Hammerspace

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Examples of Hammerspace pictured in a WikiWorld cartoon

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

This phenomenon has existed in animation for years, dating back to early Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animated cartoons. However, the term 'Hammerspace' itself both originates in and is generally associated with Japanese animation.

1 Origins
2 Hammerspace in games
3 Similar concepts
4 Notes
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Origins

The phenomenon of Hammerspace has been occurring in animation for many years. 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, bombs, anvils, mallets— from behind their backs or just offscreen. However, this phenomenon was mostly just left to suspension of disbelief. Only recently have fans created a pseudo-explanation to explain (albeit jokingly) the phenomenon.

The term "Hammerspace" originates from a gag common in certain anime and manga. A typical example would be when a male character would anger or otherwise offend a female character, who would proceed to produce, out of thin air, an oversized wooden rice mallet (saizuchi) and hit him on the head with it in an exaggerated manner. The strike would be purely for comic effect, and would not have any long-lasting effects. The term was largely popularized first by fans of Urusei Yatsura, and later of Ranma 1/2.

[edit] Hammerspace in games

The theory of Hammerspace can also be applied to many video games as game mechanics often defy those of the real world: for instance, a character might be able to carry a bike or a sword larger than himself without any sign of it before use, and inventory capabilities are commonly implausible. This is particularily visible in traditional adventure games (every item encountered can often be carried, or pull out a large item without any indication beforehand of where it was stored, such as in The Legend of Zelda) and RPGs (e.g. 99 Potions and 99 Hi-Potions in many Final Fantasies, or the ability to carry over 80 king-sized beds at a time in Final Fantasy XI)

Closer to Hammerspace's original comedic usage, Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon has its protagonist Roger Wilco cram a full-sized ladder into his pocket. The concept is expanded upon in Space Quest VI: The Spinal Frontier when Roger encounters a ladder, with the narrator remarking "Now how do you think you're going to carry around a six foot ladder?"; when he pushes the ladder into his pocket, the narrator says "You take the ladder and put it in your pocket. Ouch!" Similarly, in Leisure Suit Larry 2 Larry conceals a beverage container the size of a trash can in his jacket, and famously by Guybrush Threepwood in The Secret of Monkey Island by pulling a 6 foot long q-tip from his pants (his "inventory space" is a running gag in the series).

Spot on is Amy Rose, Sonic the Hedgehog's self-declared girlfriend from the Sonic series, who produces the Piko-Piko Hammer, her primary weapon, to attack, though she more often uses it on enemies rather than Sonic himself. Amy seems to have more than one Piko-Piko Hammer as seen in Sonic X, where she throws a hammer at Eggman's craft (due to the latter pointing Sonic's absence down to being he dumped Amy). When Eggman points out that Amy's hammer is now embedded in the hull of the aircraft (as opposed to being in her hand), Amy places her hand by her side, to conjure (from a small puff of smoke) another, identical, Piko-Piko Hammer. Amy continues to do this until nine or ten hammers have embedded themselves in the side of Eggman's aircraft. Also, in the game series, Chaos Emeralds are pulled out by the characters' backs by hammerspace.

[edit] 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. The sketch comedy show All That featured a character based on this concept named Baggin' Saggin' Barry, who could produce anything (even an airplane) from his unreasonably baggy pants.
Spaces that are larger on the inside than on the outside are common, in fact this is the most common extra-dimensional storage space variant among live-action media. 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 ("explained" in Elmo in Grouchland with a portal 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, swimming pool, sleeping facilities, toilets and a large main hall. Simlarly in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series the Unseen University is frequently said to be much larger on the inside, and you can apparently wander forever in the multi-dimensional Library while the central glass dome remains overhead.
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. A similar ability is demonstrated by Merlin son of Corwin, in The Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny.
In the film Mary Poppins, Mary's handbag is larger on the inside; It is large enough to contain a full-sized coat stand.
The 2006 movie UltraViolet features technobabble "flat-space technology".
Animorphs and Transformers use extra-dimensional storage areas to explain changes in mass and parts lost in shapeshifting.
In the video game Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force the main character Alex Munro is seen several times in cutscenes 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).
In the Touchstone/Disney pictures film The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack Skellington shows an example of hammerspace near the end of the movie when he stuffs Santa's hat inside of his jacket, though he may actually have stored it inside of his ribcage.
In Count Duckula, the character Nanny is able to pull any object out of her sling.
Characters in the manga Naruto fit items of almost any size onto parts of a scroll, where they can be summoned at any time, similar to hammerspace.
Plankton of Spongebob Squarepants, once pulled out a golden spatula he claimed was hidden in his "Secret Compartment"
Sosuke Sagara of Full Metal Panic would usually produce a fire-arm out his school outfit that could no way have been discreetly hidden, this would lead many characters around him to yell something close to "How did you hide that?!".
Max, the unclothed rabbit from Sam & Max, often produces a weapon (such as a Luger) out of nowhere. His partner Sam often wonders at this; the response is normally 'None of your damn business, Sam.'
Hiruma from Eyeshield 21 seems to be able to pull numerous automatic weapons out of thin air even while wearing a football uniform without even showing a bulge. However this can mainly be explained by his devil handbook as it also provided him with a tank and fireworks before.
The concept of Hammerspace is mocked in the Timon & Pumbaa episode Clip Hangers, in which the title characters try to find out what's "behind our backs", pulling an increasingly large and ludicrous assortment of objects (a piano, elephant, yacht, etc.) out from behind them.
In the Indigo league of Pokémon, Misty usually pulled a mallet out of nowhere,usually to hit Ash,or Brock.
In Bounty Hamster, Marion the Hamster can pull incredibly large things out of his cheeks, seemingly in in infinite quantities.
In Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger, the Gekirangers are said to put their battle costumes and weapons in a dimensional pocket.
The role-playing game, Tales from the Floating Vagabond uses this concept in the form of a "schtick" (a singular special ability each character can have). This schtick is called "The Trenchcoat Effect."

[edit] 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. In The Runaway Bride, he notes that his pockets are also bigger on the inside.
More often than not, non-animated occurrences in film or television are explained as a plot hole rather than Hammerspace access, and dismissed due to suspension of disbelief. Examples include the live-action Highlander series, where the sword-wielding Immortals often have their weapons readily available despite their lack of a suitable container or article of clothing in which to carry a concealed sword.
A similar sounding term of no conceptual relation is "Hammertime", which refers to early 1990s rapper MC Hammer.