Notary Nonsense

Lucy: This time, you can trust me. See? Here's a signed document, testifying that I promise not to pull it away!
Charlie Brown: It is signed! It's a signed document! I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong. This year, I'm really gonna kick that football. (runs up; Lucy still pulls the football away) AAUGH!
Lucy: Peculiar thing about this document — it was never notarized.

— It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Most Common Law influenced countries appoint qualified individuals to serve as a "notary public" — an officer constituted by law to oversee and validate the signing of legal documents, administer oaths, and other similar activities as an "impartial witness", typically referred to as "notarizing" them. For the vast majority of people, their only dealings with notaries will be the decidedly serious acts of transferring deeds or witnessing the signing of a will. In fiction, however, the scope and qualifications of a notary are often played to unrealistic extremes, for the sake of comedy, drama, or sometimes simplicity.

Common examples include:

• Someone claiming to be a notary who obviously is not (or can't be, like a child).
• Notaries treating their craft as Serious Business, well beyond what it is in reality.
• Getting ridiculous things notarized (D&D character sheets, homework, body parts, caskets, etc.)
• Following the struggles of a legitimate notary to get the required signing parties together.
• Representing the process as unrealistically complex (or overly simple).
• Notarizing something blatantly illegal turns it into a legally binding contract.

This is far from an exhaustive list and, really, any unrealistic situation involving a notary or something notarized qualifies.

It should be noted that in many Civil Law countries, a notary is a legal professional akin to a lawyer with many additional qualifications and responsibilities. "Nonsense" among them would be even more detached from reality.

Sub-trope of Artistic License – Law. Can also be a form of Hollywood Law if the "nonsense" is treated as normal. Compare Fantastical Social Services, which may cross over if the notary in question is in some way supernatural. Notarization may be done with a Personal Seal depending on the locale. Notaries exist to help avert tropes like Forging the Will, A Plot in Deed, and sometimes Never Filled Out Official Paperwork in real life. Where There's a Will, There's a Sticky Note isn't likely to be notarized, part of why it is so legally dicey. May be involved to give legitimacy to a Silly Will or Spiteful Will.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Don Martin's Lance Parkertip, Noted Notary Public is technically a notary public, but his day-to-day work consists of absurd Hardboiled Detective adventures involving dangerous criminals and gunplay. He also stamps things almost as a Character Tic and even uses his stamp in lieu of a ticket when investigating aboard a cruise ship.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin draws notary seals on his assignments and deems them official.
  Miss Wormwood: By the way, you can stop signing your work "Calvin, Boy of Destiny," and I think your time would be better spent studying than drawing "official notary seals" at the bottom.
• Knights of the Dinner Table: Brian, a cunning player, keeps his preparations in a sealed envelope on a signed, dated, and notarized sheet, all so the GM can't accuse him of making his actions up on the fly.
• Peanuts: Lucy invites Charlie Brown to kick a football, which he refuses because she always pulls it away and he falls on his back. Lucy then presents to Charlie Brown a document stating that she won't pull it away, so Charlie Brown runs over to kick the ball. When she pulls it away anyway, she notes that the document wasn't notarized.

Films — Live-Action

• In Hail, Caesar!, Joseph Silverman is a surety agent and notary on call by the studio for whenever they need paperwork on the fly. He's so committed to his duties that he once goes to jail on drunk driving charges because they transferred the ownership title of a car to him after its real owner — an actor on contract to the studio — got into a drunken accident. DeeAnna Moran is so impressed by his reliability that they get married after a single evening when she needs a sham husband to pretend that her child was conceived in wedlock.
• The kidnapping and extortion in Pain & Gain almost falls apart after they force Victor Kershaw to sign over his life savings and all business holdings since they didn't get the paperwork notarized. "Mastermind" Daniel Lugo, who never quite figures out what a notary actually is, eventually gets the owner of his gym, who got his notary license years ago for an unrelated matter, to sign the paperwork, which gets him arrested along with all of the rest when the scam is exposed.
• The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy: The opening narration states that the events of this movie are based on a real experiment:
  Narrator: There is no doubt as to its authenticity. Testimony of people participating in the experiment, sworn to by a notary public, preclude the possibility of any fraud.

Literature

• The Golden Oecumene: Atkins gives his knife an order; it asks for a written, notarized copy because it anticipates needing to preserve that information for a court martial.

Live-Action TV

• In Batman (1966), the criminal illusionist Zelda the Great always steals $100,000 from the bank every year on April 1. After failing to catch her, Commissioner Gordon asks Batman and Robin for their help. Batman crafts a plan where he plants a phony news story that the $100k was actually counterfeit money, being held in the bank until it could be destroyed, hoping to tempt her into stealing again while setting a trap for her. (She sees through the trap and instead kidnaps Aunt Harriet, holding her for $100k in ransom.) Trying to get her to give herself up and turn on her corrupt business partner, Gordon goes on live television to announce that the stolen money was real and holds up a phony newspaper story from the Gotham Times with a quote from the bank manager as proof, stating "Look, it's signed and notarized!" Even for a Batman/police ploy to catch a villain, notarizing a newspaper page falls well within the sphere of nonsensical.
• In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Amy Santiago is a By-the-Book Cop who loves doing paperwork and is very proud of being a notary. When Jake Peralta by this point her husband and father to her child uses a different notary for something, she reacts like he had an affair.
  Jake: But he's not lying, Terry will not be heisting. I had him get a notarized letter that says he legally cannot win.
  Amy: You cheated on me with another notary?
  Jake: I mean, you're making it sound more intimate than it was. He just embossed something.
  Amy: Just embossed? What else are you gonna tell me? Did you just put your thumbprint in his logbook?
  Jake: Both of them.
  Amy: Oh, my God. You know what? We'll talk about this later.
  • Amy nearly has a breakdown when the squad needs her to notarize a fake document as part of a scheme to catch a criminal.
• Fantasy Island: The Devil tricks Julie into selling him her soul as a gambit to get Roarke's soul. Then it turns out she signed her soul to Roarke. The contract is legally signed and notarized, so each owns half of her soul.
• Floricienta: After Sofía leaves for Brazil and Floricienta refuses to take the money of her biological father, Santillán, because she does not need it to be happy, the widow Malala and his Spoiled Brat daughter Delfina are set to be declared the only heirs to Santillán's fortune. Floricienta, however, has a change of heart when she realizes she could use the money to become the foster mother of the Fritzenwalden kids and save them from Delfina, their Wicked Stepmother. According to Santillán's will, Malala and Delfina must wait until an 8:00pm deadline before they are declared the heirs. Floricienta must race to the last notary office open that evening to claim her inheritance... which is an odd situation for a notary to be in. A notary could have validated the will back when Santillán was alive, but it would be up to something more like an estate lawyer to oversee and settle the actual terms of the will.
• Hudson and Rex: In "Mansion on a Hill", Grace intends to infiltrate a party Sarah's friend Fiona is hosting to murder Sarah. She accidentally murders a notary in attendance, Jamie, who caught her trying to sneak in, but then uses Jamie's notary stamp to gain entrance while pretending to be her. Notary stamps are a tool of the trade, but using one as a form of ID definitely qualifies as nonsense.
• M*A*S*H: Due to Hawkeye and BJ's machinations, Radar finds himself promoted to second lieutenant. Margaret doubts that Radar was promoted through merit, and asks him if he has any influential relatives, like a general or an admiral. Radar offers that his uncle is a notary public.
• Parks and Recreation:
  • In "William Henry Harrison", Ben, as city manager, needs to get Leslie (representing the National Parks Department) and Ron (representing the Gryzzl corporation) to sign a Point of Sale document, with the Dumb, but Diligent Garry as notary. Because Leslie and Ron refuse to be in the same room together (due to a Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure), Ben and Gerry must follow them around for the duration of the episode trying to get them to sign with various mishaps (the wrong person signs it, a page is missing, etc.), as Garry refuses to accept anything less than proper, witnessed signatures before he notarizes it.
  • The Series Finale "One Last Ride" shows the Distant Finale future for each major character in the show. For Garry, who became mayor of Pawnee and lived to 100, it shows his funeral. As a member of the "Indiana Notary Society", he receives their most coveted honor at his funeral — a 21-stamp salute.
• Integrity to the letter of the agreement is a big deal for the demons and some monsters in Supernatural. When Crowley, as King of Hell, is trying to strike a bargain with the Leviathans, they work out an intricate and detailed contract. When they're both satisfied, they call for a Notary to participate in the signing.
• Witse: A Played for Drama example in the episode Mr. Cash". After a notary is murdered, the investigation reveals that he was running a Ponzi scheme using under-the-table cash from his clients. While not impossible, it would be an odd scheme for a notary, something more suited for a professional investor or accountant as notaries generally don't handle client money like that.
• In the first-season finale of Young Sheldon, Sheldon helps write up an agreement governing the budding romance between his grandmother and his mentor, Dr. Sturgis. Much to his delight, Sturgis reveals that he is a licensed notary, and thus could make the agreement official. (Though not addressed in the show, in most cases, notaries are supposed to be impartial witnesses, not involved with the document in question.)

Theatre

• Opera comedies involving a fake notary witnessing a fake wedding that some main character is supposed to believe is real include:
  • Donizetti's Don Pasquale is an old man whose nephew Ernesto refuses to marry the rich fiancee he's arranged, so as punishment, he decides to find a young wife for himself. He asks the advice of a doctor, who is Ernesto's friend, and gets Ernesto's girlfriend Norina to pretend to be an innocent former nun, and "marry" Ernesto's uncle to turn his plan on its head. The notary is the doctor's cousin in disguise.
  • Mozart and Da Ponte's Così Fan Tutte: Despina, the maid who encouraged the two female leads to embrace the same freedom men have and leave their old lovers as presumed dead and get with these new foreign suitors (actually the old lovers in disguise, seducing each other's girlfriends) dresses up as a notary to officiate once the women fall for the "new" men.

Webcomics

• Full Frontal Nerdity: One of Nelson's characters is revealed to be The Mole. He has the DM read a sealed and notarized letter he'd submitted prior, containing the details of his character's true allegiance.
• Skin Horse: For the Notaries Public, paperwork is a sacred ritual, as they're an ancient Obstructive Bureaucrat monastic order. Unity's induction into the order involves transfusing her brain into various wild animals to learn the wisdom of bird and beast, all of which turn out to have their own bureaucracies. (This is an alternate certification path, though. Non-prophesied notaries just submit an application and pass a gauntlet of deadly trials.)
  Speak with respect! This is the High Abbess. Try anything and she'll hand you your butt. She will then certify in triplicate that you legally took possession of your own butt. Your demise shall have a scrupulous paper trail!

Web Videos

• Scott The Woz: Scott and Rex appear on a talk show about people that have throats. The host asks him if he's been notarized for having a throat. He hasn't, so he's promptly kicked off the show and considered not to have one.

Western Animation

• Futurama: Scruffy, the Planet Express janitor, reveals himself to be a notary in "The Bots and the Bees". While there is nothing that says a janitor could not also be a notary, he is revealed to have died and been brought back as a zombie in "Law and Oracle", implicitly putting his personhood, much less his qualification to be a notary, in serious doubt.
• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown uses the same football gag featured in the Peanuts newspaper strip a couple years earlier (see Comic Strips above).
• King of the Hill: Peggy Hill is a notary public. When Buck Strickland needs to hide assets from his wife ahead of her filing for divorce, he sells his barbecue restaurant to Hank and scribbles the transaction on a beer coaster, which Peggy promptly notarizes. She then says that since Texas is a "community property" state, she and Hank are now co-owners — which throws her into a legally murky situation, since notaries are supposed to serve as impartial witnesses to the signing/execution of documents.
• Metalocalypse: Nathan Explosion is actually really good at contract negotiations. When Dethklok tries to obtain talent for singing the blues, the Devil himself offers to give them that talent in exchange for their souls. Nathan managed to renegotiate their contracts where they offer a $5 Hot Topic gift card for blues fame and a 7% backend of the Blues Devil's soul. The Devil clearly wanted to get away from Dethklok as soon as possible and makes the excuse of leaving in order to get the contract notarized, where Murderface then reveals that he's a notary. The Devil still declines the offer and leaves.
• Phineas and Ferb: Dr. Doofenshmirtz's evil scheme in "Magic Carpet Ride" is to enact a "solemn vow" he made to make his brother pay for ruining his painting back when they were young adults. The day after he made the solemn vow, he had it notarized.
• Sealab 2021: In "Let 'Em Eat Corn," Hesh being a licensed notary allows Sealab to secede from the USA. Shanks thinks the new country is Sealabia, but Hesh tricks him into signing paperwork that makes it Heshopolis.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart Gets Hit By a Car", Mr. Burns insults his team of high-priced lawyers when it seems like they are losing the trial by calling them "overpriced, under-brained, glorified notary publics!" They all hang their heads in shame at this remark.
  • In "Goo Goo Gai Pan", the family needs a notary while in China to make Selma's adoption of Ling official. A soldier who happens to be nearby turns out to be a notary. In China, notaries are much less common than in the U.S., possessing far more legal legal powers as well. Stumbling upon one when needed like that would be highly improbable.
  • In "The Last Traction Hero", Smithers thinks that eating a cake with a waiver written on it counts as signing a waiver as long as it's done in front of a notary. Scatterbrained Senior Abe Simpson being that notary doesn't help the situation.
• The Venture Bros.: In the episode "What Color is Your Cleansuit", Hank (a teenager of uncertain legal age due to being a clone) claims to offer notary services to an inquiring Dr. Orpheus (who needs to change the terms on his child support). Considering that Hank's "company" is basically a Lemonade Stand Plot after Rusty forced him to get a job that he runs in the garage selling items he swipes from the compound, serving crappy food, and offering a variety of services (tailoring, printing, etc.) with his only "employees" being Sgt. Hatred (a recovering supervillain) and Dermott (also a teenager), it is highly unlikely that any of them are actually qualified notaries.

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