Enslaved Tongue

What's wrong, Narancia? Stand got your tongue?

Certain types of monsters, wizards, and other supernatural or alien beings are able to control your voice, or otherwise replace your communications with those around you. They will use your voice to lie to teammates, friends and loved ones, or to deliver warnings or threats. Sometimes this is the beginning of full on Mind Control, or the opening move of the Puppeteer Parasite.

Most of the examples fit into the subtropes:

• The person under the Truth Serum is forced to tell the truth.
• The Tongue-Tied person is unable to communicate a certain piece of information.
• People burst into spontaneous song under the influence of The Music Meister.

Sub-trope of People Puppets. Frequently part and parcel of Puppeteer Parasites' abilities. May overlap with Answering Echo if the person can only repeat the last words of another. Inversion of Can Only Move the Eyes, where the person retain the ability to speak when they are being controlled. See Mission Control Is Off Its Meds for cases where a remote voice over a comm channel is hijacked and subverted. Magical Profanity Filter is a sub-trope where people become unable to swear, but can otherwise still communicate.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Aquarion Evol: Kagura ends up insulting and threatening Mikono when he becomes nervous around her, due to his superpower of Reversal making him talk in reverse.
• Big Order: Sena plans to get Gennai to confess what he did on live broadcast, but he outwits her and makes him look like the good guy. She cannot refute him because she is too shocked in the manga; in the anime, his ability of "Mind Set" controls her into agreeing with everything he says.
• Code Geass: After Mao sends Suzaku into a psychological shock, Lelouch uses his Geass and orders him to "never speak again", leaving Mao incapable of saying anything. It doesn't last long since C.C. Mercy Kills him afterwards.
• Crayon Shin-chan: Don Pan Pan in the 26th movie incapacitates his adversaries by hitting Pressure Points that make the victim crack one-liners, or only say "Your underwear is showing".
• Doraemon have one such gadget which can hijack another person's tongue, a cordless microphone with a protruding arrow which, when pointed at a target, will have the recipient say anything the user wants him / her to say. Used in a manga chapter to help Gian's sister, Jaiko, hook up with a boy she had a crush on, but things goes hilariously wrong (as usual) when Nobita tries helping Jaiko to confess... but accidentally points the microphone on her crush.
• Doraemon: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi have Doraemon being taken out and impersonated by a shapeshifting robot enemy called a Yamitem. When the real Doraemon shows up just as Yamitem (posing as Doraemon) tries to lure everyone into a deathtrap, Yamitem seals Doraemon's mouth during a Spot the Imposter moment when Suneo and Gian asks for the two Doraemons to say their names.
  Doraemon:: I know! You're G... [suddenly lose his voice as Yamitem seals his tongue]
  Yamitem!Doraemon: You're Gian and Suneo! Am I right?
• Dororo (2019): The amanojaku, a Youkai that induces perverseness, forces the villagers and the protagonist duo to say and do the opposite of what they intend. It takes almost the entire episode for Dororo to figure out that her sudden Cannot Spit It Out is supernatural and that her partner has likewise been acting Weirder Than Usual.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. In "One Angry Man: TRIAL", the Major uses a Ghost Infiltration Key to make Togusa give the testimony she wants on the witness stand. Regardless of her motives, he's understandably not happy about it.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • In Diamond is Unbreakable, Hazamada's Stand, Surface, can make anyone mimic its actions upon eye contact. After it locks Josuke in its movements, Josuke tries to warn Jotaro but can't open his mouth due to Surface's link.
  • Golden Wind Tiziano, a member of the Boss' elite guard, has his Stand, Talking Head, a small fleshy-looking gremlin-like creature that latches onto a target's tongue and forces them to only communicate the opposite of what they mean. This even extends to writing and gestures. Tiziano can even toggle Talking Head's power at will, causing further confusion. He uses this to deadly effectiveness in conjunction with partner Squalo's Clash, a Stand with the appearance of a shark that can invade any size and shape of liquid and execute a surprise attack, to terrorize Team Bucciarati, Narancia in particular as the page image above shows.
• Maoh: Juvenile Remix: Ando's ability is to make people say things he wants them to say.
• Medaka Box: Oudo's Compelling Voice won't allow itself to be used for anything but Kneel Before Zod. Though he meant to tell his schoolmates to live life to the fullest, the first words that came out of his mouth were the order to bow before him.
• MM!: The A-Cup Angst sufferer Mio uses hypnosis to temporarily make Taro end all of his sentences with "hugetastic boobs".
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil: Tanya is forced to subconsciously pray to the Jerkass God every time she activates her "blessed" Type-95 jewel.
• Sgt. Frog:
  • Keroro tries to make a Hypno Fool of Natsumi with a Verbal Tic candy, but everyone ends up eating one (or more) conveniently right before important phone calls.
  • Kululu's invention turns the second light novel into an aptly-narrated Detective Story, in which the "detectives" are forced to call each other by their embarrassing code names.
• Smile PreCure!: Majorina ruins the comedy contest by using special rings on the guest duo which make them unable to tell jokes or speak in the Kansai dialect, causing their routine to fall flat.
• Spellbound! Magical Princess Lil'Pri: Episode 35. Whatever a clingy magic card attaches itself to is forced to lie or act against what they say.
• Stitch!: Checkers, the Experiment that makes others cater to his wearer like royalty, is now modified to take control of the wearer's body so Hämsterviel speaks through them. It results in an uncommon combination of Tropes: a People Puppet who Can Move The Face except for her mouth, out of which Hämsterviel's voice comes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Torunka is unwittingly affected by a Cursed Needle during his infiltration with Luna, blurting out the truth when he intends to lie.

Comic Books

• When Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen overhears crooks planning to kidnap him and force him to reveal Superman's identity, he tries to counteract this by taking a lie serum. Hilarity Ensues. When the crooks finally strap him to a Lie Detector and interrogate about Superman's identity, he gets through it by claiming that Superman is Clark Kent.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Those stuck in the magic lasso have to obey whomever is holding the other end. At one point a villain got hold of it and ordered Di to tell Steve certain things, and while she had to obey the commands she also tapped her foot in Morse to communicate what was really going on to him.

Films — Live-Action

• Beetlejuice: When the Maitlands first release the title character, he gives a demonstration of his possession power by talking through Barbara.
• Bruce Almighty: Bruce uses his god-powers to make his rival anchorman speak gibberish during a live newscast.
• The Mask: A brief example, when Stanley/The Mask causes a policewoman to sing a couple of lines of the song "Cuban Pete" with him.
• A mundane example happens in one of the Multiple Endings of Unfriended: Dark Web, where Mathias is Buried Alive and tries to use his phone to contact his deaf girlfriend Amaya for help. Problem is, the hackers have gotten into his phone so that his mouth on FaceTime is blurred (so Amaya can't read his lips), and so that all of his text messages, and the speech-to-text software he'd designed to communicate with her, instead say that he wished he'd spent more time learning sign language.
• In the X-Men Film Series, Charles Xavier can use his telepathic mind control powers to have a conversation with someone else who is miles away, by taking over other people and using their voices. One example is in X-Men: Days of Future Past when Xavier talks to Mystique by possessing various people around her as she's walking through the airport.

Literature

• In Animorphs, there are several instances of Yeerks making their human hosts say things they really don't want to.
• In The Divine Comedy, King Minos has the ability to compel any of the damned before him to truthfully confess all their sins, no matter how ashamed or deceitful they were in life. This allows him to judge them and accurately decide which circle of Hell they should be condemned to.
• Ella Enchanted: Ella is forced to say things she doesn't want to as part of her curse of obedience. In the film adaptation, this extends to not being able to say certain things, such as anything about the existence of her curse.
• Halo: Evolutions: The short story Human Weakness reveals that the strange flashbacks Master Chief saw of Cortana slowly going insane were the Gravemind hacking her and speaking with her voice.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Books can be bewitched to cause harm to anyone who attempts to read them. One example mentioned is Sonnets of a Sorcerer, which causes the reader to speak in limericks for the rest of their lives.
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: People under the influence of the Fairies who attempt to tell anyone about it will instead recount random stories they do not know.
• The Laundry Files: In The Apocalypse Codex, the Big Bad breeds supernatural Puppeteer Parasites that eat and replace their victim's tongues.
• The Little Witch: The little Witch helps three women collect sticks for fire without any interference by making the forester say the opposite of what he means.
• Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters: The title aliens can control a human's body by touching him and make him say anything they want. One politician is taken over and forced to say things he doesn't mean, and suffers great anguish over it. When some of his fellow politicians hesitate to strip off to prove they're not being controlled, he draws a gun and forces them to do so.
• One book in the Venus Prime series sees Blake injected with a drug that's intended to work as a truth serum by making him unable to stop talking. He manages to escape his captors, but spends the whole night rambling on about random topics until the serum finally wears off.
• In Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger, Sadist Teacher Mr. Gorf — son of Mrs. Gorf from the first book — steals the students' voices, calls their homes, and uses the stolen voices to tell their parents how much their children hate them. The students are forced to watch, brought to silent tears.
• In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, unlike most Oz animals, the Wicked Witch's winged monkey minions do not speak, at least until Dorothy defeats the witch and they explain she had been controlling them with her Hat of Power, which included silencing their ability to protest against some of the horrible things she compelled them to do.

Live-Action TV

• Bewitched:
  • Sam's mother put a spell on Darrin causing him to start talking like he was three years old. Right in front of his boss!
  • At another time she casts a spell that causes him to constantly speak in cliche.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Midnight", an unknown creature possesses one of the members of the group, to whom the Doctor tries to reason with. However, the creature's speech catches up to and then overtakes the Doctor's thoughts, taking control so he orders the others on the ship to kill him against his will.
  • In "Flesh and Stone", Amy Pond is forced to count down to her own death after a copy of a Weeping Angel is created in the vision centres of her brain.
• Get Smart: Maxwell Smart is given lying pills to foil any possible interrogation. Of course, he takes it at an inappropriate time and suddenly lies about every slightest fact, including his own name.
• One of the possible side-effects of owning someone's heart in Once Upon a Time — not only can you essentially use the victim as an unintentional mole, you can also make them say things you want them to say in order to manipulate others.
• Round the Twist: A skeleton's curse forces Pete to end every sentence with "without my pants".
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Sabrina puts a spell on Hilda so that she'll say whatever Sabrina says, so she can make her go on a date with Mr. Kraft. While that is going on, Valerie shows up and Sabrina starts having a conversation with her while Hilda keeps repeating everything Sabrina is saying to Valerie. Eventually the spell breaks and Hilda drags Sabrina off to Zelda to figure out an appropriate punishment.
• In Sherlock, Moriarty steals voices — by the entirely non-magical means of kidnapping people, strapping them to bombs, and typing out what he wants them to say.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: In "Plato's Stepchildren", the cruel and arrogant Parmen telekinetically controls the Enterprise crew, forcing them into humiliating performances such as dancing, singing, and reciting poetry.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Trance", a strange voice speaks through Leonard Randall's mouth and ruins his scam about channeling the warrior Delos.

Mythology and Religion

• In Classical Mythology, the nymph Echo is cursed to repeat what she has already heard without ever putting anything in her own words.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • A ring of truthlessness forces its wearer to lie in response to any questions asked of them for as long as the ring is worn.
  • Garblers are Blob Monsters that are covered in mouths, which constantly mutter words of power. Their signature ability is reversing truespeech uttered around them, so an attempt to heal an ally with a word of nurturing would instead be reversed to harm them. Garblers can instinctively tell what an utterance's intent is, and won't try to reverse something that might be beneficial to them, so there's no use using breath of recovery on one and expecting it to reverse the utterance and paralyze itself.
• Paranoia: The Puppeteer mutation can be used to force a character to say whatever you want (with a good enough Power roll).

Video Games

• Disgaea Infinite: The player takes on the role of a Prinny who can induce Last-Second Word Swap on other characters via Mind Control. Everyone, including the target, immediately notices how out-of-character the altered decisions are.
• Puyo Puyo!! Quest: The Accursed Knight Series. Eldur suffers the "Curse of Delayed Speech", and Fried suffers the "Curse of Attaching 'Pyon★' To the End of Every Sentence".
• Spyro: Year of the Dragon: The Spooky Swamp causes everyone in it to speak entirely in haiku.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: In the Imperial Agent class story, this occurs if the player attempts to pick dialogue options that would go against their Behavioral Conditioning orders not to tell anyone about said conditioning. The Agent will instead say, in an even tone, that everything is fine.
• World of Warcraft: The Warlock spell "Curse of Tongues" slows the target's spell casting speed by forcing them to speak Demonic.
• Yo-kai Watch: So-Sorree and whoever he Inspirits halfheartedly apologizes by going "Sorry sorry I'm so sorry!"

Webcomics

• One Oglaf comic concerns a man with a reputation as a Sex God, but a woman who's just slept with him is underwhelmed. It turns out he's an average lover who happens to possess a magic amulet — he originally wanted one that enhanced his sexual prowess, but there's no such thing, so instead he got an "amulet of making people say you're awesome in bed even though you're not."
  Disgruntled Woman: ...and you won't believe how good he is in bed!
  Annoyed Woman: Yes, I've had him too and I heartily concur.

Web Original

• The Fear Mythos: The Choir from "Slip ups" makes people say the opposite of what they mean.
• SCP Foundation:
  • I, SCP-426, am a toaster that makes people unintentionally refer to me in the first person. Eventually, they start to think that they're a toaster and end up harming themselves.
  • What to do with SCP-779-KO is the only thing people can talk about; they are unable to talk about how or why.
  • SCP-1839, a book that can convince people they are a fish, in the same way that you are. It can cause text about itself to display messages properly addressing you as a fish. By the way, you should probably get back into the water now, considering dry land is unhealthy for fish like you.
  • The former library currently known as SCP-2602, which has the effect of causing people to refer to this building, which served as a library at some point in the past, as a former library. This has the effect of causing common anomalous aspects of former libraries like this one to be considered commonplace for buildings that were former libraries, and as such need not be investigated, as they are of course to be expected when dealing with ex-libraries like 2602.
  • SCP-61231 is a male African rainbow crab who makes all statements about (but not spoken by) him appear to say the exact opposite of what they mean, based on what he knows about a concept.^note For instance, his number is actually 2769, but he mistakenly thinks 2^16 (the maximum allowed SCP number value) is equal to 64000 (hence 64000-2769=61231) rather than 65536. Subverted, as his anomalous effect can only affect human perception, not actual text, audio, or images.
• Stampy's Lovely World: In Episode 526, "Saving The World", Hit The Target takes control of Stampy's voice, making it so that Stampy has to say whatever HTT thinks without being able to speak for himself.

Western Animation

• Dexter's Laboratory: After an experiment in Sleep Learning backfiring, Dexter wakes up unable to say anything except "omelette du fromage" (incorrect French for "cheese omelette"). Bizarrely enough, everyone he faces in the episode happens to want to hear the very phrase — from his French teacher to the crowd at the UN. Except the password authentication system in his lab.
• In Martha Speaks, the titular talking dog draws her ability to speak from eating alphabet soup and the letters somehow entering her head instead of her stomach. Any change to the soup will mean a change in Martha's ability to communicate. For example, in one episode, Martha is compelled to speak Polish after being served Polish alphabet soup. In another, the soup company decides to stop including some letters, and Martha's speech Deteriorates Into Gibberish. And in yet another, her soup can is opened from the downside, effectively eating it backwards and causing her to say the opposite of what she means.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Under the effect of The Cutie Pox, Apple Bloom is forced to speak in Gratuitous French when she gets a Fleur-de-lis cutie mark.
• Happens twice in O'Grady with separate incarnations of The Weirdness — an unexplainable force that periodically affects the town and everybody in it with a different effect each time.
  • In "Bubble Heads", any time somebody tries to lie, a visible, audible, and tangible thought bubble reveals their true thoughts. It turns out that most people rely heavily on white lies in their day to day lives, so not only are the bubbles everywhere, they cause strain in the characters' friendships because they can no longer spare each others' feelings.
    Abby: I tell you the truth 100% of the time.
    Bubble Abby: More like 30%.
    Beth: Oh my god!
    Abby: That is not true! That is so not true!
    Bubble Abby: So true.
    Abby: We should stop talking, it's getting really crowded in here.
    Beth: Or maybe we should just stop lying.
    Abby: Good point.
  • In "Cop 'Stache", every time somebody tries to say something negative about somebody else, they get a forced grin and say something positive instead — for instance, a popular student tries to tell Harold to get lost when he bothers them, but is forced to ask him to hang out with them instead. This unfortunately even applies to when a negative statement is for the recipients own good; when Abby tries to change up her look to impress her crush, her friends are forced to tell her she looks fantastic when, in reality, she looks absolutely ridiculous.
• On Phineas and Ferb, many of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's inventions and schemes involve communication. One example is the Double-Negative-Inator. Which makes everybody trying to say a negative to add another negative to their sentences, so they become positive (and their own attitude change, as if they actually wanted to say a positive). Or the Least-Likely-inator, which forces people to do, or say, the least thing in their nature. Among others.
• The Replacements: Todd gives himself "lie spice" to make his lies 50% more believable, but too much consumption of the salt causes Todd to have uncontrollable lying. Needless to say, it does not end well for him.
• In an episode of The Smurfs (1981), Gargamel captures Smurfette and prepares a truth serum to force her to reveal the Smurf village's location. Unfortunately for him, Azrael steps on the potions book and accidentally turns the page to a potion of compulsive lying.
• Steven Universe: White Diamond's mind control allows her complete and total control over the affected Gem, including speaking through them with her voice.
• In Young Justice (2010), the fully activated Blue Beetle scarab can control everything about its host except for their thought process, including their speech. Jaime's attempts at Fighting from the Inside only add up to sarcastic comments that only his puppeteers can hear.

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