Bow Chicka Wow Wow

Tucker: Did somebody call for a really hairy plumber? Bow-chicka-bow-wow!
Church: Tucker! Shut up.
Tucker: I came here to lay some pipe. Bow-chicka-bow-wow!
Church: Tucker!

— Red vs. Blue

"Bow Chicka Wow Wow" is the sound of a character beatboxing porno music, based on the funk-rock soundtracks that many '70s pornos are believed to have had. This is usually done after the character has seen or heard something lewd. Or sometimes simply imagined something lewd. The 1970s was the golden age of porn, when the best films had big budgets, scripts and plots. The late 1970s films used the funky, soul-infused disco that was a huge fad at the time. The trope imitates the wah-wah-pedal "chicken scratch" electric guitar figure that was popular in this style of pop music.

Compare That's What She Said. See also Sexophone.

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Examples

Comedy

• Rex Navarrete:
  • In the "Bomba Tapes" routine, Rex reenacts the various Filipino porn he used to sneakily watch by imitating the "BOW CHICKA WOW WOW" bassline interspersed with bad porno dialogue in Filipino. He notes Filipino porn had a severe decline in quality in the 80s, wherein he recreates the bassline and dialogue... now interrupted by taho and balut vendors yelling in the background, thanks to worse mics.
  • The memetic "Party Like It's 1904" skit compares racist white American freakshows showcasing Filipino tribals (sadly an actual occurrence) fetishising the barely-dressed Filipina women dancing to their "tribal music" to shitty clubs fetishising Filipina women to shitty electronica, represented by bad faux-porno beats that Rex jokes was beatboxed by a deafmute.

Comic Books

• Black Canary And Zatanna Bloodspell: Black Canary and Zatanna are looking in the window of a toy store that's displaying Justice League of America action figures. Zatanna teases Black Canary by temporarily animating the Black Canary and Green Arrow dolls and making them talk to each other:
  Zatanna: I love toys. Look who's in the window!
  Black Canary: Oh, those. We okayed those to be sold for charity. The profits go to victims of supervillains.
  Zatanna: Uh-huh. [magical sparks go from her finger to the toys]
  Green Arrow Doll: Hey, pretty bird. I ain't seen you around the Barbie aisle before.
  Black Canary: I guess you were on reserve when we made that deal.
  Zatanna: I'm not bitter. Bount-chicka-bount-bount.^note That's how it's spelled in the comic, but the intent is clear.
  Black Canary Doll: Hey yourself, Robin Hood. Is that an arrow in your quiver or are you just happy to see me?
  Zatanna: [gets punched in the shoulder by Black Canary] Ow!

Fan Works

• Teá does it in an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.
  "...Burn the witch!"
• So does Hanyuu in one episode of Higurashi Parody Fandub, after the principal said that he and Chie will have sex in his office, instead of saving Satoko from her uncle. However, she actually said "Hau Chicka Hau Hau".
• In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Master Roshi says this when noticing that Goku has a son.
• In Violence Inherent in the System, Hermione dresses up like Lara Croft to co-teach a Defense Against the Dark Arts class. When Harry calls her into their office to "discuss a few things", one of the fourth year Gryffindor boys singsongs "Bow chicka bow wow!"

Film

• McLovin of Superbad likes to play with this.
• Done by Alvin in the first Alvin and the Chipmunks film.
• The best-known arrangement of 3-2-1 Contact's theme used this.
• The first American Pie movie opens with a heavy bass version of this as Jim attempts to fill a sock while watching heavily scrambled cable porn.

Live-Action TV

• Rachel from Friends does this in "The One with the Free Porn", apparently unaware of what she's singing. She eventually asks what it is that's been in her head all day and is told that it's the theme to Good Will Humping.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • Done by the bots whenever the dialogue in a movie suggests a porn film segue.
  • Also inverted: they add "sexy dialogue" when the music resembles this. (It was really the music of all low-budget '70s films, at least until the porn association became codified.)
• 2 Broke Girls: "...and the Dumpster Sex" has Max thinking it was "Brown Chicken Brown Cow".
• An episode of Bones has Booth explain what Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow Boom-Clicka-Mow-Wow means to Bones
• Any time the scene style is 'porn' or simply 'filled with LUST!' in Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which of course makes it into the Spiritual Successor Drew Careys Improvaganza in a big way.

Music

• Shorthand Phonetics literally has a track called "Bow-Wow-Chikka-Wakka-Chikka-Wakka-Chikka-Wakka, Bow-Wow-Chikka-Wakka-Chikka-Wakka-Chikka-Wakka"
• Referenced by way of pun on Trace Adkins' "Brown Chicken, Brown Cow".
• Mike Posner has a song called this. Surprisingly, it's about mood music. The video even resembles a '70s softcore porno.
• "Cheeka Bow Bow" by The Vengaboys.
• The Argentine band Cumshot main source of inspiration is the aforementioned Bow Chicka Wow Wow soundtracks of the 70's porn flics. It's up to the listener if this is Stylistic Suck or a funny and inventive whole new playground for ambient music.
• Swedish europop singer Gunther, on the other hand, is undoubtedly a parody.
  "You touch my TRA-LAH-LAH! My ding-ding-dong!"
• The Fitnessgram Pacer Test soundtrack contains a number of examples, especially in the earlier stages.
• "Oh Yeah" by Yello is a popular alternative for shows and movies (most famously Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Secret of My Success) who want to license a particular song for scenes like this. It even uses the onomatopoetic sounds in question, albeit not in that order.
• The entire gimmick of the band Pornosonic is to play music like this, with each song listed as the theme from a different non-existent porno film from the 70s (Ron Jeremy even provides fake soundbites in between songs).
• Meghan Patrick has a song by this exact title.
• In late 2023, the PornHub Community intro theme was discovered to be a licensed track called "Beats Me". Cue just about everyone making porno jokes in the comments.

Theatre

• While "Thurio's Samba" from the rock musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona doesn't use the exact phrase, it adds some more explicit language between "chicka" and "wow".

Video Games

• In Destroy All Humans! 2, both Orthopox and Arkvoodle use the expression, with the latter speaking it in a deep voice.
• Devil May Cry 5: Nico can be heard doing the "Bow Chicka Wow Wow" porn music riff after Nero saves a naked Lady.
  Nico: Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do.
• Guitar Hero III: The Legends of Rock includes an unlockable bass guitar called "Boom Chicka Wah Wah". If you listen closely, this tune plays before you play any career encore in the Mitch's Moose Lounge venue (which is a strip club).
• Approximately a week or so before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out for World of Warcraft, Thrall, leader of the orcs, disappeared from his chamber for a few hours. The official forums proceeded to speculate on what he was doing and where he was during that time. This led to many responses simply saying "Jaina", but the absolute best was in response to one of these, where the poster simply wrote "Bow-chicka-lok-tar".
• Perhaps taken to a literal extreme with the DSiWare game Spotto!, where the titular bird character must rescue a hot chick by the name of "Chikkie Wowwow".
• When breeding sheep in FarmVille, your sheeps' sprites in the pen will be replaced with a sign reading "Baa chicka-wow wow!" while they're, um... busy.
• Abobo's Big Adventure: "Bow Chicka Wow Wow" appears on screen as a form of censoring while Abobo is having his way with Annie the mermaid. Too bad we can't see how he managed to avoid The Mermaid Problem...

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: "Chaz Time" is a "love" ballad sung by Chaz as he attempts to seduce Moxxie that heavily features this type of instrumentation.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • "Bow-chicka-bow-wow" becomes a catchphrase of Tucker, to the point that even his alien baby says it. (Well, "Blarg-Chicka-Honk-Honk", but close enough.)
  • Caboose hilariously attempts to say Tucker's catchphrase. The result:
    Caboose: Hey-chicka-bump-bump!
    Tucker: Caboose! What did I tell ya about that?!
    Caboose: Sorry! Sorry...
  • Jeff Williams, the main music director for Rooster Teeth works, even made the catchphrase its own song in the soundtrack for Season 9.

Webcomics

• In one Bruno the Bandit strip, this is the call of the Pornmonster.
• Different sound for the same thing in Girl Genius:
  Zeetha: Hey, Skifander's patron Goddess is Ashtara, she who controls, among other things, fertility. Our holy-days are fun! ~Cha cha cha!~
• Spinnerette: While teasing Heather about Marilyn's crush on her, Sahira references the riff, though she says "Brown chicken brown cow".

Web Original

• Atop the Fourth Wall: In his review of a pair of comics where Superman and Big Barda are mind-controlled into filming a porno, Linkara threatens violence upon anyone who posts "Bow Chicka Wow Wow" in the comments section.
• Used by Cracked to describe the weird death of French president Felix Faure, who on February the 16th 1899 expired from a heart attack while having sex with his mistress in his office.
• In Gorgeous Freeman, Dr. Breen's Leitmotif is "A Happy Ass: Special Delivery" by Pornosonic.
• Lampshaded in Rooster Teeth's Rage Quit episode featuring Toy Stunt Bike:
  Michael: Fuckin' porno music right here! Bow chicka chicka wow wow, da-na-na-na-na-na, ridin' yo bike, over a FUCKING GODDAMN BLOCK!
• This is the music used in the Simply Nailogical video intro, accompanying "polish porn" of nail bottles spilling.

Western Animation

• Family Guy:
  • Stewie does this in "Screwed the Pooch" when Brian runs out onto a greyhound track and has sex with Lois' father's prize dog.
  • When Brian goes to Hollywood to become a writer and get a gig directing porn, he gets a Woody for best director. The best score Woody included two lounge lizards and John Williams.
• One On the Next spot for Clone High is nothing but Joan and Cleo in a Cat Fight with the Narrator Bow Chicka Wow Wow-ing over it.
• Bender does this in Futurama.
• Archer: In season 3, Malory admires herself in the mirror, wearing nothing but a trench coat. She flatters herself with a "You still got it. Bow chicka wow wow."
• Hazbin Hotel: The Final Battle of season 1 has Adam call Lucifer the most hated being in creation. Lucifer points out that Lilith (Adam's ex and Lucifer's wife) seemed to like what he was offering, then implies that he also seduced Eve, before dropping the trope name and making a cunnilingus gesture.
• King of the Hill:
  • When Bill's career as a competitive eater is over, Dale uses this (in a slight variation) to console him with the fact that he got lucky with his groupie. Yeah, not so much...
  • When Hank is accused of failing to return an adult video to the video store, Boomhauer taunts him with this.
• Phineas and Ferb: A main part of the chorus of the song "Gitchee Gitchee Goo", about a man trying to work out if their girlfriend loves him, is "bow chicka wow wow".

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