Loophole Abuse

I should have been more specific! —Last Words of The Ghost of Captain Peghook, DuckTales (2017)

You never said which x...

Someone does something outrageous by finding a loophole in the rules, which were too narrowly written to consider such impossibilities. Loophole Abuse is a form of Refuge in Audacity—which still allows the agent to claim they were following the rules.

Sometimes the loophole doesn't even really exist, but the competitor makes everyone think it does. Occasionally the loopholes were planted to enable Loophole Abuse.

Compare Screw the Rules, I Make Them. Also contrast Bothering by the Book, where someone becomes a pest by following the rules to the letter, without looking for loopholes. If someone else finds a loophole, it's My Rule Fu Is Stronger Than Yours. Not unknown as a subversion of Just Following Orders and Exact Words. If a rule is instituted solely to close the loophole, you have an Obvious Rule Patch.

In games, this may often be the result of some kind of oversight by the creators. A programming oversight can cause someone to do something they did not actually intend, such as killing a mob intended to be invincible.

Common variants are the Animal Athlete Loophole which exists because no rule bars animals from playing sports, and Flexible Tourney Rules, wherein a characters abilities may violate the rules of the game. Scrabble Babble is Loophole Abuse for Scrabble. When applied to Tabletop Games, it becomes the annoying Rules Lawyer. See also Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty.

In Real Life this is rare for two simple reasons: First, loopholes are quickly closed once discovered. Second, many systems have Rule Zero: some designated referee, judge, or authority figure has the absolute final word...

A favorite weapon of the Jackass Genie.

Of course, this rarely happens in fictional instances, because of the Rule of Drama.

See also Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught. Related to the Lord British Postulate, which may require some Loophole Abuse to actually pull off the kill.

Examples of Loophole Abuse include:

Subpages

• Anime and Manga
• Comics
• Film
• Literature
• Live Action TV
• Professional Wrestling
• Tabletop Games and Board Games
• Video Games
• Web Comics
• Western Animation
• Real Life

Other Examples

Advertising

• This Segata Sanshiro commercial. Apparently there's no rule against grabbing a guy off the sideline and hurling him at the ball to score a goal for your team.

Fan Works

• In The Outside, Satsuki forbade Ryuuko from going outside, however, as Aikurou points out, in chapter 2, she didn't say the latter wasn't allowed to look outside, to which Ryuuko does. This is how she meets Mako, as she pokes her head out of a window to sniff the air.

Theatre

• For quite a while Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark exploited a longstanding critic tradition of not releasing a review until after opening night by labeling all of their productions as "dress rehearsals"—despite selling tickets for them to the public at full price. In fact, rumor had it that the producers intended to keep it in dress rehearsals its entire run and never formally open it.
  • Then again, there's no rule that says critics have to wait for opening night to review a show either—a fact many reviewers took advantage of when the official opening had been delayed one too many times. To say they were unkind would be a massive understatement.

Web Original

• Elaine E. Nalley in the Whateley Universe is so notorious for doing this at Whateley Academy that the headmistress gave her the codename Loophole. As a Rules Lawyer, this can cause problems. Eventually, she discovers that the administration believes in Rule Zero.
  • In another Whateley example, Jobe Wilkin's mandatory school codename is... Jobe Wilkins. It's not just megalomania, given his notoriety as the only son of the setting's Captain Ersatz of Dr. Doom he figures he's not going to go unrecognized in any event.
• Ain't no rule that vampires can't be gymnasts!
• Skeletor competes in a Pokémon match ^{[dead link]}
• In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, the 1964 Summer Olympics saw both the United States and the Soviet Union field teams filled to the brim with super-humans. In some cases, the "athletes" were quite obviously superhuman. Olympic officials swiftly closed the loophole that allowed superhuman "athletes" and disqualified both teams before competition actually began.
• A big problem in the Salvation War is that nobody has made laws pertaining to the dead, which causes quite a few legal headaches.
  • Another time, a British colonel tried to take over the command of Free Hell, only to be stopped by Julius Ceaser who points out that because of the amount of people under his command, he is technically a general.
• Skippy's List has examples:

124. Two drink limit does not mean first and last. 125. Two drink limit does not mean two kinds of drinks. 126. Two drink limit does not mean the drinks can be as large as I like. 127. "No Drinking Of Alcoholic Beverages" does not imply that a Jack Daniel's® IV is acceptable. 135. An order to put polish on my boots means the whole boot.

• The alt text of the final illustration on this installment of Randall Munroe's What If? column (concerning Scrooge McDuck and zoning regulations), invokes the former Trope Namer:

There's nothing in the basketball rulebook that says a duck can't build a giant bin of money to swim in.

New Media

• TASVideos often uploads runs that beat the game in a ridiculously low amount of time. The catch is that "beat the game" is defined as "trigger the The End screen", even if that's done by exploiting an obscure glitch rather than actually, you know, beating the game. A few Egregious examples literally jump into the ending sequence from the middle of the game for no apparent reason.
  • Super Mario World in two and a half minutes.
  • EarthBound in nine minutes.
  • Kirby's Adventure in five and a half minutes.
  • Also, even if the ending screen is glitched up and scrambled due to prior hi-jinks, it still counts, which happens in at least one run.

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