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Readings Are Off The Scale
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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 all but useless.
A reading that's so off the scale as to be truly incredible may even cause the measuring device to suffer from Explosive Instrumentation
Seen in almost every Space Opera.
Examples:
- Despite their phenomenally polymorphic instrumentation and interface, sensors on Star Trek are especially prone to this fatal weakness. So much so that some of the Trek novel writers are prone to hanging a lampshade on it, by having someone say "We've got to get bigger scales."
- 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!
- Can it?
- Actually, 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 The 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!"
- 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 one episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Lt. Ibuki addresses this trope directly ("All our meters and gauges are going off the scale!") when trying to recover Eva-01 and Shinji.
- 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.
- Comic book example: Lampshade Hanging 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?
- Real world example: 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.
- Another real world example: when the nuclear reactor SL-1 went critical in 1961, the first team to check out the alarm discovered their radiation sensors pegged at maximum. The second team, which went in with more powerful radiation sensors, also had their sensors peg at maximum.
- Implied in Ghostbusters. The PKE meter (handheld device used to measure ghost activity) seems to only have two readings: Zero and Pegged.
- 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.
- Relentlessly spoofed in this
 xkcd strip.
- 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]
- Real life: 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.
- In Real Life, a sensor being off-scale often means 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.
- Homeworld's Nebula missions feature this. However, it is stated that your personnel are working to recalibrate them to compensate.
- 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.
- 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 exagerrating....
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