Eureka Moment: Difference between revisions
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Not to be confused with a [[Bat Deduction]]. While both can initially appear almost identical, a Eureka Moment leads to a coherent chain of reasoning that the detective can explain to the bystanders later; whereas a [[Bat Deduction]], if it gets explained at all, makes even ''less'' sense after the explanation.
The
Often used as a [[Deus Ex Machina]], albeit one that is acceptable more often than annoying. If the detective actually takes the idea literally rather than uses it as an inspiration, that is [[I Was Just Joking]].
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Detective Conan]]'' does this a lot. One time, he solved a murder he had been stuck on just by Ran mentioning that she had bought new pajamas for them. (To be more specific, she mentioned that said pjs were a matched pair, leading Conan to realize that the murderer was a set of identical twins.)
** Conan is a brilliant detective hiding in the body of a small child, so if he figures something out before anyone else, it's not uncommon for him to subtly lead those around him to their own
** There is also a certain part wherein Heiji and Conan figures out the dying message, but start, at Heiji's prompting, to subtly lead Kazuha to deciphering the dying message to make her feel better, as she was about to cry.
** As well as Conan deliberately inducing Eureka moments to Kogoro due to Kogoro's [[It's Personal]] attitude after the murder of one of his old judo teammates.
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* An unexpected source: in ''[[Godzilla]] vs. Biollante'', a scientist works out the flaw of a recent attempt to neutralize Godzilla via [[Applied Phlebotinum]] by seeing dry ice hauled about for emergency refrigeration in the wake of the unthwarted monster attack.
* In ''[[Independence Day]]'', a scientist's father tells him to dress more warmly so he doesn't catch a cold, which gives him the idea to disrupt the aliens' force fields by uploading a virus into the mothership's computers in a reference to ''[[War of the Worlds]]''.
** This scene is parodied in the "Cancelled" episode of ''[[South Park]]''. However, this parody is itself not an example of
* In ''[[Inside Man]],'' a chance comment a rookie cop makes to Denzel Washington's character allows him to figure out how exactly the hostage takers were able to stay ten steps ahead of the police.
* ''[[A Beautiful Mind]]'': Nash develops his theory out of his friends' fighting over a girl. [[Did Not Do the Research|THE NASH EQUILIBRIUM DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!]]
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'''MAX''': That an answer will come.
'''SOL''': No, it's the wife! You have to relax! }}
* In the first ''[[Ace Ventura]]'' movie, Ace gets his
* ''[[Evolution (film)|Evolution]]'' has some [[Egregious]] examples:
** The revelation that the aliens reproduce quicker with ''[[Incendiary Exponent|fire]]'' is brought about by Orlando Jones' character dropping a lit cigarette into a petri dish, seconds after explaining how he hasn't smoked in years.
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*** Note that ''Evolution'' was, in fact, a pastiche of these kinds of movies.
* In ''[[Real Genius]]'', Knight's frustration at his sabotaged laser failing leads him to a freezer, where he realizes "It must be frozen..." and invents an entirely new and better laser using a frozen core.
* In ''[[A Few Good Men]]'', Tom Cruise briefly halts a brainstorming session with the rest of the defense team to look for his lucky baseball bat, which Demi Moore has innocently placed in the closet. Staring into the closet prompts a
* In ''[[War Games]]'', during the tense final scene, when Falkin tries to access Joshua with his password and finds it's been taken out, David asks what they're going to do. Falkin says "I don't know. Do you?", then for some reason, Jennifer says "I told you not to play games with that thing". So, David thinks for a moment, then says "It's games. GAMES!", and proceeds to play games with Joshua.
* In ''Blood Work'', the detective realizes the meaning of the [[Criminal Mind Games|Code Killer's message]] ("903 472 568") looking at a check he wrote for his neighbor, Jasper "Buddy" No one, after someone else has pointed out that the message doesn't contain a 1.
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* [[L: Change the World]] has one character hiding clues in math problems. L figures out the solution when accidentally given a clue.
* ''[[In the Line of Fire]]'': Clint Eastwood's character figures out the meaning of a word with seven letters after a chance remark by a character played by Joshua Malina.
* ''[[Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus]]''. After having sex the two [[Hot Scientist
* In ''[[Stranger Than Fiction]]'', the author figured out how to kill off the main character after seeing someone drop an apple. She mentions she'd never be able to explain the connection. [[It Makes Sense in Context|It makes sense when you see it.]]
* ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]''. The title character is given a staff and told to "Follow Rana. The staff will lead you to Totenkopf".
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** Which makes it a [[Bat Deduction]] instead.
* In ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'', Nicholas Angel's suspicions are stumped by the question of how one person could be in multiple places at once. When he and Danny Butterman go visit the convenience shop, the conversation that takes place between Danny and the clerk causes Nicholas to suspect {{spoiler|multiple killers}}:
** What's more, {{spoiler|the shop clerk who triggered the
* ''[[Major League]]'': The Indians' manager is about to send hopelessly wild pitcher Ricky Vaughn back to the minor leagues. During their conversation, the manager off-handedly mentions another pitcher who went down to the minors and had a successful career. Vaughn squints in the pitcher's direction, and the manager realizes all his problems are related to poor vision.
* In ''K-9'' Dooley is growing frustrated with a case he's working. His girlfriend Tracy told him that he needed to relax, and the answer would come to him. Not much later, things are getting romantic between the two, when lo and behold, Dooley has an epiphany and must rush out the door with his four-legged sidekick.
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{{quote|I am jumping up and down because at the very moment Dick Clark said the word "Go," it was like an invisible hand reached out and snatched away my veil. And for almost a minute, I understood everything. When that veil isn't hanging down right in front of a person's face, a minute is long enough to realize a lot of things.}}
* [[Agatha Christie]] loved doing this in the Hercule [[Poirot]] novels. Very frequently, he fits the pieces together after inspiration from a chance remark by one of the other characters; to Poirot's credit, he never fails to explain precisely how it helped him break the case.
* Every ''Cat Who...'' novel by Lillian Jackson Braun features Koko the Siamese doing something odd which eventually leads to Qwilleran having a
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams'': While Bernie Rhodenbarr is talking with a friend, she mentions the ''Cat Who...'' series, when his cat suddenly launches into strange behavior and Bernie solves the crime. {{spoiler|Subverted, in that he'd already solved the crime, but didn't care about revealing the result. When the cat acted, as if on cue, he decided to play along.}}
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', Sansa supplies her father with one {{spoiler|when she says that Joffrey (who she has a mad crush on, [[The Caligula|the poor girl]]) is nothing like his father, [[Boisterous Bruiser|Robert]]. This finally makes Eddard realize that ''none'' of Cersei's children take after Robert -- though all of Robert's bastards do -- and the kids are most likely the product of incest between Cersei and her brother, Jaime}}.
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** Asimov also wrote an essay about how this sort of thought process works called "the Eureka effect". It's even made it into a few high school literature books.
* An extremely complicated version of this trope is pretty much the premise of ''Chasing Vermeer''.
* [[Timothy Zahn]] likes this trope. Or, more accurately, this trope fits his style. Many of Zahn's original works are [[First-Person Smartass]], and the settings are similar to Hitchcock-style suspense/intrigue mysteries, so there's guaranteed to be one when the protagonist finally puts the pieces together. (Though the reader, unless he figures it out
** ''[[The Icarus Hunt]]'' has at least two: One when a comment makes the protagonist realize another person's murder was connected with something completely different than he'd been assuming; another when a different comment triggers a flashback. [[The Summation]] indicates he may have had another couple more along the way that the audience wasn't even privy to.
** The [[Quadrail Series]] tends to have one per book, minimum; most notably, the moment in ''Night Train to Rigel'' when Compton figures out how the FTL trains work.
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* Aside from the few times they recognize the answer instantly, the characters in ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'' seem to rely solely on this trope to solve all the various puzzles and sub-puzzles. For the last puzzle before the book's climax, we don't actually get to see the main character work out the answer.
* [[Nero Wolfe]] does this quite a bit. He's got all the pieces, but can't make them fit together, Archie (or one of the suspects) says something that causes him to look at one particular thing in a different way, and everything falls into place. He will often admit to Archie when it was something that he said or did; if it was someone else, he saves the information for the [[The Summation|Parlor Scene.]] Both Archie and the reader know one has just occurred when Nero starts doing his "lip exercises".
* Subverted, while lampshading the subversion, in Mil Millington's "Love And Other Near-Death Experiences", in which the central character has a startling realization that he recognizes would qualify as a
* In ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]] [[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince|and the Half-Blood Prince]]'', a sarcastic comment by Harry ("Fifty-seventh time lucky?") about his inability to get a crucial memory of Voldemort from Slughorn inspires Ron to suggest Harry use his luck potion, which proves effective. A similar scene occurs in the movie, only (in keeping with the screenwriter's general inclinations) reversed: Ron's comment inspires Harry.
* In ''[[Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn]]'', near the climax of the third novel, [[Magical Native American|Binabik the troll]] has a classic Eureka Moment during his party's escape from the [[The Fair Folk|Norns]] beneath Asu'a, as a result of an offhand comment from the dwarrows who are aiding them. Unconventionally, this leads not to the solution to the plot but the [[Oh Crap|horrifying realization]] that the heroes have been doing the [[Big Bad]]'s bidding the entire time.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The Dutch Detective show ''Baantjer'' featured, in ''each and every episode'', a Eureka moment when the protagonists were in their usual bar, when the barman makes an offhand remark. The Euraka moment always looks and sounds the same too. Eventually Lampshaded, when the barman asks if he doesn't deserve be put on the police payroll.
* ''[[Jonathan Creek]]'' actually used this so much that at one stage another character actually ''anticipated'' that a totally random object would trigger a
* Hong Kong prime time dramas seems to love this trope. Case in point, the period drama ''Song Shijie'', where the eponymous character is a court lawyer who seems to be surrounded by people and incidents that randomly give him pivotal clues.
* In ''[[Angel]]'' this is lampshaded when Angel announces that they're waiting for Wesley's
** [[Gibbering Genius]] Fred puts it more poetically.
{{quote|'''Angel:''' "[[Madness Mantra|Listen, listen, listen...]] What are you listening for?" <br />
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* In the pilot episode of ''[[Bones]]'', Brennan is sitting down to have a drink and discussing a book written by the episode's original patsy, when they come across the patron saint of fish, and Brennan realizes who the real baddie was, based on the fact that he kept tropical fish tanks that used a certain type of diatomaceous earth, and runs off to take him down by herself.
* This trope was regularly parodied in the 1960s [[Batman (TV series)|Batman]] TV show. "That's it, Robin! The man in the grey suit was whistling 'The Star-Spangled Banner' BACKWARDS! The Joker's lair must be in the old fireworks factory! [[To the Bat Noun|To the Batmobile]]!"
* [[Castle]] is beginning to show an aptitude for
** Castle and Beckett will often have these moments simultaneously (or near simultaneously) in order to demonstrate how they click (in [[UST|more ways than one]]). For one example, Beckett was writing something on [[The Big Board]] when she suddenly had a brainwave... and Castle at the exact same time ran in from the elevator, having obviously had the exact same brainwave.
* Happens with astonishing regularity in ''[[The Closer]]''. Brenda has them all the time... in fact, she had one when she was at her father's hospital bed, and another when she was trying on her wedding gown.
* Later seasons of ''[[CSI]]'' have relied heavily on episodes in which evidence gathered for one case provides the
* In a ''[[CSI: NY]]'' episode, Hawkes watches a Jennifer Lopez video during his lunch break. While admiring her, um, ''ass''ets, he remembers they are insured, helping him figure out the case - it's an insurance scam.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has it happen so many times, it's practically a drinking game at show marathons.
** ''The Talons of Weng-Chiang'' makes fun of the word itself: the Doctor claims that it translates from Greek as "This bath is too hot."
* [[Unfazed Everyman|Sheriff Carter]] solves problems with literal ''[[Eureka]]'' Moments, followed by saving the town with an [[It's Up to You]] sequence. (Especially ironic since he's the supposedly only normal person in a town full of geniuses.) Sometimes, however, the
* Inverted in ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]'', when Ray lies that he has a great Christmas present ready for Debra, which he got the idea for on a trip they took to Manhattan a while back when she shouted "Oh my god!". On his brother's advice he gets her a First Edition copy of ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'', then has to blunder his way through an explanation of what she shouted "Oh my god" at in Manhattan that caused him to think of the book.
* In ''[[Farscape]]'': Not so much a mystery as a scientific puzzle, but while John tries to figure out how to save Earth from the Scarrans at the end of the regular series, Aeryn tells him not to beat himself up over it. Because of the way she phrased it, he gets an idea for a solution, kisses her, tells her to "Never change!", and runs out. Aeryn gets a half-pleased, half-bemused look on her face.
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* Happens in nearly every episode of ''[[Numb3rs]]'', with camera effects indicating the mathematical wheels turning in Charlie's head. Usually followed up with the strangely PBS-like explanation of the relevant analogy.
* In ''[[Prison Break]]'', Mahone puzzles over a clue to where Michael is going that ends with the word "woods." After seeing the badge of a cop whose last name is Rivers, he realizes that the clue does not refer to a place but a person.
* Shawn Spencer in ''[[Psych]]'' frequently has major
* This trope regularly occurred on ''[[Remington Steele]]'', with Steele being reminded of an old movie which somehow resembles the case he is working on. Sometimes used as a [[Red Herring]] when Steele's movie references end up providing a plausible but entirely incorrect solution.
* In one episode of ''[[Seven Days]]'', a scientist discovers a cure for cancer by seeing some water on her morning jog. The discovery is apparently averted when Frank goes back and interrupts her right before she sees the water- but she discovers it anyway after receiving a similar
* ''[[Stargate SG-1|Stargate SG 1]]''. If Jack O'Neill is going to solve the episode's problem without shooting his gun a bunch, he'll say something random and Carter'll build a solution out of it.
* An episode of ''[[The West Wing]]'' has Josh struggle all episode with trying to determine a solution for an unfavorable rider to a long-fought for bill that will result in a piece of land being used for strip-mining. After wracking his brains all episode without success, a chance comment from Donna about antiquated computer systems reminds him of a long conversation with the President earlier in the episode about national parks, and he comes up with the idea of using the Antiquities Act to have the President declare the region a national park.
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== Radio ==
* On ''[[Absolute Power (radio)|Absolute Power]]'' Martin's comments (usually that they should give up, or similarly unhelpful) often give Charles a
{{quote|'''Charles''': You have that ability, peculiar to the mediocre, of making the obvious statement that brings out the genius in a genius.}}
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== Western Animation ==
* In the ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'', virtually every conversation Batman has with Alfred while pondering the crime du jour leads to a
** One memorable conversation involved the Riddler and a series of riddles. Batman and Alfred are staring at the riddles and Alfred makes the comment that the riddles all involve numbers. From that, Batman turns the numbers into Roman numerals and then simultaneously, both declare, "Of course! The Department of Motor Vehicles!" (suddenly seeing the Roman numerals DMV together could easily be a
** Another has Batman deducing where Count Vertigo's hideout is when Alfred tells him that he soon won't know his right hand from his left. Yes, he was confused about which direction Vertigo escaped in because his senses were scrambled, and he had actually gone in the opposite direction Batman had originally thought.
** In yet another (Killer Croc's appearance on the scene), Batman realizes the nature of his foe due to Alfred's offhand comment that he was going to keep dinner in a crock pot to keep it warm.
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'''Amy''': Maybe you're right. I guess science has to keep pushing forward, with the hope that... That's it! ''Pushing forward''. Professor, I know how to restart the Earth!
'''Farnsworth''': Pssh. You can't suddenly know something by assembling a committee of words... That's it! I'll assemble your committee! }}
* In ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'', Po opens the scroll containing the secret to limitless power and kung fu itself to find {{spoiler|nothing but a blank, reflective foil, which seems to imply that obtaining limitless power is impossible}}. He then meets his father who says that the secret ingredient to his popular "Secret Ingredient Soup" is {{spoiler|also nothing; it's special because people believe it is}}. This leads Po to having his
* Finn from ''[[Adventure Time]]'' has one in which the word "RENCE" on one half of a murder weapon makes him think of Clarence, whom he had met several minutes prior.
{{quote|'''Jake:''' "Rence"?
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* According to IMDB, composer Bill Conti had a rocking theme all ready for the [[Training Montage]], but couldn't figure out what to call it. Director Avildsen, impressed by the nameless piece, agreed that "It should be almost like [[Rocky (film)|Rocky]] [[Training Montage|is flying now."]]
* Watson and Crick, co-discoverers of the DNA molecule's double-helix structure, got the idea after noticing a spiral staircase. It was a [[Luck Based Search Technique|completely unlikely solution]] based on the limited evidence.
** They actually got the idea from Rosalind Franklin's research. Not so much a
** The inventor of Genetic Fingerprinting, the DNA identifying technique used by forensic investigators and dramas all over the world, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, had such a moment (and it is frequently described as a
*** Parodied by Discworld, by suggesting that DNA might have been faster but only licensed to carry 14 people, if he'd been looking at an elevator during the Eureka moment.
* [[Isaac Asimov]] has a famous quotation where he points out that, [[Averted Trope|despite the example of Archimedes]], great scientific discoveries are usually not heralded by "Eureka!" but instead with "Huh. That's strange..."
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* According to Cognitive Psychology, when it comes to problem solving those "Eureka Moments" are actually called insights which are deep, useful understandings of the nature of a problem. However, compared to the typical slow approach to a problem solution, insights often occur abruptly and almost without warning. Tasks that involve insight usually require something new and non-obvious to be done and in most cases they are difficult enough to predict that the initial solution attempt will be unsuccessful. This can lead to the so called "AHA-experience" where the solution pops up all of a sudden.
* [[Merv Griffin]] came up with the name of his popular quiz show format ''[[Jeopardy!]]'' after a network exec told him that the show, piloted under the name ''That's the Question'', needed "more jeopardies".
* An
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