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False Cause
- 184 statements
- 30 feature instances
- 15 referencing feature instances
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Confusing correlation with causation, assuming causation because of correlation, or ignoring that there is some other factor that affects both of the things under discussion. Often summed up as "Correlation does not imply causation". Also called "Magical Thinking"note many superstitions are based on committing this fallacy or "Ignoring a Common Cause". The easiest way to dispel this fallacy is to remember that statistics do not occur in a vacuum: correlation only implies causation if all other factors are equal, which they frequently are not. You must take into account all factors before you can narrow down to the deciding factors. See Correlation/Causation Gag for when this is Played for Laughs. Also see Placebotinum Effect. |
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This exact argument is used in an SVU episode where some kids attacked a woman and killed her. The kids played a video game with a similar attack, therefore, the video game caused them to attack the woman. | |
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit | hasFeature |
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In Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, the eponymous wolf is hunted by Ollie because she happens to show up whenever a disaster happens. In truth, the disasters are caused by a very human saboteur vacationing in the area. The wolf's appearances are entirely Red Herrings that foreshadow her interest in human affection and activity, which is unusual but has a logical cause unrelated to the mystery. | |
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The Simpsons: In "Much Apu About Nothing", a bear randomly appearing in the neighborhood leads the mayor to fund a massive Bear Patrol scheme. Homer claims that the lack of bears proves the Bear Patrol works, at which point Lisa points out that you might as well say that a rock keeps tigers away, since she's holding the rock, and she can't see any tigers. Homer's response? "Lisa, I want to buy your rock." In "Radioactive Man", Bart meets a guy who apparently lives in an old Spirograph factory. As Bart goes to leave, the guy ominously warns "there's a direct correlation between the decline in Spirograph use and the rise in gang activity!" |
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Justice League: One episode features a journalist claiming that since white-collar crime has risen since the League formed, the League clearly causes that crime (in fact, given the League's style, it's entirely possible that the smarter criminals turn to white-collar rather than blue-collar crime to reduce the chances of Superman slapping them around Metropolis, but his logic still doesn't track). An even better example (from that same episode, that same scene, and that same character) would be when the talk show host demands that the Flash explain why since the League was formed 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and the rest end in death. Not only is there no connection between the founding of the Justice League and divorce rates, of course all the other marriages end in death. The couples who didn't get divorced simply grew old and died naturally, by accidents, etc. Hence the phrase "'til death do you part". |
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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One strip both discusses and mocks this trope. One guy says he doesn't believe events are causally connected. His friend turns out the light, pulls out a gun, and a shot rings out. When his friend exclaims in dismay at the bullet in his arm, he blames it on the darkness. | |
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In one Dilbert strip, the Pointy-Haired Boss tells Dilbert that he's been receiving anonymous emails with links to articles about the world's worst bosses. He's caught on to the fact that he gets one of those emails every time he leaves Dilbert's cubicle, and says he notices the correlation. However, right outside Dilbert's cubicle, Wally sends another anonymous email to the boss, while thinking to himself, "Correlation does not imply causation." | |
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Sesame Street had a Bert & Ernie sketch where Ernie held a banana in his ear, claiming it kept away alligators. | |
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Discworld: While witches are certainly capable of casting Curses that actually harm people or cause ill-fortune, they prefer to rely on the fact that bad things happen to people all the time. If one of them happens after you've "cursed" them, they'll remember. | |
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The Mandalorian: One of the thugs at the beginning of Chapter 1 gets in Mando's face for spilling his drink when he entered the building. However, the drink had already been spilled by the thug himself when he stood up and hit the table in the process. | |
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The Order of the Stick: Someone once told the red dragon Empress of Blood that more powerful dragons have grown larger. So now she spends all her time stuffing her face to gain as much weight as possible. Since she's a Puppet King, this may have been intentional. | |
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The Order of the Stick (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
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One Not Always Right story has a clerk working in a shop where the bathroom light turns on a short while after the switch is flipped. One impatient customer drags the clerk over without paying attention to the clerk's explanation and flicks the switch back and forth to prove his point. The clerk then flips the switch to on and yells "STRUN BAH QO" (Storm Call) just before the lights turn on. The customer is left awestruck that the Dragonborn stands before him. | |
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Not Always Right (Website) | hasFeature |
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xkcd: A strip using the rise of both Firefox and Wicca to imply that Firefox causes witchcraft. After looking at the data, Black Hat comes to the conclusion that cancer causes call phones. |
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In the American Dad! episode "A Smith in the Hand", Stan (who becomes addicted to masturbating after accidentally doing so while applying ointment to his penis) comes to the conclusion that he watches TV all the time and masturbates all the time, therefore TV causes him to masturbate. He then tells Steve that he constantly thinks about sex because he watches too much TV. | |
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It's sometimes argued that "Harry Potter is a corrupting influence" because of the spectacular way in which Harry Potter actor Jamie Waylett went bad. Of the dozens of cast and hundreds of crew, one person went bad, and that's not near enough to "prove" malignancy. There's no way anyone can know if Waylett wouldn't have turned out the way he did anyway, or that he wasn't already headed in that direction before being cast in the Harry Potter movies. To use an example from the series proper, this would be like saying "all wizards in Voldemort's class will turn out evil because Voldemort turned out evil." | |
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Cynical spoof-journalist Jonathan Pie confidently predicted everything good or bad will be attributed to Brexit for years to come. | |
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Invoked in an episode of Monk. A pharmacist had killed his partner years ago and buried him on church property. When he learns the church plans on expanding, which would lead to the body's discovery, he concocts a scheme to stop them. He switches out patients' prescriptions for sugar pills so that their conditions worsen, then suggests that they drink from the church's fountain. Once he learns that they have, he starts giving them proper medicine again, so their conditions "miraculously" improve. As far as the patients know, they've been getting the medicine all along, but their symptoms only improved after drinking the holy water, therefore the holy water must be responsible for their recovery. | |
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In an episode of the mothership series, the defense lawyer for the serial killer of the week used a Media Watchdog witness to try to prove his client's violent actions were caused by violent TV. The prosecution destroys the argument by pointing out that if violent TV created violent people then everyone in the courtroom would be violent because everybody watches violent TV. | |
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Played with in Rango, as an owl mariachi band tells the story of the life and death of the hero, implying that the events of the movie would lead to Rango's death. At the end of the movie, Rango is alive and well, and the owls comment that he will inevitably die some day, as he is as mortal as anyone else. | |
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Rango | hasFeature |
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In If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, Reverend Pirkle tells us that crime has increased since the introduction of television. | |
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If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? | hasFeature |
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h3h3productions made a collab with PewDiePie in early 2017 where PewDiePie portrays a far more self-centered and greedy version of himself. Around the same time, YouTube had a glitch that caused subscriber counts to appear as if they were rapidly dropping, which made Ethan of h3h3 briefly think he had killed PewDiePie's channel. | |
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Law & Order: This exact argument is used in an SVU episode where some kids attacked a woman and killed her. The kids played a video game with a similar attack, therefore, the video game caused them to attack the woman. In an episode of the mothership series, the defense lawyer for the serial killer of the week used a Media Watchdog witness to try to prove his client's violent actions were caused by violent TV. The prosecution destroys the argument by pointing out that if violent TV created violent people then everyone in the courtroom would be violent because everybody watches violent TV. |
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The West Wing had an episode named from the Latin name for this fallacy, "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc". In the episode, some of the White House staffers think President Bartlet's electoral problems with Texas stem from him making fun of their big hats. Bartlet mentions the above stated phrase, correcting them that his problem with Texas is his immigration policy. Also, (jokingly?): | |
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In an episode of NUMB3RS, Charlie tells Don about the ice cream-rape correlation. As the sales of ice cream goes up, so do the number of rapes. The key is both take place during summer. | |
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My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: The story starts with eight-year old Catarina realizing that she's the Alpha Bitch character in a Romance Game named Fortune Lover, whose events will happen when she will be fifteen. Two of the possible main story branches have Maria, the Fortune Lover Player Character, end up with Catarina's fiancé Geordo or Catarina's adoptive step-brother Keith. Both those scenarios end with Catarina either exiled or dead due to her general abuse of Maria and/or an outright murder attempt on her. Wanting to keep this from happening, Catarina acquires various skills to be able to find a job after her exile and counter the means by which she gets killed. She also figures out it's a good idea to act much nicer to Geordo and Keith than her Fortune Lover counterpart did and ends up Becoming the Mask. When all three of them enter the Wizarding School in which Fortune Lover is set and meet Maria, Catarina dreads the prospect of Geordo or Keith falling for Maria and killing Catarina to preserve the relationship even if she doesn't bully and/or try to kill Maria. What Catarina misses is that she wasn't killed and/or exiled to be taken out of the picture, but in response to her abuse and murder attempt, both actions that her current self would never dream of doing. | |
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My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! | hasFeature |
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In one episode of South Park, banning Kentucky Fried Chicken causes a violent Black Market economy to spring up. Meanwhile, legalizing medical marijuana causes people to give themselves testicular cancer deliberately so they can legally get marijuana. The authorities look at the situation, and deduce that legalizing medical marijuana caused gang violence and legalizing Kentucky Fried Chicken will prevent testicular cancer. | |
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Encanto: Many of the villagers blame Mirabel's uncle Bruno for their various misfortunes (such as a dead goldfish, gaining weight, or going bald) because he predicted the occurrences ahead of time. He did not cause their misfortunes at all, and is in fact Good All Along. He simply has No Social Skills, and it doesn't help that (per Word of God) Bruno's visions were so overwhelmingly negative because he's a massive worrywart (not helped by his mother Alma, unable to move past her own trauma, pressuring him to focus on possible threats to the village). To top it off, it's implied that he wasn't actually using his powers to predict the aforementioned misfortunes - he was simply stating likely outcomes of observed behaviors (such as one man enjoying his sweets a little too much, and a lady keeping her fish in a bowl which was way too small for it). This is also why he went into hiding prior to the events of the film. After Mirabel didn’t receive a gift from the house, Alma asked him to look into her future. He received a vision that Mirabel would be involved in the collapse of the house, but recognized the vision was too vague to draw a proper conclusion from. He hid the vision and left because he knew that his reputation meant that everyone would immediately assume Mirabel was the cause of the the magic failing. Sure enough, Alma immediately jumps to blaming Mirabel once the vision is discovered. | |
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This is more or less the entire premise of How I Met Your Mother. The final season finally establishes the link between the events of the previous eight seasons, but it is clear that Ted could have just skipped to those events without telling his kids all the prior information. The series finale reveals what the real reason behind all of this was, and that has a logical correlation to the events of the show. Widower Ted is telling his kids about his romantic history with Robin to explain that he wants to pursue a relationship with her (the Mother died ten years prior). | |
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Friends: Phoebe refuses to go to the dentist because every time she's gone in the past someone she knew has died while she was in the chair. When her current toothache becomes too painful she reluctantly makes an appointment and the first thing she does afterwards is call every single person she knows to make sure nobody has died. | |
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In Dumbo (2019), the film's take on the Magic Feather trope is done like this: the first few times Dumbo propels himself into the air are the result of him sneezing from a feather caught in his trunk, leading his human friends to conclude that he can't fly without one. | |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Hero Worship", the Enterprise finds a child who was the lone survivor of a destroyed starship and thinks he caused its destruction because he accidentally hit a computer console when he was thrown off-balance just before everything blew up. | |
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