Megaphone Gag

"Uhh... attention. Attention. We're looking for the chick with big boobs."

— Butt-Head, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America

Since a megaphone isn't an appliance owned by the typical consumer, it's generally assumed that anyone wielding one is an authority figure. They allow officials to broadcast critical information to enormous audiences in emergency, crowd control, or other impromptu situations. But when a comedy character gets their hands on one, their message will be anything but official.

Usually, the message will be rude, vulgar, or otherwise offensive. Sometimes, the megaphone does not belong to the user but is "borrowed" from the person who is supposed to be using it. This usually causes the original user to snap at the borrower for taking their device without permission.

This is not limited to megaphones of the handheld variety. Speaker systems mounted in stores intended for announcements to the public are a common target for this type of mischief. If a character steals a police car, it is almost certain that they will blurt out a message of some sort over the built-in loudspeaker.

Expect this trope to be invoked by a Slogan-Yelling Megaphone Guy who gets carried away. If this trope is Played for Drama, then it may be an example of Canned Orders over Loudspeaker or Bavarian Fire Drill.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• In a commercial for Bell in 2006, Gordon points a megaphone out the window of his house and demands his neighbours stop using the internet to avoid slowing down his downloads. Frank informs him that Bell's DSL services aren't shared with neighbours, and he embarrassingly tells the neighbours "never mind."

Comic Books

• Tintin: In The Red Sea Sharks, Tintin and Haddock end up on a ship belonging to a slave-trading operation. When one of the slavers boards the ship to inspect the cargo, Haddock drives him off with a volley of insults. After a minute, Tintin points out that the man is out of earshot, but the Captain, not to be defeated, runs to the bridge to continue his tirade through a megaphone.

Films — Animation

• In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the constable is directing the foot traffic of a vegetable competition through a megaphone. He forgets that he's holding it as he accidentally repeats shocking news whispered in his ear.
  Victor Quartermaine: [whispering] Constable, listen, I don't want to cause any panic, but the beast isn't actually dead yet.
  Constable: [through the megaphone] THE BEAST ISN'T ACTUALLY DEAD YET?!
  [The entire crowd all stops what they're doing; stunned silence, Victor facepalms]
  Constable: [through the megaphone] Oops.
  [cue the Mass "Oh, Crap!"]
• From South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, where the show would normally use a Lame Rhyme Dodge:
  Mr. Garrison: How would you like to go to the school councilor's office?!
  Cartman: How would you like to suck my balls?
  Mr. Garrison: WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!
  Cartman: Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Actually, what I said was... [produces a megaphone] HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUCK MY BALLS, MR. GARRISON?
• In Up, Carl borrows a construction worker's megaphone to yell at the construction worker's boss "You in the suit! Yes, you! Take a bath, hippie!" The construction worker frantically grabs the megaphone back to declare "I am not with him!"
• In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles' dad Jeff drops him off in front of his new school in his police cruiser. When Miles is too embarrassed to say "I love you" in front of his new classmates, Jeff pops the siren and uses the car's mounted megaphone to demand that his son say "I love you, dad."
• Atlantis: The Lost Empire has a few courtesy of Ms. Packard.
  "Attention, tonight's supper will be baked beans, musical program to follow. Who wrote this?"
  "To the person who stole the L from the Motor Pool sign, ha ha, we are all very amused."

Films — Live-Action

• Ali G Indahouse: When he's running for parliament, Ali rigs up a loudspeaker on his car and drives around campaigning. His message starts out with, "All you motherfuckers, fuck-fuck-fuck-fuckers!", and just gets more obscene from there. Later on, when he and Julie get up to some Auto Erotica in his car, they accidentally turn on the loudspeaker, giving everyone a show.
• After the protagonists of The Hangover get stuck in traffic in their stolen police car, the driver activates the lights and siren and demands pedestrians get out of the way so they can drive on the sidewalk. At the end of the scene, he addresses a female pedestrian and says "Ma'am in the leopard dress, you have an amazing rack" over the speaker system.
• Me, Myself & Irene: While Charlie is shopping in a supermarket, a woman asks to squeeze ahead of him in the cashier line with "just one thing." As soon as Charlie cedes her some space, she signals to her waiting brood to wheel in a brimming shopping cart. This deception triggers Charlie to switch to his Hank persona, and Hank takes control of the cashier's microphone.
  Hank: Price check on VagiClean, please, price check on VagiClean. Someone's baking some bread, and it smells like sourdough.

Literature

• Big Nate: On a Roll: Nate uses the PA system at the mall to advertise his comics, only to get caught by a mall cop. He then has to awkwardly explain to Dad what happened and gets grounded for one week.
• Captain Underpants: In one of their many pranks, George and Harold play "Weird Al" Yankovic music over the school intercom.
• The Heroes of Olympus: Ever since Leo Valdez tinkered with Coach Hedge's megaphone, it randomly blurts things like "The cow goes moo!".
• In his second book, Tucker Max recounts the time, as a Duke Law student, where he purchased a police level bull horn and proceeded to take this trope to the Max. It became, in his words, an extension of his body, put down only to shower and masturbate. He took it to the Duke Campout, where students wait in a lottery to win tickets to the men's basketball games. He took particular delight in tormenting the poorer students who camped on a muddy field below the richer ones who had RVs, before they finally got the campus cops to make him stop.
  Tucker Max: You know when you pine after something really badly, like a cool toy or a new car or whatever, once you get it, it's never as good as you imagined it would be? This was the opposite.

Live-Action TV

• The Chaser's War On Everything has this as a recurring segment, with one of the blokes making bizarre unauthorized announcements in places like grocery stores, banks, casinos, and airports.
• Community:
  • In "The Politics of Human Sexuality", Dean Pelton discovers that the condoms from the STD fair are faulty, so he tells Abed to rush to the office and tell everyone through the PA speaker. When Abed gets there, though, all he tells the students is not to use condoms for sex.
  • A Stinger of one of the episodes has Abed and Troy taking over the Dean's PA. One of their joke announcements is Abed seriously recommending that the Dean install some sort of lock on the door to the PA room.
  • In "Beginner Pottery", an inexperienced voice in a Hispanic accent gives a PA announcement. The Dean thanks him, and informs everyone about the "morning announcements class", which is how the Dean gets people to pay him to do one of his jobs.
• The Golden Girls was quite fond of this trope.
  • When the protagonists go to a drugstore prepare for a cruise they are taking with their male friends, Blanche suggests that they purchase some condoms to be safe, with Dorothy and Rose feeling embarrassed at the idea. When they work up the courage to discreetly add the protection to their order, the clerk requests a price check over the store's PA system and describes in great detail the nature of the items they are purchasing. Even more outrageously, his associate responds over the speaker system, and they engage in an explicit 2-way conversation about the brand and model each woman has selected, which is broadcast to the entire store. Customers begin to point and stare^note It doesn't help that immediately prior, Dorothy had an outburst where she shouted "Condoms, Rose! Condoms! Condoms! Condoms!" in frustration due to Rose not understanding what "protection" meant., prompting Blanche to commandeer the microphone and shame the crowd for their rudeness, telling them that they should be ashamed for judging people who are trying to be responsible while enjoying sex.
  • When Rose finds her old megaphone when cleaning up the house, she reminisces about using it to publicly chastise rulebreaking park visitors as a forest ranger. Later, Dorothy uses the tone generator function to get Sophia's attention after she fails to answer to her name being called.
  • In a later episode, Rose uses the megaphone while leading a protest against tuna fishermen tangling dolphins in their nets. However, she goes off on a tangent about her experiences in her hometown of St. Olaf, to the annoyance of her friends and the bewilderment of passersby.
    Rose: That's why the brown bear and the field mouse can live in harmony. Of course they can't mate, or the mice would explode.
  • When Rose is selected to deliver the eulogy for a deceased relative, her roommates accompany her on the journey to support her, as public speaking is her worst fear. When their flight turns around due to extreme weather and she realizes she will never get to deliver the speech and thus confront her phobia, Dorothy suggests she simply present the speech to the passengers on the plane. Rose uses the flight attendant's microphone to orate the speech and the passengers are moved, but the flight attendant tells her to sit back down and berates her for using the plane's speaker system ("Give me that! This is not the Copacabana!").
  • In one episode, Dorothy goes on a few dates with Ted, her ex-husband Stan's brother. It seems things are going well, and when Ted invites Dorothy to a fancy restaurant, Stan suspects a proposal is imminent. Unfortunately, Ted reveals that he was only being nice to Dorothy so she'd babysit his kids for him while he went on a vacation with a younger woman. Dorothy assures him that she's not angry, and furthermore that she'll keep a secret he told her during their time together. She then promptly takes the microphone the maitre'd uses to call guests on her way out:
    Dorothy: Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? The gentleman at Table Five in the blue suit is impotent. Bon appetit.
  • In "Journey to the Center of Attention," Blanche becomes envious of Dorothy when she upstages her at the Rusty Anchor, her favorite bar, by singing. Blanche tries to win the crowd back with a song of her own, but makes a fool of herself and runs off. As Dorothy goes to comfort her, Rose eyes the abandoned microphone, grabs it, and launches into a stand-up comedy routine.
• The Impractical Jokers did this at least twice. The gag consisted of the jokers taking a turn holding a megaphone linked to a wireless microphone, and the other three jokers saying some bizarre phrases at passersby.
• On Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Elliott and Olivia use a grocery store's megaphone to call for a person of interest known online as the "Master Baiter".
• M*A*S*H has the camp's microphone surreptitiously placed in Major Houlihan's tent while she and Major Burns are making out. Their lustful dialog and heavy breathing are broadcast through the camp's loudspeaker system until the pair realize their foreplay has an echo.
• My Name Is Earl
  • When Earl steals a police car to go joyriding with Joy, they drive around heckling the residents of Camden before pulling over Earl's ex-girlfriend. After she is stopped, Joy calls her a "slut" over the PA system and orders her to get out of the car and spread her legs.
  • Defied in an episode where a police officer attempts to negotiate with a kidnapper who is holding a young boy hostage in a motel room using a megaphone. The boy's father shows up and grabs the megaphone, but he never gets a chance to speak with it as the negotiator immediately grabs it back and admonishes him.
    Police Officer: When we want to use the megaphone, we ask to use the megaphone. We do not snatch the megaphone.
  • In another episode, Earl's ex-wife mounts a megaphone to the roof of her car and drives around undoing the positive accomplishments he has achieved thus far in the series. At one point, she abuses a troupe of circus freaks that Earl had previously helped overcome their insecurities.
• NewsRadio:
  • "Rap" begins with Beth calling a staff meeting through a rolled-up piece of paper, interrupting Lisa during a call.
    Lisa: Beth, I'm on the phone!
    Beth: But I am on the megaphone! Megaphone wins!
  • On "Goofy Ball", Joe once invented a device that, despite not looking like one, can function as a megaphone. He demonstrates by yelling "Red Sox suck!" through it.
• Parks and Recreation: In "Leslie and Ben", Leslie Knope's Sitcom Archnemesis Jeremy Jamm crashes a parks fundraiser gala, very drunk and wielding a megaphone. He chants "parks are stupid" until Leslie yanks away the megaphone and responds with a chant of her own. As is often the case, these shenanigans are witnessed by their Straight Man coworker:
  Leslie: [through the megaphone] Knope rules, Jamm sucks! Knope rules, Jamm sucks! Knope rules, Ja— Councilman Howser.
  Councilman Howser: ...Leslie. Jeremy.
  Jamm: You better make sure my aunt gets her megaphone back.
• Red Dwarf: In "Me 2," the Cat apparently brings one into the ship's movie theater just so he can yell with it point-blank at Lister to shut up when Lister's eating too loudly.
• In Trailer Park Boys Ricky abuses a store announcement system for a quick gag.
  Ricky: Mr. Lahey to the "Fuck Off Department", Mr. Lahey to the "Fuck Off Department"! And hurry the fuck up!
• One episode of Yeralash had a guy shout instruction at people mounting a poster up on the side of a building. At the end, a boy comes and points out the guy has a loudspeaker on his belt... so the guy turns it on and shouts "shut up!" at the boy.
• Young Sheldon:
  • In "Killer Asteroids, Oklahoma, and a Frizzy Hair Machine", Sheldon uses the school intercom to broadcast his message about how science isn't respected anymore.
  • In "A Political Campaign and a Candy Land Cheater", as class president, Sheldon uses the intercom to tell fun facts about the Pledge of Allegiance.
• You're Skitting Me has a series of sketches titled "Inappropriate Times to Use a Megaphone" which always ended with someone yelling something secret, personal, or embarrassing through a megaphone in a crowded place.

Music

• Parry Gripp: The song aptly titled "Megaphone" centers around people being locked out of a film festival due to the lack of venue space, regardless of who they are or if they have a ticket. The announcer spends the song yelling at the crowd with the megaphone, with lines such as:
  I've got a megaphone, put it up your butt
  Back to your trailer, you dumbass hick
  No platinum pass, you can kiss my ass

Video Games

• Fallout: New Vegas can get into this when the Mad Scientists of the Think Tank use the PA system in the Old World Blues DLC.
  Dr. Klein: YOU GUYS SHOULD TRY THIS INTERCOM THING! IT MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE SOME KIND OF... SKY-GOD!
• Tidus pulls this off in Final Fantasy X. After arriving to Luca, he materializes handheld megaphone out of nowhere and proclaims that Besaid Aurochs will take the Blitzball cup this year. This wouldn't be too weird except Besaid Aurochs didn't win a single cup past ten years, and his message is mainly directed at Luca Goers, the main arch nemesis of Besaid Aurochs but also the front-runners for the Blitzball cup. The rest of Aurochs and mainly Wakka is understandably very embarrassed when Tidus does this.
• In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, helping the Patil twins apply Babbling Beverage on the loudspeakers will make Umbridge talk nonsense and say silly things (e.g. "I eat frogs").
• SCP: Secret Laboratory: Players can find an intercom room that allows them to broadcast their voice to the entire facility (including enemy teams) for thirty seconds. Cue mic spam, meme voice clips, and other general tomfoolery.
• The World Ends with You: Sho Minamimoto (AKA, Pi-Face) sometimes pulls one out of nowhere to speak to the Player-population at-large. He swaps it for 777's band microphone at one point, leaving the band of Reapers puzzling over the megaphone with a recording of him yelling "Sine, cosine, tangent!" And reportedly, the band ultimately tries to incorporate the megaphone into their performances (though this is never actually seen on-screen).

Web Animation

• In some of the GoAnimate "Grounded" videos, the naughty child sneaks into the principal's office and says over the intercom that the school is on lockdown.

Web Comics

• In this Precocious comic, Bud needs to leave his announcer stand, and Ursula tries to cover for him, but a case of Is This Thing Still On? causes her to accidentally Quote Mine herself.
• xkcd:
  • Strip #81 "Attention, shopper" (the page image) shows Black Hat holding a golf club and announcing over a megaphone that an expensive car with a Vanity License Plate in the parking lot was just smashed by a golf club.
  • Strip #684 has a guy seamlessly work a change in his personal life into a conversation.

Web Original

• One Not Always Working story has a butcher block in a supermarket receive a delivery of crab legs. The submitter’s coworker gets on the intercom, and makes the most of the opportunity.
  Coworker: Attention, [store] shoppers! We have crabs! And we’re just itching to sell them to you! So come on back to the butcher block!
  [The customer and I stare at him with our mouths hanging open. Just then, the store manager’s voice pipes in over the intercom.]
  Store Manager: [Coworker], REPORT TO THE FRONT OFFICE!

Web Videos

• Implied in one Above Average skit where a couple makes unusual noises in their apartment suite to disrupt their downstairs neighbors. The couple doesn't speak into the megaphone in the video, but one can be seen placed prominently in the foreground of a couple scenes.
• Brandon Rogers:
  • In one video, Brandon approaches a man preaching through a megaphone. He asks if he can use the megaphone and the man lets him with the caveat that he say something "only about Jesus Christ and not the homos". Brandon agrees only to say "Worship Satan" while the man tries to grab the microphone away.
  • In "Hall Monitor Helen", the titular Helen Brownstein is promoted to detention manager. How does she tell the children to quiet down? By pulling out a megaphone and yelling, "THIS IS A PLACE OF SILENCE!!"
• Chuggaaconroy: At the end of episode 49 of his Pokémon Platinum Let's Play, Chugga goes to the podium Cyrus was using to address Team Galactic and yells "Team Galactic smells!" so that everyone in the building (in-game) can hear him.
• Smosh: In "22 CRAZY VINES (That Don't Exist)", one of the "Timmy the Time-Traveling Troll" segments shows Timmy going to when dinosaurs existed. He gleefully yells through a megaphone that they're eventually going to be killed by an asteroid.

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • In "Wheels & the Legman and the Case of Grandpa's Key" Legman (Roger) talks about how he volunteers at the Children's Cancer Ward. This is revealed to be Legman speaking into a bull horn outside the hospital. "You're all going to die. Your parents and your doctors are lying to you." He is then dragged away by a security guard.
  • In "Seizures Suit Stanny" Francine recalls seeing a cashier getting fired for using her PA to announce a "Major burn" in response to an insult Francine gave to the impatient customer behind her. Becomes a Brick Joke when the cashier, Cindy, returns to the store at the end of the episode and does it again, then tells her former boss he has no power over her anymore.
• In the Arthur episode "D.W. Gets Lost", D.W. gets a megaphone to announce "Free desserts on Aisle 12!" to get everyone away from the free samples she wanted to eat.
• Curious George: in "Curious George Takes a Vacation", George gets lost in the airport. When he is found by the announcer and they are both waiting for the Man with the Yellow Hat to arrive, the monkey starts mumbling in the megaphone, causing confusion and hilarity among the passengers.
• When Danny goes missing in Danny Phantom, his parents drive around while pulling a digital video screen show a picture of his face. Danny's mom makes a standard plea for assistance to bystanders over the vehicle's PA system, but when Danny's father grabs the mic he goes on a spiel about how they intend to shower Danny with "sports and manly stuff" when they find him.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Just the Two of Us!" Timmy and Trixie become the only people left in the universe. One of the ways they take advantage of this is by making a lot of noise in the library with airhorns and bullhorns. Trixie (who's slipping into Yandere territory) uses the bullhorn to demand Timmy tell her she's pretty and shoves the bullhorn in his face to make his compliment louder.
• Family Guy: "Petarded" has Peter stealing the mic for a fast food restaurant's PA system and declaring, "Attention restaurant customers: Testicles. That is all."
• When Mac and Bloo attempt to film an entry to a film festival in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Bloo turns into a Prima Donna Director who alienates the entire crew by constantly barking orders at them through a megaphone, which he shoves in their faces. Even worse, Bloo spent the entire budget for the movie on purchasing the megaphone, which belonged to Cecil B. DeMille (who Bloo thinks was a woman).
• In the Futurama episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid", the entire population of Earth becomes stupid except for Fry, who is immune to the Brainspawn's stupidity-inducing attacks. When he realizes how stupid everyone has become, he yells at them through the wrong end of a megaphone and is knocked over when a bird squawks through the other end.
  Fry: Attention, New New Yorkers! STOP ACTING SO STUPID! (bird squawks into megaphone) AAAAHHHHHHH!
• Johnny Bravo: In the episode "Law and Disorder", a New Job Episode where Johnny becomes a mall security guard, Carl Chrynizzwics, Johnny's frenemy, shows up trying to resolve the situation between Johnny and a Blatant Burglar by using pop psychology to defuse the situation... singing Billie Holliday via a bullhorn. The burglar is confused and disgusted. Then Johnny's mum Bunny shows up as a SWAT team enforcer, resolving things.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Grade School Confidential," Bart is barricaded inside Springfield Elementary with Skinner and Krabappel. After police fail to talk them down, Homer seizes the police bullhorn to address his son.
    Homer: (through bullhorn) BART, THIS IS YOUR FATHER. DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE REMOTE IS? I LOOKED ALL OVER THE HOUSE.
    Bart: (yelling from the school's roof) Did you check your pocket?
    (Homer finds the remote in his back pocket)
    Homer: (through bullhorn to Marge and Lisa) IT WAS... (lowers bullhorn as they flinch) ...it was in my pocket.
  • In "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", Bart sets up fifteen police bullhorns end to end and shouts "Testing!" through them, creating a devastating soundwave that shatters glass all over town. This initiates the main story of him being sent to military school as punishment.
  • In "The PTA Disbands", Bart gets hold of a megaphone at a construction site and tells the operators of the machines to do ridiculous things. The construction foreman angrily snatches the megaphone and berates his workers for not being able to tell the difference between his voice and Bart's, in a voice that sounds exactly like Bart's.
  • In "Lisa the Veterinarian", Bart is at an indoor water park, where there is a long line for the ride he wants to go on. He sneaks into the control room and uses the park's PA system to deliver a fake emergency announcement warning that the water is infested with "those tiny fish that swim up your wiener". This causes everyone else to run out in a panic, letting him enjoy the ride with no waiting.

Real Life

• In one video posted to social media, an airline passenger who misses the boarding of their flight uses the PA system to request security to open the gate for them. According to a media report, airport security ultimately arrived and sympathized with the man, but informed him there was nothing they could do.
• A police officer in Florida was fired in 2014 after driving his drunk friends around in his patrol car and allowing them to spew abuse from the loudspeaker.
• In 2015, a police department in Winnipeg, Canada gained notoriety after a helicopter crew accidentally activated the loudspeaker in their aircraft, broadcasting an explicit sexual conversation about oral sex to the neighbourhood below.
• In one video posted online, an LAPD officer driving with his lights and siren on is heard using his PA system to tell a driver, "I don't care if you've got a BMW, move!" after the luxury SUV tries to pull in front of the car.
• In 2010, a racist prankster got on the PA system at a New Jersey Wal-Mart and ordered all black customers to leave the store. One customer who was there sued Wal-Mart for a million dollars, but the case was dismissed as the judge ruled the company couldn't be liable for the actions of a customer.

---