Line #55 Main/StutterStop


1	->''"W-w-w-w-was th-th-this th-th-the f-f-f-face..."
2	-->-- Wannabe Actor '''Wabash the Tailor''' at the beginning of ''Film/ShakespeareInLove''
3
4	->''"Two households! Both alike in dignity, in Fair Verona where we set our scene..."''
5	-->-- Triumphant Actor '''Wabash the Tailor''' at the ''climax'' of ''Film/ShakespeareInLove''
6
7	A character has [[SpeechImpediment a stutter or a stammer]], and it affects how he communicates with others... badly. But then, usually at some key dramatic moment, his stammer disappears and he is able to speak with surprisingly smooth and eloquent diction.
8
9	This is often TruthInTelevision, as many stutterers don't stutter at all (or do it much less) if they're acting, singing, or talking about something they know well.
10
11	See also PorkyPigPronunciation, AlternateCatchphraseInflection, and DelusionsOfEloquence. Can overlap with OOCIsSeriousBusiness if other characters consider their unhindered speech unusual.
12
13
14	----
15	!!Examples:
16
17	[[foldercontrol]]
18
19	[[folder:Advertising]]
20	* An advert for Malibu had two beautiful women in a nightclub turning down the advances of various CasanovaWannabe types. A nervous man with a stutter tries his luck by asking if he can buy then a ma-ma-ma-- before smoothly segueing into them DuetBonding over the delights of drinking Malibu.
21	[[/folder]]
22
23	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
24	* In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamTheWitchFromMercury'', protagonist Suletta Mercury has a noticeable stutter, which disappears whenever she is in the cockpit of Aerial, her giant mech partner.
25	[[/folder]]
26
27	[[folder:Comic Books]]
28	* ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'': Abel never stutters when he is telling someone a story.
29	* ''ComicBook/StarmanDCComics'': Nash stops stuttering when her brother is [[AvengingTheVillain killed]] and she becomes the [[DaddysLittleVillain heir to the Mist legacy]]. When asked how she stopped, Nash claimed that she was "[[ThatManIsDead someone else]]".
30	* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'':
31	** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': When Byrna is truly furious her stutter all but disappears, as is shown when she volunteers to join Villainy Inc. She is understandably pissed at being imprisoned in a foreign country when all her crimes happened within the United States and strapped into a mind washing device that forced her to obey her captors and tried to force her to be happy about it. She's also the most clear example of the Aphrodite Girdle's failing, as she was able to fight off all the effects but obedience and secretly rebuild and improve on her arsenal and armor while imprisoned on Reformation Island.
32	** ''ComicBook/WonderWomanTheHiketeia'': Danny speaks in a stutter for most of the story but when she reveals what happened to her sister and her murders of the men responsible she speaks fluidly.
33	[[/folder]]
34
35	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
36	* Toggle, a character in ''Doonesbury'', has difficulty speaking after suffering brain damage in Iraq. He usually loses the stutter when Gary Trudeau wants to use him to make a point.
37	-->'''Toggle:''' I like it here. People never t...t...t...\
38	'''Zonker:''' Treat you different.\
39	'''Toggle:''' Try to finish my sentences.
40	[[/folder]]
41
42	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
43	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'', Hercules stutters throughout the the film, from awkward teenager to adult hero. Particularly seen when Hercules is with Megara.
44	[[/folder]]
45
46	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
47	* ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'', where Wabash can barely speak because of his stammer, and is only included in the play because Phillip Henslowe (the "producer") owes him money. But, after a brief false start, he delivers ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet's'' prologue (and at the end, the epilogue) with perfect eloquence.
48	* Subverted in ''Film/PansLabyrinth'': [[BigBad Captain Vidal]] mocks a captured resistance fighter with a noticeable stutter by telling him that [[BaitTheDog he will let him go if he can count to tres without stuttering]]. The man tries his hardest, makes it past dos, but fails and so gets tortured and executed. Of course, knowing Vidal, it probably wouldn't have ended well even if he had succeeded.
49	* Michael Palin's character K-k-k-Ken in ''Film/AFishCalledWanda'' has a terrible stutter throughout the movie. It vanishes when he gets his revenge on Otto, his major adversary, at the end of the movie. [[WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue Final credits reveal]] he now works as an MC at Sea World.
50	** In an earlier scene, Jamie Lee Curtis' character kisses him while to get some information out of him, leaving him ironically un-tongue-tied for a few moments afterwards.
51	** Palin actually [[ShownTheirWork did quite a bit of research on how stuttering works in real life]] and incorporated it into his performance. Ken's stutter is not as bad when he's around people he's comfortable with (Wanda and George), and becomes worse when Otto (whom he can't stand and is scared of) is around.
52	* In the Creator/JohnWayne film ''Film/TheCowboys'', one of the boys on the cattle drive wasn't able to warn them of danger due to a stuttering problem. Wil Anderson (Wayne's character) proceeds to give him a brutal tongue-lashing, and the boy stutteringly calls Anderson a "s-s-s-s-s-son-uh-uh-uh-of-a-buh-buh-bitch". Anderson then continues to antagonize the boy until the youth explodes into a verbal tirade of completely stutter-free profanity. Anderson then calmly congratulates him on getting over his stutter, and warns the boy to not get used to cursing at him like that. The boy never stutters once for the rest of the film.
53	* Billy in ''Film/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', after he has sex with Mac's girlfriend, but before Nurse Rachet threatens to tell his mother.
54	* King George VI ("Bertie") in ''Film/TheKingsSpeech'' spends most of the movie stammering terribly, but his therapist Lionel Logue finds that he doesn't stammer when he's very angry and/or swearing.
55	* ''Film/PrimalFear:'' Aaron stutters almost every other word. He only stops when [[spoiler: [[SplitPersonality he]] [[SubvertedTrope (apparently)]] [[SplitPersonality takes on the much more aggressive persona of "Roy".]]]] In the final scene of the movie, [[spoiler: he loses the stutter when he [[TheReveal reveals]] to Marty that it was [[EvilAllAlong just a part of the gentle, meek act he was putting on to make himself seem innocent.]]]]
56	* This is lightly featured in ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan'' as one of the CharacterTics of this version of Peter Parker; he falls into stuttering and repetition in most regular situations and especially anything dealing with Gwen Stacy, but once the mask comes on- he immediately switches gears, drops the stutter and picks up the [[YouFightLikeACow insults]].
57	* ''Film/OnceUponATimeInHollywood'' shows that Rick Dalton has a mild stutter in his personal life (along with a midwest accent) but is otherwise flawless when playing a character on set. He even improvises a line with [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal three alliterative words]] to great acclaim.
58	* ''Film/{{Stutterer}}'': Played with. Greenwood, who has a very very bad stutterer, also has an Internet girlfriend named Ellie, and he's scared of what will happen when he meets her in real life. His stutter doesn't go away when he meets her--but it doesn't matter, because she's deaf. And happily, he knows sign language.
59	* ''Film/HuntingAndGathering'': Philbert has a pretty bad stutter, which is one of the reasons he mostly avoids contact with people. It turns out that his stutter goes away when he's onstage performing, and he becomes a standup comic.
60	[[/folder]]
61
62	[[folder:Literature]]
63	* ''Literature/TheAliceNetwork'':
64	** Eve's stutter completely disappears at times when:
65	*** she's very angry
66	*** she's acting ([[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Charlie)
67	** Her stutter isn't as bad when:
68	*** she's speaking French, her native language
69	*** she's drunk
70	** Inverted: when Eve is very scared, she stutters much more.
71	* In the ''Literature/GreenHills'' series, Stewart stutters badly when speaking English, but not at all when speaking Welsh or singing in any language.
72	* Used for TheReveal in the first ''Literature/{{Harry Potter\|and the Philosophers Stone}}'' book. The villain was p-p-p-poor s-s-stuttering Professor Quirrell all along.
73	* Bill Denbrough from Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/{{It}}''. Both Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh remark on the fact that "Stuttering Bill doesn't realize that he doesn't, always".
74	* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story "Galley Slave", sociology professor Simon Ninheimer stuttered almost all the way through to the end, where he gives an eloquent speech of the evils of AI proofreaders.
75	** Ninheimer doesn't exactly stutter, but he does have a very idiosyncratic speech pattern full of verbalized pauses, giving the impression that he's looking for just the right word to use. One of the other characters comments that if Ninheimer were to say "The sky is ... uh ... blue", you'd feel that he had paused to give due deliberation to the notion that it might be green.
76	* Simon has a stutter throughout most of the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/EqualRites'', but loses it after a run-in with some {{Cosmic Horror}}s.
77	* Literature/ErastFandorin has a stutter/verbal tic that goes away when he's in disguise/in more LetsGetDangerous moments.
78	* ''Literature/ProfessorMmaasLecture'': The termite Dr. Brillat-Beetonin, afflicted with a stutter which makes him into an anxious NervousWreck, eventually loses it apparently by sheer force of will and becomes a charismatic rebellious leader. He gains large amounts of power and influence until suddenly an actual crisis strikes the termite mound, at which point he panics and goes back to his old stutter, and presumably old personality.
79	* In ''[[Literature/IncarnationsOfImmortality Wielding A Red Sword]]'', Mym (the future Mars, Incarnation of War) has a bad stutter. He learns that he can overcome this by singing his remarks.
80	* A squirrel with a bad stutter in ''{{Literature/Redwall}}'' is told by a group of performers that he should try singing his sentences instead. Not only does it work, he later manages to speak without stuttering as well.
81	* In Hilary Mantels historical novel ''Literature/{{A Place Of Greater Safety}}'', [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolutionMajorFigures Camille Desmoulins]] loses his stutter when addressing large revolutionary crowds.
82	[[/folder]]
83
84	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
85	* Lieutenant Reginald Barclay in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' and ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' had a few scenes like this. It was usually evidence that he was really certain about what he was saying, but just couldn't get the words out. It wasn't nervousness that caused his stammer, it was his utter comprehension of the danger of the situation they were in.
86	** Although on some occasions it was evidence he'd been hit by the NegativeSpaceWedgie and was NotHimself.
87	* Happens at least once to the title character in the TV version of ''Series/IClaudius''.
88	** The title character of ''Series/IClaudius'' eventually trains himself so that he largely loses his stutter. What makes it fit this well is that he had achieved this well before most people thought he had... and so right up until becoming Roman Emperor, he's still seen as poor, stupid, stuttering C-C-C-Claudius. Soon after, he drops the ObfuscatingStupidity, much to his enemies' dismay.
89	* A character on ''Series/JoanOfArcadia'' had a terrible stuttering problem, made worse by the fact that he was on the Debate Team. So how did he find his voice? Joan discovers that he has an exceptional talent for finding/gathering evidence and arranging excellent presentations.
90	* In the ''Series/HereComeTheBrides'' episode "A Man and His Magic," the SnakeOilSalesman Merlin is able to cure Jeremy's stutter because Jeremy believes in his powers more than anyone else. When Merlin is exposed as a fraud, Jeremy's faith is shattered, and his stutter returns in full force.
91	[[/folder]]
92
93	[[folder:Music]]
94	* Country music singer Mel Tillis had a terrible stutter, except when singing. On one tour, one of his roommates was Johnny Paycheck, who had forgotten his motel key and was trying to re-enter the room through the window. Thinking it was a burglar and wanting to warn the others in the room, Mel literally sang out "There's a robber/Comin' in/Through the window."
95	** Tillis was one of the innumerable celebrities to star in ''Film/CannonballRun''. He actually has to sing some of his lines just to get them out.
96	* World famous [[{{Scatting}} scat singer]] Music/ScatmanJohn states in his song "Scatman" that the reason why he sounds so good singing and has trouble stuttering off stage is because he's actually stuttering in his songs. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Geiq0FP13uQ&feature=related Take a listen]].
97	-->''Everybody's sayin' that the Scatman stutters''
98	-->''But doesn't ever stutter when he sings.''
99	-->''But what you don't know I'm gonna tell you right now,''
100	-->''That the stutter and the scat is the same thing.''
101	* Music/TheWho's most famous song "My Generation" from ''Music/MyGeneration'' makes use of stuttering while singing, probably the most famous instance in music history:
102	--> ''Why don't you just all f-f-f-f-fade away?!''
103	* Music/DavidBowie's album ''Music/HunkyDory'' has a song called "Changes", which makes use of a stutter:
104	--> ''C-c-c-c-changes''
105	* The "Stutter Rap" by Morris Minor & The Majors.
106	-->Well, no one's ever seen what I mean\
107	From the age of n-n-n-n-n-n-thirteen\
108	We've all been caught in a m-m-mouth trap\
109	So join with us and do the st-st-st-st-st-st-st-stutter rap!
110	* In ''Music/TheHamiltonMixtape'', halfway through his part in "My Shot (Rise Up Remix)," Joell Ortiz begins stuttering and saying "um" before every word. After one line of doing that, he busts into his fastest, most boastful part with ease.
111	[[/folder]]
112
113	[[folder:Theatre]]
114	* In the French farce ''A Flea in Her Ear'', one of the characters has something wrong with his palette that makes him stutter. At one point in the play, he gets a prosthesis, and so the stops stuttering at that point. It gets knocked out afterward though and he goes back to stuttering.
115	* In ''Theatre/WeWillRockYou'' the main character Galileo has a heavy stutter that slowly disappears after meeting Scaramouche to the point where she points it out to him before they sing "Who Wants to Live Forever?".
116	[[/folder]]
117
118	[[folder:Video Games]]
119	* ''VideoGame/StreetFighterV'' introduces Necalli, who displays this in his dialogue. Considering that his design and his name suggest that he's from an ancient civilization (possibly Aztec in origin), this habit could be explained as him trying to adapt to modern language.
120	-->'''Necalli:''' ''[after defeating Vega]'' You can never ho...hope to cut me with such a feeble blade.\
121	'''Necalli:''' ''[after defeating Ken]'' Give u...up. I'll dr...drink your flames.
122	[[/folder]]
123
124	[[folder:Webcomics]]
125	* ''Webcomic/AvasDemon'''s Odin usually stutters except when he's lying.
126	* ''Webcomic/EnnuiGo'': Calixta naturally speaks with a stutter, but is able to speak normally with effort, and does so in her wrestling {{Heel}} persona. [[spoiler:It's also revealed that her mother has the same stutter. She normally hides it, but briefly lapses back into it on a single occasion during an argument with her daughter]].
127	* In ''Webcomic/{{Imp}}'', Celina's imp stutters a lot, especially when he's scared or nervous, but speaks normally when calm enough.
128	[[/folder]]
129
130	[[folder:Web Original]]
131	* A story posted on Website/FourChan tells the tale of an autism caretaker witnessing the infernal badness of ''VideoGame/SonicBoom'' overpowering the speech impediments of one of his students. [[http://i.imgur.com/D84saHj.png Behold!]]
132	[[/folder]]
133
134	[[folder:Western Animation]]
135	* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': The flashback at the beginning of "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS7E5Unmortricken Unmortricken]]" shows that [[Characters/RickAndMortyEvilMorty Evil Morty]]--who has ''never'' stammered in his previous appearances set in the present day--did in fact used to have the same anxious, stuttering voice as every other Morty. We see the moment he permanently drops the stutter completely as the first sign that he's snapped after putting up with his Rick's abuse for so long.
136	[[/folder]]
137
138	[[folder:Real Life]]
139	* As explained above, this can be TruthInTelevision, as there is a set of circumstances where a stutterer might not be affected (or be less affected) by his condition, such as when acting, singing, talking about very familiar topics, or even when drunk. Note, however, that the whole condition is a complex topic and doesn't affect everybody the same way, to the extent that what helps some cases might not work, or even have the opposite effect, in others (it can also become a SelfFulfillingProphecy, as stutterers finding themselves in those circumstances might only become more nervous on the notion that they ''must'' stop stuttering, ultimately making it all worse). People with this condition often need a lot of trying and failing in order to discover their particular tricks.
140	* Creator/JamesEarlJones has a stutter that is present whenever he is speaking extemporaneously without time to prepare what he is going to say. It is ''never'' present when he is performing, unless the character he is playing is specifically designated as a stutterer. In his childhood it was so bad that he didn't speak for three years.
141	* Creator/RowanAtkinson has a stutter that he overcomes on screen by over-pronouncing certain letters, most notably his Bs.
142	* Creator/NicholasBrendon has a stutter that he says he beats by using a handful of tricks he learned when he was a kid to get around his speech problem. One is turning everything into a song lyric in his head before he says it. Another is pretending that he's actually his twin brother (actor Kelly Donovan) instead of himself, as he never stutters when he's performing.
143	* Creator/BruceWillis had a stutter as a teen. He was drawn to acting because he noticed that his stutter disappeared when he was on stage giving a performance.
144	* UsefulNotes/JoeBiden had a stutter growing up. He used various techniques to work around it, to the point that he no longer noticeably stutters when speaking extemporaneously (which, as a politician, he has to do a lot). However, his wording is often a bit clumsy, and the techniques he used to work through his stutter apparently contributed to his bad case of [[OpenMouthInsertFoot foot-in-mouth syndrome]] (which, fortunately for him, mostly comes off as endearing rather than embarrassing). He is notably not prone to any kind of stutter, clumsiness, or gaffes when working from a script.
145	* Creator/SamuelLJackson had a stutter when he was younger and one of the reason he likes swearing so much is because swearing helped him get over it. He'll still occasionally swear to himself if he starts stuttering again.
146	[[/folder]]

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