Circling Birdies

Why pay ten cents when you can see stars for free?

"Hah! By hitting me in the head, you've only granted me several small familiars!"

— Kiwi Blitz, page 578

An animated character who has been stunned, usually by blunt head trauma, will display a "halo" of twittering birds or twinkling stars orbiting their head at or above eyebrow level. Sometimes it's just circles or whirls spinning around. This is a cartoon representation of "seeing stars." Upon recovery, the character will usually brush them away with an impatient or brusque sweep of their hands.

It is not uncommon for circling stars to sound like birds (cuckoo is very commonly added, although it's usually the cuckoo clock variation instead of the realistic version), even if it makes no sense. Cartoon cats who see circling birdies sometimes swat at them as though they were real. Similarly, this trope often occurs in live-action instances with just the sound effects of birds.

Occasionally, more idiosyncratic "satellites" will circle the character, usually related to either their personality or the task they were trying to accomplish when they were stunned. Unrelated to Circling Vultures, which foretell a rather worse fate than a mild concussion.

May also go with Non Sequitur, *Thud*. Compare Concussions Get You High. Catching Some Z's is a similar visual effect for characters who went night-night the usual way.

An example of Editorial Synaesthesia.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In this commercial for Froot Loops from 1998, a teen hockey player gets knocked out during a game and hallucinates that he's playing against an entire team of Toucan Sams. When he comes to at the end, stars and Toucan Sams circle his head, as he asks "What's with all the birds?"
• In this ad from the late 90s, circling birdies are replaced by circling sandwiches and jars of Miracle Whip after a boxer is punched by a Miracle Whip-slathered boxing glove (a "knuckle sandwich").
• A late 2009 promo for WWE's Tables, Ladders & Chairs event featured cartoon birds circling wrestler Chris Jericho's head after he took a hard blow to the head with a metal chair. The ad was somewhat controversial, as some said it made light of the potentially serious head injuries professional wrestlers can face during a performance.
• This Sprint ad for NFL Mobile Live in 2009 used this trope. As a frustrated fan stared at his phone, the announcer mentioned that fans were watching players' Twitter feeds without seeing a single tweet. A stray football then hits the fan in the head, and versions of the Twitter logo bird fly around his head.
• This Moxie Girlz 3D commercial had one part where a girl was seeing objects circling her head. Not because of a concussion though.
• In this iconic Sprite commercial, a boy's hard landing after a failed basketball dunk results in tiny basketballs and Sprite cans circling his head.
• Japanese singer Tomohisa Yamashita experiences circling birdies after being on the receiving end of a cartoon character's punch in this Toshiba commercial
• In this Cap'n Crunch commercial, a martial arts instructor (played by Simon Rhee) is knocked over silly and, instead of birds, sees pieces of Cap'n Crunch spin around his head.
• In the late 80s/early 90s, the Swedish Chef of The Muppets fame had his own breakfast cereal, Croonchy Stars. This commercial features the circling stars version of this gag while showing the Chef making a batch of Croonchy Stars in "the Muppet Test Kitchen".
  Narrator: It seemed impossible, but then it hit him.
• Cookie Crisp makes people have cookies for breakfast, but people say cookies are not for breakfast, but then have a taste and say that cookies are for breakfast. One commercial uses bird sound effects when the teacher gets her taste of Cookie Crisp.
• This McDonald's commercial used bird sound effects when Birdie crashed after she failed to land.
• In this commercial for the Angry Birds Go! Telepod toyline, Chuck teleports into the game world and drives past the other racers, causing them to crash. Terence in particular was sent flying into the air, landing in the heap with three stars revolving around him.
• In this commercial for the snack Fundamiddles from the early 90s, a kid (played by future TV star Jonathan Tucker) gets whacked by a mallet-shape blast of chocolate from the snack and hears tweeting birds.
• In one of the Doraemon Toyota Commercials, Nobita gets a ring of spinning stars on the top of his head after he rides a toy car in circles.
• One of the bullies in this Cheetos ad from Turkey sees winged versions of Chester Cheetah circling his head after being thrown to the grown.
• The commercial for the Animaniacs licensed games for the SNES and Sega Genesis ends with a critic appearing alongside the games' box arts, saying "I give it four stars." Wakko then emerges from the Genesis version's box art and hits the critic on the head with a hammer, causing five stars to spin around it. Wakko then says, "I give it five."
• One early Apple Jacks ad, back around the time when Apple was a villain, ended with Apple having Cinna-Mons running around his head after his most recent attempt to stop Cinna-Mon failed.
• A basketball to the head leaves four cocky basketball players seeing circling stars and images of Bugs Bunny and hearing tweeting birds after they unwisely decide to take on the wascally wabbit and Michael Jordan in this 1992 Nike ad, which could be seen as a prototype for the two coming together for Space Jam.
• The US commercial for Super Smash Bros. 64 ends with Yoshi hitting Donkey Kong with a hammer, resulting in Nintendo 64 logos circling his head.

Animation

• The Lamput episode "Alien" does a variation on this trope. Lamput, Slim Doc, and Fat Doc accidentally invade an alien's spaceship; at one point, the alien accidentally destroys the ship's control panel trying to shoot the three unwanted guests, sending the ship flying up into space and causing it to bounce off of several planets. All of the planets get rings of circling stars around them after being hit... except for Saturn, which already had a ring.
• Little Singham uses the stars variety, accompanied by bird sounds, frequently for injured characters. The villains tend to experience this the most often, though Little Singham and his friends see them on occasion, too.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, this happens multiple times to various characters, with numerous variants such as circling stars and circling wolf heads.

Anime & Manga

• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Alessi gets pulverized by a de-aged Jotaro, getting blasted aside with circling stars, and then wakes up to find Jotaro and Polnareff about to give him a double No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• In Doctor Slump, the characters comment on that: "Wait, it's American, we're Japanese", and shoo out the birds, who swear as they fly away.
• Although stars flying out as the result of impact is frequently used in Doraemon (on both the manga and the anime) and not really noteworthy, in the manga chapter titled Glittering Night Sky, Doraemon has a gadget that can help you literally harvest them. Anytime there are stars flying out because of impact, whether from 2 objects colliding, or from Nobita when he's beaten up by Gian which produces larger stars, Doraemon can use a net to catch those stars. Doraemon and Nobita use those stars to create a beautiful starry sky that they don't get to see in the crowded city.
• In the Sakura Taisen: Ecole de Paris OVA, Erica gets stunned several times; each time she gets a "halo" of little fluttering angels, and remarks on them.
• Mahoro's circling birdies in Mahoromatic apparently are real, as they can be seen by other characters.
  • Although they appear when she's asleep, and continually multiply until she wakes up, leading to some... awkward situations when Suguru decides to observe her when she's dozing off.
    • That may have been SUGURU''s dream, as he was asleep at the time.
  • At one point in the second season, Mahoro's birdies are seen to re-enter her head when she wakes up. Only five this time, though.
  • Near the end of the manga, it is explained that Matthew (actually named "Arcadia Matthew Faye Ray") is an artificial intelligence, the birdies are part of her "sleep program", and that Mahoro was patterned after Matthew and/or the creator of Matthew, "Mahoro Matthew Faye Ray").
• In the first episode of Best Student Council, Rino gets afflicted with these, combined with Non Sequitur, *Thud*, when Kaori bumps into her. Later in the episode, Kaori sees birds when she hits her head on a tree. This time they stay until the end of the episode.
• The manga of Soul Eater has Crona seeing stars after a good bash to the head from Stein's foot. He/she even says "Uwaa— I can see stars... but I can't figure out how to play with them~"
• Pokémon: The Series sometimes features characters seeing circling bird-like Pokémon such as Pidgey or Torchic. Often, it indicates when a Pokémon is succumbing to the effect of the Confusion status. There is also a low chance of circling stars. However, this does not always apply for Confusion at times: in one episode in Sun/Moon, Ash's Rowlet sees stars after being hit by a Relavation Dance from Lillie's butler's Oricorio, and then not long after, Rowlet sees birds after being knocked out due to impact with Mallow. During the first Battle Royal episode, Ash’s Litten, Kiawe’s Marowak and Sophocles’ Charjabug all see stars after Masked Royal’s Incineroar knocks them down in a single move. Not long after, Sophocles himself also sees stars after being hit in the face. In the third Battle Royal episode, Faba, while in the Masked Royal disguise, sees stars after Incineroar lands on top of him. Later, taking a page from the games' book, starting in episode 105 of the Sun and Moon series, during Ash’s Lycanroc VS Lycanroc battle with Gladion, Gladion’s Lycanroc sees birds after becoming confused due to using Outrage, and the trope would repeat every time Gladion’s Lycanroc becomes confused due to Outrage. In Journeys, the birds used for confusion (starting from episode 36 of Journeys when Ash’s Riolu was confused by a Trainer’s Octillery’s Psybeam) resemble the generic ducks from the older generation games, though this can change depending on the episode; for example, in episode 102 for Journeys, the confusion birds used for Articuno after it gets hit by Gary's Umbreon's Confuse Ray resemble the ones from the seventh and eighth generation games.
  • In the original series, during a flashback of the Season 2 episode "In The Pink," Misty tries to teach Togepi to headbutt by gently headbutting a wooden post. Eventually she gets annoyed and manages to knock herself out, causing four pidgeys to fly over her head.
  • Also, the Ditto at the beginning of Pikachu's Ghost Carnival, in which the Ditto gets circling stars when it got hit on the head by a Cubone while Ditto was disguised as a Cubone.
  • In Big Meowth, Little Dreams, Meowth has circling Pikachus when he lands after being blasted off.
• In order to be accurate to the Pokémon games, Pokémon Adventures had this trope sometimes for confused Pokémon. Sometimes, confused Pokémon see birds flying around their head, with examples being one of Agatha's Gengar in the Yellow saga when it gets hit by Professor Oak's Kangaskhan's Dizzy Punch, and the scamming Bird Keeper's Hoothoot in the Gold/Silver saga when the confusion from the Swagger move Gold's Aipom (nicknamed Aibo) just used on Hoothoot kicks in during Gold's challenge to capture the Wooper, thus exposing the Bird Keeper's scam. In the Diamond and Pearl saga, the birds are replaced by circling Torchic running around the confused Pokémon's head, with examples including Roark's Craindos after becoming confused by a Water Pulse attack from Platinum's Piplup, and Diamond's Lickilicky (nicknamed Kit) after Sebastian's two Chinchou confuse him with Water Pulse after Sebastian stripped Kit from his Own Tempo with Weepinbell's Gastro Acid.
  • In the Ruby/Sapphire quiz book, question 74 shows a ring of birds (the usual confusion status condition) at the top right corner, and the question asks (in Japanese) which Pokémon move does not cause the user to become confused, with the selections ranging from a Bellossom using Petal Dance, a Spinda using Thrash, a Zangoose using Fury Cutter, and Rayquaza using Outrage. Of course, the correct answer section reveals that the move Zangoose is using, Fury Cutter, doesn’t confuse the user, but rather increases in damage every time it lands.
• In one arc of the manga Oh My Goddess!, and its second anime adaptation, Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy, there's a scene where Urd, who has been split into her demon and goddess halves, spins the two "round-and-round" so Keiichi, Belldandy, and Skuld can't tell which Urd is which, resulting in the Trope.
  • Happened earlier than that in the TV series, in Urd's debut episode. When Keiichi gets medicine for Belldandy, he gets a bonus "instructional video" from the pharmacist (Urd in disguise). When Urd leans in for a kiss, an intrigued Keiichi follows suit, and Urd somehow accidentally knees him in the chin, resulting in the Trope for Keiichi.
• Happens to the title charcter of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor when he's knocked silly in one episode.
• Seen a few times in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, both the stars and birdies variants. In the episode where Jean gets into a Mushroom Samba after eating mushrooms, Marie knocks him out with his own encyclopedia, and he keeps the Circling Birdies for a long time afterward, even commenting on seeing them.
• During one scene of Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, after Metal Robotnik crashes into the sea, Robotnik explains about his plans. However, when he mentions that Sonic "will have to fight something far more evil than Metal Robotnik," Sara hits Robotnik on the head, and stars circle Robotnik's head. This video has the entire scene.
• One episode of Naruto has Rock Lee seeing little Sakuras dancing around his head after being hit by her; they then stop to pretend to flirt with him before they all punch him again.
• In episode 7 of Kotoura-san, this happens to Hiyori, after she bangs her head against the wall a few times to get rid of thoughts about Manabe and Haruka she doesn't want to have.^note She has a crush with Manabe, but became the Hopeless Suitor and had a case of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy at this point. At that scene, she was reminded Manabe is her crush.
• Happens to Chi in Chi's Sweet Home during Chapter 45 (or near the end of Episode 91 in the anime) after Juri is a little too rough with petting Chi (which is by shaking Chi's face). Which of course is different in the anime, where Chi sees circling hearts.
• In episode 7 of Dragon Ball Super, One of the character's father sees stars and planets.
  "I'm seeing so many stars, it's like a galaxy!"
• The 4Koma Pokémon 4Koma Plaza features some Japanese 4Koma about a certain Pokémon. One of them features a Skitty chasing a ball, only to trip over a rock. The Skitty sees stars circling its head after that, and then proceeds to chase the stars.
• In episode 4 of Himouto Umaruchan, at the final segment of the episode, Umaru enters a fighting tournament under the persona of U.M.R., and it comes to the finals with Sylphynford being her final opponent, when Umaru notices that Sylphynford somehow saw through her 5-combo opening (and the fact that Sylphynford is proving to be a tough opponent) and gets determined to win after noticing that her brother is watching. However, Sylphynford claims that throwing the match is not a smart idea, but upon asking on what is so interesting and noticing that Alex is watching as well, Sylphynford is left stunned with birds flying around her head. Only when she finally realizes that her reaction is being watched does she run out in embarrassment, leaving Umaru the winner of the tournament by default.
• This trope occurs frequently in Galaxy Angel. During one episode in the second season, Mint tumbles into a tree and sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star while stars and birds circle above her head before she loses consciousness.
  • In another episode in a later season, Milfuelle tries performing one of her "famous" backflips and ends up falling backwards, causing her to spend the rest of the episode babbling on about the pretty stars she's seeing.
• This occurs on two occasions in Magical Play. In one episode, Pipin sees stars and carrots after being dazed during a battle. In another episode, Padudu and Pipin are both tied up and spun, and when they stop, they are considered representatives, but at the cost of leaving both Padudu and Pipin dazed and seeing miniature versions of their respective companion circling their heads (miniature Uokichis for Padudu and miniature Sekines for Pipin).
• Perman: In "Lift Just Two of Us", Perman gets a halo of circling stars and planets above his head after he lands on the cactus in the elevator.
• This is used a few times in the Warrior Cats manga Ravenpaw's Path: a few BloodClan cats get stars circling around their heads when the heroes smack them upside the head.

Comic Books

• Asterix:
  • In Astérix and the Great Crossing, a KO'd native American sees American stars.◊ In the same book, another native American sees all the stars from the American flag.
  • In another book, an Egyptian sees hieroglyphs of birds.
• Archie Comics:
  • Archie Comics will sometimes have Archie dazed after a fight, and seeing, not just basic birds, but rather specific ones, such as Red-Winged Blackbird or Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, twittering and circling his head.
  • One instance has Dilton fall off a skateboard while listening to headphones, commenting on how the track suddenly sounds like birds chirping.
• Batwoman (Rebirth): Not actually shown, but Kate Kane mentions she's seeing these just after her girlfriend punches her out in a boxing match.
• The fifth issue of the Justice League Unlimited tie-in comic has Green Lantern John Stewart get knocked out by General Eiling and have winged power rings circle around his head.
• In Supergirl story Brainiac's Blitz, when Brainiac's ship's beams strike the heroine, Kara sees white stars circling around her head while dazed.
• The Warrior Cats graphic novels use Bloodless Carnage, in contrast to their violently heavy source. In A Clan in Need, Sorrelpaw is supposed to be severely injured, but she doesn't look remotely injured. Not even her fur is messed up. The only sign of her being injured is her lethargic behavior and the stars circling around her head.
• All-New Ultimates: Miles Morales saw stars when Taskmaster attacked him.
• Flare has a variation with Arcanna. The Dash runs over her while he's trapped in her magical containment sphere, leaving her with circling bats.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: When Diana knocks out Mars in issue 5 he's shown on his back with a dove circling over his head.

Fan Works

• The Calvinverse:
  • Retro Chill: Hobbes gets socked by Evil Calvin and sees "a bunch of stars, planets, tweety birds and somewhere in the deeper recesses of his brain, he heard a harp playing for no apparent reason."
  • Calvin & Hobbes: The Series:
    • Socrates sees stars, checkers, and little pink elephants with umbrellas after getting thrown at a tree.
    • Hobbes later sees stars after bashing a cage containing Calvin's parents open.
• My Little Mages: The Nightmare's Return: Fie-Doe sees birds after Roh-Ver beats him up at one point. Then he hits him again, and they change into stars.
• Sharing the Nation: Twilight flies hard into Fluttershy's cottage and comes close to knocking herself out. The narration notes that, although she is now much more used to literally seeing stars since her ascension, seeing birds is a bit new for her — although in this case the circling birds happen to be Fluttershy's mind in the bodies of three songbirds, who's hovering worriedly around Twilight's head.
• Earth and Sky: Happens several times to the point of being a Running Gag. For instance, after Soarin' finally kicks Shootin' Star's flanks, the latter sees miniature Soarins circling his head while hitting bells with sledgehammers.
• Carry On Blissey: In Chapter 11, there is a part where Matron Blissey mentions imagining seeing stars around her head.
• During Chapter 8 of Olimar's Experiences on Guard Duty, Roy sees stars when Kirby 2 hits Roy with a tuna fish.
• From the Star Trek: Voyager Parody Fic "A Fistful of Mammary Gland".
  Seven took a hefty swig of her drink and immediately began to see stars, which her cortical processor made a vain effort to catalogue.
• A literal case happens in Saphroneth's Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK, when Fred and George pull a cracker that explodes with enough force to knock the two flat. The cracker produces a couple of canaries that circle over the twins' heads for a while before flying off.
• Saphroneth does it again in Legendarily Popular, when Keldeo's attendant Pidoves become concerned about his possible concussion, and fly around his head in circles.
• Spooky: A ring of yellow stars orbits Count Von Roo after he fails to pounce on Claw and hits his head on a rock.
• Toyed with in this fancomic based on Turning Red. After a very long dance practice, Tae Young is seen passed out in the background with three doves (his signature bird) circling his head. As the comic progresses, the doves pick him up and lay him on the bench with a blanket.

Films — Animation

• In Aladdin, when Iago (a parrot) is knocked out by the Sultan flying on the magic carpet, he sees little flying sultans saying "Have a cracker! Have a cracker!"
• In the The Adventures of Tintin, when the pickpocket is confronted outside his home by the police he tries to run away but we hear a crash off screen. Camera moves over to show him on the ground with little birds circling his head. The birds are in fact real and he had run into a woman who had just bought the birds at the pet store. The store owner can be seen catching the birds in a net.
• In one of the credits gags in Brother Bear, Koda uses one of his fighting moves on Rutt, and we hear the bird chirping sound when he hits the ground.
• Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie: After George and Harold transform Mr. Krupp back and forth between his regular persona and Captain Underpants repeatedly, he faceplants and gets surrounded by tiny flying Captain Underpantses shouting "Tra-La-Laa!" in squeaky voices.
• Similar to Roger Rabbit, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is about Animated Actors. And apparently these include the birds, as while the title chipmunks are bashing each other's heads trying to summon the trope in a weaponized way (to distract a villain with a cat head), one of them is seeing leaving his home late at night, to his wife's dismay.
• In the test footage for Uli Meyer's live-action/animation hybrid "The Duck", which ultimately was never made, one of the live-action crooks hears birds when clonked with the titular character's large gun and later sees circling stars and planets when a boomerang-like device hits his head.
• In The Emperor's New Groove, Kuzco sees llamas after Chicha clocks him with the Frying Pan of Doom.
  Kuzco: You have a lovely wife... They're both very pretty...
• Near the end of the "Noah's Ark" segment of Fantasia 2000, Donald Duck is thrown against a wall after getting his foot stuck inside a rope holding up the door, and when he finally crashes down onto the floor, several animals on the ark can be seen circling his head (including a pair of non-anthro ducks). Later at the end, Donald Duck sees stars after an elephant steps on him.
• In Luca, when Luca falls off the bicycle and hits his head, he sees anchovies circling his head.
• The Mind's Eye: In Beyond the Mind's Eye, after a miniature pterosaur breaks the camera lens, the music cuts to a quiet drone while a subtle whistling sound hints that the pterosaur might be seeing something orbiting its head.
• In Peter Pan when Mr. Smee is pounding a sign on Captain Hook's cabin as he tells another pirate to be quiet, at that very moment Captain Hook opens the door to attack Smee but he accidentally hits him on the head with the hammer he was pounding the nails in with, he then sees stars and planets circling his head as he falls unconscious.
• In The Return of Hanuman, Tunnu gets these when he was crashed by a ball hit by Maruti.
• The Twelve Tasks of Asterix: After being punted into the ground by Fulliautomatix, Cacofonix has birds circling his head... lyrebirds, fittingly for a bard.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit:
  • Roger sees Circling Birdies after getting hit by a refrigerator while making a cartoon, but the director gets mad at him for not following the script: "It says 'Rabbit gets clonked, rabbit sees stars'. Not birds, stars!" Roger proceeds to repeatedly bash himself in the head, resulting in a whole series of revolving visions of everything but stars.
  • Later in the film, after Eddie goes to Toontown, he bumps his head getting out of his car and sees birdies (hatching from eggs and flying around his head), and shoos them away in disgust, giving one of them its own circle of something in the process.
  • Roger would eventually see stars later on, after — literally — getting a ton of bricks dropped on him. He regards their presence with, "Look, stars! Ready when you are, Raoul!"

Films — Live-Action

• Fred Flintstone sees circling pterodactyls after Barney punches him due to a misunderstanding involving embezzling at Slate Co. in the live-action film version of the The Flintstones as seen here.
• Happens to George too many times to count in the two George of the Jungle films. One of the henchmen in the first film also hears birds after a punch, and Shep the elephant also sees circling stars after unsuccessfully trying to use his head as a battering ram in the sequel.
• Brendan Fraser is in a class by himself for this trope. Not only does he experience it about a half a dozen times as George, but he also hears tweeting birds in the live-action film version of Dudley Do-Right and a cut scene from Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
• Space Jam:
  • Michael Jordan sees circling birdies — more accurately, circling golf balls with bird wings — after a hard fall.
  • Granny gets to see circling Tweety birds after being dog-piled by the Monstars.
  • Also happens to LeBron James with Tweety birds in Space Jam: A New Legacy.
• Animated birdies and stars circle Joe Torry's head after his character is punched in the comedy Sprung.
• In The Scene, Jimmy Fallon hears tweeting birds after running head-first into a bus.
• In Gremlins, Big Bad Stripe hears tweeting birds after getting knocked out moments before he sees the fountain.
• In The Great Muppet Caper, Kermit the Frog has animated birds circling his head when Miss Piggy sees him for the first time.
• In The Toxic Avenger Part II, in one scene, a Japanese girl hears tweeting birds after getting punched in the face.
• Matt LeBlanc hears birds after getting knocked out by a car door in Ed.
• In the live movie The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Boris, one of the Big Bads, sees these after the CDI falls on his head.
• The 1967 musical "Half A Sixpence" uses tweeting bird sounds after Arthur (Tommy Steele) is tossed through a roof during a musical number. Somewhat lampshaded, in that actual birds are escaping as a result of his crash, adding cooing pigeons to the cacophony of the usual high-pitched bird sounds standard for this trope.
• In Inspector Gadget (1999), after Gadget uses a grappling hook to trip a criminal, you see stars circling his head before he falls unconscious.
• In Army of Darkness after Ash accidentally raises the dead and he tries to put the skeletons back in the ground, at one point a bunch of skeletons punch him at the same time and you hear tweeting birds.
• At times, movie trailers will add in a bird sound effect that does not appear in the actual film.
  • This scene from Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed, for example, in which Fred (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) is knocked silly by his own shield while battling a knight, included bird sounds in one of the film's trailers, though they were not used in the film.
  • Bird sounds were used after Tracy Morgan was hit in the head in one of the Little Man trailers.
  • A trailer for Tangled used bird sounds when Rapunzel knocks out Flynn with a Frying Pan of Doom.
  • Mitch Eakins hears birds after recovering from a faint in a trailer for the sequel to Evil Bong.
• The lead character (played by Seth Adkins) in "Funky Monkey" stumbles and hears birds after getting tackled hard during a football game.
• The direct-to-DVD sequel of The Little Rascals uses bird sound effects frequently after comedic injuries. Alfalfa hears birds twice: once after crashing into a car, and once after getting a pounding during a wrestling match. Waldo hears birds after getting socked by a spring-loaded boxing glove, and his father hears them after being whacked by a stray golf club. Stymie hears birds after the gang's homemade streetcar crashes.
• The villain in Munchie Strikes Back hears birds after being bonked by a bowling ball.
• In Bio-Dome, Doyle (Stephen Baldwin) hears birds after a whack in the head by a book sends him flying across the room.
• In "A Talking Pony?!?," aka "A Pony Tale," Wesley (James Lastovic) hears birds after experiencing several blows to the head with a horseshoe. He later hears birds again when the shock of hearing a talking horse causes him to faint.
• In Critters 2: The Main Course when Ugg and Lee shoot up the restaurant to try to kill all the Crites inside, one of them while attempting to escape hits it's head on the door, it then hears birds tweeting as it sits there dazed, this then gives it the idea to get the others to work together to break down the door.
• Muscle-bound giant Yeti (played by Robert Maillet, aka wrestler The Kurrgan) hears birds after having his head smashed by a cinderblock in Brick Mansions.
• Lucas (Alex Ashbaugh) hears birds after a headbutt in this scene from spoof film Superfast.
• Bridger Zadina hears birds after walking into a punch in this scene in "Kids Vs Monsters."
• In A Fairly Odd Summer, Vicky (played by Devon Weigel) sees birds when she gets knocked in the head and falls to the ground.
• In "Finn On The Fly," Eddie (David Milchard) hears birds after getting punched, as seen here.
• In the 1961 version of "Babes in Toyland," stars appear each time the baddies clonk Tom Piper (Tommy Sands) with a mallet.
• Stars appear above Nic Puehse's head after he faints near the beginning of "Nic And Tristan Go Mega Dega."
• In Uncle Buck when Chanice figures that Buck is listening to her and Tia's conversation she swings the door open, the first time he managed to avoid it but the second time sends him flying across the kitchen knocking him out, as he lies there unconscious he hears the sound of tweeting birds.
• Mickey Rooney and Sidney Miller hear birds both of the tweeting and cuckoo variety when play-acting a comedic wrestling match in "Men Of Boys Town."
• Sirius (Zack Ward) hears tweeting birds after being slammed into the back of the cage in the film "Monster Mutt," as seen here.
• Problem Child:
  • In the first "Problem Child," after a disastrous camping trip which ended with the buffoonish Roy getting a Frying Pan of Doom to the head, Junior gleefully makes a drawing of the incident in which he adds circling birdies around Roy's head. Little Ben admonishes him: "You know in real life, people dont get birdies on their head when they get knocked out. They get concussions, like Roy did."
  • In the made-for-TV "Problem Child 3: Junior in Love," Little Ben (played by William Katt, replacing John Ritter) hears birds after he is punched out by his father while sparring.
  • Junior himself experiences this stars version of this trope in the film's animated spin-off.
• Both bumbling burglars (played by Clint Howard and Judge Reinhold) hear tweeting birds after bonks on the noggin with a Frying Pan of Doom in the "Home Alone-with-a-dog" Ping.
• Joe (David Spade) alludes to seeing these after being thrashed by an alligator in Joe Dirt.
  Joe: It's like the cartoons, I'm seein' all "tweet tweet."
• Ultraman Mebius and the Ultra Brothers have another live-action example when Ultraman Mebius fights Alien Guts, a bird-like enemy who can duplicate himself. Mebius managed to smash two copies of Guts headfirst into one another - cue Guts getting dizzy with a bunch of chibi-Guts circling around his head.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): In an episode of the Rescue Rangers show seen near the beginning, Chip invokes this on Dale in order to distract Fat Cat. Later, Chip and Dale do this again as part of their plan to get the drop on Sweet Pete, whose transmogrified form has the head of a cat. To top it off, the scene briefly cuts to one of the birds having to get up in the middle of the night to do his job, to his wife's chagrin.
• In this trailer for Bullet Train meant to highlight social media buzz around the film, a ring of the Twitter emblem's blue birds appear around Aaron Taylor-Johnson's head after he is punched.
• A spin inside a washing machine leaves Laxman (Kunal Khemu) dazed and hearing chirping birds in the Hindi-language comedy "Golmaal Again."
• In many a short starring The Three Stooges, a shot of someone who has been knocked unconscious will likely be accompanied by the Wacky Sound Effect of birds chirping.

Literature

• Discworld:
  • In the novel Moving Pictures, one of the minor side effects that the motion picture industry has on the Disc's flexible reality level is that tweeting birds appear over the head of a wizard with concussion.
  • In The Science of Discworld, Ridcully mentions a wizard who "died of planets" (which presumably orbited his head).
• In Search The Sky, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, there's a scene where Ross is made to Talk to the Fist.
  He brought up a roundhouse right, and Ross saw the stars and heard the birdies.
• In Amelia Bedelia Digs In, one of the Young Amelia Bedelia chapter books, Amelia's father bonks his head and says that he's seeing stars. Amelia Bedelia doesn't understand, so he explains "stars like in the cartoons."
  Amelia: So right this minute, little planets and chirping birds are circling your head?
  Alice: [Amelia's friend] Ouch! That must hurt.
  Amelia's father: Tell me about it.
  Amelia: She just did.

Live-Action TV

• Happens frequently on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide to characters following a head injury. At times, only the bird sound effects play, but other times animated birds and other objects circle the victims' heads. Recipients of the trope in the show include Ned, Billy Loomer, Cookie and Faymon Phorchin.
• Fittingly, Spike TV's Knockout Sportsworld often appends circling birds and stars around the heads of the athletes in its clips.
• Nickelodeon's Roundhouse enjoyed playing with this trope. While injured actors usually only heard the bird sound effect, in the episode Disaster, a cast member spun a mobile of stars around Ivan Dudynsky's head after a fall, and a castmate remarks that she can tell he's injured because of the tweeting birdies. In another episode, Dudysky is clonked with an anvil and says that he sees "stars," as a castmate spins a mobile with cutouts of Cher, Whoopi Goldberg and other Hollywod big names around his head.
• Jimmy of Out of Jimmy's Head sees circling birdies a couple of times after being bonked with a mallet.
• A wrestler felled by Slater sees flashing stars, accompanied by bird sound effects, in Saved by the Bell.
• The boys of Big Time Rush sometimes experience this trope. James, for example, hears tweeting birds after a thrown shoe clonks him on the head in one episode. Carlos hears birds in the premiere episode when a shopping cart he's riding in slams into a car. Logan and Camille both hear birds in another epsisode, when they run towards each other in slow motion and crash hard. Logan, Carlos and James all hear birds in another episode, after dizzying themselves while spinning on a bat and falling. In the episode "Big Times Rides," James hears birds after crashing his motorcycle through a wall, and Logan and Carlos both hear birds when their wagon crashes into a car.
• On this episode of his eponymous Nickelodeon series, Nick Cannon asks an animator to turn him into a cartoon. The animator obliges, drawing a sketch of Nick who gets hit with an Illogical Safe, resulting in the trope. Nick then rethinks the wisdom of wanting to be a cartoon character.
  • Happens to Nick in another episode, in which Nick gets knocked silly while trying to slide into home in a baseball game, leaving him on his back and hearing tweeting bird sound effects.
• Invoked in Scrubs. After running face-first into a door, J.D. remarks that he hit his head so hard he thought saw cartoon birds but then realized that he was just seeing the wallpaper in the pediatric ward.
• Tory from MythBusters sees a ring of birds circling head his after being knocked out during a kickboxing match, as seen here.
• On a segment on Popular Mechanics for Kids, animated stars appear and bird sound effects play after host Jay Baruchel is beaned with a baseball.
• You Can't Do That on Television used a bird sound effect after a head injury on rare occasions. Alasdair, for one, hears tweeting birds after a hard fall from the ceiling in the Wildlife/Animals episode. In one of the later episodes, Christian hears birds after the coach hits him on the head with a baseball bat. Strangely, the show never used the sound during the caveman sketches, which usually centered on finding a way for the caveman dad to bash his kids in the head with a club.
• Unfabulous uses bird sounds in the episode "The Toot." In a daydream sequence, Addie imagines herself passing gas with enough force to send her boyfriend Jake flying. He crashes into a soda machine and looks dazed as bird sounds play and soda cans clonk him on the head.
• Mexico's version of the game show "Hole in the Wall" ("Aguas con el Muro") uses this trope on contestants who get knocked into the water. In this clip, for example, singer Adrian Varela sees circling dolphins after his fall.
• American Idol used the bird sound effect in the audition phase of its 11th season when one contestant, Tyler Beach, banged his head on a low-hanging pipe when celebrating his golden ticket to Hollywood, as seen in this clip.
• MTV's Room Raiders used bird sounds in one episode after a contestant banged his head on the top of a canopy bed.
• During a stop-motion segment on a holiday episode of That '70s Show, Kelso is struck by lightning, falls to the ground and hears tweeting birds, as seen in this clip.
• Saban Entertainment's live-action shows in the 90s frequently used bird sound effects to indicate head injuries, particularly on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. The comedy relief characters — primarily Bulk and Skull, and later Spike — were the chief recipients, although they occasionally were used with villains or even occasionally the heroes. Saban's Beetleborgs took it a step further and often added animated stars after head injuries, usually to Flabber, although one of the heroes, Roland, also saw stars a few times.
  • In Power Rangers Ninja Steel, Victor and Monty hear birds when they get clonked by a rock.
  • Adam (Johnny Yong Bosch) hears birds after taking a spill during an outtakes montage in Power Rangers Turbo.
• In an episode of Abby's Flying Fairy School, Gonnigan gets this as shown here when he has a great fall to the floor with a CRASH! However, he recovers from the trauma, wobbling around the room with the dizzy birds and dizzy wobbling trombone variant, complete with him passing out on the floor with a big *thud*. His mind also questions this.
  Gonnigan's mind: Why the heck do I keep getting abused this way? I mean, shouldn't it be Tails Abuse, or Jeffy Abuse, or Red Brother Abuse instead? Geez! [kicks his red brother Red Gonnigan into a wall] (Red Gonnigan: Ow! My leg!)
• The Spanish soap Rebelde occasionally used bird sound effects after an injury. Unlike many shows, it was not confined to head injuries. One character, Miguel, heard birds when another character stepped on his hand.
• In an episode of Shake it Up, Deuce says before passing out: "Am I looking up? Because I see stars."
• On the "Driving Lessons" episode of Life with Derek, Ralph (Shane Kippel) gets knocked over and hears bird sounds. He then remarks about seeing stars on the ceiling.
• Happens to Dean twice in the Supernatural episode "Hunter Heroici." The plot centered around a comatose retirement home resident whose dreams of a cartoon world affected the reality around him. Dean first decides to test the theory by whacking himself on the head with a book, leaving him dazed and hearing tweeting birds. Later in the episode, the villain hits Dean with a frying pan several times, and he hears cuckoos. Additionally, in the episode "The Monster at the End of This Book," a meta-episode in which fanfaction is becoming reality, Dean experiences the stars variant in a somewhat lampshaded fashion. The fanfiction had a point that said "Dean saw stars." This became reality when Dean, having been hit by a car, comes to seeing stars before his eyes. He remarks on them, then it comes into focus revealing the stars actually are a pair of dangly star earrings worn by a lady helping him.
• On the ANTFarm episode "Scavantger Hunt," Cameron sees miniature versions of Gibson circling his head after he's beaned with a bell. Disney used the episode as a sort of "Where's Waldo" game where viewers were supposed to count every appearance of Gibson, so the trope played into that.
• In one episode of Lizzie McGuire, after Lizzie is knocked silly by her own locker door, the scene cuts to the cartoon version of Lizzie, who has stars and planets circling her head as seen here with some uh.. Cranial Eruption.
  • Lizzie's brother Matt also experiences this trope a few times via sound effects, such as in this episode, when he unsuccessfully tries to break a board with his head.
• Fix-up television show Blind Date sometimes would animate birds or other objects around the head of an injured dater.
• In a segment on boxing, New York TV reporter and man-about-town Ben Aaron got knocked out by his female opponent, leaving him hearing cuckoos and seeing stars and images of the opponent's head circling his head. Here's the clip.
  • Ben later suffered a similar fate after an encounter with a sumo wrestler.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy often would use bird sound effects after Bill or one of his kid helpers suffered a mishap. In this clip, for example, a kid hears birds after being clonked with an apple. Frequently, this trope would occur after an Offscreen Crash.
• Sometimes used on the 90s version of Zoom. In this clip, for example, Zoom-er Kenny hears birds after a few mishaps during an exercise session. In another episode, a kid exploring the beach hears birds after being bopped with a football. In a blooper reel, Zoom-er Kyle hears birds when he's bonked by a camera.
• In a fifth season episode of The Cosby Show, Theo's friend Mitchell (Don Reed) invokes this trope while doing an extended impression of a kung-fu movie, as seen here. After feigning taking a few hits, Mitchell makes the sound effect of birds while moving his hand around his head. The bit was actually taken from a stand-up routine Reed was doing at the time.
• Billy (Billy Draper) of the Timmerman Brothers hears birds twice after slipping and falling on ice in The Naked Brothers Band Christmas special.
• In the SNL spoof music video "What Does My Girl Say," pictures of butts circle around Jay Pharoah's head.
• Spanish-language Cartoon Network sitcom La CQ frequently adds animated birds around the students' heads when they fall, get hit by a ball or suffer any other wide range of slapstick mishaps. Jenny and Monche are the most frequent victims, though all of the main cast and much of the supporting cast experience it at one time or another.
• On a season 5 episode of Tosh.0, Daniel Tosh experiences this trope after recreating the classic cartoon gag of painting a tunnel on the wall and crashing head-first into it.
• Both JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake heard birds after crashing into one another during a sketch on an episode of the Mickey Mouse Club. Kevin Osgood also hears them in another sketch after getting clonked with a baseball.
• In a segment on the U.S. version of Big Brother 4, cuckoo sounds were played when Justin was bopped playfully by another contestant, as seen here.
  • Many seasons later, on the U.S. version of "Big Brother 17," former contestant Caleb Reynolds experienced the trope when he came to host a challenge. Caleb broke a board with his head, and the next shot showed him looking dazed with animated stars around his head, as seen here.
  • In "Big Brother 19," Mark heard cuckoo sounds effects after falling numerous times on a slippery surface during a competition, and Alex had animated stars around her head after sustaining numerous blows in a punch/slap/kick competition.
• In this sketch from MADtv (1995), tweeting bird sounds are used when O.J. Simpson (played by Orlando Jones) bumps his head on an air conditioning unit, a spoof of blooper reel shows that frequently use cartoonish sound effects.
• In "A Changed Man" on Medium, Allison falls and hits her head. Bridgette asks if she saw stars, or planets, or these. Ariel tells her that they're only cartoons, Bridgette insists that they could be in real life too.
• The High Fructose Adventures Of Annoying Orange used this on rare occasions. In the episode "Welcome to My Fruitmare" Orange hits his head on a wall, then he sees stars with faces and falls asleep. In a 2013 promo, Broccoli drops a brick on Nerville's (Toby Turner) head while he is recording a voiceover. He falls and gets back up with oranges circling his head, and he comments on them.
• In teen telenovela Atrévete a Soñar, a brawl leaves Richie (Ricardo Ceceña) hearing birds and seeing cartoon hot dogs and doughnuts circling his head — appropriate, given his prowess as a chef!
• Frequently used in telenovela Misión S.O.S. Usually, it's just the bird sound effect after a character is dizzy or dazed, but El Chaneque (Jesús Zavala) sees animated stars circle his head in addition to the bird sounds when he is fired out of cannon, crashes and, in a nice bit of irony, gets clonked by his helmet.
  • In particular, Rodrigo (Miguel Martinez) is a frequent victim of this trope. He hears birds both after running into a door and after taking a tumble while trying to climb into a window and, after getting clonked on the head with a basketball, sees images of his beloved Diana (Allison Lozz) circling his head.
• CBBC uses bird sounds on occasion when a presenter gets clonked. It happened with considerable frequency to Chris Johnson after Ed Petrie would hit him with a giant boxing glove or other object to introduce Total Wipeout, as seen in this montage. It also happened to Ed, Iain Stirling and, after a barrage from a frying pan, Dominic Wood.
• Various characters experience this in the children's telenovela "Suenos Y Caramelos," and each character sees a circling object distinct to his/her personality after an injury. Talon, for example, sees the typical circling birds, while Fregonal sees sinister-looking crows. The plucky Mauricio, meanwhile, sees circling airplanes whenever he gets knocked silly. More minor characters tend to see simple circling or flashing stars.
• The Brazilian telenovela Carrossel uses bird sounds on occasion, such as when bully Paulo (Lucas Santos) gets crushed by Jaime (Nicholas Torres) during a basketball game.
• Big Wolf on Campus uses bird sound effects every so often. For example, Tommy (Brandon Quinn) hears birds when he runs into a tree in one of the early episodes, and he hears them again when hitting his head during a brawl in another episode.
• The "La Familia del Super 3" series on the Catalonian Super 3 Club uses this trope frequently, as its live-action characters are meant to be visitors from a cartoon world. Fluski, for example, sees circling birds after crashing with a pair of rocket skates; Rick sees circling stars after getting clonked with a mallet; Roc sees flashing stars as he stumbles around in the dark.
• The title character (played by Nick James) in the Hank Zipzer television series sees birds circling his head after getting hit by a spring-loaded boxing glove in a cutaway sequence in the episode "Camouflage."
• In Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, this is a frequent trope, yet it is always just the sound of chirping birds. Characters who have had it used on them include Xena (in The Furies), Gabrielle (in The King of Assassins), Eris (in Kindred Spirits), Philemon (in Warrior... Princess), Amarice (in Animal Attraction), Dr. Polly (in Send in the Clones), and Joxer (in nearly every episode he's in)
  • The spin-off Young Hercules also used the sound. Hephaestus (Jason Hoyte) hears birds after being tossed during a fight, for example. Buterus (Paul Norell) hears them after becoming a victim of The Door Slams You. Antos (Daniel Gillies) hears birds after being spun around by Hercules. Strife (Joel Tobeck) hears them after being zapped into a post by Ares.
• The Armenian show "Outdance" uses bird sound effects on occasion when a character is knocked out. In one episode teaser, the hapless Garik heard birds when he was punched out, though the sound effects were absent from the actually episode. Another character hears birds when a girl punches him out in a later episode.
• In the Quebec television series "Ramdam," Simon (Xavier Morin-Lefort) frequently hears birds as a result of Amusing Injuries in the comic cutaway scenes. A few of the causes: getting knocked silly in a boxing match, taking a hard hit in a slap duel, being on the receiving end of a spring-loaded boxing glove and, while dressed as a caveman, getting clonked with a club.
• In the Halloween episode of How to Rock, Kacey (Cymphonique Miller) takes a fall, gets up and mentions seeing "birdies" before passing out again, triggering an All Just a Dream episode.
• Disney's reboot of "Bug Juice" added circling stars around a camper's head when he hit it after coming down a water slide.
• In the Mexican comedy series "40 y 20," Paco (Jorge van Rankin) sees animated birds around his head both when he is punched out and when he drunkenly falls from the stairs.
• Efthymis Kokkinaras frequently experiences this trope in the Greek children's show Akata Makata. For example, during a visit to Puerto Rico, he is repeatedly hit in the head by coconuts, hearing tweeting birds and/or cuckoo birds after each blow. Another time he is clonked with a bell and sees images of bells circling around his head.
• La Familia P. Luche frequently uses animated stars when a character is hit in the head or is experiencing pain in general, such as when another character grabs them by the ears.
• In one of the animated cutaway sequences on the Nickelodeon series Romeo!!, Romeo (Romeo Miller) imagines himself and Myra (Brittney Wilson) as Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots in battle, and they both hear birds when they punch one other.
• Brazilian telenovela "Da Cor do Pecado" uses this trope occasionally, especially in scenes involving the antics of Edilásia and her sons. Usually only the sound effects of birds are used, though Thor (Cauã Reymond), Dionísio (Pedro Neschling) and Abelardo (Caio Blat) also all get animated stars around their heads at one point after losing a match.
• In Mi Marido Tiene Más Familia, Robert (Daniel Arenas) hears tweeting birds when being punched out in a fight; Temo (Joaquín Bondoni) also hears birds after being punched in another episode.
• In the Ecuadorian series 3 Familias, Kevin (Kevin Chapin) sees circling stars twice while engaged in battle against Max (Carlos Scavone) in a Street Fighter parody. Kevin also hears bird sound effects after fainting in another episode, as does Genaro (Martin Street) after getting punched. Max himself hears tweeting birds a few times in the final season, including when he faints while watching a chicken get slaughtered and when getting knocked silly in a boxing match.
• The Italian series New School frequently uses bird sounds when a character, usually Nick (Matteo Valentini), gets injured; Nick also sees circling stars after taking a hit in a dream sequence.
• The title character in Filipino sitcom Juan Tamad, played by Sef Cadayona, hears birds after a punching bag he is hitting rebounds onto his head.
• During a boxing match dream sequence in Una Familia Con Suerte, Pancho (Arath de la Torre) takes a double punch as referee, causing birds to circle his head, of which the announcer makes mention. In a later episode, Enzo (Pedro Moreno) gets bird sound effects after falling off a bed.
• After taking a slap that knocks him silly, Tábano (Peter Lanzani) sees animated circling stars in a chapter of the 2006 version of "Chiquititas."
  • A ring of birds also appears fairly frequently around the head of knocked out characters in the Chiquititas spin-off "Rincon de Luz." Tobias (Lucas Crespi) is a frequent victim of the trope.
• In this montage on The Real World previewing his eventual WWE personality, Mike "The Miz" Mizanin hears tweeting birds while showing off his wrestling moves.
• Animated birds circle Don Day's head after a friend clonks him on the Ecuadorian series "El Combo Amarillo."
• Frequently used in the Indonesian series Tendangan Garuda, particularly to Sonny (Sonny Wakwaw) when he runs into the goal, gets clonked with a ball or otherwise inevitably knocked silly during a football match.
  • The Indonesian series Sultan Aji similarly uses these effects. They appear to be apparent to other characters, as when Boim (Andro Trinanda) and Sinyo (Sinyo Syamsul Rizal) see them after being clonked with a soccer ball and comment on seeing them around one another's heads.
• Circling stars appear around Brent Rivera's head after he spins around during a challenge on Nickelodeon's series "Group Chat."
• Host Jay Pharaoh and some of the players on Nickelodeon's "Unfiltered" series experience this on occasion. Jay, for example, sees stars on two separate occasions (after being virtually "punched" and spun) and also sees Photobooth-style birds around his head while talking about birds, though it is not related to dizziness or a head injury in that latter case. Gabrielle Nevaeh Green gets the birds around her head after being spun around on a turntable.
• As part of the Backstreet Boys' "Terrifying Tower Takeover" bumpers for Kids WB, AJ McLean is shown trying to record a line for the Animaniacs' Yakko, Wakko and Dot, who are unimpressed. When AJ asks for his motivation, Wakko triggers a giant mallet to crush him, leaving AJ seeing circling stars with chirping bird sound effects.
• In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Navi's predictions involve her crashing into things. Some of the later ones have little Navis circling her head for a few seconds post-crash.
• In the juvenile telenovela "Alegrijes y Rebujos," Rogelio (Sebastián Rulli) hears chirping birds when he's the victim of a Flower-Pot Drop during an unsuccessful serenade.
• In the Nickelodeon Latin America series "Skimo," Fito (Daniel Tovar) hears tweeting birds after being clonked with a club during a sequence where he's imagined to be a caveman. Fito also hears birds while in a boxing match with Tavo (Miguel Santa Rita).
• Barney & Friends used bird sound effects on occasion, such as after Barney crashed on a skateboard, or when Johnny Appleseed (played by Michael) got clonked on the head with an apple.
• In the 1998 Argentinian series "Dibu," the title character while in his non-animated form boxes the ears of bully Diego, resulting in birds appearing around his head. When discussing the incident later with his friends, it helps Diego to realize that Dibu is actually a cartoon character in disguise.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: In episode 3, Alan gets circled by imaginary birds after being beaten up due to getting Mistaken for Thief. In spite of the birds being imaginary, Alan tries to shoo them away before he collapses.
• In Kids Incorporated, Kid (Rahsaan Patterson) hears chirping birds and sees flashing stars after he trips when training in the "Masked Mauler" episode. Several seasons later, the same thing happens to Robin (Jennifer-Love Hewitt) when she is hit by a ball while training for a fight.
• In The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder, Cosmo hears chirping birds (and sees them as well) after Wanda drops an anvil on his head. That'll teach him to get sassy.
• The Umbrella Academy: Discussed when Klaus learns that all the times he thought he was having near-death experiences were real deaths.
  Klaus: I just thought I was like one of those wacky Looney Tunes characters; like, hit me on the head with a hammer and I see some cartoon birds. And then, pop! I get back up.
• Hey You! What If...: Birds appear around Zigi's head after a crash landing, appropriately enough in the "...You Could Fly Like a Bird" episode. He also hears tweeting birds when he's clonked by a wrench in the "...You Built a Mega Slide" episode.
• Ellen's Game of Games: When a player hits their opponent's portrait during the Buckin' Blasters game, stars appear around the portrait's head and it switches back and forth between the standard portrait and a dazed expression by the player. The animated version of Ellen also sees circling stars in the demonstration video for the Dizzy Dash game, when she gets dizzied.
• Turkish series Köstebekgiller uses stars when a character gets clonked, such as when Gölge (Ali Nuri Türkoğlu) gets clonked with a frying pan and when Kaglar (Cem Kilic) accidentally hits himself with a pot.
• In "Club Mickey Mouse," the Southeast Asia-based version of The Mickey Mouse Club, stars appear around Wafiy's head in one episode when he's discussing his dizziness. Stars also appear around the head of several extras in another episode when they are tackled by players dressed for American football during a soccer game.
• In the telenovela "Amigos x siempre," Santiago (Christopher Uckermann) hears birds after being punched; Hipólito (Eugenio Bartilotti) also hears them when Santiago pelts him with racquetballs.
• Lie Yan Jian Ni (David Lin) hears tweeting birds a few times throughout Taiwanese action series "The M Riders," such as when he gets punched or blown up.

Music Videos

• Aaron Carter's music video for "That's How I Beat Shaq" uses bird sound effects near the end after Aaron's mother asks him whether he had hit his head.
• A cartoonized version of Cyndi Lauper experiences these when she's thrown from a motorcycle during the animated sequence in "She Bop".
• Eminem — in his "normal" form of Marshall Mathers, rather than his Slim Shady alter ego — sees circling birdies with a side dose of a Cranial Eruption after being thrown from a mechanical bull in the second episode of his animated series "The Slim Shady Show."
• 2-D from Gorillaz sees stars and a few other symbols circling his head twice after being violently shaken in the short "Hey, Our Toys Have Arrived."
• Katy Perry sees stars circling her head after a basketball bonks her in the head in her music video for "Swish Swish."
• The stars variation appears in two music videos directed by the Fantastic Heat Brothers - "Matzoh Ball (Don't Kick It)" by The Macaroons and twice in "I'm a Puck" by The Zambonis.
• Machine Gun Kelly gets circling stars and hearts around his head when he's struck with a knock-out dart in the "Emo Girl" music video.

Pinballs

• The playfield for The Champion Pub has these circling elements regarding K.Os.
• Failing to complete "Window Shopping" in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Stern) shows the defeated turtles with stars circling their heads.

Theatre

• The 2008 version of Broadway Bares, a burlesque parody of Alice in Wonderland, used bird sound effects near the end when Alice (fittingly for this trope, played by Mary Birdsong) accidentally bonked herself with the Queen of Hearts' scepter. Earlier in the show, Alice hit herself repeatedly on the head with a book in frustration and, in a daze, mentioned seeing "bunnies" afterward, which ushered in the first appearance of the White Rabbit.
• In Fuddy Meers, the son Kenny mentions having cartoon birdies flying around his head when recalling abuse by his father, adding a small bit of levity to an otherwise serious scene.
• Used in Hot Shoe Shuffle, a West End musical about five Australian tap-dancing brothers. When the youngest brother, Slide, is hit in the head by a door, he does a vaudeville-style dazed stagger while bird sound effects play. Adam Garcia originated the role, as seen here.
• Used in the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. In the "Grand Old Ivy" number, Finch (played first by Daniel Radcliffe and later by Darren Criss and Nick Jonas) is playing an imaginary football game and runs into a rather large player, which sends him flying in slow motion as bird sound effects play.
• The stage musical version of The Lion King invokes this trope. At the end of "I Just Can't Wait to be King", the actor playing Zazu notices his bird puppet is gone. He asks, "Where is my bird?" before running smack into the wall at the side of the stage. Bird sound effects play as he staggers in a daze momentarily.
• Breathless hears bird chirp sound effects when she is hit by a giant hammer in the 1990 stage show Dick Tracy: Diamond Double-Crossed at Disneyland
• Some Honk productions use bird chirp sound effect when Cat is knocked out by the baseball.

Video Games

• AI: The Somnium Files: "Member B" has these after getting flung against the wall by Date following his arrival at the Kumakura office.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Once an enemy has had their armor bar depleted, they'll be immediately stunned, signified by a spinning star on their head. Likewise, if Ann gets hit with a heavy attack, she'll get stunned with the same effect until she gets out of it.
• XenoGears: This comes with the confused status effect, with circling stars above the affected party members.
• Kingdom Hearts: Whenever Donald Duck and Goofy (or any of your other companions, for that matter) are knocked out, stars circle their heads.
• Metal Gear: Unconscious guards are differentiated from dead or sleeping guards by a little halo of stars merrily orbiting above their heads. As the guard gets closer and closer to waking up, one star at a time will cheerfully ascend heavenward and vanish. A guard with five stars won't be waking up for a while, but a guard with one star could open his eyes any time... (weirdly enough, the MGS games are usually considered serious. Of course, it does fulfill a gameplay function.)
• Onmyōji (2016): When someone is under the Stun effect, they will bend over (and may or may not hold their head as though having a headache) and have stars circling above them.
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails: Once a characters has their armor broken or hit with a stun attack, they receive circling birds.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: When sneaking around the Gerudo Fortress, Link can stun Gerudo guards with either his Hookshot or arrows. If arrows are used, then the Gerudo falls down, and has stars circling her head.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:
    • Auction house patrons see stars (which sound like birds) upon being stunned by Link's bids.
    • Link gets a halo of stars circling around his head after a Hurricane Spin attack.
    • Medli is the only one who has actual birds circling her head, since she is, herself, a bird.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures: The Links can perform a Hurricane Spin after they power up the Four Sword during the level, and gets a circling crown of stars after performing one. You can also your buddies with various items such as hitting them with a slingshot, running into a wall with the Pegasus boots while another player is nearby or using a Charged Attack with the magic hammer with a player nearby. All cases harmlessly stun the player. Shadow Link can also stun players with the Magic Hammer and can also be stunned during the various encounters.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks have Link become dizzy if he uses the Spin Attack too many times because the touch screen controls allows you to execute the attack much faster than in most other games. You'll also get dizzy if you roll too many times.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has lights orbiting Link's head whenever he's knocked down by Blaino, a Mini-Boss in Turtle Rock who soon uses the opportunity to uppercut Link back to the dungeon entrance.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds has this as a Funny Background Event during the ending. After the memorial tablet of Lorule's Triforce explodes, Ravio gets knocked down and his pet bird Sheerow can be seen flying over him in this manner.
• Feeding Frenzy: Little stars spin on top of fishes temporarily paralyzed by jellifishes.
• Hype: The Time Quest: Defeated foes have spinning stars and circles circling above them while they disappear, while a chirping bird sound effect is heard.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: An actual bird circles the character being attacked by Confusion spell animation followed by question marks at the end of the spell animation.
  • Final Fantasy V uses circling chocobos.
• Pokémon has been using this to show the Status Effect Confusion since at least Pokémon Gold and Silver, although the ones there are bird balloons.
  • Circling birdies were part of the Dizzy Punch animation as far back as Pokémon Red and Blue.
  • Pokémon Heartgold and Soulsilver: In the minigames, the birds are replaced by Psyduck.
  • In the Pokéwalker, the player's Pokémon experience this; when knocked out, in the journal, stars circle that Pokémon's head, Blissey for example. For large Pokémon, the stars that circle its head are not in the background, but above the background. Wild Pokémon do not experience this trope; when the HP hits zero, they run away.
  • In the Gen V games during the Poke Transfer minigame, circling stars appear if two Pokémon bump into each other by mistake.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus removes the Confusion status in battles, but in Noble Pokémon boss battles, when a Noble Pokémon is open for a Pokémon to be sent out, when possible, stars circle that Noble Pokémon’s head. The circling stars effect also applies to the player’s Pokémon if they are sent out outside of battle with low HP.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon does this for Confusion, but Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity takes it to the next level; during the intro, the hero hears birds after falling from the sky. In the Adventure Squad games, this is also used storywise; Elder Slowking gives a tutorial on how the Stacking mechanic works, and he has two of the player’s starting Pokémon use an attack on him, resulting in him being knocked into the air and back onto the ground. The second time Slowking gets back up after collapsing, it is treated as if Slowking was confused with circling birds above his head, as he further explains on how Stacking works. After this, he collapses and this time doesn’t get back up, resulting in a Bait-and-Switch moment in which the game fakes a “The End” situation.
  • Pokémon Rumble also has this for Confusion, but Rumble Rush also does this during the Super Bosses; when a Super Boss reaches a certain amount of HP, it will put up a barrier that causes all attack to be unable to drop its HP down. To damage it again, the player must pull a Street Fighter EX and break its guard. When that happens, the Pokémon that was guarding will see stars, leaving it open for any attack and/or combo of attacks the player throws at it.
• Dizziness in Street Fighter II was indicated by the character standing groggily with stars, bells, birds, or Grim Reapers circling their head.
• In Bound by Blades, most of the bosses will produce swirling stars above their heads after receiving enough damage, as a sign that your attack is working.
• Bubble Bobble (not in the NES [or Virtual Console] version): When Bub/Bob dies, after he spins out, he falls on his back and dizzily sees stars above his head while his eyes circle around (no spirals) before poofing away. It's also in the first Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move game, in which the sprite animations are based on Bubble Bobble's.
  • Bubble Symphony: Bub and Bob still fall backwards upon death (even though they spin out differently; their original spinouts being taken by Coro and Kulu) and their eyes circle around but no stars are visible.
  • In Puzzle Bobble 4 / Bust-a-Move 4, when the player loses, Bub/Bob immediately gets dizzy, gains spiral eyes, twirls around, falls forward, and has birds circling above his head. Also the case for Bub in the Game Boy Color exclusive Bust-A-Move Millennium, and Bob in SPACE Puzzle Bobble. (Bob the unlockable character cries instead in BAMM.)
  • Bubble Bobble Plus (WiiWare): They spin out as fast as in the arcade original and end up lying on their back before they poof away. There are no hovering stars. According to this.
• In Team Fortress 2, a player hit with a baseball will be temporarily stunned and treated to a third-person view of their character in a dazed trance, complete with "BONK!" written over their heads with stars circling it.
  • There's also the Halloween version (When they get in contact with the ghost in Harverst and one of the Headless Horseless Horsemann abilities), where instead of "BONK!" it's "YIKES!".
• In the Wii Punch-Out!!, when an opponent is stunned, birds circle around their head. Some fighters will instead have something else related to their nationality/gimmick circling their head- for example, Piston Hondo has circling egg sushi.
  • Unsurprisingly, as it's basically a knockoff of the Punch-Out!! series, Glu's Super KO Fighter 2 uses the trope in the same fashion when a fighter is knocked down. The fighter 15 Cent, a parody of 50 Cent, sees circling dollar signs, for example. Your character sees simple stars. The trope actually factors into gameplay, as the fewer circling items above the character's head, the more likely he is to be able to get back up.
• The Game Over screen of Ape Escape has Spike lying flat on his back with stars circling his head.
• Happens in Monster Hunter to monsters if they get smacked in the head with a blunt weapon enough times, or if they get hit with a flash bomb. Can also happen to the hunters if they get hit with certain attacks, or receive too many hits within a short span of time (In which case the number of stars deonotes how much time is remaining in the stun).
• In the Tales Series, such as in Tales of Symphonia, circling birdies denote being stunned, which can happen to pretty much anyone who suffers enough abuse in a short period of time, or if they get smacked upside the head with a Pow Hammer.
• Any enemy stunned by Commander Keen's Neural Stunner in Keen 4, 5, and 6 will see stars around its head — if you don't, that means the stunning is only temporary. Fortunately, this applies to Keen himself if he gets stunned by his own fire in 6.
• The final frame of Mario/Jumpman's death animation in most versions of the original Donkey Kong includes a plain white halo. It was likely intended as this but limited by hardware.
• In the first two Donkey Kong Country games, Diddy will get a ring of stars over his head if you lose a life while playing as him. In Donkey Kong Country Returns, enemies you stun with the peanut popgun/ground pound get an actual birdie circle.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Paper Mario 64: When Tutankoopa attempts to attack Mario with a spell, it backfires and ends up hitting him instead, stunning him with spinning stars.
  • Most of the Mario Party games feature this with birds if a character is stunned by something like dangerous areas or hazards on the game board. An example is the minigame Dizzy Rotisserie in Mario Party 6, which has all characters be freed from rapidly-spinning cages, remaining dizzy as a result and having stars orbiting their heads. They have to move into the dungeon's exit in 30 seconds or less (the dizziness alters the control scheme, so this is easier said than done), or else the Bowser statues will begin exhaling fire while rotating, roasting whoever remains.
  • In Wario World, when an enemy or boss that Wario can use a Mad Move on is punched enough (or, in the case of some enemies and bosses, if a specific method is done correctly, such as doing a Ground Pound on them), they'll become dazed and birds will circle around their head. Now Wario is able to pick them up and use a Mad Move on them, though he has to do this before the enemy or boss recovers after a certain time. Of course, some bosses are immune to being dazed (such as Dual Dragon, as punching one of its heads enough times would simply leave it open to the other's fire breath attack, and Red Brief J, who cannot be hurt by Wario's punches at all), and Wario can also be dazed if he is hit by a powerful attack that deals a lot of damage, such as a shockwave.
  • Boom-Boom in New Super Mario Bros. U and onwards has circling stars in his head.
  • In both Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World circling stars appear over Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach and Rosalina (the latter three appear in 3D World) if they die.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Any character stunned by a broken shield or reflector, exploded Deku Nut, Mewtwo's Disable move, Weavile's False Swipe, Wario's Wario Waft, or Luigi's Negative Zone will be rendered immobile and a tweeting sound effect is heard. Button Mashing may get the player out of the "stunned" effect sooner.
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Stunned characters see circling stars. Additionally, Gogoat sees stars if it crashes into a wall.
• Falling from great heights causes this (and loss of a hit point) in The Lost Vikings. If you are in the unfortunate situation of already having only one hit point, the poor viking hitting the ground will splash to tiny pieces and die.
  • Also occurs if Eric tries to ram a wall that DOESN'T break on impact.
• Each Darkstalkers character has a different circling something when dizzy. Felicia has white cats, for example. Some, like Morrigan, have little versions of themselves.
• Invoked in BioShock 2. If you club a splicer while guarding a Little Sister, she comments "Daddy's makin' you see stars 'n' birdies!"
• Stunning in RuneScape causes stars to appear with bird sounds.
• Metroid: Samus Returns: Whenever Samus uses a melee counter on an enemy, they will be stunned and have stars spin around them.
• A character in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 whose guard has been broken will stand there, dazed and with yellow birds circling over his or her head.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In one cutscene of Sonic Unleashed, as Chip explains on how he lost his memory, when he said "And then nothing," he sees stars and tiny versions of himself circling his head (Wii version only, for they are replaced with normal stars in all other versions), as seen here. In another cutscene, Eggman sees stars after a kid throws a rock at Eggman's head, as seen here.
  • Any time a character in Sonic the Fighters is knocked onto their back, they briefly see circling stars.
  • In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Knuckles gets circling... something orangey-yellow when he starts coming to after being briefly knocked out during a cutscene in Hidden Palace Zone. Due to graphical limitations and the size of the circling objects, they're hard to identify, although they are most likely birds or abstract shapes.
• Creature World also has Seeing Stars Head Bonk, and Seeing Birds Head Bonk, in which users see stars, or birds when they wear the hat. There is also a hat in which users have hearts in their eyes and hearts circling the user's head.
• Bomberman games sometime feature this with birds or stars when players or enemies are stunned. In Bomberman Blast, if a player is stunned, the tweeting of birds can be heard from the Wii Remote Speaker.
• MapleStory has this trope; players and enemies that are dazed get a halo of circling mushrooms. This happens after taking damage by a certain enemy and so on.
• Toonstruck features circling stars at one point. And you need to take these as an item.
• The Neverhood: While they're not shown, falling to the bottom of the drained lake for the first time will result in a cutscene of Klaymen being stunned, which is accompanied by typical "birdies" sounds.
• Eastern Exorcist have a halo of silver stars popping up whenever you inflict enough hits to stun enemies, which works even on bosses. They'll be disoriented for a few seconds, allowing you to spam a few more hits before they recover.
• In Epic Mickey, Mickey sees Gremlins after getting slammed in the face while freeing one from a safe. The gremlin then flies over to him, takes a moment to glance between Mickey and the circling versions of himself, then comments on what a good likeness they are.
• World Heroes has this trope with stars, birds, or angels circling a dazed fighter's head. (Click on this link to go to the sample combos, in which most fighters were dazed by combos.)
• Spyro the Dragon, in the original trilogy at least, sees stars whenever he's hit. Also, in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy Version of Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Spyro's friends Sheila, Sgt Byrd, Bentley and Agent 9 also see stars whenever they are hit.
• Sly Cooper: Whenever you knock out a guard, stars can be seen circling around them.
• Dirk from Dragon's Lair II has this trope, but only consists of circling hearts in one death scene... no, two, in Level 3, and circling stars in another death scene in this longplay.
• Wii Party features numerous ways to inflict this trope (stars with bird sound effects) upon your Miis, as this montage demonstrates.
  • Wii Play and Wii Play: Motion also uses the stars to the duck in Wii Play and the Mii you selected in Wii Play Motion's minigame Cone Zone.
• In Kirby Mass Attack, when Kirby is stunned, a bird circles Kirby's head. World 2's boss gets circling stars.
• In Brain Dead 13, if you defeat Vivi, a bat circles Vivi's head.
• Power Instinct has this starting with the first game, but one of the stuns are flying hearts. The second game takes this to the next level with circling objects, such as people, sushi plates, chicks, and fish.
• So you are playing Fighter's History, and you fight an opponent. However, if you hit a weak spot multiple times and when a character is stunned, this game has circling objects that differ from each character, similar to Darkstalkers. Take Liu Feilin for example. When Feilin is stunned, she sees circling fairies. For another example, Liu Yungmie sees circling unicorns when she is stunned.
• Happens often in the Raving Rabbids series after they get hit on the head with an object.
• In Crusader of Centy, the first boss, the Big Bad Wolf, attacks by hitting himself on the head with a hammer, causing stars and birds to circle his head. He then uses these objects to damage you.
• In Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf, Ralph gets stars circling over his head when running into a wall. And in one instance, Daffy Duck gets them too.
• In World of Warcraft, a character can get "dazed" if a monster hits him from behind, resulting in a 50% reduction to his movement speed for 3-4 seconds. While he's dazed, an animation of swirling stars appears over his head.
• The ending of Super Tanooki Skin 2D has Mario seeing stars.
• In Spelunky, stars (or little birds in the remake) circling over a lying character indicate that they are simply stunned rather than killed.
• Justin Bieber, Robert Pattinson, Nicki Minaj, Pitbull and the other various celebrities featured in the online boxing game "The Brawl" experience the stars version of this trope when they take enough abuse.
• Quik the Thunder Rabbit has circling birdies when the player character suffers Collision Damage.
• True to its desert theme, in Tiny and Big when Tiny gets hit by a boulder thrown by Big without dying (or is stunned for, ahem, other reasons), a set of small rocks circle around his head.
• Wii Sports:
  • Wii Sports Resort has Cycling, a bike sport. One of the features of this sport is that it has a stamina system. If a Mii's stamina runs out, he/she stops in his/her tracks with stars circling his/her head.
  • Wii Sports Club has the Boxing sport from the original Wii Sports. One of the differences, though, is the inclusion of a stun system in which after a Mii's HP goes down to a certain point, he/she is stunned and sees stars, leaving him/her unable to punch, though he/she can still dodge.
• In Little King's Story, you can cause a couple of bosses to get hurt in ways that induce Circling Birdies And Stars while they're stunned. If the Onii King is in the throes of a tantrum when an Onii has thrown something to him for him to throw, he won't catch it, and be stunned. If you cut a totem pole while the Owl Hag is standing on it, she'll fall and be stunned.
• Iosa the Invincible from Iji has lights orbiting her head when stunned. She sees less and less as she gets close to recovering.
• This occurs a couple times in Injustice: Gods Among Us, when an opponent is caught in Wonder Woman's lasso of truth or when Zatanna puts her opponent in a hypnosis stars will circle their heads.
• In one version of Battle Chess, Rook takes Knight and Bishop takes Knight both involve head trauma for the knight, complete with "cuckoo" sound effect.
• Pikmin:
  • Pikmin (2001): Olimar has circling stars after he crash lands.
  • In the second Pikmin short movie, "Treasure in a Bottle", the Yellow Pikmin's plan is to use a Bomb Rock to free the Red Pikmin trapped in the bottle. It works at first, but the Red Pikmin falls back into the bottle. When the three Pikmin go to the bottle, the Red Pikmin that was stuck is now dazed and has circling stars around its head.
• In Chip Chan Kick, stars will circle over stunned enemies while a twittering sound effect plays.
• In a cutscene in Rita James and the Race to Shangri La a Yeti which gets clonked by a low-hanging stalactite sees light flashes and spirals.
• The Besmirched Noble's Son (with his default name being Sonny in the Switch version) in Miitopia finds himself dizzy and circled by some stars after taking a beating from goblins in Easin Hills.
• Animal Crossing:
  • Animal Crossing: City Folk uses this trope when you go to the city and enter Katrina's Fortune Shop. No matter what you ask her, Katrina will drop an anvil or wash pail on your character's head and your character will hear tweeting birds and see stars for a few seconds.
  • Animal Crossing: Wild World onwards has the scorpion and the tarantula who can and will pursue you if you come near them with your net out, and if you miss or do not get away quickly enough, your character will see stars and then pass out.
• Stunned angels and demons in both Bayonetta games have stylistic pentagrams circling above them when they are stunned.
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when a Nazi guard is knocked out during a fist fight, swastika-shaped stars appear over his head. Even in the German version, which otherwise went with No Swastikas.
• In the video game version of Shrek 2, some enemies and bosses can be dazed, with birds circling above them. This can also happen to teammates who have their HP reach zero in battle.
• In LEGOLAND, this occurs to two different characters when they hit their heads in the intro; JP sees circling bricks and wrenches while Bob sees circling flowers and leaves.
• In Farmcraft a chicken which gets hit on the head by a falling tractor part sees tiny chickens.
• In XCOM 2, a disoriented character has curved lines circling their head.
• In the PaRappa the Rapper related game Um Jammer Lammy, this occurs to Lammy when she slips on a banana peel before dying and going to Hell. This, however, only occurs in the Japan and PAL versions; in the USA version, this trope doesn't happen; instead, Lammy gets her belt snagged on the shop door and flung back to the previous stages of the game before ending up on an island, causing an Impact Silhouette.
• Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom shows orbiting birds for the "stunned" status effect (usually inflicted on enemies via Ground Pound, but a few enemies can also stun the player character).
• Creatures from the Creatures game series can fall unconscious and have stars circling on top of their head. If you don't try to help it, the creature will die.
• In Telepath RPG, when you beat Cerzak in battle, rather than fading away in purple like everyone else, he'll fall over with stars circling over his head until you win the battle, this is the only time in the series that a character does not die when out of HP.
• The teacher from The Classroom 1 has circling stars when hit by a grenade launched into the classroom.
• In The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, Bugs sees stars whenever he gets hit, which prevents him from using his hammer for a few seconds.
• In Dink Smallwood mod Lost Forest Romp Dink sees birds after being given a drink containing powdered slayer claw.
• Whiplash: The enemies will have stars floating around their heads when they are stunned.
• FTL: Faster Than Light uses two circling stars to indicate that a character has been stunned.
• The first Chibi-Robo! has instances where Chibi Robo can become dazed, either through spinning on the control stick enough times or being bonked by a washpan after charging, in which case Chibi Robo sees pixelated birds. In the latter case, Telly Vision will count how many times the washpan has been dropped.
  • Also in the first game, one instance in which Telly's attempt at singing "Teriyaki Blues" can get interrupted is when sitting down to watch Telly sing. In this case, right before Telly can even sing, the same washpan falls down and bonks Telly, causing him to see pixelated birds and look around. After this, he leaves, but not before giving Chibi Robo some Happy Points for his time.
• Mr. Bean: Around the World: Most of the time, when Mrs. Wicket catches Mr. Bean, she hits him on the head with a ruler, causing him to see stars.
• It had little effect on gameplay, but any head-on car crash in Road Rash would leave your biker struggling with twinkling stars as they got back to their feet.
• In Doom Eternal, the way to defeat the Marauder is to wait for its eyes to flash green, then shoot it, which stuns it and leaves it open to further attack. While stunned, circling stars appear around its head along with a sound effect. The same applies to the Final Boss of the DLC expansion "The Ancient Gods: Part 2".
• In the Mega Man Star Force games, both Mega Man and enemies will have birds circle around their heads when confused by an attack.
• The King of Fighters averts this by simply showing the character standing groggily after being stunned for taking too much punishment.
• In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: The Clash of Ragnarok's Eight Fists^note Japanese title: Shijou Saikyou no Deshi Kenichi: Gekitou! Ragnarok Hachi Kengou, characters will have little stars circling above their heads when hit by an attack that breaks an environmental object, provided they stand close enough to that object.
• The icon for the Stunned status effect in Deep Rock Galactic is represented by circling stars.
• Duo, the owl mascot for Duo Lingo gets flashing stars in some of the game animations when he is dizzied, such as the completion screen when he gets spun around by Vikram.
• Stunned enemies in Sorcery School have little stars.

Web Animation

• In The Annoying Orange episode "The Amnesiac Orange", Orange has stars circling his head after getting an Easy Amnesia. Then some cartoon birds show up and complain about the stars stealing their job. At the end, Midget Apple also gets Easy Amnesia, complete with the same stars. Then the birds show up again and start beating up the stars.
• In the video "Cucumbers" by Weebl, a cucumber attacked by a panda has stars circling its head.
• The Annoying Orange: Orange gets hit on the head by Cantaloupe, and has stars flying around his head. Then two cartoon-like birdies turn up complaining that the stars are stealing their jobs. Later, Midget Apple gets hit on the head as well, and the stars turn up again. But this time, the birds get really angry and start beating up the stars.
• Happens to Strong Bad at the end of the Homestar Runner toon "Marshmallow's Last Stand" as a result of him being tripped by Homestar for ripping up the star on his shirt after a fight. Homestar then takes one of the stars circling Strong Bad's head and places it on his own shirt. Earlier in the toon, Strong Bad sees stars after Homestar body slams him.
• RWBY:
  • In the "Yellow" trailer, when Yang knocks Junior across the room with a punch, he has hearts circling his head.
  • In the episode "Players and Pieces" when Jaune collides with Ruby, knocking her against a tree. However, wolves are used instead of birds (complete with barking sounds).
  • RWBY Chibi eventually used actual birds. Crows, to be precise, as it was the effect of Qrow punching Cardin silly.
• TF2 Analysis:
  • In "Mission Unpossible", after falling down a shaft and leaving an Impact Silhouette in the floor, a stunned ILoveKimPossibleAlot sees circling... Kim Possibles.
  • Twice in "Double Rainbow":
    • Firebrand, after crashing through a wall and his bubble forcefield fails him, see circling stars and lets out a Non Sequitur, *Thud*.
    • Jasper, running away from Twink in the desert, trips and knocks himself out, with three little Twinks then circling his head.
• WWE Slam City uses the stars version on occasion. CM Punk, for example, see circling stars during his battle with The Miz.

Webcomics

• Forestdale: As a consequence of having a head on collision with one another during a baseball game, Dallas and Adam are left laying dazed in the grass with some pretty birds circling around their heads.
• Girl Genius:
  • One strip shows Mad Scientist Gil seeing circling airships.
  • Lady Vrin gets to see stars.
  • Mini-Clanks have circling cogs.
  • Maxim gets circling hats.
• Kiwi Blitz: This briefly happens to Steffi after she gets shot multiple times in the head. Fortunately, her Powered Armor helmet protects her, but the impact still leaves her in a daze and causes several circling kiwi birds to appear around her head.
• In a Numbskulls strip, Ed finds that he doesn't have a star for the top of his Christmas tree, so the Numbskulls send him outside to fall over and hit his head. Sure enough, stars start dancing around his head; however, one of them is frozen solid by the cold, allowing him to pluck it out of the sky and stick it on the three.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Circling Stars are not uncommon early on.
  • Lien threatens to hit Qarr the imp so hard he would see demonic circling birdies.
  • In "She Didn't Miss", a lizardfolk bounty hunter named Gannji gets three circling pterosaurs after getting hit by a power word: stun from Vaarsuvius.
  • In "Conditional Diagnosis", Elan, trying to work out if Roy has been stunned, staggered, dazed, or dazzled, observes that "it's one of the swoopy-star conditions, not one of the swirly-eye ones".
• Penny and Aggie:
  • When Brandi knocks her out, Xena gets circling Church of Happyology logos.
  • Also happens to Nick; he gets circling stars when a bookself falls on him.
• In The Adventures of Shan Shan, after running into the gate.
• Happens to Princess Rosalina in one segment of The Three Little Princesses after her kart crash-lands in the castle, as this video shows.
• In Rusty and Co., Rusty gets the stars after falling into an underground tunnel.
• Played with on Erfworld, using Twitter icons as the circling birdies.
• In the Doctor Whooves webcomic, the Doctor experiences circling TARDIS after giving a psychic headbutt to Lyra, while Lyra experiences circling harps after the same headbutt.
  The Doctor: Again, never again. Especially a unicorn. Too dangerous!
• Star Mares has a pair of near-identical twin sisters who both have a trio of stars as their cutie marks. They joined the Imperial Navy because they thought that meant they were supposed to see the stars. Turns out that wasn't quite what destiny had in mind.
• In El Goonish Shive, Gracemander gets circling Grace-A-Birdies after a Critical Hit.
• Tales from Somewhere: In The Legend, "One More Beer", the character that Morten had tossed out of the window in the last strip now has small yellow stars circling their head.

Web Original

• Danny Casale of Danny's Studio sees stars with bird sound effects when he finds himself in an Angry Birds parody in this video.
• In this episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd, Bugs Bunny drops an anvil on James Rolfe's head, and James sees Tweety Birds around his head and swats them away in anger.
• Smosh:
  • A parody called "Pokémon In Real Life" starring Anthony. This part has a scene of Anthony noticing Jigglypuff hiding in a bush after being put to sleep by the song. Anthony then finds a brick and yells, "TAKE THIS!!!" Then, he throws the brick at said bush and it hits Jigglypuff in the head, and Jigglypuff staggers in a daze as it hears bird sound effects, and Anthony has the chance to engage battle with Jigglypuff.
  • Anthony himself also experiences this trope in his aptly named video "Punch myself in the face so hard I see birds." In true cartoon fashion, Anthony tries to shoo away the birds circling his head after he's hit.
• DeviantArt user ~Nachturnal once created a story called "Spin", where a female Whimsicott, who played pranks on shiny Pokémon because she was jealous, tries to make a Spinda dizzy, but only made herself dizzy. Cue circling stars around Whimsicott's head. According to the story, "it took a while for Whimsicott to stop seeing stars."
• The YouTube comedy short "The Perfect Spot" uses circling stars at the end when one of the actors crashes headfirst into a tree. Bird sounds also are used throughout the video as the two guys undergo various slapstic antics.
• At a couple points in The Cartoon Man saga, Roy and Simon get hit in the head hard enough that stars circle their heads, accompanied by the sound of birds tweeting.
• Happens several times to the lads in Adsapaps' "Cartoon Violence" short, each time using circling stars with the sound effect of birds. Adam falls victim twice, once after being punched and once after being hit with a Frying Pan of Doom. Ollie also gets them, along with a Cranial Eruption, after Adam bonks him with a hammer.
• Footballer Billy Wingrove of the F 2 Freestylers sees circling stars during a video in which the guys are trying to score penalty kicks while dizzy.
• YouTube stars Kian Lawley and JC Caylen used the stars version on themselves in the thumbnail for the video in which they attempt the dizzy challenge.
• In a video with SpongeBob in the real world, a kid who says that SpongeBob is not real sees SpongeBob, and runs into the school hall and runs straight into a wall and falls to the ground. He sees circling SpongeBobs circling his head, laughing.
• In this episode of Death Battle, Daxter sees birds when him and Jak are blasted by Ratchet blasts them with a blaster he used to suck them up.
• At the end of the video, Ice Cream and Guacamole, the main character gets tired from dancing an falls to the ground. He then sits up to see Ice Cream and Guacamole circling his head.
• Both Ego the Cholo YouTube Eric Ochoa aka SUPE Reee GO) and bodybuilder C.T. Fletcher hear birds in this Street Fighter parody.
• In a nod to the original film, Jeremy Lin sees circling Psyducks following a crash landing in Ryan Higa's Space Jam parody "Space Jam 3: Anime Edition."
• YouTube star Daniel El Travieso sees birds circling his head after losing a boxing match in this video.
• Miguel Angel's animations of Fernanfloo has the YouTube star experiencing this trope at times.
  • In Fernanfloo Conquistando Chicas en la Playa de GTA 5, he sees circling stars, moons and planets after fainting.
  • In Pewdiepie and Fernanfloo Ends with Christmas, he gets thrown from a mechanical bull, leaving him hearing birds as his eyes spin.
• Jacksepticeye animations sometimes have circling eyeballs around Jack's head.
• Movie Man Mark (Mark Ricci) gets the stars variety with tweeting bird sounds when he runs into a post in a caveman sketch.
• Luccas Neto and his friends frequently experience this trope in his YouTube videos. Luccas often will acknowledge the animated birds flying around his head after he gets clonked.
• Guava Juice uses the bird sound effect at times in his vides, and he also sees circling stars after a hard fall in this video. In a video where he takes viewers' dares, he take an anvil to the head and ends up with a case of circling stars and birds.
• YouTube star Caio Faria sees both stars and birds when a clonk on the head causes him to lose his memory in this video. He sees them again when he gets the second clonk to restore his memory.
• YouTube star Marlin Ramsey Chan gets the stars version after falling off a trampoline in this episode of his Mar Mar Land series.
• The Russian cosplay YouTube channel Watch Me uses this in numerous videos, most frequently the stars version with bird sound effects. Occasionally other objects appear, including birds or sometimes the cast members' visions of themselves circling their heads. Its sister channel, the more reality-based "We Are Family," typically uses only the bird sound effects, usually after someone faints, though it occasionally uses circling stars as well.
• Luí (Luigi Calagna) sees the circling stars version after taking a fall while doing a hula-hoop challenge in this video from Me Contro Te.
• Gato Galactico (Ronaldo de Azevedo) frequently experiences this trope in his videos.
  • He sees circling stars and planets after a fall in this video.
  • In this video, an energy ball to the head causes both circling stars and Easy Amnesia.
  • A gas attack in this video causes him to hear birds and faint.
  • He sees stars and hears chirping birds in this video after getting knocked around by his escaping friends.
  • He sees circling stars and birds in this video as he gets dizzy while watching Toshi run in circles around him.
• The enigmatic and ubiquitous Ukrainian "Troom Troom" channels frequently use this trope for the guys and girls with their videos after they suffer a fall or take a hit, both with bird sound effects and at times animated stars and birds. The character "Chad" in the Woo Hoo videos is particularly prone to this trope, usually ending up with a case of circling stars, birds or other objects consistent with the theme of the video at least once with each appearance.
• PeanutButterGamer (Austin Hargrave) hears tweeting birds after hitting himself with a stop sign in this video.
• Boxer Ryan Garcia used tweeting bird sound effects in his analysis of his fight with Romero Duno to describe a moment where his opponent was dazed; he also gave Duno a dose of circling stars in the video's thumbnail. He did to same to Logan Paul in the thumbnail of a video where he gave the social media star boxing tips.
• Italian YouTube stars Cap e Kazu sometimes use the circling stars version when one of them faints.
• YouTube star Kristopher London sees circling stars and gets cartoon-style rolling eyes to indicate his dizziness after trying to blow out candles in this 100 Thieves video.
• Miko from Show Piedra Papel o Tijera sometimes hears chirping birds after an injury, such as when he falls off a ladder or out of a tree.
• The guys of the No Deo Hero (formerly No Deo Duo) channel, especially Primal Instinks, frequently experience this trope in their cartoon-style, slapstick sketches. In the Mouse Trap Madness sketch, for example, Primal repeatedly gets both the birds and stars varieties (and, at one point, circling mice) throughout the sketch as his attempts to catch an invasive rodent backfire.
• YouTube comedian Rad Dad sometimes hears chirping birds after his many falls, bonks and other comic mishaps. In this clip, for example, a series of Rake Take incidents followed by walking into a post leaves him on the ground, hearing birds and muttering about "pretty stars."
• Markiplier gets the circling stars version (with bird sound effects) while in a Punch-Out!! parody during his adventures.
• During Scruffy’s video on Pikmin 3’s Sound Effect Trivia, during the section about clarity, he brings up an example about the bird-like sound that plays when a Skutterchuck is hit while carrying a rock. Scruffy goes on to mention that sound’s meaning, with the camera panning down to an animation of a dazed Skutterchuck seeing circling Scornets above it.
  Scruffy: You know, that sound when a character has birds around their head because they’re dizzy. That sound comes from cartoons, and it’s not nearly as realistic as Pikmin 3's environment or soundscape, but it enhances the idea that the Skutterchuck is dazed, and this is your chance to defeat it. That, for me, is "cartoonish" clarity.
• Topper Guild experiences the trope occasionally in his videos. In this video, a ring of birds appear around his head when he gets flipped by a young assailant.
• Brazilian YouTuber Mateus Pain (painzeiro) sees a ring of birds after getting clonked by Thor's hammer in this video showcasing the disadvantages of superpowers. In another video, he sees circling images of Baby Shark around his head after a fall, having previously been pestered by his niece with the song nonstop.
• Circling stars appear around Ben Azelart's head denoting his dizziness after he rolls down a hill in this video.
• The hapless Don Day gets the stars version every so often in the webseries "Mis Pequeños Actors," such as this video where a clonk by a baseball results in a case of Easy Amnesia.
• Italian YouTubers Ninna e Matti often add stars and birds around the heads of someone who has taken a tumble in one of their videos (usually Matti but occasionally Ninna or one of the guest stars). Matti gets them after a hard punch knocks him down in this video, for example
• Epic Rap Battles of History: In "Romeo and Juliet vs. Bonnie and Clyde," Clyde Barrow invokes the trope via clever wordplay when he threatens that "If these lovers cross me, they're gonna end up seeing stars!"
• Stromedy sees stars while fainting in this video.

Western Animation

• The 9th Life of Sherman Phelps: At the end of the episode "Cloak & Stagger", Ronald gets run over by the spy's car. When the spy leaves, Ronald has a wrench, a nut, and a bolt circling his head. The tools fall on his head and knock him out.
• Frequently happens in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and was invoked in the episode "Tails Prevails" by Tails, who is at a junkyard searching for items to be used a gift for Sonic. After an unstable pile of junk falls on his head, the resulting circling birdies prompt Tails to remark that he needs to add wings to Sonic's gift.
• In Aladdin: The Series, in the episode "Never Say Nefir", flying rhinoceroses circle Aladdin's head after he's hit with a tranquilizer dart.
• Played with in the American Dad! episode "Home Adrone". Stan tosses a young man from a moving vehicle during a Chinese New Year parade, and after rolling down the street, the man sits up with tweeting birds, stars and other assorted objects circling around his head. The shot then zooms out to reveal the a boy is spinning a mobile above the man's head and blowing a whistle to make the bird sounds.
• The title character of American Dragon: Jake Long experiences this frequently. In one instance, he sees tiny versions of his dream girl Rose running around his head after being knocked silly by a locker door. Jake's buddy Spud sees circling fish in another episode after a chair the throws boomerangs back on him.
• In Animal Mechanicals, whenever hit by something, Komodo always lands with circling tools around his head. In the reboot, Island Owl circles everyone's head if one gets dizzy.
• In the Back at the Barnyard episode "Clan of the Cave Cow", a cave cow (mistaken for Otis) whacks Abby on the head with a club. Baby chicks circle around her head as she says "I'm a pretty ballerina" before collapsing to the floor.
• In the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Emperor Joker", after Jokermite hits Batmite over the head, Batmite sees bats circling his head. Later, after Batmite knocks out Jokermite, the latter sees flying joker fish circling his head.
• Ben Tennyson gets the circling stars version in the Ben 10 (2016) reboot when sucked into the cartoon world of Xingo after getting inflated, flying around as he deflates and crash landing in the episode "And Xingo Was His Name-O." One of Ben's alien alter-egos also sees circling stars when facing off against Xingo in an earlier episode.
• In "Betty Boop's Halloween Party" a party guest is hit in the head by an apple on a string and sees one big star, while a gatecrasher sees multiple stars when devil ghosts hit him with their pitchforks.
• In Beverly Hills Teens, Bianca sees circling birdies after hitting her head on a tree and falling. Pierce also gets circling birdies after a fall, and they both suffer a case of Identity Amnesia. In other episodes, both Gig and Wilshire experiences the circling stars version of the trope.
• In The Brothers Grunt, the eponymous brothers will sometimes have this trope happen to them with circling toilets.
• When Captain Caveman from Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels gets hit on the head he'll often see pterodactyls circling around his head.
• The Care Bears series used this trope frequently, especially in the Nelvana episodes. Beastly, Grumpy Bear, Braveheart Lion and Champ Bear were its most frequent victims, but most of the bears and Care Bear Cousins experienced it at one point, as did one of the kids the bears were trying to help. The show usually used stars but sometimes threw in other circling objects, most notably when No Heart saw circling bats after being knocked out by Grumpy.
• ChalkZone: This happens to Snap in "Rapunzel" when Snap saves Queen Rapsheeba from getting crushed by the castle prop.
• In Class of 3000, the episode "Love Is In The Hair... Net" has Madison get door slammed in the face. She falls to the ground with unicorns circling her head.
• The Cleveland Show: In "Frapp Attack", Cleveland Jr. remarks that he'd rather get hit with a mallet than attend Duke. He proceeds to hit himself, and as birds circle his head, he adds that his preferred sport is bird-watching.
• On the Classic Disney Short "Pluto's Fledgling", Pluto is helping a baby bird who's learning how to fly. There's a Running Gag of Pluto falling off a tree, down a roof and onto the ground, seeing circling birds afterwards. When it happens at the end, the last bird is the fledgling, finally able to fly.
• Dad'X: Princess and Cruck help Dad'X get his beard unstuck from the toy conveyor belt. He flies backwards onto Cruck, causing both of them to have circling stars around their aching heads. Princess gets similarly dizzy due to the strong magnetic waves present in Foudror's base.
• Dragon Booster: The title character comedically falls down a pipe, and when he hits the ground, a bunch of curvy stars — his personal emblem — circle his head.
• On Dragon Tales, Zak gets spinning stars around his head around the beginning of "Calling Dr. Zak" after he and Wheezie shoot out of their knuckerhole really fast and land right on their bottom.
• Used several times in The Dreamstone:
  • Played with in the pilot episode when Sgt Blob tells Frizz and Nug to sneak towards the Dream Maker's tower and whistle him when the coast is clear. Frizz and Nug dart forward and run into a wall, causing whistling birds to circle their heads. Blob overhears and, assuming it's the signal, charges into them.
  • Done again in "Hod" by Rufus and Amberley in one of their rare Amusing Injuries throughout the series.
• In Dudley Do-Right episode "Flicker Rock", Snidely Whiplash pushes a big rock down on Dudley's head with no effect of killing him, but causes Dudley to deal the episode of seeing things like birds and trains that aren't there.
• In the Earthworm Jim episode "Queen What's Her Name" after Princess Whatshername throws Queen Slugforabutt against a wall, the queen sees little winged Earthworm Jims circling her head.
• Done all the time in Ed, Edd n Eddy, but was invoked in "The Luck of the Ed", when Ed was trying to recount what happened when he lost Eddy's magazines:
  Ed: Then I hit my head on that branch—
  (Ed smacks into a tree branch, then walks around to the other side of the tree)
  Ed: Nope. Sorry. It was this one.
  (Ed smacks his head on the other tree branch.)
  Ed: Then I gazed at the stars...
  • Eddy's Brother has circling stars when he's defeated.
  • A Cartoon Network channel bumper/ident involved the Eds running at and into each other. As they fall down, a star appears above each one of their heads, and Ed remarks, "I see stars..."
• CM Punk (or, more accurately, CM Punk Rock) hears birds and sees stars after Barney knocks him headfirst into a turnbuckle in "The Flintstones and WWE: Stone Age Smackdown."
• In the pilot for The Fairly OddParents!, Vicky gets the stars version after Cosmo and Wanda drop a giant cherry on her. In a later Oh Yeah! Cartoons short, Timmy gets them after Cosmo accidentally drops a carousel on him.
• In the Family Guy episode "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing", Peter predicts a grand piano will fall on his head. About a minute later, it happens. Peter sees stars when this happens.
  Peter: If you get a fortune cookie, don't open it!
• On Futurama, the sign in front of The HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots has birds circling above it.
  • In the Futurama Holiday Spectacular, Fry sees spinning Christmas, er, Xmas ornaments after Robot Santa clubs him with a candy cane.
• "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi" uses the stars version very frequently. Ami, Yumi, and Kaz are the most frequent victims since they are the two girls and a guy.
  • In the final episode, Yumi and Kaz sees swirling yellow stars after Ami sees a neutral face with a man.
  • In the beginning of second act of the episode "The Oddyguard", Ami and Yumi gets terrified while sees spinning stars when this happens.
  • Done two times in "Visiting Hours", when being kicked up, Yumi gets the stars version while Ami sees a few symbols when this happens.
  • In the second act of the episode "Neat Freak", Ami sends Yumi and Kaz flying when she yells "unacceptable". Yumi and Kaz sees both yellow and light purple stars when this happens.
  • The third act of the episode "Record Breakers" uses the swollen bees version very frequently. He asks throwing the cotton candy off, Yumi does gymnastics while being hit with a cotton candy in the face while bees being swollen on Yumi. Yumi is being hit with guitars and sees stars above his head.
  • Ami and Yumi gets the colored stars version, when being swinged in a rope in the episode "Camping Caper". One of the main characters sees spinning stars when being swinged in a rope.
• The House of Mouse short "Donald's Goofy World" has Donald being knocked out with tiny Goofy heads going "A-hyuck!" circling over him. When he regains consciousness, he kicks them away.
• At the beginning of the 1963 Disney TV special Inside Outer Space, Professor Von Drake falls off his high seat wiole stargazing from his observatory and lands on the floor, getting stars over his head.
  Von Drake: I don't know about you, but I just saw stars I've never seen before!

• Parodied in the short Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou. After Lou and Jenkins have their Crash-Into Hello, one of the overly-friendly bluebirds who had been hounding Lou circles her head before flying off.
• Used fairly frequently in Kick Buttowski, usually with stars or just a plain circling line. The hard-luck Kick is the most frequent victim. In the episode "Free Gunther," he experiences it about a dozen times in a row while sustaining repeated blows from Magnuson's hammer.
• In Kid vs. Kat, this trope was experience in some episodes; however, Kat (aka Mr. Kat) has experienced this in some episodes being the only ones with Kat with the trope; for example, in Never Cry Sheep, when Coop slams a trash can on Kat, Kat has stars circling his head.
• Kuu Kuu Harajuku: "Multi Tasking" has Baby roller skating during rehearsal. She winds up slamming into the rest of the girls, causing them to see stars for a brief moment.
• Let's Go Luna!: In "You Can't Move the Moon", when Luna knocks out Jiro during the sumo wrestling match, the latter gets circling stars around his head for a few seconds.
• It is definitely easier to list those Looney Tunes shorts that don't use this trope. Among those that do:
  • In "Daffy Goes Hollywood", Daffy Duck tries to get past a studio guard in order to see movie stars. At the end, the guard decides to help him see the stars — by hitting Daffy over the head with his nightstick. Daffy then calls the "stars" by name: "There's Alexis Smith, and Dorothy Lamour (a star in a sarong!)... Sufferin' succotash! It's Ann Sheridan!" and even gives one a kiss.
  • In "Rabbit Hood", Bugs Bunny tricks the Sheriff of Nottingham by telling him that the king is coming, and then hitting him over the head when he turns and bows. The Sheriff then sees little kings walking around his head, leading to the classic line, "Odds-fish, the very air abounds in kings."
  • The Road Runner short "Going! Going! Gosh!" has Wile E. Coyote getting run over by a truck, then having little miniature trucks circling his head in place of birds or stars.
  • In "Baseball Bugs", one of the Gashouse Gorillas is knocked out, and surrounding his head are four little baseball players with angel wings, tossing baseballs among themselves.
  • In "Yankee Doodle Bugs", Bugs visits Betsy Ross to check on the progress of the new U.S. flag. Feeling the blue field is too plain, he paces around the lawn trying to think of something to "snap it up a bit"... and carelessly steps on a rake. Pointing to the resulting stars orbiting his head, he asks, "Hey, Betsy, does this give you an idear?"
  • "A Pizza Tweety Pie" definitely satisfies the "cartoon cats" criterion above.
• The Loud House: Parodied in "No Spoilers", when Walt the canary flies around Lincoln's head after he falls down the stairs.
  • The show's spinoff, The Casagrandes uses the stars version somewhat frequently. Sid in particular tends to get them a lot, such as when she's dizzied during a wrestling match. Bobby, somewhat the Butt-Monkey of the series, also sees circling stars at times and gets the birds variety after a bicycle crash in the episode "Fast Feud."
• Happened quite a few times on Mr. Bogus:
  • Happens to Bogus, while he's dressed as an Eskimo in the first act of the episode "No Snooze Is Good News", but he sees ice cream cones circling his head, as he grabs one and eats it.
  • At the end of the first act of the episode "Babysitting Bogus", Bogus sees winged babies circling his head after getting hit on the head by the baby's milk bottle.
  • In the episode "Bad Luck Bogus", Bogus sees stars circling around his head after hitting the ground from missing landing on the couch.
  • Bogus sees buses circling around his head after landing inside the video store in the episode "Totally Bogus Video".
  • This also happens to Baddus after landing in a tree in the episode "Bogus To The Rescue", but instead of birds, he sees winged Boguses.
  • It happens to Bogus once again in the second act of the episode "Waterboy Bogus", after Running into the Window trying to get into the penguin exhibit, but sees penguins circling his head.
• In My Life as a Teenage Robot, the episode "Puppet Bride" features Jenny getting hit on the head with a cane. Blue stars circle her head for a brief moment before she shakes them away.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony Tales:
    • "The Play's the Thing": Clover gets the spinning stars and planets with the sound of chirping birdies variant while being spun around in a barber's chair.
    • "Just for Kicks": Ace gets the spinning soccer balls with the sound of chirping birdies variant when Patch kicks the soccer ball right in his nose. Ouch!
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: When a character gets dizzy, be it from any kind of amusing blunt trauma or motion sickness, they will usually have stars circling their heads for a short while.
    • "The Return of Harmony Part 2": Twilight sees lots of stars after slamming face-first into Tom the boulder.
    • "Hearth's Warming Eve": During a snowball fight with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, Rarity is beaned in the head and gets a halo of circling stars, which she shakes away with an angry expression on her face.
    • "Daring Don't": Parodied; when Rainbow runs into a tree where Fluttershy is helping some baby birds in their nest learning to fly, the chicks fly and circle around Rainbow's dazed head.
• On Nature Cat, when the Talking Animal characters are walking through the woods on the way to a Talking Blue Jay's music concert, Nature Cat gets bonked on the head and sees circling blue jays.
• Used several times in the New Kids on the Block cartoon series. In this episode, when Jonathan is knocked out by a falling surfboard, he hears tweeting birds and sees tiny surfers around his head (he then develops amnesia and thinks he's a pro surfer). After Donnie is thrown from a horse, he sees miniature versions of himself on horseback circling his head. The New Kids' bodyguard Bizcut sees circling music notes when dazed in another episode. In this episode, Danny hears tweeting birds after a hard fall.
• In Nutri Ventures: The Quest for the Seven Kingdoms, Episode 3 has Nina seeing stars after landing in a trash can.
• The Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "Blotto" ends with the titular character getting hit on the head by his girlfriend Dotto, resulting in Blotto stunned while stars spin around his head.
• In Packages from Planet X, lead character Dan sees circling soccer balls after a hard fall during a soccer game.
• In the animated TV series "The Osmonds," characters occasionally see circling stars, especially Fuji and Jimmy, but the whole Osmond clan experience it togetether in the Transylvania episode after rolling down a hill in a Big Ballof Violence and crashing.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "The Yard Sale", a Roman gladiator accidentally smashes headfirst into a column, and three images of people riding chariots circle around his head.
• The stars version appears occasionally in Pepper Ann. Milo, for example, sees them after taking a hard hit during football practice, and Crash sometimes sees them after his frequent Amusing Injuries.
• Played with in the Pixar Short Day and Night, whose characters have scenes visible inside them. When Day gets hurt, birds are seen flying inside his head.
• Bird sounds frequently play in PJ Masks when a character is injured or dizzied, often as their eyes spin in opposite directions to add to the effect.
• Characters occasionally get these in Les Podcats, usually just the sound of chirping birds but occasionally accompanied by circling stars as well. Senzo tends to be the most frequent victim.
• The stars version appears fairly frequently in Problem Child. For example, in the episode "Junior Meets Tiny Ben," a rare instance where Junior finds himself the Butt-Monkey for much of the episode, Junior sees circling stars three different times.
• In one episode of Randy Cunningham: Ninth Grade Ninja, Randy sees various food items circling his head after being tossed into a food cart.
• In the Rugrats episode "Reguarding Stuie" after Stu hits his head on a robot duck weathervane and falls off the roof he sees stars and ducks spinning around his head.
• Happens to Salem in an episode of Sabrina: The Animated Series. Being a cat, he eats one of them.
  • Sabrina and Harvey also experience this on occasion throughout the series. In one episode, a dizzy Harvey, having been thrown from a spinning art display, sees images of portraits circling his head.
• Seven Little Monsters: In the episode "The Nose Knows", Two's enormous nose ends up making him accidentally drop his pop-up book out of the window, where it ends up hitting the monsters' pet cow Belinda in the head, causing miniature versions of Belinda wearing tutus to spin around her head.
• In The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" version of The Raven, Homer tries to drive off Bart the Raven by throwing a vase at him, only for to miss and hit himself in the head, resulting in tiny Bart Ravens circling his head saying "Nevermore! Nevermore! Nevermore! Nevermore!". Bart himself experiences this trope in a later "Treehouse of Horror" spoof of Nightmare on Elm Street. In his dream, after being hit with a Frisbee, birds circle his head while "No Sale" signs pop up in his eyes.
  • Also seen in the Season 20-present Couch Gag, in which Jebediah's statue's head falls on Ralph's. One of the things he says after being hit is, "I see stars!"
  • In "Homer the Father", after Bart sells nuclear secrets to China in exchange for a dirt bike, only for Homer to give him the same kind of bike the next day, he has an Imagine Spot of him getting beaten up by Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty for committing treason for no reason, telling him he'll be "seeing stars and stripes forever".
  • In A season 26 episode, Maggie befriends some animals and recruits them to save an opossum from a dog. During the fight, a bird knocks the dog away, and the dog sees circling chirping birds around his head. But then the dog hits back, and the bird ends up seeing circling barking dogs around his head.
• The Smurfs provides an interesting take on this in the episode "Papa's Puppy Prescription"; when Gargamel gets dazed by running into a rock, in his next scene he tells Azrael how he sees birdies and little stars flying around his head. Azrael, of course, cannot see these "birdies" and "little stars" Gargamel speaks of — and neither can we as a matter of fact — leaving him confused about what his master is talking about.
• This occurs on several occasions in SpongeBob SquarePants. The common example is stars, anchors or scallops, although different circling objects can appear. For example, in the episode "Survival of the Idiots", Patrick gets hit in the head and sees chicken drumsticks.
  Patrick: Hot... wings.
  • Another example occurs in another episode "Teacher's Pests" Mrs. Puff hits Mr. Krabs and Plankton with a tree and they see circling stars. Spongebob, deciding he wants some as well, drops a tree on his head until he sees stars and Mrs. Puff takes them away.
  • Another example occurs to Karen in the episode “Karen’s Virus”, where she sees circling ones and zeroes after ramming into a wall due to having a virus, and she comments on them.
  • In "Rock Bottom", little scallops swirl around SpongeBob's head when he runs into a wall.
  • In "Shopping List", Mr. Krabs had just gotten beaten up by Sandy, who was angry that she and SpongeBob had to go on a wild goose chase for nothing, and as she walks out with a bag of money to pay for her submarine that was lost, Mr. Krabs dizzily walks out with small clams circling his head before he is finally launched into the sky by Sandy.
  • In "Patrick's Tantrum", after getting knocked out by Patrick, Harry the Health Hazard has circling Patrick's saying "Tweet".
  • In "Abandon Twits", when Squidward gets bashed on the head with an anchor, three images of him sailing in a little ship circle around his head.
• The guys of Supa Strikas experience this trope after a hard hit during a game or other head injuries. Bo sees circling stars after a slip on a banana peel that also leads to Easy Amnesia. The guys also occasionally see circling soccer balls, such as when Chuck takes a hard crash during a game or when Klaus is whacked by a door and knocked off a train.
• In the Super Mario World cartoon, Mario gets hit in the head while trying to find something useful in the blocks. Due to this, when he does find something (a feather), he's too dazed to be able to catch it. He then grabs one of the stars circling his head, and is able to use it as if it were a Starman powerup.
  • It also happens on the The Super Mario Bros. Super Show episode "Pirates of the Koopa", when Mario asks for a star that is circling the parrot's head after he bumped it on the top of the crow's nest.
• Spy vs. Spy: In "Beach", a bird circles the black spy's head after running into a wooden stake (in which the white spy was able to get a photo from a woman to trick the black spy into running into the wooden stake.)
  • Also happens in "Wall", in which the white spy gets circling stars after getting smacked by a fence. (Strangely enough, stars also circle the hand at the beginning of the episode when the white spy punches the brick wall.) Also, early in "Basketball", the black spy enters the scene in which the white spy notices the black spy and screws up, in which, as a result, the basketball hits the white spy in the head. Bird sound effects then play, as the white spy staggers in a daze, right before the black spy steals the ball. Also, in "Toilet Plunger", the white spy sees circling birdies after a hit to the head with a toilet plunger, with a rock attached to it to make it look like as if it were a HAMMER.
• Normally in the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon, Blank White Eyes are used. However, circling stars were used in the episode "Switched" when Puppet King-controlled Robin accidentally hit himself with his own baton.
  • Used much more frequently in the decidedly more cartoony series Teen Titans Go!
• Lampshaded in Tiny Toon Adventures, where animal lover/killer Elmyra gets trapped in the mall after closing time. At one point she gets hit on the head, send birds flying around her head. Then Elmyra grabs one of the birds and hugs it, which also has smaller mini-birds circling around its head.
• The Tommy & Oscar animated series uses birds and/or stars in nearly every episode, and characters frequently comment on what they are seeing. For example, when both Tommy and Oscar see stars after taking a tumble on the set of a Star Wars-like film, they mention how great the special effects are for the film.
• Total Drama:
  • Chris bullies Duncan over his crush on Courtney in "Trial by Tri-Armed Triathlon", so Leshawna helps her challenge partner out by knocking the host out. She and Duncan win the challenge moments later, so Chris groggily forces himself back on his feet to declare "Bedunca" and "Shewaninin" the winners as three stars and Saturn circle above his head.
  • Courtney slams into a wall surrounding Camp Wawanakwa in "Total Drama Drama Drama Drama Island". She gets up from being knocked back as four birds chirp and circle her head. Annoyed, she shoos the birds away, prompting one of them to chirp something rude at her.
  • To prevent her own team from winning in "The Chefshank Redemption", Gwen smashes their one shovel in pieces over Harold's head. He goes down while four stars and a blip circle above his head. Despite no birds being present, bird sound accompanies the stars.
  • Vito takes Scott to the final landmark in "Grand Chef Auto", at which point Scott no longer needs him. When the other's back is turned to him, Scott clubs him down and leaves Vito lying out cold with four stars and several flashes circling above his head. Despite no birds being present, bird sound accompanies the stars.
  • To turn an enamored Dave hostile towards Sky for the finale in "Lies, Cries, and One Big Prize", Chris shows him her audition tape in which she mentions her boyfriend Keith. Dave blanks at this devastating reveal, which is reflected by three Sky heads circling his head while they repeat "boyfriend Keith" in slow-motion.
• Total DramaRama uses the trope on occasion. Owen, for example, sees circling images of his treasured toy ball circling his head after running into a door. Cody gets a ring of sheep circling his head after fainting from fear. Duncan sees stars followed by the images of chirping birds when he gets slammed in the face by an Easter egg.
• The VeggieTales in the House episode "Laura at Bat" had this happen to Jimmy Gourd after getting beaned in the head by a ball while he was announcing the climactic ball game. In this case, however, he sees baseballs circling his head.
  • Happens to Larry in "IT", where it's circling lemons on him.
• In one episode of Wayside, Todd sees stars after a fall. Mrs. Jewls then told Todd to get his head "out of the stars," and it turns out that the stars were really on a project involving a globe.
• The cartoon versions of Chris and Martin Kratt often experience this in their animated series Wild Kratts. The circling creature usually corresponds to whatever critter they're following that day. For example, after a fall from a tree in one episode, Chris sees circling lizards. Another episode features Chris seeing circling walruses and Martin seeing circling polar bears after a blow to the head.
• In the Woody Woodpecker cartoon "The Barber Of Seville'' when Woody shrinks an Indian Cheif's headdress he chases Woody with his tomahawk trying to scalp him, Woody responds by hitting him on the head with a mallet he then sees little birds with turkey feathers on their heads doing the stereotypical war whoop.
• The title character of Zeke's Pad sees circling pancakes twice after mishaps during gym class in the series's first episode. Zeke had eaten a lot of pancakes for breakfast, resulting in numerous slips and falls during gym.

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