Basic Trope: A character does something thought impossible without realizing it's impossible.
- Straight:
- Therm can ignore gravity because nobody ever told him about gravity.
- Therm, newly educated in the subject matter, solves a problem considered impossible by experts in the field.
- Exaggerated:
- Therm can rewrite the laws of physics by not understanding them.
- Therm can do the impossible when he doesn't understand that it's impossible, because he doesn't know that Achievements in Ignorance are themselves impossible.
- Downplayed: Therm can do high-level calculus easily because nobody ever told him it was hard.
- Justified:
- Therm is a Reality Warper but doesn't quite know it yet, and is unconsciously affecting the world around him based on his beliefs.
- Therm is in a dream, and as such can change the rules whenever he wants.
- Therm could Limit Break without hurting himself because the limit was actually mentally imposed, Therm never knew that there was a supposed limit and could activate it whenever he wanted to.
- Therm has thought processes different from his peers, so he tends to try solutions that nobody else has thought of (or would reasonably consider). As a result, it's only natural that his unorthodox methods can crack the secrets to at least some things thought couldn't be accomplished.
- Inverted:
- A character can't do something because they didn't realize it's possible.
- Therm knows not only that it's impossible, but why. And then he figures out how to make it possible.
- Therm is aware of, and frequently exploits, in-universe glitches.
- Therm achieves or creates something grand and different in a new way because he wrongly thought something easily done was impossible.
- Subverted: He really knew it was impossible. He's just that awesome.
- Double Subverted: After he says that, someone points out that it's impossible to do something on virtue of awesomeness alone.
- Parodied:
- Therm can't do anything that he can understand, but can do anything he can't understand.
- Not knowing that such a thing is (literally) inconceivable, Larry conceives of and draws a four-sided triangle.note
- Zig-Zagged: Therm can create impossible things and do impossible deeds because he doesn't understand that they're impossible, but then it transpires that he does understand and is feigning ignorance. Then the others find that he isn't just feigning ignorance, but is in fact powering his achievements with Clap Your Hands If You Believe and is consciously ignorant, carefully keeping himself from new knowledge. But this revelation damages his ability to create, as he knows how he is capable of these feats and thus can no longer do them. Then, someone hits him with a hammer and it's all back to normal.
- Averted:
- Therm knows exactly what he's doing, and how he's doing it.
- Therm tries to do something. He doesn't know it's impossible, so he keeps trying for a long time. He gets nowhere.
- Therm doesn't attempt to do anything that anybody thinks is impossible.
- Enforced: "You know what'd be funny? Someone not falling down a cliff, because they didn't know they were supposed to!"
- Lampshaded: "Big Bad's plan may be foolproof, but it's not Therm-proof!"
- Invoked: "Yes, what Therm's doing is impossible, but don't tell him that!"
- Exploited:
- Therm is sent off to perform some task because of his ignorance of its impossibility, and the others make damn sure he doesn't find out it's impossible.
- Therm realizes that, because Achievements in Ignorance are possible, then anything is possible. He instantly becomes a Reality Warper.
- Only one thing can happen when Emperor Evulz lectures Therm on gravity while he's standing above a pit of lava.
- Alice and Bob, the two other heroes, both hit each other with hammers to forget about gravity and fly, after seeing Therm's ability.
- Alice employs Therm to create a non-infringing copy of Bob's invention as he doesn't know how it works.
- Defied:
- While Therm is standing in midair, someone hands him a physics book.
- The producers, directors, screenwriters, etc.: "We mustn't attack science or encourage anti-science thinking, by portraying scientists as ignorant of their subject, and having the scientifically illiterate doing things or inventing things purely based on their ignorance."
- Discussed:
- "Someone should tell Therm you can't ride a Tyrannosaurus rex while flying a rocket at the same time."
- "If one doesn't understand the subject matter of what one is attempting to invent or achieve, one is simply trying random things one after the other, hoping to hit a bullseye. One won't even achieve the ordinarily possible, let alone the impossible."
- Conversed: "It's amazing what can happen in fiction if the characters don't pay attention in physics class."
- Deconstructed:
- Because Therm has no clue how he's ignoring gravity, it's impossible for others to learn how to do it themselves, at least not without painstaking research or risky experiments.
- Therm is taunted for his ignorance and decides to become intelligent by studying hard. Because of this, Therm loses what really made him special since he now understands the limits of reality and can't accidentally cross them.
- Gravity only affects those who already know about it, so there's no way to learn about it in the first place. As a result, there is no gravity.
- Education is deprecated; only the ignorant can achieve or invent anything new. "Ignorance Is Strength."
- Reconstructed:
- Therm is the most powerful warrior, not because he can handle his weapon, but because he can unlock his true potential whenever he wants to, and this ability drives apart him and the people about whom he cares. They later find out that his ignorance had a reason for overcoming the limit, and bring him back so they can find out how to.
- Therm convinces himself that there's a magical force that pulls distant objects towards each other. As a result, he manages to fall, since he didn't know it was impossible.
- It's found that the education system needs reform, having put too much emphasis on rote memorization of rules and laws about how the universe works without allowing the space for critical thinking and analyzing why. Said "rules" were intended to be just heuristics, not the hard-and-fast "this is how the universe always works" type, but had been useful shortcuts until now; but times have changed and they fit much less well than they once did. Ignorance of these rules opens new possibilities of study and the formulation of more "rules" that seek to explain everything, but those in turn have holes or gaps that allow people ignorant of those rules to achieve things that those rules say shouldn't be possible. And so the process repeats.
- Untwisted: He knew it was impossible … according to the prevailing intellectual framework. But Therm comes from another school of thought, which finds that what he's doing is completely possible and entirely explicable.
- Played for Laughs:
- Cringe Comedy occurs with people who know the physical laws of The 'Verse trying, and failing, to imitate Therm.
- Therm's actions lead to hilarious consequences like Amusing Injuries.
- Played for Drama:
- Therm's reliance on his lack of or incorrect knowledge to accomplish things alienates him from Alice and Bob.
- Alice gets Salieri levels of upset at Therm because the (extremely vile and ban-worthy barrage of insults regarding Therm's intellectual capacity) idiot can make physics his bitch just because he never read a freaking book. Even the things that just make sense — you don't need to be Sir Isaac Newton to know about gravity, all it takes is to trip.
- Played for Horror:
- Thanks to his ignorance, Therm inadvertently does the impossible and summons an Eldritch Abomination.
- Alice and Bob were running away from Therm and destroy a bridge to prevent him from murdering them. They get about two seconds to breathe easy before Therm comes charging on the air through the chasm like a psychotic Road Runner and kills them both. Bob's Lame Last Words are a puzzled "It can't be…!"
- Therm may not know how the heck gravity works and that may be an influential factor, but this is just proof that there is something very wrong with Therm and it will end badly for everybody if Therm has ignorance of other things like "Thou Shalt Not Kill"…
- Implied: An HR person, interviewing Therm for a job application, tells him, "Obviously, you're very accomplished. But how did you accomplish so much?" Therm can only say, "Honestly, I don't know how."
- Plotted a Good Waste: The writer uses Therm's ignorance of our world's physics, chemistry, biology, etc. as foreshadowing of The Multiverse and that he has crossed boundaries.
Back to Achievements in Ignorance.note
