History Main / Calvinball

* In MysteryScienceTheater3000, this is what Australian Rules Football boiled down to. Of course, the fact that ARF is a real game with a well-defined set of rules is irrelevant, it was just a catch-all term for whatever wacky sports game they were playing on the satellite.
* In ''PlayMistyForMe'' ClintEastwood's character plays a game of "Crybastion" with his barkeeper to get a woman to strike up a conversation with them.

* The students of Third Street School on ''{{Recess}}'' play a game called "Battle Tag." We don't see it played, but we do see all the kids on the playground sprawled on the ground afterwards with their clothes all ripped and covered with dirt.

* On ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'', a U.S. Acres short involved Orson convincing the others to play a game of "pigball". We don't see how actual pigball is played, as Roy plays a joke by switching the actual rules with a set of increasingly absurd ones (like flipping a baked potato not only to see who plays first, but if the game is actually played at all) which instruct the players to score points by doing embarrassing and ridiculous stunts (like dressing in silly outfits or finding a live hippopotamus).
** They get back at Roy with a "game" called "roosterball", whose rules are to take the person with the most feathers and throw him in a mud hole.
*** In another short, Garfield finds himself trapped in a Western show, playing poker. The stakes get ridiculously high ("I'll see your horse and raise you...") and then Garfield ends the game by declaring, "You had the old maid! I win."

-->"The first rule of Timmyball is that Timmy always wins."\\
"I thought Timmyball had no rules."\\
"[[LogicBomb That's the second rule of Timmyball.]]"

* There's a ''WesternAnimation/RocketPower'' episode where the kids try to invent their own sport, "Rocketball." Although it starts out very simple ("hit the ball into the trash can"), more people gradually join in and to make it "fairer", so many rules are added that it degrades into this.

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' had a B-plot with the adults all trying out a board game that follows a long list of byzantine rules depending on the current state of the game, such as "Player One can only move counter-clockwise when all the other players are in the Penalty Zone." By the second or third time it cuts back to them, they're all bored out of their minds, but for some reason, they still keep playing.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Talisman}}: the Magic Quest Game'', by Games Workshop, an expandable board game loosely based on the ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' role-playing games. Players advanced simplified RPG characters toward a simple goal (claiming a magical crown or some such), but the game took every chance to complicate and subvert this goal. Much of the gameplay occurred through card wars in the fashion of ''MagicTheGathering'', with the added dimensions of dice and boards. Even without the expansions, various player powers and cards indicated contradictory or overlapping results. Expansions added wild elements like time travel, outer space, underground dungeons, and cityscapes. The overall effect was of a network of overlapping and shifting rules, whose precedence was hotly debated at every turn. In fact, half the fun of the game is debating the rules.

* The audio commentaries of Peter Jackson's ''{{Film/TheLordOfTheRings}} movies include a couple of stories about "Tig." It started with a few of the cast members simply poking each other and saying various nonsense words, but Elijah would thought they were playing an actual game. They proceeded to make up rules as they went along just to mess with him. It was over a year before he realized that it wasn't a real thing.

* In the TomStoppard play ''The Real Inspector Hound'', the characters in the PlayWithinAPlay play a card game called "[[{{Pun}} Pontoon Bridge]]". They actually play it twice, and the rules aren't remotely similar.

* The ''Series/{{Stella}}'' comedy group performs a sketch in which one of them suggests they play a "logic game" in which the players take turns saying one of two nonsense words in a unspecified pattern. The second member quickly grasps the pattern and is able to play along, but the third member always guesses wrong. It becomes increasingly obvious that the "pattern" is completely random, and the third member will be deemed wrong no matter what he says.

* The ''{{Stella}}'' comedy group performs a sketch in which one of them suggests they play a "logic game" in which the players take turns saying one of two nonsense words in a unspecified pattern. The second member quickly grasps the pattern and is able to play along, but the third member always guesses wrong. It becomes increasingly obvious that the "pattern" is completely random, and the third member will be deemed wrong no matter what he says.

*** We do know that they find TabletopGame/{{Chess}} too complicated and don't have the patience.

* [[TropeNamers The name]] comes from the anti-game invented by ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', whose only consistent rule was that you couldn't play the game the same way twice (although no one was ever allowed to question the masks, either). Watterson mentioned in the tenth anniversary annotations that he constantly get fanmail asking for the rules, to which he commented they were simple: you make them up as you go along, although the main point seemed to be to make up whatever rules would cause your opponent the most defeat, humiliation and annoyance. Hobbes was very good at it, and Rosalyn picked it up quickly.

* Duel Monsters from ''Anime/YuGiOh'' is this, especially in the early story arcs before a more concrete set of rules was established; even then, new cards were constantly introduced that changed the existing rules, to the extent that the series was formerly the TropeNamer for NewRulesAsThePlotDemands.

* The TropeNamer is frequently played in ''Fanfic/CalvinAndHobbesTheSeries''.

* [[TropeNamer The name]] comes from the anti-game invented by ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', whose only consistent rule was that you couldn't play the game the same way twice (although no one was ever allowed to question the masks, either). Watterson mentioned in the tenth anniversary annotations that he constantly get fanmail asking for the rules, to which he commented they were simple: you make them up as you go along, although the main point seemed to be to make up whatever rules would cause your opponent the most defeat, humiliation and annoyance. Hobbes was very good at it, and Rosalyn picked it up quickly.

* At ''Wrestling/{{WWE}} Backlash'' in 2001, William Regal challenged Chris Jericho to a Duchess of Queensbury rules match, which Jericho readily accepted, despite having no idea what "Duchess of Queensbury rules" entailed. It turned out that Duchess of Queensbury rules simply meant that Regal got to change the rules whenever Jericho was about to win. Jericho attempts to pin Regal? Oops, the match is divided into two rounds, and round one just ended. Jericho gets a submission? Oops, submissions aren't allowed!

Also, the trope does not include games to which every single rule has not been given. If the basic structure of the game is laid out it is not an example of CalvinBall. After all these are fictional games which appear in some kind of narrative, and we should not expect a full manual of rules to interrupt the flow of the story. If it's merely the ''points'' system that's arbitrary, it's ThePointsMeanNothing.

** House Rules Parcheesi isn't just CalvinBall, it's ''Zen'' CalvinBall

* ''NewGirl'' has "True American", a drinking game with Candyland elements, in which the floor is lava. The rules involve zones (some of which are crazy), yelling out the names of presidents, and alcohol (with cans of beer as Soldiers of the Secret Order, and a bottle of bourbon as King of the Castle). If you take a break to have sex with a beautiful woman, everyone else wins. And everything you hear in True American is a lie.

* ''WesternAnimation/RecessSchoolsOut'' includes something called "Battle Tag".

* At the start of the ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost", [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick are playing a game that involves bubble-blowing, moving pieces on a chess board with your breath, carrying rocks around, climbing a tree, and other crazyness. At one point, Patrick triumphantly shouts "I lose!", until [=SpongeBob=] reminds him, "But it's not Tuesday, Patrick." When an annoyed Squidward asks them what they're doing, they sheepishly admit, "We don't know."
** "Tuesday" being a reference to one of the few known rules of [[Franchise/StarTrek Fizzbin]].

* In MysteryScienceTheater3000, this is what Australian Rules Football boiled down to. Of course, the fact that ARF is a real game with a well-defined set of rules is irrelevant, it was just a catch-all term for whatever wacky sports game they were playing on the satellite.

*** It's noted in ''Literature/QuidditchThroughTheAges'' that the ''author'' has had access to the complete foul list, and agrees that "No good could come of its release to the general public." He also notes that while the ban on wand use in-game would automatically restrict over half of them, and ones such as "striking another player with an axe"... well...

--> Host: PlusBum! 13 points!

* ''Webcomic/MountainTime'' has "[[http://mountaincomics.com/2013/05/02/mountain-time-450/ Plusbum]]."
--> Jeff: Saddle up your igloo!
--> Host: Ghostbum! You're spooked.