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Beyond The Impossible: Western Animation
"Most people thought the Sonic Rainboom was just an old mare's tale but on that day, the day I discovered racing, I proved that the legends were true; I made the impossible happen!"

The medium of Western Animation is such that literally anything is possible. Beyond The Impossible, in this case, refers to those rare actions and events that do not conform to the previously established rules of its universe. Generally, the more realistic a work is, the greater the likelihood that something going Beyond The Impossible can be found. Cartoons like Looney Tunes would be exempt from this trope, because the characters and settings follow no rules except the Rule of Funny (a rule which cannot be broken, only ignored).

  • In Avatar The Last Airbender, Earth Benders repeatedly demonstrate that they cannot bend metal. Magic A Is Magic A is so strong with this one that an entire episode was based on earth benders as POWs in a metal prison. This trope comes into play near the season two climax when Toph invents metalbending.
    • Which her descendants are able to do in the sequel series The Legend of Korra.
    • The Legend of Korra: "It's not a full moon...how are you doing this!?" Korra when Tarrlok bloodbends her into submission. A panning shot later confirmed that the moon was indeed only a cresent.
      • Amon can resist bloodbending. Tarrlok's bloodbending. It's been shown already that the only ones who are able to resist bloodbending are fully fledged Avatars and waterbenders that are at least as skilled as the bloodbender in question. And even without considering that, it was also shown that Tarrlok was able to take down many of the strongest characters in the show, including Korra, using his bloodbending. Revealed to be a subversion, however, when Amon turns out to be Tarrlok's older brother, and consequently a more skilled waterbender, and bloodbender, himself.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: This is a cartoon with the occasional Acceptable Breaks from Reality by Rule of Funny... but Pinkie Pie can do much more cartoonish and impossible things than anyone else.
    • One time, she appeared in a mirror without being in the room.
    • Besides of Off Screen Teleportation, she has even appeared briefly in more than one location at once.
    • There's also her sometime disregard of the fourth wall. Outside of a one-off gag or two, Spike is the only other character to engage in this, and does so far less overtly or consistently.
    • In the episode "A Friend In Deed," Pinkie Pie has Fantasy Sequence done in felt as she runs through her checklist of friend-making activities. After coming out of the spot, she resolves to complete her list, and punctuates it by holding up a green felt checkmark from her Fantasy Sequence. In the same episode, she also sprouts an extra pair of limbs, which disappear just as suddenly. ...Yeah.
    • In "Too Many Pinkie Pies," Rainbow Dash is trying to nap by the lakeside. Pinkie, who still wants to jump and splash around, compromises by doing a huge cannon-ball - only to slow herself down just as she reaches the water, and gently float the rest of the way down. Rainbow stares and asks "How did you do that?" Though it gained less attention, she did the same thing while bouncing on a trampoline at the beginning of "The Best Night Ever."
    • "Too Many Pinkie Pies" also has her (or rather, her clones) perform feats like inflating her hoof so that working fingers pop out, or making a "crazy face" by morphing her face to resemble that of a G3 pony.
    • The "Pinkie Sense" is an ability of Pinkie's that, according to Twilight Sparkle, breaks the Magic A Is Magic A rules of the world.
  • Billy from Adventure Time. While the show has a habit of doing this anyway, Billy's backstory had him defeat the Ultimate Evil and literally PUNCH AN OCEAN TO DEATH.
    • Also, HE FOUGHT A BEAR!
    • Finn popped a bubble he had made into a black hole with a four-dimensional sword despite in show and real life logic and physics saying otherwise.
  • In Wakfu, Nox, the main villain of the first season, is a powerful Time Mage who has been alive for over 200 years, collecting life energy and feeding it to a powerful magical artifact called the Eliacube, trying to accumulate enough energy to turn back time in order to undo a mistake which caused the death of his family. He has slaughtered countless people and entire civilizations for this purpose alone, despite being warned that doing so is impossible, even for a Time Mage, and could instead result in reality being destroyed. In the end, he manages to achieve his energy goal and actually succeeds in turning back time by 20 minutes.
  • The Transformers: Alternity Megatron's Tesseractal Swords are blades of infinite length. "Physical space is not an obstruction."
  • Ben 10 Ultimate Alien has a scene where Gwen slaps Humungousaur out of a drug-fueled rampage. She can canonically beat substance abuse out of people.
  • At one point in Bionicle Jaller sets Mantax ablaze on the ocean floor. Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors is important in the series so its Hand Waved with the Wizard Did It rule; he has power over fire, and if he wants fire underwater, he can do that (not easily, but still...).
  • Played for laughs in Lilo And Stitch The Series. The duo have failed to reform 627 in the usual way, so they ask Jumba, resident Evil Genius and 627's creator, if they can dehydrate him back into pod form.
    Jumba: No. When something is hydrated there is absolutely no way for it to being dehydrated.
    • They place an order and the device works.
  • Jonesy from Sixteen can get a tan from the mall's florescent lights. His explaination: "The key to a good va-cay is all in the mind ." Nikki shouted how impossible this was but the tan was there so there wasn't much she could do about it.
  • Men In Black have a Freeze Ray that can freeze fire.
  • Teen Titans: Cyborg once got in a Brawler Lock with an insanely strong robot who was working at full power. Cyborg won by going farther than full power. His meter was at around 160% before it exploded. This was in fact the aesop of the episode: Cyborg believed it was impossible for him to get any stronger/faster/better etc. because "I'm a robot; my limits are built in." His human half allowed his mechanical half to perform better than what should have been possible.
  • Futurama:
    • Many of Professor Farnsworth's inventions involve screwing logic. For example, the Planet Express ship doesn't fly, it stays put and moves the universe around it. Not to mention the boxes in Universe 1 and Universe A, which contain each other's universes - until the Professor and his Universe A counterpart somehow switch them, so that each box contains its own universe.
      Professor: Nothing is impossible. Not if you can imagine it.
    • On multiple occasions, bending robots have bent "unbendable" girders.
    • Bender's arms came off in the pilot and he managed to put them both back on by himself. Lampshaded by Fry: "I don't know how you did that".
  • Cosgrove, friend of Freakazoid, has the ability to make any group of characters immediately stop fighting and behave themselves, from common burglars to supervillain mooks. It even works on The Warner Brothers. The premise of their own show was their inability to be contained or controlled.
  • Kung Fu Panda Legends Of Awesomeness: Three examples
    • Master Yao can do more than Supernatural Martial Arts and perform outright magic such as Time Stands Still and do physical attacks with his mind.
    • There are techniques called the 'Six Impossible Moves' which would be better named 'six moves that are impossible for anyone lacking 'The Gift'. Po and Fenghuang can do them because they have it and this is presumably what fuels the latter's "strong rule the weak" beliefs.
    • "The Three Needles" is a trick that is repeatedly stated to be impossible. Po accomplishes it by cheating with magic shoes. Which is how Shifu and the others knew that he was cheating.
  • Bens City: "The Debris" contains a lot of supernatural elements, and the ending of "The All Inclusive" feels like a Twilight Zone Twist ending. Yet, most of the rest of the series happens in a very realistic world.
  • The first plot arc of DuckTales featured a dog(?) who had been looking for the city of gold for centuries. When asked how he stayed alive that long, all he said was "Sheer willpower!"

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