History Main / InWorkingOrder

* Averted (and explained) in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars''. One of the intelligence reports for GDI details how one of the [[ScaryDogmaticALiens Scrin]] [[TripodTerror tripods]] was captured: after a [[BadAss commando]] had blown up one of its legs with plastic charge, an engineer moved in and established control over it, using a computer program originally used to [[CallBack decode the Tacitus]] back in ''Firestorm''. It works just as easily for The Brotherhood.

* {{Averted}} in ''Series/BabylonFive'': alien technology of unknown origin or use has a tendency to either not work properly or backfire if used without understanding, as shown when someone tinkered with a device from the now extinct and was turned into a monster bent on killing everyone who didn't fit in a very restrictive definition of a "pure Ikarran" written by racists with little scientific knowledge ([[GoneHorriblyRight and now you know what killed the Ikarrans). [[GenreSavvy That's why government entities prefer to reverse-engineer any alien technology they find]].

* In the ''Videogame/{{X-Com}}'' series, it is in your best interest to quickly research alien items, and THEN this is in full effect. You can manufacture them after that, but why should you if you can just take them from the hands of dead aliens? Even so, some items like armor can only be used to research human-usable equivalents, and it's taken a tad far in some cases. For example, every alien enemy fought in-game that can carry weapons and grenades is at least [[HumanoidAliens vaguely humanoid]], and certainly has an opposable thumb fairly similar to ours ([[JustifiedTrope and it works pretty well, so why should we be the only ones to evolve it?]]). The fluff is even explicit about the fact that most of them are genetically engineered and/or selectively bred to be [[DumbMuscle more obedient than smart]], so [=AK47=] levels of simplicity to operate would be a necessity. Your troops still can't pick one up from a dead alien grunt and use it until they've been researched.

* The existence of this trope is a plot point in the ''Videogame/{{Halo}}'' series, with the Forerunner technology that apparently can only be used by humans.
** Averted with Covenant weapons: While humans can use them, they never quite figure out how to reload the battery-powered ones, making them ThrowAwayGuns (the covenant plugs them into charging stations, they actually can't be reloaded in the field). Most of them can't use them to their full potential because of the Prophets religion on not tampering with Forerunner tech.

** Their pilot learns to drive the ship by... watching clips of himself, as a kid actor, pretending to drive their ship. The friendly aliens built the controls intuitively matching what they thought he was doing, and didn't bother making a manual. Luckily he actually ''did'' have a control scheme worked out in his head when he filmed it and just had to be reminded of the full details. (These are also the aliens who built a fully functional black box DeusExMachina without having the slightest idea what it did, or even what it was ''supposed'' to do.)

* Niven's ''KnownSpace'' stories also use this pretty heavily, but with a good justification: The Thrintun and Tnuctpin artifacts are all held within [[TimeStop Slaver stasis fields]], which prevents them from aging.
* TimothyZahn's ''Spinneret'' book deals with a human colony planet with no metal whatsoever. It doesn't take long before it's discovered that alien machinery has been sucking up all the metal for purposes that become clear later. Said machinery is at least a hundred thousand years old, but works almost perfectly - a few ancillary machines have seized up, but the bulk of the system does its job as well as it used to when humans were still busy carving stone tools.

* In the ''Planet Hulk'' storyline, basicly the whole planet of Sakaar is built on this. Every piece of technology the natives have is salvaged from crashes and wreckage that's fallen through a wormhole. Subverted, though, in that quite a bit of it is beyond their ability to reproduce.

* In ''Film/IndependenceDay''. Here it has been studied for the past 40 years - but not by the person who piloted it. And the ones who did study it got the diections reversed. Note that the craft has a convenient joystick when the aliens could ''control a human brain'' by touch.
* Subverted in ''Film/CowboysAndAliens''. Zeke finds what appears to be an alien sidearm, and uses it to destroy a random alien object as a test. Turns out the sidearm is actually a welding tool, and the random object is an alien grenade. Its alternate modes of fire are also amusing.

* In ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED GundamSEED]]'', weapons designed for mobile suits of one side have energy and data interface plugs that can only work with HumongousMecha of that side. Some mobile suits are built later during the series that have a "Universal plug" that can allow weapons of all sides to work with that suit.

*** Sam did get a bunch of knowledge from the tokra ( and once you know how to use a keyboard computers are much easier to use)

* ''PlanetSide'' has the [[PreCursors Ancient Vanu]] [[EldritchLocation Caverns]]. All the technology in them still functions perfectly fine, despite the Vanu being [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence gone]] for god knows how long. After [[ApocalypseHow The Bending]], many of the caverns were relocated from under the surface of Auraxis to truly odd locations - such as being inside an asteroid in the depths of interstellar space. This has had no effect on the cavern systems, courtesy of their [[NanoTechnology self-repairing nanites]]

* In ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'', the reboot. Starbuck flies a craft that, not only was "alien", but designed to operate without a pilot at all. Especially ridiculous as she was able to out fly another, albeit slightly less hotshot, pilot comprehensively and yet no one else could even figure out how to get the thing moving without her.

* RealLife: The US Air Force ran a program during the ColdWar codenamed Constant Peg, which basically involved Soviet aircraft, primarily of the [=MiG-21=] and [=MiG-23=] varieties, acquired from a number of sources (e.g. Egypt, which changed sides in the late 1970s) for analysis and pilot training. The pilots had to write their own checklists and one piece of advice was "You can touch the shiny switches, but don't touch the red or rusty ones". A number died in accidents.

* Played with, but decidedly subverted in ''{{District 9}}''. The Prawns are shaped very similarly to humans. So it makes sense that in District 9 all the Prawn-made guns were very similar to human guns. Despite picking them up, aiming them at a target and pulling the trigger being relatively intuitive for humans, firing them was impossible. Play around with it all you want, but nothing but Prawn DNA running through your blood will get a Prawn gun to actually fire.

* In ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'', the reboot. Especially ridiculous as said pilot was able to out fly another, albeit slightly less hotshot, pilot comprehensively and yet no one else could even figure out how to get the thing moving without her.
** Just because it wasn't explicitly stated. Starbuck flies a craft that, not only was "alien", but designed to operate without a pilot at all.

** ''UFO Aftermath'' takes this one step further: research descriptions suggest that the scientists have added a stock, a grip and a trigger to the plasma gun so that it can be used by humans. Also, alien armor won't work for humans due to their environmental systems (Reticulans need lower gravity and more oxygen) so they had to build that from scratch.
*** Similarly, the Wargot weapons in ''Aftershock'' require a little additional modification for human or cyborg use, as the Wargot inexplicably possess an additional 'finger' on their elbow-equivalents, in order to operate an additional trigger system. It's never really explained ''why'', but it could well be an attempt to avoid this trope.

* RealLife: The US Air Force ran a program during the ColdWar codenamed Constant Peg, which basically involved Soviet aircraft, primary of the [=MiG-21=] and [=MiG-23=] varieties, acquired from a number of sources (e.g. Egypt, which changed sides in the late 1970s) for analysis and pilot training. The pilots had to write their own checklists and one piece of advice was "You can touch the shiny switches, but don't touch the red or rusty ones". A number died in accidents.

* In the the [[{{Revival}} remake]] of ''Series/TheTomorrowPeople,'' the kids use a crashlanded spaceship as a headquarters. While it cannot fly, it can act as homing beacon for Tomorrow People, heal them when they nearly drown, enhance their telepathic abilities, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking whip up the best orange juice known to man]].

* Averted in TabletopRPG ''CthulhuTech'': for the expressed purpose of avoiding this trope, the alien Migou design their guns and mecha to require no less than six limbs to operate.

* Played with slightly in 3E ''DungeonsAndDragons'', which requires a Use Magic Device check to operate any magical item that's found (it's assumed that the characters are experimenting with different activation words and handgrips), but even the strangest and most alien artifacts will yield with a high enough roll.

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[[folder: Video game]]

* In the ''KamenRiderDecade''/''KamenRiderDouble'' CrossOver movie, Double takes control of a Super Shocker mammoth [[HumongousMecha mecha]] simply by docking his modular motorcycle's front half into the mecha's forehead (and for extra points, that spot was previously occupied by a laser cannon).

** At least one fanfic {{Hand Wave}}s this by claiming alien weapons were DNA-locked to their owners. What the scientists were doing was to add humans to the list of permitted users (and while they were at it, they also added iron sights), and the questionably-canon "Data Cannisters" suggest that the alien grenade had some weird psionically-activated arming system that nobody could figure out and which had to be stripped out and replaced with a mechanical timer.

* ''[[StargateVerse Stargate]]''. Once reverse-engineered somehow, any tech can be used as-is, even the titular piece of LostTechnology from ''Film/TheArkOfTruth'', which was buried for about ''50 million years''.

* In the show ''{{Aquila}}'' two school kids find a small alien ship, with a dead Roman Centurion in it, it's perfectly tuned for humans but the downside is that its controls are in Latin, later they figure out that you can change the language to English thus making it a lot easier to control. So it's an alien vessel, tuned for humans, been underground for at least 2,000 years plus however long it was before the Centurion found it and it can be configured for modern languages, neat.

** In VideoGame/{{Xenonauts}}, while alien technology generally can't be used straight away without Main/DoingResearch on it, a soldier can simply pick up an alien plasma rifle and use it in the same battle with no problem at all. It is only after the battle ends when alien weaponry becomes non-functional.

*** The 2012 reboot averts this; when an alien dies it's equipment self-destructs and the researchers are reverse-engineering the fragments. You still need to figure out how to capture one intact in order to use their plasma weaponry. The game also takes pains to point out that, in most cases, alien weaponry is designed for alien physiology, which is a little different from human physiology, and even then, humans can adapt alien technology to ''new'' applications, such as sniper rifles and plasma light machine guns.

* In the show ''Series/{{Aquila}}'' two school kids find a small alien ship, with a dead Roman Centurion in it, it's perfectly tuned for humans but the downside is that its controls are in Latin, later they figure out that you can change the language to English thus making it a lot easier to control. So it's an alien vessel, tuned for humans, been underground for at least 2000 years plus however long it was before the Centurion found it and it can be configured for modern languages, neat.