History Main / BlackBox

*** And then you can't call it a perfect reproduction. Yes, it looked like X, it had an arm cannon, a variable weapons system (though he only used three moves), and a set of armor... but it's much weaker than X in many ways and in fact is quite comparable with [[spoiler: the clone body Zero is in.]]

* This is a major feature in Creator/AlastairReynolds' ''Revelation Space'' novels. Everyone uses a certain kind of stardrive, but only the makers know how they work, and fiddling leads to an enormous explosion. The most powerful weapons are barely-understood gifts from SufficientlyAdvancedAliens [[spoiler:or future humans who will sent the blueprints back in time]].\\

* In Ian Irvine's ''Well of Echoes'' series, the clankers draw energy from nodes. No-one knows why it works, but their are some illegal books that speculate on these topics.

** The Space Marines' implants cannot be duplicated since the source material needed to create more of them, the Primarchs, are dead, lost, fallen to Chaos, or are otherwise in no condition for harvesting. Even worse, the [[EmperorScientist God Emperor of Mankind]] is the only person alive(ish) who knows how to create more Primarchs, and he's been trapped in living death for 10,000 years. If a Marine falls in battle, retrieving his implant is his comrades' top priority, since each lost implant means one less Space Marine ready to fight against the enemies of humanity.

* In ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' the Devices discovered by dwarfs are ancient Black Boxes with assorted functions, including power sources and recording devices. The magical supercomputer Hex is also a Black Box; it's added so many peripheral devices to itself that even its original designer, Ponder Stibbons, is no longer sure exactly how it works.

Compare ScavengerWorld, where ''everything'' is similar to a BlackBox not by conspiracy but by TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.

* Black Boxes are a dime a dozen in ''Anime/TheBigO'', ranging from nigh-indestructible giant robots to androids to underground tunnel networks. The last episode reveals that [[spoiler: the ''plane of existence'' is one big BlackBox. The only comprehensible objects in the series are tomatoes, and ''those'' are a type of mysterious lost technology]].

** It's all but stated outright that the Otome were based on the Hime, the "natural" [[MagicalGirl magical girls]] from ''MaiHime''. So it's a BlackBox replicating magic. Its a damn miracle it works at all.

* ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic!'' has a bunch of them, collectively called 'Black Technology', created by the mysterious 'Whispered'. Many are simply extrapolations of existing technologies, which are mass-produced and change the world drastically - [[ReedRichardsIsUseless Whispered are explicitly NOT useless.]] Others, however, are perfect examples of the trope - Foremost among them is the 'Lambda Driver', a true BlackBox which enables users to [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve warp the laws of physics through sheer determination]].

* CaptainAmerica's shield is essentially a Black Box in design; made of an unknown alloy of [[{{Unobtainium}} Vibranium]], other metals and a mysterious bonding agent- which the creator doesn't know about, having fallen asleep during its production- which results in a shield that has properties unlike anything else in existence. Some say that agent was [[RightMakesMight American Rightousness]] (as opposed to [[PatrioticFervor American self-righteousness]]), explaining why it seems to act as almost an EmpathicWeapon to Cap.
** ''Captain America'' is a BlackBox. The only scientist who knew how to produce the SuperSoldier Serum was assassinated, leaving NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup after exactly one test subject was treated with it: Steve Rogers. [[ArcWelding Trying to replicate the success of the project spawned Nuke, Deadpool, Wolverine, Fantomex and at least ten others.]]

** The arc reactor becomes less of a BlackBox in ''IronMan2'' when Vanko manages to build one. His doesn't work quite like Stark's, though, and it's unclear whether the important bits actually work differently (so it's still a black box, just a smaller one) or whether it's just irrelevant design choices.

** The ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'' series features a number of examples of the BlackBox. The alien Posleen (or "people of the ships" in their language) are similar to the Covenant in Halo in that they use technology they understand poorly if at all. A perfect example of this is one of their commanders staring in confusion at a computer helpfully informing him "Incoming ballistic projectiles. Impact in 10 seconds. Five.... etc" The views of their society in the initial books of the series are vague for the most part but imply that they only really use the systems that kill things or are almost entirely automated. A literal black box used by the humans in the same series appears in the form of the AID which is a black memory plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes with an extremely potent AI embedded in it. They act as a UniversalTranslator as well, but are provided by another species and the humans haven't a clue how they really work or how to make them. [[spoiler: This turns out to be a serious problem for a number of reasons]]

Judging by one character's vauge discription of the internal conditions in a stardrive in "Weather", the Conjoiners kept the stardrive technoloy BlackBox so that the 'retarded' (everyone else) wouldn't try and weaponise it. [[spoiler: And also because of the whole disembodied-brain thing...]]

** The starship Heart of Gold features the infinite improbability drive that enables improbability manipulation up to a point where the ship exists everywhere at once and can drop out anywhere instantly - universe wide teleportation. The hitch is that nobody knows ''how'' the improbability drive really works, some smartass janitor just figured out one day that all he needed to know was how improbable it was for that drive to come into existance and ''voila'', [[JustAddWater instant]] BlackBox.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' often adapts lesser versions of the technology the crew encounters from other planets. "It doesn't quite work like the original" is commonly stated. However, they're far more aware than most BlackBox users of the potential for unexpected side effects.

* Deadliar from ''VideoGame/{{Hellsinker}}'' previous nickname was Blackbox in true spirit of this this trope since noone had any idea how he operated and produced the results he did.

* In a flashback arc of ''{{Gnoph}}'', a scientist criticizes the military for creating a breed of SuperSoldier pretty much by accident and then using them despite not really understanding how or why they work. Sure enough, things soon GoHorriblyWrong.

* An early ''{{Goats}}'' storyline involves such a machine - you put kittens in, and pop tarts come out; nobody knows what happens to the kittens. Later it's revealed that the machine is [[spoiler: a stolen alien spaceship engine, which is powered by the good feelings created when the kitten is placed in a loving home. But it's still a BlackBox, because even the aliens don't know where the pop tarts come from.]]
* In ''Webcomic/{{Westward}}'', Escherspace -- a form of FasterThanLightTravel -- appears to be a BlackBox. Publicly, the government claims that "only a few scientists" know how it works; in reality, it's strongly hinted that only the mysterious alien Phobos may be capable of understanding it, and he must personally work the controls when the webcomic's eponymous CoolStarship makes an interstellar jump.

* BlackBox programming is a very important concept in real life. For example, all UsefulNotes/{{API}}s (which allow developers to connect to things like Facebook or Google Maps) are black boxes; generally, the only details developers have are usage instructions and a description of what it does, since someone writing, say, a GPS application doesn't need to know anything about how Google Maps works.

* Large amounts of real world software source code is an absolute abomination of incomprehensible abbreviations, architectures which haven't evolved and grown so much as become cancerous, baffling hacks and plain old carelessness and stupidity or even just plain old lack of programming know-how. Such software will gain BlackBox status pretty soon after the original developers move on.

* Older electronic (and most especially military) technologies may well have been designed by people who are dead, coded in languages which no-one ever hears of nowadays, use electronic standards long since obsoleted and built by companies that dissolved or got eaten by other companies some time ago. {{Black Box}}hood arrives quite naturally for such devices, which could conceivably include missile guidance systems or nuclear warhead triggers which are still quite useable today.

* Many psychiatric drugs work via mechanisms that are either unknown or only loosely understood. The laborious (sometimes decades long) process of searching for side effects and other quirks irons out many of the BlackBox problems that plague fiction.

* The philosophy of ''instrumentalism'' boils down to "the ''only'' important thing about any theory is whether it's usable, i.e. predicts a result of given experiment". Hunting for explanations is but a pointless infinite regression. This means that "light is truly made of particles" and "light is truly made of waves" are fancy statements that delusionally bind real events to imaginary constructs while "wave model correctly and in convenient form predicts diffraction/interference effects" or "particle model correctly and in convenient form predicts absorption/emission effects" states everything that really matters in this issue. From this point of view ''anything'' is a BlackBox, the only difference is that we already know how to dismantle some blackboxes to several smaller blackboxes and what buttons to push.

* There was a fad for "miracle cure" machines at the beginning of the twentieth century that were actually called BlackBox machines. You just set a few controls, turned it on, and whatever quack therapy that model was based on would cure the illness. The reason they were intentionally kept as black boxes was the controls did nothing to its function, and most in fact had no working parts.

See also InWorkingOrder. SisterTrope to DisposableSuperheroMaker. Compare StepThreeProfit.

* BlackBox programming is a very important concept in real life. For example, all [[ApplicationProgrammingInterface APIs]] (which allow developers to connect to things like Facebook or Google Maps) are black boxes; generally, the only details developers have are usage instructions and a description of what it does, since someone writing, say, a GPS application doesn't need to know anything about how Google Maps works.

* Some artifacts in custody of the ''Wiki/SCPFoundation''. Anything classified as "euclid" is not entirely understood by the Foundation staff, though some Safe-class objects, such as [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-914 SCP-914]], also display this sort of behavior.

-->-- '''Yawgmoth''', ''MagicTheGathering/TheThran''

* In ''MagicTheGathering/TheThran'', the whole Thran Empire relies on powerstones as their source of energy, but even the engineers who work on them don't exactly know how they work.

* This is a major feature in AlastairReynolds' ''Revelation Space'' novels. Everyone uses a certain kind of stardrive, but only the makers know how they work, and fiddling leads to an enormous explosion. The most powerful weapons are barely-understood gifts from SufficientlyAdvancedAliens [[spoiler:or future humans who will sent the blueprints back in time]].\\

This is surprisingly common in RealLife, particularly in programming, where the programmer is the only one who really understands how what they've built works (and sometimes, not even ''them''[[hottip:note:For an analogy, solve a complex math problem without writing down anything but formulas and equations, and try making sense of it a couple weeks later.]]). Especially in high-level languages, where the programmer can for example tell the computer to replace all occurrences of "cake" with "apple" in a text, and doesn't have to worry about how the system does it - s/he gets a changed text back and that's that.

* The Clow Cards in the first arc of ''Manga/CardcaptorSakura''. The cards are sentient, though astonishingly specialized[[hottip:*:Only some. Sweet, Song, Flower, and similar are almost pointlessly specific, but the rest are either multi-function in and of themselves (the elemental ones), straight-up buffs (Dash, Fly, Fight, etc.), or hugely useful tools in many circumstances (Sword, Mirror, Illusion, Loop, etc.).]], and their creator is dead [[spoiler: but returns anyway in the form of his reincarnation in the second arc.]].

** To a degree, Exaltations themselves are black boxes, to the point where the guy who ''made'' the Celestial-tier shards probably can't make any more[[hottip:*:partly because he's comatose and dying of robot-cancer]]. The main alterations made have been the result of insane supergods launching curses fuelled by the power of their own deaths (the Great Curse), the random action of a zone of infinite probability (the breaking of the Lunar castes), flipping a switch that may have been there all along (Abyssals), and using an intact Solar shard as the battery pack for a web of Yozi Essence (Infernals). Alchemicals can only be made by demiurges channelling the Design of Autochthon and have no idea how to make more when not channelling. About the only Exalts it's easy to make are Dragon-Bloods, and that's because all you need is two other Dragon-Bloods, one male and one female.

* [[Film/IronMan Tony Stark's]] ability to miniaturize the arc reactor is what drives Stane mad in the latter half of Ironman, since Tony didn't exactly leave any blueprints of it in the Terrorist's base and none of Stane's Scientists can duplicate it (leading to his Memetic line about Tony building stuff in a cave with scraps). In IronMan2 the fact that the Ironman suit and miniature Arc reactor apparently ''not'' being Black Box tech is what kicks off most of the plot.

** This also extends to the [=spinoff/sequels=] ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' and ''Series/StargateUniverse'', where the protagonists uncover a dearth of Ancient and alien technology. Though they know how to operate the Ancient technology they find (most of the time), they don't know their exact inner workings.

** Really, this can apply to just about anything a player creates in the game. Fortresses can get so elaborate that critical functions are simply forgotten or change completely as they are built upon. Many a fortress has run into [[NonIndicativeName fun]] because the guy running it forgets which lever opens the door to the mess hall and which one [[KillItWithFire activates the fortress' lava-based self-destruct]]. A truly stand-out example has to be where one LetsPlay ended up creating a fortress so convoluted that one room ended up becoming its own PocketDimension.

An elaboration on NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup.

* In ''Animorphs'', the kids are given the power to morph by touching the Blue Box by the alien Elfangor [[spoiler:right before he is eaten alive by Visser Three.]] Later, [[SixthRanger David]] shows up with the same blue box and it is used to give him morphing power even though no one present has any idea how the technology works. [[spoiler: This happens later again when the Auxiliary Animorphs are created, and yet AGAIN when the Yeerks steal the blue box and use the morphing power to create their own solidiers with the morphing ability.]]

* In the ''MassEffect'' series, the Citadel and mass relays are thought to be built by the Protheans. Humans and other races use them, though their inner workings and construction are poorly understood, and any attempt ''to'' understand them is regarded as an exercise in futility. [[spoiler:It turns out that a race of AbusivePrecursors, the Reapers, were the real builders of these wonders, and the Protheans were just barely figuring out the technology themselves when they were wiped out.]]

*** Which is odd, considering that [[spoiler: Protheans]] have succeeded

** [[MassEffect3 The third game]] kicks this UpToEleven with [[spoiler:the Crucible]], [[spoiler:a [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture light flung into the future]] so many times that barely anyone who tried to build it understood what it was or what it did. Not even the Protheans were sure how it even ''operated,'' and they nearly finished the damn thing before the Reapers completed their invasion. It's hammered home numerous times through the game that it could do damn near anything because while there are easily understandable blueprints for it, there's no data on how to use it or what it does. At one point Commander Shepard likens the situation to a child playing with his father's gun]].

* For much of the ColdWar, nuclear weapons were black boxes, either entirely or to the people working with them. All nukes were designed by multiple people, but sometimes these teams worked loosely with each other in isolation, the effect being that no one person knew how a particular nuclear weapon worked. This method of security eventually fell out of favor as some of the bombs produced by these teams were abject failures; to the extent that at one point in US history, nearly all the warheads carried by US submarines were dudes due to their faulty safety systems. In the other case of nuclear black boxes, teams designing ICBMs and bomb cases were given the bare minimum of information needed to design a delivery system.

* Finch and his partner invoke this trope in ''PersonOfInterest'' when questioned by the [=CIA=] on how the Machine provides intel. Finch feels the Machine is too powerful for any person to have access, and so encrypts it so heavily even he will never be able to access it again.

* In PhilipPullman's ''HisDarkMaterials'', the subtle knife certainly fits the bill. It is an ancient weapon that can cut through anything, including the fabric between dimensions. However, it has the unfortunate effect of [[spoiler:creating a soul-eating monster every time it is used, and eventually weakening the equilibrium of the universe]]. The alethiometer also qualifies, though it has no negative effects.

* Does [[Film/TheDayOfTheTriffids Triffid oil]], which effectively saves the world from global warming, but then it turns out that Triffids are fairly dangerous beings if let loose, count?

* ''Series/BabylonFive'':

** Other leftover First One technology likewise. For example, Shadow devices that allow for remote control of ships. Like Sheridan says, the younger races don't understand them and can't build them, but are sure willing to use them.
** Not to mention the machine that transfers [[CastFromXP life force]] from one person to another, first featured in the first season episode ''Quality of Mercy'' and turning up again in a few later episodes.

* ''The Thran'' provides the page quote. The whole Thran Empire relies on powerstones, but even the engineers who work on them don't exactly know how they work.

* In David Brin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series all of galactic civilization is based on such technology (very much like MassEffect) the exception being humanity's, humans STILL have to rely on BlackBox technology in order to go FTL or fight in space, but they try to do it as little as possible, and sometimes having access to a technology you know intimately might be an advantage... {{Rock Beats Laser}}s after all.
* This is a major feature in AlastairReynolds' ''Revelation Space'' novels. Everyone uses a certain kind of stardrive, but only the makers know how they work, and fiddling leads to an enormous explosion. The most powerful weapons are barely-understood gifts from SufficientlyAdvancedAliens [[spoiler:or future humans who will sent the blueprints back in time]].
** Judging by the eponymous character's vauge discription of the internal conditions in a stardrive in "Weather", the Conjoiners kept the stardrive technoloy BlackBox so that the 'retarded' (everyone else) wouldn't try and weaponise it. [[spoiler: And also because of the whole disembodied-brain thing...]]

* In aviation, the flight data recorders aboard aircraft are called "Black Boxes" (despite typically being brightly colored to make them easier to find after a crash). They get this nickname because the flight crews are unable to get at the recorders in order to prevent them from tampering with the data.

* Part of why there's such a thing as an AwfulTruth in Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica is that the process of Magic is mysterious, even to the resident MentorMascot. [[spoiler:Still, he has no qualms with the side effects of the magic if it helps stave off the heat death]].