History Main / FooledByTheSound

* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'':
** In "WesternAnimation/BunnyHugged", Bugs Bunny tears his wrestling mask in half to fool The Crusher into thinking he's ripped his shorts. Bugs then disguises himself as a tailor to give him some of his usual mischief.
** In "WesternAnimation/StuporDuck"", the entire plot is kicked off when Daffy Duck mistakes a radio show he hears in someone's office for a news broadcast about dirty deeds being done by Aardvark Ratnik, which gets him to change into Stupor Duck.

->''"Clenching his teeth, Han raised his blaster. But even as he did so, his peripheral vision caught Luke's hand making some sort of gesture; and suddenly the Imperial spun around in the opposite direction, pointing his blaster rifle toward a patch of empty floor. 'He thinks he heard a noise,' Luke whispered. 'Let's go.'"''

(When she does enter the room, and is about to look behind the bed curtains, Henry Tudor who is hidden behind them baa-baas like a sheep.)\\

** In volume 3's extras, a scene during the infiltration of Hanazono mansion is shown in which three of the girls hide and imitate meowing to make the gaurds think it's just the cat. However one of the girls, Shizuka is a CuteMute who speaks using a text-to-speech app on her phone that reads lines from literary passages. It still fools the guard.

** ''Film/HomeAlone2'': Kevin uses a voice-changing toy to make his own voice sound deeper, pretending to be his father when he makes his hotel reservation by telephone, which fools the hotel staff.

* ''Film/ByTheSea'': When somebody climbs a ladder towards a bedroom window, the champagne bottle he is carrying pops open. He tosses the bottle away, which smashes. A nearby policeman thinks a window has been broken, and investigates.

* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': In "WesternAnimation/BunnyHugged", Bugs Bunny tears his wrestling mask in half to fool The Crusher into thinking he's ripped his shorts. Bugs then disguises himself as a tailor to give him some of his usual mischief.

'''Queen:''' Oh Edmund. It's the ''lying'' I find so hurtful.

* In a ''Series/SesameStreet'' sketch, Grover mistakes an echo for someone mimicking him and yells, "Will you knock it off?!".

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}'': Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde have traced the whereabouts of chauffer Manchias to the abandoned Cliffside Sanitarium. Or not so abandoned, as there are a dozen grey wolf guards surrounding it. To distract them, Judy imitates a wolf howl (impressive for a rabbit), which triggers the other wolves into a group howl. This lets Nick and Judy slip past them unnoticed.

** ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysSecurityBreach'': Two examples in the Ruin DLC. Firstly, various sections require you to use a replication of either Gregory or Cassidy's voice to lure hostile animatronics away from key locations. Secondly, you can find [[TheBusCameBack Candy Cadet]] in the depths beneath the Pizzaplex, who will tell you a story if you find enough tokens scattered around the area. He tells the story of a mother and son who lived in a cabin in the woods, hunted by a monster before the mother captured the monster and locked it up in the basement. The boy was afraid of the noises the monster made each night, but the mother would soothe the boy by singing him a lullaby. Eventually, the monster listens and learns to replicate the lullaby, singing it to the boy when the mother is away in order to lure him into setting them free, and... [[NothingIsScarier that's where the story ends]]. Both examples serve to foreshadow [[spoiler:the true identity of the "Gregory" trapped beneath the Pizzaplex]].

** ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3'': To fool Springtrap into moving somewhere else, you have to play a soundbite of Balloon Boy's laugh via the audio devices. [[spoiler:Considering the [[WouldHurtAChild type of person]] who's inside the suit, it makes perfect sense why he'd go after it, thinking it's children he could target.]]

This trope is when somebody believes that a sound imitated or reproduced in-universe is the real thing, or when one sound is mistaken for another. The imitation can be a form of {{Gaslighting}}, or it can be made accidentally. The easiest way this can happen is when a recorded sound is played back, but sometimes a character will imitate a sound using their voice, or other method, which is convincing enough to fool somebody. This can be PlayedForLaughs if the imitation is bad, yet is believed.

** Two stormtroopers arrive to guard the Death Star's tractor beam controls while Obi-Wan is working on sabotaging them. Once finished, he uses the Force to make them hear a noise behind them, making them look away long enough for him to escape. They're heard talking about it briefly:

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'', there's a short sidequest in which Link must sneak after Mila who is out late at night and making a run for her employer Zunari's safe with intent to steal. If Link gets caught, she'll run away, but if Link doesn't completely hide himself and she sees only a tiny part of him, Link will meow, fooling her into thinking it's just a cat.

* ''WesternAnimation/PeppaPig'': In "Baby Alexander", the Pig family hears the eponymous Alexander's [[CuteButCacophonic wailing]]. Daddy Pig wonders if it's a car alarm and Peppa mistakes the sound for a fire engine.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOctonauts'': In "The Seahorse Tale", Barnacles's [[GrowlingGut stomach grumbles]], and Kwazii mistakenly thinks Barnacles is growling at him.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E25PartyOfOne Party Of One]]'' Applejack insists to a suspicious Pinkie Pie that she can't enter a barn because construction is going on. The other members of the Mane Six inside said barn quickly begin making all sorts of "construction noises". The ruse is only partially successful.

* ''Series/{{Thunderbirds}}'': A highly technological example occurs in "The Cham-cham", in which coded messages are sent using music played by a band, which is interpreted by the cham-cham machine. Lady Penelope infiltrates the band and manages to send counter-messages with her singing, fooling the cham-cham.

* ''Series/MotherlandFortSalem'': In "Not Our Daughters" Abigail hears the voice of her deceased cousin calling for help. She runs off on her own, only to find a Camarilla[[note]]group seeking extermination of witches[[/note]] agent using tech that duplicates Charvel's voice to trick her. More agents arrive and they overpower her. Fortunately, two members of her coven show up and save her before the agents kill her.

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* ''Literature/SixthOfTheDusk'' features a variation: As some of the creatures on the island of Patji have some level of psychic ability and are extremely predatory and territorial, the blossoms of Patji's Fingers (a type of tree) have the ability to mimic the mind of an injured or fearful animal, which draws those psychic predators nearby. The predators then attack and kill one another over who gets to hunt the supposed prey, and their corpses then fertilize the trees.

* ''Film/Scream6'': After Sam briefly sees her being attacked, Quinn is then heard screaming and shouting and apparently fighting off a Ghostface before being stabbed by them and her body is thrown back through the door. [[spoiler:It turns out that it was all feigned by Quinn and her brother and father in order to throw suspicion off Quinn as she is actually Ghostface.]]

* In the ''Film/HomeAlone'' series:
** Kevin plays gangster clips, or recordings of his jerkass uncle, to scare away intruders. He even manages to hold a dialogue with a pizza delivery guy, by picking out the right lines from the gangster clips.
** In ''Film/HomeAlone2'', Kevin uses a voice-changing toy to make his own voice sound deeper, pretending to be his father when he makes his hotel reservation by telephone, which fools the hotel staff.

* ''Film/NannyMcPhee'': In the sequel, when Algernon whistles to demonstrate a bomb falling, Mrs. Docherty thinks it's the kettle.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkBiggerLongerAndUncut'' The Mole's distress call is to imitate a dying giraffe. When the kids make the sound, some nearby soldiers comment "Hey, did you hear that? Sounds like a giraffe is dying over there."

* ''Film/{{Babe}}'': When Duchess the cat hisses, Babe thinks she's coughing or sneezing.

* In ''[[Anime/TransformersCybertron Transformers: Galaxy Force]]'', at one point two of the Autobots are pulled over by a traffic cop. They project an image of a driver in their driver's seats and the one in the lead plays back a recording of the person they're projecting. Unbeknownst to them, the one of two people they were projecting was '''the President of the United States''', and the recording was from a speech she was giving. The understandably confused cop simply stares as they drive off.

* At one point in ''WesternAnimation/BambiII'', Bambi is lured into a hunter's trap with a deer call. This is in fact TruthInTelevision, as deer hunters utilize such weapons to emulate a deer's bray near perfectly. Rather tragically however, [[TranslationConvention from Bambi's perspective the call is humanized to sound like his mother]].

* ''WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'': Fritz is lying in a hospital bed, a victim of a bombing at the power substation. Three weeping furry female visitors come to see him, which leads the policeman outside his room to believe Fritz is a goner. When he hears some noises come through the door, the cop takes his hat off, certain that Fritz is in his death throes. Inside the room, Fritz isn't dying, nosiree, not even close.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpiritStallionOfTheCimarron'': Little Creek has been captured by the cavalry, and is tied to a post inside the fort. He hears two hawk cries, and knows that these are a query from his tribesman as to whether he's okay, and where in the fort he's located. Little Creek answers with another bird call that results in a sharp knife flung over the fort wall and piercing the ground near his thigh. None of the soldiers notice the bird calls are unusual for their species, nor that their prisoner suddenly has a tool/weapon handy.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheThreeLittlePups'': The Dogcatcher attempts to blow up the brick house with dynamite. Droopy use a paper bag to pop near the Dogcatcher. He thought he blew up so he checked, but the dynamite blew up right in front of him.

** In ''Five Run Away Together'', Dick, Julian and George make convincing imitations of the sounds of cows, sheep and horses, to frighten the not-very-bright Sticks who are camping in the dungeons, who are well and truly taken in.
** In ''Five go to Demon's Rocks'', nine-year-old Tinker pretends to be a bicycle, and imitates the sound of a bicycle bell so convincingly that Aunt Fanny believes somebody is ringing the doorbell.

* ''Series/LineOfDuty'': Cracking up under the pressure of going undercover in a brutal gang, John Corbett is pushed over the edge when the gang tells him that they're moving into [[SexSlave sex slavery]] and he's then introduced to the clearly terrified trafficked women. When the women are locked in a room and he hears horrific screaming, he can't take it any more and rushes into the room with a gun. It turns out it was a trap and one of the other gang members was making the noise to draw him out. Lisa then slits his throat from behind.
* ''Series/MrBean'': In "[[Recap/MrBeanTheBusStop The Bus Stop]]", Mr. Bean tricks a blind man into giving up his place in the queue at the bus stop. He does this by scurrying past, making the sound of a bus stopping, including the hissing sound of the door opening. The man is fooled, and walks straight out into the path of an actual approaching bus.
* ''Series/PuddleLane'': The Magician promises Toby that he will play with him when the clock strikes thirteen. To make the Magician believe this has happened, Toby gets somebody to bang on a metal plate to make the sound of the thirteenth chime, after the clock has struck twelve.

* ''Series/{{Thunderbirds}}'': A highly technological example occurs in "The Cham-cham", in which coded messages are sent using music played by a band, which is interpreted by the cham-cham machine. Lady Penelope infiltrates the band, and manages to send counter-messages with her singing, fooling the cham-cham.

* ''VideoGame/CityShroudedInShadow'': In one sequence, the protagonists are hiding in an office building from the yakuza pursuing them when one of the latter hears something and begins to investigate. A number of options pop up to throw them off the scent, ranging from the plausible (meowing like a cat or barking like a dog) to the ridiculous (howling like a wolf). During her playthrough, [[Characters/HololiveJapanGAMERS Mio Ookami]] (being a wolf-girl) decided to try the "howling like a wolf" option to see what would happen, and was bemused that it worked: by that point the yakuza had already seen [[Franchise/UltraSeries giant alien monsters]] and [[Film/{{Gamera}} kaiju]] randomly appearing, and as a result simply accepted that random animals appearing in an office building was equally plausible.

* In the second installment of ''VideoGame/HugosHouseOfHorrors'', you have to lure the maid away by making her think Uncle Horace is ringing for her. To do this, you have to rub a bell with catnip, so that a cat plays with the bell, and makes it sound.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'': Parrots can imitate the sounds of monsters to scare players thinking there's the real one, on any {{Difficulty Level|s}} besides Peaceful which doesn't have monsters.

* ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'': When Mario is [[ExactEavesdropping spying on Grubba]], the latter hears a sound from the vents and the player must choose from three options a sound to imitate: a squeak, a meow or ''a belch.'' Fortunately for our heroes, if the last option is picked, [[BitchInSheepsClothing Grubba]] assumes it's just a belching beetle.

* In ''WebOriginal/SearchAndRescueWoods,'' one of the supernatural creatures in the Park tries to lure the narrator closer by making the sound of a crying baby. He notices just in time that the cry loops, like it's a recording and backs off.

* One of the tapes in ''WebVideo/GeminiHomeEntertainment'' warn you of being subjected to this trope, as Woodcrawlers are able to possess human bodies and then imitate sounds. Most of these being bone-chilling and desperate ''cries of help'', they even refer to them as ''auditory hallucinations'' to further try and tell you that these possible desperate screams are just bait from fake humans.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'': In "[[Recap/TheAngryBeaversE2UpAllNight Up All Night]]", Dag and Norb are watching a B-Movie called "The Crawling Spleen", which features the titular creature making a splashing sound as it approaches. When they turn off the TV, they hear a sound which they think is the spleen in their house, but it turns out it's the sound of their faucet dripping onto a wet sponge.

** In "[[Recap/TheLoudHouseS1E26StudyMuffinHomespun Study Muffin]]", the sisters say, "Buh, buh, buh" when they're distracted by Hugh, a man on whom they have a crush. The other sisters hear this noise and initially mistake it as a goose or a sheep.

** In "[[Recap/MarthaSpeaksS1E30RaidersOfTheLostArt Raiders of the Lost Art]]", Martha (a domestic dog) howls to get Helen's attention. Mr. Stern the janitor hears her, but thinks it's a wolf that howled. Also, in the same episode T.D. whistles also to get Helen's attention, which Stern mistakes for a bird.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewScoobyDooMovies'': Creator/JonathanWinters, known for his impressions and sound effects, guest-starred in one episode. At one point, he tries to trick the MonsterOfTheWeek by convincing him a police helicopter is chasing him. It fails because, there's obviously no helicopter in the sky. At a previous point, he uses {{Ventriloquism}} to trick a particularly stubborn farm hand.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther'': In ''Pink at First Sight,'' Pink Panther wants to get hired by a delivery service that has its messengers perform for the recipients. He goes to a music store and buys a tape player and some tapes. He lip-syncs to the songs on the tapes, causing people to think he's really singing. (Though this is excusable for him, since he's a HeroicMime who seemingly can't talk or sing at all.) Later on, when he is cornered by some gangsters, [[ChekhovsGun he uses the tape player again]] to play a recording of a police officer saying "This is the police! We've got you surrounded!" [[spoiler:The gangsters think the police really are after them, and they hightail it out of there]].

* Alarms which make the sound of a barking dog are sometimes used to deter intruders.
* Sometimes, people have believed houses to be haunted because of mysterious noises, which had a rational explanation. One extreme example was of knocking sounds which had been coming from the ceiling for several years. This was actually caused by a mechanical alarm clock on a chair in the bedroom above, making the faintest of tapping sounds, which were amplified in the room below.

* An urban legend about the M1 Garand, the standard American military rifle from 1936 to 1957, argued that after firing all eight shots from the en bloc clip, the empty clip would be automatically ejected and made a distinct "pinging" sound as it hit the ground. Enemy soldiers supposedly learned to listen for this sound and would emerge from cover to fire back as the American reloaded; the Americans would then start keeping an empty clip on their person and drop it during engagements, fooling the enemy into thinking he was out of ammo and then picking them off. [[https://freerangeamerican.us/debunking-m1-garand-ping-myth/ The story is a complete myth:]] while the M1 clip ejector did make a distinctive noise, [[GunsDoNotWorkThatWay it wasn't nearly loud enough to be heard from an enemy position, especially not during battle]], and in any case a squad or fireteam were very unlikely to all run out of ammo at the same time.

* ''WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'' is lying in a hospital bed, a victim of a bombing at the power substation. Three weeping furry female visitors come to see him, which leads the policeman outside his room to believe Fritz is a goner. When he hears some noises come through the door, the cop takes his hat off, certain that Fritz is in his death throes. Inside the room, Fritz isn't dying, nosiree, not even close.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}'': When Doc's engine sputters, Lightning believes that Doc is shooting at him.

-->'''Paul:''' I know, Thufir. I'm sitting with my back to the door. I heard you, Dr. Yueh, and Gurney coming down the hall.
-->'''Thufir:''' Those sounds could be imitated!
-->'''Paul:''' I'd know the difference.
-->'''Thufir:''' ''(thinking)'' Yes, perhaps you would at that.

-->'''Gurney:''' Don't stand with your back to the door!
-->'''Paul:''' I could tell it was you by your footsteps, Gurney Halleck!
-->'''Gurney:''' Someone might imitate my stride.
-->'''Paul:''' I'd know the difference.

--->'''Stormtrooper 1:''' What was that?
--->'''Stormtrooper 2:''' That? That's nothing. Outgassing, don't worry about it.

--> '''Head of the army:''' I am a military man, and I know a gun when I hear one! Turn back!
--> '''The BFG:''' That is just the giants snortling in their sleep. I is a giant myself, and I know a giant's snortle when I hear one.

--> '''Queen:''' It's not a sheep in there with you, is it?
--> '''Edmund:''' Of course not!
--> '''Queen:''' Well then, let me in.
--> (When she does enter the room, and is about to look behind the bed curtains, Henry Tudor who is hidden behind them baa-baas like a sheep.)
--> '''Queen:''' Oh Edmund. It's the ''lying'' I find so hurtful.

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!!Indexes: MistakenForIndex, QuoteSource.StarWars, SoundFXTropes