Speech Bubbles are graphic interpretations of characters' speech. Therefore, cartoonists show interruption or talking over another person's speech most conveniently by
Painting the Fourth Wall — specifically, obscuring a speech bubble with something.
Obscuring with another speech bubble means that the character is interrupted or drowned out by another.
Obscuring
◊ with
Written Sound Effects means the same for sounds. Sometimes a speech bubble may even be obscured with an object: Either this object produces loud and specific sounds that drown out the speech or the character stops talking immediately.
The
Wall of Blather uses this on
Wall of Text to indicate "long lecture that no one listened to."
A form of
odd-shaped speech bubble, and so a
Sub Trope of
Painting the Fourth Wall, often used for
Curse Cut Short. When the speech bubble blocks
something else, it's
Speech Bubble Censoring. See also
Sound Effect Bleep.
Examples
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Comic Books
- It appeared in Empowered at least once. Searches needed.
Comic Strips
- Played with, hilariously, with Get Fuzzy. In order to make their lives "edgier," Bucky begins censoring Satchel by yelling beep over his speech bubbles. He even tries to use a little black box to cover up written swearwords. Of course, Satchel reveals he is trying to say, "oh sugar," but with Bucky beeping him, all you see ''oh s—." Rob ultimately stymies him by holding up a speech bubble out of Bucky's reach.
- There was a For Better Or For Worse strip that did this a few years ago, in which April cut off her friend Becky with an overlapping speech bubble when Becky referred to a mentally disabled character as a "retard".
- Invoked in Achille Talon, when the titular character tries to explain the conception of a strip but gets a bubble saying "that text" glued onto his speech by an incompetent assistant. The entire end of the strip has him trying to speak while the glued bubble gets in the way of his text.
Literature
- In the Horrible Histories book The Awful Egyptians, the narrator refers to the fact that at times, after great military victories, ancient Egyptians would gather the genitals from dead enemy soldiers and pile them up in public. In a caricature illustrating such a pile, a son says to his father, "Look at this huge pile of" "That's enough, son!"
Video Games
Web Comics
◊ with Written Sound Effects means the same for sounds. Sometimes a speech bubble may even be obscured with an object: Either this object produces loud and specific sounds that drown out the speech or the character stops talking immediately.
The Wall of Blather uses this on Wall of Text to indicate "long lecture that no one listened to."
A form of odd-shaped speech bubble, and so a Sub Trope of Painting the Fourth Wall, often used for Curse Cut Short. When the speech bubble blocks something else, it's Speech Bubble Censoring. See also Sound Effect Bleep.
