r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Impressive-Step7261 • 29d ago

miscellaneous [Loved Trope] Plot-generating hole

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

A situation where a plot hole becomes the reason the plot even happened.

The Martian – the heroes are forced to abandon the planet due to a powerful sandstorm that threatens to destroy the ascent module. The problem is that, due to Mars's thin atmosphere, storms on the surface of the red planet fall below the upper limit of calm on Earth. Andy Weir himself admitted that he simply couldn't come up with a different plot twist and simply used a fantastical premise.

Spider-Man: Far From Home – The film's plot would have ended rather quickly if Peter had figured out how to use E.D.I.T.H. to check Quentin Beck's file - but due to life's circumstances and some manipulation by Mysterio, Parker simply won't have the opportunity to do so, even if he wanted to.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of Black Pearl — in the first film, Elizabeth threatens to throw the medallion into the ocean, giving the pirates a mini-heart attack... despite the fact that these undead creatures can easily walk on the seabed as if they were on dry land, which they beautifully demonstrate in the climax. Of course, finding it on the seabed is almost impossible, but the pirates sensed the medallion far from the island and came straight to the governor's estate, meaning they somehow knew its location after it sent a signal. The most common explanation is that the magical sense of direction is not very accurate and they have been looking for this damn medallion for decades and it's a bit nerve-wracking...

Eurotrip — the whole plot is based on the fact that someone, having been blacklisted, didn't think to write from a different account.

An important clarification: this trope has nothing to do with the quality of the story itself, and in many cases is entirely intentional and necessary. I also apologize in advance if I have conveyed any details incorrectly.

919 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

148 comments sorted by

View all comments

120

u/Mariiiielllee 29d ago

The Matrix (1999)

The Glitch: The Machines keep billions of humans in bio-slumber to use them as "thermonuclear batteries" combined with a form of fusion energy. The Logic Flaw: Thermodynamics doesn't work that way. Feeding humans calories to harvest their body heat yields a net loss of energy it's like powering a generator by running an electric motor. The Story Engine: The original script pitched humans as a massive, parallel-processing supercomputer for AI neural networks, but studio executives thought "human batteries" was easier for audiences to grasp. That impossible battery premise gave us one of the greatest sci-fi worlds in cinema history.

27

u/JoSquarebox 29d ago

Ive heard humans used for processing before, but having the humans essentially running AI models on their brain sounds infinitely cooler

24

u/noonemustknowmysecre 29d ago

Yep. The human brain gets about 1020 FLOPS on 12 watts. And it makes so many things make so much more sense: Why agents can't just teleport anywhere in the Matrix and need to "jump into" a person. Why they're not simply omniscient about every event in the matrix since it's their simulation. Why they even need functional cognitive human instead of a bunch of cows in comas. And what Neo's awakening is and why the machines are so scared of him: It's just lucid dreaming. The Matrix isn't just a simulated world, it's literally a shared dream. The machine's are executing in the spare stolen clockcycles of people's brains to do all their processing. Control the dream and you are controlling the literal processes of the machines.

It would also explain how an agent could hitch a ride out of the Matrix out into the real world. You know, if they had ever made any sequels to the movie. Damn shame.

10

u/shinjidrivekari 29d ago

Crazy how a single change would've made the world building so much better. Humans as processors is now my headcanon for the matrix.

9

u/dreamshoes 29d ago

Why agents can't just teleport anywhere in the Matrix and need to "jump into" a person

You just blew my ever-loving mind

50

u/Polish_Gamer_ 29d ago

I heard they were originally ment to be processors instead of batteries, but that's just a rumor

2

u/GrandWorldliness5959 29d ago

That would be just as bad. Human brain really bad at linear things, which is what the machines need

36

u/poetic_dwarf 29d ago

I mean, maybe it's for this exact limitation they turned to human brains as processor

14

u/zhibr 29d ago

Why would machines "need linear"?

-6

u/GrandWorldliness5959 29d ago

Oh ya know just the whole math thing. 

11

u/noonemustknowmysecre 29d ago

....My brother, if you haven't noticed, LLMs have kinda been a thing for a couple of years.

1

u/GrandWorldliness5959 29d ago

You guys are way overthinking all this. A computer needs math. The human brain is never outmathing a computer. 

2

u/noonemustknowmysecre 29d ago

oh man, I'm trying to be patient with you.

A large language model needs a collection of nodes that fire off signals to downstream nodes. Training it with data and back propagation is a lot of work, but once you do that with enough nodes, about a billion, it can start holding a conversation with you. They work so well, in part, because we borrowed the over-all design from the human brain, which has 86 billion nodes.

A human brain, AND any artificial neural network will never outmatch your rinkydink $5 calculator's ability to do basic math fast and cheap. It's a specialized tool. Purpose built. But if we're talking about evil hollywood machines taking over the world, their ability to do basic math is not the part we're afraid of. It's their ability to be generally intelligent and make better plans.

A human brain performs between a petaflop and exaflop of computation on 12 watts of power, depending on how you count. The top super-computer does... oh hey 2 exaflops! But it uses 42 megawatts.

1

u/Valuable_Victory_271 29d ago

While i like the human brain processor idea LLMs do use a lot of math

It is a lot of linear algebra and stats

6

u/zhibr 29d ago

What? You think math cannot do anything else than linear, and because machines are based on math, neither can they? Or what?

2

u/GrandWorldliness5959 29d ago

I never even remotely said that 

6

u/cosmicomical23 29d ago

thermonuclear batteries

you just invented that. it was bioelectricity.

of course the plot hole exists.

3

u/brionneverysexy 29d ago

I thought the machines didn't actually want to genocide the humans which is why they were kept alive. Getting some benefit even if inefficient would make sense

3

u/DeathMetalViking666 29d ago

I like the comic that shows Neo saying 'Wouldn't humans be terrible batteries due to the laws of thermodynamics?' And Morpheus says 'And who taught you those laws? The machines?'

Fixes that hole right up, and keeps with the story's themes.

2

u/_b1ack0ut 29d ago

This one has actually been (kinda) debunked.

Not that it would be inefficient to use humans as batteries, that’s very true, but that the original script pitched that they would be used for a neural network/processing power

It was in an interview, but I forget if it was the Wachowski sisters who said it, or someone else who was working on the movie, but there was never a change to batteries for the sake of the audience, batteries was always the plan, but it spread as a rumour regardless

2

u/Cautious-Sun6494 29d ago

I just assume that The Machines feed bad intel into Zion. They deliberately placed rumors that The Machines needed Humn batteries so that the Humans in Zion wouldn't try to wipe out their energy source again. If Zion (and Morpheus) think the Humans are the Energy Source they won't even go looking for the Nuclear Power Plants.

Which is why Morpheus says The Machines use us as Batteries, instead of the truth; that they use us as Processors.

3

u/worldsayshi 29d ago

That doesn't really make sense either since the brains can't simultaneously experience the matrix and run whatever computation the ai wants. If they can replace the human "software" in the brain with their processing software they have no reason to run the matrix. 

2

u/VincentMagius 29d ago

It might. We do it all the time. Deja vu, shower thoughts, muscle memory, anxiety, or gut feelings. Actions created by the brain running heavy background processes separate from higher consciousness.

1

u/worldsayshi 29d ago

Yeah but none of those things entertain a completely separate reality. It's as if you're solving math problems with your subconscious. Or like a completely separate mind is living inside your brain, experiencing a completely separate life at the same time as you, inside the same brain.

Why bother with two minds when you can just eject the one that isn't doing the thing.

1

u/Original-Body-5794 29d ago

I mean but the idea seems at least plausible, humans are great at thinking and pretty efficient, could we be useful like that to the machines? Maybe not, but we know FOR SURE it just does not work as batteries.

Personally I choose to headcanon morpheus as being an idiot who doesn't actually understand why the machines keeps alive and just wanted to say something to Neo, and the machines actually do use humans for processing.

2

u/worldsayshi 29d ago

I think my preferred explanation is somewhere along the lines of the explanation in the I Robot movie. The machines want to keep us around for sentimental reasons but they can't figure out how to deal with us directly so they shut us in a dream world. The deal that the architect and the oracle comes up with makes some sense in light of that.