History LoopholeAbuse / RealLife

* Ain't no rule that says [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins a penguin]] can't be [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Olav Colonel-In-Chief of the Norwegian King's Guards]] and receive a knighthood.

* Eisuke Ogura, creative director of ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFightersXV'', ended up having to resort to this during the game's development - he wanted to include [[CreatorsFavorite his favorite character K9999]], which he had been dreaming about bringing back for years. The problem was that K9999 was [[CaptainErsatz so much of a ripoff]] of ''Manga/{{AKIRA}}'''s Tetsuo Shima that Creator/{{SNK}} had made it unspoken company policy that [[BuryYourArt mentioning the character by name or even alluding to the fact that he existed at one point was strictly banned]], so he couldn't include K9999. [[PaperThinDisguise Krohnen]], however, was fair game.

* It is true, however (and despite [[HollywoodHistory common depictions in fiction of the contrary]]), that [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition inquisitors]] never tortured or killed people themselves for this reason. They had lay servants to do the torture, and as for the executions, the Inquisition only sentenced the guilty "to be relaxed to the secular arm", i.e., handed to civilian authorities, who then executed them.

* According to Myth/NorseMythology, dying outside of battle wouldn't get you into WarriorHeaven. Thus, records exist of HornyVikings asking their friends to MercyKill them [[ICannotSelfTerminate on their deathbeds]], so they'd have ''technically'' "died by the sword."

* Use of of fragmenting, explosive, or incendiary munitions in small arms is forbidden under the Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868. Except it has several loopholes:

** Nintendo threatened to stop selling games to retailers who sold unlicensed games. Being forbidden from selling Nintendo games was a death sentence for any video game store, so most retailers did not carry unlicensed games. Color Dreams got around this by rebranding themselves as Wisdom Tree, making [[TheMoralSubstitute Christian-themed NES games]], and selling them through Christian bookstores. Since Christian bookstores didn't normally sell video games in the first place, Nintendo's pressure would mean nothing. As a bonus, Nintendo was resistant to suing Wisdom Tree as filing a lawsuit might lead to outrage from [[MoralGuardians conservative parents and church groups]], especially in the Bible Belt--certainly the last thing Nintendo wanted would be [[TheNewRockAndRoll a series of boycotts and bonfires where video game consoles are burned]].
* The laws of relativity state that something with mass can't accelerate past the speed of light. They say nothing about objects that have ''always'' been at a faster-than-light speed, hence - tachyons. In more detail, if you solve the equations for total energy of a normal particle moving faster than light, you will get an imaginary number, but the total energy is proportional to the rest mass, and nothing says the rest mass has to be real. Likewise, the Alcubierre drive, more commonly known as a warp drive, gets around the FTL rule by exploiting the fact empty space has no mass and is not subject to the lightspeed limit. Hence, create a localized region of space that is itself traveling faster than light, and place a ship inside.

* In UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, Plato defined Man as an "animal with two feet and no feathers", and was applauded. When [[DeadpanSnarker Diogenes]] heard of this, he showed at Plato's academia and held a chicken with all feathers plucked out, while he shouted: "Behold Plato's Man!" After that, Plato added "[[ObviousRulePatch with broad, flat nails]]" to his definition.

*** While the British (unlike most naval powers) never outright cheated on treaty limits, they weren't averse to exploiting loopholes. The ''Nelson'' class battleships, the first capital ships to be built under the Washington Naval Treaty.[[note]]Britain was given a special allowance to build 2 battleships immediately to make up for the US getting to keep ''Colorado'' and ''West Virginia'' and Japan getting to keep ''Mutsu'', 16-inch gun armed ships that weren't completed when the treaty negotitions began and thus normally would've been required to be scrapped or converted, as had been the case with with 13 other capital ships for the US and 6 for Japan. Britain had not yet begun construction on their next generation of capital ships (and none of what had been planned pre-treaty would've been even '''close''' to treaty-compliant) and had no ships with 16-inch guns, so to agree to their rivals getting to keep those 3 ships they demanded getting to build 2 equivalent ships of their own.[[/note]] The ''Nelson''s actually came in '''under''' the 35,000 ton limit despite being the best-armed and best-protected warships in the world at the time, in part due a rather ingenious design, in part because of design compromises that left them will little room for future upgrades and in part due to some serious loophole abuse regarding their torpedo protection. A common feature of torpedo defense systems in that era was alternating air-filled and liquid-filled chambers in torpedo bulges, with the liquid usually being simply water. Whereas such bulges were usually externally mounted on older ships (since the need for such protection hadn't been understood until after they were built), ''Nelson'' and ''Rodney'' had fully internal "bulges". This meant it was '''technically''' possible to pump the water out of the torpedo bulges and use it for the ships' boilers (although there'd rarely if ever be any reason to do so), and thus the British declared that torpedo bulges were storage for boiler water and that water (around 4000 tons' worth) didn't count toward standard displacement.

*** The Italians and Japanese weren't fooling anyone because, once you know the length, beam, and draught of a ship, it's fairly easy to estimate the ''actual'' displacement if you know the displacement of a ship with a similar hull form. Almost all treaty cruisers were capable of at least 30-knots and, if not derived from, were at least inspired by the WWI-era British Hawkins class. The British ''Hawkins''-class was specifically designed to chase down and overpower light cruisers and destroyers that could escape from battlecruisers. A ''Hawkins''-class cruiser was designed so that it could lose 4 boilers and two turbines to battle damage and still be faster than a WWI-era battlecruiser. While the amount of armor the cruisers had was not publicized to other nations, giving ''some'' wiggle room, when for example the ''Mogami'' brought into service and Japan insisted she came in well ''below'' the Treaty limit at [[BlatantLies 8,500 tons]][[note]]Her ''design'' displacement was 9,500 tons and her actual displacement during sea trials was 11,169 tons...more than 30% heavier than her claimed weight. And that's not even getting into the massive refit she was given almost immediately when it was discovered in 1935 that [[EpicFail nearly the entire Imperial Japanese Navy was dangerously prone to capsizing]], which ballooned her up to 13,670 tons.[[/note]], this was considered outright laughable by the other naval powers. The British Director of Naval Construction responded to reports of the ''Mogami'' by saying "they must be building their ships out of cardboard or lying." But knowing is one thing, proving is something else.[[note]]Some British treaty cruisers practically ''were'' made out of cardboard, having very little armor protection. So they couldn't ''prove'' that Japan wasn't doing the same thing.[[/note]] And by 1936, Japan renounced the Washington and London Treaties, and thus no longer even needed to make a pretense of obeying treaty limits...but in practice the desperate need for more destroyers and Japan's much smaller industrial capacity than its rivals meant that they couldn't take much advantage of this.

* In the 2020s, due to the spate of high profile incidents of gun violence in the United States, [[Creator/WarnerBrothers WB]] instituted a ban on firearm accessories for action figures of characters from the Franchise/DCUniverse. Obviously, this posed a problem for companies producing toys of DC characters who are known to use guns in the comics or films. [[Creator/ToddMcFarlane McFarlane Toys]] managed to work around this by releasing a munitions accessory pack which, while technically designed to work with all of their 7-inch figures, included guns that were clearly intended to be used with their DC toys. These included NoCelebritiesWereHarmed versions of the Joker's long barrel revolver, [[Film/TheSuicideSquad Harley Quinn]]'s rocket launcher, Series/{{Peacemaker}}'s Desert Eagle and Comicbook/RedHood's dual pistols.

* Allegedly, [[https://imgur.com/d0R9aQ5 this student]] who, upon hearing a "3 × 5" card would be allowed for the upcoming exam, showed up with a 3 × 5 card...measured in ''feet.'' Since the syllabus never specified inches, the professor apparently let this go ([[ActuallyPrettyFunny just this once,]] after which [[ObviousRulePatch the syllabus was updated]]) partially because it was technically correct and partially [[RefugeInAudacity for the sheer ridiculousness of it]].

* Allegedly, [[https://imgur.com/d0R9aQ5 this student]] who, upon hearing a "3x5" card would be allowed for the upcoming exam, showed up with a 3x5 card...measured in ''feet.'' Since the syllabus never specified inches, the professor apparently let this go ([[ActuallyPrettyFunny just this once,]] after which [[ObviousRulePatch the syllabus was updated]]) partially because it was technically correct and partially [[RefugeInAudacity for the sheer ridiculousness of it]].

*** A variation, though there is no recorded case of someone actually doing it, joke or not: You can technically answer all your homework or test questions by something like "2 x 2 =/= 1001". After all, "solve" simply means "make this equation valid".

*** Anyone that has circled 'X' when teachers told you to find it. [[MathematiciansAnswer Mathematicians will surely applaud such an answer...]] [[http://franciscotrindade.blogspot.com/2008/06/encontre-x.html This was actually done by an anonymous Brazilian student.]] It turned into an meme, but there's no way of knowing if this is from an actual test or just done as a joke.

* There's an old joke that goes "Should you ever accept a bet from a man who says he can bite his own eye? [[spoiler: No, because he'll take out his dentures and do so, thus making you lose the bet.]] Should you ever accept a bet from a man who says he can bite his other eye? [[spoiler: No, because then he'll pop out his glass eye and bite it, making you lose another bet."]]

* Eisuke Ogura, creative director of ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFightersXV'' ended up having to resort to this during the game's development - he wanted to include K9999, [[CreatorsFavorite his favorite character]], which had been one of his dreams for years. The problem was that K9999 was [[CaptainErsatz so much of a ripoff]] of ''Manga/{{AKIRA}}'''s Tetsuo Shima that Creator/{{SNK}} had made it unspoken company policy that [[BuryYourArt mentioning the character by name or even alluding to the fact that he existed at one point was strictly banned]], so he couldn't include K9999. [[spoiler:[[PaperThinDisguise Krohnen]], however, was fair game]].

** When ABC bought the Fox Family Channel in 2001, the company had planned to revamp the channel as "XYZ", making it a sort of a clone of an FX-esque {{Rerun}} Farm in the style of ABC (this was long before FX -- which as of 2019 is now a sister network -- struck gold with ''Series/TheShield'' and when using cable networks to "repurpose" reruns was in vogue). Allegedly, various forms of contractual language imposed by former owner and [[TheFundamentalist fundamentalist broadcaster]] Pat Robertson (which among other things, also requires daily airings of his program ''Series/The700Club'' and an annual CBN telethon each January) stated that carriage deals for the network would become void if the word "Family" were removed from its name, meaning that Disney would be stuck having to renegotiate with every system to get back on, which for any basic cable network would be a disastrous proposition. However, this turned out to be an urban legend, confirmed by network staff when the Freeform name-change was announced.

* Winnipeg radio station CFEQ, "FREQ 107", was established as a Christian station aimed towards a young audience. However, they attempted to pivot itself from a "pure" Christian contemporary format towards an alternative rock format that could attract more mainstream listeners and advertisers. This meant they needed to work around the CRTC license explicitly requiring that 95% of its weekly programming be "non-classic religious music". They proceeded to be AmbiguouslyChristian, digging up as much NotChristianRock they could find to see if anyone would notice, branded themselves as "Winnipeg's New Rock Alternative", and held a promotional campaign involving billboards reading "What the [[CurseCutShort F---]]" (which eventually filled in the FREQ letters). However, their loophole abuse [[AudienceAlienatingPremise backfired in both directions]]: they were having trouble getting mainstream advertisers because [[AvoidTheDreadedGRating of the stigma of still technically being a Christian station]], and they were not getting Christian advertisers because they were being too "liberal" for a Christian station. Based on this, they asked the CRTC to let them reduce their quota of explicitly religious music, but was denied. After being acquired by Golden West (making it a sister station to another Christian station in Winnipeg, CHVN), the station dropped their Not Christian Rock format and returned to their previous format as "Ignite 107". They later switched to a classical music format instead.

* When Netflix first wanted to introduce streaming to the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 and UsefulNotes/{{Wii}}, they were hampered by an exclusivity agreement that they had signed with Microsoft that made the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 only console with built-in support for Netflix. "Built-in" seemingly referred to software loaded from the console's internal storage as opposed to a removable disc, so Netflix at first released their [=PS3=] and Wii streaming apps on discs and shipped them out to customers who requested them. Once the Microsoft agreement expired, they promptly released downloadable apps for both of the other consoles and discontinued the discs.

* When Netflix first wanted to introduce streaming to the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 and UsefulNotes/{{Wii}}, they were hampered by an exclusivity agreement that they had signed with Microsoft that made the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 only console with built-in support for Netflix. However, the keyword here seems to have been "built-in", which meant the exclusivity deal did not apply to software loaded from a disc, so Netflix at first released their [=PS3=] and Wii streaming apps on discs and shipping them out to customers who requested them. Once the Microsoft agreement expired, they promptly released downloadable apps for both of the other consoles and discontinued the discs.

** And then they took the trope UpToEleven with the ''Admiral Kuznetsov'' class, which is a full-sized aircraft carrier with an absurd amount of anti-shipping and anti-aircraft missiles, and point defense systems. [[AwesomeButImpractical This didn't turn out so well for them,]] however, as trying to be both a cruiser ''and'' an aircraft carrier means it's [[MasterOfNone not very good at either role.]]

** The declaration specifies munitions with a weight smaller than 400 grams, meaning someone could just build a [[UpToEleven bigger]] {{BFG}} firing bigger munitions. Thankfully, exploitation of this loophole would just be silly (anti-materiel rounds weigh about 40 grams and the rifles firing them are ''enormous''), preventing its abuse due simple physics.

* When Disney bought Marvel, Universal Studios told them that they couldn't make any theme park rides using any heroes with the name Marvel on it in their Orlando or Tokyo Disney theme parks due to their own theme parks having exclusive contracts with them. However, Disney did not advertise ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'' as a Marvel production, but as "From the studio that brought you Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America". [[http://www.insidethemagic.net/2014/08/star-lord-and-gamora-to-appear-as-first-marvel-characters-at-walt-disney-world-in-awesome-mix-tape-party/ Thus, they were able to put Star-Lord and Gamora in one of their parties]].

* Boeing demanded that Trump overtax any aircraft parts made by Airbus that entered the US territory. Airbus responded by builting a factory in the US and hired Americans workers to build those parts.

** Likewise, icons often aren't handled by the mature filter. Some trolls on those sites regularly put pictures of asses or stuff that normally would be placed under "mature" to shock people with the mature filter on. It was less common in deviantART where the icon size was limited to only 50x50 pixels, but on other art sites with bigger avatars...

* Website/{{Twitch}} banned live streams of people in bathing suits unless they were engaged in the act of swimming or bathing. This has resulted in many streamers creating content in their pools or hot tubs, sometimes going as far to install such a device in their preferred filming location. The practice has become some prevalent that "hot tub streams" have pretty much become a defined genre of soft-core porn.
** Doubling down on the loophole abuse, some streamers unable to afford a full size hot tub will simply fill up a pint sized kiddie pool in their studio.

** [[http://notalwaysright.com/please-pull-up-to-the-next-fast-one/23213 This man]], too. The restaurant had a policy that if the customer didn't get a receipt, their meal was free. What does he do? Shove the money into the drive-through attendant's hands and ''immediately'' speeds to the next window. The drive-through guy didn't have time to even ''offer'' a receipt, but that matters not. The speeder argues this point and sadly gets away with it. Drive-through guy wisens up though, and offers a receipt ''before'' taking the money next time the speeder rolls around.
*** This one actually applies both ways - such deals are often impossible to claim in the absence of abuse like this, as there is no clear rule as to when the time limit for the action runs out, and once the transaction has ended it is too late for the "prize" to be given. The customer could reasonably have been handed their receipt at the food window to avoid the situation above - or if he drove away from that too, he's now absent, so can't claim his money back. Burger King in the UK at one stage offered a "if we don't ask if you want to go large, you can go large for free" campaign. Since customers would often directly order a "large xxx meal.." - meaning that they would not ''be asked'' to upsize as they had already announced they were doing so - cashiers and most customers reasoned that common sense meant the promotion would not apply in this case. However, given this, any attempt by a customer to claim on the deal could be denied as the cashier could claim they ''would'' have asked the question in the future. The deal was, in fact, unclaimable.

* Website/FanFictionDotNet doesn't allow [[RealPersonFic Real Person Fics]] since 2002, but the Screenplays section is a hotbed of K-Pop [=RPFs=] made by Indonesian-speaking fans. The Misc X-overs section also occassionally contains [=RPFs=] as well that slipped through the site's moderation.

* If a site has hotlinking protection, yet you want to share its images on, say, a blog or forum, save the image to your computer (which you usually can) and now it can be safely uploaded. Or if the site has no upload option, you can upload to an image hosting site and link the image from there.
** Similarly, if a webhost you use has anti-hotlinking measures (either by causing images linked elsewhere to fail to load or display a "Image hosted by ''(host)''" placeholder), you can usually get away with hotlinking an uploaded image anyway by changing the image's extension to .txt (text file). If the host only checks for file extensions and not the actual contents or metadata, the image will display just fine. This was a popular practice during TheNoughties, but with the rise of forums that allow users to upload images directly for posting or usage as avatars (thanks to server space having gotten cheaper over time) and, failing that, image hosts explicitly designed around hotlinking (such as Imgur), the .txt trick has largely gone out of practice.
* Website/{{Kickstarter}} maintains that their site can only be used for funding creative projects. One user looked over their definition of "creative project" and discovered it was so vaguely worded that he could legally run a campaign for ''potato salad''.

** Buyers on the other hand can exploit a loophole in the bid retraction system to find out what a competing buy's maximum bid is. Bids normally cannot be retracted, but an exception is made for typos on a bid. The system is automated so anybody can just claim a typo to retract their bid (unless it's too close to the auction's end), but obvious abuse of the system is likely to result in a ban. The loophole? If you deliberately put the decimal in the wrong place of your bid (say "$99.9" instead of "$9.99") there's nothing to suggest to eBay that it '''wasn't''' actually a typo. Doing this to make a bid far over what anybody could reasonably be paying for the item can let you scout out what the high bidder's max bid is, and then after the retraction you can outbid him if you think it's worth it.

* The laws of relativity state that something with mass can't accelerate past the speed of light. They say nothing about objects that have ''always'' been at a faster-than-light speed, hence - tachyons. In more detail, if you solve the equations for total energy of a normal particle moving faster than light, you will get an imaginary number, but the total energy is proportional to the rest mass, and nothing says the rest mass has to be real.
** Likewise, the Alcubierre drive, more commonly known as a warp drive, gets around the FTL rule by exploiting the fact empty space has no mass and is not subject to the lightspeed limit. Hence, create a localized region of space that is itself traveling faster than light, and place a ship inside.

*** Likewise, Subway once had coupons for a free six-inch sandwich with the purchase of a six inch meal. This was probably intended to get people to bring someone to Subway with them, but all it resulted in was everyone buying a six-inch meal and getting another six-inch sandwich that was completely identical to the first six-inch, making a divided footlong. It got to the point where the employees didn't even bother with the pretense of the footlong being two separate sandwiches.

* Porn parodies can get away with directly mentioning the work they're parodying by sticking "Not" prominently in the title and subtitling them as "A XXX parody", e.g. ''Not The Bradys XXX'' which as the name implies is an adult sendup of ''Series/TheBradyBunch''. If the rights holders complain, the production company can simply point out that they clearly marked the product as ''not'' being the original work, as parody is protected speech.
** Two porn parodies of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'', called ''Super Hornio Brothers 1&2'', were made. Creator/{{Nintendo}} objected to these films, but was unable to get them banned from distribution due to the aforementioned ruling on parodies of otherwise-copyrighted works. What did they do? Buy the rights to the films and made sure they never saw the light of day.

* Similar to how PC Gamer magazine used to give freebies for in-game cosmetics in their magazine, loads of other magazines used to include freebies inside. Such as codes for contest entries or cards for trading card games. There is no rule saying you have to ''buy'' the magazine in question -- so people routinely used to go into supermarkets, take the feelies out, and then place the magazine back on the shelf. [[ObviousRulePatch Some magazines caught on and started shipping them with plastic wrap]], since stores ''do'' have a rule against opening books and product that were wrapped. Additionally, AintNoRule saying you have to ''buy'' the magazine or the book -- you could read it in the store. Some storekeeps however start enforcing this. And, much like magazines, some ship their books inside plastic bags to keep people from reading it without buying.

* Similar to how PC Gamer magazine used to give freebies for in-game cosmetics in their magazine, loads of other magazines used to include freebies inside. Such as codes for contest entries or cards for trading card games. There is no rule saying you have to ''buy'' the magazine in question - so people routinely used to go into supermarkets, take the feelies out, and then place the magazine back on the shelf. [[ObviousRulePatch Some magazines caught on and started shipping them with plastic wrap]], since stores ''do'' have a rule against opening books and product that were wrapped.
** Additionally, AintNoRule saying you have to ''buy'' the magazine or the book - you could read it in the store. Some storekeeps however start enforcing this. And, much like magazines, some ship their books inside plastic bags to keep people from reading it without buying.

* Georgia's state constitution explicitly forbids punishments of banishment from the state, but there is nothing forbidding the court from banishing someone from counties. As such, courts have enough wiggle room to sentence convicts to exile from every county ''except for one'': Echols County, a crappy backwater county so miserable that leaving the state voluntarily would be more appealing.