Hammerspace

Hammerspace (also malletspace) is a fan-envisioned extradimensional, instantly accessible storage area in fiction, which is used to explain how animation, comics and games characters can produce objects out of thin air.

While this phenomenon is best known from Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies and Disney animated cartoons, the term itself both originates in and is generally associated with Japanese entertainment.

Origins

Hammerspace draws its name from a semi-common cliché in humorous anime and manga. A typical example would involve a male character offending or otherwise angering a female character who would proceed to produce, apparently out of thin air, an oversized wooden rice mallet (saizuchi) and hit him on the head with it in an obviously exaggerated manner. The strike is purely for comic effect, and serves as a visual metaphor rather than an actual plot device. The term was largely popularized first by fans of Urusei Yatsura, and later of Ranma ½, as characters Shinobu Miyake and Akane Tendo, respectively, are famous for being particularly vigorous "malleteers". Similarly, Kaori Makimura of the anime and manga City Hunter is well-known for pulling out giant mallets (often labelled "100 tons").

Hammerspace also occurs in western animation. Inexplicable production of items dates back to the very beginning of animated shorts and was a fairly common occurrence during the golden age of animation. Warner Bros. cartoon characters are particularly well-known for often pulling all sorts of things — guns, disguises, umbrellas, bombs, anvils, hammers (mallets), from behind their backs or just offscreen. This predates anime and is generally considered the inspiration for the Japanese analogy.

Hammerspace has also been referred to as the back pocket, as in the Toon role-playing game.

Hammerspace in games

Hammerspace is also useful in explaining peculiarities of many video games, for example where a game character wielding a sword bigger than himself does not appear to be carrying one until he actually enters combat, or why characters often have implausibly large object-carrying capacities. Adventure games, in particular those published by LucasArts Entertainment and Sierra On-Line contain more egregious examples of Hammerspace, in which the player can carry all the items he or she can pick up, regardless of quantity or bulk.

This phenomenon has also been lampooned by the same game designers. The video game Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon has its protagonist Roger Wilco cram a full-sized ladder into his pocket, and Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) similarly depicts Larry concealing a beverage container the size of a trash can into his jacket. However in Quest for Glory, as a perfunctory nod to physical reality, characters are made to walk more slowly when carrying more than strength might reasonably allow.

Similar concepts

Impossible item carrying doesn't need to be inexplicable. Some fiction settings address the matter by any of various means, creating what isn't Hammerspace but can work in much the same way.

• Numerous comical shows play the absurdity of the situation for laughs by deliberately drawing attention to it, an act known as "lampshade hanging." [1] For instance, in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Super Globetrotters, one of the main characters (Louis "Sweet Lou" Dunbar) stashes his inventory in his comically-oversized afro, while Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers produced unlikely items from his coat, most famously a candle burning at both ends in the classic Horse Feathers. Similarly, Inspector Gadget's hat contains an infinite number of gadgets, though it is never explained how he can fit the gadgets inside the hat.
• Spaces that are larger on the inside than on the outside are common. These can be whole houses, such as Snoopy's doghouse in Peanuts, which features a billiards table, a Van Gogh painting and a basement. Smaller ones can even be carried, such as a backpack in Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road which is about the size of a house on the inside. Other examples include the "4 Dimensional hypercube" with its apparently-infinite storage capability in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, and Oscar the Grouch's standard-sized garbage can on Sesame Street which houses not only Oscar but all of his pets, including an elephant. However, in the children's film entitled Elmo in Grouchland, this seeming impossibility is "explained" with the existence of a portal that transports a person to another world. One of the most famous examples would be the TARDIS in the British TV programme Doctor Who. This is an old-fashioned police box on the outside and has a kitchen, sleeping facilities, toilets and a large main hall.
• In the Russian novel series The Labyrinths of Eho, the main character acquires a talent to reach his hand anywhere he can't see it to retrieve items from other dimensions, from hot cups of coffee to pink umbrellas.
• Animorphs and Transformers use extra-dimensional storage areas to explain changes in mass and parts lost in shapeshifting.
• In the Disney live action movie Mary Poppins Mary pulls many items out of her handbag when arriving at the childrens' house.
• In the video game Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force the main character Alex Munro is seen several times in cut-scenes to pull weapons or other items from what is called a transporter buffer. A similar concept is used by characters in Beyond Good & Evil (video game)
• The main character in the Monkey Island game series, Guybrush Threepwood, stuffs all his invetories in his pants, this includes, a shovel, a ramrod, hair from the dog who bit me and a fork, amongst many other things.

Notes

• The term Hammerspace is often used synonymously with magic satchel; however, Hammerspace is an actual extra dimension where items are stored, whereas a magic satchel uses magic to either contain these items or to access Hammerspace itself, similar to the way The Doctor (from Doctor Who) uses sufficiently advanced technology in his space-time machine the TARDIS to achieve the same results. Note, however, that the Doctor, often for comedic effect, seems to carry an improbably large number of items in his pockets among which is usually something immediately relevant to the situation (see, for example, "Genesis of the Daleks", "Battlefield"); there is no technological explanation provided for this.
• Often in film and television, characters gain access to improbably large or convenient objects (for example in the live-action television series Highlander, where the sword-wielding Immortals often have their weapons readily available, despite lack of any suitable container or article of clothing in which to carry such weapons). However, these are expected to be overlooked or dismissed due to suspension of disbelief and while similar are not technically examples of Hammerspace.

See also

• Cartoon physics
• Magic satchel
• Portable hole
• Bag of holding
• Hammertime

References

• Universal comedy anime rules. Retrieved on October 22, 2006.
• Hidden Objects: The Hammerspace Phenomenon. Retrieved on October 23, 2006.

External links

• Hammerspace on Urban Dictionary
• Hammerspace on Everything2