History Main / SlowElectricity

* ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'' has you fighting slow monsters known as "brutes" for the first two levels, which are only really dangerous if you don't move. Later on you're merrily coming back from a hit-the-button mission, walking in a corridor, and suddenly the lights start to go out one by one. When the final one dies, [[spoiler:the game presents you with the ''real'' enemy - fast, hard to kill and quite dangerous - while you can't see a thing]]. Lots of crazed shooting at shadows usually ensues.
* ''VideoGame/{{Penumbra}}'': ''Overture'' ends with lights in a hallway clicking off one at a time, before Philip gets kidnapped.
** In the fan sequel, ''Necrologue'', Philip can revisit this hallway, and traveling all the way to the end results in a creepy re-enactment of ''Overture's'' ending. Though that time, it's just a hallucination.
* Black Mesa seems to adore this trope in ''VideoGame/HalfLife.''
* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal}} 2'' the lighting abruptly goes out in the Enrichment Center's maintenance areas [[spoiler: after Chell and Wheatley escape [=GLaDOS=]]]. However, given Wheatley's coinciding dialogue, it's probably just [=GLaDOS=] turning each light off manually.

In fiction, outages -- or repowered structures -- often come on light by light, system by system, dramatically, with a strange thumping noise. [[TruthInTelevision This is known as a cascading failure when it is an outage, and systems often power up slowly if turned on via breaker]]. Usually used for suspense, see KillTheLights.

Subtrope of ArtisticLicensePhysics. Step-sister to SlowDoors. A product of RuleOfCool.

* At the end of the first ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' film, the lightning crawls down the wire at roughly a walking pace.

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Syndrome in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'', since he has a weakness for designing his buildings with dramatic flair.

* At the end of ''Film/AddamsFamilyValues'', the electricity moving in the mass of wires flows so slowly that Pubert is able to crawl into the room and short-circuit the wiring, [[spoiler:saving his family from the electric chairs and electrocuting Debbie, who has thrown the switch]].

* In ''Film/EighthWonderland'' a special ops team has tracked down the server farm hosting the "unwanted" virtual nation. After blowing it to smithereens, the video feeds of the users slowly fade away over the course of a minute.
* In ''Film/TheHungerGamesCatchingFire'', Katniss winds Beetee's wire around an arrow and shoots it into the dome overhead. The charge from the lightning strike on the tree can be seen following the arrow upward.
* In ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2'', Spider-Man and his web lines are able to out-speed Electro's attacks. While it's true in canon that Spider-Man is insanely fast by human standards, he's nowhere near the speed of light.
* During the power outage in ''Film/CaptainAmericaCivilWar'', we see the traffic lights go out one after the other.
* ''Film/TheElementarySchool'': Fanous takes his son on a tour of the electric station where he works. The big finish is Fanous throwing a switch and picking up some load, with homes and street lights getting lit up at a rate of about one streetlight a second.

* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Technically an AvertedTrope in the [[Recap/RevolutionS1E1Pilot pilot episode]]: everything goes out in a single moment, not all at the exact same time, but pretty close. ...and then it spins back around to Creative License Science, since the "power outage" causes planes to immediately fall out of the sky, smartphones and computer tablets to deactivate, and a good few blocks worth of cars to stop working altogether. (Creator/JJAbrams is involved - doubtlessly a lot of twists, retcons, and outright hand-waving are soon to follow).

In real life, the effects of electricity travel very fast - relatively close to the speed of light. As such, most power outages always strike near instantaneously and always strike an area.

In fiction, outages - or repowered structures - often come on light by light, system by system, dramatically, with a strange thumping noise. [[TruthInTelevision This is known as a cascading failure when it is an outage, and systems often power up slowly if turned on via breaker]]. Usually used for suspense, see KillTheLights.

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* The [[Anime/{{Pokemon}} Pokémon anime]] has Electric attacks being dodged very easily. Few Electric attacks miss as easily in the games, and the ones that do involve an electrified body part making contact. Shock Wave notably cannot miss.

* [[ShockAndAwe Misaka Mikoto]] of ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' and ''Manga/ACertainScientificRailgun'' fights Touma a lot, and each time he is able to swing his [[AntiMagic right arm]] in the direction of the attack and block it entirely. Later explained as Touma [[spoiler:subconsciously using an ability to sense AIM Fields and predict her attacks.]] Touma doesn't know he's doing this, either; in the novels, he often remarks how fortunate [[note]]that right there should have been a clue that something more was going on, given his constant bad luck[[/note]] he is that her lightning always hits his hand.
* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex 2nd Gig'' episode "Embarrassment". At the end of the episode, the crew of a Coast Guard ship sees the lights of Nagasaki going out in sections after the city's power is cut, apparently by the refugees. Justified in that the city had many relay power stations holding up the entire grid, and when the cascade began, it was slowed down by each station's failsafes eventually giving out by trying to overcompensate for the adjacent stations.

* ''Film/{{Constantine}}''. When the title character and Angela Dodson are talking on the street, demonic influence causes the streetlights to turn off (with clunking sounds) - first far away, then approaching them.

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* ''Series/{{NUMB3RS}}'': In one episode, the case involves several reactors being taken down in an attempt to create a cascading failure. The shot of the shutdown when it occurs is basically the same thing as most shows/movies show though, but it's a bit more valid than a full electrical failure causing the skyline shutdown sequence.

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* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': While Lightning Release techniques often move ''very'' fast by human standards, they're a fraction of the speed that actual lightning would move, making them possible for a sufficently nimble fighter to dodge; this is explained by the fact that it's ''not'' actual electricity, just human Chakra mimicking electricity.

* ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'' has you fighting slow monters known as "brutes" for the first two levels, which are only really dangerous if you don't move. Later on you're merrily coming back from a hit-the-button mission, walking in a corridor, and suddenly the lights start to go out one by one. When the final one dies, [[spoiler:the game presents you with the ''real'' enemy - fast, hard to kill and quite dangerous - while you can't see a thing]]. Lots of crazed shooting at shadows usually ensues.

* The first ''Film/ResidentEvil'' film. When the Red Queen (and the power) are shut down and restarted in the first film, some areas and devices turn off (and light up again) at different times.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': Series 6, The Rebel Flesh, opening scene

* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'': We get the city power failure sequence at TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
* ''[[Series/LoisAndClark New Adventures of Superman]]'': Explosives under a light-beam cage were deactivated by having Lois setting off the explosives and Superman destroy the wall panel circuit before electricity reached the destination. This is ComicBook/PostCrisis, so Superman is ''fast,'' but '''not''' "here to Alpha Centauri in three seconds" fast.

* ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind''. During the massive electrical blackout early in the movie, the lights in urban areas go out in successive blocks, with the blackout appearing to be "spreading".

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'': The episode "Idol". The Wonder Twins' attack on a criminal causes a blackout during which the lights of Metropolis turn off in segments.

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* Black Mesa seems to adore this trope in ''Half-Life.''

* What we think of as electricity is produced by, or at least related to, the motion of electrons. The electrons themselves have mass -- very little, but some -- so they cannot move at the speed of light. In fact, they move very slowly in wires, often on the order of several centimeters per hour. Current in a wire doesn't work by moving a single electron from point A to point B, however; it's more accurate to think of the electrons in the wire as many tightly-packed balls, or water molecules, or as beads joined in one big rope. If you push or pull on one end, electrons at the other end will move almost immediately. How quickly? At the speed of the propagation of electromagnetic fields, which is at the speed of light.[[note]]In that medium, so electricity in copper wiring travels about 1/3 the "speed of light" (in a vacuum).[[/note]]
** Electricity does propogate at the speed of light, but it's the speed of light in the material that the current is travelling through (electrons do not physically travel through the conductor). Which will always be slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. It is possible for particular to exceed the speed of light in a medium, this causes Cherenkov radiation.