Line #51 Main/LunaticLoophole


1	So you've organized this [[TheCaper major heist]], with a motley [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits team of criminals of all different personalities]], which has GoneHorriblyWrong, and the whole [[BolivianArmyEnding Bolivian army]] is at your doorstep. Things look dire. But you can be assured of one thing: The batshit insane one ''will'' get away, and probably go on to have adventures of his own.
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3	Maybe crazy people are invisible to police, or maybe God has a plan for this individual, though what that plan is is anybody's guess. Or maybe God just loves a lunatic.
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5	Obviously, this is a sub-trope of SuccessThroughInsanity and KarmaHoudini. Also related somewhat to JokerImmunity. Also sort of related to TheFool, except this character's insane, not stupid. Also similar to InsanityImmunity.
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7	This is most obvious as a {{Death Trope\|s}} (everyone ''except'' the lunatic dies), so expect '''''UNMARKED SPOILERS!!!'''''
8	----
9	!!Examples:
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11	[[foldercontrol]]
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13	[[folder:Comic Books]]
14	* Johnny from ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, manages to avoid being arrested for or even suspected of any of his murders. This trope is taken to an extreme as said murders include draining the blood of a flower vendor, on a crowded street in broad daylight, with numerous horrified witnesses present.
15	** It's actually a PlotPoint: he's protected from harm by an [[EldritchAbomination exceptionally malevolent]] WeirdnessCensor [[spoiler:which is dispelled by the end of the series, necessitating a WalkTheEarth ending.]]
16	* By the end of ''ComicBook/MarvelZombies 4'', it appears that the severed head of Zombie ComicBook/{{Deadpool}} has escaped the destruction of all the other super-zombies.
17	[[/folder]]
18
19	[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
20	* In ''Film/Armageddon1998'', crazy Russian guy is one of the few guys that survives. Also Creator/SteveBuscemi's character, who gets "space dementia." It helps that the rest of the crew [[BoundAndGagged duct-taped him to a chair]] because of it.
21	* In ''Film/{{Braveheart}}'', before the Battle of Stirling Bridge, crazy Irish guy declares that God told him he would survive the battle, but he wasn't so sure about the main character. Turns out both of them survive. [[spoiler:This turns out to be foreshadowing, since at the end of Wallace's revolt he's brutally killed while the Irish guy looks on helplessly (while not dying).]]
22	* Creator/MaggieGyllenhaal's character, Raven, in ''Film/CecilBDemented'' definitely qualifies as the craziest of the Sprocket Holes (and that's saying something). Making this example particularly egregious is when Honey Whitlock (Creator/MelanieGriffith's character) is being arrested, Raven actually calls to her, to tell her the movie's finished, and throws Honey a devil-kiss, and ''not one cop'' notices her, as she then hides in the back of a hearse.
23	* Garland Greene, Creator/SteveBuscemi's character in ''Film/ConAir''. At the end, when all the other convicts are either dead or being arrested, Greene just walks off into the Sunset Strip and starts gambling. In spite of being a famous serial killer, he was never a part of the escape plan and never does anything bad during the course of the film.
24	* In ''Film/MenaceIISociety'', pretty much every main character, both sympathetic and not, dies by the end, except for the main protagonist's completely unsympathetic, psychotic, trigger-happy partner, who gets arrested in the end.
25	* ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean''
26	** Captain Jack Sparrow rides on a wave of such loopholes through the movies.
27	** In the [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanOnStrangerTides fourth one]], efforts are made to make it look more planned than stumbled through. YMMV on how good of a choice that was.
28	[[/folder]]
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30	[[folder:Literature]]
31	* David Gemmell's ''Echoes of the Great Song'' has an [[Literature/TheElricSaga Elric]]-style Failing ex-MasterRace. They are attacked by invaders from another world and the book ends with a suicide mission to blow up the enemy ammunition dump. The only survivor is the one who disabled the Stun Setting on his Laser Bow because he can't think of any time he would point it at anything without wanting to kill it.
32	* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': In ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'', the titular Grand Admiral muses that perhaps the greatest reason why the Rebel Alliance, now the New Republic, was so successful and stayed alive where other rebellions failed was because they [[RefugeInAudacity had the audacity]] to enact [[CrazyEnoughToWork strategies that looked absolutely insane]] ([[Film/ANewHope such as sending a bunch of snub fighters to take on a planet-destroying battlestation]]).
33	[[/folder]]
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35	[[folder:Live Action TV]]
36	* Murdock of ''Series/TheATeam'' occasionally escaped arrest when the rest of the team was arrested.
37	* ''Series/DoctorWho''. The Doctor's not ''completely'' crazy (probably) but it has been proposed that one of the reasons that the {{Big Bad}}s generally spare his life is that they're genuinely curious about [[CloudCuckoolander the way his mind works]]. (Of course, narrative causality probably carries a bit of weight too...)
38	* Averted by Haywire in ''Series/PrisonBreak'', who [[spoiler:does make it out of the prison at the end of season 1, but is unceremoniously killed off halfway season 2.]]
39	[[/folder]]
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41	[[folder:Toys]]
42	* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'': A repeated occurrence with [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Vezon]]:
43	** Out of the Piraka, he's the only one who doesn't get [[spoiler:mutated into a sea snake and then [[FusionDance fused]] into a golden-skinned Skakdi {{God}}.]]
44	** He is one of the four group members of Order of Mata Nui strike team sent to free Makuta Miserix to not die or betray the group.
45	** When he gets sent on a suicide mission to Destral to distract Makuta Tridax long enough for the Order of Mata Nui to begin laying siege upon Destral, he ends up surviving long enough for Mazeka and Tobduk to kill Tridax, with Vezon stealing Tridax's Kanohi Olmak (A MaskOfPower that opens [[PortalDoor portals to other dimensions]]).
46	** Immediately after that, Vezon opens a portal and arrives in front of a massive wave of [[AppliedPhlebotinum Energized Protodermis]], which he survives yet again (albeit fused with the Olmak and now becoming a walking dimensional gateway opener).
47	** He then travels through countless alternate universes until he is summoned by a Great Being from his home universe to free him from his prison, eventually also rescuing a host of power players who had been expelled from the Matoran Universe by Makuta.
48	** After that, he and everyone else escaped the fortress where the Great Being was imprisoned when it was blown up by another Great Being.
49	[[/folder]]
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51	[[folder:Video Games]]
52	* In ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'', CanonForeigner and [[PsychoForHire complete]] [[AxCrazy nutcase]] Ryuji Yamazaki is the only one of the Eight Kings of {{Orochi}} to actively challenge and disregard him... [[DeathByOriginStory and survive to tell the tale.]] He is also the only one of the Eight Kings to [[spoiler: be alive as of the beginning of KOF XIV; Vice and Mature are only apparitions, all of the Heavenly Kings have been KilledOffForReal for some 20 years, and Gaidel was DoomedByCanon.]]
53	[[/folder]]
54	%%
55	%%[[folder:Western Animation]]
56	%%* Cyclonus[=/=]Snow Cat is one of the few named Decepticons to survive both ''WesternAnimation/TransformersArmada'' and ''Anime/TransformersEnergon''.
57	%%[[/folder]]
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59	[[folder:Real Life]]
60	* UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc. One of the reasons she was so successful in warfare was because [[CrazyEnoughToWork her strategies were so crazy that her enemies were caught completely off-guard]].
61	[[/folder]]

Context Main / LunaticLoophole