There Is No Rule Six

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In comedies, Long Lists and even shorter ones will include not only redundant repetition of unnecessary items, but also items which assert their own nonexistence.

Compare There Are No Rules, and don't see also I Was Never Here.

Examples of There Is No Rule Six include:

Film

• Karate Kid II had a textbook example:

Mr. Miyagi: Aha... here are the two rules of Miyagi-Ryu Karate. Rule Number One: "Karate for defense only." Rule Number Two: "First learn Rule Number One."

Literature

• Chapter 19 ("Miss Zarves") of Sideways Stories from Wayside School:

There is no Miss Zarves. There is no nineteenth story. Sorry.

• Dave Barry In Cyberspace includes a parody of advertisements found in computer magazines purportedly offering great discounts on computers. One of the "incredible prices" quoted is: "BAXTER DataWeasel 95949847 -- There is no such computer! Ha ha!"
  • Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway had a double-layered use of the trope: in the American Constitution, Article I Section 8 reads "Section 8 has been intentionally left blank." This becomes doubly funny if you know that Section 8 is the part of the Constitution that gives Congress all of its legal power.
• The book My Brother Was an Only Child by Jack Douglas has, as the entire contents of Chapter Nineteen: "To hell with Chapter 19. Every damn book you pick up has a Chapter 19."
  • Except Sideways Stories from Wayside School.
• In Ender's Game, Rose tells Ender that there are only three rules, "Do what I tell you and don't piss in the bed." When Ender asks what the third rule is, as he was clearly meant to, Rose replies that that was three rules - "We don't do too good in math, here."
• Vorkosigan Saga's rules for space warfare:

Rule 1: Don't overrule the Tactical Computer unless you know something it doesn't. Rule 2: The Tac Comp always knows more than you do.

• An old Usenet humor post titled "The Australian Fifth Degeneration Project" had a numbered list of "features" for a rumored new computer including "Feature number 6: There is no feature 6." The Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch was cited in a subsequent footnote.

Magazines

• A Running Gag in Private Eye:

Full list of things that fit a ridiculously narrow definition 1. The only example. 2. Er... 3. That's it.

Live-Action TV

• The Trope Namer is the Bruces Sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, where "Rule six: There is no... rule six" is sandwiched between "Rule five: No poofters" and "Rule seven: no poofters".
• Also in the "Monkee vs. Machine" episode of The Monkees as Peter prepares for a job interview:

Mike: Just remember these three little words: Don't. Argue. Peter: That's two words. Mike: See? You're doing it already!

• In an episode of the TV series Porridge, chief warden McKay tells Fletcher that there only two rules in Slade Prison. The first rule: "You do not write on the walls." The second: "You obey all the rules." Oddly, he'd just mentioned a rule against prisoners congregating in cells.
• A minor variation from Bottom:

Richie: Well, well, well, it's interesting because A, I said it and anything I say is interesting per se, and B, er, well, there isn't a B because the A was so great.

Music

• The Traveling Wilbury's have two albums: "Vol. 1" and "Vol. 3".

Radio

• There are no examples from radio shows.

Tabletop Games

Board Games

• Found in the rules for the Steve Jackson board game Globbo.

Card Games

• An unusual non-(intentionally)-comedic example once appeared in Magic: The Gathering's comprehensive rulebook:

Rule 502.9d: Ignore this rule.

• • It was originally a rule involving assigning trample damage that became obsolete, but kept to avoid renumbering the rest of the rules. It was finally removed when Eighth Edition was released.
• The Monty Python version of Fluxx has a card called "My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels." Two people playing the game must each choose a number between one and four. One is subtracted from the sum of those two numbers, and a rule corresponding to that resulting number must be followed. There Is No Rule Six.

Tabletop RPG

• Dungeons & Dragons: Page 128 of the 3.5 Dungeon Masters Guide has a list of traits to flesh out NPCs. Number 26 is blank missing entirely, and Number 100 reads "No sense of humor (See #26)".

Theatre

• Dramatic example from Fiddler on the Roof, when Tevye is mulling over whether to accept Chava marrying a non-Jew: "On the other hand... there is no other hand!"

Video Games

• The manual for Lemmings paid homage to Monty Python in the Hints and Tips section with "6. There is no tip number 6."

Web Comics

• Vexxarr has an experimental gravitic weapon made by humans after studying an alien repulsor, test-firing which left Mars with about 1.05 natural satellites. Robots ordered to disassemble and rebuild ran into a little... procedural problem (see the next page as to what happened when they tried to do it safely):

Bot 1: What does the repair manual proscribe? Bot 2: Step one, move back 10,000 AU or to a minimum safe distance. Bot 1: And STEP 2? (bot 2 studies the memo) (beat) Bot 2: There IS no step 2. Bot 1: (puts a manipulator to its camera)

Web Original

• A joke list of Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Commandments features a variation on this:

201. Thou shall not point out there is no 175 commandment. 193. By order of the Inquisition: There is no such thing as the Inquisition, questioning this will have thou deemed heretic by the Inquisition.

• The Laws of Anime include #43- Law of Triscaquadrodecophobia: There is no Law 43.

Western Animation

• From the Freakazoid! episode "Normadeus":

Freakazoid: "One: Norm Abram is gone. Two:..." Cosgrove: "We don't have a two."

• From South Park:

Step 1: Collect Underpants. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!

• The Cow and Chicken episode "Night of the Ed!" has Cow reading about what to do when their pet jackal turns vicious. Step one is "Panic". Step two is "There is no step two".

Real Life

• Very common in real life codes of law. Laws are generally always referred to by number, so labels always have to be kept consistent. Thus, whenever a law or section of a law is repealed, the text is replaced by something along the lines of "There is no section X."
  • As a practical matter, sections within a title or chapter are often "reserved" so that entire chapters don't need to be re-numbered when a new section is added. Normally, the hundreds digits and up within a section number indicate the chapter, while the tens digit of a section indicates a particular topic within a chapter. Thus, §521 might deal with 1st degree murder, §522 with second degree murder, §523 with felony-murder, and then §524-530 are "reserved", with §531 being, say, voluntary manslaughter. If a new degree of murder is added (capital murder, perhaps), it would be §524, rather than having to renumber everything, having to make it §523A (which is really confusing), or having to put it at the end of the chapter, which may be several hundred sections later (which is just as bad). This does result in there being no §524....for the time being, at least. In this case, the missing sections are simply labeled as "§§524-530: Reserved"
• Question 17 of the 2011 British Census: "This question is intentionally blank"