Ass Pull cleanup

Note: This opening post was partially based on the opening post of a TRS thread made by badtothebaritone.

Ass Pull is defined as a trope where an unforeshadowed plot twist is handled in an inelegant fashion. However, while complaining wasn't much of a problem despite the name, there was still a lot of misuse for plot twists that don't fit the requirement for them to be unforeshadowed.

The TRS thread closed after it was determined that cleanup should be tried before making any major changes, so this thread was made to clean up misuse.

Nice, this trope has some examples that have been bugging me lately.

• From Who Framed Roger Rabbit:
  • The villain's Evil Plan can come off this way to viewers who don't know the historical context behind it, because as Eddie lampshades, no one in the film knows what a "freeway" is, or even heard of the word or said it. Thus, until the villain directly explains it to Eddie (and the audience), the hints and foreshadowing of their plan don't line up on their own and are only apparent in hindsight.
  The example itself points out that the work provides hints to the plot twist.

• And from X-Men: First Class:
  • Some find the idea of Raven as Charles' adopted sister to be this given that the two were shown to have no emotional connection to each other in the original film series.
  This is not a plot twist, it's one of the first scenes in the film, which serves to establish the two characters' relationship. It may be a Retcon, or maybe even Continuity Snarl, but I don't think it's an Ass Pull.

Can they be cut?

Okay, Pokemon stuff.

• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Every once in a while, a Pokémon evolving does not follow established rules from the games, the most common example being those happening mid-battle, but there are specific examples such as Sliggoo evolving in its own Rain Dance when it only evolves during natural rain. Not a plot twist.
  • The "Thunder Armor" seen during the Mossdeep Gym battle is an oft-cited example of glorious stupidity. Pikachu uses Thunder that gets reflected back to itself and Swellow, which somehow becomes some sort of armor. Essentially granting the user(s) invincibility out of nowhere, without being used again at all in the rest of the series? What makes you scratch your head, though, is how Ash came up with the idea in the first place, and how Pikachu knew what he wanted without even being told. Pikachu just randomly aims at a nearby cloud in the sky after being told to use the attack, like he read Ash's mind or something. Swellow was always abnormally resistant to Electric attacks, which was a plot point in its debut appearance, so it's not completely out of nowhere.
  • Fans are still sore on how Pikachu, an infant Pokémon still in his early days of adventuring, could knock out Rhydon, an Ground/Rock beast with a single Thundershock through his natural electricity grounding. Ash claiming that Rhydon's horn conducted the shock through his immunities pretty much sealed this trope. Especially a couple of years later when Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire introduced Pokémon Abilities. Specifically, it gave Rhydon the Lightning Rod ability, which attracts Electric-attacks to itself and nulls them through its own horn. So how to explain that again, Ash...? Idk, on one hand, he beat Brock's Onix, anouther Ground type, with electric attacks via trickery, but on the other, that used external stuff not present here
  • The most logic-defying example yet may be with the introduction of a second Mewtwo in Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend Awakened. Creating another Mewtwo should be impossible, given Mew's extreme rarity and the original Mewtwo destroying all knowledge of its creation, yet a group of scientists never seen before (or since) manage to find Mew DNA offscreen, get the idea to create Mewtwo, and manage to engineer their Mewtwo's DNA to create a physically identical specimen, all with no indication that they even know there's a Mewtwo in existence already. And no explanation for why they even bothered to create Mewtwo is ever given. Even worse is that during the Diamond & Pearl series (a mere five years prior), it was outright said there was only one Mewtwo in the world. Maybe?
  • Pokémon: The First Movie: Infamously, when Ash dies, the tears of Pikachu and the large crowd of Pokémon surrounding him float towards him and somehow bring him back to life. This is technically slightly foreshadowed, but the idea is still so nonsensical and cheap it's still wildly considered an ass pull, especially since the concept is never shown again in the series. Foreshadowed
  • Pokémon Journeys has a girl's Feebas evolving while holding a Prism Scale, which is untrue, as it can only evolve through trading while holding the item. A later episode has Goh's Scyther evolving while actually holding a Metal Coat through trading. Bizarrely enough, though, how it evolves is through a machine that exists for the sake of evolving Pokémon through trades without actually trading; a feature that is completely alien to the games. Neither of these instances are discussed much in-universe. Not a plot twist
    • Grookey's capture episode. It just so happens to be one of Team Rocket's gatcha machine Pokémon that conveniently wanders into Cerise's Lab (of all places in Vermilion City) at night and decides to sleep with Goh. Why does it do that? There is no reason whatsoever. The monkey just so happened to find Goh likeable despite not even knowing him properly. Not a plot twist
• Pokémon Adventures had Ruby reveal out of the blue at the end of his arc that he's had Celebi on hand the entire time. Careful digging through the dialogue earlier on can find tiny hints that lead to it, but it still largely feels this way. Tiny hints are still hints.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Mar 5th 2023 at 1:18:40 PM

In my opinion:

• Cut.
• Keep. Even if Swellow was shown to be abnormally resistant to electricity, he was never shown to be empowered by it. This particular strategy, which inexplicably generates a physical armour out of pure energy, comes out of nowhere and is never seen again.
• I'd cut this. It doesn't run on the logic from the games, but makes sense in the context of the anime. It's just a case of Adaptational Achilles Heel.
• Didn't watch this film, but is it really a plot twist? Wasn't Mewtwo heavily advertised in the promos?
• Cut.
• Cut.
  • Cut.
• Cut.

Not just resistant, to the point it couldn't be KO'd by Pikachu who was not "highly weakened".

There's no way electricity could ever knock it out. It's foreshadowed of how big of a deal it is. I'd say pull it overall. It's a weird move to pull, but they did set it up how big of a deal their interaction was enough.

The Rhyhorn stuff is a bit ridiculous. Onix was doused with water. That isn't that odd. However, this one wasn't, imo, foreshadowed at all. It was a completely random thing that got turned into an Ability later(but with changes). I'd say keep.

Not all movies are canon to the anime. This means a second Mewtwo isn't that odd either. I'm going to say cut. We don't know the strict continuity enough for it to matter. I'd keep it in mind if we find out all movies are in continuity, though. Though it sounds more like a big retcon, not an ass pull, anyway. Who says one cannot be created later? Or it could be another dimension too(which these are confirmed anyway, so it's not as impossible as they state).

• Pokémon: The Series:
  • During the Mossdeep Gym battle, Ash has Pikachu reflect his own Thunder attack back on himself and Swellow to give the latter Improvised Armor, letting them power through Tate and Liza's attacks and win the battle. Nothing like this had ever been hinted at prior to this moment. While Swellow had been shown prior to be abnormally resistant to Electric attacks despite its Flying type, nothing ever implied they could power it up, much less to this degree.
  • The Ground type's immunity to Electric attacks was always a major obstacle that Ash and Pikachu had to overcome through trickery or coverage moves. Then, Pikachu takes out a Rhydon with a Thundershock aimed directly at its horn, even though no Ground type ever showed such an Achilles' Heel before. As a result, the knockout comes out of nowhere and in direct opposition to what had been shown prior.

How's this for a rewrite? Removed the complaning.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Mar 5th 2023 at 7:12:36 AM

I found this YMMV.Tokyo Xanadu which I'm very unsure of:

• Ass Pull: The twist that the Epilogue presents. There is little to no foreshadowing that the Nine-Tailed Fox saved the true Shiori's soul during the Tokyo Twilight Disaster, and so the fact that Kou has another chance to bring back Shiori is a bit too convenient. It's also somewhat contrived that the Nine-Tailed Fox saved Shiori and not any of the other women who died from the tragedy, such as Futaba, Gorou's dead girlfriend, though the Hand Wave given is that Shiori happened to fit the Nine-Tailed Fox's desire for a priestess to serve him forever.

IIRC, There are some hints to the existance on Nine-tailed fox, mainly in the form the intermission chapter which the level is based on is inspired by Shintoism and the boss there is a black fox, hinting some relation. Still, I'm not sure this entry is an Ass Pull or not.

I've actually been specifically avoiding responding to the Broken Base entry you've brought up in the Wall of Text thread about that in part because on the one hand having seen a playthrough of the game that's one of the parts of the "negative" side that's just factually wrong - the interlude foreshadows its existence, if not its role, quite heavily - but OTOH it was also for the "eX" enhanced remake, not the original game, and I have no idea what the differences are.

I actually looked up a playthrough, and the intermission chapter is there in the original version. So take that for what you will.

Edit: In addition, the only main difference between og version and the updated is the after story, the side stories and Ryouta and Jun being promoted to playable, so there that.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Mar 5th 2023 at 9:37:55 PM

If it's literally the same then I'd cut it, because while the initial references to the hot springs having once been the site of a temple to a fox god and the throwaway Real After All gag don't count for much, the end of the chapter where Rem turns into a five-tailed fox to act as a boss, and then says afterwards that she took that particular form because she was borrowing part of the power of something sleeping in the area, feels like it's foreshadowing its existence much more heavily than Ass Pull allows for.

Removed and cited this thread.

A lot of those Pokemon examples are Series Continuity Error rather than Ass Pull. I'd put the Mewtwo one there especially since it was directly stated that only one existed. I think the X-Men example with Xavier and Raven could go there too.

Edited by PhiSat on Mar 5th 2023 at 12:39:39 PM

From YMMV.The Great Ace Attorney:

• Ass Pull:
  • 2-3 seems to be building up to a logical conclusion, with the revelation that Enoch Drebber designed the fake teleportation machine to kill Odie Asman in revenge for Asman's ruining his life, only for it to suddenly reveal with no real foreshadowing that Asman somehow survived being dropped thirty feet to the ground totally unscathed, only to then immediately get killed by Courtney Sithe, who had her own reasons for wanting revenge on him. It's such an abrupt revelation that it fuelled fan speculation that Sithe was originally meant to have a larger role in the game, but was hastily turned into the case's killer so as to write her out more quickly.
  • The culprits of the final two cases in the second game are this, since them being villains makes the entire duology to be based on not kicking out Ryunosuke even though they have ample reason to. Judge Jigoku is initially stated to be a huge supporter of Ryunosuke taking Kazuma's place on the study tour, with Professor Mikotoba revealing that the only reason Ryunosuke wasn't called back to Japan was due to Jigoku's influence, but during his cross examination, Jigoku would give a contradictory claim that he didn't want Ryunosuke on the study tour as it meant that he wasn't able to send another assassin to take Kazuma's place, acting as if he didn't have any power over the situation. Similarly, Stronghart is also shown to support Ryunosuke's legal endeavors, even allowing him another chance at being a lawyer after disgracing himself in court instead of using it as an opportunity to send him back to Japan and bring in an assassin like he wanted.
  • In the final trial, Herlock and Iris come to the defense's rescue, revealing that they had invented hologram and video camera technology and that they were livestreaming the events of the trial, and Stronghart's confession to being the Reaper, to Queen Victoria herself. Not only do the technological reveals fit poorly given the game's time period but none of it had been foreshadowed beforehand. While Sholmes and Iris had been presented as being brilliant, none of their prior inventions came close to the level of advancement of holograms and live sound-video recording, and nothing prior to their appearance in the final trial suggested that the courtroom had been outfitted with the cameras or projectors needed to pull it off.

I don't doubt much about the third one, seems straightforward enough about the impossible technology in the 1900's, but the other two i am doubtful about.

From YMMV.Yashahime

• Setsuna dying from Kirinmaru slashing her with his sword. Compare this with her uncle Inuyasha, another half-demon who was slashed and impaled quite often in the original series, even having a hole punched through him by Sesshomaru during their second fight. Inuyasha survived and healed from all those injuries due to his accelerated healing and it doesn't make sense that Setsuna, a hanyou like Inuyasha who should have the same demonic healing power, died from a wound that was an inconvenience to Inuyasha at best. Even more noticeable when you compare her to Sango, a full human, who was impaled in the back by a brainwashed Kohaku and was then buried alive, but still managed to dig herself out of her grave and this was before Naraku put a jewel shard in her back to help ease her pain.

I'm not sure if this belongs there. While Half-Demons/Hanyos can be pretty durable, depending on the power they inherent, Kirinmaru among the most powerful demons in the setting, ranking at perhaps second or third most powerful. In fact, he is described early on in the show as being something of an equal to Inuyasha's father, who is described as the most powerful demon in the setting. During their fight, Kirinmaru was playing with the protagonist and not actively trying to kill them until Setsuna actually harmed him, which pissed him off and led to him striking at her in anger. As a result she dies and he slashes through her weapon, breaking it, and then slashes through to her chest resulting in her death.

Whenever I try to look for audience reactions to Setsuna's death, the issue is less how she died, at Kirinmaru's sword, and more at the fact she died at all, since nobody really believes that she would stay dead. And they were correct about that since she is revived in the next episode.

So, should I leave it or cut it?

I think cut? Does seem more like Like You Would Really Do It situation.

It's already listed there, though the entry is admittedly quite sparse.

(x3) I think it's misuse because it doesn't seem to involve a Plot Twist.

Any feedback on my rewrite of the Pokemon entries?

I think they look better.

They look good in my opinion.

It's swapped in now.

Game Theory:

• Ass Pull: The theories on Mario, Undertale and FNAF have been accused of having rather contrived explanations that focus too much on speculation instead of hard evidence or confirmation by the creators. In particular, the "Mario is Communist" video has been criticized for focusing too much on red coloration as added to represent communism when most programmers view the red coloration more for color contrast (and also for its connection to heroism), though in that case even Mat himself pointed out how ridiculous that theory was at the end of the video covering it.

EDIT: To clarify, what I think the troper in question is accusing Mat of coming up with random theories and then working backwards to prove them.

Edited by randomtroper89 on Apr 1st 2023 at 12:41:16 PM

AssPull.One Piece

• The reveal of Luffy's devil fruit actually being the Mythical Zoan Human Human model Nika. There was no build up to the reveal, nor any hint that Luffy's fruit was something more than what it looked like up until that point. The only thing that had any sort of build up prior was the figure of Nika, the Sun God, which Who's who talked about before, and still, none of it was alluded to be related to the Gum-Gum fruit.
  • It also doesn't help that the Five Elders where the ones used to explain to the audience what the fruit is about; and given that they talk as if they always knew of the fruit's true nature, this only makes them, and thus also the World Government, look like a bunch of incompetents that didn't properly pay attention at a boy who seemingly had eaten a legendary devil fruit which always eluded them for 800 years, even when said boy became more and more a threat to the status quo.

Oda was definitely building up to Luffy's fruit being special at latest by Who's-Who vs Jinbe. While it's debatable if he was dropping hints beforehand, it can't really be said that it lacked foreshadowing entirely.

From YMMV.Scream VI:

• Mindy's survival serves as this for a sizable chunk of the audience as well - specifically because Ethan, a killer who wants her dead, saves her for no apparent reason other than to lower audience suspicion of him. While it's theoretically possible that Ethan is using this to establish some sort of alibi to throw the other characters off, the motivation behind it seems unclear when he vanishes from the rest of the movie and isn't seen again until his reveal, eliminating any benefit to lowering their suspicions.

I'm not super familiar with this trope but as detailed here it has been subject to edit wars and I just want to know if it counts.

Few on which I am not sure. From The Owl House “For the Future” YMMV page.

• This episode reveals what happened to Odalia after "Clouds on the Horizon": she's currently serving The Collector, having made a deal with them in exchange for sparing her. Not only was this never shown onscreen, but it's hard to believe The Collector would willingly associate with an adult after what Emperor Belos did to him just a few episodes ago.
• Boscha revealing she not only missed Amity since the end of their friendship, but begging her to return to her side. Even ignoring the bad timing of this revelation, what with the apocalypse happening as they speak and the heroes being separated, not once have any of Boscha's prior appearances implied that she either missed Amity or that she was that hung up about her breaking their relationship. It's implied that the loss of her other friends is behind this sudden desperation, however. Another factor is of course probably the shortening of the series.
• Luz' palisman being a "Snakeshifter" felt like a cheap attempt to get your cake and eating it too to many fans. All other palismen have had very limited shapeshifting, with no indication that a fully shapeshifting palisman is possible. Given how much Luz struggled with chosing a palisman in "Hunting Palismen", and how that episode seemingly made it clear she could only have one animal as her palisman, it can come across as coming out of nowhere just so Luz won't have to make a commitment.

While we didn’t see Odalia making deal with Collector, it is worth noting that this one is much more in Collector’s favor (ie they are free with their powers rather than having to rely on their partner’s word the they will free them),

Boscha didn’t have much of screen time of ever interaction with Amity to say whether it is real Ass Pull or simply something we didn’t see before

Lastly Luz has never shown to have problem choosing what animal to be her palisman, simply didn’t have a goal with strong conviction to bond with one. Finally, Luz herself carved a tree soo her Palisman can chose what they want to be won’t no indication that she prefers any animal over the other.

While I think first two, definetely second entry warrant disscasion, third I really don’t feel fits.

Thoughts?