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Knight Rider: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Knight_Rider_2.jpg|frame|[[Hell-Bent for Leather|Cool jacket?]] Check. [[Cool Car]]? Doublecheck. [[They Fight Crime]]!]]
{{quote|''A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in the world of criminals who operate above the law...''
▲{{quote|''A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in the world of criminals who operate above the law...''}}
▲{{quote|''Michael Knight. A lone crusader in a dangerous world. The world... of the Knight Rider.''}}
▲A fairly simple concept about [[My Horse Is a Motorbike|a modern cowboy with his horse being the coolest of '80s cars, the Pontiac Trans Am.]] The original series aired on [[NBC]] from 1982-1986.
Police officer Michael Long was wounded when he interfered with criminal activities. His face scarred and everyone thinking he is dead, he accepts an offer by an eccentric millionaire to have his [[Magic Plastic Surgery|identity changed and his face reconstructed]]. In return he becomes a high-tech vigilante dealing with criminals who operate above the law. The man behind this offer is Wilton Knight, the owner of Knight Industries. Wilton strongly believes that one man (Michael) can make a difference.
Accepting the challenge, Michael Long becomes Michael Knight. To aid him, he is given a car -- and what a car it is! So much horsepower it can't be measured, every electronic device imaginable and then some, impervious to anything short of heavy artillery -- and controlled by an Artificial Intelligence with the voice of [[William Daniels]]. The '''K'''night '''I'''ndustries '''T'''wo '''T'''housand -- "KITT" -- was the ''real'' star of the show; [[David Hasselhoff]]'s Michael was simply a plot device used to give the car something to do and someone to banter with. In fact, according to [[Wikipedia|That Other Wiki]], the show was created in response to a perceived lack of leading men who could act, with then NBC president Brandon Tartikoff suggesting that a talking car could fill in the gaps in any leading man's acting abilities.
Backed by the secretive Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG), Michael and KITT pursue a never-ending crusade against, well, just about anybody who seems to be a bad guy that week, defeating them with a turbo boost, a microwave zap, and the durability of a front line heavy battle tank.
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The show has been revived several times:
* 1991 with the TV movie ''Knightrider 2000'', which was mostly the same concept but KITT was transferred into a Pontiac Banshee concept car. Despite high ratings it never materialized into a series, probably because the TV movie was set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] and a series based on that would have been too expensive.
* 1994 reimagined it as ''Knight Rider 2010'', which was ill received and a radically different premise with a heavy ''[[Mad Max]]'' theme.
* 1997 had a new television show ''[[Team Knight Rider]]''. Lasted a season and had a small fleet of intelligent cars.
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Unfortunately, the ratings did not improve enough after the retooling (a steady average of 5.5 million viewers), and despite [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|strong international interest]] and high numbers of video stream viewing and episode downloads, NBC failed to include the show in their official Fall 2009 line-up.
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Not to be confused with [[Kamen Rider Ryuki/Characters#Ren Akiyama (Kamen Rider Knight)|Rider Knight]].
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{{tropelist}}
* [[A-Team Firing]]
* [[Adventure Towns]]
* [[
* [[Almost-Lethal Weapons]]
* [[Arrested for Heroism]]: In several episodes, efforts to stop a bad guy landed Michael in jail and KITT in police impound.
* [[Bad Habits]]: "The Ice Bandits".
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* [[Mirror Match]]: KITT and KARR.
* [[Monster of the Week]]: Most of the show is done in this format, with very few villains resurfacing for another round.
* [[Morality Chip]]: KITT's [[Obstructive Code of Conduct]] is the preservation of human life, a leading factor of his friendly personality. KARR lacks this, his compulsion instead being self-preservation- ultimately, at the expense of everything and everyone else. [[Fridge Logic|One has to wonder why]], if you're designing a car to act as protector to a guy who's intended duty is the protection of those who can't help themselves, would you then make it's primary directive SELF preservation?
** To be fair, Wilton Knight's panicking and immediately deactivating KARR after he {{spoiler|ran over traffic cones representing children during a test}} couldn't have helped KARR's attitude...
* [[Mr. Exposition]]: Particularly in episodes where the action takes place inside of a building, KITT rattles off so much exposition about the current situation that he sometimes doesn't even give other people a chance to talk before switching subjects.
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* [[My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That]]: KITT in both series was pretty well aware of the hormone levels of his driver around certain women.
* [[No One Could Survive That]]: [[Not Quite Dead]], KARR returns, despite having been blown to pieces.
** Actually, he returns after plunging off a cliff into the ocean. He's recovered by a couple that find him under the sand on a beach. He was blown up at the end of ''KITT vs KARR'' and is never seen again.
* [[Off-the-Shelf FX]]: Several of the original series's Turbo Boost shots were done with Matchbox cars. A discerning eye might notice the bright red "KNIGHT 2000" lettering on the sides of the car -- present on licensed merchandise, but ''not on the show''.
** Jossed. They DID use scale models for some stunts, but they were custom-built models roughly in 1/10 scale. Some of them were badly built, but none had the "Knight 2000" lettering.
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* [[Robot Buddy]]: I hope you figured it out by now.
* [[Sapient Steed]]
* [[Shout-Out]]: KITT's scanner was lifted from the Cylons of ''[[Battlestar Galactica
** One episode of the new series took place in Las Vegas. As Mike is pulling in, a girl yells "I'm staying at the Montecito!" This is the setting of sister NBC series ''Las Vegas'' (both shows were produced by Gary Scott Thompson). Given that ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' also spent a lot of time there, [[Intercontinuity Crossover|this arguably places all three series in the same universe]].
** In the 2008 series, the [[Halloween Episode]] had Billy dressed as "[[Torchwood|Captain Jack Harkness]], the [[Doctor Who|time-traveling]] bisexual".
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* [[Stock Footage]]: To save the expense of spectacular footage, the original series liberally used whatever footage available to substitute. Examples include using the climatic crash of the titular vehicular monster, ''[[The Car]]'' multiple times, especially for the initial defeat of KARR in "Trust Doesn't Rust" and the canyon flooding visual from the first Christopher Reeve are used in ''[[Superman]]'' in "Not a Drop to Drink".
** [[Stock Footage Failure]]: Speaking of "Trust Doesn't Rust", there's ''blatantly'' obvious use of stock footage in the montage in which KARR is helping Tony and Rev commit crimes. The dashboard shown ''clearly'' belongs to KITT, and they even use a shot of KITT with stars and stripes on his hood from "Slammin' Sammy's Stunt Show Spectacular"!
* [[Stupid Crooks]]: An episode dealing with car theft has a "false alarm" as two crooks attempt to steal the pimped-out K.I.T.T, and quickly prove not to be the professionals Michael is looking for: They're trying to break in using a Philips-head screwdriver instead of a flat one, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20120504211008/http://www.atylia.com/images/catalogue/porte-manteau-design-nova-noir-450.jpg this kind] of coat hanger.
* [[Surrounded by Smart People]]: A given Micheal Knight character is this.
* [[Take That]]: A very blatant example occurs in the first season of the original Knight Rider. The episode features a race between cars running on alternative fuel (KITT's liquid hydrogen included), and one of the cars is an orange Dodge Charger, driven by two stereotypical Southern state villagers, and runs on moonshine. Guess [[Dukes of Hazzard|which show]] this is supposed to be. When the race eventually happens, Michael and KITT first {{spoiler|Turbo Boost way above that car}} and barely halfway into the episode, {{spoiler|the car blows up and nobody inside survives}}.
** In an earlier ad before the series began, KITT's specifications are compared to those of a [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute|suspiciously similar Dodge Charger]], with the tagline "Competition is No Competition".
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* [[Weaponized Car]]: The old KITT had lasers and occasionally other systems that he tended to use for defense or minor attacks on key points. The new KITT, to emphasize just how more [[Badass]] he is, is armed with a laser, rocket launchers and [[More Dakka|three]] [[Gatling Good|miniguns]], [[Plot Induced Stupidity|which typically aren't used when they would actually be useful]].
** The vehicles of Team Knight Rider were armed to the teeth, given the missions they were assigned. Especially the [[Combining Mecha|combined form]] of Kat and Plato, which had very conspicuous missile launchers.
* [[Wham! Episode]]: Season three (original) had the episode "Junkyard Dog" which not only destroyed KITT, but literally disintegrated him to a bare shell and CPU box with a very small chance of recovery. We'd seen him bashed, smashed and even blown up before, but never eaten from the inside. Seeing the state the car was in after being pulled from the acid suggested that there was absolutely ''[[No One Could Survive That|no way in hell]]'' KITT could possibly have survived. [[Unexplained Recovery|He had]], of course, but still.
** The episode "Scent of Roses". First off, Michael nearly leaves the Foundation after one bullet to the gut too many. Then they finish the episode by {{spoiler|killing Stevie Mason.}} If Hasslehoff had gotten his wish to make this the final episode of the series, it would've been one helluva [[Downer Ending]].
* [[Wrench Wench]]: "KI2T"'s mechanic Bonnie Barstow (replaced in Season 2 by April Curtis but comes back in Season 3).
** Sarah Graiman is "KI3T"'s mechanic, but because of newer technology, the role is more [[Girl Genius]] than [[Wrench Wench]].{{context}}<!-- "Girl Genius" is a work, not a trope. -->
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Action Adventure Series]]
[[Category:American Series]]
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[[Category:TV Series]]
[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]
[[Category:Multiple Works Need Separate Pages]]
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