History Main / TelepathicSprinklers

* Completely averted in ''[[Literature/DragonsInOurMidst Raising Dragons]]''. When Billy sees Adam trying to trip the school bathroom's sprinkler system with a lighter, tries to stop him, and accidentally sets it off with his breath, the water is described as "putrid smelling" and later "sticky and smelly". There is also no mention of any other sprinklers going off--only the fire alarm clears the building.

** Played straight in one of the short stories, when Harry needs to interrupt a wedding before TheBigDamnKiss, but is pinned down by hotel security in the hallway outside the ballroom. He uses a weak blast of fire aimed at the sprinkler directly above him, and succeeds in setting off the others.

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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* In the dodgeball scene in ''WesternAnimation/ChickenLittle'', the title character is flung against a window and slides down, catching himself on a fire alarm pull station which activates and sets off the sprinklers in the gym.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* Done in ''Film/TheMatrix'', shortly after the famous lobby scene. Neo's elevator firebomb somehow manages to set off every sprinkler in the building, drenching the Agents (several stories above the blast) at a dramatically opportune moment. Somehow the dinky sprinklers in the room also manage to fill the place up with what looks like about a foot of standing water, just to make the upcoming helicopter/machine gun scene look that much more awesome. (Possibly justified in that this is a computer simulation of the "real world" and the Matrix may not have a very intricate subroutine dedicated to how sprinkler systems in buildings are supposed to work.)

* In ''Film/BruceAlmighty,'' Bruce uses the power of {{God}} to stop a party by activating the house's sprinkler system. {{Justified|Trope}} in that the sprinklers are being set off by willful divine intervention, not a fire.
* In ''Film/MeanGirls'', the headmaster stops a riot by setting off a single fire alarm and drenching everyone. This was particularly effective as 'everyone' was teenage girls who were worried about their hair. However, the sprinklers appeared to only come on in the corridor, not the rest of the school.

* In the movie ''Film/{{Accepted}}'' during the big party scene, one of TheRival school members pulls the fire alarm. For some reason instead of releasing a siren and alerting the fire department (possibly because the place was actually a condemned mental asylum they had given a MakeoverMontage), all this does is turn on the sprinkler systems and causes everyone to start dancing in the rain.
-->''Wet T-shirt party!''

* In ''Film/VeronicaMars'', Veronica breaks up a BarBrawl by holding a lighter to one sprinkler head, which causes all the other sprinklers to go off in the room except for the one directly over her.

* In ''Film/TheBody2012'', a fire somewhere in the hospital kicks off all sprinklers in the building.

* Happens when a character in Joan Hess's ''A Conventional Corpse'' sets off the fire alarm at a college, and the sprinkler system goes off on every single floor of the building. Particularly conspicuous, as colleges would be the last place to ''want'' TelepathicSprinklers even if they did exist, due to student-prank false alarms.
* A variation is discussed in Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/{{Competitors}}''. While locked in a room aboard a SpaceStation, Leonid suggests starting a fire, assuming the automated system will open the door. Lena calmly tells him that the automated system will isolate the room and suck out the air to suffocate the flame.
* The "stagnant water" part is specifically mentioned in ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'', when Holly shoots a hole in the sprinkler's tank to avoid the averted ConvectionSchmonvection of a magma flare.
* Completely averted in ''[[Literature/DragonsInOurMidst Raising Dragons]]''. When Billy sees Adam trying to trip the school bathroom's sprinkler system with a lighter, tries to stop him, and accidentally sets it off with his breath, the water is described as "putrid smelling" and later "sticky and smelly". There is also no mention of any other sprinklers going off--only the fire alarm clears the building.
* Averted in ''Polar Star'', by Martin Cruz Smith. Arkady Renko is LockedInAFreezer on a Soviet factory ship by the villains. He tries to trip the alarms by lighting some oily rags near the heat sensor, but nothing happens.

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

* ''Series/{{Frasier}}''
** In the episode "Liar Liar", Frasier set off the sprinklers in the entire room to interrupt a romantic moment between two people.
** In another episode he tried to empty out a theater by setting off the sprinklers. Averted, because only that sprinkler went off -- and pathetically so, only getting him slightly damp before fizzling out entirely, causing him to remark that the building is a deathtrap.
** However in the episode where the brothers open a restaurant, a Cherries Jubilee explosion at a customer's table caused ''all'' the sprinklers to go off, even the ones in the kitchen.

* The second season finale of ''Series/{{Community}}'' featured Troy rigging all of the sprinklers in the library to spray paint instead of water, which all go off at once when Shirley pulls the fire alarm.
* Averted in ''Series/DueSouth'', when Fraser and Vecchio are trapped in a bank vault. Fraser trips the sprinkler in order to flood the vault, and that sprinkler is the only one to go off in the whole bank.
* ''Series/TheNewAvengers'': In "Complex", Purdey is trapped inside a building which is attempting to kill her. Steed and Gambit dump a bunch of matches and lighters to her through the mail chute. She uses these to trigger the sprinklers which go off through the entire building and short out the computer controlling the building.

[[folder:{{Music}}]]

* Averted in the filming of Music/XJapan's PV ''Jade,'' when [[ItMakesSenseInContext Yoshiki managed to set the bed on fire]] during a sex scene involving fire. The sprinklers in the old abandoned theater being used were filled with ''sewagefilled'' water. The scene never made it out of the cutting room.

[[folder:VideoGames]]
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'': A mook holds a torch up to a sprinkler, causing all the sprinklers in the hallway to go off. Travis's beam katana isn't waterproof, so it results in a comedic electrocution, and a short detour to turn off the sprinklers.

* The fire suppression system ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'' lets you install on spaceships is an aversion; it goes off only in rooms that are on fire.

[[folder:WebComics]]

* In an early arc of ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', [[http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=17 Tedd and Elliot attempt to invoke this]] to [[spoiler:stop the Goo Monster]]. Although, interestingly, their plan doesn't actually ''require'' this trope to succeed, it fails nevertheless: [[spoiler:the school had skimped on repairs in order to pay for more murals]].
* When Alhambra attacks [[Franchise/{{Annie}} Ann's]] building in ''WebComic/AndShineHeavenNow'', [[Manga/{{Hellsing}} Integra's]] plan for dealing with him was pulling the fire alarm. When Ann says that pulling such a childish prank was not going to help them against a vampire, Integra merely points out that it will set off the sprinklers. [[spoiler:Integra has the ability to consecrate water.]]
-->'''Ann:''' Oh, you're ''good''.

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]
* Averted on the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' episode "Fear Itself", which has Robin trip the sprinkler system inside the video store to destroy Control Freak's sentient minions. He uses batarangs to do it, and he sets off every single one of them individually.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' played this straight in "A Test Before Trying." To buy Bart more time to study for a vitally important test, Bart recommends Principal Skinner pull the fire alarm. As Skinner ponders this, the GoodAngelBadAngel trope comes into play, but the "devil" is his mother Agnes, who claims "You wimp!" and activates the pull station, setting off the alarm (which is basically the same as the school bell) and all the sprinklers in the hallway, as the faculty and teachers evacuate through the showers.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheScoobyDooShow'' does this in "The Ghost of the Bad Humor Man" when Shaggy and Scooby are trapped in a storage freezer and try building a bonfire to warm up. The flames trip one of the fire sprinklers, which causes ''all'' the sprinklers in the freezer to activate, and then [[FromBadToWorse the water freezes and becomes snow due to the cold temperatures]].
** ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndGuessWho'' also did this in the "Now You Sia, Now You Don't", when Music/{{Sia}}'s [[ClearMyName doppelganger ghost]] pulls the fire alarm in a jewelry store, causing all the fire sprinklers to activate, in order to get away from the gang.
* Has happened in a few ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episodes. In the episodes "[=HTTPete=]" and "Family Guy Lite," Peter sets off said sprinklers by pulling the fire alarm, in both cases mistaking the pull station for something else.

* Touma utilizes this trope in the second episode of ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex''. His opponent has magical wards set up all over his apartment building, and he needs to destroy them to make the man beatable. Setting off the Telepathic Sprinklers (which cause the ink on the wards to run, making them powerless) disables all of the wards at once without him needing to track them all down.

When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and ''all'' of the sprinklers on that floor--or even in the entire building--will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Sometimes, pulling the fire alarm will activate the sprinklers as well. This is because Hollywood engineering is based on the RuleofCool and helping advance the plot, not reality.

When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and ''all'' of the sprinklers on that floor--or even in the entire building--will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Sometimes, pulling the fire alarm will activate the sprinklers as well. This is because Hollywood engineering is based on the Rule ofCool and helping advance the plot, not reality.

When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and ''all'' of the sprinklers on that floor--or even in the entire building--will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Sometimes, pulling the fire alarm will activate the sprinklers as well. This is because Hollywood engineering is based on the RuleofCool and helping advance the plot, not reality.

When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and ''all'' of the sprinklers on that floor--or even in the entire building--will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Sometimes, pulling the fire alarm will activate the sprinklers as well. This is because Hollywood engineering is based on the RuleofCool , not reality.

When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and ''all'' of the sprinklers on that floor--or even in the entire building--will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Sometimes, pulling the fire alarm will activate the sprinklers as well. This is because Hollywood engineering is bases on the RuleofCool, not reality.

When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and ''all'' of the sprinklers on that floor--or even in the entire building--will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Sometimes, pulling the fire alarm will activate the sprinklers as well.

In the real world, only some sprinkler systems work like this--usually in buildings with a very high fire risk. While some neighboring sprinklers could go off due to the water hammer effect, most modern systems use sprinkler heads that have their own individual trigger (usually a glass tube that breaks when it gets too hot, or in older systems a lead slug that melts at a low temperature), thus limiting the water delivery only to the location of the fire. There are two simple reasons: 1) Where cisterns are used, the amount of water available to put out the fire is limited, so naturally you want as much of that water as possible to go where it will do the best job putting out the fire before the cistern runs dry and 2) Spraying water on things tends to damage them, so you only want to do that where it's truly necessary. Where sprinklers are connected directly to the main water supply, if they all went off simultaneously there wouldn't be enough pressure for the system to work adequately without much larger and more expensive pipes throughout the entire building. Additionally, activating the fire alarm system (via a pull station or smoke/heat detector) will not trip a sprinkler system, although sprinkler systems can trip a fire alarm system if they are interconnected with each other (and they usually are). Fire suppression systems that flood an area with high-expansion foam (such as found in aircraft hangars) or inert gases ''are'' normally activated this way, but this is because these systems will not only extinguish the fire but also kill everyone in the room, so for safety reasons are supposed to be manually activated after confirming that everyone is out.

* A similar puzzle in ''VideoGame/{{Penumbra}} Black Plague'' involves this, requiring [[spoiler: igniting a barrel laced with gasoline]] to trigger an emergency release on a door. ''Requiem'' takes this UpToEleven, where aside from all the sprinklers going off like the previous example, a water pipe bursts and slowly floods the room even after the sprinklers have stopped.

* In ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'' a mook holds a torch up to a sprinkler, causing all the sprinklers in the hallway to go off. Travis's [[strike:lightsaber]] beam katana isn't waterproof, so it results in a comedic electrocution, and a short detour to turn off the sprinklers.

A SubTrope of RealityIsUnrealistic. Similar to HydrantGeyser. ScriptReadingDoors are a similar case of an appliance that does whatever the writer wants.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/TheSims2''. Chances are, you're only going to have one sprinkler in the house to begin with, in the kitchen, where there's more danger of fire; but if you do have more than one (likely by the fireplace or the grill if it's covered), only the one in a position to put out the fire goes off. And really annoying in the college expansion when that *bleep* cow decides to be funny and set it off.

Also, while sprinklers in media spray little bits of clear water, a real sprinkler system--which typically sits for years without use and which is designed to put out or stop the spread of fires as fast as possible--dumps between twenty and one hundred gallons (80-400 liters) of filthy, stagnant water per sprinkler per minute—assuming they work at all[[note]] As a sprinkler system gets older, it decays, especially if it doesn’t get tested and serviced regularly, which costs money. For the first ten to twenty or so, they can be expected to work fine. After that, it depends on maintenance and water quality[[/note]]. Not exactly the best way to spend your day. Compare that to a simple shower, which puts out about one-and-a-half to two gallons (six to eight liters) per minute.

A SubTrope of RealityIsUnrealistic. Similar to HydrantGeyser.

* Played straight near the end of ''Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life'', when Rafe sets off the sprinkler system, modified with bright fabric dyes. The fire alarm part is averted a bit, as a more realistic modern fire alarm sound is used instead of a bell (as what's typically used in the media, though bells are rarely used as fire alarms in America nowadays.) One slight discrepancy however is that the sprinklers in the principal's office spray out normal water while all the others around the building spray out dyed water instead. (which would be impossible unless each set of sprinklers had their own separate supplies of water) In addition, while ALL the sprinklers in the school DO discharge, the fire alarm is correctly activated by them, rather than the other way around.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'', Bob gets a message that self-destructs, causing a small fire for a brief second that sets off all the sprinklers in the house, getting groans from the rest of his family. Cut to them drying books and furniture to avoid permanent water damage. It works because of the RuleOfFunny. Oddly, those same sprinklers don't go off when [[spoiler:Jack-Jack discovers his power to burst into flame]].

* In the dodgeball scene in ''WesternAnimation/ChickenLittle'', the title character is flung against a window and slides down, catching himself on the fire alarm pull station which activates and sets off the sprinklers in the gym.

* Played straight near the end of ''Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life'', when Rafe sets off the sprinkler system, modified with bright fabric dyes. The fire alarm part is averted a bit, as a more realistic modern fire alarm sound is used instead of a bell (as what's typically used in the media, though bells are rarely used as fire alarms in America nowadays.)

* In ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' episode 2.6 ("Malignant") one half of a pharmacy had suffered water damage due to the sprinklers going off. The other half did not get wet because [[spoiler: the pharmacist had disconnected that half]] of the system. The otherwise savvy detective Goran does not comment that this was unnecessary.

* Done in ''Film/TheMatrix'', shortly after the famous lobby scene. Neo's elevator firebomb somehow manages to set off every sprinkler in the building, drenching the Agents (several stories above the blast) at a dramatically opportune moment. Somehow the dinky sprinklers in the room also manage to fill the place up with what looks like about a foot of standing water, just to make the upcoming helicopter/machine gun scene look that much more awesome.

* In ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'', Bond is chasing a bomber through Miami International Airport when the bomber changes into a TSA uniform and turns a "sprinkler activation" key on an alarm panel, drenching the terminal.
** Justified as this was an emergency override function of the sprinkler system and not triggered by an actual smoke detector.
** Just starting a regular fire alarm would have worked exactly the same way and there was no reason at all to drench the whole place in water. It just [[RuleOfCool looks more interesting]] than dry people leaving the building in an orderly fashion.
* In ''Film/{{Constantine}}'', the title character does this, after having his assistant bless the water. Enter *bleep*-off smoking demon hordes.

** Crane, in the episode "Liar Liar", set off this sprinklers in the entire room to interrupt a romantic moment between two people.
** There was another episode where he tried to empty out a theater by setting off the sprinklers. Averted, because only that sprinkler went off.

* Averted in ''Series/DueSouth'', when Frasier and Vecchio are trapped in a bank vault. Frasier trips the sprinkler in order to flood the vault, and that sprinkler is the only one to go off in the whole bank.

* Averted on the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' episode "Fear Itself", which has Robin trip the sprinkler system inside the video store to destroy Control Freak's sentient minions. He uses batarangs to do it, and he sets off every single one of them.