Hand Wave: Difference between revisions

{{trope|wppage=Handwaving}}{{Needs Image}}

{{quote|'''Nick:''' But wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?

 

A Hand Wave (also [[Memetic Mutation|memetically]] called "Scotch Tape") is any flimsy explanation - particularly involving the [[Backstory]], a [[Retcon]], or a use of [[Phlebotinum]] - which is noteworthy for its lack of detail or coherence. It may be used to (try to) hold together an [[Idiot Plot]] or an otherwise outrageous story. Often consists of throwaway lines like "[[It's the Only Way]]." The name comes from academia, initially to refer to where complicated parts of a valid argument are glossed over for the sake of convenience.

* This trope is referenced by a movie executive in ''[[Thank You for Smoking]]''. They are discussing the idea of [[Product Placement|having two actors smoke in a movie]] that's set on a space station.

{{quote|'''Nick:''' ''But wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?''

'''Nick:''' ''Of course.'' }}

* In the book ''[[Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince]]'', in order to travel to a plot-important location, Harry and Dumbledore must sneak out of the school to a completely deserted street in a nearby village, from which they can then [[Teleporters and Transporters|Apparate]]. In [[Harry Potter (film)|the film]], the following time-saving exchange occurs:

* Lampshaded in Jasper Fforde's ''[[Thursday Next]]'' series; a "textual sieve" is apparently some sort of book security device, but it is never very clear exactly what it does. At one point, a character asks Thursday just what it is, and she replies, "It's never fully explained."

* In the children's science fiction novel ''I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X'', the main character is transported to the titular dimension. Shortly after finding himself able to communicate with one of the locals there, he asks how speaks his language. The local responds that the opposite is happening and the protagonist is speaking the language of Dimension X, which he quickly realizes is true. The explanation given is a quick bit about cross-dimensional travel's effect on the mind, and is never brought up again. [[Fridge Logic|Nor is it really a very good explanation]], if someone from Dimension X came to our dimension, what language would they speak? (Considering in the series it includes not only the hundreds of languages on Earth but also alien ones.)

* In one of Harlan Ellison's short stories, he has the protagonist trapped in a situation that, judging by the description, there is absolutely no way he could logically escape. The author then stops the story to tell us that the protagonist remembers a time he once bought a pulp novel that ended with a [[Cliff Hanger]] in which its hero was likewise trapped in a seemingly inescapable situation. When the next chapter finally arrived, he very eagerly snapped it up, only to discover that it tied up all the stuff left hanging in the last episode in ''the first sentence'' by turning the hero into an action figure and having him punch his way out of the trap. Getting back to the story, the author then tells us the protagonist was still thinking of how cheated he'd felt about that pulp novel's hand-wave--[[Hypocritical Humor|when he finally escaped]].

* In Jack Finney's short story "Behind the News", a newspaper man uses a melted-down meteor [[Unobtanium|made of an unknown metal]] to make his news come true (kind of like the ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episode "Printer's Devil"), and when his secretary doesn't understand how it's happening, he gives the following explanation:

** An early episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' has the crew needing to conserve power. Yet they still wanted the characters to play around on the holodeck. So they threw in a line about how it's power systems are self contained and cannot be used by any other system on the ship.

** In the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "Paradise Lost", Captain Sisko is framed as a [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|shape-shifting]] Changeling by a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]], who somehow rigs Sisko's blood sample to move by itself and glow the way Changelings do when changing shape. In the following [[Just Between You and Me]] scene, Sisko asks him how he did that. He replies, "Does it really matter?", and the subject is dropped.

** The [[Teleporters and Transporters|transporters]] include a component called a "Heisenberg compensator" as a handwave to get around quantum uncertainty effects. As the page quote attests, Michael Okuda likes getting around questions of how it works by answering, "It works very well, thank you."

** On ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', on at least two occasions aliens cursed at Captain Archer in their native tongue. When Archer looks to Sato for the translation, all she would say is, "You don't want to know." On another occasion, which doesn't qualify under this trope, she crudely translates a Tholian curse with "Something about your mother..."

** The perception filter, which either acts as a disguise or (more usually) prevents people from noticing you. It's now being used as the excuse for the monster of the week to be able to hide from everyone all the time. The writers at least had the grace to lampshade this in an episode where when everyone fails to notice for ages that they're on a planet of two-headed aliens and all the statues have one head, when the Doctor declares that it's either a perception filter, or they're just all idiots.

** The psychic paper was explicitly devised by Russell T. Davies to facilitate this; it can show whatever the person holding it wants the person reading it to see, meaning that the Doctor could explain what he was doing in the room where he shouldn't be or why he might have been found over a corpse quickly and bluntly without having to hold the plot up however many episodes until it all got sorted out.

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'', one common statement is that [[Ape Shall Never Kill Ape|no Minbari has killed another Minbari]] since Valen's time. But in a season four episode, Marcus challenges Nehroon to a battle to the death under the Minbari ritual of denn'sha. Since Nehroon immediately knows what it is, that implies that the Minbari have been killing each other in formal duels for quite some time, despite this 'Minbari do not kill Minbari' principle. In one of the books they hand wave it by saying that by agreeing to fight a denn'sha duel, you agree to take responsibility for your death on your own hands if you lose. This means that every Minbari who died in a duel has technically committed suicide, which doesn't count.

* In ''[[The Man from U.N.C.L.E.]]'', one of the innocents involved in the Affair was concerned that Solo was killing so many enemy agents, he explained that they used "sleep darts" in their guns.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'s'' [[Complete Monster|Kefka]] [[Omnicidal Maniac|Pallazo]]. His motivation for conquering the world and the magic could also fall in this trope, but for him a motivation is not really necessary considering he's [[Psycho Prototype|nuts]]. He just do it [[For the Evulz|because he can]] and wants to.

* The video game ''[[Deus Ex]]'' has lockpicks and multitools that, for some unexplained reason, can only be used once. During the tutorial level your support says that "unlocking doors expends the resources of modern lockpicks", but seeing as how the actual item is just two rods that spin about, it doesn't make much sense. It's never mentioned why the multitools can only be used once. Maybe they used really cheap batteries?

*** A better Handwave would be that you're actually carrying only one lockpick and one multitool, each of which has a certain number of "charges" (up to ten); you're never seen putting one away and getting out another even on locks that require multiple uses. Thus when you pick up an additional device, you really just take the batteries out of it and use them to recharge your tools.

* In the first three games in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' video game series, the nation of Cyrodiil is described as mostly tropical jungle. The fourth game in the series is the only one that actually takes place there, and it is shown to actually be mostly temperate hardwood forest. The in-game books "Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes" vaguely explains that the god Talos (the [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|endivinated spirit of the first Cyrodiilic emperor]]) used his powers to make Cyrodiil colder to make the local soldiers more comfortable.

** An even bigger hand-wave of the same stripe comes in the form of the Camouflage Tonic, discovered by research-photographing the disappearing-reappearing Houdini Splicers. That's right, kids, all it takes to engineer an advanced tonic that allows you to go sight unseen is a few handy snapshots! Grab those cameras and do Andrew Ryan proud!

** The Vita-Chambers handwave ''Bioshock'''s system of allowing the player to respawn at the instant of his death, with opponents retaining the damage you have already dealt them. Not that it does {{spoiler|Ryan}} any good later on. He did state that he has disabled the nearest Vita Chamber before letting you in to see him. Perhaps it does have an effective range.

* After completing ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'', you get The Boss's gun if you start a [[New Game+]]. If you equip it and call your weapons expert, he asks how Snake has it, and Snake tells him [[MST3K Mantra|not to worry about it]]. He also tells Snake that the gun has infinite ammo because the ammo feed is shaped like an infinity sign. "Makes sense..."

** At one point, Snake can eat some Bio-Luminescence Mushrooms in a cave, they recharge the batteries of all your electronic objects. When you speak with Para-Medic about this, she says that it's [[Achievements in Ignorance|impossible for that to happen]]. When Snake proves to her that it happened, she says that it must have been the placebo effect.

** They also scatter bombs, arrows, and hearts, and may be responsible for some of the ubiquitous treasure chests.

* In the original ''[[Street Fighter]]'', players fought an enemy named Birdie, who was a white punk with a mohawk. When the character returned in ''Street Fighter Alpha'', he was a huge, hulking, ''black'' punk with an even bigger mohawk. In ''Street Fighter Alpha 3'', he claims in one of his win quotes, "I looked pale because I was sick."

{{quote|'''Link:''' Luckily I brought my Smart Sword. It won't hurt anyone friendly. In fact, it makes them talk!}}

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' pulls a bit of one in the justification for why the Gnomes had failed to retake Gnomeregan for four years and the Darkspear Trolls had failed to recapture the Echo Isles, despite each being held by an elite boss [[Easily-Conquered World|capable of being killed by low-level players]]. Apparently, the thousands of Thermaplugg's and Zalazane's heads turned in by players over the years were all from fakes, not the real deal.

{{quote|'''Homer''': Wait a minute, Frank Grimes wasn't married!

'''Junior'''. He had a fondness for hookers, okay? }}

{{quote|'''Robot Leela:''' We're robots and we're in love. Let's ditch these meat jackets. ''(strips out of her mutant skin, revealing a [[Terminator]]-like exoskeleton)''

'''Robot Fry:''' Whoa, cool! ''(takes off his human skin to show a similar exoskeleton, then speaks in a matching voice)'' Hasta la vista, wiener!

{{quote|'''Cubert J. Farnsworth''': That's impossible! You can't go faster than the speed of light.

'''Professor''': Of course not. That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2206. }}

* Early ''[[South Park]]'' episodes described the "Terrance and Phillip Show" as a cartoon with crappy animation, though this later evolved into a weirder (but funnier) premise that the show was actually filmed in Canada, where everything actually ''was'' crappy-looking. In the episode "Behind the Blow," which parodied [[VH-1]]'s ''Behind the Music'', this inconsistency was waved away with a rather convoluted explanation. Apparently, in the South Park world there ''used'' to be a Terrance and Phillip cartoon that was separate from the live-action show, but the cartoon was so popular many people became confused as to whether or not T&P were real people or cartoon characters.

* In ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius]]'' episode "The Junk Man", Sheen asks Jimmy several questions as they are flying to and from the Moon, like why the voyage takes only a few minutes and why the boys don't need space suits and helmets. However, both times Jimmy starts to answer Sheen's questions, the camera cuts to Carl on the other side of the rocket singing an off-key, made-up song about the Moon. Both times Carl finishes singing, the camera cuts to Jimmy asking Sheen if he understands his answer and Sheen responding that he is still confused.

{{quote|'''Sizz-Lorr:''' After your escape, the great Foodening began! Foodcourtia's most horrible food rush, that lasts twenty years! The gravatational pull from all that snacking makes it impossible for anything to leave the planet. I was trapped. Alone. ''Without help.''

'''Zim:''' [[Lampshade Hanging|Twenty years?]] But I haven't been gone that long.<br />

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* Even when the brain is whole, people are capable of awesome hand waves. When confronted with moral decisions, people make them almost instantly (unless they're really tough, like whether it's okay to sacrifice four people to save five others). Essentially, three things happen when we make a moral decision. One portion of the brain feels empathy for those involved (oh, wook at da baaybeees). Another portion of the brain seeks a much more utilitarian solution (kill the spares, collect all the food, live as a king). Depending on how strongly these two fire, we reach a decision, usually some kind of balance between the two. Then the final act happens; our prefrontal cortex (the part of the frontal lobe responsible for, among other things, logical thought) justifies the decision we've reached. In other words, all those books you had to read in philosophy 101 about morality and the justification for various ethics? So much handwaving for decisions stuffy German men had already made. But very, very sophisticated handwaving.

** Though, to be fair, it takes quite a lot of handwaving for biologists to reach a conclusion like that.

 

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