Beyond the Impossible/Playing With

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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 Calvin Ball
  • Justified: Bob figures out weaknesses in the system of magic that underlies his powers and manipulates it in ways his mentor never thought of.
  • Inverted: Magic A Is Magic A.
  • Subverted: Bob isn't breaking the rules, per say, but exploiting Loophole Abuse.
  • Double Subverted The Powers That Be decree an Obvious Rule Patch but it doesn't deter Bob.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob claims to have broken the rules, but is actually exploiting Loophole Abuse. An Obvious Rule Patch makes further exploitation impossible but Bob breaks the rules anyway. The The Powers That Be invoke Rule Zero, which prevents it from working again. Bob says he has another method....
  • 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 time wasting gestures. The Big Bad is shocked he can do this. Mentor blows a referee's whistle and makes Bob sit in a penalty box.
  • Deconstructed:
  • 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.
  • Averted: No one breaks the rules, or conversely, there are no rules to break.
  • Invoked: Mysterious Mentor never told Bob the rules hoping he would find a way around them as Achievements in Ignorance.
  • Lampshaded: "Bob, you can't break the rules of the universe whenever you feel like it."
  • 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.
  • 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."
  • Played For Laughs: Bob ends up screwing 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 Super-Powered Evil Side that drags Bob to the Dark Side. He has to balance his spiritual well-being with abilities that threatening it grants him.

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