http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExplosiveInstrumentation

Circuit-breakers are for pansies.

Warning! All control consoles double as Firework Storage Lockers. On detonation of fireworks, please leap dramatically to the floor and feign unconsciousness. Instruction Manuals for the USS Enterprise All control consoles double as Firework Storage Lockers. On detonation of fireworks, please leap dramatically to the floor and feign unconsciousness.

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Explosions look cool. As a result, in the future (and sometimes in the present) there are no such things as fuses or circuit breakers, and every control panel, sensor, and shield has C4 built into it. That way, if Readings Are Off the Scale, the user will be sure to notice. Also, no matter how deeply buried inside a ship its bridge is, you are guaranteed a shower of sparks and a deadly explosion when the enemy gets through its shields, or if some other disaster befalls the ship.

Long considered an unrealistic but effective way of showing battle damage when you don't have the budget to mess up a miniature or  in modern works  create damaged versions of CGI models. Realistically the console would be separated from the destructive effects of high power circuits through various means of protection and would not harm its operator under any scenario. Worst case scenario the controls should simply stop working, or the screen should just turn off.

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A Super-Trope to Readings Blew Up the Scale.

Compare No Water Proofing In The Future, Holographic Terminal (which doesn't explode  just get spammed with pop ups). Should require No OSHA Compliance, although that point is rarely touched. Squat all to do with musical instruments going kaboom, or the 1812 Overture. Thus, this trope has nothing to do with Orchestral Bombing.

Examples:

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A bit of a Running Gag in Ark Royal is the crew noting that the consoles don't explode, usually when one of the idiotic Tagalong Reporters complains about the battles being boring.

Subverted in the Bernice Summerfield novella Jason and the Bandits, in which an Unreliable Narrator bemoans a pirate spaceship's lack of a Pointlessly Exploding Console, which ordinarily provides immediate tactile feedback that a ship operating under infradrive, rather than in normal time and space, has suffered damage. The pirate captain retorts that "The Pointlessly Exploding Consoles kill more people than they ever save."

In Cryptonomicon "the Finn" has an old CRT monitor explode in his face, almost killing him because a virus overloaded the vacuum tubes, blasting glass fragments into his face. This can, with a faulty monitor and much (un)luck actually happen, though the chances are insignificantly small because there are safety features to prevent exactly this. There hasn't been any actual cases where this has happened; it's only theoretical.

Legacy of the Aldenata: In When the Devil Dances, during the Posleen assault on the Rabun Gap wall one of the consoles in SheVa 14, supporting the wall's defenders, explodes after a plasma gun hit penetrates into the command center. A few paragraphs later it's even lampshaded by the SheVa's commander.

Lampshaded in Redshirts when the captain calls down to Engineering to get some surge suppressors on the bridge consoles and complains that there is no logical reason the bridge should look like a fireworks display every time the Intrepid gets into a firefight. Turns out it's because there's a Star Trek -like TV show intruding on the Intrepid's reality.

Star Wars Legends: After the ISD Freedom takes a full broadside including several ion cannon hits from the super star destroyer Lusankya in The Bacta War, one redshirt on the Freedom's bridge crew is mentioned to have been killed by an exploding console.

Live-Action TV

Tabletop Games

BattleTech traditionally has "neurofeedback" — whenever a 'Mech suffers an ammunition explosion, the pilot's neurohelmet, a critical part of the user interface (but one which isn't connected so much to the ammo bins as to the machine's gyroscope, which can in turn take damage without causing any similar fuss) basically delivers an electric shock directly to their grey matter.

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