It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Difference between revisions

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== 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.

* 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:

** What's worse is that Calvin's time machine, duplicator, and transmogrifier are all the same box. The only changes are what direction the box's opening is facing and what's scribbled on its side. Calvin himself took advantage of this at one point: after creating several duplicates of himself (whom he couldn't stand), he got rid of them by getting them to stand under the duplicator box, crossing out the label "Duplicator," and writing in the new label "Transmogrifier" so he could change them into worms.

*** When the transmogrifier was introduced, it was able to select between 2 or 3 forms. When Hobbes asked what if he wanted to turn into something else, Calvin simply replies he left space to write more stuff on the dial.

== Radio ==

* 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 40000|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.

* 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.

** 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!

* ''[[Darkwing Duck]]'' hardly has any other kind of technology. For example, there's the completely fictional notion of all matter consisting of "trons", particles that come in good and evil flavours.

== Other ==

* 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.

* 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.

== Web Original ==

* Devisors from the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'' run on this trope, although they sometimes get devices that are ''close'' to reasonable. This is annoying to those with both [[Gadgeteer Genius|Gadgeteer]] and Devisor traits, since they don't know if what they built either obeys the rules of science or ignores the rules of science, in which case they can't patent and mass-manufacture it. The only test is if someone else can build it.