History Main / ETGaveUsWiFi

* In the ''Literature/MyTeacherIsAnAlien'' series by Creator/BruceCoville, an alien helps humanity develop television in hopes that it will slow humanity's development. He later regrets the interference.

* In a lovely piece of irony, [[{{Series/TheXFiles}} Gillian]] [[AgentScully Anderson]] apparently believes this.
** A quick Google search confirms she isn't the only one. This little factoid made it hard to search off-TVTropes for more examples of this trope.

->''"We own the patents on a few things we confiscated from out-of-state visitors: velcro, microwave ovens, liposuction."''
-->-- '''K''', ''Film/MenInBlack''

* Similar to the 2007 film, ''TransformersAnimated'' has the robotic technology of the 22nd century all reverse-engineered from Megatron's dormant head.

Works where there are InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien instead of humans can also fit this trope.

** In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations'', it's confirmed that [[spoiler:Altaïr had learned the design for the first handgun -- and forearm-mounted at that! --]] from a vision given by one of these, which had been implied in ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII''. Also, in a brief scene at the beginning of the "Battle of Forli" DLC for ''II'', a brief activation of the Apple shows images of designs that LeonardoDaVinci (who was watching the Apple) would later set to paper.

* ''Hard Landing'' by Algis Budrys, in which a bunch of crash landed alien Joes have to get by on Earth, and one of them decides to sell alien tech to the US.

** The episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "Dalek"]] features a tech mogul who steals alien tech. According to him, Broadband is from {{Roswell|ThatEndsWell}}.

* In Creator/OrsonScottCard's ''Literature/EndersGame'' and ''Ender's Shadow'', certain technologies like gravity manipulation and [[spoiler: Faster-than-Light communication]] come from reverse engineered alien technology.
** And then changed in the ''Earth Afire'' prequel where humanity already has gravity lensing technology ''before'' the Formics even get to Earth, courtesy of [[MegaCorp Juke Ltd]].

* Pseudo-example in TheStinger of the second ''NightAtTheMuseum'' movie, where a cell phone left in a ''portrait-sized photograph'' prompted a guy from just after WWII to attempt to reverse engineer it. According to the photo, his name was Joey Motorola. Motorola, Inc. was founded in 1928 by Paul V. Galvin [[OlderThanTheyThink and was]] ''[[OlderThanTheyThink already]]'' [[OlderThanTheyThink making hand-held radios in 1940]].

* TheAsylum film ''Transmorphers'' has the human resistance's weaponry reverse-engineered from the alien robots'.

* In the first live-action ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie, the technological advances of the 20th century were made by reverse engineering the captive, frozen Megatron after he was discovered in 1897.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Assassins Creed|I}}'', the [[TheKnightsTemplar Templars]] (and by extension, society) are implied to have gotten all of our advances from reverse-engineering alien artifacts (with a couple of failures, see Philadelphia Experiment (done by by US government, not Templars)). Later on in the series, [[spoiler:it turns out it's not aliens exactly, but rather the [[{{Precursors}} First Civilization]] of humans on this planet, who created ''homo sapiens'' to serve them but were overthrown and wiped out.]]

* ''Series/ChappellesShow'' had a take on the movie DeepImpact where the president reveals all the nations secrets in the shadow of impending doom. One of these is the existence of aliens who brought us technical marvels such as both Playstation 1 and 2. (3 and 4 had yet to be released)

* We've evidently gotten quite a bit of knowledge out of that one crashed spaceship in ''Film/IndependenceDay''. An extended version of the film explicitly states that it was used to create Earth computers, which also {{handwave}}s the vulnerability of the mothership to a computer virus.

* Preventing the reverse of this--keeping Human/Federation tech out of the hands of alien civilizations whose society might be altered by it--is one of the original reasons for ''Franchise/StarTrek's'' [[{{Alien Non-Interference Clause}} Prime Directive]].

** In general, once the Foundation has analyzed something to the point where it's completely understood, they arrange of what they've learned to be released to the general public, since at that point it's no longer considered to be paranormal/anomalous.

* In ''FanFic/HarryTano'', the presence of former Jedi Ahsoka Tano soon leads to Republic Tech being recreated on Earth, albeit with a large portion of it being MagiTech until workarounds can be found.

* ChappellesShow had a take on the movie DeepImpact where the president reveals all the nations secrets in the shadow of impending doom. One of these is the existence of aliens who brought us technical marvels such as both Playstation 1 and 2. (3 and 4 had yet to be released)

* In the ''MyTeacherIsAnAlien'' series by Creator/BruceCoville, an alien helps humanity develop television in hopes that it will slow humanity's development. He later regrets the interference.
* Inverted and played straight in ''GoMutants'', where the human invention of nuclear weapons brings our planet to the attention of alien races [[spoiler:leading one of them to invent the [[strike:internet]] PLEX for us.]]
* In ''TheManWhoFellToEarth'' (both book and film), alien protagonist Thomas Jerome Newton starts an Earthly corporate empire via his people's inventions (electronics, film stock, etc., all far ahead of human technology) with the intent of raising the capital he needs to fulfill his mission.

* In OrsonScottCard's ''EndersGame'' and ''Ender's Shadow'', certain technologies like gravity manipulation and [[spoiler: Faster-than-Light communication]] come from reverse engineered alien technology.

* In ''[[GarrettPI Angry Lead Skies]]'', two of the "[[UnusualEuphemism silver elves]]" [[TouchedByVorlons enhance Kip Prose's brain]] so he'll invent better and better technology, hoping that he'll eventually create the industrial base for them to repair their ship. [[spoiler: They're taken home by some of the other Visitors, but Kip retains his inventiveness and uses it to introduce stuff like tricycles, pencils, and folding umbrellas to [=TunFaire=] in later books.]]

** In # 14, the tea visits [[Area51 Zone 91]], where the government is rumo study a crashd alien spaceship. A crazy woman at the beginning of the book strongly believes this is how humans got computers, but at the end we find out [[spoiler:there ''is'' an alien construct being studied... an Andalite ''toilet''. And an obsolete model at that.]] According to Ax, humans can't learn anything from it, so they decide not to say anything to the military devoting their lives to hopefully reaching the stars.

[[caption-width-right:250:[[TechnologyMarchesOn "Behold our superior technology: the mobile wireless telecommunicator!”]] ]]

->''"We own the patents on a few things we confiscated from out-of-state visitors: velcro, microwave ovens, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking liposuction]]."''
-->--'''K''', ''Film/MenInBlack''