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Someone is off his meds.

Bedevere: So, logically...
Peasant: If... she... weighs... the same as a duck... she's made of wood.
Bedevere: And therefore...?
[Beat]
Another Peasant: ... a witch!
Crowd: A witch! A witch! A witch!!
Witch: It's a fair cop.

Insane Troll Logic is the kind of logic that just can't be argued with because it's so demented, so lost in its own insanity, that any attempts to make it rational would make it more incomprehensible. It is logic failure that crosses over into parody or Poe's Law. A character thinks in such a blatantly illogical manner that it has to be deliberate on the part of the writer.

For examples of Insane Troll Logic by video game developers, see You Can't Get Ye Flask, Moon Logic Puzzle, and (extreme examples of) Guide Dang It!.

For examples of characters who engage in this, see The Ditz, Cloudcuckoolander, Strawmen, Hitler Ate Sugar, Moral Guardians, and of course trolls of both internet and mythological origin. A character will tend to use this when he thinks he is smarter than he really is. See also Bat Deduction (when the Insane Troll Logic is used to deduce something - correctly), Right for the Wrong Reasons (same), Blue-and-Orange Morality (when the troll logic stems from an otherworldly bizarre moral compass), and Reality Is Out to Lunch (when reality actually follows the troll logic). Irrational Hatred may have this as its basis, and Chewbacca Defense is literally built of it. And then, sometimes it's just Obfuscating Stupidity or Obfuscating Insanity in action. No relation to Insane Clown Possefor the most part.

Remember that not all bad or faulty logic is Insane Troll Logic. Insane Troll Logic is so badly screwed up that it isn't even wrong — usually either the presenter or the audience have no grasp of even the concept where the "logic" should apply.

A character consumed by this trope tends to say things along the lines of "Because I say it is!" or "You're a liar!"

(Note that, in order to qualify for this trope, some reasoning must be provided; for example, "He likes sweets, thus he is a Nazi" on its own probably doesn't qualify for this trope, but "He likes sweets, thus, he likes Danishes, and if he likes Danishes, he must be a German, and as we know, all Germans are Nazis" probably does, since it provides more "logic" and context. The latter is otherwise known as the Fallacy of Composition.)

Warning: trying to understand the following trains of logic may make your brain hurt.

No Real Life Examples, Please! Disagreements may cause flame wars. Those very flame wars will happen on this website if started, therefore TV Tropes' servers might catch on fire and may get damaged, and spread to the rest of the internet via the gravity of the situation. You cannot argue with this, it's legitimate fact-based physics. That's why it will happen physically. These flame wars will be the depth of the Internet — No, not DEATH, but they are similar concepts because they're similarly pronounced. Furthermore, many computers are connected to those servers and they might catch on fire, too. Because if you can see a fire, you can feel the heat. Ergo, fire is bad, and everyone needs to cool down a bit. So, remember to always douse your computer with water when having a disagreement.

Seriously, though — no real-life examples. Not to be confused with Violation of Common Sense.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

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    Advertising 
  • The Get Rid of Cable campaign from DirecTV. See what happens when you make bad decisions — namely, choosing the Other Guys subpar cable services. For example:
    "When you wait forever for the cable guy, you get bored. When you get bored, you start staring out windows. When you start staring out windows, you see things you shouldn't see. When you see things you shouldn't see, you need to vanish. When you need to vanish, you fake your own death. When you fake your own death, you dye your eyebrows. And when you dye your eyebrows, you attend your own funeral as a guy named Phil Shifley. Don't attend your own funeral as a guy named Phil Shifley. Get rid of cable, and upgrade to DirecTV. Call 1-800 DirecTV."
  • Time Warner Cable had one once which was nearly as bad. The spot featured Mike O'Malley holding a small puppy, saying that since cable cost less than satellite, the money could be used to buy things like dog food and that puppies love dog food so that the simple conclusion must be that satellite hates puppies.
  • Cablevision has played it straight many times, with ads promising better picture because the pixels on your TV will be happier on Cablevision, or that Verizon is a phone company, and therefore too busy to provide you with internet service (ironic, considering Cablevision's primary job is to provide you with TV, not Internet). Some of their commercials from a few years ago were mistaken for parodies.
  • Toshiba used a similar argument in one commercial to tout their shock-proof hard drives, because if a power station tech drops his laptop and breaks the hard disk, then it causes a glitch and the power will go out. If that happens, then your milk will spoil. If that happens, you'll drink the spoiled milk and turn into a zombie, then bite your roommate, who will then bite others until zombies roam the land. So dropped laptop = Zombie Apocalypse, and that's why shock-proof hard drives are good. It's ostensibly played for comedy, but the ad offers up a bit of Fridge Horror when you notice that the guy following this loony-bin train of logic is the president of the company.
  • Toast always lands buttered-side down. Cats always land on their feet. So, what happens when you tape toast, buttered-side up, on a cat's back? Infinite energy!
  • In Latin America, during the 2014 edition of The World Cup, DirecTV advertised the then-upcoming football league seasons by telling the viewer about what would supposedly happen if they missed them (a sequence of very improbable events leading to a bad situation). One commercial's logic procedure goes from the viewer missing an important match to waking up in a dried ditch in the street. Another's goes from missing a match to flooding the house.
  • In one of Jeremy Clarkson’s “rejected” advertisements for Hawkstone Lager that was posted on Instagram, he claimed that because God took six days to create the world and he took thirty days to create the lager, that makes Hawkstone Lager “six times better than the world” (a subtitle at the bottom corrected it to five times).

    Audio Plays 
  • In an old Bert and I... sketch, a notoriously smelly and unclean man becomes enough of a nuisance that he's brought before a judge to explain himself. The man asks the judge how he can be considered unclean — after all, he washes maybe once a year, while some people are apparently dirty enough that they have to wash every day.
  • The Big Finish Doctor Who audios feature several;
    • In "Short Trips: The Second-Oldest Question", the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa find themselves in the village of Snittlegarth, where the residents not only readily believe that a chicken is capable of arson, but is actually planning to commit arson.
    • In "Short Trips: Rulebook", the Fifth Doctor and Peri have to deal with the twisted logic of the rule-bound Ellani. As the most straightforward example of the Ellani's fixation with rules, after the Doctor and Peri were involved in a mad battle that nobody could have survived, Ellani logic dictates that they didn't survive, even when Peri and The Doctor are standing right in front of them.
    • In "The Holy Terror", the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher arrive in a society where the current reigning emperor is considered to be a god. As a result, when new emperor Pepin is subject to a ritual assassination attempt, the whole ritual is performed with blanks in the gun, reasoning that he wouldn't be harmed either way given his divine status.
    • In "The Last of the Cybermen", the Sixth Doctor once again meets the Logicians, who are making another attempt to ally with the Cybermen. Zennox in particular tries holding a gun at a Cyber-Controller, thinking this puts her in charge. The Cybermen disabuse her of the notion, but she dies still agreeing with their insane logic.
    • In "Flip-Flop", the slug-like Slithergees make various proclamations to assert that they are a "persecuted minority" even when they're basically in charge of the planet Punxatornee in one timeline (the other timeline has Punxatornee as a nuclear wasteland after a devastating war).
    • In "The Chimes of Midnight", the butler Shaughnessy argues that the impossible deaths depicted- including a woman drowning herself in the sink or another woman stuffing herself to death with her own plum pudding- happened because the victims were too stupid to realise that it was impossible to kill themselves that way.
    • In "Zagreus", when the TARDIS locks Zagreus (currently controlling the Doctor's body) inside a Schrödinger's Cat lead box, Zagreus tells her that he's dead now, so she'd better let him out. When the TARDIS pointedly remarks that dead people generally don't talk, Zagreus tries to convince her that she's mad for talking back to a dead person, so she'd better let him out.
    • "The Furies" (part of the Diary of River Song series) looks at the conclusion of Madame Kovarian's attempts to kill the Doctor to prevent him restarting the Time War from his time on Trenzalore (as discussed in "The Time of the Doctor"). Having failed to kill the Eleventh Doctor, Madame Kovarian becomes so consumed with the idea that she "has" to kill the Doctor to save the universe that she goes back along his timeline to try and kill the Fifth Doctor... in other words, to stop the Doctor from restarting the Time War, she killed him before he could even stop it in the first place (to say nothing of the worlds that will now die without him to save them).
    • "Her Own Worst Enemy" (looking at the adventures of Jenny, the Doctor's daughter), Jenny encounters a society that judges people by auditing them on whether they feel that they have lived a worthwhile life. As Jenny tries to point out, such a system doesn't actually work as the criteria being measured are too variable, as arrogant people will constantly justify their actions while good people may hold themselves to such a high standard that they can't live up to their own expectations.

    Comedy 
  • In one of his sketches, Coluche had this famous Black Comedy joke:
    "30 per cent of road accidents are due to alcohol. I conclude that 70 per cent of road accidents are due to water."
  • Bill Cosby has a famous routine (from his concert film Bill Cosby: Himself) about him being rudely awakened by his wife, and his daughter asking him if she can have cake for breakfast. He decides it must be healthy because it has eggs, wheat, and milk in it, and says yes. His wife then comes down, sees what the kids are eating, "has a conniption", and then sends him back to the bedroom… which is where he wanted to be in the first place.
  • Mitch Hedberg would frequently use this to great comedic effect. One anecdote he told involves him encountering a duck and wanting to feed it, so he goes into Subway and orders a bun with nothing on it. They refuse to sell it to him until he puts at least one topping on it, so he relents and has them put lettuce on it. When they ring it up, he mentions he wants it to feed a duck, and they give it to him for free. Conclusion: Ducks eat for free at Subway.
    Mitch: Had I known that, I would've ordered a much larger sandwich. "Lemme have the steak fajita sub, but don't bother ringing it up, it's for a duck! There are six ducks outside, and they all want Sun Chips!"
  • Steven Wright does this a lot.
    One time a cop pulled me over for running a stop sign. He said "Didn't you see the stop sign?" I said "Yeah, but I don't believe everything I read."
  • Abbott and Costello have a recurring sketch where Costello tries to prove that 7 x 13 = 28 (to actual mathematicians, the actual answer is 91). The brillliant thing about this bit is that he manages to find three incorrect methods of getting the same wrong answer, using division, multiplication, and addition. To people who have no idea how to divide manually, then these faulty formulas actually sound logically consistent, despite being completely wrong.

    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • The Joker lives on this. Batman openly states that "with normal men, you can find logic but the Joker's schemes make sense only in his twisted mind."
    • In a 1989 storyline, a bomb expert reads about Batman defusing a device with a technique only he knows. He realizes Batman must be someone he trained in the past. It hits the bomb expert that if he knows that, someone else can figure out who Batman is by who trained him and that could put the expert and his wife in danger. So, he starts tracking down the men who must have trained Batman and murders them, while having them dressed in Batman costumes to make it look like "some random lunatic."
    • Batman himself can fall into this. A famous 1950s story has the public confused when Batman wears a different colored costume every day. At the end of the story, it's explained that Dick Grayson had injured his arm trying to stop a robbery. Batman was worried that if people saw Robin also with a weak arm, they'd somehow put together he was Dick Grayson and thus know Batman is Bruce Wayne. So, by wearing the colored costumes, Batman put attention on him and no one focused on Robin until he was healed. This being the Silver Age, it works perfectly.
  • Deadpool: Deadpool runs on Obfuscating Insanity, but every once in a while, his brain slips (another) gear and he goes into full-blown troll logic. Usually, you only find out which he was using after the body count is tallied. At one point, presumably, the thought process went like this: I got my powers from weird experiments on a mutant, therefore I am a mutant. I am a mutant, therefore I am an X-Man. I am an X-Man, therefore I need to wear an X-Man costume, therefore I will run around in Marvel Girl's old green miniskirt outfit. Cyclops was not amused.

  • Fables: The Three Blind Mice. They'll be walking along headed for some goal (usually a fairly far-out one), and one will question if there is such a place/circumstance/etc. One of the mice (usually Thaddeus) will then say that since no-one has stopped them or they haven't been told that their goal is not attainable, then it must be there, and all they have to do is find it. Rose Red has a particularly funny example.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Everything Doctor Doom does make sense if you believe as he does that everything wrong with his life is Reed Richards' fault.
    • Utilized in one issue where a Skrull who is secretly Hank Pym steals the FantastiCar and disappears, after calling out the coordinates for sector 1-C, and to scan for Ferric Oxide. According to the Thing, ferric oxide means rust, 1-C means Yan-C, which means Yancey Street, and together they mean the abandoned auto junkyard off of Yancey Street. This is then lampshaded by Hank Pym revealing that he was hanging out on them the entire time, and if they had gone to a local pizza place, he would have been there.
  • The Flash: Both Reverse-Flashes fall into this, to the point where you'd think it comes with the yellow tights.
    • Zoom (Hunter Zolomon) is this once you actually think about what he's saying. He's a guy who has gone through an extraordinary amount of tragedy throughout his life, and when his back is broken and Wally West (the then-current Flash) refuses to use time-travel to fix Hunter's spine, Hunter accidentally turns himself into Zoom, a speedster much faster than Wally. He resolves to use his powers to make Wally experience tragedy, believing it will motivate Wally into becoming a better hero… see the flaw there? If Hunter's logic was as foolproof as he believed it to be… he himself would be a great hero! But he's not. It seems like Hunter's just looking for an excuse to beat up on Wally for not fixing his spine, though later events show that he's really just that insane, as a side-effect of his powers.
    • Eobard Thawne blames Barry Allen for every bad thing in his life, which makes no damn sense whatsoever. It doesn't help that Eobard is an egotistical, sadistic sociopath whom abused his Time Travel powers to change Barry's past by killing his mom and framing his dad for it. Post-Crisis, his hatred of Barry makes a little more sense given that the Thawnes had been Feuding Families with the Allens ever since Barry's twin Malcolm was switched at birth with a Thawne that a drunk doctor killed, but not only does this not seem to factor into Eobard's motivations post-Post-Crisis, but even Malcolm's grudge against Barry was Misplaced Retribution at its finest.
  • Johnny Turbo: This is the entire basis of the existence of the comics, and the "plot" follows suit. Buy the Turbo Duo game system, because FEKA is composed of evil robots!
  • The Simpsons: In one issue, Milhouse was convinced he was invisible thanks to Bart and some business involving Professor Frink's dumpster. When Milhouse found himself about to have the local bullies beat the crap out of them, Bart stepped in with this trope, arguing that there are many invisible things you can't see which are dangerous, so how dangerous could something invisible you can see be? Lampshaded immediately when Jimbo ran off with a cry of "Let's get outta here! He's using contradictory logic!"
  • "Le Monde des Lettres" in Franco Belgian Philémon runs on this, frequently making Wonderland look tame by comparison.
  • Recurring character Inspector Bougret in Gotlib comics always solves the criminal cases he's on. His conclusions may be correct, but the way he attains them is utterly nonsensical.
  • The Incredible Hulk:
    • The earliest Hulk, being a raging paranoiac, could run on this. Rick Jones is hanging out with the Avengers? Clearly Rick's told them he's secretly Bruce Banner, therefore he must destroy the Avengers!
    • Played for sheer horror with Brian Banner. Baby Bruce is far smarter than a child his age should be? He's a Mutant, and since Mutants want to kill mankind, Bruce is planning to kill mankind. This, in Brian's mind, justified beating toddler Bruce senseless, and later trying to murder Bruce. Alcohol played some part in this, but some of it is just the result of Brian being an untreated paranoiac.
  • An example happens in the third issue of the four issue miniseries of Kaboom's Over the Garden Wall Comic-Book Adaptation where it turns out that Wirt and his brother Gregory had traded their clothes to animals for pears. Greg wants to eat his pear, but Wirt won't let him because he fears that they won't be able to get their clothes back with only one pear. Greg proceeds to give a ludicrous fallacy on how they could still trade one pear back for their clothes.
    Greg: But why don't we eat ONE of them? Because when you have two pears and you eat one pear, you still have two pears because a pair is always TWO... so two pairs is actually 4 pears, and 4 pears is 8 pears, until you get to infinity. That's just a common knowledge run of the mill rock... fact...
  • Lady Death: Queen Satasha hates the rebels after a battle against Death Queen's minions razed her kingdom with her wife being killed in the conflict. Despite the fact that she offered sanctuary to the rebels because they were her friends and her wife was killed by one of Death Queen's monsters, before Satasha's eyes no less. While, to her credit, she blames herself for accepting the rebels in the first place and surrenders the throne to atone for failing to her subjects, her hatred for them is so intense — more specifically, one of their key leaders Wargoth, that she provides The Dragon with the means to kill him, when he had absolutely nothing to do with her death. The thought of calling out Death Queen's followers for the attack never crosses her mind. In short: she wants to avenge her beloved by siding with the party directly responsible against the other party which used to be friends with her and had nothing to do with it because they lead their enemies to her home in the first place.
  • In the fourth "classic" Paperinik story, Donald Duck mentions that Paperinik (his own superhero/antihero alter ego) could solve Scrooge's current problem but is told that a think-tank of scientists established that Paperinik doesn't actually exist because Scrooge used a Paperinik-looking robot to advertise his wax museum, hence he was a robot all the time, even when he stole Scrooge's bed while he was sleeping on it. Somehow, not only the whole Duckburg has bought it, Scrooge himself did, at least until they see Paperinik in person.
  • The Order of the Dragon in Crimson are a knightly order that not only hunts evil monsters that threaten mankind, but also angels too with the purpose of harvesting their organs into battle-drugs. Their reasoning for killing them is that God sent them as rewards for them to use as they see fit.
  • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
    • The Lost Light crew finds what appears to be a corpse of a future version of Rodimus, apparently killed by getting his head cut in half. Rodimus tries to prevent this fate by cutting his arm off, because his dead self has two arms, and if he only has one, then he won't die. After it's pointed out there's nothing stopping them reattaching his arms after he dies, he orders them not to. It's only when it's discovered it's not Rodimus from the future at all, but something even weirder that he relents.
    • And then there's Whirl. At one point he acknowledges that he was specifically ordered not to engage, which he is going to interpret as a veiled order to engage because not engaging just feels wrong, like fighting in the wrong direction.
    • None of the Scavengers are exactly genius logicians. Spinister, at least, is The Mentally Disturbed, so it's not surprising when his arguments are questionably rational; Crankcase, who at one point insists that since he came up with the name for their Nerf wars, he holds the copyright and so anyone who says it owes him money, has no excuse (aside from maybe missing a chunk of his head).
  • Judge Dredd: The Dark Judges arrived to the conclusion that only the living commit crimes, therefore life itself is the greatest crime of all and the only suitable sentence is death.
  • Harvest from the New 52 almost certainly counts. In the future, he fought in a war against metahumans, which started when Superman retreated from the world after the gradual death of his son, Jon Lane Kent. When his own son dies in the war, the man who would become Harvest decides to end the war by any means necessary. How does he accomplish this? By going back in time, infecting little Jon with something that'll make him look like he died of a birth defect, kidnapping him when everyone thinks he's dead, and brings him back to the future to raise as his own son and anti-metahuman weapon. That's right, Harvest started the very war his son and countless others died in… all so he could end it.
  • Spider-Man: J. Jonah Jameson will take any action of Spider-Man's as proof he's a mass-murdering menace out to get the people of New York, probably in collusion with the villains he fights, even denying the evidence of his eyes and ears. Sometimes, even completely non-Spider-Man related activities are also part of the webbed menace's nefarious schemes... somehow.
  • Superman:
    • Much like Doctor Doom and Reed Richards, Lex Luthor's obsession with Superman is fueled by this. Several stories have him insisting Superman has ruined him, or is out to get him. In 52, he's utterly convinced new superhero Supernova is actually the missing Superman, who has apparently cooked up an all new identity just to mess with him.
    • The introduction of the Legion of Super-Villains in Action Comics has Silver Age Lex displaying a fine example. He decides that since there exists a Legion of Super-Heroes there must exist a Legion of Super-Villains. Somehow. Of course, he's proven right moments later, because this is the Silver Age.

    Comic Strips 
  • Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes loves this type of logic.
    • When he's doing a report on bats, he classifies them as bugs because they fly, they're ugly, and they're hairy. He also says he'll get an A on his paper because he's using a "professional" clear plastic binder.
    • Calvin also protests going to school because if ignorance is bliss, then his education is a violation of his right to the pursuit of happiness. He puts on a patriotic, American Revolution-esque shtick, and when his teacher chases him as he tries to leave the classroom, he yells "Monarchists!"
    • Calvin invents flying wings just by taping a few pieces of construction paper cut into the shape of feathers to his arms. Hobbes asks him why nobody else thought of that before, and Calvin justifies it by saying only an "uncommon mind" could figure it out. He's absolutely sure of himself, but once he tests it out by having Hobbes hurl him over a cliff...
      Hobbes: Don't sell the bike shop, Orville.
      Calvin: Shut up and go get me some antiseptic.
  • FoxTrot:
    • In one strip, after Roger spends part of his and Andy's bank account to buy a very expensive driver without her permission, he tries to convince his understandably furious wife that it can actually help them save money. (And only succeeds in making her angrier.):
      Roger: The titanium lets it have a super-huge sweet spot, which will help to straighten out my slice.
      Andy: How will that save money?
      Roger: Remember that lawyer I almost beaned the last time we golfed?
      Andy: He only threatened to sue.
      Roger: And then there are the cases of balls I lose each time...
      Andy: You know, you could just STOP PLAYING!
    • In another strip, Roger — again — needs an antacid because he got sick to his stomach having lunch at a place called the Mucky Clam. Andy asks him why he'd even eat there, as he always gets sick when he does. Roger says it was because they had an all-you-can-eat special.
  • Dilbert:
    • In This early strip:
      Dilbert: Reading increases my knowledge, and knowledge is power.
      Dogbert: But power corrupts... and corruption is a crime... and crime doesn't pay... if you keep reading, you'll go broke!!!
      Dilbert: Gosh! It... it always seemed so harmless!
      Dogbert: Oh yeah, the librarians would love to have you believe that!
    • Another Dilbert story arc introduced Dan the Illogical Scientist, who was a practiced hand at this sort of thing.
      Dan: I'm much smarter than you because scientists have invented many things.
      Dilbert: But those are other scientists, not you.
      Dan: Apparently you don't understand science.
      ...
      Dan: That idea won't work. I know because I've read many reports about ideas that didn't work.
      Alice: You haven't even looked at my idea.
      Dan: Oh, I get it; you're one of those religious nuts.
    • The Pointy-Haired Boss uses insane troll logic on several occasions. On one occasion, one of these hell-spawned managerial decisions causes Dilbert's head to explode.
    • Exploited in this Dilbert strip
      Dogbert: The great thing about absurd logic is that it fits any situation.
  • Pearls Before Swine featured Rat wearing a hat that he claimed made him immortal. His logic was that he wore it and he hadn't died yet.
  • In a Peanuts strip, Lucy is interviewing the cast at the sandlot for a school newspaper article on violence in sports:
    Lucy: A judge recently described a hockey stick as a "dangerous weapon", do you agree?
    Franklin: In all my years of playing baseball, I have never once been hit by a hockey stick!
    Lucy: There's another for my list of stupid answers...
    • Lucy herself has a long history of being guilty of this. In one early sequence, she becomes convinced that snow grows up from the ground, because after all, flowers and grass do that, and because snow always seems to happen overnight as far as she can remember, so she's never seen where it comes from. Even when she actually sees it snowing, she's thinks it's just the wind blowing snowflakes around in the air, and that it does indeed come up out of the ground. In a more famous example, she tells Linus that leaves fly south for the winter. When Charlie Brown objects, she points out that when you look at a map, south is down.
  • Pogo does this constantly.
    • For example, when Albert is on trial for allegedly eating Pup-Dog, Seminole Sam produces a fish skeleton as evidence, arguing that Pup-Dog was so fond of water he was "jus' like a fish." Porkypine refutes him by pointing out that it's a catfish skeleton.
    • Often, the characters would attempt to outwit each other, each using their own Insane Troll Logic. The results were... frequently astonishing.
      Howland Owl: Seminole Sam's hair tonic growed hair on me! Why you so worried about that watermelon?
      Albert: Poor watermelon din't grow hair. She'll catch cold!
      Seminole Sam: [listening to the melon] Worse than I thought! The melon has no pulse!
      Albert: Mebbe it's holdin' its breath?
  • Sally Forth (Howard) subverts this trope. Hilary tells Sally that since she told her Christmas was about giving, she took the egg carton out of the fridge and put the eggs in a plastic bag. It turns out to make sense, however, when it's revealed in the next strip that Hilary had used the egg carton to make an ornament for Sally.
  • One Garfield strip has him speaking to the readers:
    Garfield: There are many advantages to being lazy. [long beat panel] One being not having to tell you what they are.
  • Duff in Conchy is prone to this. Upon learning that Jupiter has 12 moons, he points out that Mars has two, Earth has one, and Venus and Mercury have none, and reaches the conclusion that the Sun evaporates moons.
  • One of Randy Glasbergen's comics has a penguin reasoning that since penguins and some old TV shows are black-and-white, then some penguins must be old TV shows.

    Films — Animated 
  • BoBoiBoy: The Movie: When Gopal tells Papa Zola that his father says that people only fish for squid at night, he asks him if his father sleeps at night. He replies yes, and Papa Zola suddenly shouts that surely the squids need to sleep at night too.
  • In The Emperor's New Groove, Yzma uses this as an excuse not to give food to the poor:
    Yzma: It is no concern of mine whether or not your family has... what was it again?
    Peasant: Umm... food?
    Yzma: Ha! You really should have thought of that before you became peasants!
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Judge Frollo is a Holier Than Thou Bible-thumper utterly convinced of his piousness while committing sin after sin in God's name and blaming others for his problems via Psychological Projection. Because of this, he is "plunged into the fiery pit" for his immoral actions.
    • Related to the above is his rationale for hating Romani in particular, which boils down to "the way they act makes normal people more inclined to sexuality and other immoralities, so they all have to be killed." Ironically, his lust for a Roma woman is what drives the plot. He even professes this in the second half of "Hellfire", where if he can't have Esmeralda, he'll kill her. And anyone who stands in his way will be disposed of.
  • In The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Eyeore's explanation for how Piglet's house is Owl's house qualifies. But Pooh invokes this trope when he points out how they keep finding a sand pit when lost in the mist, which leads to him deducing that they should look for the pit instead to find their way home by accident. This leads to Rabbit deciding to prove this idea false, subverting the trope at first, only to double subvert it when it turns out that Pooh's plan is partially true; actively searching for the pit results in Rabbit not finding it, nor home.
    Pooh: Say Rabbit, how would it be if as soon as we are out of sight of this old pit we just try to find it again?
    Rabbit: What's the good of that?
    Pooh: Well, you see, we keep looking for home but we keep finding this pit. So I just thought that if we look for this pit we might find home.
    Rabbit: I don't see much sense in that. If I walked away from this pit and walked back to here, of course I should find it! I'll prove it to you! Wait here!
  • In Mickey's Christmas Carol, Scrooge (McDuck) uses this to get out of giving money to the poor.
    Scrooge: Well, you realize if you give money to the poor, they won't be poor anymore, will they?
    First Collector: Well, I—
    Scrooge: And if they're not poor anymore, then you won't have to raise money for them anymore.
    Second Collector: Well, I suppose—
    Scrooge: And if you don't have to raise money for them anymore, then you'd be out of a job. Oh please, gentlemen, don't ask me to put you out of a job. Not on Christmas Eve.
  • The attendant at the Family Reunion Office in Coco is allergic to Dante, a hairless dog, and keeps sneezing. The attendant, like everyone in the Land of the Dead, is a skeleton and insists that it makes sense that he's allergic to a hairless dog because he doesn't have a nose. Miguel is appropriately bewildered by this response.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A recurring Abbott and Costello routine, used in In the Navy and Little Giant, has Costello's character attempting to prove (three different ways) that 7 x 13 = 28. This equation is also quite common among their other acts as well. It was also used in Yeralash.
  • Virtually all the Marx Brothers films include examples of Insane Troll Logic played for laughs. A quick sample from A Night at the Opera:
    Driftwood: (presenting a contract and pen) Sign here.
    Fiorello: I forgot-a tell you, I don't write.
    Driftwood: That's all right — there's no ink in the pen.
  • A major plot point in 1982's Alone in the Dark. Dr. Potter has come to replace Dr. Merton in a mental institute. Patients who really liked Merton come to the conclusion that Merton is gone, Potter is here, Potter killed Merton, and they ought to kill him before he kills them too. Granted, they are literally insane.
  • In Animal House, in order to deflect attention from the (accurate) charge that they supplied their underage pledges with alcoholic beverages and date-raped their female guests at a toga party, Eric Stratton uses this. By claiming it's unfair to railroad the entire Delta fraternity because of the actions of a few bad apples. After all, one might as well scapegoat institutions of higher learning in general for allowing such organizations to exist at all -- and, by extension, one might also condemn the United States of America for mismanaging its national educational system. And how dare you! That's unpatriotic!
  • Played for Drama in Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos claims that he's trying to save the universe from overpopulation by killing half of it. Apart from the fact that such a thing could wipe out livestock and other essential things that lifeforms rely on, his plan is based on gathering the reality-bending Infinity Stones. They would let him solve resource depletion and hunger without a single death, but he goes through with the culling anyway. Avengers: Endgame establishes that Thanos ultimately doesn't care about most other life and that he just wants to prove that he alone can fix what he sees as wrong with the universe.
  • Batman: The Movie:
    • The Dynamic Duo, Commissioner Gordon, and Chief O'Hara are attempting to figure out who made a murderous attack on the Caped Crusader — with a shark stuffed full of TNT:
      Batman: Pretty fishy what happened to me on that ladder.
      Gordon: You mean, where there's a fish, there could be a Penguin.
      Robin: But wait! It happened at sea! See? "C" for Catwoman!
      Batman: Yet — that exploding shark was pulling my leg!
      Gordon: The Joker!
      O'Hara: It all adds up to a sinister riddle... Riddle-er. Riddler?
    • The same movie tops it later when Batman and Robin try to figure out the Riddler's pair of clues to his latest caper:
      Batman: One: What has yellow skin and writes?
      Robin: A ballpoint banana!
      Batman: Right. Two: What people are always in a hurry?
      Robin: Rushing... People... Russians!
      Batman: Right again. Now, what would you say they mean?
      Robin: Banana... Russian... I've got it! Someone Russian is gonna slip on a banana peel and break their neck!
      Batman: Precisely Robin! The only possible meaning.
  • In The Big Store, Flywheel makes a case to the patriarch of an Italian family that because he makes 25$ a week and that average child costs 5$ a week, therefor it's "economically impossible" for him and his wife to have 12 kids, and therefore he doesn't have 12 kids. That kind of logic would track if they were renting kids 5$ a week, but that's not what's happening.
  • Played for laughs in this scene from Black Dynamite, where the gang makes a ludicrous number of associations to deduce the villains' scheme.
  • In The 'Burbs, Art suspects the new neighbors are a family of serial killers; his "investigation" involves slipping a note that says "I know what you've done" under their door and running away, simply to let them know someone is onto them.
    Art: Now they know that we know that they know that we know!
  • In the infamous, NC-17 version of Caligula, the titular character used this to justify accusing otherwise innocent people of treason and having them executed in the most brutal of ways.
    Macron: How have I displeased you, Caesar? I have always been loyal to you!
    Caligula: Exactly! You're an honest man and, therefore, a bad Roman. Meaning you're a traitor. It's logical.
  • In Casino Royale (1967), James Bond describes Mata Hari with whom he used to have an affair with the words "great little dancer, terrible spy" and their daughter Mata Bond as a "terrible dancer". From that he deduces that she "might be a great little spy" and thus the right person to infiltrate SMERSH.
  • Death Machines: The biker gang that harasses the white Death Machine in the bar very quickly go from "this idiot is not talking to us for some reason" to "he's a cop". Even if he wasn't, well, a death machine, you wonder why the hell they think bullying a cop is a good idea.
  • Dr. Bernardo from Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask:
    "Does it sound mad? That's what they called me at Masters and Johnson's clinic, mad. Because I had visions of explorations in sexual areas undreamed of by lesser human beings. It was I who first discovered how to make a man impotent by hiding his hat. I was the first one to explain the connection between excessive masturbation and entering politics. It was I who first said that the clitoral orgasm should not be only for women! They ridiculed me, said I was mad, haha! But I showed them. They threw me out of Masters and Johnson, no severance but, and I had it coming. But I showed them!"
  • Four Lions: Many examples from the main characters. But most often coming from the stupid, racist, Ax-Crazy and blatantly hypocritical Barry:
  • Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah: In the dub, the justification for Godzilla becoming the main threat at the end of the movie quite literally amounts to "Look at how big that thing is! It won't be friendly!".
  • In The Gore Gore Girls, detective Abraham Gentry intentionally puts Lieutenant Anderson on the wrong track in his pursuit of a Serial Killer through a bit of Insane Troll Logic: When the Lieutenant asks Abraham what he was doing with the victim the night the murder occurred, he makes a sarcastic comment about witnessing to her and giving her a Bible. The Lieutenant points out that there wasn't a Bible at the scene, and Abraham replies that the murderer must have stolen it, and therefore the person they're looking for must be a religious fanatic. At a later crime scene, he manages to keep the Lieutenant looking in this direction despite the fact that this victim did have a Bible; obviously, the killer stole her Bible, then replaced it with another one to throw the police off.
  • Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay:
    • The eponymous characters are arrested and forced to eat "cockmeat sandwich". When Kumar asks the guard (whose dick he and Harold have to suck) if the guard is gay, he responds, "There ain't nothing gay about getting your dick sucked; you're the gay ones for sucking my dick! In fact, it creeps me out being around you fags." The group escapes before they have to put this to the test.
    • George Bush similarly justifies his smoking in this manner.
      Kumar: So you get high and then you put other people who smoke weed in jail?!
      Bush: Duh.
      Kumar: That's so hypocritical!
      Bush: Oh yeah? Well, lemme ask you somethin' Kumar. You like givin' handjobs?
      Kumar: No sir.
      Bush: You like gettin' handjobs?
      Kumar: Ha, yeah!
      Bush: Right, well that makes you a fuckin' hypocriticizer too. So shut the fuck up, and smoke my weed.
  • In Head of State, the Gilliams' opponent tells his campaign manager to bury Mays. Naturally, the manager resorts to the Attack of the Political Ad method, one of which claims that, because didn't attend a certain rally against cancer, he must be "pro-cancer".
  • In Kaamelott: Premier Volet, Perceval (one of the biggest ditzes in the Kaamelott universe) uses some strange tactics in La Résistance, such as:
    Perceval: We put clothes with bright colors on so they think we are venomous.
  • In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Pippin argues to Treebeard that they'll be safer going toward Isengard rather than away from it. Subverted because he's talking out his ass and just wants Treebeard to see what Saruman has done to the nearby forest. Doubly subverted in that what he says actually does make a kind of sense, but Treebeard would never have thought so.
  • In Love and Death, Boris, wondering what Socrates would say, and remembering that ancient Greeks were homosexuals, presents a horribly mangled version of a famous syllogism (whose normal, logically valid conclusion is "Socrates is mortal"):
    "A: Socrates is a man. B: All men are mortal. C: All men are Socrates. That means all men are homosexual."
  • In Madea's Family Reunion, Victoria tries to rationalize the fact that she let her second husband, Lisa's father and Vanessa's stepfather, rape her in order to stay. Vanessa outright asks if she's insane.
  • Mars Attacks!: Kessler believes that the Martians must have been peaceful because of their intelligence, ignoring the fact that intelligence really does not dictate what people are like.
  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
    • Paraphrased: Witches burn. Wood also burns. Therefore witches are made of wood. Wood floats in water. A duck also floats in water. So logically, if she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood! And therefore, Burn the Witch!. When they put her on the scales, she does indeed weigh the same as the duck. The townspeople first reach the conclusion that they can tell if she's a witch by throwing her into the pond, which actually is part of witchcraft folklore. Logically, if the accused floats, she's a witch using magic and must be burned. If she sinks and drowns, she's not. In this case they're actually right.
      Witch: It's a fair cop.
    • Also, when they're trying to figure out how to test whether or not she's made of wood, one villager suggests that they try to build a bridge out of her. Bedevere dismisses this particular test... because bridges can also be built out of stone.
    • The logician on the soundtrack album goes all the way to the warning track in left field trying to reconcile this with all fish living underwater and all mackerel being fish and dovetailing it into his wife's restlessness.
      "My wife does not understand this necessary limitation of conversion of a preposition, so consequently, she does not understand me, for how can a woman expect to appreciate a professor of logic if the simplest cloth-eared syllogism causes her to flounder?"
  • In Monty Python's Life of Brian, a bunch of people becomes convinced that Brian is The Messiah, which he vehemently denies. As somebody points out, "Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!" So Brian says that he is the Messiah, causing the crowd to shout, "He is! He is!"
    Brian: NOW FUCK OFF!!!
  • Murder by Death:
    • Somehow, Sam Diamond links a girl walking off with his money in 1940 Paris with the German invasion of France that by chance occurred two hours later. Of course, it's played for laughs. It's also a Shout-Out to Casablanca, another film Humphrey Bogart is famous for.
    • The ending becomes this when you realize that each and every explanation offered by these so-called "great detectives" — as well as the one the mastermind gives them in his Motive Rant, which they end up accepting as the truth — relies on all of them accepting that the maid they saw was actually a mannequin. The actual truth, of course, revealed after they all leave, is that the mastermind is the maid, utilizing Latex Perfection to disguise herself.
  • Nocturnal Animals: Ray claims that if people accuse him of something he hasn't done, then he's got a right to for real. His girlfriend accuses him of cheating? Well, then he will. A woman accuses him of wanting to rape her? He'll do it.
  • In One, Two, Three MacNamara, head of Coca-Cola in West Berlin, is annoyed that everybody stops working and stands at attention whenever he enters the main office room because it's hardly in keeping with the values of freedom and democracy. His efficient assistant Schlemmer tries to explain to him that it is because the employees have internalized these values that they keep doing it. He ordered them to stop standing at attention, but they keep disobeying him!
  • Pirates of the Caribbean:
    • Barbossa occasionally strays into this territory. This gem comes from the third movie:
      Barbossa: Aye, we're good and lost now.
      Elizabeth: Lost?
      Barbossa: For sure, you have to be lost to find a place as can't be found, elsewise everyone would know where it is!
    • Captain Jack Sparrow not only uses Insane Troll Logic, but his logic is also so insane that it quite nicely loops back around to making sense. Added to the fact that it alternately seems like Obfuscating Insanity and, well, just plain old-fashioned insanity.
      Jack Sparrow: Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.
  • The Princess Bride: Vizzini batters the Man in Black with a series of contradicting logical deductions to decide which cup is poisoned. The Man in Black accuses him of using his monologue to trick him into revealing where the poison is. Whether this is his goal or not is never explicitly explained, since the core of Vizzini's trick is simply switching goblets while the Man in Black's back is turned. It's unclear whether his deductions truly led him to believe that the goblet originally in front of him was the poisoned one, or whether he was simply counting on the Man in Black's reaction to his choice being the confirmation. Either way, he was wrong.note 
  • In RoboCop (2014), the political pundit played by Samuel L. Jackson claims that any senator who supports the Dreyfus Act (which prevents robots from being used to police American cities), must be "pro-crime", citing RoboCop's success (even though RoboCop is a cyborg, not a robot).
  • R.O.T.O.R. has this dialogue: "The difference between a hero and a villain is the amount of compensation they take for their services. At our pay grade, I'd say we're heroes."
  • Throughout the Saw movies, Jigsaw and his apprentices believe that surviving the Death Traps people are put in will cause them to appreciate life more. Failing to escape means they lack a survival instinct or don't appreciate their life enough. Yeah, because becoming traumatized totally makes someone care more about their life. Simone, a survivor, calls the nonesense out at a survivor meeting in Saw 3D.
    Simone: I had to cut off my goddamn arm! What the fuck am I suppose to learn from this?!
  • The Shining documentary Room 237 is ripe with this, putting forth theories like how there are scenes in the film that imply Kubrick helped fake the moon landing.
  • In Silent Hill, Rose knows where to go by finding vague items; she always turns out to be right, but it gets odd when she MUST go to the hotel because she found a piece of a sign in some dead guy's mouth. It makes sense, however, since the town seems to follow dream/nightmare logic rather than that of Real Life, and the power that keeps the town the way it is seems to deliberately guide her to the next destination.
  • Speed Zone: When Vic comes to kill Alec, Alec tries to talk him out of it. He's placed money on a car in a cross-country road race and explains that the odds of that car winning are one hundred to one. He then reasons that since he's been gambling with Vic's boss for ninety-six months (12 months in a year x 8 years), his odds of winning the bet are four to one (100 - 4).
    Alec: Their odds are a hundred. My odds are four. Vic, I can win that race even if that car blows all four tires and an engine!
  • Summer of Sam is about how paranoia grips a neighborhood in the Bronx because of the Serial Killer Son of Sam, though it does lead to one amusing moment when one character thinks they know who the killer is:
    Woodstock: I know who the killer is. I figured it out. Reggie Jackson...What kind of guns does the killer use? .44 caliber, right? What's Reggie's number? 44.
  • Superbad: Fogell's explanation for choosing the name "McLovin" on his fake ID.
    Evan: What kind of a stupid name is that, Fogell? What are you trying to be, an Irish R&B singer?
    Fogell: They let you pick any name you want when you get down there.
    Seth: And you landed on McLovin?!
    Fogell: Yeah, it was between that and Muhammad.
    Seth: [beat] Why the FUCK would it be between that and Muhammad?! Why didn't you just pick a common name like a normal person?
    Fogell: Muhammad is the most commonly used name on earth. Read a fucking book for once.
    Evan: Have you ever actually met anyone named Muhammad?
    Fogell: Have you ever actually met anyone named McLovin?
    Seth: No, that's because you picked a dumb fucking name!
    Fogell: Fuck you.
  • The humor of The Three Stooges often ran on this.
    • For instance, a stock joke for the trio would be having the Stooges sentenced to death (often for a Felony Misdemeanor) and give them the choice of beheading or being burnt at the stake. One of the boys (more often than not Curley) would opt for burning at the stake. His reasoning? "A hot stake's better'n a cold chop"...
    • Another would see one of the Stooges, when ordering food, ask for rotten eggs and burnt toast. When asked why, the answer would be "I've got a tapewoim and that's good enough for 'im".
    • Much of the plot of ''A Plumbing We Will Go" is built on this, to the point where the Stooges' surreal logic begins to affect the house they're inadvertently destroying (as an example, the Stooges need to get pipe to try and stop a leak. They take a pipe conduit for electrical cables, that somehow routes water to all the electrical devices in the house, including a television set!)
  • Wild River: R.J. Bailey declares that one of his workers, Ben took the offer to work for the TVA for greater pay, and Bailey threatened Ben into coming back to work for him and then beat him so viciously that he couldn't work for two days (making Bailey hire another man). He declares that this means Chuck owes him the $4 he had to pay for Ben's replacement. Chuck understandably doesn't see it that way. After Bailey beats up Chuck and takes the money though, it's implied that he was merely trying to intimidate Chuck and make a point, as he uses that money to buy some moonshine to send up to the battered Chuck with a smug chuckle.
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has Willy Wonka's explanation for the Road Trip Across the Street in the Wonkamobile: "If the Good Lord had intended us to walk, He wouldn't have invented roller skates."
  • Shaw's plan in X-Men: First Class is built on this: mutants are "the children of the atom" (even though he and at least three other mutants manifested their mutations before the Trinity test, let alone Hiroshima), so starting a nuclear war would increase their power and allow them to rule the world (even though most mutants don't have powers that would allow them to survive either a nuclear strike or the resulting fallout). Subverted in that it's possible he's actually looking out for himself, and only using that argument to convince people to help him. He, after all, would be perfectly suited to surviving a nuclear war.
  • In Zombieland: Double Tap, Madison goes through an accidental Self-Induced Allergic Reaction to almonds from her trail mix. When Wichita questions her on this, she claims she thought trail mix was vegan.

    Gamebooks 
  • Bowser's scheme in the Nintendo Adventure Book Dinosaur Dilemma. To quote the Super Mario Wiki:
    Bowser has his minions begin abducting all the dinosaurs in Dinosaur Island, so he can "prove" his theory that the dinosaurs went extinct due to not looking both ways before they crossed the street; once the dinosaurs and all evidence of their existence are gone and his theory is thus "proven" true, Bowser intends to be awarded the Snowbell Prize (feeding the cooked dinosaurs to the committee awarding it) and be named curator of the Mushroom Kingdom Museum of Natural History, conveniently located across the street from Mushroom Palace, which he plans on pelting with garbage.
  • Wizards, Warriors and You: The Warrior gives a ludicrous explanation on how he cured the Wizard's madness-inducing infection by shooting him with a poisoned arrow. The Wizard had made the poison, saying it will kill anything. The Warrior thus figured it would kill the illness infecting the Wizard, but leave a good man untouched.

    Jokes 
  • A game magazine once held a contest for the best logical argument based entirely on illogical steps. The winner was proof that there was, in fact, "life after death":
    After death comes the mourning; after morning comes night; beside the knight is the bishop; the bishop is underneath the pope; the pope has serious convictions; and with serious convictions you get life!
  • This is the basis of an entire genre of humor from the '60s and '70s: elephant jokes. For example:
    Alice: Why do elephants wear green sneakers?
    Bob: Why?
    Alice: To conceal themselves when they run across pool tables. Did you ever see an elephant run across a pool table?
    Bob: No.
    Alice: See? It works!
  • Prove logically that a cat has nine tails.
    1. No cat has eight tails.
    2. A cat has one more tail than no cat.
    3. Therefore, a cat has nine tails.
    • A similar joke asks, "Which is better, eternal happiness or a turkey sandwich?"
      1. Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
      2. A turkey sandwich is better than nothing.
      3. Therefore, a turkey sandwich is better than eternal happiness.
  • Prove logically that a lazy dog is a sheet of paper.
    1. A sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane.
    2. An inclined plane is a slope up.
    3. A slow pup is a lazy dog.
    4. Therefore, a lazy dog is a sheet of paper.
  • Most examples of a fallacious argument, taken to hilarious extremes as a way of illustrating some issues regarding the steps of logic. For example:
    1. All polar bears are left-handed.
    2. 10% of burglars are left-handed.
    3. Therefore, if you get robbed, there is a 10% chance it was a polar bear.
  • A popular meme on some gaming websites involves doing some equations and ending up with 3, saying "Half-Life 3 confirmed", since the game is infamous for taking an incredibly long time to be released. A related one is where fans note that all of Valve's games merely have one sequel and never a third game, leading to the meme: "Valve can't count to 3."
  • Another popular joke involves escaping from a room with no doors, no windows, and only a tablenote .
    1. You look at the table and see what you saw.note 
    2. You take the saw that you see and cut the table in half.
    3. Two halves make a whole.
    4. You escape through the hole you just made.
  • A joke involving penguins and old TV shows:
    1. All penguins are black and white.
    2. All old TV shows are black and white.
    3. Therefore, all penguins are old TV shows.
  • Prove that school is evil.
    1. School is for learning.
    2. Learning gives you knowledge.
    3. Knowledge is power.
    4. Power corrupts.
    5. Corruption is evil.
    6. Therefore, school is evil.
  • Prove that girls are evil.
    1. Girls require money and time, therefore Girls = Money x Time
    2. Time is money, therefore Girls = Money^2
    3. Money is the root of evil, therefore Money^2 = evil
    4. Therefore, Girls are evil.
  • Prove that every horse has an infinite number of legs.
    1. Horses have an even number of legs.
    2. Behind they have two legs and in front they have fore legs.
    3. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse.
    4. The only number that is both odd and even is infinity.note 
    5. Therefore horses have an infinite number of legs
  • From comic Minnie Pearl: "My boyfriend just gave me the highest compliment! He says nothing's better than a pretty girl, and I'm better than nothing."
  • This Insult Backfire from a feminist after being called a bitch:
    A bitch is a female dog.
    Dogs bark.
    Bark grows on trees.
    Trees are part of nature.
    Nature is beautiful. Thank you for the compliment.
  • A popular children's gag:
    Did you know I have eleven fingers?
    You do?
    Yes. Watch. (Begin counting backwards on the fingers of one hand.) Ten, nine, eight, seven, six... (Hold up all fingers of the opposite hand.) Plus five is eleven.
  • Pick up a spider, put it down again and tell it to walk. It will walk. Pick it up again, put it down again and tell it to walk again. It will walk. Pick it up again, pull its legs off, put it down again and tell it to walk. It will stay where it is. This proves that pulling the legs off a spider causes it to go deaf.
  • Scientists discovered that there is a special nerve that connects human eyes to their bottoms. Proof? When the test subjects were stabbed in the buttocks, they cried. And when the test subjects were stabbed in the eyes, they shat themselves.
  • A hunter was asked what he did for a living, and he responds that he "hunts tigers in Africa." When it's pointed out that there are no tigers in Africa, he replies "that's because I do my job".
  • Why are fire trucks red? It's because they have eight wheels and four people on them, and four plus eight makes twelve, and there are twelve inches in a foot, and one foot is a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was also a ship, and the ship sailed the seas, and there were fish in the seas, and fish have fins, and the Finns fought the Russians, and the Russians are red, and fire trucks are always “Russian" around, so that's why fire trucks are red.
  • Police officer arrests a man sleeping on a park bench with only underwear on.
    "Why are you sleeping like that?", asks the police officer.
    "My sexy briefs keep the bats away this town", he says.
    "Huh? There ain't no bats in this here town", says the officer.
    "See! My sexy briefs work!" says the man.
  • Q: Why do you never see elephants hiding in trees? A: Because they're so good at it!

    Literature 
  • Haruhi Suzumiya:
    • Haruhi Suzumiya does this at times. Then again, she is something of a Cloudcuckoolander, but it's most likely that she doesn't mean it seriously. The prologue of the 4th novel had this nice dialogue:
      Haruhi: Crab is a no-no. I can't take it. Picking the flesh out of the shell drives me nuts. Why can't crabs make their shells edible? How come they didn't do anything about that during the course of evolution, might I ask?
      Kyon: [narrating] They don't undergo natural selection in the depths of the sea just for the sake of your stomach!
    • Haruhi's take on that classic storytelling element, The Climax:
      Haruhi: There's something I've always wondered about. You often see people die in the last episode of TV shows and the like. Doesn't that feel unnatural? Why do they just happen to die at that time? It's strange. That's why I hate anything where someone dies at the end! I would never make a movie like that!
    • She keeps up this trend in the spinoff series Haruhi-chan:
      Haruhi (seeing some cherry blossoms blowing by): Cherry blossoms... Petals falling... Blood splattering... Dig a hole... Bury... Under the cherry blossom... Kyon! Let's have a viewing party!
      Kyon: How do those thoughts connect to a cherry blossom viewing party?
  • Isaac and Miria of Baccano! have a lot of this. One instance is kind of like the Fat Tony example, in which he argues that just as you can get vegetables from eating steak (obviously, this is wrong itself), if you steal someone's wallet, whatever is inside then belongs to you. He also asserts that a mine in which gold has never been discovered is a great place to look for gold for precisely that reason.
    • Even better, the entire 'mining for gold' thing is linked with their usual career of thievery by Isaac claiming that they're stealing from the Earth itself.
    • One of their heists involved stealing the front door of a museum, so that nobody could get in.
    • Even better is his continuation of the "take someone's wallet" logic. If you pick up the person holding the wallet...
    • The Slash reveals that Jacuzzi's mind tends to switch to Insane Troll Logic when he's scared.
      ...A loud doorbell is scary. Scary like something dangerous. Dangerous like the Mafia, which means the Mafia have come to kill us, I know it! I have to hide!
  • In Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, the following exchange happens:
    Yoshii: You might not know this, but, in Japan there's a legend saying you'll be blessed if you confess beneath a legendary tree! And there's only one thing "legendary tree" could be referring to at this school... It refers to the legendary beauty, Hideyoshi Kinoshita!note  In other words, you'll be blessed if you confess to Hideyoshi!
    Hideyoshi: This is wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin.
  • Durarara!!'s own troll Orihara Izaya does this all the time to screw people over.
    • Kururi and Mairu ideas on "twin-ness" are baffling. Thanks to their big brother, Izaya.
    • Kida has moments, too, as he can conclude any remark by "... so, let's go pick up chicks!"
    • Shizuo also applies in episode three. After being hit in the head by a goon, he says this:
      Shizuo: You just went for my head, didn't you? ... You know that you could kill someone by hitting a vital spot on their head, right? ... If you know this, then you were trying to kill me, right? ... So you shouldn't have any complaints no matter what I do to you, right?! [mega punch]
    • He later makes a similar rant taken to an even greater level, arguing that since there's a 0.0000000000000001 percent chance of dying from the "evil eye", beating up someone who glared at him is justified self-defense.
  • Full Metal Panic!: While pretty effective in a combat situation, Sosuke Sagara's mind becomes this in a school situation, always over-analyzing something and believing that it's got to be the work of a spy or potential assassin, or worse yet (for the other students) that it's supposed to provide them with Training from Hell (as an example, he receives a letter from a Stalker with a Crush schoolgirl early in Fumoffu... after piecing it back together from what remains after he blew up the shoe lockers, he takes the Anguished Declaration of Love and offer to meet behind the gym as "I have been spying on you all of this time and I want to meet you at this time so we can duel". He also once takes an art teacher's statement that he should be "hard to get" as a model as an order to hunt his classmates down Predator-style as some kind of counter-surveillance exercise).
  • Jaine Austen Mysteries: Jaine's mother Claudia had her and her husband retire to Florida from Hermosa Beach to be closer to the Home Shopping Network (which she is addicted to), and thus be able to get her packages faster.
  • James and the Giant Peach: The Earthworm's proposal of what to do when the Centipede is immobilised from being covered from head to toe in hard and fast drying paint: the Centipede to stick out his tongue, and everybody would pull really hard, to turn him inside out so that he has a new skin.
  • KonoSuba: When asked why she kept using Verdia's castle as target practice after promising to stop. Megumin says she simply couldn't go back to casting explosion in empty fields once she knew how satisfying it was to have a target.
  • The Devil is a Part-Timer!: Lucifer is a Fallen Angel who wants to win his way back to Heaven and is convinced that the best way to do so is by allying himself with Maou, the Demon King, and being a Jerkass who terrorizes innocent people.
  • Katarina in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! used to be a "normal" schoolgirl who died and reincarnated as a noble who happens to also be an otome game villain. She recognizes the role she's in and takes steps to avoid the bad ends that may be in store for her, but these plans tend to be 'scare my fiancee with a toy snake before he can stab me' or 'learn to farm in case I get exiled.'
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School: As fears of Silas Scratch begin circulating around Hardscrabble Farms, students begin telling contradictory stories of when they supposedly saw him. Albert Sandy explains this confusion away as Silas using the farm's sewage system to travel around the camp quickly, which is how he can potentially be seen at two locations around the same time.
  • Discworld
    • The explanation of L-space: Books contain knowledge. Knowledge is power. Power is energy. Energy = matter. Matter equals mass. Mass distorts spacetime. Therefore, a well-stocked library or bookstore invariably becomes a labyrinthine lattice of literature connected to every other book that could ever exist, as anyone who’s ever gotten lost in a bookstore knows.
    • Then there's Cribbins at the end of Making Money. He intended to out Moist von Lipwig as archswindler Albert Spangler as a scam to get money out of him. But Moist outed himself before Cribbins got the chance. So Cribbins concludes that Moist, having kiboshed his scam, now owes him five thousand dollars.
    • The Auditors of Discworld reason that any sentient personality exists for a finite period, which is negligible in comparison to the infinity of Time. Therefore, they instantly cease to exist if they make the fatal mistake of identifying themselves as "I". The book Lampshades the Insane Troll Logic of this, but the erring Auditors themselves vanish too quickly to ever catch on.
    • One auditor who has accidentally-on-purpose become human engages in some intentional Insane Troll Logic to trap the aforesaid Auditors, such as putting up a sign that says "Do Not Feed the Elephant" next to an empty cage, a sign with an arrow pointing left but having the word RIGHT on it, and a sign that simply says Duck! with neither a waterfowl present nor a reason to lower one's head.
    • Some of the less sophisticated members of the Watch (i.e. Colon and Nobby) have this approach to confessions. If someone confesses to a crime then you believe them, even if it is impossible for them to have committed said crime. The people you don't believe are the ones who won't confess. Only guilty people are trustworthy.
  • The Brightest Shadow: One of Veron's main tactics when she's messing with people.
  • Catch-22 and its sequel Closing Time. Never let Milo Minderbinder talk. Or ex-PFC Wintergreen. Milo was able to make a profit by selling black market foodstuffs to himself. And rightfully bragged about it. The whole of Catch-22 is based on the idea that the military is run on insane troll logic, as is the US system of capitalism. Look at where Minderbender convinces High Command that the Luftwaffe subcontracting bombing the Americans to the USAAF is perfectly reasonable.
  • The focus of the satirical novel Gog, where the eponymous protagonist meets a variety of intellectuals, artists and charlatans with very stupid ideas. The most illustrative example is the eponymous Caccavone, who believes in "Oudenism"; while Descartes taught that he thought, therefore he existed, Caccavone holds that, because thinking is just abstract and does not correspond to reality, he doesn't think, therefore he doesn't exist! He believes that absolutely nothing exists ("being=nothing").
  • The Star Wars Legends short story anthology Tales from Jabba's Palace has one story about Gartogg the Gamorrean. Even among the other not too bright guards, he is considered incredibly dumb. In his attempt to solve two murders so that he could be assigned the best jobs, he concluded that snot vampire Dannik Jerriko must be the killer because there was no evidence to find and his species never leaves evidence when they kill someone. He turns out to be right after all.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy runs on a combination of this and It Runs on Nonsensoleum:
    • The eponymous guide proves that there is no life in the universe by first informing that the universe is of infinite size and that there is a finite number of inhabited worlds in the universe. Since any finite number divided by infinity is so small "as makes no odds", then clearly any life in the galaxy must be the product of a deranged mind. And that anybody you encounter is therefore just a figment of your imagination.
    • It also said that the Babel Fish proves there is no God. After all, it is so staggeringly improbable that such a thing would have been created by chance that it proves there is a creator. However, God has said that He refuses to provide proof of His own existence as with proof there is no need for faith, therefore by proving His existence, He simultaneously proves that He does not exist "and disappears in a Puff of Logic". The man who proves this goes on to prove that black is white. In the TV version, it is explained that combining all colors together in the form of paint equals black while combining all colors in the form of light (from colored bulbs) equals white. Fittingly, the man gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing/crosswalk.
    • Legal precedent was established when the Guide was sued by the families of hitchhikers who had taken the entry on the planet Traal literally. (It said "The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal often makes a very good meal for visiting tourists" rather than "The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal often makes a very good meal of visiting tourists") The Guide's lawyers summoned a poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth and truth beauty, and therefore blamed life for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving statement, held life itself in contempt of court and duly confiscated it from all present before retiring for a pleasant evening's ultra-golf.
    • In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Zaphod justifies stealing a spaceship thusly: "Property is theft, right? Therefore, theft is property, therefore this ship is ours."
    • In And Another Thing..., the same people who use the Babel Fish to prove that God doesn't exist use the silver-tongued devil, an even more useful creature, to prove that Satan does. There's Lampshade Hanging about how little sense that makes.
  • Dirk Gently. His chosen career was built around using this in order to list anything he likes, even holidays to the Bahamas, as "case-related expenses", although since nobody ever pays for his services, such as they are, it's kind of a futile gesture. Luckily, most of his cases can be solved by Bat Deductions, not that he'll ever get paid for doing so.
  • Scott Adams' book The Joy Of Work includes a section called "You Are Wrong Because," a handy sheet listing various logical fallacies and suggesting the reader make a copy and hand it to a coworker with the fallacy they have committed circled.note  Two of the examples that stand out as examples of this trope are "Amazingly Bad Analogy" ("You can train a dog to fetch a stick. Therefore you can train a potato to dance.") and "Total Logical Disconnect" ("I enjoy pasta because my house is made of bricks.")
  • Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth takes place in a world of wordplay and dubious logic. For example:
    • King Azaz's cabinet justifies why words grow on trees:
      "Well, money doesn't grow on trees, does it?" demanded the Count.
      "I've heard not," said Milo.
      "Then something must. Why not words?" exclaimed the Undersecretary triumphantly. The crowd cheered his display of logic and continued about its business.
    • Heck, the central plot point of the story is that Milo's task to rescue the princesses was impossible, but he was able to succeed because he didn't know that in advance.
  • In a short Italian story a king once decided to inspect his dungeons. He asked the first prisoner about his crime. The prisoner pled innocent. So did all the other prisoners but one, who confessed to numerous heinous crimes. The King ordered he be thrown out of the jail at once so that he wouldn't besmear the convention of honest people with his presence.
  • A Serial Killer (who specialized in premature burial) in the Criminal Minds novel Killer Profile claimed that, while he buried his victims, he was not responsible for their deaths, they alone were. They should have tried harder to escape, and because they did not, they obviously did not want to live and let themselves die, so all the alleged victims were not murdered, but actually committed suicide.
  • First printed in the book Science Askew[1], according to the proof that Barney The Dinosaur is the Antichrist or Satan, if you take the phrase CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR (since that's what his fans call him), then convert U to V and cut everything that isn't a Roman numeral, then the sum of the result (C+ V+ V+ L+ D+ I+ V) is 100+ 5+ 5+ 50+ 500+ 1+ 5 is 666.
  • Wayne from Brandon Sanderson's The Alloy of Law comes up with some hilarious examples, such as: "I bought a ward against [logic] off a traveling fortune-teller. It lets me add two 'n' two and get a pickle."
  • Magic Ex Libris: The Hero justifies his stealing the car of a very powerful sorcerer that way:
    Isaac: Is it really stealing if you’re stealing from an asshole?
  • Kill time or die trying:
    Nathan: The routes must be the same length, or there would be signs saying otherwise
  • According to the counselors at The School for Good Mothers, "Loneliness is a form of narcissism. A mother who is in harmony with her child, who understands her place in her child's life and her role in society, is never lonely." Simply having desires of her own or unresolved emotions makes a mother unfit.
  • Abdel from Someone Else's War doesn't just speak this language, he practically invented it.
  • The One Who Eats Monsters: Asura who can manipulate minds cause this in their victims. As a result of Ghorm's machinations, the Asura Cabal's mortal agents are twisted until they believe whatever wildly contradictory things are needed by the asura to sic them on Senator Bradford and Naomi. An eco-terrorist, a racist rapist, and a religious soldier all work together despite knowing they have been told wildly different stories and would rather kill each other, and they just never question it.
  • Spoonbenders: On top of blaming professional skeptic Archibald on their family's fall from grace on live-television, Frankie also blames Maureen's death on him by way of chaos theory.
    Frankie: First, the act is wrecked. We're dead as her as the public is concerned. Gigs get cancelled, fucking Johnny Carson starts making fun of us. ...Once they isolated us, we were sitting ducks. Do the math kid. Nineteen seventy-three. Height of the Cold War. The world's most famous psychics are discredited on The Mike Douglas Show, and just a year later, a woman with your grandmother's immense power just dies? Oh yeah.
    Matty: But Mom— Mom said she died of cancer.
    Frankie: Sure. A healthy woman, a non-smoker, dies of uterine cancer at age thirty-one.
  • In the Star Risk, Ltd. series, Jasmine King left her previous job after her supervisor decided she was too perfect to be human, therefore she was an android, therefore he didn't legally need to pay her.
  • In The Bible, the Pharisees often made such charges against Jesus, like, "He casts out demons by the prince of demons." Jesus points out the obvious contradiction of the accusation.
  • In The Qur'an Abu Lahab doesn't believe and staunchly opposes The Prophet Muhammad — to the point where the latter prophesies that Lahab will eventually burn in hellfire as an unbeliever. Of course, Lahab not believing in such things is unmoved by such a threat. The IST / Catch-22 comes when some use this passage to reason that Lahab could have easily have proven Muhammad's prophecy wrong and thereby scored further points by simply converting to Islam — as it would thereby let him avoid going to hell (as according to Islam). Yes, Lahab ought to have debunked the teachings and inspiredness of Muhammad by accepting the teachings and inspiredness of Muhammad, according to the rules as dictated by teachings and inspiredness of Muhammad...
  • Pasho has the tribe of Jai and the people of Keli. Those wicked Keli eat fishes and their women wear silver belts rather than golden bracelets. Better murder them all to preserve the purity of Jai.
  • The Tamuli features Insane Troll Logic from an actual Troll! (Ok, one of their Gods, but still). Ulath and Tynian are able to travel around in 'No Time', in which the Troll Gods freeze time to allow someone to move large distances in between seconds. However, while in this space between spaces they are still able to perceive the actions of the people around them in real-time. How is this paradox reconciled? Because the Troll Gods think that it works that way.
  • In the Resident Evil novel City of the Dead, Chief Irons holds Claire Redfield at gunpoint and demands to know why she's there. When she tries to explain that she only wants to find her brother, Chris Redfield, Irons comes to the conclusion that since Chris had worked against him that Chris worked for Umbrella — and by extension thus Claire works for Umbrella and was sent by Umbrella to kill Irons. And no amount of explaining on Claire's part can convince him otherwise, as he takes her complete and utter bewilderment of his accusations as an admission of guilt.
  • Referenced in Robert A. Heinlein's The Star Beast. "A petition has been brought before the court seeking a destruction order for the animal Lummox. The petition is rejected as the court finds itself unable to follow the alleged reasoning."
  • In His Only Wife, Evelyn's father once refused to sell palm oil to Aunty Ganyo at the price she offered, offending Aunty. She concludes that Evelyn must take after her father and orders her son Richard to dump Evelyn (they carry on with their relationship on the sly). The fact that the man had been dead for 22 years and Evelyn had nothing to do with the incident does not matter.
  • In James Thurber's The 13 Clocks:
    "If you can touch the clocks and never start them, then you can start the clocks and never touch them. That's logic, as I know and use it."
  • In the Rainbow Magic series, Jack Frost's reason for going after the Green Fairies was because he wanted goblins to be the only green thing around, not realizing that green meant ecology.
  • Psmith has a knack for this. From a scene in Psmith in the City wherein he harasses a politician at a Town Hall meeting:
    Mr. Bickersdyke, having said some nasty things about Free Trade and the Alien Immigrant, turned to the Needs of the Navy and the necessity of increasing the fleet at all costs.
    'This is no time for half-measures,' he said. 'We must do our utmost. We must burn our boats—'
    ...
    'How,' asked Psmith, 'do you propose to strengthen the Navy by burning boats?'
    The inanity of the question enraged even the pleasure-seekers at the back.
  • Julian's brother Gallus drunkenly explains why he's not The Caligula:
    "Sometimes at night, I walk the streets in disguise. I listen to them. I watch them, knowing I can do anything to them I want and no one can touch me. If I want to rape a woman or kill a man in an alley, I can. Sometimes I do. But it is evil. I know it. I try not to. Yet I feel that when I do these things there is something higher which acts through me. I am a child of God. Unworthy as I am, he created me and to him, I shall return. What I am, he wanted me to be. That is why I am good."
  • Warrior Cats:
    • Hawkfrost wants to kill Firestar because he couldn't save Tigerstar from Scourge's claws. Ignoring the fact that no one could do anything out of shock, and Scourge was too fast for anyone to stop him.
    • Played for laughs in Bramblestar's Storm, when the apprentices bunk in with the warriors temporarily. Dewpaw says that they must be warriors now since they were in the warriors' den now.
  • In L. Jagi Lamplighter's The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel, we learn of Magdalena Chase's parents who offered her up for Human Sacrifice and were told it wouldn't work because they didn't love her enough. So they locked her in her room for a week. Two days, they didn't even bother to feed her.
  • The Pushcart War has a mayor who's in the trucking companies' pocket convincing everyone not to oppose the trucks by stating that they stood for progress and also delivered a lot of good things like peanut butter. So if you were against the trucks, you were against progress. You might even be against peanut butter. And no decent person could be against peanut butter!
  • Played for Laughs in Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!). Apparently, you can't spell "emotional abuse" without "bus", which is why Colbert never takes public transportation. For that same reason, he dislikes books (can't spell them without "Boo!", can you?).
  • In Honor Harrington the excuse used to exclude Honor from the House of Lords is that she shot a man whose gun was empty. The reason his gun was empty was that he'd just used it to shoot her in the back. To make it even more insane, he'd opened fire on her during a formal duel without waiting for the official start so even if Honor hadn't shot him the officer supervising the duel would have executed him immediately anyway.
  • Heavy Object:
    • The Capitalist Enterprise produces the EX Wall, a barbed wire barrier laced with explosives. Neither the wire or the explosives pose any obstacles to Objects, but damaging the wall will knock the explosives free, essentially becoming landmines which are illegal by international law. The Enterprise will then accuse the enemy who damage the Wall of breaking the law because it was the attack which created the mines, not the Wall itself. The politics involved are so bad that other nations have to avoid the EX Wall, allowing the Enterprise to define the battlefield's size and shape.
    • The Faith Organization blames the Legitimacy Kingdom for the destruction of their capital, Rome, and launch a retaliatory attack on Paris, the Kingdom's capital. The Capitalist Enterprise and Information Alliance reason that this battle could easily escalate into a world war involving all of the powers unless brought to a swift end. To accomplish this, they launch their own attacks on Paris, effectively initiating a four-way war.
  • Carrie: Margaret White's entire worldview is made out of this. She thinks that all Sex Is Evil (even for reproduction) and thinks a lot of other random things are evil to, including summer camps. She also thinks only "bad" women have periods or grow breasts, even though she obviously has breasts.
  • Under Suspicion:
    • In I've Got You Under My Skin, Nina's mother blames her for Robert Powell leaving her for Betsy, because the three of them happened to be having lunch in the same restaurant as Besty and her daughter Claire (who was Nina's best friend), and thirteen year old Nina called them over to say hello, resulting in Rob and Betsy getting to know each other.
    • You Don't Own Me: When Ryan reveals George Naughten has a criminal record involving harassing and stalking a teenaged boy named Connor related to his mother being injured by a texting driver, Laurie initially assumes that Connor was the one behind the wheel... only for Ryan to inform her that George was harassing the person the driver was texting at the time. Laurie finds this quite bizarre, lampshading that George seems to have "missed a step in logic there". George later explains he felt that Connor was responsible despite not even being in the car because if he hadn't been texting his friend, she wouldn't have gotten distracted and rear-ended his mother's car; George finds this to be perfectly logical. It's noted that George has some undisclosed mental illness, with his psychiatrist saying he has a history of obsessing over people for both real or imagined persecution.
  • In Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear, Haimey quickly realises that most of libertarian-pirate Farweather's explanations as to why the Synarche, and Haimey in particular, suck are a mess of self-contradictory nonsense. The Synarche suppresses freedom in the name of the greater good and drafts people into its projects ... but she's completely bewildered by the idea they don't punish freeloaders, and her own society enforces obedience via implanted explosives. Haimey's clearly broken because she uses "rightminding" so much ... and the fact she believes it's a good thing while not using it as much as she could makes her a hypocrite ... and if she really thinks rightminding makes her a better person, she should switch it off and see what she's like then. And Haimey's suppressed memories simultaneously prove that she's just the same as Farweather deep down, and that she's never had a chance to explore who she really is, because that version of her was also created by others messing with her mind. Eventually Haimey concludes that she's just not worth arguing with.
  • Terra Ignota: Mycroft concludes that a crime whose evidence points to a conspiracy by the Utopia hive could not possibly have been committed by any actual Utopians, because Utopians are so technologically advanced that they would have instead committed the crime perfectly and without leaving any evidence. Everyone present concedes that that's actually an excellent point.
  • In one Uppo Nalle book, Reeta's grandmother wins a trip to New York for only two people, but reasons she can take Reeta, Uppo-Nalle, and Laulava Lintukoira with her, because she is one person, Reeta (a child) is half of a person, and Uppo-Nalle (a talking teddy bear) and Laulava (a talking dog) are quarter-people, and therefore they make a total of two people.

    Multiple Media 
  • MonsterVerse:
    • Riccio in the graphic novel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong descends into this late into his Sanity Slippage. He goes from respecting the Iwi to assaulting and threatening them as he becomes more concerned with his idea of Kong as God, and he decides to bring the Iwi's wall down as a test to see if Kong is the kind of god that will come to their aid; rationalizing that if Kong doesn't intervene to save the Iwi, then it means them and everything in the world is unworthy of Kong specifically, plus all his talk about removing the barriers that divide creatures even if doing so is suicidal as in the case of taking down the Iwi's wall.
    • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
      • The Eco-Terrorist mastermind Emma Russell has a pretty big case of this even if they do make some valid points. Their child was a casualty of a past Titan battle, and how did they decide to ensure their child's death wasn't "in vain"? By setting all the Titans loose on the world indiscriminately so they can inflict Gaia's Vengeance, and they're staggeringly oblivious to how this act essentially involves re-engineering their child's exact death a million-fold on a global scale, because in their mind, if it'll stop future generations from losing all their children to a manmade extiction event then engineering that event in the present is an acceptable sacrifice. It's no wonder Emma gets called out as insane.
      • Alan Jonah's justifications for letting King Ghidorah do what it wants to the Earth descend into Insane Troll Logic once it becomes clear that Ghidorah's goals involve creating an even more rapid extinction event than the one Jonah and his allies were originally trying to prevent. Jonah brushes off Emma's concerns about Ghidorah with a brief rant about how irredeemably despicable he thinks the human race is, and he nihilistically decides to just go with whatever Ghidorah does and focus on keeping himself and his troops alive throughout the apocalypse, declaring that what matters is that the Titans (or rather a Titan) are taking the Earth back from humanity. At this point, it doesn't matter to Jonah that Ghidorah's actions defeat his entire original purpose of saving the Earth's ecology, all that matters is that humanity isn't the dominant species anymore and that he feels confident he and his men can weather out the coming apocalypse.
  • Record of Lodoss War: Karla the Grey Witch justifies constantly manipulating the various factions and rulers of Lodoss into an endless chaos of border-wars, rebellions, monster uprisings and other slaughters as preventing great suffering by preserving the Balance Between Good and Evil. The heroes opposing her point out that this just means people are constantly dying directly or indirectly from the fighting, and Wort the sage even states outright in the OAV version that her whole modus operandi stems from having gone mad.

    Music 
  • The Arrogant Worms:
    • "Let There Be Guns":
      Worm 1: Nobody ever gets shot, cause everybody have a gun.
      Worm 2: Makes sense.
      Everybody: Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun?...
    • Also, their "Don't Go Into Politics" concludes that going into politics, science, or music is a bad idea, because so many famous politicians, scientists, and musicians are now dead.
  • In the song "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" by Country Music singer Mark Chesnutt, the title character gets angered by a song on the jukebox and shoots it. When the cops arrive, this trope occurs:
    Reckless discharge of a gun, that's what the officer's a-claimin'
    Bubba hollered, "Reckless, hell, I hit just where I was aimin'!"
  • The Lonely Island song "Threw It On The Ground" has a protagonist who's oddly angered by being handed things, and responds by breaking them "on the ground." In one scene of the protagonist at the farmer's market with his "so-called girlfriend", she hands him her cellphone, stating it's his dad. He then throws it on the ground, because his dad's "not a phone! DUH!". In a previous scene, he throws a free hot dog note  on the ground because "What do I look like, a charity case? (...) I don't need your handouts!"
  • "1.0 (Fuck No)" by the Moistboyz is a song that rationalizes drinking and driving with lines such as "Why'd you put the bar so far from my home?"
  • Flanders and Swann, parodying Neo-Luddites and their attitudes, said: "If God had intended us to fly, He would never have given us the railways."

    Podcasts 
  • Mom Can't Cook!: Andy and Luke decide the reason First Kid uses a CGI White House for one shot is because "America's enemies might see it." There doesn't seem to be a more logical explanation they can come up with.
  • Episode five of Mystery Show revolves around the question of Jake Gyllenhaal's exact height, a question prompted by a very divided internet comment thread. In said thread, one commenter notes that Jake must be six-foot-three because he was (allegedly) supposed to play the Joker, who is six-foot-three. Others point out that that doesn't make sense because they can't confirm that the Joker is six-foot-three. Starlee suggests (probably jokingly) that the discrepancy might be why Jake didn't get the part.
  • Sick Sad World:
    • One episode talks about a man who said aliens were threatening him. This guy later got arrested for child porn and claimed not only did aliens plant it, they also erased a hard drive of his, which police suspected had some incriminating evidence. The hosts point out it doesn't make sense that they would destroy evidence if they wanted him to get in trouble.
    • The same episode has a guy claiming aliens wanted him to be sentenced to death so they could save him at the last minute and prove their existence. Dev and Jasmine point out if the aliens were that powerful, they could easily find another way to prove they are real.
  • Welcome to Night Vale: Night Vale runs on this trope. For example, the reason they are fighting the Blood Space War, as explained in "Lost In The Mail", is because they believe that if the war ends, then the war will never end, and therefore they have to continue it forever so that it might one day end.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Samoa Joe walked out on Crimson during a tag team match in TNA because Crimson was on an undefeated streak and Joe never needed help during his undefeated streak.
  • John "Bradshaw" Layfield's rants on supporting the heels have this, one example saying that Daniel Bryan had the nerve to reject the The Wyatt Family even though they kidnapped him to force him to join. He also says that The Authority's abuse of power was "helping" wrestlers and "best for business".
  • Michael Cole was doing this after Layfield's departure to wrestle again and before Layfield's return to the announce table from 2010-2012. His demented justifications for the behavior of many heels, especially former General Manager John Laurinaitis, legitimately angered many fans, as well as other members of the commentary team.
  • Sami Callihan deserves a shot at Dragon Gate USA's Open The Freedom Gate Champion Johnny Gargano because Gargano and Callihan are both part of the EVOLVE roster, which was just featured in a video game in which Callihan's usage by players exceeds Gargano's by 2%! Proof that the people are turning on Gargano, proof that Callihan is better than him!
  • In one of his comedic introductions for his and The Miz's web show The Dirt Sheet, John Morrison declared that he doesn't like Canada, because he doesn't like maple syrup. And he doesn't like maple syrup because it reminds him of Canada.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Acceptors from B.R.A.T.S. of the Lost Nebula are a cult that accepts anything and everything, including destruction at the hands of the Shock. When the Brats show up to save them and point out that they have to accept the aid, the Acceptors deal with the two mutually exclusive acceptances by trashing the Brats' ship, the logic being that they do not have to accept help from the Brats if the Brats are rendered incapable of actually helping them. Later, when all of the other cultists bail, the group's leader decides that, since a cult cannot consist of just one person, it is effectively disbanded, and thus he is no longer bound by its rules, and so can now reject being destroyed by the Shock.
  • In the Fraggle Rock episode "The Preachification of Convincing John", Mokey has very sensible (albeit wrong) reason for wanting the Fraggles to stop eating Doozer constructions. When this fails to persuade everyone, she recruits Convincing John, who explains it like this:
    Well you eat a Doozer tower,
    And it's as pretty as a flower,
    And a flower's what you pick up in a field,
    But the field can have a hole,
    And you can fall in while you stroll,
    And then a Gorg can come along to find a meal,
    And he can pack you in a sack,
    And you can try to scramble back,
    But you'll never, ever, ever get free,
    'Cause every time you eat a tower you'll be shut up for eternity!
  • The Muppet Show:
    • One skit on the Rita Moreno episode has Kermit, Piggy, Rita (portraying "Tiffany Gonzales"), and Brewster (a mostly forgotten Muppet) in a panel discussion:
      Brewster: In my country, we have a seldom-used saying, "When the swine lubricates the automobile, you wind up with a greased pig."
      Rita: That doesn't make sense.
      Brewster: I know, that's why it's seldom used.
    • Gonzo the Great does this a lot (being the Cloudcuckoolander on The Muppet Show) but there is a good one from The Muppet Movie:
      Gonzo: Where are you going?
      Fozzie: We're following our dream!
      Gonzo: Really? I have a dream, too!
      Fozzie: Oh?
      Gonzo: But you'll think it's stupid.
      Fozzie: No we won't, tell us, tell us!
      Gonzo: Well, I want to go to Bombay, India and become a movie star.
      Fozzie: You don't go to Bombay to become a movie star! You go where we're going: Hollywood.
      Gonzo: Sure, if you want to do it the easy way.note 
  • On Sesame Street, Lefty the Salesman would use this logic to try to sell Ernie useless items. For example, one day he tried to sell Ernie a number 8, with the pitch that he could hang it up on the wall at home, so if he ever had pressing questions like, how many tentacles does an octopus have, or how many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh, he could merely glance at the mounted digit for the answer. (He didn't make the sale, but only because he just missed another salesman who tapped Ernie out with his sale of number 9s; exact same spiel, but for how many players are on a baseball team.)

    Radio 
  • The Goon Show based a huge portion of its humor around this kind of logic. One of the best-known examples is the exchange between Eccles and Bluebottle that is usually referred to by its first line, "What time is it, Eccles?" In this example, Eccles explains in a perfectly logical sequence of total nonsense that he knows what time it is because he has the time written on a piece of paper in his pocket.
  • I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue uses a lot of this logic, either taking it seriously (of course Mornington Crescent is a real, rational game with a long and detailed history) or as one-off gags and quick silliness.
    Humph: Graeme, why are cashew nuts never sold in their shells?
    Graeme: Ah, that's because cashews are actually monkey kidneys. And monkey kidneys don't come in shells, they come in monkeys. That would bulk out the packaging too much.
  • Doctor Who Expanded Universe
    • In Big Finish Doctor Who, an Eldritch Abomination named Zagreus possesses the Doctor. The TARDIS manages to lock him up inside her. Zagreus tells her that he's dead now, so she'd better let him out. When the TARDIS pointedly remarks that dead people generally don't talk, Zagreus tries to convince her that she's mad for talking back to a dead person, so she'd better let him out.
    • In the BBC audio drama Hornets' Nest, the hornet queen throws every moment of doubt Mike Yates has ever had of the Doctor at him in order to break his trust, heedless of the fact that they're contradictory. So in one breath, she criticises the Doctor for abandoning Earth, then she suggests that he's not really a time and space traveller at all and Mike's been conned, and then she asks Mike if he's not jealous of his Time Lord powers.
  • The vast majority of logic from Karl Pilkington, from The Ricky Gervais Show, is this.
    • For example, he's willing to donate all of his organs except his eyes. He doesn't want to donate his eyes because he's afraid of becoming a blind ghost. Even though he is convinced that blind people will get eyes in the afterlife.
    • Another example: Karl believes that snakes and spiders like hiding under rocks. The Earth is essentially a giant rock, with Australia underneath. That's why there's so many snakes and spiders in Australia.
    • Karl thought the dodo went extinct because it tasted terrible and no-one wanted to eat it.
  • Bleak Expectations has an example of a character using such logic, when Harry Biscuit attempts to break the 30 mile an hour speed limit. He believes the issue is a lack of horsepower, on account of only having so many horses. Therefore, if he has more horses, he shall have more horsepower, and break the speed limit.
    Harry: It is simple mathematics.
    Pip Bin: ... It is wrong mathematics!
  • In The Men from the Ministry:
    • Mr. Lamb apparently asked his landlady Mrs. Bradby to charge less rent for the benefit of both of them. When his secretary Mildred questions how it brings help to her, Lamb says that in weeks he can't pay she loses less money.
    • According to Sir Gregory, it is said that one person in four is mentally unstable. Therefore if you're on the bus and the nearest three people look sane, it must be you.
  • In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) (and no other versions) the natives of Brontitall build a fifteen-mile high statue of Arthur Dent Throwing The Nutrimatic Cup, an event they witnessed as a vision that changed their whole society. The Arthur Dent part of the statue stands on the ground; the Cup part of the statue hovers in midair. How? Because it's artistically right.
    • The radio version also mentions that Marvin, the Paranoid Robot, who, due to copious amounts of time travel, ended up several times older than the universe itself, at long last finally broke down... and was promptly put back together again because his owners, i.e., Zaphod and the gang, were — due to time travel — alive at the time he broke, which of course went against the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's lifetime warranty.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Dungeons & Dragons, slaadi have weird ways of thinking. They are outsiders from the realm of chaos, are Always Chaotic Neutral (or Chaotic Evil in 4th edition), and who have a mechanically-enforced Our Monsters Are Weird creature-generation system. They also look like giant anthropomorphic frogs. And this is ignoring the very big potential for Player Character Chaotic Stupid tendency.
  • In Paranoia, playing along with The Computer's Insane Troll Logic is a major survival skill and plot instigator.
  • This is part of the appeal of Warhammer 40,000's Orks. Imperial scholars theorize that somewhere in the distant past a Mekboy built two superficially identical vehicles, one of which was painted red. Due to an immeasurable internal difference, the red vehicle went faster, so the Orks decided it was due to the color scheme, a belief they've stuck with ever since. Since the Orks are unconsciously, latently psychic, this means that any vehicle painted red goes faster because they expect it to.note 
    • Orks on military strategy: "Here's da plan: win. If we lose, it's because ya didn't follow da plan."
    • Orks on friendly fire: "If ya misses it, it's obviously one o' ours. If ya hits it, den it must be one o' theirs."
    • Orks on victory and defeat: "Orkses is never beaten in battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin' so it don't count as beat. If we runs for it we don't die neither, so we can always come back for anuvver go, see!"
    • Orks on being ambushed: "Ha! Dese gits just made da classic blunda: attackin' an Ork who 'adn't found 'em already! Now we'z can stomp dem fasta, haha!"
    • Orks on firepower: "Dere is no such t'ing as too-much-dakka. If such a t'ing as enough-dakka existed, adding more to it woul' be too-much. Derefore dere is no such t'ing as enough-dakka! Pile it on, boyz!"
    • One Ork Warboss and his invasion fleet got sent back in time by a Warpstorm, arriving shortly before they'd left. The Warboss decided to kill his past self so he'd have two copies of his favorite gun. The resulting confusion stopped the invasion in its tracks, thus proving that even Orks have their limits.
  • Frankly, this is a significant part of Tzeench's domain; as he is the chief patron of Manipulative Bastard and Exact Words contracts that will end up benifitting, harming or both for the person who dealed with him.. Tzeench is rightly feared as a Chaos God for his Troll logic.
    • /tg/ has applied Orky logic to matters of camouflage, concluding that purple is the sneakiest color. Because you've never seen a purple army, have you?
    • By this Eldar philosopher Uthan the Perverse cocluded that Orks are only sane race:
      "The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude."
    • This can apply to the Players themselves. A swarm of infantry bodies in any other army would be a suicide tactic (or at least be a handicap in the case of the imperial guard). For the Orks, it's the only tactic! This actually works because the Orks roll so many dice, the sheer amount of actual hits are still enough to kill whatever they're targeting, despite the massive odds against them.
  • In Genius: The Transgression, this is the Phenomenologist's modus operandi. They believe that facts shouldn't get in the way of personal whim and so they will happily alter their philosophy and perception of reality to justify whatever they're doing at the time. What sets them apart from The Unfettered is that they genuinely believe everything they say, even if it's obviously absolute nonsense.
  • A big part of Conspiracist is the player characters (agents of the Illuminati) using absurd logic to determine what their mission will be, based on a cryptic clue given by the game master (or "Controller").

    Theatre 
  • This is the basis of how the Theatre of the Absurd works. Eugène Ionesco was particularly good at this.
  • In Anyone Can Whistle, the patients from a local insane asylum infiltrate a line of pilgrims waiting to see a "miracle" set up by the mayoress and her cronies. To keep from being exposed, they call on the asylum's doctor, who sends his recently arrived assistant, J. Bowden Hapgood. Hapgood promises to separate the sane from the insane using "the principles of logic," and has an entire 13-minute musical sequence that is full of this kind of "logic".
  • Any Dane or Norwegian who didn't sleep their way through school knows this classic example from Ludvig Holberg's 18th century comedy Erasmus Montanus: Erasmus, having returned to his home village after getting an education at the Copenhagen university, demonstrates the power of logical thinking to his mother by stating that since rocks can't fly and his mother can't fly, she must be a rock. The mother is so gullible that she begins to think she is a rock, but Erasmus "saves" her by pointing out that rocks can't talk, but she can, so she's not a rock after all. Due to this play, the concept of insane troll logic is called Erasmus-Montanus logic in Denmark.
  • In Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio orders his servants not to let his wife, Kate, eat or sleep. Kate begs their servant Grumio to give her food. Grumio pretends to use this so that he can follow Petruchio's orders.
    • First he offers to get Kate some calf's foot. When she agrees he rescinds the offer, saying that calf's foot would make her bad-tempered.
    • Then he offers her tripe but takes that offer back for the same reason.
    • The real kicker is the beef and mustard. When he offers this to Kate, she agrees. Then he says no because the mustard is too hot. She says she'll have the beef without the mustard, then. He says no, the beef goes with the mustard. She says she's willing to eat one or the other or both or anything else. So Grumio comes up with the perfect solution: mustard without the beef!
  • In Caryl Churchill's version of A Dream Play, there is a scene with a teacher in school arguing logic with a student of his. The teacher is asked what time is, to which he replies that since time flies, logically, time is something that flies while he's speaking. One of the other schoolboys starts to fly, claiming that by that logic, he is time. The teacher agrees, confirming that he is in fact time. But the first student says that that's impossible, and because logic failed in that case, we can therefore logically prove that logic is wrong.
  • Touchstone, in As You Like It, explains that Corin's going to Hell because he never went to court:
    Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never sawest good manners; if thou never sawest good manners, then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.
  • And while we're on the subject of fools in Shakespeare, Feste, the fool from Twelfth Night, is a master of this. For example, he attempts to prove that Olivia is a fool so that the people asked to "take away the fool" will remove her instead of him:
    Feste: Good madonna, why mournest thou?
    Olivia: Good fool, for my brother's death.
    Feste: I think his soul is in Hell, madonna.
    Olivia: I know his soul is in Heaven, fool.
    Feste: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
    • Feste also gives a lengthy, confusing speech when Olivia accuses him of growing dishonest:
      Olivia: Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides, you grow dishonest.
      Feste: Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool no longer dry; bid the dishonest man mend himself: if he mend, then he is no longer dishonest: if he cannot, let the botcher mend him: anything that's mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue: if that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty's a flower. — The lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I say again, take her away.
  • Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona:
    Launce: Fie on thee, jolt-head! Thou canst not read.
    Speed: Thou liest; I can.
    Launce: I will try thee. Tell me this: who begot thee?
    Speed: Marry, the son of my grandfather.
    Launce: O illiterate loiterer! It was the son of thy grandmother: this proves that thou canst not read.
  • Pops up constantly throughout the works of Gilbert and Sullivan:
    • Jack Point's explanation of how there is humour in all things in The Yeomen of the Guard is this with a touch of Metaphorgotten:
      Point: Now observe. She said "Hands off!" Whose hands? Thine. Off whom? Off her. Why? Because she is a woman. Now, had she not been a woman, thine hands had not been set upon her at all. So the reason for the laying on of hands is the reason for the taking off of hands, and herein is contradiction contradicted! It is the very marriage of pro with con; and no such lopsided union either, as times go, for pro is not more unlike con than man is unlike woman — yet men and women marry every day with none to say, "Oh, the pity of it!" but I and fools like me!
    • In The Mikado, Ko-Ko saves his life (plus the lives of Pooh-Bah and Pitti-Sing) when Nanki-Poo suddenly shows up, very much alive. This puts the Mikado in something of a quandary; Ko-Ko did not kill the heir apparent, but he is in dereliction of his duty. Ko-Ko solves the problem thusly:
      Ko-Ko: When Your Majesty says "Let a thing be done", it's as good as done, practically it is done, because Your Majesty's will is law. Your Majesty says "Kill a gentleman", and a gentleman is told off to be killed. Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead—practically he is dead, and if he is dead, why not say so?
      The Mikado: I see. Nothing could possibly be more... ha-ha-ha, satisfactory!
    • In Ruddigore, the entire plot is motivated by a curse that compels the current Bad Baronet of Ruddigore to commit a crime every day or die in agony. Robin (the current baronet) is about to be killed by the ghost of his ancestor, Sir Roderick, for failing to commit his daily crime, when he suggests to Roderick that failing to commit a crime is tantamount to suicide, and suicide is itself a crime. Not only does this satisfy Roderick, but causes him to come back to life (essentially making his undeath vanish in a Puff of Logic).
    • In The Pirates of Penzance Major-General Stanley claims the tombs in the ruined chapel on his estate are the tombs of his ancestors, even though he only bought the estate a year ago. He is their "descendant by purchase," you see.
  • Angels in America has Roy Cohn explaining to his doctor at length how he is not homosexual, even though he does have sex with men, as homosexuality is really about lacking social, economic and political power.
    "Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys."
  • "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man:
    It takes judgment, brains, and maturity to score
    In a baulk line game,
    I say that any boob can take
    And shove a ball in a pocket.
    And they call that sloth.
    The first big step on the road
    To the depths of deg-ra-Day—
    I say, first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon,
    Then beer from a bottle.
    An' the next thing ya know,
    Your son is playin' for money
    In a pinch-back suit.
    [...]
    You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table.
    Pockets that mark the diff'rence
    Between a gentleman and a bum,
    [...]
    Trouble with a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for 'pool'!
  • The Miser has The Matchmaker Frosine use it in hopes of convincing Harpagon that marrying Marianne will give him "a clear twelve thousand francs a year", by listing all the expensive things that Marianne does not indulge in and summing up their prices.
  • In Arsenic and Old Lace (including the film version) Mortimer Brewster pulls this when trying to get "Teddy Roosevelt" Brewster to sign the papers to admit him and his aunts to the crazy house.
    Mortimer Brewster: The name Brewster is code for Roosevelt.
    Teddy Brewster: Code for Roosevelt?
    Mortimer Brewster: Yes. Don't you see? Take the name Brewster, take away the B, and what have you got?
    Teddy Brewster: Rooster!
    Mortimer Brewster: Uh-huh. And what does a rooster do?
    Teddy Brewster: Crows.
    Mortimer Brewster: It crows. And where do you hunt in Africa?
    Teddy Brewster: On the veldt!
    Mortimer Brewster: There you are: crows — veldt!
    Teddy Brewster: Ingenious! My compliments to the boys in the code department.
  • In The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trials, an old man named George Jacobs is accused of witchcraft, Abigail Williams claiming he entered her window at night to perform his spells. Jacobs points out that he needs canes to walk, and that climbing would be impossible with his health. The court replies that he could've sent his spirit into the window. Sadly, Jacobs can't argue against that and gets hanged.
  • Westeros: An American Musical: The Sand Snakes' reaction to their father dying in another kingdom is to go murder their father's entire family while completely ignoring people who are not only much more directly reponsible for the situation, but physically much closer to them.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • Phoenix Wright is fond of objecting first and thinking later and of grasping at straws and coming up with imaginative guesses, but he's usually too honest and reasonable to use actual troll logic. However, in one situation where he's desperate to keep the trial going as long as possible until the police complete the next phase of their investigation, we get this exchange:
      Witness: He looked suspicious because he was walking through the hall in the hotel wearing black leather gloves.
      Phoenix: Footballs are made of leather! Are you saying that all footballs are suspicious just because they're made out of leather?!
    • Another example from the third game involves a massive stone lantern with upside-down bloody writing on it. Gumshoe voices the results of his special Gumshoe investigation: At the time of the murder, the stone lantern was upside down.
    • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, one of the witnesses devolves into this frequently, notably why he steals large panties (For Science!), and if you can actually keep up with his Motor Mouth Scrolling Text, he somehow manages to take the leap from discussing someone being shot "square in the forehead" to "krypton particles are rare" among other things.
    • Phoenix will often break into this trope whenever the player answers a question wrong. Take this example from the DLC case of the fifth game:
      Judge: And on what grounds do you base your assertion that the singing trick was faked?
      Phoenix: Take That!
      Judge: That item proves the singing trick was faked?
      Phoenix: No, Your Honor. This piece of evidence will not prove that. In other words... this piece of evidence is... a fake-out! And if this evidence is a fake-out, then the singing trick was a fake-out as well!
      Athena: Boss, I don't think that makes any sense...
      Phoenix: Momentum is key at times like these.
      Judge: I can hear every word you're saying, Mr. Wright!
    • Edgeworth himself does this if you present wrong evidence in at a few parts in Gyakuten Kenji 2.
      Edgeworth: Objection! Do you not see a problem with your statement just now?
      Courtney: I'm afraid I see no such problem.
      Edgeworth: Exactly. So if you fail to see the problem, then that must mean you fail to see the problem with accepting your logic! You're admitting that you can't comprehend your own logic?!
      Courtney: The only thing I fail to see here, is your point.
      Edgeworth: Nggh...! (Curses...! I guess I should have known that wouldn't work...)
    • Matt Engarde also proclaims that he never killed anyone, despite hiring an assassin to commit the case's murder for him, making him indirectly responsible. Either due to using Exact Words or his own warped belief in his own innocence, he actually manages to fool Phoenix's Magatama with this.
    • During the third case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, Hugh O'Conner, desperate to get the defendant, a close friend of his, found innocent, pulls out an absolutely insane attempt at a confession about him using a body double to take his place in his academy's mock trial, so that he would have time to go commit the murder. Everybody in the court is convinced he's lost his mind after hearing it. Athena only agrees to do a therapy session with him because it's the only way to not lose the case at this point, and prosecutor Blackquill has to flat-out leave the courtroom to clear his mind.
    • In Turnabout Time Traveler, when Edgeworth protests that some scattered flower petals are hardly "meaningful" evidence, the Judge disagrees...because they're his wife's favorite flowers, and their relationship is VERY meaningful, so the petals must be, too. Phoenix is actually able to get a fair number of bluffs through by playing on this angle; since the trial centers around a wedding and Edgeworth is quite vocal about his desire to remain single, the Judge will usually agree with Phoenix due to Edgeworth 'not understanding romance'.
  • In Double Homework, nearly every point Henry tries to make falls under this.
  • In Umineko: When They Cry this is what Battler's strategy degenerates into when he's desperately grasping at straws, no matter how ridiculous, as a viable theory (as long as magic isn't involved of course); from "spike-launching devices" to "small bombs". Beatrice lets the more amusing ones pass, at least for the time. Dlanor uses her laws to cut them down abruptly and mercilessly.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
    • Cloudcuckoolander Yasuhiro Hagakure delves into this from time to time. Perhaps the biggest example is when Kyoko shows up after having believed to have been killed, and Hiro refuses to believe that she isn't a ghost. The first part of the trial then consists of Makoto having to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kyoko really is alive. While she is standing right in front of them.
    • Monokuma is a less hilarious example. He traps the cast in a building, tells them that the only way out is to kill someone and get away with it, and then psychologically and emotionally tortures and blackmails them to make them desperate to get out enough to kill. Whenever anybody calls him on it, though, he claims that the students killing each other is entirely on them and it isn't his fault. But his worst use of Insane Troll Logic is unquestionably when he outright decides to plant a fake suicide note on the scene of a crime and when this is found out, he tries to claim that this act wasn't the same thing as planting false evidence or attempting to mislead anyone trying to find the killer... because he didn't fake Sakura's signature, and therefore it's Aoi's fault for believing the suicide note to be real. It turns out that particular instance was indeed a suicide, but not for the reasons Monokuma's fake note implied.
    • This is the foundation of the Big Bad's life philosophy. Absolutely nothing about loving and hoping for despair makes any sense, but they see this as a good thing- due to their Ultimate Analyst talent, they can immediately analyze and understand anything with a logical basis, which makes those things boring. However, despair is completely illogical, and therefore not boring. The difficulty in keeping such an insane ideology makes life interesting for Junko Enoshima.
    • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Mikan tries arguing (very poorly) that her double murder of Ibuki and Hiyoko wasn't her fault because everyone else obviously hates her and they drove her to do what she did by making her into her current self with their bullying, so everyone should just immediately forgive her. Never mind the fact that sans from Hiyoko literally everyone else in the of the cast shows no hostility towards Mikan, and in fact, most of them have shown her the exact opposite. This is also a doubly awful excuse, as she clearly picked her victims based on practicality- Ibuki was one of the friendliest girls in the class, but killed because her Gullibility Disease made her an easy target, while Hiyoko was the one person Mikan would be justified in being hostile towards, but was only killed because she accidentally witnessed Mikan setting up the crime.
      • Though in this case, the argument is Right for the Wrong Reasons; Mikan really didn't have full control over her actions, because the Despair Disease had reverted her to a point when Junko had made her Brainwashed and Crazy. It didn't have anything to do with her being bullied, but she was still not in her right mind.
    • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Himiko is the Ultimate Magician who prefers being called the Ultimate Mage, and acts like she can perform real magic. This leads to her often claiming that things happened as a result of magic. Gets to ludicrous degrees during the second class trial, as the body was discovered during Himiko's magic show. The first portion of the trial is spent with Himiko refusing to drop the "it was genuine magic" shtick, even though it was making her the prime suspect. After Shuichi proves how the trick was done she still insists it was real magic, and that she's not a magician for the rest of the game.
    • Tenko's infatuation with Himiko leads to her dropping some pretty standout examples of terrible logic when Himiko comes under suspicion, like saying that she couldn't have left a puddle of water after getting out of a water tank because she doesn't get wet.
  • The Fruit of Grisaia:
    • Michiru's reasons on how some of her actions reinforce her tsundere nature can often come off as this.
    • Michiru's reasons as to why and how she consumes vitamin C are as varied as they are misinformed, it doesn't make her smarter, and it's not that much easier for the body to absorb it in liquid form.
    • Sachi takes off her maid uniform and wraps it around the head of her brush. Why? Because it connects with the floor on a larger surface... besides she just accidentally fell, so her clothes were wet anyway.
  • In The Labyrinth of Grisaia Michiru's reasons for going to a winter date. Winter is rather romantic, right? She certainly believes so. Is she looking cute in her coat? The protagonist admits as much. Is it a problem that they are in the middle of the late-summer heat of early September and otherwise in the hottest days of the year? Not in the slightest. Winter date it is then... Granted there is a simple reason why she wants that, but the way she tries to justify it is as ludicrous as it gets.

    Webcomics 
  • Com'c: Several characters do this, particularly John, who can prove that the speed of sound is 1 mph (~1.6 km/h).
  • 8-Bit Theater:
    • All of Red Mage's plans run on this very logic. When stranded on an island, Thief quite accurately states that Red Mage's plan to get off the island would likely involve blowing up the island with them on it with the justification that they're no longer on the island anymore. While Red Mage's actual plan was much less dangerous, it did involve massive amounts of Evilutionary Biology for the Chocobos and a willingness to exploit his Mime ability beyond its actual usefulness.
    • This quote of Red Mage's sums it up quite well.
      RM: In the arena of logic, I fight unarmed!
    • Everyone in the comic is either a liar, a cheat, or utterly stupid, if not all three, so conversations tend toward this. For example; In this comic, Red Mage explains how his plan to shoot down a visible sky castle, then repair it, in order to fly high enough to find the invisible sky castle "makes too little sense to fail."
      Black Mage: Okay, Red Mage, enlighten us. How can a plan that makes no sense work?
      Red Mage: One simple reason: It makes too little sense to fail.
      BM: What.
      RM: Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any step will have no effect on the macro level.
      BM: That's so stupid I can't even see straight anymore.
      RM: Now imagine what'll happen when physics tries to figure it out!
      BM: Seriously, this hurts.
    • Black Mage isn't immune to this himself, either. Among other things, he justifies his penchant for extreme short-term planning on the grounds that since it's always now there is no long term and therefore he can't be screwed by it (shortly after being screwed by it), and his explanation for why he tore off the wings of a fairy in order to stick them on a baby's back and make a fake fairy managed to confuse even Red Mage.
      Black Mage: [on a corpse] It's not what it looks like?
      Guard 1: Looks like a man killed either by a flurry of stab wounds or from having his face peeled off.
      Black Mage: Right! So it can't be that, as I explained just now.
      Guard 2: I think he has a point.
      Guard 1: You think he has a point? His point is that the corpse can't be a corpse because it's a corpse. That's no point at all!
    • Black Mage explains his loyalty to Chaos:
      BM: Way I see it, yes, Chaos is the embodiment of all suffering and destruction. But he's also the wildcard of natural forces. Chaos! Dude gave us 24 hours for basically no reason! Who knows what he'll do next? Okay, sure, he'll destroy the world. But maybe he'll turn it into cake. Or fire. But I figure there's more kinds of cake than fire, so the odds are actually in my favour.
      RM: Even I know that's a dumb plan. A dumb, dumb plan.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Elan learns that the more armor you have, the more it counts against Hide checks. This leads him to the conclusion that wearing absolutely zero armor will make him perfect at hiding, in other words, that going naked will make him invisible.
      Elan: Woo! I'm invisible! You can't see me!
      Roy: How I wish that were true...
    • This is also his reaction when Haley reverses the definitions of adventure and adventurer to make him feel better. If anything they do counts as an adventure since they're adventurers, then of course he's going to go out and do the most random thing possible for the excitement that it's also an adventure. Even Miko is weirded out by his brand of Insane Troll Logic.
    • Miko uses troll logic from time to time, as lampshaded by Roy:
      Roy: It's like she's got that monk ability that lets you jump as far as you want, except with her, it applies to conclusions.
    • Tsukiko's grounds for her conclusion that the undead are nice people. Her reasoning is that the living are bastards, so as the antithesis of life, the man-eating undead must actually be sweet, innocent, virtuous entities.
    • The Empress of Blood knows that dragons get more powerful as they get bigger. However, she decided to make herself bigger by overeating. All this does is make her morbidly obese, but she still thinks it's working. It probably helps that her advisors are under no hurry to dissuade her of this notion.
    • This is also the basis for the dwarves' fear of trees. The vast majority of lightning strikes trees, sent by Thor is the god of lightning. Therefore, trees must be evil and/or Thor's sworn enemies. Thor wouldn't waste a perfectly good lightning bolt on a tree just for shits and giggles, right?? (Well, yes, actually he would. But he never told the dwarves that...)
    • Some potion-makers insist that their low prices boost traffic to the store, ignoring the fact that they're selling their wares for less than the cost of making them. Vaarsuvius gives up on explaining when they decide to turn around their business by announcing a sale.
  • Shortpacked! has REALLY insane troll logic here. This is based on an actual troll on his blog (link)
  • Joey's plan to sneak into his landlord's house in A Game of Fools has to be seen to be believed.
  • Darths & Droids
    • Jim's truly spectacular plan to throw the Mos Espa podrace.
      Pete: Let's just recap here. We've given away our only means of transportation to someone to throw a race in which, at our insistence, he is no longer competing. We've bet all our money on a nine-year-old driver who has never raced before, in a vehicle he built in his backyard. We've sold all of our decent weapons to raise the money for the aforesaid bet. And if by some bizarre unforeseen chance we don't win... you've agreed to hand the Queen of a planet we're meant to be helping over to a sadistic slave-owner. And a group of mercenaries, armed by you, Jim, will expect you to help them capture... you.
    • This argument by Jim's other character — you'll know him as Han Solo, but that's just one of the many identities he stole — directed at two gangs chasing him:
      Jim: Look. You lot think I'm Umberto. But you guys think I'm Sergio. Clearly you can't both be right, so at least one of you must be wrong. Given one of you is definitely wrong, the most likely conclusion is that you're both wrong. So we'll just buy some fruit and you can be on your way.
    • Jim's plan shortly after: Declare that you stole the identity of the guy who was just eaten by a monster. Also wear the guy's one remaining boot as a disguise, though that's just an additional touch. Then decide that the monster won't chase you any more because it thinks it's already eaten you.note  Corey adds the idea that others will be safe by sticking with Jim's character so they won't be chased either.
  • Reginald from Nedroid has workout advice. Given that it's better to do fewer reps with more weight, is to take it to its logical conclusion and do zero reps of a million pounds.
  • Featured in "troll physics," a form of 4chan's /v/ board's MS Paint comics. For example, bread always lands butter-side down. Cats always land on their feet. Therefore, attaching a piece of buttered bread to a cat's back will result in Anti-gravity.
  • Several characters in Ménage à 3 and its spinoffs have their moments of insanity. For example...
    • Being fairly flaky at the best of times, Yuki is especially prone, particularly when she's upset. She sometimes recognizes when she's being unreasonable, though it doesn't always stick:
      Yuki: He kissed another girl! How can he possibly do that when he doesn't even know that I might possibly be considering liking him?! Oh, right... All that stuff I just said...
    • There are also Nathan's claims about his own sexuality, denying that he's at all gay despite starting each day out by having anal sex with one of his male subordinates.
  • In El Goonish Shive, most of the characters seem to think that Tedd's explanation of the reason he maintains long hair is Insane Troll Logic. Oddly, it actually makes perfect sense. You see, Tedd looks very androgynous and would quite like to look more manly. But he keeps long hair anyway. If he cut his hair, he would look very slightly more manly but it would be obvious that the thing that makes him look so feminine is his actual face itself. If he keeps his hair in a really girly long hairstyle, then everyone at school with him assumes that he would look manly if not for his hair.
    • Much later on, Tedd realizes that he's actually genderfluid. This provides an alternative (and less illogical) reason for maintaining long hair; he sometimes enjoys looking girly even when he's not using one of his Gender Bender devices to turn himself female.
  • In Tales Of Zenith, Tam O'Shanter says that it's JFK's fault the Oklahoma City Courthouse was bombed. "JFK appointed his brother Attorney General. This got Congress so mad they passed a law that the president can't appoint any relatives to a cabinet position. This meant that Bill Clinton couldn't appoint his wife Attorney General, so when Waco happened, instead of Hillary talking it out with David Koresh, Janet Reno allowed the FBI to use tanks and tear gas, and people couldn't get out and died. As a result, Timothy McVeigh saw what happened and decided to blow up the Oklahoma City Courthouse. That's why it's JFK's fault, if he hadn't appointed his brother Attorney General, Hillary would have been able to be appointed, and she's too politically savvy to have made the mistake Janet Reno did."
  • Real Life Comics depicts an instance that actually happened to creator Mae Dean in real life: She tried to order a Pepsi in a Dave and Buster's, but was refused because she wasn't of age to drink alcohol yet (despite her repeated protestations that Pepsi isn't alcoholic). This gets a Call-Back when Mae finally does hit the legal drinking age — the first thing she does is go back to D&B's and say "I want a freaking Pepsi."
  • The Whiteboard: According to Doc, he won't need a parachute when he next goes skydiving. He'll just bring along an extension cord or some welding leads, and it's an even bet that they'll snag on something before he lands.
  • Hobbits And Hole Dwellers Bailey, roleplaying as Gandalf declares that she has wizard business to do. Ted, presumably watching her wander off, tells her to stay put, but-
    Bailey/Gandalf: You're right! I'll write my name on your door so I don't get lost.
  • From Homestuck:
    • In one of the later chapters, Terezi attempts her hand at insane troll logic when she finds the corpses of her recently murdered friends. According to Terezi, there is no way that it could be anyone but Vriska. To rule out any discrepancies in her logic, she fabricates her own story in which Vriska murdered several trolls, then developed a taste for troll blood (which would explain the vampiric markings on the side of Feferi's neck). She gives up on trying to explain it, acknowledging that her explanation is stupid and unlikely. However, this doesn't change her mind at all about the culprit, logic be damned. She's not at her most sane by this point.
    • Post-scratch Derse apparently has its own version of Serious Business (a social network). The first time we see it, a Dersite known as HATLIKER tells everyone that he accidentally sat on his favourite hat. What do the others suggest? Turning the hat upside-down and sit on it again to "unsit" on it.
  • Precocious:
  • Early in Basic Instructions we had the redneck and Scott's own mother providing this. After Jenkins introduction, he became the poster child for using Insane Troll Logic to insist that he's right about everything. When Scott indulges in this himself, he hangs a lampshade on it by calling on Jenkins to support him.
  • Nephilopolis in general runs on this in Dresden Codak, but the Department of Inquisition has a particularly fine line in it, concluding that something they just saw happen could not possibly have happened.
    Head of Department: Science is about finding the most credible explanation, and since Gary has the highest credibility score, you are a weather balloon.
    Gary: Dap. [Fist Bump with the "scientist" standing next to him]
  • The puzzles set by Leonardo da Vinci on the Vatican Library door in Irregular Webcomic! are a parody of Moon Logic Puzzles. They start off looking simple (the Train Problem and Knights and Knaves), but the characters use absurd logic to solve them (and yet, while they worry away at technical inconsistencies, they completely dismiss Only Sane Man Monty's point that Leonardo couldn't have written a train problem). And these solutions appear to be right, much to Monty's bewilderment.
  • One Penny Arcade strip has Tycho finding Gabe after the latter has left his house full of cigarette smoke. Gabe explains that he preordered My Stop Smoking Coach, but Tycho reminds him that he doesn't smoke; Gabe reasons that he got a carton of cigarettes with his preorder.
  • Sluggy Freelance: There's an example of Insane Troll Logic in ethical reasoning in the drunk scene in "That Which Redeems — Sham Pain" where Leo and Kent talk about how Zoë did wrong in habitually telling the truth when Leo thought she was habitually lying.
    Leo: I feel like Zoë is someone different than I thought. Like her whole life was a lie.
    Kent: The life you thought she was living.
    Leo: Right!
    Kent: Because when she told you about the life she was living you thought they were lies.
    Leo: Right.
    Kent: But her lies turned out to be truth making your truth of her lies.
    Leo: Totally!
    Kent: That bitch!
    Leo: I know!!!
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal sometimes advertises the "BAH Fest", apparently an actual event, where BAH stands for "bad ad hoc hypotheses", which seem to fall under this trope. That aside, specific examples from the comic:
    • How to be a Conspiracy Theorist. The sample reasoning mostly consists of really bad puns substituting for connections between things.
      "'Moon' has four letters. 'Fore' is what you shout in golf. Golf was invented in Scotland. Scottish descendants created McDonald's. Donald is a cartoon duck, and you know who didn't duck in time? Abraham Lincoln."
    • In "Connections", a woman tries to analyse everything a man says by using a device that records it all and arranges concepts via connections. Unfortunately, her logic in doing this isn't very good: Because he connects "Hitler" with "evil", "evil" with "confusing" and "love" with "confusing", he must hold that Hitler = love. No wonder she concludes he holds 7 trillion socially repulsive views.
    • From another strip: Since someone set a monetary value for human life, we can conversely measure large sums of money in terms of number of human lives; since any amount of money would theoretically accrue enormous interests if invested for a very long time, we can conclude that failing to save a little money is equivalent to mass murder.
    • "The Future 2": The more morally upright people are in the future, the more deserving they are of previous generations leaving them a good world to live in. Therefore, the worse we are now, the more morally right it was for the people of the past to leave us the world they did. Therefore, we should now be bad to make the past generations' actions morally better.
    • "Mortality": Since psychology tells us the way to learn something is to practice gradually a long time, therefore the way to die well is to practice by dying bit by bit inside while you're alive.
      "Shakespeare has Caesar say 'Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.' Point is, if you get the equivalent one practice death a day, that's almost 3 years of training, just by being a coward!"
    • "Chess": I can't have cheated at chess because if I don't follow the rules, then by definition I'm not playing chess.note 
  • Freefall:
    • Helix, when trying to find Sam Starfall, concludes that Sam will hide somewhere Helix won't think of. So he gets a map of the spaceport and crosses out all the areas he can think of. Then he goes to the place that isn't crossed out. It works.
      Sam: Helix, why is it every time you think, it's my head that hurts?
    • At one point, Sam decides to steal the satellites he's being paid to deliver. When he tries to figure out a good spot to hide them, Helix comes to the rescue: the best place to hide satellites is in orbit.
      Sam: Hmm. Only people with a spaceship could get to them. We'd be able to keep an eye on them. And if we put them exactly where they're supposed to be, the owner won't notice we've stolen them. Helix, I like it! This is a crime so sneaky and so subtle, even I don't know if I'm actually committing it!
    • Sam's clever plans to rescue Florence include "Shipless Reentry", "Rocket Propelled Inflatable Penguin", and "Tribble Suit" ("Too Cute To Shoot"). Perhaps fortunately, none of these plans end up being needed.
  • Paranatural:
    • Johnny at one point makes the following argument: All roads lead to Rome. But they're not going to Rome. Therefore, they should leave the road. It eventually gets them to something they wanted to see, but only after hours of wandering uselessly through the woods.
    • Ritz Price-Lee at one point explains that she's literally kicking the dog because the dog is poor, and someone needs to make animals stop freeloading and get real jobs.


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Alternative Title(s): Ogre Like Logical Fallacies

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The Invention Of Gravy

The Cat tells Lister the Story of how Archimedes discovered gravy when he was sitting underneath a tree and a bath fell onto his head.

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