Readings Are Off The Scale - Television Tropes & Idioms

The instruments used by the heroes, be they solitary investigators in the back woods or interstellar explorers on the fringes of the galaxy, are never up to the task of actually measuring the full scope of their subjects. Nor can they be recalibrated to expand that range at the cost of some loss of detail. The result is that not a day goes by that something doesn't peg the meters, rendering them completely useless.

A reading that's so far off the scale as to be truly incredible may even cause the measuring device to suffer from Explosive Instrumentation.

It should probably be noted that, as the Real Life Examples below indicate, in Real Life, it's seldom as easy as just "recalibrating". At a certain point, any measuring device will eventually reach the limit of what it was designed to measure.

Seen in almost every Space Opera.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

In Dragonball Z, some characters have eyepieces called "Scouters" that measure ki, outputting it as a 'combat rating' (or 'power level' in the dub), and if one of these is used to measure a combat rating that is rising at a rate that the unit cannot handle, it'll explode. To be fair, this is only a flaw in the low-grade ones for the Red Shirts. The higher-ups get ones that are perfect and don't have this flaw (though Vegeta has a bad habit of crushing them anyway). Still, it's hard to see why they bother with them, since it's easy enough to learn how to sense energy levels without them (Then again, no one told them that)...somewhat fair, as Dragon Ball Z characters seem to get more powerful every season. In other words, they're OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!
- What, nine thousand?
  - There's no way that can be right!
- One instance involved the mooks on a different planet measuring the readings of Frieza and Goku... who were killed when the readings overload blew up the entire complex.
- Toryiama admitted he did this intentionally, as he didn't like the hard-and-fast "this character is more powerful than that one by this amount" corner the scouters had painted him into, and also the ever-increasing power levels would have made for ever-increasingly stupid sounding numbers.
- Kids Next Door spoofs this part of Dragon Ball Z in a skewed Rashomon-type episode. In Numbah 4's telling of the pizza delivery, it is a spoof of Dragon Ball Z, down to transformations and Ki (Or rather bubblegum bubbles) balls. During the scene where he is continually being zapped by The Delightful Kids From Down The Lane (as a multi-headed Freiza no less), Numbah 4 states their power is off the charts, and continues saying "Must...Get....Bigger charts!"
In one episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Lt. Ibuki uses this trope directly ("All our meters and gauges are going off the scale!") when trying to recover Eva-01 and Shinji.
- Misato finally addresses this trope in one of the last few episodes:
  Maya: Yet, I can't believe it. I mean, it's impossible on this system.
  Misato: Nevertheless, it's a fact. We must accept the fact and then investigate the cause.
In the final episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, after Lord Genome's Heroic Sacrifice, the Spiral Power gauge doesn't just register a number that's off the scale; the glass covering it actually shatters and it keeps increasing onto empty air, in plain defiance of all logic and common sense.
- Viral does this several times to Kamina. But that may be more because he's fucking KAMINA!
In Space Runaway Ideon, the crew of the Solo Ship head back to Earth to use the most advanced computer on the planet to try and calculate the titular mecha's potential output. Needless to say, they're all shocked when the readout points to literal infinity. Quickly, they begin to worry about the fact that a release of that kind of energy at once could destroy the universe. The computer wasn't exaggerating....
Used in the Fire Red Leaf Green saga of Pokemon Special, when Orm uses the dark Pokedex to gauge the power of Yellow's Pokemon, laughing at their low levels. And then her Viridian Power kicks in, sending the numbers over 100...which, as any Pokemon fan can tell you, is effectively off the scale.
- They were only boosted to the 80-90 range, which, while still on the scale, effectively stomped their opponents. The only characters that have stronger Pokemon (by level) are the two original protagonists.

Comic Books

Lampshaded in an issue of Fantastic Four:
Mr. Fantastic: Power is right off the readouts...
Human Torch: So I'm guessing bigger readouts wouldn't help? Like that amp in Spinal Tap that goes up to eleven?
In Cable & Deadpool issue #15, Black Box has Deadpool hooked up to some equipment that's monitoring him and showing Black Box his thoughts. After some observation, Black Box notes that Deadpool's ferocity and skills are off the charts.
Black Box: Clowns. He is too funny. But his ferocity—his skills—are off the charts. I should know...I've charted them all.

Film

Implied in Ghostbusters. The PKE meter (handheld device used to measure ghost activity) seems to only have three readings: Zero, Pegged and Blown Up. When we see it used, it only seems to go "active" when a ghost is within visual range, so it's only slightly better than, say, looking.
- The RPG explains this by saying that incidents with a reading of, say, three on the PKE meter are so easy to deal with (and therefore boring) that it's not worth depicting or roleplaying them. Of course, that's not Canon.
Temperature probes sent to absolute evil in The Fifth Element return some plus or minus 5000 degrees. A bit later, Leeloo's DNA is described has having hundreds of different bases.
In Star Wars The Phantom Menace, Anakin Skywalker's midi-chlorian level is said to be "off the charts."
Midway through Forbidden Planet, we are shown a power gauge consisting of a (very large) number of lighted displays, each of which shows ten times the amperage of the previous one. (Think of it as a decimal display with a whole lotta digits.) What the protagonists consider a large power output barely registers as a blip on the first gauge. Naturally, by the end of the film, we see the whole panel lit up (and flashing!).
The energy readings of the reactor in Antarctica are off the scale to Nite Owl's Owlship in the movie Watchmen

Literature

Despite their phenomenally polymorphic instrumentation and interface, sensors on Star Trek are especially prone to this fatal weakness. This is lampshaded in the Star Trek New Frontier book Being Human:
Soleta: Readings are off the scale.
McHenry: They're always off the scale. We've just to install bigger scales. [sic]
Funny inversion in Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: The temperature at the evil sigil during the Apocalypse is never measured correctly. The machines put it at either -150 or +350 degrees. Both are correct, 'cuz that's the temperature in Hell.
The Last Continent in Discworld uses a thaumometer, that measures magical energy. Sure enough, it melts when it detects a magical field of over a million thaums. To be fair, that is a far greater amount than would ever normally be encountered, but they'd accidentally traveled back in time to when a Creator was installing an entire new continent.
- Given the nature of Discworld magic, melting is about the most normal thing one could expect at this point — magic fields encountered in other areas have been known to make coins always land on their edge, cause dragons to appear out of thin air, and tear the fabric of reality.

Live Action TV

Crusade, the shortlived sequel series to Babylon 5, subverted this trope when the captain of the Excalibur ordered the sensors so affected be recalibrated so that the readings were back on the scale.
In the Lost episode "The Incident," Dharma is drilling into the island's electromagnetic pocket. Dr. Chang notes that the Gauss readings are off the scale. (This magnet is known to be strong enough to crash a plane.)
In Star Trek: "The Corbomite Maneuver," the mass of a starship only one mile across was off the scale, according to Spock. One wonders how he measured the mass of, ohh, planets or moons.

Real Life

The Apollo 13 incident began on the ground, when one of the oxygen tanks that would later go into space with the service module was having a mechanical problem. The technicians decided to vent the liquid oxygen from the tank with the help of the onboard heating system. This caused the temperature gauge (which was designed for use in space after all) to go off-scale high. However, nobody knew at the time just how far off the scale things were. Yet another mechanical failure took the thermostat out of commission, causing the temperature in the tank to reach over 1000 degrees and burning the insulation from the wires. The results are well-known.
- Specifically, (looking at the wikipedia article) the temp gauge didn't go above 100 degrees fahrenheit (38 degrees C). This wasn't considered a problem, because a thermostat was supposed to cut the heat at 80 degrees F. Unfortunately, this had fused on because when the electrIcal system was redesigned from 28v to 65v, the thermostat wasn't. The result was that temperatures hit an estimated 1000 degrees F (538 Degrees C)
Radiation monitoring instruments are prone to this sort of problem, especially those instruments used for health and safety physics.
- Following the 1961 power excursion in the SL-1 nuclear reactor and the subsequent steam explosion within and meltdown of the reactor, the first team to check out the alarm discovered their radiation detectors pegged at maximum. The second team, which went in with higher-range radiation detectors, also had their detectors peg at maximum. When the bodies of those killed in the explosion were recovered, the bodies alone pegged these high-range meters.
- When the Chernobyl reactor exploded, a dosimeter capable of measuring the true radiation levels failed when it was tried. Every other dosimeter merely read "off-scale," leading the crew to assume that the steam explosion hadn't penetrated the reactor (ignoring the pieces of reactor fuel lying everywhere). In reality, some areas of the plant had radiation levels 5,600 times the range of the dosimeters. And when a new dosimeter with a larger range was brought in? The high readings convinced them it was defective.
- A disturbing example from radiation medicine: the radiation monitoring devices in some malfunctioning radiation therapy devices (Therac-25 machines) experienced saturation when they (and patients) were incorrectly exposed to extremely high current electron beams. One patient, after one of these treatments, reported a sizzling sound, as of something frying, that turned out to be these saturated radiation monitors. Of course, the patient didn't necessarily know that at the time.
- Scarily, certain types of radiation detectors, if they are energized while in a strong radiation field, will actually read zero instead of pegging. Of course, don't expect any plot points to hinge on this.
In Real Life, a sensor being off-scale may mean the sensor or its wiring has failed. Whether it fails off-scale low or off-scale high depends on the type of sensor and on the kind of damage. On the Columbia Space Shuttle accident, several sensors on the left wing (most of them being left over from early tests from when it was the first space shuttle) registered off-scale readings. By observing the relative timing of the sensor failures and knowing the layout of the wiring within the wing, the investigators were able to determine the path of the damage.
- It still means often enough that the number its reading is higher then the highest number, or less commonly, lower then the lowest number the sensor is equipped to display or read, scales and electronic balances (weight/mass), for example, have this problem often.
C'mon, has nobody else pegged their speedometer on a straightaway at 2am? This is especially common in cars from the 1980s; most speedometers from that period top at 85mph due to funky bureaucratic definitions of sports car vs. coupe.

Video Games

In Lufia II, when the party steps forward to have their personal energy measures by Lexis's kymograph, Guy's results are five times more than the highest reading Lexis had ever seen, then Selan's are shown to be eight times more, then for Maxim, yes, the Readings Are Off The Scale.
Homeworld's Nebula missions feature this. However, it is stated that your personnel are working to recalibrate them to compensate.
- Done straight when the Bentusi are first encountered. Made hilarious by the calm way it's stated.
Also happens in Chrono Trigger, if Robo is in the party during the battle with Lavos' final form. He tries to assess Lavos' power level:
Robo: ''Power level is... immeasurable! It's completely off the scale!
Enemy Scan abilities in the Final Fantasy series usually depict boss statistics as a series of "???" readings, indicating how powerful they are compared to regular flunkies. Notably, some games allow you to upgrade the Libra/Scan spells to reveal these readings.
In World Of Warcraft, monsters and enemy players more than ten levels above yours will have their level displayed as "??" or a skull symbol. They might be +11 to you, or +50. Either way, you probably don't want to mess with them.
In Persona 3, Your Mission Control all but freaks out at trying to perceive the Bonus Boss' power.
Fuuka: Her power is unbelievable! Who is she?
Lampshaded in the Ghost Busters videogame:
Egon: ''These readings are off the charts...I'll have to make new charts."
In Fallout 3, the player has a radiation measuring device. At the end of the game, if the player steps into the highly irradiated control room of the Project Purity building, the meter will get maxed at +100,000 (as in, more than one-hundred-thousand rads) and jiggles. Mercifully, no-one comments on this.