Impossible Task: Difference between revisions
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** After that, it was to steal a [[Mineral MacGuffin]] her [[Battle Butler]] carried. {{spoiler|Nagi herself destroyed the stone when it was revealed (to Hayate) that it was the connection a great spirit would be able to use to permanently inhabit the butler's first love interest}}. Now she's having to learn to live without the backing of the inheritance.
* In ''[[AKB49: Ren'ai Kinshi Jourei]]'', [[Sink or Swim Mentor|producer Akimoto]] of the [[Idol Singer|idol group]] [[AKB48]] likes to give tasks which are effectively impossible to the trainee members to force them to improve themselves, such as requesting them to attract a full house performance within 2 months at the price of 10000 yen per ticket (performances by regular members only cost 3000 yen per ticket) or face disbandment.
== [[Child Ballad|Ballads]] ==
* The classic song "Scarborough Fair" ([[Child Ballad|Child # 2]] and [[Refrain From Assuming|also known as "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme"]]), is a lovely, melodious song about a girl blowing off a guy who's courting her by telling him the only way she'll love him is if he can do a half-dozen or so impossible things.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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* In ''[[The Phantom Tollbooth]]'', shortly after arriving in the Mountains of Ignorance, the protagonists meet [[The Blank|a gentleman with no face]] who asks them to complete some impossible tasks: one of them is to carve a hole through a rock with a needle, one is to move a pile of sand with a pair of tweezers, and one is to empty one well into another with a dropper. After Milo uses a magic math-solving pencil he received from the Mathemagician to realize it would take thousands of years to finish the tasks, the man reveals himself to be the Terrible Trivium, one of the Demons of Ignorance and the anthropomorphic personification of wasting time.
* In ''[[Stardust (novel)|Stardust]]'' by [[Neil Gaiman]] the protagonist is challenged by a crush to bring back a fallen star from the magical land outside their town in exchange for her hand. Subverted in that she didn't actually expect him to try, much less succeed, and they didn't get married when he did.
* In ''[[Land of Oz|
* In ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', Beren is told to return to Doriath with a Silmaril in his hand if he's to be allowed to marry Luthien. Part just-that-[[Badass]], part [[Exact Words]]; with [[Magic Music|Luthien's help]] (and by "help" we mean she did most of it) he gets further than he could possibly have been expected to get, but he ''is'' called "Beren One-Hand" for a reason... {{spoiler|A giant wolf bites off Beren's hand and swallows it, including the Silmaril. Beren returns to Doriath anyway, pointing out that the Silmaril is in his hand (and the hand in the wolf's belly).}}
* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering|The Brothers' War]]'', the King of Argive decrees that any suitor for his daughter must move a huge boulder across the town square. Urza builds a machine to lift and transport the stone, declaring that he had moved it with his mind.
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** And then he trolls the Jarl by pointing out that while he had everything necessary to pay him with, he'd decided to ignore being legally reinstated instead and just use the loot to make himself richer and more powerful than the Jarl ever was. The situation is eventually resolved when both men forgive each other and make an alliance against the attack of a much worse enemy.
== [[Live
* From ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]]'':
{{quote|'''Tony''': What is it with you people? What kind of twisted upbringing did you have? You know, why can't you just say, 'Oh, that'll be 100 gold coins'? Why does it always have to be, 'No! Not unless you lay a magic egg, or count the hairs on that giant's ass!'?}}
==
* In one ''[[Peanuts]]'' story, Snoopy wants to read ''[[War and Peace]]'' at the rate of a word a day; given the novel's notorious length, this would have taken him roughly 1,610 years.▼
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==
* The labors of Hercules are a classic example.
* In ''[[Journey to the West]]'', The Buddha asks Sun Wukong to jump out from his palm. It turns out to be impossible because The Buddha's palm engulfs the entire universe.
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* A Roman Vestal Virgin was accused of having had sex, a capital offense. To prove she was still a virgin, she offered to carry a sieve full of water from the Tiber to the Temple of Vesta "in proof of her perfect chastity". (Given that the accusation was political in nature, she may have had help to accomplish the task.)
* In some Middle Eastern story, a King gave a challenge with a great prize if someone could get a valuable gem that's in the middle of a large carpet without tools or setting foot on the material. Many people try stretching as far as they could and failed, until one humble person realized that the challenge ''didn't prohibit touching the carpet with anything other than feet''. So, he simply rolled up the carpet until he got halfway and simply picked up the gem.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==▼
▲* In one ''[[Peanuts]]'' story, Snoopy wants to read ''[[War and Peace]]'' at the rate of a word a day; given the novel's notorious length, this would have taken him roughly 1,610 years.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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* ''[[Paranoia]]'' missions tend to be this, especially after secret society goals and personal agendas are figured in. The game's stance varies from [[Failure Is the Only Option|"literally impossible"]] to "we have no idea how to succeed, but acknowledge that sufficiently devious PCs will come up with ''something''" to "the PCs ''could'' succeed by doing X and Y and Z, it's just ludicrously unlikely that they'll be lucky and virtuous enough to actually pull all that off".
== [[
* [[The Merchant of Venice|Shylock]]'s "pound of flesh nearest the heart" is related; in this case, it's the villain who is forced into either doing an impossible task, or giving up what is due him.
* Skillfully subverted with ''[[Cyrano De Bergerac]]'': In Act I Scene V, Cyrano claims that fate has decreed that he, being [[The Grotesque]] because of his large nose, must love the most beautiful woman there is, implying an Impossible Task. The truth is, given his [[Mommy Issues]], Cyrano himself has chosen the most beautiful so [[Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality|he will fight knowing that he cannot win her love.]]
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But I may love — and who? 'Tis Fate's decree
I love the fairest - how were't otherwise? }}
* And old story about the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web “deep web”] - part of the internet only accessible with special software and rumored to have sites where human traffickers, drug dealers, [[Professional Killers|professional killers]], and people who sell illegal pornography (possibly even [[Snuff Film| snuff films]]) - is that it has an even deeper section called [https://www.engadget.com/2015-12-18-the-myth-of-marianas-web-the-darkest-corner-of-the-internet.html Mariana's Web], that contains humanity’s darkest secrets, like the [[Religious Horror|Vatican’s secret archive]], the location of [[Atlantis]] or information on [[Alien Invasion]]s, and the files of government intelligence agencies. Some even claim it is run by a [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot| sentient AI]] that is at the risk of evolving into [[The Terminator| Skynet]]. But even if the Mariana’s Web is real (and it probably isn’t) accessing it requires an algorithm called the [https://web.archive.org/web/20211106161328/https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Polymeric_falcighol_derivation Polymeric falcighol derivation] (warning link is NSFW due to language) which requires a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing quantum computer] to do. Since nobody even seems to know what the Polymeric falcighol derivation is, or even if it’s real, and quantum computers are not real, only existing in science-fiction (and would not available to the public even if they were, as they supposedly require a high-vacuum environment - such as outer space - to work) its likely impossible to discover whatever it is hiding.▼
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* The terms of Zuko's banishment in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]].'' [[Snipe Hunt|"Find a nigh-all powerful person, catch him, and bring him back, and ''then'' you can come home. Oh, and he's been missing for a hundred years."]]
* In a US Acres segment of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', Orson and Wade set up a restaurant that's guaranteed to serve any food you order - if they can't make it, you get free food for a month. Roy attempts to take advantage of this with several attempts at Impossible Orders... and then gets served exactly what he orders, to his own shock. He eventually wins with "an elephant foot sandwich with mustard". Even though Orson and Wade had found an elephant, it wasn't theirs to kill and put in a sandwich, so to screw with Roy, they just showed him the elephant and pretended that they were out of mustard.
▲*
== [[Real Life]] ==
* The University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt traditionally has an impossible task or two among the list of things to find, make, or do. One year it was "build a working nuclear reactor in a shed on the Quad", which, in best Impossible Task fashion, turned out to be not ''quite'' as impossible as the organizers had expected (or hoped).
* "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?]" This question is impossible to answer, as it was intended to have no answer. In fact, in modern times, it is often used as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics that are of no value.
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