Speaks in Binary

"Actually I, um, haven't finished the first word yet."

Pit: Does something seem a little... off with Pyrrhon?
Palutena: How can you tell?
Pyrrhon: 01001011010010010100110001001100.^Translation KILL

— Kid Icarus: Uprising

Binary code: The base-2 number system. Occasionally known as the "language" of computers. However, it's not usually spoken. But when it is, it's this trope. It's usually used jokingly as robots "native" language.

However, "binary" is not a language: Raw binary data has no meaning without a structure describing what it is. The "binary language" could be anything from "English text encoded in ASCII" to "Ideas, each attributed to a 16-bit number".

Compare Speaks in Shout-Outs, where a character speaks almost exclusively in reference to other works.

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01000101 01111000 01100001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 01110011 (Examples):

01000001 01101110 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01001101 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100001 (Anime and Manga)

• Robots in Masamune Shirow's works (Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed) often do something very similar: speaking in bar codes!
• Pipospetchi in Tamagotchi!

01000110 01101001 01101100 01101101 (Film)

• The old modem like chirping emitted by droids in Star Wars films is called "binary" in-universe. However, it's unknown whether it's binary as we know it and how is it encoded into sound.
• In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, when V'ger arrives at Earth, she starts sending a signal towards Earth, expecting a response from her Creator. As Spock observes, "A simple binary code, transmitted by carrier-wave signal. Radio." Kirk responds, "Radio?"

01001100 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 (Literature)

• Ashley, and all the other aliens, in Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series have binary as their native language. They also play binary Scrabble.
• Appropriately, Binary Larry in Emily the Strange: Stranger and Stranger. He writes a message on the sewer walls in binary. Emily knows how to decode it.
  • Binary Larry has a friend named Hex Lex who chisels code into the sidewalks in hexadecimal (base 16).

01001100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00101101 01000001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01010100 01010110 (Live-Action TV)

• Star Trek:
  • In the The Original Series episode "The Changeling", the Enterprise tries to contact the probe Nomad, and it replies in a binary code. Then it sends a mathematical message requesting language equivalence, which leads it to speak in English afterwards (which does not fit Aliens Speaking English since Nomad was made on Earth).
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "11001001", there is a race called the Bynars, who always operate in pairs and speak to each other in binary code.
• Joe from NewsRadio claims to be able to read binary.
• In Red Dwarf, Kryten uses binary as droidspeak on occasion. In "Terrorform" he gives a very long set of binary as an "old droid saying" about not standing and blathering when you're in mortal peril.

01001101 01110101 01110011 01101001 01100011 (Music)

• In the Flight of the Conchords song "The Humans Are Dead", there is a binary solo. It doesn't mean anything though.

01001110 01100101 01110111 01110011 01110000 01100001 01110000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01101001 01100011 01110011 (Newspaper Comics)

• In a Dilbert strip, Dilbert is eating lunch with a nameless coworker. The coworker brags, "When I first started programming, we didn't have any of these sissy windows! We only had ones and zeros. And sometimes we didn't even have ones! I once programmed an entire database using only zeros!" Dilbert replies, "You had zeros? We had to use the letter O!"
• Jason does this in a FoxTrot comic.

01010100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 01110100 01101111 01110000 00100000 01000111 01100001 01101101 01100101 01110011 (Tabletop Games)

• In Warhammer 40,000, Tech Priests use binary as a secret language (although it's never been established if it's binary as we would know it), described as "twittering" sounds (whether this means they make modem sounds is up to the reader). Justified by the fact that all of them are at least part machine.

01010110 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101111 00100000 01000111 01100001 01101101 01100101 01110011 (Video Games)

• Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: According to Idinite scripture, the Kosmocraters cursed the Cainites with the Code of Babel, which causes them to only speak in 1s and 0s. However, the Cainites eventually invented a new language out of binary. In reality, the curse is fake because several Cainites managed to learn the Idinite language. The Cainites also made a chip that can enable Idinites to instantly learn Cainite language after swallowing it, and it's implied Adam and Lot ate those chips in order to form their alliance with the Cainites.
• In Mass Effect, the final message from the rogue AI on the Luna Base is in binary. It translates into "HELP".
• When Pyrrhon from Kid Icarus: Uprising tries to control the Aurum, only for them to take control of him, he speaks out loud in binary; it translates to "KILL".
• Volt in Tales of Phantasia^note at least the Super Famicom Fan Translation speaks almost entirely in binary, causing a misunderstanding between him and the heroes which leads to a fight, and later, a contract.
• In The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation, CAT-209's dying speech is in binary; it translates to "FUCK YOU NERD".
• Played with in Chapter 2 of Deltarune. The cat-like opponent Tasque speaks in what looks like gibberish meowing, but their dialogues are actually written in binary, with every "me" representing a 0 and every "ow" representing a 1. These binary texts can be converted to UTF-8, as follows.^note In Japanese, they instead use "ny" and "an" for 0 and 1 respectively; "nyan" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for meowing. The UTF-8 text also spell out "N", "Y", and "A".
  • meowowme owowmeow: 01101101 ("m")
  • meowowme meowmeow: 01100101 ("e")
  • meowowme owowowow: 01101111 ("o")
  • meowowow meowowow: 01110111 ("w")
  • If you pet them, they'll say, "owowowmememeowme owmemeowowmemeow owmeowmemeowmeow": 11100010 10011001 10100101 ("♥", a heart symbol).
• In Street Fighter III: Third Strike, all of Twelve's win quotes are in binary. Among their translations are "EZ JOB", "PAIN" and "KO". That said, he's fully capable of speaking English, as his rival dialog with Necro proves.

01010111 01100101 01100010 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01101001 01100011 01110011 (Web Comics)

• In The Order of the Stick, Elan considers a dilemma from a Law/Chaos viewpoint, and his Lawful Angel is a modron and speaks entirely in binary. It's not very helpful.
• In The Witch's Throne, the Witch's arm uses a spell in binary.
• Reunited squirrel girls aka "Think Tank" in Sequential Art.
• Freefall: The robots, occasionally.
  • A crowd scene includes a robot with a sign proclaiming that The End Is Nigh in binary ASCII.
  • The robot version of lifting On Three involves counting "00000001 00000010 00000011."

01010111 01100101 01100010 00100000 01001111 01110010 01101001 01100111 01101001 01101110 01100001 01101100 (Web Original)

• Pirate_Tinman speaks in binary because his actual voice is broken, as shown when he first booted up in Shadow of Israphel and also in "Sunshine of Israpony". This is used to call Lewis Brindley and Simon Lane idiots behind their back at some points.
• SF Debris makes this joke in this review of Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Killing Game". A Borg "love song" sung by Chuck!Seven is in binary with a hexadecimal verse.
• Quite a few SCP Foundation writers seem to be under the impression that binary is some kind of universal language, considering the number of SCP objects of alien or extradimensional origin with "messages in binary" in them.
• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: the Custodes reveal fairly early on that they have a "translator" device that allows them to speak in binary. When demonstrating its use, the binary output, if decoded, actually spoils several plot points. Later they use these devices when negotiating with with the Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus in his "native" language... the output is delivered as song, with binary subtitles for the lyrics (which are written in l33tsp34k).

01010111 01100101 01100010 00100000 01010110 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101111 01110011 (Web Videos)

• This music video featuring a robot dance with the lyrics being in binary.

01010111 01100101 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01000001 01101110 01101001 01101101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 (Western Animation)

• In Futurama, Bender says a prayer in binary. He ends with "2".
  • There's also the Time Code from Bender's Big Score, a long list of zeros and ones that is said like an incantation to send the speaker back in time.
  • In "Godfellas", the galaxy that may or may not be God signals Bender in binary. Bender mentions that he only knows enough binary to ask where the bathroom is (which contradicts the above, but hey, Rule of Funny).
  • Played for another joke in "The Honking", where during a stay in his late uncle's haunted castle, the passage "0101100101" appears in blood. When pressed on what it means, Bender correctly describes it as gibberish... but once he sees it in the mirror reflected as "1010011010", he freaks out and runs away screaming. That alone would constitute a gag, but it turns out the latter sequence is a real decimal: 666.
• In an episode of ReBoot, when comedian Johnny O'Binome tells a joke in binary, the "binary joke" comes out to "Take my wife, please!" when translated into ASCII.
  • In various other episodes, numbers are said in binary. For example, Turbo remarks that Matrix's age should be 11 (pronounced one one, or what would be 3 in base 10). Also, characters infected by super virus Daemon could be made to count backwards, in binary, disintegrating up on reaching 0.

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01010111 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110010 01110101 01101001 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100001 01100111 01100101 00101110

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