Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Difference between revisions

You can also fuse your '''Imported Alien Phlebotinum''' with the home-grown variety to produce hybrid devices which do wacky things. The process of contriving such devices leads to a good [[MacGyvering]]-style plot.

 

 

Sometimes the aliens do this on purpose, to lend us humans a helping hand. Sometimes, it's an accident. In the latter case, they might show up later and want it back. Violently.

 

See [[Spice of Life]] when it is an edible resource with some use in space.

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== Anime and Manga ==

* The aliens wanting their phlebotinum (the SDF-1) back was the driving force for ''[[Robotech]]''.

* The Core Robots and related technologies from ''[[Parallel Trouble Adventure Dual]]''.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]: Original Generation'' has a variation on this: The alien faction known as Inspectors gave humanity the Black Hole Engine to see if they were advanced enough to figure it out. If they could, it signaled that they likely had a good enough tech-base to justify invading and stealing it to hybridize with their own.

* Some of the weirder technology in ''[[Darker than Black]]'' (like [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|memory erasure]]) is [[Handwaved]] as having come from [[Not of This Earth|the Gate]].

 

* With the exception of the magic-based [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] version, the [[Green Lantern]] [[Green Lantern Ring|Rings]] are explicitly Imported Alien Phlebotinum, having been given to the various worthies by the [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|nigh-omnipotent]] Guardians of Oa.

* Marvel's ''[[X-Men]]'' got a lot of Imported Alien Phlebotinum from the Shi'ar thanks to [[Interspecies Romance|Professor Xavier being Lilandra's consort.]]

* The 1990s comics sequel to ''[[Lost in Space]]'' used this as a [[Retcon]] to explain how Earth could have interstellar technology in 1997. The ''Jupiter 2'' had been reverse engineered from a crashed alien ship from Alpha Centauri. The "foreign agents" who employed Dr. Smith were revealed to be Alpha Centaurians working to prevent humanity from reaching their world.

* [[Iron Man]]'s [[Arch Enemy]] the Mandarin has ''ten'' rings of power. These rings were found on a crashed spaceship of Makluan origin.

* ''[[Scarlet Traces]]'', a trilogy beginning with [[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]] and expanding into an [[Alternate History]] in which Britain is an alien-fuelled superpower, is chock full of reverse-engineered alien technology.

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

* ''[[District 9]]'' uses a variation of this trope. The alien "prawns" have super weapons that evil [[Mega Corp]] MNU would love to figure out, but the weapons only work with alien DNA. When an accident causes Wikus, the film's protagonist, to begin transforming into a prawn, he becomes able to use the weapons—which results in both MNU and Nigerian gangsters [[MacGuffin Girl|chasing Wikus]] so they can figure out how to access his power themselves.

* This was the whole premise of the movie ''[[Explorers]]''.

* ''[[The Meteor Man]]'': The title character survives a direct hit from a meteor, and gains superpowers.

 

== Literature ==

* All the elements of this trope are used in ''[[Megas XLR]]''.

* In ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers]]'', two aliens share their [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|hyperdrive]] with Earth in exchange for our help in defeating the evil Crown Empire.

 

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