Berserk: The Golden Age arc of the manga really deconstructs the idea relentlessly pursuing one's dream. While the story shows the importance of finding and achieving a purpose for oneself, it also shows just how dangerous and self-destructive it can be if the ambition is too great and laser-focused. and the means you set out to fulfill it are that costly. Griffith seems like a heroic and romantic figure, especially when he espouses his philosophy on a man's need to make his dream come true that you can almost ignore some of the darker things he does to bring his own to reality, but not only does the emotional toll ultimately prove too great for him, but his refusal to ever let it go leads him to becoming the figure of great evil that we saw him become in the Black Swordsman arc.

The Witcher: There are too many instances to count (and unlike A Song of Ice and Fire, it didn't go full retard in trying to deconstruct every fictional trope under the sun), but I'd say the big one is the idea of the oppressed minority. While the nonhumans, particularly the elves, do indeed deal with unfair discrimination in some parts of the Northern Kingdoms, they're shown to be assholes as well, especially when they form the Scoia'tael to fight the North on behalf of the Nilfgaardian Empire. And the Scoia'tael is only making things worse for the law-abiding nonhumans as the humans are looking at them with even greater suspicion and hostility. Oh, and the Nilfgaard Empire, that promised to reward the Elves handsomely for their work by giving them a land of their own to rule autonymously? Yeah, it screws them over and shows it never gave a damn about them or their plight; it just used them to fight Nilfgaard's battles for it.

Fallout 3: It did a similar thing. While the game is poorly written overall, I love what it did with the "twist" of the Tenpenny Tower quest, and showcased why you should pay attention to what individuals actually say and do, and not get caught up in sympathy because they belong to a poor and oppwessed minowity. The people of Tenpenny Tower don't like ghouls, so they don't want Roy and his goons to come in. But you can convince them to see the light and learn to get along with and welcome the ghouls into their home. Happy end for all, right? WRONG! Not long after moving in, Roy kills all the humans in Tenpenny Tower and populates it with ghouls. But you should have known from the beginning that was a bad idea because when you talked to Roy beforehand, he showed what a murderous unrepentant asshole he was, he was always a hair's breath away from killing you if you simply misspoke, and he was planning on killing everyone in the tower just because they wouldn't let him in. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you let the psychopath in?! In the end, he never wanted to live in harmony with the humans; he just wanted to take their stuff. Just like a lot of so-called oppressed minorities in the real world.

No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular: Or "Watamote" for short. This deconstructs the cute shy girl and "cool otaku" character archetype in manga and anime (like Konata from Lucky Star, whom Watamote's protagonist, Tomoko, kind of resembles). It shows that socially-awkward people aren't these adorable little moeblobs you just want to hug and protect; a lot of time, they're actually assholes with a lot of built-up resentment towards other people, whom they're likely to project their own flaws upon, and that social awkwardness is not a cute or desirable trait. It's uncomfortable to watch, can come across as creepy, and is very crippling. That being said, the manga eventually reconstructs those conventions; the protagonist, Tomoko, through sheer persistence and force of will, brute forces her way to becoming a somewhat functional individual, and shows herself to be an eccentric-enough person that catches the interest of multiple people and allows her to make friends.

The Hobbit: Yes, even the codifier of modern fantasy got in on this, particularly with the idea of a dragon's hoard. Hurray, Smaug was slain and the Dwarves can now reclaim their ancestral home and wealth! Except now that the dragon's gone, many interested parties are beginning to emerge seeking to claim a part of the now unguarded treasure for themselves, which almost causes total war to break out between them. It's also quite unexpected because up until this part, the story was very straightforward, with the (mostly) sympathetic Dwarves and Hobbit dealing with hardships and (seemingly) unsympathetic antagonists. But when we get here, the Dwarves, Men of Laketown, and Mirkwood Elves all have valid and understandable reasons to come to blows, leading to a very complicated political situation that has even the unambiguously good Bilbo resorting to shady tactics in a desperate effort to broker peace between the feuding factions.

I like One Punch Man as a subversion/deconstruction of superhero stories. Even shounen to some degree. Usually the story is about encountering a tough enemy, training up, and then defeating them. Being able to one shot anybody like having infinite damage in a video game can get boring after a while.

Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.

Evil Dead 2 puts slapstick comedy in a gory horror movie. Army of Darkness takes it even further by turning Ash into a full-on marginally-competent cynical anti-hero (with a redemption arc).

Then they undid all of that in the last 10-15 years -- the more recent Evil Dead movies subverted the Evil Dead 2 expectations by making them straight horror stories, and the recent Army of Darkness shows subverted the expectations for Ash by making him completely incompetent, pathetic, and unheroic.

Drakengard 1 managed to deconstruct basically any action game and even most JRPGs by taking off a lot of the "hero lenses" that many of them portray your party in.

Caim isn't some legendary hero saving the world from the Empire. He is a bloodthirsty monster committing mass genocide who is only slightly less evil than them by not trying to end the world. His party members regularly cower in fear of him. His actually racist dragon who hates all humans cannot fathom the depths of his violence.

At one point in the game you've killed so many Empire men they've begun drafting children to fight for them. And he still slaughters them completely mercilessly while his comrade begs him to even show an ounce of restraint.

To that extent, in the sequel he is treated like a literal walking apocalypse. People outright piss themselves in fear upon seeing him. He manages to murder Death itself. When faced with the option of facing him or a giant mad dragon (as killing one will kill them both) the army of the world chooses the dragon.

He has no real special power. He is enhanced physically by his pact with a dragon, but its nothing superhuman. He is just a guy with a sword. He is in fact weaker than most Protagonists in the games it is deconstructing.

But the game shows how horrifying such a character would be without the story writing them as the "good guys." And all this without pulling the, at the time novel and now cliche, "you were the bad guy all long" shtick. Because you are undeniably the good guy, doing the correct thing, and even your methods are proven to usually be the only ones that work. Its when people try to be nice, merciful, or even heroic that the world shows them quickly the consequence of that.

I'll cop to watching some nuTV here, but only because it had a cool idea that it completely failed to deliver on. In the first episode, of AppleTV's "Hijack" Idris Elba's character is implied to be some sort of amoral super negotiator that works for all sorts of business/government deals. When hijackers take the plane, he goes to them and essentially offers to work for them. This could have made great TV if the MC was actually working for the hijackers to ensure his own survival, but they don't even stick with it through the second episode and the show becomes a boring plane hijacking movie stretched over 7 hours. The show is shit.

The incompetent white male, powerful smart women, wise minority themes are so consistent that the show could make a decent drinking game, and I've watched the rest in amusement just (correctly) guessing what every character will do based on their race/sex.

Regarding Ned, there were theories he never actually died because:

• His death takes place in an Arya chapter and she's is too far away in the book to make him out clearly, the TV show drastically cuts down the distance from the statue of Baelor to where Ned is

• Ned has been in the Black Cells for weeks so even those who know him barely recognise him

• None of the peasants attending even know who the fuck he is so anyone could be put infront of them and they'd believe it was whoever they were told, a concept that gets repeated with Jayne Westerling pretending to be Sansa

But GRRM isn't likely to ever publish the next book let alone the last one so even if this was going to be an actual thing it's far, far too late now for anyone to care.

Plus a lot of people don't even pick up on how some PoV characters are intentionally written as poor narrators that give incorrect accounts over and over, like most Sansa chapters.

Perhaps not exactly what you are looking for, but I think my favorite subversion, and an example of one that is actually fun and interesting unlike most that happen today, off the top of my head is the twist about 2/3rds of the way through the Lego Movie. (and spoilers ahead for anyone who cares)

Basically, the entire time up to that point in the movie, it has seemed like a very simple children's movie. It has its moments where as an adult you can laugh at things, but most of the jokes are making fun of other movies, making fun of adults, show Lord Business as being evil because he wants everyone to follow the rules all the time, simple stuff like that.

Then the main character Emmett is forced to sacrifice himself to save everyone else in LegoLand from danger, so he jumps into a portal off the side of a cliff, disarming the bomb that he had been unwillingly made into the trigger for.

[SECOND SPOILER WARNING]

And then the whole movie shifts to the real world. Where we see that the reason it was all very simple and relied on pop culture references...was because it was the imagination of a child playing with the Lego set. And "Lord Business" is his dad, who the kid is upset about because he keeps getting scolded for playing with the Legos by his dad (who obsessively follows the instructions and built a model city out of them). And it actually ends in redemption where the dad realizes he was being a dick to his son and he starts treating him better and letting him use the Legos.

I have seen a lot of movies try to pull off a similar sort of twist, but few have been successful, and I wasnt expecting something that deep in a kids movie.

The Mistborn series has this at points. Instead of an arduous trial, the cloak of membership is handed over at the first meeting casually.

Indiana Jones has it. He shoots a guy instead of having a big brawl. He'll lose or be tricked and that's half the movie.

There is a short story in the Dresden files about Harry Dresden complaining about fire damage in dungeons and dragons. He's a wizard that mainly uses fire in modern Chicago.

Before star Trek all the space shows were about scientists or families traveling. So a show about a military space exploration ship, and a captain that earned his position at the academy would be very different.

Might sound silly, but I think Shrek is a really good example.

Ogre's are typically associated as being evil, but it quickly shows that's not who Shrek is.
The movie continues this theme when you meet the princess. While at first you would think her and Shrek have nothing in common, but again it shows not to judge by appearances, showing the princess isn't who you would expect.

Fairytail Manga. It is constantly deconstructing things. At one point they are expecting a big battle with a boss that has waited a thousand years to fight. It's been dead for most of that time.

Your comment on Watchmen applies to all the "good" instances I can think of: mildly interesting, but overall not worth it.

DS9: critiques/deconstructs the utopia depicted in all other ST shows. While very good itself, it pulled its biggest punch (humanizing Dukat) and ultimately paved the way for the Trek shitstorm we're nearing the second decade of.

Miller's Dark Knight comics: not so much deconstruct as play lethally straight. I've always been fond on his eldritch horror take on Plastic Man.

I suppose this would qualify as a subversion of expectations, but Farscape is categorically excellent. I'd say the first two seasons are perfect television. The subversion being that, often, the status quo doesn't return after 43 minutes. Especially the, uh, thing that happens at the start of season 3.

If I'm sticking current, Death mount Dead play, I like the twist of who the protagonist actually is, the nuanced take on a necromancer and what is truly the difference between 'good and evil'

Call of Duty 4, where one of the two player characters gets caught just outside the blast radius of a nuclear explosion after his squad takes a detour to rescue a grounded pilot. It's setup like other movies and games where the protagonist will get out in the nick of time after preforming heroics, so you're not expecting your character to perish.

Later games in the series jumped the shark by trying to up the shock value, and generally abandoned the ordinary solider theme of early CoD and Medal of Honor.

Joe Abercrombie's First Law trillogy has a bunch of good ones. Logen Ninefingers/ The Bloody Nine: The noble barbarian who is good and noble and heroic except sometimes when in the middle of battle when he gets possessed by an evil spirit/ has an split personality that surfaces / just plain old bloodlust. This alter ego comes with its own name and it's unclear what exactly it is but it can end up from plainly killing the target enemy, to killing noncombatants, allies and up to children of allies. By the end of the book it turns out his friends fear the shit out of him and most support the "villain" that "betrayed" him and are much happier with him gone.

Bayaz The first of the Magic: The kindly old wizard who takes the heroes on an around the world expedition for the greater good and a quest to make a king. Turns out he is probably the most evil person in the world compounded by the fact that he has true power to back it up. Has extreme lifespan and keeps control of entire nations over history through useful idiots and pawns just so he has a big enough cudgel to hit his enemies with. He's so bad that you realize his nemesis the one you're led to believe is the evilest man in the world (and he is pretty damn evil) ended up the way he is just to try and stop Bayaz. And the way he is a cannibalistic mage in charge of a bunch of other cannibalistic mages + a turkish like empire of which he is the high priest of (it's ok though the hypocrite Bayaz has his own cannibalistic aprentices). Oh and he uses a dirty bomb like magical weapon in the middle of the capital city to defeat his attacking enemies. Cancer like symptoms kill a bunch of people including probably the only good guy in the entire books.

Jezal the foppish noble would be hero who gets manipulated by Bayaz to end up king. He starts an idiot and ends up a slightly aware one at the end when he realize that yes he is king he has power and wealth and adulation but he is nothing but a puppet to Bayaz and Bayaz's actual man in charge the Head Inquisitor, and there isn't anything he can do because he's just an insect and Bayaz replacing him would be just a minor inconvenience. And the former princess his wife? Well sure she's beautiful and everything Jezal wanted in a woman except she's a lesbian and hates his guts.

Sand Dan Glotka former champion of the nation, dashing good looks ladies man captured and tortured by the enemy empire during a military campaign. Released as an ugly cripple forever forced to use a cane, constantly plagued by pain attacks (he considers stairs as his archenemy). Ends up working for the inquisition as he's useless as a fighter now and he hardly wants to remember his old life. Its his job to torture criminals and innocent alike to wring out confessions and hidden truths which he uses to outmaneuver his bosses and colleagues just so he can stay alive in a life he hates living. He ends up in charge of the kingdom, the minder of king on behalf of Bayaz, married to a real beauty who was once infatuated with his old self but wouldn't spare a second look now if not for the fact that she'd be the center of a scandal as the pregnant unmarried destitute with no family left noble (father of the child being the new king).