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Short Circuit: Difference between revisions
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''Short Circuit'' is a pair of films that were written with the intention of [[Deconstructed Trope|deconstructing]] [[AI Is a Crapshoot]]. It's a near-unique film that doesn't fall easily into any one genre, instead it takes elements of sci-fi, action, romantic comedy and slapstick.
In the first film (1986) NOVA robotics demonstrates five experimental robots for military use. With mobile tank treads, impressive tactile response, limited AI and a very dangerous laser weapon, they are bleeding edge advanced machines. During a storm, SAINT #5 is [[Lightning Can Do Anything|struck by lightning]], frying its circuits and causing a critical malfunction in its programming. It wanders off unnoticed, headed for the unsuspecting denizens of a small town, in particular one defenseless girl and animal lover named Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy). It is a race against time to recapture the wayward robot before disaster strikes - but it is already too late. Number Five is adapting... learning... and willfully ignoring commands.
Steve Guttenberg plays the designer Newton Crosby who is trying to figure out what happened to this robot. He becomes friendly with Stephanie and comes to see that Number Five has acquired a personality... and a love of [[The Three Stooges]]. But NOVA sees Number Five as their property that has gotten away from them, and they want him either returned or destroyed.
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* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: Johnny and Ben. You do ''not'' want to be around Ben if something's happened to Johnny on your watch. Just see [[Berserk Button]] above to see why it's an equally bad idea to take Johnny lightly.
* [[Big Stupid Doodoo Head]]: "I've got an error message for you! I'll scramble your RAM!!" Quoted by Saunders, apparently unsure of how to properly insult a robot. Johnny is understandably less than impressed.
* [[Blank Slate]]: Number 5 is a fast learner though.
* [[Innocent Blue Eyes|Blue Eyes]]: Johnny 5. The innocent variety.
* [[Bollywood Nerd]]: Ben.
* [[Break the Cutie]]: Quite literally, in the second movie.
* [[Brick Joke]]: One of the phrases that Johnny passes to Ben during his date with Sandy is misinterpreted as Spanish, which Sandy translates into "Your mother sleeps (makes love with) with my dog". At the movie's climax, Johnny uses the same phrase to taunt a crook.
* [[Bus Full of Innocents]]: Howard is scared that the malfunctioning Number 5 might attack one.
{{quote|'''Howard:''' What if it decides to melt down a bus full of nuns? How would you write the headline on ''that''?!
'''Ben''': [[Open Mouth, Insert Foot|Nun soup?]] }}
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* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: Too many to list, most notably Johnny's magnet and remote control.
* [[Chrome Champion]]: Johnny's makeover in the epilogue of ''Short Circuit 2''. He looks like R.O.B. mated with an Academy Award.
* [[Confessional]]: Johnny rolling his way into a church confessional.
* [[Couldn't Find a Pen]]: With his voice box damaged, Johnny uses a rock to scrape out an S.O.S. on a brick wall.
* [[Cute Machines]]: Number/Johnny Five is intended as this, of course, but the little Johnny Five toys take the cake.
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'''Ben:''' Oh, them. Pittsburgh. }}
* [[False Friend]]: {{spoiler|Oscar}}. You really ought to see it coming, but he's so jolly that many viewers don't.
* [[Family-Unfriendly Violence]]: Johnny Five's {{spoiler|[[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|ridiculously graphic maiming]] at the hands of the bank robbers}}.
* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Johnny seems to believe this is the reason {{spoiler|Oscar tried to kill Johnny, but only locked Ben and Fred in a freezer. See [[Lock and Load Montage]] for the result.}}
* [[Fire-Forged Friends]]: Fred treats Johnny like he's his personal butler (partly because Ben kept him in the dark about Johnny's AI), then tries to sell him to some corporate bigwigs, prompting Johnny to unleash the white hot rage: "He is [[I Feel Angry|NOT]] my friend!" However, after Johnny is {{spoiler|nearly killed by Oscar's mooks}}, Fred [[Pet the Dog|scavenges the city]] for him and later [[I Owe You My Life|repairs]] him ''single-handedly''. By the end of the movie, they've become an [[Adventure Duo]].
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* [[Granola Girl]]: Stephanie. Takes in all manner of poor and homeless animals (and one sentient robot), runs a truck that she sells natural food out of, and expresses her deep displeasure with the military and their weapons.
* [[G-Rated Drug]]: Apparently, knowledge is this to a newly sentient robot. [[Played for Laughs]], of course.
{{quote|'''Number Five:''' [[Punctuated!
* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Howard Marner is hinted at undergoing one at the conclusion of the first film by {{spoiler|firing Schroeder}}.
* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: Newton and Ben. (Ben lampshades this a couple of times.)
* [[Hollywood Nerd]]: Newton isn't exactly smooth with the ladies.
* [[Human Mail]]: Though not technically a human, Johnny Five mails himself to Benjamin in [[City with No Name|the city]] (with the help of Newton and Stephanie), after being rejected as an airplane passenger.
* [[Humiliation Conga]]: How Number Five deals with Frank.
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* [[Incredibly Obvious Bug]]: On Number Five. At least in this case they weren't expecting the robots to try to get rid of them.
* [[Inkblot Test]]: Administered to Number Five by Crosby as part of a Turing test.
* [[Insane Proprietor]]: Manic Mike.
* [[Instant AI, Just Add Water]]
* [[Instant Expert]]: Number Five assimilates information at an insane speed, going through an entire dictionary within seconds. Notably, this doesn't help him learn morality; he's still got the mentality of a five-year old, just a very smart one.
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* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]: ''"Let's party."''
* [[Lightning Can Do Anything]]: A single bolt is all that stands between a sufficiently advanced robot and sentience.
* [[Limited Wardrobe]]: Fred seemingly owns only one -- admittedly expensive -- shirt, which he wears on a daily basis. This makes it all the more poignant when Fred [[Pet the Dog|tears his sleeve off without hesitation]], applying it to Johnny's leaking battery.
* [[Loan Shark]]: Fred uses one to sponsor his business with Ben, with thirty days to pay up. When the jewel thieves first confront Fred and Ben with ski masks, Fred first thinks it's the loan shark's henchmen.
* [[Lock and Load Montage]] / [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Johnny Five goes through this after {{spoiler|being beaten and left for dead by the villains, out of sheer anger that they merely kidnapped his friends, but flat out tried to kill HIM}}. He even dons a mohawk-like set of spikes for the occasion.
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* [[Missed Him by That Much]]: Searching for the dying Johnny, Ben and the cops arrive at Radio Shack at the exact moment that Fred and Johnny exit the frame. This happens twice more during this sequence, though the final time Fred remained behind for Ben and the cops to find instead.
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Like the first film, ''Short Circuit 2'' is a light comedy. That is, till the scene where [[Big Bad|Oscar]] has his goons brutally smash up Johnny 5 in near slow-motion.
* [[My Name Is Not Durwood]]: Ben keeps calling Johnny "Number Johnny Five". He doesn't really seem to mind though.
* [[No Sympathy]]: Crosby taking No. 2 (without permission) on his hunt for No. 5, causing Howard to wet his drawers some more.
{{quote|'''Howard:''' Great! So instead of $11 million on the loose, we're going to have ''twenty-two''!
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** #5's reaction when he makes the connection between a [[Trampled Underfoot|dead grasshopper]] and NOVA's intent to [[They Would Cut You Up|disassemble him]]. "Disassemble = DEAD? '''[[Big No|NOOOOO!]]'''"
* [[Odd Couple]]: Mild-mannered, scrupulous Ben and slovenly, amoral Fred.
* [[An Odd Place to Sleep]]: Ben inherited the NOVA truck from the first movie and drove it to NYC. It doubles as his toy factory and living space.
** Even after Fred leases a warehouse, Ben continues to nap in a hammock in the truck (which is now parked indoors).
* [[Operation Blank]]: An army general at NOVA's launch party is already fantasizing about deploying SAINT robots to [[Make the Bear Angry Again|nuke Moscow]]. "We call it Operation Gotcha Last."
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* [[Pick Your Human Half]]
* [[Pig Latin]]: Used by the sequel's villains to fool Johnny -- the ''one'' language he doesn't know how to translate.
** He's managed to work it out by the second time they try this trick on him.
{{quote|'''Johnny 5''': Oo-scray oo-yay, ozobay.}}
* [[Pinocchio Syndrome]]: He even picked a copy of the novel of ''Pinocchio'' while at a bookstore, determining that it required a more careful read.
* [[Playing Cyrano]]: Johnny Five to Ben during the latter's date.
* [[Porn Stash]]: Ben's "schematic drawings" that he offers to share with Newton.
* [[Product Placement]]:
** "Wouldn't You Like To Be a Pepper Too?"
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* [[Robosexual]]: Number 5 hitting on Stephanie in the tub.
* [[Rock Beats Laser]]: Johnny outwits his evil twins by deflecting their lasers with rocks and [[A Handful for An Eye|blinding them with mud]]. $11 million well spent, Pentagon.
* [[Run for the Border]]: {{spoiler|Oscar}} and his cronies devise a clever plot to smuggle the jewels into South America. Each one is hidden inside a cheap, plastic toy dinosaur; "Our gift to the Brazilian National Orphanage."
* [[Running Gag]]: Skroder seems rather obsessed with food...
{{quote|'''Skroder''': What I've got is trouble, which I don't need because my wife is at home cooking a steak that's going to be dried out by the time I get there
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'''Crosby''': None.
'''Skroder''': Well let me tell you I've got three of them. Three dandy little Skroders, and I want them to be adults, not barbeques. }}
** He also mistakes Number 5 for a coffee machine.
* [[Secret Underground Passage]]: The tunnel connecting Ben's warehouse with a high-security bank vault.
* [[Shell Game]]: Johnny Five learns it from a street performer in ''Short Circuit 2''.
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* [[We Used to Be Friends]]: Newton calls out Howard Marner on this, claiming that back when they were both scientists, Howard would have realized the value of Johnny Five's sentience. Howard bluntly replies, "[[Only in It For the Money|I'm a businessman now.]] I'm not a scientist anymore."
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: It takes a lot of convincing before the human leads will concede that Number Five is alive and not [[Just a Machine]]. This is the main moral premise of both films, leading to the end of the second movie in which Johnny is publicly declared a sentient being and made a citizen of the United States.
* [[Wild Goose Chase]]: Number 5 notices his [[Tracking Device]] and throws it into the pick up truck of an elderly couple. The soldiers in pursuit of him find the couple instead.
* [[You Are Number Six|You Are Number Five]]: He starts as just a number, but gives himself the name Johnny Five. Ben calls him "Number Johnny Five".
* [[Your Mom]]: Invoked in the first movie as a taunt to Number Five's pursuers.
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