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alt title(s): Disastrous Training Sim Opening Our hero is executing an impossible mission. It's full of action and adventure, and he gets to show off how heroic he is, but at the last minute, something unexpected goes badly — often ridiculously so. The killer robot swoops down to off the hero and...
Computer, end program.
It was all just a simulation, training exercise, or Dream Sequence. In most cases, the hero steps outside to discuss what he did wrong with the simulation operator, who will point out, "If this had been an actual emergency, you'd be dead."
The rest of the episode will typically focus on his overcoming whatever character flaw prevented him from succeeding in simulation.
This is typically used as the first scene of an episode or film (though it may also come between the planning and execution phases of an Impossible Mission story), as an easy way of introducing the viewer to the kind of danger the main character(s) might experience on a regular basis. Also, it's a good way to kick things off with an action scene and introduce suspense without actually affecting the plot. It will feel like In Medias Res, except that it's not really part of the main storyline.
Occurs most often in Speculative Fiction, series about teams of criminals, series set in the military, and shows about ninjas. Sometimes leads to a Training Accident plot.
Named for the training simulation shown in the first scenes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan where a bunch of Starfleet cadets attempt a simulated rescue of the eponymous space freighter in hostile Klingon space. Compare Professor X Likes Watching Teenagers Sweat, in which The Kobayashi Maru (or some other "safe" action scene) is used to introduce the characters and their abilities before the real action starts.
Note that "Kobayashi Maru" also refers to an unwinnable scenario, because the training simulation from The Wrath of Khan was just that - an unwinnable scenario designed to teach prospective command students that sometimes you simply can't win (either the cadets' ship would be blasted by the Klingons, or they would be forced to leave the freighter's crew to their fates). If a "true" Kobayashi Maru scenario is featured at the beginning of an episode, the character flaw the rest of the episode focuses on will either be the character's own pride or inability to accept that sometimes, crap happens. Occasionally, this will be subverted in that the character will win the scenario, by cheating - providing the character flaw the rest of the episode may focus on (incidentally, this is touched upon in The Wrath of Khan, mentioned in one or two of the tie-in books, and shown in the 2009 reboot, as this is how Kirk became the only cadet to ever win).
See also Kobayashi Mario and Secret Test Of Character. If the simulation becomes legitimately dangerous, that's a Holodeck Malfunction. Nothing to do with a certain attorney.
Examples
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Anime
- Soukou No Strain, when Sara trains for sub-lightspeed permission.
- Many times in the .hack// series, although they're in a virtual world to begin with.
- Somewhat used in the second Cardcaptor Sakura movie. After capturing all of the Cards, we learn that this is how Tomoyo keeps herself entertained. However, it's not a simulation (the monsters are made with the Create card), and Sakura wins.
- Used once in Outlaw Star, where Gene goes through several launch simulations. Each time, something goes badly wrong as a test to see how he's react in unanticipated situations. Needless to say, it pissed him off, and the first launch went perfectly...Well, if you don't count the thousands of dollars worth of damage he caused to the landing dock, that is.
- Code Geass doesn't use it, but in one interview the show's director offered a Kobayashi Maru-like situation to illustrate the differences between the two male leads. As the story goes, there's a car wreck and two men are injured, one worse than the other; there's also a hospital some distance away. Lelouch, an "end justifies the means" type, would consider the factors, then take the man with less severe injuries to the hospital; that man lives, and Lelouch consoles himself over the other's death with the knowledge that at least he saved one person. Suzaku, a "means justifies the ends" type, would do his best to get both of them to the hospital, but they'd both die along the way; at first he'd curse his own weakness, but then he'd assuage himself by saying that he did the right thing.
Comic Books
- Try to count how many times the X-Men did this in their Danger Room. Between the comics and cartoons, Wolverine has had his butt kicked by simulated robots in order to learn an important lesson at least once per Story Arc.
- This appears in one of the flashback sequences of Ex Machina, with Bradbury and Kremlin acting as well-equipped robbers to test out Mitchell's equipment and reflexes.
Film
- As mentioned, the Trope Namer is the "Kobayashi Maru" training scenario seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which is a test of how the OCS cadet responds to a Heads I Win Tails You Lose situation. The cadet, in command of a starship, receives a distress call from a freighter (the Kobayashi Maru), which has broken down in the no-fly zone between Klingon and Federation territory, and whose crew will soon die unless action is taken. The politically correct choice is to abandon them to their law-breaking fates; if the cadet chooses to aid, s/he is pre-emptively attacked by angry Klingons. The aspect of the test which some trope users do not carry over is that the cadet must be defeated by those ships, so The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard and will happily break the laws of physics, probability or reality to ensure a Humiliation Conga-worthy win.
- Responses to the scenario are varied, with several characters improvising solutions but losing anyway (Scotty, for instance, used a physics trick that worked on paper but not in the real world; the computer's response was to spawn more ships than the entire Klingon navy had). Only James T. Kirk ever defeated it, and that was by reprogramming the simulation so that the Klingons would be respectful of the reputation he intended to have. Computer cheats? Kirk cheats back. (According to semi-canonical novels by Shatner himself, the test later becomes used to encourage this sort of outside-the-box thinking.)
- Other Star Trek novels give Kirk the Freudian Excuse that his traumatic memories of the executions on Tarsus IV (from "Conscience of the King") led him to not believe in the No-Win Scenario.
- In the new Trek movie, Kirk reprograms the simulation so that the Klingons have no shields. He then photon-torpedoes the ships and "wins". Also worth noting is that here Spock designs the test every year to be unbeatable, with the point of the no-win situation being to know what it's like to face certain death, while Kirk (like in the aforementioned novels) explicitly believes there is no such thing as a no-win situation.
- As Kirk himself says in the new movie, "It depends on how you define 'winning', doesn't it?"
- The novels had Sulu go the diplomatic route, the most 'correct' decision. Nog used his Hat and bribed the Klingons. Chekov self-destructed his ship, taking the Klingons with him. However the explosion was bad enough the lifepods of the crew were also taken out. Expanded Universe has many other characters taking the test. At least one blew up the ship rather than rescue it...
- One character deliberately blew it up, rationalizing that either it was screwed to hell anyway, or that it was actually working with the enemy to lure him into trap.
- Spock comments in The Wrath Of Khan that the explosions and smoke effects do not do wonders for the equipment.
- One of the novels has Kirk's nephew save the ship by sacrificing himself, challenging the enemy commander (Romulan rather than Klingon in this version) to single combat and having the Enterprise beam off the Kobayashi Maru crew and run away while he fights to the death. The admiral in command assumes he must have cheated like his uncle, but Spock explains that it all would've worked. It's just that Peter Kirk knew far more about Romulan culture (including a challenge that if properly given it is punishable by death to refuse, even if issued by a non-Romulan) than a cadet normally would.
- A recent Star Trek Enterprise novel depicts the origin of the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which is not a simulation. [[In addition to being outnumbered, Captain Archer discovers that the enemy ships have a device that can take remotely control of his ship's systems. He ends up having to flee and allow the Kobayashi Maru to be destroyed.]]
- Referenced in Dog Soldiers, when a platoon on a training exercise finds out their "opponents" have bugged their communications: "It's the Kobayashi Maru test - they've fixed it so we can't fucking win!"
- The Agent training scenario in The Matrix ("Were you listening to me... or looking at the woman in the red dress?") Even Neo is fooled into thinking it was the real thing. The scenario is designed to always end with the trainee's death, because a human cannot beat an Agent. The only recourse when faced with one is to attempt escape, and even that is iffy at best.
- Ocean's Eleven. The scene opens with The Amazing Yen infiltrating the Belagio vault from the inside. Zoom out, and we see Rusty Ryan discussing strategy with the team, followed by them betting on which maneuvers Yen will try out in the practice vault.
- The first Tomb Raider movie, which opens with Lara Croft, well, raiding a tomb. She's attacked by a giant killer robot (!) which shortly turns out to be created specifically for her to train with.
- The opening of X-Men: The Last Stand, with a homage to the "Days of Future Past" storyline in the original comics.
- The beginning of Monsters Inc., in which the monster comically stops being scary, but more importantly, leaves the closet door open, potentially allowing a child to escape into the monster world.
- Later revisited when Waternoose goes into a Motive Rant, thinking that he's alone with the heroes in the human world.
- In Die Another Day, Bond is seen in a virtual training scenario, in which he shoots M to rescue her.
- At the beginning of Never Say Never Again, James Bond infiltrates a terrorist hideout to rescue a kidnapped woman. After he frees her, she stabs and kills him. Then we find out that the whole thing was a live-action simulation. M chides Bond for not realizing that the woman could have been brainwashed by the terrorists during her captivity.
- And an inversion in The Man With The Golden Gun - the movie opens with the villain apparently shooting Bond, but it turns out to be a mannequin of him for training (which is also a Chekhovs Gun).
- From Russia With Love (along with the video game) start with Bond in a hedge maze, eventually getting killed...only to find out that it's a simulation on the bad guys' side. The man may not be Bond, but he really is dead...
- In The Silence Of The Lambs, FBI trainee Clarice Starling bursts into a room, gun drawn, and orders a hostage taker to surrender. He does so, and as she prepares to handcuff him, someone behind her puts a gun to her head, cocks it and says "You're dead, Starling". The lights come on and the person with the gun is revealed to be one of Clarice's trainers.
Trainer: Starling, where's your danger area?
Starling: The corner.
Trainer: Did you check?
Starling: No.
Trainer: That's why you're dead.
- Falling From The Sky: The Story Of Flight 174 starts with a simulation of a catastrophic fuel supply failure in an airliner, which the trainee pilots duly crash. They protest the ridiculousness of the situation to the examiner, who tells them "It's not a dream. It happened." The film is the story of the famous Gimli Glider incident, where a 767 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet and managed to escape with no major injuries; the examiner was played by the original pilot.
- Toy Story 2 begins with Buzz Lightyear examining a remote planet, entering the enemy head-quarters, having a dramatic showdown with emperor Zurg... and then being blasted to ashes by Zurg. The camera zooms out, and we find out that all of this was just Rex playing a Buzz Lightyear videogame. Rex never really gets in the need of overcoming what made him fail, but the sequence still affects the plot.
- The virtual reality wargaming scenes in Avalon.
- The beginning of The Avengers, where Steed is attacked by a number of opponents while walking along a street. Afterward it's revealed that he was just being tested on his fighting skills by the Ministry.
- Early in the first Rush Hour, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan walk in on the female bomb squad cop while she's in the middle of a training scenario in bomb disposal, causing her to mess it up and cut the wrong wire. After the resultant faux explosion, the trainer actually says, "Congratulation, we're all dead," then goes on to berate her for allowing herself to be distracted. Guess what she's called upon to do under fire in the final action sequence. Go on, guess.
Literature
- "The two .38s roared simultaneously". James Bond concludes something like this in the first chapter of Moonraker, which is basically a quick-drawing contest. He puts the other "guy" (a cardboard target) in hospital, but is "killed".
- This occurs several times in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, especially the X-Wing books. As in Real Life, cockpit-shaped simulators are essential tools for fighter pilot training - but here, holographic and gravity-altering technology makes the simulations much more realistic. They get used for all kinds of things, from training to testing new tactics to teamwork-building exercises, and they tend to be either this trope or Fictional Video Game. There are even a few times when the one in the simulator doesn't know it's a sim.
- Most notably, the opening of the first Star Wars X-Wing book by Michael A. Stackpole has a literal Kobayashi Maru-type simulation, popularly called the Requiem scenario
 . In it, a flight of four X-wings must protect an Alliance corvette called the Korolev from waves of TIE fighters and bombers (flown by other pilots rather than the AI). Corran Horn beat the scenario after coming up with the strategy to quickly eliminate the more threatening bombers with proton torpedoes and then finish off the fighters afterwards, which as it turns out was how the scenario went originally.
- This training mission was based on a mission in the X-Wing game, which basically couldn't be beaten unless the player focused on killing every TIE Bomber the very instant it appeared.
- Another book, Death Star, has a pilot compulsively replaying a simulation that had been made from a scan of one of the top fighter pilots. Even as a simulation, the top pilot kept gunning down the compulsive pilot within seconds.
- The short story "The Op" in the Whateley Universe. The Grunts (the mutant version of JROTC) face an Alien-like threat that has already wiped out a city. They're killed one by one in horrific fashion. The villain of the scenario is Sara as we see just how dangerous she really could be. In full trope mode, they get their asses chewed by Gunny Bardue once the scenario ends.
- In the novel Reach by Edward Gibson the Wayfarer 2 astronauts are approaching their destination when one looks out the window to find they're about to collide with…his house! It turns out they're in the simulator, and the people running it were trying to demonstrate the importance of staying focused even when something unexpected happens.
- Mentioned in one of the Artemis Fowl books. In one of her LEP exams, Holly defeated a simulation that pitted her against insurmountable numbers by blasting the projector. The computer recorded defeat of all enemies, so she passed.
- What, nobody mentioned Enders Game yet? Pretty much all of the games in the school when Ender is given his own team are designed to be unwinnable. Of course, he wins them all.
- Almost every novel in the Honorverse has simulator runs, some of which are indeed meant to be (nearly) unwinable. More often than not, however, it is Honor Harrington herself who sets up the exercise. Most notable example is found in On Basilisk Station where her ship is built as a testbed for a new weapon system that is obviously an unworkable idea as it requires very close proximity. In the first Exercise she manages to "kill" the King Roger, Flagship of the Manticoran fleet. She does not manage to repeat the feat, however, as her ship is thereafter targeted as soon as it appears and "killed" with overwhelming firepower.
Live Action TV
- In addition to its original appearance, the Kobayashi Maru simulation is found or mentioned in a number of Star Trek The Next Generation episodes. (TNG also includes fresh instances of the trope; for instance, the Bridge Officer qualification test in the episode "Thine Own Self", in which Troi realizes that she can only succeed if she orders LaForge to his death).
- Also used in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode The Magnificent Ferengi where the Ferengi are shown in a botched attempt to rescue Quark and Rom's mother, in which she ends up being shot by one of her rescuers, before it is revealed that they are practicing for the real thing, in a holosuite.
- In Star Trek Voyager, the failed invasion of a Borg ship to steal some Phlebotinum that leads to Borg storming the Voyager proves to be a simulation. Also, a test similar but not identical to the original Kobayashi Maru is used by Tuvok when assigned to instruct some unruly ex-Maquis in the Starfleet way. It ends the way the original Kobayashi did, but there's a twist: turns out they could have survived by retreating if they hadn't been too proud to.
- Not a flaw you would expect from guerrilla fighters...
- Star Trek Voyager is particularly guilty of someone dying in a Batman Cold Open only to be revealed as a simulation that you could make a drinking game out of it.
- In the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force videogame, a similar scenario is used by Tuvok. It's winnable, again.
- Tuvok provides an interesting twist in the episode Worst Case Scenario: Paris discovered an unfinished "Maquis Rebellion Scenario" that Tuvok never completed since he saw the Maquis having virtually zero problems fitting in. Paris and Torres have fun trying out different scenarios, and it proves to be so popular among the crew that Tuvok is pressured to complete it. When Tuvok and Paris attempt to modify the simulation, however, they find that former Maquis (and defector to the Kazon) Seska had discovered it and rigged it to be a true no-win scenario with Everything Trying To Kill You, and with the safeties disabled, Tuvok and Paris would be Killed Off For Real. The bridge crew couldn't shut it down quickly, but they did have access to the writing interface. So Janeway stepped in by becoming the Deus Ex Machina until they could turn it off.
- Mackenzie Calhoun found an interesting way to get through the Kobayashi Maru in Stone And Anvil: he gives the orders to destroy the ship himself.
- There is also a Super Nintendo videogame based on Starfleet command training. One of the missions the player must complete is the actual Kobayashi Maru scenario, and it IS unwinnable (unless, of course, the player cheats the game into letting him play as Kirk...)
- It's worth noting that while you can't save the Kobayashi Maru, you can prevent it's destruction indefinitely if you're good enough. Unfortunately as the enemy infinitely respawns there's very little point.
- The start of Generations has everyone aboard an old-timey sailing ship called the Enterprise, with Worf being forced to walk the plank. It becomes clear pretty early on that this is a Holodeck game everyone is playing.
- Proving that Starfleet isn't blind to all those "How I Flunked The Kobayashi Maru Test" stories circulating among cadets, Wesley Crusher on TNG was subjected to a different kind of simulated no-win scenario during his Academy training. A faked "accident" left two technicians trapped in a room that would soon flood with radiation, and Wesley was given time to save only one of them. Unable to talk the more terrified man into moving, he helped the injured one to safety and reluctantly left the other behind.
- That wasn't a replacement for the Kobyashi Maru, that's a test given to officers/cadets seeking to become command level officers, the test Wesley faced was just for entrance into the academy.
- His encounter in the books led to a disaster in Boogeymen.
- Power Rangers is fond of this one, using it in episodes of Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue ("Trial by Fire"), Power Rangers Ninja Storm ("There's No 'I' In Team"), Power Rangers SPD ("Beginnings"), and Power Rangers RPM ("Ranger Red").
- Stargate SG-1 did it at least twice ("Proving Ground", "Avatar").
- War of the Worlds
- MacGyver, multiple times ("Lost Love", "The Survivors").
- In the short-lived series Heist, a cliffhanger has professional thief Mickey locking himself in a vault to motivate his team members to figure out how to open it quickly before he suffocates. The next episode begins with the team members apparently failing to unlock the vault in time, only for Mickey to yell at them and for the camera to reveal the giant hole they had cut in the vault to get him out.
- In The Listener, paramedic main character Toby and his partner get stuck while trying to reach a woman with a head wound. She is annoyed, but amused; if it hadn't been an exam, she could have died.
- In Leverage, it is mentioned that a master hacker with the handle "Chaos" is referred to as the Kobayashi Maru by CIA and NSA computer specialists, in reference to the fact that Chaos' hacking methods are unstoppable.
- Becomes a Shout Out when you realize that Chaos, is Wil Wheaton.
- In CSI, David Hodges also mentions that he called his cat Kobayashi Maru (affectionately known as 'Kobe' or 'Mr. K').
Video Games
- Arguably the most famous cutscene from Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core involves a Melee A Trois between Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth. Everybody was just plain fighting when Genesis entered Lets Get Dangerous mode and Sephiroth started slicing off the Sister Ray in retaliation (they were fighting on top of it). During the climax, Angeal's sword broke off blocking Genesis's attack, the piece cuts Genesis' shoulder, and the "sky" came off as bright color pieces. It was all just a training simulator. But hey, What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome?
- James Bond likes this trope. The first mission in GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is one of these. Afterward, the titular agent is fired from MI6 for allowing Bond to be "killed" during the simulated mission at Fort Knox.
- Which is entirely silly for so many reasons, including the fact that the death wasn't really caused by him (IIRC, Bond is hanging on to a ledge and falls) and getting fired caused the agent to turn evil. Wall Banger ahoy.
- James Bond does like this trope. In the video game version of From Russia With Love, the player watches his character get garroted in the cutscene following a lengthy infiltration mission. Turns out it's a training scenario for the Dragon, and the player's character was an evil mook-in-a-mask rather than Bond. As this same scene (minus the infiltration) happens in the original movie, the player shouldn't be too surprised.
- Ninja Gaiden for the original Xbox begins with what turns out to have been a training mission. What makes this a bit disconcerting is the fact that you kill a good 200 ninjas (absolutely no ambiguity about whether they're dead or just knocked out here) before the audience is let in on this.
- It's All There In The Manual: the rival ninja clan is, well, a rival ninja clan, enemies of the Hayabusa ninjas. Ryu murders them. But the leader of the rival ninja clan is, in fact, his uncle, and so they don't really fight to the death. Unless Ryu loses.
- Space Quest V opens with Roger Wilco at the helm of a spaceship facing a dire red alert situation (a direct homage to the Kobayashi Maru scenario). He's then interrupted by on the viewscreen by an actual captain who tells him to stop messing around in the spaceship simulator and get back to class.
- Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force couldn't resist: the game opens with you playing as Ensign Munro with an away team on a Borg cube. Then things go horribly wrong and you end up killing yourself and your team mates, only to reveal that's a Holodeck simulation all along. True to form, Tuvok is there to tell you what a sorry excuse for a Starfleet officer you are.
- Even worse is that he tells you, as you board the turbolift, to consider the scenario to be your personal Kobayashi Maru.
- Starfleet Academy games tend to have the actual Kobayashi Maru as a level. In the old PC version by Interplay, you're given the option to cheat in exactly the same way Kirk did - in fact, you have to in order to progress in the game. Your bridge crew's reactions when the Klingons recognize you are priceless.
Western Animation
- An opening sequence on Batman: The Brave And The Bold recently featured the Outsiders running through a holographic battle-simulation under Batman's direction.
- Kids Next Door, "Operation T.U.R.N.I.P.", where an attack by a hostile mecha turns out to just be Numbuh 3 testing the treehouse defenses.
- Done in the third season finale of Venture Bros. The Monarch & company storm the Venture compound, capture the boys and Dr. Venture, and even manage to decapitate Brock Samson. Then #21 starts making out with Dr. Girlfriend and it is all revealed to be a simulation (with 21 hastily claiming that the simulated Dr. Girlfriend had gone berserk and was trying to kill him.)
- The Legion Of Super Heroes Season Finale "Sundown: Part 1" opens with the entire team being destroyed one by one by the Fatal Five. Then the simulation ends, and they prep to start again. Phantom Girl is not amused. "There's only so many times a girl can face her simulated doom in one day!"
- X-Men Evolution does this the most times in its short run, twice forming the plot for the episode. (In the first, Cyclops doesn't want to train against Rogue's simulation, and in the second, the young'uns learn teamwork.)
- The older X-Men cartoon and the concurrently-running Spider-Man cartoon once did a Crossover: The Mutant Agenda introduces Spidey to the X-Men by his sneaking into the mansion to find Professor X... and getting waylaid by Sentinels. Turns out it's the Danger Room, of course.
- Used in the "Glitter N' Gold" episode of Jem. Jerrica wants to tell her boyfriend, Rio, that she is Jem's secret identity. She uses Synergy, her hologram-making super-computer to make an illusion of Rio to see what will happen; it goes badly. Synergy assumes that she might be wrong—but then the real Rio explodes at Kimber after she reveals that she made a mistake - using almost the exact same words the holographic Rio did. This came from Christy Marx, the writer of most of the episodes of the Jem series, who wanted Jerrica to have a reason to keep her other identity a secret from Rio.
- Spider Man And His Amazing Friends, in keeping with its Marvel Comics roots, pulled a Danger Room on Iceman in a late episode.
- Family Guy two parter, Stewie Kills Lois/Lois Kills Stewie
- Lampshaded when Brian describes it as "a huge middle finger to the viewers."
- The Power Puff Girls use a holographic training room in one episode as a Shout Out to X-men.
- One Time Squad episode began with the heroes fighting a pyromaniac George Washington in a training simulation.
Webcomic
- Erfworld: The Battle for Gobwin Knob IS a Kobayashi Maru, or at least the scenario Parson had been designing that resembled it was. In addition to fighting impossible odds, the GM is supposed to cheat, and the only way for the player to win is to cheat the system better. At this point, Parson has "won" the battle and is now having to deal with the aftermath.
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