Quotes / Failsafe Failure

Sarge: Oh no! That last lightning bolt fused the detonator! There's no way to turn this thing off!
Simmons: Can you do it manually?
Sarge: Impossible. I specifically designed it so that I wouldn't be able to defuse it.
Grif: Why?
Sarge: In case I fell into the wrong hands, and was brainwashed to help the Blues.
Simmons: Nice thinking, sir.
Grif: You had to get just one last asskiss in before we die, didn't you?

— Red vs. Blue Episode 43

There's a mawkishly overdramatic scene in which a character sacrifices himself by bravely detaching and blowing up the entire Metroid wing of the spaceship with him inside. We'll let slide for now the issue of why exactly he had to be inside it to do this, but Metroids show up later on ANYWAY, so he might as well have just stuck yellow and black tape over the door for all the good it did!

—Zero Punctuation on Metroid: Other M

This is like having an emergency light that plugs into the wall! Or a parachute with a rope that's connected to the airplane!

— SF Debris, "Learning Curve"

It seems the ship blew a plasma injector, and is now down to just four. Archer insists the ship can run on four injectors just fine, but Trip points out it can't run on three.

Okay, see what I mean about Starfleet sending them out to look like idiots? If something is that essential to the functioning of your ship, why would you not carry spares? Multiple spares, at that?

—The Agony Booth on Star Trek: Enterprise, "A Night in Sickbay"

Note to Self: When designing outer-space headquarters, do not allow personal living quarters to be shot off into space by a control that is outside the room.

—Chris Sims on X-Men: The Animated Series, "Sanctuary, Part 1"

The defense system is perfect, Mark. It'll even bury our mistakes.

—Dr. Jeremy Stone after a nuclear bomb countdown has started, The Andromeda Strain

It's what you'd call a failsafe. Except he only got as far as the "fail" part.

— Tobi, on Itachi Uchiha's attempt to keep Sasuke away from the speaker.

"Note: Need to implement this."

— The Hidden Valley Bunker Self-Destruct Terminal upon clicking "Cancel Self-Destruct Sequence", Fallout: New Vegas

(chaos is wreaking havoc in Ponyville)
Twilight Sparkle: Don't worry, everypony! I've learned a new failsafe spell that will fix everything!
(Her horn glows, and a wave of light surrounds Ponyville. When it fades... nothing happens.)
Twilight Sparkle: My failsafe spell... failed! Now what do we do?
Spike: Umm, give up?

— My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, The Return of Harmony: Part 1

Sam: "Failsafe? Is that some kind of vault which you keep all your fail in? Because, I love ya Quinn, but a failsafe is sounding more and more like an apt description of this mission."

—Serious Sam

"At Starfleet, we put the 'fail' in failsafe!"

— SF Debris, in his review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Nth Degree"

The problem with Flight 592 is that you defeat the intended purpose of the Class D cargo hold, because even though the hold may be airtight, you've got 144 sources of oxygen in that airtight container.

— Greg Feith, on ValuJet Flight 592, Air Crash Investigation

"Out of order?! Fuck! Even in the future, nothing works!"

— Dark Helmet (on finding out his ship's self-destruct override is broken), Spaceballs

Narrator: The House Phica primary generator was designed to take a lot of punishment. A direct hit with a nuke, even inside the gravitic shield it powers, will not of itself cause a loss of containment. For that to happen, the reactor techs would have to spend several minutes doing everything exactly wrong.
Reactor Tech: Protocol T-21: Executing step-down and bleed.
Reactor Boss: Drown protocol! We're under attack! Full power to the shields!
Narrator: Exactly.

— Schlock Mercenary

"Dyatlov broke every rule we have. He pushed a reactor to the brink of destruction. He did these things believing there was a failsafe; AZ-5, a simple button to shut it all down. But in the circumstances he created, there wasn't. The shutdown system had a fatal flaw. At 1:23:40, Akimov engages AZ-5. The fully-withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor. These rods are made of boron, which reduces reactivity, but not their tips. The tips are made of graphite, which accelerates reactivity [...] No one in the room that night knew that the shutdown button could act as a detonator."

— Valery Legasov, Chernobyl

All of the above shouldn't fail you. But, if you work with tech, you'll know how often failsafes will fail. "Should" is basically the only thing you can count on.

— Anthony, "Never Do Tech Support For Your Family Again!", Linus Tech Tips

"Five different systems had to go wrong for that laser to fail us so spectacularly. Five."

— Agent Block on how a LASIK surgery resulted in someone dying, Final Destination 5

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