Given the following Apex statement: What occurs when more than one Account is returned by the SOQL query?

While an error occurs and is logged, the primary consequence is an immediate runtime `QueryException` that, if unhandled, stops the transaction, rather than just logging an error and continuing.

Apex is a strongly typed language, and a single SObject variable cannot be automatically cast or converted to a `List` data type when multiple records are returned.

Apex does not automatically assign the first record found when a query assigned to a single SObject variable returns multiple records; it strictly enforces the 'one record or zero records' expectation for single variable assignment.

In Apex, if a SOQL query is intended to return a single SObject (i.e., assigned to a non-List SObject variable) but retrieves more than one record, a `System.QueryException` is immediately thrown. If this exception is not caught by a `try-catch` block, the current transaction rolls back, and the code execution is terminated.