Misophonia Gag

Misophonia is a psychological condition where someone finds mundane sounds like chewing, clicking a pen, or whistling to be instantly, almost irrationally distracting and/or irritating, and can't concentrate until the sound goes away. Sometimes a work will showcase a character who has this condition and explore it in depth. More often than not, though, it's simply used as a one-off instance where a character has a misophonic reaction to something and their reaction is used as a comedic punchline or a brief moment of drama for that scene or installment. The rest of the work, if it ever revisits this, will only do it infrequently and usually for the same kind of reaction.

This can be a source of Torment by Annoyance if done deliberately, and especially if it's done repeatedly. Also, characters with a Hair-Trigger Temper can be especially prone to being the butt of this type of reaction.

Dripping Disturbance, Nails on a Blackboard, and Loud Sleeper Gag are specific instances. Ring-Ring-CRUNCH! can ensue if the source of the annoying sound is breakable.

Subtrope of Comical Overreacting.

Compare:

• The Misophonic, whose characterization is defined by their misophonia to some degree.
• Behavioral Conditioning, where a sound (or other stimulus) can become associated with an unrelated negative stimulus.
• Annoying Background Event, which can have the same effect but doesn't have to be sound-related.
• Hell Is That Noise, when the sound in question is scary instead of annoying.
• Terrible Ticking, where the sound is only in the listener's head as a sign of growing insanity.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Uzumaki: Shuichi gets very irritated when the town's clock goes off, complaining that it "just pierces through the ears". That phrase comes back several times, each to highlight a character's growing instability and discomfort with their surroundings, while others aren't bothered at all by whatever noise happens to be creating the problem.

Comic Strips

• Beetle Bailey: Lieutenant Fuzz and Sergeant Snorkel share an office. Sarge's old Army desk chair has developed a persistent squeak, inevitable given Sarge's body mass. The chair's routine squeaking annoys the bejesus out of Lt. Fuzz, who used to complain about it. Since Sarge does nothing about the squeaking (and in one strip, he tries to amplify it), Fuzz can only do his paperwork when Sarge is out of the office.
• Dilbert:
  • A couple of strips are based on Alice's annoyance with some sounds in the office:
    • She goes bonkers trying to keep from yelling at Wally for clipping his nails nearby. Turns out he has a library of annoying sound clips on his computer.
    • She fixes the Pointy-Haired Boss's issue with the keyboard clicks on his phone.
  • The boss hires a former terrorist to design the software's user interface. The noises he picks to play include nails on a fingerboard, the sound of vomiting, and a bird hitting a window, and those sounds are for when a user does something right. When the user makes a mistake, he has the software play the sound of a vomiting bird hitting a chalkboard. Dilbert is distressed by the former and faints when he hears the latter.
• Peanuts: In one Sunday Strip, Peppermint Patty slowly opens a cellophane candy wrapper at a concert, unaware of Marcie's tortured reaction to the crinkling sounds. The final loud CRINKLE! knocks Marcie out of her seat.

Fan Works

• In The X-Files fanfiction Sick Day, Scully is annoyed by the unwell Mulder's sniffing.
  Scully: [thinking] Blow your goddamn nose, Mulder!

Films — Animation

• The Lion King: After Mufasa berates Scar for missing Simba's ceremony, Scar expresses mock regret while sharpening his claws on the wall of the cave. The scraping sound makes Zazu cringe and wince.
• Pinocchio: At the beginning, Jiminy Cricket is trying to sleep in Geppetto's workshop, only to be kept awake by the sound of Geppetto's many ticking clocks, combined with Geppetto's loud snoring. Finally, Jiminy shouts "QUIET!", causing the clocks to stop.
• Shrek 2: During the carriage ride to Far Far Away, Donkey passes the time by making popping sounds with his lips, to Shrek's (and eventually Fiona's) fury.

Literature

• Guardians Of Gahoole: In "Shadow Wolf", from the spin-off series Wolves of the Beyond, Faolan and the other Gnaw Wolves are participating in a competition to see who would get promoted to "The Watch". Faolan ended up being driven crazy by the sound made by Heep's chipped tooth, to the point where he loses concentration and fails the hunting challenge.

Live-Action TV

• The Brittas Empire: In "Assassin", Brittas taps his fingers on the table whilst he is going over the (low) attendance figures for the leisure centre. This annoys Helen to no end, who brings up how a wife snapped and killed her husband after many years of having to withstand him clicking his teeth, with the implication that she's considering doing the same herself (though she doesn't in the end).
• Corner Gas: In "Dress For Success", Karen spends the episode tormenting Davis over the fact that he gets queasy at just the mention of certain gross foods. In The Tag, Davis discovers that Karen hates the squeak of the hinge on his ticket book, so he starts squeaking it intentionally to get back at her.
• How I Met Your Mother: "Spoiler Alert" reveals that Lily has a loud chewing habit, which annoys all the other characters.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In "Mac And Dennis Move to the Suburbs," Mac is irritated by a smoke detector that occasionally chirps, which Dennis says he can't hear. During their huge fight at the end it happens again and it turns out...
  Dennis: Newsflash, asshole! I've been hearing it the entire goddamn time!
  Mac: THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING!?
  Dennis: BECAUSE I HATE YOU!!!
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024): Happens in both directions while John and Jane are operating undercover at a vacation spot. John gets annoyed that she chews loudly with her mouth open and Jane responds by loudly clinking their dishes and glasses with her utensils to mimic how he eats.
• Red Dwarf: In "Duct Soup", Kochanski can't stand the squeaky noises of the pipes she's right next to, and resorts to both attacking them with a wrench and having an emotional breakdown due to them.
• The Wonder Years: In "Day One", Kevin's teacher Mr. Bottner absolutely cannot stand the sound of paper being torn out of a spiral-bound notebook (he sustained hearing damage in the Korean War and sounds of a certain frequency aggravate the wound), and threatens to punish anyone caught doing so. When one of Kevin's classmates tears out a sheet without thinking, the teacher threatens him with detention, until Kevin tears out a sheet from his binder and gets the rest of the class to do so.
• Young Sheldon: In "A High-Pitched Buzz and Training Wheels", Sheldon is made aware of a small, imperceptible noise coming from the refrigerator. No-one else hears it, but it annoys him so much that he tries to stop it by dismantling the fridge. This makes his father extremely angry.

Radio

• The Ricky Gervais Show: Discussed when Karl is attempting to explain his idea that everyone has a problem hole that they need to fill with problems. He says that everyone's problem hole is the same size, but actual problems are different sizes depending on their importance, with Ricky having "a load of Skittles" and Karl having "a big cream egg". When Ricky asks why his problems are so small compared to Karl's, he says that Ricky gets annoyed very easily with stuff that doesn't matter, such as people chewing loudly, breathing loudly, or coughing.

Theatre

• Chicago: During "Cell Block Tango", Liz recounts killing her husband Bernie because he wouldn't stop popping his gum.

Web Animation

• Epithet Erased: In the episode "The Doctor Is In", since Dr. Beefton is the Living Dream of his creator Sylvie, Molly runs offscreen to trip the fire alarm in order to wake him up and cause their foe to vanish. Her personal narration of the alarm ringing highlights just much the shrill sound just drills into your brain and annoys you, and after being praised her for quick thinking by Giovanni, she directly states that she really needs to go turn the alarm off before her misophonia drives her crazy.

Web Video

• One Danny Gonzalez vine is about how annoying it is to hear someone cough behind you in class. Danny turns around and pulls a knife out on the cougher.
  Danny: Coughin', coughin', you'll be in a coffin, if you keep on coughin'!
  Cougher: Whoa, okay, I'm stoppin'!

Webcomics

• Ennui GO!: Exploited by Noah in "Styrofoam" to break Izzy out of a major depressive episode. He rubs two Styrofoam containers together near her, and then runs out of the room with her hot on his heels.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: Exploited in "The Kiss", where Gumball tries to get over the trauma of Granny Jojo's kiss by running an obstacle course full of more traumatizing events. One of the obstacles is the "Sounds of Suffering," where Gumball's classmates torture him by scratching a chalkboard, scraping a fork on a plate, and rubbing against Alan the balloon.
• Dan Vs.: In "Anger Management", a car alarm blares outside. Dan rants about how irritating the sound is, and the other students in the anger management class agree with him. Dan then has them demolish the car to stop the noise. Then Amber reveals that it's her car.
• Family Guy: In "From Method to Madness", Peter and Lois cover their living room furniture with plastic wrap when Meg brings home their nudist neighbor. In one scene, Peter irritates Lois by rubbing his hand on the plastic to make a loud squeak.
• House of Mouse: The premiere episode featured the sketch "Hickory Dickory Mickey", in which an alarm clock keeps Mickey Mouse up at night with an annoying ticking noise.
• Human Resources: In "Training Day," during Sensitivity Training, Connie says she hates the sound of toenails being clipped. The consultant Empathy thus sets up a scenario where she clips her talons while Connie is talking to demonstrate to Connie why she needs to be more considerate.
• Jungle Junction: "Ellyvan's Boing-Boing Blues" revolves around Ellyvan becoming very annoyed after Zooter learns she can make a "boing" noise with her tail, to the point that he can't sleep.
• Loonatics Unleashed: In "The Cloak of Black Velvet", Danger Duck has a cell phone with a ringtone that irritates Tech Coyote out of a lotus meditation, and actually sparks a no-tech wager between the two characters. Later in the episode, the same raucous ringtone breaks Tech out of Black Velvet's Mind Control.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Space Madness", Commander Hoek and Cadet Stimpy are settling down for a long trip through space. All is fine until Stimpy starts tapping his finger on the table, which Ren finds annoying. In his mind, the tapping gets louder and louder until he can't take it anymore and he snaps at the Cadet.
  Commander Hoek: DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP TAPPING LIKE THAT? YOU BLOATED SACK OF PROTOPLASM!!!
• The Simpsons: In "Homer Loves Flanders", Ned finds Homer breathing noisily through his nose so annoying that he yells at him at the top of his lungs, even though they're in church.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Squeaky Boots", Mr. Krabs gives SpongeBob a pair of boots which make a loud squeaking sound whenever he walks. SpongeBob loves them, but the incessant squeaking so annoys Mr. Krabs that it drives him to steal the boots and hide them in the Krusty Krab. Unfortunately, Spongebob is so distraught about "losing" the boots, Krabs' guilty conscience causes him to hear the boots' squeaking wherever he goes until he finally snaps, pulls the boots out of their hiding place, then deep fries and eats them.
    Mr. Krabs: Stop it! Can't you hear it? Yes, I did it! I took the boots! They're here, under the floor boards! Please, make it stop! It's the squeaking of the hideous boots!
  • "SpongeBob's Bad Habit" opens with the customers at the Krusty Krab chewing loudly and making disgusting noises. This slowly bothers Squidward, until he finally screams out loud about how much he hates the place.

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