Acceptable Breaks from Reality

aka: Acceptable Break From Reality

A Willing Suspension of Disbelief is a must for every work of fiction. There are certain elements of story or gameplay where realism would simply make a work tedious, difficult, or confusing for the audience. Thus there are ways in which works will be blatantly, unabashedly unrealistic, and nobody really minds. See the Rule of Index.

It's possible for these to become unacceptable, when the abstraction gets in the way of enjoying the work. On the flip side, it's possible to get so accustomed to a particular break from reality that people stop realizing it's unrealistic.

Of course, different people have different tolerances for the balance between "abstraction" and "simulation," which means that some media creators make conscious and deliberate efforts to avert at least some of these tropes. Those sorts of things, however, tend to cater toward a rather niche crowd. Even then, there's still a small measure of abstraction simply to prevent things from getting too tedious.

Overlaps with The Law of Conservation of Detail, for those tropes that could be justified but aren't worth the time. Anti-Frustration Features are a related trope in video games, but are more about when gameplay elements or rules are temporarily changed or suspended to make the game easier for a specific section.

Note that despite the title, these tropes are about realism, not reality. Some of them may be Truth in Television. (Reality Is Unrealistic, after all.)

Compare with Cliché for when these acceptable breaks are expected by the audience and Favorite Trope for when the audience loves seeing them in use regardless if the trope is realistic or not.

Forms of Acceptable Breaks From Reality include:

Examples:

Animation

• Pomysłowy Dobromir: The various devices build by Dobromir work on principle, but are still greatly simplified from their real-life counterparts.

Anime & Manga

• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): In Real Life, Fritz Lang looked nothing like King Bradley and is almost 30 years younger at the time, but it hardly takes away from the story.
• Girls und Panzer:
  • In-universe, Sensha-do teams seem to use modern radios and throat mics, rather than the far more varied systems of the time. For instance, the volleyball team's Type-89 I-Go shouldn't have a radio at all! Supplemental material point out that this is part of the partial modernization of the tanks to make matches safer and more even.
  • Despite the use of live rounds, and thanks to some briefly-described safety features, Sensha-do is apparently very safe. The massive amounts of damage we see never do more than smudge the girls. If this weasel did not exist, the show would be much darker, and probably have a body count.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: What seems to be standard breaks from reality found in Humongous Mecha anime, turns out to be very well backed-up in-universe. As a result, it's less of breaking away from reality as it is that the anime's reality is so off-rails, it can justify its wacky state of affairs. The pilots are so young because they can't be tainted by the Second Impact, and as that event happened fourteen years ago... The Hero can get so good at his job, not because of any merit of his but because his mecha is a Soul Jar for his mother and a hijacked clone of the enemy species — it's his mecha doing all of the work. And so on.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS: Even though Yuga only just invented "Rush Duel", everyone has cards built around that format, even in flashbacks. Since Yuga envisioned the format because he felt the game proper was stale, it's implied he designed it to work well with already existing cards.
• A Bride's Story: A minor one, lampshaded in the afterword of volume two: getting a load of bricks dumped over your head will kill you, even if the bricks are only made from mud and sun-dried (rather than fired in a kiln).

Art

• The Last Supper: It would make a lot more sense to have the Apostles sitting on opposite sides of the table, but it's for the best Leonardo da Vinci didn't dedicate his talents to a painting of six peoples' backs covering up what is either Jesus or an Italian hobo.

Blogs

• A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry: Conversed.
  • Dr. Devereaux often points out in his essays on Lord of the Rings when the filmmakers had to change things to make scenes possible to film. For instance, the skirmish between the Rohirrim and the warg riders in The Two Towers features a lot of ahistorical elements, such as minimal tactics besides charging in and the Rohirrim using few spears and not wielding their shields. He points out that the rather basic tactics on display are likely because the scene is supposed to be a short appetizer before Helm's Deep and therefore going simple is favorable, and filming a horseman with a spear and shield in an action scene is rather difficult (shields are cumbersome, and prop spears are much more dangerous than prop swords).
  • It has a similar verdict in regards to the extreme control the player usually has on their troops in a strategy game compared to what the generals would have in the pre-modern period, as having to blindly rely on a pre-conceived plan without much ability to influence the things that happen on the battle wouldn't be very fun.
    "Having to make a plan effectively blind and then mostly just hope it goes well would be very frustrating for many players. It was frustrating for many generals too, of course!"
• John K. Stuff: Conversed. In "Wayne Boring's Superman", the eponymous blogger points out that Superman is so beloved because of the preposterousness of his premise, specifically, that he cannot be killed in-universe.
• The Tyrannosaur Chronicles:
  • Traumador can write and post blog entries during situations in which it would logically be inconvenient for him to do so (such as while being trapped inside a backpack and menaced by dromaeosaurids). He has even been known to respond to comments while supposedly being caught in these mishaps. Additionally, the posts sometimes end on cliffhangers, despite the fact that it would make little sense for Traumador to either have been blogging in real time or to leave the readers hanging had he made the posts after the events described.
  • There are occasionally posts by characters other than Traumador that provide insight into plot points to which he is not privy, often with no in-universe explanation as to why they are posted on his blog. There is also no reason given as to why Traumador presumably cannot or does not see these posts.

Comic Books

• Papyrus: The comic's historical setting demands that children under the age of six are to be naked. However, this is not adopted to prevent pedo-pandering.
• Scott Pilgrim: The setting is a video-game version of Toronto, so there are all sorts of wacky things such as epic narrator voices, video-game interfaces, quests, and factions such as ninjas. People are also capable of doing things that are impossible in reality — from pulling all sorts of acrobatics to killing without consequence so long it's done within the constraints of a duel/challenge. So, its premise pretty much runs on this trope.

Fan Works

• Living in Oblivion: Discussed and defied. The blog is geared toward demonstrating how hard a Non Playable Character actually has it in a Video Game setting. The result is that it gets swiftly illustrated why video games genuinely need this trope — otherwise, they would be beyond Nintendo Hard, extremely boring at times, and overall frustrating. While a good gaming experience can be obtained out of such limitations, there are still plenty of things that you just can't avoid.

Live-Action TV

• Better Call Saul:
  • Gus and Hector are both native Spanish speakers, and logically should be holding most of their conversations in Spanish, especially when talking with the people they're in business with for The Cartel (Nacho, Eladio, Bolsa, Lalo, etc). However, Giancarlo Esposito and Mark Margolis can't speak Spanish and get their Spanish lines phonetically, making their delivery extremely stilted. So, whenever there's a scene where Gus or Hector should logically be speaking Spanish, the writers can either have them speak Spanish, where it will be obvious to any fluent speaker that they can't really speak what is supposed to be their native language, or have them speaking English inexplicably. The show does both, depending on the situation, but both actors are otherwise excellent at playing their roles, so most will let it slide (by contrast, Tony Dalton and Michael Mando both speak fluent Spanish, so Lalo and Nacho speak the language far more often; Lalo in particular exclusively speaks Spanish when talking to Hector).
  • Every single character who also appeared in Breaking Bad (Jimmy, Mike, Tuco, Huell, Gus, Hector, Eladio, Bolsa, etc) is supposed to be anywhere from 5-8 years younger than they were when they appeared in Breaking Bad. In real life, the actors are all several years older. The show puts very little effort into hiding this discrepancy; at best some of the characters look about the same age and are old enough for it to be handwaved as them no longer visibly aging. Hector is the only one who really pulls it off, just because he spent all of Breaking Bad as a mute invalid. A couple of flashbacks even show Jimmy right around the time he started working in the mailroom in the early 90s, meaning he's supposed to be a good 20 years younger than he is in Omaha, and all the show does to try to sell this is give him a cheap wig. It's clear the showrunners aren't even trying to fool anyone, which is reasonable given that de-aging CGI would be expensive and would also invoke a distracting uncanny valley effect, and that makeup would likely not be effective either. The only other solution would be to recast the actors, which would be pretty much guaranteed to irritate the fanbase, so just looking the other way is the best solution.
  • ADX Montrose is based on one of the most human-rights-violating prisons in reality, ADX Florence. Prisoners there are kept in solitary confinement for twenty three hours, and patients with mental illness (which Jimmy would be classed as, with his PTSD and dissociation tendencies) have a high rate of suicide. But Jimmy needs to have some sort of peace, with regular visits from Kim and the hope of getting out early, so prisoners can move around, have recreational activities and Kim is able to sneak in as his lawyer.
• In The Boys (2019) it's both a plot point and part of the world-building that the Supes play themselves in the films based on them. But none of the Supes mention taking acting lessons, nor do the film crews comment on their sub-par performances and generally treat them like normal actors, even though these films are supposed to be the in-universe equivalent of real-life superhero blockbusters, and proper movie acting can take years to still fail to learn for some people. Starring in such a movie is also stressful and time consuming, and would interfere with Supes' other responsibilities. Realistically, Vought would have most if not all the roles played by professional actors, just like how athletes, veterans and other celebrities rarely play themselves in their biopics, but the way the show presents it allows for some interesting plots and for the satire of superhero media, celebrities and Hollywood to remain focused on the characters the audience knows.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The she-mantis has a distinctive accent because her actress is from South Africa. The accent only adds to the fact that she's a giant insect and, thus, doesn't possess a mandible or vocal cords.
• Cobra Kai: The All Valley Tournament doesn't have any weight or gender divisions. This is done to allow the cast to fight in the same tournament and get to fight whatever opponent it's needed for Character Development or plot advancement.
• Mr. Robot: While the show goes out of its way to avert Hollywood Hacking at all costs, some of the hacks are sped up for the sake of keeping the show theatrical and entertaining.

Video Games

• World of Warcraft:
  • Quite a few. Ranged weapons don't run out of ammunition any more, your mounts can fly or run indefinitely, eating or drinking heals all wounds, you can carry hundreds of items with you without so much as a bulging backpack showing, and you can swap pants without ever getting off your horse, as long as you're not in combat.
  • In-Universe, Warlocks, Demon Hunters, and Death Knights are not very well trusted. Warlocks and Demon Hunters must work very hard to ensure their demonic powers do not get the better of them, and death Knights were hated for well, being (former) agents of the Scourge who caused a lot of ruin. (This was even shown with how, with the exception of the Undead, Warlock class trainers tended to be in back alleys or behind buildings while everyone else was front and center and how Death Knights had to go to Acherus to train.) Yet they all start with the same neutral faction and never have to worry about hate crimes or the rogue person who still does not trust them.
  • Averted with the Forsaken, however. Originally neither the quests, the NPCs, or even the in-game voice-over were vague about the Forsaken joining the Horde only out of convenience and not having any real loyalty towards them. Over time the Forsaken appeared to begin developing some real camaraderie with the Horde until Cataclysm came and their queen was shown to be doing all sorts of shady things behind the backs of the other Horde leaders. Because of this, the Forsaken start out as Neutral with other Horde factions (except the Blood Elves, probably due to the Forsaken's leader being a former High Elf) rather than Friendly as all other races, on both factions, do.

Websites

• Cracked: Parodied in "If Video Games Worked By Real Logic". In one panel, a hairdresser informs his client that he can't "cut his hair longer". In another, a car is turned upside down as a consequence of pulling a typical car video game stunt.