u/theMCATreturns

Not really sure about the physics on this.
Someone is either supernaturally light-footed or a speedster, usually. They run on top of something even though it is currently falling and not being supported by anything.

1). X-Men: Dark Phoenix:
Quicksilver runs on debris that might be supported by telekinesis?

2). The Hobbit:
In the third film Legolas runs up a collapsing bridge.

3). Devil May Cry (Netflix):
Dante runs up a plane crash.

4). The Flash:
The Flash microvaves a baby.

Taking a relatively human-looking creature and redesigning it too look more alien. Or perhaps incorporating aspects of speculative evolution.

1). Dwarves:
Changing dwarves from "smaller, stouter humans" into something much more subterranean.
Image 1: The Hobbit (1977)
Image 2: I redesigned Dwarves (Monstergarden)

2). Gnomes:
Gnomes are redesigned into small creatures.
Image 1: Gnome Watching Railway Train (1848)
Image 2: Make Your Fantasy Races Weird with Speculative Evolution (Sawyer Lee)

3). Andalites:
The centaur-like Andalites are redesigned to look more alien.
Image 1: The Andalite Chronicles
Image 2: Monarobot redesign.

4). Trolls:
The Trollhunter movie makes clear trolls are animals that do not wear clothes and rarely live together.
Image 1: The Princess and the Trolls (1913)
Image 2: Trollhunter (2010)

5). Vampires:
The Strain depicts vampires as a condition afflicted to unfortunate human hosts. The true vampire "organism" is a parasitic worm that releases a symbiotic retrovirus, radically altering the human host. "Strigoi" lose the ability to reproduce, develop a cloaca, feed via a retractable proboscis, and lose many facial features.
Image 1: Dracula (1931)
Image 2: The Strain

6). Martians:
In Young Justice, Miss Martian's "human form" is a green-skinned version of her favorite sitcom actress. Most humans assume their "true form" is the green-skinned, bald humanoid that Martian Manhunter presents as. But they're really much larger and alien-looking, and can be divided into three color-based castes.
Image 1: Miss Martian's "human form."
Image 2: Miss Martian's true form and Martian Manhunter.

I understand why an animal (that is constantly fighting) would develop strong muscles.
But why are they so toned? So human-like? Are these kangaroos being fed a movie-star diet? Are they dehydrated? Why don't they have any fat?

Sources:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYrx-FphpwQ/
https://www.menshealth.com/trending-news/a19538280/massive-australian-kangaroo-bodybuilder/
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/article7322199.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200b/Roger-the-musclebound-kangaroo-is-back--and-it-looks-like-hes-been-hitting-the-weights.jpg
https://a-z-animals.com/articles/find-out-why-kangaroos-flex-and-show-off-their-massive-muscles/
https://nypost.com/2022/03/11/buff-kangaroo-goes-viral-after-flaunting-giant-muscles/
https://www.shutterstock.com/search/kangaroo-muscles

The main characters, set in the future, are trying to figure out who the "big bad" is. It turns out there's a secret intelligence operation filled with modern people who had been cryo-frozen. They're employees of the corporation that built [setting] the characters are from. And they're spying on/manipulating their society.

1). Fallout:
Vaults 31-33 are supposedly "control vaults." Or vaults that don't (obviously) house a horrible experiment being conducted by Vault-Tec on its inhabitants. In reality, the "experiment" is a breeding program, designed to create "super managers." Vaults 31 and 32 were "stocked" with normal people. 33 is actually a cache of cryo-frozen Vault-Tec employees. Every now and then, an employee is unfrozen and distributed into 31 and 32. Where they assume leadership and have children.

2). Silo:
The eponymous Silo is filled with 10,000 people who do not know why the silo was created. Over the course of the story, the protagonists discover there are 48 other silos filled with similar people. Some of them had already died off or been wiped out. Silos 2-50 are populated by descendants of 21st-century people. But Silo 1 is filled with modern humans (the generation that built the Silos), thawed out on irregular "shifts." Silo 1 monitors and discretely guides the other silos. And if the population of a silo tries to escape or make contact with another silo, the modern people in Silo 1 flood it with poison gas.

3). Wayward Pines:
People "wake up" in Wayward Pines, Idaho with no knowledge of how they got there. The town is surrounded by a sheer mountain cliff on one side, and a deadly electric fence on the other. All townspeople are monitored via cameras and microphones by an unseen group of people. It is all they can do to forget who they were "before" and try to build a new life.
As it turns out, the entire town is hundreds of years into the future. Like Fallout and Silo, a billionaire built a massive vault inside the town's mountain. His employees are all volunteers, put into suspended animation willingly. But the town's residents were abducted.
The founder did this because environmental pollution was irreversibly mutating the human genome. Outside of the town, all human life has been replaced by feral, mutated "aberrations." The electric fence is designed to keep the "abbies" out of Wayward Pines. The end goal is to create a generation of people born in the town (who know the truth about the outside world). But people from the "old world" generally react poorly to knowing this, and are kept in the dark.

Essentially: a class, race, item, etc. that is extremely disadvantages at the start. But if you put a LOT of work in, it can become ridiculously powerful.
I enjoy it in a lot of RPG and fantasy-adjacent media. Because it puts the character at the "underdog" disadvantage most protagonist start off with. But then, as the series goes on they start to reap the benefits of their rare or obscure class.

1). Magikarp (Pokémon):
There are better examples of this (like any pseudo-legendary). But Magikarp is the classic archetype. Especially in the first game, when you couldn't google everything you needed to know. Magikarp is an explicitly pathetic Pokémon you can catch almost anywhere. But if you level it up enough, you get the dragon-like Gyarados.

2). Primals (Dungeon Crawler Carl):
I'm not done with book 3, so I don't know for sure how this will pay off.
Carl (along with millions of humans) are forced into a magic "dungeon crawl" for aliens to watch as entertainment. Once he gets to the third floor, he is allowed to change his "race." Some humans turn themselves into giant cat folk. Or elves. Carl is drawn to the "primal" option.
Primals are the "original" intelligent species in the galaxy. Much of the intergalactic government's technology is based on poorly-understood primal ruins. Nobody really knows what their deal is. So, picking the "primal" option doesn't change your appearance. But it does give you the option to really level up your attacks past what's normally allowed. The issue is that "benefit" only helps if you put an absurd amount of work into it.

3). Page (Homestuck):
Homestuck is about playing "Sburb," a magical videogame. Players are assigned a "mythological role," composed of a "class" and "aspect." Their powers depend on their title. For example, a "thief of life" can steal lifeforce from their opponent. A "knight of time" has time-related abilities.
Some classes are "better" than others. And some combinations doubly so. The "page" class is the hardest to do anything with. Even after ascending "the god tiers," most pages are comparatively weak and powerless. But if you put an absurd amount of work in (which nobody has), pages become the most powerful players in the game.
Comparable to the classes that are designed to be powerful. Jake is the "page of hope." In one timeline, he is forcibly leveled up. At that point, he becomes more powerful than the reality-warping "witch of space." And possibly stronger than the "lord of time," who is supposed to be unbeatable.

The aliens got our look and language down. But if you know ahead of time, they're not "authentically terrible" enough to blend in. So, humans start using racism as a shibboleth.

1). Key and Peele:
Two survivors make their way through the wreckage of a city. They realize the aliens are impersonating our appearance accurately, but not our behavior.

2). Lanterns:
Hal Jordan interrogates a potential alien in a town outside of Abin Sur's crash site. He notices that the man knows an awful lot about human culture, but not about the "controversies" being discussed in 2016.

3). Pluribus:
It's obvious who is and isn't infected with an alien hive mind. Because the infected are all nice, generous people.

It's not that they're invisible or reflectionless (like a vampire). Instead, something about the creature prevents a clear, accurate photograph from being taken. At least under normal circumstances.

1). Nope:
"Jean Jacket" is a large, UFO-like, floating creature. If it gets close to any electronics, they immediately power off. So, only hand-cranked film can capture it.

2). Spider-Man:
After Dr. Strange's spell, Peter is retroactively obscured in all photos. According to the extended cut of No Way Home, pictures that already had Peter in them are minutely altered. For example, a bird blocks his face in all pictures from his school trip.

3). Bigfoot:
"I think bigfoot is blurry. That's the problem." - Mitch Hedberg.

The plot starts in their pajamas and pretty much ends that way.

1). Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
The Earth is destroyed early in the morning. Arthur escapes, but remains stuck with only his pajamas and robe for the rest of the film/books.

2). Dungeon Crawler Carl:
Carl is outside (trying to fish his cat out of a tree) when the world ends. It's in the middle of the night, so he was barefoot with just a pair of boxers and an old leather coat. When he enters the titular dungeon, the omniscient AI running the game thinks Carl's outfit is hilarious. So, it continues to give him "powerful" magical clothes (like indestructible, heart-covered boxers) to incentivize him to stay that way. It also >!develops an uncomfortable, explicitly carnal fascination with Carl's feet. !<

3). Homestuck:
This is less of "the whole time" and more "most of it." Homestuck is about playing "Sburb," a magical game. One of Sburb's mechanics is a "dream self." When a player goes to sleep, they wake up in a second body (wearing magic pajamas). That way, the game can be played 24/7.
If the players level up far enough, they reach "the god tiers." Which come with their own special, self-washing pajama uniform. Once reaching god tier, most players just keep their game-provided clothing on.

4). Peter Pan:
Peter Pan abducts recruits the Darling children in the middle of the night.

5). The Polar Express:
The eponymous train picks passengers up in the dead of night. So, they're all wearing pajamas.

6). Rear Window:
A photographer recovering from a broken leg notices a crime across the way. He's in his pajamas pretty much the whole film.

Nocturnal monsters that only come out at night. But aren't vampires. Specifically, a threat that appears omnipresent in the darkness. Something that survivors know they must hole up against every night. In these settings, if a character gets trapped outside at night, the only thing that can save them is luck.

1). From:
The people of "From" are stuck inside a pocket dimension of some kind. It takes the form of a dingy small town. Every night, immortal "creatures" walk around town. If you get caught by them, they torture you death. Luckily, the survivors figured out how to keep the creatures out of buildings. Before that, all you could do was hide. But even now, if you leave a window open or a door unlocked, they can get inside just fine.

2). Arcadian:
Nicholas Cage raises his sons in a fortified country home. Every night, bizarre-looking monsters roam the countryside.

3). Kubo and the Two Strings:
Kubo is the grandson of "The Moon King." He cannot go out at night, lest he give his location away to his evil grandfather. When he stays out too late, two of his aunts immediately find him.

4). Pitch Black:
A group is trapped on an alien planet. Once every few years, the planet is enveloped in a long-lasting eclipse. That's when its (highly light-sensitive) predators come out to feed.

Fish people have to wear an elaborate, space-suit-like getup to survive comfortably on land. It can be broadly divided into three categories: full-suits, fishbowl helmets, and gill-wetters.

1). The Umbrella Academy:
^(Type: fishbowl helmet + piloted body.)
Carmichael runs the "time police" or something. He's a seemingly normal goldfish controlling an apparently human body.

2). Megamind:
^(Type: fishbowl helmet + piloted body.)
"Minion" is an alien fish of some kind. Megamind puts his bowl on a robotic body for him to control.

3). Dungeon Crawler Carl:
^(Type: full suit.)
Zev is a "Kua-Tin." One of the aliens whose species is running the eponymous dungeon crawl Carl is forced into. Unlike most Kua-Tin (who wear gill-wetters), the paranoid Zev wears a full-body suit whenever she enters the magical dungeon.

4). Chicken Little:
^(Type: fishbowl helmet.)
"Fish" is an exchange student. He wears a helmet reminiscent of an old-timey diving suit.

5). Creature Commandos:
^(Type: fishbowl helmet.)
Nina is a metahuman who requires fresh water to breathe. I wonder if she could survive in Atlantis? Either way, she needs to wear her helmet to breathe on the surface.

6). Krapopolis:
^(Type: fishbowl helmet.)
"Hippo" is half-Atlantean, a quarter centaur, and a quarter manticore. He takes after his mother, and requires a breathing apparatus to survive on the surface.

7). Hellboy:
^(Type: gill-wetter.)
"Abe Sapien" wears a suit to keep himself sufficiently moist.

8). Ben 10:
^(Type: gill-wetter.)
"Pisccis Volann" are a species of angler-fish-like aliens. They don't require a full suit, but do need to keep their skin wet to breathe.

Good time-skips are often used for training arcs. Or to signify that nothing interesting happened for you to miss. OR at the very least, what happened during the time skip is plot-relevant and elaborated on with more than a hand-wave.
But when they say "oh yeah a bunch of cool, character-defining stuff happened. But we won't revisit it at all." I'm not a fan. Especially if it's an excuse to dramatically alter a character to suite a new writer's taste. I am FINE with dramatically changing a character. But DO IT on screen for the audience to participate in.

1). Ben 10:
Full disclosure: I do not love the UAF series. They're fine. It seemed like the showrunners (who were not the original creators of Ben 10) just wanted to change everything about the original series. The characters' personality, powers, appearance, etc. are all altered with no explanation other than "it's been five years."
Ben apparently gave up the Omnitrix. Kevin figured out how to return to human form and developed an entirely different power. Gwen makes light constructs, now.
This is all theoretically fine, but we never actually learn why Ben removed the Omnitrix! It's not a mystery for the audience to discover. It's just because the new writers wanted to do that. Set everything back to square one.

2). Young Justice:
Between season 1 and 2: several characters retire, break up, get together, start their career and die, etc. You wanted to see Jason Todd? Too bad.

3). Star Wars:
This one isn't really fair because I haven't watched all of the little stuff that has come out or every canon novel published since the Disney purchase. But good storytelling isn't supposed to be homework for the flagship product. I shouldn't have to read a random novelization to know how Palpatine created a fleet of cultist star destroyers.
So, going straight from a movie that sees the re-establishment of democracy and cementing Luke's character as a beacon of hope. To "yeah the empire still (basically) exists and democracy is flaccid and Luke failed and banished himself," all off-screen is annoying.

They're big, even by the standards of their kind.

1). How to Train Your Dragon:
Most dragons are larger than humans. Or at least large enough to ride. "Alphas" tend to be massive dragons (though a small, sufficiently powerful dragon can unseat them). The "Red Death" is an alpha that previously terrorized the Viking village of Berk.

2). House of the Dragon:
Dragons get larger as they age. So, the centuries-old Vhagar can swallow a young dragon whole.

3). Tolkien's Legendarium:
Smaug was big (and bigger in the movies). But the largest dragon was described as roughly mountain-sized.

4). Homestuck:
All trolls (an alien race) are raised with a "lusus." Which are various species of alien fauna evolved in symbiosis with the troll race. Usually, "high blood" trolls get larger, more powerful lusii. But a relatively mid-blooded troll, "Redglare," was somehow chosen by "Pyralspite." A ridiculously large dragon capable of swallowing a castle-sized spider whole.

5). Dragon Ball:
"Eternal dragons" are capable of granting wishes. Earth's dragon, Shenron, is large enough to wrap his body around castles. Planet Namek's dragon, Porunga, is roughly the same size but jacked.
"Ultimate Shenron" is large enough to swallow regular Shenron whole. And "Super Shenron" is larger than entire galaxies. Though, he seems to be able to alter his size when necessary.

1). Dragon Ball Z: Abridged:
Goku is going to break Frieza. Like a Kit-Kat™ bar.

2). Scott Pilgrim vs. the World:
"Cleaning lady dusting" is not the same as saying "I'm going to vaporize you."

3). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Turns out a random robot's arm is not a threatening weapon to brandish.

I ask because it's a major pet peeve of several Gen Xer Seattleites I know. They claim that only transplants say "the Puget Sound." Instead of just "Puget Sound," like "Puget" is a title.
Is it like "I-5" vs. "the 5?"

^(Image from) ^(Whidbey Island)^(.)

The late Peter Cullen told a story about his brother's advice. Peter was going to audition for Optimus Prime, and he said "Peter, if you're gonna be a hero. Be a real hero. Don't be a 'Hollywood Hero' type. With all the yelling and screaming and trying to be tough. Be strong enough to be gentle."

So, these are characters strong enough that they don't have to compromise their values. They can afford to take risks and save/spare people they might not otherwise.

1). Superman:
Superman can take a beat to save a squirrel. He can try to get a rampaging kaiju out of the city without harming it. And he can do that without putting people in danger.

2). Transformers:
How Peter Cullen describes the voice he uses for Optimus.

3). Avatar: The Last Airbender
Aang is the last "air nomad," a civilization of pacifists wiped out by the "fire nation." In order to end the war, he is told he needs to kill the Fire Lord. But doing so would irreparably damage his people's most sacred value. So, using the overwhelming force of the Avatar State and energybending, he finds a compromise that removes the Fire Lord from the picture nonlethally.

4). Jujutsu Kaisen:
Gojo is "the strongest" sorcerer. He's so dangerous that he can bend the rule of law to spare "dangerous" people the government wants gone. So, not only did he stop a child from being sold to his father's abusive wizard family. Gojo also stopped a teenage demon host from being executed.

1). In the flesh:
Humans who died in 2009 (with their brain intact) mysteriously rose as zombies. Cities were overrun with the aggressive, man-eating undead. But by 2010, the government had discovered how to "cure" the zombies. By injecting a special chemical into their spine, the zombie's intelligence and memories return.
Most are horrified when they begin to remember what they did while feral. Unfortunately, people with "partially-deceased syndrome" are not really cured by this injection. If they miss a dose, they quickly revert into a dangerous undead cannibal.

2). iZombie:
Zombies are still "mostly" human. But with an incredibly slow metabolism and immunity to most non-cranial injuries. Unfortunately, a zombie must regularly consume a human brain. Or else they devolve into a feral "Romero."

3). The Girl with All The Gifts:
Regular "infected" are feral. But if a pregnant women gets infected, the child develops a partial resistance to the pathogen. They're still contagious and "undead," but remain intelligent. The remaining government raises the zombie children, teaching them to read and write. But if the kids get too hungry, they usually become feral.

A character (who can reasonably assume they are capable of flight) tries to fly and fails.

1). Invincible:
Mark's dad can fly. In the first episode he tries a few times before he was ready.

2). Lanterns:
John Stewart knows that Hal Jordan can fly with his ring. So, he tries to fly, but instead creates a bird.

3). The Boys:
Homelander tries to teach his son how to fly.

People play a seemingly "low-stakes" game of some kind. Could be a boardgame, card-game, videogame, etc. But it's actually a magic and life-threatening.

1). Jumanji:
Some kids try to play a boardgame, "Jumanji." Playing it alters their home into a jungle of sorts.

2). Zathura:
The kids' neighbors find Jumanji and discover "Zathura" in its box. They end up in space.

3). Homestuck:
John is excited to play the "Sburb beta" with his online friends. It turns out installing the disc onto your computer summons a meteor to your location.

4). Smiling Friends:
Pim plays a card game with Charlie and Allan. But he accidently draws a "devil-demon card."

I think it's fun when the plot of whatever episode necessitates a setting that shouldn't exist. It's more fun when a character tries to point it out.

1). The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball:
Gumball and Darwin try to figure out how their house works.
"Alright, okay. Just look. I go through the front door, up the stairs, I take one turn right to go to our bedroom, and . . ."

2). Seinfeld:
Some fans argue that Jerry's hallway is physically impossible.

3). The Simpsons:
Rooms appear and disappear over time. Doors lead different places in different episodes, etc.