Simpsons Wizard Key

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Gundenia Ransbottom

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:38:55 PM8/3/24

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Can be used to Hand Wave away minor nitpicks and Contrived Coincidences that should really be covered by Willing Suspension of Disbelief - if it didn't happen that way, there wouldn't be a movie, or magic genuinely is involved in the story. However, having to use it to excuse major Plot Holes that the creators really should've caught beforehand will make people rightly angry.

Often used in the literal sense, i.e. something that would be impossible happens because someone explicitly used magic (magic that only they know) to make it happen. However, this trope is not about magic per se,note We could have called this trope 'The Sufficiently Advanced Science/Aliens Did It' if we wanted to. but any kind of handwave; it happened because the author wanted it to, end of story.

On that note: In fantasy with wizards, before linking to this trope, note that it's important that either the Wizard in question remain unidentified, or, failing that, what exactly they did remains unspecified. Remember, this is a kind of Hand Wave: we're being asked not to look too closely because "it's like that because we said so". Further side note: If an explanation is offered in a later sequel or bit of "expanded universe" content, it can still count as this in the original work, especially if the later explanation has more than a slight whiff of Retcon. A well-written work that involves magic should have at least some basic notion of what magic can and can't do, see Magic A Is Magic A.

Note that this explanation can potentially bring more Fridge Logic into a story, e.g. when the explanation given later fails in a situation in some way that could have easily been solved by doing what they apparently did before. This can also lead to Reed Richards Is Useless when you realize the possible, fantastic uses of that random trick nobody seems to care about.

Anime and Manga

Princess Tutu can Hand Wave anything just by claiming Drosselmeyer did it.
All of Strike Witches' oddities can be amply explained by the presence of magic.
In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Spiral Energy can justify anything as long as it's awesome. This applies to any green, glowing thing in Super Robot anime, going all the way back to Getter Rays and also including G-Stone Energy. The G-Stone is soft enough science, but when THE POWER comes up, just... just don't question anything orange. It won't get you anywhere.
In the 3D Background Explanations Corner of the Negima! Magister Negi Magi volumes, whenever Ken Akamatsu notes that something is off, like how the external shots of Eva's home doesn't match the internal shots, he'd mention with his tongue firmly in cheek that it's probably due to magic screwing up its physical dimensions or something similar.
Yotsuba&! invokes this trope in chapter 68 to try to squirm out of trouble when she breaks some dishes, to patch up holes in her story. Her father doesn't buy it for a second.
Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: the series features a Mind Screw of a Temporal Paradox, but also features not one, not two, but THREE reality-warping characters.
Played for laughs in the pornographic manga Sei Sou Tsui Dan Sha: So how was it possible that the main character's penis could be detached from his body, and reattached to anyone else? Magic. His mom was a witch this whole time. Yes, he knew about this but didn't think to tell anyone until she mentioned it herself. And yes, all this is divulged in exactly one page and Mari Itsuki is not taking it well.
Most modern and futuristic technology in the pirate-era world of One Piece is there because the super genius scientist Vegapunk did it.
Pretty much anything else is the "Will of D" or because a Devil Fruit user did it. Occasionally odd things about Devil Fruit are because they were worked on by Vegapunk, up to and including a gun and a sword eating them. Because Vegapunk.
Dragon Ball
Creator, Akira Toriyama said he wasn't sure how scouters stay attached to the user's ear during sharp head-turns and decided it must be some kind of "alien technology".
When asked why child characters can turn Super Saiyan so easily in later seasons, Toriyama says that super Saiyans develop "S-cells" in their DNA which pass onto their children making it a lot easier to turn Super Saiyan.
The only explanation anyone had for why a supposedly-permanent Potara earrings de-fused inside the body of Super Buu was a speculative "Super Buu is a literal magical genie and Reality Is Out to Lunch inside his body, it's likely that Your Magic Is No Good Here". When Dragon Ball Super gave it a revision so that the Potara is only permanent if at least one of the fusees is a Kai, and neither of the Kais around during the battle with Super Buu had any reason to know this; note One of them was thrust into the position unprepared and untrained, the other had already fused with a mortal witch, which was a permanent fusion because he was a Kai himself. However, the former were able to defuse using a wish to the Namekian Dragon Balls. it was generally accepted as an improvement over the former quote-unquote explanation relying on this trope.
Jaco the Galactic Patrolman handwaves Goku's lack of aging as an aspect of Saiyan biology. Apparently Saiyans spend several years as children with no real adolescence then spend several decades as adults in their prime.

Theatre

This trope is in full effect in Shakespeare's last play: The Tempest. The plot begins with Prospero, a wizard, conjuring a storm that bring most of the other characters to his (Prospero's) island. From there on, nearly every plot development stems from some further act of magic by the wizard. Some Lampshade Hanging also occurs, as the script repeatedly comments on magic being the solution to inconsistencies in the plot.

Web Original

Some French-speaking fan communities have developed the equivalent saying tgcm or ta gueule c'est magique ("shut up it's magic".)
Hellfire Comm's Let's Play of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). When asked by FTA to explain things like plotholes, magic mirrors, and all sorts, NTom64's answer is almost always "Magic" and that you shouldn't "come to him to question the logic of this game, as there is none".
Uncyclopedia likes to have fun with this: [1]
Referenced by Simmons in Red vs. Blue after trying to explain teleporters to the crew."I probably could have saved a lot of time by telling you these things worked by magic".
The Wizard is responsible for all the events of Comic Fury Werewolf. This started as a joke, and eventually became the main plot.
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series's version of the Bonds Beyond Time movie name drops this trope.Dark Magician Girl: Dark Magician, how come we can talk in this movie?Dark Magician: A wizard did it.
The Binder of Shame. The aptly-named Killer DM Psycho Dave just had a player character hit by a random magical effect in his sleep just to mess with the player and said character woke up to find his head had been turned into a giant piece of broccoli. When challenged to explain how and why, Dave replied "It's magic, I don't have to explain it".
One article on Cracked.com rather aptly used the term "Plot-Hole Spackle" to refer to magic as a narrative device. Hilarious in Hindsight when you consider site editor David Wong's response to niggling questions about John Dies at the End.
Ultra Fast Pony has the characters themselves invoke unexplained magic.
In "Rocks, Clocks, and Two Stupid Ponies":

Celestia:

Applejack:

Celestia:

In "Chicken! Run!", Sweetie Belle acts as a Self-Backing Vocalist for an impromptu live performance. When asked how she sang both parts at the same time, the answer is "Magic!"
Channel Awesome:
The movie To Boldly Flee features a literal Plot Hole which is used to address any inconsistencies the website had (like in Kickassia when Spoony was the same person as Dr. Insano). The movie ended with the Nostalgia Critic merging with it to stabilize it. The Critic was eventually released from it and replaced with Douchey McNitpick.
Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall is particularly prone to the sarcastic comment, referencing the Joe Quesada quote "It's magic, I don't have to explain it!" when comic books engage in this. Summed up in his review of Superman Distant Fires, when a nuclear war somehow deprives all the heroes of their powers (no matter what their source) and lightning storms somehow restore them:"There are two kinds of magic in the world. Magic as a force that can grant the wondrous... and then there's narrative magic, the kind where we get the classic phrase 'It's magic, we don't have to explain it!'"
Amusingly enough, Linkara initially used the "It's magic, I don't have to explain it!" when asked how his Magic Gun works. We get an explanation for the Magic Gun's powers in the Silent Hill: Dead/Alive reviews... and it turns out that no, Linkara, you really didn't have to explain it.
The Nostalgia Critic/Nostalgia Chick crossover review addresses how FernGully: The Last Rainforest uses this trope not so much as an excuse but a really poorly though-out mythology. When the Critic questions it, the Chick responds by beating the shit out of him.

Nostalgia Chick

In What If? (XKCD) #111: "All the Money", Randall Munroe handwaves away how you managed to acquire all the money in the world with "some money-summoning magic spell". Cue image where Rob from xkcd is standing next to a pentacle and tells Megan he's doing economics.
Emer Prevost's version of this when movies are inconsistent is "Fuck you, that's why".
In The Editing Room, "magic" is usually the explanation when something makes little sense. Given the site's nature, this happens often.
Release That Witch: A 21st-century engineer finds himself in the body of a prince, stuck in a fantasy world on the brink of war. The ensuing technology uplift turns the entire world upside-down, but the main problem is said engineer isn't an Omnidisciplinary Scientist and anything structural, biological, or chemical draws a blank. So instead of continuing the witch hunts and rejecting magic, he hires the witches to use magic to replace technologies he doesn't understand or doesn't have the tools to re-invent. Welding tools? Fire witch did it. Lamination tools? Paint witch did it. Computer parts? Magnet witch did it. The series goes on for a long time without explaining WHAT magic is, only what it does.
In How It Should Have Ended, Batman can explain any improbable or impossible action he does by saying "Because I'm Batman!"
SCP Foundation: The SCP Foundation reconstructs this, in their quest to study and explain the supernatural, their articles written in scientific language show that individual SCPs have consistent rules about what they can do and what they can't, they often detail testing where two or more SCPs were placed together to see what happens when their rules collide, and they have even examples where science was able to fully explain some SCPs to the point they are no longer considered supernatural, however, magic and supernatural as a whole runs on the concept that it has no rules and no logic, SCPs as a whole can be anything, science will never explain them and that's the whole point.
Parodied in this now-famous cartoon by Sidney Harris where a scientist writes out some insanely complicated equation and puts "then a miracle occurs" in the middle of it.
Played for laughs in Fate/Apocrabridged, when Caster of Black's constant questions about the premise of the original series lead his interlocutor to scream in exasperation that he has no idea how it works either.Darnic: The Chalice of God does not come with an instruction manual!
Minilife TV: In the Season 3 Watch Party, Chris uses this excuse to explain why an American flag appears in the episode "That's So Gay!" when the series takes place in the Kaliwit Region.
Somebody for Nobody is a short film on YouTube about a man who never learned to walk and a woman who Never Learned to Talk, due to curses bestowed upon them as infants.