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{{trope}}
[[File:Addams-DownhillSkier.jpg|frame]]<!-- |[[The Chad Mitchell Trio|It's Super-Skier!]]]] MOD: when we get a page for the Chad Mitchell trio we can restore this caption. -->
A [[Stock Phrase]] that is commonly used as a [[Lampshade Hanging]] of [[Toon Physics|those occasions when the laws of physics (and other scientific laws) are blatantly defied]]. This is sometimes caused by [[Achievements in Ignorance]], when the impossible thing only occurs because the person involved has no idea that what they are doing is supposed to be impossible.
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Compare and contrast with [[Fridge Logic]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Beauty's default reaction to [[
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', this is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8fkUsUbpZk Vivi's reaction] when Nami is able to predict when a cyclone will hit while navigating the Grand Line, something regarded as impossible by most pirates. She wonders whether Nami does so less from researched skills and more from innate ability.
* In the first episode of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V]]'', Yuya defeats his foe by Pendulum Summoning, a technique that was, up to then, unknown. Even Yuya himself has no idea - at the time - how he did it, and is shocked to see that he won. (He'd find out how later, [[It Sucks to Be the Chosen One| much to his regret]].)
* In ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', this was ''everyone's'' reaction when Cell somehow survived his own [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]], ''including'' Cell himself.
* In ''[[Dragonball GT]]'', when Baby discovers that Gohan is Goku's son, he remarks that he finds such a thing "odd". He's only seen Goku in child-form, Gohan is a grown man. He doesn't dwell on it though, shrugging and admitting he's a pretty odd creature himself.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [[Atomic Robo]] occasionally has to ask himself: "Why do we even ''have'' the [[Square-Cube Law]]?"
* Played for laughs [[Black Comedy|(sort of)]] in an issue of ''[[Batman: Streets of Gotham]]''. The story starts with [[Villain Protagonist]] Jenna Duffy (aka blue collar villain The Carpenter) in a [[Bad Guy Bar]] shooting pool (or rather, hustling pool) when Batman crashes in. As the hero fights the thugs, Jenna thinks maybe he hasn’t noticed or recognized her, and if she can just get close enough to club him on the side of the head, she can -
{{quote|'''Batman:''' Get out of here, Duffy.
'''Jenna''' ''(via caption)'': Damn! How does he do that?!}}
== [[Film]] ==
* From ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home]]'':
{{quote|'''Uhura:''' Admiral, I have a signal closing on the whales. Bearing 328 degrees.
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'''Uhura:''' On screen. }}
* In ''[[The Matrix]]'', this is a beat cop's reaction to not only witnessing Trinity leap over a six-lane street, plus sidewalks, to go from rooftop to rooftop, but seeing Agent Brown follow her.
* From ''[[The Wizard of Oz]]'':
{{quote|'''Dorothy:''' Oh come now, how can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
'''Scarecrow:''' I don't know! But [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All| some people]] without brains do an ''awful'' lot of talking!}}
:* That's... actually a pretty profound explanation.
== [[Literature]] ==
* From ''[[Through the Looking Glass]]:
{{quote|'''White Queen:''' Now ''I’ll'' give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.
'''Alice:''' I can’t believe that!
'''White Queen:''' Can’t you? Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.
'''Alice:''' There’s no use trying, one can’t believe impossible things.
'''White Queen:''' I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.}}
* In ''[[Contact (Literature)|Contact]]'' (the book, not [[Contact (film)|the movie]]), while the characters are moving through the wormhole, one of them, a theoretical physicist, does some calculations and says (paraphrase): "I can almost prove mathematically this can't be happening".
* Seeing as he can do impossible things, Mr. Impossible - from the ''[[Mr. Men]]'' books - gets this a lot.
== [[Live
* In an early ''[[Sesame Street]]'' sketch, Ernie poured himself a glass of milk while hanging upside down, ignoring Bert's warnings that the milk would spill.
* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "Spectre of the Gun". When Spock and McCoy test their [[Knockout Gas]] on Scott, it doesn't work.
{{quote|'''Spock:''' Captain, you don't seem to understand. It did not function, but it must function.
'''McCoy:''' Nothing could go wrong, Captain. It should work.
'''Spock:''' A scientific fact. But if the tranquillizer does not function, which is clearly impossible, then a radical alteration of our thought patterns must be in order.
==
* [[Charles Addams]]'s famous [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QMuDihPPyPA/Sy_Kr3PtRtI/AAAAAAAAMEs/5zh5Gg-2XD0/s400/addams.jpg
* In one series of ''[[Bloom County]]'' strips, Opus and Milo are hunting for the Basselope in the forest. In one, Opus thinks he sees him and takes a Polaroid shot, but instead takes a picture of a squirrel blowing a raspberry at them with a loud "Thpptp!" In the last panel, Opus looks at it and says, "How can a picture go 'Thpptp'?"
* ''[[Peanuts]]'' has many, most involving Snoopy:
** In one strip, Snoopy is asleep while playing second base, with an alarm clock behind him. It rings, waking him up, and he catches the fly ball coming towards him. A confused Charlie Brown says, "How do you set the alarm for a fly ball??"
** In another strip, Snoopy tries to dive into Lucy's wading pool, but she shouts, "Oh no you don't!" and Snoopy ''turns around in mid-air''. Then he says to himself, "Now how did I do ''that''?"
** In another, Snoopy is upset that it's raining on his face, and shouts "Why can't it only rain on my legs?" And it ''does.'' When Lucy comes by and asks how that's possible, he says, "There are always ways of working things out."
** One strip set in winter has him lying on his doghouse, covered with snow. When Charlie Brown comes out with his supper, he takes his dish, eats it - evidenced by loud chewing sounds - and hands the empty dish back, ''all without disturbing the snow.'' "I wonder how he did that?!" muses Charlie Brown.
** The arc where Peppermint Patty is introduced exaggerates how bad Charlie Brown's baseball team is, where despite Patty hitting five home runs and pitching a no-hitter, the team loses 37-5. This causes Patty to launch into a rant that starts with "THIS IS RIDICULOUS!" and leave in disgust.
==[[Web
* Subverted in ''[[8-
** This is generally [[Only Sane Man|
{{quote|"What I hate about my life... '''Part''' of what I hate about my life is that it '''is''' working."}}
:* Much later on, this is Thief's reaction after Fighter saves the party from a massive fall {{spoiler|once Black Mage's intended Sarda-killing Hadoken makes its explosive impact... [[Not the Fall That Kills You|''by blocking the ground''.]]}}
* Happens to the word in this [[Questionable Content]] strip, when an AI appears to be drunk. [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2133\]▼
{{quote|'''Thief:''' I hate it when the things he says that don't make sense '''''make''''' sense.}}
▲* Happens to the word in [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2133 this] [[Questionable Content]] strip, when an AI appears to be drunk.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* From ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'':
{{quote|'''Church:''' Poor Jimmy was the last one to go. Tex walked up to him, pulled Jimmy's skull right out of his head and beat him to death with it.
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(cut to Tex, in black armor, beating Jimmy to death with his own skull)
'''Jimmy:''' This doesn't seem physically possible! }}
* In ''[[Dragonball Z Abridged]]'', Goku managed to obtained a muffin {{spoiler|and the ability to read minds}} by pressing the muffin button of the spaceship carrying him to Namek... except there
** King Kai says this directly when Goku pretends to hang up on him while they were ''communicating telepathically''.
{{quote|'''Goku:''' "Oh, all right. I promise I will absolutely not ''click-brrrrrrr'' *long inhale* ''rrrrrrrrr''"
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* This phrase being said verbatum is a running gag in the [[College Humor]] point-of-view sketches.
* [[Danbooru]] has an image pool with this name.
* [[SCP Foundation|SCP-028]] is an abandoned storage yard where anyone entering gains complete, perfect knowledge of a single subject. One D-class who entered learned how to recycle the carbon dioxide in his lungs into oxygen, letting him survive without the need to breathe; his body was not physically altered in any way, he simply ''learned how to do it.'' The Foundation - who regularly deal with [[Eldritch Abomination]]s, [[Eldritch Location]]s, and [[Things Man Was Not Meant to Know]] on a regular basic - was completely baffled, one of them stating, "Seriously, how the hell did he do that?"<ref>Of course, if they really wanted answers, [[We Have Reserves|maybe terminating]] him wasn't the best idea...</ref>
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The [[Trope Namer]] was ''[[Camp Lazlo]]'', specifically the episode where they tried to sell [[It Makes Sense in Context|expired, uncanned beans]]. A man was walking towards the stand... [[Rule of Funny|and then floated into midair, drifted right over the stand, and then floated back onto the street and continued walking]]. This prompted Raj to ask how that was even possible.
* ''[[Futurama]]'': In one episode, Bender's arms fall off. A moment later we see the arms, in closeup, pick up and reattach each other. Fry is just as baffled as the audience.
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* In "The PTA Disbands" episode of [[The Simpsons]], Homer gets upset at Lisa for making a working perpetual motion machine because it violates the laws of physics. ("In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!")
* 1973-74 ''[[Superfriends]]'' episode "The Watermen". The title characters are trying to refuel their starship by extracting silicon from sea water. This causes the sea water to immediately turn into red tide, which is impossible: red tide is caused by microorganisms. An oceanographer named Professor Matey points out several times that the red tide is not acting normally.
* In one ''[[Woody Woodpecker]]'' cartoon, the villain is trying to ambush Woody using a rifle with a crosshairs. As he watches Woody approach through the crosshairs, Woody actually ''walks up the vertical line of the crosshairs'', causing the villain to look up and exclaim, "How did he do ''that??''"
* In the climax of the ''[[Teen Titans]]'' episode "Betrothed", Beast Boy is able to scare some palace guards away by transforming into one of the giant Tameranian beasts he saw earlier:
{{quote|'''Raven:''' How long have you been able to do that?
'''Beast Boy:''' Uh... Since just now?<ref>Fans have debated just how Beast Boy's powers work, given that he seems able to turn into any living or extinct member of a planet's natural ecosystem, but not magical creatures like Malchior; most have simply concluded that if he has ''seen'' the animal, or a depiction of it, he can turn into it.</ref>}}
* ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]''; Slimer runs away in an episode after Peter yells at him, and leaves a note behind. Jennine finds it first, and angrily reads it to the guys, scolding them. Ray takes the note and asks how she can read it, as Slimer not only has bad penmanship, but got slime all over the paper. Jennine simply snarks, "I'm a secretary. I can read anything."
* In ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'' episode "Operation: C.A.K.E.D.-5", Father's [[Evil Plan]] involves constructing an ice-cream cake the size of the Death Star; due to his [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]] situation, Numbuh 19th Century thinks combining a cake with ice cream is a culinary impossibility and tries to figure it out while babbling incoherently. "This kid doesn't get out much, does he?" Father asks Numbuh 86.
* In an episode of ''[[Harley Quinn (TV series)|Harley Quinn]]'', the Joker tries to convince Debbie (the school superintendent) to expand the dual immersion program, bribing her with homecooked [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroz_con_pollo arroz-con-pollo.] She doesn't seem willing to do so [[Tempting Fate|(and is gutsy enough to insult him)]], and when she leaves, Joker is shocked to see that she [[Big Eater|ate the entire contents of the tray]] in the two minutes they were talking, ''including the bones''.
* In the ''[[Star Trek: Lower Decks]]'' episode “The Spy Humongous”, Dr. T’ana remarks how she has no idea how Rumdar (a Pakled) could still be alive and unharmed after being blown out an airlock into the vacuum of space. “Pakleds are strong!” replies Rumdar. Maybe so, but seeing as he wound up out there because he mistook the airlock for a bathroom, he's also pretty dumb.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:Stock Phrases]]
[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]
[[Category:Rule of Funny]]
[[Category:
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