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Techno Babble
- 547 statements
- 102 feature instances
- 428 referencing feature instances
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Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })Any impressive- and scientific-sounding, but ultimately nonsensical utterance, full of buzzwords. Most common in Science Fiction (usually the softer kind), but military, medical and Police Procedural themed shows can also use it when they want the underlying technology to sound impressive. Dishonest technician characters sometimes resort to vague, senseless "technical" babble to make up "serious problems" in the inner workings of a machine and offer to "fix" them for a high price. When technobabble is used to justify a plot development, it's a Hand Wave. When it is used to solve a problem, it is a Polarity Reversal. When it is used to add to the genre feel, it is Narrative Filigree. Due to its historical use and abuse by sci-fi writers, Technobabble is nowadays played more and more often for laughs or parodied in some way. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })Compare to Applied Phlebotinum and Green Rocks. When technobabble contradicts itself, well, A Wizard Did It. See also Blah Blah Blah, Hollywood Hacking and Technology Porn. Magi Babble for the fantasy version of this trope. Often the source of an Expospeak Gag; may be Sophisticated as Hell. Particularly ridiculous technobabble may appear to someone with actual expertise as being a technical form of Delusions of Eloquence, or just have a hysterical or horrifying meaning in the real world. Layman's Terms is the opposite trope. Compare and contrast Proverbial Wisdom, for wise or spiritual characters who cannot say anything without cloaking it in riddles, proverbs and flowery metaphors. |
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Dropped link to AngryVideoGameNerd: Not an Item - UNKNOWN | |
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| Techno Babble / int_11859033 | type |
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Narbonic, which featured such gems as this◊, this◊, and this◊. Note that the author insisted on making the technobabble the most scientifically accurate stuff in the entire comic. Then later somewhat explained after Dave goes mad, he states that English doesn't have half the words he'd need to explain how mad science works. So he made his own language◊. |
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Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time uses this when describing her scientific work. In one episode, a romantic rival to Finn is just as conversant in Techno Babble as she is. | |
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Lampshaded in Lost in a Good Book: Further lampshaded in One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing, which reveals that any technological object in the Bookworld more advanced than a toaster is built by Techno Babble Industries. |
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Megas XLR has a running gag of having Future Badass Kiva saying some sort of technobabble, only to have it shrugged off by lazy bum Coop. She's describing Gatorade. |
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Space Brat: The Wrath Of Squat inverts and parodies this when the resident Mad Scientist explains his Body Swap machine. He starts in layman's terms, but only gets a Flat "What". He then repeats himself in hilariously over-the-top Techno Babble; cue Freak Out!. | |
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Awful Hospital has this as a major plot element. Most characters encountered talk about "spiraling" and "sub-perceptual zones" with the same level of casualness most people would talk about dirty dishes and late night television. Slowly, the readers begin to (sort of) understand concepts like "layers" and "branchination", but the realms are just too massive to understand everything, so we will probably never know what "gleaming" is or what "furlers" actually are. | |
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Subverted in a The Far Side comic, where one scientist makes the mistake of uttering "The 'T' Word" in a lab. "Hey, could you hand me the... the... the thingy?" | |
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Samurai Jack can parody this excellently at times due to the fact that nine times out of ten, Jack, being the Fish out of Temporal Water that he is, wouldn't understand the simplest terms being explained to him. | |
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Advice and Trust: Lampshaded by Shinji in chapter 3: | |
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Parodied in Sluggy Freelance, here. | |
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Kids Praise: The time machine in the seventh album inevitably brought this on, with Psalty talking about an "over-under-inside-out power drive" at one point. | |
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In Farce Contact, a Star Trek: Enterprise Parody Fic, technobabble is created as a consequence of the Universal Translator, as it's the only way anyone can remain incomprehensible. | |
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One of the most famous examples is the line uttered by the Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons in the episode "Das Bus". Notable for being actually clear, logical, and transparent to anyone who knows about computer networking. In layman terms, he has a dial-up modem, he wants broadband access, and in order to do that, he needs a router that can fit inside his private network. Here's the full quote: | |
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The subreddit /r/VXJunkies is centered around a totally real scientific hobby involving lots of esoteric terminology. | |
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In Dave the Barbarian, this is parodied in an episode in which Dave suggests solving the problem with convenient technobabble. Candy responds that convenient technobabble levels are dangerously low. | |
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Parodied in an earlier episode of Justice League. Doubles as foreshadowing for the example above, as it demonstrates that both J'onn and Shiara are from highly-advanced civilizations. | |
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Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gets some in the second half with the bio-computer. The only person who can understand a word of it is Leeron, and then only half. The show doesn't even try taking it seriously-generally, the ultra-dense technobabble spouted by the bio-computer is either ignored or boils down to "All this I'm saying doesn't really matter because you're just going to break physics anyway, you jackasses." | |
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The universe presented in Supergirl mini Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade is an Affectionate Parody of the Silver Age. It runs on mad pseudo-science. | |
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In Origins, this is exploited by Slade Stevens, the head of S&S Munitions. He knows what he's saying is meaningless, but he also knows that nobody has the knowledge to contradict him, resulting in his being accepted as an expert. | |
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8-Bit Theater features a technobabble dialogue in this strip. | |
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In Sidekick Girl, Haze explains how a hero with Super Speed can run through a solid object. | |
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Paranoia has a recommendation for the GM about this trope: talk fast. If any of the players ask for clarification, tell them that the information is beyond their security clearance. The Paranoia XP rulebook also had a table at the back to randomly generate technobabble-esque medication names | |
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This particular one is a plot point in Idiocracy. The simpleton citizens of the future have induced a dust bowl because they were watering their crops with the energy drink Brawndo, because "It has Electrolytes!", instead of water, which they use exclusively for toilets. They were literally Salting The Earth, and were too stupid to realize it. | |
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Tenchi Muyo!: The infamous "Mihoshi's Fairy Tale" episode of the original OVAs,e in which Mihoshi claims the Big Bad in her story was stealing "ultra energy matter" for nefarious purposes. Scientist Washū demands to know just what the hell "ultra energy matter" is, and Mihoshi nervously handwaves it away with a Shaped Like Itself explanation that leaves Washū fuming. | |
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"The Foundation of S.F. Success": (Conversational Troping) Dr Asimov advises the reader to use scientific jargon (even if it's wrong) in their own works, because that's what the fans enjoy. | |
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In one Dilbert strip, the Pointy-Haired Boss asks Dilbert, "Did you know that twenty percent of all microfleems are subradiante?" He keeps telling Dilbert to consider the implications of this until Dilbert submits to his superior knowledge of technological facts. He doesn't actually know what a microfleem is. The Dilbert website used to contain a random mission statement generator, which bordered on this trope. |
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In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, it is lampshaded when Flash receives a trope fitting answer about the way they are going to get into the enemy base and says "Some of us don't speak Star Trek". | |
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Neon Genesis Evangelion is also infamous for its technobabble. It doesn't just feature babble about actual technology but about meta-physics as well, straight down to talking about things like "ego barriers." Episode 20 had the best one when Shinji's been absorbed by Unit 01 and they're trying to get him out. Problem is, he doesn't want to come back. Fuyutsuki and Gendo Ikari were experts in "metaphysical biology" (You got philosophy in my science! You got science in my philosophy!) before going military. In other words, the Eva universe had a field of science devoted to things like the Angels even before the Second Impact. One of the most straightforward examples of this trope is in the fact that the MAGI must verify every Angel is "Blood Type BLUE" before the Evas can attack them. The fact that most Angels are several stories tall and shoot laser beams from their mouths isn't enough of a tip-off, apparently. Episode 13 is probably one of the best sources for this, as it focuses less on the pilots and more on the technicians, Bridge Bunnies, and Ritsuko. During the Angel's first attack sequence, we hear all kinds of Techno Babble, such as in this scene, just as the attack commences: |
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The Whateley Universe runs on Technobabble, since it's a universe of mutant superheroes and supervillains, with a Cosmic Horror Story backstory. All the major power classifications have their own Technobabble for how they work. There are even rival Technobabble factions: most Psi researchers think that "magic" is just a form of psionics; most magical adepts think that "psi" is just a form of magic; etc. One mutant power in particular literally runs on Technobabble: so-called "devisors" make up a Technobabble explanation on how the piece of wondertech they're building would work, and then impose new physical laws on the device so that it actually does work. |
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The Head of the Alchemists' Guild speaks like this in the Discworld novel Reaper Man, which is appropriate given the Alchemists are like early Discworld scientists. Also seen with the Smoking GNU in Going Postal, who are to the mechanical telegraph system known as the "clacks" what RL hackers are to the Internet. When Moist listens to their explanation of ...the Woodpecker, about the only words he recognizes are things like "chain", "disengage", and "the". |
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Hayate the Combat Butler: Even Nagi is accused of doing this by Isumi: | |
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Guilty Crown uses a lot of biology-themed Techno Babble, most of it misapplied or completely nonsensical (intron-RAM, anyone?). | |
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In the novella A Taste of Honey, Adónane and Perfecta, upon meeting Femysade, immediately launch into what Aqib calls 'women's business' — namely mathematical and physics technobabble, throwing around phrases like 'fatidic notation', 'models of earthbound singularities', 'quantum measurement' and 'telekinetic watcher'. | |
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Parodied in Homestuck: while most of the characters are more likely to use Buffy Speak for anything technical, the Sburb installation screen includes such interesting phrases as "Realigning Cartesian mandrills".note A direct parody of The Sims, which uses similarly meaningless phrases during its loading screens. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Mazinger Z: Early on in the series it is explained that Photon Atomic (Koushiryoku) power is obtained in the process to transform Japanium in Alloy Z. In the manga version of the battle versus Jinray S1, Professor Yumi explains Jinray's electrical discharges generate an electro-magnetic field around Mazinger that disrupts the power feeding Mazinger and breaks down the Pilder's controls. He also warns that, should the electrical tension increase too much, Mazinger's mechanisms would melt. In the episode in which Minerva-X appeared, Professor Yumi theorized that she was made of super-steel. |
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In Sinfest, Percy uses it to belittle Pooch's discovery. (Percy had earlier declared a shoe was an "awesome machine" for him.) | |
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Space Dandy's explanation for how warping works is that the warpers mind is switched with another version of them from a different universe. Which sounds reasonable at first. But the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. If no motion is occuring, why would people use it. From their perspective, nothing happens. Either that, or the person disappears but never arrives anywhere since the incoming mind has no body to switch into. From the point of view of anyone watching, either it's a dud or it's lethal. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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In Liar Game, Akiyama uses this in the prelims to the fourth round to explain how he can tell who is "Infected" and who is "Normal". He's actually faking the entire thing, but he does it convincingly enough that everyone believes him, allowing him to proceed with his plan. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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A Certain Magical Index is quite fond of this trope, as well as the sister trope Magibabble. Most of the espers have a somewhat plausible explanation for their powers, but a lot of times when you look too close, the science starts to fall apart. That being said, the fact that every esper is explicitly a Reality Warper with a very limited skillset helps gloss over the physics goofs. And since the method to create espers was literally invented by an evil wizard, there's another explanation if it's ever needed. | |
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HERZ: Plentiful, as it was to be expected considering the source material is a Super Robot series. Chapter 3 gave a good number of examples, featuring different activation tests. | |
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Despite being an Affectionate Parody of science fiction in general, it's surprisingly rare in Commander Kitty. One of the more notable examples even had the author going on to explain it in the side notes. | |
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In Nobody Dies chapter 44 ANE!Gendo & Fuyutsuki discuss how to explain ND!Rei: | |
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While working as a spy in The City of Gold and Lead, Will tries to encourage his Master to talk about his work, but unfortunately there aren't any human words for the technical terms the Master is using. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Shin Mazinger Zero: Mazinger is acronym for Multidimensional Automaton Zillion Infinity Neural Generative Exterminate Reverter And in chapter 6: |
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Techno Babble | |
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Can happen occasionally in Jackie Chan Adventures, particularly with the Section 13 engineer, Kepler. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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In Hellsister Trilogy, Brainiac-5 is prone to rambling about complicated science terms which nobody but him understands. | |
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Kara of Rokyn is set in another planet, settled by an alien civilization, so technobabble comes up every so often, like when the main character is discussing "holovids" or running into "farming servobots". | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Lampshade firmly hung in Keychain of Creation with the character of Nova, an Alchemical Exalt. Specifically, in her fight with Misho here. Misho's usually the go-to guy for Magi Babble about Magitek, but Nova's particularly bad about it, especially since her stuff is more "tek" than "magi." | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Gunnerkrigg Court: "Jargon computers technical wizardry babble jargon." | |
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Techno Babble | |
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The titular Bastard Operator from Hell is a master of coming up with what an informed reader can tell is nonsense, but which the boss will consider to be very impressive. The BOFH also uses a technobabble overload to force lusers into Dummy Mode, where they will do whatever he tells them without thinking about it. |
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Techno Babble | |
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In the Kaeloo episode "Let's Play TV News", Mr. Cat uses complex words to explain his latest invention to Kaeloo and Stumpy. Of course, they don't understand, so he has to show them how it works. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Parodied in Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series, where wizards incorporate technical terms from science and engineering into their arcane rituals. Lampshaded in that Jon-Tom immediately spots the connection, but turtle wizard Clothahump merely comments that the wizards in his (our) world must simply use comparable formulae for their spells. | |
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Technobabble in Girl Genius tends to run afoul of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee; if any use of technology is described it will fail or be foiled, necessitating on-the-spot improvisation that involves Percussive Maintenance, Frickin' Laser Beams, or just science that happens to be weird. The entire three-way poison cure between Agatha, Gil and Tavrek is a good example, as it was full of babbling Sparks getting owned by Finagle's Law. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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"The Ugly Little Boy": "Mesonic intertemporal detection"; Dr Hoskins' explanation for their ability to "see" the past and choose what area of time/space they create a bubble of "not time" around to bring forward into the present. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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A Bugs Bunny cartoon featured this with Marvin's "illudium Q-35 explosive space modulator", to blow up the earth because it obstructs his view of Venus. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Played with in Life, the Universe and Everything: Ford murmurs portentously about detecting "eddies in the space-time continuum," and Arthur, not understanding at all, asks, "Who is Eddy then, exactly?" | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Spirit of the Century allows players to make declarations about scientific facts their characters know which can help in whatever situation they find themselves in. Since Spirit of the Century runs on the rules of pulp narrative, both players and Game Masters are encouraged to make such situations less about "realistic science" and more about "impressive sounding technobabble." | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Combattler V had many blatant examples. In an episode, a court is judging Combattler is too dangerous to be controlled because it is made of super-alloy (chogokin) and powered with electro-magnetic energy. | |
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UFO Robo Grendizer: In an episode of the first season, the Vegans plot attacking during an eclipse and luring Duke to fight in the eclipse's umbra because the lack of solar waves will disrupt the flow of the Applied Phlebotinum that fuels Grendizer. Hence the Humongous Mecha will run out of power and will be rendered defenseless. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Last Child of Krypton: Among the giant robot show elements and the sci-fi-oriented super-hero comic-book elements there is plenty of jargon around. And in the first chapter Rei very nearly calls the trope by name: | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Excellently parodied in the "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" episode of Futurama. Also, from "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch:" Or how about "The Honking:" Really, they use (and parody) this all the time, in a variety of different ways. |
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Techno Babble | |
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Code Geass: "Super-electro-magnetic-shrapnel cannon, FIRE!!" | |
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Techno Babble | |
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In Magic: The Gathering, a card from the Future Sight set modified how the player assembles contraptions. Contraptions don't exist. You can't assemble them. There are no rules pertaining to 'assembling' or 'contraptions' anywhere in the game... At least until Unstable which finally gave them rules and actual Contraption cards. This is actually a reference to a past card, Great Wall, which made it possible to block creatures with plainswalk even if you had a plains; at the time, only one creature with plainswalk existed, and even today, with over a hundred thousand cards, less than twenty have or grant plainswalk. |
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Techno Babble | |
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Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation is rife with sci-fi jargon, what with being set in the 25th century. The opening narration includes a description of the anti-gravitational fields surrounding the buildings as a suicide prevention measure. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Alternately played straight and played with in Teen Titans. You have five teenagers living/fighting crime together. Cyborg is a half-robot and thus knows a lot about computers and machines, despite not finishing high school; Raven grew up meditating and reading ancient magical scrolls; Starfire is an alien with substantial knowledge of science and her own world's culture but will ultimately be stumped if you ask her a question about Earth's history, culture, and language; Robin is a Bad Ass Normal raised by Batman who makes all of his own toys; and Beast Boy, as Raven so artfully put it, learned his history from a cereal box — and the rest from TV. Get this group together and you're in for some pretty interesting conversations. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Subverted in Kid Radd, where the otherwise brilliant Mad Scientist has a huge blind spot for technobabble. "The sensors are picking up some stuff!" | |
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Sailor Moon Abridged, episode 31: | |
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Techno Babble | |
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Played with in Life, the Universe and Everything: Ford murmurs portentously about detecting "eddies in the space-time continuum," and Arthur, not understanding at all, asks, "Who is Eddy then, exactly?" "And that's his sofa, is it?" Also played with in the first book and radio series: |
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Techno Babble | |
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This exchange in Reality Is Fluid between a Cardassian scientist and a slightly Book Dumb* originally a weapons officer, not a scientist Starfleet captain. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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The Adeptus Mechanicus of Warhammer 40,000 has Lingua Technis, a language devoted to Techno Babble. It lets them maintain their monopoly on technical knowledge. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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In the classical novel by Alessandro Manzoni The Betrothed it's used by don Abbondio, a clergyman. He's just trying to find an excuse to convince the young Renzo to postpone his marriage (he has been threatened by the henchmen of a local noble to do that) and starts sprouting nonsense in Latin to impress him. Renzo, although, doesn't fall for it and just roars "Enough of your Latinorum!". | |
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In El Goonish Shive, Tedd uses it to explain why drenching the Goo with water will destroy it. | |
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In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction Friendship Is Optimal: Always Say No "Luna/Hanna" provides Greg with a technical explanation of how she's able to talk to him, which flies right over his head. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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In Nip and Tuck, the Show Within a Show Rebel Cry features it, lampshaded. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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Encounter With Tiber has a multi-page bibliography. If the someone is babbling scientific words, its because they're reading the relevant Other Wiki page. | |
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Techno Babble | |
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In the Jimmy Two-Shoes episode "A Cold Day in Miseryville", Heloise gives one to explain her new Weather-Control Machine to Jimmy and Beezy, receiving blank stares. She then deadpans an explanation you'd give a child, instantly giving the two a complete understanding of the entire thing's mechanics (personified by them suddenly wearing classy scholar attire). | |
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Yu-Gi-Oh! referred to Kaiba doing a "quantum analysis" of his and Yugi's first duel. Because subatomic particles are so relevant to the world of card advantage. Card games are very Serious Business. |
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Intragalactic did a parody of technobabble in a footnote here: "It wouldn't seem like you could chart space on a two-dimensional screen like this. Until you remember that at large distances space functions as a flat surface due to the exponentially increasing effects of gravity as we near the Planck time. Subspace anomaly nanoprobes wormhole." Also in Muertitos by the same author here: "The trauma has rendered her catatonic, clinically vegetative, and medicine saline doctor viral!" |
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In Beat the Drums of War, an admiral from Starfleet Science starts to explain to Fleet Admiral Jorel Quinn her plan to divert the invading Heralds into a black hole, but he stops her in mid-sentence because he didn't understand her the first time she explained it, either. | |
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Lampshaded in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! when Jean Poule tries to explain the experiment which produced Molly. And again when Molly tries to explain her newest invention. |
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Done occasionally in Calvin and Hobbes: The Series, though at one point it is defied (overlapping with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness): | |
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Genius: The Transgression: Actually represented in the rules, and known as Jabir. A Genius who tries to talk about any kind of science will find that they have suddenly stopped making sense. Deconstructed/Played for Drama in this case; Jabir is described as a disturbing thing to witness and suffer from. |
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Lampshaded by Q in the Star Trek book I, Q. Q is visiting the Q Continuum, which is in a state of utter chaos. He describes it in technobabble, true to the tradition of Star Trek. After his lengthy, jargon-ny description of what the heck's going on, he proceeds to hang the lampshade: | |
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Goblins. Kin is prone to this, especially hilarious when talking to the dimwitted Minmax. | |
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The Firefly Tabletop RPG featured a table that allowed the GM to randomly generate damage to the players' ship. It had two columns, one for technobabble, and one for what this actually meant. They were rolled separately, and therefore one had no correlation to each other whatsoever. The technobabble column itself came in three parts: the part prefix (Primary/Hydraulic/etc), the part (Stabilizer/Vent/Feed/etc) and what happened to it (Cracked/Jammed/Exploded/etc) requiring three rolls to describe what went wrong when all anyone wants to know is the fourth, which is what it means. |
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Mobile Suit Gundam and its derivative works are known for inventing whole new quasiscientific areas (e.g. Minovsky Physics) together with corresponding Technobabble. Example from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: | |
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SciShow took on it, as well: "The Retro-Proto-Turbo-Encabulator". Seeing how Hank Green is an expert at actual technical jargon, the video sounds eerily like his usual ones. | |
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Also seen in one opening of Family Guy where Peter is watching TV and a stand up comedian (Dennis Miller) comes on and delivers this line: "I don't want to go on a rant here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first Battle of Antietam. I mean, when a neo-conservative defenestrates, it's like Raskolnikov filibustered deoxymonohydroxinate." Which in turn leaves Peter with the amazing comment "What the hell does "rant" mean?" | |
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Another great example is Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, when Faustus quizzes his new demonic "servant" Mephistophilis about astronomy. Specifically, he wants to know why the planets move the way they do. Since Mephistophilis' job is to win souls for Hell, not to answer obscure scientific questions, he cops out with the Latin phrase "per inoequalem motum respect totes," which means "by unequal motion relative to the whole." This sounds like real astronomy, especially because of the old Gratuitous Latin thing, but it's so vague and general as to be this trope. It's so vague, it's not even false per se. It's as if you asked how a car worked and somebody told you "by virtue of lubricated mechanical linkages actuated by kinetic energy." | |
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Kai, Chronicles of Syntax's resident Teen Genius, likes doing this. | |
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Aubrey-Maturin: Stephen Maturin invokes this trope, due to the highly technical nature of running large sailing ships: "Your mariner is a splendid fellow, none better, but he is sadly given to jargon." | |
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Used copiously in animated sci-fi epic Broken Saints, particularly by computer genius Raimi, which makes some of his stints as Mr. Exposition difficult to follow. Sometimes various field-specific jargon is thrown in just so we know writer Brooke Burgess has done the research. | |
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Far Out There does this all the freaking time, though there's usually at least a little lampshading going on. | |
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Voltron: Legendary Defender has lots of techno babble, especially from Pidge and any character with a science background. | |
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According to Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Guide 4, the advanced technology of the Mecha Phantom Beast archetype includes quantum-output machines. The decoys created by these machines are nearly indistinguishable from the original on radar and are said to be so efficient at drawing away fire, that as long as a single decoy has been deployed, the original machine cannot be shot down. | |
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Subverted completely with Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and the sequel, Virtue's Last Reward. The abilities of espers and those who throw their consciousnesses through time could have easily been handwaved with vague explanations about telepathy and mental time travel. Instead, everything is explained in complete length, pulling from real world scientific theories and phenomena, such as morphegenetic field theory, Minkowski space, the many-worlds interpretation, and schrodinger's cat, to name a few. In the end, everything in the series seems to have gone out of its way to purposefully avoid using technobabble at pretty much any point, despite it being very sci-fi-like in nature. The anti-matter bombs in Virtue's Last Reward are specifically given an entire scene dedicated to explaining how they work, using real world science. This includes anti-matter is, what anti-matter annihilation entails (this part is justified in-universe as a needed explanation for Quark, since he's just a child), then how the bombs utilize this, and how you work out the joules of energy generated by a detonation by taking the amount of matter and anti-matter, and using Eisten's E=MC^2.note The most amazing part of this, is how they manage to make what is basically a science lesson not only seem seamless and not like it's out of place, but also fairly entertaining. It's specifically the game's way of taking a spirited jab at one of [[Fair-Play Whodunnit"Knox's 10 commandments"]], "no hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation", as referenced in the game's secret files. |
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Code Lyoko is also chock full of it. Suffice to say it's never a good idea to let Jérémie explain how his newest program works. Or let Aelita answer questions about simple mathematic concepts. | |
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Parodied on Nebulous: | |
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In Sturgeon's Law, Jenn attempts to cover up her incompetence with Star-Trek-style technobabble, with mixed results. | |
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Dexter's Laboratory used this often, a famous example is in the very first episode where Dexter and Dee Dee are fighting over a device that turns people into animals. | |
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Parodied in Giuoco Terapia: | |
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Mahu: Being a sci-fi series, "Second Chance" has quite a lot of this. Thanks to characters explaining the terms afterwards, it can be understood with little difficulty. | |
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