Characters in some works, particularly anime, tend to stutter whenever even slightly surprised.

(Alice, Bob's wife, returns home early, without going shopping)
Bob: A... Alice! You're early!

Can also be written as "A-Alice! You're early."

Probably happens due to RuleOfPerception applied to surprise.
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!!Examples:

* ''CodeGeass''.
* The girl who played Miranda on ''Lizzie [=McGuire=]'' did this in what seemed like every other line.
* ''SpikeLee'''s ''DoTheRightThing'' has one character that stutters a lot.
* SHODAN from ''VideoGame/SystemShock'', resembling a sound card malfunction. It probably ''is'' a sound card malfunction.
* ''TowerOfGod'':
---> '''Rachel''': Wa-Wait a minute! *CRASH* Co-come in, Koon.
* [[http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/970081.html "You cannot deny the emotional impact of the stutter-typing!"]]
* Almost everyone in the ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney'' series does this at one point or another.
* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': [[spoiler:Castle Heterodyne personality]] in a mechanical humanoid body after "Unstoppable Higgs" [[AreTheseWiresImportant kicked it a few times]].
* Kinda the whole point of ''TheKingsSpeech''.
* Gaius Baltar does this constantly on ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}''. Unusual in that he's the only character who does so.
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'' uses this. In a flashback, the main protagonist's now-deceased mother implies she has fallen in love with quick-witted fox Renard, resulting in his use of this trope before she leaves him hanging with a mischievous smile. Happens again years later when, after returning to the Court, Surma's daughter Antimony says she'd let Renard return to the forest if he wanted (him not being able to escape so long as she didn't allow it, being the only reason he's not trapped in a large cell being tortured) and he repeats this action while telling her not to ask that of him, going on to say that the love he had for Surma, while not what he had once believed it to be, hadn't gone away and muses that someone has to be around to protect Antimony.
* In IsaacAsimov's [[Literature.TheCavesOfSteel robot novels]], Elijah Baley dramatically stutters Daneel's name in the first and second books. In ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'', the stutter stems from Baley's initial discomfort in talking to a humanoid robot and calling it by the familiar name; but in ''The Naked Sun'' his "D-daneel" is pure surprise and pleasure at seeing Daneel again.
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