Loophole Abuse / Live-Action Films

aka: Live Action Film

Loophole Abuse in Live-Action Films.

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• In The 13th Warrior, Herger (one of the Vikings) offers a horn full of mead to Ahmad after the second battle. Ahmad — who is a Muslim — refuses, saying he is forbidden by his religion to drink alcohol made from "the fermentation of the grape nor of wheat." Herger cheerfully points out that mead is made from honey. After a moment of thought, Ahmad just shrugs and chugs the mead down.
• In The Absent-Minded Professor (and both remakes such as Flubber), the coach of the Opposing Sports Team in a basketball match complains to the referee that the Medfield College team is obviously cheating somehow, but the referee refuses to make a call saying that "there's no rule that one team can't jump higher than the other!". When the "team that can jump higher than the other" is jumping higher than a human is physically capable of (as in they are inches away from hitting the rooftop), it's obvious that there is something funny going on. The Medfield team could also be accused of breaking excessive traveling rules with said super-jumping, ironically.
• In Air Bud, there is apparently no rule against a dog playing basketball. Probably because no one ever thought that would come up ever.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. Apparently there Ain't No Rule against a football quarterback throwing the ball with a teammate also holding onto it, which is the only way Alvin's game-winning touchdown is allowed. Granted, such a rule is likely not needed given one would have to have the strength of Hercules to throw the ball and another player together unless said other player was, well, as small as a chipmunk.
  Actually, there is a rule against assisting the ballcarrier's forward progress, you can't push him from behind, or throw him (e.g. Over the pile at the goal line.)
• In the film adaptation of Dick King Smith's Babe, Farmer Hogget plans to enter Babe in a herding contest for dogs... despite Babe being a pig with an odd talent for sheepherding. He was concerned that the entry papers might say Name of Dog, because he couldn’t in good conscience put "Pig" down for that. The form, however, says Name of Entry. So Farmer Hogget is in the clear: it never asked you to specify that you were entering a dog.
  • This was in the book too, with the added comment of people possibly remarking "Pig? That's a funny name," without realizing it was the honest truth.
• In Bad Words - a former loser of a spelling bee finds and sets out to exact revenge after learning that a certain age isn't listed for an upcoming spelling bee.
• Batman Returns: The Penguin assures Catwoman that he will scare the Ice Princess when they kidnap her. But notice that he didn't say scare her but not kill her.
  "She looked pretty scared to me!"
• In Black Panther (2018), Okoye and the Dora Milaje are bound by honour and law to serve the throne, no matter their personal feelings about who happens to be sitting on it. When Killmonger usurps the throne, they are unhappy in the extreme but nevertheless carry out their duty... until T'Challa returns and reminds Killmonger that he neither yielded nor died and so technically the challenge is still active. When Killmonger refuses to honour this and sets his goons on T'Challa, breaking the rules of the challenge and voiding his claim, the Dora Milaje immediately pronounce him unfit to rule and to a woman turn on him.
• In the movie Blades of Glory there ain't no rule saying two guys can't skate as a pairs team. ^note In Real Life, there is for Pairs Skating in the Winter Olympics (spoil-sports), but the competition in the movie is the fictional "World Winter Sports Game".
• In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch is about to participate in a knife fight with Harvey, a member of his gang challenging him for leadership. Butch starts walking towards Harvey and claims that first they have to get the rules straightened out. Harvey thinks the idea of rules in a knife fight is so dumb that he lowers his guard and bellows that there are no rules. Butch immediately kicks Harvey in the groin, states that if there aren't going to be any rules it's about time to start the fight, and finishes off Harvey before he can recover from Butch's sneak attack.
• In the Swedish movie The Call-up, the protagonists (who are doing their military service) are out on exercise and need to drive back to base. The quickest way back is over a bridge, but the bridge has been declared destroyed (and everyone is supposed to play along) and a guard refuses to let them pass. Their solution? They drive to a hardware store, buy some paint, and paint the words "Helicopter" on the truck. The guard can't stop them crossing that way.
• In Casino the Nevada Gaming Commission has a rule that you don’t have to have a license to work in a Casino, you just have to apply for one. They already have a ten year backlog and all you have to do is change your job title every few years and they stick your application at the bottom of the pile. It’s basically outright stated that this loophole has been put in place purposely to ensure the right people are running the Casino and are thus bringing in the millions of dollars every year.
• Cherry Falls: "A serial slasher who's targeting virgins? Ha, we'll all just throw an orgy and lose our virginity!" Unfortunately for them, just because the kids found a loophole in the M.O. doesn't mean the killer would just pick up their ball and go home, and now they're all trapped in one place.
• In A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song, Gail Van Ravensway threats to use this to access and steal her stepdaughter's inheritance unless she obeys her.
• Cold Turkey: The one townsperson who won't sign the non-smoking pledge manages to avoid disqualifying the town for eligibility in the cold turkey contest by taking a vacation for the duration of the contest.
• In D2: The Mighty Ducks, the Ducks try on new uniforms (which were the uniforms of the just-created Anaheim Ducks, which in the timeline of the films were not yet invented) for the third period of the final game (they before had been Team USA). Despite the opposing coach's protests, the play-by-play announcer notes that he has "just been informed that there is no rule against changing uniforms during a game".
  • In many sports there actually isn't a rule about changing uniforms halfway through. Some teams raise money for charity by doing this and then auctioning off one set of uniforms after the game. Usually, though, they're duplicates of the same uniform, and teams generally don't wear different uniform designs during the same game.
• The Dark Knight: Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face, has a self-imposed rule that every choice, even the choice to kill someone he hates, is decided by coin flip. When he confronts Maroni, who was partly responsible for the murder of Harvey's girlfriend, in the back of a moving car, this happens:
  Two-Face: (flips coin, which comes up good) You're a lucky man. (flips it again, and it comes up bad) He's not.
  Maroni: Who?
  Two-Face: (fastens seatbelt) Your driver. (shoots the driver in the back, sending the car flying off the road)
• In The Darwin Conspiracy, a scientist only agrees to analyse unique genetic samples found if he is given assurance that any discoveries he makes won't be used for human testing. Unknown to him, his sponsors have another lab running different tests on those same samples, with the intention that they can perform human testing officially using the other scientist's project (with one of the first scientist's team stealing his data for discreet use in the other project).
• Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man finds Dr. Raymond Cocteau's annoying, and his view of a perfect world, boring and bland, but Phoenix can't kill him because of his psychological programing prohibits him from personally harming Cocteau. Then this happens:
  Phoenix: Will somebody please kill him? (Tosses gun to a Mook) He's pissing me off.
• Descendants 2: Lonnie is trying to join the school fencing team, but even though Jay respects her skills, he can't let her on because the school rules state that the team must comprise one captain and eight men (a term which is apparently interpreted very strictly in Auradon). Jay gets around it by giving his position to Lonnie, as there is no rule requiring that the captain be male).
• Diggstown focuses on a bet between two hustlers, Gillon and Caine, on an epic day of boxing. They draw up the rules of the boxing competition first and put their bets in escrow to prevent cheating, then spend the rest of the movie exploiting all of the loopholes they'd secretly left in the rules to gain an advantage, including:
  • Caine has Gillon agree that a "day" of boxing is a full 24 hours. Caine then starts the competition at the stroke of midnight to maximize the time his fighter can spend facing challengers and put Gillon's boxers off their accustomed sleep schedules.
  • Gillon tells his son, one of the ten boxers scheduled to fight Caine's champion Palmer, to approach the ring, look Palmer in the eyes, and then walk out without entering the ring. Caine and Palmer interpret this behavior as a forfeit, so after Palmer defeats nine other boxers, they think they've won. However, technically Gillon's son never entered the ring, and therefore ruling took place. Gillon still has a final, surprise boxer to field.
  • Gillon is limited to fielding local boxers who reside in the county. He brings in a dangerous boxer currently serving time in the local prison to fight for him because technically he's a "resident" of the county.
• In The Dirty Dozen the named dozen are in war games when they switch their armbands to the other side's color and infiltrate their headquarters. When questioned on this tactic, they reply, "We're traitors".
• This is the big problem in Dogma: God is infallible. Whatever He/She says, goes and if two Angels are to be banished to Wisconsin for all eternity, so be it. However, a church in New Jersey is celebrating its 100th anniversary and allowing those who enter its church to be absolved of all sins. Loki and Bartleby's plan is to essentially dump their wings, pass through into the church and voilà, purged of all sins and allowed to get back into Heaven. Of course, by doing that, it proves God is fallible and destroys reality as a result.
• In Down Periscope, Lieutenant Commander Dodge fired off two torpedoes at the conclusion of a war game right before a targeting solution from the opposing ship destroyed his submarine. The win condition was to destroy the target in the harbor those torpedoes hit.
• In Drop Dead Gorgeous, after Amber's costume for the talent section of the show is stolen, Gladys attempts to prevent Amber competing even with a new costume on the grounds that all costumes have to be pre-approved a week in advance even when Amber's wearing a simple black leotard that shouldn't be "offensive" to anyone. Lisa provides another loophole by giving Amber her costume, reasoning that her costume was approved previously and she was never going to win the contest anyway while Amber has a better shot.
• In Exam, the candidates are told that they will be disqualified if they talk to the invigilators and/or deface their own question paper. One of the candidates works out that there is nothing stopping them talking to each other or from defacing a question paper belonging to a different candidate. This leads to scenes of the candidates talking to each other about how to pass the exam and defacing the other candidates' question papers by shading the papers and wetting them.
• A meta example from Fight Club. The character Marla Synger's line to Tyler Durden after having sex for the first time was supposed to be: "I wanna' have your abortion." But an executive at Fox Studios thought that was too crude and ordered the director to change it. He agreed on the condition that the correction could not be corrected. Thus, Marla Synger ended up saying: "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school."
• Flubber where the professor put flubber on the shoes of his school's basketball team when they are losing an important game. As a result, the team suddenly find themselves able to easily make impossibly high jumps to win the game. Although the coach of the opposing team protests this development, the stunned referee refuses to stop play because there is no rule that establishes a height limit of players' jumps, even though it is obvious this sudden advantage for the team appearing mid-game must be the result of some kind of external aid that is likely against the rules.
  • The same happens in the original version, The Absent-Minded Professor.
• Several times in Fright Night (2011). Vampires can't enter residences without an invitation, but there's nothing against pretending to be delivery boys, attacking victims in abandoned houses or blowing their homes up.
• Done by Griphook in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 after he double crosses the trio during the raid on Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts.
  Griphook: I said I'd get you in. I never said anything about letting you out!
• Shows up in the ending to Juwanna Mann, where a male basketball player is forced to play for a WNBA team, crossdressed, and wins the final game for them. He wins by making a slam dunk, which IS forbidden in WNBA rules. In fact, it was brought up earlier in the movie that he could NOT score using slam dunks. Which is a departure from real WNBA rules, which do not prohibit dunks. It's just that very few women can dunk on a 10-foot rim.
• I, Robot:
  • The first law of robotics states that "a robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm." If this is unavoidable, the robot may make the decision based on balance of amount of harm or probability of harm. This combination allows VIKI to attempt to take over the human world, stating that doing so will prevent humans harming each other, and any individual humans harmed during the process are balanced by the harm avoided to the world as a whole.
  • Also, at the end, Sonny asks if Spooner is going to arrest him for killing Lanning. Spooner replies that Sonny is a robot, and murder is defined by a human killing another human.
• In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale has, apparently, a requirement for the magi that they must serve a king for them to be able to use magic. Gallian reveals that the beastly Krug have no king, so he simply crowned himself as their king. Thus, he serves the best master he can think of — himself. The rules never specified it must be a king of humans or that the magus himself couldn't be king. Of course, it's also implied that only a madman like Gallian could have accepted such twisted logic enough to allow his powers to work. And Gallian doesn't deny that he has gone mad but actually uses his madness to boost his power.
• In Into the Woods, one of the items is hair as yellow as corn silk... except there Ain't No Rule saying it has to be human hair, as actual Corn Silk◊ works.
• In Jack the Giant Killer whoever wears the crown of King Erik controls the giants. However, this does not make them entirely obedient, and they could find ways of killing the wearer of the crown indirectly, or simply standing by and allowing the wearer to be killed.
• In Labyrinth Sarah needs to cross a bridge guarded by a fox-type knight Sir Didymous who refuses to let anyone pass. After getting the specifics of his vow, which is that none may pass without Didymous's permission, Sarah then asks him for permission.
• Lone Star (1996): During the time of the flashback scenes, the county has an ordinance stating that only clubs and fraternal organizations can serve liquor. Saloon Owner Roderick Bledsoe gets around around this by declaring that his bar is a club, and that the membership admission is buying a drink every time a "club member" visits.
• Lord of War:
  • Agent Valentine attempts to stop Yuri when he's looting former Soviet warehouses in Ukraine because he has a helicopter gunship destined for Burkina Faso. Yuri has the rocket pods removed and shipped separately, claiming the helicopter is for humanitarian missions, thereby skirting the sanctions. Valentine isn't fooled for a second, but legally can't do anything.
    Yuri: I must point out that, when shipped separately, the weapons and the aircraft both comply with current Interpol trade standards and practices.
    Valentine: We both know that is an obscene bureaucratic loophole that's gonna be closed any God damned day.
    Yuri: But it's not closed. And while certain people might interpret this cargo as suspicious, thank God we live in a world where suspicion alone does not constitute a crime, and where men like you respect the rule of law.
  • At one point, Valentine manages to corner Yuri but he doesn't have any concrete evidence to justify arresting him (since Yuri already let the local villagers take all the guns away). Valentine instead cited that he's legally allowed to 'detain' Yuri for 24 hours and he's gonna use every single second of it and handcuff Yuri to a briefcase and strand him in the middle of nowhere, reasoning that one day of Yuri not going about his gunrunning business means one more day given to the innocent people who would've been killed by the guns he's selling. Yuri also darkly speculates that Valentine left him out there in hopes that the African wilderness or bandits would kill him. At the very least, Valentine isn't shady enough to kill Yuri himself in a Vigilante Execution despite prodding from his colleagues.
• In the 1986 film Lucas, scrawny 14-year old Lucas Bly takes advantage of a school district rule that says that school sports teams must allow any child with an interest to play in order to join the school football team in a misguided effort to impress the girl he has a crush on. The coach is reluctant, as Lucas can best be described as "scrawny", but it forced by the school district to let Lucas onto the team. The first time he actually plays, though, Lucas is injured so badly he requires hospitalization. There might not be a rule against scrawny runts joining a football team, but maybe there should be.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Thor, Heimdall is ordered by Loki to not activate the Bifrost for anyone. When Sif and the Warriors Three need to help Thor out on Earth, he sticks his sword in the controls and leaves, essentially leaving the keys in the ignition for them. Later, he takes advantage of having taken an oath to obey the king. When Loki, the acting king, fires him, Heimdall attacks, since he's no longer bound to obey him.
  • Heimdall is good at this, doing it again in Thor: The Dark World, where it's his sworn duty to notify Odin of any crime against the throne. So he summons Odin to the Bifrost to report that he's committing treason, i.e. by luring Odin away from the palace and not reporting the treason Thor and the Warriors Three are engaging in.
• In Matchmaker Mysteries: A Killer Engagement, female lead Angie Dove and lead cop Kyle Cooper both took the same vehicle to interview a witness and as such, are together when Kyle has to tail a suspect; he firmly tells Angie to stay in the car, which she's annoyed by but acquiesces. When the suspect bolts towards the car, Angie opens the door just in time for him to smack into it and fall flat. Kyle comes over and gives her a Disapproving Look but Angie points out she stayed in the car the whole time, a fact he concedes.
• In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, Zordon is worried as the Rangers failed to stop Ivan Ooze's escape and he's heading for the Command Center. Alpha reassures him — no one can enter the Command Center without a Power Coin. A split second later, Alpha turns around and sees Ivan slipping in through the cracks of the Command Center doors.
  Alpha 5: Um... almost nobody!
• The title character in Mister Roberts, with the deal he made with the Captain to get shore-leave for the ship's crew: while he agreed to not write any more letters requesting reassignment, he never said anything about not throwing the Captain's prized palm tree overboard.
• In Monte Carlo, Grace Bennett manages to infiltrate a high-class party with her friends because she happens to be an exact double to expected attendee Cordelia Winthrop-Scott. Although Cordelia attempts to accuse Grace of identity fraud when she returns, as well as the alleged theft of a valuable necklace that was meant to be up for auction (one of Grace's friends wore it and it fell into a bag), the inspector brought in to investigate the case dismisses her claims. As the inspector points out to Cordelia, she can't accuse Grace and her friends of kidnapping Cordelia or stealing the necklace when Cordelia is right here and the necklace is on public display, there's no distinct evidence of identity fraud as Cordelia can't prove when she was elsewhere and Grace was pretending to be her, and it's not a matter for the police if Cordelia is miserable about the situation.
• In Mortal Kombat: The Movie, Shang Tsung wants to avoid fighting Liu Kang at all costs, so he uses Johnny's offer to fight Goro to subvert the tournament structure, in combination with Shang Tsung's championship right to enter the tournament, to force Sonya to fight him for the right of Earthrealm to lock Liu Kang out. It doesn't work because the heroes realize both participants have to agree to fight so Sonya refuses to accept his challenge until the others arrive.
• Jason constantly does this to Kelly in Mystery Team.
• Necessary Roughness and Waterboy. Ain't no rule that a man can't play football among boys! In Necessary Roughness, the rule is the NCAA eligibility rule, which states that a player begins his eligibility the day he first enrolls in college. So technically, though Blake was 34 years old, he's a "freshman" to the NCAA; he has three full years of eligibility remaining after the movie. A notable real-life example is Chris Weinke, who played six years of minor league baseball (for which he would not have been eligible to compete at the NCAA level) before enrolling at Florida State and becoming a quarterback in football (for which he still was eligible.)
  • Also no rule against women playing in Roughness, as Lucy, a women's soccer player, joins the team. It's even lampshaded by Robert Loggia's character. This is true to life as well; there have been a handful of female kickers at the college level in real life.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl:
    • Barbossa uses and subverts this. Like all good rules lawyers, Barbossa has no problem with the rules bending—as long as they bend in his favor.
      Barbossa: First of all, returning you to Port Royal was never part of our negotiations or agreement, so I must do nothing. And secondly, you have to be a pirate for the Pirate Code to apply, and you're not. And thirdly - the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
    • Plus, his agreement to release Jack and Elizabeth... with no specification about when or where, so he just maroons them on an island. They're lucky he didn't "release them" to the sharks.
      Barbossa: Don't dare impugn me honor, boy! I agreed she'd go free but it was you who failed to specify when or where.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest:
    • This was Jack's "Plan A" to honor his deal with Jones, and the value of one hundred souls.
      Gibbs: And how do you intend to harvest these ninety-nine souls in three days?
      Jack: Fortunately, he was mum as the condition in which these souls need be.
      Gibbs: Ah. Tortuga, then?
      Jack: [wipes slime on Gibbs] Tortuga.
    • He tries it on Jones earlier in the film, but Jones isn't having any:
      Jones: You have a debt to pay. You've been captain of the Black Pearl for thirteen years. That was our agreement.
      Jack: Technically, I was only captain for two years, then I was viciously mutinied upon.
      Jones: Then you were a poor captain, but a captain nonetheless! Have you not introduced yourself all these years as Captain Jack Sparrow?
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End:
    • Rules Lawyer Barbossa knows the pirate's code so damn well, he's able to pull this on Jack, even going as far as to tell Jack's Dad on him, who happens to be the Keeper of the Code and scary beyond all reason. Jack makes Barbossa regret this by pulling a dragon right back on him.
    • In the same film, Jack tries to invoke this with Jones, saying that their debt was settled when he was taken to the Locker, no-one said he had to stay there. Jones doesn't agree to it and takes him prisoner.
    • Davy Jones is forbidden from setting foot on dry land, except for one single day every ten years. When both sides invoke a parlay, said meeting happens on a sandbar in the middle of the sea, which technically doesn't count as "dry land". On top of that, Jones is standing inside a bucket full of sea water, which means his feet aren't on the sandbar either.
    • At the end of the film, this is how Jack finally manages to kill Jones once and for all: by stabbing his heart using a dagger that was presently held in the recently-deceased Will Turner's hand. This also has the benefit of preventing Jack from being forced to become the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, as well as resurrecting Will as the new captain, since it was technically by Will's hand that Jones died.
• In Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, this is the reason for the Red Queen deciding to team up with Alice. Her programming keeps her from harming Umbrella Corporation employees, even though she wishes to stop their Evil Plan, but Alice isn't tied by any such Restraining Bolts, so providing her with vital information helps the Red Queen carry out her desires by proxy. Also, in a similarity to the RoboCop (1987) example, during the climax Alicia Marcus takes the time to remind everyone she owns half of Umbrella, and promptly fires Wesker; as he's now technically no longer in Umbrella's employ, the Red Queen is able to deploy her security measures and kill him.
• RoboCop:
  • In RoboCop, the villain Dick Jones secretly programmed a fourth directive into RoboCop that prevents him from harming Omni Consumer Products personnel, which keeps RoboCop from arresting him after revealing his involvement in the death of a rival colleague. Later, Robocop goes to a board meeting where Jones is, not to kill him because of the fourth directive, but to show damning footage of his wrongdoing. Conveniently, Jones had earlier told Robocop what exactly the classified fourth directive contains, and nothing in his programming is preventing him from spreading this information further. When Jones tries to take the CEO hostage, the CEO fires him. Since Jones is no longer employed at OCP, that means the fourth directive no longer applies to him, which means RoboCop can finally give him his comeuppance by shooting him until he falls out of a window.
  • Cain in RoboCop 2 uses the same tactic on a subordinate who failed him. When his mistress protests that he said that he would only scare the guy while he's having him cut open with surgical tools, Cain flatly states "Doesn't he look scared?"
• Semi-Pro:
  • Ain't no rule says you can't play drunk. Well, there is a rule, but they can't enforce it. ("Remember those 30 free throws I did in Minnesota last year?" "Yeah?" "I don't.")
  • When they first use the alley-oop, the ref rules it a violation, although the protagonists are ready and throw the rule book at him. The ref is forced to allow it.
• Star Trek:
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the 2009 Star Trek film, the Kobayashi Maru test. Starfleet actually had to add a "no reprogramming the simulator" rule after Kirk's shot at it, and according to the Expanded Universe, this kicked off a whole tradition of loopholing the scenario. Not only that, but it became an expectation of any student to find a way to beat the simulation with outside-the-box thinking.
  • In the opening to Star Trek Into Darkness, Spock cops to Kirk and Bones violating the Prime Directive by rescuing him in broad daylight before a primitive alien species, yet still argues the point that they wouldn't have been violating the wording of the Prime Directive had they not been detected. Because then the natives would never have known that the Enterprise crew had interfered with their development by saving them from extinction. Admiral Pike doesn't buy it, feeling the spirit of the law was more important, and Kirk ends up getting demoted off the captain's chair... temporarily, only to get it back to pursue Khan after Pike is killed.
  • Later on, the Vengeance is bearing down on the Enterprise and turning it into Swiss cheese. Carol races onto the bridge and begs to contact Admiral Marcus, who is not only captaining the Vengeance but also her father and he wouldn't attack them if she was on board. Marcus' solution? Teleport her over to the Vengeance, then keep shooting.
• In Stroker Ace, the eponymous character tries to find his way out of an unfair contract which his sponsor uses to promote business more aggressively. Lugs tries to have five or six different lawyers find these in the contracts wording only to be told that Stroker's best chance is to get Clyde Torkle to fire him (quitting activates a clause which says Stroker can't race for the next three years). Stroker then starts using the contract to his advantage by humiliating Torkle with a couple idiotic advertising gags (the contract only says that he has to sell chicken; it fails to mention how he should do it) and hiring Pembrook as part of his pit crew just to piss Torkle off.
• Subverted in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Not only is there a rule against getting out of the car and running, but they're both disqualified for it. Double subverted in that neither cares, and still count it as a moral victory for Ricky Bobby.
• The Terminal: Dixon asks for Viktor's help in dealing with a Russian man who went into frenzy when the airport confiscated pills for his father because he didn't have proper documents. After the man is neutralized, Viktor, having read the rules, is able to save the guy by getting him to say the medication is for a goat, since animals don't require documentation for medicine. Soon afterward, everyone in the airport salutes Viktor as "the goat" for defying airport regulations.
• In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, John Connor makes the T-800 swear that he won't kill anyone. Programmed to obey John Connor, the T-800 agrees, and promptly follows it up by Knee Capping a security guard, since John only ordered him to not kill anyone.
  T-800: He'll live.
• The Rail Enthusiasts in The Titfield Thunderbolt are able to secure funding to buy the railway by telling the local rich alcoholic that there's no law to prevent them from running a bar on their train first thing in the morning when all the pubs are closed.
• In Troop Zero, Ms. Massey keeps Moving the Goalposts for the titular Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to be allowed to be in the Birdie Scouts. One of the requirements is that each troop has a den mother, an adult to oversee and supervise them. So Christmas asks her father's secretary and family friend Rayleen, who agrees despite not really being into the scout thing... only for Ms. Massey to say Rayleen is ineligible, because she has a criminal record (meaning, she has one traffic violation from years ago). At this, Christmas' father has enough and says he'll be the den mother; he's read the rulebook, so he knows that nowhere in the text does it say the den mother has to be a woman. Even better since Christmas' dad is an actual lawyer.
• In the movie Winning London, the Olsen twins have to save some "hostages" as part of a Model UN convention/competition. As it's all pretend, the hostages are just in the next room over, so they take the literal approach and climb through the air vents to save them. After coming back into the room, one boy shouts "You said we had to work it out on paper!", to which the official responds "No, I said you had to work it out."
• Wizards of Waverly Place, The Movie: Jerry and Theresa forbid Alex and Harper from going to an R-rated party because they are underage, and to make their word perfectly clear they give them a rule not to leave the building in any way. Alex then turns the restaurant's subcar design into a literal subway so the girls can travel to the party without technically leaving the building. Unfortunately, it ends up a disaster when Alex has trouble controlling the subway and they almost get killed until Justin saves them.
• In Zoom: Academy for Superheroes, in the final scenes of the movie as we see the 'Happy-Ever-After' scenes for each of the super-powered kids, we watch the expanding boy playing soccer as the goalie and being the team hero, as there Ain't No Rule against being able to expand your body parts to block the entire goal so no shots can go in.
• A rather famous meta example for the 1964 war film Zulu. Due to apartheid laws in South Africa at the time of filming, director Cy Endfield was forbidden from paying the Zulu extras at an equal rate to the white actors. He got around this by giving them all the animals used in the production, which were a lot more valuable to them than the money would have been.

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