-->''"It's magic. We don't have to explain it."''\\
-- ''Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief''

-->'''Time Magazine''': "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?"\\
'''Michael Okuda''': [[MathematiciansAnswer "It works very well, thank you."]]\\
-- ''Michael Okuda, ''StarTrek'' Technical Advisor''


A Hand Wave, also known as Scotch Tape, is any flimsy explanation, particularly involving the BackStory, a RetCon, or a use of {{phlebotinum}} which is noteworthy for its lack of detail or coherence. May be used to (try to) hold together an IdiotPlot or an otherwise outrageous story. Often consists of throwaway lines like "[[ItsTheOnlyWay it's the only way]]." The name comes from academia, initially to refer to where complicated parts of a valid argument are glossed over for the sake of convenience.

Another source is ''StarWars'', where the [[TheForce Jedi mind trick]], used to force weak minds to accept a suggestion regardless of plausibility is [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1rlThKe1qo always]] accompanied by a literal hand wave.

Sometimes this is simply because the writers couldn't think of a plausible explanation, so decided to [[BellisariosMaxim play down its importance]]. In the best cases it's because the explanation is [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality genuinely irrelevant to the story and would be a distraction]]. Sometimes it's because the thing they're handwaving is so universally reviled that they want to [[LampshadeHanging joke along with the audience's disdain]] for it.

When skillfully done, a handwave can obscure the [[FridgeLogic ridiculousness]], or at least make it plausible enough so that the audience achieves a WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief. Scotch tape may not be strong, it may not be pretty, but it's much better to have some sort of explanation than nothing at all.

TheWatson is often a valuable source of ScotchTape. In ScienceFiction shows, a handwave is usually conducted with TechnoBabble. In fact, an alternate name for {{Phlebotinum}} is ''Handwavium''.

In the industry, the vague and generic direction given by management to actors, designers, editors etc is sometimes known as "hand waving" as it is frequently accompanied by a lot of equally unhelpful gesturing. But that is not this trope.

See also AWizardDidIt. Compare and contrast JustifiedTrope. A.K.A. ScotchTape (not to be confused with [[DuctTapeForEverything Duct Tape]]).
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!!Examples:
*In ''FinalFantasyVIII'' the BigBad Ultimecia wants to force the world to go under "Time Compression." Infuriatingly to many players, when the question of what her motive is in doing this is handwaved away by the mad scientist Odine as "Who knows? It does not matter." Thanks to some cryptic statements made by Ultimecia in the final battle all sorts of [[EpilepticTrees theories]] have been suggested regarding her motives, including the idea that she is the future version of Rinoa (a theory {{Jossed}} by WordOfGod). This theory has been directly discredited by Square-Enix. Ultimecia's reasons for undergoing time Kompression are explained throughout the game. Officially, she was trying to destroy time as time had unfairly painted her as a villain. (This is in fact supported by the script throughout the game as well.)
**Happens in other games in the ''FinalFantasy'' series. For example, ''FinalFantasyVI's'' Kefka offers little explanation for why he does what he does beyond that he's simply and flagrantly insane and [[OmnicidalManiac wants]] to destroy the world. [[FinalFantasyVII Sephiroth's]] motivations stem from wanting to become a deity, but the exact mechanisms he's planning to use for this are just as hand-wavey.
*** [[DidNotDoResearch Incorrect]]. Sephiroth was encased in Mako until near the very end of the game. The 'Sephiroth' we see wandering the world, shanking flower girls and releasing the plot to summon Meteor is in fact Jenova in a Sephiroth suit. Square has confirmed this.
*The video game ''DeusEx has'' lockpicks and multitools that, for some unexplained reason, can only be used once. During the tutorial level your support says that "unlocking doors expends the resources of modern lockpicks", but seeing as how the actual item is just two rods that spin about, it doesn't make much sense. It's never mentioned why the multitools can only be used once. Maybe they used really cheap batteries?
** The HandWave is actually that the actual lockpick mechanism is significant nanite swarms that attempt to mimic the lock combination - depletion of those is what causes multitools and lockpicks to deplete.
*** In a more {{egregious}} example from ''DeusEx'' when JC is [[spoiler:assigned the mission of killing his own brother, if he actually tries to do it his brother [[GameplayAndStorySegregation takes no damage]] and handwaves it with the comment "Stop kidding about, JC."]]
*[[TheHerosJourney Monomyth-style adventures]] such as ''{{Beowulf}}'' sometimes seem to have a BigBad who could conceivably be defeated more easily by some combination of protagonists other than TheHero, but for no given reason, the others [[HoldingOutForAHero hold back so that the hero can do it]].
* Basically anything involving Dawn as the Key on ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. And any time when someone explains why the main problem of an episode ''just can't'' be resolved using a simpler spell or plan.
* ''StarTrek'' is famous for its TechnoBabble "explanations", but sometimes it doesn't even try that hard:
** In the ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "Paradise Lost", Captain Sisko is a framed as a [[VoluntaryShapeshifting shape-shifting]] Changeling by a WellIntentionedExtremist, who somehow rigs Sisko's blood sample to move by itself and glow the way Changelings do when changing shape. In the following JustBetweenYouAndMe scene, Sisko asks him how he did that, he replies "Does it really matter?", and the subject is dropped.
** In "Trials And Tribble-ations", several of DS9's crew members (including Commander Worf) travel back in time to an episode from ''StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. They remark on the difference in appearance between Worf (with his elaborate makeup and appliances) and the smooth-headed Kirk-era Klingons (with very simple makeup). Worf puts them off, saying "We do not discuss it with outsiders". (Eventually it is [[RetCon retconned]] in ''StarTrekEnterprise'' as the result of some earlier botched attempts to create genetically "augmented" Klingons.) They should've just put Michael Dorn in the old-fashioned makeup and left it at that. Vastly funnier.
*** Ironically, Bashir and O'Brien's guesses on what caused the change "What happened? Some kind of genetic engineering?" "A viral mutation?" [[spoiler:ended up being both correct.]]
** The [[TeleportersAndTransporters transporters]] include a component called a "Heisenberg compensator" as a handwave to get around quantum uncertainty effects. Michael Okuda's response, when asked about it, can be seen in the second page quote, above.
* The ''AeonFlux'' episode "Reraizure" deals with the fate of creatures called "Narghiles". Since they're dangerous, one character decides to get rid of them, but because "You can't kill them" (those were his exact words and the only explanation given), he plans to put them all on a platform that will be shot into space.
*In the first three games in ''TheElderScrolls'' video game series, the nation of Cyrodiil is described as mostly tropical jungle. The fourth game in the series is the only one that actually takes place there, and it is shown to actually be mostly temperate hardwood forest. The in-game books "Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes" vaguely explains that the god Talos (the [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence endivinated spirit of the first Cyrodiilic emperor]]) used his powers to make Cyrodiil colder to make the local soldiers more comfortable.
** This inconsistency was supposedly brought up in an interview with one of the devs of the game, whose response was rather hostile and went along the lines of "are you really going to complain about esoteric information located within the backstory of the backstory?"
* Three endings in ''{{Drakengard}}'' are given explanations like this. The third ending has expository dialogue which is [[{{Macekre}} particularly ambiguous and poorly written.]] The fourth ending's explanation trumps them all, though, with a [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands hastily-written and somewhat nonsensical fable]] being the justification for a suicide run against [[FinalBoss the final boss]] in the hopes that the fable will be re-enacted. Given, the circumstances were pretty dire, so the characters could almost be excused for thinking what they did. The fifth ending, well, [[DroppedABridgeOnHim is supposed to be anticlimactic.]] What else do you expect to happen after vanquishing UltimateEvil? The sequel clears up a lot of the fog presented here, but that's no excuse.
* The lack of male-type humanoid robots in ''YokohamaKaidashiKikou'' is supposedly due to the fact that the male versions are "weaker" than the female ones, but how this difference comes about is never explained.
* In ''BatmanBegins'', Batman (who has a strict no-kill policy) gets into a high-speed chase on the freeway with the cops, causes more than a couple crashes and drives over several cop cars with the cops still inside, endangering dozens of civilian and police officer lives. Yet we know no one is hurt (very badly) because Alfred says: "[[CouldHaveBeenMessy It's a miracle no one was killed.]]" The same thing happens in ''TheDarkKnight'', as he fires high-powered guns into what appears to be a mall's glass door to break it so he can drive through, then showing people dodging out of the way. No way someone wasn't going to get hit. In ''TheDarkKnight'', it is "explained" that the Batmobile has "life sign scanners."
** Bear in mind that he is, after all, the goddamn Batman. That combination of value for human life, ultra-keen skills just this side of superhuman (reflexes, alertness, multi-tasking, planning ahead on the spur of the moment), and just plain luck being on his side is to be expected with that character in any medium where you see him. A hand wave is almost the lingua franca in discussion of such ordinary things for him.
* In the film ''TheAbyss'', the pressurized station so deep underwater that it can cause illness to people on board is brought to the surface in the space of less than a minute, and immediately people climb out, without having any symptoms of 'the bends.' Lindsey defuses a FridgeLogic moment by saying "We should all be dead. We didn't depressurize," and another character answers "They [the aliens] must have done something to us." No further explanation is given. The novelization (by Orson Scott Card, no less!) handles this a bit better...holes such as this (and the alien's back-story) are filled in fastidiously. All without diminishing the mystery and wonder.
*TruthInTelevision (sort of): in dreams, if you are aware enough to spot an inconsistency, your mind will hand wave it with the first explanation it can think of ([[VoodooShark which can be even more implausible than the original fact]]) to prevent you from waking up. And you will perfectly accept it. Then, when you wake up, FridgeLogic will come to you.
** In lucid dreaming, things which are out of the ordinary or impossible like this are referred to as Dream Signs. While they can trigger lucid dreams, they are an endless source of annoyance when they don't. For example, this troper remembers a dream in which he discovered a chemistry set that was labeled "Only works in dreams", to which he noted "Cool, 'cause I'm in one right now!", without waking up ''or'' becoming lucid. Painful.
* On ''{{Farscape}}'', the explanation as to why the Breakaway Colonies force the heir to the throne and her spouse to be frozen (while pregnant, and able to hear everything) for 80 years and left in a governmental chamber, is along the lines of "We've always done that, and it works!" (Works to do what, exactly?!)
* The manual of ''[[SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] 3'' handwaved the game's physics bugs as just part of the "many diabolical traps" created by Robotnik, so players couldn't say they weren't warned about having to reset their games.
* From ''FamilyGuy'':
-->Stewie: Say, Brian, now that I think about it, how can you possibly have a thirteen-year-old son when you yourself are only seven?
-->Brian: Well, those are dog years.
-->Stewie: That doesn't make any sense.
-->Brian: You know what, Stewie? If you don't like it, go on the internet and complain.
* {{Lampshaded}} in ''[[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/38215 Keegan's Truck 5]]'', when Commander Canada repeatedly dodges Keegan's questions on how the former is alive despite being killed years ago (repeatedly insisting that it is irrelevant), culminating with this exchange:
--> '''Keegan:''' What are you hiding? Why can't you tell me?\\
'''Commander Canada:''' I can't tell you why I'm still alive because the author is too lazy to come up with anything! ''Let it go!''\\
'''Keegan:''' Oh. Okay.\\
'''Commander Canada:''' Now, back to the damn story.
* In ''{{Bioshock}}'', the research camera analyzes the creatures you photograph and will give you "research bonuses" towards greater damage. Atlas explains this with a lot of five dollar words, but it still doesn't eliminate the fact that it's just a camera.
** An even bigger hand-wave of the same stripe comes in the form of the Camouflage Tonic, discovered by research-photographing the disappearing-reappearing Houdini Splicers. That's right, kids, all it takes to engineer an advanced tonic that allows you to go sight unseen is a few handy snapshots! Grab those cameras and do Andrew Ryan proud!
*** Even if we accept the handwave one the camera, the tonic part still makes no sense: Houdini splicers teleport, they do not turn invisible. So you are learning a new power by studying an enemy who does not even have that power...
** The Vita-Chambers handwave Bioshock's system of allowing the player to respawn at the instant of his death, with opponents retaining the damage you have already dealt them. Not that it does [[spoiler: Ryan]] any good later on.
** Well it very heavily implies that the vita-chambers only work for you since you are [[spoiler:related to Andrew Ryan.]] That is also why only you can use the metro, if you look around especially once you first get into Rapture there are signs saying "let us leave". [[WildMassGuessing Make your own decision]] about how [[spoiler: Sander Cohen]] gets from Fort Frolic to Olympus Heights.
*** The bathyspheres were programmed to work for Ryan and his underlings. Since [[spoiler: Sander Cohen]] was one of these, it's pretty obvious how he moved around.
*** Well, he ''is'' a [[spoiler:houdini splicer, and a powerful one at that, so there's no telling if he just teleported between areas of the city.]]
* Played for comedy in ''BigTroubleInLittleChina'' when Egg Shen appears above a hole in the ceiling. Jack asks how he got up there, and Egg simply replies, "Wasn't easy!"
** Well, Egg Shen ''is'' a wizard, so obviously AWizardDidIt.
* In ''DoctorWho'', the sonic screwdriver is a small handheld device capable of performing almost any task needed to get the Doctor out of a (often writer-induced) jam, from diagnosing injuries to locking/unlocking doors, hacking computers, blowing up security cameras, and, yes, even turning screws. The device works by flipping a switch and waving it at the intended target.
** It is precisely because it is so useful for getting the Doctor out of jams that the last executive producer of classic Doctor Who, Jonathan Nathan-Turner, had it destroyed early during the fifth doctor's tenure, never to return - and in the classic series it was used almost exclusively for opening doors and occasionally fixing things. Most of the time, when the Doctor was poking around in stuff, it was not with the sonic screwdriver. Now it almost always is. The new series not only brought it back, but has taken its hand-waved powers and raised them to epic proportions. Most of what it did in the classic series was at least semi-plausible for a high-tech tool. Now it's hand waving incarnate.
*** An even greater hand wave is the introduction of the sonic screwdriver's KryptoniteFactor, a "deadlock seal." This was originally established as a special kind of lock that was the only thing the sonic screwdriver couldn't open. Since then, anything and everything that the writers need the sonic screwdriver to be ineffective against has been described as "deadlocked," no matter what its nature, origin, or composition may be. Sometimes they're double or triple deadlocked, or even "maximum deadlocked."
*** And wood. Don't forget that it doesn't work on wood (although [[AnythingThatMoves Captain Jack Harkness's]] [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything sonic tool]] [[EvenTheGuysWantHim does]]).
** The Master's return from certain death (being burned alive in "Planet of Fire") is completely handwaved when he next appears in "The Mark of the Rani". When asked how he survived, the Master simply replies "I'm indestructible. The whole universe knows that." And that's the end of it. No explanation even attempted.
*''{{Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann}}'' does this with anything that isn't completely and totally awesome ; Spiral Energy did it.
** And, to be honest, most of the stuff that is.
*** Now you know why the Anti Spirals want to shut it down.
* After completing ''MetalGear Solid 3'', you get The Boss's gun if you start a NewGamePlus. If you equip it and call your weapons expert, he asks how Snake has it, and Snake tells him [[MST3KMantra not to worry about it]]. He also tells Snake that the gun has infinite ammo because the ammo feed is shaped like an infinity sign. "Makes sense..."
** Likewise, Solid Snake in ''MGS 2'' tells Raiden that he has infinite ammo...because he's wearing a headband. The headband in question is given to Snake in MGS 1's good ending, and is a special item who causes... infinite ammo.
***Snake was referring to the fact he "uses his head" and the bandanna was there for the in-joke
**** Also, after ''MetalGear Solid 4'', many fans tried to explain any supernatural "powers" or abilities the characters may have with simply "nanomachines."
*''GirlGenius'': Agatha builds a "mechanical taxidemist and tailor" in a forest [[MemeticMutation without even a box of scraps]]. How? She completely fails to explain:
--> "''Please.'' I ''always'' carry a swiss army knife and a coil of wire."
** Considering the fact that it was during a joke chapter, this tropher assumes it to be more a lampshade hanging than a handwave
* ''TheLegendOfZelda: The Minish Cap'' seems to be, at least in part, Nintendo's attempt to do more than simply HandWave the fact that Link is able to find money in random bushes and patches of grass, by explaining that the tiny race of people known as the Minish like to scatter the money for big people to find.
** They also scatter bombs, arrows, and hearts, and may be responsible for some of the ubiquitous treasure chests.
* At the end of ''BackToTheFuture Part II'', [[spoiler:the Delorean gets struck by lightning while flying, and gets sent to 1885. At the point when the lightning actually strikes the car, it is stationary in the air, but it has to be moving at 88 miles per hour to time travel (which is important in both parts I and III). When it got hit it wasn't moving. The handwave is that the lightning causes the Delorean to spin at 88 miles per hour, shown with the trails of fire being spirals in the air (the 1885 date is justified, as the time circuits were shown earlier to be broken, and an 1885 date was briefly shown).]]
* The Reapers in ''MassEffect'': They set things up to allow galactic civilization to reach a certain point, and then awaken from their millions-of-year sleep to return to the galaxy so they can wipe them out, leaving just enough on scattered planets to allow civilization to begin to reform.. Over and over again. One character, once, asks ''why'' they would do that and the only answer given is another character saying that they're so advanced that their motives are necessarily inscrutable. The whole ''point'' to the thing never gets addressed. (Possible Justified Trope: It's not like Sovereign was gonna tell you, and who else are you going to ask?)
**It is likely that the Reapers reasons will be revealed in one of the sequels, as Mass Effect has always been planned to be a franchise.
** Another example in ''MassEffect'' is Saren's cure for the krogan genophage. In the game's setting the genophage is some incurable condition that is causing the krogan extinction. No one, not even the people responsible for its existence, can figure out how to stop it but Saren comes up with a cure when the plot requires you to destroy his cure. No explanation or inquiry is made by anyone afterwards as to just how he did it.
*** This troper finds it likely that Sovereign, highly advanced as it is, was able to supply Saren with the cure. Just speculation, of course.
*** Also, the series of cloning vats you find in the base seems to imply that "cure for the genophage" is a fancy phrase for "the ability to clone Krogans en masse."
*** And the cure was never said to actually work or that was necessarily a cure in a literal sense. If anything, it was likely merely a lure to allow Sovereign to control a bunch of highly formidable warriors with a chip on their shoulder.
**** This is actually one of the lines Shephard can use to pursuade Wrex into not jumping sides over the cure, although his wording is more obtuse to the point where most players don't seem to make the connection to this idea.
* In the original ''StreetFighter'', players fought an enemy named Birdie, who was a white punk with a mohawk. When the character returned in ''Street Fighter Alpha'', he was a huge, hulking, ''black'' punk with an even bigger mohawk. In ''Street Fighter Alpha 3'', he claims in one of his win quotes, "I looked pale because I was sick."
* A few ''[[TheSimpsons Simpsons]]'' episodes use this trope. In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", after Homer tells Bart and Lisa about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin his barbershop quartet]], the kids have some questions about why they'd never heard about it until now, where all the money went, and so forth. Homer assures them that "there are perfectly logical answers to all those questions, but they'll have to wait for another day".
* This trope is referenced by a movie executive in ''ThankYouForSmoking''. They are discussing the idea of [[{{ProductPlacement}} having two actors smoke in a movie]] that's set on a space station.
--> '''Nick:''' ''But wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?''
--> '''Jeff:''' ''Probably. But that's [[{{HandWave}} an easy fix.]] One line of dialogue. "[[AsYouKnow Thank God we invented]] the, you know, [[{{Phlebotinum}} whatever device.]]"''
--> '''Nick:''' ''Of course.''
* TheFlash has the Speed Force, a dimension that is also apparently a prison and a mass vaporizer.
* Parodied by TheOnion: "[[http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sci_fi_writer_attributes Sci-Fi Writer Attributes Everything Mysterious To 'Quantum Flux']]"
* Played (kinda) for laughs in {{Bleach}} in the new filler arc. When Renji's [[EmpathaticWeapon sword Zabimaru]] breaks free, Zabimaru is shown as a split being, a monkeyish woman and a childish snake. This is contrary to Zabimaru's previous appearance, which was an actual monkey (as apposed to a very humanoid monkey with [[MostCommonSuperpower cleavage]]) that had a snake for a tail (a Nue). When Renji asks why Zabimaru isn't in it's previous form, the Chimpett half of Zabimaru simply laughs and says "Since when are you so concerned with minor details?" "That's a pretty big freakin detail!"
** This is actually based on an omake when Renji and Hisagi read a cataloge of changes Mayuri can do to their weapons true forms, Renji sees that changing them into females is possible. So it may or may not count.
* Capcom's explaination about how [[ResidentEvil Chris and Jill both escape the mansion even though you can only control one at a time, and everyone you don't take direct control of dies?]] "They just did."
* Lampshaded in Jasper Fforde's ''ThursdayNext'' series; a "textual sieve" is apparently some sort of book security device, but it is never very clear exactly what it does. At one point, a character asks Thursday just what it is, and she replies, "It's never fully explained."

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