History Main / ImpededCommunication

** Sarah Connor tries to issue a warning to her roommate Ginger by phone, but the killer robot has already liquefied her. Instead, Sarah's message to the answering machine reveals to the terminator that he's killed the wrong target, and that Sarah Connor is at a downtown dance club.

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[[folder:Film-- Live-Action]]

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* While traveling aboard ''Film/TheHindenburg1975'', the Countess plays cards with Napier and Pajetta, a pair of {{Card Sharp}}s who fleece the gullible on luxury cruises. The Countess quickly deduces their shenanigans, as well as their signal system. She discretely edits these signals so that it's their wallets that get drained, rather than hers.

* While traveling aboard ''Film/TheHindenburg1975'', the Countess plays cards with Napier and Pajetta, a pair of {{CardSharp}}s who fleece the gullible on luxury cruises. The Countess quickly deduces their shenanigans, as well as their signal system. She discretely edits these signals so that it's their wallets that get drained, rather than hers.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode "Naughty Nautical Neighbors": [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick are communicating with bubbles that contain their voices. Squidward, whose house is between theirs, gets annoyed and secretly sabotages their messages by using his own bubbles that say mean insults to them. This causes Bob & Pat to hate each other for the episode.

[[caption-width-right:350:Anybody got some Radar Peanut Butter?]]

* ICantHearYou: Hijinks with impeded communication

->-''What made the German panzers so terrifying in UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo was not their heavy armor, their large guns, or their speed. In fact, the German tanks were generally mechanically inferior to their rivals. But the piece of equipment they had that their opponents lacked was a radio. Where the Allied tanks would have one radio per platoon, the Germans made sure each tank had a radio. This enabled them to demonstrate coordination beyond the ken of their opponents. So, from the opponents’ perspective, it seemed like the Germans were everywhere at once, finding every weak spot in the line, and driving deep behind the lines to sow chaos and terror.\\
That means that the true counter to the form of rapid attack made possible by Doctrine: Mobility is not some sort of novel weapon or armor. It’s the seemingly humble wide-spectrum communications jammer. If you can break the radios, the whole fast-moving apparatus collapses under its own weight into a confused mess. One with no other option than to engage in a frontal assault against the obvious strongpoints.\\
'''-[[https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/technology-advanced-subatomic-theory/ Commentary on the "Advanced Subatomic Theory" technology from]] ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' ''' ''

'''-[[https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/technology-advanced-subatomic-theory/ Commentary on the "Advanced Subatomic Theory" technology from ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'']]''' ''

->-''What made the German panzers so terrifying in WW2 was not their heavy armor, their large guns, or their speed. In fact, the German tanks were generally mechanically inferior to their rivals. But the piece of equipment they had that their opponents lacked was a radio. Where the Allied tanks would have one radio per platoon, the Germans made sure each tank had a radio. This enabled them to demonstrate coordination beyond the ken of their opponents. So, from the opponents’ perspective, it seemed like the Germans were everywhere at once, finding every weak spot in the line, and driving deep behind the lines to sow chaos and terror.\\

Compare with ForgedMessage and TheRadioDiesFirst. Contrast PoorCommunicationKills, where the communication failure is due to the character's own flaws, rather than any outside influence. This can be invoked by tropes like FakeStatic and CuttingTheElectronicLeash.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/SpaceBalls https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/spaceballs_radarjam_2.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Anybody got some Radar Peanut Butter?]]

!Examples:

It also has a lot of overlap with CutPhoneLines, ForgedMessage, and TheRadioDiesFirst. Contrast PoorCommunicationKills, where the communication failure is due to the character's own flaws, rather than any outside influence. This can be invoked by tropes like FakeStatic and CuttingTheElectronicLeash.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'': In "Naughty Nautical Neighbors", Spongebob and Patrick are communicating with bubbles that contain their voices. Squidward, whose house are between theirs, gets annoyed and secretly sabotages their messages by using his own bubbles that say mean words to them. This causes Bob & Pat to hate each other for the episode.

* Subverted with the infamous "Russian Woodpecker", a transmission from the Soviet Union which caused shortwave radio listeners to hear a series of tapping sounds over broadcasts, which was thought to be an example of this (others theorized even crazier possibilities, like it was being used for weather control and/or mind control); in reality, it was a long-range threat detection radar whose usage happened to interfere with shortwave radio because of the wavelengths and frequencies used.

* ''We All Died At Breakaway Station'' is a science fiction thriller that centers on a communication relay station that can route messages across interstellar distances in minutes rather than years. During the war between humans and the alien "Jillies," this station was ravaged, but is still functional. One last desperate stand is made at this relay station: the aliens aim to sunder it before Earth spies can transmit the location of the Jillie homeworld to Earth Command.

* ''Literature/WeAllDiedAtBreakawayStation'' is a science fiction thriller that centers on a communication relay station that can route messages across interstellar distances in minutes rather than years. During the war between humans and the alien "Jillies," this station was ravaged, but is still functional. One last desperate stand is made at this relay station: the aliens aim to sunder it before Earth spies can transmit the location of the Jillie homeworld to Earth Command.