This is one of his less extreme wild takes...
"And when they pulled the driver’s body from the twisted.. burning.. wreck, it looked like THIS!"
"AAAAAAGHHH!"
-Peewee's Big Adventure
A variation on
The Take. If
The Take is reaction and a
Spit Take is a form of overreaction, the
Wild Take is over-overreaction.
For example, say a mouse ran across the kitchen floor. A take would be to jump back, startled. A wild take would be to scream at the top of your lungs and jump high enough to leave a hole in the roof.
Most characters who engage in this behavior tend to be high-strung at the best of times. Don't ask about the worst of times.
Mostly an
Animated Trope, though live-action shows for a younger demographic can go into these at times.
Examples:
Film
- A rare live-action example in Planes Trains And Automobiles. Del and Neal are driving on the wrong side of the motorway at night completely unaware of it until two huge trucks come up either side of them. Their car scrapes up against the two and the pair scream. There is a series of fast cuts between the outside and inside of the car, and at one point we see that both Del and Neal have been replaced by google-eyed skeletons just to elevate the sheer cartoonish shock. This is followed by Neal lookng over at Del and seeing him dressed as the devil himself, laughing maniacally. The two end up on the other side, pull the brakes and their suitcases fly off the back of the car and land on the road. Neil's fingertips are embedded in the dashboard and Del has bent the steering wheel. The completely unexpected wild-takes make this one of the funniest scenes this editor has ever seen in his life.
Real Life
- This editor suffers from high levels of anxiety. This means that he does Wild Takes for real. Including Kermit the frog style. They're rather therapeutic.
- On one memorable occasion, this troper was engaging in the somewhat inadvisable activity of slacking off at work while wearing headphones and paying more attention to the computer than her surroundings; in accordance with Murphy's Law, her boss came up behind her like a goddamn ninja and commented on the slacking. This troper went "WAUGH!" and shot upright forcefully enough to very briefly break contact with the chair entirely.
- From The Paranoid's Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You Can Just Feel Coming On: Hyperexplexia, AKA Exaggerated Startle Reaction - "What if every time a door slammed shut, you jumped into the air and jerked your limbs wildly? [...] Hyperexplexia is a genetic neurological condition, which means that when you hear a door slam, even your DNA gets scared."
Television
- On The Muppet Show, Kermit the Frog is (in)famous for the wild takes he does when the craziness on the show gets to be too much, with hands waving in the air screaming. It's rather funny.
- An episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway featured a game of Unlikely Superheroes, where Colin was Horribly Frightened Of Everything Man. Priceless.
Video Games
- In the Ace Attorney games, witnesses will do a Wild Take if you manage to put a particularly large hole in their testimony.
Webcomics
- From 8-Bit Theater:
Black Mage: Hey, Fighter. You've got... a giant spider on your face!
Fighter: AUGH, GET IT OFF! IT'S IN MY HAIR, IT'S IN MY HAAAAAIIIIR!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS! YOUR SWORDS, AS SHINY AS THEY MAY BE, ARE POWERLESS AGAINST THE SPIDER'S WRATH! THE INVISIBLE SPIDER GOD WILL SMITE US ALL! NO ONE IS SAFE! ALL IS DOOMED! THE BLACK APOCOLYPTIC SKIES RAIN WITH SPIDERY DEATH! WHY HATH YE GODS FORSAKEN US! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! Spiders... all over... can't get them away... (THUD!)
- Jean, being rather temperamental (often with reason), does a lot of these in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, such as here,
here, here, here, and here.
Western Animation
- Wade, the paranoid duck on the "U.S. Acres" segments of Garfield And Friends, had this as his primary character trait. Everything elicited a Wild Take from him.
- The Planet of Easily Frightened People on Earthworm Jim was a Planet Of Hats based around constantly having Wild Takes. ("AHH! Something green! AHHH! Something not green! AHHHH! Air!")
- The titular dog of Courage The Cowardly Dog does these whenever he's scared, i.e. every thirty seconds. These are often cut to quickly and make the occasional surreal things on the show even scarier.
- In one Tiny Toon Adventures episode, Plucky Duck got stuck in a Wild Take, leaving him as a giant eyeball with legs for the bulk of the cartoon.
- It's worth noting that this happens after Plucky sneaks into an "Advanced Takes" class taught by Daffy, instead of the basic class taught by Bugs - suggesting this is one of the only things Daffy ever topped the rabbit in, probably because of the way his luck often turned out in the series.
- Slappy Squirrel was fond of pointing these out while watching her old cartoons; "Ah, wild take no. 32, regular as clockwork. Wish everything was as regular as clockwork around here."
- On Fairly Odd Parents, Mr. Crocker would frequently do wild takes when ranting to himself about Timmy's "Fairy Godparents!"
- Ren often did this in Ren And Stimpy; such examples include after making fun of their drill sergeant only to realize he's standing right next to him when he sees this he screams, his eyeballs pop out of their sockets, his brain pops out of his skull, his skin melts off his head, and his bones connecting to his neck pop off, and when he is under the influence of Stimpy's happy helmet he makes a different and wackier expression after each word as he says "I MUST GO DO NICE THINGS!".
