The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at You Know, That Thing Where.
Rule of Perception maybe? If the audience doesn't see something happening, it might as well not exist.
"Banks of industrial lights turning on one-by-one" would fall under Slow Electricity.
Slow Doors for the Tomorrowland example. Parts of this probably fall under Rule of Cool, ways of making them more visually appealing. But the arrows/gunports make me think there might be a missing supertrope (of Slow Electricity and Slow Doors). Possibly two different ones, one about firing lines in general, one for what you're describing about contrived coordination of events that should really be simultaneous, more random, or a bit of both.
Edited by Unsung
They're all best to fit under Rule of Cool. Again, tropes are flexible, so....
The worst offender of this trope is probably the first Mummy film; Brendan Fraser fires a single gunshot that moves a mirror in an underground crypt, causing it to reflect light from a torch to another mirror, and vice versa, until the dimly-lit chamber becomes completely illuminated. Never mind it's light we're talking about here, but it sure looks cool ;)
@Chabal 2 - I don't think that's really it. Because you could show all the things happening simultaneously, just by zooming out a bit. And when you cut from one thing to the next, they could all be happening simultaneously (just shown sequentially because it's a movie).
These ARE the droids we're looking for. That was lucky.
@Florestan - agreed. But that's specifically NOT an example of this trope, because it makes sense. The trope is about nonsensical examples.
These ARE the droids we're looking for. That was lucky.
@Robert TYL - sure, but in that case we'd never have Absurd Cutting Power, Absurdly Cool City Absurdly Sharp Blade, or any of the other 177 sub-tropes of Rule of Cool. I think this one is significant enough to have its own.
These ARE the droids we're looking for. That was lucky.
Apollo 13 one is Aluminum Christmas Trees - check archival footage of the Apollo launches; Apollo 13 the film just applied some Mundane Made Awesome to the actual process of disengaging the swing arms.
They really don't release until after the rocket has started moving, because part of the reason they're there is to keep the rocket stable until the last possible second. In both the archive footage and the film they also release their connections roughly simultaneously but there's a visible delay between various arms moving. A lot of cuts of the archival footage from Apollo 11 actually exaggerate this for purposes of Technology Porn using Repeat Cuts from different cameras to show each individual arm releasing in slow motion, then showing viewpoints where all of the arms can be seen releasing roughly at the same time after the rocket starts moving (allowing for the limits of physics and late 1960s/early 1970s technology) as in the film Apollo 13's recreation.
Regarding things like attempting to define a trope by "not making sense", that's getting into Tropes Are Tools territory. I can name real-world examples of all of the tropes you list there- for Absurdly Cool City: Las Vegas, Dubai, the Walled City of Kowloonnote , Shibuya, Gunkanjima, London, New York, Moscow, Paris, Shanghai, Detroit, Seoul... there are a lot of absurdly cool cities out there.
@Scorpion That isn't right at all. The service arms were for electrical, pneumatic, fuel, oxidiser, cooling, air conditioning, coolant and venting connections. They are incredibly lightweight compared to the weight of the rocket and would do nothing for rocket stability. They are indeed released as the rocket is already moving, so retracting them one-by-one would mean the later ones would get ripped off. Indeed, check out archival footage and you'll see that they all swing simultaneously (or very close to).
These ARE the droids we're looking for. That was lucky.
^You clearly didn't read what I wrote.
Parts repeating what I said aside, weight has little to nothing to do with structural strength; 90% of structural engineering is about supporting massive amounts of load with relatively little material. Swing arms serve multiple purposes, including assisting in the precarious balancing act of keeping an unmoored bomb the size of a skyscraper standing on end until launch.
It's important to assume you are wrong until you have done your research.
Do we have one regarding the fact that things look cooler when shown sequentially, even though they'd really be happening all at once?
E.g.
This can make sense if there's some sort of limitation on doing everything at once. E.g. a small crew of people running around doing things, rather than each thing having its own dedicated operator. Or for banks of industrial lights turning on one-by-one, this may be a limitation based on the amount of current they draw while starting up.
Similarly, it can make more sense in instances where the film cuts from one thing happening to another. Then at least you could say that the events are all happening simultaneously but being shown sequentially. But when it’s all one cut, it often doesn't make much sense.