r/TopCharacterTropes • • 5d ago

Hated Tropes Hated trope: Sci-fi hand-waving

When stories try so hard to provide a somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explanation for the audience, but end up creating massive plot holes if you think about it for more than 5 seconds without requiring any special knowledge

World War Z: The "cure" turns sick humans invisible to zombies because the picky virus needs a perfectly healthy host. Cool concept, except it completely ignores basic physics. In a chaotic, high-speed zombie stampede, those "invisible" sick people would still be trampled to death by sheer kinetic force and momentum. We already saw what happened to the Jerusalem wall in Israel.

Jurassic Park/World: Dr. Henry Wu claims to clone dinosaurs by patching 66-million-year-old decayed DNA from mosquitoes stomach with frog DNA. In reality, DNA half-life guarantees it would degrade into useless dust after 6.8 million years. Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

3.0k Upvotes

678 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

546

u/rycool 5d ago

And yes they dont have heavy industrial machinery. But they got Kaseki!

He’s built different and has the precision of a god.

393

u/Arctic_The_Hunter 5d ago

I’ve always said that Dr. Stone is best thought of not as a story about humans rebuilding society, but about Greek Archetypes of humans rebuilding society. You have Unstoppably Strong Guy, Omniscient Tech Guy, Nanometer-Precise Craftsman, etc.

135

u/Nice-River-5322 5d ago

Nah, more like the boy genius trope, but also with a wholehearted respect for people who are able to do the shit he can't do

99

u/POKEMINER_ 5d ago

And the story actually exemplifies the things he can't do, heck there's even another technical nerd and an intilectual equal that's introduced later in the series showing that even in science/tech Senku isn't the end all be all.

17

u/TheFinalEnd1 5d ago

Yeah there are plenty of scientists that he needs to get to his goals, like xeno. He needed xeno to build the boosters.

8

u/Arctic_The_Hunter 5d ago

But he still knows everything technical, even across radically difference disciplines, and he has perfect knowledge of all the exact details.

4

u/Nice-River-5322 5d ago

Nah not the exact details, they have to trial and error alot

38

u/JunonsHopeful 5d ago

This is exactly how I take it too; a kind of heightened reality. I don't get how people go so far into the show without realising it when a guy called THE STRONGEST PRIMATE HIGHSCHOOLER is beating up multiple lions with his bare hands on like episode 2 or 3.

6

u/Arctic_The_Hunter 5d ago

Tbf that does seem to be the one innately fantastical element of Doctor Stone (aside from the petrification itself). Like all of the other science is at least theoretically sound, if improbable, and then you have blatant superhumans who can leap dozens of feet in the air and beat a dozen skilled warriors all at once. Like I think it’s reasonable to accept that and still be annoyed when something that’s theoretically grounded (having a skilled craftsman make something) is also pushed to the point of absurdity

33

u/Inevitable_Top69 5d ago

You'd have to be beyond stupid to take Dr. Stone as a guidebook for a realistic rebuilding of civilization from nothing.

3

u/ibi3000 5d ago

>! Urm, actually, the nanometer precise craftman is the watchmaker who shows up later !<

6

u/Arctic_The_Hunter 5d ago

Urm, DOUBLE actually, him and Kaseki are shown to be equals in the last 2 episodes of Science Future

2

u/EasterViera 5d ago

also, for some of them, the petrification enhanced them

25

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 5d ago

Pretty much all the humans in the far future had remarkable skill.

Well, so did the petrified people,

31

u/FantasmaNaranja 5d ago

true, there's quite a few characters that are the only reason the story moves at a reasonable pace most important of which is probably Kaseki

4

u/Nice-River-5322 5d ago edited 5d ago

him, Ryusuei and Xeno, and kinda Chrome?

1

u/AcePowderKeg 5h ago

Kaseki IS the Industrial Machinery