Deteriorates Into Gibberish

Stewie: Yeah, it seemed like they're all set without you. She's done a fine job creating a child-friendly environmen-ta-re-mi-ooh, buh de buh boo, buh buh buh THPTHPTHPTHPT...
[Brian slaps Stewie]
Stewie: Great parenting.

— Family Guy

This is for a piece of dialogue that starts out seeming fairly coherent, but over time gradually deteriorates into gibberish.

Relatively common in Hilarious Outtakes. May be a sign of Sanity Slippage. When anger is the specific reason for this, it would be Angrish, whereas if falling in love is the reason, then it's Gibberish of Love. It may also happen in the presence of cute things or when starting to cry. This may start out as a Dramatic Stutter before the speaker loses their grip entirely. Repeating something they're trying to remember until it devolves into hopeless gobbledygook is Repeated Rehearsal Failure. When the gibberish precedes the character passing out, it's a Non Sequitur, *Thud*. When it precedes a worse fate such as death or insanity, it's Word-Salad Horror.

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Examples

Anime

• In Train to the End of the World, former train conductor Zenjiro has become a senile old man who pantomimes a train due to the 7G transformations. However, for five minutes a day, he can revert to his original youthful appearance and talk coherently by putting his cap on. Once this time limit expires, he reverts to a senile old man and goes back to chugging like a train (even in Morse), so his communication sessions with the main cast often end this way.

Comic Books

• In the "Homeschooling" arc of Runaways, Klara gets so worked up after Chase keeps yelling at her that her limited grasp of English fails her and she's reduced to incoherence.
• In the Secret Six arc "Depths", one of the slaves starts to protest her treatment, to which Mr. Smythe responds by having her fellows systematically butchered in front of her. By the end of it, she's so horrified that she's begging them to stop in broken English.

Fan Works

• In Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl, this happens as the search party enters the range of the neurocypher.
• One of the bloopers for Glitter Force: Into the Glitterverse has Nozomi try to say "awake" and "alive" at the same time, resulting in "awive", then "awale", then finally just babbling like an idiot.
• When the four use the white key to visit the entrapped Pyar gods in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, they're told that the key endowed the gods with temporary coherence. After a brief and mostly unhelpful conversation, the three gods sink into gibberish before fading away. Later, when John is powering their boat through the Hungry Sea, he starts to spout gibberish as well. This is actually an important plot point since it points to the curse of incoherence that was placed upon the Last Wizard centuries ago. When they encounter her, they figure out that the ubiquitous saying “Speak the problem and it will be solved” is finally relevant in this situation, and George breaks the curse on her by telling her that she's cursed not to be able to speak.
• In The Panda Chronicles chapter "Mama's Boy", Jesse's apologies to Aaron T. eventually become unintelligible due to his Inelegant Blubbering.
• The first line of Reality Is Fluid, with First-Person Smartass Kanril Eleya not quite listening to a politician blathering:
  "This project ushers in a new era of cooperation between Cardassia and Bajor. We are healing the wounds of the Occupation and the Dominion War, Blah, Blah, Blah." Okay, that last part was me.

Films — Animated

• Storks: Pigeon Toady has an Imagine Spot where he's singing "How You Like Me Now", which eventually dissolves into nonsense. The subtitles just become question marks by the end.

Films — Live-Action

• In Bruce Almighty, Bruce uses his God-given powers to sabotage Evan Baxter's first day as anchor, causing him to spout bizarre non-sequiturs, start speaking in a helium voice, and eventually just start babbling incoherently, all while live on air.
• In Scary Movie 3, Cindy tries to warn people about the Alien Invasion, so she writes in the monitor a text for the anchorman of the news network to read and tell the audience about it. She is busted and another guy writes a correction, the two start to fight at the console and the anchorman goes from contradicting himself to speaking gibberish because they write random letters.
• In Night at the Museum''s third film, when the magic tablet starts to rust, the Theodore Roosevelt replica's speech to the visitors suddenly becomes gibberish.
• In The Parent Trap (1998), Annie (posing as her twin sister Hallie) goes into French (or French-sounding gibberish) when her dad tells her that he's going to marry Meredith.

Literature

• Discworld:
  • In Feet of Clay to a troll watchman after tasting a suspicious powder "Yes, this is definitely slab wurble wurble sclup"
  • In Making Money to Moist von Lipwig after drinking splot, "Any minute now the dhdldlkp;kvyvvbdf(;jvjvf;llljvmmk; vvbvlm bnxgcgbnme—"
  • In A Hat Full of Sky, the wizard Professor Bustle invites the eldritch creature known as the Hiver into his home, confident he can control it and make it work for him. His research notes, preserved as an awful warning to wizards contemplating following his line of research, start off as a parody of scientific notation but degenerate into megalomania of the I'll show them! type (with multiple exclamation marks included), followed swiftly by babbling and then gibberish.
• Tim Benzedrine's scrawled note in Bored of the Rings. Apparently, he took drugs before writing it and the high caught up with him in the process of writing.
• Happens a lot to Cigar in Gone. He's only coherent and himself occasionally, and sometimes he'll transform midsentence.
• Johannes Cabal the Detective: The Mirkarvian government kidnaps Johannes to reanimate the late Emperor for his public address. He produces a zombie with a fleeting facade of sapience that wears off mid-speech, veering into an ever more incoherent rant about eating his enemies' brains. Johannes discreetly escapes as the zombie goes feral.
• In Martha Blah Blah, Martha involuntarily begins speaking gibberish all the time because the executive in charge of the soup company cut back on the letters.
• In Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Playback", advanced aliens attempt to rescue the pilot of an exploding human spaceship by capturing his mental pattern and even offering to build him a new body. Unfortunately, the recording was flawed, and his attempts to explain what humans look like degenerate into incoherent babbling.
• Red Dwarf: In the novel Backwards, one Killer Robot infects another with a computer virus that causes its systems to deteriorate. The infected robot tries to ask the other one "What are you doing?" but it comes out as "Wing for nozzle kloop."

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of How I Met Your Mother, Marshall describes how Lily became more and more neurotic in the weeks leading up to their wedding. Cue a series of flashbacks of Lily charging into the room with increasingly irrational complaints, with the last one being a tearful "Iggy wiggy wiggy!"
  Marshall: After a while, it was just... noise.
• In Blackadder III, the Prince Regent does this: "Well, lucky lucky us. Luck, luck, lucky laaarck lukluklukluk laaarrk, laaaaarrk!"
• This news reporter.
  • In 30 Rock, Pete Hornberger has a similar experience.
    • Also in 30 Rock, a parody of Barbara Walters gets more and more incomprehensible while interviewing Jenna Maroney. Somehow Jenna understands her.
• In the Criminal Minds episode "Amplification", one of the last stages of the poisoning causes the victims to babble absolute nonsense. The first time it appears it's almost comical, but because this sets the audience up for this actually being dramatic, the remaining times it's shown it's Played for Drama. In Reid's case, the babbling starts mid-sentence.
• In the NewsRadio episode "Zoso", Beth tries to sell a line of hats. As the negotiations fall apart, she gets so upset that she starts blubbering incoherently, and her potential buyers decide to relent and buy her hats so that she'll stop.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus' lineal descent from The Goon Show was never more apparent than in the "Stock Market Report":
  "Trading was crisp at the start of the day, with some brisk business on the floor. Rubber hardened and string remained confident. Little bits of tin consolidated, although biscuits sank after an early gain and stools remained anonymous. Armpits rallied well after a poor start. Nipples rose dramatically during the morning but had declined by mid-afternoon, while teeth clenched and buttocks remained firm. Small dark furry things increased severely on the floor, whilst rude jellies wobbled up and down and bounced against rising thighs which had spread to all parts of the country by mid-afternoon. After lunch, naughty things dipped sharply, forcing giblets upwards with the nicky nacky noo. Ting tang tong rankled dithely, little tipples pooped and poppy things went pong. Gibble gabble gobble went the rickety rackety roo..."
• Mr. Bean: In "Back to School, Mr. Bean", the very composed judo instructor has a moment of this in the face of Mr. Bean's extreme nervousness about being "thrown". Having tried to coax Mr. Bean to co-operate, and pursued him around the room, the instructor briefly flails his arms and stutters.
  Instructor: Look, just... just... jus.. jus.. j. j. [finally regains composure, and speaks reassuringly] Look, just calm down.
• One bit in Reno 911! has Dangle and Wiegel dealing with a woman who's weeping so profusely that they can't get any information out of her. Finally, Dangle starts weeping along with her and this somehow convinces her to get in the back of their squad car.
• In two episodes of Stargate SG-1 ("The Fifth Race" and "Lost City"), Jack gets the knowledge of the Ancients downloaded into his brain by a computer, and his speech progressively incorporates more and more Ancient words until he can't speak English at all anymore.
  "Well, apparently I have lost the falatus to speak properly. [Beat] That wasn't a joke. I didn't do that on purpose."
• Community:
  • In "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design", Jeff tells Annie to blow off looking into the sudden appearance of a teacher Jeff claims doesn't exist. Her response quickly does this.
    Annie: Oh sure! I'll blow it off! I'll just blow everything off! Like, maybe I'll blow off walking!
    [Annie stops walking; Jeff bumps into her]
    Jeff: Okay.
    Annie: Or maybe I'll blow off standing.
    [Annie drops to the floor; Jeff steps over her and keeps going]
    Annie: I'm just blowing it all off! Now I'll blow off talking language!
    Jeff: Fine!
    Annie: Blee blee blah blah blah...
  • In "Regional Holiday Music", Annie (again) tries to sing a sexy Santa song. Emphasis on tries because her attempt at "cutesy" baby-talk eventually turns creepy:
    Annie: ♪Won't you be my daddy?/ I'm a silly Christmas baby!/ Tell me what to deck.../ Cuz' I forgot!♪ [falls over]
    Jeff: [legitimately concerned] Annie?
    Annie: [crawling around on all fours] ♪Bwainy hurty undewstanding Cwistmas!/ Mistletoe for eatie taste good?/ You smawty, me dumb!/ Help pwetty have fun!/ Boop-y doop-y doop boop.../ SEX!♪
    Jeff: Look, eventually you hit a point of diminishing returns on the sexiness.
    Annie: What's a demmemememuah?
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Babel" has the station infected with an aphasia virus. As the disease takes hold, characters rapidly become unintelligible.
• Inverted for Reg Barclay on Star Trek: The Next Generation, who normally talks with a stammer. When he starts speaking coherently, it means that things have gotten serious.
• Scott Bakula (Captain Archer) sometimes does this in the Hilarious Outtakes for Star Trek: Enterprise.
  Archer: I think it's natural for people to get a little slop-sloppy. (goofy voice) And since we were talking about sex, I—(babbles while making a goofy face)
• In Six Feet Under, Nate struggles to say "numb arm" just before suffering a stroke, resulting in increasing incoherence... and the Trope Namer for Narm.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent:
  • In "Blind Spot", criminologist Jo Gage plays a tape of someone being tortured by a serial killer, pointing out to Goren how the victim's speech grows increasingly incoherent as the pain and panic overwhelm them.
  • In "Untethered", Goren is bound to a table and denied water for two days. He grows increasingly incoherent as the dehydration nearly kills him.

Music

• In the Sandra Boynton song "Nobody Understands Me", the singer throws in nonsense words throughout. Near the end, she deteriorates into this for one whole sentence.
  Nobody beezifies me
  Nobody febbin ud.
  Kibbldzy deen voo nizee!
  I hate being misunderstood.

Radio

• Happens in an episode of The News Quiz, when Phil Jupitus starts to answer a question about Scottish devolution and the West Lothian Question, before realising he doesn't really know enough about the details to continue and descending into gibberish before rallying enough to say "And I don't want the points because I don't deserve them." (Sandi then tells him it was actually a rather accurate and succinct description of the situation.)
• Former BBC presenter Sarah Kennedy lapsed into this on several occasions, a drawback in one presenting the early breakfast show on national radio. Inevitably, kindly hands had to lead her away from the microphone, ring a cab, and send her home to sleep it off (whatever the it was), while a stand-in presenter took over. Officially, it was put down to over-strong prescription medication and lack of sleep. Sarah no longer works for the BBC, or indeed in radio.
• Frequently used in The Goon Show. For example, in "The Call of the West":
  Greenslade: It is 1867 and dead on time. The harbour of Boston is a hive of inactivity, as English immigrants bring their shattered bank accounts to the New World. Alongside is the Good Ship Venus: The pling plang toof, nobitty nibbitty noo, pleta omnivorous plethora, pletty plom plom tartity to to tooee, fit plor tong tang tit putt putt.... I say, I can't read this rubbish! I - aargh! [splash]
  Little Jim: He's fallen in the wa-ter!
• John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme: The weather report, even if you tuned in specifically to hear it, quickly descends into nonsense as the listener loses track until they hear the phrase "back to you in the studio", a fact the reporter is pretty open about both before and during.
• The Tongue-Tied song, a romantic love ballad first aired on Son of Cliché, later reprised for Red Dwarf on television, in which a hopelessly smitten swain fails to communicate the depth of his love.

Video Games

• In Fallout 3, one Apocalyptic Log is like this, as a Vault dweller succumbs to the experiments secretly being conducted on her: "aw;'jf OrDe R p[fal al Hlep HeLp dme Me, LosS mInd CANdofw stopthem gEt OUT m[pofmy HED"
• In Mass Effect, one symptom of advanced Indoctrination is increased verbal incoherence.
• A borderline meme example from Tales of Vesperia: Rita Mordio during Overlimit. "I'm SO gonna make you blah, blah, blah, TIDAL WAVE! Blah, blah, blah, TIDAL WAVE! Blah, blah, blah..."

Web Animation

• The Eddsworld episode "MovieMakers" has a conversational variant that occurs during a filmmaking montage.
  Laurel: The space cats will kill us all!
  Edd: Kill us all!?
  Laurel: KILLUSAAWLL!
  Edd: KILLASAW!?
  Laurel: KILUZSPEZSPA!
  Edd: FLURGERBLA!?
• In the first If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device special, the Emperor and Kitten play a round of Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker, while Custodisi gets to play Combat Commentator, repeating "How is Kitten ever going to win now?!" in an increasingly-strained voice until it sounds like he's having a stroke.
• The RWBY episode "Field Trip" involved the arrival of a dog so cute that resident Ice Queen Weiss devolved into baby talk.
  Weiss: You mean this mangy, drooling... mutt... is gonna wiv wif us foweva?
  • Most egregiously:
    Weiss: Oh, I'll miss you so much, we're gonna be best friends, I ka be vo q yuaouuuuu. (That last may have been her attempt to say "I can't believe how cute you are.")

Webcomics

• xkcd:
  • #1296 has Git commit messages degenerating within a span of hours from "created main loop & timing control" to "here have code" to "adkfjslkdfjsdklfj."
  • #573 has a teenage girl mocking her father's generation for their lackluster pranks (namely the Rickroll). Her father calmly remarks that she's wrong:
    Father: I once raised a kid with conditioning so her speech centers would shut down when she was upset.
    Daughter: What? No, you couldn't have bleegle warble yargle ARRGH!

Web Original

• Happens a lot in Dildobitch's infamous Amnesia: The Dark Descent video.
• In I-Mockery's Action Figure Aberration feature, Spider-Man takes offense to The Tick's dissing of 3 Doors Down, and starts singing their song "Kryptonite" as thus: "If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman? If I'm alive and well, will you be dere be booo bah bah! Bee blah bee!" The other action figures proceed to beat him up as he exclaims, "Kryptonite!"
• The Internet Oracle: Question 135.10 asks why no-one's worrying about "that damned satanic Snuggles the Fabric Softener Bear on TV working his fur off to turn everyone's brain to mush". The Oracle's reply:
  ... the snuggles bear is friend.... not muching brain... snuglis bear nice .. love snugls ber...

Western Animation

• The Legend of Korra: When Mako first meets Asami, he's so stunned by her beauty that, for a moment, he can't do anything but blush and stutter.
  Asami: Oh no! I'm so sorry. I didn't see you!
  Mako: How could you not see me? I mean, I was [sees her face] ju-ju—... I was— I-I— Wow. [coughs] That was— [clears throat]
• In the Family Guy episode "The Former Life of Brian":
  Stewie: She's done a fine job creating a child-friendly environmen-ta-re-mi-ooh, buh de buh boo, buh buh buh THPTHPTHPTHPT...
  [Brian slaps Stewie]
• Darkwing Duck:
  • "The Haunting of Mr. Banana Brain": Launchpad begins stuttering uncontrollably after seeing Paddywhack's jack-in-the-box pull in Quackerjack. He only manages to break himself out of it to yell at Darkwing and Gosalyn not to touch the box.
  • "Time and Punishment": Launchpad, seeing that Darkwarrior still has positive feelings for Gosalyn, asks if he can join the reunion. Darkwarrior turns around and goes on a Tranquil Fury-fueled tirade about his sympathies toward the criminal element and tells him he's going to give him the chair for defacing his statue (which he actually was only an innocent bystander for). Launchpad starts stuttering uncontrollably until Gosalyn breaks in to say that he didn't do it.
• Happens to Quick Clones in Men in Black: The Series, right before they dissolve into a puddle of goo.
• In the South Park episode "Goobacks", the "They Took Our Jobs!" slogan spouted by the enraged blue-collar workers who've been displaced by all those people from the "feww-chure" becomes increasingly incoherent at every rally.
• Throughout the first season of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage actually talked throughout the episodes, spoke in complete sentences, and interacted with other characters through words. After that, Cartoon Network forced Courage to stop talking because Linda Simensky thought Courage talked too much in the first season, so Courage's dialogue was reduced to barely anything more than his frightened babbling... any actual talking he did do in those last three seasons was reduced to mostly to an Aside Comment every few episodes or a stock recording of Courage calling out for Muriel.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law had Vulturo, Harvey's rival bird-themed lawyer. His statements start out Wicked Cultured with an aristocratic tone, but eventually degenerate into mwoh hohn hon hnyaaaaaooonn…
• The judge in The Dick Tracy Show episode "Court Jester" had spent the entire trial listening to Mumbles and his speech impediment that after he closes the case (once Mumbles and Stooge Viller were found guilty), he degenerates into unintelligible mumbling himself.
• The General from Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines doesn't hesitate to deteriorate into gibberish. He speaks it from the get-go.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Maud Pie", the title character says she likes to express herself through her wardrobe. When Rarity asks Maud what her current outfit is saying, Maud replies "It doesn't talk. It's a dress". Rarity tries to explain what she meant but soon lapses into embarrassed, incoherent spluttering.

Other

• Vintage comedian and magician Tommy Cooper would do this as part of his act. He'd mumble an explanation of what trick or sketch he was performing, and over the course of it, it would degenerate into incomprehensible gibberish. It was rather funny.
• One conversation from a Downplayed Apocalyptic Log on Tumblr:
  mamayuuma: my parents bought me this rly shady bottle of Coke from mexico should i drink it
  mamayuuma: i'm gonna drink it
  mamayuuma: update: apparently it's supposed to be the original recipe it tastes kind of weird
  mamayuuma: EVERYTHIG NIS VER Y FUNN Y AND I AM V ERY AW AYKE ALRIGHT LA LRHAIGTH LARIGHTAL RIGHT LALTH IRHTALTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
  spoopyhahanonoseeren: didnt the original recipe have cocaine

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