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"Cuz if we find we're in a bind
We're totally screwed, but nevermind
We'll pull something out of our behind."
— The USS Make Shit Up
An Ass Pull is a moment when the writers pull something out of thin air in a less-than-graceful narrative development, violating the Law Of Conservation Of Detail by dropping a plot-critical detail in the middle, or near the end of their narrative without Foreshadowing or dropping a Chekhovs Gun earlier on.
In cases where a character suddenly gets a new skill without explanation, it's usually explained away as a Chekhovs Lecture or Chekhovs Skill that was forgotten earlier.
An Ass Pull used to resolve an unwinnable situation for the protagonists is a Deus Ex Machina. An Ass Pull used in the same way for the villains is a Diabolus Ex Machina. An Ass Pull doesn't necessarily have to resolve or derail a situation, though; many times, an ass pull is just used without any greater plot implication. Please limit examples on this page to ones that don't fit in either of the other two.
The term is also used to describe something that the characters make up on the spot.
When the term is used literally (to pull an object out of someone's rear), that's an Ass Shove.
See also Shocking Swerve. Given certain examples, Wing Pull could fit into this as well. Sometimes called Sulu's Foil, since it's the opposite of Chekhovs Gun.
As this trope frequently concerns plot twists, there are unmarked spoilers below.
Ass Pull is among the Tropes Of Legend.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- A variation was used in Mahou Sensei Negima, where the other characters force Chisame, who just wants to be normal, to get a magical pactio with Negi for the sole reason that her artifact might be something useful for their situation. Turns out that it's exactly what they needed. Although it kind of makes sense, in that the artifact is based on the person's personality, so they had some idea of what to expect.
- They do it again when Asakura reveals her pactio and again the artifact is exactly what the group was in need of. The total convenience of it was lampshaded repeatedly by the other characters.
- A classic and fairly divisive one comes in Getter Robo Armageddon: Genki Saotome, former token Cute Kid of the cast (a type practically required by and endemic of 70s television), was retconned into a girl (an Action Girl at that) so that s/he could be part of the new Getter team. This was foreshadowed a little in the actual Armageddon OVA before the big reveal, but just why everyone treated him/her like a boy during the original Getter shows is basically completely unexplained. Some consider this a slaughter of a character's original concept but others see it as an absolutely hilarious and ingenious subversion, as by the time Armageddon was produced in 1998 the Cute Kid was the deadest of Dead Horse Tropes; the original Genki would not have worked in a show like Armageddon at all.
- Occurs a number of times in Pokémon when one such creature evolves just at the right time, often in the middle of a battle. Especially noticeable as the game mechanics only allow evolution after a battle has ended. This is not the only game mechanic to be played around with in the animé ("Pikachu! The horn!" in his battle against Blaine's Rhydon, for instance).
- The horn moment became a Reverse Funny Aneurysm when later games introduced Rhydon's ability to attract lightning with the horn, protecting allies at no cost to itself.
- The worst case of this was earlier in the series, when circumstances forced Ash to use his vastly inferior Krabby in a tournament battle. The winning move? HYPERBEAM, a skill a Krabby wouldn't normally have access to, and which Ash has not been shown to acquire for the little pocket monster.
- No way. The "Thunder Armour" seen during the Advance Generation makes all the others look puny. I mean, essentially granting the user(s) invincibility out of nowhere, without being used again at all in the rest of the series? What makes this troper scratch his head, though, is how the hell Ash managed to come up with the idea in the first place.
- Bleach's most recent arc has been pulling so many of these it seems that it just gets ridiculous. The fans have come to nickname such occurrences plotkai. We've got Ichigo getting a new form out of nowhere, Kira being a former fourth squad member so he could have healing powers, and Yammy being the 0 Espada for no apparent reason other than to have a plot twist.
- Hitsugaya got cut in half by Harribel! If untreated, he could be the first fatality in Bleach! Just kidding... he prepared an ice mirror/clone of himself that bleeds and gasps "What the Hell" when cut in two, and he did it all in the space of a few seconds to take an attack he couldn't have possibly seen coming! What a guy!
- Earlier on in the Soul Society Arc, Yoruichi reveals that since they went in on the day the cleaners were in the dangai, they went back in time seven days, something that had never been hinted at before or had any logical basis. Then again, this is proved pointless almost as soon as it's revealed, as Rukia's execution is pushed forward, leaving the heroes only one day to save her.
- Naruto is ripe with these, just look at the Gaara vs. Lee fight. Gaara managed to get away from Lee's Initial Lotus by creating a stupidly perfect sand replica of himself, pulling a Replacement Jutsu with it, and burying himself in the ground A.) While rather high in midair B.) While he was getting the crap beat out of him C.) So quickly that Kakashi was the only one in the room even capable of noticing anything had happened.
- Every damn fight Sasuke is in he does this. Stop taunting us and just kill him!
- A more recent example would be when Sasuke gained all of Itachi's powers (despite the fact that you can only gain the upgrade that Itachi had if you kill your best friend, which Sasuke didn't), and has mastered them to a greater degree than Itachi has, despite having them for a few days at the most whereas Itachi had the powers for years. This includes Susanoo, which goes from a terrible drawing made by a 4-year old in Itachi's possession to a giant black skeletal demon in Sasuke's!
- It's implied that Itachi has become Sasuke's most important person after The Reveal, especially considering his new motive for revenge, though this brings up the question of why "killing your best friend/most important person" suddenly applies posthumously.
- Oh no! Sasuke is about to die from chakra exhaustion! Oh wait, never mind, Zetsu managed to use a time release jutsu (in the split second before the Raikage snapped his neck) that sucks all the chakra out of everyone in the room and gives to Sasuke.
- Gundam SEED had a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge deathmatch between Cain And Abel childhood friends Kira and Athrun. It ended when Athrun, his Gundam out of power, grappled Kira's and used his Self Destruct Mechanism in a last-ditch attempt to kill him. How did he survive? A blast door sealed off the cockpit, meaning Kira was badly hurt but not dead, and he was discovered by Lowe Guele who got him medical attention. And yet when Kira's friends examine the ruined Strike Gundam, the cockpit is a melted ruin thanks to the heat of the blast. So how did he survive?
- Canaan has the egregious cliffhanger in which Maria is locked up in a train car with a time bomb ticking down. In the next episode, she is saved from the wreckage by Yunyun. It's totally unclear how any of that happened and how Maria managed to survive her shotwound afterward, even though Yunyun had been carrying her around for hours.
- Alphard surviving her fall of several meters also has some of this. Sure, the woman is strong, but that is just ridiculous.
- The very final battle of Ral & Grad ends with Ral exploiting a quality of Shadows that was never mentioned before, contradicts almost all of what we were previously told, requires several Wall Of Text word balloons to explain, and apparently exists solely to faciliate a Bittersweet Ending.
Comics
Film
- In The Matrix The undeleting of Agent Smith as a virus program and Neo's subesequent reduction in apparent ability when fighting the "upgrades" both feel like really stretched efforts to keep Neo from becoming too powerful for the plot to contain.
- The "Upgrades" seem rather insubstantial, as even with them, Neo is able to beat up three agents in a short period of time.
- Exactly. Arguably, Neo doesn't lose apparent power; he just faces larger numbers of opponents, which forces him to make a little more effort to beat them.
- "Luke is my brother!". That is all.
Literature
- In Simon R. Green's Something From The Nightside, Joanna is an Artificial Human sent to trick the main character into entering an evil house. We find this out while the main character is in the house. Joanna fades into the wall and is never seen again.
- More or less everything in the sixth book comes out of one posterior or another.
Live Action TV
- The Star Trek writing team did this when Denise Crosby expressed regret over quitting Star Trek The Next Generation, with several episodes featuring Crosby as Romulan Commander Sela, a half-human half-Romulan alternate-universe daughter of her original character Lt. Yar (but somehow was her perfect identical twin in every way, except for having pointed ears).
- In Star Trek, for an example of the "Character Made It Up On The Spot", in "The Corbomite Maneuver" Kirk pulls some Corbomite out of his ass, calling it a material that can reflect the attackers' destructive potential back on them and everything else in a large area and then some. It was entirely a bluff to get Balok to back down. It worked so well, he pulls it out again for some Romulans in "The Deadly Years".
- Then they actually made a Corbomite Reflector- it's the special equipment of the Federation capital ships in Star Trek: Armada, the video game. Though it should be noted that it was simply named after Kirk's bluff and that games don't count in Star Trek Canon.
- Notably, Harlan Band tries the exact same maneuver (in a bit of a Shout Out) against the Spung in an episode of Space Cases. It doesn't work, apparently because the Spung warlord is played by George Takei.
- Kirk is clearly the master of this maneuver, as in "A Piece of the Action," he generates the card game Fizzbin from the orifice mentioned in the trope's name, complete with nigh-indescribable rules. Suffice it to say, you don't want two jacks and a king on Tuesdays at night.
- Kirk's mastery of this extends as far as confusing people long enough to get a good grip on the table that's going to be upended.
- In the first season of 24, it was decided only towards the end of the season that Nina would be the series's major mole, despite it contradicting some of her actions as seen earlier in the season.
- One potential explanation is that Nina was working with the Drazens unbeknownst to Gaines, who had hired Jamey as his mole, and thus decided to have Nina killed without knowing she was on his side.
- Perhaps the ultimate in television is the infamous reappearance of Bobby Ewing in the shower on Dallas.
- Serena Southerlyn's "coming out" scene ("Is it because I'm a lesbian?") in Law And Order. It was ambiguously hinted at on occasion, and since the show rarely ever shows any personal life aspects for a character (as a "gimmick"), this may be less of an Ass Pull and more of a "Oh, we didn't mention that?".
- The fact that said scene was the character's last on the show (she asked the above question upon being fired by Arthur Branch.) lends some credence to this.
- Thank God You're Here is a sketch/game show where various comedians are brought into different sets with different plots and as different characters. They aren't informed as to what they're going to be doing or who they're supposed to be - though costumes can occasionally give them hints- and they are required to play the role they're given as best they can. It's like Who's Line is it Anyway but without the explanations.
- House, M.D.: The whole story about Cameron suddenly deciding to try out Calvin's drugs and sleep with Chase. It's very strange and random that a person like Cameron would actually do such a thing. Her decision was (somewhat) explained as her being angry/upset that she had spent her whole life being a 'good girl' always doing the right thing by helping people, and still got screwed over.
- Battlestar Galactica, reimagined version: In the finale, The humans and organic cylons discover they're genetically compatible with a bunch of primitives from the other side of the galaxy. This is implied to be part of the plan of Powers That Be, but still really convenient.
- Don't forget about the fact that constellations from 150,000 years ago were on the flags of a dozen human tribe nations that wouldn't appear for another 150,000 years. Good job with that writing..
- Which can also only be seen from our earth, where none of the Colonials or Cylons had ever been before. Well God did it.
- Or is it? The coordinates that led them there were The Music, as input by a verified angel of God no less. The Music is thousands of years old, and who knows how much more way back it goes. This tells us that the whole series of events has been planned by God millenia ago, and that the second "Earth" is incredibly important.
- Listen to the Ron Moore podcasts about the finale. He pretty much admits to asspulling the entire last half of the series. I believe he called it something like freedom to let the story evolve.
- And of course they posthumously made up an entire Cylon character (Daniel) simply for the purpose of plugging the number gap between Number Six (Caprica) and Number Eight (Athena).
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer - the last few seasons had a number of these, which ones are most wallbanging is a matter of opinion.
- Seeing as the series was supposed to end after season five, one could opine that the last two seasons are made up of this trope and WallBanger on the part of Joss Whedon.
- The Lost Room - the business about the Law of Conservation of Objects comes out of nowhere in the last five minutes of the series and is crucial to the resolution of the main plot.
- Stargate Atlantis needed a "dramatic" way to get Atlantis involved in the battle with the Super-Hive, so Zelenka pulled "ass drive" out of Mc Kay's wormhole.
Tabletop Games
- The metaplot of Legend Of The Five Rings RPG's second and third edition may be considered full of Ass Pulls with killing off main NP Cs and even gods, as the authors simply interpreted the outcomes of official L 5 R CCG tournaments instead of coming up with something more coherent themselves. Way less than graceful.
- Made even sadder by the fact they've been doing it with the game's metaplot since day one. Some are great twists, others...not so much.
- Every Dungeons And Dragons Dungeon Master ever will occasionally resort to this to keep things moving. If necessary to end the game after going Off The Rails, they may employ the "nuclear option".
- GURPS has two advantages that let the players do this: gizmos, which allows you to pull out a small item out of nowhere, as long as it is something your character would have, and Wild Talent, which lets you perform an untrained skill, and even learn it permanently with an enhancement.
- If this troper recalls correctly, Warhammer 40,000's Eye of Terror campaign involved an Ass Pull from Games Workshop. Namely, the Eldar came in just behind the guard and marines yet ended up losing Eldrad and all the Blackstone Fortresses - ie, the sort of result that might be expected from coming in last.
Video Games
- In World of Warcraft, the "twist" of M'uru allowing himself to be captured and drained by the Blood Elves would have far more effective if everything in the game hadn;t pointed in the opposite direction (M'uru making active attempts at escaping, the Blood Elves becoming increasingly violent and arrogant about their stolen abilities, etc). One of the Blood Elf leaders, Lady Liadrin, pulling a complete 180 in terms of personality in the space of three seconds didn't help the plot development seem any less of an ass pull.
- Not that it makes it much less silly, but some people were expecting that exact plot twist from the day blood elf paladins were announced. There are forum discussions and fanfics theorising it well before the actual events occurred in-game.
- The original lore of the Blood knights was an Asspull as well. The light (power from faith), suddenly being able to be siphoned like gasoline from the recently created Naaru. The worst part was Thrall and Cairne not caring as they got power from it. It's so bad that the above change could be considered an Authors Saving Throw.
- Likewise, the whole notion of the Blue Dragonflight suddenly turning hostile and thus providing a convenient source of killable mobs in the Northrend expansion is a shameless ass pull. Note that in the preceding Outland expansion said Blue Dragonflight actually helps you defeat the final boss...
- Not to mention that the whole reason that Malygos went insane in the first place is because Deathwing wiped out the entire Blue Dragonflight 10000 years ago, which means there shouldn't be any blue dragons around at all except Malygos.
- The Blue Flight's resurgence is explained at the end of the War of the Ancients Trilogy. Korialstrasz, having been sent back in time, preserved some eggs to be given to Malygos when the time was right. This in itself is a pretty big asspull, not that the Warcraft lore isn't known for that.
- Death Knights, Asspull ahoy! A new class of undead who rebelled against the Lich King (Sound familiar?). Okay, fair enough. However the only two races that according to previously established story could of been death knights were Humans and High Elves, both of which were slaughtered en masse by the scourge. That's why all Forsaken look human. Instead however we have dwarf, gnome, troll, night elf, and tauren death knights who weren't anywhere near the undead. Then you've got Draenei death knights who weren't even on the same damn planet. Then there's the fact that these folk are happily accepted back with the living. The Forsaken, not so much. So apparently if you're a lieutenant to the big bad you can come back home to open arms, but if you were just a mindless Mook then it's exile for you!
- To be absolutely fair, the playable death knights are supposed to be a "new generation," so to speak. It's All There In The Manual.
- Hello, Gilneas worgen...directly cribbed from a fan theory that's been long considered far-fetched due to timing issues.
- I just plain gave up on Warcraft lore after Burning Crusade. There's an endless loop of who created the Burning Legion. Originally, Sargeras was corrupted by the Eredar and Nathrezim, so as an excuse to let us play (not 50 foot) nice Eredar, they swapped it...which means that either Sargeras decided to turn evil for no reason, or the Nathrezim did, but consider how many Nathrezim die in Warcraft (Almost all of the ones in Warcraft III were "dead" at the end of the game) compared to how many Eredar do (Just Archimonde) and it doesn't make much sense how a relatively normal race that look like Vamprires could have corrupted a Titan. Wrath of the Lich King only seems to have been released to show that Arthas isn't really that powerful...or that the Scourge's mind control isn't so absolute anymore. By Cataclysm I stopped caring. Horde get little green gnomes that up until this point were specifically neutral, and the Alliance gets Worgen which are just going to inspire the Furries. Oh joy.
- At least the goblins (they're the Bilgewater Cartel, not the Steamwheedle Cartel) actually make sense.
- This can be applied to the ending of the game Legendary, wherein Deckard's Signet is revealed out of entirely nowhere to be the blueprint for the construction of another Pandora's Box.
Webcomics
WesternAnimation
- Avatar The Last Airbender- To many people Energybending was just this. Ironically it combines with Foreshadowing: Aang's desire to Take A Third Option in regards to defeating the Big Bad is seeded into the narrative some episodes in advance. It's the third option itself that could've been set up better.
- Ozai accidently unblocking the chakra allowing Aang to enter the Avatar state also qualifies.
- In Thunder Cats, there are so many Asspull moments that go in favor of the good guys, it is annoying. The Sword of Omens in particular seems to gain new powers every episode. As Mumm-Ra once said, it's always used to "pull [Lion-O's] fat from the fire." Whenever the good guys are in a bind, it's always the Sword of Omens that saves the day.
- Apparently, Cheetara has untapped extreme power. All that one has to do is piss her off royally. Then, she's capable of exuding brilliant rays of psychic energy that can disable a mobile fortress, knock the good guys out of a trance, and destroy machines. What?
- Even the Big Bad Mumm-Ra has his own Asspull moments. There are moments in the show that Mumm-Ra seemed to be killed off for good, but he somehow comes back:
- Fighting a Genie underground, causing a cave-in that traps them both.
- Lion-O defeating Mumm-Ra in his final day of the Anointment Trials. It seemed permanent.
- Mumm-Ra trying to open the Star of Thundera, which causes a massive explosion that Mumm-Ra seemed to be consumed by.
- Even when the Ancient Spirits of Evil get sick of Mumm-Ra's failings and give him an ultimatum to kill off the good guys or else he'll be banished from Third Earth. As expected, Mumm-Ra fails and gets exiled. What happens next? He ends up on New Thundera.
- Grounder blowing into his hand and getting a pumpkin in Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog.
- In The Fairly Oddparents, some of "Da Rules" seem to be made up on the spot to make sure Timmy can't just unwish his problems (all vocal wishes must be made in the voice of the godchild, no breakfast wishes after 10:30am, etc.).
- In many respects, the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show had much of this in Ninja Tribunal, such as an original Shredder, among other examples that I don't know to list.
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