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In comedies, Long Lists and even shorter ones will include not only redundant repetition of unnecessary items, but also items which assert their own nonexistence.
Compare There Are No Rules, and don't see also I Was Never Here.
Examples:
Board Games
- Found in the rules for the Steve Jackson board game Globbo.
Film
- Karate Kid II had a textbook example:
Mr. Miyagi: Aha... here are the two rules of Miyagi-Ryu Karate.
Rule Number One: "Karate for defense only."
Rule Number Two: "First learn Rule Number One."
Literature
Live-Action TV
- The Trope Namer is the Bruces Sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, where "Rule six: There is no rule six" is sandwiched between "Rule five: No poofters" and "Rule seven: no poofters".
- Also in the "Monkee vs. Machine" episode of The Monkees as Peter prepares for a job interview:
Peter: "That's two words."
Mike: "See? You're doing it already!"
- In an episode of the TV series Porridge, chief warden McKay tells Fletcher that there only two rules in Slade Prison. The first rule: "You do not write on the walls." The second: "You obey all the rules." Oddly, he'd just mentioned a rule against prisoners congregating in cells.
- A minor variation from Bottom:
Richie: "Well, well, well, it's interesting because A, I said it and anything I say is interesting per se, and B, er, well, there isn't a B because the A was so great."
Magazines
Music
- The Traveling Wilbury's have two albums: "Vol. 1" and "Vol. 3".
Tabletop Games
Radio
- There are no examples from radio shows.
Theater
- Dramatic example from Fiddler on the Roof, when Tevye is mulling over whether to accept Chava marrying a non-Jew: "On the other hand... there is no other hand!"
Video Games
- The manual for Lemmings paid homage to Monty Python in the Hints and Tips section with "6. There is no tip number 6."
Web Original
- A joke list
of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Commandments features a variation on this:
201. Thou shall not point out there is no 175 commandment.
193. By order of the Inquisition: There is no such thing as the Inquisition, questioning this will have thou deemed heretic by the Inquisition.
- The Laws of Anime include #43- Law of Triscaquadrodecophobia: There is no Law 43.
Western Animation
- From the Freakazoid! episode "Normadeus":
Freakazoid: "One: Norm Abram is gone. Two:..."
Cosgrove: "We don't have a two."
- From South Park:
Step 1: Collect Underpants.
Step 2: ???
- The Cow and Chicken episode "Night of the Ed!" has Cow reading about what to do when their pet jackal turns vicious. Step one is "Panic". Step two is "There is no step two".
Real Life
- Very common in real life codes of law. Laws are generally always referred to by number, so labels always have to be kept consistent. Thus, whenever a law or section of a law is repealed, the text is replaced by something along the lines of "There is no section X."
- As a practical matter, sections within a title or chapter are often "reserved" so that entire chapters don't need to be re-numbered when a new section is added. Normally, the hundreds digits and up within a section number indicate the chapter, while the tens digit of a section indicates a particular topic within a chapter. Thus, §521 might deal with 1st degree murder, §522 with second degree murder, §523 with felony-murder, and then §524-530 are "reserved", with §531 being, say, voluntary manslaughter. If a new degree of murder is added (capital murder, perhaps), it would be §524, rather than having to renumber everything, having to make it §523A (which is really confusing), or having to put it at the end of the chapter, which may be several hundred sections later (which is just as bad). This does result in there being no §524....for the time being, at least. In this case, the missing sections are simply labeled as "§§524-530: Reserved"
- Question 17 of the 2011 British Census: "This question is intentionally blank"*
In England only. In the Scottish and Welsh Censuses, Question 17 asked about proficiency in Scots/Gaelic/Welsh languages.
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