Robin: [regarding a Fallback Marriage Pact] We still have our deal, right, if we're both still single when we're 40?
Ted: Yeah. [long pause] No. I'm sorry. I can't do that anymore. As long as the door is even a little bit open, I have this feeling that I'll just be waiting around to see if I win the lottery when you turn 40.
Ted: Yeah. [long pause] No. I'm sorry. I can't do that anymore. As long as the door is even a little bit open, I have this feeling that I'll just be waiting around to see if I win the lottery when you turn 40.
There are several series that establish their own status quo; even if it is subject to change periodically, there is usually still a basic formula that surrounds each installment. There are just certain conventions linked to the premise or the characters that remain in place throughout a work's run that serve as a framework with which to create stories. This gives the series some sort of structure and the audience an idea of what to expect; even if they have no idea how the story will actually go, they'll know to expect at least [X] and [Y] to happen at some point.
However, as a series goes on, it will begin playing with its status quo. And one of the ways in which it may do so is by looking back and pointing out the realistic issues regarding their own conventions and how they use their tropes. They'll take an aspect of the work and explore the realistic consequences of it, sometimes to the point of Mind Screw. This is referred to as Internal Deconstruction due to the work undergoing the task of deconstructing itself with regards to its characters and past storylines, rather than the deconstruction being done by a Spiritual Antithesis, some sort of fanwork or any specific trope. If done with real intent, this may result in a minor Retool that tries to shed past formula and evolve to something different.
To be considered for this trope, the series in question must have established a common pattern and spend a fair amount of its run using it without irony. After that pattern has become a series staple, that's when they start to poke holes in it. It isn't just Growing the Beard by refining the original pattern to its apex.
It may be the result of Cerebus Syndrome. It may also be an Author's Saving Throw or an answer to an unrelenting Status Quo Is God. Compare Ascended Fridge Horror. If a series starts off idealistic and then deconstructs its own ideals, then Graying Morality may ensue.
Compare Self-Parody, where a property exaggerates its conventions for deliberate humor; this and Internal Deconstruction can additionally overlap.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: The series is built around the ongoing Duel of Seduction between genius students Kaguya and Shirogane, who are in love with each other but far too proud to admit it, and thus enact overcomplicated schemes to make the other confess first. However, the Culture Festival arc makes it clear that they each have a host of psychological issues (Kaguya's self-hatred, Shirogane tying his self-worth to his accomplishments), showing that both are driven by deep-rooted insecurities. Even after they confess and have The Big Damn Kiss, those issues don't go away, and the next arc has them struggling to figure out how to continue opening up before they can become an Official Couple.
- Bleach: The first movie briefly deals with the consequences of Ichigo's habit of leaving his physical body lying aroundnote when he transforms into a Soul Reaper. By the time he gets back to it, a small crowd has gathered around his lifeless body while a team of paramedics is trying to resuscitate him.
- Digimon Tamers is this toward the first two seasons of Digimon. The real consequences of having a highly powerful and destructive monster as a pet/friend are really explored here, especially with the government keeping a very close eye on the mysterious creatures (although the original Adventure gave glimpses at this, this was the season that really dives into the concept).
- The Majin Buu Saga of Dragon Ball Z deconstructs the growing reliance on power upgrade after power upgrade by introducing a villain which raw force just would not work against, and the heroes constantly trying to get more power only ends up repeatedly making things worse. The Super Saiyan 3 transformation subverts No Conservation of Energy and cuts Goku's limited time that he's available to help short, as well as greatly tiring him in the final confrontation. The Fusion Dance proves useless because the only ones available for it are kids who don't entirely understand the dire nature of their situation. And Gohan having his full potential unlocked makes him cocky and ends up making Buu stronger instead. Even forming Vegito to decisively overpower Buu doesn't work, as rescuing Buu's hostages runs out the fusion's time limit and unleashes the chaotic Kid Buu. It takes an elaborate strategy to finish off the evil majin once and for all, and even that very nearly failed. The arc also does a good job of showing why Goku being on the side of good was the best course of action for Earth—by showing Majin Buu as an unhinged Evil Counterpart to Goku's younger years.
- Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 had a few instances of Deconstructing tropes from previous Gundam series, such as showing the corpse of Neil Dylandy to show everyone that he is indeed very dead, a very realistic portrayal of just how hopeless Rebellious Princess Marina's situation is (her nation is now gone and her country never got better beforehand) and Wang Liu Mei as a more realistic representation of a celebrity gaining political power.
- The Movie has a different ending: A Happily Ever After and World Peace for everyone through an Assimilation Plot, including the aliens who killed countless human soldiers. It preaches that war is the product of misunderstandings and everyone would get along as long as we didn't miscommunicate. This may also be considered a deconstruction of the traditional Gundam ending, which is often bittersweet, if not a complete downer.
- In terms of recurring Gundam archetypes, we see a more positive interpretation: The resident Expy Newtypes are the next stage in human evolution and really do lead humanity to glory, which often is criticized or outright shown as wrong across multiple Gundam installments.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans takes a sledgehammer to numerous longstanding Gundam tropes:
- As implied by the title, the majority of the main characters are actual Child Soldiers conscripted by a Private Military Contractor, many of them slaves rounded up by pirates. Troubling Unchildlike Behavior is rampant as this is the only life they know, and the main Gundam pilot Mikazuki is among the most brutal, even sociopathic, lead characters.
- In prior Gundam works, the teenage main characters are more like young adults, and the war story gives them a Coming of Age arc. The Gundam is typically seen as a method of empowerment; the hero gets to inflict fear on their enemies. Gundam Barbatos (and other Gundams) in this series are instead seen as almost demonic figures, and partially because the kids didn't really know what they had, the return of the Gundams comes across opening the Sealed Evil in a Can. And in the end, their effort and determination ultimately fails to defeat Gjallarhorn.
- McGillis, the resident Char clone, is unusually ruthless, and the act of betraying his closest friends is shown to be a demonstration that he is discarding his morality in service of his goals rather than having a stronger sense of morality than the rest of his faction. He eventually acquires a specific rival in Vidar, who seeks to understand what kind of person would do that.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 had a few instances of Deconstructing tropes from previous Gundam series, such as showing the corpse of Neil Dylandy to show everyone that he is indeed very dead, a very realistic portrayal of just how hopeless Rebellious Princess Marina's situation is (her nation is now gone and her country never got better beforehand) and Wang Liu Mei as a more realistic representation of a celebrity gaining political power.
- Most of the Love Live! animes are quite lighthearted. Furthermore, they often follow the same formula of winning the Love Live! competition and saving the school from closing. This formula starts with the original series Love Live! School Idol Project and is still used for Love Live! Superstar!!, even when the saving-the-school-part is not much more than a side note. But Love Live! Sunshine!! deconstructs this formula when the school cannot be saved in the end and therefore they fail to reach one of their main goals. This deconstruction gets even more highlighted by the fact that the parallelism to the original series is discussed within Love Live! Sunshine!! itself.
- The longer it runs, the more My Hero Academia (and the spin-off Vigilantes) criticizes the Punch-Clock Hero premise it is based around. Hero Society is increasingly depicted as a deeply corrupt and flawed institution that encourages nepotism, glory-seeking, greed, in-fighting, and all other sorts of antiheroic behavior, while the Mutant Draft Board brands genuine superheroes as illegal vigilantes for the crime of daring to be independent and even sometimes uses deniable black-ops agents to preemptively murder potential threats to maintain the image they are bringing peace to the world. The Everyone Is a Super nature of the setting is also deconstructed, such as showing the borderline-draconian lengths necessary to police a world where most people have superpowers, as well as how distressingly easy it can be for even children to dangerously misuse their powers and be branded villains. One character even speculates that the whole series is set Just Before the End, pointing out the growing number of powered people (as well as the fact that powers can strengthen over generations and mix with other powers) and wondering if human civilization will soon begin to self-destruct when the whole population ends up consisting of people whose Quirks are so powerful/uncontrollable that they're in a constant state of Super-Power Meltdown.
- One Piece, known for its unrelenting characters despite impossible odds, got struck hard with this when the obstacles in front of them become simply too hard to break away with their power (physical and will) alone. Case in point: during Luffy's struggle on rescuing Ace, he takes more punishment than usual — busting through the harsh condition of the prison, being poisoned to near-death, having to struggle against said poison with the help of Ivankov's hormones which takes off his lifespan (and 20 hours, during which Ace is transferred to Marineford), having to fight back up to escape, needing a doping hormone (twice), and finally trying to dig in to Ace's platform (with the help of Whitebeard and co). Not to mention the taxing Gear Second that he uses repeatedly. All of them are worth it, as Ace managed to break free... only for him to be goaded into a fight, and killed, by Akainu. Luffy's resulting Heroic BSoD is so great that, after he recovers from his wounds, he starts questioning his own power and worth, something he never does before.
- Persona 4: The Animation: The "A Stormy Summer Vacation" two-parter deconstructs the original game's social sim aspects, by showing just how bizarre the average day in a Persona playthrough would look to an outside observer with no context. The rest of the party witnesses Yu "dating" multiple adult women at once (actually the Temperance, Devil and Death Social Links) and catch him in the middle of several part-time jobs and "minigame" activities like fishing in increasingly strange contexts. (he's doing it all to raise money to replace an expensive toy he broke)
- Pokémon Horizons: The Series picks apart a few aspects of Ash's tenure using entirely new characters.
- In Episode 18, the audience learns that Professor Friede, the series' new mentor figure, hated his job as a traditional Pokémon Professor. While previous professors like Oak had nothing but praise for their efforts, Friede found it a Soul-Crushing Desk Job and quit researching for a while because all that time being stuck in a lab didn't fuel his passions for Pokémon like he would have hoped.
- Episode 20 picks apart Ash and co.'s Nice Guy tendencies. Though the heroes would always stop to help despite it delaying their journeys, they rarely, if ever, suffered any consequences down the line for doing so. However, Liko proves that this only worked in Ash and friends' favor for so long because they stayed true to their goals and personalities. Liko being an Extreme Doormat who bends over backwards to please everyone stunts her own growth as a trainer, and her lacking a goal only does her more harm than good. When she throws a fight against Wakaba to make sure she wins, Wakaba and Liko's Sprigatito are not happy about Liko just giving up like that. Kabu has to tell Liko that she's only hurting herself with this attitude, however noble it may be.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion deconstructs the original series' ending by showing just how damaging losing Madoka in the finale was to Homura, as well as Homura's intense devotion in general. Although there were a few hints that Homura's devotion was unhealthy in the series, the movie goes as far as to show that Homura would go against Madoka, become the devil and steal Madoka's power just because she believes it would make Madoka safer and happier.
- Rebuild of Evangelion: Of the first three movies, two go into working Shinji Ikari into an Adaptational Badass, the kind of Shinji 'with a spine' that Fanon and non-canon media like Super Robot Wars likes to portray (and/or wishes he was in the original canon), who will do incredible things to save his friends' lives. Then comes the third movie where things have gone straight to hell, and have gotten even worse by the time the film ends… all of which can be blamed on Shinji and him pulling a reality-bending Moment of Awesome on the end of the second movie without knowing the collateral damage that would ensue.
- And by that same token, the third movie also takes great pains to point out the mental gymnastics required for the people to blame everything that's gone wrong solely on Shinji's shoulders while accepting none of the responsibility for their own actions. Misato turns into a second Gendo, Asuka almost kills him at least once...
- Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie deconstructed the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise's portrayal of Evil Knock Off Metal Sonic. In the games, Sonic would usually be able to fight toe-to-toe with Metal Sonic. The OVA however shows that since Metal Sonic is an Elite Mook robot who has the same powers that Sonic does, but he has the added benefit of having unlimited energy due to being a robot, he is able to beat Sonic both times he fought him. Also, it shows that because Metal Sonic is an exact clone of Sonic, he also has some of Sonic's personality, which makes things complicated for Dr. Robotnik's plans. And also, the only way that the heroes were able to defeat Metal Sonic was for Tails to mess with his programming, not with Heroic Willpower.
- Terminator Zero is one for the Terminator franchise overall. The show outright points out that Skynet's attempts to kill any and all resistance against it via sending a Terminator back in time ironically just ends up creating the very people they tried to kill in the first place, and even in the rare cases where they succeed, someone else will inevitably rise to the occasion. It also reveals that the constant time traveling has led to the emergence of multiple Alternate Timelines.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
- Judai/Jaden was unabashedly The Ace and The Chosen One for the first two seasons, with all major victories and Myth Arc based stories revolving around his ability to beat the toughest opponents. The third season drops some bombshells as he sees the consequences for always having to be the Hero and alienating his friends along the way. When once he was The Pollyanna, he has an emotional meltdown and he grows to have No Sense of Humor.
- Also done with Ryo Marafuji/Zane Truesdale. Like Jaden, he was The Ace of the school, but after suffering a sequence of losses and losing respect and self-worth that he had in himself, he too snapped. Unlike Jaden who shuts down, Zane lashes out with extreme brutality. It ain't pretty, and by the time he finally snaps out of it in season four, he's been physically crippled.
- On the side of the villains, Sartorious/Saiou plays with the usual format of how the Arc Villain of the franchise usually works. Most villains like Pegasus and Marik necessitate that they duel the main protagonist for their goals to be achieved. Sartorious, through the Light of Destruction allowing him to view the future was able to construct his Evil Plan in such a way that would never need to duel Jaden, because he knew doing so would ruin everything. When Jaden DOES challenge him? He simply refuses, leaving Jaden completely dumbfounded. It was only by an outside force intervening and throwing a wrench into things that he was forced into dueling him to ensure things would go as planned.
- In general, GX heavily deconstructs the franchise's notorious Serious Business treatment of Duel Monsters, with the protagonists growing more and more disillusioned with the game because it's just not enjoyable when people are constantly being put in stressful, life-threatening situations by it. The absurdity of treating a card game as a life-or-death matter is repeatedly called out, and Judai himself starts to outright hate the game after a while, desperately trying to convince others to stop taking it so seriously, only to get ignored or shouted down. In the end, he's only able to find any enjoyment from the game when he meets a kindred spirit in Yugi, playing a duel with zero stakes behind it at all.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V shows the potential dangers of powers that can make a simple game a Duel to the Death by giving the power to almost everybody. An entire army uses it to enact genocide, and the survivors take the same power to fight back. It's not pretty on either side. The series has a lot of examples that are franchise-specific rather than series-specific, but a particularly obvious example is when the lesson Yuya learns in episode 53 is deconstructed in episode 56.
Art
- In 1963, Norman Rockwell, the famed illustrator of down-home Americana, quit his job at The Saturday Evening Post when, after receiving backlash from segregationists for drawing a 1961 cover, "Golden Rule",
featuring a pro-civil rights message, the Post told him to stop drawing covers featuring Black people on equal footing with white people. He subsequently went to work for the liberal magazine Look, drawing covers and illustrations that resembled the dark subversions of his sentimental style that later artists would use to satirize '50s America. "The Problem We All Live With", for instance, depicted Ruby Bridges going to a newly-integrated school under the protection of federal marshals while walking past racist graffiti, "Murder in Mississippi" depicted the 1964 murder of three civil rights activists by a Vigilante Militia in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and "New Kids in the Neighborhood" depicted Black children helping their family unload a moving van in a white neighborhood and being stared at by a group of white kids with a mix of puzzlement and suspicion.
- The final addition to North America: Portrait of a Continent is a cartouche that essentially divides it into its two major elements: the minimap depicts North America itself in a more natural state, free of the myriad details seen on the main body, whereas the surrounding frame is comprised entirely of a selection of said details and iconography. Of note is Thomas' sign-off being carried by a macaw, symbolic of how the content is what carries him up, not the other way around.
Audio Plays
- A Big Finish Doctor Who story, "The Gathering", suggests that traveling with the Doctor can poison your mind. When the Doctor revisits Tegan late in life, it turns out she left the TARDIS disenchanted with her previous lifestyle, turned away friends, lost herself in a boring job, and resented pretty much her entire life. She also has a brain tumor, which is hinted to be a side-effect of TARDIS travel (It is alien, after all).
- Sonic the Hedgehog Presents: The Chaotix Casefiles: Since their introduction, Team Chaotix has been used mainly as Plucky Comic Relief, with the trio stuck in Perpetual Poverty due to rarely being hired to do any detective work. While this series starts off as more of the same, episodes 3 and 4 start deconstructing those same tropes by showing that being seen as comical buffoons ends up weighing heavily on the group's self-esteem and how it affects each member of the team.
- Charmy blames himself when his genuinely good idea of giving everyone walkie-talkies backfires because he forgot to make sure the batteries were fresh, allowing the lens thief to get the drop on the group and steal the third one; he's so upset that he failed to find a purpose in the group — something he'd realized he was lacking in episode 1 when Vector pointed out that he fit the bee's assumed role of "the muscle" better — that he nearly leaves the Chaotix entirely.
- Espio finds himself Always Second Best to Rouge, who manages to out-stealth him twice, even when he's invisible, and saves his life in episode 3note . Just like Charmy, he ends up questioning his purpose as a ninja if he can't even be stealthy.
- Vector is excited to finally prove himself with a real case for once, only to discover that Torii was a double agent for G.U.N. and only hired him due to his connection with Sonic, not because she believed he could actually solve the case. The realization that his case was built on false pretenses cuts Vector right to the heart, and he starts questioning himself too by the end of Episode 4.
- Instead of their poverty being a source of comedy, Episode 4 plays it seriously when the Chaotix Copter — which is in a constant state of disrepair because the team can't afford to fix it — breaks down in mid-flight, causing the group to plummet out of the sky.
Comic Books
- Doktor Sleepless: Warren Ellis deconstructed much of his own oeuvre in the series, in which a very typical Ellis protagonist, who in particular is a hybrid of the motivations and objectives of Elijah Snow from Planetary with the personality of Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan, is finally revealed to be an Omnicidal Maniac Villain Protagonist.
- The Incredible Hulk: The Immortal Hulk is an Internal Deconstruction of the Hulk and the Marvel Universe as a whole, returning to Marvel's Atomic Age horror comic roots to show how absolutely nightmarish it would be to live in a world where Death Is Cheap, radiation gives people superpowers, All Myths Are True, and alien terrors invade every other week.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) takes apart a number of tropes across the broader franchise:
- Sonic himself deconstructs the All-Loving Hero and Invincible Hero. He longs to see the best in others and for them to live free as he does, but his attempts to bury the hatchet with his enemies repeatedly backfire, prompting friend and foe alike to blame his sense of mercy for the Vicious Cycle between him and Dr. Eggman; one such foe proves to be such a piece of work that Sonic comes to genuinely despise him over time. The comic also puts an emphasis on Sonic's mortality, Plot Armor notwithstanding: even running himself ragged barely protects him from a robo-zombifying techno-organic pathogen he contracts (purging it fully requires the Chaos Emeralds), his Super-Speed is twice negated by a leg injury, and a rival speedster briefly outright kills him at one point.
- The comic-original villain, Dr. Starline, deconstructs the Loony Fan, Only Sane Man, and Big Bad Wannabe. He idolizes Eggman and is thus disappointed by Eggman's usual self-destructiveness. After a falling-out and his banishment from the Eggman Empire, Starline launches his own bid for world domination, hoping to surpass Eggman and regain his respect. Gradually, however, Starline reveals himself to be a complete and utter bastard who is just as flawed as the people he criticizes, and he meets a humiliating demise after a vengeful Eggman undoes all his plans. Ironically, it's from beyond the grave that he finally gets the credit he longed for and gets the last laugh on Eggman and the heroes, with his Villainous Legacy enduring through his ex-idol and Magnum Opus creations.
- Surge the Tenrec and Kitsunami "Kit" the Fennec deconstruct the Evil Counterpart in that Starline forced them to be one to Sonic and Tails, respectively, based on his shallow understanding of the latter two. Rather than produce Superior Successors to the heroes, Starline's experiments broke his creations mentally and emotionally, leaving them with glaring personality flaws: Surge, possessing an Irrational Hatred of Sonic that she herself does not understand, is often Blinded by Rage and leaps before she looks, while Kit's Undying Loyalty to her is such that he lacks any self-worth, reducing him to an Extreme Doormat incapable of functioning without his partner. Even worse, Surge feels she can't be free until Sonic is dead (even after Starline's own death), while Kit can't understand why the heroes would attempt to negotiate with them out of kindness instead of necessity, leading them to violently reject any attempts by their counterparts to reason with them.
- One Story Arc deconstructs Silver the Hedgehog's notorious former Inspector Javert tendencies. In this case, he has the right man from the start and follows a credible lead, but his ensuing Battle of Wits against the evil shapeshifter Mimic favors the latter, whereas Silver himself performs best in a straight fight. As such, his investigation still comes to naught and winds up with him publicly disgraced. None of this was even Silver's original objective; he just wanted something to do and was in the right place, but at the wrong time. Thankfully, Blaze gives Silver a pep-talk and they both set out to see the world together.
- The Restoration (formerly the Resistance) as a whole differentiates itself from the Knothole Freedom Fighters via this trope. Whereas the Freedom Fighters were a government-backed crime-fighting group (which after the Soft Reboot includes Team Rose), the game cast sans Amy Rose go back to their normal lives ASAP; Amy herself later burns out and quits after the Metal Virus storyline, and once Jewel the Beetle takes charge, the Restoration becomes an almost all-humanitarian group, save two small task forces.
- Spider-Man: The Back in Black storyline deconstructed Kingpin's Badass Normal status and his ability to fight on an even level with Spider-Man, who could lift trucks, move faster than the eye can see, and see the Kingpin's attacks coming before he even tried to launch them. Usually, they can still have a fight, but then the Kingpin had Aunt May shot just for giggles. Spider-Man broke into the prison where the Kingpin was held and utterly floored the Fat Man, coming within a hair's breadth of killing him without even being touched, and made it extremely clear to everyone that the only reason that the Kingpin had ever fought effectively against him was because Spidey didn't want to kill him and was holding back.
- Star Wars: Star Wars: Legacy is one of several Internal Deconstructions, and a lot of both volumes are spent discussing, subverting, and toying with the franchise's conventions:
- A young, heroic Jedi brimming with potential, hailing from a great family, and destined to bring balance to the Force? Cade Skywalker used to be like that... until he spent most of his childhood having all that Chosen One crap shoved down his throat, only to subsequently watch his father be murdered by the Sith while he could do nothing despite all his power. Now, he's a bitter, cynical, and self-destructive Anti-Hero who just wants to be left alone and stays as far away from Jedi business as possible, and the Jedi are arguably better off without him. Then volume two twists it in a different way; the new hero is Ania Solo, another descendant of the Skywalker family, but one who wasn't lucky enough to get cool Force powers and now leads a boring, obscure life running a junkyard with nothing to show for her lineage... until the adventure she always wanted finds her in the worst way possible.
- A strict dichotomy between light and dark, good and evil? Not here. The Empire is no longer a bunch of straw villains, but a genuinely noble government with just as many heroes as the Alliance, and is arguably more effective to boot. Speaking of the Alliance, they're willing to let mass murderers like Darth Wredd rampage about as long as it's not in their backyard. Meanwhile, not all of the Jedi are role models to aspire to (see Cade Skywalker above), and some Sith are actually pretty decent folks who were just unlucky enough to be raised in a cruel, inherently toxic culture. Not to mention, the Force itself is not nearly so simple and clear cut as people are led to believe; using the Force to heal injured or dead people, for instance, is a Dark Side power. The story starts in a Morality Kitchen Sink and only gets more complicated from there.
- Darth Wredd seems like he's going to be this comic's equivalent of Darth Vader, being a disfigured Sith Lord hiding behind armour. But then he independently turns on the Sith, because he would never be loyal to the people who ruined his life, killed his family, and tried to use him as a weapon. It isn't a Heel–Face Turn; he's just going to destroy the Sith right alongside the Jedi and anybody else who gets in his way, rejecting attempts to make him copy Darth Vader and forging his own villainous identity. Oh, and villains aren't the only ones who can be Darth Vader Clones; Azlyn also becomes one, just one that stays on the side of good, undermining the Freudian Excuses of all the previous Vader Clones.
- Wacky, lovable robot sidekick that exists for comic relief? R2-D2 returns, but spends much of his screentime being cruelly abused and dismissed by Cade, who treats him not as a loyal family friend but as a dumb little nuisance that should just shut up and fly the ship. And instead of being relegated to the role of Plucky Comic Relief, he gets several chances to prove himself as an invaluable ally, such as risking his life to save the other heroes from crashing into a sun.
- Faceless henchmen and soldiers that exist for the main characters to fight or to fill backgrounds? Here, a lot of time is taken to show that all those generic mooks are people with lives all their own, and it is repeatedly shown that just because you aren't a superpowered warrior of noble descent doesn't mean you can't be a really awesome hero in your own right. Indeed, one of the running plotlines revolves around a lovable squad of stormtroopers loyally serving their country as they grapple with being a bunch of normal folks caught in the middle of war amongst The Chosen Many... and one of the first notable things they do is kill a Sith Lord.
- Transformers: IDW's comics deconstruct many of the franchise's hallmarks:
- The “Robots in Disguise” element is taken to its logical conclusion; the Autobot/Decepticon conflict is a morally grey, cloak and dagger affair, with the Decepticons infiltrating governments to destroy them from within and the Autobots being forced to take on the role of Benevolent Conspiracy.
- The franchise's usual Adventure Towns involved the Autobots traveling to alien planets and saving them from Decepticons. Here, the Transformers are pariahs wanted dead by much of the galactic community, expressly because other planets keep getting dragged into their war.
- Unlike in many previous versions, the Autobots and Decepticons are not the only factions on Cybertron. There are numerous Neutral factions... most of which hate Bots and Cons alike, blaming them and their conflict for Cybertron's devastation.
- Transforming isn't just a toy gimmick, it's a massive part of Transformer culture and life, and many of its own gimmics get disturbing twists:
- The Action Masters are Transformers who refuse to transform for religious reasons, receiving quite a bit of discrimination for it.
- Pretenders are horrific abominations of science created by basically fusing Transformers and organics.
- The Headmasters give Transformers a massive intelligence and reflex boost, with terrifying trade-offs like having their original heads removed painfully.
- Micromasters are human-sized because they used to be human (or at least Human Aliens) prior to being experimented on by an Evilutionary Biologist.
- War Is Hell is in full effect:
- Battles between Transformers are treated with realistic, horrifying brutality, and Anyone Can Die.
- Earth ends up being devastated by the Decepticons partway in and spends most of the story recovering.
- The Forever War doesn't last forever; about halfway through, it ends and stays ended. The rest of the series is spent dealing with the aftermath, especially how difficult it is for the Autobots and Decepticons to adjust to life without war. Many of them do not handle it well, with some having full-on nervous breakdowns.
- X-Men: Perfectly encapsulated by this quote from Cyclops' page: "He's a fearless rebel leader who's been trained his whole life to fight for mutantkind. If you read that as 'fanatical Child Soldier terrorist,' congratulations! You now understand his character arc."
Fan Works
- Abyssal is a dark, epic Mega Man X fic set in a dystopia where corporate greed enslaved both human and Reploid alike. The main problem in Abyssal was that Reploids were not legally considered people while still acknowledging free will, which passed the buck on any 'crimes' committed by a Reploid (as minor as not showing up to work) squarely on them rather than the corporations, thereby giving corporations free rein to dispose of problematic Reploids with no oversight. The same author deconstructs the system they created in Thanks for Nothing Dad, where the government being a bit more proactive nipped the entire plot in the bud. The courts ruled that the manufacturers are responsible for their Reploid's well-being, and holds them liable if an error drove a Reploids to crime. Abyssal is 36 chapters long, and Thanks for Nothing Dad is one.
- Ahsoka: A NZRE Star Wars Story: E1 does this to the quest to find Ezra and the fact that it's taken four years for Ahsoka and Sabine to get to that point.
- A Case Study in the Sturdiness of the Rookie 9 is a Naruto fanfic where Naruto and his classmates are assigned to different teams. The new teams have their own dynamics and methodology brought by their teachers. However, besides Kurenai's Team 8 (Shikamaru, Hinata, and Sasuke), these dynamics get deconstructed as the series goes on.
- For Team 7 (Shino, Sakura, and Choji), the team developed a series of self-reliance and self-training thinking that's the lesson Kakashi is putting on them, rather than him leaving them to their own devices. This ends up leading them to favor their team's well-being over everyone else, up to betraying a fellow Konoha Team during the Chunin Exam.
- For Team 10, Asuma is stuck with both Naruto and Kiba butting heads. In order to get them to work together, he has Ino use the Yamanaka Clan's mind-control technique to rein them in. Ultimately, the technique has a more brutal impact on the boys' minds than either Asuma or Ino realized. Even worse, the damage made Kiba more vulnerable to Orochimaru's Curse Seal.
- A Student Out of Time: The Dianthus Memory arc serves as one for both Danganronpa and many of the blog's ongoing elements. Notably, Hajime's insistence that Thou Shalt Not Kill is revealed to unintentionally lead to Tsumugi Shirogane escaping capture, and eventually going on to create her underground killing games, eventually leading to the events of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, starring his granddaughter Kaede. He doesn't take the revelation well, especially as his allies conclude that Violence Really Is the Answer.
- I Against I, Me Against You: Several fanfics depict Prince Blueblood as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who only behaved like an ass to Rarity because he was angered by her advances on him, and eventually gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about it. Here, when he uses this as an excuse, Tucker tears him apart, pointing out that Rarity was at worst naive and a bit pushy and nothing she did justified his dickishness.
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail
- Act 2 begins seriously dissecting the concept of an Accusation Fic, as the punishments being doled out in response to the situation start crossing the line from justified to increasingly disproportionate. What began as Laser-Guided Karma snowballs into anything but.
- The dramatic turning point of Act 2 kicks off with another long, detailed lecture about how horribly Chloe was mistreated, followed by another harsh punishment being meted out. Except this time, the one making the speech and doling out the punishments isn't as justified as they believe, and their actions cross the line over into monstrous. From here, the story explores what kind of horrible things can happen when somebody decides that their personal catharsis overrides more measured or appropriate responses, or is more concerned with vengeance than healing.
- Chloe as a character is increasingly dissected as the story delves into the roots of her issues, showing that many of her problems stemmed from mounting self-hatred over the bullying she faced, along with her personal biases and resentments growing deeply ingrained. More and more, the choices she made are called into question, brought into harsher scrutiny over time.
- The same applies to Parker, particularly after the Unown come into play, as the darker aspects of his relationship with Chloe come into play. His insistence that everything is clearly black and white, with his sister as a clear-cut victim and everyone else aligned against her, gives way to Black-and-White Insanity and mounting anger issues at any display of injustice, real, imagined, or exaggerated.
- The amount of lectures and rants directed at the characters in story eventually gets to a point that both Cerise parents are sick of hearing them. When Talia sends a Tough Love email to Chloe, she bluntly tells Chloe that at this point they'd been told everything there is possible to say a ton of times already while the parents mentally snark that everyone seems to think they were the first to tell them both how they failed as parents.
- The Light of Abyss: Chapter 110 serves as one to the fic's treatment of the series Star vs. the Forces of Evil. For the majority of the fic, the only time SVTFOE came up it was to criticize it, with Star being called a "vapid princess" that Dr. Strange had to lecture for a week straight following her series ending, multiple characters used as mouthpieces to vent Rater's frustrations with the series, and the Eventuality having Luz restore the Realm of Magic in a blatant attempt at undoing the series' controversial ending. When Star herself actually shows up though and Amity has a knee-jerk reaction to accuse Star for the current situation after all she's heard of her, Star demonstrates the kind of effect facing all of that criticism would have on a person, particularly what it would do to their mental health. She goes into a rant about how she's become Easily Condemned for a situation she had no good solutions in without anyone bothering to hear out her side of the story, had already received the approval of doing what she did from someone with an Omniscient Morality License and was given no reason to think it wasn't the right thing to do, how she's had to spend the last half a decade making up for what she's done while forced to attend therapy, and how the Eventuality bringing the Realm of Magic back as part of a lesson for Luz just made things worse for people with her and Glossaryck (now Back from the Dead and pissed since he liked being dead) being forced to clean up the mess. By the end of her rant, Amity can only apologize for her knee-jerk reaction while Dr. Strange begins to realize he had been judging her while lacking crucial context, and Star is just so exhausted she just wants to get this all over with while lamenting she should have just gone to couples counseling with Marco like he wanted.
- Redaction of the Golden Witch:
- Walter Absalom picks apart the Forgery he's studying and examines why it was rejected by the Witch Hunter fandom in the first place.
- The 1996!Protagonist takes an especially harsh look at the Witch Hunt phenomenon. Each of their companions appears to have completely lost sight of the fact that the Ushiromiya family and their staff were real victims of an actual tragedy.
- A Red Rose in the Blue Wind
- There is a common plot point in most of Iron117Prime fanfics where one-half of the hero group withholds information regarding their respective main antagonist. The worst thing that said hero group often receives is getting a slap on the wrist for keeping it all under wraps. Ozpin had been concealing this information for quite some time, and his character is what leads to the information regarding the antagonist being revealed right before a major climactic event is about to happen. This completely strains his relationship with the rest of the Sonic characters, who, after the Battle of Beacon, take matters into their own hands for real.
- A well-known trope in the author's fanfics is about a villainess who is hard to beat in the canonical series but gets subjected to The Worf Effect by the new heroes and then progresses and turns good at the end or the midpoint of the story. Cinder Fall lacks the redeeming traits of Azula and Cornelia li Britannia, so much so that one of her first acts of villainy is killing a young Faunus child for spreading information to the heroes, which sours their depiction of her. Once she finally comes face to face with Sonic for her actions and promptly loses, the first thing she thinks about is attaining more power to defeat her newfound archnemeses, which includes the canonical death of Amber and gaining the Fall Maiden powers. However, her victory streak is cut short once she's face-to-face with Shadow, who, wanting to exact vengeance on her for what she did to the Faunus child, beats her to a pulp. The Grimm that had been holding her power dies off after Sonic goes Super and teleports the Grimm to the surface of the Sun, passing the Fall Maiden powers to Pyrrha. All of this leads to her losing any semblance of the power she once had in the canonical series, and it's clearly looking grim now that she's also lost both of her arms. As the final nail in the coffin, whereas Azula and Cornelia still keep serving under their lieges, Salem no longer deems her useful and orders her minions to kill her on sight.
- Remnant's Blonde Bard: Guitar Cutie being supernaturally popular comes with issues later in the story.
- Jaune being a sex symbol as Guitar Cutie with legions of hardcore fans and admirers was just a joke for most of the story and a source of Jaune's income. Come chapter 29, Jaune has learned that someone managed to track the money he makes to Argus and realizes both that a Loony Fan could find his family and may harm them when they find out that the "woman he loved" was a cross-dressing man. Saphron also realizes Jaune makes so much money because the fans are that obsessive. Jaune makes a plan to be spotted in Vacuo just to throw people off the trail.
- Later, Guitar Cutie is so influential that Sun and the orphans he helps being the first people to publicly know her causes them to be targeted by a gang who wants Guitar Cutie to meet them.
Literature
- Animorphs serves as an overall deconstruction of the Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World genre—the teenage heroes who end up as Earth's only line of defense against the genocidal, mind-controlling Yeerks are frequently shown as impossibly out of their element, and their regular lives, interpersonal relationships, and general ability to function all suffer as they go through constant battles against a far more powerful force. However, as the series progressed, author K.A. Applegate also deconstructed the main archetypes of the five main human characters:
- Jake, The Leader, is the team's rock and does his best to retain stable and grounded for the others when things get rough. As the months pass, though, he's increasingly weighed down by The Chains of Commanding and develops an I Did What I Had to Do attitude when it comes to making decisions. Jake eventually orders the explicit slaughter of tens of thousands of hostless, defenseless Yeerks, which is explicitly stated to be a genocidal act and haunts him for the rest of his life.
- Rachel is The Big Guy of the team and an Amazonian Beauty who loves to fight. But as her time in the war progresses, she gradually becomes a Blood Knight who genuinely enjoys killing, and is forced to admit to herself that she can accept being the Animorph who does the harshest, most dangerous jobs—not just because the others don't have the stomach for it, but because she wants to.
- Marco, Jake's best friend, initially begins as The Smart Guy and team strategist who's brilliant at coming up with plans; he's also the joker of the group who loves to crack puns and keep spirits high, and openly admits to being interested in the traditional trappings of being a hero, like wealth, fame, and beautiful women. His intelligence and planning eventually give way to ruthless pragmatism (a mindset he calls "the line"—wherever a goal exists, the shortest and most direct way to completing that goal is the best way possible); his joking tendencies are the result of him being a Sad Clown who absolutely refuses to show any sort of negative emotion or weakness; and while he does get to enjoy the high life after the Animorphs successfully deter the Yeerk invasion, he's utterly bored with it in months and realizes that his existence is completely empty.
- Cassie is The Heart of the group: she's naturally good with animals, plays peacemaker among the other Animorphs, and is the first to suggest compassion and empathy when problems arise thanks to being a social expert. By the final few books, she's forced to admit that she's lost a good deal of her innocence after being faced with the horrors of war—to the point where she actively recruits disabled teenagers as auxiliary Animorphs because they're among the only people who are considered Beneath Notice by the Yeerks—and her natural tendency to make decisions based on her feelings becomes more troublesome, as evidenced when she chooses to let Tom escape with the morphing cube rather than let Jake stop him. Cassie also starts using her natural ability to read people as a weapon, proving herself to be even more manipulative than Marco when the need arises.
- The The First Law series begins with a trilogy of novels that are very clearly intended as a Deconstructor Fleet of heroic fantasy/high fantasy tropes. Red Country feels like a case of internal deconstruction in that it shows how normal people would react to the actions of the characters from the original trilogy.
- The Noon Universe novels began extremely idealistically with Noon: 22nd Century, which described a utopian future society where everyone is honest and hard-working for the good of humanity. But already in the second and third books, Escape Attempt and Far Rainbow, the authors basically show that even in a perfect society, human beings remain fundamentally flawed, so all the advances of civilization cannot prevent humanity from destroying itself and their environment. It only gets worse from there on, mirroring the Strugatsky Brothers' progressive disillusionment with Soviet ideology and goals.
- The late-period Saint short story "The Spanish Cow" internally deconstructs Simon Templar's more snobbish tendencies, and overall Karmic Thief attitude, by having him come close to seducing and stealing from an unattractive, middle-aged, poorly-educated wealthy woman because he dislikes her. He only realises at the last moment that he is about to do something truly cruel and evil to a completely non-villainous person just because he thinks that she isn't cool and sexy enough to deserve her lifestyle.
- By Word of God, Kameron Hurley started writing the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy because of her dissatisfaction with the way that Action Girls in SF and Urban Fantasy were often written: as having been made that way against their wills, lamenting their inability to achieve Acceptable Feminine Goals, and benefiting from Beauty Is Never Tarnished to keep them sexy for male audience members. She decided to create a female character who was actually a gender-swapped version of a truly badass male action hero. Then she decided that action heroes of that kind were basically assholes regardless of gender, explaining why the books become gradually less approving of Nix as a person as they go on.
- In the Doctor Who New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures, being a Doctor Who companion is absolutely guaranteed to mess you up for the rest of your life, although agreeing to become one is presented as a pretty good indication you were messed up to start with. At times, the writers almost seemed in a competition to see who could give a former companion the absolute worst life. It got to the point where the fact the Doctor kept dragging people off with him despite all the evidence was considered a bigger sign of him being a monster than all the genocides.
- The Dresden Files:
- Harry Dresden's Hot-Blooded nature and proclivity for the Indy Ploy is savagely deconstructed as the series goes on, with it being shown that his "spur of the moment" ideas might work and be effective at the time (or even be the only possibility he has open to him), but they can have horrible consequences down the road since he didn't properly plan ahead and account for all the variables. Just a few examples include him deciding to risk his life for his girlfriend Susan in Grave Peril (sparking an incredibly bloody war that lasts for at least an In-Universe decade), him helping Lara Raith depose her father in Blood Rites (meaning that the White Court of Vampires now has a dangerously intelligent and ruthless Chessmaster in charge), and wiping out the entire Red Court of Vampires in Changes causes a hideously massive Evil Power Vacuum in the supernatural world (to the point where even the series' Extra-Strength Masquerade is starting to fall through). Understandably, this all helps incite Character Development for Harry as he learns to act more carefully and rationally, using more Xanatos Speed Chess instead of being a Leeroy Jenkins.
- Relatedly, Harry is quite the Destructive Saviour, to the point where there's a series-wide Running Gag of Harry burning down a building practically once a book. However, in Changes, this widespread history of property damage that follows in his wake results in the FBI suspecting Dresden for a terrorist bombing. It even bleeds back over into the supernatural side of things, with Harry having to fight the assumption by both his enemies and allies that he's just a Dumb Muscle Person of Mass Destruction for constantly knocking down buildings as he learns to become more of a Genius Bruiser who can get shit done without causing massive property damage.
- Harry's It's All My Fault tendencies have been pretty reliably shown to be a tragic but not exactly noteworthy element of his personality and natural part of his Chronic Hero Syndrome. However, Ghost Story (2011) deconstructs this being overlooked and taken in stride by showing how Harry was Driven to Suicide when a Fallen Angel whispered the right seven words in his ear to perfectly prey on his massive Guilt Complex. In Skin Game, Michael Carpenter literally calls Harry a "pigheaded, arrogant idiot" for unnecessarily heaping such guilt onto himself and calls him to stop holding himself up to such impossibly high standards.
- The first Earthsea trilogy established the craft of wizardry as restricted to men, with the maxims "weak as women's magic, wicked as women's magic" never shown to be unjustified. Ged's first teacher, his aunt, is a petty and self-important hedgewitch, and another budding sorceress tries to manipulate him into casting spells beyond his means. Le Guin later realized that there was no actual reason for her to have written this except that it was common genre convention, so her second trilogy takes a good, hard look at this attitude, where it could have come from, and the consequences to subjugating women and shutting them out of proper education.
- In the Heralds of Valdemar series, Valdemar is normally portrayed as The Good Kingdom, with a Monarch who's been accepted by the gods (in the form of their Companion) and a shining example of tolerance because their ideal is that "There Is No One True Way." Sure, there are noble conspiracies, bad Valdemarans, and bigoted villains who won't get with the program, but that's not the way the system is supposed to work. Closer to Home, however, shows that The Good Kingdom is still an oppressive system in many ways, where the theoretical freedoms available to women don't prevent them from being trapped in social controls that force them into the roles of wife or victim. The villain of the story, while exceptionally cruel even by Valdemaran noble standards, is a product of the system and benefits from its inherent abuses. Mags and Dallen even spend a bit of time discussing how the King and Prince are personally babysitting a noble feud that threatens to break into violence, while in the poorer parts of Haven, people murder each other every day, and nobody thinks much of it - and while it's wrong, it's the way Valdemar is.
- Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs is infamous for its usage of Lady Land, what with most women being originally characterized as a Spoiled Brat paired with Rich Bitch and/or Gold Digger. But this gets deconstructed…
- The Alternate Timeline Marie Route Web Novel series shows Marie's Sympathetic P.O.V. about how many of the boys in the academy are just as bad as the girls, while introducing a number of other sympathetic girls as Marie's friends.
- In the eighth light novel volume, it's shown that higher-level Blue Blood nobles have a sexism problem, with Clarice being victim to Slut-Shaming, as well as the kingdom having undergone a Full-Circle Revolution and Leon having to defend one of his sisters against male bullying resembling what he had faced.
Music
- Eminem created his "Slim Shady" alter ego as A Darker Me for his fans to vicariously live through, a violent sadist who frequently engages in Comedic Sociopathy. On two songs from The Marshall Mathers LP, "Stan" and "Kim", he shows what would happen if somebody actually tried to do the things that "Slim Shady" did in his songs.
- On "Stan", the titular Loony Fan of Eminem hears his music and thinks that his persona isn't an act. Wanting to be more like his idol, he commits a Murder-Suicide of himself and his pregnant girlfriend in imitation of Eminem's Murder Ballad "'97 Bonnie & Clyde". When Eminem reads the increasingly unhinged letters that Stan sent him, he is absolutely horrified, especially when he turns on the TV and realizes that the details of the grisly news report he's watching line up with the details that Stan wrote down in his letters. Years later, on The Marshall Mathers LP 2, he wrote a Sequel Song called "Bad Guy" in which Stan's brother Matthew, who Stan described as even more obsessed with Eminem than he was, kidnaps and kills Eminem as revenge for destroying Stan's life and his family.
- "Kim" shows what Slim Shady's behavior would look like without the "Comedic" part of Comedic Sociopathy. A prequel to the more comedic "'97 Bonnie & Clyde", to which it serves as a Spiritual Antithesis, it's a brutal, unflinching, six-minute song in which Eminem raps as Marshall Mathers about murdering his wife, making it clear that anything funny about such a situation comes purely from the sick manner in which Slim Shady frames it for the listener. It's one of the most horrifying rap songs ever written, and reportedly, the real Kim tried to kill herself when she saw a live performance of it.
- Vektroid is considered one of the genre codifiers of vaporwave, primarily from her seminal 2011 album Floral Shoppe under the name "Macintosh Plus", but in 2019 she would release the single "Sick & Panic", also released under the Macintosh Plus name in 2019, which she pointedly stated was to skewer the sound of Floral Shoppe and vaporwave as a whole. In particular, while vaporwave is a Sampling-heavy music genre that reappropriates jazzy musak for sounds that are largely soothing and nostalgic in nature, "Sick & Panic" screws with various distorted samples and noises into arrangements that are almost completely unrecognizable to the average ear, at best resembling avant-garde free jazz, deconstructed hip-hop, and the sounds of computers glitching themselves to death.
Tabletop Games
- A fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons book "Threats to the Nentir Vale" features a group of monsters that deconstruct the murderhobo fantasy dungeon crawlers. The Barrowhaunts are a group of undead revenants who used to be an adventuring party in life. They delved a burial tomb complex and attracted the ire of the warlord buried inside, whose spirit called out to local hill clans related to the ghost and told them to come take their revenge. They answered the call, and the adventurers preferred to slaughter them all rather than relinquish their loot, killing the entire people off. One of the hillfolk elders laid a dying curse upon the adventurers, binding them to the land for all eternity. The adventuring party did become more and more obsessed with the region as time went by. They kept coming back for more treasure and attempted many delves into the complex. Eventually their greed surpassed their skill. After the ensuing TPK, they got back up, now fully under the effects of the curse. Robbing tombs for personal gain is risky in a world where curses of doom are real.
Theater
- The Weaver of Dreams' main thesis is that, unlike in the source material, Penelope might not have waited faithfully for Odysseus after 20 years of running Ithaca on her own, and may have even grown used to both ruling the country and the attention from the suitors.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!:
- The analysis for both characters of any Death Battle is often presented as the hosts going over the characters fresh, aside from when they're already legitimate fans of them. In "SpongeBob VS Aquaman", doing it like this with only the understanding of the connections between SpongeBob and Aquaman means they don't understand just how big the gap between both characters truly is. While Boomstick is presented as a more neutral and reasonable party, Wiz enters each analysis expecting SpongeBob to be a legitimate joke and Aquaman an impressively broken character... only for those to flip incredibly quickly. As a result, the outcome of the battle is obvious from the moment both analysis sections are completed and neither the hosts or the animation can even pretend it isn't; the gap between SpongeBob and Aquaman is just that big and notable.
- The Season 10 episode "Martian Manhunter VS Silver Surfer" deconstructs how the show often uses Excuse Plots, Out-of-Character Moments, and No Plot? No Problem! to make the combatants fight each other to the death - in particular, by using two characters who possess both universal awareness and overwhelming compassion for sentient life. In this episode's climax, the Silver Surfer wonders why they're even fighting, seemingly realizing that some higher power (likely referring to the show's creators themselves) is causing the battle to happen for reasons he does not understand.
- Helluva Boss
- Millie's status as a Satellite Character is portrayed rather realistically in episode "Unhappy Campers". She expresses how she never has any moments to shine, and for how supportive she's been toward Moxxie, he hasn't been supportive of her own ambitions. As such, once Millie gets a lot of popularity as "Millerd" among the campers, she revels in the attention.
- In the same episode, Moxxie's Butt-Monkey status is deconstructed by showing the Inferiority Superiority Complex he's developed as a result and how annoying that can be for Millie to deal with. As usual, he takes the brunt of physical and verbal abuse and humiliation in this episode (which is made worse here by his failed attempts at acting like a popular girl, resulting in him becoming Hated by All); Here, though, it's juxtaposed with Millie effortlessly winning the hearts of the other campers, and seeing her become so popular so easily whereas he ends up becoming an outcast no matter what he tries results in Moxxie becoming envious of her instead of supportive out of sheer wounded pride. Millie calls him out on this during the couple's first on-screen fight.
- Karen from the episode "Sinsmas" exists to be one to all of I.M.P.'s clients. While most of them were very dubious individuals, they usually had a legitimate case for wanting revenge on their target, especially since most of them indeed turned out to be Asshole Victims when I.M.P. took to the task. By contrast, Karen is so upfront, petty, and vindictive in her motivations that even I.M.P. realise she's a bad deal, and when they find out the target is a genuinely good person with no strings attached, they can't go through with the job and choose to give Karen her comeuppance instead, it being the more genuine act of Pay Evil unto Evil they usually do.
- "Mission: Orphan Time" examines the other side of its own show's premise - any assassin is going to eventually be sent against a target that genuinely does not deserve it, and I.M.P. finds one in Frank Wrigglers, who is such a Nice Guy that Loona starts looking up to him and even Blitzo's finely-tuned cynicism takes a backseat as he realizes that he isn't a Depraved Kids' Show Host. The episode is relatively light on jokes and large on personal drama. Additionally while previous episodes had extreme levity towards I.M.P.'s cruelty to even undeserving people, the short ends on the bleak note of Wrigglers' brutal death, and Loona clearly disturbed after finally doing what her job demanded.
- Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction is a deconstruction of The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Everything the Reds and Blues got away with in their own canyon is torn apart when they're reassigned elsewhere. Caboose is tied up in the brig due to his Friendly Fire tendencies. Grif and Simmons face the firing squad after selling all their ammo to the Blue team. The reason that all the Red and Blue conflicts were nothing more than pointless squabbling over equally pointless flags and bases is revealed to be a conspiracy by command.
Webcomics
- Dominic Deegan: One of the comic's most common ways for Dominic to save the day was for him to use his powers of second sight and insight into the others to run work in the background and set up a Batman Gambit or two to take out the enemies. By the time of the "The Battle for Barthis" story, he was able to save the day without even leaving his room. This would get taken apart in the "Snowsong" story, where he pulls a similar feat to defeat the title enemy, only to get chewed out by Pam, who was furious that someone she called a friend didn't inform her that there was a plot to destroy the town that she was responsible for going on right under her nose. Dominic would take this to heart, and later stories had him be more open with his allies and setting some limits as to how he used his powers to look in on others, only pulling these gambits as a last resort.
- Dumbing of Age takes all the characters of the Walkyverse, with all their personalities and quirks, asks "How would these characters come across in real life, as opposed to a World of Weirdness full of superheroes and pop-culture parodies?" and answers "Not very pleasant or sane". Previously innocuous personality quirks like Danny's fecklessness, Joyce's devoutly religious upbringing, Walky's childishness, Amber's anger issues, etc., now all point to deep-seated, self-destructive psychological issues that mean everyone comes across as broken in some way.
- Ennui GO!: For much of the comic's run, Cricket and Bee's relationship has been a humorous case of No Guy Wants to Be Chased; she'll aggressively pursue him, he'll act like a tsundere about it, rinse and repeat. However, the "Don't Say You Love Me" arc ends up deconstructing this dynamic. Cricket, while still harboring a crush on Bee, is genuinely uncomfortable partaking in public displays of affection. But because he resorts to shoving her away and avoiding her without telling her why he's uncomfortable, Bee sees no reason to stop with her pursuits — and consequently, is getting frustrated by the fact that Cricket can't seem to make up his mind about wanting the relationship or not, culminating in her calling him out on it during their drive-in date. Once he clearly explains that he loves her but isn't comfortable with PDA, she agrees to respect his boundaries.
Web Original
- Critical Role: In all 3 campaigns, the main party has ended up in possession of sentient magical items (usually weapons), which has gone poorly nearly every time as they all turned out to be evil. Taliesin Jaffe decided he wanted to explore what the world would look like from the perspective of a sentient item, so in Campaign 4, decided to play Bolaire, a sentient, god-killing weapon in the form of a theater mask that takes over the bodies of anyone who puts him on. Bolaire was used in many wars after the one he was made for, but eventually got so sick of simply being used for conflict that he ran away and started building up his own life.
- Newer works in SCP Foundation, itself a deconstruction of the Urban Fantasy genre, increasingly question the implications of a shadowy organisation with more power than many world governments being tasked to preserve normalcy in the world. Especially from 2016 onward, several entries such as SCP-3985 have explored how quickly such an organisation can become unaccountably self-serving and corrupt. Other entries, such as SCP-4000 and SCP-3293, go a step further and deconstruct the basic premise of containing anomalies (especially sapient ones) and its moral and ethical implications, especially considering how far the Foundation can go to do it.
- Other entries deconstruct the entire Ancient Conspiracy angle of the Foundation by applying Science Marches On; SCP-1851-EX is the desire for slaves to escape to freedom labeled as an anomalous phenomenon, while SCP-2750 portrays skinwalkers as a Native American ethnic group that was driven to near-extinction by pogroms when a Foundation precursor group took the prejudices and superstitions of rival tribes at face value.
- SCP-6140 is a reinterpretation of SCP-140 that frames the bloodthirsty Daevite Empire as an orientalist view of Daeva culture and mythology written by a foreigner that ultimately got a more realistic country hidden from the world, which would have superseded the true history and become real if the books that caused the anomaly weren't destroyed to let Daevastan come back in its original form.
- Other entries deconstruct the entire Ancient Conspiracy angle of the Foundation by applying Science Marches On; SCP-1851-EX
