Static Electricity
 | This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable. This trope has been moved back to the Trope Workshop because it needs a better description. Two sentences, the first of which is an Example as a Thesis, is not a suitable description. |
 | This Trope page is a stub. You can help All The Tropes by expanding it. If you have checked or updated this page and found the content to be suitable, please remove this notice. |
 | This is a Trope Workshop page, still under consideration for creation. Help out by editing the current page, or leave a comment on the Talk page. Trope Workshop Guidelines |
So you're minding your own business and then you're about to touch something and then ZAP! You're in for a shock.
 |
Zappity Zap-Zap, Double D! —Ed, Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "Every Which Way But Ed"
|
 |
Alternatively, a character will shuffle across a carpet in socks to build up a charge to do this.
Though in super hero or fantasy, the character in question uses static electricity to warm up so he can deliver an electric jolts to the Big Bad, monster, or mook, whereas in other fictional media, making static electricity is the power of the hero.
| This page needs a better description. You can help this wiki by expanding or clarifying the information given. |
Examples of Static Electricity include:
Anime and Manga
- Occurs in Detective Conan as the trigger for a murder.
- Lucky Star: STURONGGAAAHHH!
- Late in the second season of A Certain Scientific Railgun, the title character builds up a static charge on her own body as a side effect of consciously overriding her own nervous system in order to be able to move. This comes as a shock[1] to her roommate, who tried to give her a hug.
Comic Books
- Bone: Fone Bone rubs his feet on the ground to build up a static charge ("for luck") before touching the Crown of Horns. This causes a chain reaction that kills Briar.
Film - Animation
- On Cats Don't Dance, Battle Butler Max rubs Pudge on his bald head and makes him stick to the roof of the theater with static cling. He eventually comes down, his feathers standing on end in a fright wig. Later, he shakes hands with the turtle, inadvertently shocking him.
Film - Live Action
- In Office Space, Peter gets a static shock every day when he comes into work touching the door handle. One way it illustrates his changed self is that he comes in one day with a power screwdriver and removes the handle, which shows he's taken control of his life.
Literature
- On Arthur, when the class is having a sleepover at the museum Binky complains that it will be the same as last year's. A Flash Back shows us Binky being throughly bored and annoyed last year including someone in the static electricity display shocking him. "OW!" Then in this year's field trip eveything happens the same as last year, including the shock. This time Binky reacts with Dull Surprise. "Ow. Even that's the same as last year."
Live Action TV
- The King of Queens: after accidentally shocking each other, Carey and Doug start a static shock fight in their socks.
Newspaper Comics
- Dilbert: a few strips had Dogbert shuffling along to carpet to charge himself with electricity. He confronts Dilbert and demands to be called "Thor, Dog of Thunder". When Dilbert responds with a joke about resistors, Dogbert shocks him with electricity, complete with X-Ray Sparks.
- Baby Blues: in one strip Hammie rubs his feet on the carpet to use X-Ray Sparks on his older sister with static electricity.
Oral Tradition, Myths and Legends
- Lightning is static electricity; its weaponisation in classical myth is at least as old as Zeus from the Greco-Roman pantheon and Thor from Norse Mythology.
Video Games
- Roger Wilco used a shag rug and some dance moves to deliver an incapacitating static charge to a cyborg kidnapper.
- In Pokémon, various electric pokemon, like joltik and Oricorio's Pom-Pom form, makes and uses static electricity to generate electrifying results.
Western Animation
- The Tick: a minor character, the Carpeted Man, has this as his superpower.
- On Pinky and The Brain, one of Brain's plans is to build a giant dryer that will create enough static cling to trap everyone in their own clothes.
- In one episode of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, the resident Mad Scientist uses robot dogs to kidnap cats from all over the neighborhood. He then uses a cat-petting machine to build up static electricity and power a Lightning Gun.
- Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy: Edd demonstrates the concept to Ed, who of course takes it too far. Zapity Zap Zap!
- Family Guy: Peter gains the "power" to zap people after he buys a pair of long underwear. This results in annoying Lois so much she has all of the carpet removed from the house, kicking off the B plot.
- ↑ Pun intended.