History Main / BillionsOfButtons

** In another episode of ''Voyager'', the Doctor ends up on a Starfleet ship where the only other crew is another EMH who's never even seen bridge controls. At one point, the Doctor tries to get the other EMH to take over tactical while he pilots the ship. HilarityEnsues.

Usually, of all these buttons, a few will ''always'' be used, [[PlotSensitiveButton usually in different]] [[ContextSensitiveButton contexts]]. This can be justified by the fact that any vessel with standardized parts would have more than a few displays which look identical, and the fact that pressing various combinations of the return, tab, arrow, and escape keys while in a menu system can in fact get you radically different results- but this does not mean that the rest of the keys are unnecessary.[[note]]Other than "pause/break" and its friends.[[/note]] Nevertheless, many shows just don't manage to make things look convincing, or to consider that the more 'advanced' something is, [[EverythingIsAnIpodInTheFuture the fewer buttons it might have]].

* Not technically physical buttons, but UsefulNotes/{{UNIX}} command line programs often have dozens of optional flags that can and can't be combined, leading to a feeling of this trope. The UNIX philosophy is that simple, smaller programs with a single main function interact via I/O to form a larger operating system, but in practice it's often much more straightforward from the developer's perspective to add functionality to an existing program than to write a whole new one just to do something that's only slightly different, so existing programs grow flags, often in astonishing profusion. All the possible input flags for a program are typically outlined on the ''[[AllThereInTheManual man]]'' page - [[MindScrew if you can understand]] [[ViewersAreGeniuses the developers' own documentation]]. Most non-geeks just stick to Windows GUI and call it a day.

* Pilots of the famous A-10 Warthog (that would be the American [[strike:attack plane]] [[{{BFG}} giant]] [[GatlingGood rotary cannon]] with a plane wrapped around it) are expected to not only be able to use the ''many'' buttons, knobs, and switches in the cockpit (the design predates the glass-cockpit concept), but they are expected to be able to do so blindfolded during training in case they have a problem while flying at night.

[[quoteright:300:[[RealLife https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/billions-of-buttons_space-shuttle_1988.jpg]]]]

'''EMH-2:''' [[LampshadeHanging There are so many controls]] ...\\

This is TruthInTelevision. RealLife aircraft, spacecraft, power stations, trains and so on have loads and loads of buttons — many of which are only used if one particular component (out of thousands) is misbehaving. The cockpit of the Space Shuttle, for example, has buttons covering every available surface (even the ceiling!). More advanced and reliable computing power has allowed designers to simplify control panels; the 'Glass Cockpit' with Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) screen, for instance, is pretty much standard kit on most airliners. Even in an era when most or all functions ''can'' be routed through a single simple interface, having a cockpit full of hard-wired controls reduces the chances of a single circuit failure rendering an entire craft uncontrollable. The armada of buttons are on standby just in case you have to take full manual control of the craft, or make it do something outside the normal operational regime — say, when you suddenly need to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 land an airliner on a river]]. (In a delightful fulfillment of the trope, the Airbus A320 actually ''does'' have a button for precisely that situation; it seals several of the aircraft's external openings, to help slow the rate at which the fuselage floods and sinks. In the case of Flight 1549, though, it wasn't actually used, nor would it have helped, since the impact with the water tore holes much larger than those the "ditch switch" would have sealed. But the switch was ''there'', and that's the point.)

* Parodied in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/SonicSatAM'' when Sonic sabotages Robotnik's oil drilling operation, though he takes out the drilling probes with their emergency destruct button first. ("I wonder what'll happen if I punch ''all'' these buttons? Only one way to find out!") He proceeds to do just that while singing a slight remix of the song he sang earlier in the episode, thus causing the drilling platform's destruction.

--> '''Murdoch:''' They're blinking and they're beeping and they're flashing... and they're FLASHING and they're BEEPING. I can't stand it anymore! WHY DOESN'T SOMEBODY STOP THEM?!...

** Another Looney Tunes example appears in the WesternAnimation/BugsBunny short "Hare Lift", which features a massive new plane with this kind of control panel.

* In ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfWonderWoman2016'' the Holliday Girls are amazed that Diana can control the aircraft they "borrow" due to the overwhelming number of buttons and switches in the cockpit.

-->'''Ogelthorpe:''' Quit pushing the buttons!
-->'''Shake:''' This whole ships a bunch of buttons!

This is TruthInTelevision. RealLife aircraft, spacecraft, power stations, trains and so on have loads and loads of buttons - many of which are only used if one particular component (out of thousands) is misbehaving. The cockpit of the Space Shuttle, for example, has buttons covering every available surface (even the ceiling!). More advanced and reliable computing power has allowed designers to simplify control panels; the 'Glass Cockpit' with Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) screen, for instance, is pretty much standard kit on most airliners. Even in an era when most or all functions ''can'' be routed through a single simple interface, having a cockpit full of hard-wired controls reduces the chances of a single circuit failure rendering an entire craft uncontrollable. The armada of buttons are on standby just in case you have to take full manual control of the craft, or make it do something outside the normal operational regime - say, when you suddenly need to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 land an airliner on a river]]. (In a delightful fulfillment of the trope, the Airbus A320 actually ''does'' have a button for precisely that situation; it seals several of the aircraft's external openings, to help slow the rate at which the fuselage floods and sinks. In the case of Flight 1549, though, it wasn't actually used, nor would it have helped, since the impact with the water tore holes much larger than those the "ditch switch" would have sealed. But the switch was ''there'', and that's the point.)

Another design consideration underlies the trope: that of haptic feedback. The primary strength of a touchscreen interface is its ease of discoverability and configuration: instead of a bunch of single-purpose buttons and switches and so forth, you can have just a single touchscreen with modes providing all those controls and more, and the platform lends itself well to helping a novice user find her way around the interface. The trouble is, those controls are totally refractory to muscle memory and touch feedback, because no matter what control inputs you're making, what you are actually ''doing'' is wiggling your fingertips around on a sheet of glass. This makes it almost impossible to perform those control inputs without looking at what you're doing, -- a minor concern when you're flipping between apps on your iPad, but a potentially life-threatening requirement when you can't afford to divide your attention from trying to fly an aircraft or spacecraft back out of trouble.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

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

*** This also happened very early on in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E3TheEdgeOfDestruction The Edge of Destruction]]''. A plot relevant button had to be labeled for the actors to interact with, and the crude felt-tip label [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fast_return_9567.png made it onscreen]].
** In the serial ''Day of the Daleks'' the women 'manning' the consoles in the Controller's headquarters are clearly just sliding their hands aimlessly over those same consoles. Perhaps it's meant to be a touch-sensitive interface, but how can they tell what they're doing without looking at the panels?
** TheAestheticsOfTechnology is invoked in the [[AppliedPhlebotinum Sonic Screwdriver]] which has had very few buttons over the course of the show's run but lots of functionality (much of it from the newer series). The latest version has a thumb slide and specifically operates by [[ContextSensitiveButton reading the user's thoughts and extracting a relevant function]].

** If the dramatisation of the early days of the franchise ''Film/AnAdventureInSpaceAndTime'' is accurate this was in effect from the very start of the show. Creator/WilliamHartnell insisting that the same controls were used for the same Tardis function successfully arguing with the producers that it would violate viewers suspension of disbelief if he used the same control to operate the door one week and activate the viewscreen the next.

* In ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'' original series, any time a computer was used, it would have not only numerous buttons, but also panels full of lights that were not labeled, which would blink, usually in a pattern. This is a simultaneously lazy and clever take on contemporaneous ''actual'' computers, which themselves had panels full of lights which ''were'' labeled, and which would blink, usually in a pattern. Since the lights and their labels had meaning only for those few closely familiar with the arcana of a particular machine's operation, the TV versions just showed big panels full of blinking lights, since that's all a layman would notice in any case.
* In ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', ''Serenity's'' cockpit doesn't have massive amounts of buttons, but it does have a large number of them on the consoles and especially on the cockpit's ceiling.
** Alan Tudyk, who played the ship's pilot Wash, said that every time he was directed to do something with the ship, he would always flip three switches above him as a sort of "start-up sequence".
* Inverted in ''Series/RedDwarf'' with Holly's ultra-sophisticated, universe traveling, faster-than-light "Holly Hop Drive". It only had two buttons a green one marked "start" and a red one marked "stop", you pressed the green one to start it...
-->'''Holly:''' ...and you can work out the rest of the controls yourself.
** In ''Back in the Red'', Kryten manages to sway Rimmer into coming with them by promising him his own seat in the cockpit with as many as five buttons at his command.
* The vehicles in ''Series/SuperhumanSamuraiSyberSquad'' were controlled by many flashing unlabelled buttons pushed by untrained teenagers (and on one occasion a high school lunchlady) - even weirder considering the said vehicles were actually [[ItRunsOnNonsenseoleum antivirus software.]]
* In ''Series/KnightRider'', K.I.T.T's control panel had a lot more buttons than were actually used. The handful that were used, like Turbo Boost and Eject R, were marked clearly, but most of them had obscure labels along the lines of [=7DLX=], [=8PL1=], or [=P AUX=].
-->'''Devon:''' Welcome on board the Knight 2000.
-->'''Michael:''' Thank you. What's all this? ''(gestures at dashboard)'' Looks like [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]]'s bathroom.

* The [[CoolCar Delorean]] TimeMachine in ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' films has three rows of buttons along the roof of the car (well, the roof that isn't also part of the gull-wing doors) and more than a few on the board behind the seats. They're never touched in the movies, though the Delorean model in the [[VideoGame/BackToTheFuture video game]] labels the buttons such things as "Flux front", "Coolsys 1", and "Alt".

-->'''Michael Knight:''' Thank you. What's all this? ''(gestures at dashboard)'' Looks like Darth Vader's bathroom.

* The cockpit of any Batmobile, from the '66 TV show to ''Film/TheDarkKnightSaga''.

** Two words: '''Gentoo Linux'''. Two more words: '''USE Flags'''. Every single package, every program down the ''kernel'', is compiled from source, tailored to your ''exact, explicit'' hardware and software specifications set beforehand. The next step in customization would be Linux from Scratch, or creating your own personal forks of programs. [[AwesomeButImpractical Most people, even Linux geeks, see no need for this, or indeed for compiling everything from source Gentoo-style.]] Gentoo is used mostly for servers with a very specific hardware configuration, for a very small gain in performance to add up over longtime 24/7 operation. Desktop "ricers" and hobbyists tend to veer more toward the precompiled binaries of Arch Linux.

*** Or how about the face-sized "Headbutt Button" [[YouFailBiologyForever (placed above the steering wheel on the dash)]]? To make Megas execute a headbutt, Coop must headbutt the gigantic red button, but not before a quick open-mouthed head-shake in proper LargeHam fashion.

* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' TARDIS console has tons of buttons and things on her it, because it's actually a 6-person console which the Doctor is using by himself. The ship also creates her own interfaces every time she takes on a new appearance, and the buttons change accordingly. The Doctor often needs to run around the console hitting buttons on all sides, even when it's not an emergency. (In an emergency he sometimes has to tie levers down with rope...) Also, because of the effect of eleven centuries of amateur maintenance, the console possesses less actual buttons than it does loose wires, brass light switches, ''bicycle pumps''...

[[folder:Videogames]]

* The eponymous giant robot in ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'' has buttons for every occasion. In one episodes, he hits a series of buttons labelled, in this order, "Missiles," "More Missiles," and "[[MacrossMissileMassacre All da Missiles.]]" In another, after declaring he was going into Super Destructor Mode, Coop presses a button labelled, "You heard him kids Super Destructor Mode!" Once, when trapped in a cocoon with a giant alien insect queen bearing down on them, Coop and his pals look over all the hundreds of buttons on the console and find themselves having to decide between "Break Out of Cocoon" and "Kill Giant Insect." He also installed three buttons that could destroy the planet ("Destroy the World," "Smite the World," and "Destroy the World Worse"), but the "Save the World" button was out of order when he needed it the most. Heck, there's a button in the series finale for "Just Got Hit With A Giant Taser?" which zaps the guy with the taser by sending a charge along his own wires.

** A similar gag was done in ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', justified (sort of?) in that the people in the air planes were ''babies.'' The three buttons were LIFT OFF, FIRE MISSILES, and... a clowny face. It doesn't do anything, just enjoy it.

[[folder:Comicbooks]]
* In ''{{Wolverine}}'' #75, the X-Men are re-entering the atmosphere after flying the Blackbird to Magneto's asteroid. Quicksilver must take the pilot seat because there are so many buttons that he is the only one fast enough to activate them all.

* In ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' original series, any time a computer was used, it would have not only numerous buttons, but also panels full of lights that were not labeled, which would blink, usually in a pattern. This is a simultaneously lazy and clever take on contemporaneous ''actual'' computers, which themselves had panels full of lights which ''were'' labeled, and which would blink, usually in a pattern. Since the lights and their labels had meaning only for those few closely familiar with the arcana of a particular machine's operation, the TV versions just showed big panels full of blinking lights, since that's all a layman would notice in any case.

** Taito's ''Landing'' series of video games (''Midnight Landing'', ''Top Landing'', ''Landing Gear'', and ''Landing High Japan'') avert this trope, being simulators but designed to be playable by casual arcade customers. The first two games only have a yoke, throttle, and ContextSensitiveButton (used for menus and performing a go-around to retry the stage). ''Landing High Japan'' does add rudders and buttons for flaps, but it's still heavily simplified compared to the likes of many consumer flight simulators.

* Parodied during an episode of ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'', while Shake pokes around the button laden ship of the Plutonians.