Exact Words / Real Life

• This is the entire premise of malicious compliance, also known as Bothering by the Book, i.e. following the exact instructions and protocols down to the most excruciating detail in order to be an annoyance— for example, if you happen to not have the right to strike.
• President Ryti of Finland did this during World War II. He gave his word to Hitler that neither he nor Finland would ever make peace with the Soviet Union under his rule. When the time was ripe, Ryti retired and the next president pulled out of the war.
• Hitler really should have seen that coming. In 1934, Hitler insisted that the Wehrmacht swear an oath of loyalty to him personally— not to "the German people" or any other such cohort or location that could allow his soldiers to rationalize betraying him (on the grounds that it was in the best interests of the German people to remove Hitler from power). This was critical because many German Army personnel had broken the laws of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic for political reasons. The most famous of these may have been when several thousand soldiers deserted from the German Army to fight alongside the Bavarian police and ultranationalist paramilitary militias against the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. The oath made all officers who attempted to do him in oathbreakers, which a few may truly have found to be a difficult mental barrier to overcome (though it would've meant nothing once he was already dead, and this could have promoted a 'wait and see' approach). The oath's greatest legacy was its use in justifying inaction against Hitler after the war. Even officers who had been good friends with Hitler and supported (almost all) the regime's political goals, such as Heinz Guderian, were able to claim that the oath had kept them from trying to kill Hitler.
  • Averted in the case of Mussolini, who kept the armed forces' traditional oath to the king, and made his Black Shirts make the same oath, precisely because he considered that Fascism and Mussolini himself were expendable for the good of Italy. Thus when the Grand Council of Fascism voted to ask the king to depose him and Vittorio Emmanuele III did just that, transition was peaceful. Of course Hitler had to spring his old buddy from prison and install him as a puppet of an "Italian Social Republic" (which, unlike fascist Italy, was rampantly antisemitic and opposed to many old Italian traditions), which predictably caused the second biggest partisan movement (after Yugoslavia) during World War II to rise against Italian fascism.
• The Holocaust in Denmark. In 1943, Werner Best, the Waffen-SS commander responsible for Denmark, was ordered to make Denmark Judenfrei (Non-Jewish/Jewless/Jew-Free). He may or may not have let the Danish civil authorities know of this, but he certainly made no attempt whatsoever to stop them once he learned that they were transporting Denmark's entire Jewish population of 7000 across the straits to Sweden.^note  Denmark supplied Germany with a full sixth of the kilocalories that she got from non-grain sources in the form of dairy products, chiefly cheese and butter. She also required a minimal occupation force, needing just a few thousand Army troops to guard the beaches and having no Order Police (Ordnungspolizei/Or'po') presence whatsoever— the Danish administration basically continued to operate as usual, including the Danish Police who were perfectly sufficient to combat crime and maintain order. Pissing the locals off was, therefore, very much not in Germany's interests, and Best understood this. Moreover, Best was of the school of thought within the SS and Nazi Party which favoured the ethnic cleansing of troublesome minorities including Slavs and Jews, rather than killing them. In letting this happen, he fulfilled the secondary objective of his orders (cost-efficiency) better than any SS regional authority in Europe: the entire process did not cost Germany a single mark. Himmler was not particularly pleased, as the order 'Make X-region Judenrein' was generally understood (through verbally indicated, strictly off-the-record hints) to mean that he wanted that region's Jews deported (to the secret Extermination camps in former Poland). But because Best had followed Himmler's orders to the letter, all Himmler was able to do was demote him.
• This is quite common among parts of the German public servants. As a Beamter, you enjoy a number of benefits — such as automatic promotion and the virtual impossibility of losing your job (anything under the equivalent of a one-year sentence in prison is a-okay) — but you lack the right to strike, and your wages are state-set instead of negotiated. Therefore, if the public employees want to articulate their dissatisfaction, they engage in "Dienst nach Vorschrift" (service as ordered), doing exactly what the guidelines request, instead of what would be sensible, thereby deliberately wasting people's time.
  • This is a relatively common labour tactic known as "working to rule" — when an actual strike would be illegal or disadvantageous, the workers instead insist on following every picky little rule, greatly slowing down work while not actually doing anything that they can be punished for.
• The way that a city showed submission to the ancient Persian empire was by giving symbolic gifts of "earth and water". According to Herodotus, Darius sent emissaries to Sparta demanding earth and water. The Spartans threw the emissaries down a well, saying, "You'll find plenty there." (Depicted, with bonus shouting, in 300.)
  • The Athenians took a similar tactic and tossed their Persian emissary into a pit.
• Miranda Rights, when they say "everything you say can be used against you", not only do they really mean it, they mean it absolutely literally: anything you say can be used against you. But never for you. Any disculpatory comment that you might make cannot be used in court; even if it's cast-iron proof that you didn't do it, somehow it'll fall under hearsay and be dismissed by the prosecution. (This is the other reason you should remain silent, so you can give the statement as testimony.)
  • Or, more technically, statements made by the defendant cannot be entered into evidence by the defense. Doing so could allow the defendant to testify on his own behalf without being sworn in or facing cross-examination; i.e., it's hearsay. On the other hand, a very strong case can often be made that a defendant's statement upon arrest is an "excited utterance" and therefore excepted from the rule against hearsay. If the statement does meet this exception, the statement can be used in the defendant's favor (under the rules of evidence prevailing in common-law countries).
• During the 1960 Democratic Presidential Primary, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign found out that his rival John F. Kennedy had a hormonal disorder called Addison’s. Kennedy's team had his doctors put out a very carefully worded statement that said he didn’t have Addison’s that stemmed from having had tuberculosis. Only about a quarter of all Addison’s cases come from TB but it was enough to quash the stories about his health for good, especially because Kennedy was only 43.
• In 2007 J. K. Rowling was asked by a kid at a Q&A for Harry Potter what exactly Dumbledore's brother did to a goat that landed him in prison. She first asked the girl how old she was, to which she replied that she was eight. She told the girl that he did a charm to help him clean the goat and finished with "So, that is my answer to you."
• Bill Clinton famously answered 'no' when asked "Is there a sexual relationship between you and Monica Lewinsky?", which he later defended by arguing that the questioner had asked if there "is" a relationship (meaning, is there one presently); there had been a relationship, but that there wasn't one at the present. Whether his answers were "technically" perjury is heavily debated.
  • His oft-quoted claim, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" is legally correct if they only engaged in oral sex. At the time, "sexual relations" specifically referred to genital contact between a man and a woman.
  • Clinton also exploited this trope when he famously claimed in his first presidential campaign (1992) that he "experimented with marijuana" a few times while in England, "didn't inhale," and never tried inhaling again.^note And yet when asked if he would inhale if given the chance, Clinton replied - cringing all the way - "Sure, if I could." However, everyone who knew him as a young man distinctly remembers him as a bit of a stoner. Christopher Hitchens, who was with him at Oxford, has an explanation for that — Bill preferred edibles. Bill Hicks independently came to the same conclusion:
    '"I tried marijuana, but I did not inhale." What does that mean? ...Brownies! Look at his waistline!'
• When Plato gave Socrates' definition of man as "featherless bipeds" and was much praised for the definition, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Behold! I've brought you a man." After this incident, "with broad flat nails" was added to Plato's definition.
• According to legend, when Mongolian emperor Timur the Lame reached the city of Sivas during his conquest of Turkey in 1401, he promised there would be no bloodshed if they surrendered. Trusting his word, they did, and Timur had 3,000 of the townspeople Buried Alive while arguing he had kept his promise as there was no blood.
• Richard J. Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun, was a pacifist who wanted to prevent war by "reducing the size of armies." Well, his invention (and its spiritual descendants) have certainly done that.
• George Spencer of New Haven, Connecticut, was put on trial for bestiality in 1642 and told that a confession would earn him mercy. Spencer eventually decided to confess in order to be spared punishment, only to be told that "mercy will be offered by God, not by the court." He was hanged.
• This is how Mila Kunis got on That '70s Show: those auditioning for the role of Jackie had to be at least 18. She was 14. Kunis claimed she'd be 18 on her birthday; she just never said how far off that birthday was. By the time the producers finally figured out her age, it was known among them that Kunis was a superior, if not perfect, fit for the role she had auditioned for.
• This trope is the reason why the Japanese have the JSDF despite renouncing war and giving up on its military. Article 9 of their constitution stated they can't maintain a military for war purposes. However, it never said anything about maintaining an armed force for self-defense purposes.
• During The Spanish-American War, Captain Bucky O'Neill boasted that the "Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me." He was shot a few minutes later. The Spanish Army had gotten some of their ammunition made in Germany.
• During The American Civil War, some recruits often tried to join while underage. They went in with a piece of paper in their shoes with the number "18" on it, then when questioned said, "I'm over 18." Legally speaking, this obviously wouldn't fly — but since it's psychologically much easier to tell a wildly misleading truth than a straight-up falsehood, those who did this were less likely to get caught.
• British politician Simon Hughes, when asked if he was gay replied: "The answer is no, as it happens, but if it were the case, which it isn't, I hope that it would not be an issue." When he then later came out as bisexual, he lampshaded this trope by apologising and saying: "I gave a reply that wasn't untrue but was clearly misleading. I apologise."
• To gain the support of the council that decided who ruled Jerusalem, Sibylla of Jerusalem agreed to annul her marriage to the unpopular Guy of Lusignan, on the condition she chose her next husband. The council agreed, and she was crowned. Then she chose to remarry Guy and crown him king consort.
• Under orders to make an exact copy of a captured B-29, designer Andrei Tupolev faced a serious problem: If he used the U.S. insignia, it could be seen as rebellious. If he used Soviet insignia, he would be slighting Stalin by not following his orders. He was able to breach this problem in the form of a joke letter, and Stalin gave his approval for Soviet insignia. He faced additional problems: that particular B-29, due to a manufacturing error, had a few extra, obviously unnecessary rivet holes (that didn't have rivets). They appeared in the copies. Similarly, because the plane was American, Imperial measurements were used in the sizing of parts, but the USSR used metric. Even though using similar-sized standard metric parts which were almost exactly the same size (such as the aforementioned rivets) wouldn't have made a difference, all the parts were machined to be exact duplicates of the American originals. Tupolev did, indeed, replicate many trivial details, in large part so that the spies on his team would report his obedience to Stalin. He also suggested many improvements that were approved by the bureaucracy and incorporated into production Tu-4s.
• In 1140, the city of Weinsberg was besieged by the Holy Roman Empire, led by King Conrad III. The siege ended with an agreement wherein the women of Weinsberg would be allowed to leave, along with whatever they could carry on their backs. So they left... while carrying the men on their backs. Conrad, impressed by the women's cunning, remained true to his word and let them leave. (The Ever After example was directly inspired by this.)
• According to legend, this is why the first in line for the British crown is traditionally titled the Prince of Wales. In 1301, King Edward I of England supposedly promised the Welsh that he would have someone "a prince born in Wales, who did not speak a word of English" as Prince of Wales. He then produced his own infant son Edward II, who was indeed born in Wales (in Caernarfon while Edward I was campaigning in Wales) and did not speak a word of English (or any other language). As the English aristocracy at the time often spoke Norman French instead of English (indeed, Edward I was the first king since 1066 who actually spoke English fluently, and it wouldn't be until the reign of his great-great-grandson Henry IV that the King would be a native English speaker), other versions of the legend had Edward I promise a prince that didn't speak either English or French, and one version had him say "born on Welsh soil and speaking no other language." The first story certainly isn't true, since Edward II was born in 1284.
• While negotiating the surrender of a group of temples that had rebelled against him, the Japanese warlord and future Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu promised the monks that after they surrendered their temples would be "as they were before." Once the peace was settled, he razed them all, noting that the temples had all once been vacant fields.
• In 2005, the owner of Major League Baseball's Anaheim Angels decided that he wanted to rename the team to the Los Angeles Angels, in an effort to appeal to the larger Los Angeles media market. Makes sense, and it wouldn't be the first time Los Angeles had a pro sports team that was actually located in nearby Anaheim. The problem is, the team's 33-year lease contract for their stadium, owned by the city of Anaheim, stipulated that the team's name must include "Anaheim". Thus, they renamed the team to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, as that name includes Anaheim. The city of Anaheim sued to force the team to revert to the previous name. They lost, and the Overly Long Name remains in place to this day. The team's owner correctly presumed that most fans and media would end up dropping the "of Anaheim" in common usage. In 2019, the team's own bought Angel Stadium outright from the city, meaning there was no longer any lease agreement and the farce was no longer required.
• A UN officer in Bosnia was specifically ordered not to fire lethal weapons at anyone who was not firing at him. There happened to be a visible observation post calling in a long-range bombardment on his position. Since the observer wasn't doing any shooting, he had to grin and bear it — until nightfall, when he launched a phosphorus illumination shell which just happened to float down into the observation post.
• When Harriet Tubman went to visit her still-enslaved parents, so one story goes, they refused to look at her. So if anyone ever asked them if they had seen their daughter, they could say "no" with complete honesty. This was supposedly averted when she finally came to rescue them.
• The law sometimes results in situations like this:
  • In Germany, the use of Third Reich symbolism is illegal with very specific exemptions. This has sometimes resulted in prosecutions for ironic usage or for usage clearly critical of the Third Reich e.g. crossed-out swastikas, while actual Neo-Nazis use other symbols like the Imperial German flag to skirt the ban. Due to this fact, the Obvious Rule Patch of "unless it is used in a clearly anti-Nazi statement" was added.
  • Some people practising bestiality in England have also been convicted for rape — as the animal was less than 16 years old. (Cf. "buggery" in The Other Wiki - NSFW warning.)
  • Probably apocryphal, but they say a lawyer who had to prosecute a sodomy case where the evidence was very weak mused about reducing the charge to "following too closely."
  • Averted: Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul tells the story of a clever lawyer making a very subtle argument turning on Exact Words before the Supreme Court of Canada. He was in full tilt when Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin abruptly leaned forward and asked whether his argument also worked in French, which of course it had to since the law is equally valid in both official languages. The lawyer was completely dumbfounded.
• An innocent example: this story about an autistic child who wrote spelling words, as instructed, in exact alphabetical order. As in, the letters in each word were sorted, not the words themselves.
• Bill Cosby made the film Leonard Part 6, which he quickly grew to consider a disaster. But the studio had him under contract to promote it. The contract didn't tell him what to say during the promotional spots, though, so he made the tour... and derided the film on each appearance, telling viewers to avoid it.
• Pat Arrowsmith, a self-confessed lesbian, was left an inheritance by her father, on condition that she gets married. So she married a friend who was sympathetic to her plight; the will didn't say anything about the marriage being consummated. ^note This was long before homosexual unions were recognized as marriages.
• Michael Rasmussen, former professional cyclist from Denmark, who got kicked out of Tour de France in 2007 while leading the race, never actually said he was clean. He'd always say when asked about doping that he had never tested positive, which was true.
• A reported example was a girl who went out on a date but was told she had to be home before midnight. She and her boyfriend are out and about until 2, which would have been a disaster if it was discovered. So she decides to wait one hour and walk in the door at precisely 3 am. The next morning when her father asked her what time she got in, she said, "I watched the clock very carefully, and I walked in at exactly a quarter of twelve. (Which it is if you divide 12 by 4, you get 3.)
• A flagman back when railroad crossings did not have lights testified in court that at the night crossing where the train was crossing the road in near pitch-black conditions, "I was waving my lantern from side to side when the car crashed into the train." This was true, however he did not, at the time, mention that the lantern wasn't lit.
• Foie gras, a French food made from the swollen liver of a fattened goose, is considered a delicacy and appears in the culture's haute cuisine. However, it is created by force-feeding geese and, in some cases, limiting their mobility so they can do nothing but eat, practices which have earned the ire of many animal rights activists. In the late New Aughts (2000-09), some of these activists were able to ban the sale of foie gras in French restaurants in California... but savvy owners realized that while they were forbidden to charge for foie gras, there was no rule against their serving it. Thus, several restaurants started offering eighteen-dollar glasses of water that came with a helping of "complementary" foie gras.
  • A similar practice happens in Moore County, TN, the location of the famous Jack Daniels Distillery. It is legal to make alcohol there, but one cannot purchase it. Therefore, a customer at the gift shop could buy a Jack Daniels glass bottle that just happens to have whiskey in it and just happens to be the price of a bottle of whiskey.
• The US Congress and government, in general, receive a lot of mockery for the size of bills and regulations. It's easy to make fun of a proposed law by pointing out that it's longer than Stephen King's most ambitious novels. But interests affected by these laws and regulations have very good lawyers who are quite skilled at finding every possible loophole. As a result, a major piece of legislation must be crafted with extraordinary care, with all terms defined at great length, to ensure the legislative intent is crystal clear and unimpeachable.
  • The Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare," aka "Health Care Reform") is an example of why careful legislative crafting is so crucial. Opponents of the law have challenged elements of it on the grounds that the law sets up health insurance marketplaces: established by the states, ideally, but by the federal government if the state opts out. The law also provides tax subsidies for those too poor to afford the full price of health insurance on the exchange. However, opponents point out that one section mentions that customers are eligible for subsidies that can be used "on exchanges established by the state," which, they say, means that customers using exchanges established by the federal government are ineligible for the subsidies. For various complicated policy reasons, this would cripple the law. The law's drafters argue that this is a ridiculous, nitpicky interpretation that ignores the rest of the bill and the stated intentions of just about everyone involved with the crafting of the law, as well as arguing that the legal definition of "exchanges" provided another section of the law mandates that all exchanges, whether state or federal, be identical in structure. The supreme court in a 6-3 decision upheld the law, following the reasoning of "They made the equivalent of a typo, everything else would not make sense". However, Antonin Scalia in one of the last major legal opinions of his life wrote a scathing dissent including phrases like "the court's interpretive jiggery-pokery".
  • Parliamentary Common Law countries like England and New Zealand manage to evade this issue. The common law concepts around statutory interpretation, which have developed to guide judges when deciding a case that turns upon nitpicky details in a statute, rank some methods of interpretation above others. For example, the ambulatory approach and parliamentary intention are weighted above the ordinary dictionary definition of a word, so that an old statute covering printed images of naked children would be held by a judge to also cover digital publication.
• Television producers love this. For example, the producers of Pretty Little Liars promised that the Season 3 finale would reveal who 'killed' Alison. It turned out that no one killed her; she was still alive.
  • In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Ryan brought up Mona was A in the books and Lucy said that they "were doing it differently than the books". Mona was still A, it's just she didn't die like in the books
• Similar to the above example: During the sixth season of ER, George Clooney, who had left the show in the previous year, stated he would not appear in the season finale (Julianna Margulies, who played Clooney's love interest Nurse Hathaway, was departing the show that season). He did, in fact, appear in the episode before the finale, which was Margulies' final regular episode; the episode ended with Hathaway leaving Chicago, flying out to Seattle and reuniting with Doug Ross.
• Patrick Hoban, an infamous Yu-Gi-Oh! player, made a deal with his opponent to side out a certain card (move it from their deck to their side deck, where it couldn't be used) in the second duel of a match. Hoban did indeed side the card (Djinn, Releaser of Rituals) but simultaneously sided back in another copy of the same card so that in the next duel, he had access to the card and his opponent didn't. This incident led to Konami officially declaring side decks to be "hidden knowledge"^note The term for things an opponent is not allowed to ask you knowledge of, previously covering the deck, the hand, and face down cards effectively banning the previously accepted practice of gentleman's agreements. Hoban claimed in his book that he specifically never actually did it, but some of his teammates did, though this may have been to escape punishment from Konami.
• Since duels were often fought in countries which prohibited the practice, the custom arose of having the duelists' seconds and physician stand with their backs to the fight, so they could testify that they "saw no shots".
• PT Barnum in 1856 once charged money for people to witness "A six-foot man eating chicken". When people came in, they would see a six-foot-tall man... eating chicken wings. (Modern circuses often lampoon this with clown acts.)
• An unsuccessful example: Kevin Kulek of boutique pinball manufacturer Skit-B Pinball attempted manufacturing and selling games based on the film Predator in 2011. Three years later, news struck that the project was shut down by Fox, it being never officially licensed by them (despite Kulek previously assuring the opposite), and that those who had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the venture were out of luck. Upon further investigation, a trend of Kulek allegedly using Exact Words to find legal loopholes came to light: Kulek had sent a letter to Fox regarding usage of the Predator license, taking it as he got their permission — without paying a dime — when they said yes; when the Predator name and logo vanished from Skit-B's site in 2014, Kulek claimed it was due to a cease-and-desist letter from Fox, but that production would continue as it didn't explicitly state against it; Kulek claimed Skit-B was a non-profit company due to not having yet become profitable, thus being able to do things legally that for-profit companies couldn't. Of course, he didn't get away with using their literal definitions rather than their legal ones; the Predator project was discontinued, with Skit-B dismantled and Kulek hit with a pending lawsuit from customers who claim that he defrauded them.
• A famous episode in the life of Judge Roy Bean, where he released an Irish railroad laborer charged with killing his Chinese co-worker. His justification was that criminal homicide is the "killing of another human being", and the law had nothing to say about "killing a Chinaman." His decision probably had a lot to do with the mob of angry Irishmen outside his courtroom threatening to hang him if he didn't let their friend go.
• Computer programmers (and to a lesser degree, users) often struggle with this; Computers will do exactly what you tell them to do. No more, no less. The computer is not at fault if a bug arises since it is Just Following Orders.
• A very horrifying example occurred in 1969 when Charles Manson went into the house of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, had some of his followers tie them up as he held them at gunpoint and reportedly told the couple "I'm not going to kill you." He then left the house and sent in the rest of the members who accompanied him that night to murder them instead.
• Kids of a certain age tend to take rules very literally and think doing something even slightly different than the prohibited action is OK (e.g a kid is told "don't hit Bob" so he hits Frank instead; when called on it, he claims he didn't break the rule, since you only said he couldn't hit Bob specifically).
• A famous legal example, detailed on The Other Wiki here, focused on the distinction between "doll" and "toy." Specifically, the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States had ruled that there were two major categories of playthings for children: dolls, which included human figures, and toys, which contained "nonhuman creatures." Though the distinction seemed small, dolls were charged a tariff rate of 12%, while the rate for toys was only 6%. In 2003, Marvel Comics—or more specifically, Toy Biz, Inc., its action figure subsidiary—argued that all of their products should be charged as toys, not dolls. Why? Because franchises like X-Men and Fantastic Four contained characters that looked like humans, but weren't because of their mutant abilities, rendering them "nonhuman creatures" instead. The judge in the case examined over 60 of the figures before ruling that Toy Biz was correct; her decision led to reimbursements for Marvel and outcry from fans, who pointed out that the whole notion of mutants as a "separate" class is a recurring theme in the comics... touted by anti-mutant hate groups and other bigoted individuals.
• Not even the legendary Bill Murray is immune to this trope. In 2004, he was approached to voice the title character in Garfield, and agreed because he saw the name "Joel Cohen" listed on the writing team. As a fan of the Coen brothers, he agreed... only to start reading his script on the first day of recording (after he'd already signed to a two-picture deal) and realizing that it was poorly written. He insisted on watching the whole film and, frustrated with its quality, demanded to know "what Coen was thinking"... and that's when the producers revealed that the script had been written by Joel Cohen — namely, a screenwriter whose credits include Toy Story and Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) — not Joel Coen of the Coen Brothers. Needless to say, Murray was less than thrilled.
• UK Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell proposed on 3 November 2016 in the House of Commons that BBC One resume the practice of playing "God Save the Queen" (the UK national anthem) at the end of its broadcast day (the practice was halted in 1997) to commemorate the successful Brexit vote. That evening the BBC's Newsnight program ended its broadcast by stating that though it wasn't BBC One it would be happy to oblige - Smash Cut to a video performance of "God Save the Queen" (the anti-establishment '70s punk rock song by the Sex Pistols — which also added a dose of Irony, since the BBC is state-funded).
• A PR rep for Capcom was quoted as saying that "there won't be a Super Street Fighter V." Both Street Fighter II and Street Fighter IV had received updates following the Super Street Fighter ___ naming convention, but from the context, it was obvious that what the representative meant is that Street Fighter V wouldn't receive updates sold as separate, full-priced games as had been the norm for the series and that all extra content for Street Fighter V would be accessible through the game's new downloadable content structure. When Capcom ended up making such an update to revive mainstream interest in the game after it had unperformed, it was named... Street Fighter V Arcade Edition.
  • Capcom's message was meant to convey that no matter what, if you owned a copy of SFV, you will always receive all the updates for free. True to that, Arcade Edition is a 100% free update for those who own SFV. Arguably, the trope is both played straight (in that there is *a* rerelease of the game, just not called Super Street Fighter V) and subverted (in that the rerelease does not force owners of the game to spend any money) at the same time.
• After Leisure Suit Larry 3 was released, and seemed to definitely end the series, creator Al Lowe promised that there wouldn't be a Leisure Suit Larry 4. He said nothing about not making Leisure Suite Larry 5, though.
• In March 2017. the Australian morning news show Sunrise ran a story about "Prince William's helicopter" narrowly avoiding a mid-air collision with a drone. Despite clarifying fairly early that William was not on board on this occasion, the reporters continued to play up the Prince William connection for the "benefit" of the show's changing audience for the next couple of hours, resorting to questionable claims that he was "lucky to be alive" and had "narrowly avoided a helicopter crash."
  Charlie Pickering: Yeah, William narrowly avoided the helicopter crash by being somewhere totally else, that wasn't in a helicopter.
• At one point, the Weimar Republic forbade the Nazis from marching in uniform. The Nazis responded by having a demonstration where the SA men marched while shirtless.
• A 2018 tweet from economics journalist Patrick W. Watson described Elon Musk as an "African-American immigrant", leaving many people confused because Musk isn't black. However, Musk grew up in South Africa and his father was an Afrikaner, thus making him an African-American in the sense of "an American originally from Africa", not "an American of (recent, black) African ancestry."
  • This particular case of terminology comes up occasionally in the US census, to the point where the official Office of Management and Budget standards on race for the census define "Black or African American" as referring to people who specifically "[have] origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa". This thus includes black people of African descent in America, those from (typically but not necessarily Sub-Saharan) Africa proper, and other (continental) American nations, but excluding non-black African populations such as Arabs, Berbers, and Afrikaners (cheeky or otherwise). While admittedly a rather circular definition, this does rather get the point across.
• Former North Dakota Democratic Senator Kent Conrad is a curious example.
  • When Conrad was first elected to the Senate in 1986 (defeating first-term incumbent Republican Senator Mark Andrews), Conrad tied whether he would run for re-election in 1992 to whether there was a significant reduction in the federal deficit by that time. There wasn't, and despite polls showing the voters would support him seeking re-election he decided not to run for a second term for that seat.
  • However, the state's other Senate seat became available when longtime Senator Quentin Burdick died on September 6, 1992 at the age of 84, with retiring Governor George Sinner appointing Burdick's widow Jocelyn to the seat pending a special election^note Women were not given the right to vote nationally until the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920, with most women arriving in the Senate being appointed to finish the terms of their late husbands. It wouldn't be until 1978 when Nancy Landon Kassebaum was elected as a Republican from Kansas that a woman first entered the Senate on her own merits vs. a widow's appointment, and when Jocelyn Burdick declined, Conrad ran for and won the special election for the last two years of Quentin Burdick's term, since it wasn't running for re-election to his original seat,^note Congressman Byron Dorgan ran for and won the election for the seat Conrad gave up, going on to hold that seat until his retirement in 2013.
• In this story from FMyLife, the storyteller's mother said she would buy them a new dishwasher for their apartment that only cost $1.25. She got them a sponge.
• A husband promised to give his unfaithful ex-wife half of everything he owned. He literally does so by sawing everything in half. You can see for yourself.
• When the Spanish and their allies besieged Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs sent ambassadors to ask the Tarascan state for help. They asked to meet the Tarascan king, Zuangua, not knowing he'd already died of smallpox. The Tarascans agreed to their request and killed them so that they could meet Zuangua in the afterlife.
• The Synanon cult held multiple people against their will. One of these was a woman who was referred to them upon having a nervous breakdown in Santa Monica and then held for two days before being shipped off to their ranch compound, where the cult's abusive practices drove her into a full-on psychotic break. Once her husband and their lawyer Paul Morantz finally found her, they managed to get her released, on the condition that they would have to sign a waiver saying Synanon was not liable for anything that happened to her at the ranch. They agreed, and promptly sued the living daylights out of the cult for everything that happened in Santa Monica.
• In 476, the Byzantine Emperor Basiliscus surrendered to the deposed emperor Zeno (whose throne Basiliscus had usurped twenty months earlier) on the condition that Zeno wouldn't shed the blood of him and his family. Zeno agreed and sent them to a fortress in Cappadocia, where Zeno had them enclosed in a dry cistern where they died of exposure.
• Traditionally, East Asian countries such as China had taboos in place against shedding the blood of royalty. Well, strangulation and poison don't result in the shedding of blood. Neither does wrapping someone in a carpet and having that carpet trampled with horses. Or pouring molten metal into someone's ears.
• In April 2018, British supermarket chain Iceland declared that they would stop selling products containing palm oil in its own-brand products by the end of the year, citing the effect demand for said oil was having on the rainforests. Shortly into 2019 some of those products were still for sale, still contained palm oil, but they no longer carried the Iceland brand, seemingly so they could declare they'd succeeded while still negotiating with the companies responsible for producing them.
• According to Herodotus, King Croesus of Lydia was told that if he attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. As he'd been told the Persians could only defeat him when a mule held the throne, he assumed the empire in question was theirs. Unfortunately, he neglected to consider the Oracle might not have meant "mule" literally—in fact, she was referring to Cyrus the Great, who was a "mule" in the sense that one parent was Persian and the other Medean, and who did, in fact, hold the throne. Whoops.
• One method of combatting internet art theft is the demand to link back to the site reposters got it from or credit the artist: of course, the thieves instead link to their own site (since they "got" the image from there) or write "credit to the original artist" in place of the person's name.
• Masahiro Sakurai once stated that no fighter was added or cut from the base roster plan back in 2016, for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Come November 1st, 2018, and Piranha Plant's confirmed as the first DLC character, as an early adopter bonus. This seemed to contradict Sakurai's statement, until months after the fact for a few reasons; Piranha Plant is the only DLC character in the game to have an amiibo ready from the start, is the only one to come with a Palutena's Guidance (something the base game's fighters also have), and recent characters like Rex and Spring Man were rejected for timing reasons (and in favor of other characters being DLC such as Pyra/Mythra and Min Min). So the plant is indeed part of the base roster plan.
  • Back in 2015, when Bayonetta was announced as the final DLC character of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Sakurai claimed she was the winner of the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot... but only out of realizable and negotiable characters at the time. It wasn't until 2021 that he revealed the real victor was Sora of Kingdom Hearts. It just took additional time to work out a deal with Disney to get Sora in Smash, which is why he was the final DLC character of Ultimate.
• When the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games were delayed due to the COVID-19 epidemic, multiple media outlets commented how this was utterly unprecedented in the entire history of the Olympics, even during both World Wars. Which is true. World Wars I and II caused the Olympics held those years to be cancelled, not delayed.
• When countries receive sanctions from sports organizations, athletes from there can't compete under their flags and names. Nothing says they can't go as Independent Olympians, or inscribed under a different organization - following the state-sponsored doping scandal, Russian athletes competed for the Olympic Athletes from Russia in 2018 Winter Olympics, the Russian Olympic Committee in 2020 and 2022 ones, Authorised Neutral Athletes in track and field tournaments, and as the Russian Tennis Federation in the 2021 Davis and Billie Jean King Cups.
• Going into the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix, Max Verstappen had an unassailable lead in the Drivers' Championship and could seal the title if he scored enough points. The race was red-flagged due to torrential rain, and by the time it was restarted, there was only enough time left for just over half the planned race distance. Under existing rules, which had been tweaked for that year, races that failed to reach 75% race distance would award proportionately fewer points. It was assumed that the rule would apply in this instance, meaning Verstappen wouldn't quite have scored enough points to win the title... so when the FIA declared that he had, everyone (including Verstappen himself) was utterly baffled. Turned out that the exact wording of the rule meant it only applied if a race was suspended and not restarted; since the Japan race had been restarted, full points were awarded despite the truncated length, and Verstappen was champion. The rule was changed for 2023 to be less confusing.
• In January 2020, Leeds United signed Jean-Kevin Augustin on loan from RB Leipzig, with a clause stating that if Leeds won promotion, they would be obliged to sign him for £18m and hand him a pre-arranged contract. Augustin's loan deal expired on June 30, by which time the season would normally have been over, but because of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Leeds didn't actually win promotion until July. Having barely played Augustin, they tried to use this trope to get out of signing him by arguing that, since his loan deal had ended before they won promotion, the clause was null and void. It blew up in their faces big-time: RB Leipzig sued them on the grounds that they were violating the spirit of the contract, and after a lengthy legal battle, the courts ruled in Leipzig's favour. Augustin (who by that point had moved to Nantes, having been left in limbo) promptly sued Leeds himself for unpaid wages, and after another lengthy legal battle, he was awarded the full value of the pre-arranged contract that Leeds would have handed him had they signed him. All together, Leeds were forced to pay over £40 million despite never actually signing Augustin.
• Chinese warlord Zhang Zongchang once declared that he would win a certain battle or return in his coffin. When his troops were forced back he was true to his word - he was paraded through the streets, sitting in his coffin and smoking a large cigar.
• Exact wording is at the heart of the unexpected hanging paradox. On a Saturday evening, a prisoner is condemned to death by hanging at noon of some day of the following week, with the condition that he will not know on what day he is to be hanged until the morning of the execution. The prisoner reasons that he can't be hanged on Saturday: if he's still alive Friday afternoon, he'll know he's to be hanged the next day, so it won't be "unexpected" as ordered. Then he sees that he can't be hanged Friday either: on Thursday afternoon, it'll be down to either Friday or Saturday, and Saturday's already been eliminated, so then it has to be Friday, and again the order that the hanging be unexpected can't be carried out. By the same logic, he eliminates Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday, leaving only Sunday. Since he knows about it Saturday night, again it's impossible to hang him unexpectedly. Therefore, he figures, he can't be hanged at all! Except that when the hangman comes to fetch him Tuesday morning, he's not expecting it - meaning the order is carried out word-for-word after all!
• An interesting case involving this trope and Laser-Guided Karma. A controlling hardass rich self-made farmer had written out his will stipulating what would happen to his assets. He had intended on giving two of his farms to his sons and everything else to a trust fund while the wife would be sent to a pre-determined retirement village with a monthly stipend from the trust fund. However, he had used terms "first to die" and "longest living" with the idea that he would die before his wife. In a turn of events, the wife had a sudden stroke and passed away before he did. The farms went to the kids, who decided to finally stand up to him, and he had to live in the retirement village with the stipend.
• In 1979, the powers that were at Marvel Comics decided to cancel various series that weren't selling that well to make room for new ones. This would have resulted in the then-current Black Panther storyline getting Cut Short ^note AGAIN – it had just been resumed after previously having fallen victim to the feature's 1976/77 relaunch, but the staff simply continued and concluded it in three issues of the company's sole remaining showcase mag, Marvel Premiere. But Captain Marvel was also in the middle of a storyline, and had some leftover filler issues, too. So they launched a new volume of Marvel Spotlight, thus continuing the existing feature in what was technically a new magazine. ^note Although they eventually showcased other heroes as well and took their time with the remaining filler tales. Then, just as they were going to print the final one in 1981, Spotlight was canceled again. It would finally be published a whopping decade later in a new anthology called Marvel Super Heroes, along with the final installments of Ms. Marvel.
• Prior to its release, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was advertised as a story that took place 100 years before the events of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Of course, Nintendo never specified whether it would be in the same timeline, especially when one considers Koei Tecmo's usual habits.
• Speaking of Nintendo, this is how Game Genie won against Nintendo when they were sued for copyright infringement on grounds that the peripheral created derivative works (ie: modifying the games into new games). Because of the way the Game Genie worked it didn't technically modify anything or create anything but merely mucked about with the communication between the console and the game^ExplanationOn startup, the game cartridge would store various values in the console's memory: things like starting health value, lives, ammunition, what level you started on, and even more fancy things like physics rules and color palettes would be assigned to specific addresses in the memory to be referenced later. A Game Genie code consisted of a memory address and a one-byte value (also sometimes a compare value, but that's not important for this explanation), and would assign the value in the code to that memory address instead of the value from the game. For example AASPLAZE, the code for Mega Man which lets you start with 9 lives, gives a memory address of 1053 and a value of 08 when decrypted: the game cartridge would normally send a value of 02 to that address which the console then references every time it needs to reset your number of lives to "full", but the Game Genie sets 08 instead which gives you 9 lives to start instead. So in terms of the console, it didn't "modify" anything any more than the game would under normal operation, and didn't modify anything in the game period, and none of these changes were permanent in any way. , the judge likened it to skipping pages of a book or fast-forwarding a film rather than "creating derivative works" as Nintendo alleged and ruled in favor of Galoob. Nintendo appealed this and lost, and appealed having to pay Galoob $15 million in damages plus legal fees (all the way to the Ninth Court, no less) and lost again.
• Similar to the Marvel example above, DC Comics had been hit hard with the DC Implosion of the '70s and, to their horror, learned that one of their flagship titles, Detective Comics, was under the axe. They also realized the Bat-franchise also had one of the best-selling titles — Batman Family, thus the decision was made to go ahead and cancel Detective Comics... and through a bit of Loophole Abuse, rechristen Batman Family as Detective Comics featuring Batman Family and giving the title 'Tec's old numbering. When sales safely buoyed, the Batman Family moniker was dropped, and Detective continued on.
• DotEmu essentially invoked this when Nickelodeon approached them about making a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, being impressed by their work on projects like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap. Of course, Nickelodeon never specified whether the game should be based on any specific incarnation of the turtles, so naturally, being staffed with old-school fans of the '87 cartoon and its '90s tie-in games, DotEmu jumped at the chance. Thus, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge came into being soon after DotEmu learned of Tribute Games wanting the same thing.
• This is one way to use the phrase (and trope) "With All Due Respect". The amount of respect due to whoever you're speaking to doesn't have to be large, or even non-zero.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries mandated the wearing of face masks, and not doing so is punishable by law (the severity depending on the country). In the United States, where wearing masks has become a hot topic discussion, some took to wearing face masks that look more like nets and have holes so large that at least two fingers can fit inside each in order to technically follow the law, despite such masks offering no protection whatsoever. Only time will tell if the authorities will create an Obvious Rule Patch to remedy this.
  • Meanwhile in the UK (where face mask use became mandatory inside shops), one guy decided to wear a face mask to cover his crotch and nothing else.
• When the government of the Australian state of Victoria announced that Melbourne would move to "Stage 4" COVID-19-related restrictions and the rest of the state to "Stage 3", they said that they would lift some restrictions on September 13. They did, but instead of the anticipated move to Stage 3 in Melbourne and Stage 2 in the rest of the state, it was a very slightly less restrictive version of Stages 4 and 3 respectively.
• Early in the COVID-19 Pandemic (before wearing facemasks was mandatory, but around the time more people were figuring out it would be a good idea), one company selling facemasks on Amazon attracted criticism (and a great deal on one-star reviews) for showing a photo with a USA flag and the text "based in USA". The masks themselves were actually made in China, or, to be more specific, Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak and literally the last place anyone would want their masks to come from. "Based in USA" presumably referred to the company that distributed the masks, not produced them. The listing is no longer available on Amazon, so it seems that this trope did not work as the seller intended.
• In 2016 the New York City changed its transit rules for pets in the subway to only allow them if "enclosed in a container and carried in a manner which would not annoy other passengers". This resulted in people with large dogs bringing along tote bags, duffel bags, suitcases, and the like, just for their dogs to chill in for the duration of the subway ride. The city was actually fine with this, as long as people were no longer letting their dogs roam around subway cars unattended the spirit of the law was still being followed, and that was good enough for them.
• In 2016, the Cleveland Browns hired Hue Jackson to be their next head coach. After a particularly tough season, the Browns finished 1-15, getting their sole win against the San Diego Chargers thanks to a failed field goal attempt by the Chargers. After the season ended, he gave a press conference assuring everybody that things were going to improve, saying "We're not going 1-15 again. No, or I'm gonna swim in the lake [Lake Erie] over there.". He was right, they didn't go 1-15 again. They went 0-16 in 2017, the second team in NFL history to lose 16 games in a single season after the 2008 Detroit Lions. And after that season, he stayed true to his word and swam in Lake Erie.
• There is a road sport in some American cities called "gimmick rallye", wherein participants must drive around, following a set of very carefully worded instructions to the letter; the instructions are worded in such a way as to catch participants out without them realising. For instance, one might be given the instruction "turn right at any uninstructed T junction", and must note that this instruction not only applies if one is travelling up the stem of the T, but it also applies if one is travelling in via the left entrance of the T. Or one might be told to make a U-turn at all "stop signs", but the instructions might define a "stop sign" as "a red HEXAGONAL sign with the word STOP on it" (i.e. do not follow the instruction at normal octagonal stop signs) or "any sign with the word STOP on it" (which includes signs like "Bus Stop" and "S Stop 12 Rd").
• The title of MultiVersus is a meta example. When asked about the subject of playable characters outside of Warner Bros. properties, one of the developers from Player First Games had this to say:
  "yes, anything is possible. There's a reason we didn't name the game WB Brawlers."
• In 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act. On the outside, it was meant to prevent discussion of any sort of LGBTQ+ topics in schools (hence its epithet among critics as the "Don't Say Gay" Law):
  • However, since the legislation was written in such a way to outlaw "discussion of gender", at least one teacher has decided to follow the law to the letter and refuse to use anything following heteronormative discussion, even referring to kids with neutral they/them pronouns.
  • When Disney came out in opposition to the law, Desantis decided his course of action would be to take control of Disney's local government the Reedy Creek Improvement district. Disney gave him the district, but not before transferring the majority of its power back to the corporation.
• Chapter 131 of the Texas Transportation Code grants "interurban electric railway companies" the power of eminent domain to acquire land to build out their routes. The law was written with Interurbans in mind, a form of transportation which became virtually extinct in the United States by the 1930's. Thanks to the very broad definitions of both "interurban" and "electric railway" however, this law has survived to the present day, where it has been judged to still apply to Texas Central, a private company aiming to build an electric high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas.
• SNK did this during their 20-year long trolling campaign about the fate of The King of Fighters's K9999 - post-2016 reports from visitors at their offices suggested that there was an unspoken rule in an attempt to bury the character that mentioning K9999, or even alluding to his existence, was forbidden. Nothing was said about being forbidden to mention Krohnen.
• Ed Boon engaged in many misdirections involving exact words in the build-up to Mortal Kombat X's release:
  • Kotal Kahn, Emperor of Outworld, was said to not remain in the position for the entirety of the game. Nothing was said about not including flashbacks to Mileena's rule.
  • The game would include more than 12 newcomers. Nothing was said that they all had to be base characters.
  • Eight characters would be killed off. Nothing was said that they had to die in Story Mode.
  • Quan Chi's goals being realized. Nothing was said that he had to be alive to witness said goals coming to fruition.
  • The Final Boss was a surprise returning character. Nothing was said about it not being a surprise return of a One-Winged Angel incarnation.
• GDPR regulations set guidelines for data collection, including making it mandatory to have people opt-in to having their data processed, and making the process overt (no hidden controls). There is, however, provision for declaring a "legitimate interest" in the data, at which point consent isn't required. The intent is that this is used for data that the business couldn't function without, such as an online store needing to process payment details, but the guidance is flexible on how a business decides what falls into this category, only requiring that it can justify it. This has lead to many websites adding opt-out toggles in hidden parts of the interface that state the user agrees the site has a legitimate interest. That allows these sites to process that data even when users haven't consented while technically still following the guidelines, making this functionally the kind of opt-out approach GDPR was specifically intended to prevent.
• A trans man who was estranged from his parents received an invitation to his sister's wedding, but his parents told him to come in a dress, or not come at all. What they didn't know was that in the past 7 years, he'd been taking testosterone, gotten surgery, and become a weightlifter. So he showed up to the wedding as his manly, muscular, hairy self in a pink frilly dress. (His sister gave him the go-ahead before the wedding, thought it was hilarious and took as many pictures of him at the wedding as she could.)
• An often-seen mail-order lottery scam works on this principle, where they offer "a prize worth $5,000" or something to that effect. The prize in question is a coupon book, where if you were to redeem every single coupon the total savings would roughly equate to $5,000.
• A tragic Real Life case applies to many adverts referring to electricity, or other forms of power, being produced from "renewable sources". While this can include ecological sources such as wind and solar power, it can also be applied to burning wood (or "biomass") because trees can be replanted. But they often aren't, or wood is used so quickly that the replanted trees don't have time to grow back. After all, technically, saying they're renewable doesn't imply any promise to actually renew them..
• Disney promised the popular Hat Box Ghost would arrive in Haunted Mansion in the Magic Kingdom in November 2023 and they were true to their word. The Ghost first appeared on the ride on the last possible day, November 30.
• During a police chase in Oklahoma, the suspect thought that it was a good idea to hang off the side of a highway overpass after crashing his car. The officer closest ran over towards him, demanding he "get on the ground!" repeatedly, only for the man to do just that, sustaining serious injuries in the fall. The officer's sheer disbelief can be felt as he repeats "get on the ground" as he runs over, only to choke and simply say "get..." as the man lets go of the concrete. The suspect did as he was told, but not exactly in the way that was intended.
• In 1965, Country Music singer Buck Owens took out a full-page ad in Music City News in which he stated that "I shall sing no song that is not a country song. I shall make no record that is not a country record. I refuse to be known as anything but a country singer. I am proud to be associated with country music. Country music and country music fans made me what I am today. And I shall not forget it." Problem was, Owens was known for performing covers of popular rock songs by Chuck Berry and The Beatles. When called out on this, he responded that he considered rockabilly to be a form of country music, and argued that the chief reason for the divide between the two genres was because many of the biggest rockabilly performers were Black men. (He later did start performing poppier music whose status as country music was more disputable, but this was during a Creator Breakdown caused by the death of his friend Don Rich in an accident in 1974, and even he won't defend a lot of the music from this period.)

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