Often accompanied by an Oh, Crap!, Precision F-Strike, or similar reaction as the reality of the situation sets in.
A Broken Lever of Doom or, when it comes to cars, a Removable Steering Wheel can cause this to happen. It can also occur in a My Car Hates Me situation where a person desperately needs to escape but their vehicle won't start, and can also involve repeatedly turning the key in the ignition, with a possible Dangerous Key Fumble first.
Have You Tried Rebooting? may be suggested as a way to fix the problem.
Can sometimes show up in comedic works, especially if whoever's trying to get the controls to work has a snappy comment about the situation or responds to someone with such.
See also:
- Button Mashing, which is just spamming buttons in a video game to hopefully make something happen.
- It Won't Turn Off, when something runs despite its power supply being cut off or shut off.
- Pressure-Sensitive Interface, where how softly or forcefully you hit a button determines its function.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Martian Successor Nadesico: In one episode, during a battle with the Jovians, the weapons systems aboard the Aestavalis robots and the Nadesico herself begin to lock onto and attack allied UEAF ships and fighter craft as well. The crew tries to stop the system from attacking allied craft, but they seem powerless to do anything. Even Ruri Hoshino, who has a direct line to the computer, is unable to get it to stop targeting a UEAF shuttle that was coming to explain the problem after the battle, and barely keeps it from wiping out the escape pod before they make it on board. The problem turns out to be the computer itself, which has a personality and remembers fighting the UEAF when the Nadesico initially left Earth to journey to Mars. Ms. Fresange equates it to an employee who has become bitter and resentful of new management, and Mr. Prospector can only voice his agreement with the analogy, saying he can sympathize with the computer.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: When Wufei disables Noin's Ares, Noin can only futilely shuffle the controls as Wufei destroys the military base she was guarding and kills all the recruits she trained.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- In episode 18, after Unit-03 is taken over by an Angel and goes on a rampage, Shinji fails to stop it since his classmate Toji is the pilot and he doesn't want to hurt Toji. Gendo orders Unit-01's Dummy Plug system to be activated, causing Unit-01 to go berserk and tear Unit-03 apart as Shinji helplessly tries to get his Eva back under control.
- In episode 19, after Unit-01's battery power is exhausted, the Angel Zeruel overpowers it and begins battering it with its sharp, ribbon-like "arms". Shinji fruitlessly works the controls and shouts "Move! Move!" to no avail. However, just as Zeruel exposes Unit-01's core and begins hammering on it, Shinji finally breaks down, saying "I'm so sick of it already." Unit-01 responds of its own volition, going berserk and tearing the Angel to pieces, even ingesting its S2 organ.
Audio Plays
- Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures: In "Max Warp", the Doctor and Lucie investigate the death of the Ferret, the presenter of the titular show. They're gassed and placed inside a spaceship which promptly plummets to the surface of a moon. None of the Doctor's button mashing, nor Lucie's weird theory that crying the names of rodents will prevent the crash, makes a difference, as the ship was programmed ahead of time. Thankfully for them, they're actually inside a flight simulator conducting a driving test.
Comic Books
- Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1977): One of the methods used to fight Godzilla is the construction of a giant robot. In one issue, a teenage boy sneaks into the control room in the robot's head and tries on the cybernetic control helmet for the robot. The sudden link to the robot's systems knocks him out while still wearing the helmet. The robot starts walking forward in response to the boy's dreaming, directly towards several natural gas storage tanks. Jimmy Woo climbs onto the robot and into the control room. Once inside, the robot is almost right on top of the storage tanks and he has absolutely no idea how any of the controls work, so he starts desperately pushing every button and yanking every lever in reach while hoping that something will work. He manages to stop the robot at literally the very last minute.
Fan Works
- Spider-Ninja: Played for Laughs in one chapter; Donatello's first tech support customer is a man who has no experience with computers, to the point that he starts aggressively smashing keys as Donnie tries to feed him advice. Turns out, he didn't know he had to charge the laptop before he could use it. Made even funnier when the end of the chapter reveals that Don's customer was Steve Rogers.
- Tattered Capes Under a Shattered Moon: As his prototype Atlesian Paladin fires on the audience, Watts wildly presses buttons on his Scroll, shouting that he's trying to regain control. Much to Colin's shock, his lie detector claims Watts was lying.
Films — Animation
- Inside Out: In the climax, with Joy and Sadness gone, Fear, Disgust, and Anger struggle with the controls of Riley's Brain with a Manual Control to prevent her from running away. It doesn't work.
- Inside Out 2: When the "Puberty" alarm on Riley's emotion console goes off, Joy and Disgust frantically begin hitting buttons and pulling levers on the console to try to shut it off. When that doesn't work, Joy pulls the alarm off the console and sends it to the back of Riley's mind.
- Madagascar 1: When the penguins first commandeer the ship, Skipper demands a progress report from Private, who is jumping up and down on the control panel. He replies, "It's no use, Skipper, I don't know the codes!"
- WALL•E: When WALL•E finds out he is trapped in an escape pod that is rigged to self-destruct, he tries mashing the red button in an attempt to turn it off. When that doesn't work, he starts wildly scrambling about the pod's controls, which only manages to set off the pod's parachute, flotation raft, and signal flares all at once.
Films — Live-Action
- The Dark Knight: Played for Laughs. As the Joker walks out of Gotham General Hospital with the facility exploding behind him, the explosions seem to stop, leaving the Joker standing there bemused and annoyed. He pulls out the detonator and starts mashing the button, eventually just banging it against his palm to get it to work. The explosions suddenly resume, startling the Joker and prompting him to hop into the back of a stolen bus for a clean getaway. Contrary to internet myth, this was entirely scripted, and not a moment where Heath Ledger ad-libbed the reaction when the pyrotechnics failed.
- Dumbo (2019): Dumbo messes with the controls in the central tower of the circus park, shutting down parts of the park and allowing the Medici Circus people to escape. Vandevere starts working the controls to try to get the power back on, despite sparks flying from the controls and a lackey telling him that this will only cause an electrical overload, and even starts hitting the control panel with his cane in frustrated anger. Sure enough, an overload happens, starting a fire that burns down the park.
- The Incredible Hulk (2008): In Sterns' lab, Sterns attempts to test a cure on Banner. The machines don't start, so Sterns slaps the computer and mutters "Stupid grad students." Then, as Banner transforms and Betty urges Sterns to administer the cure, the machines malfunction again. This time, Sterns frantically mashes keys on the computer terminal, then jumps up, kicks the machine, and falls.
- James Bond:
- For Your Eyes Only: When Bond and Melina Havelock are ambushed underwater in their Neptune submarine by a Mantis submarine with mechanical arms piloted by one of Kristatos' men, Bond pushes the Neptune's thrusters to maximum capacity and rams the enemy submarine into the hole in the wreck of the St. George till it's stuck in it. The enemy submarine's pilot keeps mashing his machine's buttons to no effect.
- GoldenEye: Boris Grishenko gets increasingly mad at not being able to break the code his former colleague Natalya Simonova used to have the GoldenEye Kill Sat do an atmospheric re-entry, and moreso as Bond irreparably damages the control antenna. At one point, he takes his PC's screen in his hands and frantically shakes it.
- Casino Royale: After being poisoned with digitalis by Le Chiffre, Bond hastily staggers his way out to his Aston Martin DBS to use his emergency first aid kit. He follows all instructions from MI6 over the phone exactly, but when they ask him to activate the defibrillator to restart his heart, Bond pushes the button on it several times to no avail with increasing desperation as the MI6 techs yell at him over the phone. Only right before he passes out does he notice that he accidentally knocked out the cord connecting the defibrillator pads to the main device, and he is unable to plug them back in before he passes out. Fortunately, Vesper Lynd rushes in to plug the cord back and revive him, saving his life.
- The Matrix: Downplayed in a couple of instances:
- When Trinity first contacts Neo through his computer, Neo tries to input a couple of commands through his keyboard but fails, not realizing that the computer isn't real and Trinity is just manipulating its Matrix code.
- At the start of the "deja vu" sequence, Tank gives a puzzled look at what he's seeing, then tries to enter some commands on his keyboard and throws his hands up in confusion as monitors glitch and the Matrix code goes wonky. However, once everything resolves, he becomes horrified as he sees what's been changed in the code.
- Mortal Engines: When London attacks Salzhaken and the mining town's component parts scatter and flee, one cluster of buildings stalls out because its engine has gone down. As the larger predator city approaches, the crew manning the town's engines desperately wrestles with its controls, pulling at levers and trying to engage the motors, with only irregular sputters of smoke to show for their efforts. They get the engine going eventually, but the time lost trying to activate it allows London to close enough distance to pursue and catch the smaller town.
- RoboCop (1987): The OCP project team under Dick Jones usher the ED-209 robot into the executive boardroom for a demo. Jones has one junior VP point a gun at ED-209, at which it deploys its guns and tells him he has 20 seconds to drop his weapon. The suit does so, but the robot continues the countdown. The project team immediately realizes ED-209's malfunctioned and opens its control panel to start trying to disable it, but to no effect. The countdown expires, ED-209 starts shooting the junior VP, and doesn't stop until one of the techs breaks the control panel by yanking out some wires, shutting the robot down.
- Shelby Oaks: When Mia is frightened by what she sees in cell 37 and falls getting out, her flashlight picks that precise moment to die. She smacks it several times in a panic but it doesn't come back on, and she leaves it behind when she runs away after the hellhound shows up.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The transporter suffers a serious malfunction just as two people begin to beam aboard from Starfleet Command in San Francisco. Kirk takes over the controls from Janice Rand, fidgeting with the controls along with Scotty and calling to Starfleet, "Starfleet, boost your matter gain, we need more signal!" Unfortunately, the patterns begin to degrade and they begin to materialize, before being returned to Starfleet Command. Kirk somberly asks Starfleet if they retrieved the crew who were in the beam. The reply is an equally somber "Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long... fortunately."
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: In the first confrontation between Enterprise and Reliant, after Enterprise is crippled, Kirk and Spock use a backdoor tactic to force Reliant to drop its shields. Khan's henchman notices the shields going down, and when told to raise them again, he tries to input the command then smacks his fists on the tactical console and exclaims, "I can't!". Enterprise retaliates, and Reliant is forced to withdraw.
- Star Trek: First Contact: During the battle with the Borg cube, Defiant sustains heavy damage and loses weapons and shields. Lt. Commander Worf smacks the console he's sitting at with his fists to try to get it to respond but to no avail. Being Worf, he decides to crash Defiant into the cube.
Worf: Perhaps today is a good day to die! Prepare for ramming speed!
- This Island Earth: Cal Mechem buzzes a flight tower, but his little stunt causes a flame out, killing his jet's power. Before he's unknowingly rescued by the Metalunans, we're shown a shot of him fighting with the control stick.
Literature
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Zaphod's crew steals a spaceship only for it to take off on its own and ignore their attempts to steer it. Justified as it turns out to be a stunt ship being remotely piloted into the sun for a stage act. Fortunately, the shipyard padded the budget with an emergency teleporter.
Ford: Does none of this function?
Zaphod: All overridden.
Ford: Smash the autopilot.
Zaphod: Find it first. Nothing connects.
Live-Action TV
- Chernobyl:
- At the climax of "Please Remain Calm", as the three reactor operators are moving through the water below reactor #4 to try to find the valves that will drain the water, their flashlights begin to fail from the radiation. They frantically shake and slap the flashlights to no avail, and the episode ends with them in total darkness as their Geiger counters hiss and crackle. However, at the start of "Open Wide, O Earth", they pull out wind-up flashlights and are able to find the valves.
- In "The Happiness of All Mankind", a German-made bomb disposal robot is sent into one of the most highly irradiated sections of reactor #4's roof to clear debris, with the Activation Sequence shown in detail. However, within just a few seconds, the cameras go to static. The operator repeatedly hits buttons on the console to try to get it to respond before he sees the "active" lights going from green to red, and he realizes that it's not the cameras that are fried, it's the robot. Shcherbina quickly realizes that the Central Committee gave the Germans the propaganda number for the radiation levels instead of the actual levels, and calls the Committee to furiously deride them for their stupidity.
- Doctor Who: In "A Christmas Carol", Kazaran Sardick has access to a machine that will control the clouds above the planet, allowing the starliner with Rory, Amy, and 1101 other passengers and crew aboard to land. But Sardick doesn't particularly care, and won't lift a finger to help. What's more, the controls are isomorphic, responding only to him, so the Doctor can't override them. Instead, he tries to override Kazaran by going back and meddling in his timeline to make him a nicer person. He succeeds, but now the controls don't recognize the kind man that Kazaran has become, leaving him and the Doctor to fumble with the controls with them not responding. Fortunately, the Doctor is able to find a workaround using the power of music and a bit of Applied Phlebotinum in his broken sonic screwdriver.
- The Expanse: In the backstory, a human engineer named Solomon Epstein living in the Mars colony came up with an improved design for fusion engines that power space ships, and attempted to test it out in a ship he cobbled together. Epstein believed his design was only going to be a modest improvement in engine performance, so when he tested it out both Epstein and the ship were completely unprepared for how well it would work, how fast it would make his ship go, and the immense g-forces it would put on both the ship and the pilot as a result. As the test increasingly spiraled out of control and Epstein began getting crushed by the g-forces he was experiencing, he made a number of attempts to stop the test flight manually or by using voice commands, and finally to simply call the Mars colony for help, but nothing worked. Eventually the g-forces killed him, but the design of his engines helped revolutionize engine design and gave humanity an enormous help in colonizing our solar system.
- Masters of the Air: This happens every other time a B-17 is mortally wounded by gunfire from German fighters or from flak from Anti-Air guns. The most notable cases happen during Part 3 and Part 5, when Claytor's and later Egan's bombers are damaged beyond repair, with them and their copilots futilely attempting to regain control before deciding to order the Abandon Ship and have their crews bail out.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the climax of "Silicon Avatar", Doctor Marr (seeking revenge for the death of her son) sabotages Enterprise's instruments, which had been allowing them to communicate with the Crystalline Entity. Because they'd been trying to find a way to peacefully coexist with the entity rather than outright kill it, Picard orders LaForge to try and stop the communicator, which is sending out a sound beam that is harmful to the Entity. LaForge does all he can at the consoles, all but shouting that he doesn't have enough time to fix the doctor's tampering. The Entity is ultimately shattered before the crew can stop the sabotage, and Dr. Marr is arrested.
Video Games
- Overwatch: When D.VA is hit with a stun weapon, her own first person view shows that technically only the mech goes down and she jostles the control sticks until the stun ends and she regains control.
- The Stanley Parable: One of the many endings has the narrator trap the player in the control room of the mind control facility as it is self-destructing. The player can run around the room pressing various buttons to no avail.
Webcomics
- Unsounded: All Magitek, from cosmetic accessories up to mechas, can be infected by mnemonic phantoms. If the operator is lucky, they might just jam the controls
for a moment and then disperse. If they're very unlucky, the ghosts might override the weapons systems.
Western Animation
- The Penguins of Madagascar: Played for Laughs when the penguins try to fly a rocket to the moon and it begins hurtling out of control.
Skipper: Kowalski, status report!
Kowalski: [deadpan, while mashing the control panel] I am randomly pushing buttons while we spin out of control.
Skipper: Can I push one? It'd make me feel better. - SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Skill Crane", after finally getting the hang of the titular crane game, Squidward gets cocky and decides to apply his skills to an actual crane. It works... until he makes one slight wrong movement and brings the entire construction site down by accident. As soon as Squidward realises this, he panics and becomes completely unable to control the crane anymore, and it goes flying out of control and chases SpongeBob and a group of construction workers to the Krusty Krab while he desperately tries to stop it, which ends up completely wrecking the restaurant.
- StarBeam: In "Spaced Out", astronaut Luna Diaz is broadcasting from her space shuttle to Zoe's classroom when a meteor shower hits the shuttle, dislodging its external fuel tank and sending it spinning out of control, with Luna last seen trying to work the controls to no avail. This prompts Zoe to become Starbeam and head out into space to fix the problem.
- Steven Universe: In "Gem Heist", the Crystal Gems were planning on getting into the Zoo due to Pearl (being designed for such things) knowing how to open the Zoo's doors. However, when they get to the door into the human containment area, Pearl notes that it's different from the other doors, and she can't figure it out. This leads to her trying numerous combinations at the door's control panel (none of which work) while Steven and Ruby pound on the door trying to get it open.
- Wallace & Gromit: In A Close Shave, Wallace tries to use his Knit-O-Matic (in Wash Only mode) to give Shaun the sheep a good cleaning—but the machine gets a system fault and switches over to Light Shave mode. Gromit fiddles with the control knob, trying in vain to set it back to Wash Only mode, then when that doesn't work, bangs his fist on the side of the console.
