Trope, Absurdity Ascendant, Predefined Messages, Makes Just as Much Sense in Context
Makes Just as Much Sense in Context
Revision as of 17:19, April 9, 2014 by Dai-Guard (wall)
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Headscratchers •
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"My first thought when I heard that was, 'I am so going to quote that out of context,' but on reflection it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in context either."
—Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Heavenly Sword review, Zero Punctuation
Sometimes, when describing an event in a work, we resort to It Makes Sense in Context.
Sometimes, though, an event is just as nonsensical in context as it is when summarized, and we say it Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
Closely associated with Mind Screws and Gainax Endings.
Compare these related tropes:
The former trope "I Am Not Making This Up" covered anything surprising (the trope was scrapped due to being thrown around like confetti, applied to anything even remotely unusual). This covers the much narrower context of stuff that is nonsensical both when summarized, and in context. To provide one example, Cantor's proof of the existence of the Transinfinite fell under IANMTU, but because it makes sense when the context is described and is a fairly logical result, it wouldn't be this.
A Big Lipped Alligator Moment is the intersection of this and Padding. A plot point that Makes Just as Much Sense in Context may or may not be padding; it could be vital to the plot.
This is a touch more extreme than Fridge Logic; in Fridge Logic, it appears to make sense in context, until you examine it more closely. This fails to make sense in context, and when examined more closely. If it doesn't make sense until you examine it more closely it is Fridge Brilliance.
Voodoo Shark is a Sister Trope; a patch over a plot hole creates another plot hole. Sometimes it falls under Fridge Logic, and thus is a separate trope; for example, the second order Trope Namer of Voodoo Shark (the Star Trek: Voyager holodeck problem [1]) was a straight up case of Fridge Logic, but not this.
What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs? and Widget Series is the whole show; this is just one case.
Giant Space Flea From Nowhere is when a game's boss has no relationship to anything else included in the game or its backstory, generally being blatantly out of place, setting, and even genre.
Examples of Makes Just as Much Sense in Context include:
Near the end of the first Hellsing anime, the main villain catches Alucard's bullets with his head by phasing it. He then sends the bullet flying back down the barrel of the gun, somehow causing it to explode all the bullets into Alucard and reduce him to a pile of blood. Then again, this is a show about gun-wielding vampires.
Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei is already pretty bizarre, but there's this one scene where the eponymous teacher, Itoshiki Nozomu, walks on a beach towards the ocean, looks up, sees a giant squid with Big Ol' Eyebrows emerge from the water ... and tenderly mumbles "Mother".
Episode 7 of Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai has Karura, a White-Haired Pretty Boy bent on world domination, throwing cakes at people in the streets because he wants to ejaculate, but was unable to.
The Mochi strips in Axis Powers Hetalia, which feature Estonia's new pets: rice cakes that look and (sort of) act like other nations. In one strip, Mochicanada ate Mochimerica's daddy, a Lettuce that wanted to take over the world, and was proclaimed to be "The greatest country!". And that was one of the less nonsensical strips! There's also the end of the Hetalia Bloodbath 2010, which managed to be this, heartwarming, and awesome at the same time. Also, Godzilla-sized Rome singing opera. And regular-sized Rome distracting aliens with The Power of Rock.
The generally absurd nature of One Piece makes it a frequent sufferer of this trope. e.g. "The geezer-tree and... a unicorn are having a drink!"
Actuaaly, they are zombies which explains it better. Okay, seems that sometimes putting things in-context makes them even worse. Except when you actually read them themselves.
Dead Leaves pull a few of these at times. At one point, Pandy fights off her opponent by giving birth to a winged baby with sunglasses and handguns.
Film (Animated)
The infamous rapping dog scene from Titanic: The Legend Goes On is this in spades. The uncut edition vaguely justifies it by having the dog rap about how the animals are going to throw a party and he wants them to steal food for it (which we see the animals doing in later scenes), but the announcement for the party and the fact that it's expressed via a rap number comes right the flip out of nowhere.
Film (Live-Action)
This infamous montage of clips from The Wicker Man remake. Watching these scenes in their proper context within the movie doesn't subtract from their sheer randomness and ridiculousness at all.
In Troll 2, the ghost of the grandfather stops time to allow the protagonist to urinate on his family's dinner (the need to keep the family from eating the dinner is properly set up, but it's never been hinted that the ghost had this power). This may make some viewers wonder WHY HE DIDN'T JUST TOSS THE FOOD OUT.
The rooster in The Hangover was never explained (Word of God is they got it to feed the tiger, though).
Live-Action TV
The "Hurley" bird in Lost was only explained in the DVD-only epilogue.
There's got to be a reason why the entirety of one Jam sketch was two men in underwear shooting each other in the ass, but no one can think of one.
The infamous Star Trek: Voyager episode Threshold, in which traveling at warp 10 causes people to mutate into large salamanders and have salamander babies together before being returned completely to normal. There's something about "evolution" in there, but beyond that...
There was a very strange case on Cops where a man walked in on his mother having sex with his wife. As if this itself isn't ridiculous, he doesn't know how to react, so he calls the police hoping they can do something about this. His mother, seeing that he's calling the police, stabs him in the hand. When they get there, they arrest his mother while his wife screams after the car "She's 61 years old! You can't do that to her!"
Pretty much everything about "Friday".
"Donk-Donk", one of the minigames in Rhythm Heaven Fever, is so bizarre that the description in the English version of the game admits it's hard to describe. It involves what appear to be anthropomorphic tuning forks piloting a rocket propelled by their own rocking motion across a landscape of giant flowers and pink clouds, with a green cartoon octopus stuck to the underside of the rocket along for the ride.
Puyo Puyo is this unleaded. For instance, SUN's plot is about green-haired Satan enlarging the sun so he can have a longer summer and be surrounded by women in bikinis. In Fever 2, Primp Town apparently has a forest, an ocean, some ruins, and a desert all in walking distance. Not to mention that, half the time, people attack each other for no good reason!
The characters of Little Busters are prone to this. On top of the page we have a quote from Haruka, who spouts this kind of lines all the time. Other examples include Kengo summarizing Masato's life as "I brought you mayonaisse", Masato somehow interpreting things as being about muscles and just about everything Kyosuke says.
Web Original
Harry Partridge is never thinking what you're thinking. Oh, and all hail Stephen, king of the lesbians!, as well as The Justin Bieber Show.
In "Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend", two gay men in their underwear ride each other like scooters and segways chasing down a girl driving a transforming steamroller. They finally blow her up by pulling down their underwear revealing a baby head that shoots lasers. This is all that's given as a description:
Deep in the forest lived Billy and his charming companions. They peacefully honed their bodies and listened to music there. But a wave of development came upon the forests. One who would turn all to road. Kagamine Rin had come. Billy must stop the construction before all is turned to road.
The entire series of asdfmovies are this, probably because it's a blend of Rapid-Fire Comedy and Surreal Humor.
"I AM PUNCHING YOUR SALAD!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
The Rubber Fruit video "Soldier thinks the sentry is american" described as:
"A young Engineer has just built its first sentry, and is very proud of himself. However, he is interrupted by the appearance of a Stupid Faice Soldier. The Soldier insists that the sentry is an American, but the Engineer disagrees. This enrages the Soldier, who eats the Engineer with the help of a special bacteria called Francis. Attracted by the commotion, a Pedospy appears and attempts to hump the Soldier to death. Before he can do this, however, the mother Engineer returns and eats them both."
Often the case of the stories on What the Fuck Is Wrong With You. Especially the live episodes.
In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Moon Farm", the main characters decide to fly an army of cows to the moon because of an ancient scroll containing a lost verse to "Hey Diddle Diddle" which claims that ice cream made from moon cow milk is the greatest in the universe. We don't know, and its clear that many of the characters don't either.
"I'm in a bear suit!"
There is an educational video made by the Spitzer Space Telescope PR people where a woman gets eaten by a giant anemone.
The most publicized press event of the 2010 Australian federal election was... the burning of a pair of Tony Abbott's speedos on morning talkback radio. Yes, radio, not television. Memetic Mutation ensued in the Australian media over just how impossibly nonsensical the event was.
↑ Short version: The ship was dealing with a long term power shortage. The Holodeck was said to be on a separate power supply. The problem: Why not hook that supply up to the main ship, which was badly in need of power?
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Absurdity Ascendant
Predefined Messages