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

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

Alan Schneider: Who or what is "Godot"?

Samuel Beckett: If I knew, I would have said so in the play. — Interview before the first American production of Waiting for Godot Who or what is "Godot"?If I knew, I would have said so in the play.

What is this trivia page about? No comment.

Joy of joys, the author(s) of your favorite series is/are answering the fans' questions! Now's your chance to finally get some closure on pressing continuity issues! So you walk up and ask, "Was Bob really a robot?"

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Their answers? "I dunno." "No comment."

Congratulations. Instead of an answer, you just got the Shrug of God: author(s) intentionally not answering a question about their work.

Before you get angry at them for being evasive, remember that they may have a reason for their ambiguity.

Not to be confused with Flip-Flop of God, where the author has a definite answer which has changed over time, or with Creator's Apathy, which is when a creator admits to not caring about or trying on their project.

Contrast with the Hand Wave, and "A Wizard Did It", which are given in response to questions about Plot Holes or the workings of a story's Phlebotinum. In contrast, the Shrug of God is given in response to more mundane questions: questions that should have a simple, straightforward answer. Don't mistake it for Ascended Fanon which, while it may come with a shrug from the creator, is quite different: Ascended Fanon is when the creator accepts, for any reason, the explanations offered by fandom to questions raised by that author's work. The shrug comes when the author refuses to take a stand about either those questions or any possible answer to them.

In other words, if the question is "How does this work?" and the answer is "Beats me," then it's a Hand Wave. If the question is "What happened?" and the answer is "Beats me", it's the Shrug of God. If the answer is "Magic" then changed later on to "Science", it's Flip-Flop of God.

When the author insists on quashing a theory, see Jossed, which is the opposite. When the author explains but in supplementary material see All There in the Manual. For those stories that are deliberately ambiguous, see No Ending and Riddle for the Ages.

In lieu of a definitive Word of God, someone connected to the production may chime in with the Word of Saint Paul, or anyone with sufficient credibility may offer up the Word of Dante.

The inverse of Ascended Fanon. Compare Noodle Incident. See also The Walrus Was Paul, Loose Canon.

See also Bellisario's Maxim and the MST3K Mantra.

Not to be confused with Atlas Shrugged, which—while wordy at times—lets you know what Ayn Rand thinks of a lot of things in no uncertain terms. In any case, Atlas was a Titan.

Now comes with didactic audio-visual summary!

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Comic Strips

Calvin and Hobbes: What is Hobbes' true nature? A magical stuffed animal that comes to life when Calvin is around? A figment of Calvin's imagination? Bill Watterson isn't sure himself. In the Tenth Anniversary Collection, Watterson would only state that Hobbes is a comment on the subjective nature of reality; Calvin sees him differently from everyone else. This is reportedly the reason Watterson would not allow a stuffed toy Hobbes to be manufactured (that, and his loathing of merchandising). He felt it would answer the question as to whether or not Hobbes was just a stuffed toy. Other interviewers have occasionally tried to trap Watterson with a gotcha question highlighting specific instances in the strip in which Hobbes does seem to be a) either completely real or b) either completely imaginary. For example one interview where the interviewer asks how Hobbes could tie Calvin to a chair and then be discovered in that state by his father, who is not ordinarily able to see evidence of Hobbes being "alive." Watterson simply answered ambiguously that he liked the intellectual tension created by "two versions of reality that do not mix." In the Tenth Anniversary Collection, Watterson states that "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie (like the 'Noodle Incident' I've referred to in several strips) is left to the reader's imagination, where it's sure to be more outrageous." Readers will search in vain for any explanation of the rules to Calvin Ball... but that's really no accident. Watterson established clearly that you make up the rules of Calvin Ball as you go.

Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis says that he has never come up with a definite answer for what the crocodiles' accent ("Hullo, zeeba neighba") is supposed to be. He did give an answer to that question. The Crocodiles are speaking "Crocese". Kind of undermined by the comic itself, where it is pretty much established that, of all the Crocs we meet, it is only Larry, Bob and a few others who speak like that. Larrys wife, son and parents all speak english without any visible accent. Their accent was used as an unreveal on one occasion. Commentary in one of the books did have him say he thought it could be Russian . Odd, as you wouldn't find crocodiles there.



Fan Works

Films — Animation

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Radio

Tabletop Games

The Dresden Files RPG is chock full of these, mostly because the game books are canonical and exist as in-universe documents. For example, it's mentioned that miss Gard probably has some kind of catch that needs to be fulfilled in order to use healing magic, but both Billy and Harry are left scratching their heads as to what that catch might be.

Many fans of the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Eberron frequently ask questions such as "What happened to destroy Cyre and create the Mournland?" no matter how many times such things are said to explicitly be points of Canon Uncertainty And Doubt. The answer is deliberately left out, so DMs can provide their own and easily work those events into their own plotline. Additionally, a similar question involving the Planescape campaign setting is one regarding the true nature of Sigil's ruler/guardian, the Lady of Pain. A straight answer has never been given, other than a novel hinting that she has ties to the Greek pantheon of gods. The most direct answer simply states that she was inspired by the title character of Algernon Swinburne's poem "Dolores". Incidentally, unlike the Eberron scenario, which it's stated explicitly that it is the DMs call to provide an explanation for the various mysteries, Planescape encouraged DMs to leave such questions regarding the Lady of Pain and various other multiversal engimas deliberately unanswered, to maintain the setting's particular ethos. Similarly, the nature and identity of Ravenloft's Dark Powers are usually kept mysterious. While some fans reject the 3rd edition Ravenloft products, they did provide a satisfactory answer: the Dark Powers have no canonical true nature, and DMs should do whatever they want with no worries. Early products and novels for Forgotten Realms deliberately refrained from offering more than cursory information on the nation of Sembia, specifically stating that this was so individual DMs could do whatever the heck they wanted with the place.

Perhaps as a reaction to the increasingly unwieldy Metaplot of its predecessor, the New World of Darkness loves this, repeatedly emphasizing the Storyteller's opinion as the ultimate arbiter of what is canonical and not. One noted example in the New Orleans: City of the Damned supplement is that Donovan, the Prince's Sheriff, is concealing his identity and that it would be disastrous if his true identity were made known. About the only information the book gives about his past is that he was Embraced in 1865.

Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games (the creators of GURPS) has been known to answer obscure questions about his games with "Fnord." (A reference to the Illuminatus! trilogy, which has often gotten Shout Outs in SJG products.) Given the sensitive nature of the subject matter (religion) in the In Nomine roleplaying game from Steve Jackson Games, many topics are what the Line Editor officially refers to as matters of "Canon Doubt and Uncertainty". Each individual DM is supposed to come up with their own answers to such questions as 'Was Jesus Christ really the Son of God?', and the official game material has never and will never address the issue directly.

Warhammer 40,000: So, what's up with the two missing Primarchs? Word of God is, of course, "No comment." Also, who the hell is Cypher and what is he up to? This is essentially Games Workshop's company policy about canonicity.



Theater

John Patrick Shanley won't reveal whether, in his play Doubt, the priest molested the children or not . The point of the play is the investigation. He has, however, noted that he has decided on an answer and told the actors playing Father Flynn, although nobody else.

. The point of the play is the investigation. He has, however, noted that he has decided on an answer and told the actors playing Father Flynn, although nobody else. Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts ends with one main character deciding whether or not to kill her son. Ibsen refused to state what she chose, saying it was too important of a question.

Ibsen refused to state what she chose, saying it was too important of a question. A lot of people have asked Stephen Sondheim what the giant's wife from the second act of Into the Woods represents in real life (global warming, AIDS, etc.). Sondheim's response: "To James [Lapine] and me, it is a giant. Enough said."

Samuel Beckett, when asked what, exactly, Waiting for Godot even meant responded "What do you think?" And then, on being given the interviewer's analysis, "Hmmm, interesting." And that is all. Beckett did, however, deny a persistent piece of Fanon that persists in studies of the play. "If I meant Godot to be God, I would have simply called him God." Though, to complicate matters, at another point he did claim that his subconscious does things without him at times. All in all, "If I knew who Godot was, I would have said so in the play."

W. S. Gilbert, when asked about whether or not Jack Point is dead (the libretto says that he "falls insensible") at the end of The Yeomen of the Guard, said: "The fate of Jack Point is in the hands of the audience, who may please themselves whether he lives or dies." (However, he was also reported as having said "Jack Point should die" when asked if it was all right to treat Point as dead.)

Toys

BIONICLE: Greg Farshtey, writer of most of the media, occasionally does this in a very Deadpan Snarker-ish fashion. Fan : This is a bit of a nitpick, but in Federation of Fear, Tren Krom is described as having yellow eyes. But in The Mutran Chronicles, and on his

Greg : You're right. It is a nitpick. : This is a bit of a nitpick, but in Federation of Fear, Tren Krom is described as having yellow eyes. But in The Mutran Chronicles, and on his BS 01 entry, he is said to have little more than holes laid into his skull for eyes. Which one is the accurate description?: You're right. It is a nitpick. He also refuses to discuss how new Matoran are made, basically telling fans to think it up themselves. He does this to keep a feeling of mystique to the setting and avoid the Squick that would probably come with an explanation about it. Though it may also have something with the No Hugging, No Kissing rule Bionicle seems to operate on. The closest thing to a direct answer we have is from the Bionicle Encyclopedia, which features a one-line reference to the idea that new Matoran cannot come into existence outside of Metru Nui.

During Q&As on the Palisades message board, Ken Lilly's standard response to questions about potential upcoming figures and accessories was "anything is possible." After the company folded, he admitted that the answer was usually "no" due to reasons of cost or complexity, but saying so straight-out would have been discouraging to future questions.

Video Games

Visual Novels

The writer of Umineko: When They Cry, Ryukishi07, has made it clear that he will never reveal what really happened on the real Rokkenjima. Though he has said that he knows what really happened (fitting with reason 5 above), it also fits with one of the themes of the series, namely about truth (and the subjectivity of it) which says that the readers has to figure it out themselves and create their own truth. He's mentioned that some people on the internet have actually managed to figure out what happened. The truth did get explained in 2014 with the release of the 8th arc of the manga, which Ryukishi07 was involved with.



Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation