Buttons working in some games but not others

This problem is rather complicated and weird. While playing Final Fantasy XII I experienced a substantial static shock while picking up my dual-shock 2 controller. I immediately noticed that the triangle and select buttons had stopped working. I switched to a second controller and considered the first to be possibly broken.

Later on I got another substantial shock while playing Final Fantasy X. I found that the only problem, with both controllers, was that I could no longer use the start button to pause the game.

Further investigation has revealed some perplexing information. While playing a dvd movie with controller 1 I could use the d-pad, triangle, x, start and select buttons with no noticeable problems. Likewise, I experienced no problems with Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires or Final Fantasy X-2. With FF X, while the start button will not pause the game with either controller, it will interrupt the intro movie to proceed to the title menu. With FF XII, in battle mode the triangle (menu) and select (map) buttons will not work on either controller, but most perplexing, the square button will not work to return to the title screen while paused with the start button, but it will work in battle mode to open the command menu.

So far I've tried starting new games with both FF X and FF XII and deleting my system data from the memory card to eliminate any chance of a software prolem to no success. I'm pretty sure any solution will involve opening the controllers at this point, but I have no idea what to do when I have them open as the problems are both game and context specific.