You also see it a bit in popular fiction. Take a look at movies. Characters often find themselves in impossible, terrible situations. Fictional situations of overwhelming severity. Someone's family kidnapped; aliens invade; evil villain threatens to destroy everything type stuff

The audience has to confront the losing situation. How will the character get out of it? Here there's a genre divergence on how it resolves. Most hollywood movies take the option: the character just "man ups" and somehow finds it within themselves to overcome it by summoning even greater violence.