It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Difference between revisions

 

Sometimes justified by [[The Spark of Genius]] or [[Psychic Powers]].

 

* Flying Horse released this award winning commercial based on the Buttered Cat Paradox in the "Other" section[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yW5cyXXRc].

== Anime and Manga ==

* In the ''[[One Piece]]'' manga, author Eiichiro Oda often gives joke reason for things in his question-and-answer column, like how Zoro can [[Talking Is a Free Action|talk]] even when he [[Cutlass Between the Teeth|has a sword in his mouth]] because [[Determinator|his heart allows him to speak]]...

** At one point, it is revealed that most of what Rakan can do IS actually due to sheer badassery, or rather, will power. Apparently, his particular brand of magic runs on it, allowing him to block an attack charged {{spoiler|with ALL of his power plus Negi's}}.

** Done [[Up to Eleven]] when he {{spoiler|''comes back from being erased''}} through ''willpower''.

== Comic Books ==

* Even by comic book standards, the source of Marvel's Golden Age superhero The Whizzer's powers was pretty ludicrous: an injection of mongoose blood gave him the power to go really fast just like a mongoose does when it's killing a cobra.

* According to ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' being a <s> vegetarian</s> '''vegan''' apparently gives you [[Psychic Powers]].

** The explanation (humans only use 10% of their brains since [[90% of Your Brain|the other 90% is full of curds and whey]]) for why this works [[Voodoo Shark|actually makes less sense.]] And all the characters know this.

== Film ==

* ''[[The Core]]'', which is scientifically ridiculous from beginning to end, acknowledges this at one point when a character shamefacedly admits that he refers to his secret miracle substance, which not only gets stronger the harder you squeeze it and/or the more you heat it, but generates vast amounts of electricity while doing so, as "[[Unobtainium]]." This is based on an old engineer joke wherein an otherwise perfectly good design turns out to require some material whose tensile strength, melting point, or whatever is higher than that of any known substance, and the spec therefore calls for "Unobtainium."

{{quote|"He reprogrammed himself to grow larger!"}}

* How does the FLDSMDFR (food creating machine) in ''[[Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs]]'' work? By mutating water molecules. That's ridiculous, you say? [[MST3K Mantra|Well, it's just a show. You should really just relax.]]

== Literature ==

* The ''[[Thursday Next]]'' novel ''Lost in a Good Book'' features Nextian Geometry, which (for example) uses the "principle" that cylindrical objects such as cakes and scones look rectangular from the side, as the basis for a design of cookie cutter which doesn't leave those irregular bits of leftover dough.

** And we must not forget about the one drive that functions on the principle that bad news always reaches places before anything else. Too bad nobody would allow it to dock.

** If you've done [[Alice in Wonderland|six impossible things this morning]], why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways - Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

* The novel ''[[The Holy Land]]'' claims that extraterrestrials are taller because of relativity. They've been flying in spaceships for generations, and since everything in the universe is shrinking (the ''real'' reason for the redshift), the time dilation means that they've shrunken less.

** James Blaylock used the same premise in ''Land Of Dreams'', mostly as an excuse to include time travelers' giant shoes and spectacles in his novel alongside little men disguised as mice.

* Stanislav Lem has sci-fi stories set after the Discovery of the Energetic Potential of Lemon Juice.

* The universe of ''Dr Dimension'' heavily relies upon Heinz products for propulsion and enegry generation, so much so that the number 57 is considered to be holy by a number of religions.

== Live Action TV ==

* [[Mad Scientist|Dr. Forrester]] from ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'', his explanation for some of his more implausible inventions? "It would take a scientist to explain it, and I'm just too mad".

* ''[[El Chapulin Colorado]]'', being a superhero satire, obviously runs on Grade-A Nonsensoleum to make [[Idiot Hero|the titular hero]] paralyze people with a bicycle horn, shrink to about 4 inches tall, and show up at Venus, ancient Japan or Nazi Germany.

* The Chronoskimmers from ''[[Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?]]'' run on "fact fuel" generated by crew members answering history questions.

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Calvin of ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' invents devices that run on nonsensoleum, especially cardboard boxes capable of traveling through time, transforming Calvin into an animal, etc. Hobbes [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] these inventions by saying, "It's amazing what they can do with corrugated cardboard these days." Or:

* There is no better description for ''[[The Goon Show]]''. Well, except one: "Ying tong iddle i po."

* One part of ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' radio series that was never adapted in other versions has a fifteen mile high statue of Arthur Dent Throwing the Nutrimatic Cup. The mile-long marble cup floats in mid-air "because it's artistically right."

== Tabletop Games ==

* [[Warhammer 40,000|Orky]] "teknologie" runs, quite literally, [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|because the Orks believe it should work that way]]. This is typified in their most common upgrade to any vehicles' speed: they paint them red, because "[[Law of Chromatic Superiority|da red wuns go fasta]]!" So while the real reason is that Orks have tremendous [[Psychic Powers]], their explanations fit this trope perfectly.

** This is used to hilarious effect when a group of Imperial engineers try to determine what it is that makes Orky weaponry so deadly. They dismantle it, put it back together, try everything they can to even get the gun to fire but nothing. The gun is actually missing several vital components, but when they put it in the hands of an ork, it fires with deadly power.

* One of the main problems with the mad science of ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]''—it runs entirely on the inventor's madness (sorry, Inspiration). Any attempt to pin down the underlying scientific principles involved (''especially'' by a mundane observer) will fail, and any attempt by a mundane observer to closely examine or tinker usually results in the thing [[Made of Explodium|blowing up]]... [[Gone Horribly Wrong|or worse]].

== Video Games ==

* The [[Adventure Game]] ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police|Sam and Max]]: Bright Side of the Moon'' has the characters drive off in their quite ordinary DeSoto with a screech of the tires, fades out, then fades back in on the moon just as they're getting out. Whether this is better or worse than the comic book "Bad Day On the Moon", with its offhand explanation of stuffing the muffler full of thousands upon thousands of match heads, is debatable. [[MST3K Mantra|Best not to delve too deeply into it]]. In the cartoon, we get to see how it's actually done. They ''[[Rocket Jump|grenade jump]] there while inside the DeSoto''.

* In ''[[Monday Night Combat]]'' ''[[Power-Up Food|bacon]]'' raises a character's attributes past their maximum limit until the end of their current life. The explanation? "[[Hand Wave|Bacon makes you better at everything]], [[Insane Troll Logic|just like in real life]]".

* The whirligigs of ''[[Netstorm]]'': 'This device is lofted on its own impossibility and so it destroys by the power of negation.' [http://netstorm.wikia.com/wiki/Whirligig Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.] Oddly enough, they need to refuel every so often, which implies that they must be loaded with impossibility before each flight. Does impossibility have a physical form? One would assume not, but then why is their impossibility supply finite? More importantly, how do you power an object with impossibility in the first place, let alone destroy things with it? It seems that the Whirligig is something of a philosophical quandary, though it must be acknowledged that attempting to use logic on an example of this trope is futile.

== Webcomics ==

* ''[[Scary Go Round|Scary-Go-Round]]'''s Tim Jones built a time machine that was a self-heating teapot with a clock on the side and an electronic eye in the lid. To use it, one simply had to set the clock to your desired time, then turn on the teapot; using the principle that "a watched pot never boils", the water would heat up but never boil. In the process, time would get confused, and reset itself to the nearest timepiece.

* While not [[Sci Fi]], ''[[Order of the Stick]]'' is openly plot-based. The characters are [[Genre Savvy|aware]] and use it for everything from fastforwarding in time to realizing what's about to happen.

* ''[[Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy]]'', in order to support the [[Fetish Fuel]].

* Professor Zweistein of ''[[The-FAN]]'' attempts a rather [http://www.shastrix.com/thefan/index.php?comic=48 nonsensical explanation] regarding people turning into anime characters due to lengthy exposure to anime. This turns out to be a subversion as he later admits that he made it up on the spot.

* In ''[[Tobias And Jube]]'', the titular duo have a spaceship drive that allows it to cross vast distances really quickly. The way it works is: the crew suggests a place to go and decide to go there. The ship then arrives there solely because it would have to arrive there eventually.

** The ''Dark Science'' in particular arc is premium unleaded nonsensoleum: Kim hires a director friend to produce horrendous adaptations of literary classics, in order to convert "posthumous indignity" (i.e., the authors spinning in their graves) into clean energy. It would've worked, too, if anyone had actually gone to see the films.

{{quote|'''Kim:''' If sufficiently disgusted, an author's spinning corpse can produce over 400 megajoules per grievance.}}

* ''[[The Life of Nob T. Mouse]]'' is built on this trope. Characters are not born, they just appear. There's a city built on a giant wodge of putty plugging a hole in the universe where the Big Bang happened. Waving a jelly on a stick with pink-icing buns stuck on it will summon a letterbox that lets you ''post yourself to another universe''. The list goes on and on.

* A whole lot of stuff in ''[[Regular Guy]]''.

* The Alpha Bro Strider in ''[[Homestuck]]'' invented a way of making JPEG artifacts in real life that obviously runs on this trope. Its quite profitable despite nobody wanting the products, because they ''have a negative cost to manufacture''.

* ''[[Ansem Retort]]'': time travel is achieved through binge-drinking. Neither why nor how is ever coherently explained.

== Western Animation ==

* Much of Professor Farnsworth's science in ''[[Futurama]]'' is based on total nonsense. For instance, his theory of "reverse fossilisation"—that if fossilization turns organic matter to minerals, then one simply had to reverse the process to turn household appliances into animals. He also built a spaceship which moved by staying perfectly still by shifting the rest of the universe, whose engine's afterburners worked at two hundred percent efficiency. Ships can cross the universe in days even though you can't travel faster than the speed of light because the speed of light was increased six hundred years ago.

'''Cubert:''' Then explain it.

'''Professor Farnsworth:''' Now ''that's'' impossible! }}

{{quote|'''Professor Farnsworth:''' Nothing is impossible if you can imagine it! That's what being a scientist is all about!

'''Cubert:''' No, that's what being a ''magical elf'' is all about! }}

{{quote|'''Professor:''' Well, Omicron Persei 8 is about a thousand light years away. So the electro-magnetic waves would just recently have gotten there. You see--

'''Fry:''' Magic. Got it. }}

* ''[[Sheep in The Big City]]'' actually had a robot called "the plot device", leading to conversations like:

{{quote|'''Woman''': How did you get here so fast?

'''Major Minor''': I used a plot device!

'''Plot Device''':(sticks head into view) Hello. }}

* ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' uses nonsense technobabble from time to time. But the show's favorite science to use in this manner is sociology: almost all of the Brain's schemes are satirical shots at trends in American culture, and treat human behavior with the same dignity that this trope usually treats science.

{{quote|'''Brain:''' In the office kitchen, I will simply stage an accident utilizing the microwave oven and the non-dairy powdered creamer. For no one really knows how a microwave works.

'''Pinky:''' But, why the powdered creamer, Brain?

'''Brain:''' No one really knows how ''that'' works, either. }}

* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'', this show is '''made''' of nonsenseoleum. The very first episode has them escaping earth's gravity, in a rollercoaster, because the Effiel Tower ''flung'' them there like a slingshot.

** Though interestingly, sometimes things ''will'' have a scientific basis, such as their plan to experience forty hours of sunlight by flying around the world in "Summer Belongs to You." Amusingly, ''this'' was the one time one of their friends decided to exhibit [[Arbitrary Skepticism]]—he may not understand their usual insane take on science, but he ''knows'' a day isn't that long!

* In an episode of ''[[Krypto the Superdog]]'', tiny aliens land on Earth to refuel their spaceship, the fuel in question being ''sugar''. And they're rather sickened to discover humans eat what is their equivalent of gasoline.

 

* The tongue-in-cheek idea of building an anti-gravity or perpetual motion device by attaching a piece of buttered toast to a cat's back and dropping them from a height. According to the [[wikipedia:Buttered cat paradox|buttered cat paradox]], the cat must land feet first and the toast must land butter side down, but both can't hit the ground at the same time.

** Alan Moore played with this in ''[[Tomorrow Stories]]'', where kid supergenius Jack B. Quick buttered cats to create antigravity devices. His parents quickly reminded him, however, that the cat would eventually lick off the butter and fall, which they did just in time to fall on the [[Shout-Out|mutated pigs who had had a]] [[Animal Farm|Communist revolution]].

* Fantasy artist Robin Wood's "Theory of Cat Gravity": The sun has gravity in spades. Cats lie in the sun to absorb gravity. Cats then lie on their owners, using the stored gravity to pin them in place. This is why it's so hard to bring yourself to get up off the couch when a cat is lying on you.

** In a corollary to this theory, dogs make people laugh so they can collect levity, which is the opposite of gravity. Then they use the stored levity to cancel out cats' gravity, so their owners will get off the couch and play with them.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Absurdity Ascendant]]

[[Category:Webcomic Tropes]]

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]

[[Category:Rule of Funny]]