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Fictional
Legasov: 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 The fully-withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor.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.
Kadnikov: Why?
Legasov: Why? For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them, like those in the West. For the same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. For the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient. It's cheaper.
Kadnikov: Why?
Legasov: Why? For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them, like those in the West. For the same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. For the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient. It's cheaper.
"'PC LOAD LETTER'? What the fuck does that mean?"
— Michael Bolton, Office Space
"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
— Montgomery Scott, on how easy it was to sabotage Excelsior's transwarp drive, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Brains: Oh, my. What a t-terrible design.
Virgil: Is it sitting on the hydromethane tanks?
Brains: Correct. A failed attempt to disable the actuator could v-vaporise the whole area.
Virgil: Is it sitting on the hydromethane tanks?
Brains: Correct. A failed attempt to disable the actuator could v-vaporise the whole area.
"Yours may have laser eyes, but mine breathes fireAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH! ...that was a stupid design!"
Dr. Doofenshmirtz, piloting a fire breathing Humongous Mecha dragon with the cockpit in the mouth. Phineas and Ferb
Documentaries
Narrator: Investigators make a frightening discovery. It's possible to close the lever on the outside of the door even if the hooks and locking pins are not in the closed position. Paul Eddy is a journalist who investigated the history of the DC-10.
Paul Eddy: What Windsor showed is that you could actually pull the handle in order to buckle the top fixture so that the handle went home properly, but the locking pins had not gone through the spools.
Narrator: This means that baggage handlers can believe the door is closed when it's not. Not only can the outside lever be closed without the locks being fully engaged, there's no way for the crew of the plane to know. The faulty locking pins will still turn off the warning light, even though they aren't in their proper position. The door was a ticking time bomb.
Paul Eddy: What Windsor showed is that you could actually pull the handle in order to buckle the top fixture so that the handle went home properly, but the locking pins had not gone through the spools.
Narrator: This means that baggage handlers can believe the door is closed when it's not. Not only can the outside lever be closed without the locks being fully engaged, there's no way for the crew of the plane to know. The faulty locking pins will still turn off the warning light, even though they aren't in their proper position. The door was a ticking time bomb.
— Mayday, "Behind Closed Doors"
Web Video
"I got it to work - barely - but the thing about the Jaguar CD is that not only is it prone to hardware failures, it's prone to about five different ways it can fail. It can fail if the CD device isn't perfectly set on the machine; it can fail if the contacts aren't clean; it can fail if the Memory Track cart isn't perfectly set; and it can easily fail because the laser system or the motor are defective, and they often are; and in this case, it would often fail because the lid is so poorly designed that when closed, it actually closes too tightly and mashes the CD against the inside of the drive, preventing it from spinning, and that could easily cause additional internal damage!"
— Dr. Insano, The Spoony Experiment, "Highlander - Last of the MacLeods
"
""This controller is a piece of shit. What's the most important aspect about any fucking game? Well, being able to fucking play it, and what do you need to fucking play it? A fucking controller. So what do you do when the controller doesn't work? You're fucked. This is the reason the system failed; this! In the name of God, heaven, and hell, everything in between, every creature on Earth, by the far reaches of the galaxy, by the inner rims of the universe and every megaverse in the ultraverse, let it be known, let the word be known; this controller is fucking horrible!"
— The Angry Video Game Nerd, on the Atari 5200 controller
"Ah, yes, the Atari Jaguar CD. What a steamin' pile of fuckin' shit that was. I wanna make sure there's nothing wrong with the console itself first, just to rule it out. So I plug in a game, push the power button, the Jaguar logo comes careening towards me in the foreground, and after a particularly hilarious fuckin' startup sequence, I'm playin' some Tempest 2000. WHOA! So now I know there's nothing wrong with the console itself. Time to move on to the CD unit. So I plug it in, hook up the additional 47 cables that came with it, push the power button, the logo comes careening towards me in the foreground, snarls, and...the Red Screen of Death, indicating a connection problem. So, the first thing I did was deep-clean every single contact point on both the console and the CD unit. I turned it on, red screen. Then I went back and made physical adjustments to every contact point in both the console and CD unit so it'd make a more solid connection. Turned it on, red screen. Finally, I just said "fuck it" and directly wired those two sons-of-bitches together, completely bypassing any and all cartridge ports and ruling out the remote chance of there ever being any kind of connection issue between the two systems. I turned it on and guess what? Red screen!"
"Let's take a moment to appreciate this design innovation, with its ability to block the score and its wonderfully chosen colour: light grey on white. If you're wondering how accessible this is for people with poor eyesight, well, the standard minimum contrast ratio is 4.5:1. Now if we test this colour... (1.07:1) Oh, you've gotta be kidding me. That's... that's, like, literally the worst accessibility fail I've ever seen in my entire life. That's... that's too much... that's too much jank..."
Real Life
"This airplane is designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys."
— A random Boeing employee, on the 737 Max 8
"Boeing put the same alarm in place for two different types of dysfunction. One was a minor fault, but the other — the loss of oxygen in the cockpit — is extremely important."
— Constantinos Droungas, representing the families of the victims of Helios Airways Flight 522
