Phony Rules - TV Tropes

"No! Rock rips through paper! I win!"

• Death Note A supernatural variant occurs near the end of season one, with it being revealed that Light wrote two fake rules on the back of his original Death Note in order to trick the Task Force and clear him and Misa of suspicion.
  • The first rule states that if a Death Note user fails to write names consecutively within thirteen days, the user will die. This rule was created in order to "prove" that neither Light nor Misa could be Kira, since early on, they were incarcerated for fifty days without any opportunity to use the Death Note. Unfortunately for Light, L suspects that this rule is fake because of all of the other evidence against Light and Misa and decides to test the rule by having a death row inmate use the Death Note to kill another. L dies before he can try this and the other task force members don't try because of moral reservations. Later, Mello manages to prove that it's fake and pass the information on to the task force.
  • The second fake rule states if the Death Note is destroyed, then anyone who's touched it will die. Light, naturally, created this rule to keep the Death Note from being destroyed. Once Near learns from Ryuk that this rule is fake, he has every Death Note destroyed.
• Monster Musume: After Centorea joins the household, Miia decides it is time for the two of them and Papi to have a refresher of the Homestay Rules. The first few she covers were already established by the story, but then she makes up a rule where the first homestay monster at a home has privilege, which Centorea calls out.

• In The Stuff of Legend, our heroes discover a town inhabited by board game pieces where everyone lives at the whims of the Mayor and his book of cruel rules. When the Mayor is eventually overthrown, it's revealed that his book is completely blank.

• 101 Dalmatians: When Horace and Jasper enter to steal the puppies, pretending to be electricians, they claim that the house needs to be inspected by law.

• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000): When Mayor Augustus calls for nominations for the next Holiday Cheermeister, Cindy Lou nominates the Grinch. Augustus attempts to reject this by claiming that the Book of Who says the award can't be granted to the Grinch. Cindy automatically calls him out and even demands him to state the page, leaving him to try and save face by claiming he lost track of the page.
• Tremors 2: Aftershocks: Earl and Grady play Rock–Paper–Scissors to decide who will make the potentially Heroic Sacrifice. Grady beats Earl by choosing paper over Earl's rock, but Earl cheats by making up a rule that rock rips through paper. Grady is initially fooled, although he later realizes that Earl lied to him.

• Jurassic Park (1990): After Tim manages to restart the park's main power source despite the park's confusing custom-made/modified interface and operating systems, Gennaro gets on the radio to tell the ship that was spotted carrying some young raptors to turn around. When the skipper responds that he's on a tight schedule, Gennaro threatens the skipper that he will be in violation of the Uniform Maritime Act, which carries the penalty of loss of his ship operating license, fines of thousands of dollars, and a few years in prison. After the skipper agrees to turn the ship around, Grant asks about the Uniform Maritime Act, to which Gennaro responds: "Who the hell knows?"
• In Midnight at the Well of Souls, Serge Ortega leads Nathan Brazil and his group of Entries to the room holding the main Well Gate and tells them that when they pass through the Gate they'll be transformed to a new form, one native to one of the Well World's hexes, and transported to that hex. He also tells them that the door behind them is sealed, and they must go through the Gate in order to leave the room at all. It's all true except the last bit: the door is not sealed, but Ortega routinely tells Entries it is so that they don't get the idea they can simply refuse to go through the Gate.
• Monstrous Regiment: Sergeant Jackrum makes up a bogus rule to Lieutenant Blouse to avoid forced retirement. In a later dispute, Blouse checks the rule book, then makes a big show of commending Jackrum for their in-depth knowledge of the rules. Polly who witnesses this realizes the unspoken words. Blouse caught Jackrum lying and is letting him off, putting the latter on the back foot.
• The Story of the World: When demonstrating that ignorance of the law is a problem, it gives the hypothetical scenario of a little kid wanting to buy a LEGO set, only for an older girl to steal it by pretending smaller children are legally required to give their toys away to larger children.

• Breaking Bad: In "Better Call Saul", Badger is suspicious of a buyer and suspects he's an undercover cop. The buyer claims that the "Must State If You're a Cop" rule is an actual law and encourages Badger to ask him. Badger is convinced when the buyer says no, agrees to sell him meth, and is promptly arrested for dealing to an undercover cop.
• The Brittas Empire: In "Wake Up the Lion Within", Carole's alter-ego conducts a scheme to get Carole to become leisure centre manager by switching the labels for the 1995 and 1996 Whitbury County Council Regulations and using it to convince Brittas that it was still legal for the staff to go up the ladder without insurance. Brittas doesn't discover the truth until after he had resigned out of guilt when Carole (deliberately) injures herself going up the ladder.
• Lampshaded in The Crystal Maze. In one game where the contestants are not allowed to confer, Richard O'Brien tells the team that if this rule is broken, the contestant will be locked in. He then adds "I've just made that rule up".
• Ghosts (UK): This is part of how Thomas died. When he challenged a man to a duel, his cousin Francis told him that they would each have to take twenty paces before shooting instead of ten, catching Thomas off guard. Francis did this so that he could marry the woman Thomas loved and inherit her fortune, after forging rejection letters from each of them.
• iCarly: In "iTwins", Carly realizes that the kid she's tutoring, Chuck, is a total brat. To get revenge on him, she says that the U.N. has passed an "International Math Law" to add a new number between five and six called "derf." Chuck fails his math tests and has to go to summer school as a result.
• Law & Order: There's a widespread but false belief that cops aren't allowed to lie to a witness or suspect during an interrogation. On more than one occasion, the L&O detectives use it to their advantage. (Truth in Television: real-life cops do this all the time.) In one particular example, a middle-aged woman is protecting the identity of a possible suspect, because he is her granddaughter's fiance. Detective Curtis tells the woman that the victim was not only killed but also brutally raped. The witness protests that wasn't in the news, so he must be lying. Curtis replies that he's a cop, so he doesn't tell lies. The woman believes him and gives him the name and address of the suspect. However, Curtis's claim is a lie: the victim was killed, but not raped.
• I Love Lucy: Ricky and Fred lie to Lucy and Ethel about various rules for golf, such as making them hold the club in awkward ways, or telling them they had to ask "May I?" before taking a swing. When they learn that they were tricked by a professional golfer, he helps them get back at Ricky and Fred by coming with them to golf with their husbands, and actually successfully performing a shot using the bizarre rules created by the husbands.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In the episode "Outcry" a teenage rape victim who was found after being missing for days wanted to go home, and her stepfather supported her. Benson told them that the girl had to go to the hospital for a rape kit according to a law that she just made up.
• Power Rangers Ninja Steel: The B-ploy "Sheriff Skyfire" has Victor and Monty becoming interns to the school's security guard, and decide to use their position to steal from the other students by claiming that they violated some made-up rule in order to "confiscate" whatever it is they want to steal.
• Wizards of Waverly Place: In the episode "Disenchanted Evening," Alex meets a wizard named T.J. who brainwashed his parents into letting him use magic whenever he wants. Cocoa powder can remove the brainwashing, which T.J. knows, so he lied to his parents that brownies (which contain cocoa powder) are illegal, though Jerry and Theresa manage to get around the lie by claiming that the law was abolished.

• Ghost Trick: At the end, it is revealed that the whole one-night limit thing was a complete fabrication used to motivate the protagonist towards action.

• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: The Big Bad lies about a change in the rules to the ninth man, resulting in him blowing himself up.
• Your Turn to Die: During Chapter 1, Sara picks up a card with glowing text on the back. The text states that she must keep the card on herself at all times and never show it to anybody else, or else she will die. However, these are later revealed to be "dummy rules" that aren't actually enforced, as shown when Sou trades cards with Kanna in a flashback.

• Homestar Runner: Played with. In "Kick-A-Ball" Homestar and Strong Bad compete in the titular sport with Homestar seemingly only having Pom Pom on his team while Strong Bad gets everybody else (thanks in part to Homestar only choosing Pom Pom). Come the end though, it's revealed that Homestar secretly drafted Strong Sad at the end via a double side-mouth whisper draft, which Strong Bad calls Homsestar out on cheating. Unfortuntately for him, Homestar reveals in the rulebook that double side-mouth whisper drafts are established as legal. Said rule was blatantly forged into the rulebook by Strong Bad himself.

• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the episode "Crime After Crime," Mr. Herriman frequently punishes the other imaginary friends by sending them to their rooms without dinner by claiming they broke some made-up rule such as "touching things" or "standing on rugs." His reason for doing this is because he hid several carrots around the house and he doesn't want anyone else to find them.
• Garfield and Friends: In the U.S. Acres segment, "The Bad Sport", Orson convinces his friends to try a new sport called pigball. We never get to see how actual pigball is played, though, as Roy plays a joke by switching the actual rules with a set of increasingly absurd ones, such as flipping a baked potato not only to see who plays first but if the game is actually played at all, which instruct the players to score points by doing embarrassing and ridiculous stunts such as dressing in silly outfits or finding a live hippopotamus. Near the end of the episode, Lanolin gets back at Roy with a "game" called "roosterball", whose rules are to take the person with the most feathers and throw him in a mud hole.
• Moral Orel: The "Lost Commandments" created by Clay Puppington's mother Angela are a religious variant of this trope; according to her, God gave Moses sixty-three commandments rather than ten, but Moses forgot some. One of the Lost Commandments "Honor thy father. Not mother, just thy father," outright contradicts one of the actual commandments, which says "Honour thy father and thy mother."
• Rated "A" for Awesome: The end of "Club Detention" reveals that Vice-Principal Nitpickler has been making up school rules just so she can put students in detention for "breaking" them.
• Transformers: Animated: After Optimus Prime, Sentinel Prime, and Bumblebee manage to capture Waspinator, Optimus insists that since Earth is in his jurisdiction, he should be the one to deal with Wasp. Sentinel, having no argument, tries to claim that he has the right to take in Waspinator despite Earth not being in his jurisdiction because he's the "Primer Prime." Optimus doesn't fall for it.

  Optimus: Did you just make that up?
  Sentinel: No.

• While being a Memetic Mutation, there may’ve been instances in childhood when playing a game with a Sore Loser who’ll start pulling new and previously unheard of rules of the game from their asses the second they start losing.
• Pretty much the source of all "police confrontation" videos. Police officers, when they are a By-the-Book Cop, follow rules. But it often makes their job easier to bend the rules by pretending they have authority in situations that they do not, even by citing fake or nonsensical statutes. If they ask you to do something for which they have no legal mandate, you can politely refuse them, and if that makes them "annoyed" or whine that you're being "unhelpful", they can have a cry about it in the corner. Citizens have rights which limit what police can and cannot do, it is not a citizen's duty to make a police officer's job "easy".