Basic Trope: Hackers can use computers to do unrealistic things.
- Straight: Max, a Mad Scientist, can get into people's computers and activate viruses with his machine alone.
- Exaggerated: Max can hack into anything and everything, including traffic lights and microwaves.
- Downplayed: Max can change entire webpages through hacking. He uses this to help him upload viruses.
- Justified:
- Everything Is Online.
- Max is literally using magic to hack.
- Max is a Reality Warper who likes the "Hacker" aesthetic.
- Inverted: Max can't even use his computer to access his own files.
- Max uses social engineering to create viruses - not even by persuading a disgruntled programmer on the inside to do so or tricking someone else into compiling one he composed.
- Subverted: Max tries to remotely activate a virus via his computer but fails.
- Double Subverted: But he only failed once, and succeeds every other time he tries.
- Parodied:
- Everything Max knows about hacking, he learned from playing Portal.
- Max hacks into the computer via Percussive Maintenance.
- Max hacks into airgapped DARPA servers using a solid plastic toy computer.
- Zig-Zagged: Max can easily hack someone's computer, but the others don't. That may because "the others" protect their computers well.
- Averted: Computers are portrayed realistically.
- Enforced: "The boys upstairs just greenlighted the new hacker flick. There's one problem, though: they found the dialogue too advanced." "Just throw a bunch of random tech terms in there and they won't bat an eye!"
- Lampshaded: "Hacking is like magic."
- Invoked: Max makes computers with security backdoors, letting him easily hack anyone who buys his computer.
- Exploited: Max recruits hackers and Mad Scientists by hanging outside theaters showing hacker movies, and listening in on who complains about the lack of realism.
- Defied: "Hacking is more than click-clacks and loading screens, Max!"
- Discussed: "Lemme guess ... she's just gonna press a few keys and then some traffic light is gonna explode, right?"
- Conversed: "You know, modern hackers can hack any computers if they want, as news says."
- Implied: Max says he's going to hack into someone's computer. As Bob leaves, Rapid-Fire Typing is heard in the background.
- Deconstructed: It turns out the hacker does the whole Rapid-Fire Typing shtick just for show, and he does the actual "hacking" through different means.
- Reconstructed: It's a necessary show, otherwise his peers would be uber-bored. And his results are still excessive for what someone with a laptop, a few faked e-mails with spyware and a couple of hours' worth of Social Engineering and digging through trash should be able to do.
- Played for Laughs: Max hacks into computers specifically to leave "A Winner Is You" and other silly messages.
- Played for Drama: Max is a sociopathic malevolent hacker, and he's got his eyes on a hospital's systems if another Mad Scientist can't find his Hacker Cave in time.
- Played for Horror: Max hacks into a nuclear reactor and sets off a meltdown just to get Villain Cred.
- Plotted a Good Waste: That Max's hacking is so unrealistic is foreshadowing that he is making the whole thing up to fool a technologically illiterate Charlie.
Back to Hollywood Hacking.
