"It's magic. We don't have to explain it."
Okay, so I called C.C. fat. And she turned me into a penguin. That's besides the point.
"You are now carrying my child!"
"But how?"
"It is the mystery of the dance!"
A.K.A.
Scotch Tape. Any flimsy explanation, particularly involving the
Back Story, a
Ret Con, or a use of
Applied Phlebotinum which is noteworthy for its lack of detail or coherence. May be used to (try to) hold together an
Idiot Plot or an otherwise outrageous story. Often consists of throwaway lines like "
it's the only way." The name comes from academia, initially to refer to where complicated parts of a valid argument are glossed over for the sake of convenience. Another influential example is
Star Wars, where the
Jedi mind trick, used to force weak minds to accept a suggestion regardless of plausibility, is always accompanied by a literal
Hand Wave.
Sometimes this is simply because the writers couldn't think of a plausible explanation, so decided to play down its importance. In the best cases it's because the explanation is genuinely irrelevant to the story and would be a distraction. Sometimes it's because the thing they're handwaving is so universally reviled that they want to
joke along with the audience's disdain for it.
When skillfully done, a handwave can obscure the
ridiculousness, or at least make it plausible enough so that the audience achieves a
Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. Scotch tape may not be strong, it may not be pretty, but it's much better to have some sort of explanation than nothing at all.
The Rick is often a valuable source of
Scotch Tape. In
Science Fiction shows, a
Hand Wave is usually conducted with
Techno Babble. In fact, an alternate name for
Phlebotinum is
Handwavium.
See also
A Wizard Did It.
Examples:
- The video game Deus Ex has lockpicks and multitools that, for some unexplained reason, can only be used once. During the tutorial level your support says that "unlocking doors expends the resources of modern lockpicks", but seeing as how the actual item is just two rods that spin about, it doesn't make much sense. It's never mentioned why the multitools can only be used once. Maybe they used really cheap batteries?
- Monomyth-style adventures where they have a young boy or girl as a Chosen One who must save the world, such as The Inheritance Trilogy, The Dark Is Rising, and to a lesser extent, the movie version of The Lord Of The Rings, all seem to have a big bad guy who could conceivably be killed by anyone else besides the main hero, but for no given reason, all others hold back so that the hero can do it.
- The Dark Is Rising isn't a very good example of this; there's no big bad guy to be killed because the villains are all both immortal and unkillable. And getting them banned from time in the end is done as a group effort.
- Basically anything involving Dawn as the Key on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And any time when someone explains why the main problem of an episode just can't be resolved using a simpler spell or plan.
- This troper still does not understand how Connor came to be on Angel, considering that Darla was a vampire who couldn't have children [she isn't alive, so she couldn't sustain the baby] and who couldn't even properly give birth. Basically, a wizard did it...or an ancient god, whatever the case may be.
- It's because Angel passed the challenges to save her life, but because that was blocked, the effect stuck around till they got it on. Which was pretty much the point of that season It's not Scotch Tape if it's been set up and you just weren't paying attention.
- In "Trials And Tribble-ations", several crew members (Including Commander Worf) from Star Trek Deep Space Nine travel back in time to an episode from Star Trek The Original Series. They remark on the difference in appearance between Worf (with his elaborate makeup and appliances) and the smooth-headed Kirk-era Klingons (with very simple makeup). Worf puts them off, saying "We do not discuss it with outsiders". Eventually it is retconned in Star Trek Enterprise as the result of some earlier botched attempts to create genetically "augmented" Klingons.
- They should've just put Michael Dorn in the old-fashioned makeup and left it at that. Vastly funnier.
- Umm...there's something about Michael Dorn that you might be forgetting that makes that...peculiar makeup somewhat impractical on him.
- They could fix that in makeup too, it would've been even funnier.
- Well, there's such a thing as makeup that's lighter than the actor's skin tone. Or they could have dusted him with something that would look bronzeish, even if only in certain lights, stuck the silly eyebrows on him, and called it a day.
- The Aeon Flux episode "Reraizure" deals with the fate of creatures called "Narghiles". Since they're dangerous, one character decides to get rid of them, but because "You can't kill them" (those were his exact words and the only explanation given), he plans to put them all on a platform that will be shot into space.
- In the first three games in The Elder Scrolls video game series, the nation of Cyrodiil is described as mostly tropical jungle. The fourth game in the series is the only one that actually takes place there, and it is shown to actually be mostly temperate hardwood forest. The in-game books "Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes" vaguely explains that the god Talos (the endivinated spirit of the first Cyrodiilic emperor) used his powers to make Cyrodiil colder to make the local soldiers more comfortable.
- Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons is an eight-year-old boy who ran for President, even though, of course, the Constitution requires a candidate to be older than thirty-five. The Hand Wave for how this was possible was that "the Patriot Act made the Constitution irrelevant."
- Three endings in Drakengard are given explanations like this. The third ending has expository dialogue which is particularly ambiguous and poorly written. The fourth ending's explanation trumps them all, though, with a hastily-written and somewhat nonsensical fable being the justification for a suicide run against the final boss in the hopes that the fable will be re-enacted. Given, the circumstances were pretty dire, so the characters could almost be excused for thinking what they did. The fifth ending, well, is supposed to be anticlimactic. What else do you expect to happen after vanquishing Ultimate Evil? The sequel clears up a lot of the fog presented here, but that's no excuse.
- The lack of male-type humanoid robots in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is supposedly due to the fact that the male versions are "weaker" than the female ones, but how this difference comes about is never explained.
- In Batman Begins, Batman (who has a strict no-kill policy) gets into a high-speed chase on the freeway with the cops, causes more than a couple crashes and drives over several cop cars with the cops still inside, endangering dozens of civilian and police officer lives. Yet we know no one is hurt (very badly) because Alfred says: "It's a miracle no one was killed."
, a parody of the English-version viral marketing of Suzumiya Haruhi, patches up why the maker couldn't find actors.
