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I ain't quiet
Everybody else is too loud
Pablo: He only says important things, for instance...
He's not The Voiceless. He's not an Ineffectual Loner. He just rarely talks, so anything he does say carries extra weight. In most instances, The Quiet One is physically imposing. He is either The Big Guy or The Lancer and may also be a Gentle Giant or Genius Bruiser.
If he's a member of The Squad, he'll either enjoy killing a bit too much or suffer anguish over the fact that he has killed and must continue to kill. If this is ever explained, it's credited to his former civilian occupation being one that abhors death and destruction. Often, this is the member assigned to carry the BFG.
In a Deconstruction setting, his quietness is a reflection of deep psychological problems, which is why he is more commonly an Anti Hero than a hero. Otherwise The Quiet One just comes across as cool, calm, collected, and slightly above the madness of their universe; a less vocal Deadpan Snarker.
You might expect The Quiet One to be a loner, but unless he's the Aloof Big Brother, that's hardly ever the case, probably because of the assumption that Loners Are Freaks.
A subtrope of The Stoic, see also Silent Bob. Contrast: Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, Motor Mouth.
Examples
Anime
- Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh (the un-Macekred one)... So, naturally, Kaiser Ryo (pre-Face Heel Turn, at least) from Yu-Gi-Oh GX.
- Akira Okochi and Zazie Rainyday in Mahou Sensei Negima take this in two different directions. Akira doesn't speak much, but talks normally when she does. Zazie, on the other hand, can hold entire conversations without speaking at all. She answers a phone call and relates how her day is going (apparently) without ever saying anything apart from a few ellipses and is understood perfectly.
- Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing Also Trowa Barton. There are fanfics claiming that he maintains a "words per day budget" and will resort to sign language if he runs out.
- Sasuke, Itachi, Shino, Neji and Gaara in Naruto. Although Sasuke and Neji used to make remarks, once in a while, about how stupid the others were.
- Rey Za Burrel from Gundam SEED Destiny.
- Senri from +Anima, who also often is thought to be glaring menacingly at people when really he's just... really out of it.
- Guts, Pippin from Berserk.
- Commander Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Captain Hans Gunschë from Hellsing.
- Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic. Especially noticeable in the Burning One Man Force novel, with his interactions with Nami and her group. After every victory in the arena, the group always has festive celebrations with beer and drunk chatter. And every time, he'll always be sitting away, quietly sipping his water. Nami, having a crush on him, tends to watch him yearningly. Numerous times, she tries to go over and talk to him, but every answer from him tends to kill conversation. It's worth noting that none of that is because he particularly hates anyone or is that mean - he just has zero social skills.
- Seijuro Shin from Eyeshield 21.
- Dakichi Komusubi can also be considered one since he rarely says anything beyond grunts or one word sentences.
- Subverted by Takashi "Mori" Morinozuka from Ouran High School Host Club. He is physically large and doesn't say much, but what he says is pretty mundane most of the time, not to mention how he tends to have a Personality Change on rainy days. This trope was however invoked by Renge who tried to cast him as one in a Dating Sim style movie.
- Chad from Bleach. As is Nova to his squad. The series has been known to play with this by pairing the two up and portraying neither to be able to successfully start a conversation.
- It gets the point that Kon pops up and yells at them for wasting screen time.
- Sakaki, the tall, dark, Huge Schoolgirl in Azumanga Daioh.
- Minami Iwasaki, the tall, but not-so-dark Huge Schoolgirl in Lucky Star.
- Sora from Sketchbook. She's quiet only because she's really shy. Since she's the show's lead character, though, we get to hear her unusual thoughts via Inner Monologue often.
- Mogi from Death Note. Subverted slightly as he is forced to become an overly enthusiastic manager, and worries that it suits him too well. He starts to talk more once Soichiro Yagami dies.
- Jin from Samurai Champloo incarnates this trope, just as his opposite Mugen incarnates another...
- Isumi Saginomiya from Hayate The Combat Butler.
- Oji Karasuma from School Rumble.
- Sanya from Strike Witches, except when she's singing. Also Ursula from the novels, which might tie in with her being something of a Nagato (see entry below) Expy.
- Yuki Nagato from Suzumiya Haruhi, who's also The Stoic. The only person she has a normal conversation with is Kyon. She rarely ever talks to anyone else, and often simply ignores the person or resorts to simple hand gestures.
- And, of course, this all depends on your definition of "normal conversation". Yuki speaks to Kyon, but she never says an unnecessary word.
- To get an idea of how little she acts, her staring at Kyon and Mikuru playfully flirting is considered a great deal of emotion from her.
- In the original episode "Someday In The Rain", Yuki spends about a third of the episode on-screen, but neither Minori Chihara or Michelle Ruff are credited...because she doesn't speak throughout the entire episode.
- Zafila/Zafira of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, so much so that the trainees in StrikerS didn't even realize that he could talk until their second mission.
- Mugi from Hitohira. Due to her character development she moves out of this, helped by the fact that she's somehow still rather popular with other girls.
- Maggie from R.O.D. The TV. Has a habit of "nesting" with piles of books in small, enclosed spaces.
- Brandon Heat. So much so, he was often mocked by other characters for being such a man of few words. He only usually has one or two lines per episode, and in the video game, with one exception, he says nothing at all.
- Hagi in Blood+.
- Luciola from Last Exile.
- Rocket from Ginga Densetsu Weed
- Jo from Innocent Venus. Sana is afraid of him at first because of his reticence, but it turns out that he's the nice guy of the group.
- Rika from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni.
- Yu Yu Hakusho's Hiei tends towards this. Chuck Huber, his voice actor, told a humorous story in the commentary; he once watched an episode of the show with his family, and all Hiei said through the whole episode was "Hn."
"[His wife] was like, 'Wow. They pay you for that?'"
- Keith Gandor from Baccano has been known to go years without talking, and as such the resident Knowledge Brokers have been known to forgo their usual $500 fee if he says more than five words to them. Yes, Keith's words are so rare that they have monetary value.
- Occasionally, Ryu Sanada of Kimi Ni Todoke will speak in whole sentences. But not often.
- Kamemon in Digimon Savers. The PawnChessmon count too, but they never actually talk on-screen.
- They do in episode 26, but it seems to be limited to a few clicks.
- Veffidas from Macross 7 has 5 lines tops throughout the entire series but whenever she talks, she usually has a point.
Comic Books
- Strongbow, from Wendy & Richard Pini's Elf Quest. Talks aloud, but not often; he's far more prone to using the elven telepathy called "sending." Non-elves, or elves who don't know how to send, find him to be a very taciturn fellow indeed. His unfriendliness towards outsiders doesn't help. See also The Stoic.
- Redlance from Elf Quest could also qualify, but for the opposite reason: he's quiet because he's shy. His partnership with the more outgoing and assertive Nightfall is a classic case of role-reversal, and they're both perfectly comfortable with it. (Also it's implied that when it comes to sex he does a 180 and goes completely wild.)
- His name is Redlance. What do you expect?
- Yeah, well, officially that's not how he got the name, but whatever...
- Cass Cain (Batgirl II) from Batman, when she's not massively derailed, speaks little and mostly with short words. This is the result of her father raising her without talking to her or letting her hear people talk, so that body language would be her language. Even after magic fixed this, she was never comfortable with words.
- Duma from TheSandman evolves from The Voiceless into this in Lucifer
Film
- In Predator the quiet one was the Native American tracker "Billy" whose contributions were things like "Something is out there." Poignant because, sure enough, something was out there.
- Silent Bob from the View Askewniverse evolved from The Voiceless into The Quiet One.
- Gaear Grimsrud from Fargo is an almost mute character, though he is also a demented sociopath.
- Captain Miller from Saving Private Ryan possesses some of these traits.
- The main character from Edward Scissorhands.
- Hugo Stiglitz of Inglourious Basterds, who's definitely one of the bloodthirstiest of the Basterds (and that's saying quite a lot).
Literature
- The narrator of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest is a physically imposing man who pretends to be deaf and mute. Between his deliberate silence, his hallucinations and his distorted view of himself and others, it is assumed that he has schizophrenia.
- He does. Unless you believe that the asylum actually inserted electronics into the patients every night.
- Hettar from the Belgariad. But as one of the prequel novels shows, there's at least one worse; Algar, founder of Hettar's homeland, who could let days go by without talking. When asked by Polgara, "Don't you ever talk about the weather?", he just points to a window and responds, "What for? It's right out there. Go look for yourself."
- Ulath, from the Elenium and Tamuli series. He's actually very intelligent, but tends to respond quite cryptically and briefly with one or two word comments. It's explained that he works out all the logical steps in his head, but sees no reason to share any more than the conclusion.
- Benjamin, the donkey from Animal Farm.
- "Lofty", from Monstrous Regiment, definitely has "deep psychological problems".
- Emperor Gregor Vorbarra from the Vorkosigan Saga.
Live Action TV
- Capt. Ronald Speirs in Band Of Brothers
- The badass priest "Mr Eko" from Lost does not speak for forty days after he kills two of the "Others" in self-defense.
- Daniel "Oz" Osbourne on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who famously explained his lycanthropy as follows:
Oz: Got bit.
Buffy: Apparently not that long.
- We see the hidden depths behind his laconic demeanor, when Buffy is granted telepathy and overhears Oz's thoughts:
(thinking): I am my thoughts. But if Buffy can hear my thoughts, they exist in her, independent of me. I cease to exist.
(aloud) "Huh."
- Angel's not known for his talkativeness, either; lampshaded when the two chat:
Angel: Oz.
Oz: Hey.
Angel: Nice surprise.
Oz: Thanks.
Angel: Staying long?
Oz: Few days.
Doyle: Are they always like this?
Oz: No, we're usually laconic.
- Teal'c from Stargate SG-1. "You speak?" "Only when it is appropriate." Indeed.
- Firefly's River Tam both plays this straight and subverts it; she typically has the fewest lines of dialogue in any given episode, and will go through a lot of scenes without ever saying anything. When she does talk, its usually in the form of traumatized crying, gibberish, or veiled warnings or predictions.
- James May of Top Gear, though it's mainly 1. relative to his two chatty co-presenters and 2. all the better to set up a well-aimed deadpan snark when they have argued each other into exhaustion
- The Haitian, of Heroes fame, was speechless in most of his early appearances and many of his later ones. He refuses to reveal his given name and, since he speaks so rarely, one wonders how everyone knows he is from Haiti.
- Cameron mostly lets the others do the talking, and when she does speak, its usually done with a very inflectionless monotone. She mostly just punches things.
- Kosh of Babylon 5 barely ever speaks at all, when he does it's generally a sentence fragment, and fragmentary or not, it rarely makes any sense.
- Nasir of Robin Of Sherwood could go entire episodes without speaking.
- Will Scarlett from Robin Hood.
- To a lesser extent, Little John - though when he did talk, he usually did so quite loudly.
Theatre
- In the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Miss Jones is the quietest of the secretaries until she lets loose in "Brotherhood Of Man".
Video Games
- Kratos from Tales Of Symphonia. He has emotions, they're just not obvious at first glance.
- Auron from Final Fantasy X is a stoic, taciturn man who chooses to only talk when it is important. Kimahri, who talks even less than Auron does, also qualifies.
- Gage/Trak from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Repeatedly lampshaded by the reminding cast, who complain about how he never speaks more than a sentence at a time.
- Arioch from Drakengard, except when she speaks it's usually to say something deliciously morbid or insane.
- Minor character Fujin from Final Fantasy VIII and Kingdom Hearts (going by Fuu there) speaks in broken statements of only one or two words at a time.
- FFVIII's main character, Squall, is also not much of a talker, particularly early on when his Jerkass Facade is at its strongest, to the point that "Whatever," and "..." are his Catch Phrases. Since the game allows the player to listen in on his Inner Monologues, the reasons for Squall's silences become increasingly more apparent as the game goes on.
- For a major character of Kingdom Hearts, Lexaeus of Organization XIII.
- The Main Character (Minato) from Persona 3 fits this trope to a T
- Henry Townshend is listed in the Silent Hill 4 manual as a "quiet individual who never lets his feelings show". Apparently he's (mostly) capable of saying "What...the hell..?"
- Valygar from Baldur's Gate 2. Putting him in the same party as Jan Jansen makes him a great example of the Unfunny as well.
- Iceman, from the original Wing Commander easily qualifies, save one cutscene where he's oddly chosen to play Mr Exposition. It's said that even when he does speak, he does so only barely louder than a whisper, and you have to listen closely to hear him.
- Ricky Johnson fits this trope to a bang.
Western Animation
- Referenced in The Simpsons, "Lemon of Troy", where Bart and friends prepare to raid Shelbyville; Bart declares that Todd Flanders will be "the quiet religious guy who ends up going crazy."
- In the episode where Homer joins the Navy, his superior officer gives the following keynote speech: "I'm a man of few words. Any questions?"
- Mai on Avatar The Last Airbender.
- Don't forget Longshot. He only had one line, ever.
- Spoofed in Pepper Ann with, "Hush, the senior who never speaks."
- Austin from The Backyardigans in some episodes, such as "Heart of the Jungle".
- Velma Dinkley on A Pup Named Scooby Doo ("Velma said 'Jinkies!'" "It MUST be a clue!")
- Ferb from the Disney cartoon Phineas And Ferb, who, despite being one of the two main characters, generally only speaks once or twice per episode, expressing himself the rest of the time through nonverbal cues. These lines tend to be either the most random or funniest of the episode.
- Raven from Teen Titans; the quote from Slade at the top of the page is spoken about her.
- All the operatives of Sector V on Codename Kids Next Door have a position/nickname: Number 3 is "The Flirt," Number 2 is "The Inventor," and Number 5 is "The Quiet One," although she's more like the Only Sane Man.
- In Animaniacs Wakko is the least talkative of the Warner siblings as in some segments he doesn't say anything.
- Kenny from South Park especially in the later episodes rarely talks and he is not involved in the plots as much as he used to be.
- Shifty Dingo from Blinky Bill, mainly due to being a Shrinking Violet.
- Katana from Batman The Brave And The Bold. When she does speak, her Outsiders teammates immediately stop whatever they're doing and listen to her.
- In the episode "Inside the Outsiders", there's a flashback dream sequence to a time when she was chattier. It's revealed that she doesn't speak in the present in order to honor her sensei's memory... and because she blames her loose tongue for indirectly causing the sensei's death.
- The titular character of Samurai Jack is one of these there are several episodes in which he never speaks.
- Leon in Titan Maximum is incredibly quiet for a monkey and his only response to things is usually just a blink. He does seem to be the Only Sane Man of the group though.
Web Original
- Kamimura from Broken Saints, apart from his internal monologues, is not the most talkative guy around. Of course, his limited knowledge of English, the language spoken to and around him for most of the series, could be part of that.
Real Life
- U.S. President Calvin Coolidge was famous for this. There is a longstanding joke that a woman at a party came up to him and said, "Mr. President, I just bet my friend that I could get you to say more than two words." Coolidge looked at her and said, "You lose."
- According to America: The Book, the two words Coolidge said were actually "Fuck you."
- Which is derived from another Real Life incident in ancient Greece, but with a Spartan.
- The capital of ancient Sparta was in Laconia, from whence the word laconic was derived.
- The story goes as such: An emissary from Philip of Macedon (Father of this guy
 ) goes to Sparta and reads a long speech: "If enter your lands, then we shall impale your men, violate your women and slaughter your children, burn your granaries, and put all priests to the sword..." and so forth. The Spartan king doesn't say anything until the end, when he replies: "If."
- This story about a quiet stranger who joins a casino poker game. When The Quiet One finally breaks his silence, he turns out to be a truly awe-inspiring Deadpan Snarker.
- In The Beatles George Harrison was often considered the 'quiet one' being overshadowed both by the songwriting genius of Lennon & McCartney and the good natured clowning of Ringo Starr. Later, when he was allowed to write songs, he proved his innate talent was the equal of his comrades with 'Something' and 'Here Comes The Sun' amongst others.
- John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, would later claim the title of "the quiet one" for himself - while his bandmates would flail wildly about the stage and destroy their instruments, he stood still as a statue, single-mindedly playing his bass, and rarely opening his mouth. He would eventually write a song called The Quiet One about himself.
- Craig Jones of Slipknot has the title of The Silent One, choosing to never show up for interviews and never answer any questions when asked.
- Pata of X Japan and Ra:IN. Generally seems quiet and sleepy, is the *least* showy member of his bands. Is also one of the most skilled who's had the least drama out of either.
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