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Unusual User Interface: Difference between revisions
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== Anime and Manga ==
* The ''Manga Shakespeare'' version of ''[[Hamlet]]'' is set in a futuristic (if a little [[Used Future|used]]) cyberpunk world. Polonius uses a [[Holographic Terminal]] that seems to be controlled by a staff of some sort, and all letters and notes delivered in the play are in the form of small capsules that plug into ports on the characters' wrists (or in Horatio's case, forehead).
* The ''[[Ghost in
** The reason (some) cyborgs used keyboards rather than direct interfacing was to avoid them catching a virus or getting hacked. The mechanically-enhanced fingers were just to enable cyborgs to type faster than humans.
* The little hacker kid from ''[[DT Eightron]]'' doesn't use keyboards anymore; he links cables to the tip of his fingers and he types, in midair.
* In ''[[Tenchi Muyo! GXP]]'', [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]] Seiryo's [[Cool Ship|(un)Cool Ship]], the ''Unko'', is controlled in combat by a giant Bingo game. The entire scurvy crew of [[Space Pirates]] sit in front of boards, and maneuvering thrusters fire when a called number is on one of the cards; they return fire whenever someone gets "Bingo". Granted, the Hat of the ship is "Good Luck", but it's definitely weird.
* In ''[[Outlaw Star]]'', Melfina the android navigator controls the ship by being suspended naked in a tank of some liquid.
** Not entirely. It seems to be that she merely facilitates the ease-of-use of the ships supposedly complex systems, since while she can control the ship if need be, the Outlaw Star is much more capable with Gene or Jim at the wheel as well, so to speak.
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*** This might be slightly related to Guld *not being entirely human*. He's half Zentraedi. {{spoiler|Which is why he isn't instantly turned into a puddle of goo when dogfighting with the X-9 after he turns off the limiter (but in the movie version there is a particularly graphic eyeball implosion in the fight sequence).}}
** ''[[Macross 7]]'' features Basara's custom Valkyrie controlled by a ''[[The Power of Rock|guitar]]''.
* The Humongous Mecha in ''[[
** In the second season, the Megadeii like Big O are shown to be sentient, and can bond with their pilots by literally jacking into their backs; if someone who's not a proper Dominus tries to use one, however, he gets eaten alive by wires, just like {{spoiler|Alan Gabriel}}.
* The character Gein from ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' builds several "combat dolls" - they're basically clockwork mech suits that are controlled with the same mechanism as puppets, except from the inside.
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* ''[[Superman]]'' has a kryptonian computer made of crystals. Touching or rearranging the crystals makes the computer perform different functions. How he remembers these without labels is a [[Required Secondary Power]].
** Or [[Fridge Brilliance|the labels are either tiny or respond to a light frequency beyond human sight so that only he can read them]].
* [[
* ''[[eXistenZ]]'' has biological computers which interface with you through plugging a ''very phallic'' tentacle into a port in the base of your spine. The movie plays this for all it's worth, even having characters [[Fetish Fuel|lick]] the ports of other characters during sex scenes.
* ''[[The Matrix]]'' has every human used by the machines outfitted with a port in the back of the skull to plug into the matrix. Non-vat grown humans can't get one installed, either.
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*** And [[Holographic Terminal|Holographic Terminals]].
**** And screws straight into your brain.
* The Na'vi in ''[[Avatar (
* In ''[[Flight of the Navigator]]'', the boy flies the ship by placing his hands on two hemispheres, and leaning one way or another.
* In ''[[Zardoz]]'', a large crystal set into a ring projects written data or film footage onto surfaces, as well as responding in kind to verbal commands.
* One of the alien ships in ''Buckaroo Banzai'' had its controls set up to be operated with one's toes.
* In [[
** This works great for the pilot, who was very young and had invented his own ideas for all of the controls. For the engineer who was a prudish thespian and didn't care...
* In ''Zoom'', the spaceship at Area 51 is controled via placing one's hand in a sphere of gooey stuff.
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* In one of the ''Starstormers'' series of young adult sf novels by [[Nicholas Fisk]], the kids designed a weaponry interface that could be used by the ship's ''cat''! It was essentially a variant on the traditional cat-toy of waving the shiny about and watching the cat jump at it, only the shiny was the display showing where the enemy ship was, and the cat was in a harness that transmitted its movements to the targeting systems.
** Similarly, a short story in ''Cats in Space (And Other Places)'' had a scene with a cat defending a ship from aliens who had remotely incapacitated the human crew by leaping and batting at the screen, which the computer interpreted via telepathic interface. The series of well-intentioned mishaps that caused the ship to respect the cat's "orders" in the first place also caused the cat to receive its own paycheck. Plus danger expenses.
* The entire Starship Bistromath in Douglas Adams' ''Life, the Universe and Everything'' is an unusual interface. It's a [[Exactly What It Says
* E.W. Hildick's Ghost Squad novels featured an inversion of this trope. One of the main characters regularly used a word processor (with a regular keyboard) that he built himself. The inversion is that the protagonists were ghosts of young people, and they were severely limited in how they could interact with the physical world. The electronics whiz's affinity for his creation gave them a way to communicate with the living.
* In ''Memory Prime'', a ''[[Star Trek]]'' novel by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Spock interfaces directly with a network of sentient computers by shoving the wire leads through the tips of his fingers so that they make contact with his nervous system. In effect, he's mind-melding with the internet.
** Hopefully not this [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|Internet.]]
** Others melded with that network on a regular basis; they had fingernail implants that played nicely with the sockets Spock jammed his hands into.
* In the ''[[Wing Commander (
* In [[Timothy Zahn|Timothy Zahns]] ''Conqueror'' series (''Conqueror's Pride'', ''Conqueror's Heritage'', and ''Conqueror's Legacy''), the [[Cool Plane|Copperheads]] were controlled through a jack in the back of the heads of the pilot and tail gunner, with the interface basically mapping the fighter's functions to a virtual human body. Damage is represented by pain, weapons by the user's fists, and so forth
* ''[[Dirk
* ''[[Neuromancer]]'' practically invented this trope, especially as regards the [[Cyberpunk]] genre.
** Vernor Vinge's ''True Names'' and K.W.Jeter's ''Doctor Adder'' predated Neuromancer.
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* In Scott Westerfeld's ''[[Uglies]]'' series, the Specials have this, as well as in the fourth book, ''Extras''. In ''Extras'', everyone has these.
* In ''Skinned'' by Robin Wasserman, this is available to the general public, but most people don't have it.
* In ''[[The
* Head jacks and neural splices in Lauren P Burka's short stories ''Mate'' and ''Whip-Hand''.
* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s novels ''[[The Stars Are Cold Toys]]'' and ''[[Star Shadow]]'', the Geometer's ships can be controlled with a variety of methods, including speaking to the ship's AI, ''thinking'' to it, or simply putting your hands into containers filled with a gelatinous liquid called the "colloid actuator", which allows for a "meld" between the pilot and the craft.
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** Humans also seem to interface well enough whenever putting their hands in this cylon liquid. But perhaps this is facilitated by the hybrids always present in the bathtub in those instances.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Long Game" had people installing ports in their foreheads.
* ''[[
** Once the series' [[Action Girl]] (well one of them anyway) was able to control the ship after being infused with the pilot's DNA (the ship's pilot is part of a race whose only method of leaving their home planet is being bonded to [[Living Ship|Living Ships]]). The Pilot race's language is apparently complex enough to give a great deal of information in a single sentence, so perhaps only a few buttons are needed.
** Of course, since Moya is [[Sapient Ship|alive]], one wonders whether Pilot controls the ship, so much as negotiates with her. Frequently Pilot's role is to talk Moya *out* of something she wants to do.
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*** Trying to reconcile both of these sense-making points may get you tangled up in a [[Timey-Wimey Ball]], though.
* Taelon shuttles in ''[[Earth: Final Conflict]]'' are piloted using a gesture based system, including a bow-and-arrow like move for firing the weapons. Similarly...
* The Liandra from ''[[Babylon
** The White Star has very odd main controls in its early versions, although as it gets redesigned the controls become more normal. Even in the earliest version, though, there are some fairly ordinary control panels.
** Sharlin class cruisers (otherwise known as Minbari War Cruisers) appeared to be commanded verbally. This is a very odd choice for a warship.
*** Most warships are ''commanded'' verbally. Minbari cruisers do have a normal crew who presumably ''operate'' the ship with more or less normal control interfaces, just not in the same room as the commander(s).
* ''[[
* Willow freaks out her friends by accessing a computer database via touch (and magic) in the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Smashed."
* [[Star Trek:
** Speaking of Star Trek: TNG, you kids today may be all jaded and stuff, but those touch screen [http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Okudagram Okudagrams] on the Enterprise were freaking ''awesome'' in 1987. The rest of the ship's interior may have looked like the lobby of the Knoxville Days Inn but I wanted one of those control panels in the worst way.
*** Just remember to take the [http://www.cracked.com/article_17316_instruction-manuals-uss-enterprise.html fireworks] out first.
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*** [[Fridge Logic|How'd he play that thing with his helmet on?]]
** [[Power Rangers Wild Force|Zen-Aku]] also has musically-controlled Zords.
** Dr. K of ''[[
** Some of the Megazords seem to be directed by the Rangers waving their hands over [insert cool object here].
*** Sometimes not even by waving over anything, but simply getting the Megazord to do a finishing move by what can only be described as [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FVEL08hef0 synchronized arm dancing.] They would basically Macarena a monster to death.
** One incredibly unintuitive system had the Rangers sitting in little pods on a checkered surface, and directing the Megazord by way of ''chess moves''. ''In the heat of battle''.
* On the ''[[Land of the Lost (TV series)|Land of the Lost]]'' series, pylons were controlled by arranging different colors of crystal on a glowing grid at the top of a stone pedestal. This was made ''insanely'' difficult by the sheer number of possible combinations of colors, as well as the tendency of crystals to blow up, get hot, generate force fields, or whatever if they actually came into contact with one another. (But then, if it was ''easy'' to operate the portal-opening pylon, the Marshalls could've just camped out inside it for a few days until they triggered a portal leading home.)
* In ''[[Cosmos]]'', [[Carl Sagan]] controlled his dandelion-seed-shaped "Spaceship of the Imagination" by waving his hands over a control panel embedded with quartz crystals with colored lights shining through them.
* In ''[[Andromeda]]'', Seamus Harper had a dataport in the side of his neck, which allowed him to plug into, and interface with computer systems.
* In ''[[
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** Later games, however, have caught up with WiFi and made wireless the prime mode of interaction with the Internet. People still have ports in their head that connect to the web, they just don't require the cables.
** Don't forget the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality interfaces, which can look like ''anything'' the user wants it to. A Node's Operating system could very well just look like a library, with each book representing a program. There's no limiting the weirdness.
* The 'mechs from ''[[
** The novels based on the tabletop game give the Clan [[Powered Armor|Elementals]] another system to make up for the lack of buttons to push. Their weapons fire when they put their hands in certain positions, and they turn things on and off by the "glance system," where their viewport has a series of icons above and below it. To activate the icon, the Elemental just looks at it for a moment. They also apparently use modified versions of the neurolinking systems.
** Battletech does have invasive cybernetic control systems however. That being said, said systems are every rare, cutting edge technology. They also have a tendency to drive the user insane after a few years, if not kill them out right
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*** It could also be a pun on the medieval "ribauldequin" or organ gun.
** Many walker units are like this as well.
*** Dreadnoughts are also mentionable, since you have to be pretty close to dead, and have had to have done something pretty epic just prior, or have been in a very good standing within their force to justify being placed in one. The Dreadnought is equal parts [[Walking Tank]] and [[Man in
*** Ork [[Funetik Aksent|Killa Kanz and Deff Dreddz]] are just like dreadnoughts, except for being ramshackle and "orkier" in design, the pilots are all volunteer, and they are permanently hardwired into the machine (whereas dreanought pilots' sarcophagi can be removed from the dreadnought when they're not in use). [[Our Goblins Are Different|Gretchen]] tend to take a liking to [[Villainous Upgrade|piloting the Kan]], while [[Our Orcs Are Different|Orks]] tend to resent the day-to-day existence inside of a Deff Dredd (having to eat meals through a mechanical straw, for example), but they tend to forget their qualms when they're shredding though power armored infantry like butter.
*** Other examples that fit the trope are the Dark Eldar Talos, which is actually run by an autonomous AI, but has a [[Human Resources|tortured slave inside]] [[Powered
** Let's not forget the [[Sarcasm Mode|always fun and exciting]] [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|passages through the warp]]. The Navigator, a human mutant who has a third eye capable of seeing in the warp, sits in a chair that he is literally wired into (including a tube that deposits saline capsules into his mouth to prevent him from dehydrating), which is then raised into a transparent hemisphere on the surface of the ship, where he pilots the vessel as it travels through hell. The only navigational landmark for him to use is the Astronomican, and eldritch horrors that would drive a normal person insane constantly gnash and throw themselves at the vessel, kept at bay only the Gellar Field which the ship generates for (relative) safe passage through the warp. The results of a ship's Gellar Field failing are, to put it lightly, rather unpleasant.
* ''[[Cthulhu Tech]]'': Engels. [[Homage|see]] ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' above, without the [[Synchronization]], but with more invasive surgery and SAN checks.
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== Videogames ==
* ''[[Final Fantasy]] X-2's'' [[Big Bad]] had a buglike [[Humongous Mecha]] called Vegnagun, and like its name would suggest, it had a [[BFG]] built into its mouth. Now how do you suspect something like that would be controlled? Why, with a gigantic pipe organ, of course!
* [[
** And based on the email, the game it recommends trying the demo of claims [[Your Mind Makes It Real|"fireballs burn your face, walls hurt when you hit them"]] this is not exactly unreasonable to be a taboo.
*** On the other hand, [[Mission Control]] Alex Jacobson, the person the mail is addressed too, is perfectly fine, physically and mentally.
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== Webcomics ==
* Similar to the Terminator example above, ''[[
* From ''[[
** Earlier in the series, Agatha uses a modified pipe organ to control her army of clanks.
* You could see Ping from ''[[Megatokyo]]'' as an Unusual User Interface. She's a [[Robot Girl|gynoid]] made by Sony as an accessory for playing [[Dating Sim|Dating Sims]].
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* ''[[Terinu]]'' has the old "port in the head" method of cybernetic interface, but it's limited to expensive and specialized "Cybergliders" who run the risk of eventual brain damage even before you add in encountering hostile ICE. Everyone else sticks to either voice commands or keyboards.
* Kimiko Ross from [[Dresden Codak]] has a jack in her upper back.
* [[
* ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]:'' The default language on dragon computers is Chaucerian English. Molly, being an omnidisciplinary scholar, can read it with ease. "Hey! You got those funny s's that look like lowercase f's! Giggle!"
* Bedivere in the Space Arc of ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'' has an I/O jack replacing <s>his</s> her [[Artificial Limbs|missing hand]]. [http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/1065.htm Largely for the sake of a pun].
* Pip from ''[[Sequential Art (
* The David Hopkins webcomic ''Rework the Dead'' has the "purple light system" which allows species without limbs to use technology simply by looking at the control the want to operate and blinking
* ''[[
* Cwynhild from ''[[
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* ''[[Transformers]]'' use keyboards. Why is that an [[Unusual User Interface]]? Because Transformers are ''robots'' who have been repeatedly shown to be able to interface with a computer by just plugging into it. You'd think it would be their favorite mode of computer control... But no.
** In the new "Transformers: Animated" series, Soundwave first shows up with Laserbeak, an electric guitar (that turns into a bird) that controls the Autobots' mind when he plays it. During his second appearance he's upgraded to Ratbat, a keytar (that turns into a bat) he uses to reprogram them. It seems to take a while; he ends up standing around in the sewer for a while rocking out.
** In ''[[
* [[Played for Laughs]] in a ''[[Futurama]]'' episode that parodies ''[[Minority Report]]''; the police's Future Crimes computer is made of giant holographic screens manipulated by hand. To focus you make binocular motions in front of your face and to rewind you do the Cabbage Patch.
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** Before the debut of the Nintendo64, there were jokes being passed around that the controller was in fact a glob of jelly that could read the electrical impulses from your brain through your fingertips.
** Before '''that''', there was the Powerglove.
{{quote| '''Angry Video Game Nerd''' (quoting ''[[
** Before... well, a little after that, there was the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-UZv3AS-E Sega Activator].
** Not to mention [[wikipedia:U-Force|U-Force]].
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