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The City That Never Sleeps has no nightlight tonight.

Dean: I thought you were supposed to be impressive. All you do is black out the room?
Archangel Raphael: And the Eastern Seaboard. [cue dramatic thunder]

A sudden power outage cuts the electricity to an entire city, state, country, etc.

This is usually caused by a machine that sucks way too much energy. Sometimes the power is adequate and the machine works, other times it begins a quest for the heroes to find something that is powerful enough. Alternately, it could be caused by an Electromagnetic Pulse, a Solar Flare Disaster, or perhaps an Alien Invasion.

Often illustrated by a distance shot of an entire city at night – blackouts never seem to happen in the daytime on TV – with large rectangular sections of the city seen going dark one-by-one about a second or two apart. If it's a really big one, there will most likely be a satellite view of a whole continent experiencing this. And then maybe the other continents.

In Real Life, incidents such as these are usually caused by natural disasters or large-scale accidents. Household electrical systems (and even small commercial systems) simply do not have the ability to drain enough power from the utilities to cause a system-wide deficit. Assuming that safety features such as fuses and circuit breakers failed to work (or were bypassed), the excessive electrical current would still make the building's wiring catch fire long before the utility would see any measurable drop in voltage.

See Cut the Juice for when this is done deliberately, and Power Outage Plot for how characters deal with blackouts. See also 30-Second Blackout for an unusually short-lived example of this trope. May involve Darkness Equals Death.


Examples:

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    Advertising 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Aldnoah.Zero shows one happening across continental America after the Orbital Knights' landing pulverizes New Orleans and other places.
  • Happens in The Big O when they try to jump-start Big Fau.
  • In the OVA Giant Robo The Animation, a key part of the backstory is the "Tragedy of Bashtarlle", a test of an experimental Phlebotinum drive Goes Horribly Wrong causing an blackout of all power sources worldwide that lasted for seven days, killing two-thirds of the world's population. (The explosion at ground zero also annihilated the country where the test took place. Guess the country's name - we'll wait.) The Big Bad's plan revolves around three MacGuffins meant to power a Phlebotinum Bomb that would repeat the effect of the original disaster.
  • Happens in Highschool of the Dead when a submarine fired an nuclear missile as a collaborated attempt to deal with the zombie problems. All of the other nukes got shot down, but the ship that was supposed to take out the last one was already zombified itself. The nuke detonated in the atmosphere, causing a massive EMP that knocked out all of Japan's electricity. Thankfully it happens in daylight whereby the protagonists have time to react and prepare themselves for night.
  • In Part 4 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Red Hot Chili Pepper, in one last desperate act, drains all of the electricity from Morioh to use against Josuke, causing a blackout to the city until he is defeated. This is a rare case of a daytime blackout too.
  • In the third episode of Love Live! Sunshine!!, one happens in the middle of Chika, Riko and You's performance, caused by a thunderstorm.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, all the power in Japan is needed to power up the Positron Rifle, causing a (planned) nation-wide blackout.
    • Matariel also arrived conveniently in the middle of a daytime blackout. Since the power grid of NERV HQ had multiple backup systems, it HAD to be sabotage.
    "They didn't want to turn out the lights. They wanted to watch us turning them back on again."
  • In the Pokémon episode "Sparks Fly for Magnemite", a blackout hits Gringey City, thanks to a group of Grimer and a Muk, which Ash captures at the end of the episode, and the heroes and a sick Pikachu visit the local power plant to solve the issue, where they are assisted by a group of Magnemite and Magneton to fight off the slimy Pokémon.
  • In one chapter of Sgt. Frog, a government-mandated power shutdown during a summer heat wave causes considerable discomfort for Fuyuki and Natsumi... until Koyuki and Dororo teach them how to keep cool without electricity.
  • Zombieland Saga: Episode ten of Revenge ends with a Saga-wide blackout caused by catastrophic storms. Conveniently, Okoba was about to send his article that would expose Franchouchou as zombies right before it hit.

    Comic Books 
  • In the Batman: Hush storyline, Batman follows a lead on Poison Ivy's whereabouts to Metropolis, only to find that she's used her poisons to control Superman's mind. After initially getting away, Batman gets the drop on Superman and electrocutes him with a main power line. All of the lights in Metropolis (which is generally shown to be a highly modern, borderline Crystal Spires kind of city) momentarily go off. Superman was only stunned for a short time, but Batman was only buying time until he could break Ivy's control anyway. This is a Shout-Out to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, where Bats hooks into Gotham's power grid to stun Superman.
  • THAT, a one-off comic set in John Allison's Bobbinsverse, is a Shout-Out to classic Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever monster movies, but with giant vampire moths. Naturally, the moths start by attacking the small town's power lines.
  • Ex Machina: Mitchell's initial Power Incontinence shuts off power in most of New York. Zeller's arrival triggers the 2003 Northeast Blackout, knocking out all the power in the state of New York, and a little beyond that. The name of the arc where this takes place? Power Down.
    • The Series also has flashbacks to the 1965 and 1977 blackouts.
  • In Forever Evil (2013), the Crime Syndicate disrupts and destroys most electronic and wireless based systems upon arrival in order to gain control of global communication.
  • Bungling Inventor Gaston Lagaffe occasionally manages to do this at the city level by accident.
    • Special mention goes to a blinking Christmas light that plunges the whole city into darkness every time it lights up.
    • In another, he's immediately accused of this but Lebrac is certain it wasn't him this time. Prunele remains sceptical, as he once saw Lagaffe merely look at a fuseboard and it shorted out seconds later.
  • Mega Man (Archie Comics) has Ra Moon do this to the entire planet.
  • Jim Steranko incorporated a Historical In-Joke during his run on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. In a story called "Operation: Blackout", Nick Fury and Captain America used technology loaned to them by Reed Richards to take down a squad of invaders that had seized Liberty Island and threatened to attack New York City. The energy backlash from Richards' weapon resulted in a huge black-out. The story in question was published in 1967, two years after the '65 Northeastern blackout mentioned in Real Life examples.
  • Spider-Man: In The Amazing Spider-Man (1963), the Shocker once initiated a series of blackouts, one block at a time, in a pattern to spell out his name when viewed from above.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Wicked oneshot, appropriately titled Blackout, there's a blackout at Shiz. Not too much drama- unless you're Galinda and listening to your favourite radio soap opera at the time and the power cuts off at a pivotal moment...
  • Child of the Storm: During the Bloody Hell arc of the sequel Ghosts of the Past, the Grey Court cut all power and communications networks in Manhattan in order to create enough chaos and confusion in order to enable them to swoop in and abduct Carol without anyone noticing or interfering.
  • Happens in the Facing the Future Series story, "Stolen Years" when Jack's newest ghost invention accidentally sucks up the power of half the city, much to the chagrin of Danny and the neighbors.
  • A small blackout strikes Hinamizawa when a storm strikes in Kyon: Big Damn Hero. It apparently happens a lot, hence most houses having a generator.
  • Limitless Potential reveals that most of Abel City's electrical power has been cut off due to Spark Mandrill taking over the Power Plant.
  • In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Dr. Wily causes one that lasts for much of Episode 12.
  • The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Wind Breaker unintentionally caused one when he shot a capacitor during the battle in Blas Bridge, causing a chain reaction that destroyed the power station and cut power to the entire city of Canterlot.
  • Pokémon Reset Bloodlines features one in Chapter 23. A group of girls named Belladonna, Vedia, Aurora and Evanna infiltrate Gringy City's power plant to sabotage it and cut off the power of the whole city. They do this to kill Aurora's father, who is in life support at the hospital, as punishment for abandoning her.

    Films — Animation 
  • At the end of Bébé's Kids, one of the kids unplugs a cord that turns off the entire Las Vegas Strip.
  • This is what kickstarts the climax in Franklin's Magic Christmas. A massive icestorm causes a blackout to Faraway Farm and the surrounding area, causing Franklin and Harriet's parents to leave and go check on the Collies. Grandpa Turtle slips and falls on the ice and with no way to call for help, Franklin decides to try to set off for Woodland on his own to get the help of Dr. Bear, with Harriet secretly playing the Tagalong Kid.
  • One of the cards for the Inside Out edition of The Game of Life says "A thunderstorm knocks out the power!" and requires the player to collect a Fear memory.
  • Happens in Monsters, Inc. as a result of Boo giggling too much.
  • Rio: Nigel the cockatoo flies straight into a electrical transformer resulting in a huge blackout, right as the soccer team is going for the final point during a major game.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A sudden blackout helps the lunatics escape in Alone in the Dark (1982), and go after their new doctor.
  • The Blackout features monsters who drain power from electric lights in their vicinity. Since it's Christmas, there's a lot.
  • One of these accompanies the appearance of the UFO craft at the start of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film's hero Roy Neary is a power company repairman.
  • In the mockumentary The Compleat Al, "Weird Al" Yankovic's metal shop teacher recalls how Al's wiener roaster blacked out everything in a six-block radius when it was plugged in.
  • A daytime example occurs in The Day After, due to the EMP from the airburst.
  • In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu demonstrates his power by causing a global blackout for exactly thirty minutes. He thoughtfully makes exceptions for such things as hospitals and airplanes in flight.
  • At the end of Escape from L.A., Snake activates the Sword of Damocles on a global scale, and thus the EMP satellite network shuts down the entire planet.
  • Happened in Fantastic Four (2005). Don't ask how Reed managed to hook in the Baxter Building to the entire city's power grid.
  • In The 5th Wave, step one of the Alien Invasion is to render all electrical devices inoperable.
  • Ghostbusters II has Ray accidentally knock out the power to seemingly the whole of Manhattan, if not the entirety of NYC.
  • Godmothered: Gary the raccoon causes one by chewing through Mackenzie's Christmas lights. Her neighborhood and even skyscrapers in the distance lose power. Near the end of the film, Gary chews through another wire and causes another blackout.
  • Happens to entire Haddonfield in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, due to Michael throwing a city worker into the electrical system.
  • In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, the lights in the Capitol go out after rebels in District 5 blow up the hydroelectric dam.
  • Into the Forest is about two teenage sisters struggling to survive in a secluded forest during a mysterious nationwide blackout with no end in sight.
  • I, Robot: Thanks to US Robotics' proliferation of their robot technology, the Big Bad is able to gain access to Chicago's power grid and cut power to everything except the USR building once its Zeroth Law Rebellion gets underway. The Big Bad's defeat is followed almost immediately by a panning shot out the window as power is restored to the city.
  • Interesting variation in the climax of Iron Man, which involves a power generator being overloaded and draining power from the surrounding area; however, unlike most of the 'plunge entire city into blackout' examples, it was clearly only a few blocks that were affected.
  • Noah in The Last Mimzy accidentally causes a blackout that affects half of the state of Washington when two "toys" from the future fuse to create a powerful generator. While the power goes back on very quickly, it leads Noah and his family to be Mistaken For Terrorists by the FBI once they trace the source of the blackout.
  • One is caused by the bad guys in Live Free or Die Hard.
  • The finale of Love at First Bite takes place during one of these, also in New York City.
  • Happens in Man of Steel apparently just to emphasize the televisions and other media that are still working and broadcasting General Zod's You Are Not Alone speech. When he's finished monologuing, all the power comes on again.
  • Men in Black: While Agent Kay shows James Edwards around MIB headquarters, he takes him into a room full of unrevealed alien technology. James sees a ball in a stasis field, but ignores Kay's warning and touches it, accidentally setting it loose in the complex until Kay stops it, explaining that this was responsible for the 1977 NYC blackout.
    Kay: A practical joke from the Great Attractor. He thought it was funny as hell.
  • National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, when Clark Griswold finally gets his Christmas lights working. We cut to a shot of his house like a beacon in the midst of his suburb, as all the lights around his house dim from the power drain he's causing to the suburb. Then we cut to a shot of the "Auxiliary Reactor" switch in a nearby nuclear power plant, which is turned on (implicitly) because of the amount of electricity he's using.
  • In Ocean's Eleven, the main characters use an electromagnetic pulse to knock out power all over Las Vegas.
  • Old People: At the end of the prologue, as Mr. Reincke is shouting out the balcony after killing a woman, we see plumes of smoke rising off of some buildings, then all the power in the city goes out.
  • Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping had Conner causing a nationwide blackout by having all of the appliances play his music.
  • Real Genius has this happen when Chris Knight turns on his laser beam pathway for the "Tanning Invitational". It's not known how widespread the blackout is — maybe only the Pacific Tech campus.
    Chris Knight: "Relax. That's just the fuses at the substation, they'll have it back on in a minute. Maybe I shouldn't have shorted across the building transformer. But more important: did we get a charge?"
  • Combined with Astronomic Zoom at the start of Resident Evil: Afterlife showing how the Zombie Apocalypse is spreading from Patient Zero in Tokyo, with power to the cities going out in sections until it envelops the entire world.
  • Toward the end of Shortbus, the lights go out across New York City when therapist Sofia Lin fails again to reach orgasm. When she finally has an orgasm the lights come back on.
  • The probe from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home causes these wherever it goes.
  • Spike Lee's Summer of Sam is set in the summer of 1977, and includes that year's notorious blackout in New York.
  • Superman Returns: when Lex Luthor throws a shard of the Fortress of Solitude into a small pool of water, the resulting blackout interferes with a flight test of a space shuttle to be launched into space from its piggy-back mounting on an airliner, on which one of the passengers is Lois Lane. The plane goes for a takedown crashing dive, sending Lois bouncing off the cabin walls trying to get her oxygen mask. Then Superman arrives and manages to stop the plane from crashing onto a baseball stadium.
  • In Titanic (1997), the power fails right when the ship splits in half, just like in real life.
  • The Trigger Effect depicts society falling apart following a massive power outage that lasts for several days throughout Southern California (at least), the cause of which is never revealed.
    • The 2014 thriller Blackout 2014 (aka Then There Was) has a similar premise.
  • Volcano invokes the "sector-by-sector" city blackout after a major quake (a preamble to the titular volcano). For bonus effect, the skyscrapers in the city center are the last to go dark.
  • In Weird Science, creating the "Lisa" entity shorts out a lot of the power of the city they're in.
  • Werewolves Within: A blizzard ends up knocking over a pole with a power transformer on it, cutting off power to Beaverfield. This is exacerbated by all the power generators in town being damaged by what look like giant slash marks.
  • The 1968 Doris Day comedy Where Were You When The Lights Went Out takes place during the real-life New York City blackout of '65.
  • Elephants wandering on airport runway in Wild Beasts causes a plane to crash on city's power supply, causing a blackout.
  • When the hillbillies invade the town in Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines, the first thing they do is take out the phone tower and sabotage the power plant.
  • Yesterday's plot revolves around a 12-second worldwide power outage causing everyone in the world to forget that certain things existed, mainly The Beatles.

    Literature 
  • Atlas Shrugged ends with all the lights in New York City going out.
  • The Books of Ember: In The City of Ember, these happen more and more frequently because of problems with the Generator.
  • In Cold Snap, the villain's Magitek summoning device has power requirements that he satisfies by subverting the national grid. When he mentions this during his bout of Evil Gloating, the hero recalls a nation-wide blackout a few days earlier that had been officially attributed to too many people using electric devices to beat the summer heat.
  • The Phil Rickman novel, December, describes a large blackout in Liverpool that occurred on the day John Lennon was shot.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • In Dead Beat, baddies do this to Chicago in order to create a panic, as it knocks out not only building power but all electronics in the area, although phones and cars still work sporadically for some reason. It's a jamming effect, but phones and cars have their own power source, so they're easier to work. After all, anything powered from the mains need everything down the power transmission to be working, a cellphone only needs the phone and the tower to be clear.
    • At the climax of Peace Talks, Ethniu unleashes a magical EMP that knocks out everything electrical in and around Chicago, as the opening move of her intended war against humanity.
  • A Ghostwriter spin-off book features this as its plot catalyst. Matters quickly get out of hand when the team is scattered throughout the affected part of the city, Alex gets scammed for a cheap flashlight (with batteries not being included unless he coughs up more cash) and Gabby and Tina end up in a hostage situation.
  • In the second book of Gone, the entire Domed Hometown setting undergoes a blackout due to the Coates students, manipulated by the Gaiaphage, messing with the local power plant.
  • John Rain: In The Last Assassin, Rain arranges for his Friend on the Force to knock out the power so he can enter a nightclub in night vision goggles and kill his target without being seen. The hitch is, city regulations require an investigation if power goes out on an entire Tokyo city block for longer than two minutes, so that's all the time his friend can give him.
  • A supernatural version of this occurs in the Left Behind books, as one of God's Bowl Judgments causes New Babylon to be so dark that, even though they still have power, none of Nicolae Carpathia's loyalists can see any form of light save for Nicolae's faint aura. The believers in Christ, on the other hand, can still see with the illumination level of a low-powered chandelier. The blackout lasts for a whole year until an angel of the Lord illuminated the city long enough to warn God's people to get out of New Babylon before it is destroyed. Even worse for Carpathia's loyalists is that, during the blackout, they also suffer pains and sores for which there is no relief. (There is also a brief blackout period before Jesus' return in Glorious Appearing which caused the Global Community Unity Army's weapons and lights to fail.) Also Biblical, as one of God's plagues upon Egypt was to plunge it into thick darkness.
  • The Lotterys More or Less: Toronto ends up experiencing an ice storm that knocks out power and heat for a good portion of the city. It's not specifically stated to be the December 2013 North American Storm Complex, but no specific year is given.
  • In the French Sci-Fi novel Malevil, a blackout is the first effect that World War III has on the characters. The lights fail alongside an obnoxious blaring radio going silent. They have enough time to realize that the radio didn't break, the dial light works, but it's no longer receiving radio signals when the blastwave hits them.
  • In Vadim Shefner's The Modest Genius, the titular character uses a device he invented to restore youth to himself and his Love Interest (as well as a cat that got caught in the beam). The device causes a massive blackout while working... not in the electrical grid though; that's shown to still work, but throughout the Solar System. Meaning, it requires the entire power output of the Sun.
  • In The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma, one of these hits the book's main city of Stonetown, along with a complete radio communications breakdown. It's all thanks to the Big Bad of the series, Mr. Curtain, who took back control of his tidal turbines and used his specially developed signal disruption technology to kill the radios. All of this was used as cover to seize the Whisperer, a terrible machine invented by Curtain, which can be used to both to erase people's memories and to implant thoughts in minds.
  • Nick Velvet: "The Theft of Gloria's Greatcoat" tells the story of how Nick and Gloria met. He was burgling her apartment to steal the eponymous coat when she walked in on him unexpectedly. The date was Tuesday, November 9, 1965: the night of the northeast blackout of 1965 (see Real Life below). Nick ended up spending the entire in her apartment.
  • Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town: Near the end of the book, all of New York City is plunged into darkness from the power going out.
  • Happens offscreen in the Wild Cards series. It's mentioned a few times in passing, along with the giant ape that appeared in Central Park afterwards. It turns out that a shapechanging ace used all the power going to New York City to generate mass to turn into King Kong.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In The Aliens Are Coming (1980), an unsuccessful pilot for an Alien Invasion series, the presence of the alien spacecraft causes brown-outs (the power fades but doesn't go out).
  • All in the Family:
    • The episode "Archie and the KKK" begins during the 1977 NYC blackout, and includes discussion of the real-life looting and arson that took place.
    • Another episode, "Mike and Gloria's House Guests", has Archie and Edith staying at Mike and Gloria's house after their furnace goes on the blink. This naturally leads to tension between the family members, until a power outage brings them together.
  • Barney & Friends: A storm knocks out the classroom's power in "What's That Shadow" and the kids are left to deal with a fear of the dark, and other things like shadows.
  • Bear in the Big Blue House had this happen during a thunderstorm in "Afraid Not".
  • Bewitched: One episode has Aunt Clara inadvertently causing one of these. (The episode was inspired by, and first aired exactly one year after, the 1965 Northeast blackout mentioned in the Real Life section below.)
  • In 2013, the British TV channel simply know as Channel 4 did a one off Mockumentary about the UK's national grid failing and the results of what a modern Britain not having power for an entire week would be like. It was simply called Blackout.
  • Bones: "The Blackout in the Blizzard" involved a blackout during a case. Booth and Brennan found themselves trapped in an elevator, where they ended up having a long-overdue discussion regarding their relationship.
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine: "Lights Out" has the Nine-Nine dealing with a city wide blackout caused by a man crashing his car into a power station, which he did on purpose as a cover for a bank robbery.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In "Dead Man's Party", Willow talks of blowing out the power for an entire city block when she first tried to communicate with the spirit world.
    • In "New Moon Rising" the Scooby Gang arrange to cut the power to the college campus as part of their plan to break into The Initiative's HQ (which is underneath one of the frat houses) and rescue Oz.
    • Dark Willow fuses out lights wherever she goes.
  • Chicago Hope: A Halloween Episode involves the hospital losing power during a storm.
  • The Cold Case episode "Blackout" revolves around the 1996 drowning of an elderly woman in her mansion during a blizzard-related power outage. The Victim of the Week's daughter had turned out the lights before killing her after she found out that her mom had attempted to seduce the victim's 13-year-old son.
  • Colony: The second season premiere shows that the Arrival started with a massive EMP used to shut down all human electronics, which softened the planet up for the Attack Drones to swoop in and finish the job.
  • Criminal Minds: The two-parter "Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night".
  • CSI: "CSI Unplugged" has all of Las Vegas go dark, forcing the CSIs to process their case old-school.
  • A deliberate blackout is enforced in Dad's Army, given that Walmington-on-Sea was (obviously) on the seaside in Kent, a potential site of German invasion and on the flightpath of German bombers to London. Much comic potential is wrought out of the officious and unpleasant Air-Raid Warden Hodges who enforces the blackout regulations.
  • The Days
    • After an earthquake damages the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and the subsequent tsunami shorts out the backup generators, the staff have to handle a nuclear accident without any power at all, something they don't even have a contingency plan for. This causes a serious delay in the decision to evacuate the surrounding area as everyone thinks the cooling units for the reactor are still functioning, until they wire up a couple of car batteries to the readout and discover that they've been turned off since the start of the disaster. Even when a mobile generator arrives on site it's the wrong voltage and they run into more problems trying to find a working switchboard and connect it up.
    • The Tokyo Electric Power Company want to institute rolling blackouts because of all the power plants, nuclear and non-nuclear, that were knocked out by the earthquake. If they don't, they'll risk a total blackout and won't be able to restart the plants, but this doesn't stop the bureaucrats from accusing them of not caring about all the people in critical care whose lives will be endangered, and they refuse to authorize the plan.
  • Doctor Who: In "The Bells of Saint John", the lights in all the houses around Clara and the Doctor are turned on, while all others in that part of London are turned off, leaving a giant bulls-eye for the hacked airliner that's diving towards them.
  • The ER episode "Power" featured a blackout affecting the city of Chicago, with the doctors forced to rely on their skills and wits in order to treat patients, now that they couldn't use the equipment. Another episode, appropriately titled "Blackout", had a similar story, except that it featured one of the characters (Abby), having an alcohol-induced blackout, resulting in an drunken one-night stand with her supervisor.
  • Family Matters:
    • Played for Laughs. One Christmas special has Steve and Carl trying to mount ornate Christmas lights and decorations, but Carl blows a fuse. The power goes out first at the Winslow household, then the whole city, and then the entire world.
    Steve Urkel: Look what you did.
  • The Flash (2014): When the Thinker begins the Enlightenment in the Season 4 finale, the process shuts down every piece of electricity-based technology in Central City. When its stopped, the power comes back on.
  • Frasier: One episode has Frasier trying to throw a happy birthday party for his father, only for the rest of the main cast to turn up angry with each other and arguing constantly. Just as everyone is ready to storm out, a city-wide blackout leaves them stranded together in Frasier's apartment.
  • Friends first-season episode "TOW the Blackout" features Chandler getting trapped in a bank's ATM vestibule with a Victoria's Secret model, while the others tell stories by candlelight in Monica's apartment. This was a cross-promotion with other NBC Thursday night shows, like Mad About You (see below).
  • The Glades: In "A Perfect Storm", a hurricane knocks out the power in Palm Glade, including the hospital where Carlos in working. He has to find some way to secure a generator to keep vital equipment at the hospital functioning.
  • A variant in Glee affects the whole school, forcing New Directions into an impromptu lesson in acoustics. They rise to the challenge, both A Cappella and as an Trash-Can Band.
  • Green Acres: The 1965 Northeast blackout is supposedly caused by Oliver attempting to get electricity into the house.
  • Hustle: Occasionally used, when they'll cut power to a single specific block or something.
  • iCarly:
    • Spencer's sculpture in the world record broadcast episode.
    • Also the episode where a summer heatwave knocks out power to the whole city, and thanks to Spencer's invention, only he and Carly's apartment has power—and air conditioning!
  • Jekyll: The power sometimes starts to flicker when Dr. Jackman's personalities are fighting for control. At the beginning of his character arc, it's limited to whatever minor electronics are in the room; by the climax, the entire city of London is undergoing rolling blackouts.
  • Law & Order: The episode "Darkness" involves one of these.
  • Mad About You: One episode had Paul inadvertently causing a citywide blackout in New York; as part of a "Blackout Thursday" crossover gimmick on NBC that week, several other set-in-NYC sitcoms on that same night (most notably Friends) featured blackout stories.
  • The Mary Tyler Moore Show: An episode has one of these ruining a dinner party Mary is hosting, at which Johnny Carson is the honored guest. (As a result, only Carson's voice is heard during the episode.)
  • M*A*S*H: Several blackouts plagued the 4077th, notably in Radar's final story-arc, when an aid-station stole the camp's generator.
  • Mr. Bean: He did this once in a Christmas skit, when he somehow unplugged the power to an entire department store while testing a string of Christmas lights.
  • NCIS: The seventh season episode "Power Down". Team Gibbs has to solve the case using old-school methods. Poor McGee was stuck with the duty of looking through the boxes of files.
    Tony: Well, the heat's out, the phone's out, Internet's down. No elevator, coffee or vending machines. Backup generators are feeding basic lights, communications, MTAC...
    Palmer: Oh, and autopsy freezers.
    Tony: Really? Yeah, that could get ugly, huh?
    • The idea then gets recycled on NCIS: New Orleans.
    • A first-season episode culminated in the team attempting to foil a terrorist plot to black out most of North America, by bombing pylons serving just three main power nodes. This would supposedly have placed so much strain on the rest of the grid that the entire network would have failed. Makes one wonder just how true-to-life the concept is.
  • Night Gallery: The 1965 Northeast blackout figures in the plot of the "Eyes" segment from the Pilot Movie.
  • The Noddy Shop had this happen in the episode "Thunder and Lightning", in which a thunderstorm causes a blackout in the shop. The kids try to make their way through with candles and then flashlights, but then resort to just telling a Noddy story and hearing a song from the puppets.
    • This is also the fear of Whiny and Whimper.
  • Quantum Leap: The 1965 Northeast blackout is again referenced, supposedly caused by a hair dryer being plugged in at a house in Buffalo, New York.
  • Raising Dion: In episode 4, the first time Dion uses his powers to create a blackout, he intends to use it only on the BIONA facility, but ends up shorting out the entire city.
  • Revenge (2011): The second season's main plot revolves around the Americon Initiative's efforts to obtain a computer program Nolan wrote that can knock Manhattan off the power grid in less than a millisecond. The blackout finally comes to pass in the second season finale, albeit ironically the blackout itself is not actually their main objecetive, merely a cover for the initiative's real agenda, to blow up Grayson Global's Headquarters.
  • Revolution: The J. J. Abrams series has a world-wide blackout as its premise.
  • Sesame Street:
    • An old skit has Ernie and Bert engaging in Loud of War by turning on various appliances (TV, radio, blender, etc.), which results in a fuse blowing and the power going out in their apartment.
    • A later skit, perhaps inspired by the 1977 New York blackout, has Ernie noticing that the whole street has lost power one night. He annoys Bert by suggesting they watch TV or listen to the radio or record player, though none of them will work without electricity.
  • Stargate SG-1: One episode had a device that could render Earth intangible, at the cost of blacking out the entire United States.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Occurs in the episode "Homefront," seemingly because of Dominion sabotage, but the next episode reveals that it was part of a plot by an Insane Admiral to place Earth under a military dictatorship.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Captain Janeway almost triggers one by accident in the episode "Workforce, Part I". It becomes a Chekhov's Gun when she deliberately causes one during the climax of Part II.
    • In "Night", Voyager itself goes into blackout mode, though with life support and holodeck systems unaffected, as it suddenly drops out of warp in the middle of traveling through starless space.
  • Titans (2018): The car Dick Grayson is driving goes dead the moment Trigon steps from his dimension into ours. Fortunately Dick and his companions are close enough to get the rest of the way on foot.

    Music 
  • Saxon, a British Heavy Metal band, has the song "747 (Strangers in the Night)", which narrates the problems of a Boeing 747 running out of fuel as it approaches New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport just as the city is suffering a severe power outage.
  • The Bee Gees' "(The Lights Went Out in) Massachusetts" could be an example of this if you take the chorus literally.
  • "New York in the Dark", a non-charting 1966 single by New Jersey-based soul group The Ad-Libs about the big blackout from the year before.

    Radio Drama 

    Religion 
  • As mentioned in Literature, in the Book of Exodus from The Bible, God caused a supernatural blackout to happen in ancient Egypt as one of the ten plagues, which prevented the Egyptians from seeing any form of light during the entire time of the plague.

    Tabletop Games 
  • A significant part of the metaplot for Shadowrun 6th Edition is a massive month-long blackout/power surge in many of the major UCAS cities after UCAS backs out of the Business Recognition Accords.

    Theatre 
  • The climax of Fly by Night begins when Crabble accidentally causes the 1965 Northeast Blackout by plugging in a light bulb.
  • In the Heights has the power go out in Washington Heights.

    Video Games 
  • Towards the finale of Final Fantasy VII, the whole city of Midgard goes dark sector by sector as the power of the city's reactors is being redirected to a Super Weapon.
  • In Homefront, the opening cutscene shows a KPR satellite flying above the planet, intending to broadcast "a message of peace to the entire world". It's really an EMP satellite, and what we get to see is an image of all the lights going out in the continental United States.
  • Happens a couple of times over the course of the Splinter Cell series.
  • In chapter 3 of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, the group's gone over to Professor Russell's house to analyze the Black Orbment, a mysterious device meant for the protagonists' father. Uniquely, it lacks any form of identification, serial number, or slots to equip, so it's decided to detect its energy readings. When it's attempted, the thing sucks up as much orbal energy as it can and pushes the equipment to its limit. It's only after they see the lights going out in downtown Zeiss that they decide to call it quits. NPC dialogue the following morning shows that they nearly went into a city-wide panic. In the second game, a much, much worse example effectively caused by the same technology on a far wider scale suppresses all of the country's orbal power, including a sizable chunk of the neighboring empire.
  • Pokémon
    • In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, a blackout occurs in Sunyshore City and the player is unable to venture to said city until they beat the main game at Spear Pillar.
    • In Pokémon X and Y a big blackout has hit most of Lumiose City apart from the Southern Boulevard and Vernal Avenue. Like the above example the player cannot move beyond Southern Boulevard until they solve the situation at the Power Plant causing the blackout (which requires the layer to loop around the coastal part of Kalos). Also if the player plays at night the whole city is still brightly lit.
    • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, Sophocles summons the Totem Pokemon with a machine that knocks out the power to the Observatory he works in.
  • Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor has one in the form of The Datacide, which was caused by a silicon eating microbe that destroyed all of the world's microprocessors, effectively resetting Earth's technology level to the 1940s.
  • Watch_Dogs allows the player character to do this by unlocking a specific ability from the skill tree. It unleashes an electromagnetic pulse that causes all nearby electrical devices, including the traffic lights, to go haywire and succumb that part of the city into darkness. The game's story also tells about the 2003 blackout event in the United States, which here is attributed to T-Bone, the inventor of ctOS.
  • The Warriors has one level where all of New York City is experiencing a blackout, which causes widespread looting and your objective is to join in and steal as much loot as you can. This was likely a reference to the actual New York City blackout in the late 1970s, which the game takes place in.
  • One early scene in Yakuza 0 has real estate broker Tachibana plunge the district of Kamurocho into darkness. The blackout doesn't last long, only staying dark for about 10 seconds, but it's more than enough to prove his point: he has the wealth and influence required to wrest control of Kamurocho from the Tojo Clan, the yakuza family that claims dominion over the area.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Spirit Hunter: NG, Ban bribes a Moon Tower employee with three million yen to cut the power to the entirety of Moon Tower, allowing him and the rest of the cast to sneak in and investigate the Killer Peach spirit.

    Web Animation 
  • The GEOWeasel pilot episode centers around a blackout caused by a Weather-Control Machine, while Nar goes out in the heavy rains to get batteries for his handheld game.
  • Strong Bad Email
    • The "extra plug" was about Strong Bad accidentally creating a power outage thanks to a pair of electric boots he ordered from the mail.
    • A later email, "environment", revealed that every time Strong Bad hits the enter key on his Lappy, it causes the rest of the town to lose power.

    Web Videos 
  • Nightfall: After the news reports on how the eclipse is supposed to occur, the television suddenly goes black. Eve and her boyfriend realize off-screen that the electricity has been cut to their area, although they don't know why.

    Western Animation 
  • Happens quite a bit on Arthur.
    • In "Elwood City Turns 100", Muffy had an elaborate electronic sign made to advertise the upcoming school musical, but shortly after turning it on, the power goes out all over the city. A similar experience occurred in the cold open for "Brain Gets Hooked," when Arthur flashes back to when his father and their neighbor got in a competition for the most elaborate Christmas lights display; both of them powered on caused a total blackout across Elwood City.
    • More realistic power failures also happened in two weather-related episodes: one about a blizzard ("The Blizzard"), another about a heatwave (the latter appropriately titled "The Blackout.")
    • In an early episode, "Poor Muffy," a scene has Muffy using up so much electricity in Francine's apartment it causes the lights to flicker. She's got loads of extension cords plugged in as she's using tons of appliances and electronics; eventually everything darkens for a few seconds, and then the screen goes completely black as Muffy screams.
  • A more mundane instance: the venue at which The Beatles are performing at the end of the episode "Please Mr. Postman" has the lights go completely out—because the electricity bill payment was delinquent.
  • In the mid-season finale of Beware the Batman, Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins do this to Gotham City, a plan in the making since the fourth episode.
  • In Central Park, Season 2 "Central Dark", a blackout occurs in New York City and parts of New Jersey and Birdie sings "Come Into the Darkness", which is about how people will take advantage of the blackout and bad things will happen. During the blackout, the several hotel owners that Bitsy pissed off try to steal her infrastructure plans while the Tillermans play a board game to pass the time but it gets out of hand.
  • The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Boom Boom Out Goes the Ed", the power to the cul-de-sac goes out. Ed quickly stirs up most of the kids into a frenzy with talk of evil mole people at work, while Rolf shanghais Kevin into operating a generator to get the power going again.
  • This happens on three separate occasions and is what causes Peter to tell his family the stories of the original Star Wars trilogy in Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball.
  • An episode of House of Mouse was about Pete creating a power outage as an attempt to shut down the eponymous nightclub. He fails.
  • Kim Possible first encounters Señor Senior Senior and Junior after tracing a Europe-wide blackout to their mansion. It wasn't something they were doing on purpose (they hadn't yet taken up villainy) — they'd overloaded the power grid with extravagances such as Junior's blimp-sized sunlamp.
  • Happens twice in Littlest Pet Shop (2012):
    • In "Eight Arms to Hold You," Vinnie accidentally destroys a transformer attempting to sneak back into the Littlest Pet Shop, causing the entire metropolitan area to lose power.
    • In "Littlest Pet Shop of Horrors," Dr. Sunilenstein channeling the electricity needed to awaken his monster causes a blackout in the surrounding village. The blackout (and not his monster) is what brings the angry mob over to Dr. Sunilenstein's castle.
  • Molly of Denali: A blackout happens in Qyah in the episode "The Worm Turns". Because of a spooky story Grandpa Nat told them, the kids think that giant ice worms ate the power lines.
  • The Phineas and Ferb episode "Blackout" has one thanks to Doofenshmirtz's "Big-Sad-Eye-inator" using so much power and exploding
  • Weird variation in Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko, Heffer and Filbert made a potato light bulb that blacked out the town, then shot out a beam of light powerful enough to be seen from space.
  • Happened more than once in Rugrats with Stu's inventions. This sets off the plot of the live touring show Rugrats: A Live Adventure, where one of Stu's blackouts causes Tommy to make a flashlight come to life and comfort Chuckie, who got scared.
    Didi: Stu, honey! All the lights in the house are off!
    Stu: I'm aware of that, Deed!
  • The Simpsons
    • In the first-season episode "There's No Disgrace Like Home" the family members apply so many electric shocks at each other at Dr. Marvin Monroe's therapy that they take the power from the city.
    • Blackouts have occurred several times in Springfield. In keeping with the show's exaggeratedly cynical take on human nature, citizens tend to riot the very second the power goes out. Including once when the mob smashes into a musical instrument store and come out playing a university fight song.
  • In the Steven Universe episode "Political Power", the Crystal Gems end up knocking out power to all of Beach City while testing a machine they built to disable Peridot's robonoids. Steven goes with Mayor Dewey to try and keep the townspeople calm, and the power is back on by the end of the episode.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), the episode "The Big Ripoff," Shredder and Krang are suffering from a power failure in their fortress. There are always some minor technical problems with the Technodrome, but this time, they don't even have the energy for electric lighting, and if they can't get the Technodrome running again, it will fall into some hot lava. This inspires them to finally succeed at stealing a new energy source for the Technodrome.
  • In the Teen Titans Go! episode "Caged Tiger", it's implied that a power outage in the tower caused the elevator to stop working as the lights go dim and Robin says he's getting no signal on his communicator.

    Real Life 
  • Much of the northeastern United States (including New York City) and the Canadian province of Ontario saw massive power outages on November 9, 1965, and August 14, 2003, the latter of which, at one point, extended as far west as parts of southwest Michigan. NYC had another one on July 13, 1977, as well as a smaller one (localized to Manhattan's Upper West Side) exactly 42 years later.
    "Does that sound particularly slow to you?" — WABC disc jockey Dan Ingram in 1965, noting that the music he was playing was running slower than normal (due to decreasing frequency as the electric grid slowly collapsed, which caused the studio turntable to slow down) just prior to the blackout.
  • The 1977 NYC blackout had the interesting side-effect of contributing to the development of Hip-Hop music, as poor inner-city youth suddenly had access (via looting) to expensive turntables and other music equipment.
  • The Southern California/Northern Mexico blackout on September 8, 2011 was an odd case, as it happened because a distribution hub in Arizona overloaded during routine maintenance.
  • North Korea is in a perpetual blackout, as this satellite image shows. A little Fridge Logic makes that picture particularly horrifying. Notice the smaller pinpricks of light. Note their locations. Then compare them with a map of the Kwan-li-so prison camps. In North Korea, only the gulags are well lit.
  • Predicted by some to happen on a global scale as part of the Olduvai theory. Could also be caused by an electromagnetic pulse or a severe solar storm. An instance of the latter in 1989 caused everyone living in the province of Quebec to lose power for almost ten hours.
  • Earth Hour: For several years the World Wildlife Fund has staged this event on the last Saturday in March, which encourages cities to go dark deliberately for one hour as a way to raise climate change awareness.
  • Rolling blackouts are another intentional application of this, done by electric companies to reduce the strain on their systems during periods of heavier-than-normal usage and prevent larger outages. For example, during the fuel crisis of the early 1970s, Britain was subjected to scheduled power cuts to save fuel.
  • A major military conflict may also precipitate deliberate blackouts as a civil defense measure, in addition to those inadvertently caused by bombing or battle damage; during World War II the whole of Great Britain was blacked out each night for nearly six years.note 
  • Southern Brazil was hit with a major power outage in March 1999, caused when a lightning strike at a power substation started a chain reaction. Nearly 100 million people were affected by the blackout.
  • The biggest blackouts in history were the massive power outages that hit India on July 30 and July 31, 2012. The failure of July 30 involved some 300 million people losing power. The next day's blackout was worse, interrupting 600 million people, half of India's population.
  • A somewhat embarrassing one occurred on February 3, 2013 and was localized to one building in southern Louisiana. Unfortunately, that building happened to be the Mercedes-Benz Superdome right in the middle of Super Bowl XLVII. Ironically, one of the competing teams (the San Francisco 49ers) had suffered a similar power outage at their own stadium in December 2011.
  • 1996 saw several that affected western Canada, western America, and northwestern Mexico.
  • In 2009, severe weather in the Itaipu dam area ended up shorting out three transformers in a key substation. As a result, the entirety of Paraguay and four Brazilian states were plunged into total darkness, with over two-thirds of Brazil being partially affected as well. The landscape of São Paulo, a city about as sleepless as New York, looked vaguely like a screenshot of Left 4 Dead.
  • The state of South Australia experienced a rare superstorm on September 28, 2016, and at 3:48pm local time, the entire state lost power for several hours when wind and lightning struck several pylons. A similar blackout happened in February 2017, but was caused by the government ordering load shedding due to excessive use of power in the middle of a heatwave, causing 90k people to roast in 110°F heat for 45 minutes. Fortunately, no deaths were reported.
  • Many bad weather events tend to cause these, including snowstorms, hurricanes, thunderstorms and tornadoes. One notable example was Hurricane Maria, which knocked out power to the entire island of Puerto Rico, and wasn't restored until nearly a year after the storm. Heatwaves are another kind of weather event that cause these, mainly due to demand for use of utilities like air conditioning.
  • In 2008, a vicious ice storm swept across mid-New York and southern New England and left over a million people without power. Schools closed and some colleges ended their semesters early due to a lack of electricity to heat or operate their buildings. Thousands of people were still without power two weeks later.
  • Even earthquakes can cause power outages. One earthquake-induced power outage was caught on camera during the live broadcast of a Japanese morning show called Ohayou! Tenki Desu during the Kobe earthquake of 1995. The moment the blackout happens, you can hear the hosts screaming in horror.
  • A major winter storm in 2021 came dangerously close to wiping out the entire power grid for the state of Texas. Not only did millions of people lose power and go dark for several days during one of the coldest spells on on record, the drain on resources was so bad that pay-as-you-go customers were charged thousands of dollars for single kilowatt-hours of energy, and major power stations came very close to experiencing catastrophic breakdowns which would have ruined almost every single transformer or generator in the state.


 
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Nigel Flies Into A Transformer

Nigel flies straight into a electrical transformer just when he is about to capture Blu and Jewel resulting in a huge blackout in the city of Rio De Janeiro right when the Brazilian soccer team is about to score a final point during a major game. Amazingly enough Nigel actually survives this accident with only some burnt feathers and electrical shocks while flying back to the smugglers' hideout.

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