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I Thought It Was Forbidden: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Ridcully''': That would be unethical, Dean.
'''The Dean''': [[Tautological Templar|Why? We're the good guys, aren't we?]]
'''Ponder Stibbons''': Yes, but that rather hinges on doing certain things and not doing others, sir.
|'''[[Terry Pratchett]]'''|''[[The Science of Discworld]] III: Darwin's Watch''}}
{{quote|'''Arthur:''' Mmmm. So now you've noticed how much time Cobb spends doing things he says never to do.
|''[[Inception]]''}}
There are two possible cases of this trope:
Physics (Type 1):
:A "[[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]]" that someone uses frequently without [[Plot Armor|suffering the consequences]]. [[The Hero]] just uses it because he's [[Rule of Cool|just that awesome]]. Sometimes justified by the hero being able to avoid the drawbacks of the technique through experience or through unique abilities that cancel out the drawbacks. Other times, everyone seems to do it frequently, and so whatever made it forbidden is an [[Informed Attribute]].
Ethics (Type 2):
:This is the case of something that's forbidden because of ethical ramifications. [[Protagonist-Centered Morality|Ethics?]] [[Godzilla Threshold|Who needs those when you've got a universe to save!?]] No one will care if you kidnap someone from the past with your time machine. It doesn't matter that you just took that bad guy's God-given free will. Ignoring rules for "the greater good" doesn't make you ''anything'' [[Knight Templar|like a villain]]. In better cases, this is portrayed as a [[Shoot the Dog]], or the writers [[Black and Gray Morality|mean to let the audience decide]] without having [[An Aesop|the Aesop]] [[Anvilicious|dropped on their heads]]. In worse cases, we get a [[Designated Hero]].
Bad guys are often exempt from type 2 because, well, they're bad guys. Why should a [[Card-Carrying Villain]] or [[Complete Monster]] care about ethics?
{{examples}}
== Type 1 ==
=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===▼
* ''[[Naruto]]'' lives off this trope - forbidden
▲== [[Anime and Manga]] ==
▲* ''[[Naruto]]'' lives off this trope - forbidden technqiues are referred to as "kinjutsu" and may be either of the above types.
** The title character knows two forbidden techniques, one which he uses ''all the time''. To his credit, the second one starts out very dangerous for him. But, of course, he finds a way to bypass the dangerous part, because [[Instant Expert|he's frickin' Naruto]].
** There's also Rock Lee, who seems to suffer less and less as he continues to use the [[Super Mode|Lotus technique]].
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** Filler character Guren uses multiple supposedly-life-sacrificing techniques consecutively, while bleeding heavily, without hindering her fighting ability much. {{spoiler|She remains alive at the end of her arc.}}
* ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' - the Kaio Ken (literally "World King Fist") technique briefly amplifies every aspect of the user's being - from physical strength to ''sense of taste''. Goku is warned that his body may not be able to handle such a surge of power. While he does feel pretty bad the first few times he uses it, later on he suffers no such effects. By the time he fights Frieza he can stack the technique up to 20x its normal power and doesn't need to even [[Calling Your Attacks|call it]] anymore. King Kai has to explain to other characters observing the battle that no, he's not holding back he's been using it the whole time.
* Initially averted in ''[[Slayers]]''. Lina's improvised ultimate spell, the Giga Slave, is at least noted as a way to deal with every big bad. However, because of its side effects, great effort is put into not using it because
* Projection in ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' for Shirou; he keeps doing it and it says that it burns out his nerves and magic circuits and whatnot and yet it never permanently injures or kills
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', the main character Luffy has a technique called Gear Second that makes his blood pump faster, increasing his speed and power. In the first arc this appeared in, it was stated that using the technique wore him out, while also decreasing his lifespan. But by the Impel Down and Marineford arc, he's constantly using the technique, even when he doesn't really need to, with seemingly no side effects at all.
** During the Skypeia arc, one of the characters Wiper had a special weapon that could put out a lot of force, but which also backfired on the user. The weapon could potentially kill a user with one use. Throughout the saga, Wiper uses it ''three'' times, and though it injures him, it never takes him long to get back on his feet.
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* Singing the Ultimate Song in ''[[Senki Zesshou Symphogear]]'' is supposed to kill the singer, or at least put her out of commission. By the end of the series, the protagonist trio use it ''twice'' in the same fight.
=== [[Literature]] ===
* In Robert Jordan's ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' series there exists a nasty spell called Balefire, which basically erases its target from existence. ''Retroactively'', with [[Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]]. The more force you put into the spell, the farther back in time it goes. The heavy strain this spell put on the very fabric of existence was enough to get both sides—light ''and'' dark—to silently agree to stop using it long ago. For all its dangers it can also be extremely useful. Several characters are saved (or revived) from death when their attacker is hit by this, it ignores defenses, and it's a guaranteed way to {{spoiler|prevent the Forsaken from reincarnating}}. In small doses there aren't any apparent ill effects. It's only with massive blasts that the world seems to momentarily sway to the characters nearby.
* Max Impeller compensator rate in the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series is treated like this. [[Word of God]] is that it's a historical artifact from a previous era when going to the maximum rate really wasn't that safe and risked catastrophic failure of the compensator, which at 500G would turn you to paste. Of course we've never seen a ship have random failure in the entire series even at max rate as modern designs don't need nearly the same margin for safety.
=== [[Live
* ''[[Star Trek]]'': While not an attack, the Vulcan mind meld is originally set up this way. It can cause irreparable harm to the minds of both people. Nevertheless, it becomes part of Spock's standard tricks throughout the rest of the series, and becomes mundane even later. Even in the prequel it is used by someone who doesn't even know how without even a mention of harmful effects.
** In the first-season episode "Arena", Kirk's order to exceed the Enterprise's maximum safe cruising speed is heavily [[Played for Drama]]. Similar and higher speeds are used in later episodes with much less concern for the danger.
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** Especially for ''[[Kamen Rider]]'', where such things are often as bad as they're said to be (you really ''do'' die if as a normal, unaltered human you use the [[Kamen Rider Kiva|Dark Kiva]] or [[Kamen Rider 555|Kaixa]] powers.)
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* In videogames you sometimes get to use the dangerous forbidden stuff without ramifications because they don't want to limit the player's freedom of choice.
** ''[[Jedi Academy]]'': Your teachers get worried if you learn many [[Dark Side]] powers, but whether you fall to the dark side in the end is entirely up to player choice.
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* ''[[MAR]]'' has it's titular character Ginta with his ultimate technique, third ÄRM, Gargoyle which turns [[Living Weapon|Babo]] into an extremely powerful beast, complete with lazer breath. He is warned early on (in a flashback) not to use it heavily, as it is taxing on him. First time he is seen using it, it drains him. Every onther time after that, he's flashing it out so many times it's a wonder why he doesn't just start his fights with that and be done with it.
=== [[Movies]] ===
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' when Egon suggests crossing the streams.
{{quote|'''Peter:''' 'Scuse me Egon, you said crossing the streams was ''bad''...}}
== Type 2 ==
=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===▼
▲== [[Anime and Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', human transmutation is forbidden due to the ethical ramifications. {{spoiler|It takes part of your body as payment, but it turns out the government forbids it only because they don't want alchemists creating their own armies. Armies of soldiers who are quite literally [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|powered by forsaken children]] (at least some of them).}}
** In [[Fullmetal Alchemist (anime)|the 2003 anime version]], {{spoiler|attempting human transmutation still takes part of your body as payment (unless you have a Philosopher's Stone) but instead creates a homunculus without accomplishing whatever it was you were trying to accomplish.}}
* Despite mass-based weaponry being illegal in the [[Lyrical Nanoha|Nanoha]]-verse, in [[Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force]], the main characters turn to devices that have mass-based attacks in order to combat the Huckebeins' [[Anti-Magic]] abilities.
=== Film ===
* Kind of inversion in ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]'': after witnessing how dangerous the bazooka is, Mr Smith tells [[There Should Be a Law|it should be forbidden]]. It is. As is his job.
=== [[Literature]] ===
* In ''[[His Dark Materials]]:'' touching someone else's dæmon is given this treatment (sort-of), though admittedly mostly by the villains. In book one, it's treated as a case of "Never, ever, ''ever.'' Not even in battle, when trying to kill another soldier, will you touch his dæmon." By the time of book three, the standard seems to have been significantly relaxed - then there's the odd times when a dæmon will initiate contact with another human. In the companion book ''Once Upon a Time In The North,'' the [[Complete Monster]] of a villain talks about the number of times he's manhandled other men's dæmons to torture them. However, one could argue that the standards for touching someone else's dæmon have always been at the levels that are shown in book 3, but Lyra, being a child, was just unaware of them.
** On the other hand, in ''The Amber Spyglass'' when {{spoiler|Ama uses the tail of her own dæmon to brush a wake-up powder on Lyra's nostrils -- ''why couldn't she have brought her own brush??''}}
*** Given that many some of the incidents in which people touch others' demons have sexual overtones (When a mook touches Lyra's daemon, the phrasing used could have applied to him molesting her just as easily, {{spoiler|Will and Lyra touch each other's daemons just before doing... something related to love out in the forest}},) this could have some [[Les Yay|interesting]] connotations.
* In the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[
** In ''[[
* There's a subplot in ''[[Outbound Flight|Survivor's Quest]]'' where Luke, three years married to Mara Jade and [[Happily Married|happy about it]], is aware of the Jedi's stance against attachment, including love and marriage. One of the reasons he's eager to visit the ruins of the Jedi-headed Outbound Flight is his hope of finding intact, unaltered Jedi records which might, just possibly, have something in them about Jedi who disagreed with this stance.
* In the final ''[[Harry Potter]]'' book, Harry and his friends start firing off "unforgivable" curses pretty freely.
** Also prevalent in the movies where villains are frequently vaporised by magic or magically torn to pieces by heroes. But it's all fine so long as nobody uses the "instant painless death" curse.
** The implication in the books is that while ''anyone'' can tear someone limb from limb, the killing curse is inherantly evil, as it is fueled by the desire to end a life.
* In ''[[Tigana]]'', Alessan {{spoiler|enslaves a wizard}} in order to save the world (or actually, just one country).
=== [[Live
* ''[[Star Trek]]'''s [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]]. It tends to only be mentioned when the captain is about to <s>break</s> [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right|"bend" it for the greater good]].
** There were, however, a number of episodes (none in the Original Series...) that subverted this, with the captain indeed trying to enforce the [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]] in morally... troubling circumstances. The implications were often very disturbing. (Stop a deadly illness that we've got a cure for from wiping out an entire civilization? But that would be ''playing god''! Save a primitive society of millions from a supernova? But we don't want to ''interfere''! Etc.)
*** More disturbingly, this also happened in Enterprise when the [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]] didn't even ''exist'' yet! No rule was forcing him to act this way at all... it came across more like he just didn't want to help anybody and helped derive the [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]] as an excuse!
** The ending was changed from actually saving the species to what it became due to [[Executive Meddling]]. {{context}} <!-- There's a lot of Star Trek out there - which ending are you talking about, and what form did the meddling take? -->
=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===
* There are several rules to [[Time Travel]] in ''[[Continuum]]'', and one very specific rule is to avoid [[Temporal Paradox|Frag]] and fix any encountered. Only a Narcissist would be so vile as to intentionally risk the lives and futures of the universe for their own selfish ends. And then most time combat is about fragging the opponent as fast and as hard as possible, often to the point where the enemy is little more than semi-aware goo swaying through the true universe they are now barely able to touch. Unlike most cases, [[What the Hell, Hero?|this is called out]], although the danger presented by and difficultly in defeating normally a Narcissist makes it a [[Necessarily Evil]].
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* This can be easily applied to players in [[Video Games]], as while the ''story'' has ethical ramifications, it's not actually real, but most gamers couldn't care less in their pursuit of shinies. Case in point: In ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', becoming a [[Mega Manning|Blue Mage]] is seen as power-hungry and amoral (you pretty much [[Deal with the Devil|sell your soul]] for it). Of course, nobody cares, because BLU is one of the most asked-for jobs andIwantmyBlueMagedammit!
** It's not really a [[Deal with the Devil]], considering the Empire drugs and abducts prospective Blue Mages and forces the procedure on them against their will. In-world lore still portrays it as amoral and self-destroying, however.
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*** You can chide Merill for using blood magic when you first meet, and people will keep mentioning how she's dabbling in things she shouldn't be, even though the player might opt not to use ''any'' of her blood-related magic after that first scene. And at the same time, you can already have blood magic yourself, and thus start any battle by stabbing yourself brutally in the stomach and then keep on rolling by using people's own (still internal) blood against them in the most gruesome of fashions.
=== [[Western Animation]] ===
* In ''[[Time Squad]]'', Larry 3000 points out that kidnapping people from the past is forbidden (yes, he used that ''exact'' word), and they do it anyway. To be fair, kidnapping someone made them actually able to do their job properly.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:That Which Must Not Be Indexed]]
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