http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk

Liquid: I've been up all night doing research.

Ocelot: Research? On what?

Liquid: Well, it was supposed to be on the current geopolitics of modern nuclear weaponry.

Ocelot: This is a

Liquid: I got slightly sidetracked. The Last Days of FOXHOUND I've been up all night doing research.Research? On what?Well, it was supposed to be on the current geopolitics of modern nuclear weaponry.This is a Wikipedia page about Mick Jagger I got slightly sidetracked.

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A trope we can all relate to, and one of the most prominent reasons behind why TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life. You're probably doing it right now, or if you aren't you will be by the time you finish this article.

A Wiki Walk is a train of thought that has gone off the rails and is Riding into the Sunset. When going for a Wiki Walk you know where you begin, but no one knows where you'll end. Are you a Mad Scientist building an orbital death ray? Well, too bad, inspiration struck and now it's the world's biggest dancing dish washer with a fully adjustable cup holder. You want to have a serious talk about the Middle East? Within ten minutes you'll be arguing whether Darth Vader could take Gandalf in a fight. Just want to check the Rule of Cool page? Before you know it you're adding examples to Bungling Inventor. You, my friend, have just had a Wiki Walk.

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The key feature of a Wiki Walk is that if someone were to see only the beginning and end of the Wiki Walk it would seem completely random, while in fact there was a series of thoughts that connected the beginning and end result, or it is at least implied that this is the case.

Despite the name, the phenomenon itself has existed since long before wikis — computers and hyperlinking simply made it faster and easier. For example, in the days of paper book encyclopedias, a person would get distracted and sidetracked by articles they paged past on their way to what they were actually looking for.

If in a mystery, it could easily cause a Eureka Moment, or possibly a Bat Deduction depending on how out-of-nowhere it feels.

A common version of this trope is when a Wiki Walk is still in progress at the end of a scene, and then we catch the end of the conversation, which usually takes the form of a Noodle Incident, in the beginning of a later scene.

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A Cloud Cuckoo Lander is particularly susceptible to these, though we mostly only hear the end result. This is most likely responsible for the stranger half of any Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? moment.

If there is a database involved it will usually overlap with an Archive Binge, and is one of the reasons TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.

A Sub-Trope of this is the Halfway Plot Switch, when the plot seems to do this.

Refers to how you could, in two or three links, end up at a trope seemingly unrelated to the page you started from. Definitely an example of Truth in Television. Often cannot be recreated, as anyone who has spotted an interesting trope en route, planned to come back to it, and then forgotten what it was, will attest. Doing it intentionally for fun is known as "playing Wiki Tag." Thankfully however there is the ever helpful "open in new tab" function on your browser...

People have turned this into a game! It's called The Wiki Game, and the objective is to get from one article, to a completely different article in the fewest number of clicks.

For an academic paper on the subject (although possibly not a peer-reviewed one — there is no title of an academic journal displayed), go here.

Here on TV Tropes, tropers are asked to not leave links to pages on or off the wiki in place of contextualized examples because (among other reasons) tropers are incredibly prone to the Wiki Walk.

See also Browser Narcotic and Schmuck Bait.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Aki in Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts does this several times, the most notable one being in the second OVA. The viewer is shown a long series of thoughts - none of which makes any sense - while the other characters are left wondering how Shimada saying that Himeji might change schools has anything to do with whether Hideyoshi would still love Aki if he had a mohawk.

Haruhi Suzumiya: The title character will occasionally fall into one of these. One episode of Haruhi-chan opened with Haruhi watching cherry blossoms fall and mumbling to herself about "hiding the bodies," and ended with an idea for a field trip/treasure hunt (mostly an excuse to have Kyon dig a hole). Luckily Itsuki was on hand to describe each stage in Haruhi's thought process, just from knowing the starting and ending points. (Sub) Haruhi: Hmm... cherry blossoms... petals falling... blood splattering... dig a hole... bury... under the cherry blossom... (Dub) Haruhi: Hmm... cherry blossoms. Cherry blossom petals fluttering to the ground... blood spraying... digging a hole... burying... under a cherry tree.

In Strawberry Marshmallow, Miu had a train of thought that started with baseball and culminated with the realization that Nobue's birthday was the next day. It went something... like this (direction changed to limit confusion): Baseball > Broken bones > Skeleton > Ghosts > Things that disappear > David Copperfield > Burned out on magic > Reveals how tricks work > Birthday

In Azumanga Daioh, Osaka doesn't just Wiki-walk, she Wiki-pole-vaults. In one beach episode she has a one-sided conversation with Sakaki about dolphins, sea lions, and hemorrhoids.

Orihime Inoue's daydream in Bleach begins with her and the main character, Ichigo, on a romantic walk in the park, which turns into a race against an African-American athlete, ending in her victory (in a boxing match), and immediately followed by an attempted assassination. She is shown doing so from time to time. Example: once during the Rukia rescue arc, Ishida saw her crying, and she explained she was just looking at the sun, proceeding to compare the sensation to many other unrelated things - in order, sneezing, feeling like going to the bathroom while in a bookstore and feeling the gums bleeding while biting on an apple. By far the best is when she has to say goodbye to a sleeping Ichigo: "Ichigo... there were so many things I wanted to do. Become a teacher... or an astronaut... or open a pastry shop... or go to Mr. Donuts and say 'Give me one of each!'... or go to Baskin Robbins and say 'Give me one of each!' If only there were five of me! Then I could be born in five different towns, and eat five different meals, and have five different jobs. And all five of me... could fall in love with the same guy. ... Ichigo. Thank you. Goodbye."

Yuuki from Kanamemo at one points starts rambling about sneezing caused by curses, straw dolls and wood shortage, indicating that something is not quite right with the usually quiet woman — and she indeed collapses from high fever shortly after.

Patty from Lucky Star mentions Otome (Maiden's) Road and launches into a description. The screen then splits to show the Wiki Walk one of her (naive) classmates took when she heard her say "Otome Road" and interpreted it literally.

and launches into a description. The screen then splits to show the Wiki Walk one of her (naive) classmates took when she heard her say "Otome Road" and interpreted it literally. An old man in Nichijou manages an impressive one about how miserable his life is starting with how nobody came to his online chat party, to people leaving the bus when he got on, to a goof up on a school trip, to insomnia, to gaining weight, and ending on how his last birthday present was a roll.

In Durarara!!, Shizuo decides to ask his new Russian Kohai/human encyclopedia, Vorona, about Siberia. This somehow morphs into a lecture on cakes. Vorona: Siberia. The correct pronunciation of which is Сибирь ([sʲıˈbirʲ]), may denote a Federal District of Russia or a wider area. The meanings are many-layered. And in Japan they also call a certain kind of dessert Siberia. Explanations vary as to how the name originated, among which a theory exists that it comes from the delicious fillings inside the Castella resembling the tundra and railways in Siberia. The Castella is said to be the first cake variety to be introduced to Japan. After that the Japanese developed their unique cake culture under various influences from different countries. The variety called the shortcake is also uniquely Japanese. At Christmas the Japanese are especially big on cakes, and on the streets all kinds of cakes send tantalizing smells to my nasal cavity.

Yuyushiki is basically Wiki Walk: The Anime with the three title characters forming a club to randomly look up words or phrases on the internet and following where their train of thought takes them.

In Cop Craft, a clue of a bulldog tattoo on the elbow comes up in episode 11. When one of the cops identifies the bearer as likely a US Marine who got it before new regulations, citing Wikipedia, her partner responds with a 3 step Wiki Walk from the starter page (M4 Carbine). What she responds with is more like 30 steps.

Fan Works

In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars /Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, a villain actually gets started on a HeelFace Turn from "wiki-walking" through a captured ship's computer core, exposing them to new concepts that begin to break down their simple view of the universe.

Films — Animation

Captain B. McCrea from WALLE receives some major character development using one of these. He starts by asking the computer to define "Earth," and ends on "Dancing," after passing through "Sea," "Farms," "Pizza," and "Hoedown."

In Finding Nemo, Dory starts to go down this path several times, but she is usually stopped.

At one point in Disney's Tarzan, Tarzan views a slide show of elements of modern (in 1882) British life, to "know about the strangers like me [him]". It is implied that he views every single slide Jane and her father brought, because there's a dissolve to Tarzan still looking through slides while they're asleep.

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Radio

On an episode of the Martin/Molloy radio show, guest John Clarke opined that the internet was like the modern version of the dictionary. You'd open the dictionary to look up the word 'perspicacity', and three hours later you're discovering all of these new and interesting words but still haven't learned what 'perspicacity' means.

Video Games

Of course the folks over at The Wiki Game have made a sport of exactly this phenomenon.

In the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC in Mass Effect 2, files on Grunt reveal his web searches, in which he started looking for information on krogan history and wound up reading about dinosaurs. SEARCH: krogan history

SEARCH: great wars

SEARCH: genofage / ERASED / krogan victories

SEARCH: okeer / ERASED / great generals

SEARCH: toochanka / ERASED / tuchanka

SEARCH: urnot wrex

SEARCH: battlemaster shepard / MODIFIED / commander shepard / MODIFIED / commander shepard normandy

SEARCH: animal fights / MODIFIED / large predators

SEARCH: tryrannsauros wrex / ERASED / earth lizard wrex

SEARCH: dinosaurs

In Disco Elysium, the Encyclopedia skill governs your ability to remember trivia. This can be very useful in some situations, but quite often it results in your thoughts getting hijacked by ruminating over fascinating fact after fascinating fact rather than focusing on the tasks at hand.

Webcomics

Web Originals

Western Animation

Real Life