History Main / NoTimeToExplain

* In ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'', Youko Nakajima was an OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent until a mysterious blond man appeared in her classroom, swore allegiance to her, and urged her to escape as quickly as possible with not time for explanations. Shortly after, the school was attacked by monsters, giving some weight to his argument. TrappedInAnotherWorld ChangelingFantasy drama ensued, and it was a ''long'' time before Youko got an explanation. If he had taken the time to say ''one more sentence'' about what was going on, the entire plot would have been very different.

* Parodied in ''Film/ScaryMovie4'', when the Tom Cruise/''[[Film/TheWarOfTheWorlds War Of The Worlds]]'' character says "We're leaving this house in 30 seconds, there's no time to explain", and a random passerby runs up to the window and screams "Alien Attack!". Tom admits that that pretty much covered it.

--> '''Uncle Felix:''' There's so much I have to tell you [about the kids' parents being spies], but very little time to explain.
-->'''Carmen:''' Uncle Felix!\\

** She goes through this trope again in ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire The Goblet of Fire]]'', which also sort of backfires. [[spoiler:She puts various clues that she's heard together and figures out that Rita Skeeter is an unregistered Animagus and is using her skills to spy on people (most recently Harry) in the form of a beetle in order to find out their secrets and use that as evidence for her articles. Hermione realizes this and rushes off to find Rita without telling Harry and Ron about this, and she successfully captures her and forces her to stop writing terrible articles about Harry. However, Hermione does these actions too late, as Rita had already sent enough articles about Harry with substantial evidence to get the damage done, which encites a year-long wave of smear campaign from other column writers to severely discredit him and convince the public not to believe him about Lord Voldemort's return]].

* ''VideoGame/ShantaeAndTheSevenSirens'': When Shantae finds the Mayor of Arena Town at bridge of the Siren Airship, he says "No time to explain" how he got there, because he needs help.

%%** Ron gets increasingly more annoyed each time Hermione does this.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* Parodied in the Season 7 finale of ''WebAnimation/SonicForHire'', Franchise/{{Sonic}} and Tails get the clue "When at the start the code is the key". Sonic figures it out but repeatedly refuses to tell Tails what the answer is, saying "There's no time!". It's even further parodied as there is a part where the two are riding an extremely slow platform and Tails points out there's plenty of time to explain, Sonic just jumps to the next platform shouting "No time!".

* "No time to explain, Fred!" was Super Chicken's CatchPhrase (well, one of them) in ''WesternAnimation/GeorgeOfTheJungle''.

* In ''Webcomic/CityOfSomnus'', as Sakhalin (who is, at least outwardly, one of the bad guys) is helping the good guys escape, she's barraged with questions and answers:

* In ''Anime/TheTwelveKingdoms'', Youko Nakajima was an OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent until a mysterious blond man appeared in her classroom, swore allegiance to her, and urged her to escape as quickly as possible with not time for explanations. Shortly after, the school was attacked by monsters, giving some weight to his argument. TrappedInAnotherWorld ChangelingFantasy drama ensued, and it was a ''long'' time before Youko got an explanation. If he had taken the time to say ''one more sentence'' about what was going on, the entire plot would have been very different.

The only real justification is that it almost always takes longer to describe a given action than to just perform it — in the words of Grace Hopper, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." Explaining the action may waste valuable time that should be spent performing the action — [[ExplainExplainOhCrap meaning there is no time to perform the action at all]]. Of course, there's always the possibility that the person asking forgiveness ''really'' should have gotten permission — NiceJobBreakingItHero