History NotTheIntendedUse / Other

* This tactic is often weaponized by companies to sell what ''would'' be illegal if used for its obviously intended purpose, by claiming it is designed for a different and legal purpose. The most common are "Tobacco Water Pipes" (which are obviously bongs for weed), "Tire Thumpers" (which are obviously bludgeoning weapons), "Fuel Filters" (which are obviously ''firearm suppressors''), and of course the various kinds of swords and bladed weapons which would be illegal if they weren't claimed to be props or decorations. More often than not this works since laws are often written so specifically as to avoid LoopholeAbuse that they inadvertently [[GoneHorriblyRight allow it instead]], and because they don't protect ''the user'': don't think for one second that you won't be charged for using a firearm suppressor just because you bought a "fuel filter" to attach to your firearm.

* Microsoft Excel may have been designed as an accounting and spreadsheet program, but it can be used to classify and organize all kinds of things. As just one example, historians may use Excel to organize, classify and summarize research materials. One Tumblr user's grandmother found a [[http://i.imgur.com/hZFvwVm.jpg completely different use for it]] - designing knitting patterns.

* Game engines such as UsefulNotes/{{Unity}} are obviously meant to be used for games, but they have also been used in non-gaming contexts, such as mobile device interfaces.

* A lot of UsefulNotes/{{Python}} programmers use the interactive mode as a desk calculator, so much so that it's become a running joke in the developer community. This usage is even mentioned in the official tutorial. It's also true to an extent with other interactive interpreters.

* Game controllers are cheap, easy to use and are familiar to younger generations. This is precisely the reason why the US military uses them for controlling things like UAV drones as it would be easier to train rookie soldiers using something they already had experience with. Even veteran operators of bomb disposal robots prefer USB controllers to the ones that come with the device, as these controllers tend to be more responsive and have finer control than the somewhat janky built-in controls on the laptop that operates them. In 2023 it has been pointed out that the ''Titan'' submersible involved in an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Titan_submersible_incident incident]] where they went missing whilst attempting to explore the remains of the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic used an off-the-shelf Logitech G F710 game controller, a $40 joypad they might have snatched off [=GameStop=] or some other electronics store and modified for submersible use.

* Website/YouTube began life as a simple video sharing site for users to upload their own videos onto -- at least, until people figured out "their own videos" could also mean copyrighted material that they happened to have a compatible video file of, as well as still-framed or lyric videos intended to show off the audio instead. While there still is a lot of user-generated videos on the site, a good chunk of them are more for collecting the same user's content on other user-generated content sites and compiling them on [=YouTube=] as backup. [=YouTube=] would later release the side app [=YouTube=] Music that allows users to play music-uploaded-as-video (as well as pure audio files of music) without needing the video to be playing back.

* [[SyntheticVoiceActor Speech Synthesis]] systems are generally made to help disabled people - such as providing a voice to people who cannot speak or allow visually impaired to "hear" text. For a number of people, especially children, it's a ''very'' good source of comedy because of odd mispronunciations, the bizarre sounds, and [[HehHehYouSaidX the fact a lot of them do not have any kind of blacklist]].
* Related, Website/GoAnimate was intended to serve as a way for people to make animations for things like advertisement or education - with schools even teaching kids how to animate using it. Of course, one look at its page on this wiki will show just how kids ''actually'' used it...

* Game engines such as UsefulNotes/{{Unity}} are obviously meant to be used for games, but they have also been utilised in non-gaming contexts, such as mobile device interfaces.

* Venom and poison produced by animals and plants is typically meant as a defensive mechanism to prevent or deter attackers, but certain animals are able to utilize the venoms and poisons of other organisms for their own purposes. Monarch butterfly larvae eat poisonous milkweed to render their bodies inedible to predators, some sea slugs hunt jellyfish and use the jellyfish's venomous tendrils to hunt other prey, and countless humans love eating plants that contain the toxic capsaicin as a food sensitization method, or even because [[HumanityIsInsane they like the taste of it]]. Psychoactive compounds are much the same -- theoretically an animal unfortunate enough to eat the wrong mushroom will be horribly disoriented and never eat one again... or do it again, on purpose, for fun.

* Incandescent and halogen light bulbs are ''incredibly'' inefficient, wasting anywhere between 85% to 90% of their consumed energy as heat rather than light. While this makes them incredibly poor wasters of electricity (and are ''terrible'' for the environment), it also allowed them to be used as simple mini-heaters for devices like Lava Lamps and the Easy Bake Oven that utilize ''both'' the light and heat. Even traffic lights profited from this, as after the mass switch to LED there were a few instances of them freezing over and becoming useless, necessitating the use of built-in heaters or specially-designed hoods to deflect snow and ice from them.

* Game controllers are cheap, easy to use and are familiar to younger generations. This is precisely the reason why the US military utilized them for controlling things like UAV drones as it would be easier to train rookie soldiers using something they already had experience with. Even veteran operators of bomb disposal robots prefer USB controllers to the ones that come with the device, as these controllers tend to be more responsive and have finer control than the somewhat janky built-in controls on the laptop that operates them. In 2023 it has been pointed out that the ''Titan'' submersible involved in an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Titan_submersible_incident incident]] where they went missing whilst attempting to explore the remains of the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic used an off-the-shelf Logitech G F710 game controller, a $40 joypad they might have snatched off [=GameStop=] or some other electronics store and modified for submersible use.

** Microsoft Excel may just be the software king of this trope, it has been used for everything from letter-writing (why instead of Microsoft Word? Because the grids make it easier to align the text!) to filing taxes (screw Quicken!) to even being used as a ''[[https://www.cnet.com/news/play-an-rpg-made-in-excel/ game engine]]''!.

* Despite it's reputation among artists, Adobe Photoshop was never intended to be used for digital art. At it's core, it was made for retouching photographs. Many of its features even reference traditional photo development techniques, burn and dodge for example.

** Outside of PC graphics cards, video game consoles such as the Xbox contained powerful processors and were being sold at a loss to recoup the pricing in games. Predictably, people wanting raw processing power bought up the consoles to make use of that hardware for calculations. [[https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html The US Air Force]] has one of the top 50 supercomputers in the world right now, capable of performing 500 trillion floating point operations per second (TFLOPS), making it the fastest interactive computer in the entire US Defense Department. It's made out of 1,760 UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 consoles.

-->'''Commenter:''' Powerpoint can't run on UsefulNotes/{{Linux}}? [[RussianReversal Run Linux on Powerpoint then]]!

** Cough medicine works not by soothing your throat, but by shutting down the cough reflex in your brain. Taking cough syrup in excessive doses produces a psychoactive effect on par with illegal street drugs. The reason cough syrup isn't illegal in spite of this is because there's no other known way to medically treat a cough. Plus, the taste is downright nasty, being bitter enough to make some people vomit from it. Though neither the taste nor its price stopped it from being hailed as a status symbol by some in the HipHop community, specifically for the psychoactive effect. The cocktail known as "purple drank", "lean", etc. is a mixture of codeine cough syrup mixed into Sprite with hard candy to dull the bitter flavour.

* In a similar vein to drugs being used recreationally, certain non-drug substances have gained notoriety for being used far outside its intended purpose, such as rubber contact cements and roof sealants made from toluene, acetone found in nail polish remover, and [[NitroBoost nitrous oxide]] used as propellant in whipped cream. Such was the problem with the so-called "[[BrandNameTakeover Rugby boys]]" in the Philippines that the local DEA mandated [[ItTastesLikeFeet bitterants]] to be added to contact cement in order to discourage intentional misuse; though [[{{Determinator}} this didn't keep them kids from still huffing them]], apparently.

** One also notes that there are fewer differences between a sniper rifle and a machine gun than one would expect, as both are heavy weapons with long barrels. A few countries even adopted what were intended as machine guns and use them as designated marksman's rifles instead, including Britain's L86 (a long-barreled variant of the L85 assault rifle) and Germany's [=G8A1=] (a mag-fed version of the [=HK21=] machine gun), and there's also the famous story of US Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock and his scoped [=M2HB=], with which he made what was the longest-distance kill ever made for 35 years before his record was broken by Canadian snipers at the start of the War on Terror - who, it should be noted, were using sniper rifles with very large bullets designed precisely because snipers like Hathcock showed that large and heavy anti-materiel bullets like .50 BMG were perfect for sniping at extremely long ranges.

** During WWII, soldiers found other uses of anti-tank rifles when improvements in tank technology rendered them ineffective for their intended use, such as using their massive rounds to shoot through walls. In particular, the PIAT launcher had such a large explosion that some users attacked houses or bunkers with them (this was even mentioned in the official manual a year after it was first produced), and a few even managed to jury rig it to fire indirectly like a mortar. This might also be the reason modern anti-tank weaponry tends to also have a wide variety of different ammunition available for other non-anti-tank purposes.

** An older "misuse" of patents: while owning a patent entitles you to protection from copying for some time, the documents typically must include relevant production details or chemical components, meaning once the patent expires anyone who wants to copy your product can do it pretty easily. Some companies, like the lubricant maker WD-40, have deliberately avoided filing for patents to keep their trade secrets, well, secret.

* In 2007 Clarks introduced [[https://www.behance.net/gallery/25472357/Jack-Nano-and-Daisy-Worlds-for-Clarks a line of children's shoes]] with a hidden compartment containing a small toy inside the heel. While BBC News reported it as a term-time distraction, the Daisy and Jack Nano shoes could, at least in theory, be used for something even less savoury, e.g. hide small slips of paper containing answers and other contraband for the purposes of cheating in exams. One Twitter user even [[https://mobile.twitter.com/NiallSnipars/status/1067178383174447104 jokingly suggested]] [[TheStoner hiding cannabis]] in the compartment, and wished for adult sizes be made for the purpose.[[note]]They were actually available in sizes as large as EU 37 or UK 4.5, something a teenager or a young adult could wear if not for the rather juvenile designs.[[/note]] Clarks later revisited the toy-in-a-shoe concept with the [[https://www.clarks.co.uk/Kids/findits-shoes-collection "Find-Its"]] line of school shoes which came with miniature insect-based robot toys each with their own implement built in.

* Because toothpaste is designed to clean the delicate enamel of teeth, it needs to be abraisive yet ''incredibly'' gentle. These two qualities make it ideal for cleaning small scratches on [=CDs=], [=DVDs=], and really any glass or plastic surface. It works wonders on a glass-top stove as well, and will buff that thing right back to as scratch-free as the day you bought it. Not bad for something that costs a buck at the dollar store, leaves no chemical residues, and smells nice and minty instead of like cleaning agents.

* The german-made [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard Flakpanzer Gepard]] is a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) that was originally designed in the 1960s to protect ground troops against attack aircraft and attack helicopters. Eventually, they were phased out in the 1990s and 2000s in favor of modern systems that used anti-air missiles with much greater range. A number of them were sent by NATO to Ukraine in 2022 after Russia invaded the country, and they proved extremely successful in fighting cheaply made drones and loitering munitions that could not be fought effectively by modern missiles because their low costs meant that the drones were much cheaper than the missiles that were supposed to intercept them.

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* The Lisp programming language was invented by John [=McCarthy=], a professor at MIT, as a pseudocode language. Its strength was that it completely ignored the machine state and simply mapped the input of a function to its output. It was so perfectly developed that almost all of the core functions ''were written in Lisp itself''. [=McCarthy=]'s TA Stephen Russell (who is more famous for creating the first computer game, VideoGame/SpaceWar, looked at the paper pre-publication and said "You know, if you wrote the eval function in machine code, you'd have a lisp interpreter." [=McCarthy=] informed him that Lisp wasn't a real language, it was just an abstraction used to express algorithms. Russell went off and wrote the eval function (and a few other functions he discovered couldn't be written in lisp) and one of the greatest languages of all time was born.

** In the same vein, Unreal Engine was created with the main purpose of being used to develop 3D games. However TV production houses found that they could just use it to create virtual sets and composite their actors into it, saving them a ton of money and time in the process. One notable example of this was the children's TV series ''Series/LazyTown'' where it was used to render the virtual sets alongside a framework called [=XRGen4=]. Epic later went on to incorporate workflows for film and television productions in subsequent incarnations of the Unreal Engine and planning to charge non-gaming industry with its own subscription plan.