Loophole Abuse: Difference between revisions

* [[Loophole Abuse/Anime and Manga|Anime and Manga]]

== Comics ==

* In one album of ''De Rode Ridder'' ("The Red Knight", a Belgian comic), a villain tricks the hero into swearing an oath not to use his sword against him. The Red Knight, being [[The Fettered]], is honor-bound to keep it, even when the villain eventually attacks. {{spoiler|He circumvents it by giving his sword to his female sidekick, who is not bound by the oath and still carries a grudge against the villain for a [[Kick the Dog]] moment earlier in the album. The results are... messy.}}

* Subverted in an issue of ''[[Spider-Man]]'', Spidey is riding on top of a car as it drives through New York (with the driver's consent). A cop pulls up next to them.

{{quote| '''Spider-Man:''' Bet you a buck this isn't covered by traffic regulations.<br />

''(Next panel, Spidey is holding a citation)''<br />

'''Spider-Man:''' Huh. It is. Who knew? }}

* A ''Desperate Dan'' comic in ''The Dandy'' has him deliver a grand piano to a friend, so he oils the castors, gives it a push and "drives" it down a motorway. On passing a police car, one of the policemen comments that there is nothing in the rulebook about a piano needing an M.O.T.

* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', the most popular Mayor of Mega City One was Dave the Orangutan—put forward by the Judges in an apparent attempt to discredit democracy since there was no specific rule against it. He was so popular that after he was assassinated the post was abolished for ten years due to the public feeling that no one could replace him.

* Invoked by [[Disney Ducks Comic Universe|Scrooge McDuck]] in [[Don Rosa]]'s story "The Guardians Of The Lost Library". Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work.

{{quote| '''Referee:''' Are you ''nuts?'' You can't conduct an archeological excavation in the middle of a soccer championship!<br />

'''Scrooge:''' Oh, so? Show me that rule in the rulebook!<br />

'''Assistant:''' Gosh, he's right! It ''is'' allowed by the "King Tut" rule of 1922!<br />

'''Referee:''' No, the rule was ''voided'' after it resulted in a ''curse'' on whosoever dared enter the locker room! }}

* In [[Green Lantern]], this is used by the rulemakers themselves. The Guardians sent a Green Lantern to a particularly nasty planet and he is almost immediately killed, so the Green Lantern sends his ring out to find a worthy successor. Enter [[Badass Longcoat|Jack T. Chance]]. After "taking care" of a prominent threat on the planet, he is called back to Oa by the Guardians for discipline, but Jack says that he did what he had to do and would rather quit than be bound by the rules of the Guardians. The Guardians, lacking a suitable replacement for Jack, stated that a Green Lantern was not required to be a "[[Good Is Not Nice|nice sentient]]" and gave him back the ring with provisions that it could not be used outside of the planet Jack was stationed. The reason the Guardians were so annoyed with Chance was because of his own Loophole Abuse. Green Lantern Rings couldn't be used to make [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|lethal attacks]], so once Jack discovered this, he would use his ring to battle foes to the point of exhaustion - and then shoot them.

* As pictured above, various forms of Loophole Abuse crop up in ''[[FoxTrot]]''. More examples can be found at that work's page.

* Used for laughs in the ''[[Young Justice (Comic Book)|Young Justice]]'' ''[[No Mans Land]]'' special. Robin is depressed about being banned from helping Batman. Superboy points out that Bats never said anything about YJ steering clear of Gotham. So he and Impulse go on a ROAD TRIP!

* In ''[[Mega Man (Comic Book)|Mega Man]]'', the original six Robot Masters want to help Mega Man after his [["I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight]], but they are programmed to destroy Mega Man. So they do...by destroying [[Evil Twin|the Copy Robot]].

* [[Lex Luthor]] once made a deal with Mxyzptlk where Mxy would provide Luthor with the means to render Superman powerless. Part of the deal was that Luthor must never tell Superman about Mxy's role in this. Not enjoying the idea of being unable to let [[Superman]] know how he defeated him, Luthor tried to circumvent that part of the deal by telling someone who would tell Superman about the deal. Luthor then told ''Clark Kent''.

* In the fantasy comic strip ''Yamara'', a toad familiar is tasked with bringing a newly-revived ex-vampire her first non-blood meal in centuries. The cleric forbids him from serving her meat, while another character threatens him with punishment if he offers her fruits or vegetables. [[Take a Third Option|His solution]] is to serve her cream of mushroom soup.

* In the story "Marriage Vows," in issue #15 of ''The Haunt of Fear'', the heroine wanted to marry one Prince Dashing but was hampered by the fact that her father had promised her hand in marriage to the ruler of a neighboring kingdom in exchange for a big fat loan. Let's just say that she found a way to take that promise [[Squick|very literally]]...

== Film ==

* In the film adaptation of Dick King Smith's ''Babe'', Farmer Hogget plans to enter the titular character in a herding contest for dogs... despite Babe being a pig with an odd talent for sheepherding. He was concerned that the entry papers night say ''Name of Dog'', because he couldn’t in good conscience put "Pig" down for that. The form, however, says ''Name of Entry''. So Farmer Hogget is in the clear: it never asked you to specify that you were entering a ''dog''.

* In ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean|Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End]]'', [[Rules Lawyer]] Barbossa knows the pirate's code so damn well, he's able to pull this on Jack, even going as far as to tell Jack's Dad on him, who happens to be the Keeper of the Code and [[Disproportionate Retribution|scary beyond all reason]]. Jack makes Barbossa regret this by pulling a dragon right back on him.

** Barbossa uses and subverts this:

{{quote| '''Barbossa:''' First of all, returning you to Port Royal was never part of our negotiations or agreement, so I ''must'' do nothing. Second, you have to be a pirate for the Pirate Code to apply, and you're not. And third... the Code is more a set of guidelines than what you'd call actual "rules".}}

*** Like all good [[Rules Lawyer]] [[Munchkin|lawyers]], Barbossa has no problem with the rules bending- as long as they bend in his favor.

** Plus, his agreement to release Jack and Elizabeth...with no specification about when or where, so he just maroons them on an island.

* In ''<nowiki>~Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan~</nowiki>'' and the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (Film)|Star Trek]]'' film, the Kobayashi Maru test. Starfleet actually had to add a "no reprogramming the simulator" rule after Kirk's shot at it, and according to the [[Expanded Universe]], this kicked off a whole tradition of loopholing the scenario.

** Not only that, but it became an expectation of any student to find a way to beat the simulation with outside-the-box thinking.

* In the Swedish movie ''The Call-up'', the protagonists (who are doing their military service) are out on exercise and need to drive back to base. The quickest way back is over a bridge, but the bridge has been declared destroyed (and everyone is supposed to play along, of course) and a guard refuses to let them pass. Their solution? They drive to a hardware store, buy some paint, and paint the words "Helicopter" on the truck. The guard can't stop them crossing that way.

* In ''[[The Dirty Dozen]]'' the named dozen are in war games when they switch their armbands to the other side's color and infiltrate their headquarters. When questioned on this tactic, they reply, "We're traitors".

* In ''[[Air Bud]],'' there is apparently no rule against a dog playing basketball. Probably because no one ever thought that would come up ever.

** Combination of [[Truth in Television]] with [[Did Not Do the Research]]. You would be hard-pressed to find a "the players have to be humans" rule. However, most schools have rules preventing pets from being taken onto the premises and rules governing the handling of live animal mascots. Bud would never have been allowed on the court, except perhaps for a half time stunt.

* In the movie ''Winning London'', the Olsen twins have to save some "hostages" as part of a Model UN convention/competition. As it's all pretend, the hostages are just in the next room over, so they take the literal approach and climb through the air vents to save them. After coming back into the room, one boy shouts "You said we had to work it out on paper!", to which the official responds "No, I said you had to work it out."

* Subverted in ''[[Ratatouille]]'': There Ain't No Rule saying a rat can't become a chef (in fact, the phrase "Anyone Can Cook" practically qualifies as [[Arc Words]]), but there ''is'' a rule that a rat can't be in a restaurant kitchen. Remy spends most of the film trying to be a chef without getting caught breaking the second rule; near the end of the film, {{spoiler|the presence of Remy and his clan in the kitchen of Gusteau's still constitutes a health code violation that gets the restaurant closed down. Even that is just a temporary setback for Remy, as he and his (human) friends just open a bistro, where they presumably do a better job of hiding the rats}}.

* ''[[Flubber]]'' where the professor put flubber on the shoes of his school's basketball team when they are losing an important game. As a result, the team suddenly find themselves able to easily make impossibly high jumps to win the game. Although the coach of the opposing team protests this development, the stunned referee refuses to stop play because there is no rule that establishes a height limit of players' jumps, even though it is obvious this sudden advantage for the team appearing mid-game must be be the result of some kind of external aid that is likely against the rules.

* ''Semi-Pro'': Ain't no rule says you can't play drunk. Well, there is a rule, but they can't enforce it. ("Remember those 30 free throws I did in Minnesota last year?" "Yeah?" "I don't.")

* In the movie ''[[Blades of Glory]]'' there ain't no rule saying two guys can't skate as a pairs team.<ref>In [[Real Life]], there is for Pairs Skating in the Winter Olympics (spoil-sports), but the competition in the movie is the fictional "World Winter Sports Game".</ref>

* In ''Zoom'', in the final scenes of the movie as we see the 'Happy-Ever-After' scenes for each of the super-powered kids, we watch the expanding boy playing soccer as the goalie and being the team hero, as there Ain't No Rule against being able to expand your body parts to block the entire goal so no shots can go in.

* Shows up in the ending to ''Juwanna Mann'', where a male basketball player is forced to play for a WNBA team, crossdressed, and wins the final game for them. He wins by making a slam dunk, which IS forbidden in WNBA rules. In fact, it was brought up earlier in the movie that he could NOT score using slam dunks. Which is a [[Gretzky Has the Ball|departure from real WNBA rules]], which do ''not'' prohibit dunks. It's just that very few women can dunk on a 10-foot rim.

* ''Necessary Roughness'' and ''Waterboy''. Ain't no rule that a man can't play football among boys! In ''Necessary Roughness'', the rule is the NCAA eligibility rule, which states that a player begins his eligibility the day he first enrolls in college. So technically, though Blake was 34 years old, he's a "freshman" to the NCAA; he has three full years of eligibility remaining after the movie. A notable real-life example is Chris Weinke, who played six years of minor league baseball (for which he would not have been eligible to compete at the NCAA level) before enrolling ad Florida State and becoming a quarterback in football (for which he still was eligible.)

* In ''[[The Mighty Ducks (Film)|D2: The Mighty Ducks]]'', the Ducks try on new uniforms (which were the uniforms of the just-created Anaheim Ducks, which in the timeline of the films were not yet invented) for the third period of the final game (they before had been Team USA). Despite the opposing coach's protests, the play-by-play announcer notes that he has "just been informed that there is no rule against changing uniforms during a game".

** In many sports there actually ''isn't'' a rule about changing uniforms halfway through. Some teams raise money for charity by doing this and then auctioning off one set of uniforms after the game.

* ''[[Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid]]'' "Rules!? In a knife fight!? [[Groin Attack|No rules!]]"

** To be fair, even if there had been rules, Butch wouldn't have cheated in the knife fight. He cheated immediately before the knife fight.

* Subverted in ''<nowiki>~Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby~</nowiki>''. Not only is there a rule against getting out of the car and running, but they're both disqualified for it. Double subverted in that neither cares, and still count it as a moral victory for Ricky Bobby.

* In the 1986 film ''Lucas'', scrawny 14-year old Lucas Bly takes advantage of a school district rule that says that school sports teams must allow any child with an interest to play in order to join the school football team in a misguided effort to impress the girl he is crushing on. The coach is reluctant, as Lucas can best be described as "scrawny", but it forced by the school district to let Lucas onto the team. The first time he actually plays, though, Lucas is injured so badly he requires hospitalization. There might not be a rule against scrawny runts joining a football team, but maybe there should be.

* Jason constantly does this to Kelly in ''[[Mystery Team]]''.

* In ''[[Captain America the First Avenger]]'' during basic training a drill sargeant offer the recruits a challenge: if one of the recruits is able to get the flag from the top of a tall metal pole, he will be allowed to skip the rest of a training run. The pole is slippery and the recruits exhausted so the task seems impossible. Steve Rogers realizes that the instructor never mentioned {{spoiler|actually climbing the pole}} so he simply waits for everyone else to give up, walks up to the pole and {{spoiler|calmly removes the pin securing it to its base and lets the pole fall to the ground where he easily detaches the flag}}. It's one of the many [[Establishing Character Moment]]s for the future Captain America.

* Several times in ''[[Fright Night 2011 (Film)|Fright Night 2011]]''. Vampires can't enter residences without an invitation, but there's nothing against {{spoiler|pretending to be delivery boys, attacking victims in abandoned houses or '''blowing their homes up'''.}}

* Done by Griphook in ''[[Harry Potter (Film)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2]]'' {{spoiler|after he double crosses the trio during the raid on Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts.}}

{{quote| '''Griphook:''' {{spoiler|I said I'd get you in. I never said anything about letting you out!}}}}

* In ''[[Lord of War]]'', the Interpol Agent pursuing Yuri accuses him of exploiting a loophole in international arms trading laws by shipping military vehicles and their armament seperately so they don't count as prohibited/embargoed heavy weapons.

* ''[[Bad Word (Film)|Bad Words]]'' focuses on a high school dropout named Guy Trilby entering a spelling bee to get his revenge after suffering an embarrassing lost as a child. What loophole did the 40 year old found… there isn’t a rule against adults from being a participant in said contest.

== Literature ==

* [[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]: In “The Short Victorious War ” Harrington learns the reason Young was not [[Off On a Technicality|removed from command]] after the events in “On Basilisk Station”. He used a loophole to give his return to the shipyard for repairs a legal basis. [http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/17-StormfromtheShadowsCD/StormfromtheShadowsCD/The%20Short%20Victorious%20War/0743435737___7.htm\], [http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/17-StormfromtheShadowsCD/StormfromtheShadowsCD/The%20Short%20Victorious%20War/The_Short_Victorious_War.htm\], [http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/17-StormfromtheShadowsCD/StormfromtheShadowsCD/On%20Basilisk%20Station/On_Basilisk_Station.htm\]

* Dune: can be applied to using outlawed weapons, but is a legal gray/grey area.

* In [[Discworld]], [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|the Auditors]], being the very [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]s of The Rules, are typically unable to break said Rules. As their goal is to exterminate all life, they usually have to find ways around them.

** In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', one Auditor who's assumed a human body finds she can overcome the compulsion to obey rules by declaring that certain things are "bloody stupid"; "bloody stupid" things can be safely ignored. This was written into the rules because regular auditors were paralyzed with indecision if confronted with a paradoxical statement, like a sign saying "Ignore this sign", or a sign next to an empty cage that says "do not feed the elephant".

** At the climax of the book, the horsemen of the Apocalypse must ride out at the end of the world. No-one ever said ''against whom''.

** Susan's thought process in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Soul Music|Soul Music]]'', on the subject of leaving school without permission:

{{quote| ''There's going to be trouble over this. ... I'm on the back of a horse a hundred feet up in the air, being taken somewhere mysterious that's a bit like a magic land with goblins and talking animals. There's only so much more trouble I could ''get'' into... Besides, is riding a flying horse against school rules? I bet it's not written down anywhere.''}}

** Likewise with Gnome Watch officer Buggy Swires; in a companion book, he is said to have a natural resistance to rules and authority. Even the unwritten rules like "Do not attempt to eat this Giraffe" or "don't kick people in the head because they won't give you a chip".

** In Discworld, the ''laws of nature'' work like this; Ponder Stibbons has discovered that, like a busy local authority, the universe has failed to forbid a lot of things simply because it never occurred to it anyone would do them. The trick is to get things done before the universe rewrites the rulebook and pretends it was impossible all along. The breakthrough came with the invention of [[Magical Computer|Hex]], which can repeat the same spell several times a minute in minutely different ways, the universe making each one impossible just too late, allowing him to (for example) assemble the texts of books that haven't yet been written.

** The climax of ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Unseen Academicals|Unseen Academicals]]'' hinges on a long-forgotten, sometimes-derided football rule {{spoiler|specifying that the first object handled by three consecutive players in a game shall be considered the ball. This, of course, allows the young hero to put his tin-can-kicking skills to brilliant use when the original game ball is "lost."}}

** In the City Watch books there's a few loopholes in the traditional watchmen's oath, which requires new recruits to swear to "uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpork, serve the public trust, and defend the subjects of His/Her Majesty". As many fans have noticed, there's nothing in there about defending the ruler (just his/her subjects), and in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Night Watch|Night Watch]]'' Vimes points out it doesn't say ''anything'' about following orders.

** This trope is basically how the Librarian is able to keep his job at Unseen University, despite his transformation; There's no rule barring an orangutan from the college council, though the wizards had looked very hard for one.

*** This also enables him to read the Necrotelecomnicon (which caused a mage that tried to read it to disappear and the book was noticeably thicker after the incident) without harm.

** While acting as the title ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'', Death saved the life of a girl destined to die and responded calmly when Albert protested it was against the rules for Death to do such.

{{quote| {{smallcaps| The Hogfather can. The Hogfather gives presents. There's no better present than a future.}}}}

* In ''The Zucchini Warriors'' by [[Gordon Korman]], Cathy from the girls' boarding school across the street pulls a [[Sweet Polly Oliver]] and serves as quarterback, leading the team to victory. Naturally, once it's found out, the team coach attempts to argue that girls can too play football (despite having said in a prior interview that they can't). The referee shuts this down by pointing out that, as this is the Macdonald Hall football team and Cathy is not a student there, she's not eligible to play.

* In one of the ''[[Dinotopia]]'' books (''Lost City''), the newcomers to the lost Troodon warrior haven of Halcyon are challenged to complete either an underground maze or an obstacle course against one of the residents. The rules of the obstacle course are, simply, to get from one end to the other before the opponent completes his own course... but the honor-bound saurians had never previously considered the strategy of avoiding all of the obstacles and running down the empty ground between the two courses...

** In the same book, two high-ranking officials play an entirely oral wargame, declaring what they order their troops and what not. It eventually gets down to the generals preparing to go one on one on a bridge. Then the villains claims the Kraken rises up from the water and grabs his opponent. In retaliation his opponent declares {{spoiler|That the Kraken isn't a bloodthirsty monster, but just wants a friend. The Judges declare it legal, and the villain loses.}}

* In ''The False Mirror'', Ranji-aar's team was going through a large maze and discovered that the other team had bribed people, and had learned the route. So they made a ladder to get up on top of the walls, away from all the obstacles, and fake environmental dangers. Needless to say they won.

* ''~Ender's Game~''. Ender is faced with a horribly unbalanced game against two teams at once. Ender wins due to [[Instant Win Condition|the victory condition]] just being opening the enemy's gate, without bothering to actually fight the enemy soldiers.

** This was very deliberately done, a big deal is later made about war having no rules, and anything you can do to win is what you should do. (Apparently a war to extinction against aliens has no Geneva Convention). Later, while he's playing a simulation in which he was leading a campaign against the Buggers, the final confrontation gave him only a few, old ships against the Buggers' home planet ''surrounded'' by warships. {{spoiler|[[Take a Third Option|He blows up the planet.]] And then it wasn't a simulation after all...}}

* One of the final exams in [[Robin Hobb]]'s ''Shamans Crossing'' is a test of bridge construction. {{spoiler|Turns out the actual test was simply "get your team across this river", which is most easily done by making them all ''swim''. Nobody said making a bridge was mandatory.}}

** Also happens near the end of her [[Realm of the Elderlings (Literature)|Fool's Fate]], though in that case, the only thing saved was Dutiful's honor, as he had already broken his promise, made rather [[Leonine Contract|under duress]], to kill a dragon - he instead set it free. Then someone realized his actual promise had only been to deliver the dragon's head to his betrothed's house - he had never promised it had to stay there, nor that it couldn't ''still be attached to said dragon''. And thus, his promise was technically fulfilled.

* In ''[[Chrestomanci|The Lives of Christopher Chant]]'', in order to rescue his friend Tacroy, Christopher has to find Tacroy's soul and claim it from the Priest-King (the Dright) who rules Tacroy's home dimension and owns everyone in it. When Christopher does see the soul, it immediately becomes much farther away from him. When Christopher claims the Sept is cheating, he casually points out that "I named no rules." At which point Christopher and Millie follow suit, because if there's no rule to say the Sept can't use magic to interfere, then there's no rule to say they can't use their magic to ''stop'' him interfering.

** Immediately after this, the Dright asks for one of Christopher's lives in return for Tacroy's soul, but Christopher realizes that this will grant the Dright control over him. Chistopher thus gives the Dright one of his lives and immediately sets it on fire. (Of course, it did hurt a bit.)

* In the children's novel ''Ralph S. Mouse'' by [[Beverly Cleary]], Ralph's human friend, having discovered Ralph and his comparatively impressive intellect, decides to bring him to school for show and tell. The children decide to test his smarts by putting him in a maze with some food at the end and seeing how long it took him to get to the food. Ralph decides that the whole thing is stupid, climbs up the wall, and runs along the top of the maze to get to the food quicker. The children call loophole abuse, but instead of forcing the issue by covering the maze, they just put him back at the beginning, allowing Ralph to repeat his stunt over and over until the children get fed up and declare that, far from being smart, Ralph is too stupid to complete the maze by following the rules. Ralph and his human friend find this an unfair assessment, since they asked Ralph to get to the food as quick as possible and Ralph delivered repeatedly.

* In ''[[Harry Potter]]'':

** ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows|Deathly Hallows]]'', the protagonists attempt this in order to avoid having to give Gryffindor's sword to Griphook. {{spoiler|It doesn't work.}} Also, the Elder Wand {{spoiler|has passed from hand to hand when the previous owner is killed.}} Voldemort assumes {{spoiler|that this is the only way to gain control of it.}} It's not.

*** More specifically, {{spoiler|it's only necessary to defeat/disarm the previous owner. Voldemort assumed that the Elder Wand had "passed to" Snape when [[It Was His Sled|he killed Dumbledore]], but ''Malfoy'' disarmed him first, and when Harry later defeated Malfoy, the Elder Wand recognized ''him'' as its master.}}

*** Even more specifically, {{spoiler|ownership is passed only when the current owner is 'defeated/disarmed'. Dying without either of those conditions being met or arranging for one's suicide, even by help of another, means there is no transfer of ownership of the wand and its true power dies with the last owner. Dumbledore knew this, hence why he arranged his [[Mercy Killing]] with Snape. Malfoy was simply a [[Spanner in The Works]] in that regard.}}

** In ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets|Chamber of Secrets]]'', it's revealed that Arthur Weasley works in the Misuse Of Muggle Artifacts Office, but abuses Muggle artifacts on his own time. He purposefully wrote a loophole into the law in order to get away with this, namely it is misuse to use said object to harm or mislead a muggle. Personal experimentation in one's own home is another matter all together.

** Quidditch is a stunning aversion to this trope, having a rule for literally ''everything''. As just one example, there's a rule that forbids using a battle axe in play. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For added hilarity, according to ''[[Quidditch Through the Ages]]'', these rules actually arose ''because'' of this trope.

** In ''[[Harry Potter (Franchise)/Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire|Goblet of Fire]]'', the rules for the first contest states that contestants can only bring a wand to face the dragons, but not that they can't use it to summon whatever else they need. Harry uses that loophole to summon his Firebolt flying broomstick.

* ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series:

** Aes Sedai are bound by the Oath Rod "to speak no word that is not true," but the Oath Rod defines "true" as "what the speaker believes." Thus, an Aes Sedai who believes a lie can tell it as if it were the truth, and the Aes Sedai are experts at using this and other Loophole Abuses to twist the truth beyond recognition.

*** The third Oath "Never use the One Power as a weapon, except ... to save her own life, or her Warder's, or the life of another sister " can be circumvented by an Aes Sedai intentionally placing herself (or, presumably her Warder or another sister) in danger.

**** The danger has to be real and fatal, though (or at least the sister has to believe it is), meaning they can't exactly use this loophole to shatter armies with impunity the way they could without the Oath. The spirit of the law is upheld.

** In ''The Gathering Storm'', it is revealed that one of the oaths the [[Les Collaborateurs|Black Ajah]] swears to [[Satan|the Dark One]] is "I swear not to reveal the Black Ajah or its secrets ''until the hour of my death''." One recruit forcibly drafted into the Black Ajah [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|learns everything she can about its members, leaders, plans, and prophecies, then proceeds to betray it to Egwene]] [[Tear Jerker|by taking poison first]]. One would think the Dark One would close this loophole, but as Egwene herself says, "What kind of Darkfriend would [[Heroic Sacrifice|kill themselves in order to advance the greater good]]? It doesn't seem the kind of thing [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|his followers would consider]]."

** Under Tower Law the Amyrlin must be Aes Sedai, but you don't have to be Aes Sedai to become Amyrlin. Thus, {{spoiler|raising Egwene as Amyrlin makes her legally Aes Sedai without having to raise her as Aes Sedai. For even more bonus points, they wouldn't legally have been able to raise any regular Aes Sedai without an Amyrlin.}}

** The Eelfinn did this to Mat, when he unwittingly made his [[Three Wishes]] to them: "Wise to ask leavetaking when no terms were set, yet unwise not to set the terms. We will set the terms..."

*** Mat's foxhead medallion worked on a big loophole (proving the Eelfinn would have had a ball with D&D wishes) in that he was free of the One Power {{spoiler|, in that the threads melts when they touched him directly, but if you picked up a pile of dung, for example, and threw it at him with the power, it still worked.}}

*** Mat, sadly, didn't learn his lesson well enough: in ''Towers of Midnight'', {{spoiler|he carefully binds the Eelfinn in a promise not to attack his party. Then there's a solid [[Oh Crap]] moment when the packs of armed '''Aelfinn''' show up to block the way out.}}

* ''[[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]]'': Holly Short's final test at the police academy was an [[Unwinnable Training Simulation]] where she was facing an insurmountable number of virtual enemies. She fired at the projector instead.

** Also in the first book, when she interprets a cry for help from someone who has no idea she's there as an "invitation" enabling her to enter a human building. She has to argue over this to her commander later, when she states that there is actually precedent for it.

** Or in the third book, when joking (and unsuspecting) permission for Juliet to bring her "invisible friend" is also used as an invitation.

*** Earlier than that, even - when Artemis allows himself to be captured, Spiro gives him a tour of the building's security system to show him just how screwed he is. Artemis jokingly says he could beat the security with the help of his fairy friends. Spiro tells him he can bring in all the fairy friends he wants. Oops.

** In the first book, Artemis makes the mistake of saying that no fairy may enter his house while he's alive. Of course, the fairies try to kill him first. {{spoiler|[[Batman Gambit|And that's exactly what he wanted.]]}}

** In the prequel story, ''LEPrecon'', which shows how Holly got into the LEP. Her test is interupted by Turnball Root, and it ends up at a point where Commander Root and Trouble Kelp are locked inside a human dwelling. Holly can't go in to save them, so she {{spoiler|gets the ship and ''tears the house down''. You can't get dwelling sickness if there's no dwelling!}}

*** Also:

{{quote| '''Root:''' You tag me before I tag you, and you're in. [[Tempting Fate|No questions asked]]. }}

* ''[[Redwall]]'': Matthias, at the top of a bell tower, promises [[Big Bad]] Cluny he'll come down if Cluny releases his hostage. {{spoiler|Ain't no rule that Matthias couldn't cut down the giant bell, which Cluny is directly under, before coming down.}}

* Part of the backstory of David Gerrold's ''[[War Against the Chtorr]]'' series is that the United States had severe arms limitations imposed on it after the last world war. There was no such restriction on weapons ''research''. Therefore, the U.S. funneled tons of money into advanced weapon design programs and built modular factories that could be turned to war production with the flip of a switch.

* In the second ''Flat Stanley'' book, Stanley ends up being used as a sail in a boat race. A judge is heard saying that it is not against the rules to use your teammate as a sail.

* ''The Kid Who Ran For Principal'' by Judy K. Morris. Ain't no rule that says a student can't run for interim principal for the purpose of firing an ineffective and cruel teacher.

* In the [[Thursday Next]] novel ''Something Rotten'', Aint no rule saying a genetically re-engineered Neanderthal can't play croquet although it was in dispute; there ''are'' rules saying non-humans can't. The rule that non-humans cannot play croquet would normally have prevented him from playing, but {{spoiler|the reconstruction involved using some human genes for the vocal cords. As a result of the small percent of human DNA, he wasn't technically non-human, so they let him play.}}

** In the Next-World's version of croquet, finding loopholes in the rules is an expected part of gameplay and heartily enjoyed by the fans.

* [[L Sprague De Camp (Creator)|L Sprague De Camp]]:

** In the short story "Nothing in the Rules", one team at a girls' swimming competition contains a mermaid, who of course wins everything. In response to the opposition's outrage, the team coach points out that the rules only specify that all entrants must be female; nothing is said about species. The officials are reluctantly forced to admit that he's right. Whereupon the opposing coach visits the city zoo and borrows a female seal, who (properly incentivized with a bucket of fish) outswims the mermaid. To avoid disqualification for not using the proper swimming form, the mermaid only competes in the freestyle events.

** In ''Throwback'' a genetically recreated prehistoric human becomes a football player. In this case any "humans only" rules don't apply because before the story began the recreated cavemen fought for their civil rights and were legally recognized as people, even though they are technically not the same species as most humans.

* In [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s ''[[Vorkosigan Saga]]'', it is a frequently cited legal precedent that there ain't no rule a horse can't be a count's heir (or at least, there wasn't in Lord Midnight Vortala's time). If a horse's ass can be a Count, why not the whole horse? On the other hand, there Ain't No Rule against a Count hiring 2000 chefs, equipping them with Chef's knives and sending them after his enemies (Each Count can only legally have 20 of his own troops, total). The Emperor was not amused.

** The POW camp in the short story ''Borders of Infinity'' applied this trope in a rather nasty manner. So many square meters per inmate? An opaque, luminous force shield encloses that much open ground and field latrines. No periods of darkness for over twelve hours? No darkness at all, ever. Water? Everyone gets a cup along with their clothes and a bedroll (the taps by the latrines work most of the time). Access to medical personnel? Plenty of medics mixed in with the general population, but they mentioned nothing about equipment. Food? A pile of ICRC-equivalent compliant ration bars (one per inmate) appear at a random location on the camp perimeter twice per day. No solitary confinement for more than 24 hours? <insert bitter laughter here> No beatings or rapes by guards? No guards....

* Ain't no rule that a chicken can't be mayor. This one is from the book ''Herb Seasoning'' by Julian Thompson. Said chicken actually understands English and can write in (no pun intended) chicken scratch, but she's really being used as a figurehead for a conman. Long story, just read the book. Oh, and there Ain't No Rule that says the cure for depression can't be a mixture of eel slime and aspirin. Applied topically, of course.

* Used in Robert Asprin's ''[[Phules Company]]'', when the company competes on an obstacle course against the elite Red Eagles. The race specifies "full combat gear and conditions," and the Eagles make good time navigating the obstacles in heavy packs with loaded weapons. Then on their turn, Phule's company blows up the obstacles, and sprints straight through in record time. Some Eagles complain that this is cheating, but their own commander agrees that in "combat conditions," you're not worried about being polite to the landscape.

* Tom Fitzgerald is fond of this one. In ''[[The Great Brain]]'' series:

** In book four, he challenges a classmate to find a rule in the Bible or the catechism that forbids having all the candy one wants in a Catholic school. ([[Conviction By Counterfactual Clue|Uh, any number of verses regarding overindulgence or gluttony like Proverbs 23:20-21? The 4th commandment+parents passing on some measure of authority to the school they choose to send you to?]])

** In book five, he bets Sweyn that he can catch a bigger trout with a pole, line, hook, and worm bait, than Sweyn can with his rod, reel, and fly hooks. Then he tells J.D. that there ain't no rule against setting up six poles at once.

** In book seven, he bets that Parley Benson's quarter horse can't beat Sweyn's mustang in a mile race. He wins this bet easily since Parley's horse hasn't the stamina, then proposes to give the kids a chance to win their money back by swapping horses and racing again. When he wins on the other horse, the kids accuse him of cheating, and he tells them that there ain't no rule against slowing a horse to let it get its wind, and that if Parley had done it, they certainly wouldn't have complained.

* In ''[[The Dresden Files (Literature)|The Dresden Files]]'' Harry makes a deal with Mab to perform three services for her, but reserves the right to refuse to do any specific service she names, and the agreement that she won't use her powers against him for refusing to accept. However, she can always manipulate him into it in other ways. Oh, and she can still hurt him out of spite.

** Loophole abuse is also the reason Harry is very careful with the boon he received from the Summer Court. While he's being hunted by the gruffs, he considers using said boon to get them off his case, but then reconsiders; after all, if he asks Summer to protect him from their own assassins, they could easily break his back and dump him in a hospital so he won't be a threat that Summer needs to fight anymore.

** In ''Dead Beat'', he gets away with {{spoiler|necromancy}} because ''technically'' {{spoiler|the Fifth Law of Magic only applies to human dead, not [[Crazy Awesome|Tyrannosaurs]]}}. It probably helped that it was both necessary to saving the world and [[The Dresden Files (Literature)/Awesome|downright awe-inspiring]].

** On the subject of Mab, fairies are ''all about'' loophole abuse. For fairies, there is no such thing as the spirit of the agreement; if it's not explicitly outlined in the letter of the agreement, it's fair game. For this reason bargains with fairies must be considered very carefully. On the plus side, since the Unseelie Accords were written by fairies, many of whom had conflicting interests, they're pretty much airtight.

** Harry loves Loophole Abuse. He can't use magic to kill, so instead he uses magic to ''annoy'', making the less even-tempered spellslinger he's facing burn down his own house while still inside. When being chased by increasingly powerful assassins sent by Summer, which owes him a boon, he discovers that they can only hunt him until the dawn, and so requests {{spoiler|a donut. And not a magicked donut, but a fresh donut. With sprinkles.}} Naturally, it takes a while to find, at least until morning {{spoiler|since there are no donut stores open at night.}} In the most recent novel, he's told {{spoiler|only crazy ghosts can become corporeal and interact with the real world, and quickly realizes that the actions he takes, the things he does, marks him as more than slightly unhinged. Welcome to the real world, ghost Harry!}}

* In the [[Dale Brown]] novel ''Flight of the Old Dog'', the Soviets refuse to shut down their Kavaznya [[Frickin' Laser Beams|laser]] [[Wave Motion Gun|Cannon]], claiming that the previous strategic arms treaties said nothing about ground-based laser systems. In ''Shadows of Steel'' it is said that while the USSR and China signed arms control treaties against selling to Iran, none of the other post-Soviet states did.

* In ''[[The Guardians]]'', there ain't no rule that a Guardian can't become human, exercise human rights, and become a Guardian again. {{spoiler|And they gain a second Gift upon their second self-sacrifice, which is why Michael has so many Gifts.}}

* The land of ''[[Xanth (Literature)|Xanth]]'' has a law stating that the king must be an adult Magician and forbidding ruling queens. However, in one book an enemy is incapacitating kings one after another and they're running out of Magicians... until one of the heroes decides that if a Sorceress is really just a female Magician, there's no rule that they can't have a [[She Is the King|female king]].

* This is how the [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]s of the Solarian League in ''[[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]'' gained power: Their constitution gave every member nation of the League veto power over statutes... but not over regulations, which is what the bureaucrats used.

* Count Olaf of ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' plans to marry his ward Violet to get at her inheritance. ([[Getting Crap Past the Radar|And, it is strongly implied, some other things.]]) She's underage, so the marriage has to be approved by her parent or guardian. In this case, that would be Count Olaf. He stages the marriage in the guise of a play about a wedding, even tricking a judge into performing the ceremony, with the audience as witnesses. {{spoiler|Violet takes advantage of a loophole herself; the law states she has to sign the marriage license in "her own hand". She's right-handed, so she simply uses her left hand, making the marriage null and void.}}

** The film version plays out slightly differently. {{spoiler|Olaf caught the kids reading law books earlier in the film, and thus catches Violet's trick. After the contract is signed, he gloats about it. When Poe demands Olaf be arrested, the Baliff says, awkwardly, that the wedding was perfectly legal. Then Klaus uses the same device Olaf used to kill the Baudelaire parents to set the contract on fire. The audience then arrests Olaf.}}

* In her [[Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms|500 Kingdoms]] novel ''Fortune's Fool,'' Mercedes Lackey uses an ifrit as the villain. At the end, the ifrit is bound into his bottle. But the bottle cannot be sealed permanently; there must be a release condition, and it must be possible, however unlikely. So the ifrit is bound into the bottle "until you repent and reform and join the ranks of the Lawful Jinn of the City of Brass!" Geniekind have free will, he can choose between good and evil.

* In the novel ''[[Troy Rising (Literature)|Citadel]]'', a junior welder places a fake spider in the work sled of a hated coworker shortly before he goes out on EVA. When questioned about it, it is pointed out that there are regulations about tampering with a coworker's spacesuit, but not about the sleds. It is strongly implied that the safety regulations in question are rewritten after that incident.

* A children's picture book actually has this as a plot point. A child is playing outside this apartment complex, and loses a toy to the other side of the road. (Either a plane or a ball) Since he had been forbidden to cross the street by himself, he tries to ask passing adults to escort him across the street but nobody does anything. Finally, he decides to climb up some objects such as a tree, then his weight causes the top of the tree to lean, allowing him to grab the tree on the other side of the road, where he picked up his toy and threw it back across the street, and repeated the proces to get back across. His reasoning for doing this was because he didn't actually ''set foot'' on the street, and he was forbidden from ''walking'' across the street without an escort - his mother had not told him he couldn't find another creative way across.

* In the novel ''Vampire High,'' a group of vampire students decide to join the water-polo team and take their school to its first-ever victory...and then it turns out that these students have a strange and rare gene that lets them become seal-human hybrids when in the water. With their enhanced strength and speed, they win the game by a two-hundred point margin, and a group of lawyers present protest, saying that the rules state only a ''human'' can play on the team. The protagonist's father tells them that "The law hasn't quite decided what is and is not human," and points out that there were ''other'' vampires on the team who didn't have the gene, and no one had complained. [[Subverted Trope|The lawyers persist, however, until the protagonist's father tells them he's a lawyer in a VERY powerful and influential firm, and the guys back off.]]

* In the ''[[Dune]]'' universe, there is a major prohibition against using nuclear weapons against human targets. {{spoiler|Just before the final battle, Muad'Dib uses a nuke to blow a hole in the a large rock formation so his army can pass through. He points out that no humans were killed by the nuke.}}

* In ''[[Chronicles of Narnia|The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe]]'', the Pevensies justify wearing fur coats that don't belong to them on their foray into another, wintery world, on the grounds that they won't even be taking them out of [[Cool Gate|the wardrobe]].

* In the [[Clock Punk]] fantasy ''Goblin Moon'', a friend of the heroine's aunt marries a criminal she's never met, just before he is executed for his crimes. She does this because she owes her creditors a fortune, which automatically become her husband's problem as soon as she weds him; as an instant widow, she's free of her debts and can go on to marry the man she actually loves. All the criminal gets out of it is the company of a prostitute and a bottle of wine for his last night, courtesy of a well-bribed jailer.

* In the first [[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]] Book, ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', it is explained that after the advent of genetic modification, specially created athletes were designed for their league games with their entire bodies suited for their role - twelve foot basketball players, boxers with heads of unthinking muscle and so on. One football (soccer) team fielded a goalie which was basically a massive oblong block of flesh that filled the entire goal mouth. Somehow they still failed to qualify for the second round.

* The alien race in [[Tom Holt]]'s ''Falling Sideways'' have a ''very'' clear rule about [[Thou Shalt Not Kill]]. They do ''not'' have a very clear rule about Thou Shalt Not Make People Believe Themselves To Be Frogs And Therefore Starve To Death On An Unsuitable Diet.

* According to Captain Bartleby in ''[[1632|1636: The Saxon Uprising]]'', there's no rule that the Dollar is the ''exclusive'' currency of the USE, allowing the Third Division the capability to produce its own currency for purchasing supplies.

* In ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]'', to prevent the destruction of the galaxy that will be inevitable should they come to direct blows, the Ellimist and the Crayak set a bunch of rules for themselves in how to resolve their conflict... and then find as many loopholes as they possibly can. The Ellimist isn't allowed to directly save all humans from the Yeerks, but can take a small sampling of them and relocate them on another planet? Show the world's anti-Yeerk heroes a possible future to encourage them to agree to relocation... but give them a massive hint for how they can score a decisive victory over the Yeerks in the process. The Crayak's lackey, the Drode, isn't allowed to kill any sentient life? Set the self-destruct sequence on a bunch of robots (robots aren't alive!) to draw his targets into a situation likely (but not guaranteed) to kill them.

* In a ''[[Berenstein Bears]]'' novel, the new principal puts in a school dress code. They proceed to piss him off on the very first day it's in effect by doing ''just'' this. Among these are wearing ''green'' jeans instead of ''blue'' jeans, and wearing a ''Batman'' cape instead of a ''Superman'' cape.

* In the ''[[Safehold (Literature)|Safehold]]'' series by [[David Weber]], the heroes relentlessly exploit loopholes and creative interpretations of the religious prohibitions concerning technological advances.

** One of the more notable examples of outright abuse comes with explosives and chemistry: the [[God Guise|"archangels"]] who created the rules couldn't explain ''why'' certain things shouldn't be done (since that would expose people to too much knowledge), only saying that mixing chemicals X and Y would result in dangerous, magical retribution. If, however, you ''wanted'' that "magical retribution" to occur in certain controlled conditions, say in a fuse attached to a gunpowder-filled artillery shell...

** Gets even better when one of the people directly responsible for enforcing the restrictions gets brought in on the secret (namely that the religion in question is a [[Path of Inspiration]]) and starts ''helping'' the heroes abuse loopholes. Naturally having shot down attempts at loophole abuse in the past, he's well familiar with how that game is played.

* In ''[[Fate Zero]]'', Kiritsugu signs a [[Magically-Binding Contract]] with Lord El-Melloi - El-Melloi will order [[Person of Mass Destruction|Lancer]] to commit suicide and withdraw from the Holy Grail War, and in exchange Kiritsugu cannot harm him or his fiance. As soon as Lancer is dead, Kiritsugu's assistant shoots El-Melloi.

** Kiritsugu again: [[Aint No Rule]] that the Einzbern Master has to be an Einzbern, or that a Master has to be the one who supports his Servant.

** The [[Black Knight]]'s swordplay is so practiced that he can perform even his most advanced techniques instinctually, represented by the "Eternal Arms Mastership" ability. This allows him to ignore the mental restrictions of his [[The Berserker|Berserker]] class completely, while keeping the improved stats.

* [[Isaac Asimov]]: The Robot stories are basically a study in Loophole Abuse. Robots ''must'' obey the Three Laws, but many of the stories place a Robot in a situation where strict adherence to the Three Laws is impossible, and so the Robot must engage in some judicious moral wrangling to reach a resolution. Sometimes it boils down to a "spirit of the law" versus "letter of the law" situation. Other times it involves situational interpretation of the Laws (ie, a Robot cannot harm a human, but what constitutes "harm?" Does social embarassment count as "harm?" etc.) Chronologically later stories involve the creation of a "Zeroth Law," and introduces the concept of the "Greater Good" into the Robots' morality.

* In [[John C Wright]]'s ''[[Hermetic Millenium (Literature)|Count to a Trillion]]'', Menelaus tries a [[Mad Scientist|nutty]], very hypothetical, and dangerous experiment as soon as the shuttle leaves Earth—meaning he's no longer covered by Earth law, and not yet under the captain's authority on the ship. Reaction to this reasoning: they knew they shouldn't have brought along a lawyer.

== Live Action TV ==

* In the Swedish version of ''Survivor'', there was once a contest of sack racing. The production crew had bound coconuts in the water to the bottom of the sea close to the beach, and the presenter told the participants that they had to sack race to closest coconut, round it, and then return and the first to return should win. One participant reacted by rounding a coconut that laid under the closest palm tree and wasn't prepared by the crew. He got a special prize for creativity.

* From the American version of ''[[Survivor]]'':

** [[Aint No Rule]] stating you couldn't look at another contestant's board during certain puzzle challenges.

** [[Aint No Rule]] stating you couldn't bribe other contestants.

** [[Aint No Rule]] stating you can't accidentally wander into another tribe's camp

** [[Aint No Rule]] stating you can't use somebody's eyeglasses and water to start fire.

** Early in the show, someone had apparently broke a pair of binoculars they brought as their luxury item and used them to start fire. Then another time, someone apparently smuggled a granola bar into the game through their luxury item. Another time, someone brought a flag that was used as a tarp (That was confiscated) Rules have been put up for Luxury items since.

** [[Aint No Rule]] stating you can't use the other camp's fire to start your own.

** A few seasons of Survivor have started off with a "Grab supplies as fast as you can"-portion. There [[Aint No Rule]] stating you can't steal the other tribe's stuff when they're not looking.

** [[Aint No Rule]] stating you can't offer up items as a trade for fire with the other tribe.

* ''[[Myth Busters|Mythbusters]]'' competitions sometimes feature Loophole Abuse.

** Jamie's egg drop from the roof of M5 is a classic. He converted his materials to a line to lower the egg with.

** Adam justifying going over-budget on his hovercraft was also good (his finished product was within budget, but his total spending wasn't).

** In another episode they had to use salsa (the dressing, not the music) to cut through the bar of a jail cell. As part of the myth they were allowed to speed up the electrolysis by running the current from a lightbulb through it. Jamie used a small radio (a device commonly used by the interns of many Mexican prisons) to change the current from AC to DC on the wire. His excuse being he got the radio for "good behavior."

*** This escalated to Adam "stealing" a prison vacuum engine and building a makeshift drill that ultimately failed.

** For a ninja myth, Kari, Tory, and Grant competed to make the most accurate blowgun using "natural" materials such as bamboo. Since copper is a "naturally"-occuring element, Kari chose to put a length of copper pipe down the center of her bamboo tube. Needless to say, she won.

** "I'm not doing anything <X> wouldn't have done, if <X> had had power tools!"

** It should be noted that for every time they do abuse loopholes, they'll just as equally acknowledge and then subvert them by ignoring them, claiming what they call "the spirit of the myth". For example, during the myth that a piece of paper couldn't be folded more than 7 times, Grant got 8 folds by folding lengthwise as much as he could, then widthwise. Tory then took it one step beyond, since the myth didn't say ''in half''. When it came time to do the myth for real though, they all agreed that the spirit was folding in half lengthwise, then widthwise, and repeating.

* In ''[[Lost]]'''s fifth season finale, two mysterious characters are revealed to be pulling the strings behind certain events, effectively a battle of the [[The Chessmaster|Chessmasters]]. In the opening scene (set in the 1800s) one tells the other that he will one day find a loophole <ref>The two's adopted mother set a rule that states that neither can kill the other</ref> that will "allow me to kill you." In 2007, the {{spoiler|Man in Black, aka the Smoke Monster}} succeeds in killing {{spoiler|(or rather, convincing Ben to kill)Jacob, the leader of the Island}} and prior to his death, {{spoiler|Jacob}} remarks that "I see you found your loophole."

* In the pilot episode for ''[[White Collar]]'', Neal breaks his house arrest restrictions and flees to a criminal's hideout, knowing full well that the FBI can track him with GPS. When the FBI arrives to "arrest" Neal, they arrest the other criminals as well due to a clause in search and seizure law that states law enforcement has the power to confiscate evidence of criminal activity while pursuing a fugitive, even if said crimes are completely unrelated.

* ''[[Firefly]]'': When the resident minister shows up for a fight toting a rifle, he states that while the [[The Bible|Good Book]] has some quite specific things to say [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|about killing]], [[Technical Pacifist|it's a mite fuzzier]] [[Kneecapping|on the subject of kneecaps.]]

* In ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' Cameron is specifically ordered by Sarah not to kill two people who may be a lead to Skynet. When they're later murdered by gangsters, within earshot of Cameron, she nonchalantly points out to Sarah that saving them wasn't an order.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': In the Fourth Doctor episode "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S14 E3 The Deadly Assassin|The Deadly Assassin]]", The Doctor is accused of killing the Lord President of Gallifrey, the punishment for which is execution. However, the president had not named a successor before he was killed so an election must be held. So to put off his execution long enough to figure out what's really going on, the Doctor invokes some obscure law that lets him ''submit himself as a candidate'' so the Time Lords can't execute him until after the election.

* On ''[[Family Matters]]'', Steve Urkel challenges Laura's [[Girl of the Week|Guy of the Week]] to a contest to see who can climb to the top of a rope faster. The loser has to stay away from Laura forever. Steve is absolutely terrible at rope climbing, but he wins because there Ain't No Rule that says he can't use a rocket pack to fly to the top instead of climbing in the usual way. This is quite ridiculous as a way of winning a rope-climbing contest, because, well, it's not rope climbing! The guy in question never appears again, but a generous interpretation would claim that he just faded into the background like every other girl/guy of the week, and didn't stay away because he actually honored Steve Urkel's beating him in the contest. On the other hand, as a result of the jetpack, Urkel ended up in a ''[[Step By Step]]'' [[Crossover]], a fate far worse than being dumped.

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'', Ivanova becomes the Green Drazi leader by grabbing the former leader's ceremonial sash:

{{quote| '''Ivanova''': You're saying just because I'm holding this right now, I'm Green leader? But I'm human!<br />

'''Green Drazi''': Rules of combat older than contact with other races. Did not mention aliens. ''(looks embarrassed)'' Rules change... caught up in committee. Not come through yet. }}

** Also, Sinclair's abuse of the Rush Act, which authorizes him to use any and all military assets to end a strike by the station's dockworkers. He uses those "assets"—namely, funds earmarked for the military budget—to pay for the safety upgrades which the workers demanded.

* On ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'', Marcia joins Greg's Boy Scout troop because there Ain't No Rule that says a girl can't be a Boy Scout. Greg tries to retaliate by joining Marcia's Sunflower Girls Group, but he is prevented because in his case, there ''is'' a rule—not against boys joining the group, but because there is an age limit which he is too old for. Instead, he gets younger brother Peter to join.

** At the time, there most definitely ''was'' a rule that said a girl can't be a Boy Scout. They were allowed to be Explorers starting in the early 1970s, so it's possible that Marcia joined Greg's Explorer post, but technically she couldn't have joined his Boy Scout Troop.

* Similarly, on ''[[My Three Sons]]'', Chip once joined the girls' field hockey team (in retaliation for a girl attempting to join the track team.) There Wasn't No Rule preventing this, but there was a rule about uniforms, which forced Chip to play wearing a skirt, at which point [[Hilarity Ensues|Hilarity Ensued]]. The conflict was ultimately resolved by Chip unexpectedly turning out to be a lousy field hockey player compared to the more experienced girls, and [[Broken Aesop|Learning a Valuable Lesson]].

* One episode of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' has a coach putting a robot on his baseball team as the pitcher - ain't no rule against that. {{spoiler|But then the team doctor informs him that the rules ''do'' say a baseball team consists of "nine ''men''". Trying to correct this by giving the robot a heart ruins it.}}

* ''[[Strangers With Candy]]'': Ain't no rule that says a participant in the father-student sack race can't be the cremated remains of the student's father in an urn. There * is* a rule that states "50% or more of the daddy must pass the finish line;" unfortunately for Jerri, at least 75% of her father's ashes had [[Ashes to Crashes|spilled out]] while she raced.

* On ''[[I Carly]]'' There's no rule that specifically states that a full-grown adult can't wrestle in a community wrestling league. The pamphlet only ''recommended'' the activity to boys 6-10.

** This also doesn't stop Sam from challenging the [[Jerkass]] doing so and beating him.

** Another incident has [[Walking Shirtless Scene|Gibby]] show there wasn't any rule requiring him to wear a shirt at school. Funnily enough, they do have one against wearing turtleneck sweaters.

** Having gone to law school (for three days), Spencer is an expert at finding loopholes:

*** After Nevel trapped iCarly in being forced to get him a new car they couldn't afford, Spencer finds a loophole in the FCC's definition of a new car as a 'unique vehicle that's never been state registered and can go up to 25 miles per hour under its own power'. He modifies the replica star cruiser he got off the internet to be able to move under its own power. Because its unique (one of the kind), has never been state registered, and can go up to 25 miles an hour (proven when Nevel tries to drive it and destroys a flower shop), it technically counts as a new car.

*** When Sam gets them in legal trouble for getting money off children online, Spencer discovers they can legally keep the money if they give a product or service in return, and he just so happens to be selling fudgeballs for the Sunshine Girls.

*** When the gang is forced to talk about a terrible (and dangerous) line of shoes in a positive way which is enraging their fanbase, Spencer finds a loophole, they have to be talking about them in a positive way, doesn't say they can't reveal the faults of the shoe so long as they do it in a 'positive way'.

* In one episode of ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'', Joy enters a mother-daughter beauty pageant. Ain't no rule that her mother has to be ''alive''.

* Classic [[Professional Wrestling]] trope. The most obvious is the loophole that a title (usually) can't change hands unless the victory is 'clean'; if a heel were to, say, disqualify himself by hitting an opponent (restrained by his allies) in the groin with a foreign object while outside the ring over ten seconds (are there any other rules I'm forgetting?), he'd retain it. And then there's the classic No Holds Barred/Street Fight/Hardcore match, where there Ain't No Rules. Aside from 'win via pinfall or submission', of course.

** As with so many other things, Eddie Guerrero was the master of this. While the ref was distracted, he would grab a chair, hit it against something to make a noise, throw it to his opponent, and then lay down. The ref would reach the logical conclusion, and DQ his opponent. Ain't no rule against giving your opponent a weapon.

* [[wikipedia:Michael Larson|Michael Larson]] managed to take home $110,000 in winnings on ''[[Press Your Luck]]'' by finding and exploiting a flaw in the way in the game worked. By freeze-framing videotapes of the show and memorizing the patterns in which the light moved around the board, Larson was able to time his buzzer presses so that they always stopped on the most advantageous squares. CBS protested, but in the end, they were forced to give Larson the money because even though his win was far from kosher, nothing he did was technically against the rules. However, they promptly reprogrammed the board to make this stunt significantly harder to replicate.

* ''[[The Colbert Report (TV)|The Colbert Report]]'': In a [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/181202/november-15-2005/formidable-opponent---torture segment of] ''Formidable Opponent'' where Stephen debates himself one of the Stephens argue that torture is constitutional. The constitution might forbid ''cruel and unusual punishment'' but that's not a problem according to Stephen if torture is used so often it is no longer unusual.

* BBC proto-[[Reality TV]] show ''[[Now Get Out of That]]'' featured this as part of the challenges themselves, which were sometimes worded very specifically to allow this.

* One ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' parody of lawyer commercials featuring Dana Carvey was base on this trope:

{{quote| '''Carvey:''' (wearing enormous, obvious hearing aids) "Attorney Dave Miller got me ten million dollars after he told me to ram this piece of spaghetti through my ear drums. The box didn't say not to! Thanks, Dave Miller!"}}

* On ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel Air]]'', the dress code at the prep school Will and Carlton attend says that students must wear the school blazer and a tie tied in a double Windsor knot. However, the rule does not state that the tie cannot be worn on one's head. It also says nothing about sewing bright red lining into the blazer and wearing it inside out. Will does both.

** The lining was already in the blazer, he merely turned said blazer inside out. Getting away with it caused several other students to follow suit.

* Lampshaded in the ESPN Sports Science episode about hockey goalies: while there Ain't No Rule about what size the goalie can be, even the fattest man in the world wouldn't be able to take up enough space to block the entire goal, and even average hockey players can get pucks into the spaces that he leaves open.

** There is actually a rule that would prevent such a player from being a goalie: the rule about [http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=26285 how large a jersey can be] (and that you must wear one).

* The detectives of ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' once raided a place selling mail-order "used Homecoming Queen undergarments". The Homecoming Queens in question were senior citizens, and making a ''bundle''. They didn't say that the undergarments belonged to young girls, after all.

* Apparently, in ''[[Glee]]'' there Ain't No Rule against a wheelchair user being bowled down the field like a human cannonball in football. This may well not actually be true in [[Real Life]].

* In ''[[Supernatural]]'', angels must get permission to inhabit a person's body. Unfortunately, there's no rule against [[Cold-Blooded Torture|torturing people]] and [[Shame If Something Happened|their loved ones]] in order to get permission.

* In ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'', The Witches Council rules seem to be ''made'' for this. They even have a rule that says "There's always a loophole."

* [[The Drew Carey Show]] had an episode where the four protagonists were arrested and forced by the court to stay away from each other starting from when they left the courthouse. [[The Ditz|Oswald]] then decided that they should just stay in the courthouse. This trope was then [[Subverted Trope|subverted]] when the judge changed their wording to "immediately''.

* In the prologue of a [[Malcolm in The Middle|Malcolm in the Middle]] episode, Malcolm and Reese were playing football in the house until their mother told them not to. They then started throwing the football "through" the house until she told them not to. The boys kept looking for loopholes through their orders until it ended with Malcolm and Reese in their respective bedrooms, sitting at their windows, and still throwing the football at each other. Malcolm told Reese it wasn't fun anymore and Reese replied that no longer was the idea.

** In another story, Malcolm was in charge of the school paper and was forbidden from posting a certain article. In retaliation, [[Start My Own|he started his own independent paper]] and distributed it as close to school as possible without being within its jurisdiction so they'd have no say to whatever he publishes in his paper.

* In the final season of ''[[Benson]]'', Gov. Gatling used a loop hole in the state constitution's term limit language to run for a third term, since it stated that only affiliated party members were barred. It didn't say anything about someone running as an independent.

* In ''The Great Food Truck Race 2'', the teams were told to take some meat from a certain storage and make an original sausage to be judged. Whoever won would be given something to help out in their actual challenge. Korilla BBQ figured they had no chance against the other teams and considering they only had a hundred dollars to start their challenge, they opted to simply take ingredients from the storage to be used in the actual challenge and didn't bother making a sausage. The judge admitted that this was smart.

** Korilla BBQ seems to be fond of this. When the contestants were given 5 dollars each and told that they could spend no more to make a single dish to be judged, Korilla BBQ raided the condiment stand.

* This appears to be Kirk's policy with the Prime Directive in [[Star Trek the Original Series]]: the Prime Directive mentions healthy and/or natural development, depending on the quote in question... which of course means a captain is free to argue about what constitutes natural and healthy development for a culture.<ref>In his defence, this seems to be an extension of that era's Starfleet policy, given The Paradise Syndrome, and so may not be quite so much blatant cheating as it'd seem in light of the policies of [[Star Trek the Next Generation|later]] eras</ref>

* On ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', Cory and Shawn [[Riddle for The Ages|somehow]] move Rachel's car into her dorm room as part of an [[Escalating War]] and Rachel tries to get them in trouble with Mr. Feeny but he refuses to punish them because there aren't any rules against parking a car in a dorm room.

* Used by Klinger in Series/Mash when Col. Potter took command. The Colonel ordered Klinger to wear nothing but U.S. military uniforms. After enduring some issues with his regular issue uniform, he wears a female sailor's uniform from his Shirley Temple Collection.

* In earlier seasons of ''[[The Amazing Race]]'', it was common to see teams like Rob & Amber (Seasons 7 & 11) and Charla & Mirna (Seasons 5 & 11) convince locals to go along with them on legs, helping them navigate past the other teams. Luckily, this loophole was closed after All-Stars.

* On the game show ''[[Lingo]]'', the object is to guess a five-letter word and spell it. Host Chuck Woolery often mentioned "it's not what you say, it's what you spell". This has led to people occasionally abusing this rule upon realizing they've accidentally guessed a six-letter word ("Breath. B-R-E-A...D", which is ruled as a guess for "Bread"). One team said one word and spelled another on the fly ''four times'' in the course of two rounds, to their advantage and Chuck's amusement.

* In season 8 of French version of ''[[Peking Express]]'', the teams must gather 5 people named Kim before being allowed to leave Jeonju. Ain't no rule stating two teams can't go to the checkpoint with the same people. Cécilia & Joel's and Gérard & Cédric's teams having found each two people named Kim work together to find a fifth and go to the checkpoint one after the other with those 5.

* On ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' Barney is at a casino and tries to ride off on a motorcycle that was the jackpot prize for a slot machine he hadn't won. Casino security stops him, but they find they can't punish him because there isn't a rule saying you can't ride a motorcycle on the casino floor. Barney gets off scott-free, and from that day forward the casino has a "No motorcycles on the casino floor" sign prominently displayed.

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

* In order for the championship to be exchange, the match must in won in a “clean finish” meaning a disqualification won’t count. This mean if a wrestler who the champion can keep the title if DQ, even if in a lost in that way. However, this rule is discarded if the match on only be won by pin-fall or submission, such as an extreme rules match.

** This is how Dean Ambrose was able keep his United States Championship from giving it to [[Mark Henry (Wrestling)|Mark Henry]] since other Shield members intervene, resulted in Ambrose losing via DQ.

*** {{spoiler| [[Cameron (Wrestling)|Cameron]]}} was also screwed by this clause during her match [[AJ Lee (Wrestling)|AJ]] at the 2014 '''Elimination Chamber''', thanks to {{spoiler| Tamina Snuka interfering}}. Considering, {{spoiler| Tamina}} is the daughter of {{spoiler| Jimmy Snuka}}, so she know about this rule to ensure AJ keeps her title.

** This also applies for a count out rule. {{spoiler| Naomi}} got screwed out of this one on the March 24, 2014 episode of RAW when {{spoiler| AJ}} got herself a loss in this way but kept her title… on purpose. Of course, {{spoiler| Vickie}} had enough and ordered a match at Wrestle Mania for the Divas Championship... [[Who's Laughing Now?]]

* When comes to the '''''[[Royal Rumble]]''''', the only way for an elimination to count is for a wrestler to be thrown over the top rope and both feet must hit the floor.

** However, there are no rules about [[Kofi Kingston (Wresting)|hand-walking, landing on chairs, landing of the barricades]], and [[Rey Mysterio Jr (Wrestling)|landing on other fallen wrestlers]].

** Top Rope Only, through the ropes... you're safe.

** The DQ is going before your number, but how you enter isn't stated.

** When it comes to weapons, chairs and trash cans... no rule against them, but chainsaw... [[Obvious Rule Patch|there is a rule about that]].

** Though it’s advertised to have Superstars, i.e. male wrestlers, but there are no rules that it has to be men, hence why three WWE Divas entered the matches.

** Midget wrestlers are also allowed, which it’s how [[Hornswoggle (Wrestling)|Hornswoggle]] joined in 2011 and El Tortio in 2014.

** While dressing up as an animal is allowed, there were once [[Animal Athlete Loophole|no rules on having a real animal in the match]]. [[Jake Roberts (Wrestling)|Jake "The Snake" Roberts]] took advantage of this in 1989 and 1996 by bring a real snake.

* For the [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|Ring of Fire]], the fire is suppose to keep for outside interference though the match is to be won by pin-fall and/or submission. However, Harper and Rowan were able to find a loophole… just put a fire-resistant blanket since there wasn't a rule against it.

* While the "rule once unmask must stay like that", there isn't a rule against for [[Masked Luchador]] to have a back-up mask, which [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tFjdA9pd2c Sin Cara] happen to have.

** However, the rule about the removal of mask has to be in official match known as Luchas de Apuestas, or wager match. If removed by an opposite in other circumstances, it counts as disqualification in Lucha libre.

* While outside interference will result in a DQ if the rules applies and seen by a referee, but there seems no rules about any distraction. Many wrestlers, mostly [[Heel]]s, have used this method.

* Speaking of outside interference, apparently there wasn't a rule against that at an '''Elimination Chamber''' since one can only win by pinfall or submission, how else did {{spoiler| Bray Wyatt}} helped out {{spoiler|[[Randy Orton (Wrestling)|Randy Orton]]}} keep his titles, much to the dismay of {{spoiler| [[John Cena (Wrestling)|John Cena]]}}.

* Foreign objects are usually illegal unless they’re part of the outfit or in certain matches, which is how El Tortio gets away with this... since he’s dressed as a bull with includes the horns. This was even pointed out an episode of RAW that was on Veteran’s Day 2013, though the event was held in England. Naturally, let it to the announcers to go for animal jokes.

{{Quote| '''Jerry Lawler''': Can’t believe the referee doesn’t consider those horns foreign objects.

'''JBL''': We are foreign.}}

== Newspaper Comics ==

* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes|Calvin]]'' once responded to the test question "Explain Newton's First Law of Motion in [[Exact Words|your own words]]" with, "Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz."

** Another example:

{{quote| '''Mrs. Wormwood:''' CALVIN, PAY ATTENTION! We're studying ''geography''! Now, what state do you live in?<br />

'''Calvin:''' Denial.<br />

'''Mrs. Wormwood:''' *sigh* I don't suppose I can argue with that... }}

* Employed by Peter in ''[[FoxTrot]]'', where he writes a book report three pages long in a massive font. Apparently, the teacher didn't say anything about font size.

* The [[Pointy-Haired Boss]] in ''[[Dilbert]]'' once instituted a company policy where each bug fixed would earn the fixer a $10 bonus. However, [http://search.dilbert.com/search?p=Q&lbc=dilbert&ts=custom&w=Bug%20Bonus&method=and&view=list&filter=type%3acomic=date+rev there was no rule against adding new bugs for the sole purpose of fixing them.]

* In one strip of [[Garfield]] when the eponymous cat was on a diet, he invoked this trope when he realized a cake was ''carrot''.

** Not to mention the time Jon tried to teach Garfield self-control. He left a box of kitty treats in the room Garfield was in, telling him not to touch it. He left the room, then reentered a short while later. {{spoiler|Garfield took ''everything'' except the box.}}

** Even more audacious when Garfield was on another diet and Jon told him "You may have a salad." Garfield promptly helped himself to some pork chops, and when Jon called him out he claimed that no one had ever told him that pork chops were ''not'' a salad!

** And once again: "This salad needs something. I think I'll garnish it. With a '''''ham!"''' *wham*''

* In ''[[Peanuts]]'', Lucy often uses this trope to trick Charlie Brown into kicking the football. The format is as follows:

{{quote| '''Lucy''': I'll hold the ball and you come running and kick it.<br />

'''Charlie Brown''': I'm not falling for that again!<br />

'''Lucy''': <insert apparently airtight promise here> (e.g. "[[Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown|Here's a signed document, testifying that I promise not to pull it away.]]")<br />

'''Charlie Brown''': Okay, I guess you mean it this time. (e.g. "It is signed! It's a signed document. I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong. This year I'm really gonna kick that football.")<br />

''[Lucy pulls the football away yet again]''<br />

'''Lucy''': <insert explanation of the loophole she left herself> (e.g. "Peculiar thing about this document -- it wasn't ever notarized.") }}

== Tabletop Games and Board Games ==

* Old time wargamers of the Avalon Hill type may remember the nightmarish nonsense—like losing all of the British Empire to an attack carried out on London by a single airborne unit—that followed trying to play ''Rise and Decline of the Third Reich'' in its first edition in the mid 1970s. (The game's designer, John Prados, is brilliant at concept but, even in the seventh edition published in 2000, proved that he STILL can't write rules for doodly.....)

* Apparently, the official rules of [[Chess (Tabletop Game)|Chess]] once had a loophole that rendered the game 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qxf7 mate a victory for White. Although the White Queen cannot move this way legally, checkmate ended the game. The other side could only claim an illegal move while the game was in play. After a checkmate, legal move or not, it was too late. This is just the most famous example of how this major flaw in the rules could be exploited.

** The current FIDE Laws now state that checkmate ends the game, provided the move that brought it about was legal. Which ends that one.

** For a while, there was no rule that you couldn't promote a pawn into an ''enemy'' piece to block the other player's path.

*** There is a similar case of promoting a pawn into a ''king''.

*** Castling can be performed with a king and a rook which have never moved from the position they were placed. Which led to someone promoting their king's pawn into a rook and using it to castle ''vertically'', until the rules were rewritten to prevent this.

* Scrabble. It is, technically, ''perfectly legal'' to [[Kwyjibo|play words that don't exist]] - you just have to pay the penalty if you're challenged. If you can bluff your opponents into thinking it's a real word and not challenging, you're good to go.

** An episode of CSI featured a [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo]] Scrabble player who used this as his play style. He would play [[Blatant Lies|a fake word (in this example: "exvin") and bluff his opponent]] (the justifying definition: "a wine aficionado that no longer drinks"). When the opponent [[Ironic Echo|extended the word ("exvins")]], the first player would call a challenge, at which point the opponent had to pick up all the offending letter tiles in addition to the one he played and take a penalty. [[Asshole Victim|The player]] ended up literally [[Quip to Black|choking on his words]].

* There's a reason the comprehensive rules and errata for [[Magic the Gathering]] is hundreds of pages long and reads like a federal tax code. The rule-makers are constantly having to close odd loopholes the players figure out with each new batch of cards and the thousands of possible interactions that open up.

** One of the most (in)famous examples of Magic rule bending is such: There was a card called the [http://magiccards.info/un/en/236.html Chaos Orb] which had the ability to take out of play any card(s) it landed on after you flipped it in the air. One [[Magnificent Bastard|clever player]] TORE UP his Chaos Orb and [[Game Breaker|sprinkled the pieces all over his opponent's playing area]], thus effectively [[Hilarity Ensues|removing most of those cards from the game]]. The Tournament judge ruled the maneuver legal, as nowhere did it say the card had to be in one piece.

*** The other loophole was for the opposing player to catch the card in the air then either hold on to it (thus it never landed), or drop it on any card they choose. Errata for the eventually specified that you couldn't interfere.

** If there was such a ruling (they weren't systematically recorded in those days), it was overturned in 1994 with a [[Word of God]] [[Obvious Rule Patch|ruling]] that tearing up the card made it "marked", and you would lose the match for playing with a marked card. You would then be required to replace it with ''another'' Chaos Orb before the next round started or you would lose ''that'' match for illegally changing your deck configuration. Loophole Abuse cuts both ways.

** This was subsequently parodied in ''Magic: Unglued'' with the card "Chaos Confetti".

** When used as intended Chaos Orb spawned another loophole: players would spread their cards out over a ludicrously large area so Chaos Orb couldn't touch more than one when it landed, or would lean their cards against things so that it was impossible to land on top of them at all. A ruling has since been made that you can't rearrange your cards after Chaos Orb enters the game; also you must not have your cards stacked or in places where your opponent can't read their name or count them.

** There are a lot of [http://www.westley.org/infinite.html looping combinations].

** Then of course there was the infamous pre-alpha version of Time Walk, with the text, "Opponent loses next turn". When it was realised that anyone playing it would cause his opponent to lose the game at the start of his next turn, it was changed to "Take an extra turn after this one".

** An urban legend claims that in one tournament, a player cast a spell with the effect "Target players loses the game," then pointed at a completely different table and said "That guy.". Of course, you can't do that, even if nothing in the rules state the target must be in the game you're playing. That's not something necessary to state explicitly. You can't cast a Lightning Bolt at a player in another game either, or cast Control Magic on one of his creatures, or Counterspell one of his spells.

* [[Munchkin]]s in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' are worse than [[Rules Lawyer]]s: some players go for full-blown Loophole Abuse.

** Players can turn ''Locate City'' into a nuclear bomb.

** Others recovered from infinite damage by drowning themselves. Taken literally, the drowning rules set your hit points to zero, even if they're negative.

*** And then ''[[Fan Nickname|It's Wet Outside]]'' lets someone make a heal check to stop drowning.

** Passing an item hand to hand is a free action (doesn't take up time), so if you line up a few thousand people you can get an object to travel miles in six seconds. Then the last person throws it.<ref>The end result is a regular thrown object, since Dungeons and Dragons only bases thrown-object damage on the strength of the thrower and size of the object.</ref>

*** You can also have one player stand on another player's shoulders and pick him up as a free action. Then the other player picks him up. Since this is all a free action, there is no time for them to fall, and thus they can fly by repeatedly picking eachother up in midair.

** Dropping an item is a free action, as well. And if you happen to be fireproof and are standing next to an enemy while carrying, say, 500 Alchemist's Fires... Though the logistics of actually carrying 500 Alchemist's Fires is a bit screwy in and of itself (seriously, you normally only have two hands to drop them from).

** [[Dungeons and Dragons]] never has loopholes. Rule 0 (the DM can change whatever rules necessary) ensures this. Of course, it's completely possible just to get something to work merely by having the moxie to think it up and try it.

*** And in almost all cases results in even more loopholes when amateurs with poor understanding of the rules to begin with try to tamper with them.

** Perhaps the most true-to-form example of this trope (at least by the alternate name, Ain't No Rule) is that while the state of Dying is explicitly defined in the rules as far as what actions are acceptable, the state of Dead has no restrictions. There literally Ain't No Rule preventing a freshly-killed player from standing up and continuing the fight.

** There's no official restriction preventing you from using the spell ''True Creation'' to make planet-destroying quantities of antimatter.

*** Besides the obvious (just saying "No,"), a GM could ask "So how many ranks do you have in 'Knowledge: Advanced Physics Not Known In This Universe' and 'Craft: Materials I've Never Heard Of?' anyway? Oh, that's right, zero. The spell fails as your caster can't decide to create something he doesn't know exists. Since the XP cost is paid even if the spell fails, I now need to establish a GP value for priceless antimatter. Huh, seems you didn't have enough XP to cast the spell anyway, so it would fail on that grounds too. You're lucky I'm a stickler for the rules, as they state you can't lose a level for this." Loophole Abuse is equally funny when pushed back in the face of a smarmy [[Rules Lawyer]].

** The various settings tend to have in-universe cases ''somewhere'' in all the history and organizations. For instance, [[Eberron|House Jorasco]] healers are not supposed to treat without payment in money... but there is nothing hindering them from ''lending'' the necessary money and then setting a task as repayment in kind for the loan.

** In universe, the infamous ''Wish'' spell. This spell can be cast by high level wizards, or can be granted by a few select creatures (like Djinns), but they should always be met with caution. Too careless wishing can result in getting the exact opposite of what was intended, depending on the maliciousness of the creature and / or the DM. For example, when wishing for a mighty artifact, the caster might grant you the artifact... by teleporting you into the tomb where the artifact is located, in the middle of it's undead guardians.

* In the [[Munchkin (Tabletop Game)|Munchkin]] card game, some people think you can freely equip and use items you are not legally able to, [[Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught|as long as you don't get caught]]. As in any game, this is cheating if made on purpose.

{{quote| "That's not the purpose of [Go Up A Level cards], but it's so vile and Munchkinly that we love it too much to say no." ''Steve Jackson Games, on whether Go Up A Level cards could be used on enemies to provoke monsters that ignore characters below a certain level.''}}

** People holding as many cards as possible in your hand and doing whatever they can to prevent others from noticing that they're holding more than five are cheating. Contrary to what some urban legend claims, it's not legal to cheat in Munchkin.

** Early versions of the Loaded Dice card did not specify that the value you choose to replace that of a die roll had to be between one and six. And there are plenty of cards to abuse this with, like one monster that gets a bonus to its level equal to the roll of one die.

* The Lore of [[Blood Bowl]] is rife with coaches doing whatever it takes to win. For example, players are strictly forbidden from carrying weapons on the pitch. Where most players figured it didn't count as a weapon if the blades were [[Scary Impractical Armor|fixed to the armour]], the Dwarves argued it meant riding a bulldozer on the field was allowed - it's not carried, is it? The actual gameplay reflects that spirit. In first and second edition of the game, the rulebooks for the various ways a player could cheat were almost as long as the actual game's rules (and even more byzantine).

* The entire concept of Pledges from ''[[Changeling: The Lost (Tabletop Game)|Changeling: The Lost]]'' practically begs the player to use this trope; as is frequently the case with [[The Fair Folk]], neither the True Fae nor Changeling Pledges recognize any such thing as "the spirit of the agreement." You just have to make very, very sure that you actually know what you're doing.

* An in-universe example from ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''. The Ecclesasty cannot have "Men-At-Arms", due to some high mucky-muck trying to take over [[The Empire]]. Cue [[Amazon Brigade]]. (Whether this was loophole abuse or the reason for the phrasing varies by source).

** The FAQ articles have had to correct some in the past. The Swooping Hawks' Intercept rule reads "the unit never requires worse than a 4+ to hit an enemy vehicle", which means that the WS 4 Swooping Hawks could hit a WS 5 Venerable Dreadnaught on a 4+ instead of a 5+ as the normal compare-WS table would indicate, for instance. An Ork list that was designed entirely around exploiting the wound allocation rules in fifth edition by giving every model in every unit different gear was briefly popular on the tournament scene.

* This trope is [[Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG|Mr. Welch's]] bread and butter, even if the GM doesn't tend to be cooperative. The phrase "even if the rules allow it" and variants thereof appear no less than 47 times throughout the ever-growing list.

* There are a ''lot'' of infamous combos and infinite loops in ''Yu-Gi-Oh'' that result from this. The vast majority of them involves exploitation of the ruling that, except in very rare cases, a monster's effect is "reset" when it is flipped face-down or removed from the field temporarily, allowing you to reuse the same effect multiple times in one turn, with the right setup.

** Before it was banned, the card Last Turn was the subject of quite a few loopholes, mainly due to the fact that it didn't negate monster effects while it was in use. To wit, when it's activated, both players choose a monster to be on the field (the activator from their field, the opponent from their deck) and battle; whoever has a monster remaining on the field after the battle wins, otherwise it's a tie. Thing is, the monster left on the field doesn't have to be the one the player chose for the battle, and the card doesn't negate monster effects, so if you have a monster on the field that can prevent Special Summons (thus, preventing the opponent from getting out their chosen monster), or one that can summon out a monster when destroyed (thus leaving you with a monster after the battle), you can easily screw over the opponent with it.

* in the Axis & Allies miniatures game, air units were a late addition, meaning a lot of previous cards weren't prepared for their entry. Thus, units that should not be able to attack planes, like mortars and certain assault guns, can. Worst of all, [[Land Mine Goes Click|land mines]] can affect planes. Those are some ''epically'' [[wikipedia:Bouncing Betty|bouncing betties]].

** Errata dictates that units with the "bombardment" ability can no longer attack planes, eliminating most ground artillery from the equation—but mines and mortars are still okay.

* In [[Mutant UA]] a robot-class player or NPC could have drones as an "option". Maximum would be 4 without any penalties for too many options, but drones could have their own options, deliberately so for the sake of being useful, but nothing states they couldn't have drones as well. Cue infinite horde of massively powerful drones! (although rule 0 almost always stops this as it's crazy-powerful.

* In the CCG "EVE: The Second Genesis" one of the main ways to gain money (used to play further cards) are location cards. One such location has the effect "When this card comes into play, sacrifice a location". The officially sanctioned loophole around this is to play the card into an uncontrolled region. Because the region is uncontrolled, the location is uncontrolled too and the effect does not activate...

== Video Games ==

* Leet Speek, or "1337 sp33k" was this to bypass server filters on curse words.

* [[Aint No Rule]] against "Ghosting" or "Stream-sniping".

** To elaborate, professional people often stream their games. Their opponents [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|are well aware of this]], and will join in their stream as an anonymous watcher or as a dummy-account and spy on their opponents when the game doesn't let them do it. Against the rules? Nope - [[Aint No Rule]] saying you can't do it, since it's not part of the game itself.

* The party in ''[[Tales of Hearts (Video Game)|Tales of Hearts]]'' scales the tall [[It's All Upstairs From Here|Tower of Heroes King's Cross]] as part of the [[Inevitable Tournament]], only to be greeted by the recurring tourney champ Ameth, who informs them that there Ain't No Rule about ''[[Dungeon Bypass|riding an airship to the top of the tower]]''.

* Referenced in ''~Baldur's Gate~ II'' with a magic ring that fires a blast of fire. The text indicates it was used in a duel between two drow, where each was allowed the use of one magical item. It was used by a friend of one of them, who shot their opponent in the back from the stands. [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|Being drow]], everyone agreed it was a brilliant interpretation of the rules.

* ''[[The World Ends With You (Video Game)|The World Ends With You]]'' has the entry fee, in which the Conductor takes from the player whatever is most valuable to him or her. The loophole is that the Conductor gets to choose what that entry fee is. {{spoiler|In Week 2, he takes Shiki Misaki as the fee to hide the fact that he can't return her to life. In week 3 Kitaniji takes every other player from the game as Neku's entry fee because a player is helpless without a partner. This creates a situation so [[Unwinnable]] that even Uzuki and Kariya are doubtful of its morality. Thankfully there was Beat, a Reaper who was willing to [[Heel Face Turn]].}}

* ''[[Sim City|Sim City 4 Deluxe]]'' can ultimately allow a player (through some basic building making and [[Game Mod|basic modding]] of course) to have apartments on light density zones and who knows what else. Sure, it says no apartments develop on light density, but who said anything about ''pencil towers'' or ''duplexes'' for that matter if you truly cared? In fact, half of modding the game ''is'' about ballooning zone densities to unbelievable sizes with building types.

* In the ''[[Half Life]]'' expansion ''Opposing Forces'' protagonist Adrian Shephard can avoid the order to kill Black Mesa personnel to cover up the incident because he never officially got that part of his orders. He should be able to reasonably deduce that part of his orders by asking (or just watching) the others, but remains purposefully ignorant.

* Explicitly invoked by Aegis in ''[[Persona 3]]'': "Nowhere in the school regulations does it state that canines are prohibited from attending school." {{spoiler|It doesn't happen.}}

* ''My World, My Way'' is built around "Ain't no rule" as a gameplay aspect. Why struggle when whining can change your situation?

* Sissel turns this in ''[[Ghost Trick]]''. {{spoiler|He can only go back to four minutes before someone dies. But Yomiel's body technically died ten years ago and stayed suspended at the moment of death until the meteorite was removed to make him truly dead. Sissel uses Yomiel's body to go back ten years into the past and avert the events that made Yomiel into a ghost in the first place, thus changing the entire timeline to save everyone.}}

* Given that it was a widely-played MMORPG, ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has had a few instances, some controversial, some not:

** Given that [http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=5447 this] achievement is typically extremely difficult (or, depending on your class, nearly impossible), it's generally considered that the ''intended'' way of achieving it is through abusing the rather literal wording of the achievement<ref>All that's required is turning in the quest within 90 seconds of striking the crystal, namely the first objective that triggers the upcoming battle. You can turn in the quest to the NPC that spawns very closely. ''There is nothing actually stopping you striking the crystal a second time before turning in the quest.''</ref>

** Another Loophole Abuse in the game was involving Warlocks. Demonology warlocks used to have a talent point where their active pet would give them a buff, and if they sacrificed it, they would be given a different buff to replace the one granted by the pet. However, one curious player who had invested in engineering attempted to use the goblin jumper cables on his pet, and to his surprise, the pet then came back to life and granted them the buff...while they still had the buff from sacrificing the demon on top of it. Other warlocks begun to try this too, although it was still a pretty low chance of success, it worked. It wasn't even removed in an [[Obvious Rule Patch]], believe it or not - Blizzard even ''encouraged'' people to try it. It was removed before expansions, though.

** Before it was removed, someone described a pretty creative use of [[Hello, Insert Name Here]] as a hunter. [[Aint No Rule]] saying you can't give your pet the same name as you to screw up targeting macros.

*** [[Aint No Rule]] against making a couple toons for [[PvP]] and then giving them really long names that're hard to type (and start with the same letter) or really similar names for the same purpose.

** Griefing has had ''many'' loopholes....

*** "Rooftop camping". Before there was no rule against people with ranged attacks (especially hunters) standing on the roof of a building in contested territory and firing. Normally, guards should have been able to come in and hurt them, but since the guards could not get up to the roof, couldn't do anything to stop players from picking off others on the ground. Duskwood was the best place to do this because there was a ledge where you could jump onto a roof and the guards woudln't spawn. However, they would normally die from you and not suffer durability loss - in Gadgetzan, it was ''far'' more annoying, because people would just shoot ''one'' person and then feign death as the guards run over and pummel the poor player to death. Snipers were added on the roofs to prevent this.

*** In neutral Goblin cities (Booty Bay, Ratchet, Gadgetzan, Everlook), Rogues would often grief players by sneaking up to them, sticking a knife in their side, and then vanishing while the guards beat up the player who was busy wondering what the hell was going on.

** [[Aint No Rule]] against kiting ridiculously strong monsters into capital cities.

** A few rather hilarious examples resulted in an [[Obvious Rule Patch]]:

*** Before it was given to Mages as a talent, a boss in Molten Core named Baron Geddon would make a certain raid member a "living bomb" which would cause them to eventually explode and damage all people nearby. He could also do this to pets, too - and people realized that you could get past this by simply dismissing the pet. However, one time a hunter did this and then called it out in the middle of a heavily populated city...and he still ahd the living bomb debuff. A few seconds later, there was a mountain of corpses in the middle of the auction House. Cue people replicating this until it was fixed in a patch.

*** The famous [http://www.wowwiki.com/Corrupted_Blood Corrupted Blood Incident] resulted from a hunter taking an infected pet into Ironforge&Orgrimmar and spreading the plague across the cities.

*** [[Aint No Rule]] against putting a single item for sale at a huge price so people buying stuff for crafting professions accidentally buy one item instead of a full stack.

*** In one instance, a programming oversight resulted in a Worgen mob being able to be tamed. So a bunch of hunters eventually caught and tamed this pet. [[Unfortunate Implications]] resulted as Worgen became playable characters around this time..

** [[Aint No Rule]] against bringing friend(s) into the Raid Finder and have them roll on gear they don't need to increase the chances that you'll win it.

** A rare ''positive'' example that could honestly have been done in any game (and has [[Urban Legend of Zelda|been rumoured to have been done in Majora's Mask before]]), a player in a guild had a buddy who was rendered blind by an accident while stationed in Iraq. He regularly performs very well in-game, so how does he do it? The blind player and his friend acting as a "Seeing eye dog" used mods, macros, and private-sound channels so that he could literally play the game blind.

* Humans in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' under the Treaty of Farixen are only allowed to build one dreadnought per every five the Turians have. Instead they began [[The Battlestar|building carriers]] which were not subject to any restrictions. Of course, this was mostly due to the fact that Humans were the ones to introduce the concept of Carriers to the Galaxy ''in the first place.''

** In ''Mass Effect 3'', there are several ways the quarians try to get around this rule: they were arming every single ship they had so even the huge ships would be armed (and as such weren't purpose-built dreadnoughts), they were salvaging destroyed dreadnoughts thus making what the quarians were doing technically ''re''building them, [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty|the Council is too busy prosecuting the war with the Reapers to pay attention to them]], and even if the council wasn't, the quarians never signed the treaty in the first place and they largely operate outside the Council's jurisdiction anyway.

* Saturos in ''[[Golden Sun (Video Game)|Golden Sun]]'' [[Magnificent Bastard|lives and breathes this trope]], routinely making the heroes offers that he words so they don't get anything out of them. The most memorable deal is offering [[Always Save the Girl|a girl's safety]] in exchange for a [[MacGuffin]]... a girl that he needed safe anyway, and he never said anything about letting her go. It's [[Ensemble Darkhorse|part of his charm.]]

* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' has an interesting one. There are laws limiting the use of nuclear missiles. Metal Gear Rex uses a rail-gun to fire nuclear ''warheads''.

* In ''[[Disgaea]] 2'' you will repeatedly be subpoenaed by the Dark Court for various "crimes" committed by your party members. This being the Netherworld, you ''want'' to have extensive crime records, since it gives benefits. While the rules stipulate that a person has to find and enter the gate to the Dark Court, it doesn't actually have to be the person who did the crime. It also doesn't say only ''one'' person has to go in - you can form a ladder and throw up to nine people before the judge, who will write up everyone for this underhanded behavior.

* Played with in ''[[Inazuma Eleven]] 3'', when Coach Kudou forbids the entire team from going outside to practice or play soccer. To Endou, no soccer is probably as bad as having no food to eat, so he grows restless and starts kicking a soccer ball around indoors. Several of his teammates notice and realize that Kudou only forbade practicing ''outside'', so they start doing [[Improvised Training]] ''indoors'', as silly as that may sound. But then it turns out this was exactly what Coach Kudou ''wanted'' them to do, as being able to control and keep possession of the ball within tight boundaries [[Chekhov's Skill|would turn out to be extremely useful]] against their next opponents' tactics.

* In ''[[Runescape]]'', the "Falador Massacre" was a result of a player abusing a glitch. The first player to reach level 99 of Construction held a party in his house. Eventually, so many players flooded the house that it crashed and booted them all to Falador. However, players inside the arena in the player's house were still flagged for [[PvP]] (which the other players weren't, and was disabled in that zone at the time) and proceeded to go on a killing spree.

* The Cavern of Transcendence trial in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' required a team to get through the enemy-filled caves beneath the Hollows and then enter the Cavern, a massive room filled with monsters, and then activate 8 triggers (one for each team member) simultaneously that were spread throughout the room, in 90 minutes after receiving the mission. The obvious intended challenge was obviously for the team to fight through the caves, then clear out the monsters before activating the triggers. However, activating the triggers is all that's required to actually successfully complete the trial. A standard tactic quickly became having one team member with superspeed (which has a stealth benefit) and/or flight plus invisibility or some kind of stealth power, and recall (teleporting one teammate to your position) race through the caves, past all the enemy mobs, to the Cavern door and teleport in teammates. Upon entering the Cavern, the stealth teleporter would go to each trigger in turn and bring in a teammate, again without alerting any of the monsters. End result? A 90 minute trial that could be finished in a few minutes without having to engage a single enemy.

* A shortcoming in the engine that supported ''[[Defense of the Ancients]]'' allowed players to kill their own mobs. So what this encouraged was someone to stay behind and kill every single one of "Their" mobs so the enemies couldn't get experience at all, and thus the "Deny" mechanic was born.

** The sequel by Valve added a pause feature so people don't have to have a [[Bladder of Steel]] (or in case something happens that makes their game client crash.) don't cost their team the game. In order to prevent people from using this as an excuse to pause the game and plan ganks or other elaborate plans, any person can force-unpause the game. However, this appears to have encouraged the perverse [[Double Standard]] that whenever the afk player is on ''their'' team, the other team will wait for them...and whenever they're on ''your'' team, you can practically hear the other team saying, "[[Aint No Rule]] saying we can't constantly force-unpause the game and get further ahead while they're gone,"

* In-game example in [[The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim]]: If you use [[Make Me Wanna Shout|Thu'um shouts]] within the view of a hold's guards, they'll get on your case and tell you to stop that "... shouting thing". If you take the "Make me" route in the dialog, they say there isn't any rule really, and then cut off with "I'm watching you..."

* ''[[League of Legends]]'' often gives deals to get champion skins for free. However, if you do not have the champion in question, you can still get the champion ''and'' the skin for free.

* Related, PC gamer magazine often runs a code to receive a freebie for a game in its magazine, such as a free pet in ''[[Guild Wars]]'' or a free champion (and a skin) in ''[[League of Legends]]''. There's always at least one person who goes onto their forums and asks them for a new code because theirs didn't work - [[Aint No Rule]] saying people can't just go into a magazine store, take a copy of the magazine, snap a picture with their phone or write it down, and then enter it into the game without having to pay a cent for the magazine.

* ''[[Fate Stay Night]]'' is filled with these.

** The Holy Grail War is [[There Can Be Only One|a fight between Servants]]. [[Aint No Rule]] that you can't kill a Master (who is usually a [[Squishy Wizard]]) to make their Servant disappear.

** A Master is given the power to summon one Servant, and if he loses it he can form a contract with a Servant whose Master was killed. [[Aint No Rule]] that he can't form contracts with multiple Servants at once.

** [[Aint No Rule]] that a Servant can't summon another Servant. Or that Assassin has to be an actual assassin, apparently.

** [[Aint No Rule]] that {{spoiler|the supervisor of the war}} can't compete in the war.

** The [[The Berserker|Berserker]] class has probably ''never'' been used for its original purpose (powering up a weak Servant to usable levels), with every known Master opting to make a powerful Servant even more powerful.

** [[Aint No Rule]] that you have to wait until the war begins to summon your Servant.

** Broken Phantasm is a technique that releases all the power in a Servant's legendary weapon at once, destroying it in the process. [[Aint No Rule]] that you can't use it with temporary copies of weapons.

** From the 3rd Holy Grail war in the backstory and ''[[Fate Hollow Ataraxia]]'': [[Aint No Rule]] that you can't apply your family's "cast spells twice" ability to the ritual that summons Saber. Meanwhile, the summoning of Angra Mainyu as Avenger was an attempt at [[Aint No Rule]] that suffered from [[Epic Fail]] ''and'' [[Gone Horribly Right]] ({{spoiler|They tried to summon the god of evil and got a random guy whom early humans used as a scapegoat, who has no powers and only qualifies as a Servant by being the embodiment of humanity's wish for [[Pure Evil]] to exist in a form they can see. When he dies his spirit enters the Grail... [[Oh Crap|which grants wishes.]]}}).

* Similar to Germany before [[World War Two]] (see [[Real Life]] example below), USSR in ''[[Command and Conquer|Red Alert 2]]'' manages to build up a large military partly through this trope. One of the restrictions is the limitation on military aircraft. So, the Soviets build thousands of armored zeppeling to act as bombers. [[Aint No Rule]] about mind-controlling giant squids to sink Allied ships, right? Of course, having powerful psychics under your command means you can have every Allied inspector come back saying exactly what you want him to say, even if he just saw a column of Apocalypse tanks roll by.

* [[Tin Star]] has an example, with the sheriff Tin Star trying to figure out how to deal with an invasion of bandits dressed up as women without breaking the code "never shoot women and children".

{{quote| '''Mo:''' Now what do we do, Tin Star? Why are you looking at that Good Guy Code of the West?<br />

'''Tin Star:''' Looking for loopholes. Aha!<br />

'''Mo:''' What?<br />

'''Tin Star:''' It says here "never shoot women and children."<br />

'''Mo:''' Yeah, so?<br />

'''Tin Star:''' So these are just women on their own! Get my guns, Mo! }}

* Used to thwart the fal'Cie's plan in ''[[Final Fantasy XIII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy XIII]]''. {{spoiler|The l'Cie's focus was to destroy Cocoon by killing Orphan, the fal'Cie responsible for providing the rest of the Cocoon fal'Cie with the power needed for maintaining Cocoon's vital functions. The Focus didn't say anything about what they could do ''after'' they accomplished this task, which is the loophole Fang and Vanille abuse to save Cocoon from [[Colony Drop|crashing into Gran Pulse]] and [[Kill'Em All|killing its entire populace]] as the fal'Cie wanted.}}

* The ''[[Professor Layton]]'' series absolutely ''adores'' this trope. With each game's puzzle collection, you can expect at least 20% of it to be comprised of puzzles that can only be solved by exploiting loopholes in the rules.

* Many WWE Games in recent years don't permit Divas VS Superstar matches, but there's isn't a rule about replacing the character with a "vacant" or invisible character and implied the specific sex, especially in Create-A-Story mode. This means all a gamer has to do is place a vacant character in the place of a Diva <ref>female</ref> or Superstar <ref>male</ref> and have they go after either gender. For example, a vacant character would be implied to be a Diva and can attack a Superstar.

** There also no rules against creating transgender characters either and have them fight against their "birth" sex. For example, someone can create a drag king <ref>female drag performer</ref> and fight follow Divas though dressed as a guy.

== Web Comics ==

* In the webcomic ''[[Terror Island]],'' one arc involving a competition to skateboard over a river ends with the alien baddie teleporting over the river instead; he wins, because "teleporting" is [http://www.terrorisland.net/strips/257.html one of the few things ''not'' prohibited by the contest's rules], as the people drawing it up [[Puny Earthlings|couldn't conceive of it]].

* A hilarious variation occurs in ''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'', where the crew of the mercenary ship effectively avoid any litigation by becoming legally appointed bounty hunters, hunting members of the lawyer collective. They could still be sued if anyone apart from them used non-Collective attorneys, but Massey is the only non-Collective lawyer we've seen, and he's a member of the company.

* Therkla invokes this trope to her advantage in [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0562.html this page] of [[Order of the Stick]].

* Webcomics [[Lampshade Hanging|trope-poking]]: Red Mage of ''~8-Bit Theater~'' would like to direct your attention to the [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/01/20/episode-374-so-many-valid-points/ Air Bud clause] (Ain't no rule that says you can't use dice in rock-paper-scissors). This is also Black Mage's [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/12/04/episode-359-flawless-victories/ solution to an obstacle course]: Ain't no rule that you can't just [[Dungeon Bypass|blow it up]]!

** Also [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/07/16/episode-1153-federalist-interpretation-of-physics/ here]:

{{quote| '''Black Mage:''' We're going to grab the non-fabric of this anti-space time and rip it a new one.<br />

'''Red Mage:''' Is that even possible? I'm not sure this place actually exists.<br />

'''Black Mage:''' Then there's no rule that says we can't. }}

* In the webcomic ''[[Brat Halla]]'', there ain't no rule saying that a god dueling another as a tie-breaker in the [[Tournament Arc|Pantheon Games]] can't call in his independently sentient, disembodied eyeball in a [[Humongous Mecha]] to help him. For extra amusement, after t'other god tries to cite its absence in the rules, that there ain't no rule saying you ''can'', the eyeball in its mech comes in and cites the rule in question. [http://brat-halla.com/comic/233-pantheon-games-an-eye-for-the-rules/ Linksky].

* According to ''[[The Whiteboard (Webcomic)|The Whiteboard]]'', there is no rule forbidding the use of cross-country skis in paintball games. Doc checked ''very'' carefully.

* Emily wins her first race in ''[[Misfile]]''. Ain't no rule against driving 25&nbsp;mph once you're ahead of your opponent!

* ''[http://www.ryanestrada.com/2006/01/31/comics/aki-alliance/aki-alliance-chapter-2-kendra-woodward-page-15/ Aki Alliance]'': There's a rule against wearing a headset to receive outside help during a Scrabble competition. Oddly enough, there's no rule against wearing a headset to give outside help to someone else during a Scrabble competition.

* Subverted in [http://www.fantasycomic.com/index.php?p=c553 this strip] of ''[[Chasing the Sunset]]'' where there ''is'' a specific rule about knocking out a minotaur and stealing its keys to defeat a magic trial. Because it has already been abused.

* In [[Collar 6]] Sixx plans to win her bet with Butterfly by surrendering her title to Laura and becoming her slave so that she can take part in the contest directly.

* [[Kevin and Kell]]: The Domain version of the [[Face Book]] game Farmville [http://www.kevinandkell.com/2010/kk0905.html apparently doesn't disallow players from raiding their own henhouse].

* [[Gaia Online]]'s four towns engaged in loophole abuse during the "Reject Olympics" plot, by recruiting nonhuman athletes for their teams.

** [[Evilutionary Biologist|Johnny]] K. [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Gambino]] was apparently forbidden from creating new [[Zombie Apocalypse|zombie serums]]. So for the Reject Olympics he pulled an old failed prototype from storage instead, and bummed a corpse from the Devil Imps...

* [http://www.explosm.net/comics/2243/ In this] ''[[Cyanide and Happiness]]'' strip, a character manages to get around the classic [[Three Wishes|three wishes limit clause]] ("A wish cannot be used to grant more wishes") by wishing for more genies.

* The Constitution didn't provide for insane bunny senators and therefore did not lay down a rule about what to do when one goes missing. In [[Prickly City]], this matters.

* Protoman in ''[[Bob and George]]'' does this with his [[Three Laws Compliant|Three Laws Compliance]].

{{quote| '''George''': You're a robot! You're not allowed to kill humans!<br />

'''Protoman''': That only applies if I think he's a human, which I don't. }}

* Tristan pulls this in ''[[Angel Moxie]]'' so she can get away with a [[Nonuniform Uniform]] in the form of striped stockings. She [http://www.venisproductions.com/angelmoxie/archives/4/8/486.html even recites the specific rule], noting that while there ''are'' limits on what kind of ''socks'' can be worn, stockings are allowed as an alternative and there are no such limitations for them.

* Take one tabletop-gaming [[Rules Lawyer]] from our universe and drop him into an [[RPG Mechanics Verse]] with the instructions to "grant our side victory ''by any means possible''". You now have the plot of ''[[Erfworld]]''.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'': Presumably, after [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-09-06 this strip] there's now a company policy regarding air vents, where there wasn't one previously.

* ''[[Xkcd (Webcomic)|Xkcd]]'': [http://xkcd.com/115/ "There's no rule on the books saying a meerkat can't play rugby."] Though, according to the [[Alt Text]], there ''are'' rules against gorillas and [[Air Bud|golden retrievers]].

* ''[[Fruit Incest]]'' double-subverts this one in [http://fruitincest.com/archives/rule/ "Rule"]. There's no rule against a duck playing on the school soccer team, but there ''is'' a rule that every player on the team must be enrolled as a student. But there's no rule against a duck being enrolled as a student, either.

* In ''[[Rhapsodies]]'' the local office of the [[Celestial Bureaucracy|Department of Minor Nuisances]] is unable to covertly support the Circle Band due to rules and budget concerns. [http://rhapsodies.wpmorse.com/?p=2571 Nothing wrong with doing it overtly though.]

* ''[[Freefall (Webcomic)|Freefall]]'': A vital survival skill for robots and other engineered intelligences, such as the uplifted wolf Florence Ambrose.

== Western Animation ==

* In the [[Woody Woodpecker]] short ''Ski For Two'', Woody attempts to enter a lodge owned by Wally Walrus, only to be rejected due to the lodge only allowing those with reservations to stay there. So Woody promptly gives him lots of reservations...or rather, reservations Woody has made to other resorts and lodges.

* ''[[The Simpsons (Animation)|The Simpsons]]''

** Inverted and subverted in an episode where Homer enters a ''[[Robot Wars (TV)|Robot Wars]]'' style contest as a robot. He is about to be awarded a trophy by one of the two judges. There a protest that he can't do that.

{{quote| '''Announcer 1:''' Tell me where in the rule book it says that a human can't participate in a robot fighting competition!<br />

'''Announcer 2:''' Right here, rule number 1. }}

** A similar scenario occurs when Homer [[Animal Athlete Loophole|trains a horse to be a football player]]. He then reads the rulebook which says they can't play in the NFL.

** And parodied by a mock movie trailer for "Soccer Mummy". Ain't no rule that says a centuries old Egyptian mummy can't play soccer!

** When a secret society Homer is made leader of wants to reform without him in they become the society of "No Homers". When he complains that they already let ''another'' guy named Homer in, they respond, "It says 'No Homer''s''.' We're allowed to have ''one''."

** But perhaps the funniest example occurred in an early "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episode, where Lisa dreams that she and her family purchase a magical Moroccan "monkey's paw" that grants four wishes but also finds some way to totally screw the wisher over while adhering to the wording of the wish. After the second and third wishes result in unmitigated disasters, Homer declares that he has thought of a completely foolproof wish: "I want a turkey sandwich....on rye bread....with mustard - and - ''and'' - I don't want any zombie-turkeys, and I don't want to turn into a turkey myself, and I don't want any other weird surprises. ''Got it?!''" Homer's sandwich then appears as requested, and he promptly bites into it....and then throws a tantrum because the turkey is a little dry. (See, [[Jerkass Genie|he said he didn't want any WEIRD surprises]].)

** Invoked by Homer in another "Treehouse of Horror" where he sells his soul for a donut. He eventually figures that if he didn't finish the donut, he wouldn't have to go to Hell. It works...until Homer sleepwalks to the kitchen later that night and eats it.

*** In the same episode, Homer is on trial for his soul. He's saved when Marge shows a picture of them on the back of which Homer wrote that his soul belongs to Marge. Apparently, this is legally-binding and, thus, supercedes the agreement between Homer and Ned the Devil.

** In a flashback episode showing Marge pregnant with Maggie, Marge was afraid of Homer's reaction to the pregnancy so she asked her sisters to promise not to tell him about it and they agreed. Since they promised not to tell ''Homer'' about the pregnancy, they told other people so THEY would tell him.

** That's how Cletus Spuckler could get so many pretzels (for everyone of his many children) from Marge, who was giving coupons valid for a free sample. She forgot to state that she would accept only '''one coupon per customer'''. At least this helped her to know the name of every Cletus' child...

** “Lisa's Date with Density”: Lisa complains about her [[Writing Lines|punishment]] for being amused by Nelson’s antics against Willie. When Nelson sees this, he tells her to use the multiple chalk holder that’s she’ll be done faster. Lisa tells him off, but she does take his advice since there wasn’t rule against using such device.

* ''[[South Park]]'': There also ain't no rule that a peewee hockey team can't stand in for the Colorado Avalanche against the Detroit Red Wings.

** You can't get away with saying "shit" on television once according to standards and practices. Use it [[Cluster F-Bomb|162 times]] and you can quite literally [[Get Shit Past The Radar]] via [[Refuge in Vulgarity]].

** How they got away with Muhammad in episodes 200 and 201 by using various costumed and concealing methods in script, all [[Played for Laughs]]. Of course, then they [[Screwed By the Network|just censored his name and the entire "I learned something" speech]]. Cue several episodes of [[Take That|retribution]].

* ''The Bots Master'' had a robot playing children's baseball since each team was allowed one robot. (for carrying equipment but the rule didn't specify)

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'', there is no rule that Ron can't try out for the Cheer Squad...and there ''really is'' no such rule. This episode struck a sore spot with many fans since male cheerleaders are not just common, but actually ''required'' in many cheer-squads. Apart from providing support for physically taxing performances, many school districts in the United States have rules ''requiring'' at least one male cheerleader on the squad for legal and ethical reasons. Anti-discriminations clauses in many state statues stipulate that if a school does not make available gender-segregated options for both genders for each school activity then existing programs must be made available to ''both'' genders.

** Even worse was that Ron wasn't coming on necessarily as a male cheerleader, but as the ''mascot''. Their issue? They think Ron's routine looks dumb. After Ron shows it off onscreen, one wonders if any of these girls have ever actually ''seen'' a high school (or college, for that matter) sports mascot before.

* Similar to the above example, in an episode of ''[[The Proud Family]]'', Penny wants to try out for the football team. Subverted, when she tells the coach there's no rule saying she can't play, he still refuses due to his "girl's can't play sports" viewpoint, despite the fact she is clearly better than any of the guys on the team. Double subverted when her friend's mother is a lawyer who forces the coach to let her on the team. And shockingly triple subverted when the Couch allows her on the team, but states there was no rule that made him have to let her actually participate in the game.

* ''[[King of the Hill]]'', Ain't No Rule that says a 45-year-old high school dropout can't come back and play the last game of the season for his old team, just for the sake of tying a record.<ref>In [[Real Life]] there is.</ref>

** You need Haz-Mat certification to drive a Haz-mat vehicle, but you don't need one to drive a tow truck ''carrying a Haz-mat vehicle.''

** Dale wants a guard tower built on his property, but always gets rejected by the zoning board. He abuses the loophole by building the tower below mimimum zoning standards making it a shorter and narrower than minimum height and area and not build a foundation. The inspector notices this and calls Dale a complete imbecile. The tower soon collapses.

* ''[[Animaniacs (Animation)|Animaniacs]]'': Ain't no rule that a chicken can't have whatever job he wants. Of course, no matter how well Chicken Boo does, he'll still get run out of town once he's found out.

* In an episode of ''Noddy In Toytown'', Noddy is attempting to tow a giant jelly with his car, only for it to become unhitched as he is going up a hill, so it rolls back down it. The jelly rolls into Toytown where Noddy is finally able to stop it. An amused Mr. Plod (the policeman) sees the jelly and consults his rule book, and while there is a section on jelly there is nothing against the law over speeding jellies.

* ''[[Gargoyles (Animation)|Gargoyles]]'': Puck in his opening episode manages off Loophole Abuse multiple times. Demona just didn't learn. Puck: "Did you say, ''that'' human, or that ''human''? Ah, I'll figure it out myself." And then he {{spoiler|turns said human into a gargoyle, thus ridding Demona of that ''human''. Later, he twisted another wish and turned all humans in Manhattan into Gargoyles. When Demona wished them to be turned humans, he took advantage of the fact she didn't specify which gargoyles she wanted to be turned into humans and turned Goliath's group into humans, which made Demona angrier until Puck pointed out that, as humans, Goliath's group would be easier to defeat. However, Gargoyle Eliza helped them to defeat Demona. After the Gargoyles released Puck from her grasp, he granted Demona a final wish: no longer turning stone at sunlight. He twisted the wish by turning her human instead of stone, much to her horror.}}

* In Disney's ''[[The Sword in The Stone (Disney)|The Sword in The Stone]]'', Madam Mim immediately sets ground rules for her [[Shapeshifter Showdown]] with Merlin, among which is this: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lzf1XroT6w "No make-believe things," specifically, "Pink dragons and stuff."] Of course being a foul cheat, she never had any intention of following them including at the climax when she becomes a purple dragon. When Merlin tries to call her out on this, she simply responds with, "Did I say 'No ''purple'' dragons?' ''Did I!?''" Of course, the "and stuff..." part of her "rules" clearly implies she did, but she's beyond caring at this point.

** She has no loophole to excuse her turning invisible, though.

* ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]''. Timmy and his friends are stuck in a horrible military school and his Fairy God Parents are trapped, in a vulnerable state at the end. With missiles pointed at them. They simply go around the last obstacle.

** Also Timmy pretty much always defeats the pixies using a loophole in one of their ironclad contracts.

** In the episode where Timmy ran away from home, Cosmo and Wanda took him to a carnival-themed park instead of a circus. Circuses are bound by certain child labor laws carnivals don't have to obey ("they barely obey the laws of physics!") or so Cosmo told Timmy when he explained it was not a circus.

** In ''School's out! The Musical'', Flappy Bob made his [[Heel Face Turn]] since he knows about loopholes, {{spoiler|thanks to his law education which switch the world from dull to colorful}}. When the Pixies remind him of the contact he signed with them, all Bob had to do is show them the loophole on what {{spoiler| “he”}} defines as fun, not {{spoiler| The Pixies}}.

** In '''Chin Up!''', it's reveal that there isn't rule against fairies going to conventions where people are in costumes since they're easily mistaken for follow attendees, like a comic-book convention.

** In it's [[Live Action Adaptation]], ''[[A Fairly Odd Movie Grow Up Timmy Turner (Film)|A Fairly Odd Movie Grow Up Timmy Turner]]'', Timmy is 23, and, according to "Da Rules", he was supposed to had lost Godparents when growing up, but he manages to keep them by [[Man Child|living like a child]](still living with parents, going to school...).

* In ''[[Xiaolin Showdown (Animation)|Xiaolin Showdown]]'' the monks in training are faced with a circular obstacle course that they must complete by taking a small statue off a pedestal at the end. All of them compete for the best time until Clay looks at the obstacle course for a few moments and then turns around and takes the statue, setting an unbreakable record. In Zen (sorta) tradition this is the correct result, and their master confirms this.

** Similarly Jack and Omi had a showdown in which they had to get to the end of an obstacle course with a glass of water "Without spilling a single drop". So Omi held the water in his mouth for the last leg of the course and ran.

** Happens quite frequently in the show, actually. For example, the challenge in which the monks need to steal a small idol from Master Fung. Master Fung then decides to smash the idol, preventing the monks from being physically able to win the challenge.

* ''[[Hey Arnold]]'' had the thrice held-back student on a 4th-grade against 5th-grade football game. The student is...well, let's just say they had to bring the class picture to prove it. Of course, it backfires when he trips and twists his ankle thirty seconds after the game starts.

* In a "U.S. Acres" segment of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', Roy Rooster goes on the [[Show Within a Show|Buddy Bears show]] as "Big Bad Buddy Bird". He becomes the victim of a twisted version of [[The Complainer Is Always Wrong]], getting a sixteen ton safe dropped on his head for having even the slightest disagreement with the group. Getting fed up, he refuses to do anymore acting until the bears promise not to drop a sixteen ton safe on him. They promise, only to drop ''two'' sixteen ton safes on him. A later episode has him rejoin them, after having made sure they won't drop any permutation of 16-ton safes on him. Instead they drop other objects, including a much heavier type of safe on him.

** In "U.S. Acres" episode "Rooster Revenge", Roy's prank victims decided they should play some prank on him and Orson decided the worst thing he could do was "nothing". By NOT pranking Roy, Orson turned Roy's paranoia against him. In the end, Roy was visited by an inspector who looked like Orson with a fake mustache. By the time Orson appeared, making Roy realize the inspector wasn't him, Roy had already thrown the inspector into a mud waller. Enraged, the inspector threatened to transfer Roy to South Pole. The very idea frightened Roy into running away. The inspector was revealed to be Lanolin playing a prank. Just because Orson said "he" wouldn't do anything, that didn't mean "she" wouldn't.

* From the classic [[Warner Brothers]] cartoon ''Gone Batty'':

{{quote| "There's nothing in the rulebook that says an [[Animal Athlete Loophole|elephant can't pitch!]] PLAY BALL!"}}

* ''[[Laff-a-Lympics]]'': The Really Rottens were usually penalized for cheating. But in the free-form pole-vaulting event, they were allowed to participate as a several-story-tall human tower. As the Rottens made their run, the announcer reminded us that "This is ''free-form'' vaulting. That means ''anything'' goes! So, as ridiculous as this looks, it is NOT considered cheating!" Cue the Rottens' usual villainous cheering.

** In another episode, there was a kangaroo race and the Really Rottens used a mechanical kangaroo instead of a real one. However, it wasn't considered cheating because "a kangaroo is a kangaroo". They won but, when it was revealed that Dirty and Dastardly Dalton were with Mumbly in the kangaroo, they were disqualified anyway because they couldn't have more than one athlete riding their kangaroo.

** In yet another episode, there was a three-legged race and the Really Rottens were running on a treadmill attached to a vehicle driven by Dread Baron, who tried to pass it as a legit strategy because all the rules required was that they runned on three legs during the race course. However, they were disqualified and lost 25 points for it and another 25 points for forging the rule book Dread Baron presented to trick the judges into thinking the trick was legal.

* In an episode of ''[[Angela Anaconda]]'', Angela is forced into a pogo competition for charity. Despite her lack of skill, she manages to beat Nannette (in fundraising, even though she fails to break her jump record) by using two sticks at once - there was no rule against "double sticking".

* In the ''[[Stoked]]!'' episode "Boards of Glory", Reef and Broseph compete in the tandem surf competition after lo discovers that there is nothing the rules that specifies that the pair must be male and female.

* In the ''[[Kids From Room 402]]'' episode "Mrs. McCoy's Baby Boy", Nancy learned that Jordan is wealthy [[Secretly Wealthy|but doesn't want anyone to find out]] out of fear they'll think she's some kind of ''[[Rich Bitch]]''. Nancy promised not to expose Jordan's secret. However, she started bragging to her friends about having a rich friend.

* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "A Head in the Polls", Richard Nixon's head ran for President of the Earth. A reporter asked him about the rule stating that nobody can be elected more than twice as such, he displayed his new robotic body and "admitted" that "no body" can.

** Which is kind of nonsensical anyway, seeing as the 22nd Amendment actually says "no ''person''" and that was the United States Constitution and presumably the Earthican Constitution wouldn't apply.

* One episode of ''[[The Secret Show]]'' featured a clown who ran for the title of "World Leader". His strategy consisted of renaming himself after the ballot's instruction of where to insert the X and count on confused voters. Not only the strategy was declared legal, but it [[Refuge in Audacity|WORKED!]]

* In one episode of ''[[Rugrats]]'', Angelica's mother told her not to be mean to the other kids or she wouldn't get the new doll accessory she wanted. When she heard about people hiring assistants to do for people things they can't do themselves, she decided to pick a kid to be her assistant and be mean to the others on her behalf because she couldn't be mean herself. {{spoiler|Her mother caught her showing her "assistant" how to be mean, the plan backfired.}}

** In “Beauty Contest”, Lou convinces Stu to put Tommy in a [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|beauty contest]], by having him dress like a girl since it was girls only. However, Tommy’s uncle, Drew, entered his daughter, Angelica, in the same contest, which Didi exposes the problem. Despite this, Lou {{spoiler| still get to keep the prize, which it's a boat}} because both Stu and Drew are “his sons” and Angelica is his granddaughter.

* [[Phineas and Ferb]] are kids, and thus don't have driver's licenses and aren't allowed to drive. Thus, they simply drive vehicles via remote controls.

* ''[[Ed Edd and Eddy]]'' had an example similair to the ''[[Xiaolin Showdown (Animation)|Xiaolin Showdown]]'' example above, Rolf held a no rules race to see who would get a jawbreaker to solve an arguement while carrying an egg. Eddy cheated, as per usual, Double D [[Gadgeteer Genius|made a 2X4 gocart]], Ed just hobbled (Eddy had tied his shoe at the start) to the finish, which was right by the start, and won (Ed's egg broke, but Rolf never said the egg had to make it).

** '''Stop, Look, Ed''': Ed goes underneath a patch of grass Double D tells him and Eddy to stay off. However, Double D did acknowledge that Ed wasn't "on the grass" and he's in dirt, which is technically okay.

** '''Mission Ed-Possible''': When Edd was given the job to ensure that the report cards Ed and Eddy get to their parents, the principal didn't prohibit Edd from getting "help" on his job, {{spoiler| hence why Rolf was recruited.}}

* The Disney short ''The Art Of Self Defense'' has Goofy attempting to exploit the "No hitting below the belt" rule twice in a row against his opponent by hitching his pants up to his armpits (which gets him punched in the face) and eventually up to where only the top of his head is exposed (his opponent merely pounds him there.)

* In an episode of ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]'', the doctor cuts Bugs off his caffeine. In [[The Stinger]] it's revealed that the doctor told him "One cup of coffee a day can't hurt"...so he just bought a really gigantic coffee cup.

* Invoked by Kuzco in ''[[The Emperor's New Groove (Disney)|The Emperors New Groove]]'', after he has been turned into a llama and goes back on a deal sealed with hand-shake: "The funny thing about shaking hands.. you need hands!" (Cheerfully waves his hooves.)

* Averted in ''[[The Legend of Korra (Animation)|The Legend of Korra]]''. Judging from the response when Korra earthbends during a probending game, it doesn't sound like there are any actual rules about bending an element other than your own (since only one person in the world actually can). The judges insist that Korra limit herself to waterbending anyway.

** Technically, I suppose bending an element other than your own would be a uniform violation. You can't dress an earthbender as a waterbender in order to get around the rule that you have to have one bender of each element, identifiable by the uniform.

== Real Life ==

* Anyone that has circled 'X' when teachers told you to find it. [[Mathematician's Answer|Mathematicians will surely applaud such an answer...]]

** Done by this anonymous Brazilian student: [http://franciscotrindade.blogspot.com/2008/06/encontre-x.html\] It turned into an meme, but there's no way of knowing if this is from an actual text or just done as a joke.

* Race car driver Smokey Yunick was so notorious for this that some automotive journalists call this trope in auto racing "Yunicking the Rules." For example, when NASCAR rules tried to force more pit stops by limiting the size of the gas tank, Smokey replaced his fuel lines with exhaust pipe, adding several more gallons that technically were not part of the fuel tank. "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'." is practically the unofficial slogan of NASCAR; Yunick just took that to the natural extreme.

** This is why NASCAR has a blanket rule "Actions detrimental to stock car racing" which they cite with pretty much every infraction anyway.

* [[Formula One]] also has many example of creative interpretation of the rules, especially getting around the rules against 'moveable aerodynamic devices' - over the years teams have tried flexible wings and floors that bend in the wind and reduce drag; the Brabham team built the infamous 'Fan Car' where a so-called "Cooling Fan" created a vacuum under the car. In 1981 minimum ride height rules were introduced, to be policed by random checks in the pits. Brabham's Gordon Murray designed a hydraulic suspension system that raised the car in the pit lane (when it was being checked) and lowered it down again on the track. Lotus built the Type 88 double-chassis car, where the top chassis would lower down onto the track at speed creating ground effect suction. Ironically it was the more ingenious Lotus that ended up being banned. More recently in 2009 Brawn GP got round the rule specifying a 'single deck' rear aerodynamic diffuser by incorporating the mandatory rear crash structure into the diffuser, thus generating more rear downforce. In 2010 McLaren built a duct into their car that the driver could operate with his elbow (!); when used on a straight the duct stalled the rear wing and reduced drag.

*** That trick was banned by FIA in the 2012 rules by an [[Obvious Rule Patch]]- which forced the drivers to keep the hands on the steering wheel at all times. So Mercedes (the successor of Brawn) kept the duct but made it so it could be activated from the wheel, using the same button that already existed for the DRS system.

** Before 1976, no rules said that a [[Formula One]] could not have [http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 six wheels].

** At a [[Formula One]] race in Long Beach in 1982, Ferrari used a super-wide rear wing on their cars because the rules explicitly stated that all teams could have rear wings made of two aerodynamic elements, so instead of putting them one atop the other, they put the individual flaps of the wing side-by-side to create a wing twice as wide as regulations allowed. The Ferraris didn't place well and were even disqualified afterwards, but Ferrari didn't introduce that wing to win: all the other teams were cheating the regulations in various creative ways and [[Take That|Ferrari, who has a history for being under fire by rulesmakers over the decades]], [[Taking You With Me|wasn't about to let them get away with it either]].

** Played straight, then brutally averted for Tyrrell in 1984. Formula One rules dictate a minimum weight all cars must meet, but at the time it was common to find ways to reduce the weight of the car while on the track (and unable to be weighed,) such as water cooled brakes that were fed by a reservoir, which would gradually empty throughout the race, shedding weight, and topped up to pass inspection. Tyrrell was the only team with a normally aspirated engine that year, every other team having the dominant turbocharged monsters, and were only earning points due to luck and the skill of their drivers (Martin Brundle and Stefan Bellof.) However, this gave them some leverage against the turbo-running teams, as fuel tank sizes were to be cut to 195 liters (from 220L) in 1985 to curtail the power of the turbo cars. Every turbo team would vote against it (as the turbo engines guzzled fuel,) but to scrap it, they needed a unanimous decision, leaving Tyrrell (with the vastly more efficient n/a engines) in the way, leverage they were more than willing to use. Tyrrell used a water injection system for their engines, clawing back a little of the power deficit, that would be topped up before the race ended with two gallons of water, and 140&nbsp;lbs of lead shot. The FIA, after inspecting the system, eventually ruled that the water in the tank consisted of 27.5% aromatics, constituted to be an (illegal) addition fuel source, as well as illegally taking on addition fuel during the race, illegal fuel (the water/lead mix,) illegal fuel lines (the lines to the engine,) and improperly secured ballast (the lead shot.) As a result, the FIA excluded Tyrrell from the championship that year, and retroactively disqualified them from all races that year. However, additional testing showed the water carried well below 1% aromatics, and thus well within the rules. Tyrrell also argued that the rules required that ballast be fixed as to require tools to remove, which they felt was the case for the lead shot trapped in the tank. As such, they went to appeal. In an unbelievably [[Screw the Rules, I Make Them|draconian move]], the FIA ignored the test results, changed the charges to fuel in the water and illegal ballast, and ''then'' added an entirely new charge of illegal vents in the undertray, claiming they violated rules preventing the use of ground effect, but where eventually found to be of no aerodynamic purpose. Oh, and the exclusion was upheld, and a further ban from the final three race was instituted, incurring an additional fine for missing those races. This ended up being a double-whammy for Tyrrell, as the turbo teams were now free to amend the rules as they wished, while Tyrrell scrambled to secure a deal for turbo engines for 1985, and also lost all their points for the championship, losing the subsidized travel costs their points haul would have earned them, an addition cost.

** Another classic rule bend came from F1's near cousin Indycar (back before the 'Split' and today's spec series, when teams often built their own cars). 1994 Indy 500 rules allowed pushrod engines higher turbo boost levels, ostensibly to encourage engines based on road car engines. Except nothing in the rule book actually specified the need for a stock block, so Penske Racing commissioned a custom Ilmor-Mercedes pushod engine that pumped out 200&nbsp;hp more than rivals and walked the race.

* Texas [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|oilman, race car driver and engineer]] Jim Hall was the creator of Chapparal Cars and created the legendary Can-Am monster, the 2J. At the time there were no rules that prohibited a Can-Am racing car from having more than one engine, so he took a Chevy V-8 and powered the boxy 2J's rear wheels with it and took a snowmobile engine to power a set of rear-mounted fans to suck the car to the ground with. [[Awesome but Impractical|When it wasn't broken down]] it was an amazing car, and when it wasn't broken down or winning, it was being banned.

* The ''IOCCC'' (International Obfuscated C Code Contest) has a separate yearly award for "worst abuse of the rules", which is awarded precisely for invoking this trope. Obviously, this means the rules will be amended for the next year. For instance, one year's winner is the world's shortest self-reproducing program, which turned out to be a zero-length program which indeed generates a zero-length output. Therefore, contest entries must now be a minimum of one byte in length.<ref>The entries must build without manual assistance. And they may not bypass the code size limit with makefile define flags. But they can take advantage of the fact that several types of characters like empty space does not count for the main size limit.</ref>

* ''The Real Hustle'' showcased an old hustle which involved betting that some random guy can't do everything you can. Touch your nose. He touches his nose. Lick your glass. He licks his glass. Take some drink. He takes some drink. Spit the drink back out...

** Another proposition bet shown by ''The Real Hustle'': betting that you can drink 3 full beers before your mark can drink three shots. The only rule: you can't touch each others' glasses. As long as you can drink ''one'' glass before your opponent can drink their three shots, you can then put your empty glass over one of their shots, they can't remove it, and you can drink the other two beers at your leisure.

*** "Excuse me, bartender, could you move this glass?"

* Spartan boys were purposely underfed and kept hungry, and could expect vicious beatings if they were ever caught stealing food. The correct solution was not to tough out the pain and weakness of constant starvation, but to develop the skill and cunning to steal food without getting caught.

* A similar idea was that cheating was allowed in Soviet schools. What wasn't allowed was getting caught doing it. If you were clever enough to cheat without your professors catching you, you deserved the credit you got (this was harder than it sounds, because of course the professors were more on the look out for cheaters and had seen just about every trick in the book).

* There is an old story (with several variations) about a mathematician, a physicist, and an accountant competing for a job, and they were tasked with measuring the height of a house as precisely as possible to get it. The mathematician measured the house's shadow and calculated it that way, while the physicist dropped two steel orbs and timed the fall. The accountant looked up the blueprints instead, and got the job.

** Of course, given variances in build materials and labor, not to mention the house settling over time, that was probably the least accurate answer...

*** However, at least according to this version of the story, the competitors were striving for ''precision'', not accuracy, and the blueprints would probably yield the best results in this area.

* Another story tells of a student who was asked in a final examination to describe how to measure a skyscraper's height via barometer. His original answer: tie a string to the barometer, lower it from the top to the ground, measure the string, add the length of the barometer. The instructor objected, he counter-objected, and an arbiter was called in. The student proceeded to suggest:

** Drop the barometer off the edge and determine the height by how long it took to fall.

** Use the similar-triangle-shadow method everyone hates from Geometry.

** Swing the barometer like a pendulum, and work it out from the gravitic force.

** Mark off the building's height in barometer-lengths.

** Knock on the [[Almighty Janitor|janitor's]] door and offer him the barometer in exchange for telling the student the height of the building.

*** The expected answer is to measure the difference in air pressure (which is how aircraft altimeters work). It should be noted that unlike the more "creative" methods, this one will provide an answer in meters using ''only'' the barometer.

*** The story is often told with Danish Nobel Prize-winner Niels Bohr as the student, but this is an urban legend.[http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/barometer.asp Snopes has a page about it].

* Another joke involves a mathematician being asked to enclose a flock of sheep using the least amount of fence. He builds a small fence around himself and declares, "I define the side I am on to be the outside."

* At one point, the election rules for the [[Absurdly Powerful Student Council|Cambridge Union]] stated that candidates were allowed to put up one poster in the Union lobby but it had to be a certain size and it had to be "monochrome." One [[Amoral Attorney|law student]] complied by putting up a poster of the statutory size... on fluorescent yellow paper. (He got away with it, as a poster that has ''one color'' is technically "monochrome." They changed the rules for subsequent elections.)

* In July 2008, the state of Nebraska passed a "Safe Haven" law, saying that parents may leave a child at certain hospitals, no questions asked, if for any reason they feel they are not fit to care for the child. This was designed to prevent the cruel abandonment and death of unwanted infants. However, unlike many similar laws, this program did not specify an age limit nor restrict its use to state residents. It made the news after thirty-six ''teenagers'' were dropped off, mostly by out-of-staters who traveled to Nebraska for that purpose. (The [[Obvious Rule Patch]] was quickly passed to specify the acceptance of only infants up to 30 days old.)

** And then there's the smartass 20-year-old who, hearing that a district judge had ruled that life begins at conception, dropped by every liquor store in town to argue that, technically, the judge's ruling meant he was now over the legal drinking age....

* Finland pulled this on Germany late in [[World War II]]. The Northern country was on the Axis side without a formal alliance, saw the writing on the wall, but needed aid from Germany to get out of the war without being steamrolled. The Soviets had launched a huge offensive and the Finns did not have enough weapons and ammo to fight. Germany was distrustful to give Finns their weapons, for obvious reasons. So President Ryti said "As long as I am in charge, Finland won't make peace with the Soviets". The Finns stopped the Soviet advance; then Ryti resigned, Mannerheim was elected and commented "Personal vows of my predecessor do not bind me". Technically, this is true, as long as it was simply a personal vow. Generally on the international system, nations don't act on personal vows.

* It's actually fairly common to declare "no-loopholes" for events that involve a small number of people and simply disallow any attempt to get around the rules on a technicality. Some legal systems allow judges to make effectively the same declaration, generally by noting the difference between the letter and the intention or spirit of the law. However, Louisiana Law is based on the Napoleonic Code meaning that, unlike in other states, letter of the law trumps precedent. Meaning that Loophole Abuse is often played straight. So to speak.

* In an effort to speed up the games, the NCAA changed the clock rule on kickoffs, causing it to begin running when kicked instead of when it was touched. [http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2008/06/19/weird-moments-in-big-ten-football-history-1-bret-bielema-blows/ The University of Wisconsin] scored a TD with 23 seconds left in the first half, and deliberately went offsides on the subsequent kickoff. Each time the play was run, they would be penalized and have to do it again, but it would take 5 seconds off the clock that were not replaced.

* Seen frequently in fiction, but it does happen in real life: police using various means to get information or confessions without ''quite'' violating the accused's rights. The most common one (in jurisdictions where appropriate) is making it clear they are not taking someone into custody or arresting them, therefore not being required to inform them of their rights, specifically the right to have an attorney present. While common in fiction, courts generally take a dim view of this sort of thing if the police are acting like the suspect is in custody, just not doing it officially.

** Not to mention that they're required to read suspects their rights before ''interrogating'' (technically ''interview'') suspects, not necessarily immediately after arresting them. And, [[We All Live in America|at least in the U.S.]], those rights exist regardless of whether the officer reads them aloud. As soon as the suspect realizes he or she is being interrogated, or that he/she isn't free to walk away from the conversation at any time, the suspect has the right to remain silent.

* One of the most famous sports examples was the notorious [http://www.snopes.com/sports/soccer/barbados.asp 1994 Barbados vs Grenada soccer game]. Barbados needed to win by 2 clear goals to advance to the tournament final, but were only winning 2-1 in the final minutes of the game. The tournament rules stated that a draw would go to sudden death extra time, and the winner would be deemed to have won by two goals. After Grenada scored late in the game, the Barbados team realized they'd be unlikely to score as Grenada would play defensively since they didn't need to win, only to not lose by more than a goal. So Barbados fired the ball into their own net, levelling the score, then clustered around the Grenadan net so they couldn't do the same thing. Time runs out, game goes to sudden death extra time where Barbados wins.

* [[wikipedia:Underarm bowling incident of 1981|The Underarm bowling incident of 1981]] caused a major Cricket scandal when a one day international between Australia and New Zealand came down to the last ball of the New Zealand innings. With New Zealand able to tie the game by scoring a Six, the Australian Captain realized that Underarm Bowling (a completely anachronistic practice of rolling the ball along the ground instead of the usual bounce method) had not been stipulated against in the tournament rules. While a rolled ball is easy to put into play, it is nearly impossible to score a Six, therefore robbing New Zealand of any chance to win the game. While Australia won it was widely viewed in both countries as ungentlemanly cowardice. As a direct result of the incident, underarm bowling was banned in limited overs cricket by the International Cricket Council as "not within the spirit of the game".

* The [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|clever Germans]] abused numerous loopholes during the interwar period to build up their armed forced before completely repudiating the Treaty of Versailles. (Some of these methods however were actual violations of the Treaty, just difficult to prove):

** Developing rocket artillery to replace banned gun artillery, and calling them "Smoke Screen Throwers" to boot.

** Developing powerful, long range, fast "pocket battleships" that could outrun regular battleships.

*** This actually was exploiting a loophole, helped by [[Technology Marches On]] - the Versailles treaty stipulated that the largest battleships Germany was allowed to build had to be no bigger than 10,000 tons, which under 1919 conditions would have meant a slow coastal defence vessel. A decade later, when it had become possible to build large ships by welding steel-plates together instead of using rivets, thus saving weight on the hull and enabling them to install a larger engine, thus creating "pocket battleships" possible, which were in effect small battle-cruisers.

** Shortening the service obligation of soldiers in the army so that, while the army remained small on paper, it was building an unofficial reserve of trained men it could quickly call up in case another war broke out.

*** This had tradition in Germany. When [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] had defeated Prussia, he forbad them to have more than 42,000 men under arms. Their war minister Scharnhorst found a loophole, the so-called Krümpersystem: Soldiers were drilled for a few weeks, left the army then, and new ones were trained. Thus, after short time, Prussia had many well-trained soldiers again ([[Genre Savvy|knowing about this]], the Allies forbad [[Weimar Germany]] such a system - their soldiers had to serve for ten years, period).

** Developing new weapons systems by subsidiaries in neighboring countries and Russia.

** Developing new tanks as "agricultural tractors".

** Practicing advanced Blitzkrieg tactics in [[Refuge in Audacity|agricultural tractors]].

** Developing several models of high-speed advanced civilian air transport planes, that, strangely, only had space for 4-6 people and looked exactly like tactical bombers.

*** One reason the rest of Europe allowed this loophole abuse was, despite the fact that German militarization was considered a threat, the huge losses of the previous war made everyone squeamish and desperate to avoid it. And as long as Germany wasn't ''attacking''...

* In American High School Football the A-11 offense exploited a loophole in scrimmage kick formations that allowed all players to be numbered as eligible receivers, thus disguising who the actual receivers were and expanding the number of plays the defense had to defend against from 250 to 16,000. Cue [[Obvious Rule Patch]] two years later (though Texas and Massachusetts use NCAA rules, which never allowed the thing in the first place.)

* John Hopoate, a player in Australia's National Rugby League, became notorious for using a rather unorthodox move to make other players more likely to fumble during tackles. Turns out there wasn't any rule saying you aren't allowed to jam your fingers up another player's butt, and [[Stealth Pun|in the end]] the NRL had to declare him guilty of conduct unbecoming the game before they could get rid of him.

* Another real life example: George Burns and Harpo Marx were once playing golf on a very hot day, and decided to take their shirts off. A nearby group complained, and the club manager came out to inform them that club rules required them to wear shirts on the course. A little while later, he received another complaint - this time they were playing without ''pants''. When he went out to tell them to put pants on, they asked to see the rulebook on ''that'' - and it turned out that there was no rule requiring club members to wear pants on the course, because nobody had ever thought to need it.

** Golf is a minefield for loophole-lovers. The general rule is, if you try to use the Rules Of Golf to your advantage, you better make Damn Sure you know What They Are. Because your opponent will. (and in any important case, one can always drag out the Book and/or the official.) Excellent fictional example: "The Foursome", by "Troon McAllister".

** Similarly, while most cities have a general "no indecent exposure" law which makes it illegal to be naked in public, there ain't no rule against [http://improveverywhere.com/missions/the-no-pants-subway-ride/ riding the subway in your underwear].

* An English amateur cricket team barred from entering the dining room of the hotel in which they were staying on the grounds that they were not wearing ties. To his credit, the maitre'd apparently took them reappearing wearing properly-knotted ties but no shirts or trousers in the spirit in which it was intended.

* Similarly, when Vivian Stanshall of [[The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band]] was at school he repeatedly got in trouble for breaking the rule about wearing a tie. He was expelled after turning up in a tie but no shirt.

* The downs system of American football and basketball's shot clock were added when teams took advantage of the lack of such a rule to simply indefinitely keep possession of the ball. Sometimes these "keep away" tactics got really bad; on November 22, 1950, a basketball game between the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers ended in a score of 19-18. Another 1950 game went for ''six overtimes'', with each team only taking one shot in each extra period.

* [[Lord Byron]], famed English poet, was forced to send his dog home during college, as Trinity forbade keeping one. Byron's response was, of course, to scour the rules and find that there was no specific prohibition against ''keeping a bear.'' Obviously, he got one. When asked what he would do with it, he responded that it could sit for a fellowship.

** More specifically, the rule was against domesticated pets. [[Everything's Worse With Bears|The bear was wild]].

* Ain't no rule that says [[The Caligula|a horse can't sit on the Roman Senate]].

* Ain't no rule that says [[Everything Is Better With Penguins|a penguin]] can't be [[wikipedia:Nils Olav|Colonel-In-Chief of the Norwegian King's Guards.]]

** And receive a knighthood

* Ain't no rule a [[Everythings Worse With Bears|bear]] [[wikipedia:Wojtek chr(28)soldier bearchr(29)|can't enlist in the Polish Army]]. ([[NSFW]] [http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voytek.html version])We

* Ain't no rule a [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2036426/Cat-becomes-Japanese-train-station-master.html cat can't be a train station master in Japan.]

* At the time of the infamous "Snowplow Game" in 1982 between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, there really ''wasn't'' a rule you couldn't plow a section of the field in football before a field goal. Needless to say, after the game there was one. This game, by the way, is the '''''real''''' reason why Dolphins fans gloat so much over New England's failure to complete a perfect season.

** It didn't hurt that Don Shula was a member of the NFL's rules committee. This probably produced his familiarity with the rules that allowed him to see that there ain't no rule that says you can't fool the defense into thinking the play's over by pretending to spike the ball to stop the clock, and then pass the ball to an eligible receiver. And, it's still a legal play.

** Football ''loves'' Loophole Abuse, and several plays ''depend'' on it. There's no rule that the quarterback has to be the player to receive the snap, giving rise to "Direct Snap" plays that give the ball from the center to the running back with no hand-off. There are rules that state that only certain positions are eligible receivers, but there's no rule that says they can't then pass the ball to someone behind them. There's a rule that says that the kickoff must be kicked at least ten yards or touch a member of the receiving team in order for the kicking team to take possession without ending the play, but there's no rule that says you can't kick the ball ''directly'' at one of the close members of the receiving team and get the ball when it inevitably bounces off him.

** Back when Carlisle Indian Industrial School had a football team in the early 20th century, they were notorious for exploiting the holes in the rulebook. One tactic was to have leather football patches sewn onto every uniform so that every player appeared to be carrying the ball, since there wasn't a rule prohibiting it. They were stopped by Harvard, who when they played Carlisle presented game balls that had been dyed a deep crimson color (since there wasn't a rule against ''that'' either) to neutralize the trick.

** Football has several rules to cover "Palpably Unfair Acts," which serves as a [[Rule Zero]] when something blatantly unfair happens that isn't covered by the rules. It isn't applied often, though. Amusingly, the first time someone ran off the sidelines to tackle a runner, everyone agreed that the referee could award a touchdown even though the rule patch didn't exist yet.

* Ain't no rule that says [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-03-14/doraemon-to-be-japan-first-anime-ambassador fictional robot cats can't serve as ambassadors in the Japanese government.]

* Ain't no rule that says a dog can't [http://www.simonstown.com/tourism/nuisance/nuisance.htm be enlisted in the Royal Navy].

** Ain't no rule that a cartoon character can't serve in the Marines (as [[Bugs Bunny]] did during [[World War II]]).

* Avoided by most Internet services (forums, hosts, etc.) in that their Terms of Use specifically say you can be reprimanded for any reason by the owners/moderators. Effectively seals the "Ain't no rule" loophole.

** Similarly, try reading a software EULA or copyright agreement all the way through. They [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|can be paraphrased as]] saying "We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, and you have no rights whatsoever." The phrase "in perpetuity throughout the universe" is popular.

*** Though ironically, most EULAs are often unenforceable; if the EULA isn't on the outside of the box, it isn't necessarily enforceable by law. This is why, for instance, OM versions of Windows have the EULA on the outside of the packaging. Also, many open-ended contractual things of this nature can be difficult to enforce in court. Also not every copyright law allows to enforce fully EULA. For example in some countries you are allowed to deassemble code in certain cases (for e.g. to make cooperation between programs better) - even if EULA explicitly forbids disassembling.

* Ain't no rule that says [[The Colbert Report|a fictional pundit]] can't run for President. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party of South Carolina decided there ''was'' a rule that said all candidates had to be "serious".

** There isn't a rule about candidates having to be serious in the UK, which resulted in a rock star founding the Monster Raving Loony Party. And harming the political system not at all.

*** Ain't no rule in the UK that corresponds to the quite restrictive ballot access laws in (at least some) US states. Any citizen who can get a few signatures on a nomination petition and scrape together a smallish-deposit can run, and will be entitled to describe his party affiliation any way he likes. There was a real case some years ago where an individual ran as the "Literal Democrat candidate" and drew away just enough votes from the official candidate of the ''Liberal'' Democratic Party to throw the election to his opponent.

** Pat Paulsen did it first, in 1968. Then again in 1972, 1980, 1988, 1992, and 1996.

** French comedian Coluche also ran for President in the 1981 election - he originally announced it for the lulz and ran a mock campaign but dropped out of the race shortly before the election. Partly because it was starting to look like he had a real shot at the win (which he never really wanted, he was just taking the piss all along), and partly due to pressure from more serious parties or rather, as he later recounted, due to [[Suspiciously Specific Denial]] of any pressure whatsoever: representatives from both major parties informed him he had absolutely nothing to worry about from ''their'' party; but that he should be wary of the other because ''those guys'' weren't above dirty tricks and it would be a right shame if something bad happened to him.

** The Rhinoceros Party of Canada was a similar group, which just participated in the elections as a joke, proposing things like moving the Rocky Mountains one foot to the east (by hand) as a labor project. In 1993, the Canadian government got fed up with this and required that all political parties pay a certain fee in order to participate... which the Rhinoceros Party couldn't pay. So they declared that everyone should just vote for themselves and then disbanded... then reappeared in 2007 and remain active.

** Similarly, this kind of thing is fairly common in Brazil. In the past, a donkey and a rhino were massively voted for congress, in their respective states and times. This specific practice of writing a joke vote in your bill died when electronic voting machines came around, but it doesn't stop ludicrously [[camp]]y or just downright hilarious candidates ([[Poe's Law|who may or may not do that for the joke]]) from appearing in political campaigns. Of course, they rarely succeed, but when they do (like with the recently elected clown "Tiririca"), the supposed "protest-voting" behind it backfires when splash-votes help other, serious, not as well-intentioned politicians get in charge.

* While in Britain the law is adamant that a motor-bicycle and side-car set is still a motor-bicycle, not a motor-tricycle or a motor-car, they're not too picky as to what defines a motor-car, which leads on to: There ain't no rule saying you can't take your 'B' Licence ''practical test with a motor-bicycle.'' The four criteria for allowing a vehicle to be a test candidate's choice for a 'B' licence test (the one a car driver has to pass):

** A: Vehicle must be capable of at least 100&nbsp;km/h.

** B: The seat the examiner is to sit in must have an adjustable headrest.

** C: The seat the examiner is to sit in must have a working safety-belt.

** D: A suitable area must be made available on the vehicle so the examiner can place his own rear-view mirror.

** Attaching a side-car to a motorcycle makes it possible to satisfy the last three criteria. If the candidate passes, they are allowed to drive a car without having to have seen the inside of one!

** In a similar vein, for a short while there was a rule limiting the size of motorcycle you could learn on but no corresponding limit for combinations. This led to firms making what was essentially a wheel on a spring that in legal terms was a sidecar so that people could ride stupidly powerful bikes on a provisional license.

* One year in the mid-seventies, the University of Regina's Anarchist Party ran a frozen turkey as their candidate for president of the student council. ''And won''. (Student government for that year consisted of weekly general meetings open to all students and motions decided by majority vote, over which the turkey presided.) At the end of the year, the Anarchists cooked and ate their president. Possibly U of R's charter was amended to prevent this reoccurring.

* When ABC bought the Fox Family Channel in 2001, they apparently had a legal staff that rubber-stamped the deal and didn't look at the contract closely. At the time the plan was to use the network as sort of a clone of FX-esque [[Rerun]] Farm in the style of ABC (this was long before FX struck gold with ''[[The Shield]]'' and when using cable networks to "repurpose" reruns was in vogue), and it was proposed that the channel be renamed "XYZ", which would stand for the end of the alphabet. Closer research of the contract though reminded everyone that Pat Robertson once owned the channel, and when he sold the channel to Fox he threw in all kinds of legal language which meant he kept three hours of airtime a day on the network that could not be removed from his control, and that the moment "Family" was stripped from the name, every single deal made with every single cable system was null and void, and Disney would be stuck having to renegotiate with every system to get back on, which for any basic cable network would be a disastrous proposition.

** Thus, "XYZ" was ditched, the channel flailed for awhile, getting by with reruns of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway]]'', ''~7th Heaven~'', and ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'', along with reality shows that were rightfully rejected by every other network, until a smart marketer realized that if you made the network's slogan "A new kind of family" and emphasized it as much as the network name, you could easily wiggle around what Pat thought of as a "family" and expand the definition. Thus the network was finally able to program for more than two kids and two parents, and now programming like ''[[Pretty Little Liars]]'' can easily lead into ''The 700 Club'', which Pat Robertson can't do anything about.

** Meanwhile ''The 700 Club'' has so many notices, warnings and roadblocks before the show on [[ABC Family]] that remind you Disney doesn't endorse his views at all that it is pretty much treated as the [[Old Shame]] of the network. It isn't even mentioned at all on the network's website.

* There wasn't a rule for a lot of things in the US Army, [http://skippyslist.com/list/ until Skippy came along]. And some where he was quite surprised to find there ''was'' a rule.

* There was no rule in cricket about bodyline bowling, where the fielding team repeatedly bowls fast short deliveries aimed at the batsman's body, whilst setting a field with a high number of close legside catchers in the hope of catching deflections when the batsman defends himself. The England cricket team used this method to counteract the success of the great Australian batsman Sir Donald Bradman during the 1932-33 Ashes. After the infamous tour bodyline was effectively banned by changing the Laws of Cricket to limit the number of fielders allowed behind square leg, and adding that "The bowling of fast short pitched balls is dangerous and unfair if the umpire at the bowler's end considers that by their repetition and taking into account their length, height and direction they are likely to inflict physical injury on the striker."

* ''Reader's Digest'' once printed this [[Urban Legends|apocryphal story]] about a [[Cricket Rules]] match somewhere in England:

{{quote| The captain of the batting team was facing the first ball of the innings, with the opposing captain as wicketkeeper. The ball was almost a wide down the leg side, but broke back viciously and bowled him out. The astonished batsman exclaimed, "Well, I declare!" The opposing captain overheard and took him at his word, so the innings was closed at one for naught. After the teams changed round, the first bowler began running round and round the boundary with no apparent intention of stopping. When asked what was going on, the captain of the fielding side explained to the umpire, "There is no rule limiting the length of the bowler's run. He's the local marathon champion, and he's running until bad light stops play". The match was drawn with one ball bowled.}}

* This is an essential part of nine-ball pool. The balls are numbered from 1 to 9, the rules state that you must strike the lowest-numbered ball on the table, and the winner is [[Instant Win Condition|the player who pots the 9-ball]]. This implies that the intent is to first pot the 1-ball, then the 2-ball, then the 3-ball, and so on until you pot the 9-ball and win. However, there Ain't No Rule saying the balls must be ''potted'' in order, so play often involves striking the lowest-numbered ball into the 9-ball and attempting to pot the 9-ball, or into any other ball to keep shooting.

** This is also used as a tactical move when you can't easily pot any ball by hitting the lowest first. If you don't hit the lowest ball, the other player can place the cue ball anywhere on the table which usually means a setup for an easy shot. If you do hit the lowest but don't pot anything, the other player will have to shoot from where the cue ball ends up, which ideally is in a position where they will foul and you'll get the cue ball back anywhere on the table. In some games you can get the players making incredibly accurate finesse shots one after the other trying to get the other to foul.

* In 1980s Japan, there was a rule banning the uncensored display of the penetration of a vagina by a penis. However, there was no rules against [[Naughty Tentacles|phallic tentacles]] doing so, or anything made of plastic, or even a ''non-human'' penis...

** And before that, censorship laws only forbade the display of pubic hair; ''genitals'' were, technically, okay. You can see where this is going...

** Likewise, the used schoolgirl panties started being sold in vending machines because there wasn't a law on the books restricting it.

*** At least one creative jurisdiction managed to regulate their sale under laws governing "Artifacts and used goods."... which just meant pawnshops and similarly licensed buisness got into the act.

*** When Ebay and other online retailers banned their sale, some schoolgirls switched to selling a photo of themselves with the panties thrown in for free.

* In casinos offering Blackjack, it has always been prohibited to use any device to count or track the cards. People eventually found ways to count cards in their heads (and won huge amounts of money doing it). Since using your brain to gain an advantage in a game isn't illegal, casinos can't have you arrested for cheating. But since a casino is private property they can decline to accept any wager and can therefore boot out anybody suspected of counting cards.

** This sometimes turns into getting booted if you're doing "suspiciously" well, so even if you aren't counting cards and just happen to be phenomenally lucky, be prepared to be shown the door.

* At one of the Winter Olympics, Canadian Skiers didn't know there was a rule against "tobogganing", or slowing yourself using your bottom. When they did this, other athletes immediately complained to the judges, who opened that year's rulebook to cite against this maneuver --- and discovered it had been accidentally omitted...

** Norse Law used to work like this. Each year the laws were read out (about 1/3rd a year) and if a law was left out and no one made a point of it that law was removed.

* Vancouver 2010 Olympics: [http://www.examiner.com/x-24799-Dallas-Dance-Examiner~y2010m2d24-Olympics-ice-dancing-controversial-despite-well-deserved-gold-for-the-Canadians-slideshow Ain't no rule in ice dancing that you can't put belts into your costumes to help with lifts] (this is the same Russian pair with the [[Unfortunate Implications|"Aboriginal"]] costumes). As commentator Scott Hamilton noted, there undoubtedly ''will be'' in the future.

** Likewise, in the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, ain't no rule you can't prolong your dance by not touching the ice with your skates for the first eighteen seconds. Said loophole abuse resulted in the ''only'' perfect-scoring ice dance in the history of the Olympics: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2zbbN4OL98 Torvill and Dean's "Boléro"].

*** To clarify, "Boléro" itself is [[Epic Rocking|17 minutes long]]. They managed to cut the song down to 4:28, 18 seconds longer than the Olympic rules. Since actual timing starts when the skates touch the ice, they went with Loophole Abuse.

*** Needless to say, this is now against the rules. Though ice dance in general is prone to teams creating unusual moves, where there ain't no rule, leading to next season there being a rule.

* Another Olympics one: Canadian Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his gold medal when traces of marijuana were found in his system. However, marijuana wasn't actually on the banned substances list, so they gave it back to him. Then again, marijuana isn't exactly a performance ''enhancing'' drug.

* There may be a rule in baseball and softball about teammates assisting a runner, but there's not one about ''opponents'' assisting a runner...which led to a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] when college softballer Sara Tucholsky hit the only home run of her career, but tore her ACL rounding first. Two members of the opposing team ''carried her around the bases'' so her home run would count. (More complete summary at the [[Real Life/Heartwarming|Real Life]] CMOH page)

** While it definitely qualifies as a CMOH, the umpire was actually wrong. There was no rule that would have prevented her teammates from assisting her around the base path, as it was technically a home run as soon as the ball cleared the wall, which used a different, reduced set of base running rules. (Mainly that you're still out if you pass a runner ahead of you). Still, it makes a better story the way it happened.

*** Also, if somebody hits an actual bona fide homerun then they're quite likely to '''want''' to run the bases, whether it technically has to be done or not. It probably wouldn't feel right, otherwise.

* After the devastating casualties suffered from the use of poison gas in World War I, a treaty was signed banning the use of chemical weapons, the deadliest weapons of the day. However, this treaty failed to keep up with technology, and after protests against bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was noted that there ain't no rule against using nuclear weapons.

** The US had, at the time and until very recently, never actually signed a treaty banning production and use of chemical weapons (including that section of the Geneva Conventions). It wouldn't have been a treaty violation even if it had been chemical weapons being used.

* In a campaign in Northern Africa during [[World War II]], the Germans were upset to find a particular branch of [[Scorched Earth]] strategy: every oasis they came to had a sign in English stating that the oasis had been poisoned by the British army. When they complained that poisoning water constitutes a war crime, the British pointed out that there was absolutely nothing forbidding ''putting up false signs.''

* In [[World War One]] preexisting treaties banned the use of poison gas shells, but did not ban the deployment from canisters, which had not been considered at the time of writing. The later blanket bans closed this loophole.

* To score a run in baseball, you have to tag home base. Practically everyone thinks of this as tagging the base with your ''foot'', and that therefore if the catcher is already in the way you can't really tag home. But there ain't no rule that says you have to use your feet. During a college baseball game, Fordham player Brian Konwnacki took this to almost [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtUlc0-6z8A gravity defying levels] when he literally [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|jumps over the catcher]] to get to home plate and makes a flawless flip onto home plate to score a run.

** Also, from that same clip, ain't no rule that says you can't steal third base when no one's looking. (About 1:05 in the clip.)

** [http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=11140521 Or home], for that matter.

* Eddie the Eagle utilized a loophole allowing every nation to send a representative for every sport. At the time, nobody else from the UK entered for ski jumping, so Eddie did and was legally allowed to compete. [[Obvious Rule Patch]] followed requiring all competitors to have won an international competition previously or be in a certain top percentage in their event.

* When a minor [[Succession Crisis]] occurred in Poland in 1384, the Polish nobles decided that Jadwiga, the younger sister of the Hungarian Queen Mary, should become the ruler of Poland. One problem: Polish law made no provision for a ruling queen (queen regnant); all previous female Polish leaders (including Jadwiga and Mary's mother Elisabeth) had been [[The Man Behind the Man|The Woman Behind The Man]]. On the other hand, they found (to their surprise, no doubt) that there was nothing that said the ''King'' of Poland had to be a man. Ergo, Jadwiga was crowned [[She Is the King|King of Poland]]. (She even became a saint; she is known in English and German as St. Hedwig, patron of a United Europe).

* On a similar note, more or less the same thing happened to [[Ancient Egypt|Hatshepsut]]: she was crowned King (well, Pharaoh, but the title was masculine) and dressed up in drag (to the point of wearing a wig on her chin and [[Fetish Fuel|going around topless]]) after the death of her husband (and half-brother) Thutmose II.

* The Japanese Pancrase Society, a forerunner to modern day MMA like the UFC, had a dress code that allowed for trunks and boots with no other objects or weapons. One of its champions, Masakatsu Funaki took advantage of the lack of rules on personal hygiene and would often keep his long hair in a perm '''''loaded''''' with hair grease making it pretty much impossible to beat him using a chokehold.

* The [[wikipedia:Washington Naval Treaty|Washington Naval Treaty]] of 1922, was negotiated in the wake of [[World War One]] by the remaining major naval powers (Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy) to prevent another naval [[Arms Race]] like the one preceding the war (and believed by many to have contributed to it). It was extended with few changes by the London Naval Treaty of 1930. With few exceptions it entirely prohibited battleship and battlecruiser construction for 10 years, and carefully prevented aircraft carriers (which had yet to be developed into truly viable combatants) from being constructed as battleships in all but name. As a result, cruisers became the primary focus of the world's major navies. Much effort was put into avoiding loopholes, but a significant one was overlooked by the negotiators (but ''not'' by the naval designers): while both heavy cruisers (defined as being armed with 8-inch guns or smaller) and light cruisers (armed with 6.1-inch or smaller guns) were limited in size, only heavy cruisers were limited in number, and the size limit was the same for both types. As a result, the three largest navies (US, British and Japanese) all decided that, once they reached their limits on heavy cruisers, they would built very large "light" cruisers, using essentially (or in Japan's case, entirely) identical hulls to the heavy cruisers, that would make up for their smaller guns by carrying [[More Dakka|a lot more of them]]. While heavy cruisers were armed with an average of 9 8-inch guns, the US and Japanese "light" cruisers were armed with ''15'' 6-inch or 6.1-inch guns. The British "light" cruisers were originally going to as well, but were cut to 12 6-inch guns late in the design process to save money.

** The Treaty also encouraged loophole abuse of a different sort, with the US at least. The US had few aircraft carriers at the time of the treaty, and the limit on them was rather high. The limit was unofficially increased, since the US could pass off at least a few of these carriers as "experimental" vessels, on which there was no limit. As a result, the US began spamming carriers—a development only encouraged when (after the end of the treaty) many of the Navy's Pacific Fleet battleships were destroyed at [[World War II|Pearl Harbor]]. And that, indirectly, is why the United States has as many aircraft carriers as the rest of the world ''combined''.

* The American Music Awards abused a loophole of their own in 2009—the nominations are based on radio airplay and album sales, and the winners by an online fan vote. Thus, [[Michael Jackson]] and his album ''Number Ones'' got five nominations and ultimately four wins. The abuse? ''Number Ones'' was a [[Greatest Hits Album]] released in '''2003''', and the '''only''' reason Jackson got all that airplay and sales was because he had just died, but there's apparently no rule preventing old material from getting nominations. [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/10/michael-jacksons-american-music-awards-nominations-unfair.html Complaints] that nominating Jackson wasn't fair to artists who had brought out successful new material in the eligibility period and that the AMA's were piggybacking on his death for press and ratings were shouted down by fans saying that the AMA rules were rules and this just proved Jackson's superiority.

* [[Humans Versus Zombies]] manages to avert this entirely by having the "Douchebag Clause" which states "Don't be a douchebag." Simply put, if it's unfair and not covered in the rules, then the mods can invoke the douchebag clause and punish accordingly.

* [http://www.cracked.com/article_18753_the-6-most-creative-abuses-loopholes.html Cracked] has some examples.

* This is probably the reason why there are so many "dumb laws"; laws in areas like "no pet crocodiles on the street" or "it's illegal to bathe a donkey". Someone abused a loophole, and the city/county/etc. had to implement a law that would make future generations wonder "wtf"?

* Adam Hills, a comedian, has an artificial foot. He can drive, but his license stipulates that he "must wear [his] artificial right foot" while doing so. As Adam points out: "...doesn't say where."

* In combat sports, a title cannot change hands unless it is contested within its weight class - if either competitor is overweight, even if the challenger wins, the title remains with the champion. Several champions, expecting to lose, have come in overweight, lost, and retained the title. Paulo Filho, then of WEC, comes to mind.

** The World Boxing Association (one of the Big 4 sanctioning bodies) since closed this loophole with Rule 2.5, part of which states that if the champion fails to make weight, he loses his title "on the scales" regardless of the match's outcome.

* An [http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE69E33320101015 ingenious German man] has gotten around the EU's ban on high wattage lightbulbs by importing and selling them as "heaters"; since 95% of the bulbs' actual ouput is in heat, this is perfectly legal.

** That particular loophole was intentional, to allow for heat-lamps for terrariums and such. He's still abusing the hell out of it, though.

** He did not get away with it. They called him out on the similarities of his so called heating-device with lightbulbs.

* [[Useful Notes/National Hockey League|National Hockey League]] coach Roger Neilson was infamous for his knowledge of league rules and loopholes, to the point that he became known as "Rule Book Roger." He once put a defenseman in goal for a penalty shot (goalies can't leave the net to bodycheck a shooter off the puck, but defensemen can), forced nearly continuous penalties to relieve pressure on his team (no matter how many penalties a team has, only two players of five can be in the penalty box), and had his goalies leave their sticks in the goalmouth when pulled for an extra attacker, to block attempted empty-net goals. There are rules against all of these now.

** To elaborate: The current rule is that taking a Too Many Men On The Ice penalty, or other penalties intended to disrupt the flow of play, in the last two minutes of regulation or at any point in overtime while two men down results in a penalty shot instead of a minor penalty.

* Timothy Ferriss, in his book ''The Four Hour Work Week'', tells a story about how he won a kickboxing championship using a method that he described as Loophole Abuse. The rules said that [[Ring Out|a player who leaves the ring automatically loses]], and the competitors weigh in one day before they actually have to fight. So he dehydrated himself ([[Don't Try This At Home|with the help of a doctor]]) to temporarily "lose" a significant amount of weight during the day before the weigh-in and regain it, and then proceeded to shove all of his less massive opponents out of the ring.

* All who auditioned for [[Mila Kunis]]' role in ''~That '70s Show~'' were required to be [[Dawson Casting|at least 18 years old]]; she was 14 at the time, so she told the casting directors she’d be 18 on her birthday, but didn't say which one. Though they eventually figured it out, the producers still thought she was the best fit for the role.

* There ain't no rule against [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIdI8khMkw some kinds of faking] in football.

* In 1992, a sixteen year old high-school student was elected to a circuit court judicial seat in Idaho. It seems no one ever got around to adding a requirement for a law school degree, or even an age requirement, to the laws regarding state judges. He ran on a whim, and was rather surprised when he was actually elected. The boy served two years on the bench, mostly overseeing traffic cases, and according to all accounts wasn't all that bad a judge.

** In fact, most posts in US elections have only the barest minimum of requirements. Residency is usually the only one, with age being second most common. Technically, anyone who fills these requirements is "qualified" to run for the office.

*** Though this comes from one of the basic ideas that anyone can and should be able to run for office rather than limiting office to nobility or what have you. However, many such positions, such as attorney general and judge, do have additional requirements, such as "must have actively practiced law for at least X years prior".

** There are, in fact, no qualifications whatsoever to be A JUSTICE ON THE US SUPREME COURT (beyond the fact that you must be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate). Children, noncitizens, felons, or even nominating yourself is fair game (though you can't be President and a Justice at the same time; you'd have to resign from the Presidency).

** Similarly, there is no qualification necessary to be elected Pope except being a Roman Catholic male. The Papal Conclave would never elect anyone other than a Cardinal, but there's nothing stopping them from electing some random Catholic man as the Pope.

* The [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/the-fccs-guide-to-losing_b_795061.html "Net Neutrality"] bill.

* One exercise used in the Canadian Forces Officer Training Course from time to time setting up a rope bridge across a river consisting of a single rope to walk on and another to hold on to. As can be imagined, getting across such a structure is difficult. In one case, the officer in charge of evaluating the officer-cadets was a [[The Neidermeyer|jerk]] who insisted the entire group get across even thought the ropes were stretching to the point it was nearly impossible, and if someone slipped (but was held up by their safety carabiner), they were to be hauled back by their safety line and forced to try again. One cadet who slipped halfway across, before he could be hauled back, pulled his legs up over the top rope and pulled himself across the rest of the way. Realizing they were only told to get across the rope bridge, not that they had to ''walk'' across it, the remaining cadets were very quickly dragged across as they hung from the upper rope.

* US federal tax law requires that whenever a gambler wins $1,200 or more on a single bet on any casino gambling machine, the win must be paid by hand and both the casino and the winner must fill out tax forms regarding the money won. Slot machines are often designed to make things easier by modifying the pay tables to replace all instances of $1,200 with $1,199. (For example, if a certain combination pays $400 for a $1 bet, the same combination on a $3 bet would pay $1,199 instead of $1,200.)

* The ATF used to define a machine gun as a gun that fires more than one bullet per pull of the '''trigger'''. The [[wikipedia:Sputter Gun|Sputter Gun]] has no trigger. The ATF caught on and changed the wording. Also, they sometimes tried to "catch" what obviously is a faulty semi-auto (some mechanisms can shoot twice when worn—not that they're safe enough to be useful at this stage) under this.

** Every now and again some [[Sarcasm Mode|bright]] [[Too Dumb to Live|spark]] tries to exploit the current law concerning machine guns. Under U.S. law, it is illegal for a civillian to transfer a machine gun not registered at teh time that the registry closed permanently in 1986. However, there is no rule against building such a gun for yourself, so long as you do not transfer it to anyone else. However, the ATF has [[No Sense of Humor]] and loves to over step the [[Aint No Rule]] loopholes and just prosecute you anyway.

*** That's still an [http://jpfo.org/common-sense/cs55.htm understatement].

* The Filipino programmers charged with the creation of the highly-destructive ILOVEYOU virus were not charged with anything by Philippine state prosecutors because there were no laws in the Philippines regarding malware at the time. So, yes, they got away with crippling ''millions'' of computers and caused '''billions''' of dollars in damages worldwide because the Philippine justice system was behind the times—something Filipinos old enough to remember the hubbub view with a peculiar mix of misplaced pride and sheepish embarrassment.

* Broadcaster [[Keith Olbermann]] "barely graduated" from Cornell after realising that he needed to take 28 credits in his last semester. The university authorities assumed there was a rule against this - there wasn't, but he was the first person mad enough to try it.

{{quote| ''(waiting to hear if he graduated)'' Did you know you can sweat from your eyelids?}}

* In Japan gambling is illegal. So you can't exchange the balls you win in a Pachinko parlor for cash. But technically, the parlors only let you exchange the balls for various items which can be taken to another nearby store who would then "buy" the items.

** Heck, that's why poker chips, slot-machine tokens, and paper tickets won at fairs were invented in the first place: they're a way to sidestep gambling laws.

* Wanna bribe a politician, but don't want to go to jail? Simple! Lobbying. It's been said that there are ten ways to bribe a crooked politician, and a hundred ways to bribe an honest one.

* The advance of technology allows crazy abuses when the law fails to predict certain acts could ever be possible. Example: it is currently legal to program a computer to buy and sell stock for you. Therefore, it is legal to program it to buy stock in New York and immediately sell in Chicago during the split-second intervals when the two exchanges are out of sync on that stock's value.

* A British schoolboy was annoyed when he found out that boys weren't allowed to wear shorts in hot weather, so he looked up the uniform rules, and found there was no rule against boys wearing skirts. Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-13362586

* A rare positive example, [[Nintendo]] actually used R.O.B to get the NES into the American market: America was still reeling from [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983]], and no toy store would dare market a product as a "video game". R.O.B., however, allowed Nintendo to make the NES look much more toy-like and less like a video game console, and convinced toy stores to stock it.

* No rule says a woman can't be a yeoman: http://www.navygirl.org/navywomen/navy_women_history_page.htm

** On ''[[Star Trek]]'' anyway, it seems that ''only'' women can be yeomen.

* No rule says a woman can't be prom king: http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4004466.html

* No rule says a man can't be prom queen: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/28/local/me-prom-queen28

* No rule says a boy can't be carnival queen: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-406773/Only-gay-village-carnival-queen.html

* In US states where the minimum gambling age is 21 (including Native American casinos), there are bingo variety slot machine casinos where you only have to be at least 18 to play (same as tournament bingo). The slot machines' winning combination is determined by the outcome of your current bingo card rather than just the slot spin meaning that you're playing the bingo card upon activation of a spin, thus lowering the legal age.

* There are a number of blind spots where some places in the united states lack any law specifically forbidding underage strippers from performing live, like mentioned [http://www.projo.com/news/content/teen_dancers_07-21-09_Q6F39ID_v80.3985e27.html here.]

* The [[Troper Tales]] for [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Like]] was removed because it became nothing but huge complaints and was often one big [[Flame War]] after the next. Several other tropes devolved into [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Like]] in the [[Troper Tales]] section. So people turned to the [[Headscratchers]] (At the time called "It just bugs me") and let the complaining and [[Flame War|flame wars]] begin.

* In medieval Germany serfs couldn't carry swords, but as a sword was defined as (among other requirements) being double bladed, nothing stopped [[Knife Nut|really big knifes]], as long as they were single bladed.

* Ain't no rule saying states [[wikipedia:National Popular Vote Interstate Compact|can't award all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote]].

** There is, however, a rule that States can't form Compacts or Agreements without the consent of Congress.

** For that matter, there ain't know rule saying that you have to vote for a member of the electoral college based on who they'll vote for. The intent was for you to vote for someone smart enough to know who really should be president, but no state does that anymore.

* Israel once offered awards to "Heroine Mothers," women who gave birth to 10 or more children. There was no rule, however, that said the mothers had to be Jewish. The practice was stopped after Arab women kept winning, threatening Israel's status as a Jewish state.

* This is how the American legal system works. The law code does not cover what is legal; it only defines what is illegal. If the law say nothing about something, then you can technically do it legally.

* After 9/11, France made some laws against headscarfs in schools, to enforce their strict separation of state and religion. As you may know, Muslim women are supposed to cover their hair all the time. One ''very'' pious Muslim girl was told to get rid of her headscarf, or get kicked out. So she shaved off her hair.

* The hypothetical faster-than-light particles known as tachyons operate like this: the laws of relativity state that it is impossible for something to accelerate past the speed of light. They say nothing about objects that have always been at a faster-than-light speed.

** More accurately, if you solve the equations for total energy of a normal particle moving faster than light, you will get an imaginary number, but the total energy is proportional to the rest mass, and nothing says the rest mass has to be real.

* A joke involving a particularly unpopular village head goes thus: One day, while he was walking around the village at night, a young man bumped into him, and claimed that he couldn't see him because it was too dark. The next day the head passed a rule saying, everyone walking on the streets at night must carry a lantern. That night, the same man bumped into him again, and showed the lantern to the annoyed village head and pointed out that there is no rule that the lantern should have a candle. The village head made an [[Obvious Rule Patch]] the next day, saying that the lantern must also have a candle. That night, the man bumped into him again, and this time the Loophole Abuse was that the rule doesn't say the candle has to be lit. The embarrassed head cancelled the rule on the following day.

* [[wikipedia:Filibuster|The filibuster]], in which a politician prevents a bill from being voted on by extending debate indefinitely. It's actually [[Older Than They Think|as old as the Roman Republic]].

* In the United Kingdom, there used to be [[wikipedia:Rotten borough|rotten boroughs]] that had representatives in Parliament even though they had a very small population - the district lines hadn't been been changed in centuries, and what were once large population centers were now tiny villages. It was very difficult to get rid of them because it required an act of Parliament to redraw the district lines. This is why the U.S. constitution requires that [[Obvious Rule Patch|a census be taken every ten years]].

* [[wikipedia:Gerrymandering|Gerrymandering]].

* The Westboro Baptist Church basically does this to be real life trolls.

* Math Textbooks. Some of them have the answers in the back so that people can check their answers and see if they got it right. To prevent people from just copying the answers down, they only include answers for every other problem. Conveniently, to prevent cheating, guess which problems are always the ones on the test and assigned for homework?

** Though some classes, particularly in the higher grades, assign the ones that have the answers in the back so they can check it. That being said, most books only have the answers, not the work, and many teachers require work to be shown and will often assume you just copied the answer if that's all you have.

** And for the people ''making'' the textbooks, there isn't any rule stating how long the edition has to be relevant ''or'' a minimum of how much stuff should be changed for each edition. Thus it's common for a new edition of a textbook to change ''one diagram'' or ''one source'', while they pocket all the money from students who can't resell the books to the university. (This is why in every college town you see third party stores.)

* [[Jeff Dunham]] has mentioned using a method to get free professional photos taken - he used his ''school pictures''. Unfortunately, these wound up in the yearbook.

* In 2004, the Federal Trade Commission implemented the National Do-Not-Call Registry, which allows Americans to limit the number of telemarketing calls made to them. However, phone surveyors are one group exempt from this rule, allowing groups like the Christian non-profit organization [http://dove.org/default1.asp The Dove Foundation]—known for the "family-approved" seal it puts on movies appropriate for family audiences (and not to be confused with the brand of soap made by Unilever) -- to do phone surveys and ask for a follow-up call afterwards from their for-profit partner Feature Films for Families, where they try to sell movies to them. That way, they are able to skirt the Do-Not-Call rule. The State of Missouri sued Dove for US$70,000 in 2006 for violating their laws.

** Likewise, the "Do Not Call" list also doesn't apply to political campaigns, so every two years people complain about getting robocallers late at night or very early morning. This is especially bad every presidential campaign, peaking in 2008 where people reported having getting so many calls at the worst times (Especially around when they're eating dinner) that people reportedly unplugged all the phones in their house so they could get a good night's sleep for once.

* In streaming sites such as ustream and livestream, ads interrupt it. However, get adblocker and they don't play the ads at all.

** Likewise, people on Hulu often pick the "give me a longer ad and don't interrupt at all" and then use this opportunity to go to the bathroom or go make a sandwich or popcorn without actually seeing the ad.

* Many coupon deals have loophole abuse...or just deals to rack people in.

** Subway's "$5 Footlong" campaign is full of loopholes. They assume that reducing the sandwiches to $5 that you'll buy footlongs more and will buy chips and a drink to make up for the loss. However, people have, since 2008, learned that they can buy the most expensive subs on the menu that aren't listed as premium, put $15 worth of vegetables and $5 worth of mayonnaise and they decide ''not'' to buy chips and a drink. As a result, they then walk away with a sandwich that causes the store to ''lose'' money.

** A few years ago, a practice among certain Starbucks customers was named the "ghetto latte": order a double shot espresso, which is significantly cheaper than a latte, and also ask for a venti cup of ice, which is free. They then dump the espresso into the venti cup, and then go to the condiment bar and dump tons of milk from the urn into it, effectively creating a venti iced latte for the price of a doppio espresso. (Some will even bring the urn to the counter complaining it is empty when they don't get enough.) Starbucks has not so far banned the procedure, considering it technically legit.

* [[Acceptable Targets]] can be this way for sexism, racism, and discrimination, but [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|that's really all that needs to be said.]]

* In politics, those who hold an executive office are often given the power to selectively veto only parts of a bill without vetoing the whole thing. This has been often used to veto individual words or sentences to [[Quote Mine]] a bill and create an entirely different bill, for example by deleting the word "not" to completely reverse the meaning.

** Wisconsin governors are particularly infamous for doing this - former governor Tommy Thompson was known for deleting ''individual letters and digits'', which came to be known as the "[[Wheel of Fortune|Vanna White]] veto". The Wisconsin legislature has since managed to create two [[Obvious Rule Patch]]es which disallow the governor from using the veto to delete letters within a word or splice together multiple sentences, but to this day, the governor of Wisconsin can still delete individual words in a sentence.

** The United States Congress once tried to give the President this power, but the power, known as the line-item veto, was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

** Regardless, recent Presidents have made frequent use of "signing statements" which effectively indicate their interpretation of or credulity for a new law, and the extent to and/or manner in which they intend to enforce it. Such statements, however, are not binding, and have no impact on subsequent Presidents.

* Boise, Idaho has (or had) a law forbidding public nudity unless it has "serious artistic merit". A strip bar attempted to circumvent it by [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4279003.stm issuing pencils and paper to the clients].

* Privately owned land is this way to the United States constitution. Especially schools - where you essentially sign away your rights the second you enter.

* There are many cases in which an action is illegal by law, or a government agency is required by law to do something, but there is no recourse or penalty for violating said law, resulting in the law freely being broken for lack of consequences.

** A specific example recurs in Washington State, where the state legislature is required, by the state constitution, to fully fund public education as its top priority; however, no one, not even the state Supreme Court, has the power (or any means by which) to force it to actually do that.

* In online auctions (primarily eBay), it's not uncommon to find automated pieces of software that were programmed to monitor the auction and always bid with the absolute minimum price without the person having to ever actually be at the computer.

* Whenever something is released under a "pay what you like" plan (Such as the Humble Bundle Indie Bundle) a lot of people select the minimum price, especially if it's as low as $0.01. (And plenty of people still pirate it anyways.)

* On art sites like ''deviantART'', pornographic content is against the TOS. However, Artistic Nude isn't considered pornographic at all, so naturally if you look in that section, be prepared to see a ''lot'' of pornography that's labeled as "Artistic Nude".

** Likewise, icons often aren't handled by the mature filter. Some trolls on those sites regularly put pictures of asses or stuff that normally would be placed under "mature" to shock people with the mature filter on. It was less common in ''deviantART'' where the icon size was limited to only 50x50 pixels, but on other art sites with bigger avatars....

** For that matter, "Photo-dumping" is not allowed on some art sites...but people love to take these and then place them under a "Photograph" categorization so they get away with it.

* Related to the above, there were people who had done the Loophole Abuse on ''[[Fur Affinity]]'' before an update to the terms of service said that x-rated avatars would be banned, too. When it comes to depicting content banned from the site, though, [[Aint No Rule]] saying you can't tell people to go check out your gallery on another site that ''does'' allow it.

* An old Irish joke takes advantage of this:

{{quote| Murphy and Flannery hated each other with a burning passion. To help end the fighting, God sent an angel down to Murphy to help nudge him to repentance and reconciliation. The Angel said to Murphy: "Murphy, m'boy, God has told me that you may pray for any one thing you wish, and you will receive it. However, whatever you get, Flannery will get twice as much." "So, angel, lemme get this straight," Murphy replied. "Does this mean that if I ask to be the head of one dockside union, Flannery will be the head of two?" "Yes." "And if I win the Irish Sweepstakes once, Flannery will win it twice?" "Yes." And if I get a brass band following me, he'll..." "Have one in front of him AND behind him," said the angel.<br />

Murphy thought for a moment. "All right, angel, I've made my decision. '''I'd like a glass eye!'''" }}

** Of course, there's further Loophole Abuse to be had when you realize that Murphy [[Exact Words|never specified]] that the glass eyes had to ''replace'' the real eyes. The angel could just as easily make glass eyes appear and hand them over.

*** A variant has the wisher ask to be blind in one eye, which is also open to Loophole Abuse by the angel/genie due to his lack of specification as to how long the blindness should ''last''.

** Other variations of the joke (usually with the person getting double being a Lawyer) have Murphy asking for a ton of money, a ton of success, and then to be scared ''half'' to death.

*** Or to be shown something so funny he'd laugh himself half to death.

*** Or to donate a kidney.

* More legal Loophole Abuse, Wal-Mart. While this practice is ''hardly'' unique to Wal-Mart, they just happen to be the most well-known example of it. The practice in question are to skirting around labour laws.

** "Wal-Mart full time":

*** In North America, 40 hours is considered full-time legally. They claim to be hiring you for a "full-time" position, and then make you work 36–39 hours a week. Enough to feel like a full time (which actually ''is'' full-time in parts of the world, see below) but legally, you are still considered part-time and therefore you are not entitled to any benefits. A lot of Wal-Mart employees are actually eligible for food-stamps and other such public services because they don't hire anyone full-time unless they're a manager or higher-up.

*** They can't do this as much, since 35–38 hours actually would be full-time in much of Europe: in Britain 37.5 hours a week is generally seen as the default, and 35 hours in France. However the main distinction on this side of the channel in terms of rights is between permanent and temporary workers - [[Aint No Rule]] against relieving temps for no reason (especially just before three months are up and EU law specifies they get the same rights as permanent workers), or making as many jobs as possible temporary, to skirt around workers rights.

** [[Aint No Rule]] against bumping people who worked legal-full time down to "Wal-Mart full time" after they worked at the store long enough to qualify for more benefits.

** This has happened to other firms and not just Wal-Mart mind you. Depending on where in North America you live, if you work for four hours, you are required to be given a 15 minute break. Many businesses also use a computer system that keeps track of this. However, there [[Aint No Rule]] against the manager telling you to clock out and then clock back in so the computer doesn't record them of being on the clock more than four hours at a tie and saying they need to take a break. There also [[Aint No Rule]] against giving you split shifts; but to be fair, many businesses do split shifts so that the "Break" is actually an hour or more and you aren't paid.

*** Or a shift 6 hours and 45 minutes long to avoid union rules that a 7-hour shift gets a half-hour break.

** There's all sorts of Loophole Abuse surrounding overtime...

* Another common Loophole Abuse that is pretty widespread, but Wal-Mart is notorious for, a practice called "constructive discharge." Most companies would rather have inexperienced and cheaper workers instead of skilled, and more expensive ones. Basically, if an employee is fired, they're entitled to unemployment benefits. However, if the company wants to avoid paying you, they decide to make your life miserable through manipulation of the rules that you will be forced to quit.

* If you are hired as a Waiter or Waitress in America, legally you're allowed to have a paycheck below minimum wage. However, the loophole is that you ''must'' be able to make up the difference in tips. This hasn't stopped some places from hiring everyone as a waiter simply so they could get away with paying them $2.50 an hour...and subsequently getting blacklisted by the working force when word gets out.

* When Wikipedia blacked-out their site for SOPA protests, it took less than an hour for people [[Don't Shoot the Message|simply tired of SOPA protests]] to start telling people to run stuff like No Script, use the mobile page, or simply hit "stop" before they were redirected from an article to the SOPA page. Likewise, when other sites do it, there [[Aint No Rule]] saying you can't use caches, either.

* Normally, you cannot "Censor" someone with the first amendment...however there [[Aint No Rule]] saying you can't censor them through operant conditioning. (Ignore them when they talk about something you don't like to give negative punishment, or give positive punishment by responding with outright hostility.)

* The "Circle Game" can be traced back to 1929. Where the people try to trick you into looking at your fingers making a circle below your waist, and if you see it, then they get to hit you. Originally, this was done in colleges to get past their anti-hazing rules.

* California gun laws stipulate that you cannot have a removable magazine on a firearm with "assault weapon" features, such as pistol grips, collapsible stocks, flash hiders, etc. However, California defines a "removable magazine" as one that can be removed without a tool. To get around this, gun manufacturers made the "bullet button" magazine release. All you have to do is get an unfired round, press it against a tiny button that is flush against some housing so you can't use your finger, and the magazine pops out. This gets around having removable magazines on "assault weapons" because you're technically using a tool to remove the magazine.

* In the United States, it is illegal to sell fully-automatic weapons to private citizens. However, there's no law that says you can't sell a "weapon kit": selling all the parts necessary along with the instructions on how to assemble it. Some gun manufacturers have done this.

* When TV execs want to cancel a show but ratings are high, they can move it to a time slot where hardly anyone can watch it, so ratings go down. Once the ratings drop they have a reason to cancel it.

* There's no rule I can't create an example of this trope here. (Is there?)

* British solicitor [[Amoral Attorney|Nick Freeman]] has made it a specialty to get his celebrity clients [[Off On a Technicality]]. In response the British press has nicknamed him 'Mr. Loophole'. Freeman's response? [[Refuge in Audacity|He had the name trademarked]].

* The Montreux Convention prohibits the passage of "Aircraft carriers" through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits. The Soviet Union, being the Soviet Union, responded by making ''Kiev''-class "Aviation cruisers", which are [[Macross Missile Massacre|Missile]] [[Cool Boat|Cruisers]] which just ''happened'' to [[Military Mashup Mashine|carry aircraft.]]

** And then they took the trope [[Up to Eleven]] with the ''Admiral Kuznetsov'' class, which is a full-sized aircraft carrier with an absurd amount of anti-shipping and anti aircraft missiles, and Point Defense Systems.

* In a part of the [[Holy Roman Empire]], peasants were legally obliged to pay their lord a certain percentage of their grain harvest. So when in the 18th century the potato became a new food staple in Germany, the crafty peasants decided to switch from wheat and rye to potatoes so they could keep the entire harvest and resulting profits themselves. The lord tried to get them to pay a portion of the potato harvest, but in vain; the Imperial Court (Reichsgericht) in Wetzlar found that the peasants were in the right. The case is fairly well known in Germany, as one of the officials in charge of the case in Wetzlar was a young Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

* Loophole Abuse was what made [[The Knights Templar]] the richest organization in Medieval Europe. As a Holy Order, the Templars were technically bound by a Vow of Poverty, and so technically could not earn money or own property. However, they were able to accept "donations" from patrons and parishioners, and they were able to finagle a distinction between "owning" wealth and "investing" it: managing their donations "on behalf" of their patrons, becoming wealthy as an organization while still technically being able to claim they owned none of it themselves. In the process they created the modern concept of banking.

* In most of the United States, prostitution is illegal. You'd think this would put the kibosh on porn movies where paid performers have sex. However, technically pornographers ''don't'' pay their actors to have sex; the pay for the right to ''film'' the actors having sex, while the sex act itself is something the actors theoretically do of their own accord. Yes, this line of reasoning actually held up in court.

** Meanwhile, up in Canada, solicitation for prostitution is illegal, but prostitution itself isn't, leading officially recognized loophole abuse: if a prostitute and customer can arrange a sex-for-money deal without either one actually proposing a sex-for-money deal, no crime has been committed.

* On [[Yahoo]] Answers, there's no such rule that you cannot vote for your own answer. This makes it a paradise for [[Trolls]] who can easily score 13 points by writing ''nonsense''. 2 points for the answer, 1 point for the vote, and 10 points if the answer gets selected as the best by voters (which is often just one).

* Infamous "director" [[Uwe Boll]] routinely abused a loophole in german tax law that rewards investments in film. The law allowed investors in German-owned films to write off 100% of their investment as a tax deduction; it also allowed them to invest borrowed money and write off any fees associated with the loan. The investor was then only required to pay taxes on the profits made by the movie; if the movie loses money, the investor would get a tax writeoff.

{{quote| '''Uwe Boll:''' Maybe you know it but it's not so easy to finance movies in total. And the reason I am able to do these kind of movies is I have a tax shelter fund in Germany, and if you invest in a movie in Germany you get basically fifty percent back from the government.}}

* [[Rule 34]] on most art-sites is often ignored...unless it violates site policies in some way. A notable one is that characters who're canonically underage. Cue people drawing the characters as young adults so they could upload rule 34 of them.

* The Japanese ran this as their primary legal argument before the League of Nations justifying their invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Their resident international law expert (a Briton who disagreed with post-World War I norms of International Law) ran with the language in the League of Nations charter banning aggressive warfare in sovereign nations by pointing out that the part of China they invaded had been run by a warlord with only loose connections to Jiang Jieshi's recognized Nationalist government. In short, ain't no rule against invading something that isn't really a "country." [[World War II|The argument didn't take.]]

* If a high school student wants to complain about the school but isn't allowed to do so during school hours, they can still do so on social media just as long no threats of violence are made in the process. This is due to the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which talks about property rights and a student's social media account is considered private property.

** However, and this goes to anyone who does have one, slander lawsuits are protected by the Constitution, since the law can only interfere if threats are made. If a person is upset with a comment but doesn't violate the law, the victim can still file a civil case if their character is damaged.

* When the Federal Communications Commission begun to require broadcast television like NBC and ABC to aired “educational and informative” between the hours of seven in the morning until ten in evening, for three hours a week in order to keep their license back in 1996, this created three major loopholes.

** One: Most of the airings were done between seven in the morning until three in the afternoon during the weekdays, which most of the targeted children audience were at school. Commercial stations had their “malicious” product advertisements aired with the impression children wouldn’t see them… those who are healthy that is.

** Two: On way days of the week wasn’t mention either. Many broadcast television stations soon learned of this and aired the “E/I” on weekends, usually Saturdays. [[My Rule Fu Is Stronger Than Yours|Since Saturday is part of the week]], airing “E/I" programming on weekends since the target audience would most likely be at home to watch and in compliance with the FFC rules.

** Three: If a program contains some "educational and informative" information, they can legally count as an "E/I". Many talk shows got away with this because some provide information to the viewers.

* While profanity is strictly monitored on cable and broadcast television, it has to count if heard but [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|not mouthed off]]. This means, if a character lip sync the swear word without having it heard or replace it with an animal sound like a dolphin chirp or the classic bleep, a TV Network can get away with it.

* Many teenagers at a school in Mustang, OK got around the drug policy by using [http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-06-30/health/sfl-digital-drugs-063010_1_drug-abuse-miami-dade-county-public-schools-sounds digital version] since it can't be found on a drug test. Officials [[Obvious Rule Patch|control the usage of MP3 players]] and blocked YouTube in attempted to regain control.

* While is banned alcohol in prisons, the materials to make a kind of alcohol known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruno Pruno] are still legal because prisons are required to make sure national needs are meet. Some wardens have tried to [[Obvious Rule Patch|banned fresh fruits from leaving]] the cafeterias but that isn’t stopped inmates from getting alternatives.

* '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution The First Amendment of the United States Constitution]''': ''Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise there of; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.''

** Noticed a major loophole… it states congress, which consist of United States House of Representatives and United States Senate. However, it doesn’t mention school officials, state governors, city mayors, local officials, and even the President.

* If you’re a high school student and want to run school newspapers, you should [http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/freedoms/faq.aspx?id=12818 anticipate censorship by the schools] unless you don’t have them sponsor it. Make it an [http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=1230&edition=37 independently run] and offer it off-campus either having it available a news stand on public grounds or publish it online. There’s nothing the schools can do if the work is off-campus thanks to the Fourth Amendment since it would be considered private property.

** Better yet, if you happen to have a business license,<ref>this varies by state</ref> it’s seen as a form of insurance since city officials would likely allow “clean” businesses to continue just as long the license is valid.

* When the Birther Movement demanded evidence that Barack Obama is a natural born of the United States, they failed to realize there are three loopholes in the law on meets the definition of "'''''natural born'''''". While the movement was correct on the rule about being born in United States, which Hawaii became in 1959… two years before Obama was born, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States here are the rules they missed]:

** '''One''': If Hawaii was still a US territory by the time Obama was born, they still would be declared natural born US citizen even if the area eventually become enters statehood. This happened to Bette Midler because she was born in 1950 while Hawaii was still a territory of the United States.

** '''Two''': If both parents are U.S. citizens, the child is a "natural-born citizen", which is how Milder got around this since her parents are New Jersey along with the rule mentioned above.

** '''Three''': If a child is born outside the United States and one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year, the child would still be declared a natural-born. Even if he was born in his father's native of Kenya, [http://ivn.us/2013/08/13/defining-natural-born-citizen/ Obama] was still been allowed to become US President because his mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas.

* In 2010, [http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/us/massachusetts-upskirt-photography/ Michael Robertson] was arrested in Boston for voyeurism after he was caught taking pictures of women with his cell-hone camera. Robertson uses his camera photograph up the women’s skirts, and he exposed a serious loophole. Because the photographs didn’t contain nudity, the "Peeping Tom" laws against voyeurism didn’t applied. After Michael Robertson was let go, lawmakers in Massachusetts [[Obvious Rule Patch|immediately passed reforms to the laws]] to include "upskirting".

* The phase “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” is an open door invitation for a loophole since other body parts aren’t mention.