It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Difference between revisions

* Nearly everything that [[Idiot Hero|America]] in ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' invents depends on this trope - although, more often than not, nobody even tries to explain how a giant robot is going to go about stopping global warming, or how a ray gun makes people fall in love with each other.

* Jack Rakan of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' is a subversion. At first he gives totally nonsensical explanations and just seems to blow everything up with moves based purely on being cool, but it turns out he actually just knows precisely how to get what he wants out of the systems rather well defined magical system.

** 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''.

** Jet Jaguar.

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

 

 

*** Don't forget the method by which they hope time travel will be invented: A recipe for ''unscrambled eggs''.<ref>That is to say, eggs that ''were'' scrambled but now aren't.</ref>

**** [[Fridge Brilliance|Actually ...]] that kind of works. "You can't unscramble an egg" is how physicists explain the irreversability of entropy to laymen, but ''why'' this is the case is one of the unsolved problems of physics. If you ''could'' unscramble an egg, then the "arrow of time" would no longer exist, so...

** And the Infinite Improbability Drive's invention also used Nonsensoleum. They already had a Finite Improbability Generator, but needed an Infinite one to take in the whole universe for use as a drive, and frustrated scientists declared this "virtually impossible" - it took one of the lab cleaners to figure out that a "virtual impossibility" is also a "finite improbability", so he could use the Finite Improbability Generator to create the Infinite Improbability Drive {{spoiler|or, in fact, teleport its core component, the Heart of Gold/Golden Bail, there from where it had been hidden from the Krikketers}}. Furthermore, the Finite Improbability Generator is powered by a "fresh cup of really hot tea", as it runs on the unpredictability of the Brownian motion of the water molecules.

** In the sequel ''Life, the Universe and Everything'', a new form of travel is devised based on "Bistromathics", the unnatural manner in which numbers behave when calculated on Italian restaurant bills.

** ''Life'' also introduces the "[[Somebody Else's Problem]] Field", a cloaking device that takes advantage of people's natural tendency to [[Weirdness Censor|ignore things they can't comprehend or don't want to deal with]], and proposes that the secret to unassisted human flight is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Which, while a gross over-simplification, is [[Genius Bonus|sort of how things maintain orbits...]] so it's not entirely false. {{spoiler|It works, too.}}

** 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.

* 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.

 

== Live Action TV ==

** There are also the 'special parts' mentioned in the theme song, used to create the Bots (thus including, among other things, a bowling pin and a gumball machine), which in turn somehow explains why Joel/Mike can't just turn the damn movies off. Later, of course, the same theme tosses an iconic [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] over this entire trope: [[MST3K Mantra|"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes/and other science facts/Then repeat to yourself 'It's just a show/I should really just relax'..."]]

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', [[Techno Babble]] is perhaps the only trope used more often than [[Monster of the Week]], so of course there are numerous instances of this trope, for example the Doctor's [[Timey-Wimey Ball|timey-wimey]] detector (it goes 'ding' when there's stuff).

{{quote| ''[[Large Ham|David Tennant]]: He's Hyper-podulating! He's using his moluscian glang-valves to internally vibrolate our DNA!''}}

*** In fact, averting the above is precisely the reason why it's done the way it is. [[Russel T Davies]] wanted to avoid ''[[Star Trek]]''-ish [[Techno Babble]], where shows that take themselves more seriously would have the nonsensoleum described in great detail at great length in a dead-serious manner, as if you were a student and the writers were putting a lecture on the effects of neutrino flux on the phase-matrix of warp inducers in story form. As such, the Doctor will instead say "Think of X" and then tell you "It's nothing like X, but if it makes you feel better, think of it as an X." or come up with things like time being "great big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff." In-universe, this is given as or implied to be the Doctor basically being ''so'' much more advanced than humans that he's only capable of sharing so much of his knowledge - slowing his thought process down to explain things is hard for him, and sometimes there is simply no way to ''ever'' make a [[Muggle]] truly understand how something like a Weeping Angel works, and really, all you ''need'' to know is "Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good luck."<ref>But don't look them in the eyes.</ref>

** Also creatures like the shape-shifting Genetic Mutant that gains sustenance and strength by sucking 'mental energy' - strong emotions/personality features - right out of the crew's heads (via some kind of sucking proboscis applied to the forehead, as I recall...)

* ''[[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.

 

 

== Radio ==

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

 

 

* [[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.

 

 

'''Sigint''': Ah, I get it. Yep, that'll give you unlimited ammo. }}

** ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'' did something similar towards the end, when Raiden asks Snake if he has enough ammo to lend him, and Snake replies, "Infinite ammo." while pointing to his bandana (a [[Continuity Nod|reference]] to the bandana from ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', which did indeed give Snake infinite ammo for the weapon he was holding).

* The ''[[Fallout]]'' series explicitly works based not on actual science, but Science! of the 1950s. Nuclear powered cars and radiation causing giant bugs to pop up is just how things are supposed to work.

** The giant bugs and other oddly modified creatures could also have been a result of the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus), a failed [[Super Serum|Super Soldier Serum]] which created the super mutants. It got out and into the remaining animal life after the bombs dropped, making them larger and more aggressive. The nuclear cars still don't make sense, though.

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

* [[Dragon Tails]] with [http://dragon-tails.com/comics/archive.php?date=010911 Bluey's Science Explained]. Bluey is pretty much the physical incarnation of this trope.

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

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'', being a comic about mad scientists lives and breathes this trop.

*** Curiously this contradict the previous statement about having changed the speed of light.

*** Careful. The light that made it to Omicron Persei 8 was "old light," so to speak, that is light that was generated ''before'' the change in the speed of light, thus it traveled at the speed for which a lightyear was still accurate (distance traveled in one year at 2.99x10^8 m/s). The only really odd thing is that a lightyear was not redifined. However, with this series, they probably just didn't want to change the numbers on the traffic signs.

** In "Mars University", the characters meet Gunter, Professor Farnsworth's talking monkey. Fry asks if Gunter can talk because he was genetically engineered, but the Professor laughs and tells him that genetic engineering [[What We Now Know to Be True|is a bunch of science fiction mumbo jumbo]]. He then explains that Gunter's intelligence and ability to talk come from "his electronium hat, which harnesses the power of sunspots to produce [[Foreshadowing|cognitive radiation.]] "

** The ship going faster than the speed of light by moving the universe around it is probably a reference to the Alcubierre drive. Also the ship takes in dark matter which is probably not accounted while calculating the input-output ratio, thereby resulting in an absurd 200% efficiency.

* 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.

* The [http://trollscience.com troll] [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/troll-sciencetroll-physics science] meme has lots of this, along with an amount of [[Insane Troll Logic]].

** "Do Not Bounce"

* Dear God, ''[[The Mystery Sphere]]''.