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Coined by [[SF Debris|Chuck Sonnenberg]], the term refers to the novelization of ''[[Jaws the Revenge]]'' (a film not held in high regard). In the movie, the supposedly eponymous shark seeks out and attacks the living relatives and friends of Martin Brody. In the novel, a voodoo curse is used to explain away the idea that a shark understands the concept of revenge, and that it can somehow figure out where and when to find these people. What makes it the trope namer is that the writer doesn't bother to answer the question of ''why'' the voodoo curse was made in the first place, or any of the other countless questions that come to mind.
 
Similar to [[Dork Age]] but specific to an episode's plot device. Compare to [[AuthorsAuthor's Saving Throw]] in that not only is it on a plot device level, and that the creative staff is able to catch it before the final product ever leaves for production, but also in that it tends to fail miserably. Compare also to [[Justified Trope]], except a Voodoo Shark moment requires the justification to fall flat, inadequately justify, or otherwise simply fail so that suspension of disbelief remains lost. Also compare to [[It Runs On Nonsensoleum]], in which an explanation like this is played for laughs instead of presented straight. [[Dan Browned]] can be considered similar, in that specific knowledge about the subject at hand causes the hand wave or attempt to justify the trope to fall apart.
 
Not necessarily related to [[Jumping the Shark]] or [[Hollywood Voodoo]], except for particularly bad cases such as the [[Trope Namer]].
 
{{examples|Examples:}}
 
== Anime and Manga ==
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* In the ''[[Bleach (Manga)|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.
* In [[Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai]] Maria and her older sister Kate are both nuns, however Maria is only 10 year old and Kate is only 15! For those who are unware it takes years of training before a person is considered a nun.so it's highly unlikely for a person to become one at age 15 let alone 10. so what is the the explanation we get for this? [[Did Not Do the Research|Apparently becoming a nun is just a part of a long-standing tradition in Maria's family.]] Needless to say,this explanation doesn't really answer the question. In fact it just makes the idea even more difficult to believe.
* In ''[[Gundam Seed]]'', protagonist Kira is caught in the [[Self -Destruct Mechanism]] of another [[Humongous Mecha|Mobile Suit]] and appears to be dead for several episodes (though they [[Never Found the Body]]). The spinoff manga ''[[Gundam SEED Astray]]'' explains that his Gundam had an automatic blast shutter that kept him from dying, at which point ''Astray'''s protagonist found him and got him medical attention. This would have been a good enough explanation<ref>though a bit [[Ass Pull]]-ish</ref>...had the anime not shown the Gundam's cockpit as a slagged ruin of molten metal, something that no human could have survived, blast shutter or not. Other than the [[Hand Wave]] of his [[Designer Baby]] genes supposedly making him heat-resistant enough to survive a [[Reentry Scare]] earlier, there's no explanation.
 
 
== Comic Books ==
* The leadup to DC's ''[[Infinite Crisis]]'' revealed that the [[Died Happily Ever After|'pocket paradise']] which Alexander Luthor had created for himself, [[Superman]]-2 and Superboy-Prime at the end of ''[[Crisis On Infinite Earths]]'' [[Cerebus Retcon|was actually more of a]] [[Phantom Zone]], sealed off from the rest of reality by [[Magical Security Cam|a crystal wall which showed all the DCU's events in real time]]. The crisis proper started when Superboy-Prime, disgusted by [[Identity Crisis|recent events]], punched the wall in frustration, shattering it and freeing himself and the others to try and create a [[Merged Reality]], [[Well -Intentioned Extremist|whether it wanted remaking or not]]. This would have worked eminently well as an allegorical image, but [[Word of God]] stated that ''the wall was an actual physical representation of the DCU's timeline'', and used the damage caused by Superboy's punch as a catch-all [[Hand Wave]] to explain away some of the event's less explainable facts, most notably [[Back From the Dead|"dead Robin" Jason Todd suddenly 'waking up']] [[Buried Alive|in his grave]] and Maxwell Lord's completely-out-of-nowhere [[Face Heel Turn]]. [[Internet Backdraft|The fans were neither convinced nor amused]], and [[Memetic Mutation|"SUPERBOY PUNCHED TIME!"]] became something of a rallying cry.
** 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?
** The current (and much more rational) explanation is that when he is Clark Kent, Superman acts completely differently; timid, slumped, and so completely unlike Superman no one would ever relate the two, which also makes Batman disguising himself as Clark easier to accept. Bruce Wayne is a master of disguise and he and Clark already look a lot alike. With a little makeup, Bruce could easily make himself look like Kent. There's also the later post-Crisis component of the explanation: Why does anyone assume that Superman ''has'' a secret identity?
* When talking about [[What Could Have Been]] with his run on the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (Comic Book)|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?)
** Rotor's [[Word of Gay]] reveal would not have impacted his modern-day depiction, because he would've only realized it five years prior to the events of "M:25YL", ''after he was married to a female''. (Ignoring the fact that [[Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?|having him only be gay in the future means nothing to the readers]], while it is possible for people to realize they're gay after they're in a heterosexual relationship, having him find out that late after what's implied to be a long and fulfilling marriage strains credibility.)
** "M:25YL" ''is'' supposed to be the "true" future, and the one where NICOLE came from. (First of all, the story was built around time needing to be "fixed" to prevent [[The End of the World As We Know It]], and Ken's run ended with Sonic ''going back in time to do just that''. No way you can claim it to be the one true future, in that case. Second, unless Past!Nicole was destroyed before the story happened (which [[Word of God]] claims is not the case), [[My Future Self and Me|both Nicoles should exist at the same time]], and thus they should have the info they need from Past!Nicole to figure out what happened and how to fix it, something the story claims they don't. Or maybe it's a case of [[Never the Selves Shall Meet]], but still...)
* The ''[[Spider Man]]'' franchise has had its share of Voodoo Sharks, and the explanation given for Aunt May's [[Back From the Dead|return from the dead]] in late 1998's 'The Gathering of Five/The Final Chapter' storyline deserves a mention here. For easier reading, I'll list the sequence of events leading up to the Voodoo Shark moment in numbered order.
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## 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]].
** Also in ''[[One Moment in Time]]'', [http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=28611 Quesada claims] that ''[[One More Day]]'' was retconned out of continuity and Mephisto never made a deal with the Parkers - so he never saved Aunt May; she got better thanks to Peter's love and determination. ''Really'', Joe? After everyone up to God himself told Pete that she's as good as [[Monty Python's Flying Circus|passed on, no more, ceased to be, pining for the fjords...]]
* Vibranium. It was conceived as an explanation for why [[Captain America|Captain America's]] shield is so strong; vibranium is supposed to absorb all kinetic energy from impacts. The thing is, that just makes the behavior of Cap's shield even LESS realistic. [[Shield -Bash|Hitting bad guys with it]] wouldn't do anything because the shield wouldn't impart any kinetic energy to them. It would stop bullets and such just fine, but not in the way depicted - rather than ricocheting off of the shield, bullets would fall straight to the ground as soon as they contacted it (they wouldn't even deform). And forget about all those "clang!" and "ting!" sounds; that energy would be absorbed by the shield rather than bled off in the form of sound waves. Any impacts on the shield would be completely silent. And of course there's the question of what is happening to all this energy the shield is absorbing. While the full explanation is that it's made of a Vibranium-super steel alloy (not pure Vibranium). That just raises further questions...
 
 
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** Except that the end of [[FD 4]] reveals that {{spoiler|it was all part of the plan. And yes, probably with some [[For the Evulz]] thrown in for good measure}}.
* ''[[The Good the Bad And The Ugly]]'''s first couple of hours is an exercise in how even if you set up a [[Deus Ex Machina]], it's still a [[Deus Ex Machina]] - the best example being the 'carriage of the spirits' that has plenty of set-up and plot dedicated to its presence, but still comes out of nowhere at a critical moment to save Blondie's life (The movie's entertaining enough not to suffer from it, though - if anything, it adds to the stylized atmosphere).
* ''[[The Room]]'' ends with a character "dramatically" shooting themselves. However, the film decides [[Chekhov's Gun|we need to know where the gun came from]], so to explain this, an earlier scene is added where an armed dealer known as Chris-R confronts young orphan Denny about some sort of drug deal, and gets tackled by Johnny and Mark. The problem? Apart from this [[What Happened to The Mouse?|never being mentioned again]], and the sheer convenience that the entire group decided to go to the roof at just the right time, Denny claims he needed the money. He has a millionaire banker paying for his every whim and still he needed to go to a petty thug for money? Then when asked about this man, Denny says "Calm down, he's going to jail!" So... the police arrested him but didn't take his gun for evidence?
** Even better: ''Mark'' is the one who takes the gun. Even if we accept the not using the gun as evidence, are we supposed to believe that Mark simply gave the gun to Johnny?
* In ''[[Highlander Endgame]]'' a group of Immortals live in voluntary stasis in the "Sanctuary," which is located in a large cathedral, but they are murdered by an immortal named Kell. In the original theatrical version, the Sanctuary is referred to as being holy ground, but this annoyed fans of the series since it had been established that Immortals are not allowed to kill one another on holy ground. This rule was even followed by every villain, no matter how evil. So the line was excised from the DVD version. But putting aside the fact that it's in a cathedral, the Sanctuary not being holy ground is just as nonsensical when you stop and wonder why a bunch of Immortals opted to be put into voluntary stasis in a place where they'd be vulnerable. Or why the renegade Watchers would establish the Sanctuary on a place that was not Holy Ground. Their goal was to prevent The Prize from being won, ergo they didn't want the immortals there losing their heads any more than the immortals themselves...
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== Web Original ==
* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]],'' when the supposed ghost of Kaiba turns into a...[[Villainous Harlequin|gay clown]], [[Makes Just As Much Sense in Context|or something]]:
{{quote| '''Gay Clown:''' Actually, I'm not a clown. I'm [[The Rival|Seto Kaiba]]'s [[Super -Powered Evil Side|evil side]] brought back from the [[Eldritch Location|Shadow Realm]] by [[Big Bad|Pegasus]]--<br />
'''Yami:''' That's even ''less'' believable than the whole ghost story! You don't even know what you are, do you? <br />
'''Gay Clown:''' No.<br />
'''Yami:''' Didn't think so. ''[[Kill 'Em All|MIND CRUSH!]]'' }}
** This is meant to poke fun at an edit done by 4Kid's [[Macekre|Macekred]] dub; in the original version, the "clown" is simply a master of disguise hired by Pegasus to eliminate players unfortunate enough to cross with him.
 
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** They're back to calling it magic later on in ''[[Ben 10 Ultimate Alien]]''; it's starting to feel like they don't know what to call it, either that, or Mana and Magic can be the same thing, and Kevin's just a [[Flat Earth Atheist]].
*** ''Ultimate Alien'' gives the impression at least that Gwen has both alien superpowers ''and'' magical abilities and simply doesn't know where to draw the line between them since they're similar.
* ''[[Winx Club]]'' dub, "Magical Reality Check": It's already bad enough that the would-be [[AuthorsAuthor's Saving Throw]] (where Knut comes in and says that he couldn't find the herb ingredients that the Trix wanted for a potion) is placed in the ''middle'' of the episode (and not brought up again at the end where it would be relevant; [http://www.dailymotion.com/SpiderBraids/video/x2nypd_winx-club-comparisons-bloom-tested_fun this comparison] includes the throw), but it also raises the question, "Why do the Trix perform their plan to steal Bloom's powers ''after'' they're told that they lack the necessary ingredients?" (as well as "Why don't they bring ''that'' up when the plan fails?")
** And not only is the Throw placed mid-episode, it's buried so inconspicuously that [http://www.angelfire.com/la3/goldenroad15/episode10.htm this summary] for the ep doesn't even mention it, because the summary writer apparently missed that detail.
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode "Don't Fear the Roofer", near the end. In the story, Homer gets his new friend Ray Magini to fix his roof. However, it is soon postulated that Ray doesn't actually exist, since all the people that were with Homer when he spoke to Ray claimed not have actually seen him. Thinking that Homer is delusional, his family takes him to the doctor, and after several treatments of painful therapy, Homer thinks he's back to sanity again. But then they find out that Ray was real all along, and that there were logical explanations as to why no one else saw him - except for one case where Bart couldn't see Ray even though he was in plain sight and he should have been able to. Guest star [[Stephen Hawking]] then shows up and delivers the trope - a miniature black hole had appeared between Bart and Ray that absorbed the light from Ray so Bart couldn't see him. There is no way to even start explaining all the problems with that theory.
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