Loophole Abuse / Fan Works

aka: Fanfic

Loophole Abuse in Fan Works.

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Crossovers

• In A.F.E.W. the most powerful Elementals declare that anyone who tries to invoke their power against their children (Willow, Cordelia, Xander, and Buffy) will have to perform the rites exactly perfectly or they'll use the minor wiggle room to obliterate the summoner. While they do have to answer any calls on their power, they can choose how exactly the rites have to be followed.
• In Alliance of Amazons and Izuku, the villain's quirk multiplies any positive feelings anyone of the opposite gender has for him by ten, which he plans to use by creating both a criminal empire and a harem of superheroines. When he activates his Quirk to take control of some superheroines that he recently kidnapped, it fails to do anything, to his utter bafflement. Midoriya reasons that it's because the women clearly have zero positive feelings for the guy — not only are they naturally not fond of being kidnapped and restrained, but he then proceeded to tell them his plan and list all the sexual acts he'd perform with them — and anyone with basic math skills knows that anything multiplied by zero is still zero. Unfortunately for Izuku, the villain is able to find a workaround by using his quirk to multiply any positive feelings a female has for Izuku.
• In Aloha, Xander convinces Jumba to leave Stitch with Lilo by pointing out that he wants Stitch somewhere he won't cause problems for his government. On Earth, he'll be Earth's problem rather than theirs.
• In Avenger of Steel, when Clark (and Jessica) break up an attempt to artificially create mutants, after they report it to SHIELD, Clark is able to submit a story on the incident (omitting his own part in the break-out) despite signing a non-disclosure form, as he wrote and submitted the story before signing said form, which only covers who he talks to about these events after signing. While he tricked them, agents such as Barton and Hill are only officially angered about it as Clark’s story exposed most of the names they could arrest for their role in the project and he was motivated by a genuine desire to do the right thing.
• In Crush, Power Girl gets around a law prohibiting nude sunbathing (specifically that a g-string is the minimum she can wear while sunbathing and still be legal) by wearing a G-string off a guitar.
• A few supernatural variants of this are used to the heroes’ benefit in the Demented Verse;
  • In the final confrontation with Metatron, Sam and Harry are able to infiltrate Heaven by contacting Tessa so that she can take them to Heaven through Harry’s ‘door’ to Heaven after his temporary death, as that door is still ‘valid’ even if Heaven itself is on lockdown. Later, Harry is able to hide from other angels in Heaven by essentially walking in Castiel’s ‘shadow’; as Castiel is the only entity within his body after Jimmy Novak’s ‘death’, by staying close to Castiel Harry can fool casual observers in Heaven into assuming that he is the soul of Castiel’s Vessel.
  • Part of the spell used to save Dean from the Mark relied on the same act of sacrifice Lily used to save Harry; while the Winchesters aren’t permanently dead, they have died for each other often enough that it qualifies even if they always came back.
• Defied in Dungeon Keeper Ami: the conditions of a Magically-Binding Contract between the protagonist and a major antagonist are a single vague sentence. This is precisely to sidestep Loophole Abuse via Exact Words by having both sides being bound only by the intent of the agreement.
  The Light: It is precise enough for those who are willing to abide by those terms. A more elaborate contract would not protect those who would search for every loophole from our wrath.
• Shirou in Fate Game Night has a Crippling Overspecialization regarding magic in the form of swords. Anything relating to swords earns him ten times as much experience as normal (he becomes better than his dojo's kendo instructor in a single afternoon) but experience gains in any magic that isn't related to swords suffers a 90% penalty. Shirou naturally abuses this endlessly by finding a way to make other magic sword related, such as making small barriers that cover a sword shaped area.
• In Harry and the Shipgirls, Harry was legally required to register as an Animagus after gaining the ability to turn into a Tiangou. However, he and his adoptive family knew quite well that Death Eaters had infiltrated the British Ministry of Magic. Harry's response was to register with the Kyoto Ministry of Magic in Japan instead, since he lives in Japan when he's not at Hogwarts.
• Double Subverted in Harry Potter and the Fluffy Taile. Professor Sprout tries to punish Penny for being out of bed at night, to which Penny states that she was in a bed for the night; Harry's to be exact. When Sprout brings it up with Dumbledore, he decides to allow it as he sees the relationship as beneficial for Harry in the long run, as long as Penny sticks to Exact Words. Penny later encourages Harry's friends to observe that most of the rules in Hogwarts are only a punishment if the students get caught breaking them, so they're safe enough to do most things so long as the teachers don't find them.
• One of the rules for Hild forming a contract with a mortal in Hell Is a Martial Artist is that she has to work through agents unless approached first and even then must declare both her identity and intentions for the contract to be valid. Nabiki Tendo, thinking Hild to be another fiance, offers to keep the other fiances off her back for a fee. After they agree on price, Hild says that she's the Daimakaicho and that Nabiki's soul is forfeit should she fail to uphold her bargain but does so in an overly dramatic way so she won't be believed.
• A Hollow in Equestria Upon arriving in Equestria, Ulquiorra finds himself under specific orders from Princess Celestia: don't attack her subjects, or do anything that would cause them harm or put them at risk. While he consents to this, he's interpreted her rules in a way that allows him to take action against threats, reasoning the latter part of Celestia's orders actually requires him to engage threats with force, as doing otherwise would constitute engaging in a course of action that would either cause them harm or put them at risk of harm.
• If Wishes Were Ponies:
  • Equestria is located on an alien planet (thus it’s not nor have ever been a member state of the International Confederation of Wizards), so they have never had the chance to sign on to the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. As a result, the Ministry of Magic is unable to accuse them of breaking the Statute of Secrecy when Equestria makes First Contact with the Muggle United Kingdom as the law simply doesn't account for such a scenario.
  • The British muggle government locate Hogwarts by simply using seismometers to locate the disturbance caused by Luna's fight with the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets and take photos of the place using ultra high altitude spy planes and satellites. The technology bypasses any of the Muggle-Repelling charms on Hogwarts because the tech activated well out of range of those charms, which were created well before muggles had the capability and technology to do so.
• Infinity Crisis:
  • Defied in the spin-off fic Taking Flight (And Fights), as She-Hulk stops the fight between the Avengers, the X-Men and Alpha Flight by pointing out all the laws Alpha Flight are breaking by coming to America to try and force Wolverine back onto their team.
  • Arguably 'attempted' in Tomorrow's Guardians, when Drax notes that the Guardians of the Galaxy aren't the guardians of all galaxies when arguing whether they should stay in the Orville universe to help stop the Kaylon assault.
• The Infinite Loops normally prevent any looper from having children they would not normally have, because they'd vanish with the reset and traumatize the looper parent. But Nyx, Twilight's adopted daughter, is technically Nightmare Moon, and it is entirely possible to have people loop from variants; this allows her to stick around.
• The J-WITCH Series:
  • As usual, Jade is a master of this trope. When Jackie makes her promise not to involve the Guardians in fighting the Dark Hand, Jade decides that she can warn them about the Talisman-empowered criminals, and that it'll be up to the girls to decide if they'll get involved or not.
  • When Ratso first faces Irma, he says that his mother told him not to hit girls. However, he still traps her in a bear hug, trips her and pushes her to the ground, reasoning that said moves don't technically count as hitting.
  • Uncle is able to create a stun spell to use against Daolon Wong despite the Star of Threbe rendering the Guardians and the good chi wizards powerless because it was made after the Star was activated, and since its purpose is to defeat the evil wizard, not stop Elyon from returning to Meridian.
  • At the start of Season 2, Captain Black exploits the fact that Meridian is technically outside his jurisdiction as an excuse to not arrest the post-Heel–Face Turn Enforcers and leave them working for Elyon.
• When Ben/Ditto is interrogated with the Lasso of Truth in Justice Matrix, he figures out that he can give away as very little information as possible by answering questions with very vague answers that count as the truth.
• In King of Thrones, any attempt to directly kill someone- be it in a drunken brawl or an assassination attempt- will instead trigger a duel. But Stannis notes that there are still ways to kill people indirectly- such as poison or shooting a crossbow into a crowd- and until someone tries a murder method, no one will know if it will work or not.
  • In Chapter 13, several Baratheon men die when their horses fall into pit traps while hunting the criminals who dug them, with no chance to duel.
• In Last Second Savior, Harry and Aayla Secura have a Time Turner with just enough sand to send both of them back nine hours once. Harry warns Aayla that they absolutely can't change anything they know for a fact happened (like try to prevent Barriss Offee's death). However since they don't know for a fact who else died, they can send a warning to the Jedi Temple and have it forwarded to every Jedi except Aayla and Barriss.
• Defied in Lex Marks the Spot when Lex Luthor (who's been given Xander Harris's memories and morality) agrees to answer any questions written on a list but insists the questions only be those on the list in its current form. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman can't add to the list, use invisible ink so a question he can't see is on it, or use various words on the sheet to make a new question.
• In the Fairy Tail/The Chronicles of Narnia crossover The Lion, The Witch, and The Fairy's Tail, the White Witch tries to invoke the Deep Magic to claim Happy as a traitor, since he revealed the Beavers' dam where the heroes were hiding and unwittingly caused the events that lead Lucy to be petrified^note The Witch is unaware at that time Aslan had undone the curse on Lucy. However, the other Fairy Tail wizards point out that Happy believed that she and the White Witch were different people, and only came to her castle to warn her about the tyrant. Furthermore, he also told her about the others staying at the dam because he thought she was worried about his friends. By all accounts, the Witch is the true traitor for deceiving Happy in the first place. Flustered, she is forced to leave Aslan's camp while the heroes cheered in joy.
• In Lost in Camelot, Bo utilizes a version of this to encourage the Dyson of Camelot's present to stay in the kingdom; while Dyson isn't comfortable swearing allegiance to Uther directly, he agrees to swear allegiance to Bo due to her status as Camelot's fae ruler, and then 'pretend' to swear allegiance to Uther on Bo's request.
• In Lost in the Woods, as the Enterprise crew are contemplating the scale of the Reaver threat and how they can take action while still acknowledging the Prime Directive, Data observes that from a certain perspective eliminating the Reavers wouldn't violate the Prime Directive as few people actually know that the Reavers exist beyond a myth, so their absence would not significantly affect Alliance civilisation.
• Metagaming?: Sir Zeliek quickly realized that his pleas towards the other death knights only irritated them until they would eventually attack him. As he was far more powerful than almost any other death knight and possessed powers perfectly suited towards killing undead, he went out of his way to provoke them so he could kill them as "punishment", allowing him to continue fighting the Scourge despite being enslaved to Arthas.
• Metal Gear: Green: Nezu frequently engages in this throughout the fic when trying to avoid getting UA under HPSC control, forcing the HPSC to try and close up the loophole. The current loophole? Having the MSF as security personnel for UA.
• In My Hero Academia: Hero Time, Izuku is able to get away with being a vigilante because in the eyes of the law, vigilantes must have quirks, which Izuku does not have. Instead, he has an Omnitrix.
• Izuku and Ami are particularly adept at this in My Hero Playthrough, and the U.A. staff repeatedly responds with an Obvious Rule Patch.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, All Might struggles to fight the Ultra-Humanite due to the latter's Quirk, which greatly reduces the physical prowess of all humans within 100 meters of him. But Izuku is Kryptonian, letting him fight at full strength.
• At least two instances Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo.
  • While Garrus uses the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on a subject, Samara is obligated to step in as torture goes against the Justicar Code...except if the target is definitely going to be sentenced to death. Since that sentence is certain (according to Garrus), Samara does nothing.
  • On a larger scale, the creation of Sarah, the Force-sensitive Siren was a gigantic abuse of loopholes/abuse of Exact Words. A faction of Eridians, also known as Forerunners, disliked the notion of constantly having to "tend the gardens" of lesser races as commanded by the Mantle of Responsibility. They thus secretly created the Selfless Servant of the Mantle—Sarah—to carry out this duty for them. Whether the Mantle could in fact be so outsourced became a source of religious conflict, and whether such outsourcing permitted wholesale slaughter became an even bigger issue. Sarah herself didn't believe so, as her first inclination after waking with orders to uphold the Mantle was to try to kill those who created her for unjustified meddling with life and attempting to duck their duties.
• Phineas and Ferb in Dimmsdale: In "Odyssey into the Mind of Trixie", Vicky jumps over the pegs she was supposed to swerve through during the second stage of the competition, but, since there was no rule saying the contestants had to swerve, her strategy was deemed legal. Timmy hopes Phineas and Ferb will close that loophole for the final stage.
• Hagrid is allowed to keep Talon in Raptor once the Ministry makes sure she's not a dragon. When he loses interest, eleven-year-old Harry registers Talon as his own familiar and takes her home for summer break. She's a sapient Velociraptor, but all the Ministry cares about in both cases is that she's not a banned magical animal.
• In the Mass Effect/Command & Conquer crossover Renegade, the Brotherhood of Nod, once GDI's enemy, is allowed to exist openly, but they're forced to obey a treaty that limits their military capabilities to only small defense fleets. Midway through the story, the Brotherhood reveals the Temple Prime, a colossal construct larger than any dreadnought that any navy can field... but since the Temple is classified as a space station under the definitions and rules of the treaty, it's not considered a violation.
• Rising of the Sleeping Soldier: While his shield forbids Alucard from touching his One-Handed Zweihänder directly, he is still able to use his Mind over Matter powers on it just fine.
• In the Danny Phantom/Beetlejuice fanfic Say It Thrice, Aunt Melinda sets it up so that Betelgeuse can't view Lydia through mirrors. But that doesn't stop him from seeing everything around her.
  • Subverted in regards to the ghost portal, though. Betelgeuse tries to use it to get out without someone saying his name three times. It doesn't work.
• In The Search for Victory, in order to help 'protect' Daniel Jackson for revealing the Stargate program to the Avengers, Cassie decides to reveal the program's existence to the press because she reasons that she never actually signed an NDA and therefore won’t get in legal trouble for her actions.
• In The Secret Keeper sequel The Wisdom Seeker, this is basically the reason Bella isn’t accused of a foul when she wins her final Quidditch game by punching a bludger with her bare hand, as few people would choose to deliberately break their bones to win a game.
• In Seeing, Believing, Dreaming, Deceiving it's mentioned that demons lords are bound by ancient laws so that they have to warn each other before they attack their fellow lords. So right before Tom Riddle sics The Dreaded Gerald Tarrant on a group of traitorous demons his remaining demonic ally warns them in such a way that they don't believe a word he says.
  Gerald Tarrant: They took the bait?
  Karril: Hook, line, and sinker. Rassilos said - and I quote - you think we'll believe that Gerald Tarrant, the Darkest Prince of Hell, cares what we get up to?'. He thinks I was only fear-mongering. That covers the requirements of forewarning, though, so you're free to slaughter them at will.
  Tom Riddle: You circumvented the Demonic Code? You're good, Lord Tarrant, very good indeed.
• In the Jackie Chan Adventures and Teen Titans crossover fanfiction A Shadow of the Titans, Jade does this in a Cutting the Knot type situation. Basically the Drill Sergeant Nasty gym teacher for the HIVE (an overweight and balding villain with No Indoor Voice called Captain Hollywood) wanted her to run a dangerous obstacle course and ring a bell at the end. Jade asks again to make sure that the goal is to ring the bell, and then the timer starts, prompting Jade to turn around, since the course was circular. The school considered it valid, but Hollywood still sent her to detention, since the HIVE is a villain school and you don't need to break the rules to get punished.
• In Spider-Ninja, Splinter bans his kids from vigilante activity after the family learns that SHIELD is looking for them. Raphael and Petra later sneak out. When she asks if they'll get in trouble, he reminds her that Splinter said that he forbid them from going outside to crime-fight. He said nothing about simply going up for fresh air.
• Jenny Calendar is initially reluctant to relocate herself and her clan (she and not Xander got empowered by the Primal Hyena) in Stone in Love as she has a duty to keep watch over Angel. However, Giles points out that if they can convince Angel to leave Sunnydale, she'd be duty-bound to follow him.
• In Tara Sheppard, after the SGC learn that they can’t recruit Buffy due to an old deal with the Watchers’ Council, they find a way around this by officially offering support to Tara; as a result, they can give Buffy support if she needs it, as technically such aid is being provided because she lives with Tara, who is a close relative of a high-ranking member of a top-secret government program, rather than because Buffy is the Slayer.
• Titania Falls: After marrying Erza, Jellal changes his last name to Pines so that way he can't be legally extradited to Earthland. After all, the arrest warrant is for Jellal Fernandes, not Jellal Pines. That being said, it's still not safe for him to go to Earthland without his Mystogan disguise.
• In Told That Devil to Take You Back, when Dean makes a deal with Toni that she’ll give Emma back in exchange for information about the hunters in America, Dean only tells her about either hunters he knows are dead or hunters he doesn’t like that much.
• Defied in Trust Doesn't Rust; according to Bobby Singer’s research, Low Shoulder sacrificing Jennifer rather than making a traditional deal means that they won’t go to Hell after ten years like they would in a standard Deal with the Devil, but they would still go to Hell when they died for killing someone like that in the first place.
• In Uzumaki Harry, the Four Tri-Wizard Champions point out no one said they had to compete against each other, the official rules say only to participate, as well as the fact that the tournament was originally formed to forge bonds between schools—so they are totally justified in working together.
• The Weaver Option:
  • A Cardinal of the Ecclesiarchy demands having a copy of the files found in the STC, arguing that nowhere in the Treaty of Olympus is indicated that only the Mechanicus can get them, only that the originals have to be sent to Mars.
  • In the same chapter, Harrowmaster Isley's surviving Alpha Legionnaires are technically wiped out by an Imperial Tribunal. In reality? An Alpha Legion warband walked into the courtroom. The founding members of the 20th Legion's only known Loyalist Successor Chapter, the Heracles Wardens, walked out. The assignment of Taylor and company to oversee their reintegration into Imperial administration, and to make sure they STAY loyal, potentially foreshadows the Heracles Wardens engaging in their own Alpha-characteristic Loophole abuses in regards to recruitment and equipment.
  • Taylor learns that she meets all of the qualifications to be named Empress of the Aeldari Empire despite it no longer existing and her being a different species. The creators were so arrogant they never considered the possibility of another species both qualifying for the rank and reaching the place where they could claim it.

Attack on Titan

• In Age of Titans, the Curse of Ymir only afflicts those who knowingly eat another shifter. Annie (who was already something called a lesser shifter) gets around it because Marley held off for so long on passing on the power that she only has to hold the current Female Titan shifter in her mouth for several seconds before she dies from the curse. Meanwhile, Eren isn't afflicted because he didn't even know shifters were a thing before his father turned him into a pure titan and let himself be eaten.
• In My Child, Levi makes a Deal with the Devil to save his son from dying in childbirth and give him supernatural protection. At the end of the fic, the demon he made the deal with (who has taken quite the interest in Levi) remarks that Levi's son resembles him so much, that he'll have to pay him a visit sometime. Levi yells that his deal means the child is protected, but the demon says that he conveniently forgot to mention that the deal did not specify protection from him, and so he is free to make a bid for the child's soul whenever he pleases.

Batman

• In Loxare Hinder, Red Hood is extremely hostile towards his former mentor Batman and associates, outright threatening to kill them if they ever try to see him. When Stephanie Brown goes to visit him, she cheerfully points he only mentioned Batman, Nightwing and Robin as targets, which means Spoiler is exempt of the penalty. And even if he wanted to hold her tenure as Robin against her, Steph isn't Robin right now, so there.

Bleach

• Vow of the King:
  • In canon, Mayuri installed a sensor into his zanpakuto that allows him to counter any sword technique within a given range. Ichigo gets around it by punching him in the face.
  • Soul Society's Klingon Promotion system wasn't written with substitute shinigami in mind, causing Yamamoto to admit they're in a rather odd position after Ichigo kills Mayuri. The Head Captain ultimately decides to go with the letter of the law, even if it technically doesn't follow the spirit.

Buffyverse

• In Choose Your Own Awards Xander is offered a set of superpowers but the stronger the powers, the further away from Sunnydale he's sent. Xander chooses the ability to enhance others, while getting almost no power himself to stay in Sunnydale, which the being empowering him lampshades as staying true to the letter while violating the hell out of the spirit. It's taken even further when Xander uses his ability to enhance people to enhance his own power.
• Xander is told in Marked that he can't be allowed to save Kendra's life as having three Slayers would tip the balance enough that the resulting correction would bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Xander suggests simply having the Slayer spirit move on the moment Kendra would have died so she can live without bringing about the apocalypse.
• Working for the Weekend: When Xander brings Mayor Wilkins a bunch of eggs from his interdimensional trip, one is found to be of a different species than the others. He has to check, but Wilkins notes that if it's the only one of its kind in their world, he can pay off the entirety of his debt to a snake demon with that single egg because letting him eat it would mean he had wiped out an entire species. Magic doesn't care that there was only a single member of said species, just that an entire species was exterminated.

Calvin and Hobbes

• In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Jack is easily able to block Shadow - since the latter's orders were to kill all living things, a robot wouldn't count.

Case Closed

• In Dominoes, after being emotionally beaten down by his father's Breaking Speech, Shinichi offers his friends a compromise: he'll stop investigating the disappearances if they promise to save the missing children, and will go back to being a 'docile little soccer player' if they promise to attend the championship game (providing his team makes it there). The Irregulars happily agree... but by the time said championship rolls around, they've gone back to treating Shinichi as less pressing than all their other priorities. When they remember a little too late, Kazuha reassures them that the game wasn't really that big a deal, revealing how empty that promise was. Unfortunately for them, Shinichi suspected as much, hence his phrasing — since they failed to keep their word, he returns to his investigating, trusting them even less than before.

Charmed (1998)

• As established in the series, one of the few rules good and evil agreed on was that anyone whose powers have awakened has a forty-eight hour window to essentially choose if they will be good or evil. In "Sweet Seduction", the Charmed Ones meet Delilah, the adult daughter of the Source, but she was born when the Source raped her mother and he has kept her in a cell for her entire life. As a result, Prue argues that Delilah isn't good or evil despite having magic all her life because she's never had the chance to make such a choice, spending her existence up until now locked in her room and being sexually abused by various demons.

Danganronpa

• In the third chapter of New Hope University: Major In Murder, Monokuma is willing to let students take weapons out of the armory, but warns the class that anyone who does so will be recorded on the surveillance cameras, with the footage available upon request. The third culprit gets around this by firing a rocket launcher from inside the armory, meaning that the weapon never left the building.

The DCU

• Discussed in "Superman: House of El" when Kara asks the Fortress to begin fabrication of military undersuits for herself and Kal. The Fortress A.I. automatically points out that by the order of the High Council, only the military class can give such orders and the House of El is the science class, but Kara points out to the Fortress that since the High Council no longer exists, she is essentially the highest Kryptonian authority left, so it's entirely up to her what the fortress creates.

Death Note

• Many Death Note fics will circumvent the first rule of the Death Note "the human whose name is written in this notebook shall die" by revealing that a character isn't actually human but a Shinigami or a vampire or a werewolf or an alien or whatever.
• In Constant Temptation Kira can't kill Beyond Birthday because he doesn't know Beyond's true face. In fact B has been L's copy for so long that no one remembers what Beyond actually looks like.
• In Desideratum L is immune to the Death Note because he doesn't have a real name.
• In Haunted, Light figures out that Rem can't carry out her threat to kill him if he kills Misa because Ryuk has to be the one to write his name when he dies; so Light kills Misa anyway and there's nothing Rem can do about it. This loophole is actually canon-it's Rule 34^note No, not THAT one of the Death Note: "1. The owner of the Death Note cannot be killed by a god of death who is living in the world of the gods of death. 2. Also, a god of death who comes to the human world, in the objective to kill the owner of the Death Note, will not be able to do so. 3. Only a god of death that has passed on their Death Note to a human is able to kill the owner of the Death Note."
• In The Killer In You Rem is able to get around the restriction that Shinigami aren't supposed to help humans by giving them the names of people they want to kill by giving Light the names in 1337 lingo that she apparently learned from watching Misa chat. Because she writes it as "'Ryuzaki: L L a 2u l i e t, 2uatari: Q u i l l s h 2u a m m y" she didn't technically give the name.
• Ryuk pulls this in MoonLight after Light is bitten by a werewolf—since only humans can be killed by the notebook then only humans are allowed to own a notebook. So Ryuk has Light declared a non-human and abruptly takes back the notebook, erasing his Kira memories.
• From the AU of Ragnarok (Skeptikitten) after learning that Light is secretly the legendary hacker known as "Kira" (that the NPA pays a lucrative bonus for his consultation) L complains when Light again hires "Kira" to aid in his investigation. Light has this to say for himself:
  Light: Technically, Kira is Matsuda's source, not mine. I have never stated that I was not, in fact, Kira. Technicality is the soul of the law.

Discworld

• In the Discworld Tarot chapter The Ace of Swords (author - A.A. Pessimal), Miss Alice Band is able to tame a rogue unicorn where others have failed, despite being sexually experienced. The reason Alice gets away with it is because her sexual experience is only with other women. She still technically qualifies as a maiden, unsullied by contact with men, and therefore meeting the specification for unicorn-wrangling - because she has never had contact with men. It is possible that while the unicorn was trying to make its mind up as to whether she qualified, she got a silver-ornamented bridle over its head and settled the question definitively.

Disgaea

• Wolf in the Streets, Sardine in the Sheets: While Valvatorez allows his young charges to fix some of their own meals, they have to submit to a 'plate check' to ensure they're getting the nutrients they need. Zeroken tries to get around this by having the newly hired Fenrich check his plate, correctly assuming that he won't know what he's supposed to be looking for. After getting caught, he then tries to argue that ketchup counts as a vegetable, and that he drenched his food with enough of it to meet the requirements. Valzy doesn't buy it.

Disney Princess

• In Rapunzel Goes Home, Corona's Royal Guard is about to arrest Flynn Rider on sight when Rapunzel introduces herself as the Lost Princess. The soldiers are now bound to take her to the palace in order to confirm her identity, and since Flynn is travelling with her, they cannot touch him — it would be rather unseemly to hang the princess's savior, after all.

Dungeons & Dragons

• Vow of Nudity: Two notable occasions:
  • During a musical duel whose rules specify both contestants must play "an instrument they own", Haara's opponent (and their watching audience) thinks he wins by default due to her clear lack of material possessions. But after he plays a short shanty on his harmonica, she reveals her proficiency with the handflute and blows his performance out of the water with a classical Genasi aria.
  • Haara's on the receiving end of one during the king's challenge in her backstory. He promises her freedom if she can draw even a single drop of his blood in combat... and when she tricks him into stepping on a makeshift caltrop, he claims that it doesn't count because she's his property, so technically he drew his own blood using her as an instrument. (Of course, this means it was impossible for her to actually win.)

Encanto

• Through the crack in the wall: In this AU, the third generation of the Madrigal family finds out that their tio Bruno is living in the walls. Since one of the rules is "don't talk about Bruno", the kids use it to justify not telling Alma or their parents that he never actually left the Encanto.

The Familiar of Zero

• Zero no Tsukaima: Saito the Onmyoji:
  • When Saito and Louise enter into a Master/Apprentice Contract one of the punishments required for the contract to be legal (and thus any use at all to them) is the Deflowering Punishment. However, there's no laws specifying the infraction required to warrant said punishment beyond it has to be something possible for Louise to do. So the two of them set the infraction to the rather improbable "Casting ten explosions at Saito with malicious intent within five minutes followed by hitting him three times with a riding crop or whip".
  • Later Saito points out that since there hasn't been a human Familiar since the laws regarding Familiars was written, there's several loopholes regarding his situation. For example, bedding Louise's personal maid would hardly be considered improper should it ever occur.

Fairly OddParents

• In Never Had a Friend Like Me Norm, being a Jackass Genie, can use this to twist wishes. It's telling that he doesn't do this to his current master, Amanda Adams, who is too selfless to make a wish in the first place, and whom he grows fond of. The Anti-Fairies and the Anti-Pixies invite him to watch Timmy's demise, provided he sign a contract where one of the clauses is "any threat to the health or freedom of the one who signs it will leave the contract null and void.'' When the Anti-Fairies and Pixies nearly kill Amanda in this plot, the contract is rendered null and void, since Amanda's death would have resulted in him being suck back into a lamp, leaving them at his mercy. He then reveals he would have found a loophole to save Timmy anyway.

Fire Emblem

• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path: Byleth tries to do this to get Rhea, Seteth, and Catherine to let Ashe come along to fight Lord Lonato by saying they just said Ashe couldn't come, not the Blue Lion House. This doesn't work as it makes zero sense but by the time she explains it to Catherine it's already too late to return the students who aren't supposed to be there to the Monastary.

Five Nights at Freddy's

• Mike's New Ghostly Family: Though the ghosts of Missing Children Incident's victims were Kicked Out of Heaven, they weren't banished to Hell, but instead were sent back to Earth to atone for their sins. This is because to be banished to Hell, one must be sinful in life and be completely unrepentant in doing so, but since the ghost children were not only genuinely remorseful, but also never sinned as living people (as their murders of nightguards happened only in their corrupted "quasi-afterlife" when they were trapped in animatronic bodies, which was never expected to happen), God decided to be more lenient with His rules and gave the ghost children an opportunity to redeem themselves before they'll be properly welcomed back into Heaven.

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)

• To The Night Sky: Justin Everson doesn't to suffer the Body Horror associated with human transmutation, so he decides to wipe Edward's memory clean and forces him to trigger the array in his stead. Truth is not impressed by his attempt to cheat, possesses Edward to manifest in the material world and closes the loophole by murdering the shit out of Justin.

Gargoyles

• Kimberly T's Gargoyles fics show Puck using this to great extent; not only does he enjoy the chance to take Alex on certain excursions that he can 'disguise' as educational moments, but he even expands his teaching duties to include teaching magic to Bethany Marsden, the part-Fey daughter of the Xanatos' new nanny Anne, on the grounds that the geas prohibiting him from using his powers only to teach Alexander doesn't prevent Bethany sitting in on Alex's lessons and participating in them. A scene from an unwritten future storyline shows Demona use a more ruthless variation of this loophole by threatening Alex's life unless Puck restores the voice of the currently-cursed Gabriel (the mate of Demona's daughter Angela, currently cursed to be silent and worried that the curse would be passed on to their egg); Puck concedes, but Owen notes that this only worked because Demona's immortality meant that going along with her demand was the easiest option, and Xanatos assures Owen that he has no intention of using that method in future.

Girls und Panzer

• Many Girls und Panzer fanfics that include boys participating in tankery have the characters do so by saying there is no rule against having them participate in tankery.

Glee

• Glee Reprise has Rachel start her own glee club in a community centre down the street from Carmel High. Although all the initial members and several after that are Carmel students, the club is not technically affiliated with that school - which means they can also accept members from the snobby private school or the local Dalton campus as well.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed

• In For What, For All But Myself, Jiang Cheng signed a contract to never marry or sire children. It never said anything about bearing a child on his own. Not that he’d normally be capable of doing so.
• In Gold Poisons, Lan Xichen is at one point reminded of Rule 586: Gossip is Forbidden in the Cloud Recesses. He replies that he’s not there at the moment, so he can gossip all he wants.
• In If I Had The Strength, Madam Lan cannot leave the Gentian House, but other people can. When she slips within Wei Wuxian's body, the wards don't register her as "Shun Lijuan", finally allowing her to escape her prison.
• In Tortoiseshell, Nie Mingjue's line of reasoning about personally averting the Sunshot Campaign without Huaisang telling anyone else about it: if he does it instead of his brother, then Huaisang won't have changed the future and avoids any pain that might come from it. The fic leaves it ambiguous as to whether he's right.

Harry Potter

• In 3 Slytherin Marauders the goblins inform Tom Riddle that he can't completely empty out Voldemort's Gringott's vaults... so he leaves him a single Knut. Also fugitives can seek asylum at Gringotts because "Gringotts customers are allowed to stay and count their gold for as long as they like."
• In the Adam Winters series, at one point Adam is essentially accused of underage magic use, but since the protective charms Wormtail used make it hard for the Ministry to identify him as the culprit by name and nobody in the relevant department knew where Adam was staying to help them pin the ‘crime’ on him, Dumbledore decides to let that incident go without pressing charges given the circumstances.
• In The Adventures Of Harry Potter, the Video Game: Exploited when Harry discovers that his life is actually a videogame he determines he'll use every cheat, grind, and underhanded tactic available in order to exploit the system. Harry becomes a Munchkin and exploits such videogame tropes as Good Bad Bugs, Save Scumming, and Take Your Time.
• In Angry Harry and the Seven, a Ravenclaw Harry Potter is entered into the Triwizard Tournament against his will. Despite not being of age, which is a rule and breaking any of the rules means breaching the contract, it looks like he will be doomed to lose his magic, whether he participates in the Task or not. However, he then remembers something about the wording of the contract. According to it, he must compete in the First Task on November 24th. It doesn't say he has to compete on November 24th, 1994. As such, he uses that to delay his participation in the task until November 24th, 1997, when he'll be of age, and thus be able to participate without breaching the contract. Barty Crouch Senior, as the representative of the Ministry, tries to change the contract so that Harry will participate. Upon Harry's objection of not being of age, he agrees to emancipate Harry. Using that, Harry immediately claims Lordship of the House of Potter. After doing so, he then uses Crouch's attempt to alter the contract to vacate said contract in its entirety, freeing him from the Tournament.
  • An earlier example in the same story is when Harry and his friends investigate the third floor corridor. They are caught by Filch, who informs Dumbledore. When Dumbledore confronts Harry and Daphne Greengrass on going to the forbidden corridor, Daphne points out that Dumbledore stated, "The third floor corridor, on the left, is out of bounds to all students who do not wish to die a horrible death." By these words, the corridor is not out of bounds to students who do wish to die a horrible death.
• But I'm a Girl! is a fantasy AU where Hermione is a princess but has been raised as a boy all her life since her mother died giving birth as her father so desperately wanted a son that he has insisted Hermione be treated as a prince to the extent that she must find a princess to marry to carry on the line (although she doesn't object to the idea of marrying a woman and just objects to being forced into it). She manages to find a successful loophole in the form of Bellatrix, who is also a princess who has been ordered to marry a prince; Bellatrix hates the idea so much that she has been disguising herself as a dragon to stop anyone winning her hand, but as Hermione points out, since she is a "prince" Bellatrix can marry Hermione and maintain that interest.
• In Charlie does the Foxtrot or Damn the Torpedoes the goblins put slave collars on the children of Death Eaters, claiming that as offspring of branded individuals they count as chattel of their new owner (namely Harry).
  Hermione: Slavery was outlawed in 1833 when Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act.
  Goblin in charge: And two years later, the Wizengamot passed the Freeman Act, which made it illegal for a witch, wizard, or squib to own a Muggle, Muggleborn, or Half-Blood. The Act makes no mention of owning a Pure-Blood since they believed no Pure-Blood would ever allow themselves to be marked as a slave.
• The Choices That Make Us: In Defiant Until the End, when the Potters, Remus, Edgar Bones, and several other Order of the Phoenix members learn that Barty Crouch Jr. is a Death Eater when they clash during a mission into werewolf territory, Mrs. Crouch enchants James to forget about her son's allegiance, and then asks him to tell her who else knows so that she can alter their memories as well. James tells her that he has taken a magical oath not to reveal the names of Dumbledore's followers, and Mrs. Crouch acknowledges this will keep him from revealing the names, but uses her spell to make him go and erase all of those memories himself without knowing who he will visit.
• In Courage and Cunning Dobby gets around the Malfoy's orders forbidding him to identify who his Masters are by telling "Harry" that he just spent the evening getting the red and gold hair dye (that "Harry" had earlier pranked Draco with) out of young master's hair.
• In The Dark Witch and the Necromancer Harry mentions that when summoning demons one must be careful to watch the wording.
  Demons tried to kill their summoners because they despised humans generally but even more the ones, who dared to force them under their will. Which demon wanted to serve a mere human? So they tried to interpret the commands of their master in such a way, that allowed them to hurt or even kill their caster. If the summoner wasn't careful enough, that would happen very quickly. The demons had to do whatever the summoner demanded, but if he didn't word his demand carefully, the demon would take revenge later. For instance, one of the inexperienced Necromancers in the past had summoned a Demon. He had worded his demand carefully but had forgotten to forbid the demon to bring anything with him. So he brought two things, a burning torch and a barrel full of black powder. He didn't hurt or kill his summoner directly, but as he swept down back to hell, he let both fall down to the ground and the Necromancer was... well... history.
• Played for Laughs in The Death Eaters' Disney World Trip, when Ali and Solar troll the Death Eaters by telling them the Disney World employee wearing a Donald Duck costume tasted like chicken.
  "Yeah, you can taste them and everything! It's permitted[.]" It wasn't a lie exactly. No one ever wrote in a rulebook that you couldn't lick some dude in a duck suit and say they taste like poultry.
• In Dobby's Deceit, the goblins give Harry an apartment trunk with a Floo so they can come to Privet Drive without any problems.
  Dobby: It be forbidden for goblins to visit Muggle dwellings. It also be forbidden to meet heirs without supervision of magical guardians. But this trunk be Gringotts property, and goblins may visit their own property whenever they like. If Harry Potter sir happens to be there also, it be no crime.
• In Harry Potter and the Acts of Betrayal, Harry discovers that many years ago Tom Marvolo Riddle swore a Fealty Oath to one Orion Mordecai Black but the way it was worded Riddle swore loyalty not to Orion but to "Lord Black" and as the current "Lord Black," Harry calls in the debt.
• In Harry Potter and the Descent Into Darkness when Harry faces allegations that he "cheated" during the first task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament by subduing the dragon using Parseltongue Harry points out that nowhere in the rules did it say he had to fight the dragon.
• Harry's Enemies List: When Sirius dies, the Malfoys believe his father's last will and testament will finally be read since there's a rule saying no testament can be read until all living named beneficiaries are present for the reading. It's then revealed that the will to be read is Sirius'. His father's has already been read in the past because Sirius, in spite of being a beneficiary, wasn't referenced by name in the will.
• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, battles between the armies only end "when Professor Quirrell, in his personal judgment, decided one army had won by practical real-world standards":
  There was no formal victory condition, Professor Quirrell had explained, because then Harry would figure out how to game the rules. Harry had to admit this was a fair cop.
  • Lampshaded when, during a later battle which does have formal scoring, this is exactly what happens.
    Professor Quirrell: I warned you, Headmaster. It is impossible to have rules without Mr. Potter exploiting them.
  • In the first match with an explicit rule, namely you're whatever faction you state you are, which means points are taken away from that stated faction if you are knocked out (which allowed for spies and the massive Gambit Pileup that happened in that match), Harry joined forces with Draco's army, with both of them declaring themselves as part of Hermione's army, meaning she lost the massive lead in points no matter who struck who.
• Given that the main character of Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is a huge Munchkin from an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, this is to be expected. One particular example is how he handled the problem of obtaining resources to make magic items (which require a sacrifice of expensive material): buying up massive quantities of table salt. A pound of salt is worth only a few cents in the modern world, but it's worth five gold in the world of Medieval Stasis.
• In Harry Potter and the Parseltongue Legend, Hogwarts rules state that students are only allowed to bring an owl, cat, or toad, or a bonded familiar. Since Harry already underwent the familiar bond ritual with his magical cobra he's allowed to keep his snake.
• In Harry Potter and the Power of Paranoia, when developing a weapon to use against Voldemort, Luna finds a way to smuggle a large amount of plastic explosives past Harry's best wards by transfiguring them into wrackspurts. This bypasses the "transfigured animals" and "weapons" wards because the wards aren't equipped to handle something that doesn't technically exist.
• In Have You Ever Seen The Rain? Viktor states that wile he made a vow to the Headmaster of Durmstrang to never reveal its location to outsiders, he made no such vow about taking outsiders to Durmstrang without revealing its location beforehand.
• The premise of the one-shot Slash Fic I bid him! Harry makes use of the old medieval law of "Verbidden" (in which a criminal facing the gallows is released in exchange for marriage) to save good!Voldemort from execution and since the law was drafted in the middle ages and homosexuality was considered abnormal it was just assumed that it would always be a woman so no one specifically wrote the law so that it had to be a woman who bidded someone.
• In If Thems The Rules with help from Melania Black, Harry exploits an obscure pureblood law to keep his powerful and influential stalker firmly in the friend zone.
• In The Ilvermorny Champion Luna and Astoria are allowed to attend the Yule Ball despite being younger than the age limit because Harry having promised them a dance means that technically they count as his dates.
• In Impossible Harry utilizes this after being forced to compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament—he enters the arena with the dragon and instead of bothering the dragon or trying to get the golden egg he summons Quidditch Through The Ages and conjures himself a comfy chair and just sits there reading for twenty minutes:
  Dumbledore: Mr. Potter. What, may I ask, are you doing?
  Harry: I'm doing the task.
  Dumbledore: But the task is to collect the egg from dragon.
  Harry: No. To complete the task I would have to get the egg from dragon however just entering the arena constitutes competing which is enough to satisfy the contract.
• In Like Tenfold Shields the fact that Harry's parents had a will is concealed and Ministry rules prevents the goblins from telling any witch or wizard of its existence. So they tell a dragon.
• In Liquida Tenebris Harry gets Voldemort to vow on his life and magic to stop touching him. Voldie swears... and then immediately starts poking him with his wand.
• In Lord of Caer Azkaban Harry promises to remain at Hogwarts until he's completed his NEWTS... and then hoodwinks Dumbledore into letting him take his NEWTS early.
• In Loophole Harry and Ron's supervisor forces them to attend a gala he's throwing on Ginny's birthday. After realizing their invitations state simply that the dress code for couples is suits and dresses, they show up in the most ridiculous dresses they can find, with Ginny and Hermione wearing men's suits.
• In Magical Metamorphosis, Madame Pomfrey gives the Potter child a little Christmas gift this way. She points out that while staff aren't allowed to give students gifts, she can give students medical devices, and hers counts.
• The Meaning of One: When the Weasleys unexpectedly need to pay Ginny's tuition fees a year early, they don't want to let Harry pay for her, but they can't really argue when Dumbledore offers to grant her a scholarship from Hogwarts' fund for deserving needy students. Once they agree, Dumbledore then turns to Harry and asks whether he's interested in making an entirely voluntary donation to the Hogwarts scholarship fund.
• In The Mind's Guardian, an AU in which Harry has allied himself with Fudge against Dumbledore, as much as Fudge doesn't like Dumbledore he doesn't see any way to legally be rid of him but then Harry finds a loophole:
  Harry: Isn't perjury grounds for impeachment?
  Norton: You're referring to him claiming Voldemort's returned? Unfortunately, speeches before the Wizengamot and ICW are not sworn statements during a judicial proceeding. If he were anyone else, the Wizengamot might hold him in contempt, but that's all anyone can do.
  Harry: I wasn't referring to his 1981 speech. I meant his testimony in the January 1982 trial of Severus Snape. Hogwarts doesn't have full transcripts, but The Daily Prophet printed an excerpt. I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I believe Dumbledore used the phrase 'Voldemort's death' during his testimony. If he's running around now saying he always knew Voldemort survived, then he perjured himself during Snape's trial.
• In the infamous My Immortal, a rather bizarre example occurs; as Dumbledore is the only wizard Voldemort is afraid of, Voldemort ingeniously decided to carry out his plan on killing everyone in the room, just without looking at him.
• My Parents' Secret Keeper: Sirius Black is tried and acquitted but, because Arthur Weasley, who is the Minister of Magic in this fic, still believes Sirius to be guilty, isn't allowed to rescue harry from the Dursleys until he learns about a law from the witch hunt days but still valid saying no orphan born to magical parents will live with Muggles for as long as a magical guardian remains. Molly tells Arthur there must be a loophole to stop Sirius but Arthur says there isn't. When explaining this to Harry, Arthur describes it as Sirius using a loophole but it arguably isn't since Sirius is using the law to rescue Harry from the Dursleys and keeping magical children safe from Muggles is the purpose the law was made for.
• From Oh God, Not Again!:
  Harry: Wait... Didn't Draco order you not to try to save my life or to try and drive me from the castle?
  Dobby: Dobby wasn't trying to save the Great Harry Potter's life nor was he trying to send him away from Hogwarts. Dobby was trying to break Harry Potter's arm.
• Repeatedly used in The Parselmouth of Gryffindor:
  • Firstly, this is how Hermione gets around Tom Riddle's orders to the Basilisk. He forbids her to "take any such initiatives as befriending a muggle-born child" ever again, and she replies by ordering the Basilisk to be friends with her — so it's not actually the Basilisk taking an initiative anymore.
  • Later, a Boggart manages to purchase a wand. Wait, you say! Does wizarding law not forbid non-human creatures from owning wands? Well, yes, but wizarding law also classifies Boggarts as "amortal non-beings" — not creatures.
• In Passageways Harry's grandmother mentions a demon which was ordered by the High Priest who summoned it to protect the pharaoh - but not his kingdom. The resulting devastation was what turned Egypt into a desert wasteland.
• In Past's Player Harry promises to stop Obfuscating Stupidity if Tom Riddle will just leave him alone. Tom agrees because Harry didn't specify how long he had to "leave him alone." Feeling generous he gives him a week...
• In Pavement Diaries Bellatrix manages to steal the prophecy orb that only Harry Potter and the Dark Lord can touch:
  As for how she left with the orb, it was such a trivial loophole. So trivial, yet so brilliant. Bellatrix couldn't pick up the orb, but she could move the shelf it was on. So she did, and levitated it in a bag complete with featherlight and invisible extension charms, and walked right out the front door with it.
• In The Potioneer's Assistant Rebrewed Harry suggests that Dobby reveal Lucius' plot to a mirror.
  Harry: I would like you to tell your reflection everything that your Master forbade you from telling another person. Since your Master doesn't consider you to be a person, you can't be compelled not to.
• In The Power of Seven, Susan suggests a legal loophole that would make Harry taking multiple wives perfectly acceptable from the perspective of the wizarding world; as he himself is the heir of two noble families- Potter and Black- he can legally take two wives so that each gives birth to the heirs of those houses, and he could also marry Susan and Luna and let them keep their surnames as they are the last of their respective lines
• In Princess of the Blacks, Jennifer Black is able to bring her pet raven to Hogwarts despite it not being an owl because it's her bonded familiar.
  • Jen abuses loopholes regularly during the tournament. For example, Flitwick wasn't helping her with the tournament, but with career advice; it's just a lucky coincidence that his help was useful for future tasks.
  • Jen gets past the Potions challenge in the final task without using any of the potions (which don't affect her). The Durmstrang potions master wants her disqualified but the Beauxbatons one is rather impressed with her lateral thinking.
  • In the sequel, Jen makes an oath on her magic, knowing full well that such oath can't affect her due to not having any magic herself.
  • In the third book, Jen explains that she can't outright destroy Snape's Dark Mark without destroying his arm, but can move it to something else which she can destroy.
  • Even though her evocation was targeted for an plane nowhere near Death's, he can still hijack Jen's ritual because any magic she does involves traces of his own.
  • In the final book, Jen utilizes the fact that punishment for Evocation is under the jurisdiction of where it's performed, even if the summoned creatures are brought elsewhere. Since she did it in France, she only has to worry about a fine for performing a Dark Art before receiving her license (which she earned that very day).
• In Saving Her, Saving Us All, Sirius is restored to life because after being sent through the Veil of Death, it turns out to be a Veil of Judgment instead, and it judges Sirius' soul to be "pure," and thus refuses to condemn him. Harry is of course tremendously relieved, but then Harry remembers how Sirius almost got Snape killed with a schoolboy prank, so in chapter 3, Harry reluctantly asks Sirius why the Veil judged him to be pure in spite of that. Sirius answers that it was because he was so dumb as a schoolboy, he genuinely-within-his-heart didn't know that his prank could have killed Snape, so the prank didn't dilute his "purity" to the Veil of Judgment.
• Sirius' Savior: There's a law saying nobody can buy more than one wand. The Pureblood bigots don't want Muggleborns to know that, when someone buys wand materials and pays someone to make a wand with them, the resulting wand is "commissioned" instead of "bought" and there's no limit to how many wands one may commission.
• In Technically Speaking a marriage law is instituted. The Wizengamot refuses to repeal it until the British wizarding population increases by 20%. Hermione promptly encourages an appropriate number of foreign magicals to immigrate.
• In To The Waters and the Wild during flying lessons because Madam Hooch told them "no broomsticks in the air" Harry just flies after Draco without a broomstick.
• In Triwizard Without Tears, Snape attempts to take a thousand points from Gryffindor after Harry "completes" the Second Task by draining the Black Lake into the Slytherin dorm. However, Dumbledore reminds him professors are only allowed to deduct a maximum of 200 points at a time. Snape's response is to immediately deduct 200 points from Gryffindor five times in quick succession.
• Harry accidentally lands in the intersection of several legal loopholes in the Undesirable Relations series, and suffers as a result. His parents died with a lawsuit against them, which they could probably have fought and beaten — but the executor of their estate was Peter Pettigrew, who had faked his own death and gone undercover, so didn't respond to any court summons, which resulted in the lawsuit being won by default with a huge award. Then, when debt collectors came after the Dursleys for the outstanding amount, which they couldn't pay and wouldn't have if they could, they instead handled it by legally disavowing responsibility for Harry, with a form intended for disowning Squibs, citing an 'unacceptable level of magical aptitude' — because Harry having any level of magical aptitude is unacceptable to them. Fortunately for Harry, families who take that route are still obligated to provide for the child to go through Muggle schooling — except that since Harry isn't a Squib, he's enrolled in Hogwarts and automatically withdrawn from Muggle schooling, so that protection is then void. The Dursleys can't even continue to provide room and board out of basic decency and family feeling, unless Harry pays a fair rate, because according to goblin-influenced laws on the subject, if they give Harry valuable gifts, they would be considered his allies and become responsible for the debt again — but Harry isn't legally old enough to work, so paying a market rate for room and board is unreasonably difficult. It's a perfect storm of legal oppression that no one, not even the Dursleys, specifically intended.
  Flitwick: You're in a legal limbo where you're not an adult so cannot speak for yourself, yet have no legal guardians to speak for you. There's a branch of social services that handle formal complaints but that requires that the child is in a position to complain in the first place, which isn't always possible. And since you're no longer attending muggle school, that's not available to you regardless.
• In Vahan when Crime Lord!Harry expresses doubts he'd be allowed to bring his pet cougar to Hogwarts his Dragons point out "Hogwarts regulations say you can have a cat, owl, or toad. It doesn't specify breed or size. And she is technically a cat."
• In Chapter 40 of Variations on a Scene, Ron sends back a warning to himself from eight months in the future using a Time Turner even though Time Turners can only send someone back in time six hours. Ron went back in time six hours, convinced that Ron to take the written warning back another six hours and convince that Ron, until they managed to reach the morning of Halloween during their fourth year.
• Averted in Visitor when Voldemort draws up an iron-clad secrecy contract to prevent Madame Pomfrey from mentioning her treating Harry or anything about their meeting to Dumbledore.
  It really was as loophole-free as he'd said it would be. It really was a perfect secrecy contract. If she had actually been planning to tell Dumbledore or anyone else anything, this would have made it impossible. Even the method of 'I'm lying to you but making it so obvious that you know I am lying' had been included in it. When she was finally through it all, twenty minutes had passed. Taking the quill she was being offered, she signed her name, and the contract shone bright silver before disappearing.
• The Well Groomed Mind: Albus Dumbledore became Headmaster during an emergency board meeting held after a half-blood student was killed by his muggle father. Dumbledore knew about the abuse the student used to suffer but, since he wasn't required to report it, he couldn't be legally held liable. because the board couldn't fire a tenured professor, they promoted him to Headmaster to diminish his influence over the student body. The only reason he has any power at Hogwarts is because McGonagall allows it.
• Parodied in What A Cliché:
  Harry: According to rule 149-A slash B-52 subsection alpha-3 beta rotgut of the Hogwarts Rulebook, I demand a resorting!
  Harry: According to rule 721-D slash N-12 subsection beta-9 theta boogedy of the Hogwarts Rulebook, bonded partners of an enrolled student have the right to reside within the castle.
• What Would Slytherin Harry Do? is all about this trope. From using plausible deniability to beat Veritaserum to pointing out that the ban on clubs without Umbridge's permission only extend to regular meetings and their meetings were highly irregular.
• The Widower Maker has Magical Britain enact a Marriage Law that all but enslaves half-bloods and Muggleborns to old Pureblood families. The wording of the law gives the purebloods control over everything their spouses possess, and the spouses are subjected to spells so they won't be able to harm their Pureblood spouse or do anything against their will. However, Harry's wives and their families die one after the other in "accidents" while he cannot be accused of anything: the spells prevent Harry from causing the "accidents" and he couldn't seek help or bring the wives to a doctor since it would mean doing something against their will. He is causing the accidents, but he's using a Time Turner to avoid any consequences: by time-traveling from a point after said people die (which cause all the spells to stop working) to before, he gets to kill the people trying to enslave him while averting any consequences thanks to the legal loophole - and with all of those families' possessions, to boot.
• In A Year Too Soon, Harry asks about Flitwick leaving him at the Leaky Cauldron so Harry can just rent a room there until term starts. Flitwick very firmly tells Harry that he is to escort Harry back to his relatives house, however it's none of his business what Harry gets up to after that.
• In YAIHF, Dobby is able to legally gather artifacts from The Department of Mysteries because he stole a certificate from the Malfoy's vault that says "Give the holder of this paper anything he wants. Signed Cornelius Fudge". The Unspeakable guarding the artifacts doesn't give a damn because he's only supposed to guard them from unauthorized people, and Dobby clearly has authorization, despite being a House-Elf (Also, he hates Fudge, so...).
• One ficlet has Harry getting around the ban on underage magic by getting a job. As he points out, the job requires traveling and irregular hours, making it impossible to prove he wasn't working whenever he casts a spell.

How to Train Your Dragon

• In The Blacksmith's Apprentice, Thuggory attempts to invoke Heir’s Privilege to claim Astrid as his wife, but Hiccup uses that same rule to claim Astrid for himself as local heir takes precedent in the event of such a claim, despite the fact that Berk doesn’t recognise Heir’s Privilege under normal circumstances (which stops Snotlout trying to invoke it after Thuggory leaves).
• In Lost Boy, when Snotlout challenges Hiccup for his position as heir, Hiccup asks if they are allowed to choose their own weapons.
  Hiccup: As you have issued the challenge, I have the right to choose the weapons.
  Mulch: That is correct.
  Snotlout: Then what are you choosing, bitch? You can barely lift an axe or a hammer. Maybe a belt knife? Or a toothpick? Or a—
  Hiccup: I choose dragons.
• In A Thing of Vikings, Sigurd/Snotlout tries using this with regards to Hiccup's accusations of oathbreaking; as he puts it, the oath was that he couldn't use dragons to raid. As far as he's concerned, he's merely been defending the Roman Empire from rebellion by training dragons for them. Hiccup was not amused, and neither was Stoick when he heard about it.

Homestuck

• Hivefled: The Condesce was permitted to choose her weapons for her battle with her ancestor. Technically, a lowblood follower counts as a weapon; she chose the Handmaid, the most powerful psychic ever known.
  • Also, the Grand Highblood isn't actually forbidden from raping teenagers to death and binding their souls to himself.

The Hunger Games

• Cheating Death: Those That Lived: Porter Tripp was born in District Four but lives in District Five. After her victory, the Capitol decides to screw with District Five by giving District Four all of the food and other prizes due to Porter being on the records as one of District Four's citizens.
• Panem Reborn: One of the two arena events for the 103rd Hunger Games requires tributes to deposit 500 milliliters of blood into a metal box. When filled, it would open a gate to a chamber that protects them from a lethal steam wave. The Careers, Connor and the District Seven tributes, and the District Fifteen tributes, fulfilled that requirement by killing a tribute. The District Five tributes and Yorick gave each other minor injuries to fill the metal box.

Inside Out

• Intercom: After struggling with studying for her upcoming test, Riley gets the idea to have the emotions guide her through the test. Fear expresses concern that is cheating, but Riley claims that since the emotions are inside her head, she wouldn't be getting help from an outside source.

Invader Zim

• For the Glory of Irk has this pop up near the end of the story, regarding just who is supposed to run the Irken Empire now that The Conspiracy has been defeated. As Sym points out, technically speaking there's no law that says that the Tallest has to actually be the tallest Irken around, just that the title goes to whoever gets their PAK encoded as Tallest by a Control Brain. Therefore, she sees no problem with CB giving Zim that coding and putting him in charge.
• Gaz Dreams of Genie: Gaz decides to get around the limits of only having Three Wishes by using her third wish to give herself the ability to grant wishes herself. Unfortunately for her, this backfires epically when Azie uses the Exact Words of this wish to make the two of them switch lives.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Zim gets into the tournament in Season 2 Episode 10 despite being banished by exploiting its Exact Words — the invitation was extended to "all current and former Invaders", and Zim was encoded as an Invader before being stripped of his rank, so he technically counts.
• Re: My Hostage, Not Yours: This is how Zim and Gaz eventually decide to handle their relationship, given Irk's cultural policy of mating for life -— if they consider dating the human way just a prolonged courtship, it's not a full mating, and therefore something they can call off if it doesn't work out.

Jackie Chan Adventures

• Ages of Shadow:
  • Using the Sun Souls, Jade/Yade Khan intends to exploit a flaw in the seal holding her in the Shadow Netherworld — she can't permanently escape to Earth, but there's nothing stopping her from dragging the Earth in with her.
  • In classic Jade fashion, she does this with Exact Words during the Final Battle, as the wording of the rules of the game allow her to decide the outcome of duels. It says that the winner is decided by Yade Khan, but that doesn't just mean the game...
• The Ultimate Evil: There are some examples in addition to the canonical ones of Jade and Shendu.
  • During the fight over the Pan'Ku Box in the Tibetian temple, Valerie — who has learned to expect this from Jade — makes Jade and Paco remain in a safe spot by wording her instructions in such a way that Jade can't worm her way out of them.
  • When Shendu demands a kiss from Valerie in exchange for the location of Hsi Wu's hiding place, she merely keeps her lips on his for one second and defends herself by saying that he didn't specify what kind of a kiss he wanted or how long it should be. He accepts the excuse when she points out how demons like working on loopholes.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

• Things Are Gonna Get Easier: Josuke Higashikata's Stand Crazy Diamond, as in canon, can heal anything he touches except himself, which is a problem following his climatic fight with Kira and the resulting injuries that require immense surgery. However, he figures out that while he can't heal himself, he can fix the stitches if he unintentionally tears them as they aren't a part of his physical body. He does admit to Okuyasu and Hayato that doing so really hurts but still works.

Kill la Kill

• How Ryuuko manages to meet Mako in The Outside. As Aikurou points out in Chapter 2, Satsuki's rules are that Ryuuko can't go outside, not that she isn't allowed to look. As such, Ryuuko takes a peek from behind the curtain before opening the window and poking her head out to sniff the air, leading to the encounter.

Kim Possible

• Exam sees a future version of Yori go back in time to stop her past self assassinating Kim as her graduation assignment from Yamanuchi in the belief that killing Kim was necessary to keep Ron on his destined path, as Ron's life has just been miserable since Kim's death even after he married Yori. Seeing her future self's self-loathing, the younger Yori just hits Kim with a tranquiliser dart and returns to Sensei, arguing that the conditions of the test are to confirm that she can perform an assassination and the fact that she chose not to use a lethal dart on Kim doesn't change the fact that she could have killed Kim.

The Legend of Zelda

• After Link finds himself at the Temple of Souls in Raising Link, Cia and Lana argue about what to do with him. Cia wants to keep Link at the temple and grant him immortality once he's older so that he can be the sisters' lover, and while Lana secretly desires the same thing, she feels Link would be better of at Castle Hyrule. When Lana insists that Link has no place at the temple since every incarnation of him is always destined to defeat Ganondorf and save Hyrule, Cia argues that nowhere does it say that Link can't stay at the temple with them before and after his adventure.

Library of Ruina

• In Hikari, Yesod suddenly gains a permanent Compelling Voice due to a Mass Super-Empowering Event, which instantly hypnotizes anyone who hears it except for when Yesod specifies the intended recipient - in which case it'll only hypnotize said recipient. At first, he writes everything he wants to say on a notepad instead and considers sign language, but then he figures out (thanks to Netzach, who had it from his assistant Yumi in turn) that because of Required Secondary Powers, he is immune. Thus, he (reluctantly) becomes a Third-Person Person for the rest of the story. The chapter's description even lampshades this trope.

Lucifer (2016)

• Tragic Life Changes sees Chloe being saved from her death in a plane crash by God Himself as He realised that her death was part of a plan to force Lucifer back to Hell, God keeping Chloe safe in Lucifer's rooms in Heaven until he and his other children could identify the perpetrators. When Chloe returns to Earth to assist with the investigation, Raziel observes that she doesn't have to worry about breaking department policy as she is both technically still legally dead and unofficially acting as God's agent, so it's unlikely any existing authority is qualified to rule her actions as illegal.

Lyrical Nanoha

• In this fan comic, the three main characters are faced with a maze to solve. While Fate solves it according to the rules, and Nanoha goes for a Dungeon Bypass, Hayate, "one who uses cheap techniques," draws her line outside the maze, since no one said the line had to go through the maze.

Mass Effect

• In And the Meek Shall Inherit the Galaxy, the Exact Words method of loophole abuse gets lampshaded and subverted when the newly formed Independent League is held to the galaxy-wide Dreadnaught limit. Some turians are furious about this due to the fact that the League willingly accepts the limitation... because the combat doctrine the humans introduced has all but made dreadnaughts obsolete in favor of carriers. The Citadel Council refuses to place a similar limit on carriers to stay on the good side of the League.
• In The Fourth Council Race, humanity, in order to close the technological gap between them and the Citadel, lists the help of quarian specialists in exchange for the Migrant Fleet being given access to Alliance ship construction and service facilities. Had they offered them dextro planets, the Council could have taken actual action, but as it is... trading with the Migrant Fleet if fully legal, so all they can do is send a note of protest, because showing eagerness to change rules on a whim will not be taken positively by their own corporations.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• The Avengers: Endgame follow-up fic Body and Soul: The Endgame Fix uses an interesting loophole as part of a plot twist to bring Natasha back to life; the Natasha who died was a Skrull that had taken her place shortly after the snap, but since Barton believed the Skrull was Natasha when 'she' died for the Soul Stone, it still counted as him sacrificing someone he loved.

Mega Man

• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, ProtoMan is fond of exploiting these in regards to his programming.
  • Drill Man does likewise in Episode 8.

Merlin (2008)

• Utilised by Merlin in Shades of Destiny when he enters the Underworld instead of Lancelot to make the Callieach recall the spirits of the dead and leaves it afterwards. While the Callieach had intended for another death to end the current assault, Merlin points out that he fulfilled all the requirements of their deal, as he would be willing to die for Lancelot if it was necessary and he passed through the veil of his own free will, but simply never agreed he would stay there afterwards.

Miraculous Ladybug

• In Break it down, Butterfly, it is stated that a kwami has no say what happens to their miraculous until their user dies. When Gabriel had his heart seizure, his heart briefly stopped, giving Nooroo the window he needed to escape.
• In Marc Being In A Gang Rights, after Nathaniel was kidnapped, Marc gives him a knife to keep on hand incase something happened in the future. Lila notifies Damocles that Nathaniel has a knife in his locker and tries to suspend him for bringing a weapon to school, only for Marc to bail him out, pointing out that Section 3, page 87, third paragraph of the school's rulebook allows knives below 5-inches (the knife itself four inches) for self-defense purposes. The fact that it was in his locker and not being used maliciously certainly helped Marc and Nathan's case.
• One step backwards and Three forwards:
  • Tikki and Plagg exploit this to its fullest when forced to grant the Wishes of Hawkmoth and his followers. Both kwami even discuss this right in front of the villains, cheerfully observing how folks like them never think their requests through, and Plagg gloats over all the loopholes he's finding as the pair get to work.
  • In particular, Lila wishes for three things: to become a rich and famous celebrity, to be the center of Adrien's universe, and for Ladybug to suffer. Each of these is twisted around to work against her:
    • Her desire for fame makes her a magnet for Tabloid Melodrama. Whenever one of her wicked schemes blows up in her face, the results are widely publicized, making her increasingly infamous.
    • As to not come in conflict with his Wish, Adrien was split into two different people, with one keeping his name and appearance while all his memories go to Felix Agreste, his older brother. In addition, her Wish didn't actually force this new Adrien to love her — he's simply compelled to be around her. While she technically ends up as the center of his universe, it's actually because he loves superheroes, and in this new reality, superheroes only existed in comic books until Dame Papillion starts working to protect Paris... and to take down supervillains like Lila.
    • Finally, her Wish for Ladybug to suffer is applied to the Ladybug Earrings rather than to Marinette. In the new world, Emilie has the Earrings, and thus has to contend with Tikki's vengeful behavior and the Earrings being cursed.
  • While Marinette and Adrien didn't officially Wish on the combined Miraculi, both spent their last moments before the reality-warping wave lamenting their inability to stop the villains and wishing they'd done things differently. This is just enough to allow both of them to keep all their memories of the original world, helping them reunite and start planning to ensure karma catches up to Hawkmoth and the rest.
  • Although using a Miraculous to terrorize or torment somebody is obviously an abuse of power, it doesn't count as such if the kwami voluntarily decides to do so on their own. Tikki and Plagg take full advantage of this to wreck havoc at the Agreste Manor, and Trixx also exploits this to get up to their own antics after being recovered from Alya.
  • Though magically compelled to answer Nino's questions, Wayzz carefully phrases his responses in order to mislead and misdirect them.
• Scarlet Lady:
  • When Alec challenges Nino to convince two famous people to come dance on their set, Nino picks two of his friends: Adrien (who works as a supermodel) and Alya (who runs the Ladyblog). Alec starts to complain that he's missing the "spirit" of the challenge, but backs down when Nino reminds him of how he screwed over Simon Says and got him akumatized.
  • After Chat Noir forces Marinette to promise she won't get involved with akuma attacks anymore, she gets around it by becoming the Bee heroine Marigold. After all, he was worried about her getting involved as a civilian, not a superheroine.
  • When Nora challenges Alya and her friends to arm-wrestle her in order to "earn" the right to go out, they all accept the challenge at the same time, making it four against one. They use this to drive home the point they're trying to make about The Power of Friendship, citing how they can conquer challenges by working together. Sadly, Nora completely misses the point.
  • Played for Laughs when Adrien repeatedly emphasizes how Adrien has to stay home and practice piano instead of going out to meet his friends... while preparing to transform into Chat Noir and sneak out.
  • After Chloé rips up Marc's journal, the art teacher informs her that she's been banned from the Art Room, as she broke his one rule: destroying someone else's work. Chloé tries arguing that it doesn't count because they weren't in the Art Room at the time, but he rejects her reasoning.
• In Secret Santa Clause, Marinette and Adrien both use this trope to their advantage during the class Secret Santa. Marinette gets Lila and is at first devastated but ultimately realizes that the rules only state that the gifts must be meaningful, not that said meaning must be pleasant or positive; as such, she gives Lila a Ladybug purse (infuriating the secret Ladybug-hater), a sinfully rich brownie that her father tried out but discarded as a bakery item (forcing Lila to work off the calories), a cheap pearl bracelet (referencing Lila turning into a clam as Chameleon) and finally arranging for her mother to visit and collapse her house of lies. Adrien on the other hand is able to give Marinette insanely expensive and valuable gifts simply because they don't cost him anything due to him getting them through his father's company.

My Hero Academia

• Black Fox Series has vigilante Izuku being Quirkless; this means he receives fewer charges than he was supposed to have when the heroes found him, as the legal definition for vigilantism had been changed from taking the law into one's own hands to using your Quirk for heroic purposes without a license, which a Quirkless person cannot do by definition.
• In Blessings of the Goddess (NSFW story where humans have Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, and only women have Quirks), the rules of the Sports Festival state that no woman can help another woman make gear for others. Since Izuku (the first man to enter U.A. ever) is a man, he's allowed to help Mei and build gear for her.
• Ochako in The Emerald Phoenix secures the win for herself and Iida during the Heroes vs Villains exercise by taking the bomb outside of the building that was the testing site. All-Might praises her ingenuity in doing so, then says it's no longer allowed in future matches.
• Horizon: Star Driven:
  • Due to the kind of danger support gear possess if it ever fell into villainy, building anything that would even fall under the broad category of support gear-related engineering would be thoroughly confiscated or shut down without a license and corporate contract... but sports gear is much easier to build and patent, so Izuku files his Hover Board as an experimental form of sports gear.
  • When Izuku begins to draw the attention of pro-heroes who try to arrest him when he is testing his hover tech, Izuku points out that pro-heroes can't legally arrest people. They can "detain" people (and even then, it's sketchy to call it "legal" detainment) for police officers to arrest, but since pro-heroes go through a completely different form of training than the police and are less associated with the procedural side of law-enforcement, a compromise was reached. Izuku doesn't even have to let them catch him since they can't charge him with "resisting arrest."
    Byte: Oh my god. You can't be charged. At all.
    Izuku: Nope.
• Implied in Izuku's Catsuki. Midoriya figures that his Quirk, the ability to turn any human into an ordinary house cat, would be useless in the U.A. entrance exam. So, he gets the idea that he doesn't have to excel in the exam, he just has to make sure no one else does and proceeds to disqualify as many participants as he can by turning them into cats. Midoriya earns a spot at the school while all the participants he disqualified will get another chance after they revert back to normal.
  All Might: Um, is this allowed?
  Nezu: I think it's interesting.
• Looping Back to the Beginning:
  • Class 1-A are the only ones that loop. When Mineta lost his spot in the class, he stopped looping, and Shinsou, his replacement, started looping in his stead. This is also how Todoroki continued looping even after the loop where he was forced to go on the run after murdering Endeavour; despite having never attending a single class at UA, the administration never took him off the roster (with Aizawa deliberately choosing not to remind them to).
  • This is how Shinsou replaced Mineta in Class 1-A to begin with. Midoriya tore through most of the robots at the Entrance Exam, but some of them were still functioning on some level. Shinsou, who was at the same site as him, grabbed a rebar and promptly destroyed those still functioning that were incapacitated by him. He wasn't even sure if what he did counted for his score.
• One for All and Eight for the Ninth: After they end up in Hosu, Gran Torino gives Iida permission to use his Quirk, but only to rescue people and not for combat. Iida still goes after Stain like in canon, but follows Torino's instructions (as well as his lessons on flexibility and grief) by trying to get Native out of the alleyway and never actually fighting Stain. Later, Torino admits he's pissed that Iida went after the Hero Killer despite everything UA did to make sure he didn't, but he's also proud of how interpreted his instructions in a different way.
• Invoked in Null and Void (NevaraRaven). While at first glance the odds of the "Heroes vs. Villains" seem designed to be stacked against the Villain team, it doesn't take long for Izuku to realize that the rules were purposefully designed to be taken as Exact Words.
  • Since it isn't expressly forbidden, it's encouraged that both teams outsource and ask for non-hero course students to join them.
  • Two of the rules are "Keep all of the Villain Team together without losing a single member" and "Betray a Teammate". Izuku comes up with the solution of having someone on the Hero Team think that they are on the Villain Team and betray them. As a bonus, he picks Mineta to be the patsy as a form of Karma Houdini Warranty.
  • Both teams are given a list of objectives to do. Doing their team's objectives are how they score points, and once an objective is complete, doing them again will score no points. This gives Izuku the idea for the Villain Team to do the Hero Team's objectives before the Hero Team can. While this doesn't earn the Villain Team any points, it reduces the number of points the Hero Team can get.
• Think Before You Speak:
  • Nedzu informs Aizawa that he can't expel any of his students this year. This does not prevent Aizawa from threatening to do so, since the kids aren't aware that he can't actually follow through like he could for previous classes.
  • More insidiously, Aizawa decides that if he can't simply boot Izuku out of 1-A, he'll work around the problem by lying to Tensei, falsely claiming that Izuku was responsible for Tenya being injured during a training exercise. He figures that Tensei will spread his Malicious Slander around, ruining Izuku's reputation and getting him Convicted by Public Opinion, forcing U.A. to get rid of the poor kid.
• Unexpected: After Present Mic tells all of the aspiring students to "Bring anything you like!" to aid them in the entrance exam, Izuku brings a tank, after reading all variants of the UA Handbook to make sure it wasn't against the rules. Present Mic is actually impressed.
• Viridian: The Green Guide:
  • As Izuku finds out, the Quirkless technically cannot be vigilantes, as vigilantism as defined by the law is to use one's quirk similar to a pro-hero without a hero license.
  • When the police first learn about the new vigilante, they can’t officially call Izuku one until they find out that he beat up a would-be rapist to save a reporter because, until that point, he didn’t fight any villains; he just alerted Pro-Heroes to crimes-in-progress so they can deal with the villains.
• In Well, I Guess that’s my Quirk now Izuku is able to use guns, and lots of them, to take the UA entrance exam because he and his mother managed to get his Quirk registration changed from "Quirkless" to "Weapons", that "allows the user to wield all kinds of weapons – even illegal – in environments in which it is appropriate to use them", and a fake city filled with armed robots programmed to harm him is indeed an appropriate environment.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Diaries of a Madman has several examples. Navarone and Discord both love this trope, but Celestia also occasionally makes use of it as well.
• The Great Alicorn Hunt: Lesser draconequus Malfunziona can't directly affect any of the livestock at the expo in Chapter 38. So he breaks their enclosures and sets off a string of loud firecrackers, causing a mass livestock panic / stampede, thus distracting the opposition.
• The Moonstone Cup: This is used to justify Twilight's preparations for the fight against Amarok, since her wing spell was never dispelled after the qualifying round during which she made it.
• The Unchosen One: It's revealed that Trixie did this during her final exams as a student at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.
  • One part of the test required levitating a set of cubes, with the effort required increasing exponentially with each one. Trixie managed four before realizing that the cubes still count as levitating as long as they're airborne and don't touch the ground, meaning that if she juggles them, she only really had to actively levitate one or two at a time; she ended up lifting all ten using this method, creating an unbeatable record (the rules were amended so future students couldn't repeat the trick). When the story is brought up, Celestia notes that Trixie would have been fine regardless, since the passing grade was three. Meanwhile, Twilight managed nine using the intended method when she took the test, and spent years trying to figure out how somepony managed to get a better result; she's horrified to learn not only how that feat was accomplished, but that it was Trixie who did it.
  • Another part involved getting past a teacher's magical defenses and hitting them. Once again, Trixie didn't have enough raw magical power to accomplish this directly, but nothing about the rules said it had to be directly. She passed that it by destroying the stage he was standing on, so that he'd drop the barrier himself out of utter shock and get injured from the fall.

Naruto

• Naruto thrives on this in Cheaters Prosper. He cheats in the first exam by walking up to Kabuto and stealing his exam (which costs him only two points). For the second, he steals a couple scrolls then uses Henge to smuggle himself and his team onto Anko's coat so they arrive at the tower first.
• Naruto in A Drop of Poison creates two additional personas with Kage Bunshin to increase his odds of graduating from the academy. If any of them graduate, they're still him so he legally becomes a genin. He also notes that in the event someone kicks up a fuss or he doesn't graduate, he can argue that since no one discovered him, he deserves to be made a ninja anyway.
• In Geniuses of Hard Work, Kakashi and Gai made a bet regarding which team does better in the Chunin Exams. If Kakashi wins, Gai will have to give up wearing his green spandex; if Gai wins, Kakashi will have to unmask in front of Gai. Gai eventually wins, and Kakashi unmasks...to reveal another mask underneath. When Gai protests, the Third Hokage says that Kakashi is honoring the bet, since Gai asked him to "unmask", not to "reveal his face".
• A Growing Affection: Hyouta Hyuga asked Naruto to agree to set aside his weapons so they could fight on even ground. When Hyouta breaks out his holdout kunai, everyone gets mad at him for breaking the deal, and Hyouta points out that he never agreed to fight without weapons, he just asked Naruto to do so.
  • Tsunade promised not to send any Leaf Shinobi to rescue Princess Nyoko. Which does not cover hiring the Sand Ninja to find the princess, and then telling a group of ninjas, who happen to be Nyoko's friends and have a history of going AWOL, exactly where she is being held.
• The Hat Hangs Heavy: Sasuke goes to Danzo for extra training, only for the man to inform him that he legally can't train Sasuke. However, Danzo declares that a couple of his underlings will be sparring at a specific training ground later and there's nothing he can do if Sasuke happens to be nearby and watching with his Sharingan active.
• In Minimum Requirement, a pair of ninjas assigned to babysit an infant Naruto, hoping to get rid of him without disappointing the Hokage, successfully sign him up for the ninja academy after seeing it has no minimum age requirement. The Hokage is naturally furious and the two ninjas are Reassigned to Antarctica.
• Naruto Myoushuu No Fuuin: Team 7 obliterates the record for the second Chunin Exam this way. Each team is given a token worth between one and nine points and told to reach the tower with at least twenty-five points worth of tokens. Naruto pick pockets several teams beforehand then they sprint to the tower, beating the five-day exam in twenty minutes.
• New Chance:
  • During the Chunin Exams, Naruto's simple solution to the first test is to summon clones on the outside of the classroom (he's by the window) in full view of all the proctors. The clones proceed to work out the problems in the test by literally acting out the scenarios from the test.
    Proctor: D-Does this method count as cheating?
    Ibiki: (amused) No, it doesn't. He is solving the questions by his own, not getting the answers from another test, that would be cheating. Because I didn't stablish any rule about how to solve the questions this method is completely legal.
  • Naruto, again, when there's a breakout at Konoha's prison. The Hokage (Jiraiya) said he needed every ninja to help. So since he just became a genin he counts as a ninja and so does Hinata so they can help. When Hayate points out that Naruto and Hinata aren't technically ninja until they get approval from their jonin sensei and should retreat, Naruto then argues that he's going to help any way since Hayate can't order him around since he's not Naruto's commanding officer.
• In One Eye, Full of Wisdom, Sakura quickly tells Shino in the prelims that there's no rule stating she has to fight him inside the room everyone's assembled in. She leads him on a merry chase throughout the building using hit and run tactics. Afterwards, the rules are changed so that leaving the arena counts as a forfeit, but Sakura gets a good deal of respect for her outside the box thinking.
• During the first exam in Reaching for a Dream, Naruto takes advantage of only losing two points for being caught cheating by punching out one of the chuunin plants and stealing his exam. While impressed, Ibiki promptly declares that anyone imitating him will fail automatically, because they'd only be copying Naruto who had the balls to come up with it himself.
• Real Skill has Kakashi sent back to the Academy after Naruto takes both bells during the bell test. As Naruto pointed out (and the Hokage agreed), the rules stated that anyone without a bell at noon would be sent back to the academy.
• In Team 7's Ascension, part of the first test in the Chunin Exams involves finding a code hidden in a room to escape then hiding it yourself for the next candidate. Since Shino knows Chouji will be the next one in the room, he simply leaves the code on the table in the middle of the room.
• In Team 8, Naruto, Hinata and Shino have managed to get the scrolls they need to pass the second part of the chunin exam, but need to reach the tower at the center of the Forest of Death while dodging all the other examinees. Naruto realizes then that it doesn't matter how they do it, just that they do so. Cue Kage Bushin.
• What You Knead:
  • The Sandaime forbid anyone from telling Naruto about his parents. However, Kakashi realizes that he can still tell him stories about his old genin team, including his teacher Minato and Minato's girlfriend/wife. So long as he doesn't reveal Kushina's last name or their blood ties to the boy, he's still technically following orders.
  • In order to graduate from the academy, students have to demonstrate their ability to make a bunshin copy of themselves. Since one of Naruto's issues is that he has too much chakra and too little control, Kakashi teaches him the Kage Bunshin technique so he can put that excess energy to use — as he tells the exasperated Iruka, nothing specifies what kind of bunshin they need to make.
• In The World's Greatest Chunin Exam Team, a Kage retains the rank they had before they gained their title. Since Gaara was groomed to be Kazekage immediately after the invasion, he never had the chance to retake the exam and is still technically a genin. Meaning that he is still eligible to participate in the exam as a member of Team Terumi. Which is comprised of two other S-Class ninja as his teammates (who also happen to be genin) and another Kage as the jonin-sensei. Yeah.
• Fanfic/Your Heart a Haven of Thorns|Naruto}}:
  • Kikyō exploits this when Kakashi "temporarily" leaves her in charge of Team Seven while he avoids the Tiger summon for a while. Upon his return, he attempts to kick her out of the room, declaring that she's not part of their team, only for her to remind him of what he did. Turns out that there's nothing in the Konoha Guide Rules and Regulations of Chains of Command that states the commander of a unit always needs to be human, and she staunchly refuses to cede command back to him, citing her concerns about his competency as a leader and teacher.
  • While introducing Sakura to her homelands, Kikyō makes a point of reviewing a copy of the guidebook, as well as the contract she made with the Nindaime concerning her territory in the Forest of Death. She does this specifically to ensure that everything is in order and that the Sandaime won't be able to exploit any loopholes himself.
• This NSFW story combines Loophole Abuse with Refuge in Audacity when Naruto comes to the Hyuuga clan to get rid of their Caged Bird Seal. The elders claim it's necessary and traditional, dating back to when they were a wandering clan. Naruto responds by putting on a Suna headband and, as a member of a rival clan, says he will attack them, put their men to the sword, and carry off their women. Because there's nothing more traditional than that. He then proceeds to beat the hell out of the entire clan, including the clan head and use their own laws to declare that they've officially surrendered once he beats Hiashi.

Nasuverse

• Fate/Black Dawn: Like most of Shirou's magic, his time travel involved him finding a "loophole" in a supposedly immutable magical law. He notes that not only Zelretch but the world itself could easily decide to stop him, but they don't.
• Fate/Gamers Only:
  • Rikku in Extra Comic 007 deals with Medb's own Loophole Abuse to enter the competition multiple times because there was no rule stated preventing her from doing so by threatening the judges at gunpoint to give her a score higher than 11 because there are no rules against threats or a stated score limit of 10, and Medb is unable to disqualify her because invalidating Rikku's cheating should invalidate her own cheating too.
  • Rikku materializes dynamite using the device that changes her clothes by telling it that her desired item is part of her clothing, as she found out that it can't tell the difference between clothing and other objects.
• Fate/Harem Antics: Ruler challenges Berserker. As they prepare to battle, Shirou tries to avoid violence by pointing out Ruler is not supposed to fight in the Holy Grail War. Ruler says it is not a fight, it is an unofficial spar.

Odd Squad

• In OSMU: Fanfiction Friction, Orla uses the fact that she's 500 years old to access age-restricted fanfictions, despite the fact that she looks to be 11 or 12. Olympia asks her if she can use the same tactic to sneak into R-rated movies, only for her to respond that it's more trickier to do it in-person than online.

OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes

• Professor Venemous attempts this in Fink and KO when he tries to buy KO from his mother after finding out Fink has a crush on him and figuring he can make it legal since KO isn't technically a human, but a werepuppy. Carol, of course, refuses.

Once Upon a Time

• A particularly twisted example in A Darker Curse; when Cora cast the Dark Curse rather than Regina, she had the initial 'handicap' that she didn't have anything she loved enough to use as the instigating sacrifice, but Rumpel helped her find a loophole by sacrificing her twisted husband, Snow's father, as Cora had loved him in a sense when they initially married even if it was never a true love.

One Piece

• In One Piece, Two Piece, Red Piece, Blue Piece, during the Davy Fight Arc, it's pointed out that the obstacle course challenge doesn't say you can't fly. Sora's Zoan form has wings. Do the math.

Pokémon

• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
  • In the Johanna tie-in story, her parents' medical insurance is canceled because her father used to be a smoker and her mother had asthma as a child.
  • The Sensational Sisters, despite not being otherwise very bright, were quite good at this with things that annoyed them, as shown when they kicked Misty out of their home by giving her a special permit so she could have an early start as a trainer and avoiding getting into legal troubles. Of course, when they tried to pull a similar stunt on Ash, it backfired horribly on them.
  • A minor example on Ash's part; he technically faces Giovanni with seven Pokémon, as he sends Pikachu's Poke Ball back to Professor Oak so that he can equip himself with a six-'mon team specifically selected to go up against Ground-Types, but Pikachu accompanies the girls to the stands to watch the battle rather than sitting on Ash's shoulder as usual.
  • Ash benefits from another loophole instance in his League battle with Joshua when he defeats Joshua's Fearow by punching it himself; while technically League battles should just be between the trainers' Pokémon, Joshua was attempting to psyche Ash out by having Fearow fly too close to Ash's position on the field, with the League referee observing that anyone would lash out at a Fearow getting that close to them and it was actually safer to do it himself rather than use Pikachu when Ash still had Exeggutor on the field.
• Pokémon Tabletop Utopus Region: The Bug-Catching Competition does not allow competitors to attack each other. There is, however, no rule against the competitors attacking the wild Pokemon - which is useful to the protagonists, because one of their team is a powerful martial artist. There's also no rule against Scarlet choosing one Pokémon, and then channelling another so that she basically has access to all their moves and techniques as well.

Pretty Cure

• In ''Hatch Ya Later' Ryouta eats a green cupcake to cheat on his "green food only" diet.

RWBY

• Abound on both sides in The Beacon Civil War.
  • For the girls' side, the rules of the war game clearly state that no one can be prevented from entering the infirmary (though they can't hide there and will be discharged as soon as they're medically fit). But nothing says they can't post guards outside the infirmary to take men prisoner as they leave.
  • On the boys' side, Jaune refuses to trade food for his captured men after his side has taken the cafeteria from the girls, because the rules state that if one side can't/doesn't feed their prisoners three meals a day, said prisoners have to be released. Since the girls don't even have enough food for themselves, they're forced to release all of their prisoners.
• In Professor Arc: Student of Vacuo, Jaune's second practical lesson for his students is to set two random sets of partners against each other with randomized weapons. Cardin and Russel immediately swap weapons (a rapier and great axe respectively) while some other students discard their weapons entirely and fight barehanded. Jaune praises such actions, giving Cardin and Russel in particular top marks for their ingenuity.
• White Sheep: Jinn is an omniscient genie who can answer any three questions about the past or present, but not the future. Those are the rules, here are the loopholes:
  • Ozpin discovered that he can get a pretty good idea of the future by asking what someone plans for the future. Those plans could always change, but it's better than rushing in blind. He has also found that asking purposefully vague questions gets the best results; sure he gets a bunch of useless information in the process, but he can easily sift through it for the important stuff.
  • Because Jinn can't give any actual information about the future, asking about it doesn't count as a question. If she likes you, she will help speculate about the future, even if that requires using information from the past or the present, without counting as asking a question.

Rosario + Vampire

• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
  • In Act II, Kokoa, having fallen in love with Tsukune herself, invokes the Eia Dreahl, a sacred vampire pact that is punishable by death if broken, to see whether or not herself or Moka would be his mate. When they tell the others as such, they fail to specify that the pact was only supposed to be between the two of them, only stating that "the first girl to give Tsukune a nosebleed wins." Yukari promptly seizes this opportunity, with predictable results.
  • Likewise, Inner Moka also realizes that the pact didn't actually specify how Tsukune was supposed to get a nosebleed, only that he did get one, and thus wins by punching Tsukune in the face and giving him a bloody nose.
  • When Kokoa inadvertently breaks the Eia Dreahl by sleeping with Tsukune while possessed in Act III, Dark saves her from execution by pointing out that Inner Moka won the pact, but it was Outer Moka who actually mated with Tsukune. Since the two are a Split Personality and Inner Moka didn't actually break the pact, the agreement is null and void and thus no one has to die.
  • At the end of Act III, Tsukune uses the Chrono Displacement spell to rewind time by a day and save his friends from death, dooming himself to die by 10:45 PM the next day. When the time comes, however, Tsukune's ghoul form was in control of his body, and since it had its own identity and personality, the ghoul was killed instead, leaving Tsukune alive and cured of its influence.

Sonic the Hedgehog

• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Shortly after the Wachowskis secretly adopt Obsidian the newborn alien, Commander Walters tells them that they must not take in any more aliens. When Commander Walters does find out about the adoption, Maddie points out that they adopted him before the deal. Unfortunately, Walters is too much of a xenophobe to let that slide and attempts to kidnap Obsidian right there and then.

Star Trek

• Subverted in "Shortest War Ever". Kanril Eleya retroactively justifies intervening militarily to stop a nuclear war on Volante by citing a revision to General Order 24 (pointedly dated after "A Taste of Armageddon") stating that for a Starfleet vessel to intentionally depopulate an inhabited planet requires a direct order from the President of the Federation and ratification by the Federation Council. She then argues that her inaction would have led to the depopulation of Volante, and therefore she would have been in violation of the law had she not intervened. Admiral Velasquez calls BS on the excuse and Eleya admits "I did the only thing that was going to let me sleep at night!"
• The War of the Masters:
  • Don't Say Goodbye, Farewell: Captain Kanril Eleya is accused of aiding and abetting a fugitive when she lets Moab Confederacy Defense Force Colonel Janice Qua leave after they assault an Orion base together. She steamrolls the accusation on two counts: One, she had seen video of Qua's original detention and judged it to have violated so many civil rights protections that any decent judge would have dismissed the charges with prejudice, which would in turn make it illegal for Eleya to detain Qua as an escaped fugitive. She also has no grounds to place Qua under arrest as a prisoner of war, since the Federation and Moab are not technically at war given that the Federation Council has not authorized military force to recover the breakaway group of colonies, who did follow the constitutional procedure to secede from the Federation.^note Other material states that while full members have the right to hold secession referenda, whether a colony of a member state can secede is an unresolved constitutional question.
  • Create Your Own Fate: Eleya repeatedly uses irregularities in the chain of command to deal with problems, starting with an interaction with a Starfleet Intelligence commander, Lastagee, where she points out that if he can't provide her with his supposed secret orders, she has no proof that they actually exist—and as such, since she outranks him, she's within her rights to directly order him to pound sand. Somewhat amusingly in hindsight, Lastagee's orders in fact DON'T exist, because he's a shapeshifted Undine.
• In What I Did for Love, it's established that infants with parents serving on starships can only stay there for the first six months of life, after which they have to leave, and the parents can either give up their working life as they currently know it to raise a child, or said child will be raised by other people. Neither option is particularly appealing for Jim and Spock. However, there's no specified age limit for ambassadors, who have the right to travel on Federation ships for any length of time, and therefore technically there's no reason why their newborn daughter can't be named as a junior member of the Vulcan Diplomatic Corps and stay aboard the Enterprise with her parents after the sixth-month limit is up.

Steven Universe

• In this fancomic, Peridot follows Amethyst's advice to try gardening in literally any place but the Kindergarten, and... well, let's just say that Homeworld becomes quite overrun in heavy vegetation that not even the Quartz soldiers can get past.

Super Mario Bros.

• The Sea Shadow: When Doopliss steals his identity, Mario is cursed to be unable to say his name. However, there is nothing preventing him from describing himself to Vivian and her realizing who he is based on the clues.

Teen Titans

• In The End of Ends, the condition of being able to use the Dark Prognosticus is to have an empty heart and have never found true happiness. A cybernetic heart's essentially the same as an empty heart... Though it's unsaid how Beljar managed to fulfill the latter part.
  • It says to have an empty heart and never found true happiness, it doesn't state the User has to be the one with both.

Tolkien's Legendarium

• Heart of Ashes: After Smaug has found Kathryn with Andraya's help, the witch demands for Smaug to repay the debt by impregnating her daughter Freyja. The dragon turned human refuses and reminds Andraya that their original deal included Andraya helping Smaug find Kathryn in exchange for "helping Andraya with a small task". He did that just a moment ago by uncharacteristically helping Andraya with a heavy sack.

Transformers

• In Chapter 11 of Only Human, Arcee, having been changed into a human thanks to a Cybertronian artifact known as the Reformatting Module, reflects on Optimus Prime's rule of Autobots not harming humans and realizes that she's technically not an Autobot in a physical sense at the moment; as such, said rule is inapplicable to her. Arcee uses this to justify the Curb-Stomp Battle she just gave to the local Jerkass Vince.

Warrior Cats

• In the Accusation Fic Innocent or Guilty, the author argues that Thistleclaw was really a good person because nothing in the Code explicitly forbids warriors from beating up kittens ^note except for rule 15's statement that all warriors are obligated to protect Clan kits, which Thistleclaw's victim was not, and Thistleclaw didn't actually kill the kit...because a bystander forced him not to. So "technically" it's not murder! And technically, there's no rule against attempted murder, so StarClan was being horribly unfair in not letting him join their ranks.

Warhammer40000

• All Guardsmen Party: After the epic clusterfrak at the research facility in "The [REDACTED] Conspiracy", the Deathwatch Apothecary decides arresting the Guardsmen is no longer his squad's responsibility. After all, his orders were to assist the Inquisitor he was assigned to, not do the Inquisitor's job for him. With said Inquisitor dead before his squad arrived, the Deathwatch are under no obligation to do anything except report back to their Watch Station for reassignment. Any other fallout is accordingly between his superiors and the Inquisition, not him or his squad. This obvious attempt to blow it all off as not his problem and make shit fall upwards for once causes the Guardsmen to all feel that Space Marines are Mirroring Factions after all.

Worm

• In the quest He Who Devours the World, the players (as an alt-power Nilbog) end up being forced under a geas by a villain working for the Elite. The geas works like Lelouch's power, in that the person affected has to abide by a verbal statement from the caster, and this statement can only be made once. The statement in question was "As long as we [the Elite] find you useful, you will not betray us." Players quickly figured out that all it would take to break the geas was someone in the Elite calling them useless. And then somebody figured out that their partner (who had earlier refused a deal with the Elite and was on the players' side because they rescued her) technically counted as a member of the Elite because she had decided to aid the players even though she knew they had been suborned, so she could break the geas on them.
• The divergent point of the comedy fic Path To Munchies: The restrictions that the Entity Eden put on Contessa's Path to Victory power made her completely unable to model or plan for the Entities, the Endbringers or their plan, but they did not prevent Contessa from making a Path to model and bypass the restrictions themselves.
• In Blanket AKA The Diaper Changer, Taylor's mother has the power of teaching people very well, but she can't teach herself. She can, however, film herself teaching a lesson and then watch it.

Young Justice

• In Scouting, Superman gets on Conner and M'gann's case for sleeping together despite believing them to be under the age of consent. After doing some research, M'gann finds out different states have different ages of consent, with their current state (Rhode Island) being 16. While neither are technically 16, Connor and M'gann are the equivalent for their respective races, which M'gann smugly points out to Superman as she drags Connor to bed.

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