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alt title(s): Red Wire Blue Wire
Wire security systems are so common, even carnivorous plants use it!
"Clip the red wire, then the blue wire, then the yellow wire..." A Dead Horse Trope. It is impossible to have a character in a bomb-disarming situation and play up the dramatic tension of the decision to cut one wire or another without bringing to mind the sixty-two thousand other times this scenario has been portrayed. You have to imply a possible outcome and subvert it in some way.
Known permutations:
- The red wire isn't there.
- All the wires are the same color.
- Cutting any wire at all is a bad play.
- The hero is colorblind, or the lighting makes him effectively colorblind.
- The guy reading from the manual changes his mind between maybe red, maybe blue ... are any of 'em green?
- The guy with the manual says "red", the hero says "Frack it!" and yanks out the whole snarled-up mess of wires, or cuts the blue one and... there is a big explosion.
- The guy with the manual tells the hero to cut the red wire. He goes on to do so, but just as he's about to cut it (sweat in his eyes and all) - or already has - the guy says "NO!! STOP!! It's not that one!".
- The colour is one the cutter doesn't know: taupe, ochre, turquoise, umber, etc.
- The guy reading from the manual says something like "It says to cut the blue wire.." *snip* ".. after cutting the red one.."
- The hero just throws the bomb out the window.
Naturally, a bomb intended for air-dropping (or a missile warhead) really shouldn't have any trick wires! Still, it makes you wish there were an Override Command.
The Wire Dilemma has a minor Sub-Trope in the Wrong Wire.
Examples
Anime
- In an Excel Saga episode, Excel found herself trying to defuse a bomb in a restroom, while at the same time Il Palazzo questioned what a bomb was doing in the dating game he was playing (and which was also controlling the episode's events). Both chose the red wire. Both chose wrong. Thankfully, they had a living Reset Button in the cast.
- Lord Il Palazzo also has a couple of bombs set in the F City, resulting in the Ropponmatsu androids going and dismantling them - and always failing the Wire Dilemma, resulting in big booms.
- In the third episode of Galaxy Angel, Milfeulle, whose incredible luck powers render her the only one that could probably stop the bomb, is scared stiff of pressing the button to clip its digital wire; Vanilla has to force her to do it.
- Lupin III, movie In Memory of the Walther P38: Everyone's survival comes down to red wire vs. blue wire. Goemon walks up while the rest of the group is paralyzed by the decision, draws his sword and cuts the red wire ("the color of pickled plums" being his justification). It works.
- The Detective Conan movie The Time-Bombed Skyscraper ends with this situation, in which Ran (Rachel) has to pick the red or blue wire. Throughout the whole movie it has been explained that Ran and Shinichi (Jimmy)'s lucky color for the month is red (for this reason, Ran got Shinichi a red sweatshirt for his birthday), so it seems like the correct wire would be the red one until you realize that Ran actually told the villain who built the bomb about the lucky color thing. The correct wire ends up being the blue one, because Ran didn't want to cut the Red String Of Fate.
- The 2-hour special "Trembling Metropolitan Police Headquarters: 12 Million Hostages" has several of these. Three years prior, one of Sato's colleagues sacrificed his life by not disarming a bomb in order to text Sato a clue to the location of a bomb in a populated area that was given 3 seconds before the bomb went off. This is then subverted by Conan choosing to disarm a bomb in a similar situation before it can go off—he is able to figure out the location of the larger-population bomb from only half the clue.
- The focus, multiple times, of a particular Outlaw Star episode, with the final dilemma (if there even was one) occurring offscreen.
- An inversion, really. Both wires set off the bomb. The real detonator wire is implied to have been concealed behind an earlier booby trap with no dummy wire and is easily disarmed.
- In one episode of Code Geass, Mao has kidnapped Nannally and has a thousand-pound bomb hanging above her set to go off if time runs out... or if she moves... or if anyone tries to cut the wrong wire... or if anyone tries to cut the right wire at the wrong time... Lelouch gives up and goes after Mao in the hope of disarming the bomb, but in the end it turns out he told Suzaku which wire to cut and how, then erased his own memory so as not to tip off Mao.
- The anime adaption of Viewtiful Joe has a character who would show up randomly with this as his gimmick. He failed a lot.
- Just because it had to be done...Haruhi Suzumiya played this one in the web-series, Haruhi-chan. Yuki had left the house, and to entertain Ryoko and Kimidori (a green balloon dog) she had left a gift. They unwrap it, and it's a large box with a timer...and a small compartment with a red wire and blue wire opens up, along with a pair of scissors. They chuck it out the window.
- An episode of Patlabor had Asuma facing a wire dilemma. He was about to cut one wire, when a pair of wire cutters appears from offscreen to cut the other.
- Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple subverts this beautifully with a bomb made by the Laughing Fist, Diego Carlo. Miu disarms it, and a little video of Diego pops up, telling her that he wouldn't make disarming the bomb that easy, and starts the timer. Then she disarms it again...and another video pops up, with Diego mocking her for attempting to disarm the bomb again, and takes another minute off the timer as a penalty. Then Miu's grandfather shows up, picks up the bomb, and throws it far enough away that it doesn't do any damage.
Comic Books
- Parodied in a Knights Of The Dinner Table strip, where after trying hopelessly to figure out which wire to cut (the colorblind character problem), someone asks for a physical description of the bomb, and it turns out it's powered by a simple battery pack, which is pulled out. The GM was steamed he didn't realize it would be that simple.
- Subversion: In Catwoman #61, Catwoman fights Film Freak, a madman who sees everything in terms of film tropes. After defeating him, she has to defuse an atomic bomb, and faces a classic Red Wire Blue Wire situation. She cuts a wire at random — cutting any wire will shut the bomb down.
- Subverted in the Judge Dredd comic book, where a 4-year-old amoral supergenius tries to hold Mega-City One hostage with several nuclear warheads placed in strategic locations. After bragging to the Judges that no one in the city but himself is smart enough to be able to defuse his intricate booby-trapped bomb triggers, Dredd solves the dilemna by simply handcuffing the villain to one of his own bombs.
- Animal Man has the titular hero completely stumped as to how to disarm a Thanagarian bomb. Luckily, resident Thanagarian Hawkman walks in at the last second and figures out where the off switch is.
Film
- In The Abyss, Virgil must disable a warhead at the bottom of the Cayman Trough. He is told to cut the blue wire with a white stripe, not the black wire with a yellow stripe, but the yellow-green chemical light on his diving suit renders them indistinguishable.
- Played straight in the 1997 movie Air Force One, where the President of the United States has to choose three wires out of five on the titular airplane's fuel dump system blindly. He puts his trust in red, white, and blue and is proven right. (This causes a logical paradox, as the weight of that anvil should have sent the plane falling out of the sky.)
- In The Avengers, when Mrs. Peel is trying to turn off the weather control machine, she must choose whether to pull a red wire or a black wire. She chooses and pulls one, and the machine turns off. However, a short time later a Self Destruct Mechanism activates, which indicates she may have made the wrong choice.
- Double Subversion in The French film Banlieue 13: a police officer is given the shutdown code to the bomb by cell phone- but it turns out that the code would have detonated the bomb immediately, taking out the entire ghetto with it. The bomb timed out, but did nothing.
- Played almost totally straight in Bon Cop Bad Cop. Martin was bomb squad before taking his current position, so he knows exactly what to do.
- Cats And Dogs "Okay, cut the red wire." "Wait a minute. We're dogs. We're colorblind!"
- Subverted in Die Hard With A Vengeance, where the bomb squad guy is cutting wires left, right, and center, but nothing happens at all...he stays to the end...when the timer hits 0 and he finds it's a fake.
- Played with in Fight Club. "Oh, heavens, no, not the green one, anything but the green one." (After the green wire is cut) "I asked you not to DO THAT!"
- Subverted in Goldfinger: James Bond only has seconds to defuse a nuclear bomb in Fort Knox, and the best thing he can think of is to attempt to pull out a mass of wires and hope it does something. However, just when he makes the attempt, Felix Leiter arrives with a bomb expert who brushes away Bond and simply hits the off switch for the bomb to stop its countdown. With "007" on the timer.
- Heathers: “WHICH . . . red . . . button?!”
- In Jet Li's High Risk, any (big) wire you cut will inadvertently activated the bomb, but a string of wire, subtly hidden from untrained eyes, will actually defused the bomb. Because of the small size and the hidden nature of the wires (attached to a bigger wire), the bomb squad thinks that the small wire is a trap.
- In Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Buck tries to kill a Man Eating Plant that is about to digest Manny and Diego. He dives inside, goes to the center of the stem and... there's a red root and a blue root. The page image.
- May have originated with the 1974 film Juggernaut, in which a blackmailer has placed bombs inside 55-gallon drums on a cruise ship. At the film's climax, defusing the bomb requires guessing whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire. The police back in London have captured the bad guy, and he tells them to cut the blue wire — so now the question becomes, do you believe him, or cut the red wire?
- In Lethal Weapon 3, Riggs insists on trying to defuse a bomb rather than waiting for the bomb squad to arrive. After joking around with Murtaugh about what color wire to cut, he finally cuts one that accelerates the timer on the bomb... which leads to the classic one-liner, "Grab the cat."
- Parodied in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1. The first wire that Emilio Estevez cuts causes Jon Lovitz to blow up. The second causes the power to go out on the boat. The third causes a complete power outage in Los Angeles. Finally, he throws the bomb overboard.
- Played with a twist in the 1986 vehicle for bad acting, worse science and Fridge Logic moments, The Manhattan Project (featuring a young John Lithgow). The timer on a fat-man style plutonium bomb is accidentally activated and couldn't be deactivated. Fortunately, the bomb is just a high-school science project. No trick wires; no problem. Yet, before the right wire could be cut, the individual photo-flashers that powered the detonators charged up. This meant all six wires between the flashers and the detonators had to be cut simultaneously. And wouldn't you know it, there were only five pairs of wire-cutters in the hangar.
- In Naked Gun 2 1/2 Drebin has to disarm a nuclear bomb at one point in the film. He can't figure out what wire to cut, but saves the day by accidentally unplugging the bomb, shutting it down.
- In Rush Hour, the token chick (the bomb technician) must disable the C4 strapped to a child. The important part is not in what she cuts but in what order: she fails a bomb training class because of this - in fact that's why they hire her to get it off. She even uses a rhyme to memorize it. The order: Roses are red (red), violets are blue (blue), honey is sweet (green), and so are you (takes the bomb off the kid).
- In the last The Shadow film, the scientist decides to cut the green wire, and then almost cuts the red one, under protests of his daughter (and Damsel In Distress). It happens that the scientist spent the entire film confusing green and red.
- Somewhat justified, in that as the colors red and green stand as the most difficult for the human eye to process, red-green colorblindness represents a common subset of colorblindness.
- In Sky High, where the device that sabotaged the school's anti gravity systems could be disabled by severing the red wire, but most of its wires are red.
- In All Dogs Go To Heaven, done with water mains instead of a bomb while Itchy tries to break Charlie out of the pound. They can't agree on whether water mains are green or red, and being color blind and in the dark, can't tell what color the pipe they're arguing about is anyway. Turns out it's a water main and Hilarity Ensues.
Literature
- The protagonist in John Ringo's novel Ghost, while trying to prevent a nuclear bomb from going off in Paris, takes a cell phone away from the terrorist mastermind and finds two pre-set numbers on it, "Fire" and "Ice". One of them dials the bomb and tells it to go off immediately, one dials the bomb and disarms it. The protagonist gives the French bomb squad as much time as possible to try to disarm it physically, then dials a number. The dilemma here being whether you trust the terrorist when he confessed which was the disarm code...
- The Warhammer 40000: Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand uses multiple permutations of this for hilarity. Cain discovers a hovercar that has been crashed into a hotel full of high-ranking military officers is jury rigged to explode in a very violent manner. He calls up a techpriest to tell him how to fix it, who promptly tells him that "theological matters" such as disarming a bomb are not for unconsecrated plebes like Cain. Cain answers by threatening to have him shot, and when he finally secures the man's cooperation, Cain is told to pull the red wire....at which point Cain realizes both wires are purple. The techpriest advises him to use his own judgement. So Cain picks one at random and pulls.
- In the Murray Leinster story Second Landing the main character has to disable an atomic bomb built by aliens. Eventually he realizes that in all atomic bombs, no matter who built them, the explosives surrounding the fissionable core have to fire in a perfectly synchronized sequence or the bomb will fizzle. So he shoots the bomb with a bazooka, prematurely detonating some of the explosives.
- In The English Patient, this is basically Kip's job description as a sapper, constantly coming up against newer and newer Axis bombs.
- An interesting form of this shows up in Survivor's Quest. Luke and Mara have been trapped in a turbolift and are told that they can't slice their way out with lightsabers, because the power and control cables for both repulsor beams have been wrapped randomly around the turbolift car. Currently it's suspended midway between two Dreadnaughts, but if one is cut the forces will become unbalanced, and the surviving repulsor beam will quickly smash them into a Dreadnaught. They and the people caught in other turbolift cars are supposed to be kept there until their captors disarm the traps and let them out.
- Luke and Mara get out of this by carefully moving their lightsabers so that they don't quite nick the cables and using their danger sense to discover which wire will shove them up and which one will shove them down. Then they stand back to back, mindmeld, strike simultaneously, and sever both at once, cutting both repulsor beams. After that they start falling, but the safeguards in the car can handle normal falling speeds. Four 501st stormtroopers and an officer stuck in the same trap in a different car solve this by using their sensors to figure out what wire does what and rigging something using the control cables, so that some power from one beam is redirected to the other, letting them move.
Live Action TV
- Family Matters: Instead of having a timer, the bomb is on a treadmill, which has to have a rider on it non stop until it can be diffused.
- Subverted in M*A*S*H's season one episode, "The Army-Navy Game". Of course, nobody in their right mind would even consider writing a manual this way:
Blake: [reading] Next, clip the blue wire, just above second lug nut.
Hawkeye: The blue wire, the blue wire...
[clip]
Blake: But first...
- The "very poorly designed bomb" above is from a Deep Impact-style plotline in Stargate SG-1 where the team has to blow up an asteroid, then learn blowing it up is a bad idea because it would only make things worse:
Carter: Now find the wires leading from the timer to the detonator and cut the red one.
Jack: Carter, they're all yellow!
Carter: Say again?
Jack: There are five wires, and they're all yellow!
- An earlier episode featured an interesting variation, with a space mine whose arming mechanism was designed like a combination lock. The scene goes all out with this trope, including a "No, Wait!", uncertainty over the correct code and a Wrong Wire scenario resulting from the fact Carter and Jackson are having to translate the manual on the fly using the language's distant descent from Phoenician which doesn't have the number zero.
- Also in Stargate, Mitchell was told by his Alternate Universe counterpart "when the time comes, cut the green one" with no further explanation. In other words, Cam knows he has to cut a green wire some time in his future, but he doesn't know when, where, or why. For that matter, his counterpart could be lying (as he's well pissed off at that point) or referring to something that won't happen or will play out differently in his universe.
- In an episode of Eureka, the town is under threat from a "Death Ray" accidentally activated in a disused lab. Attempts to disarm it include a failed wire dilemma that shortens the countdown. When the weapon's designer shows up and simply removes the launch keys, the system fails to shut down. He asks, "Did someone cut the blue wire?"
- Subverted in Life On Mars, where Sam agonises over which wire to cut, but the bomb squad appears from off screen, cuts both wires with a pair of hedge trimmers, and walks away.
- Another twist in a Hogans Heroes episode, in which Hogan cuts the opposite wire of the one Klink picked, on the theory that Klink is always wrong.
- Hal from Malcolm In The Middle plays up this trope to evade the cops. After a strange series of events that leads the police department to believe that Hal's detached ankle bracelet (he was under house arrest) was a bomb, he claims he is from the bomb squad and tries to defuse it. As the police watch, Hal suddenly screams "Oh God, I cut the wrong wire! This thing's gonna blow!". When all the cops duck, Hal makes a run for it.
- Given an interesting twist in the Profiler episode "Unsoiled Sovereignty", where the villain has planted explosives at a site, all of them accessible only by the outside of the building. ATF agent Coop defuses the first, but it is affixed to the inside wall of the building, so he has to work THROUGH a small window without being able to see what he's doing. VCTF agent John Grant, who always wanted to be on the bomb squad, panics at trying to defuse the second, mounted on a strut of the building, and it is only after Coop ignores his own bomb to talk John through his that John figures out how to disarm it. Of course, both bombs are disarmed.
- Subverted on Monk. Monk is disarming a mail bomb, and the bomb expert tells him that it doesn't matter which wire he cuts. Monk nearly lets the bomb go off because he can't decide whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire, due to his OCD. (Eventually he cuts both.)
- Avoided in the Austrian series Kommissar Rex. One of the characters is agonizing over which wire to cut. He can't come up with anything, the timer runs out - and his colleague had pulled the detonator out of the explosives.
- Parodied in The Fast Show. After doing the standard Wire Dilemma for the first two wires (complete with dramatic close ups on the wires being snipped and disagreements over which wire to cut first) another soldier goes "Sod this, anyone fancy a pint?" and just cuts them all with hedge trimmers.
- On one episode of Criminal Minds the profilers face a victim wearing an explosive vest built by someone using the plans of a bomber Gideon had imprisoned. With the usual seconds left, the bomber tells the bomb squad tech which wire to cut. Just as he's about to, Gideon tells him to cut the other one, basing the decision on the fact the bomber had earlier admitted he could never pass up an opportunity to see something go boom.
- Parodied as early as Monty Python's Flying Circus, with the Unexploded Scotsman squad.
- A variation is used in an episode of Space Precinct, where instead of cutting wires, the defusers have a choice between removing the power pack or the trigger.
- Nash Bridges had one episode where all the wires were very strange colors.
- The pilot for new series Phoo Action had the 'Hero is colourblind' version.
- The British must love subverting this one. In an episode of Spooks, the characters are presented with your standard "rainbow wire" bomb. While Malcolm (the resident tech-head) angsts over which to cut, Adam grabs his clippers and cuts them all. Malcolm frets over how incredibly dangerous that was, until Adam points that waiting for the timer to hit zero probably wasn't the healthiest alternative.
- Subverted in a recent episode of Lost; some of the heroes find themselves trying to deactivate a bomb liberally festooned with wires of every color. In the end they are only able to delay the bomb going off, and it blows up an entire cargo ship.
- Bottom does this with tea mugs. Richie & Eddie are trying to poison a burglar they have captive. Richie, in his haste, forgets which mug - out of the three - the duo have laced with pigeon pellets.
Richie: No, which one's got the poison in it?
Eddie: The yellow one!
Richie: Eddie, they're all yellow!
Eddie: It'll be one of them, then!
Richie: But which one?
Eddie: A-ha-ha! The one with the poison in!
- They then give the burglar three mugs of tea to no effect.
- Comic vomiting isn't exactly "no effect," but given their expectations it's close enough.
- Used as a mission in The Mole: In "Tick Tock Boom", the contestants had one hour to solve a puzzle that would tell them how to defuse a time bomb. Successfully defusing the time bomb would add $50,000 to the pot; if it blew up, nothing would be added. This came down to cutting the correct (purple) wire, of the bunch of wires of various colors leading into the bulletproof glass box containing the bomb. It is unknown what would've happened if the players had cut the wrong wire.
- The NCIS team once encountered a subversion of this situation. They had two people who knew exactly how to disarm the bomb, unfortunately it was so poorly made that disarming it would take longer than they had left.
- Ziva is suspiciously adept at disarming bombs with no colored wires. Must be something they teach at Mossad.
- One episode had the team discover a giant bomb at the end of the episode, with around 100 wires - Of course, some of them are red and blue. Luckily, the "criminal" (she actualy isn't, and was chasing the bomb owner to stop the bomb from exploding) they've been chasing the whole episode knows how to defuse it.
- On Heroes, Matt Parkman is fitted with a bomb vest by the season's Big Bad and dumped on the National Mall. When Nathan shows up to help, Matt has to read the mind of the D.C. Bomb Squad officer trying to figure out how it works. The scene plays this trope straight as Matt pieces together the guy's scattered thoughts.
- A wireless variant is played straight in Babylon 5. A planetbuster bomb drives up to the station to announce that it's safeguarding its makers and will detonate, unless the inhabitants can prove their intelligence by solving a series of difficult scientific problems within a time limit of about a day. So, would the makers be afraid of barbarians or of the sophisticated? The station crew is able to come up with the answers but correctly guesses that the bomb will detonate if it transmits them. To demonstrate the latter, they send the transmission after the probe is almost out of communications range. Boom.
- The Professionals. In "Stakeout" the lads are disarming a crude home-made atomic bomb with the help of its builder, who's decided he doesn't want to die for the cause after all. He's just removed the detonator with 30 seconds to go when he forgets which wire he's supposed to cut (it's red, naturally).
- The Equalizer. Robert McCall and Mickey Kostmeyer use a simple rhyme (presumably taught in spy school) to help them remember which wire to cut: Blue before yellow, kills the fellow. Then one of them asks: "Wasn't it blue after yellow, kills the fellow?"
- Used at least three times on Home And Away, most recently with a bomb placed under a bus that would explode if anyone got off (although the bus wasn't moving at the time). With help from an explosives expert on the bus, Hugo was able to cut the right wires, disable the timer and remove it. However, he fails to notice a second timer until about ten seconds before the bomb goes off.
- The Power Rangers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles face this dilemma in the P Ri S episode "Shell Shocked"
- The Crystal Maze would have a game like this Once A Series
- Subverted on an episode of Early Edition, Gary and some his friends were kidnapped and left on a stranded boat that contained a bomb. Gary suggested to his former-cop friend for which wires to cut. But his friend told that the bomb's timer was entirely digital in nature and had no weak wires.
- In one episode of Mac Gyver, a Time Bomb is planted on a ship. After Mac disables the numerous defense mechanisms of the bomb, he arrives at a Wire Dilemma. A bomb technican tells him which wire he should cut, but Mac cuts the other one instead because he suspects that the bomb technican is the villain.
- Came up in an episode of Honey I Shrunk The Kids The TV Show, where Wayne Salynzkie admits to memorizing a Mnematic device (a running gag in the episode) to decide which wire to cut, but gets it confused with the Mnematic for Coral Snakes ("Red and Yellow, kill a fellow... Oh God, that's snakes!")
- An episode of Chuck had a variation in which the person giving the instructions was suicidal and wanted the bomb to go off. Chuck figured this out in time and did the opposite of what he said, disarming the bomb.
- An episode of Primeval had a bomb planted under a car in the Arc. When Cutter and Conner stay behind to diffuse it, Conner says to cut "The red one. its always the red one."
- Too bad all the wires on the bomb are red.
- Human Target: Winston is on the phone to Guerrero, asking him which wire to cut. Guerrero flips a coin, which does not improve Winston's temper.
Video Games
- In the RPG Illusion Of Gaia, after defeating one boss, you have to cut one of the wires on the bomb your friend is tied to (red or blue, naturally); however, either one will work, and the true problem is making your decision before the timer stops - at which point it turns out the bomb is a dud.
- This is because, of course, the main character Will has the power to always guess correctly. No matter which one the player picks, it's right, because Will is psychic. Since this is introduced very early and not used throughout most of the game, it is often forgotten by the player. He uses this power later in the game to win a game of Russian Roulette... unfortunately for the other guy.
- A 'wireless' variant appears in the adventure-game Death Gate, when the hero has been poisoned and shackled in a dungeon. He knows what color the antidote is, and uses a spell to possess a dog who can go fetch the bottle for him - only problem is, dogs are color-blind, and since the poison will kill you soon, you've only got time to pick ONE bottle. Effectively, the entire trope is reproduced in low-tech. The riddle is solved by observing colored lines behind the bottles, and based on which are visible through which bottles, you can figure out which is the right one...
- Metal Gear Acid did Number 7 pretty well, with the bomb disposal segment going very smoothly - until Alice, giving instructions, loses her head and foreshadows the impending reveal of her dual personality. Minette had previously been told, very confidently, that the bomb would be defused as soon as she connects the black and white wires.
Minette: I'm gonna connect [the black and white wires] now.
Alice: ...No!
Minette: Hm?
Alice: Don't connect them. Just cut the red one.
Minette: What?
Alice: Two don't make one. It's impossible for two to be one!
Minette: ...Alice?
Alice: Just do it. Only cut the red one.
Minette: ...
- Parodied by two mob goons in Max Payne.
Mook 1 Red, blue, or green?
Mook 2 It's always red or blue in the movies.
Mook 1 So, green?
Mook 2 No, not the green!!
*snip*
BOOM!
- The old adventure game Police Quest II plays this straight, but one-ups it by that wires (and there are many of them) not only have to be cut in the right order, but some must also be reconnected in the middle of the run. Luckily, it's not as bad as it seems, because a perceptive player will have picked up the instructions earlier in the game.
- Made fun of in Urban Chaos: Riot response where since you have no experience in disarming NUCLEAR WARHEADS. Your C.O. does it instead, he choses blue, like his mother's eyes. Heaven help us if his mother was an albino. Also I'm pretty sure that the Riot-Shield whould have protected Nick Mason from the explosion. If you see what it puts up with in the game you would agree.
- In Return To Castle Wolfenstein, the player comes to a brick wall that blocks your progress. On the other side of the wall, you overhear some German soldiers arguing about which wire to cut to defuse a bomb. Eventually one of them says, "The hell with it, they all look grey to me anyway." *snip* *BOOM*
- Unsolved Crimes for the DS has one of these for its final puzzle. The solution? Both at the same time. Humorously enough, rather than have one person cut both at the same time, the two characters each take one, meaning it's very easy to get a Game Over if you don't cut it just right at just the right moment.
- Played straight in the arcade/Wii game Ghost Squad. One of the sequences in the first stage has you cutting the wires of a bomb in the specified order. This can be a pain if your hands are unsteady, since you (the player) are using your gun to move the wire clippers.
- No dilemma in the Republic Commando, but your teammate Delta-62 (AKA Scorch) has a line when doing stuff other than shooting: "Was it red-red-green, or red-green-red?" - to which Delta-07-the one who loves to shoot things up-answers: "And he's supposed to be the demolitions expert?"
- Trauma Center has one "operation" where Dr. Stiles is following very precise instructions to defuse a bomb. In the DS version, it's a fairly standard bomb - but it becomes ridiculously elaborate in Second Opinion.
- This is a standard microgame in Wario Man's microgame set in Wario Ware Touched, with the number of wires to cut going up per difficulty level.
Web Comics
- Yet another same-color play: in the first issue of the furry Super Hero spoof Web Comic Supermegatopia, Weasel Boy tries to defuse a nuclear bomb in mid-air, only to find that all the wires are blue. Fortunately, the bomb crashes through the roof of a candy factory and lands in a vat of caramel without detonating, and with little incident other than the creation of a fairly amiable caramel monster.
- In Sluggy Freelance, Riff buys a brand name nuclear reactor (actually a repurposed Soviet suitcase nuke) that goes meltdown after an EMP burst. He spends the next couple of strips talking to customer service, who tell him to cut the wires in order of color, only to find out that, to save money, the company used the same color for each wire in a few of the reactors. After he tells them this, the company puts him on hold while they get to a safe distance.
- Oh My Gods! had a strip entitled "Why there aren't any gay men on the bomb squad." The strip featured the comic's two gay protagonists wondering, "Is it the cyanide wire or the chartreuse wire?"
Web Animation
- The Spider Cliff Mysteries: The Wednesday That Wasn't: The green wire would defuse the bomb, but the maker put a curse on it such that cutting the green wire would defuse the bomb anyway.
Western Animation
- Swat Kats has another same-color play: In the episode "The Wrath of Dark Kat", Razor tries to defuse a bomb...
Razor: Okay, piece of cake. Just remember, always cut the red wire.
...only to find all the wires are red.
Razor: Aw, Dark Kat, you miserable psycho!
- In The Tick, The Tick has to stop an oversized bomb from destroying The Renaissance. He finds a huge mass of wires inside, but after considering the wire problem, he finds an incredibly obvious On/Off switch instead.
- Compare with the episode "The Idea Men", where he simply holds the regular sized bomb at arm's length. It explodes, but he's a Flying Brick, so it's all good.
- Parodied on Family Guy's "Brian Does Hollywood" fake Previously On intro.
Meg: What do you mean, cut the blue wire?! THEY'RE ALL BLUE WIRES!
- The 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has the action-movie-savvy Michaelangelo calling it as the red wire, at which point Donatello cuts the blue one, banking on their enemies trying to "trick" them.
- One episode of Justice League involves the team disarming Joker's bombs strewn throughout Las Vegas. Batman figures out how and tells the other members (chastising the Flash for getting ahead of him.) At the last bomb, the Flash is trying to remember the instructions when the Joker pops up and starts yelling random wire colors ("Don't cut that one! You'll blow us all to smithereens!!!"), feigning panic that the Flash will cut the wrong wire. With 1 second left, the Flash simply Takes a third option and zips the bomb out of town.
- One episode of the US made Street Fighter cartoon has a scene where Guile tries to defuse a bomb, but comes up short and simply decides to Sonic Boom it. Miraculously, this actually defuses the bomb.
- An episode of The Mask: The Animated Series has the Mask trying to shut off a nuclear bomb on motion by cutting its wires. Doesn't work. Cue Plan B: covering the bomb in bread and fillings and eat it.
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