Short Circuit 2 is a 1988 comedy science fiction film, the sequel to 1986's film Short Circuit. It was directed by Kenneth Johnson, and starred Fisher Stevens as Ben Jahrvi (whose surname has inexplicably changed from Jabituya in the first film), Michael McKean as Fred Ritter, Cynthia Gibb as Sandy Banatoni, and Tim Blaney as the voice of Johnny 5 (the main character – a friendly, naive, self-aware robot). Filming for this film took place in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Benjamin Jahrvi (Fisher Stevens) has moved to New York City where he is selling toy versions of Johnny 5 on the street. Struggling department store buyer Sandy Banatoni (Cynthia Gibb) sees the toys and orders 1,000 units. Ben is helped by con artist Fred Ritter (Michael McKean) with the project. Fred borrows money from a loan shark for equipment, hires temporary workers and rents a warehouse to build the toys.

Unfortunately, the warehouse is the base of operations for a couple of thieves hired by bank teller Oscar Baldwin (Jack Weston) to tunnel into the bank vault across the street. They plan to steal a set of jewels known as the Vanderveer Collection, worth $37,862,000. The thieves try to scare off Ben and Fred, trashing their equipment and chasing away their temps which makes it impossible to meet the deadline.

A short circuit (sometimes abbreviated to short or s/c) is an electrical circuit that allows a current to travel along an unintended path, often where essentially no (or a very low) electrical impedance is encountered. The electrical opposite of a short circuit is an "open circuit", which is an infinite resistance between two nodes. It is common to misuse "short circuit" to describe any electrical malfunction, regardless of the actual problem.

A short circuit is an abnormal low-resistance connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit intended to be at different voltages. This results in an excessive electric current (overcurrent) limited only by the Thévenin equivalent resistance of the rest of the network and potentially causes circuit damage, overheating, fire or explosion. Although usually the result of a fault, there are cases where short circuits are caused intentionally, for example, for the purpose of voltage-sensing crowbar circuit protectors.

In circuit analysis (see image), the term short circuit is used by analogy to designate a zero-impedance connection between two nodes. This forces the two nodes to be at the same voltage. In an ideal short circuit, this means there is no resistance and no voltage drop across the short. In simple circuit analysis, wires are considered to be shorts. In real circuits, the result is a connection of nearly zero impedance, and almost no resistance. In such a case, the current drawn is limited by the rest of the circuit.