Could a damaged plug prong be why my dryer won't turn on?

A bent or loose prong can definately cause this if it isn't making solid contact inside the wall receptacle, but zero lights on an LG usally points to losing the 120V path that powers the control board. Electric dryers run on split-phase 240V. The heating element needs the full 240V across both hot legs, but the digital display, lights, and motor run on standard 120V between one hot leg (typically black) and the neutral wire (white). Grab a **multimeter** before buying random replacement parts. With the dryer plugged in, carefully meter the terminal block inside that rear access panel. You want to see roughly 120V from black to white, 120V from red to white, and 240V across black and red. If you get 0V between black and white, either that bent prong isn't making contact, the neutral is dead, or one leg of the double-pole breaker tripped without snapping the handle all the way over. Flip the dryer breaker firmly to OFF and back to ON just to eliminate that. Double-check how you set up the ground and neutral at the block. On a 4-prong cord, white goes to the center terminal, black and red go to the outer terminals, and green screws directly into the dryer's metal chassis. The factory ground strap that originally linked the center neutral post to the frame must be disconnected from the frame. If the neutral wire isn't seated solidly on that center post or the strap is hooked up weirdly, the electronics won't complete thier 120V circuit to neutral and the board stays totally dead.

That said, if the prong is actualy loose and wobbles inside the plug's molded housing, replace the cord anyway. A loose prong carrying 30 amps creates high resistance, melts plugs, and is an outright fire hazard. A fresh 30-amp cord is cheap and rules out the physical plug immediatly.

I dealt with this exact thing after moving into our place. In my case, replacing the cord fixed it—turned out the old plug took a beating in the back of the truck and snapped the connection inside the molded head.

Before you tear anything else apart, shine a flashlight into the wall outlet too. The previous tenants in my house yanked their cord out sideways and cracked the inner slot, so my prong wasn't making contact at all. If your prong got bent during the move, check that outlet to make sure it didn't chew up the receptacle.

If the terminal block voltages check out fine, inspect the EMI noise filter board located immediatly past the strain relief, as the spade terminals on that harness frequently work loose from simple transit vibration. Furthermore, many LG chassis route the primary 120V line thru a sacrificial ceramic fuse on that exact filter module, meaning if your compromised, loose prong arced even momentarily during insertion, you likely severed that circuit without ever tripping the main double-pole breaker in the garage. It takes roughly two minutes to verify continuity across the filter's input and output pins before you suspect the actual display PCB.

Moving appliances is such a massive headache, I literally just bought our first home last month and had a mini panic attack hooking our washer up! Hope swapping the cord or looking at that fuse does the trick for you!! Total side question though since you have an LG—does your dryer have that steam cycle with the extra little water hose inlet in the back? I saw that on a bunch of thier models recently and I've been dying to know, do people acutally hook up the Y-splitter to run water to their dryer, or does everyone just skip it? It sounds so cool if it actually gets wrinkles out!