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Miraculous Malfunction
- 110 statements
- 20 feature instances
- 20 referencing feature instances
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In mad science, "malfunction" does not mean fried circuits and broken equipment (sometimes) but often it turns out that a malfunction has created something wondrous. Usually there is no explanation to how a "malfunction" can make modifications that seem intelligent, and no mention to where it gets the parts for a technology that is entirely different from the intended. For example a toaster can easily become a time machine through Miraculous Malfunction. This can be used as an Achievement In Ignorance for the Bungling Inventor (most of whose works are created in this manner). It can also serve as an alternative explanation to why there are No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: it's not that the technology was lost but rather, the individual sample was a result of a one-time event that cannot be recreated. Particularly good researchers might then learn to reverse engineer this piece to create more, but usually they will be just as dumbfounded about how it works as everyone else even if they themselves have created it. Surpringly such technology will usually be surprisingly stable and not at all prone to Phlebotinum Breakdown, unless the plot suddenly calls for it. Note, that because of the poorly understood nature of such technology it can unexpectedly become dangerous. (While there are real-world examples of inventors accidentally stumbling upon new things while researching something else, the fictional inventor will never need to bother with follow-up research: they will get the new tech from it ready-made.) Sister trope to Freak Lab Accident which gives people powers rather than creating and changing technological pieces. See also Instant A.I.: Just Add Water! and Accidental Discovery. |
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2023-06-08T10:13:08Z | |
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Dropped link to AscendedGlitch: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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DBTropes | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_2196de57 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_2196de57 | comment |
In "Time and Punishment," a Treehouse of Horror on The Simpsons, Homer's attempts to repair the toaster create a time-machine that sends him back to the Mesozoic. As soon as the toaster "pops," he returns to the 20th century, but that's enough time to totally alter the history and evolution of all life on Earth by swatting a bug. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_272985e9 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_272985e9 | comment |
In Inspector Gadget 2, G2 swaps control chips with Gadget. Because of this, she gets some of his "glitches," which come with some fairly absurd side-effects. For example, her hat-mounted "boomerang gun" turns into a cartoon mallet, and her "net guns" turn into flying drones armed with rolls of wrapping paper. Just... don't ask. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_34b7ce64 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_34b7ce64 | comment |
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency—Professor Chronotis' time machine seems to be in a strange relationship with the telephone system. After he has his phone repaired, the time machine is inoperable too. | |
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Miraculous Malfunction / int_34b7ce64 | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_468bebb0 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_468bebb0 | comment |
In the Discworld books, this is the best case scenario of allowing Bloody Stupid Johnson to build anything. Case in point: his "improved manicure device" is best used for peeling potatoes. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_50a97b8c | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_50a97b8c | comment |
"Light Verse": One of Mrs Lardner's robots is so old that it can barely function. She insists that he's able to do simple tasks well enough, hiding the fact that whatever malfunction that has made him terrible at most household tasks has also made him the greatest light-sculptor on Earth. This hidden talent is only revealed after a US Robotics man repairs him. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_529ee66 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_529ee66 | comment |
Invoked in an episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, where Robotnik explicitly says that the creation of his "Super-Genius Program" was a million-to-one shot - and after the program is stolen and he orders his computer to make it again, the computer has to remind him of exactly this fact (which he said himself not five minutes before!). | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_5d354f8 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_5d354f8 | comment |
In the Red Dwarf episode "Lemons", the crew tries to assemble a "rejuvenation shower" from flat pack. They don't use all the parts, and the finished shower looks decidedly wonky. Rather than simply not working, the shower — which is simply meant to rejuvenate the bather — transports them through time and space to Earth in the year 23 AD. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_865c4621 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_865c4621 | comment |
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: a stray baseball landing on the shrinking machine is what actually makes it work. Though Wayne Szalinski is able to figure out why the baseball made the machine functional, and replicate the results. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_96e86320 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_96e86320 | comment |
"Liar! (1941)": Herbie's ability to read minds is the result of a production accident. Nobody could figure out how it happened; Herbie knew but couldn't tell because telling would hurt the ego of human engineers to know that a robot knew something they didn't. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_96e86320 | featureConfidence |
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| Liar! (1941) | hasFeature |
Miraculous Malfunction / int_96e86320 | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_9a8607cc | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_9a8607cc | comment |
In Star Wars: Kenobi, Annileen Calwell's husband Dannar fiddled with a vaporator at their store once, and it began producing water so incredibly sweet and delicious that the farmers are afraid to ever touch the settings again, but that means they have trouble replicating the results. Their friend and business partner Orrin Gault has come close and is attempting to ramp up production (he considers it an exquisite irony that the desert planet might export water), but nothing can match Old Number One. And then the Tuskens smash the control panel to bits during their raid on the Claim, destroying the formula forever. Orrin's copycat vaporators somehow stop producing the sweetwater themselves after that, worsening his cashflow problem. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_a5fbd473 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_a5fbd473 | comment |
In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint hooks up his machine to the town's power station to give it enough electricity to create food from water. Instead, the extra power makes the machine take off like a rocket and start orbiting in the lower stratosphere, creating food that comes down in showers using moisture from the clouds. Later, being overworked makes the machine start overmutating the food and it eventually gains sentience. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_a743338b | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_a743338b | comment |
When the Metal Men were introduced in the Silver Age, it was stated that they came out fully sentient because of freak solar flare activity or some such. Doc Magnus was never able to recreate the phenomenon to make more sentient robots. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_b4fb5d54 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_b4fb5d54 | comment |
In Memoirs of an Invisible Man, it's implied that someone spilling a cup of coffee on a control panel resulted in uncontrolled but permanent invisibility, in a lab whose research had nothing to do with invisibility. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_d634ac98 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_d634ac98 | comment |
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: As Jekyll reasons in his final letter, the only reason that his potion worked (sort of) was because the batch of salt he used had been contaminated with an unknown substance. The potion has a limited supply because when he ordered more salt, the other batches were pure, and he couldn't re-create his potion with them. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_d6c9c0a4 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_d6c9c0a4 | comment |
In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the tachikomas become sapient due to an imperfection on one of their circuit boards caused by Bateau giving his "personal" tachikoma natural oil which corroded part of it. This tachikoma induced sapience in the others when their AI's were synchronized. They did try that with the fujikomas, yet that did not work. They never quite figured the reason out. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_dcbdf760 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_dcbdf760 | comment |
In Mission Top Secret, the incident that allowed the Master Computer to hijack an old communication satellite and establish contact with kids all over the world was caused by a jar of candy being spilled onto a keyboard. However it is reproducible because the program was still in the computer's memory. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_ded14e47 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_ded14e47 | comment |
Happens in the 1984 film Electric Dreams: the hero, Miles, spills champagne on his PC while it is plugged into his company's megacomputer, causing his computer (of course!) to come to life. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_e270b7e1 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_e270b7e1 | comment |
Genius: The Transgression does not make use of this trope, curiously; rather, any new technological piece created by a Genius is one-of-a-kind called a Wonder. They can replicate Wonders, but don't understand exactly how they work; as the book points out, if they knew that, they wouldn't be practicing mad science, just regular science. Giving a non-Genius a Wonder doesn't tend to work out well; if they're lucky, it just refuses to work as the laws of physics remember that whatever the Wonder does is actually impossible. If they're unlucky, it explodes or goes on a rampage. | |
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Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_fe8ef766 | comment |
The material that became Captain America's circular shield was created accidentally during an experiment to merge vibranium and an iron alloy. An unknown catalyst entered the mixture while the scientist overseeing it was asleep. | |
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| Miraculous Malfunction / int_ff5cc447 | type |
Miraculous Malfunction | |
| Miraculous Malfunction / int_ff5cc447 | comment |
Short Circuit: A robot is struck by lightning which causes a "malfunction" that gives it sentience. | |
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