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Frink: "Yes, over here, [...] in Episode BF12, you were battling barbarians while riding a winged Appaloosa, yet in the very next scene, my dear, you're clearly atop a winged Arabian! Please do explain it!" Lucy Lawless: "Uh, yeah, well, whenever you notice something like that... a wizard did it." Frink: "Yes, alright, yes, in episode AG04-" Lucy Lawless: "Wizard!" - The Simpsons, "Treehouse of Horror X"
The standard all-encompassing explanation for any continuity errors noticed by hardcore fans of any given fantasy show. (If it doesn't make sense, A Wizard Did It. Move on, nothing to see here.)
Can be used to Hand Wave away minor nitpicks and Contrived Coincidences that should really be covered by Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. However, using it to excuse major Plot Holes that the creators really should've caught beforehand will make people angry at you.
Contrast Bellisarios Maxim, MST3K Mantra, Doing In The Wizard See also Plot Sensitive Items
Examples:
Literature
- One of The Oldest Ones In The Book, in Don Quixote, whether his beloved Dulcinea appears to be a garlic-chewing peasant, or our hero is transported from his inn chamber to fight a giant (who is actually a passel of wineskins hung above his bed), Don Quixote believes it is due to malevolent enchanters. This doesn't quite count as an example, as the text makes it clear that there is no magic occurring and Don Quixote is quite deluded when he believes such things. The book is trying to make fun of earlier books that used this trope.
- In the Discworld novel Thief of Time, most of the inconsistencies and ambiguities in the Discworld timeline (as well as some of the Schizo Tech) are implied to be the result of the first Glass Clock, or side effects of the History Monks cleaning up afterwards. They describe how they moved "excess time" to where it wouldn't be noticed (such as deep in the ocean) and likewise moved time from such places when required. The fact that most characters fail to notice the inconsistencies (like, for example, Ankh-Morpork having a 16th century Shakespearean theater across the river from a 19th century opera house) is explained by the fact that most people only notice what they expect to notice.
- Terry Pratchett has declared that all timelines are correct, but some went down different legs of the "Trousers of Time." He's also phrased it as, "There are no continuity errors in the Discworld novels. There are, however, alternate histories."
- Xanth retconned its considerable continuity errors in one book, where it's revealed that the expanding "Region of Madness" has caused odd fluctuations in people's magical talents. For example, at one time the Gorgon could only turn men into stone with her gaze; later her powers worked on women as well.
- Word Of God is that Tales Of MU is a fantasy series because the author finds "It's magic!" to be a more satisfying Hand Wave than pseudoscience. This also shows up in her space opera series Void Dogs, which uses magic for artificial gravity and faster-than-light travel.
Live Action TV
- Kryten used this phrase when answering "The 10 Most Asked Red Dwarf Questions" in the Smeg Ups outtakes collection.
- Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report on the death of Don Herbert (Watch Mr. Wizard):
But what I liked most about Mr. Wizard was that he found a middle ground between faith and science: magic. To this day, when my children ask me how something scientific works, I reply "A wizard does it."
Anime
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, to no surprise: For starters, one episode demonstrates that the Unobtainium of which the Evangelions are constructed changes its density for dramatic effect; in episode 8, Asuka can stand her Humongous Mecha on the decks of ships without crushing or punching through them, yet in this episode it's so dense that it sinks into molten rock, which is pretty dense stuff indeed, so dense that non-molten rock floats on its surface. Of course, given that the Evangelions also change size for dramatic effect, this is far from the oddest thing the audience is asked to accept.
- Suzumiya Haruhi: any inconsistencies, or really just anything could be explained with "Haruhi did it", or Kyon being an Unreliable Narrator.
Comic Books
- DC Comics used an in-character plot device in the Infinite Crisis miniseries to justify various RetCons and mistakes. "Superboy punch!" is now the standard response among fandom to questions about inconsistencies; this replaces the refrain of "Hypertime!", contributed by a previous miniseries, The Kingdom.
- People acting out of character these days is blamed on Deathstroke's mind altering drugs, primarily because this was the canon (via Retcon) explanation for Cassandra Cain Batgirl's poorly executed Face Heel Turn after Infinite Crisis.
- With the recent Spider Man event "One More Day", Marvel Editor In Chief Joe Quesada's official explanation for how Peter Parker's "marriage for Aunt May's life" deal with the devil brought back both his webslingers and Harry Osborn was "It's magic. We don't have to explain it."
- Of course, the whole *censored* Ret Con with *censored* Parker and *censored* Aunt May and *censored* *censored* *redacted* MEPHISTOPHELES was a whole *redacted* mess of *avoided* *too hot for school*, so it's admittedly hard for this Troper to find anything logical, reasonable, and/or effectively decent in the entire storyline. To this Troper, and probably numerous others, it's not only magic, it didn't really happen.
- And the Scarlet Witch apparently had the power to "subconsciously" alter reality the whole time, and that too has been used by some writers as a gloss-over explanation for continuity failures.
- The most irritating part of all of that is people like Doctor Strange, who knows more about magic than anyone alive, stating in recent comics that magic is a form of science.
- Due to the Secret Invasion revelation that Skrulls have been impersonating heroes, running around as extra copies of the heroes (particularly ones of Wolverine), brainwashed into thinking like the heroes, brainwashed into thinking that they are the heroes, are actually heroes who happen to also be Skrulls, and that now at least one of the Skrull impersonators has been replaced by another Skrull, the explanation that any character seen as being out of character or using their powers in ways they can't is really a Skrull has become pretty popular.
Film
- In Star Wars, especially the Expanded Universe, the Force, in addition to giving selected characters their "magical" abilities, seems to double as a convenient way to explain away plot holes or especially unbelievable plot devices.
- This makes certain scenes extra humorous. For instance, when the Big Bad of Knights Of The Old Republic II explains her hatred of the Force, it basically translates to a burning desire to kill the writers a la Excel Saga.
Western Animation
- Trope name comes from Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess)'s guest appearance on The Simpsons in 1999.
- In the Transformers mythos, it's Vector Prime's job to keep the timelines stable, so presumably any nitpicks are things he just didn't get to soon enough in relative time.
- Also, in Transformers: Cybertron, the death of Unicron, resulting in the Unicron Singularity, is used to explain inconsistencies in the timeline. After all, when you kill a dark god, you really ought to expect something to happen to the fabric of the universe.
- Not only that, due to the multiversal nature of the Transformers continuities, the Unicron Singularity can be used to explain away every inconsistency and plot-hole in every Transformers continuity EVAR.
Video Games
- Seen often in the Resident Evil video game series, but replace "wizard" with "Albert Wesker".
- Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles actually explains HOW he did some of the more wizardy things. And for those things the wizard did to HIM, well, Berkin did it.
- Also appears in the Metroid games, specifically in the Prime subseries, in which the radioactive Phazon is used by fans to explain away multiple inconsistencies and completely random evolutions.
- Subverted in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption however, which nicely ties up most of the lingering plot threads from the first two Prime games... using Phazon in an actually legit explanation.
- A mutant of this has become a meme among the players of the MMORPG City Of Heroes: "If it doesn't make sense, it's a Nemesis Plot." Nemesis himself is a supervillain who is infamous for making plots within plots within plots and is revealed to be a driving force, or at least the root cause, of many of the conflicts going on in the game.
- Or, as the loading screens now lampshade this: "Everything is a Nemesis plot." Also on loading screens: "Not everything is a Nemesis plot."
- The two common explanations for the many inconsistencies that reside in the Touhou Universe and backstory are either that Keine ate it, or that Yukari was messing around with the borders of space and time again.
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall allowed the player to choose one of several endings with supposedly world-changing effects. This left the developers in a sticky place when it came time for the sequel, TES 3: Morrowind, so they invented a supernatural disaster, "The Warp of the West", in which all the endings to Daggerfall had happened at once.
- In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Shivering Isles in the town of Split a character mentions "A wizard did it" when explaining the reason why there are 2 of every person inside the village.
- With the recent release of the final installment in the Metal Gear Solid series, the standard answer to explain nearly everything that happens is, "Nanomachines".
- The trope is quite literally the bare-bones backstory of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. After the events of the first game, Link discovers a Sleeping Beauty Princess Zelda in a locked room of the castle, who turns out to be the who-knows-how-many-times-great-aunt of the one he rescued in the first game. The game's in-house Ancient Keeper Impa explains that a long time ago, the kingdom's crown prince became king only to have the court wizard inform him that his father had told a secret to his sister, Princess Zelda. When the princess refused to tell her secret, the wizard put her into an enchanted sleep. The wizard then inexplicably died before he could either explain his actions or undo the magic. The player never does learn why the wizard did it -- or what the secret was that caused it all.
Web Comics
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer 40000 if something is off, it can easily be explained in-universe as being because the Warp did it. If not the Warp, then the C'Tan did it. If not the C'Tan, then the Eldar did it. (Being the wizards who did it is their hat.) If not the Eldar, then the God-Emperor of Man did it. If none of the above did it, it was certainly Commissar Sebastian Yarrick's fault. And even if any, all, or none of the above did it, Tzeentch either did it, arranged it, opposed it, or helped it, and in most cases, he did all of that at the same time.
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