As an aside, I love doing this sort of thing. In conversation, someone makes a joke about X doing something impossible, and then all of us who analyze everything to death start playing the scenario in our head to understand ramifications or limitations in the fictional and often impossible scenario. Drives my wife nuts, but I enjoy it so much :)
Your theory holds true with my wife and I. I love Seinfeld, she hates it :D
I should note that I actually don't find what I do comedic, nor am I doing it for comedic effect - I'm analyzing the scenario in a similar way that I find myself programming. It seems to feel.. similar to me. Eg, if we're discussing superman I might start thinking about all the normal scenarios Superman must find himself in. How he deals with those normal scenarios with abnormal abilities, and such.
Regardless, she still hates obsessing about that in the way I love haha. Similar to your statement, Seinfeld seems to take the same approach to analyzing things but for the target of comedy.
Interesting all around. Well, except to my wife. :)
I enjoy analyzing in the same way, it's just that Seinfeld takes the same tendency and turns them into jokes, which seem to be much funnier to people who enjoy breaking down trivial things.
My version of your Superman example is thinking about mutants from the X-Men universe with trivial mutations: there must be countless useless X-gene mutations, right? What might those be? Invisible skin, but not organs?
As an aside, I love doing this sort of thing. In conversation, someone makes a joke about X doing something impossible, and then all of us who analyze everything to death start playing the scenario in our head to understand ramifications or limitations in the fictional and often impossible scenario. Drives my wife nuts, but I enjoy it so much :)