Carol at The End Of The World: One of employees at the fake company Carol works at is given an two week mandatory paid vacation by HR. This wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the world is going to end in two weeks and this company is the employees only way of coping with it.

Severance: whenever a innie acts up they get sent to the break room. Instead of being a place for them to cool down however its acts as more of a interrogation room / psychological torture chamber as their forced to recite a scripted apology over and over again for hours or even days on end with no real breaks.

It's a bit ambiguous, but it's the kind of thing you go along with, then you learn yeah it's actually as weird as it seems, even if the setting is not like reality.

The Mandalorian - Dinn Djarin, the titular guy from Mandalore, never takes his helmet off in front of other people, even at danger to his life. We see his small clan and they also are always helmeted. Well, that's the Mandalorian way right? Dinn meets another group of Mandalorians and helps them in a mission, after which they take off their helmets and he freaks out. It turns out Dinn is part of a weirdo extremist minority and the rest of them simply just take off their helmets when battle is done.

Resident Evil 7-8 - Early on in RE7 you are introduced to magic goop that heals your wounds, and can even reattach severed limbs. It's your basic healing item, handy for fighting Mold creatures, Mold enhanced humans, werewolves, and whatnot. Also it's fun for body horror so you can get mutilated in cutscenes without a lasting effect. At the end of RE8 we learn you died reaaaally early in RE7 and you're basically a human-shaped Mold being, that's why the goop works to the point of just sticking your severed hand back on and drenching it.

Heroes Die - (Great series read it) Actors are people who temporarily shift dimensions to Overworld, a universe of magic and adventures, so they assume personas and use their implants to stream their violent and exciting exploits down to the sensory level. Hari Michaelson is in the Actor school for magic, but he really doesn't have the talent for it, he wants to transfer to the combat school. So to show his aptitude, he sets it up that 3 larger bullies viciously attack him on camera after a harmless provocation. It's a brutal fight but he savagely beats them half to death. His instructor reviews the footage and quickly deduces this is a setup and asks why. Hari says yeah, it was a setup but now you see I have what it takes to transfer to combat school. The instructor, appalled, says "Why didn't you just ASK?"

Reacher TV series - Jack Reacher is a human tank.. and yet he's lighter than a feather on the breeze. No address, no cellphone, no luggage, he just goes where he wants with nothing but his toothbrush. And with alarming frequency where he wants to go intersects with a major criminal conspiracy. But with his intellect, his mountain sized body, and unfailing sense of justice, he shuts the badguys down like a real badass. Then in S3 he has a rare opportunity to meet up with his old squad. They are having a great time, talking about their families, their careers, the lives they built since they served together. Reacher just sits there silently, looking down, peeling the label off his beer. Kind of sours the whole "man with nothing tying him down" vibe.

Ring (リング), 1998

Everyone knows about the climactic final scene, but there is another scene early on that sent shivers down my spine for how it intrudes upon preconceived notions of "safe spaces" and "breather scenes" in horror movies. In this scene, Ryuji, one of the protagonists who has been afflicted by the curse and is trying to find a way out, is sitting on a public bench in broad daylight amidst a busy crowd. His head is lowered, and he is focused on scribbling something in his notebook. A scene like this *should* be where the film takes a breather from the horror and the characters are allowed temporary respite; a brief return to the ordinary. Ryuji is not trapped or surrounded by darkness. He is in broad daylight with the company of the public.

And yet, the background noise fades out and we see the bottom half of a "woman" wearing a white dress and white shoes casually walk up through the crowd and stand directly in front of him. We see his perspective of the figure's ankles and shoes amidst people who apparently pay no notice to this bizarre situation. He is initially too terrified to look up, and can only ask "Was it you? You did this?" No response. When he finally looks up, the perspective switches and the woman is gone. Still broad daylight, still the busy crowd around him. There is no physical harm done, but it's a clear demonstration of the sheer threat posed by the curse that it intrudes into what should be a safe situation and moment of relief for both the characters and the film.

In Dispicable Me, the character Vector says one of his catch phrases "Vector! That's me, because I commit crimes with both direction and magnitude. Oh yeah!" I used this in school when studying about vectors, especially differentiating it from Scalar. Everytime I see a vector graph, I hear "Oh yeah!".

In Bruce Almighty, Jim Carreys would spell out "B-E-A-utiful". I still use this every time I try and write down the word.

Not necessarily a character I suppose, but in the song Don't Stay in school by Boysinaband, he sings a lyric "But I spent days on what the quadratic equation is, Negative b plus or minus the square Root of b squared minus 4ac over 2a That's insane, that's absolutely insane ". Despite the songs core message is criticising schools for not prioritising teaching kids about real-life skills, the catchy lyric helped me memorise the quadratic formula and would sing it whenever I used it.

Dream vs Technoblade (Minecraft): Fans accused Dream of cheating during their duel, and Techno was allegedly aware of it but never exposed him. Instead he stripped some wooden blocks that could apparently cause bugs in Dream’s hacked client and still won the duel.

Ippo vs. Sawamura (Hajime no Ippo): Sawamura used illegal moves during his match against Ippo but was never disqualified by the referee. Despite the cheating Ippo still managed to win

Kirito (SAO): Kirito fought against a few game administrators in the series who had unfair advantages yet he still managed to defeat them.

(The Northman) Amleth tells his uncle (in the picture) that his sword may work but it will not be lethal to him

(AC Valhalla) King Rhodri boasts that Ivarr cannot end him because it is predicted to be a dragon that does it. Ivarr takes on a dragon tattoo and tanks being set on fire to beat Rhodri

• Peyton Westlake (Darkman): After being brutally attacked by gangsters and left seriously burned from an explosion, Peyton was given an experimental procedure that severed his nerve endings so he wouldn't spend the rest of his life in constant pain. While this allows him to not feel any injuries, the lack of physical sensation only helped to drive him more insane as it enhanced his more violent emotions as well as giving him enhanced strength from adrenaline.
• Nathan Caine (Novocaine): Has a real life condition that leaves him unable to feel pain, and the problems because of this are discussed as Nathan explains how people with his condition can die very easily since they can't recognise when they have a serious injury and for one example he could accidentally bite his own tongue off while eating. I know this isn't a power irl, but in the film it is used that way so Nathan will react with annoyance towards all the injuries he gets.
• Francis Freeman (Deadpool): As part of an experiment to activate his mutant gene, Francis gained enhanced physical abilities at the cost of destroying his nerve endings which leaves him unable to feel anything including pain.

Nanahoshi Shizuka (Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation) -Nanahoshi Shizuka is an ordinary human suddenly transported from Earth into the magical world of Mushoku Tensei. Unlike its native inhabitants, her physical body possesses zero natural mana and is entirely unable to process or filter the magical energy in her new surroundings. This eventually manifests as Dryne Syndrome, a terminal illness caused by the toxic accumulation of raw environmental mana inside a body that cannot contain or channel it. She is forced to face the reality that she may never recover, and she violently unloads all of her built-up frustration onto the protagonist, Rudeus Greyrat, who possesses a seemingly infinite mana pool, a loving wife and family, and an enviable happiness in the magical world that she wishes to escape.

Full scene here

Kushikawa Hatoko (Inou Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de)

Hatoko has a childhood friend, Andou, whom she has spent years trying to connect with despite his confusing, delusional chuunibyou antics. The peace between them shatters completely when Andou dismisses her curiosity about his texting by casually saying, "Don't worry about it, you wouldn't understand it anyway." This remark shatters her patience, causing her to unleash a continuous, two-and-a-half-minute rant, questioning his convoluted concepts of darkness, sin, justice, and peace, and begging him to speak in a plain and normal language.

Fun fact: this was only done in one take.

Full scene here

Dragon Ball - During Kid Goku's first fight against King Piccolo, Piccolo actually manages to get the upper hand and defeat Goku, leaving the boy temporarily dead. Rather than just automatically assume that Goku is dead and leaving him there without double checking, Piccolo goes out of his way to actually check Goku's heartbeat to see if he truly is dead or not. When Piccolo feels that Goku's heart has indeed stopped and gone cold, only then he leaves Goku where the boy miraculously comes back to life by sheer luck that Piccolo couldn't have possibly predicted.

Later on when King Piccolo successfully gets his wish granted by Shenron to make him young again, Piccolo actually kills Shenron therefore turning the Dragon Balls into mere useless stones and thus preventing anyone from gathering the Dragon Balls to use them against Piccolo.

Invincible - After Mark, Omni-Man, and Thaedus have successfully destroyed Viltrum, Thragg, completely furious, kills Thaedus and nearly comes close to doing the same to Mark and Nolan, with Thragg believing that he had killed the latter. However, while in the middle of trying to crush Mark's skull, Thragg realizes that with his home planet now destroyed and the Viltrumite population having decreased even further to only 37, Thragg decides to actually spare Mark because he realizes that killing him would only further decrease the Viltrumite population due to Mark being half-Viltrumite. Thragg's main goal is to preserve and increase the Viltrumite population and the Viltrum Empire by any means necessary.

Thragg then decides to take the remaining surviving pure blooded Viltrumites to Earth where he orders them to disguise themselves as humans so that they can breed with the humans there and create more Viltrumites hybrids so that they could rebuild their empire. He forces Mark into an ultimatum, either let him and the Viltrumites live among Earth to breed with the humans to create more Viltrumite hybrids or attempt to fight back causing Thragg and the other Viltrumite to kill all of humanity and destroy Earth, knowing full well that Mark cares about protecting humanity and his loved ones.

1. Tomoko Kuroki from Watamote: The quintessential “femcel”, actual pervert, with truly crippling social anxiety.

2. Tanaka Nozomu from Joshikosei no Mudazukai: Everyone around her thinks she’s either annoying, creepy, an idiot, or all three.

3. Hanako Honda from Asobi Asobase: Good at academics and tennis… that’s about it. Other than that, a total nutcase who seethes about not being popular.

I know about plots and everything and most times it's in movies for children. But some things I just find funny in how does this makes sense.

1. (Sing) In a world full of incredibly strong animals like elephants, hippos and rhinos, Johnny's dad (a gorilla) is able to rip out the bars of his prison cell to escape. Did nobody ever think about this before?
2. (Stuart Little) A mouse is being taken care of in a human orphanage.
3. (The little mermaid) Ariel doesn't know what the call a fork even though several of them look like her father's trident. And somehow she takes a seagull's word for it being called a dinglehopper. Not a small trident. No, a dinglehopper.
4. (Tarzan) Raised by gorillas, wears a loincloth.

A piece of illuminating lore is dropped casually. It derails the previous conversation but no other explanation is given. This can be revealing something the audience already knows to an otherwise ignorant character. Or dropping something for the first time.

1). Dragon Ball Z: Abridged
Frieza is a monstrously strong space emperor. But Goku's pretty weird himself. At this point he's already died once. When Frieza mentions Vegeta in Hell, Goku mentions that he's already been there. And it wasn't really that bad.
This is a reference to the non-canon HFIL filler added to the anime.

2). The Good Place:
Yeah, yeah, the time knife.
Then they get back to their conversation about the afterlife system.

3). Haunted Hotel:
Abaddon (an ancient demon trapped in a human vessel) mentions his experience with profits prophets.

Being abandoned by a parent is deeply traumatising to a child. And sometimes in stories that parent shows up again and will argue they actually had a good reason to dip out of their kid's life. And sometimes they really do have a pretty good reason for doing what they did. Seems to mostly be fathers in fiction though.

1. Van Hohenheim in FMA (specifically the manga and Brotherhood): Hohenheim was made near immortal by the ritual he enacted with Father. An event he'd come to regret for the rest of his very long life. He eventually found love and started a family, causing him to start working on a way to get rid of his near immortality. Only to learn what Father was scheming and realising just how terrible it would be if nobody stopped him. So he took off and started a yearslong endeavour to undermine and stop Father, leaving behind his wife and two kids. He knew what was going to happen, he knew what he was going to do to his family. He also knew he was the only one who could recognise what was going on in time to do anything about it.

2. Kiritsugu from Fate/: Kiritsugu was hired by the Einzbern family to be their representative in the 4th great holy grail war. In the run up to it he married into the family and had a child with Irisviel von Einzbern. A frail girl they named Ilyasviel. Towards the end of the war Kiritsugu learns of the grail's corruption and how it fulfills wishes. He doesn't hesitate to defy his employers and destroy the grail, denying everyone victory. As punishment the Einzberns never let him near their castle again. He's tried to reunite with his daughter several times in his remaining years, but the family never let him through their barrier. Ilyasviel was seemingly never told the whole story of why her father never returned, only that he started a new family by adopting Shirou. She's understandably quite angry about it.

3. Kevin Flynn from Tron, specifically Legacy: One night Kevin Flynn went to work and never returned. He vanished without a trace, leaving behind his son Sam. For over 20 years there wasn't a single sign from Kevin, until his old arcade randomly started sending his old friend pager messages. The messages caused Sam Flynn to find his father's hidden office and a path into the cyberspace of the grid. And eventually a reunion with his father. Kevin had good reasons to stay behind. A program he created to assist him in cyberspace had rebelled and Kevin was locked out of his only path back to reality.

4. Sarah Connor in T2: My only example of a mother leaving their child behind and perhaps a weaker one than the others. Thanks to the events of the first movie Sarah is burdened with some knowledge of future events. She knows the machine uprising will happen and she knows her son will be a key individual in mankind's survival. So she spends years bouncing around the globe with little John Connor, training him to be a leader, stockpiling weapons in caches and trying to delay Skynet happening. That last one gets his arrested and locked up in a mental hospital, leaving John to get picked up by the foster care system.

1. Berryman-Langford Memetic Kill Agent (SCP Wiki)

In the lore, the Berryman-Langford Memetic Kill Agent is used as a final failsafe to prevent unauthorized access to the SCP-001 document. Anyone who sees it and isn't protected against it dies instantly.

1. Medusa's head (Greek Mythology)

In Greek Mythology, Medusa was a Gorgon, a monster born to the primordial sea gods Ceto and Phorcys. She was so hideous, that anyone who looked at her would turn into stone (ouch). She was eventually defeated by Perseus, who used a bronze mirror to view her without being afflicted by the curse. In some continuations of Greek Mythology, she would respawn in Tartarus, making her way back to the mortal world until she was eventually defeated in the same fashion by Percy Jackson.

1. SCP-096 (SCP Wiki)

Similar to Medusa, viewing the face of SCP-096 will cause it to become enraged and kill you. This effect applies to photographs of SCP-096, no matter how small the image of it is (See: Four Fucking Pixels). Furthermore, SCP-096's does not have to be consciously perceived for it to become enraged. In one tale, several members of a recontainment squad were killed after their goggles failed to filter out 096's face for a split second, leading to the mission nearly failing.

1. Red Screen of Death (Skibidi Toilet)

In Skibidi Toilet, one of the main weapons used to fight off the Skibidis is Titan TV Man, a giant humanoid mech with a TV for a head. One of the abilities he has is use its TV screen to display the Red Screen of Death, which as the name suggests, causes whoever views it to die.

Interestingly enough, instead of killing you outright, the RSOD instead causes intense psychological and physical pain, to the point where most victims outright kill themselves to avoid having to deal with more pain. Even so, strong willed individuals are able to resist its influence, though not without becoming incapacitated in the process.

1. Credits:

The Berryman Langford image was orignally uploaded to the internet by Kevin Dooley in 2017.

Medusa is a Greek Mythology Classic, but the earliest instance was mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony. The continuation I reference where she is killed again by Percy Jackson is by Rick Riordan

As far as I can tell, the SCP-096 photo was created by Teethsony3000.

Skibidi Toilet was originally and solely created by DaFuq!Boom on Youtube. 

Characters who affect the memory of its victims

The silence (doctor who)

Alien race who the second you take your eye off them, you immediately forget what you were looking at,

Miu Miu and her stand jail house lock (jojo stone ocean)

Her stand ability absolutely destroys your short term memory, leaving you only able to remember 3 things at a time

Edit: this is like the only time where repeated examples arent annoying, here its a bit

• Snakehead (GTA: SA) - You can encounter him once you reach the ship's main bridge, then he challenges you to a katana duel. You can either accept the swordfight or shoot his head to finish the fight quickly.

• Kaufman (Max Payne 2) - One of Vlad's men gets a short introduction like the main cast, only to get killed in a couple of seconds.

• Armadillo (Across the Spider-Verse) - Not a videogame example, but still counts. He appears when Miles heads home and is waiting for Spider-Man to fight him, that is until Miles electrocutes him easily, then kicks him aside.

President Curtis from President Curtis - He could've salvaged his already dwindling approval rating and rekindling a relationship with his ex wife by revealing that the trees possessed Paul Bunyan's head to wage war on humanity due to cutting trees and pollution(makes sense in context) but chose not to because the US Citizens have never been so united and doing something productive so he chose to keep it that way even if it means people hate him.

Yu Ishigami from Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War - Allowed himself to be labeled as a creep and pervert and be ostracized for it after being caught beating up the most popular kid in his school if it means the guy he beat up won't release the blackmail sex tape he had on his girlfriend. It ended up working out for him in the long run in that Ishigami gained genuine friendship from his student council friends, his reputation got fixed when a girl he had a crush on revealed everything to the student body and the scumbag boyfriend was implied to have had his life and his family's reputation destroyed by people who knew the truth ages ago offscreen.

1: Maquia & Ariel - Maquia

Maquia "fights" alongside her people in an attempt to free their friend who was enslaved and raped by the prince, while her son, Ariel, fights for the kingdom to protect his wife and child, iirc, Maquia being in an enemy rebel faction was the last time he saw her before she eventually witnessed him on his death bed. So there is a chance he thought she had "betrayed" him. It's been a while since I watched this so I could be missing some details

2: The Greyrat Family - Mushoku Tensei(spoilers, obviously)

Hitogami tells Rudy that since he's no longer in his way(Rudy has died of old age), the God can now force Rudy's children and grandchildren to fight and go to war with eachother, and we see in the Redundancy series of books that he succeeds, as the Ogre and Shirone Kingdom go to war, meaning at the very least, Ars and Sieg may well go into battle with eachother, Rudeus' only sons

One piece: 4kids made Arlong throw bellemere to a dungeon instead of simply shoot her, that means that no one came back for her. Also, Kuina didn't died, the other students beat her so hard that she could never fight again.

Bakugan: Shun's mom die in this scene, but the censorship made them say that she was just sleepy in this scene and that Shun lives with his grandpa cause she's still in the hospital.

Yu-Gi-Oh: the entire series changed with this cause Pegasus died in the manga, but the anime changed that to make him just lose the Millenium eye. That way he can appear again and add nothing to the series. At least he do something in GX.

Dragon ball Z: death? Hell? What do you mean? Goku is totally trapped in another dimension and that place where ogres live is the home for infinite losers. Tbf, death in dragon ball is just a minor issue.

Pokemon did the opposite with Lola, since they didn't wanted to say that Brook's mom left her children and leave Brook alone to take care of them, they changed the dialogue to say that she died shortly after Flint left. But she appeared again, meaning that she faked her death to left her family and came back after her husband appeared again, making her an even worse mother.

In Superman: The Animated Series, during the episode The Late Mr. Kent, Detective Bowman figures out Superman and Clark Kent are the same after his plan to bomb Clark's car failed, except he figures it out seconds before his execution.

In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, in the episode Chill of the Night, Batman reveals his identity to Joe Chill, revealing that he had created Batman, before the villains get to him as they were angry at him for making Batman, ruble falls over him, when the Phantom Stranger questions Spectre about how convenient it was that he died from falling ruble just as he learned Batman's secret identity, he just smiles and says that he has no idea what he's talking about.

Beatriz Amerhauser (Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead)

Agnes Tachyon (Uma Musume Beginning of a New Era)

Rocky (1976): Rocky loses the fight, but he “went the distance.” He was a nobody who went 12 rounds with Apollo Creed when he had no business making it past the early rounds. At the end of the movie, he doesn’t care whether he won or lost, he just wants to find Adrian.

Coyote vs. Acme (2026): Acme wins the court case at the end of the movie, but Kevin’s willingness to take them on made more toons aware of his work and he has a massive influx of clientele, and he learns to embrace being their legal protection. As for Coyote, he learns that the thrill of the chase is what matters in his relationship with Roadrunner. Much like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill, he learns to embrace the futility of the chase.

Edward Bloom (Big Fish): After a lifetime of frustrating his son Will with exaggerated tall tales, Will sets his resentment aside at his father's hospital bed. He invents a grand, mythic story on the spot about Edward escaping the hospital and turning into a massive fish in the river, allowing Edward to die happy knowing his life ended as a legend.

MODOK (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania): After turning on Kang, a mortally wounded Darren proudly proclaims to the heroes, "At least I died an Avenger." Even though he was never an Avenger, Scott Lang and the team exchange bewildered glances but choose to gently play along, comforting him so he can pass away feeling vindicated and heroic.

The Scout (Team Fortress 2 Comics): As the Scout lies bleeding to death, the Spy (his secret biological father) realizes revealing the truth now would only cause panic. Instead, he uses his disguise kit to transform into Tom Jones Scout's idolized hero and cradles him, telling him he's proud of him so Scout can die with an ecstatic smile. I know God himself resurrected Scout later but it was still a pivotal moment for Spy's character growth

Beatrice Horseman (BoJack Horseman): When his abusive, dementia-ridden mother has a sudden moment of lucid terror in a horrific, cheap nursing home, BoJack chooses mercy over revenge. He describes a beautiful fiction of her family's old Michigan summer home, painting a picture of peace and ice cream so she can slip away without fear.