History Main / HanlonsRazor

* The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in 1997 is generally accepted to be a tragic accident caused by her chauffeur being drunk while simultaneously trying to avoid the relentless {{Paparazzi}} who were more interested in getting pictures than road safety, yet conspiracy theorists still attribute the death to a deliberate hit arranged by Prince Charles, Mohammed Al Fayed, The Queen or any number of people.

''Note: this article mainly discusses the Hanlon's Razor influence in media (RealLife section notwithstanding), for a more detailed analysis of the concept and implications of razor itself, please see [[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hanlon its article]] on Rational Wiki.''

* There's still some debate as to whether UsefulNotes/TheHolodomor, the famine caused by UsefulNotes/JosefStalin's agricultural collectivization policies in Ukraine, was the result of simple mismanagement or a deliberate genocide against a nation that had a (not undeserved) reputation as a breeding ground for counter-revolutionary sentiment. [[InvertedTrope This is]] ''Stalin'' -- how this trope applies to totalitarian dictators is an interesting question.

Hanlon's Razor relies on the assumption that ignorance in and of itself isn't malicious, which often doesn't fly in a court of ''actual'' law (either way, it still led to disaster, so it still needs to be punished). It also doesn't account for malicious actions taken to conceal ignorance -- which is TruthInTelevision; see the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence Blue Code of Silence]] -- or when malicious actions are being done but the men doing said actions [[StupidEvil is stupid and incompetent himself]] and caught in bad timing. Though one could just note that the law is about attributing motives, until the actual motives are proven, in which case the law is moot.

** Inverse Hanlon's Razor still applies too, [[Literature/HorusHeresy regarding the Emperor's treatment of his sons]], which ended up resulting in the [[CrapsackWorld crapsackiness]] of the setting.

** A huge number of misunderstandings with Akane and Ranma are entirely this trope. The big problem for this couple is one word: communication. On more than one occasion, Ranma actively tries to help Akane, and the audience witnesses this, but Akane isn't aware. Since Ranma is so consistently disrespectful, she just assumes he's being vindictive or bullying her when it's much more likely actual help. It also doesn't help his case that 9 out of 10 times when Akane gets like this, ''Ranma then deliberately acts like an arse''. This isn't to say either side is more right, but Ranma doesn't communicate his intentions well at all and responds to anger with petulance, and Akane constatly invokes the point this trope tries to disprove by seemingly ''always'' assuming malice on Ranma's part no matter the situation.

* During season 10 of the American version of ''Series/TheAmazingRace'', the smart (both had Master's degrees and one went to Harvard for undergrad), fit Cho brothers who ran towards the top of the pack at the beginning of the season formed a large alliance group with the back of the pack teams. Both the other teams and the audience assumed they were using the "goat" strategy which is, in essence, intentionally working to keep around weaker teams to give you a leg up once you get to the finale. [[note]]The term was coined by sister show ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' where it's a more established strategy. Only one team on ''Amazing Race'', Jason and Amy fron season 22, have managed to pull it off. [[/note]] However, they weren't dragging along the weaker teams to thin out the crowd for themselves, they actually thought working with the weaker teams was a strategic move. This ended up being their downfall as well as the last of their allies weren't willing to repay their kindness of waiting around on them to finish and passed them up driving as soon as they got the chance.

** [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/what-if-kanye-west-is-retarded/ This article]] about Music/KanyeWest, written after some of his more controversial actions, theorises that he "might just be retarded".
* The Slacktivist, a liberal Christian blogger, has repeatedly posted about the [[http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/03/06/contraception-ignorance-stupid-or-evil/ Stupid-or-Evil game]] when it comes to discussing the actions of [[TheFundamentalist less liberal Christians]]. His most common conclusion averts this trope: he feels that if you've been fiercly opposing something for a long time (birth control, evolution theory, gun control, etc.), you have every reason to find out as much as you can about it. Remaining ignorant despite your enduring interest in the subject takes a deliberate choice and is therefore no better than deliberately lying.

** To a lesser degree than Homer, pretty much the whole of Springfield may fall in this trope occasionally, as they tend to be gullible, shortsighed and selfish enough as to completely overlook the consequences of their collective actions. Even when they aren't actively being jerks as a whole.

* One theory points out that the Tlatelolco Massacre was a big shitty misunderstanding from start to finish. In 1968, in Mexico a series of pro communist/anti government protest held by college students had made the government paranoid as the 1968 Mexico Olympics neared close and the country would be on the worldwide eye. The whole thing [[SerialEscalation started]] with a soccer game between two middle schools that turned awry and began to involve local street gangs that began to involve somehow, anti gov protesters, eventually to turn down the violence, the government decided to round up the teens into an old highschool which the students then barricaded to which the government responded by [[DisproportionateRetribution shooting a bazooka to the entrance]] of a very prized historical door which unleashed city wide peaceful protests, the government then started {{False Flag Operation}}s of vandalism in name of the students. The Tlatelolco march, the biggest protests in the history of the country was a plan to march to Tlatelolco Plaza with over 10,000 attendees. The protesters were fast rounded up by the military and then planted agents posing as students shot the military and all hell broke loose. Some new evidence points out that the military circling the protesters and the planted agents were two different operations with no knowledge that the other would be there that day, the agents were supposed to disband the protest by shooting to the air and the military was there to protect and contain the protest and to boot the agents (Olympia Batallion) were acting independently from higher executive orders.

* The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in 1997 is generally accepted to be a tragic accident caused by her chaffeur being drunk while simultaneously trying to avoid the relentless {{Paparazzi}} who were more interested in getting pictures than road safety, yet conspiracy theorists still attribute the death to a deliberate hit arranged by Prince Charles, Mohammed Al Fayed, The Queen or any number of people.

** This is hardly the only instance of such a situation. The Confederate States of America for example, was notorious for its horrific prison camps that bore an eerie resemblance to the concentration camps of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, only their death camps were ''completely unintentional''; the Confederates were not trying to mass murder and torture their [=POWs=], the camps were just massively overpopulated, understaffed, and undersupplied, with disastrous results.
* After the disasterous handling of the 2020 Iowa caucus, a large segment of the online media has been screaming that it was an attempt to sabotage UsefulNotes/BernieSanders. Numerous people have had to come forward indicating it is a tech error due to poor management, and this trope has been specifically quoted multiple times.

* About 90% of the plot of most Creator/MichaelCrichton novels is a blend of this and ''really'' bad luck in the form of multiple worst case scenarios coming true, combining, and then mutating into something even worse. Very few characters in his novels are actually ''evil'', they're mostly just lazy or short-sighted. To supply an example: In ''Literature/JurassicPark'', the sensors of the park are not set to warn about a nearly ''200%'' increase in the dinosaur population (the result of a mutation in their DNA) because the designers did not wanted to spare the computer cycles (contrast with the willful evil of Dennis Nedry sabotaging the computers to rob the Park and John Hammond putting money ahead of human safety).

* Discussed on ''Series/TheDailyShowWithJonStewart'' during several skits in which the correspondents argue whether Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}}'s misleading reporting is due to them being evil or stupid. Wyatt Cenac and John Oliver represent "[[ObfuscatingStupidity Team Evil]]" and "Team Stupid", respectively.

* ''Film/HotFuzz'': The MilkmanConspiracy of the Sandford Neighborhood Watch Alliance has been committing wanton murder for decades for the sake of making ''[[SeriousBusiness extremely damned sure]]'' that Sandford will win the Village of the Year award. The targets of said murders are people who are [[DisproportionateRetribution extremely tiny]] and [[EvilIsPetty petty]] possibilities to potentially ruin the town's chances, such as printing the local newspaper full of typos, being a bad actor, having an annoying laugh, being a street performer (a ''[[FauxHorrific living statue or a crusty juggler]]'') and owning a [=McMansion=]. When [[TheProtagonist Sergeant Nicholas Angel]] first catches wind of the NWA's conspiracy existing, he creates an elaborate theory for all of the murders involving a RealEstateScam and when [[TheReveal the truth comes to light]] he is [[DisappointedByTheMotive both baffled and horrified]] that the town became the murder capital of England for "no reason! No reason whatsoever!"[[note]]Furthering Angel's point, Danny ([[BigBad Chief Butterman's]] eventually gives the Chief a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech telling him that [[CrusadingWidow his deceased wife (the reason he is doing this)]] would be horrified if she was still alive.[[/note]]

* ''Film/HotFuzz'': The MilkmanConspiracy of the Sandford Neighborhood Watch Alliance has been committing wanton murder for decades for the sake of making ''[[SeriousBusiness extremely damned sure]]'' that Sandford will win the Village of the Year award. The targets of said murders are people who are [[DisproportionateRetribution extremely tiny]] and [[EvilIsPetty petty]] possibilities to potentially ruin the town's chances, such as printing the local newspaper full of typos, being a bad actor, having an annoying laugh, being a street performer (a ''[[FauxHorrific living statue or a crusty juggler]]'') and owning a [=McMansion=]. When [[TheProtagonist Sergeant Nicholas Angel]] first catches wind of the NWA's conspiracy existing, he creates an elaborate theory for all of the murders involving a RealEstateScam and when [[TheReveal the truth comes to light]] he is [[DisappointedByTheMotive both baffled and horrified]] that the town became the murder capital of England for "no reason! No reason whatsoever!"