It's impossible to describe Indescribable Object here... or is it?
When characters interact with an object, there's usually some info given on that object, its color, its shape, etc. But maybe Nothing Is Funnier, or Nothing Is Scarier. Whatever it is, the Narrator has given up and cannot describe the thing.
Perhaps something about the item is makes it a Brown Note, that is, dangerous to perceive in some way, such that the narration knows it and tries to keep its perception to a minimum by not describing it, and also possibly applying Pixellation or other censorship to any visuals of the item.
Or You Cannot Grasp the True Form of the item and it's not giving A Form You Are Comfortable With, resulting in just an area of indescribability.
You might get more information looking at the name of the item, if it's in a video game that provides that.
Even the Subtitler Is Stumped, if it's for subtitles. Buffy Speak, using a strange syntax of vaguely descriptive terms to describe something, is one way to describe things badly, but providing enough information that it's not this trope. Items that are Invisible go in that trope because it's more comprehensive. The Non Descript is its living counterpart.
Examples:
- The 13 Clocks: The Golux wears an indescribable hat. Hark saying that Listen has "something on his head [he] can't describe" is what tips off the Duke that Listen is the Golux.
- Thursday Next: Grammasites are metafictional animals that feed on words, with different species eating different parts of speech. In one passage, Thursday observes a adjectivore feeding on a wall, which removes all descriptive adjectives from it while only leaving behind the nouns. The result is that Thursday can still see that it as a wall, but all other qualities — color, texture, and so on — have been removed. The wall is consequently not even blank or plain, as those are also adjectives. It's just... a wall, with no observable nature beyond that plain fact.
- Look Around You: Series 1 is formatted as an educational science programme in a world where Reality Is Out to Lunch. As such, in the episode "Water" the narrator casually reveals that nobody has any idea what water or birds are, or how to describe them.
Narrator: What is water? A difficult question, because water is impossible to describe. One might ask the same thing of birds. What are birds? We just don't know.
- Stargate SG-1: Parodied in "Wormhole X-Treme!" The network producer tells Martin Lloyd's TV crew to just film the actors' reactions to an "indescribable" alien spaceship, on the grounds that they can't afford to actually depict one unless Martin can shave five grand off the special effects cost. Unbeknownst to even himself, Martin has a plan to cheaply get footage of an alien spaceship.
- Lancer: The Pegasus, one of the strangest mechs in HORUS's arsenal, gains the Mimic Gun at License II — a bizarre shapeshifting weapon that counts as all ranged weapon types simultaneously. Its flavor text simply reads, "This is not a gun."
- The Battle Cats: Downplayed by the evolved forms of the Nekolugas. While their descriptions do give some idea of what they can do on the battlefield, the narrator is clearly dumbfounded just looking at them and their Body Horror, and can't write anything else about them.
Unknown Cat: God, I don't know if this is a Cat anymore. Seriously, I give up. Knockbacks enemies. (Area Atk.)
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: The 2 visually-non-existent-but-still-take-up-an-item-slot items appear as blank, description-less spaces in the inventory, but are clearly existing since they take up a space and can be ante-d up in the Arena.
- EarthBound (1994): The "Insignificant Item" Joke Item has no in-game art, a description that just acknowledges its existence, and the strategy guide just has it as a wrapped rectangular prism of a bundle, giving almost no information about it:
Insignificant Item: It doesn't look like it would do much of anything, but...
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: "Boethiah's Pillow Book", an implied pornographic work named for the most Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous of the Daedric Princes, needs to be stolen as part of the Thieves' Guild questline in order to blackmail the noble who owns it. Unlike the game's many other fully-fleshed out In-Game Novels, trying to read this one simply gives the message "No words can describe what you see. Or what you think you see."
- In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, cooking with incompatible ingredients results in a dish called "Dubious Food", which is Censored for Comedy. It's displayed as a plate of heavily pixelated green and purple...stuff with a bone sticking out, described in the Flavor Text as "too gross to look at". Another mystery food is Akkala buns, which you can't put in your inventory and must eat with your eyes closed. It does get an icon in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but it too is pixelated. It looks suspiciously like a pixelated Tireless Frog.
- Mega Man Battle Network 2: The OddProg key item is just odd:
Some kind of chip data, but you're not sure exactly what
- Rhythm Heaven Fever: The rhythm game "Donk Donk" is so weird that the description just gives up, with just "This one's hard to explain." before going onto instructions.
- Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: The "This Thing" line of Accessories, whose icon is a question mark, and all the narration says is "...but what is it?". It can still be equipped, somehow.
- PsyCard: Friend's Quest: Hell goop has only the information that can be implied by its name and appearance and effects on things it's merged with, such that it's evil, since merging with it makes the protagonist feel evil.
hell goop: what is it even?
- FilmCow: In "Chris draws a cartoon"
, Barry attempts to describe something "so elegant and perfect that it has to be seen to be believed, a true artistic and cultural miracle that leaves me in a state of wonderment just looking at it." Chris animates it as several penises scattered across the screen.
- SCP Foundation: SCP-055
, which is a... thing. Anybody who sees it will completely forget about it within a few minutes. Anybody who reads, views, or listens to any information about it will forget such information within a few minutes. The object is classified as Keter (most dangerous) simply because the Foundation doesn't know if it's dangerous or not, specifically mentioning that it could have killed hundreds of personnel in the process of getting it and they wouldn't remember any of it. People can remember what it isn't, however, and so far the Foundation has determined that SCP-055 is not spherical. This story
explores the horror of such a... thing that isn't spherical. This is technically not indescribable, but close enough to count for the trope:
SCP-055's physical appearance is unknown. It is not indescribable, or invisible: individuals are perfectly capable of entering SCP-055's container and observing it, taking mental or written notes, making sketches, taking photographs, and even making audio/video recordings. An extensive log of such observations is on file. However, information about SCP-055's physical appearance "leaks" out of a human mind soon after such an observation.
