Basic Trope: Character or event breaks previously established physical rules.
- Straight: Mysterious Mentor outlines and defines Bob's powers, but Bob breaks them for some reason.
- Exaggerated: So many rules are broken so regularly that magic devolves into a game of Calvinball.
- Downplayed: Bob accomplishes a feat of magic that, while technically possible, is tremendously difficult and so is considered impossible.
- Justified:
- Bob figures out weaknesses in the system of magic that underlies his powers and manipulates it in ways his mentor never thought of.
- Mentor thinks in Newtonian, whereas Bob thinks in Einsteinian.
- Inverted: Magic A Is Magic A.
- Subverted: Bob isn't breaking the rules per se, but exploiting Loophole Abuse.
- Double Subverted The Powers That Be decree an Obvious Rule Patch but it doesn't deter Bob.
- Parodied: When Mentor uses his powers he does a silly mystic dance and says silly mystic words. He says these are necessary and so Bob does them, until he faces the Big Bad and doesn't have time for silly gestures. The Big Bad is shocked he can do this. Mentor blows a refree's whistle and makes Bob sit in a penalty box.
- Zig Zagged: Bob claims to have broken the rules, but is actually exploiting Loop Hole Abuse. An Obvious Rule Patch makes further expolitation impossible but Bob breaks the rules anyway. Then The Powers That Be invoke Rule Zero, which prevents it from working again. Bob says he has another method....
- Averted: No one breaks the rules, or conversely, there are no rules to break.
- Enforced: "What better way to shock the audience then for Bob to break the rules of magic?
- Lampshaded: "Bob, you can't break the rules of the universe whenever you feel like it."
- Invoked: Mysterious Mentor never told Bob the rules hoping he would find a way around them as Achievements in Ignorance.
- Exploited: Emperor Evil goads Bob into breaking the rules defining his power because this is equivalent to a Dangerous Forbidden Technique and it cripples Bob at a crucial moment in their fight.
- Defied: Bob refuses to break the rules because of the risks involved.
- Discussed: "Mentor said doing this wouldn't work but I wonder what would happen if I did this...."
- Conversed: "I thought Bob's powers didn't work that way."
- Deconstructed:
- By attemping to break the rules of his powers, Bob finds out that nothing happens. His powers simply don't work that way. If he's lucky, nothing will happen.
- Bob continuing to break the universe's established internal logic puts the entire universe at risk of being annihilated.
- Doing something by definition proves it is not impossible at all.
- Reality-Breaking Paradox
- Reconstructed:
- By experimenting with his powers, Bob discovers which rules are ironclad, which he can bend and which he can break.
- Bob continuing to break the universe's established internal logic puts the entire universe at risk of being annihilated, but then again Bob breaks that particular thing about the universe being annihilated and recreates the universe while looking awesome at it.
- Played For Laughs: Bob screws up several times because he doesn't know how to control his magic once he breaks the rules.
- Played For Drama: Breaking the rules creates a Superpowered Evil Side that drags Bob to the Dark Side. He has to balance his spiritual well being with the abilities that threatening it grants him.
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