There is a special handling of `__hash__` set to None in the interpreter core. This is because every class inherited the `__hash__` attribute from "object", and setting `__hash__ = None` is a simple way to make it unhashable. It makes hash() raising the correct type of exception (TypeError), but with unhelpful error message "'NoneType' object is not callable". The special case was added to make the error message more relevant: "unhashable type: '{typename}'". There is similar situation with other special methods defined in "object" or other common classes. Sometimes we want to cancel the default inherited behavior. >>> dir(object) ['__class__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getstate__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__'] I propose to support officially the idiom "__dunder__ = None" and add special cases to raise more specialized exception instead of "TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable" for most of special method where cancelling the default behavior makes sense (for example I do not think that we need better error message for `__repr__ = None`). The question is how to interpret value None: * Always raise TypeError (with changed message)? This is what happen currently when you set the method to None, this is the most compatible option. * Always raise an error, but allow to change it to more appropriate type (for example AttributeError for __setattr__)? * Interpret value None the same way as an absent attribute? For `__hash__` or `__class_getitem__` all three options mean the same. But absent `__mro_entries__` and `__mro_entries__ = None` currently give different results. It is even more complicated for pickling: absent `__reduce_ex__` and `__reduce_ex__ = None` mean the same in the Python implementation, but give different results in the C implementation.