Surveillance as the Plot Demands: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Blossom''': Hey, who filmed this anyway? What, do you have cameras all over the world?

 

 

The bad guys [[Sinister Surveillance|have cameras everywhere]]. Like some even-more-sinister version of ''[[Big Brother]]'', they always know exactly where the heroes are and what they're doing, even if there's no possible reason for them to be able to. It doesn't matter if they're [[Subspace Ansible|three galaxies away]] or [[San Dimas Time|five thousand years in the past]], the villains can still find them. They can put anything that they want up on the big screen, making you wonder why they don't just give up on the bizarre plans for world domination and [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|just surreptitiously blackmail every government]] in the world without the good guys ever finding out. Or at least you would if you weren't so busy trying to puzzle out exactly how [[Lex Luthor|Luthor]] managed to get a live feed of the [[Superfriends]] repairing satellites in outer space.

 

 

 

See also [[Big Brother Is Watching]].

 

* The Digimon Kaiser in ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]''. One of the standby jokes in any [[Crack Fic]] involved him being caught aiming the camera in [[Male Gaze|odd directions]]...

* MakubeX in ''[[GetBackers]]'' while inside his tower.

* ''[[Dragon Quest: Legend of the Hero Abel]]'' has Baramos monitoring the heroes' progress through magic using the eyes of his many minions.

* The new ''[[Ai no Kusabi]]'' OVA shows that Iason has surveillance cameras all over Eos watching Riki where ever he goes.

* L from ''[[Death Note]]'' likes this trope, {{spoiler|so do Mello and Near}} and is often seen watching [[Ominous Multiple Screens]]. At one point L put 64 cameras in his suspect's room only to take them out again later.

* Briefly appears in ''[[Gurren Lagann]]'' for a single episode: Tymilph has a wall of screens, displaying various things. [[Male Gaze|Including one camera aimed directly at Yoko's breasts.]]

* In keeping with his theme of knowing everything Metron of [[The New Gods]] has been shown to have a corridor full of "datalinks" (which are really just TV screens) showing information from all across the universe. Even Highfather is shocked by the things he sees Metron is able to spy on.

* Justified in ''[[Agents of Atlas]]'', where their opponent has {{spoiler|a video link to their robot team member, allowing him to always have a camera where they are.}}

** There Kool-Aid man is able to bring up a camera shot of some "Thirsties" bothering some children even though he shouldn't be able to switch to footage of this, relating Kool-Aid Man to [[Big Brother]].

{{quote|"''The Kool-Aid Man sees you when you're sleeping. *leans in close to camera* [[Nightmare Fuel|The Kool-Aid Man sees you in your nightmares]].''"}}

* In ''[[You Only Live Twice]]'', two scenes where [[James Bond]] follows the action through TV screens might bring [[Fridge Logic]]. In one, the car television shows a helicopter throwing a car in the middle of the sea - ''from above'' - and Blofeld's ship engulfing the American one ''in space''.

* The skeksis' of ''[[The Dark Crystal]]'' have spying creatures called crystal bats, whose bodies appear to be lenses; the images picked up by these lenses can be seen through the title crystal.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* ''[[Discworld]]'':

* ''The Light of Other Days'' by [[Arthur C. Clarke]] and [[Stephen Baxter]]:

** The whole book is about the invention of a device that allows the user to look anywhere in the world they want; later on, the technology is discovered to be able to directly view events ''in the past''. The main focus of the novel is on how the world adapts to the fact that "privacy" literally has no meaning anymore, since you can be watched at any point in your life (and even things you've done in the past).

** [[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story "The Dead Past" covers similar ground.

* [[Robert Ludlum]]'s ''[[The Prometheus Deception]]'' has a villain with this ''modus operandi''.

** Some of the Valar have vast surveillance assets. When upon the holy mountain Taniquetil beside his spouse Varda, Manwe Sulimo could see anywhere in the world; likewise, when Varda was similarly situated, she could hear anywhere in the world. [[Big Bad|Melkor/Morgoth]] had a rather nasty variant; he set a chair atop the peak of Thangorodrim where he imprisoned Hurin, just so Hurin could see all of Morgoth's victories and the ruin of Hurin's own nation and family.

*** Due to their limitations, Frodo famously slipped through the surveillance net to [[Walk Into Mordor|get into]] [[Mordor]]. Sauron has to resort to more "mundane" methods of info gathering such as via his flying Nazgul.

*** Additionally, one is actually used against Sauron: Aragorn uses the Palantír taken from Isengard to show Sauron that Isildur's heir is alive and challenging him. However, this is all just a ploy to keep Sauron's attention (and Palantír) pointed elsewhere while Sam and Frodo slip into [[Mordor]].

* In ''[[Septimus Heap]]'', Merrin Meredith and later Simon Heap can use appropriately-name [[Evil Lair|The Observatory]] to spy out the Castle from safe distance.

 

* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', the Trio has cameras where the need them. How they pulled off planting that {{spoiler|gnome in Buffy's lawn}} is a question for the ages.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

* ''[[Lost]]'''s "Others" seem to know the Losties' every move for the first few seasons. This is eventually explained (mostly) by the presence of spies in their camps and cameras all over the island.

* In ''[[Kyle XY]]'', Latnok apparently installs cameras in places like a diner in the middle of nowhere.

* Justified and then averted in ''[[Person of Interest]]'' where the Machine is fed data from millions of cameras already installed all over the country. It can thus track individual people everywhere in the county and determine if they are pose a threat. However, the Machine was specifically designed to deny its human operators access to its inner workings and thus they cannot just tell the Machine to track a specific person. The Machine outputs a Social Security number of a Person of Interest and the humans have to track that person down through other means.

 

== Mythology ==

* In the graphic novel ''Lucifer'' the title character once flies to the "Aleph Point" which seems to serve this exact function. Given the Norse mythological overtones the series has later on it's not unlikely the reference to Hlidskjalf is intentional.

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** Which was done again in ''[[Chrono Cross]]''. The {{spoiler|save points}} also acted as {{spoiler|subtle mind-control devices for FATE}}.

* In the first ''[[Rayman]]'' game, [[Meaningful Name|Mr. Dark]] spends most the game spying on the eponymous hero. Doesn't matter if Rayman's inside a cave or atop a mountain; Mr. Dark is always watching from that hill.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

{{quote|'''Stark''': How many cameras do you ''have''?

'''Osborn''': What, did you ''buy out'' Google Earth? }}

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** It has been demonstrated at least once that it can be "jammed", causing it to display only static (Aku treats it like a faulty TV, but [[Percussive Maintenance|hitting it]] doesn't help much). Also, it probably does a great job of ''tracking'' people once the user has found them, but might not be so hot at actually finding them in the first place.

** Still, even if Jack keeps winning, you'd think he would just send [[Zerg Rush|staggered waves]] of weak or competent enemies to tire and infuriate Jack before he delivers a finishing blow. At least part of this plan has actually happened in series.

* Played with in the Season 3 première of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'':

{{quote|'''The Monarch:''' Yeah, yeah, roll the clip...

'''The Monarch:''' Okay, okay, I get it. }}

* In ''[[He-Man and the Masters of the Universe]]'':

** This is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] when Kim points out the obvious security risks of the bad guy having a direct video link into the hero's base. Somehow, [[Genre Blind|the heroes fail to see any problem with this]].

** Aside from Kim and [[Face Heel Turn|Shego]], who exasperatedly comments that [[Too Dumb to Live|such idiocy]] is the reason the [[Dark Action Girl]] left.

** It is ''crawling'' with hidden cameras, from both the Decepticons ''and'' the Autobots. Oddly enough, even when they're supposedly connecting with the 'visual sensors' of another bot, there's always some sort of angled camera view instead.

** Megatron has one of those {{spoiler|when he's dismembered}} during the first few episodes of ''[[Transformers Animated]]''.

* In the "Abducted" episode of ''[[Invader Zim]]'':

** The duo of aliens that abducted Zim somehow have recorded video of Zim lying about being human, made even more implausible in this case since these aliens are so stupid that it'd be a stretch to think they'd even know how to use a camera.

{{quote|'''Zim:''' Why would you record that...?}}

* The ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' [[Clip Show]] claims that most of the clips shown were things [[Loony Fan|Irving]] had recorded over the summer. Some of these clips were from en episode that was [[All Just a Dream]] [[Dream Within a Dream|Within A Dream]].

* On ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'', Lucius seems to be able to pull up anything going on in Miseryville on his big screen. This is probably a side effect of his [[Reality Warper]] powers.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:The Index Is Watching You]]

[[Category:The Plot Demanded This Index]]