History Main / HandWave

* In ''Film/BatmanBegins'', Batman (who has a strict [[TechnicalPacifist no-kill policy]]) gets into a high-speed chase on the freeway with the cops, causes more than a couple crashes and drives over several cop cars with the cops still inside, endangering dozens of civilian and police officer lives. Yet we know no one is hurt (very badly) because Alfred says: "[[CouldHaveBeenMessy It's a miracle no one was killed.]]" The same thing happens in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', as he fires high-powered guns into what appears to be a mall's glass door to break it so he can drive through, then showing people dodging out of the way. No way someone wasn't going to get hit. In ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', it is "explained" that the Batmobile has "life sign scanners."

* ''Series/AlexRider'': How are [[spoiler:some of Dr Greif's clones female]]? Something something genetic something, basically.

* ''Webcomic/NeonIceCreamHeadache'' involves a drug that causes its user to be TrappedInTVLand. How can a simple pill do that? The exaplanation given is that "It aligns your nervous system with a certain electro-magnetic frequency."

* Parodied in ''Bullet Heaven 2''. Natalie panics about the second level of the second world, stating she can't breathe.

* Early ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episodes described the "Terrance and Phillip Show" as a cartoon with crappy animation, though this later evolved into a weirder (but funnier) premise that the show was actually filmed in Canada, where everything actually ''was'' crappy-looking. In the episode "Behind the Blow," which parodied Creator/VH1's "Behind the Music", this inconsistency was waved away with a rather convoluted explanation. Apparently, in the South Park world there ''used'' to be a Terrance and Phillip cartoon that was separate from the live-action show, but the cartoon was so popular many people became confused as to whether or not T&P were real people or cartoon characters.
* In a likely example of PlayingWithATrope, in the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Gnomes", the Underpants Gnomes steal underpants, and describe their entire plan as:\\

-->'''Cartman:''' Oh, now I get it!\\

* Called "Website/GoAnimate logic", and used to justify or explain the platform's LimitedAnimation and heavily cookie-cutter and sandboxed nature.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobSquarePantsMovie'', [=SpongeBob=] is able to drive the Patty Wagon, a CoolCar, despite the fact that he's canonically a terrible driver. When Patrick questions this, [=SpongeBob=] replies, "You don't need a license to drive a sandwich." And that's it, he's inexplicably a BadassDriver for the entire length of time that they have the Patty Wagon in their possession.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'': The manual for the UsefulNotes/AtariJaguar version puts the blame for the game's less than stellar performance during multiplayer on the fact that the game takes place in Hell... which is only true for the third episode.

* ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' justifies the ArbitraryHeadcountLimit by the characters pondering in universe that only 100 Pikmin being allowed on the field at once is a survival tactic to make sure an entire colony doesn't get wiped out in one fell swoop. The real reason was because of the limits of the ''UsefulNotes/GameCube'', and later for game balance so you can't just ZergRush enemies with a massive mob of Pikmin.

--> [''complicated expression'']\\

[''complicated expression'']

** In ''Comicbook/SupermanVsTheAmazingSpiderMan'', ComicBook/{{Superman}} and ComicBook/SpiderMan co-habit the same universe. How can this be? It was never explained and no fan cared about the whys or hows because it was awesome.
--->'''Creator/GerryConway:''' "Purists may complain that we never explained how Superman and Spider-Man ended up in the same 'universe'...; to our minds, how they got there was beside the point."

* ''Film/ProjectMillion'': Spazz tries to figure out how There's Wire escaped her TV. She throws several explanations at him such as she's not there and that he's in a dream within a dream, before claiming she "crawled through a river of shit and came out the other side clean."

* ''Franchise/JurassicPark'': Later films in the series brush off the fact the depiction of dinosaurs in the franchise [[ScienceMarchesOn have become increasingly inaccurate with more discoveries made]] since their [[ShownTheirWork relatively accurate]] appearances in [[Film/JurassicPark the first film]] with some throwaway lines that they were "genetically-engineered theme park monsters" specifically designed to be crowd-pleasing hybrids or the result of frog DNA influence rather than "real" dinosaurs, allowing them to keep using outdated (or even outright made-up) depictions that have long since been disproven. It works because even as far back as the first movie and novel, John Hammond was favoring RuleOfCool over paleontological accuracy when designing the park.

* ''Series/{{Arrowverse}}'': Time travel in all the shows, especially ''Series/TheFlash2014'', has always been infamously inconsistent. Eventually, Savitar mentions that the more you time travel, the less the rules apply to you. This explains quite a few things, most obviously all the people who keep surviving getting [[RetGone paradoxed out of existence]].

* ''Series/BlakesSeven'' used a similar device in the pilot. When it's been established that the CoolShip our heroes have semi-accidentally stolen can go ridiculously fast compared to any ship owned by the dystopian government they're rebelling against with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Blake points out that they should have crossed "the antimatter threshold" and been reduced to their component atoms at that velocity.[[note]]Which is, probably intentionally, [[TravellingAtTheSpeedOfPlot never specified in a unit of measurement that the audience would recognise]].[[/note]] Avon shrugs this off, pointing out that people once thought the same thing about the light barrier.

-->'''Frasier''': You were dead, what did it matter?