History Main / DangerDeadpan

* Disconcertingly the Hell Talon pilot from ''[[VideoGame/DawnOfWar Dawn of War: Soulstorm]]'' talks like this. This is because, according to the fluff, Hell Talons are piloted by Servitors, who are basically partially organic robots created from [[CloningBlues clones]] or [[FateWorseThanDeath lobotomized convicts]].

* ''LightNovel/RebuildWorld'':

* In ''Film/ZeroDarkThirty'', en route to Usama Bin Laden's compound, the helicopter shakes alarmingly. One of the SEAL team members asks, mildly, "Anyone here been in a Helo crash?" Several hands are raised without further comment.

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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* In WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic fanfic Fanfic/ThirtySecondsOverToKiRin, a downplayed version is used by fighter pilot Dusk Skyshine as he begins to realize exactly how much trouble his wingman Dash Firehooves is in. Culminating in

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* Corporal Ferro, the DropShip pilot in ''Film/{{Aliens}}''.
* The totally deadpan "I'm hit, I'm going in." from the Helicopter attack scene in ''Film/ApocalypseNow''.
* Blackhawk pilot Wolcott in ''Film/BlackHawkDown'' - "6-1 going down... 6-1 going down...", said in a very calm voice while the pilot's face displays quite a bit of concern. The radio guys relaying the info around sound more emotional than he does.
** During the crash, not on radio, the pilot also says with a disturbing amount of calm: "Hey, you gonna pull those PCS offline or what?"

* The ''Discovery's'' mission controller in ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', who was played by an actual U.S. Air Force radio operator stationed in England, whom Kubrick hired because he couldn't find any actors who could do this kind of voice.

* The opening scene of ''Film/AMatterOfLifeAndDeath'' where Carter calmly and politely chats to a female radio operator about how utterly screwed he is, and that the ''best'' hope for survival is to bail out without a parachute and hope that he is wrong about the height he is flying at.
* The former trope namer himself shows up in ''Film/TheRightStuff,'' played by Music/SamShepard. Not to mention a cameo by the real Yeager.
* Murdock (sort of) does this in the film of ''Film/TheATeam''. While he's quite excited to be flying in such a dangerous situation, when the plane is actually hit by a missile, he calmly says, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the side of the aircraft, you'll see the right wing is on fire."
* Parodied in the comedy ''Film/HotShots''. On returning from the big mission, Topper is calmly narrating as his plane falls apart ("Lost my wing. There goes the other one.") And he is cheerily talked in by Washout, who give calm words of reassurance in response to each new glitch ("Looking good. Doing fine. Call the ball.") Followed by Topper landing by way of the smoldering wreck of his plane falling straight down onto the deck. [[SlapStick It's that kind of movie.]]
* In ''Film/ZeroDarkThirty'', en route to Usama Bin Laden's compound, the helicopter shakes alarmingly. One of the SEAL team members asks, mildly, "Anyone here been in a Helo crash?" Several hands are raised without further comment.

* Matt Kowalski from ''{{Film/Gravity}}'' remains unflappably calm and collected throughout the entire disaster. Justified as he's trying to keep Stone calm by acting calm himself.
* The crew of the ''Messiah'' from ''Film/DeepImpact'' keep their cool throughout their mission even when discussing their eventual SuicideMission to stop one of the comets. The only time anyone gets emotional is when Gus is blown off the surface of the comet and sent drifting into space, Tulchinsky yells at Tanner to go back for him and lets out a PrecisionFStrike when Tanner refuses.

* In the Jack [=McKinney=] novelization of ''{{Anime/Robotech}}'', the pilots are all described as discussing their life and death situations in combat "as if they were talking about the weather", and lampshades this with an explanation that combat pilots are traditionally superstitious that displaying any worry or fear of death invites its attention.

* Another nice reference in [[Literature/JackRyan The Cardinal Of The Kremlin]] - "When he spoke, it was in the matter-of-fact tone that professional soldiers reserve for only the worse nightmares. The Colonel had just had the privilege of witnessing something that few men in human history ever saw. He had just seen the world change, and unlike most men, he had understood the significance of it."

** Uncle Hoole in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'' [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness almost always]] keeps to DissonantSerenity during stressful situations. Several of these involve ComingInHot; on one such occasion his [[{{Nephewism}} niece]] exclaimed: "We're going to make it!" (as in, land fine) and he told her "I'm afraid not."
* A variation occurs in ''Literature/GoodOmens'', during an... '''interesting''' incident at a nuclear power plant:
-->Four hundred and twenty practically dependable and very nearly cheap megawatts were leaving the station. According to the other dials, nothing was producing them.\\
[Horace] didn't say "That's weird." He wouldn't have said "That's weird" if a flock of sheep had cycled past playing violins. It wasn't the sort of thing a responsible engineer said.

* The 1998 made-for-TV movie ''Blackout Effect'', a movie centering on a failing radar system at a Chicago airport and a mid-air collision between a cargo plane and a passenger carrier. During one scene in the movie, the recording of the final conversation between the passenger plane pilots and air traffic control is played for the news media; the trope is averted to play up the dramatic pathos, with the pilots -- knowing they are going to crash within less than a minute and all efforts to prevent such from happening are no use -- crying and saying their goodbyes.

* Captain Stapley of Concorde Golf Victor Charlie in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial ''Time-Flight''.
** Brand new Air Hostess Tegan Jovanka too: "Ladies and Gentlemen, your flight is ready, please begin boarding." This would be after the aircrew has managed to repair their Concorde which has crash-landed in the Cretaceous. They call it ''Time-Flight'' for a reason.
* [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed to Hell and Back]] in the Season 2 finale of ''Series/BreakingBad'', though with an Air Traffic Controller rather than a pilot. Jane Margolis' father David works as an Air Traffic Controller in his day job and uses the trademark deadpan "mission control" voice in all of his conversations with pilots. Because of his job, he's even forced to maintain his cool composure [[spoiler: the day after his daughter dies of a heroin overdose]], so the people around him have absolutely zero clue that there's anything wrong with him...until [[spoiler: he gets so distracted by his grief that he lets two planes collide in mid-air, resulting in all 167 people on both planes losing their lives]].
* Most everyone in ''Series/GenerationKill'', though there are few pilots and their speaking roles are very brief. Has two notable exceptions in [[FunnyForeigner Sgt. Batista]] and [[TheNeidermeyer Captain America]], both of which are criticized for their behaviour by the main characters (the captain, of course, not to his face).
* A non-pilot example: On ''{{Series/MASH}}'', Hawkeye is noted in-universe as staying "cool as a cucumber" in the OR no matter how many casualties and how bad the injuries he is having to deal with. If he starts sounding riled up at all, it's usually to get across to someone else the need for urgency, or anger either at who inflicted the casualty or who's making it hard to treat it, not panic. When he does lose his composure, it's always a case of OOCIsSeriousBusiness.

* In one episode of ''Series/DeadliestCatch: After The Catch'', Mike Rowe is talking to a Coast Guard helicopter pilot and [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] the pilot's display of this trope, and [[DiscussedTrope discusses it]] at length.
* In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' Starfleet captains seem to have this attitude. Admiral Hanson who commanded the fleet in their first engagement with the Borg deserves special mention. While in the middle of the largest defeat Starfleet had faced in generations, he transmitted a simple "The fight does not go well, Enterprise" before being cut off by his ship being destroyed.
* O'Neill employs this in the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Redemption Part 2" as he's rapidly falling back to Earth in the X-302 after the initial plan fails and his engines have burned out.
-->O'Neill: I'll just... keep falling.

* [[Series/NevermindTheBuzzcocks Phill Jupitus]] has a routine about this in his ''Quadrophobia'' show, in which he contrasts the Danger Deadpan approach seen in ''Film/{{Apollo 13}}'' with the probable result if the astronauts had been British: not so much "Houston, we have a problem" as "THE F**KING ROCKET'S F**KING F**KED!!" Notable as an example of an inversion of BritishStuffiness.
* Adam Hills relates a story about flying into Hobart when the pilot aborted the landing at the last minute.
--> Captain came on and made the single coolest announcement I've ever heard in my life. ''(Suave voice)'' 'Ladies and gentlemen, you can probably tell we didn't land then. This is because the wind conditions just changed a little bit and were pushing us slightly off course. We just decided to pull up and do another lap of the airport, we'll have you on the ground in about five minutes time.' I thought that is pretty damn cool - for a man who nearly killed us all. That wasn't wind, he [[PrecisionFStrike fucked up]].
* Bill Engvall had a similar story during the Blue Collar comedy tour. His plane was coming in for a landing when it had to pull up at the last second. A moose had wandered on the runway.

* Kyosuke Nanbu is portrayed as such in the VideoGame/SuperRobotWars series, he has occasional bouts of shouting HotBlooded-ness but his overall character is the 'cool and levelheaded' archetype, slumbering volcano deal.
* The Wraith pilot from ''VideoGame/StarCraft''. "Woah. They're all over me."
** By extension, Tom Kazansky, a hero from the bonus campaign, who has the exact same voice and face, but being a HeroUnit is probably the original.
*** Confirmed by a [[AllThereInTheManual caption on the official website]]. Same with the Firebat and other heroes.
*** His name is also a ShoutOut to Val Kilmer's character in ''Film/TopGun'' - appropriately callsigned Iceman.
** The {{dropship}} pilot as well, being a fairly obvious reference to [[Film/{{Aliens}} Corporal Ferro]] above.
** As of ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'', they've been replaced by the Viking and Medevac pilots, respectively.
*** The Wraith is still in ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'''s campaign with the same smooth voice and quotes. Infamously so, as while other units sound like they are in various states of duress and infestation from being [[MindControl infected by a neural parasite]], the Wraith's voice is completely unaffected and just as calm as ever.
** The Banshee, while somewhat more aggressive-sounding (and apparently relishing in the idea of bombing things) also keeps remarkably calm. In fact, the only Terran pilot (close to the only Terran soldier period) who ''doesn't'' is the LovableCoward Battlecruiser captain.
* Iceman, in the first ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' game, is described in the manual as being the [[AlliterativeList calm, cool, collected]] pilot, and the one on top of the scoreboard when you start the game. A fellow pilot notes that everyone else shouts in combat, but you sometimes have to strain to hear Iceman, because he's pretty much ''whispering'' in terse, two-or-three-word sentences.
* Disconcertingly the Hell Talon pilot from ''[[VideoGame/DawnOfWar Dawn of War: Soulstorm]]'' talks like this. This is because, according to the fluff, Hell Talons are piloted by Servitors, who are basically partially organic robots created from [[CloningBlues clones]] or [[FateWorseThanDeath lobotomized convicts]].

* Joker in the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series combines this with DeadpanSnarker for his scenes when not actively flying.
** If you play the Omega DLC as an Engineer Shepard in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', when you reach the central reactor, you can use a Paragon interrupt to re-route power to the city instead of shutting it down, which achieves not only the shutdown of the force fields but saves the civilians instead. If you use it, once you get away from the reactor, you get this dialog:
--->'''Shepard''': You okay?\\
'''Aria''': Never better.\\
'''Nyreen''': That makes two of us. You brought all your skill to bear and accomplished the task without sacrificing lives. I applaud you.\\
'''Aria''': Shepard remains cool under pressure. Mind clear, shit together. ''(looks at Nyreen)'' Take a long, hard look; '''that's''' what fearlessness looks like.

* ''Every'' airman in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty 4: VideoGame/ModernWarfare''. The best example is probably Outlaw 2-5, who responds to being told he's in danger of getting ''nuked'' with a deadpan "Copy, we know what we're getting into."
** Deadly, the downed Cobra pilot Outlaw 2-5 landed to rescue, remains admirably collected whilst losing her tail rotor and plowing into a building. The next you hear from her, she's a bit more shaken up. Considering she's also trapped in the cockpit with a broken leg or worse, her gunner is dead, and angry [[{{Qurac}} Quraqis]] with lots of guns and a grudge against American air power are pouring out of the woodwork, this is forgivable.
** Taken to the logical extreme in the level "DeathFromAbove", where you are the gunner of an AC-130 gunship. The crew responds to you disintegrating both infantry and vehicles alike with less emotion than a guy watching sports on TV; the only guy who speaks above a normal, conversational tone of voice is the loader for the plane's 105mm cannon, whose only dialogue is "Gun Ready!".
** Similarly with any of Glenn Morshower's characters: most of the pilots, as well as 'Overlord', 'Warlord' and the NORAD HQ controller in ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 2''. The latter gets a disturbingly subtle hint of malice if you kill more than ten people in a single Predator Missile strike, though.
** The replacement voice for helicopter pilots in ''Modern Warfare 3'' remains the same, though with one instance where he does lose his cool during the first mission, when you shoot down an enemy gunship with one of the side-mounted miniguns and it [[TakingYouWithMe plows into your helicopter on the way down]]; while the helicopter pulls through, the pilot is shouting as he tries to get it back under control, even calling it a "son of a bitch".
* You can customize your player model in ''[[{{VideoGame/Tribes}} Tribes 2]]'', including your character's voice. One of the options for a Human Male player model is "Iceman." It sounds as you might expect.

* The ironclad units from VideoGame/JeffWaynesWarOfTheWorlds are a British, naval version of this trope, remaining much calmer than their land-based compatriots even when reporting that Martian units are firing at them. [[Music/JeffWaynesMusicalVersionOfTheWarOfTheWorlds Come on Thunderchild]] indeed.

* Chillingly averted in ''VideoGame/MetroLastLight'' when Artyom and Pavel share visions/hallucination/ghosts reliving their last moments: the crashed jetliner is shown minutes before the war gliding without power while Moscow goes up in flames as nuke after nuke bombards the surface. The pilot is barely holding it together while the co-pilot and passengers are screaming for their lives.
* ''Franchise/{{Hitman}}'': Agent 47 just doesn't ''do'' visible displays of emotion unless [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness the situation is pretty extraordinary]], and "a job that's gone south" is not extraordinary. Three disguises compromised already? Running low on ammo and ICA specialist gear, with a remaining arsenal consisting mostly of tinned foods and soft drinks? Half a dozen people who can see through his current disguise just outside the door? Doesn't matter. Any interaction he has is still going to be in a borderline monotone, with maybe a little bit of snark.

* When ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' fly home from Japan, the Chuck Yeager pilot keeps his cool even when the plane is grabbed and shaken about by Godzilla.
** In the episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", two fighter jets are scrambled to intercept Sideshow Bob's escape in the Wright brothers' plane. It does not go well, as the pilot comments Yeagerly: "Bogey's airspeed not sufficient for intercept. Suggest we get out and walk."

* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'': Rocko and Heffer are just about to start a plane trip when the captain comes over the intercom and mentions in a deadpan voice that he'll do his best not to pass out at high altitude like he usually does.
* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/MonkeyDust'' - [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPkKEttKIQU a pilot who got perfect scores in his pilot exam is rejected]] because his voice is goofy, while a terrible pilot gets through when he brushes off the fact he failed his exam with "a little spot of bother there, but we're through the worst of it" in a suave, clipped voice.

** Earlier in the series in ''Tiberian Sun'', GDI had the rather unshakeable Orca pilots and Nod had the even ''more'' unshakable Banshee pilots, who upon being shot down uttered a [[CasualDangerDialog deadpan "Whoops"]].

-->'''Batman''': Batman to all points. I could use some air support since I can't fly. At all. ''[about 50 feet from impact]'' Now would be good.

-->'''Shepard''': You okay?\\

-->'''Fire! Fire! Fire!''' -- Somtaaw [[BeamSpam Multibeam]] Frigate captain

** ''"(Calmly) Mayday, mayday, we're going in ha-AAAUUUGGGHHH"''

[[folder:Film]]

When a stereotypical airplane (or spaceship) pilot speaks over the radio, either to flight controllers on the ground or to his own passengers, he does so in a very soft, smooth register, just barely loud enough to pick up on the radio, probably with a faint American Southern accent (unless he's British, in which case it is [[StiffUpperLip an upper-class one]]). He uses radio jargon, even when he doesn't really need to. A true Danger Deadpan never loses his cool or changes his tone of voice [[CasualDangerDialog under any circumstances whatsoever]], a habit which is often {{played for laughs}}.

* WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife - Rocko and Heffer are just about to start a plane trip when the Captain comes over the intercom and mentions in a deadpan voice that he'll do his best not to pass out at high altitude like he usually does.

* Justified in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', where servitors (lobotomized humans used for repetitive tasks) and Mechanicus priests always speak in robotic monotones (though occasionally an undercurrent of urgency or fear can be detected).

* In Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Starfleet captains seem to have this attitude. Admiral Hanson who commanded the fleet in their first engagement with the Borg deserves special mention. While in the middle of the largest defeat Starfleet had faced in generations, he transmitted a simple "The fight does not go well, Enterprise" before being cut off by his ship being destroyed.

** Captain Eric Moody of British Airways Flight 9 managed to take this to ridiculous levels (probably helped by the good old StiffUpperLip), announcing this to his passengers; "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress." [[labelnote:*]][[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome British Airways Flight 9 landed safely]].[[/labelnote]]

* Chliilingly averted in ''VideoGame/MetroLastLight'' when Artyom and Pavel share visions/hallucination/ghosts reliving their last moments: the crashed jetliner is shown minutes before the war gliding without power while Moscow goes up in flames as nuke after nuke bombards the surface. The pilot is barely holding it together while the co-pilot and passengers are screaming for their lives.

--> '''Co-pilot to ATC:''' ''[Flat voice]'' Going down, going down, going down, copy, going down.\\

* [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed to Hell and Back]] in the Season 2 finale of ''Series/BreakingBad'', though with an Air Traffic Controller rather than a pilot. Jane Margolis' father David works as an Air Traffic Controller in his day job and uses the trademark deadpan "mission control" voice in all of his conversations with pilots. Because of his job, he's even forced to maintain his cool composure [[spoiler: the day after his daughter dies of a heroin overdose]], so the people around him have absolutely zero clue that there's anything wrong with him...until [[spoiler: he gets so distracted by his grief that he lets two planes collide in mid-air, killing hundreds of people in an instant]].