Shattering the Illusion

Gerrard: (To Yawgmoth) You're not my Hanna!

—Magic: The Gathering, Jilt

A character is being fooled by an illusion, but for reasons that may vary (just two examples: A Glitch in the Matrix or newfound self-confidence), the illusion is finally destroyed.

Said illusion could be the work of a Shape Shifter, a Lotus Eater Machine, or The Final Temptation. See also Epiphanic Prison, in which Shattering the Illusion allows the character to learn something.

A common consequence of Spot the Thread. Compare A Glitch in the Matrix, in which the illusion isn't necessarily destroyed. See also Shapeshifter Guilt Trip. A Glamour is often dispelled this way, causing Glamour Failure.

As a reveal trope, consider this a Spoiler Warning!

Examples of Shattering the Illusion include:

Anime and Manga

• Happens in Hellsing (manga and OVA) when Seras is able to shatter Zorin Blitz's illusion/MindRape powers. This is shortly followed by what is hands down Seras's Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, the Book of Darkness traps Fate inside a Lotus Eater Machine but Fate soon realizes that this reality is way too good for her and shatters it. In process, it is revealed that she had a special illusion-breaking spell ready for just such occasion.
• Happens in Pokémon if Zoroark is damaged while using the move Illusion.
• Happens in Naruto whenever anyone has to break an opponent's genjutsu.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering
  • Gerrard does a Face Heel Turn in order to win Hanna back from the dead. As he's going to give her Urza's head, however, he suddenly realizes she's nothing but an illusion created by Yawgmoth. He shatters the illusion by slaying the fake Hanna.
  • The trope is represented mechanically in cards like Illusionary Servant and Phantom Beast: targeting them with a spell or ability breaks the illusion, causing them to vanish.

Literature

• Happens to Ciaphas Cain whenever his aide Jurgen is around to prevent warpcraft from happening. Including rescuing him from a Slaaneshi witch using Glamour and from a Chaos warlord with a Compelling Voice.
• Bionicle: in "Time Trap", Vakama shatters the illusion by stopping to believe it after firing a Kanoka disk at "Nokama", which just phases through "her".
• Happens in Shade by Andrew Plotkin
• In Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Ron manages to fight back the illusions created by the Horcrux and is finally able to destroy it.

Live-Action TV

• Happens literally in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Frame of Mind", in which Riker realises he's actually a prisoner in a virtual reality, and the illusion literally shatters like chunks of glass.
• An episode of How I Met Your Mother had a comedy variant of this, in which the characters started pointing out each other's flaws. Each "revelation" was accompanied by a sound of glass shattering as the "illusion" was shattered.
  • Also, the episode tag had the illusion of a deaf person shatter by literally putting onscreen "Glass Shattering" in subtitles.
• House: season 2 finale has House realizing that nearly everything thus far in the episode has been a hallucination. He is only able to shatter the illusion by using a surgery robot to slice his Patient of the Week open lengthwise... and even then there's an agonizing few moments where he isn't sure there was an illusion in the first place.

Western Animation

• In episode 2 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle and her friends are menaced by an illusion conjured by the Big Bad that makes terrifying faces appear on the trees of the Everfree Forest. The happy-go-lucky Pinkie Pie is apparently unaffected, and helps her friends shatter the illusion by singing a silly little song about laughing away your fears.

Real Life

• Usually, if you suddenly become aware that you're dreaming, you're going to wake up immediately after. If you don't, welcome to the world of lucid dreams.