But they don't hold for the X-men. Like Namor destroyed wakanda with the phoenix
Cyclops killed Xavier and became a terrorist with the phoenix
They also don't hold back for mutants, like recently there was a marvel 1000 story where a mutant loses control and destroys a town. When wanda depowered mutants they showed many dying.
To a large extent this is because most of these stories are from the mid 2000s and onwards, where they didn't care about showing collateral damage. Since hulk's been doing this from the 60s, they just went... ehhh super-math. Though that probably doesn't explain the time she-hulk leveled bone idaho with 0 deaths, and the one death was a murder.
Like the OG dark phoenix story ended with them saying "this wasn't even jean, it was the phoenix, jean is in jamaica bay" for comparison to how they handled the phoenix casualties for the x-men back in the day.
I also remember cable/surfer having a fight, where they were just like "Yeah, we destroyed and rebuilt everything in our wake, no real harm done"
Of course, sometimes he statements can be contradictory. Like Bendis had wonder-man claim hulk destroyed and killed many people, but then again that guy wasn't right in the head at the time.
Yeah, this. THe only person who died was the politician, and that was just tampering because of Justin Hammer. But he does get "protected", like the time he dropped a chlorine gas freight , but noone really got hurt cuz of gas masks.