Batman: Pretty fishy what happened to me on that ladder.
Gordon: You mean, where there's a fish, there could be a Penguin.
Robin: But wait! It happened at sea! See? "C" for Catwoman!
Batman: Yet — that exploding shark was pulling my leg!
Gordon: The Joker!
O'Hara: It all adds up to a sinister riddle... Riddle-er. Riddler?
So you have the average detective story, with a huge, widely spanning mystery that has both the detective and the viewers stumped. You've got it going, but, now that you're in the thicket, you've run yourself into a corner. It would take more space than available to connect the pieces, and you don't want to drag the viewer along with boring step by step exposition, so what are you going to do?
Wait, your main character is a detective, isn't he? Why not just have him deduce that these things are connected, and move on. He's a genius, why not just leave it at that?
In short, this is when a character makes a huge jump to reach a conclusion, often through a mental Wiki Walk, that has to be made in order for the plot to progress, but without any real explanation for what might have spurred the conclusion.
Often used in cases where the viewers already know that everything's connected and how they connect, but there's no in-story explanation, and the plot really needs to get to the next part. There's also the matter that since in most authors are not themselves genius detectives, in many cases they have trouble thinking of a good way for the character to figure out connections that the author has already decided will exist.
Detective novelist Ronald A. Knox discouraged the use of this in his rules for a Fair Play Whodunnit.
The Trope Namer is Batman, specifically the 60's Adam West Batman, who, given his title as the World's Greatest Detective, can easily fall into this when a writer gets into a rut (or is playing it up for laughs). Can also be interpreted as "batshit crazy deduction," or, less often, "lazy writer deduction."
Compare Eureka Moment, where the seemingly illogical leap actually does have a logical explanation - it just doesn't get explained at the time in order to keep up the suspense. When the last clue is a Smoking Gun, making the previous ones redundant, it's Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun; Conviction by Counterfactual Clue, where the logic is based on faulty deduction; and Right for the Wrong Reasons, where the logic is correct but the premises are mistaken. Also see Only the Author Can Save Them Now. This is a natural result of having Super Intelligence. May look a lot like Insane Troll Logic, except in this case the deduction is correct. Epileptic Trees are fan theories that look like this, and the Conspiracy Theorist is frequently someone who thinks they have pulled off the equivalent of a Bat Deduction that proves their beliefs. Gambit Roulette is the plan equivalent.
Gordon: You mean, where there's a fish, there could be a Penguin.
Robin: But wait! It happened at sea! See? "C" for Catwoman!
Batman: Yet — that exploding shark was pulling my leg!
Gordon: The Joker!
O'Hara: It all adds up to a sinister riddle... Riddle-er. Riddler?
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- This is a key feature of Detective Conan, owing to difficulty translating. In the original Japanese version of Detective Conan, an unfortunately large number of clues rely on Japanese puns and cultural references that can't really be translated, so non-Japanese readers/viewers can't fit the clues together. Though the case involving Kan'o (spelt using the characters 'ka' + 'n' + 'o') referring to the person Kano (spelt using the characters 'ka' + 'no') was easier to solve for Western audiences.
- Death Note
- Near does this, especially in the anime, which compressed a 5 volume arc into 11 episodes. The manga explains his deductions a lot better — with huge walls of text.
- In early episodes of the anime, L does a bit of this but it drops off as enough clues are established for the audience to follow what's happening. The bilinear narration between Light and L only makes it all the more obvious.
- In this case, and in contrast to some of the other examples, there are perfectly logical ways that L could have deduced everything we see him Bat-Deduce - but they are not repeated mostly because the audience already know everything that Light has done, so it would be superfluous.
- It's also complicated because Word of God says that L sometimes says things he doesn't even believe.
- The light novel takes it Up to 11. Every murder scene involves a few absurdly complicated "clues," such as "Quarter Queen" was a child, which means her initials should be in lower case, and since she was positioned upside-down, you're supposed to flip them, therefore qq makes BB. Yeah. Half-justified by the fact that L knows that the killer is B, and Rue Ryuzaki IS the killer, and is manipulating Naomi Misora into "solving" clues that he laid out, which are in fact all irrelevant, except to set up the final contest between her (and L by extension) and B. But as a meta example, that you were supposed to deduce that the guy who looks and acts very much like L was, in fact, B, who planned on killing himself, was rather out of left field.
- This is how Lucy deducted where Mavis' grave was in the exam arc of Fairy Tail. We have six hours to find the grave? The only six letter word related to death is "demise"… and it is the only one that has the letter "E" twice… so the grave is somewhere in the E route of the first exam!
- While the story does have elements of a Fair Play Who Dunnit, the mysteries in Gosick are often solved by Victorique putting together wildly varying pieces of information, information provided secondhand more often than not, and using it to put together the elaborate scenarios that make up the mystery.
Comic Books
- Justified in Grant Morrison's Batman, where Batman points out that he needs to use half-mad logic and bizarre connective leaps to "match wits" with a rotating group of homicidal, delusional sociopaths, or people will die. Likewise, the Joker himself admits that Batman may have driven him to apophenia
, as he has to constantly wonder whether or not the Bat will solve anything he plans, no matter how random everything seems.
- Taken still further during Morrison's Justice League run by Martian Manhunter who shapeshifts his brain to make the irrational intuitive regions big and the logical regions small so he can think like the Joker. The chaotic maze he and Superman are trapped in suddenly appears to have a straight path from entry to exit.
- A rather harsh aversion occurs in the Endgame story arc of Scott Snyder's run on Batman. Supporting cast member Eric Border is revealed to have been the Joker in disguise the whole time. After he reveals himself Joker explains to Batman the meaning behind the term and is actually pretty annoyed that he didn't catch onto it sooner, despite how horribly obtuse the meaning was.
- Parodied in Nemesis, where the title villain tries coming up with some riddles with which to taunt the police. "What's black and white and red all over?" The next day a football stadium is bombed to the ground.
- Mortadelo y Filemón: This is how "El Gang del Chicharrón" Big Bad Gedeón el Chicharrón deduces that a cat smoking is Mortadelo in disguise:
- Gedeón: "Cats don't smoke. If they don't smoke is because they don't have money to buy cigarettes. If someone doesn't have enough to buy cigarettes is because he is a T.I.A. agent. T.I.A. agents eat bread with mortadella. Mortadella sounds similar to Mortadelo. Therefore...This cat is Mortadelo!"
- The Disney comic Zio Paperone e l'età del ferro. Magicka and her accomplice teleport Uncle Scrooge away while he's in the middle of a family grill, pull a complex scam on him to trick him into giving them the rights to all the gold in his money bin, then completely erase his memory of what happened. Cue Uncle Scrooge somehow quickly figuring out the entire plot anyway. His only clues? He can't account for a couple of missing hours, and there's a lump of gold in his pocket.
- Parodied in an Oink! strip. When the villainous Puzzler leaves a note that says "I'm going to rob the bank in the high street. Yours sincerely, The Puzzler". Rubbishman and Boy Blunder deduce from this that water voles live in river banks, Rob is short for Robert and the highest street in the world is in Tibet: therefore The Puzzler has trained a water vole named Robert to do something unspeakable in Tibet. They spend two weeks in Tibet, but all they find is a fruit bat called Kevin. While they are away, the Puzzler robs the bank in the high street.
- In Archie Comics "Archie at Riverdale High" #33, in the story "The Outsider", a new student named Buck Bailey is repeatedly pulling nasty practical jokes on the other students, including some kids twice his size. Archie wants to help Buck (before the other kids retaliate en masse), and realizes that no one went out of their way to welcome Buck as a new student. He summarily concludes that Buck was only pulling practical jokes to get attention, and turns out to be correct, leading Archie to give Buck a more acceptable way to be popular.
Comic Strips
- In Big Nate, Nate's thinking process in response to the question "Who was Thomas Jefferson's first vice president?"
Jefferson... Jefferson Airplane! Who made "White Rabbit"... Bugs Bunny is a rabbit. He eats carrots, which are orange. What rhymes with orange? Nothing! What's the numerical equivalent of nothing? Zero! When the temperature is zero, it's cold. What do people say when it's cold? Brr! Thomas Jefferson's first vice president was Aaron Burr!
Fan Works
- Parodied in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged, where Joseph, through an insane series of jumps ends up with a false deduction. Fortunately, Dio doesn't know he's barking up the wrong tree and ends up spilling the beans before Joseph can lay his bizarre theory on him.
Joseph: Nrg! I don't have time for this. Wait, Time. Chronos was the god of time in Greek mythology. Greece won the Euro cup in 2004. George Bush was re-elected in 2004. George Bush was impersonated in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Kal Penn is a part of Barack Obama's administration. Will Smith looks like Barack Obama. Will Smith's son's going the be in the next The Karate Kid... Oh my god I've got it!
- The leap he makes from there makes no sense either: He deduces that Dio's Stand has the power to breath fire.
- The Darker Knight takes this to an extreme.
- The Truth About Bleach has Karin deducing Ichigo might be a shinigami because she saw him in black clothes at a death memorial.
- Used and Lampshaded in Twillight Sparkle's awesome adventure when Admiral Awesome arrives in Equestria.
He opened his eyes and looked around. “Oh I’m in a land fully of magical talking ponies and those ponies in tree over their fighting against the evil ponies of their evil queen.” he immediately realized and thus skipped the boring introduction part so that we are right back into the action.
- In Equestria: A History Revealed, while most of the Conspiracy Theorist narrator's theories are powered by copious amounts of Insane Troll Logic, occasionally there are times when she stumbles upon something worth mentioning through these leaps in logic. Unfortunately, she usually labels them as uninteresting to note, and moves on.
- In the Princess of the Blacks Series, Hermione correctly deduces that Jen murdered the Dursleys. However she reaches this conclusion from A) She knows the Dursleys abused Jen. B) The Dursleys recently died in a fire. C) She thinks Jen is an evil bitch.
Films — Live-Action
- In Batman: The Movie, the entire universe runs on Bat-Logic, in the name of fun, though. For example, at the beginning Batman gets a series of "joking" riddles that vaguely talk about birds and the sea. Batman reasons out that the riddles must be from Riddler (fair enough), but the joking style is a sign he's working with the Joker (makes some sense) and the reference to birds is the Penguin (OK, I guess) and the reference to the sea... well, C as in Catwoman (...)! Meaning the four of them are working together. And Batman is absolutely right.
- There is NO way the following exchange can be described as a logical conclusion to anything. "What weighs six ounces, sits in a tree and is very dangerous?", our heroes mull over this important clue. "A sparrow with a machine gun!" Robin deduces. This is the right answer.
- Two riddles have the answers "egg" and "make applesauce". This means the villains are going to attack the Expy for the UN. You see, applesauce is a single unified mixture (like the UN), and the egg is a capsule (like the UN).
- Then there's the crown jewel of them all...
Batman: [reading a riddle] What has yellow skin and writes?Robin: A ball-point banana!Batman: [reads the second riddle] What people are always in a hurry?Robin: Rushing people... Russians!Batman: So this means...Robin: Banana... Russian... Someone Russian is going to slip on a banana and break their neck!Batman: Precisely, Robin! The only possible meaning! - In Batman Forever, upon discovering that Edward Nygma was the one sending him creepy riddles anonymously (which to the untrained eye, probably looked stalkerish but harmless), Batman instantly deduced that Nygma had actually killed a co-worker who was thought to have committed suicide. With no evidence whatsoever.
- This always comes into play when the Riddler is involved. However, the 4 riddles that eventually lead Batman to deduce the Riddler's identity are, on their own, perfectly reasonable: it's the clues hidden in the riddles that defy logic. Each riddle has a number in it: 13, 1, 8 and 5. These correspond to the letters M, A, H and E. Bruce puts 1 and 8 together, making it MRE. MRE = Mr. E = Mystery. Another word for Mystery is Enigma, leading him to conclude that the Riddler is Mister E. Nygma. Of course! At least in the Peter David novelization he had to spend some time after finding the numbers trying to work out the meaning.
David Uzumeri
Chris Sims : I’ll not hear a word spoken against Burt Ward’s deductive process, you cretin. - The movie does show that Bruce Wayne is dubious about the supervisor's apparent suicide from day one, so much so that he ordered full benefits be paid out to the man's family even though their insurance doesn't cover suicide (he's versed in psychology and must have observed that the supervisor didn't seem suicidal). Put that together with the scene Bruce had witnessed earlier with the belligerent supervisor humiliating the clearly unstable Nygma and its not so big a leap for Bruce to conclude that Nygma murdered his boss once Bruce knew that Nygma was a supervillain. For what it's worth, the riddles in the movie were devised by New York Times puzzlemaster Will Shortz.
- In fact, one of the reasons the Riddler was never used that much in comics even before he reformed was that it's hard to get around this trope where he's concerned without making the riddles insultingly easy — you not only have to write a genius but you have to write a Batman capable of outthinking a genius.
- This always comes into play when the Riddler is involved. However, the 4 riddles that eventually lead Batman to deduce the Riddler's identity are, on their own, perfectly reasonable: it's the clues hidden in the riddles that defy logic. Each riddle has a number in it: 13, 1, 8 and 5. These correspond to the letters M, A, H and E. Bruce puts 1 and 8 together, making it MRE. MRE = Mr. E = Mystery. Another word for Mystery is Enigma, leading him to conclude that the Riddler is Mister E. Nygma. Of course! At least in the Peter David novelization he had to spend some time after finding the numbers trying to work out the meaning.
- In Evolution, the scientists reason that, since arsenic is poisonous to carbon-based life forms, the nitrogen-based aliens must be poisoned by selenium. How do they reach this deduction? Because arsenic is two spaces up and one space to the right on the periodic table, so this pattern should hold true for nitrogen. They do absolutely zero testing to see if it's true before employing it live.
- In Superman: The Movie, Lex Luthor somehow reasons that kryptonite is lethal to Superman just because he is from Krypton and that pieces of Krypton must have fallen to Earth just because of the location and time of Krypton's explosion in 1948 (which he knows from reading details in Superman's interview with Lois Lane, which Superman never actually provides in the interview scene — and according to the disembodied voice of Marlon Brando by the time the rocket ship carrying Superman reached Earth, thousands of Earth years passed). In addition, he somehow knows that Kyptonite strips Superman's power while slowly killing him (thereby preventing Supes from flinging it away while still under its effects). Luthor somehow knows from all this what kind of crystal to look up in his library, too. "Deductive reasoning, that's the name of the game," he says.
- He gets one pass in the director's cut, however. He tried EVERYTHING ELSE first, with fire, ice, lightning, etc.
- Black Dynamite brilliantly parodies the entire concept here
- Subverted in The Princess Bride: Vezzini uses this to "deduce" which glass contains poison ("Iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them...") Arguably, he isn't actually trying to Bat-Deduce the location of the poison — he's just trying to get a revealing reaction out of the man in black. (Either that or he's just too caught up in his own cleverness to realize that he's thinking in circles.) The real irony is that all of his Bat Deductions lead to the right answer, even though he doesn't realize it: He successfully proves that he shouldn't drink from either glass.
- Subverted with Jason in Mystery Team, who sometimes makes assumptions based on the smallest pieces of evidence. Played straight later with Jason connecting the murders to Robert when he tells him to "Take a chill pill."
- In Without a Clue, lampshaded. A mysterious number is given, and Sherlock Holmes uses a few long and complicated leaps of logic to deduce that it means a specific theater. Specifically, the number, when taken as a chapter/verse pairing in the Book of Psalms (the kidnap victim's favorite book of the Bible), it references the name of a play that was last performed at that theater. At the end Holmes and Watson explain to the person who left the clue how they figured it out, leading to a sudden Crowning Moment of Funny - the victim reveals that the number was simply the address of the theater he was being held at.
- At the beginning of Journey 2 The Mysterious Island, Hank and Sean deduce the location of the eponymous island from a coded message sent by Sean's grandfather Alexander. The phrase "Son of Steve, born in 1883" leads them to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, written in 1883 and the phrase "his last name is going fast" and the mention of the name "Lemuel" lead them to Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift. They then piece the maps and coordinates in the three books together to form a map of the island.
- In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Gus does this with word origins, saying all words were originated in Greek, then provides examples no matter what word he's given.
Gus Portokalos: (when challenged on the word "kimono" being Greek in origin) "Kimono... kimono... kimono... Ha! Of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word himona, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe. You see: robe, kimono. There you go!"
- In Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Alec Baldwin does this by eating vegetables and listing off the random words that pop into his head. *eats a carrot* "Plane... drain... mountain... fountain... That might be something. I think I'll try the celery. Sausage... bicycle... *hic*... Toothpaste... Beach... Beach, that's it!"
- The witch/duck scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The "deduction" is: Wood, ducks, and witches all float in water. Wood and witches both burn. So if a woman weighs the same as a duck, then she's made of wood, and therefore a witch. It seems like merely Insane Troll Logic, but the world conforms to this absurdity, because it turns out that she somehow weighs the same as a duck and she really is a witch.
- Minor example in The Blade Master: Ator mentions that his parents (whom he doesn't name, BTW) were born in a certain nearby village, and from this factoid a pair of extras are able to deduce his identity. Again, he never specifies who his parents are. What, were only two people ever born in that village in the history of ever?
- ¡Three Amigos!. The title characters are in the desert and have no idea where El Guapo's stronghold is. They see a plane fly overhead and Lucky Day says "I'll bet it's going to El Guapo's!" He has absolutely no reason to think this, but he turns out to be absolutely right (the plane is carrying rifles to El Guapo).
- In Star Trek Into Darkness, Khan bombs an (apparent) public archive. This strikes Kirk as an odd target for a terrorist attack, and he almost immediately figures out it's a ruse to get Starfleet's officers in the briefing room. (Granted, the movie's fast pacing wouldn't really allow for an extended deduction scene.) While it's correct and a fairly logical conclusion, jumping right to it is a rather abrupt leap. Though he doesn't deduce it until it's too late to help.
- Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace has Governor Sio Bibble declaring that "A communications disruption can only mean one thing: Invasion. We've lost all communications!" This before they have even confirmed that the problem is planetwide, or even that the communications disruption is the result of hostile action. While it is logical to conclude that the Trade Federation, which is already blockading the planet, would jam Naboo's communications with the rest of the galaxy (and thus their means of calling for help) prior to invading, this is hardly the only reason for a communications failure.
- Almost every conclusion James Bond jumps to in Moonraker is both unjustified and completely correct.
- Someone has stolen a space shuttle. Bond immediately decides to check out the factory where they were made. Good thing the bad guy owns it.
- Bond sees a piece of glassware, and decides to check out Drax's glass works in Italy. Good thing that's where Drax is secretly creating neurotoxin. Good thing Bond didn't decide to focus on the curtains or something.
- Bond sees the chemical formula of the neurotoxin and recognizes it (!) as coming from a particular rare orchid, so decides to tromp into the jungle to find the place where it grows. Good thing Drax decided to put his secret launch facilities there, for no explicable reason.
- Shanghai Knights. After building up Arthur Conan Doyle's deductive reasoning for most of the movie, we finally get to do some, only for it to be him going unseen from a set of facts to seemingly completely unrelated conclusions with no indication of how he got there at all.
- In The Sucker (French movie starring Bourvil and Louis de Funès better known as "Le Corniaud"), Maréchal suddenly guesses where Saroyan hid the "Youkounkoun" diamond in the Cadillac he had to drive:
Maréchal: For sure! There are 2 Ks in "Youkounkoun", like in "klaxon"! (which is the car horn)
Literature
- Deconstructed in a scene in Paul Auster's City of Glass, where it is used to show that the character doing it is completely insane.
- Joyfully subverted in Sherlock Holmes' The Adventure of the Yellow Face. The title detective extrapolates a complex theory involving murder and foul play to explain the case to Watson without having so much as set foot in Norbury. And then, rather than every leap of logic/intuition being correct — he turns out to be ENTIRELY wrong in all his deductions — the reason the client's wife needed money and was going away at random times was because she was trying to secretly raise her child from a previous marriage.
- Holmes himself was invented, in part, because Arthur Conan Doyle was sick and tired of seeing detectives in fiction who always solved the case via this trope.
- Harry's deductions about the Deathly Hallows in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lampshaded by Hermione, who looks at him as if he's lost his mind when he comes up with it. Nevertheless, he turns out to be right.
- In Book Girl and the Famished Spirit, the Literature Club receives a mysterious letter written in a number code; Tohko immediately deduces the meaning based on what seems to be free-association.
"4 symbolizes death, so 4-5 obviously means 'death finds you'[...]" Ultimately subverted, as she's completely wrong.
- Early in Journey to the West, Sun Wukong's teacher decides to tell Sun Wukong to meet him at the third watch through the back door to his chambers in order to learn the secret to immortality and Kung Fu superpowers. He communicates this by smacking him three times and then leaving the room through the main door with his hands clasped behind his back. Sun Wukong figures it out, naturally.
- In The Lost Fleet captain Geary reasons why Syndics would delete software from evacuated base and why it looks like things have been broken into using non-standard sized tools is the existence of until now unknown and unsuspected aliens. The people he suggests this to generally state how nuts this sounds, but reluctantly admit they don't have alternate explanations.
- The Department of Dead Ends in the work of Roy Vickers was described in its first appearance as an attempt to weaponize this trope. On one occasion, they caught a murderer by punning on his name.
- Dirk Gently. He once came to the correct conclusion as a result of the insurance people describing an explosion as an "act of God".
No rational cause could be found for the explosion - it was simply designated an act of god. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo.
- Subverted and lampshaded in Geoph Essex's Jackrabbit Messiah: Amity spends half the day desperately analyzing the notes Jack gave her before he jumped off the Roosevelt Bridge, trying maps and anagrams and numerology and other generally clever tricks to discover what message he's trying to convey. Lieutenant Springer points out that he wrote the notes to Amity, so it's unlikely that they're written with any kind of secret codes - they just have to figure out what the hastily scrawled notes refer to.
Live-Action TV
- The 1966-68 Batman series made liberal use of this, as the various villains would usually leave clues for World's Greatest Detective, and the correct solution almost always required Bat Deductions. This turned pretty often with The Riddler
- Once, Batman solved one of the riddler's riddles that wasn't even spoken or written. Riddler used a wax-based solvent to dissolve a hole through the wall of a vault, and on doing a forensic investigation of the crime scene, Batman's chemical analysis revealed it to contain Nitrogen, Uranium, and Sodium:
Robin: If you take the first three letters of those elements, it spells N-U-S... but that doesn't mean anything.Batman: Reverse the order, and what do you have?Robin: S-U-N.Batman: Of course, that's got to be it!Robin: But what's it supposed to mean?Batman: Robin, I'm surprised at you. You're supposed to be studying French in school. What's the French word for sun?Robin: Soleil!Batman: Correct. The Riddler has left us a clear indication of where he intends to strike next. Back at Madame Soleil's wax museum!
- The series was so aware that it was going to rely on this sort of thing that invoking the trope formed the backbone of the plot of the very third episode. The Penguin, being out of ideas for a heist, sends a random umbrella to Batman. His plan: Batman will analyze the "clue", use Bat Deduction to figure out what the Penguin is planning, and the Penguin will hear it through the radio transmitter hidden in the umbrella, and then go and commit that crime! A brilliant inversion, lampshading, and subversion all in one, though one wonders how the Penguin figured he would get away with a crime that Batman knew he would commit before he himself did...
- Simple since he knew Batman was there already, he was prepared for any problems.
- The series actually got worse as time went by. Batgirl once deduced the plot of an episode based on the fact that her father was late getting home and that a new singer was in town. Only the fact that the episode was meant to be connected to the previous one, where she had met the villain, and guesses her cover is that of the singer, remotely helps thought barely.
- In another episode, Riddler knockoff "The Puzzler" left a clue that "will make Batman and Robin really put on their thinking caps": a piece of paper with the single word "Puzzles". Cue extraordinarily egregious use of this trope.
- Once, Batman solved one of the riddler's riddles that wasn't even spoken or written. Riddler used a wax-based solvent to dissolve a hole through the wall of a vault, and on doing a forensic investigation of the crime scene, Batman's chemical analysis revealed it to contain Nitrogen, Uranium, and Sodium:
- The titular character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer did this in Season 6, when Warren kills his ex-girlfriend Katrina and uses magic and time-distorting demons to trick Buffy into thinking that she was the one who did it. Just as she is about to turn herself in to the police and it looks like Warren's Evil Plan will succeed, she overhears the cops identify Katrina's body and immediately realizes Warren's scheme.
- It's often hinted that the Slayer's powers include weak clairvoyance.
- Agent Mulder from The X-Files often solved the case of the week out of the blue, though there were instance of him being wrong in his assumptions or cases where his (or Agent Scully's) logical steps were shown. One of the true non-paranormal detective episodes, "The Amazing Maleeni" about the magician who seems to decapitate himself for real during his act left all the clues in a breadcrumb trail and a sufficiently sharp viewer can deduce the conclusion and unravel the entire mystery just before Mulder gives the solution in the final reveal.
- One of the main characters in The Others had his divination power work like this.
- Used heavily in the early seasons of Star Trek: Voyager whenever an Anomaly of the Week needed to be explained. Typically, when this happened, the solution to the episode involved taking something that in any other show would have been a metaphor, then applying it as literal and having it work, culminating in a successful attempt to punch through a crack in a black hole event horizon, a procedure anyone who actually knows what that concept means would mock you for even suggesting.
- Happened now and again in Star Trek: The Original Series. One example is this exchange from "The Omega Glory" about two warring factions, the Yangs and the Kohms:
Kirk: Yangs? Yanks? Spock, Yankees!
Spock: Kohms? Communists? The parallel is almost too close, Captain. It would mean they fought the war your Earth avoided, and in this case, the Asiatics won and took over this planet.- Another example is in "Return of the Archons", where based solely on the fact that society is very bland and monotonous, Kirk becomes certain that the mysterious lawgiver named Landru must be a computer that is programmed to control the entire planet, which indeed turns out to be the case.
- An episode from the last season of Charmed opened with Billie deducting that, to search for her sister who was abducted by demons, she needed to find a powerful bloc that demons would work with. Simple - corporate America. And since she's read this story about a guy who was kidnapped as a child and now works with "corporate America," she's going to try a magic spell to see if he has anything to do with demons. And this works.
- Stephen Colbert used this technique to twice pick the Oscar winners. He has a shockingly good success rate.
- Colbert parodied himself by using the technique to "pick" the winner of the 2008 Presidential election. He kept using starting points clearly designed to point to John McCain, but wound up picking Barack Obama every time. Even when he started on... John McCain. Video
- Colbert and others generally use this kind of reasoning in parodies of Glenn Beck's chalkboard illustrations.
- Colbert parodied himself by using the technique to "pick" the winner of the 2008 Presidential election. He kept using starting points clearly designed to point to John McCain, but wound up picking Barack Obama every time. Even when he started on... John McCain. Video
- In one episode of Criminal Minds Reid correctly figures out who the murderer is by hypothesizing the murderer had multiple personality disorder, based on a single anomaly in a polygraph test, because the suspect got a control question wrong. Instead of concluding the subject failed math he went through the conclusion that on that one question a second personality took over (a phenomenon they had no evidence for) knew the answer to the question, lied about it (even though it had no incentive to do so on the first question), and that lying on the test meant that the suspect was indeed the murderer. To be fair, Reid had already clued in that something was wrong: his first hint was the uncharacteristic behavior the suspect had after the test.
- All That featured Detective Dan, who relied upon a combination of this and Insane Troll Logic.
- In The Secrets Of Isis, Andrea (Isis' alter ego) has her car stolen when she visits the library. In the spot where her car was parked, she finds a rag, which she takes back to her lab to have it analyzed and decides it has enamel laquer on it, which means that her car isn't being shipped out of the state to be sold, rather it's being kept in California to be repainted. Next, she says all the car thiefs in a car ring had been busted except for one guy who got away, so it must be him, then determines her car must be at this person's salvage yard. When she gets there, there's a sign on the door that says it's out of business, but there's an old chain on the gate with a new lock, which could only mean one thing: the car thieves are operating out of this salvage yard!
- Parodied in an episode of 30 Rock: Tracy finds a $50,000 food voucher that expires at midnight, but finds it impossible to eat that much food. The personification of leap day suggests that he goes back to "where he came from". Tracy's thought process is: We all came from the sea, C is a letter of the alphabet, alphabet soup, soup kitchen, kitchen, the Kitchen Debate
- Doctor Who: The entire eventual defeat of the mummy in "Mummy on the Orient Express" is based around the Doctor babbling through one of these in 66 seconds. He goes from knowing virtually nothing about the monster to knowing the exact word to make it go away just by ranting through his chain of logic.
- In an episode of Bones, Brennan deduces that the murder weapon must be The Slaughter's Chalice, a famous goblet that's been lost for centuries. She discovers this because there's traces of precious stones on the body. What makes it especially bad is that the traces contain diamond dust, which even she admits is not part of the chalice, meaning she cherry picked which evidence to include in this deduction. Brennan, who won't speculate that sharp force trauma to the sternum indicates murder. The only thing that lends the slightest amount of credence to her idea is the fact that one of the suspects is known to be a collector of ancient artifacts, but the chalice wasn't even brought up before this point.
- In Irish drama series The Big Bow Wow, a drug dealer is in a record store when he hears an employee direct someone to the blues section for Miles Davis. But the dealer knows Miles Davis belongs in jazz ... so the employee must be an impostor ... and since the dealer himself is a wanted criminal, obviously this person is an undercover cop and the store's being used in an elaborate sting! He's right, and initiates a shoot-out with several victims.
- Cassandra Cillian in The Librarians 2014 uses a mix of math, science, hallucinations, and free association to see hidden patterns.
- Ray Velcoro in True Detective season 2 puts together who the killers of Caspere are and that they have the missing hard drive...based on a picture of them as children and having briefly met them in passing as adults months earlier.
Radio
- Occasionally used in The Goon Show as a form of Insane Troll Logic:
"Let's see, it's 1956 AD... A and D are the first and fourth letters of the alphabet. One Four... One for the road? There are many roads. Such as Cecil Rhodes. He lives in Africa... that's it! I'll search for the missing year in Africa!"
Tabletop Games
- The Mutants & Masterminds expansion book "Mecha and Manga" introduced the Conspiracy Theorist feat which lets players make Knowledge rolls on completely unrelated (and untrained) knowledge skills after rolling a 20 (or less with further ranks) on their previous skill roll. A series of successive high rolls quickly produces Bat Deductions as your character moves from Knowledge (Technology) to Knowledge (Civics) to Knowledge (Natural Sciences) to note that not only are devices in question mind control devices, but that the particular composition of police officers means the president must be on a secret visit, and that the peculiar white coarse hair caught on the boxes means that there's a diabolical plan by Dr. Silverhair, the transfigured ape turned Nazi, to kidnap the president.
Talk Shows
- Late Night with Jimmy Fallon does this (or at least a parody of this) when they do a random word association that couldn't possibly make much sense if you didn't arrive to that conclusion beforehand.
Video Games
- Heavy Rain: While Norman is playing a video of a fight between himself and the Origami Killer from earlier in the game he notices that the killer has a golden watch, therefore he is or was a cop because the station always gives that model for promotions. In fairness, he's desperate, grasping at straws, and it's still not enough information to find the real killer. In fact, if you think that's the final clue, then you'll accuse the wrong person ( the local Rabid Cop). You have to cross-reference that with all the other clues you've gained to narrow things down to one person.
- L.A. Noire: Cole deduces that from the corpse of a recently stabbed victim he finds a ticket, therefore the fighter you were looking for is in the theater. Even your Partner lampshades this as ludicrous.
- In Sam And Max Save The World: "Bright Side of the Moon", Sam figures out Roy G. Biv's identity through a long chain of reasoning that has nothing to do with the actual clue in his name (a mnemonic for the colours of the rainbow).
Max: We're detectives, Sam, not mind-readers! Maybe we should ask Hugh Bliss.
Sam: Mind readers! That's it! ... No, that's not it.
Max By the way, have you seen my copy of "Emetics" the handbook for multi-coloured happiness by Hugh Bliss?
Sam: Colours! ... No. Think, Max, think!
Max: I know I had it this morning.
Sam: That's it! "Morning"! In the ancient tongue of the mud-worshipping Kappalahotek tribe of the Serengeti, our word "morning" means "he who destroys the hypnotic rainbow man"! That's the word he fears the most! So this Roy G. Biv is the one person we've met who's never said the word "morning"! That means it's—
(phone rings, Sam answers)
Sam: It's the Commissioner!
Max: The Commissioner? I never did trust him!
Sam: No, chucklehead, it's Hugh Bliss!
Max: Never!
Visual Novels
- Umineko no Naku Koro ni: This is how Battler figures out Beato's game and becomes the new Game Master. One of the clues that Battler used was Knox's 6th: It is forbidden for the case to be resolved using accident or intuition, so Bat Deduction should easily be averted by the readers.
- Virtue's Last Reward: Not really a "deduction", but at one point Clover manages to remember that the medication in the injection gun is Neostigmine, which counteracts Tubocurarine, thanks to the mention of the word "unclean".
Sigma: Purifying the...unclean...?Clover: Oh. Oh! Unclean...Unclean...Unclean...Unclean...Sigma: W-What? What are you doing?Clover: Shut up! I'm this close to remembering! Unclean...Unclean...Clen...Een...Een...'Een''! Neostigmine!
Web Animation
- In the first season finale of Rooster Teeth short films, Matt leads Joel through a massive Bat Deduction that ties together all of the previous episodes with rather tenuous connections. One example is that the truck that hit him in "Catch" was made in Detroit, which has a high rat population, which is controlled through rat poison, which was put in their coffee in another episode... the end of this train of thought is the box/time machine from the first episode.
- And in their series Red vs. Blue: Revelation, Sarge uses this from a radio conversation with Simmons to figure out that Wash and the Meta have taken Simmons and Doc hostage, and killed Donut and Lopez. The sequence starts out Simmons leaving several good clues and Sarge being surprisingly clever with genuine deductive reasoning, but quickly devolves into this trope, as Grif looks on bemusedly. By the time we get to see Simmons again it's not even clear whether he was leaving clues or, as he suggests, he couldn't say anything with Wash and the Meta listening and Sarge simply put it all together through his own insane brand of logic.
- In Episode 4 of the Simgm Productions Pretty Little L Iars spoof Spencer deducing Meet from Chicken being a Meat and Abandoned Warehouse from "one" because Rosewood only has one.
Web Comics
- Spoofed in this
- Happens in Freefall, when Helix uses this to find SamHelix: With so many people here, I figured you must be hiding. You're good at hiding, so I knew you'd pick a spot I'd never think of. So I took a map of the spaceport and filled in every place I could think of. Then I went to the spot that wasn't filled in and here you are.Sam: Helix, why is it every time you think, it's my head that hurts?
- Deconstructed humorously in this
- Chainsawsuit has a character guessing what another wants — not that hard, because it's obviously the best idea ever
- Shortpacked! shows a possible exploit
- The Axe Cop and The Adventures of Dr. McNinja crossover "Stolen Pizza, Stolen Lives" has a weird example that's either an actual Bat Deduction or a relatively reasonable inference (given the crazy world of Axe Cop) that's made to sound like a Bat Deduction by the way it's explained.
Axe Cop: "Look at this goo."Dr. McNinja: "It's going into that manhole cover."Axe Cop: "That's a monster door. Only monsters can go in there. There are secret monsters in there. They must be stealing the pizzas."Dr. McNinja: "What?! How do you know that?"Axe Cop: "I'm the smartest man in the world."Dr. McNinja: "Oh."
Web Original
- In the LoadingReadyRun Rapidfire Comedy SketchesRiley: Today's Friday, Coroner puts TOD about 12 hours ago, that makes it Thursday, or Thor's Day, Thor being the Norse god of Thunder. Thunder and lightning are formed when two weather systems of opposing charges come together. Charge begins with C, Weather Systems with a W. C and W, the intials of Cyrus Walker, local playboy and socialite who runs a thriving pork futures firm and was recently indicted for corporate fraud. The journalist who broke the story was Janet Smith, local reporter and wife, I think you'll find, of your suspect, Ted Smith, 375 Carinhood Road.
Rodriguez: That's pretty much about it, he turned himself in this morning.
Riley: Outstanding. - Morgan Freeman uses this in Celebrity Bric-a-Brac Theater to determine who killed Dennis Hopper and how. "Bees... Cos-Bees! It's obvious!"
- When Bikes Argue 2Hilo: Here's the battle map!
Ackro: All I see, are, grease smudges!
Hilo: The one close to me looks like an alien spaceship! Because the Martians have agreed with us that the ghost town's gotta go! ...
And the mushroom cloud-like [grease smudge] next to you... is the end of Muhammy al-Dracula!
Ackro: And where are we gonna get plutonium to nuke Mecca from, a De Lorean???
Hilo: Snagnabbit, that's it! If we can't find plutonium for the bomb, we'll never convince the werewolves to come out during a crescent moon!
Because they'll be showing Yogi Bear reruns if that happens!!! This completely ruins the whole plan!
::Hence, Hilo realizes that Ackro is right in saying that it's preposterous for bicycles in a pole barn to nuke Mecca. But his reasoning doubles as both Right for the Wrong Reasons and Bat Deduction!- The creator of that film, in a blog post, writes a Deconstructive Parody of a popular Call It Karma poem that could also count as Bat Deduction or Insane Troll Logic:
When the bird is alive, PETA makes propaganda out of it.
When the bird is dead, Monty Python makes comedy out of it.
But that's neither here nor there when discussing whether or not there is a time to kill or a time to heal. You ain't gonna out-Solomon Solomon that easily.
But if you gotta bust somebody up, choose your targets wisely. Sometimes, they bring their friends in low places.
A tree may make a few thousand matchsticks; but that won't mean jack if your house gets flooded.
So...it is better to have everyone think you're crazy, but have a backup plan for everything; than to have no one question your sanity when a 747 really does nosedive right into your living room. - This
- Seanbaby, on Batman and the Riddler (in the animated Super Friends cartoon):
For example, people like you can see an oven and grunt out loud, "oven is hot. Hot things hurt. Hurt is bad. It is bad to touch oven." The Super Friends see an oven and shout, "oven... heat... lava... Great Gotham! The Legion of Doom's headquarters is in the heart of a volcano! Let's roll!" But the most insane part is that they're usually right.
- The Editing Room did a parody screenplay of Angels & Demons, in which Robert Langdon (referred to in the script as Tom Hanks) does this really often.
Tom Hanks: Let's see here... we're in a tomb. Tomb... like Tombstone pizza, which is circular. Circular is the opposite of square... of course! To Saint Peter's Square!
- Ranger in Comic Fury Werewolf has an unusual brand of "logic". His deductions rely on a series of jumps in logic which qualify as this more often than they don't.
- Facebook answers The Question from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in this way
- Akinator's guesses sometimes feel like this, in cases where he asks a lot of seemingly (but not genuinely) pointless questions and then jumps to the correct answer.
- Water-Human at one point has one of the characters learn that Water-Human is in a city, which is somehow enough of a clue for them to instantly deduce the entire plot so far, point by point, despite being absent since episode one. "Of course, I might be wrong..."
- Tattletale from the web serial Worm has the ability to draw correct conclusions from a seemingly impossibly small amount of data as an actual superpower. Although she can still get things wrong if she tries to figure out too much from too little, and can get swept on divergent trains of thought if not careful.
- Wolfram Alpha explains why fire trucks are red
- Done completely over the top in the RWBYJNPR RecapBlake: I feel the dream of our people fell apart when we found that filthy book. Clearly no one was thinking of the children.Ruby: Hold on a sec. Children! They have bedrooms and sometimes share them, and in those rooms there are walls, and those walls are painted pink or blue, and blue and red mix to make purple, and eggplants are purple, and are also called aubergines, and I knew a kid at Signal named Bob Aubergine, and he had a frog tank, and he bought that tank at a store just off of May Street, and May is the fifth month of the year, and there are five letters in the word chunk, and since Episode Seven's recap taught us rhymes, I know that chunk rhymes with bunk! And sometimes bunks come in bed form, tho I think a bunk is always a bed but that is so not the point! Bunk beds! Children sleep in bunk beds! And so shall we. Blake-y, you're a genius.
- The theory in this Pachelbel rant
Western Animation
- Batman, in the 1970s Super Friends cartoons, would routinely come up with some extremely convoluted link between the clues and the crime. It became especially pronounced if the Riddler was involved.
- In the Justice League episode "Legends", the Justice Guild of America, a team of heroes from a Silver Age Retro Universe, gets notice that the bad guys are planning a crime spree themed for the four classical elements. The Guild members immediately figure out what these refer to, even if they are only tangentially related to the elements themselves: The fire crime is the theft of the famed fire ruby (a gem), the air crime is the theft of an "antique flyer", the water crime is the theft of a new fountain being dedicated by the city's mayor, and the earth crime (this one is a doozy, and the biggest Bat Deduction of all) is the theft of the trophy for the clay court tennis championships. The League is pretty confused by this development, to be fair, which is one part of The Reveal that neither the Guild nor its enemies are real.
- South Park:
- In the episode "Cancelled", a parody of Independence Day, the scientist (Jeff, for Jeff Goldblum) would fixate on a random element and follow a completely nonsensical chain of reasoning to come up with the solution. For example:
Jeff: Wait a minute: butt sex!
Chef: Butt sex?!
Jeff: Butt sex requires a lot of lubrication, right? Lubrication. Lubruh... Chupuh... Chupacabra's the, the goat killer of Mexican folklore. Folklore is stories from the past that are often fictionalized. Fictionalized to heighten drama. Drama students! Students at colleges usually have bicycles! Bi, bian, binary. It's binary code!
Chef: ...Who's having butt sex?
Jeff: There's a huge ship of some kind in Earth's orbit! But why? Wait a minute: chaos theory! Chaos theory, it was first thought of in The Sixties. Sixty. That's the number of episodes they made of Punky Brewster before it was cancelled.note Cancelled... Don't you see? The show is over! The aliens are cancelling Earth!
Jeff: Whoever they are, if they're receiving messages, they might be sending them, too. Wait a minute: candy bars. They usually come in a wrapper. Just like you... wrap a Christmas present. Christmas happens when it's cold. Cold, as in Alaska - that's... with polar bears. Polar bears... pola... polarity! I can switch the polarity to see what transmissions are coming from the location this one is being sent to!
Chef: THAT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING SENSE!!- Also parodied in the episode "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce", where Cartman claims to deduce that Kyle caused 9/11:
Cartman: Two minus one is one; one one - 11; two minus one is one; one one, and there are nine members on Silverstein's board of directors. That's nine-one-one. Nine-eleven. And take 2 - 1 + 9/11 and you get 12, which leads us all to the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks: Kyle!" - Played with in an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when Donatello finds the bad guys by doing a long, drawn-out series of calculations... then looks up and sees all the fireworks.
- Johnny Bravo is prone to doing this; one episode even features Adam West, who exhibits this kind of logic by interpreting a fortune cookie that said "Your heart's afire" to mean the Johnny's Momma was being held hostage at a golf course.
- And then he interprets the flag sticking out of the holes as signs of a race of mole men who are plotting to create mole-human hybrids so they can Take Over the World.
- Professor Farnsworth of Futurama uses this a lot in "The Duh-Vinci Code":
Professor Farnsworth: Animatronio mentioned a fountain. That's a statue of Neptune, god of water. The number of points on his trident is three, or "tre". The "u" in his name is written like "v". "Tre", "V". "Tre"... Trevi! It's the Trevi Fountain! There can be no question!
Leela: But, Professor—
Professor Farnsworth: THERE CAN BE NO QUESTION!- Even better is the fact that he ignores the more obvious deduction, the Fountain of Neptune, also in Rome.
- Naturally, episodes of Batman: The Animated Series involving the Riddler had this sometimes.
- This exchange between Batman and Alfred in the Batmobile, where Batman has a handful of coins and the clue "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no tales. It all makes sense when you add it up."
Batman: Penny... Penny... Cent... Red cent... Copper! It's made of copper!
Alfred: And "copper" is another word for "policeman"!
Batman: And no tails means heads. Police... Head... Quarters!
[...]
Batman: Four quarters and one penny equal 101 cents, so... Police headquarters, room 101!
- The silliest thing about this? Batman was going to go back there eventually anyway.
- Same episode, leads into the above one. Three computers crash around Gotham, displaying only a riddle on screen: "Where does a 500-pound gorilla sleep?" "What's worse than a millipede with flat feet?" "How do you fit 5 elephants into a compact car?" Train of logic: the Riddler doesn't usually use such commonly known riddles meaning the answers to the riddles are a red herring. The riddles themselves all contain numbers: 500, 1000, 5. Convert to roman numerals and get D,M,V... the Department of Motor Vehicles!!!
- This exchange between Batman and Alfred in the Batmobile, where Batman has a handful of coins and the clue "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no tales. It all makes sense when you add it up."
- Underdog. Apparently, "A rhyme/In time/Saves nine" means "Underdog should come to the town's diamond store to stop a heist." Ah, yes. "Time... like Big Ben... Ben's Jewelry Store!"
- On the Black Dynamite animated series, a plate of Jello and grits somehow causes Black Dynamite to deduce that the episode's villain is a coalition between the Ku Klux Klan and a Brand X version of the Black Panthers.
- On Tom Terrific, Manfred will say something off the cuff that will lead Tom to this. In "Go West, Young Manfred," the two are in the old west trying to find a way to deliver gold to the survivor of the trek to California:
Manfred: Please, Tom. Don't saddle me with your problems.Tom: Saddle. Pony. Pony express!
- Danger Mouse does this in "The Wild Wild Goose Chase" as he and Penfold are about to get devoured by an alligator.
Penfold: 'Cor, and I thought this (tongue) was a bloomin' carpet.DM: That's it, Penfold. Carpet, bag. Bag, pack. Pack, case. Case, trunk. Trunk, elephant! (DM does a Tarzan yell, bringing in a herd of elephants, on which he and Penfold catch a lift)
Real Life
- ARGs often work like a combination of this and Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Each clue can be extrapolated from in order to lead to the next, usually in some completely random way. For example, a set of numbers could symbolize any number of different things. Often the only way to figure out where the trail leads is to try every possibility until you find something that looks like another clue.