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New Rules as the Plot Demands
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Try to keep up, there's a quiz later.
Alister: But you can't fuse a trap card with a monster! Kaiba: Looks to me like I just did, Alister.
Games have rules. Those rules are around to make everything fair and give everyone a reasonable chance for success. They do not always make logical sense, but they're there.
However, sometimes the story isn't paying attention. This trope is where the rules of a game within a given work are made so vague or complex that there is no possible way they can be understood. Sometimes, the story just makes things up as it goes along. Hopefully, the improvisation will make sense.
This is not about the differences between rules in a work and rules in a game it's based on (The former will often be inherited from the latter), but when the rules of a work don't make sense and violate their own internal logic.
As well, deliberate and clear cheating which acknowledges that the characters are bending the rules, or finding some technicality to exploit, are also not this trope. The key is about implausibility and being unbelievably complex.
Contrast Magic A Is Magic A which is effectively the opposite of this: the rules may not make complete sense or be accurate but so long as it is consistent it works. If it involves liberties with the rules of real sports/games it's Gretzky Has the Ball. If there really aren't any rules (or the rules change very frequently), then it's Calvinball.
Also compare How Unscientific, New Powers as the Plot Demands, Gameplay and Story Segregation, Screw the Rules, I Make Them!, and Ain't No Rule. Golden Snitch is a subtrope. Stop by Serious Business on your way out.
Examples:
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Yu-Gi-Oh examples
Pre-Battle City examples
- It is important to note that many of the examples in this section are based off of earlier parts of the series, where card interactions were much more complex and simulated a lot more cause and effect. This was because the series used a lot of games that had these kind of interactions, and the rules hadn't been set in stone yet.
- In the first season, Duel Monsters was played on a large field with multiple areas of attack. Different monsters had different field advantages depending on where they were played that it was never possible to keep track of with the limited information given. Often the bonus would vary wildly from doubling a monster's stats to tripling them to raising them by 50%.
- Duelist Kingdom standardized it to 30%, resulting in weird things like Panik's Castle of Dark Illusions having 2509 defense points.
- In the fifteenth episode of the second series animé, Yugi uses a monster called Catapult Turtle to launch a fusion monster, Gaia the Dragon Champion, at another monster, Panik's Castle of Dark Illusions. This destroys the Dragon Champion on impact, causing Yugi to lose most of his Life Points (going from 1606 to 300 for no apparent reason) and the castle's flotation-ring to fall off, but it seemingly doesn't destroy the castle... until Yugi mentions that the Castle is now being held up by Yugi's Swords of Revealing Light. Yugi ends his turn, ending the effect of SoRL, thus causing the destruction of the Castle... and all of Panik's monsters, which were underneath and, due to Panik's Chaos Shield, couldn't get out of the way in time. If these things had been real, physical creatures engaged in a battle, this would be reasonably creative and entirely valid. But they're just tokens in a card game, subject to the rules thereof, and Yugi's trick has absolutely no basis in the rules (but it looked cool). The real card game hadn't yet been made when this episode was written, but unless the writers thought the real card game would somehow simulate Newtonian physics, it still doesn't make much sense.
- Note though that this would have would've won Yugi the duel anyway, as it would've done 1600 points of damage to Panik's life points, (due to Catapult Turtles anime effect letting you add 600 ATK to monsters before tributing them.) it seems however that the writers decided to ignore this and instead decided to use the version which makes no sense.
- In the same episode, the flying castle itself has the effect of hiding the villain's monsters in darkness, so Yugi can only attack the darkness and get his monsters killed by cards he can't see. How exactly is that supposed to work without holographic technology? 'You're attacking my monster. Sorry, it has higher attack points than yours. No, I can't prove it, that would defeat the whole purpose of the shrouding darkness. Just take my word for it, will you?'
- Bandit Keith plays machine monsters as they are all resistant to spell attacks, even from non-Spellcaster monsters. No card ever designates how it attacks the opponent monsters outside of the holograms - even half the Magicians look like they're physical attackers. Meaning that the only way to verify this is through the aforementioned holographic technology.
- This is also applied in two different Joey duels (see a pattern here?) in Battle City arc: against Espa Roba, he tried using Time Wizard's monster effect against Jinzo, but supposedly Jinzo has "futuristic armor" that protects him from rusting (not part of its effect), while against Weevil Underwood, his monsters start getting infected by the Parasite Paracide Weevil slipped into his deck, turning them into bugs, but somehow his Gearfried the Iron Knight was immune (likely an interpretation of Gearfried's ability to destroy all Equip cards equipped to him, but Parasite Paracide isn't an Equip card, or even the kind of monster that can be treated as such).
- Time Wizard does this in Joey's duel against Yugi. Time Wizard's effect is to spin a roulette with a 2/6 chance of landing a favorable outcome (which was changed to a coin toss for the real card game). On success the owner could either weaken the enemy monster(s) by 800 points or destroy all their monsters for half the attack power taken out of the opposing player's life points. Failure resulted in the latter effect being applied to the owner's monsters. When he used it against Yugi, it made his Dark Magician become ancient, and dropping its ATK from 2500 to 200.
- In episode 29, Shadow of Eyes forced "men" to attack Harpies Lady but did not affect "female monsters". Needless to say this leaves a lot of questions. Many monster cards in the game do not have discernible gender while some card's illustration show multiple people, some male and some female.
- In his duel with Mako, Yugi calls an attack on "Full Moon". Three major problems with that. First, "Full Moon" is Yugi's own card and is on his side of the battlefield. Second, it's a magic card, not a monster. Third, he's trying to stab the moon with a sword. Yet not only does this somehow work, it dramatically alters the battlefield, causing the ACTUAL tide (not a card effect) to go out lower than it was before he summoned the moon, and beaching Mako's sea monsters.
- The Multiply card is apparently so badly designed it can divide by zero, creating a wall of infinite Kuribohs that spawn in real time with disregard for monster space. Said Kuribohs "self-destruct on contact with enemy monsters". In his second duel against Pegasus Yugi tricks Pegasus into using Thousand Eyes Restrict's effect to equip itself with Kuriboh, causing the Kuribohs to explode and blow out Thousand Eyes Restrict's eyes, apparently negating its effect. Yugi took damage equal to Kuriboh's ATK because of Thousand Eyes Restrict's effect, which transfers damage resulting from battle while it has a monster equipped to the opponent.
- The Yami/Kaiba duel in the Duelist Kingdom arc gives us this little gem. Yugi is able to fuse one of his monsters, Mammoth Graveyard, with Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon using Polymerization to fuse the Living Arrow card (which has since become Spell Shattering Arrow
 ) with Mammoth Graveyard and then fire it at Kaiba's monster, resulting in a different fusion...or something...in any event, the result was on Kaiba's side of the field. Because it was a fusion of an Undead (Zombie-Type?) monster and a "living" monster the unnamed fusion monster's ATK and DEF decreased by the ATK and DEF of Mammoth Graveyard. Needless to say, this defies the entire mechanics of Fusion Summon in the Trading Card Game. Also note that the real Mammoth Graveyard is a Dinosaur-type.
Later, Yugi attacks it once its ATK was low enough for his weaker monsters to defeat it. However, it is stated that because Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon is a Fusion Monster that requires three Fusion Material Monsters it must be attacked three times to completely destroy it, so Yugi's attacks just kill one head. It is not possible to partially destroy a monster in the real Trading Card Game, nor do any other Fusion Monsters ever display this characteristic.
And it gets better and better: after some time, Kaiba uses Monster Reborn to revive one head of the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon with 3000 ATK, while the rest of the monster still had low ATK. As to how you could make sense of any of this without holograms is anyone's guess.
- In Yugi's duel with the fake Kaiba, it's revealed that Mystical Elf, a normal monster was actually an effect monster in the animé. It was given the effect of transferring its ATK (1100 at the time, due to a Magic Card) to another monster you control. It also could, apparently, stop Spell effects because it was "chanting a mystical chant."
- Pegasus' use of Toon Monsters surprisingly stayed close to what they actually do. However, it usually manifested this as abducting his opponent's monsters and turning them into his own Toon monsters, whereas in the actual game, the normal and Toon monsters are totally different monsters, and the two being in the same duel would more or less be a coincidence. He also used it to stop Dark Rabbit, which is not a Toon and is a normal monster, from being destroyed. His Toon monsters couldn't be targeted at all. This was shown as them hiding inside Toon World. You couldn't see his monsters until they attacked.
- Makiu, the Magical Mist gets this an awful lot: its effect in real life is totally different then in the show. It does something different every time it's played — in the duel with Weevil, it washed away the spores of the Great Moth and powers up Summoned Skull; in the duel with Joey, it's used during Joey's turn to stop Thousand Dragon's attack; finally, in the duel with the possessed Keith, it weakens all his machine monsters. To make things even better, in the original manga, the card was printed with the effect: "Water vapor surrounds all monsters on the field". Apparently, the players' imaginations was supposed to take care of the rest. This was a call back to the original design of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, being an RPG similar to Dungeons and Dragons, with a randomized card system. However, due to the ambiguity of the card effects, the idea was scrapped. These examples are a prime reason.
- Summoned Skull also gets an effect in the duel with the Rare Hunter, where it charges up Alpha the Magnet Warrior's attack by 200 points.
- If Yugi attacked with monsters in a different order though, he would've won without this "effect" anyway.
- Throughout the series, Summoned Skull is implied to attack with electricity, which is used to give him a huge variety of added abilities (additional ATK points, greater range, etc). None of this would make any sense without the holograms.
- Furthermore, the first time Yugi uses Summoned Skull, when duelling Pegasus through the video tape, Summoned Skull attacks physically, which is why it can't attack Pegasus quickly enough to win Yugi the duel - of course, it could easily have attacked quickly enough with electricity.
- Against the Paradox brothers, at one point, Yugi uses Mirror Force to block the attack of their Gate Guardian, upon which the Paradox brothers claim that a different piece of the Gate Guardian can block the attack, which is NOT how Mirror Force works. Then Yugi claims the defence by Gate Guardian deflects the attack to a different monster owned by the brothers. How is somebody able to verify this unless the holograms are involved?
- In addition, Gate Guardian is still treated as three separate monsters after being fused, and there appears to be no benefit gained from fusing them.
Post-Battle City examples
- The Battle City rules themselves count as this. The rules used in the show were deliberately moved closer to that of the real life TCG with no greater justification than "Kaiba changed the rules for his tournament" even though he in no way owns Duel Monsters. Then again...
- Each time The Winged Dragon of Ra is played it has a new power. First, there is that special writing which can only be seen under the light of the God (and that means the hologram). When Mai summons it, it doesn't work, since you need to read the text (that is written in Egyptian) to activate it. Marik promptly reads the text, taking Ra to his side of the field and activating it. Next battle, it has a new ability: it can increase/decrease its attack points by decreasing/increasing his owner Life Points, at the owner's will. And this is all before the battle is against Yugi, when it shows its real power.
- In the duel between Yugi and Marik, the latter uses all his life points but one to add to the Winged Dragon of Ra's attack points. Because Marik has made this duel a Shadow Game, this manifests itself as all of Marik's body except one eye becoming part of Ra. Because of this, Marik is able to later use the card De-Fusion to separate himself from Ra and restore his life points. One problem with this: Marik isn't a monster, or even a card. Unless Kaiba's holograms are good enough to hide his entire body and make it appear somewhere else, Marik only appeared to be 'fused' to Ra because of the Shadow Game, so 'de-fusing' shouldn't have been possible within the Duel Monsters game (as they were never actually fused in the first place).
- Averted in Kaiba's reaction to the Winged Dragon of Ra. Midway through the series, Kaiba discovers through his computer that Ra has several 'unwritten' powers. Seeing as it's his tournament and he made the rules for it anyway, he could just declare that only the abilities listed in the text count, making Ra much easier to defeat. Justified since this would really defeat the point of the tournament in the first place, which is to see who deserves to be called the best and if Kaiba were to nerf his opponent's best card just so that he can win he'd lose face and more importantly, sell out his own principles.
- Bakura tends to do this more often than not as his entire strategy. In Battle City, Dark Necrofear works to summon a Field card called Dark Sanctuary, which seems to be activated by the system reading his mind to see what card he designated the target without anyone else knowing. How this could actually be enforced under any situation, period, is not entirely clear though it is worth noting that this is not the case in the Japanese version. And in his final appearance, he manages to be in three places simultaneously and completely flouting the rules in all three. As Zorc, he ignores the effects of four separate all-destroying attacks. As Tristan-Bakura, he uses a strategy that works purely by making his graveyard go away. The cards aren't removed from play and don't go to his deck or hand, which is the only place they can go, but the graveyard just...goes away. And as the game master, he explicitly said he's making up the rules as he feels like it.
- The Doma arc gives us the Legendary Dragon cards. Joey's and Kaiba's appear on top of their Decks via magic in the middle of a duel. Kaiba's card gives us the page quote. Yugi's dragon allows him to fuse it with ...something magical (see Bandit Keith on that "definition"), Kaiba's allows him to fuse it with a trap card, and Joey's allows him to fuse it with a monster to form an equip spell card. All of which gain new effects in addition to the ones they already had.
- There is also the Seal of Orichalcos, which has multiple stages and new effects added to it with every use in a duel. An attempt to make a semi-playable version was made (not usable in an official tournament, much like the God Cards), but it ultimately ended up as a very watered down version with 1 point font.
- Battle City has its own version of the Castle of Dark Illusions in the Spell Card Umi (Sea) used by Mako Tsunami in the duel against Joey Wheeler. When activated, it conceals all of the cards on his side of the field under a layer of water. It doesn't end there, as Mako uses his free arm to cover Joey's view of his duel disk, a move that should be considered downright cheating.
- In the Pyramid of Light movie, Anubis does an example that makes absolutely no sense in terms of rules OR plot and doesn't seem to have anything dramatic or comedic to instate. He plays Thenien the Great Sphinx face down, which is obviously impossible in the real game, and Special Summons it in a way that he could have done if it was still in his hand.
Second and later series examples
- Much later, in 5Ds, Yusei is dueling Rudger. Rudger has his Earthbound God Uru on the field, as well as the field magic card Spider Web. Earthbound Gods cannot be attacked while a field magic card is on the field, so Yusei pulls some Loophole Abuse and declares that he'll instead attack Rudger directly, a strategy that, needless to say, is impossible. Entertainingly, this was actually the original ruling for the specific wording of this particular attack-immunity effect possessed by the actual Earthbound God cards (originally used for the Legendary Fisherman of Mako (the freaky fish guy) fame). The original ruling had been overridden specifically by Konami for these and subsequent cards (but not, strangely, Legendary Fisherman itself) to make them more viable.
- Now Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL is getting in on the action. In Episode 43, Kaito Releases Yuma's monsters to summon his Photon Kaiser. This is iffy enough because the rules don't seem to specify whether the two are sharing fields or not (the previous episode implies this is not the case, as Kaito's Photon Pressure World Field Spell damages everyone who doesn't control a Photon monster, and Yuma is damaged by it). What happens next is a blatant example, however. To clarify, Photon Pressure World's effect is that when a Photon monster is summoned, everyone who doesn't control a Photon monster takes damage equal to the summoned monster's Level x 100. Kaito summons Photon Kaiser, and for some reason (most likely that Yuma would lose otherwise), Photon Pressure World doesn't activate. With no good reason. And the card text is written in such a way that the effect is compulsory. At best it might be argued that Kaito summoned Kaiser to Yuma's field (which it plainly wasn't, and in any case has no basis to begin with). Doing so would damage 3 and 4 but not Kaito because he had GE Photon Dragon out.
Other Anime/Manga
- Battle B-Daman seems to forget every so often that shooting your opponent's fingers... or head... or friends... with a marble capable of shattering stone is, in most games, a flagrant foul. Not that the real things shoot like that, but still...
- To say nothing of all the weird table setups, bizarre tournament events such as a marble-powered elevator, and other head-breakingly improbable challenges.
- Especially notable is that, according to one of the final battles, joining a game already in progress and ganging up on a single person is allowed by the rules. Because ganging up equals the power of friendship. This is despite the villains being condemned for it earlier in the show.
- In Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty forced Miyuki to play a giant game of chess against her own lesbian reflection with full-sized scantily-clad human women as chess pieces, and whenever one piece took another, she'd bitch-slap the shit out of the piece that's just been taken, and her clothes would disappear. Also, the stakes are that whichever Miyuki lost would have to take her clothes off. And THEN it starts getting weird. the real Miyuki never said "Check" or "Checkmate", and we didn't see a single red/black piece take a single white/blue piece, and yet, all of a sudden, Humpty Dumpty declared the Reflection the loser and the reflection stripped.
- Humpty just wanted to watch one of 'em strip, and face it, the reflection was a lot more willing. Did you see her cry over that "loss"?
- Code Geass does this with Chess. Not only are illegal moves shown, such as pawns moving backwards, but Schneizel manages to declare "Checkmate" on Lelouch/Zero by putting his king in front of Lelouch's king. Although that move was done on purpose to try and expose Lelouch. Amusingly enough, Lelouch somehow has a Black Pawn right next to his own king.
- Megaman NT Warrior usually only changes the amount of damage that certain attacks do to even the playing field (Megaman's default megabuster is a lot more powerful), and since the characters are actually using chips in an environment with proper physics, it makes sense that certain things can be done. But at the same time, at one point in the series, they decided to speed up the combat by making chips more like equipment rather than one-time attacks. Adding this rule would probably destroy the internet when the guys with meteor chips start using them...
- Probably the most noticable example would be the Life Sword Program Advance. At first it appeared to be a wave of some sort. During the final battle of the tournament Megaman and Protoman were dueling with them like actual swords.
- In "The Net Mobile Grand Prix" the main cast enters a friendly virtual race. While the chips they use in the beginning made some sense (Nitro chips and change of accessories) the chips gets increasingly random near the end, with at least one racer turning his car into a fighter jet.
Collectible Card Game
- CCG magazine InQuest Gamer (then just InQuest) proposed a variation of Magic: The Gathering they dubbed "Kangaroo Court", which allowed players to apply real-world logic to the game, effectively acting out this trope long before Yu-Gi-Oh! existed. One given example showed a player arguing that using Pacifism on Angry Mob should destroy the mob, since it's no longer angry and would disperse.
Film
- The Sylvester Stallone film Over the Top builds up to a double-elimination arm-wrestling tournament, and the announcer reminds us of this just about every time he speaks. Stallone's character, Lincoln Hawk, loses once to John Grizzly (whose psyche-out techniques include DRINKING MOTOR OIL and EATING CIGARS) in the quarterfinals, and his spirits are broken before his son reminds him that it's a double-elimination tournament and repeats a speech from earlier in the film. Hawk comes back to beat both Grizzly and Bob "Bull" Hurley to win the championship...but wait! We never did see Grizzly or Hurley lose before that, did we? Most of the championship went by in the form of a montage of every single match, in which we saw Hawk, Grizzly, and Hurley easily winning all of their matches...then we saw Hawk lose to Grizzly...and then we saw Hawk beat Grizzly, Hurley beat the other quarterfinalist, and Hawk beat Hurley after a single (albeit extremely long and climactic) match. The entire "double-elimination" aspect was apparently thrown out as soon as Hawk was done using it for a plot device.
- In the climactic scene of Space Jam Michael Jordan takes off from half court with the Tune Squad trailing by 1 point. Stretching his arm to be directly over the basket via the Looney Tune laws of physics, Jordan releases the ball and literally drops it through the hoop for the winning pseudo-dunk at the buzzer. The movie however fails to recognize that since MJ took off from where he did, the shot should have counted for three points instead of two.
Live-Action TV
- An episode of the live-action kids drama Zoey 101 had a Battlebots-style remote-controlled robot war, where the main characters lose to the stereotypical nerds after their bot destroys the other with a hammer. When the main character's best friend comes in with her own tiny bot, the nerds laugh at it until it fires a huge laser at the other bot, completely destroying it and winning the match. Apparently, there Ain't No Rule saying you can't use military lasers in the competition.
- Star Trek: Voyager played with this in the episode "Worst Case Scenario". B'Elanna Torres found an old unfinished role-playing holodeck program Tuvok made that dealt with a potential Maquis uprising on Voyager. It was made in all seriousness, but they try to finish it up as a decent role-playing game instead. However, when they try to edit the program, they find that Seska (crewmember turned traitor) reprogrammed it as a no-win situation with Everything Trying to Kill You. To buy time for the engineers to shut down the holodeck, Janeway took control of the game stats and became a Deus ex Machina working for Paris and Tuvok. The game would send crew members to kill them, and Janeway would materialize phasers in their hands. Eventually ended with the computer going for the Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies solution, but Tuvok figured a clever way out of that.
Tabletop RPG
- Most tabletop roleplaying games incorporate what's generally known as "Rule 0," which is the GM's word is law, giving him free reign to adjust or ignore the rulebook at his whim as well as simply make up new rules on the spot. It's to be hoped that the GM will only do this to make the game more fun. House Rules should generally be negotiated and agreed upon before play begins.
- Every point just made regarding Table Top Role Playing Games is also true of table top wargames, with the exception that it becomes a rules agreement between friends. The best solution is roll a die, then check the FAQ for a ruling sometime later. It also helps that these rules oversights come up less often in wargames, which tend to have clear-cut mechanics with units only having a few actions available on their turn. Players often like adding story-based rules to the games, too.
Video Games
- In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Sylvia decides to start changing the rules to the UAA matches, such as setting up a Battle Royale, allowing Charlie and his 24 cheerleaders to fight as a team, and allowing Shinobu to fight for Travis but giving Travis the ranking.
- The gravity in Super Mario Galaxy can't seem to make up its mind on how it works. Sometimes it pulls things towards the center of the nearest planetoid, and sometimes it's a universal field that points in a general "down" direction. The sequel is even more inconsistent, to the point that the player is required to blindly leap off some ledges with no clue as to whether Mario will safely land on their underside or plummet towards infinity.
- Final Fantasy X's Spira is to death what Narnia was to time travel. Things start simple enough: the dead eventually transform into monstrous, feral creatures called fiends, and must be "sent" (i.e. magically transported) to the afterlife to prevent the transformation from occurring. But starting about halfway through the game, the story goes off the rails. We see zombie-like Bevelle soldiers wandering the ruins of Zanarkand, humans in appearance but fiends in mind and spirit. Seymour is just the opposite: he dies multiple times, achieving progressively more powerful fiend-like powers each time he returns but never losing his human identity. And Auron is revealed to also have died and returned with his original human identity, but without any fiend powers.
Web Comics
- In the FAQ for The Order of the Stick, Rich Burlew states that he doesn't have the exact Dungeons & Dragons stats for the characters so as not to limit what he can do with the story. He's also displayed a willingness to stretch the D&D rules to fit the plot. By way of example, Miko Miyazaki's escape from a forcecage spell prompted readers on the forum to point out that that's not how forcecage works.
- Of course, in that particular example, it wasn't exactly forcecage; it was Xykon's Moderately Escapable Forcecage, since Xykon planned for Miko to escape anyway. However, it's entirely possible that this was a hasty retcon by Rich Burlew in response to the abovementioned forum posters.
- The forums spent many a thread starting out Familicide. Initial estimates measured its Spellcraft DC by the hundreds, which may have been technically possible (it was researched by an epic level wizard, and cast by a wizard with the power of three epic level casters) but was insanely unfeasible and unlikely. An easier method was later found involving combining different seeds in unorthodox ways (allowed by the rules, but very subject to the whims of the DM). In any case, it's unlikely Rich bothered to come up with actual stats for the spell.
- And inevitably lampshaded when Durkon employs Weather Control (specifically, thunder) as a sonic attack. The following strip opens with an angel questioning the use of the spell thus, and Thor basically telling him to mind his own beeswax and not contradict the thunder god.
- A later comic had one of the Southern Gods telling (well, snarling at) Thor to back the hell off when he tries a similar feat outside his designated territory.
- Goblins author Thunt ostensibly based his comic on Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons, and yet frequently writes low-level characters dealing improbably-strong blows to high-level characters, like here and here. In both cases, the wooden guy with the green hair is level 10, fighting against level 2 characters. He's claimed that the fights 'work out fairly' within the House Rules he uses, at one point averting the trope by giving a play-by-play explaining how the fight would play out if it were at a gaming table.
- It would be irresponsible, however, to not point out that one of the second level characters in question is named Minmax.
Web Original
- In the first RP of Darwin's Soldiers, scientist player characters weren't allowed to carry heavy weaponry. For some time in the first RP, Zachary got to wield a bazooka and he wielded a RPG in the final battle.
- The rule about "no heavy weaponry for scientists" was rescinded for the second and third RPs
- One of the guiding principles of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe was that the needs of the story story overrode the rules whenever necessary.
Western Animation
- In The Fairly Oddparents, the fairy bible "Da Rules" provides frequent examples of this trope. One being that new sub-points of certain rules are added so that the plot can't be magically fixed. For example, magic can't interfere with love (i.e. wishing a partner to move away to eliminate a rival). In a later episode, they add that the rule doesn't mean both parties have to be in love with each other. It has also been hinted that new rules to avoid some wishes appear every time a wish goes horribly wrong.
- Parodied in the episode where Poof debuted, in which a rule was meant to be implemented but nobody got around to it. It's a joke that's used at least twice when Timmy asks why he can't wish one of his Godparents to be pregnant, with Wanda then Jorgen Von Strangle (the main rule maker himself) having to check Da Rules when asked about it, and leading to the above.
- Also of note is that genies aren't bound by Da Rules, but this isn't necessarily a good thing.
- Futurama's blernsball is an example of this trope. This is done for Rule of Funny, of course.
- Total Drama Island fits this, mostly because of Chris, aka Mr. Screw the Rules, I Make Them!. It can go from "not a rule to be had" to "dem's the rules" in about two minutes. Lampshaded, of course, by Heather. Lawsuits factor in as well.
Real Life
- Carnies have a term called an alibi, which is when someone who has apparently won a game of chance is told about a previously undisclosed rule, in order to be able to deny giving them a prize. A common example is stating that the player crossed an invisible "foul line." At least most of them are up front about not allowing underhand shots.
- The NFL has some rules that are so obscure that even coaches are not generally aware of them. Sometimes they are called attention to in playoff games, which leads to accusations that the league is manipulating the outcome to allow the more popular team to advance to the Super Bowl. Recent infamous examples include the tuck rule, which changed the outcome of the 2002 AFC Divisional Playoff Game, and the "Bert Emanuel" rule, so named when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had an apparent pass reception overturned by officials in the 2000 NFC Divisional Championship Game. The latter ensured that the "Greatest Show on Turf" offense of the St. Louis Rams, considered to be more ratings-friendly than the Buccaneers' stifling defense, would reach the championship; while the former extended the chances of the New England Patriots and Tom Brady's star power. A recent non-playoff example occurred during a 2010 game between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears, in which a potentially game-winning touchdown catch was overturned when officials ruled that Lions receiver Calvin Johnson failed to maintain control of the ball because he set it down too quickly after catching it.
- The problem with the NFL the amount of nit picky rules that the human refs are supposed to take into account along with the general vagueness of a lot of rules coupled with the limitations of the review system. The official NFL rule book isn't made publicly available (at least not easily acquired (not on the internet, though a simplified version is available)) and most people aren't privy to NFL officials meetings that clarify interpretations of the rules. Most of the examples would definitely be subjective for these reasons (they may appear to be bad calls to people on the losing end or 50% of non-vested viewers while the other half will feel otherwise. An example: during a punt the ball was rolling into the end-zone and a player from the punting team dove onto the ball, initiated contact with the ball outside of the end-zone and released contact with the ball after it was in the end-zone. It was ruled a touchback, it was challenged, reviewed and upheld. The rule that allows you to down the ball is called illegal-touching and doesn't clarify (at least in the internet rules version) whether you just have to touch the ball or have to possess the ball for it to be downed. It's interesting because for it to be considered a fumble or a muffed reception, the receiving team merely needs to graze the ball. Interpretations of the rules seem to follow along the US Justice system whereby previous interpretations continue until corrected by a higher authority.
- Illegal touching means that the ball is downed when the kicking team gains control of it and cannot be downed in such a way as to give the receiving team worse field position than when the kicking team first touched the ball. Thus, if a member of the kicking team attempts to down the ball, but it goes into the endzone off his hands, it's a touchback. If the ball is deflected toward the receiving team's endzone and then downed, the ball is placed back where it was first touched. And now for the Game Breaker: if a ball is touched by a member of the kicking team and a member of the receiving team then gains control before the kicking team does, the ball can be advanced by the receiving team, and the receiving team CANNOT FUMBLE. If the kicking team recovers a fumble or intercepts a lateral pass on such a play, the ball is downed instead of going back to the kicking team. This means that, except for the risk of throwing the ball back through your own endzone for a safety, there is no risk to attempting a rugby-style multi-lateral pass play (which like pulling the goalie in ice hockey, is normally reserved for an end-game desperation play, but is a free option on a delayed penalty, wherein the opposing team is not allowed to gain possession).
- None of the above examples, however, may be more frustrating to fans than the league's apparent knee-jerk reaction to any hit/tackle that causes a major injury to a few players by declaring it illegal, leading to players recently getting massive fines/suspensions for hits that many observers claim was "just a good football play" and those observers complaining that the game is becoming sissified.
- NASCAR has been known to change the rulebook on the fly as needed. Sometimes it seems arbitrary, sometimes it's in response to apparent overdominance, and sometimes it's just figuring out that having people race at full speed to the start/finish line when a caution comes out is less than safe when the reason for the caution flag is a guy sitting helpless a few hundred metres in front of said start/finish line, as such an incident happened with Dale Jarrett in Loudon in 2003.
- Similarly, the Formula 1 rules on pit stops, tyre management and Safety Car scenarios (just to name the most usual ones) seem to change every year, if not every few months.
- As society is constantly changing, the law needs to be constantly revised, resulting in constant new laws introduced, and changes to original laws.
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