Robotic Assembly Lines

A robotic assembly line assembling robots

In fiction, robotic factory montages are sometimes added to showcase Special Effects or to establish Infinite Supplies so that the viewers can stop wondering, "Where did all that X come from?" Note: These are assembly lines made of robots, not necessarily assembly lines making robots. Also, these are usually done as a fleeting scene to indicate that it is not that important for the plot.

See also: Technology Porn, Eternal Engine, Creation Sequence or Forging Scene.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A 2006 commercial showed the inner workings of fantastically fabulous Coca-Cola machine that makes the simple act of buying soda seem awesome.
• Some ads show Hershey's Kisses being made individually via a Magical Realism version of what is implied to be an actual production line.

Anime & Manga

• Early on in Digimon Adventure, the children happen upon a factory with a robotic assembly line constructing unusual looking metal apparatuses. The weird thing is, later on down the line, the machines disassemble the things they had just built.

Comic Books

• The first Atomic Robo Free Comic Book Day issue has Robo fighting a seemingly endless supply of Mecha-Mooks, and asking if there's a factory or something to no one in particular. Cue Trope with an editor's note that simply says "Yes!"
• Dolltopia begins with Kitty being assembled on a factory assembly line.

Film — Animation

• Ghost in the Shell (1995) begins with a sequence of Mokoto's robotic/cybernetic body being assembled.

Film — Live Action

• Bicentennial Man: The opening credits start off with a black screen, with orchestral music and hammering, before featuring the automated assembly of NDR114 robots, with plenty of closeups on the wiring and gears as everything is assembled.
• I, Robot: right before the Needle in a Stack of Needles scene in the warehouse - see that page for details.
• Minority Report has a fight scene take place on a robotic assembly line which ends when the protagonist finds a car being literally assembled around him, which he then uses to drive off and make his escape!
• Shows up in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones with the droid army.
  • We also get treated to a clone factory, although we don't quite see the Clone Troopers being "built" we do see the various stages of development, followed by their eventually arming. At the end, we see them being gathered for war.
• Small Soldiers begins with a production line of the titular toys being manufactured (including Terminator-style skeletons and rubber "skins").
• Surrogates: VBI has some that produce the surrogate bodies.
• Terminator. The climax of the first movie takes place in a robot assembly plant, with obvious Rule of Symbolism. Kyle Reese turns on the machines to make it difficult for the Terminator to track them.
• The opening titles of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory show various forms of candy being created on Real Life automated assembly lines despite the fact that this Willy Wonka doesn't use assembly lines. The 2005 film adaptation's Wonka does use them, however; an Object-Tracking Shot of Wonka Bars being created on one serves as its opening credit sequence.
• In X-Men: The Last Stand, this is used for the making of the serum.

Literature

• Brave New World opens with a description of a cloning assembly line.

Live Action TV

• Some of the Title Sequences from You Can't Do That on Television.

Music Video

• Björk's video for All is full of love consist in the assembly by various robot arms of a robotic version of Bjork and another robot. They start kissing - while the robotic arms are still assembling them.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS Ultra-Tech has rules for setting these up, specifically focusing on the product being made so that you can get along with the game.

Theme Parks

• Yes, really. Cadbury World in Birmingham, England is a quite popular tourist attraction and a working chocolate factory; once you pass through various exhibits on the history of chocolate, you're given a conducted tour of the production line.

Video Games

• Apocalypse: The War Factory stage is set in one of these, and is the only level where all your enemies are robots instead of human mooks.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The Shiro Psychic Center is filled with huge lines of Yuriko clones passing in pods, though we don't see them being grown.
• There's a whole genre of games, popularized by Factorio, where the main point of the game is building up a giant automated factory.
• The intro movie to the old computer game Hoyle Word Games.
• In sector 6 of Jumper Two you can watch (and get in the way of) OgmoBots as they travel through the assembly line, becoming more Ogmo-like in each stage.
• Portal 2 has a few levels set in the automated production lines making the turrets... some of which happen to devolve into sentient talkative AIs.
• Some of the games in the Rhythm Heaven franchise have games that involve building robots on a assembly line, like "Fillbots" from the second game and "Screwbot Factory" from the third game.
• The Shen's Legacy bonus mission in XCOM 2 is set in a fully automated ADVENT MEC assembly line, so it's basically robots making other robots. And it has been churning out legions of the things ever since ADVENT abandoned it several years ago, which justifies nicely why the current occupant has a literally endless supply of troops to send against your operatives.
• Xenogears had that famous scene where you walk into a huge, fully-automated save-point factory, revealing where all those floating symbols came from.

Western Animation

• The Slurm production factory in Futurama.
• Frequently seen in Looney Tunes, to the tune of Standard Snippet "Powerhouse".
• The Title Sequence of The Robonic Stooges.
• "Powerhouse" is also used in an episode of The Simpsons; when Homer questions where the new bowling pins that are placed after the old ones are knocked down come from, a scene is shown where the pins are being made by machines, while the old ones are thrown away rather than re-used.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Mister Krabs seems to have a penchant for building these kinds of machines, as one episode sees him exploiting the jellyfish as a power source using such a device, and another has him manufacturing soap out of the unspeakable mess from Krusty Krab's grease trap.

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