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alt title(s): Its Quiet Too Quiet It's quiet...too quiet...[gunshot whizzes past his head] Now, suddenly, it's much too loud. I preferred it when it was quiet.
There's danger nearby.... maybe. It seems safe for now... or is it?
Someone has to break the silence, and only one line will do:
"It's quiet... Too quiet."
Fairly often something will happen within a minute, which will lead another character to say " You Just Had To Say It".
Long since discredited and made fun of so often it can now be considered a Dead Horse Trope. Exception is made if it is lampshaded by adding in a sign on WHAT is quiet. "Why have all the forest noises stopped?" Compare We're Being Watched.
At least partially Truth In Television; in forests and crowded cities, there's always stuff making noise - insects, birds, etc... unless they're hiding from something.
Examples
Comic Books
- Even the usually reliable Elf Quest comics couldn't resist having a character say "it's too quiet" in the expanded version of Volume One.
Film
- Done in the first scene of Galaxy Quest, right before an ambush attack on Tim Allen and company.
- Used seriously at the time in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, but sets up a joke shortly afterwards:
Donatello: The perimeter's quiet.
Leonardo: Yeah, a little too quiet.
<they knock out the only two guards>
Donatello: Well, that was easy!
Leonardo: Yeah, a little too easy.
Donatello: Look! It's Raph!
Michaelangelo: Yeah, a little too Raph!
- A variation in the movie Lake Placid, where one character, shortly before another attack by the giant alligator, says: "I suddenly got the feeling that everything's perfectly safe".
- Shrek utters this line when he and Donkey enter a deserted Kingdom of Duloc. (Everyone there has gone off to watch the tournament.)
- When Native Americans who aren't slaves show up for the first time in Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, the ambient sounds (birds and insects mostly) go dead. The "Emperor" makes this remark, and soon a spooked horse kicks some fire onto a gunpowder barrel.
- In the movie The Marksman, the main character runs back late to the extraction point, he can clearly hear the helicopter waiting although he's still in enemy territory, he turns around frequently watching for potential pursuers, but after a while he stops, and notices no one is chasing him. It's obviously too quiet.. and correctly assesses he and his team have been setup, and the extraction chopper is destroyed shortly after by a traitor.
- While the exact words aren't used, there is a scene in Sleepy Hollow where local Young Masbath points out to city slicker Ichabod Crane how quiet the forest is, and has to explain that forests are supposed to be noisy, like crickets and birds and stuff - noises that the forest lacked at that point.
- A variation on the trope is seen in We Were Soldiers when the Mel Gibson's character arrives at a section of the American Line that's too quiet. When asked what's wrong he explains, "There's nothing wrong here...except that there's nothing wrong..."
- Later in the movie, during an especially dark night, one character starts freaking out because it's so quiet, and his commanding officer asks for a flare to see by...revealing that it was quiet because the Vietnamese soldiers were a couple of feet away, trying to sneak attack.
- Inverted in The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra:
Ranger Brad: These things just don't happen! Noises? In the woods?
Literature
- Parodied by Terry Pratchett's Discworld book Jingo, in which a soldier thinks to himself that after ten years of guerrilla warfare, nothing can be too quiet and the best part of war is the waiting (especially when you're waging war against the D'regs).
- In Five Hundred Years After, one of Khaavren's guardsmen says that since most of the civilians were evacuated, Dragaera City is so quiet that the Guards aren't really needed. Khaavren asks if he's ever spent any time in the jungle, where there are dzur or dragons? The guardsman says he has. Well, if he was out in the jungle and all the birds and little critters suddenly hid or went quiet, would he feel safe? The guardsman sees Khaavren's point.
- In Jerry Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion, Falkenberg says, "Things are going well. When that happens I wonder what I've overlooked."
Live Action TV
- In Band Of Brothers, O'Keefe mutters that it's "awfully quiet" while a handful of soldiers are on patrol in the German woods. Moments later, they stumble across a Nazi concentration camp.
- This might not so much be this trope as it is the honest truth. The places are still unnaturally quiet 60 years later; even the normal natural sounds of birds or insects are missing.
- No mystery in that. The birds are gone because they mostly feed on insects. The insects aren't doing so hot what with the amount of pesticides used in modern farming. Most farmland forests in Western Europe are now effectively devoid of both.
- Used in the movie Zombie Nightmare, featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where it was parodied by Mike and the Bots:
Crow: It's a little ominous in here.
Mike: A little too ominous.
Crow: A lot of cars in here.
Mike: A little too a lot of cars in here.
- Mocked one another episode of MST 3 K. When the hero of Cave Dwellers remarks that it's "too quiet," Crow adds, "Yeah, too too quiet."
- From the Red Dwarf episode "White Hole."
Kryten: Listen! Can anyone hear anything?
Cat: No.
Kryten: Precisely. No one can hear anything! And you know why we can't hear anything?
Rimmer: Why?
Kryten: Because THERE ARE NO SOUNDS TO HEAR!
Rimmer: Kryten, isn't it 'round about this time of year that your head goes back to the lab for retuning?
Lister: No, no, he's right. There's no sounds because the engines are dead. We've lost all power!
- I seem to remember the line was used straight up in the Polymorph episode.
- On Deep Space Nine, Quark once used this line literally. He noticed the ambient noise in his bar was 35 decibels below normal, which made him the first to realize something was wrong with his clients.
- A good twist put on it in Doctor Who on a couple of occasions, in that it's not that it's quiet, but the fact that it's NOT quiet that's the problem. Two excellent examples of Oh Crap moments (both courtesy of Steven Moffat) follow.
- The Doctor Dances, where the Doctor is listening to a tape recording of the Empty Child, but there's a whirring flapping noise in the background.
Rose Tyler: Doctor...
The Empty Child: I'm here; can't you see me?
Rose Tyler: What's that noise?
Doctor: End of the tape. It ran out about 30 seconds ago... I sent it to its room. This is its room!
- The Girl in the Fireplace, Doctor staring at a broken clock.
Doctor: Okay, now that's scary.
Reinette: You're scared of a broken clock?
Doctor: Just a bit scared, yeah. Just a tiny bit. 'Cause you see, if this clock's broken, and it's the only one in the room, then what's that [ticking]?
- The Hornblower episode Duty:
It's quiet. Uncomfortably quiet.
Video Games
- Inverted in a game of Warhammer 40000: Fire Warrior, this troper was creeping through an Imperial base when he heard a Guardsman in the next room suddenly say this phrase. Naturally, he took the cue to make things noisy.
- Straight video game example: Starfox 64.
- And kinda ruined by the fact that the game's lockon system will mark the first enemy (hidden behind an asteroid) way before the "trap" goes off.
- And the fact that it's an arcade shooter and you fly in a straight line the entire time. Kinda hard to set up a trap when you're never expected to drop your guard.
- A sublevel in the first Halo game is ominously titled "It's quiet..." Approximately three seconds after that appears, an abnormally loud distress signal comes in from a Pelican.
- "Into The Belly of the Beast". "No Covenant defenses detected... Contact! Lots of contact! No Covenant? You HAD to open your mouth!"
- Command And Conquer: Renegade's first mission opened up as follows:
First Soldier: What're we looking for?
Second Soldier: An imaginary base.
Officer: Quiet!
Second Soldier: Exactly. It's too quiet.
Needless to say, they shortly fall prey to a Nod ambush.
- Lampshaded in a trailer for the upcoming Prince Of Persia game:
- Uncharted Drakes Fortune: (amusingly, Nathan's voice actor is the same as that of The Prince of Persia in the above example)
Nathan: Do you hear that?
Elena: Hear what?
Nathan: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
- This is explained in Fire Emblem:Path of Radiance, where it is noted that even the area's naturally occurring sounds are gone (such as animals) indicates they are surrounded.
- Parodied? in Valkyria Chronicles.
Imperial chatter: Visibility is good. Almost too good.
- A NPC exchange from City Of Heroes:
Rikti Captor 1: Status: Quiet. Lk'Onik: ...: ... Rikti Captor 2: Status Correction: Too Quiet. Lk'Onik: ...: Heh.
- From Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick:
Ash: [It's quiet.] The "what the hell happens next" kind of quiet.
- Dead Rising: This trope is what first tips Frank West off that the situation in the small Colorado town is more than what meets the eye. In his words, "It doesn't sound like civil disobedience. It's too quiet."
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Used as part of a string of action movie parodies in The Fairly OddParents, "Action Packed".
- A lot of cartoons Butch Hartman seems to be involved with parodies this trope.
Real Life
- This is actually a usable rule of thumb in counter-insurgency operations. If a street is filled with people, you're probably safe. If it isn't and it should be, you're probably about to be ambushed.
- What about suicide bombers?
- Rarely in the middle of a crowded street, if just for the fact that insurgencies require the support of the locals and if you go around blowing them up on a regular basis they're not going to stay supportive of you very long.
- This first developed from the fact that natural background noise in the wilderness will disappear when the animals making the noise are alerted to intruders. If you are in the woods, and everything suddenly goes quiet, it is a safe bet that you are not alone.
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