Voodoo Shark: Difference between revisions

** What about prophylactics? Has no one in this universe ever heard of a condom? Especially since the series is implied to have occurred [[After the End]], meaning that they somehow retained knowledge of advanced robotics, but not birth control?

* In [[Digimon Adventure 02]] , the explanation why the main characters of [[Digimon Adventure]] are no longer able to digivolve to ultimate or mega, is that the power of the crests was neccesary to restore balance to the world. The problem is that these crests were not only already destroyed, the kids had already learned to evolve without them by drawing power from either themselves(english dub) or each other(original). And the other problem is that the series had already introduced a 9th crest, still with full power, so they didn't even have the power of all the crests. And the other other problem is that the world was already reborn with restored balance at the end of the first season.

* In the ''[[Bleach]]'' manga, during Hitsugaya's fight with Harribel, after she seemingly kills Hitsugaya, it's moments later revealed that what she killed, and had been bleeding, is an ice clone, with the real Hitsugaya alive and well. The anime [[Bowdlerise|omits the blood]] when adapting the scene, and while this clears up the issue of how an ice clone can be made to apparently bleed, the audience is then left without explanation for why Harribel was fooled by the decoy, considering her accomplished status.

** Since then, the editorial staff seems to have realized its mistake, and has been at pains to re-retcon some of it. For example, lines from the ''Batman & Robin'' title, as well as the semi-canon animated version of ''[[Under the Red Hood]]'', strongly suggest that Todd's body was actually rejuvenated in a Lazarus Pit, which makes for a far more palatable explanation.

* The biggest [[Voodoo Shark|Voodoo Sharks]] in the [[DCU]] might be some of the explanations of [[Clark Kenting]]. For a brief while in the [[Bronze Age]], it was [[Canon]] that [[Superman]]'s nearly [[Paper-Thin Disguise]] worked despite all the close calls because he also had a "super-hypnosis" power that prevented anyone from noticing Clark Kent's resemblance to Superman. This depended on his glasses, which were made out of pieces of his Kryptonian spaceship; in one comic Lois Lane saw Clark Kent in a suit and no glasses and assumed it was Superman trying futilely to disguise himself as Clark. Fine, fair enough, Superman does lots of things superhumanly well due to his speed and intellect and they're all called separate superpowers. But this just raises ''more'' questions, like why does a wig work as a disguise for Supergirl? Or, why does this disguise work over television? Or, there are many stories where Batman disguises himself as Clark. Does Batman have Bat-hypnosis?

* When talking about [[What Could Have Been]] with his run on the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' comic, several of former writer Ken Penders' explanations for the events in "Mobius: 25 Years Later" come off as this. A few examples:

** Locke's sickness and death was due to cancer he developed from a bad interaction with this self-experimentation (to create Knuckles) and the Master Emerald. (If that's so, why isn't Knuckles affected, even though he resulted from those same experiments?)

*# So here we come to the [[Voodoo Shark]] moment. In 1998's '[http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/260479.html The Final Chapter]', Spider-Man enters Norman Osborn's house in search of his missing child, only to find Aunt May alive and well waiting for him. Norman Osborn explains that he switched Aunt May with ''an actress engineered to be identical to Aunt May, who spent a long time practicing her mannerisms until they were identical''. And that it was THIS actress who died in ASM #400, meaning Peter (and the readers) cried over a complete stranger.

*# This leads to several questions. For one, how could this 'actress' be SO good as to fool Peter Parker? Aunt May was practically his mother. They lived under the same roof together, and Peter would have KNOWN something was wrong even if his spider-sense didn't give anything away. Secondly, just WHEN was this 'switch' made? How could this actress have practiced Aunt May's mannerisms, and become so good, when the real Aunt May was in a coma? Third, why in the world would this actress ''stay in character even on her deathbed''! It makes absolutely no sense! The books, of course, never provided any answers for these and just moved on from there without addressing it any further, [[Wild Mass Guessing|forcing any dissatisfied readers to pick up the slack themselves]].

== Fan Fiction ==

== Films -- Live-Action ==

* ''[[Star Wars]]'': The explanation of Han Solo's famous statement about "making the Kessel Run [[Unit Confusion|in less than 12 parsecs]]" left a bad taste in some fans' mouths. [[George Lucas]] eventually [[Word of God|announced]] that the Kessel Run involves navigating through The Maw, an area littered with black holes. The smart thing to do is zigzag around them, but the ''Millenium Falcon'''s superior navigational computer and engines allow her to fly a more direct route and thus arrive with less mileage on the odometer. Earlier drafts of the script indicated a much simpler explanation: Han was a blowhard trying to pull a fast one on a backwater yokel. (Note Obi-Wan's expression right after the line.)

** The prequels created one in the form of force ghosts. With the original trilogy, it was assumed that all Jedi (or at least sufficiently powerful ones) became "one with The Force" when they died. Then along comes ''[[Revenge of the Sith]]'' saying the Force Ghost thing was a technique Qui-Gon Jin discovered and taught to Yoda, who taught it to Obi-Wan. So then... How did Vader/Anakin learn it? (The obvious answer, that Obi-Wan taught it to him, runs into the problem that by the time ''he'd'' learned about it himself, Anakin was already his enemy.) And why didn't Qui-Gon or Yoda teach this technique to any other Master? For that matter why wouldn't Qui-Gon appear before his friend and Padawan, Obi-Wan?

* In the film serial ''[[Flash Gordon (film)|Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe]]'', the heroes befriend a tribe of rock creatures on the planet Mongo. Professor Zarkoff happens to know their language. How? Because the aliens colonized part of Earth, but died out there, while their counterparts who stayed on Mongo degenerated into superstitious primitives. But before the rock creatures died out on Earth, a tribe in Central America adopted their language. That tribe also died out, but Zarkoff happened to study their written records (we can only guess how the pronunciations are known, and how it could be translated at all). After the professor gives this explanation, no aspect of it is ever mentioned again.

* The ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' film series has its justification for still having a [[Masquerade]] in the second movie: military combat robots went rogue and trashed a major city. Why the government would think "Yes, we not only spent trillions of dollars building giant robots with sophisticated combat AI, concealing this information from taxpayers, but we are ''so staggeringly incompetent'' that they not only malfunctioned and started killing people, but when they did we had no way to stop them but to send in ''more'' giant robots to fight them" is somehow ''better'' than admitting it's aliens is anyone's guess.

** Not entirely foolish. It is believed, for example, that conspiracy theorists believe things like "9/11 was an inside job" because the idea that the government was in control of the whole thing is less scary than the thought that 18 "desert nomads" with almost no training were able to inflict such massive damage, totally bypassing security. The concept that aliens just plain ''exist'' would totally upend many people's entire worldview (the aliens are not only not all humanoid, but ''inorganic'' - throwing "in God's image" into disarray for many), and presenting it as a human problem due to human mistakes could very easily be seen as a lesser evil than admitting the truth.

* In ''[[The Neverending Story|The Neverending Story 3]]'', Bastion's supporting cast gets wished out of Fantasia into the real world in an attempt to justify why [[Just Eat Gilligan|he can't just wish Fantasia back to normal]]. However, [[Lampshade Hanging|Bastion himself]] questions why he can't just wish the supporting cast back into Fantasia first, then wish Fantasia back to normal. [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum|He's never really given an answer.]]

* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' has quite a few, usually concerning [[Stephenie Meyer]]'s [[Word of God|explanations]] about how a vampire's body works. According to Meyer, when a human becomes a vampire all of their bodily fluids are replaced with a type of venom. To explain how a vampire can father a child, then, she says that the venom takes over "some of the functions" of the fluid it replaced.

** In fact, this one is especially terrible because it contradicts major points in the previous books. After all, weren't some of Edward's siblings jealous of Bella's ability to have children? What prevented them from having their own children if their fluids were never hindered?

** What is also unclear is how Renesmee is able to age, since Meyer stated that once a person becomes a vampire, they stop aging. Renesmee doesn't only age, but also [[Rapid Aging|ages very quickly]], and [[Immortality Begins At Twenty|then will stop aging]] once she looks about 17 or 18.

* A rather complicated example occurs in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' regarding the [[Big Bad]] Lich King from ''Wrath of the Lich King''. Many fans complained about Arthas being stuck with the [[Villain Ball]] in the expansion after the Lich King (which he was now permanently half of) being played up as a [[Magnificent Bastard]] in the previous game. In what appears to be an attempt to justify it, Blizzard gave the explanation that Arthas's spirit was dominating over the spirit of Ner'zhul (the previously sole spirit of the Lich King, who most certainly qualified for [[Magnificent Bastard]] status, and Arthas supposedly not so much). However, that caused much more confusion considering previous interviews and scenes stating that Arthas and Ner'zhul were one being (flat out stating that neither persona existed anymore, only one Lich King), leading to many fans feeling annoyance.

** The final boss patch tried to lessen all the [[Villain Ball]] moments where he just threatened you then left, or told some mook to kill you, then left, etc.. by explaining they were all a part of a [[I Need You Stronger]] plot, to get the most powerful warriors in Azeroth to become as strong as possible then have them confront him directly, at which point he would slaughter them and raise them as Uber-Death Knights to be his new unbeatable warriors. This was a [[Voodoo Shark]] to some players, since his plan to get "the greatest fighting force the world has ever known" involved letting them kill all his other powerful minions. And while there's the obvious "if they killed them, these guys are obviously better" counter argument, the players did that by facing them one at a time while outnumbering them ''10 or 25 to one''. Throw 10 players in a room with Kel'Thuzad, Anub'arak, Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Lana'thel, Rotface, Festergut, Putridus, Saurfang and Sindragosa all at once and see how long they last, because if the players are squished in seconds, it probably wasn't worth letting all the aforementioned people and more die to get them on your side.

** Of course, as Anub'arak and Blood Princes show - he could bring them back too, so it still is a [[Xanatos Gambit|win-win]] situation for him.

** This explanation actually makes sense if you know Arthas story, as this is pretty much the way he came to be, being played has a [[Unwitting Pawn]] when he was a human [[Knight Templar]].

* ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'' attempted to justify [[Bag of Spilling|the lack of Samus' arsenal]] with the "authorization system"; to wit, she was permitted to aid the military investigation so long as she only used her weapons when authorized by the commander. So, she still ''had'' all her powerups from the previous games, and ''could'' activate them herself at any time, but ''would not'' until given the all clear.

** The problem here is that while Adam, the commanding officer, had good reason to ban the use of the more powerful weapons, the entire "authorization" thing falls flat on its face when you are sent wading through lava in an area that hurts you from just ''being'' there... with a fully functional ''heat shield'' installed that you are not permitted to use. This goes for every non-dangerous upgrade. Grapple beam to swing across the gap and get an energy tank? Sorry, no. Gravity module for free movement underwater so those space piranha won't get you? Nope. Wave beam activated for just a second so I can hit this switch behind the glass? No, you must backtrack through half the station first instead.

* In [[Psychonauts]], Raz's multiple lives in mental realms are justified with Raz having multiple layers of astral projection that weaken his link to the mental world, and if he runs out of lives, he gets ejected. Health drops are also explained as Raz collecting mental health from the realm. However, this raises a lot of questions when Raz has the same mechanics for mental health and extra lives ''in reality''.

* ''[[Castlevania]] '[[Dawn of Sorrow]]'' claims that the castle the game takes place in is an exact replica of the the [[Trope Namer]] for [[Chaos Architecture]] for the purpose of avoiding an [[Artifact Title]] (the game doesn't take place in Dracula's Castle, AKA Castlevania), which would merely be trivia otherwise.

'''Brian:''' You know what, Stewie? If you don't like it, go on the Internet and complain. }}

** [[Comically Missing the Point|Well, if the son looks human but is aging at the speed of a dog, then he could be a little less than two years old chronologically while being as physically mature as a normal human 13-year-old, so people might describe him as 13 years old...]]

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' Played for laughs. When Patchy the Pirate invited [[SpongeBob]] and Patrick to a dry-land party, the invitations got destroyed for obvious reasons...

{{quote|'''SpongeBob:''' Whoever sent this obviously has no idea about the physical limitations of life underwater! Well, might as well throw these in the fire.

** And often eventually it will be simplified with a new discovery. For example, the geocentric model of the universe began to become increasingly convoluted as improving telescope technology and star charting lead to increasingly convoluted models of how the orbiting bodies must be moving. Moving to a heliocentric model simplified this considerably.

*** Even then, there were still problems with the model. For an example visible to the naked eye, at times Mars appears to double back on itself as it moves across the night sky. Scientists began working on theories that the planets all moved in orbits within orbits (essentially, that they wobbled about within their orbits like a top that's winding down). Then they discovered a far simpler explanation: planetary orbits are elliptical, not a perfect circle.

* One of the many reasons [[Conspiracy Theories]] are ridiculed is that their "explanations" of perceived inconsistencies only raises further (and much dumber) questions, one of the more common being "How would you keep something like that a secret?"

** "Who could possibly benefit from this?" being another common one.

** [http://www.cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html David Wong], in an attempt to disprove the 9/11 conspiracy theories, actually calculated the number of people they would have had to to pay off or eliminate to guarantee the success of the [[False-Flag Operation]]. The resulting number was ''over 100,000''. Of course, that has nothing on the [[Flat Earth Society]], whose pet theory would include the cooperation of the entire Southern Hemisphere, over a billion people.

* Most [[Urban Legends]] also fall under this trope for the same reason as [[Conspiracy Theories]]. It doesn't take long for any critical observer to pick apart such stories, usually by pointing out that the city where they happen is never specified, or in the case of the story happening to "the friend of a friend" that the person telling the story is ''never'' able to give the name of that person.

* Likewise, religious apologists can come up with very odd rationalisations of their beliefs. These explanations tend to only make things look worse, especially when morality is involved.