Fooled by the Sound

"Clenching his teeth, Han raised his blaster. But even as he did so, his peripheral vision caught Luke's hand making some sort of gesture; and suddenly the Imperial spun around in the opposite direction, pointing his blaster rifle toward a patch of empty floor. 'He thinks he heard a noise,' Luke whispered. 'Let's go.'"

— Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy — Dark Force Rising

This trope is when somebody believes that a sound imitated or reproduced in-universe is the real thing, or when one sound is mistaken for another. The imitation can be a form of Gaslighting, or it can be made accidentally. The easiest way this can happen is when a recorded sound is played back, but sometimes a character will imitate a sound using their voice or other method, which is convincing enough to fool somebody. This can be Played for Laughs if the imitation is bad, yet is believed.

A surprisingly common comedic version of this involves somebody's Growling Gut being mistaken for another noise, like thunder or a volcano.

Compare Mondegreen Gag, and Voice Changeling, in which somebody mimics another person's voice perfectly. This trope applies if somebody uses a recording of somebody else's voice in-universe, causing somebody to believe the person being imitated is actually there. See also Holding Both Sides of the Conversation, when somebody out of sight provides the voice of someone else, as well as their own.

Super-trope to Mistaken for Flatulence and Pain Mistaken for Sex. This can overlap with Covering for the Noise, when an unwanted noise is made, and somebody tries to distract from it by imitating the same noise again; and with Recorded Audio Alibi, when someone uses a recording to sound like they're somewhere they aren't. Can also come from a Funny Phone Misunderstanding or Out-of-Context Eavesdropping. Compare Cacophony Cover Up, in which any noise is made to distract from another. Also compare Gesundheit and Who's on First? for confusion over spoken words. See also Nobody Here but Us Birds, when somebody imitates a bird noise. This can be one possibility for a Sound-Only Death (or at least a fan theory).

Note that this is not to be confused with sound effects being added in post-production, as doing so is not in-universe.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You:
  • In Volume 3's extras, a scene during the infiltration of the Hanazono mansion is shown in which three of the girls hide and imitate meowing to make the guards think it's just the cat. However one of the girls, Shizuka, is a Cute Mute who speaks using a text-to-speech app on her phone that reads lines from literary passages. It still fools the guard.
    Nano: Meow.
    Kusuri: Nyawr!
    Shizuka: "Mewling could be heard."
    Guard: Tsk, that cat again?
  • The extras go on to show a second scene in which the same girls try to talk a Driven to Suicide Hakari out of doing something drastic while not giving away their position:
    Guard: Don't do it, young ladyyy!
    Nano: Meow! Meoow!
    Kusuri: Nyaa! Nya-nyaaa!
    Shizuka: "You meowst keep living!" "You meowst!""
    Guard: This isn't the time for your yowling, you stupid cat!
• Due to a translation error, the first official subs of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable had Jotaro remark that he thought the heavy rain sounded like Josuke's voice. It was corrected later — Jotaro thought he heard Josuke's voice through the rain, but dismissed it as just his imagination — but by then, the line had already gained fandom infamy.
• In Transformers: Galaxy Force, at one point two of the Autobots are pulled over by a traffic cop. They project an image of a driver in their driver's seat and the one in the lead plays back a recording of the person they're projecting. Unbeknownst to them, the one of two people they were projecting was the President of the United States, and the recording was from a speech she was giving. The understandably confused cop simply stares as they drive off.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In one comic, Jughead is revealed to be able to mimic certain sounds perfectly, and this fools a few people, such as Veronica, who hears him imitating a tearing sound, and she thinks she ripped her pants. This is then turned on its head when Moose beats up Reggie for flirting with Midge and Principal Weatherbee wonders if Jughead is mimicking a street brawl.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: One arc has Susie stay at Calvin's house for the afternoon, to Calvin's horror (Susie isn't thrilled about it either). Calvin makes a recording of himself stuck in a closet, plays it to get Susie to go look, and slams the door on her. It doesn't last long as his mother comes to see what all the noise is.
• Popeye: Wimpy and Popeye hear a rattling sound from a box. They think it's a rattlesnake until Popeye opens it and finds that it's Swee'Pea, who was shaking a rattle all along.

Fan Works

• In Baby Boom (a fanfiction about The Loud House), Leni thinks there's a monster under her bed because she hears a meow and then an "odd licking sound". It's actually her pet cat Cliff.
• In the Gullfriend31 fanfic Capturing My Mind (a Pretty Cure fic), Majorina sings horribly off-key to calm down Maple. Joker then comes in and says he thought he heard the squealing of a pig. Majorina is less than amused.
• Cold Temperatures, Warm Hearts: In the first chapter, Cream hears rumbling and asks Vanilla if that's her stomach. It turns out to be an incoming avalanche.
• In The Loud House fanfic The Night of Loneliness and Companionship, Lincoln hears laughter and worries that it's a monster, but it's actually his baby sister Lily.
• Pokémpanions: In Early Evolution, the newly-evolved Machoke accidentally snaps a pencil. Togedemaru hears the cracking sound and freaks out, mistaking it for thunder (even though he's an Electric-type).
• Quizzical: In Thweet Geniuth: "Caught In The Act": Bird sound imitation is suggested by Scootaloo as signalling the presence of guards, for her friends who want to stay undetected, but Scootaloo is really bad at being a crow, while Sweetie Belle and Dinky Doo are good enough to be mistaken for birds.
• In Serpentine Fright, a fanfiction based on The Loud House, Lola hears a hissing sound at night. She wonders if it's her sister Lucy pretending to be a vampire, but it's actually El Diablo, the pet snake of her other sister, Lana.
• In With Pearl and Ruby Glowing, Flik plays police siren sounds on his phone to scare away Hopper and his gang. While this works on most of the gang, Hopper himself isn't fooled.

Film — Animated

• At one point in Bambi II, Bambi is lured into a hunter's trap with a deer call. This is in fact Truth in Television, as deer hunters utilize such weapons to emulate a deer's bray near perfectly. Rather tragically, however, from Bambi's perspective the call is humanized to sound like his mother.
• In Barbie & The Diamond Castle, Leana hears a rustling noise in the bushes and thinks it's a snake. It's actually two stray dogs, who she and Alexa adopt.
• Cars: When Lightning believes that Sheriff is shooting at him. Cut to the behind Sheriff where the sound is actually coming from his sputtering tailpipe.
• Fritz the Cat: Fritz is lying in a hospital bed, a victim of a bombing at the power substation. Three weeping furry female visitors come to see him, which leads the policeman outside his room to believe Fritz is a goner. When he hears some noises come through the door, the cop takes his hat off, certain that Fritz is in his death throes. Inside the room, Fritz isn't dying, no siree, not even close.
• Fun and Fancy Free: When Jiminy Cricket is chased by a cat and escapes by going underneath a door, he scares the cat away from the other side by barking like a dog.
• Hoodwinked!: When Wolf is spying on Red, his stomach grumbles, and she mistakes this for him growling at her.
• Ice Age:
  • Ice Age: Manny, Sid, and Diego hear a volcano rumbling, and Manny asks Sid if that was his stomach.
  • Ice Age: The Meltdown: At one point, Manny and Diego hear another animal farting and mistake it for the sound of a mammoth.
• Igor: When Igor hears shouts coming from the orphanage, he thinks Eva is killing the orphans. However, when he enters, he finds out they're shouting with joy instead.
• Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders: At one point, Scooby and Shaggy discover a cave, and escape from some Military Police by having Scooby shake his tail while Shaggy hisses, creating the illusion of there being a rattlesnake.
• Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron: Little Creek has been captured by the cavalry, and is tied to a post inside the fort. He hears two hawk cries and knows that these are a query from his tribesman as to whether he's okay, and where in the fort he's located. Little Creek answers with another bird call that results in a sharp knife flung over the fort wall and piercing the ground near his thigh. None of the soldiers notice the bird calls are unusual for their species, nor that their prisoner suddenly has a tool/weapon handy.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: The Mole's distress call is to imitate a dying giraffe. When the kids make the sound, some nearby soldiers comment "Hey, did you hear that? Sounds like a giraffe is dying over there."
• The Three Little Pups: The Dogcatcher attempts to blow up the brick house with dynamite. Droopy uses a paper bag to pop near the Dogcatcher. He thought he blew up so he checked, but the dynamite blew up right in front of him.
• The Tigger Movie: When Tigger's shouting sets off an avalanche, Piglet asks Pooh if his stomach is making that sound. Pooh nervously says it's not him this time.
• Zootopia: Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde have traced the whereabouts of chauffer Manchas to the abandoned Cliffside Sanitarium. Or not so abandoned, as there are a dozen grey wolf guards surrounding it. To distract them, Judy imitates a wolf howl (impressive for a rabbit), which triggers the other wolves into a group howl. This lets Nick and Judy slip past them unnoticed.

Film — Live-Action

• Annihilation (2018): After cracking and taking Lena, Josie, and Ventress hostage, Anya is stopped from starting on them with a knife when she hears Shepherd screaming for help outside. It's the mutated bear that killed Shepherd, now somehow mimicking her voice.
• Babe: Duchess the cat has a grudge against Babe for accidentally getting her covered in paint in a misadventure earlier in the film, but Babe is too innocent to notice. When she hisses at him, he thinks she's coughing or sneezing.
• Batman Forever: At Chase Meridian's office for an appointment, Bruce Wayne hears sounds of a struggle through the door (blows landing, Chase grunting with effort). His heroic instincts kick in and he smashes the door down... and is embarrassed to see her doing some boxing practice on a heavy bag.
• In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Ted uses a tape recording of his voice to distract his father at the police station.
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The second time Butch and Sundance rob the train, they once again encounter Woodcock, who refuses to let them in again. That's when an old woman from the train comes up to Butch and Sundance and starts yelling at them. From inside, Woodcock hears the woman complaining, and then hears her act terrified and Sundance threaten he's going to kill her, which makes him open the door - only to discover Sundance has subdued her and it's Butch who's imitating the old woman.
• By The Sea: When somebody climbs a ladder towards a bedroom window, the champagne bottle he is carrying pops open. He tosses the bottle away, which smashes. A nearby policeman thinks a window has been broken, and investigates.
• Carry On Constable: Charlie Constable hears the sound of people arguing in a house. When he then hears gunshots and a woman wailing "you've killed him", he bursts into the house, only to find that it was a radio play.
  Charlie: I thought I heard a murder, Sergeant.
• The Conjuring: When playing Hide and Clap with April, Carolyn hears the ghost boy clapping; as she is blindfolded, she believes it is April clapping, and goes to hunt for her.
• Devils Express: In one scene, the demon kills a subway worker by (very falsely) imitating a distressed woman to attract him.
• Discussed in Dune (1984). Paul Atreides is studying the various important planets of the film when his mentors Gurney Halleck, Thufir Hawat, and Dr. Yueh walk in. Paul predicts Hawat is about to admonish him for sitting with his back to the door.
  Paul: I know, Thufir. I'm sitting with my back to the door. I heard you, Dr. Yueh, and Gurney coming down the hall.
  Thufir: Those sounds could be imitated!
  Paul: I'd know the difference.
  Thufir: (thinking) Yes, perhaps you would at that.
• Discussed in Dune (2021). Paul Atreides is practicing his knife fighting on a dummy when Gurney Halleck strides in for their session and admonishes him for standing with his back to the door.
  Gurney: Don't stand with your back to the door!
  Paul: I could tell it was you by your footsteps, Gurney Halleck!
  Gurney: Someone might imitate my stride.
  Paul: I'd know the difference.
• Easy A: the first fake sexual encounter Olivia stages is to help her gay friend Brandon appear straight, where the pair make a show of going into a bedroom at a party, and then proceed to jump on the bed and make sex noises as everyone eavesdrops outside the door.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Professor Lupin (in wolf form) responds to Hermione's imitation of a wolf's call.
• Home Alone:
  • Home Alone: Kevin plays gangster clips, or recordings of his jerkass uncle, to scare away intruders. He even manages to hold a dialogue with a pizza delivery guy, by picking out the right lines from the gangster clips.
  • Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: Kevin uses a tape recorder slowed down to make his own voice sound deeper, pretending to be his father when he makes his hotel reservation by telephone, which fools the hotel staff.
• The Longest Day: Prior to the D-Day Landings during World War II, American paratroopers are issued toy clickers to help identify one another in the darkness of their nighttime operation. It turns out that these clickers sound almost exactly like a German Mauser rifle being cocked, as one paratrooper finds out the hard way...
  "Two clicks... I heard... two clicks..."
• Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang: When Algernon whistles to demonstrate a bomb falling, Mrs. Docherty thinks it's the kettle.
• A New Hope:
  • Obi-Wan imitates the howl of a krayt dragon to scare away a band of Sand People after they attack Luke and then start raiding his landspeeder for useful items.
  • After Luke, Han, Chewbacca, and Leia are saved from being crushed to death by a "garbage masher", they shout happily. C-3PO hears them and mistakes their cheerful shouting for screams of pain, concluding that they're all dying.
  • Two stormtroopers arrive to guard the Death Star's tractor-beam controls while Obi-Wan is working on sabotaging them. Once finished, he uses the Force to make them hear a noise behind them, making them look away long enough for him to escape. They're heard talking about it briefly:
    Stormtrooper 1: What was that?
    Stormtrooper 2: That? That's nothing. Outgassing, don't worry about it.
• Police Academy: Sgt. Jones has an uncanny ability to mimic noises, and when he does it over a loudspeaker it's even more realistic. He can accurately recreate the sound of machine-gun fire. In the first film he first uses it to prank some cops, then later he does it over the police car PA system to panic and scatter rioters who were attacking the car.
• Popeye: Popeye and Olive find a box and hear a rattling sound from inside. This startles Olive, who thinks it's a rattlesnake, but it's then revealed to be Swee'Pea shaking a baby's rattle.
• Predator:
  • Predator: Played to sinister effect, as the Predator's equipment can function as a high-tech "duck call", allowing the alien to imitate any sound, and any voice, to distract or unnerve his targets.
  • Predators: After an ambush halfway into the film, the Predators managed to capture and maim Cuchillo, one of the prey, and sets him up at the edge of a field with an audio recording of Cuchillo calling for help. Isabella wants to approach Cuchillo only for Royce, the de-facto leader, to stop her when he senses a trap; Isabella then delivers a Mercy Kill to Cuchillo via Sniper Rifle only for him to continue calling, where it turns out he's dead the whole time and his corpse is being propped up as bait.
• The Ruins: In both the book and film, the killer plants are able to learn sounds. They start off by imitating the sound of a ringing cell phone, which causes Pablo to get his back broken in the book, and then escalate to imitating voices to spread discord among the group.
• Scream VI: After Sam briefly sees her being attacked, Quinn is then heard screaming and shouting and apparently fighting off a Ghostface before being stabbed by them and her body is thrown back through the door. It turns out that it was all feigned by Quinn and her brother and father in order to throw suspicion off Quinn as she is actually Ghostface.
• Son of the Mask: Otis the dog, who is wearing the Mask of Loki, attempts to blow up Alevy Avery with a stick of dynamite, but the baby managed to throw it away. Alevy imitated the sound of an explosion, tricking the dog that he exploded.
• Spider-Man: When Spider-Man is rescuing some citizens from a burning building, he hears an old woman screaming for help and goes back in to save her. However, it turns out that the "old woman" was actually the Green Goblin making the sound and attempting to lure him back in.

Gamebooks

• In the books Ghostly Towers and Ghost Train, there are many occasions in which a sound believed to be a ghost actually has a rational explanation: the supposed whistling of a ghost train is only the wind whistling through the girders of a bridge.

Literature

• In the short story The Accident, the two sisters Annie and May hear a scratching, fluttering sound in the fireplace. They think it's the "Fibber Owl", a legendary owl who kidnaps liars, but it's actually a rat.
• The BFG: Just before capturing the giants, the head of the army hears a sound like gunfire, and orders his men to turn back; but it is only the giants snoring.
  Head of the army: I am a military man, and I know a gun when I hear one! Turn back!
  The BFG: That is just the giants snortling in their sleep. I is a giant myself, and I know a giant's snortle when I hear one.
• Big Nate: In one book, Nate, Teddy, and Francis are doing some band practice. Artur walks in and says he thought he heard a Siberian mountain goat. The indignant Nate then clarifies that it was actually him singing.
• Burglar Bill: After Burglar Bill has stolen a big brown box with little holes in it, he suddenly hears a noise that sounds like police cars. When he realises it is coming from the box, he opens it, to discover a crying baby.
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: Wonka tells a story about Goldie, a girl who mistook chocolate-flavored laxatives for candy. Her stomach grumbles so loudly that the neighbors mistake it for thunder.
• Dork Diaries: In one book, Mrs. Wallabanger crosses the road, unaware that a huge truck is coming towards her. The truck honks its horn for her to get out of the way, but due to her deafness, she mistakes it for a goose.
• Discussed in Dune. Young Paul Atreides is sitting with his back to the door when his tutor Gurney Halleck walks in. Paul says he heard the footsteps and knows who they are. He is admonished that the sounds could be imitated. Paul says he would know the difference.
• Emil: In one story, Emil hears the pig screaming while being slaughtered and worries that his mother is the one screaming.
• Encyclopedia Brown: Played for laughs in book 7, chapter 4 ("The Case of the Bound Camper"). When Encyclopedia and his friends (including Benny Breslin, whose loud snoring is notorious among the group) go camping, Encyclopedia briefly remembers a time when they went camping before and a male moose stuck its head into one of their tents, having mistaken Benny's snoring for another moose's mating call.
• The Expanse: In the short story "Strange Dogs", as Cara runs off into the woods at night, she records a feigned cry for help on her tablet and drops it to fool her parents as she runs in another direction.
• The Famous Five:
  • In Five go Adventuring Again, Timmy the dog sighs from under the table during the children's lessons with Mr. Roland. As Timmy is not supposed to be there, George imitates the sigh, hoping Mr. Roland will think it was she who sighed the first time.
  • In Five Run Away Together, Dick, Julian, and George make convincing imitations of the sounds of cows, sheep and horses, to frighten the not-very-bright Sticks who are camping in the dungeons, who are well and truly taken in.
  • In Five go to Demon's Rocks, nine-year-old Tinker pretends to be a bicycle and imitates the sound of a bicycle bell so convincingly that Aunt Fanny believes somebody is ringing the doorbell.
• In Harry Potter, Ginny has a habit of Copycat Mockery of people of whom she disapproves. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, she imitates Dolores Umbridge's cough so convincingly that several people look round in alarm.
• In the kids' book Lets Go Home Little Bear, an anthropomorphic bear and his son are walking through the woods in the snow. However, when the son hears the father's plodding footsteps, icicles dripping water, and snow falling off branches, he thinks they're scary creatures called a "Plodder", "Dripper", and "Plopper".
• Mr. Men:
  • In "Mr. Jelly", the titular Mr. Jelly hears his cereal crackling and popping and mistakes it for a war outside before diving under his kitchen table.
  • Annual No. 3: Mr. Jelly is in the park, and hears a Sinister Scraping Sound; and is convinced that it's a giant centipede sharpening its claws to tear him to pieces. But it is only Mr. Slow, the gardener, slowly raking the soil.
• In Rudyard Kipling's "My Own True Ghost Story," the narrator, staying in an unfamiliar house, hears what sounds for all the world like a game of billiards going on in the unoccupied room next door. He convinces himself that there are ghosts playing there, but later discovers the sound had nothing to do with billiards, but was caused by entirely by a scurrying rodent, a damaged window, and the wind.
• The Thrawn Trilogy: In Dark Force Rising, Luke Skywalker gets his group past a guard by using the Force to make the guard think he heard a noise and look towards it.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: In one episode, Howard knocks on Penny's door and plays a recording of Sheldon's voice to make Penny think that he was Sheldon.
• The Black Adder: Played for laughs in "The Foretelling". Henry Tudor imitates the sound of a sheep to stop the Queen looking behind Edmund's bed curtains.
  Queen: It's not a sheep in there with you, is it?
  Edmund: Of course not!
  Queen: Well then, let me in.
  [When she does enter the room, and is about to look behind the bed curtains, Henry Tudor who is hidden behind them baa-baas like a sheep.]
  Queen: Oh, Edmund. It's the lying I find so hurtful.
• Chalk: Just before a school inspection, all the pupils in the school have vanished. Eric Slatt tells the inspectors that the pupils are in the assembly hall, and makes them wait on the stage behind the closed curtains, while Suzy uses a record player to provide crowd noise.
• Fawlty Towers:
  • Played for laughs in "The Germans". Just before a fire drill, Basil accidentally sets off the burglar alarm, which the guests believe is the fire alarm. Basil furiously demonstrates the difference between the alarms (the fire bell being a semitone higher), and insists that the guests only leave the hotel when the fire alarm is sounded; and then only when it sounds for the actual drill, not merely the demonstration of what it sounds like.
  • Played with in "The Kipper and the Corpse". When Miss Tibbs shrieks from inside a wardrobe, Manuel imitates it and begins singing. Later, when Miss Tibbs is heard screaming loudly in the distance, Basil says to the puzzled Dr. Price "I'll turn the radio down".
• Fuller House: The episode "Angels' Night Out" has D.J.'s children and Ramona get back at Joey for pranking them by luring him into a sneak attack with a recording of Tommy crying on a Smartphone.
• Grange Hill: During a school trip, Doyle makes the sound of wild animals to scare the girls, Penny and Susi, who run into the forest and get lost.
• Comes up once in Impractical Jokers when the guys take turns trying to peddle home security systems. The one for Sal and Q has an alarm that sounds like Chinese men shouting, and one guy in the room asks if it's meant to fool an intruder into thinking that he's in a dojo filled with martial artists. The Jokers quickly run with that.
• In Legends of Tomorrow, Ray fools Nora Darhk into thinking the demon Mallus (who is currently possessing her) is giving her an order by getting a recording that sounds like Mallus, shrinking down to fit in her ear, then playing the recording there so it sounds like it's coming from inside her head. They get the recording from John Noble, the actor who voices Mallus, after realizing that his voice sounds exactly like Mallus.
• Line of Duty: Cracking up under the pressure of going undercover in a brutal gang, John Corbett is pushed over the edge when the gang tells him that they're moving into sex slavery and he's then introduced to the clearly terrified trafficked women. When the women are locked in a room and he hears horrific screaming, he can't take it anymore and rushes into the room with a gun. It turns out it was a trap and one of the other gang members was making the noise to draw him out. Lisa then slits his throat from behind.
• Motherland: Fort Salem: In "Not Our Daughters" Abigail hears the voice of her deceased cousin calling for help. She runs off on her own, only to find a Camarilla^note group seeking extermination of witches agent using tech that duplicates Charvel's voice to trick her. More agents arrive and they overpower her. Fortunately, two members of her coven show up and save her before the agents kill her.
• Mr. Bean: In "The Bus Stop", Mr. Bean tricks a blind man into giving up his place in the queue at the bus stop. He does this by scurrying past, making the sound of a bus stopping, including the hissing sound of the door opening. The man is fooled and walks straight out into the path of an actual approaching bus.
• People of Earth: Agent Foster accidentally shot herself in the foot while trying to kick down a door because she heard a baby crying on the other side. Only to discover that it was just an ad on a TV that somebody left on.
• Puddle Lane: The Magician promises Toby that he will play with him when the clock strikes thirteen. To make the Magician believe this has happened, Toby gets somebody to bang on a metal plate to make the sound of the thirteenth chime after the clock has struck twelve.
• Red Dwarf: In "Can of Worms", the crew is threatened by a Mercenoid (which is a member of a race of robotic bounty hunters). To divert it, Lister throws Rimmer's dictaphone, which is playing recordings of Lister's voice, away from them in a bid to distract the Mercenoid. The ruse is seemingly revealed when the recordings of Lister's voice end and those of Rimmer's start up. However, it is then revealed to be a ploy to get the Mercenoid to pick up the device and get electrocuted.
• Space: Above and Beyond: Attempted by the Chigs in "Sugar Dirt", who start playing fake audio clips of wounded UN soldiers calling for help in hopes of baiting survivors to respond. When that fails, they switch to just insulting them. Or trying to, at least.
  Recording: Hey! Abe Lincoln's dead!^note The Chigs lack the concept of an afterlife and apparently misinterpreted the Gospels to mean humans coming back to life is a normal thing.
• In the third season of Superman & Lois, they introduced their version of Onomatopoeia who now has the ability to mimic various sound effects to confuse people.
• Thunderbirds: A highly technological example occurs in "The Cham-Cham", in which coded messages are sent using music played by a band, which is interpreted by the cham-cham machine. Lady Penelope infiltrates the band and manages to send counter-messages with her singing, fooling the cham-cham.
• Wishbone: Invoked in "Twisted Tail", David records a (rather half-assed, by Wishbone's own admission) bark from Wishbone and edits it with his computer to sound like a much larger dog, to act as a burglar alarm for Ms. Gilmore's house after a wave of burglaries around town. It not only scares the hell out of the burglar but is loud enough to be heard from Joe's house next door, letting them get a look at him and identify him.

Magazines

• A Muse Magazine article about the World Series of Birding showed one of the team of birders the author was shadowing imitate a songbird in hopes of prompting the bird to respond so it could be counted. The birder comments he knows for a fact he's been mistakenly counted by other teams before.

Puppet Shows

• In a Sesame Street sketch, Grover mistakes an echo for someone mimicking him and yells, "Will you knock it off?!".

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The monster known as the leucrotta, first introduced in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, can imitate noises such as the voices of human beings or the sound of domestic animals which are in pain. It does this from concealment in order to lure other creatures close enough to be attacked.
  • Auditory illusions pass as real unless the listener succeeds on a test to recognize that they aren't. The difficulty varies; the 3rd Edition spell "Ventriloquism" grants listeners a reflexive saving throw to disbelieve it, whereas the 5th Edition "Minor Illusion" only gives them the chance if they're actively scrutinizing what they hear.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: Using Speak with Dead on Demir and asking "Did you find your sister?" has him respond that he heard her screaming, but that the thing making the sound wasn't actually Mayrina. It's not specified what was imitating the sound, but it's implied it was the nearby redcaps and that Mayrina's screams were used to lure and kill Demir and his brother.
• Played for Laughs in Brain Dead 13. Fritz is about to shoot Lance with an Arm Cannon, and Fritz looks away once his arm is aimed. Lance shouts "BOOM!" This causes Fritz to think the cannon has gone off. When Fritz sees Lance standing there unscathed, he lets out a comical scream before sticking his face into the barrel of the cannon, clearly confused. The cannon goes off in his face.
• City Shrouded in Shadow: In one sequence, the protagonists are hiding in an office building from the yakuza pursuing them when one of the latter hears something and begins to investigate. A number of options pop up to throw them off the scent, ranging from the plausible (meowing like a cat or barking like a dog) to the ridiculous (howling like a wolf). During her playthrough, Mio Ookami (being a wolf-girl) decided to try the "howling like a wolf" option to see what would happen, and was bemused that it worked: by that point, the yakuza had already seen giant alien monsters and kaiju randomly appearing, and as a result simply accepted that random animals appearing in an office building were equally plausible.
• Deer Hunter gives the player two devices for luring deer closer: 1) a horn that makes a noise similar to a deer grunt, and 2) a pair of antlers to rub together, which sounds like two bucks fighting over territory or does. If deer are within earshot, they will usually amble into the player's view within thirty seconds.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 3: To fool Springtrap into moving somewhere else, you have to play a soundbite of Balloon Boy's laugh via the audio devices. Given who the undead person inside the Springtrap suit is, it makes perfect sense why he'd go after it, thinking it's children he could target.
  • In Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, to keep the animatronics hunting you away, you need to lure them to other places using pre-recorded noises of children. They think it's a new, easy target for them to catch, while in reality it was designed just right to bring them specifically in.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: Two examples in the Ruin DLC. Firstly, various sections require you to use a replication of either Gregory or Cassie's voice to lure hostile animatronics away from key locations. Secondly, you can find Candy Cadet in the depths beneath the Pizzaplex, who will tell you a story if you find enough tokens scattered around the area. He tells the story of a mother and son who lived in a cabin in the woods, hunted by a monster before the mother captured the monster and locked it up in the basement. The boy was afraid of the noises the monster made each night, but the mother would soothe the boy by singing him a lullaby. Eventually, the monster listens and learns to replicate the lullaby, singing it to the boy when the mother is away in order to lure him into setting them free, and... that's where the story ends. Both examples serve to foreshadow the true identity of the "Gregory" trapped beneath the Pizzaplex.
• In the second installment of Hugo's House of Horrors, you have to lure the maid away by making her think Uncle Horace is ringing for her. To do this, you have to rub a bell with catnip so that a cat plays with the bell and makes it sound.
• In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, there's a short sidequest in which Link must sneak after Mila who is out late at night and making a run for her employer Zunari's safe with the intent to steal. If Link gets caught, she'll run away, but if Link doesn't completely hide himself and she sees only a tiny part of him, Link will meow, fooling her into thinking it's just a cat.
• Minecraft: Parrots can imitate the sounds of monsters to scare players into thinking there's the real one, on any Difficulty Level besides Peaceful which doesn't have monsters.
• Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): this is Qurupeco's most famous ability. Similarly to Real Life forked-tail drongos, this Bird Wyvern can summon other Large Monsters by imitating their sounds (and the latter always fall for it). In low-rank quests, the summoned monsters are relatively manageable Wyverns such as Jaggis and Rathian, but things change in High-Rank quests, where Qurupecos can call Deviljho, lead it to the hunter and run for its life (Deviljhos are infamous for their Horror Hunger and sheer strength).
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: When Mario is spying on Grubba, the latter hears a sound from the vents and the player must choose from three options a sound to imitate: a squeak, a meow, or a belch. Fortunately for our heroes, if the last option is picked, Grubba assumes it's just a belching beetle.
• In Until Dawn, the Wendigoes can mimic sounds, including the sound of prey and human voices. Late in the game, one will mimic the voice of Jess (a character who either went missing or was killed early in the game, depending on the player), calling for help. Falling for this can potentially get both Ashley and Chris killed.
• Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures: In "The Last Resort", Wallace's stomach growls loudly from looking at boxes of Stilton, which Mr. Paneer, Felicity Flitt, and Duncan McBiscuit mistake for thunder.

Webcomics

• Pebble and Wren: In one strip, Pebble hears Phil using a razor and believes there are bees in it, scaring him.

Web Animations

• Dinosauria: Our Frozen Past: The mother Troodon combines this with Summon Bigger Fish when the Nanuqsauruses attack her nest and kill one of her babies. She uses using her vocal mimicing ability to imitate the distress call of a baby Pachyrhinosaurus and the nearby herd mistakes it for an actual distress call and come to chase off the larger predators.

Web Original

• In Search and Rescue Woods, one of the supernatural creatures in the Park tries to lure the narrator closer by making the sound of a crying baby. He notices just in time that the cry loops, like it's a recording, and backs off.

Web Video

• One of the tapes in Gemini Home Entertainment warn you of being subjected to this trope, as Woodcrawlers are able to possess human bodies and then imitate sounds. Most of these being bone-chilling and desperate cries for help, they even refer to them as auditory hallucinations to further try and tell you that these possible desperate screams are just bait from fake humans.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: According to "Adventures In Cat-Sitting", Hop Pop is capable of mimicking the sound of a fire alarm, which he uses to drive the customers out of a shawarma restaurant.
• The Angry Beavers: In "Up All Night", Dag and Norb are watching a B-Movie called "The Crawling Spleen", which features the titular creature making a splashing sound as it approaches. When they turn off the TV, they hear a sound that they think is the spleen in their house, but it turns out it's the sound of their faucet dripping onto a wet sponge.
• Arcane: Jinx recorded herself pretending to be a little girl in distress in order to lure a squad of enforcers into a burning building filled with time bombs.
• Archer: Archer fools a door with a voice password by phoning the man who can open it, tricking him into speaking the password, and playing back the recording.
• Caillou: In "Caillou is Afraid of the Dark", Caillou keeps hearing rustling under his bed and he thinks it's a "scratchy monster". It turns out to be Gilbert messing around with a paper bag.
• Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot: In "Down to Earth", Share, Funshine, and Cheer think Good Luck is crying, so they walk up to him to give him a Care-Bear Stare. He explains that he was just laughing because he heard a joke earlier.
• Casper's Scare School: In "Our Boy Wolfie", Jimmy stubs his toe and howls in pain, which his parents mistake for a werewolf.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: In "Son of the Chicken from Outer Space", Courage gets Chained to a Railway. Muriel hears a train's whistle and mistakes it for a teakettle whistle, so she goes to see if her tea is ready.
• Donkey Kong Country: In "Double Date Trouble", when King K. Rool and the Kremlings try to steal the Crystal Coconut from Cranky's cabin, Candy tries to stall them with Cranky's sound effects record. It initially works as they run to cover when they hear war sounds, but they realize it was a trick when the record switches to animal sounds.
• George of the Jungle: Two criminals try to capture George using a phonograph of a screaming lady in distress as part of their trap. In true Jay Ward fashion, it's also parodied, when after crying out "HELP! MURDER! POLICE!" a female phone operator's voice is heard saying "This has been a recorded message."
• Julius Jr.: In "Fruitronic 5000", Julius's stomach gurgles and Worry Bear wonders if it's a sea monster.
• King of the Hill: In the episode "The Man Who Shot Cane Skretteburg", a recording of Luanne's voice is used by Dale Gribble to lure an obnoxious teenager into an ambush during a paintball match.
• Little Princess: In "I Want Baked Beans", the Princess farts in her sleep and she mistakes it for a monster under her bed.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012): Throughout "Door-Jammed", Sunil and Vinnie keep mistaking random sounds for werewolves. Mrs. Twombly shouts a Big "NO!" in frustration, and later, Roger howls in pain after dropping a hammer on his foot, and Vinnie and Sunil mistake that for a wolf's howl. Russell and Zoe also have noisy stomachs, and Vinnie and Sunil think it's a werewolf growling.
• Looney Tunes:
  • In "Bunny Hugged", Bugs Bunny tears his wrestling mask in half to fool The Crusher into thinking he's ripped his shorts. Bugs then disguises himself as a tailor to give him some of his usual mischief.
  • In "Stupor Duck"", the entire plot is kicked off when Daffy Duck mistakes a radio show he hears in someone's office for a news broadcast about dirty deeds being done by Aardvark Ratnik, which gets him to change into Stupor Duck.
• The Loud House:
  • In "Left in the Dark", Lori thinks she hears a ghost moaning, but it's only the pipes settling, then Leni hears a scratching sound and also thinks it's a ghost, but it's only their cat Cliff using a scratching post.
  • In "Study Muffin", several sisters say, "Buh, buh, buh" when they're distracted by Hugh, a man on whom they have a crush. The other sisters hear this noise and initially mistake it for a goose or a sheep.
  • In "Garage Banned", Lori growls in annoyance. Her ditzy boyfriend Bobby, who was on the phone with her, thinks it's a gorilla.
  • In "No Place Like Homeschool", the Loud kids hear an ice cream truck and rush outside, only to find out it’s just Mr. Grouse playing his CD of classic ice cream truck jingles. They fall for it again later in the episode. Finally, at the end of the episode, they run out of the house when they think that they're about to miss the bus. It turns out that Mr. Grouse was playing his CD of classic school bus sounds.
  • In "Washed Up", a boat's engine makes a weird sound. Leni apologizes, thinking it's her own stomach as she didn't have much for breakfast.
• Martha Speaks:
  • In "Itchy Martha", Martha is made to wear a cone on her head. At night, this causes her to mistake her own breath for that of a bear due to the echoing, keeping her awake.
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Art", Martha (a domestic dog) howls to get Helen's attention. Mr. Stern the janitor hears her, but thinks it's a wolf that howled. Also in the same episode, T.D. whistles also to get Helen's attention, which Stern mistakes for a bird.
• Muppet Babies (1984): In one episode, Rowlf's stomach grumbles. Piggy angrily tells him not to growl at her.
• My Friends Tigger & Pooh: In "Piglet's Piglet's Echo Echo", several characters (starting with Piglet) mistake an echo as someone else talking.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Party of One", Applejack insists to a suspicious Pinkie Pie that she can't enter a barn because construction is going on. The other members of the Mane Six inside said barn quickly begin making all sorts of "construction noises". The ruse is only partially successful.
• The New Scooby-Doo Movies: Jonathan Winters, known for his impressions and sound effects, guest-starred in one episode. At one point, he tries to trick the Monster of the Week by convincing him a police helicopter is chasing him. It fails because there's obviously no helicopter in the sky. At a previous point, he uses Ventriloquism to trick a particularly stubborn farm hand.
• The Octonauts: In "Octonauts and the Seahorse Tale", Barnacles's stomach grumbles, and Kwazii mistakenly thinks Barnacles is growling at him.
• Peppa Pig: In "Baby Alexander", the Pig family hears the eponymous Alexander's wailing. Daddy Pig wonders if it's a car alarm and Peppa mistakes the sound for a fire engine.
• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop: The episode "Wild West Peril" has the Hooded Claw use this as part of his Teepee Trap in an attempt to kill off both Penelope and the Ant-Hill Mob.
• The Pink Panther: In Pink at First Sight, Pink Panther wants to get hired by a delivery service that has its messengers perform for the recipients. He goes to a music store and buys a tape player and some tapes. He lip-syncs to the songs on the tapes, causing people to think he's really singing. (Though this is excusable for him since he's a Heroic Mime who seemingly can't talk or sing at all.) Later on, when he is cornered by some gangsters, he uses the tape player again to play a recording of a police officer saying "This is the police! We've got you surrounded!" The gangsters think the police really are after them, and they hightail it out of there.
• Pinky Dinky Doo: In "Pinky and the Grumpy Alligator", Pinky and her father hear Aloysius the titular bad-tempered alligator stomping and snarling. Her dad wonders if it's Pinky's stomach.
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Something's Going Around", Louis hears moaning and thinks it's an escaped ghost, but actually it's Peter who's in pain from a supernatural ailment.
• R.O.B. the Robot: In "How Sweet It Is", a geyser is heard rumbling and Ema asks Orbit if that's his stomach. He responds that he thought it was her stomach making that sound.
• Rolie Polie Olie: In "The Bump", the Polies are kept up at night by an unusual snarl, and they wonder if it's an alien invasion or a monster spying on them. It turns out to be Spot's stomach growling due to indigestion.
• Sarah & Duck: In "Tummy Talk", Sarah's stomach is very noisy due to not having had lunch yet. A frog is heard croaking and the Interactive Narrator wonders if that came out of her stomach as well.
• South Park:
  • In "The Death of Eric Cartman", Cartman hears (what he thinks is) Liane crying. It is then revealed a moment later that she's just loudly banging a plumber.
  • In "Tonsil Trouble", Kyle hears that Cartman's been diagnosed with AIDS. He leaves the room for a moment and begins to laugh hysterically. Butters hears him and thinks he's crying.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the episode "Squid's Day Off", Squidward is left in charge of the Krusty Krab and tries to take advantage of the situation by playing hooky from work, under the guise of running unspecified "errands", only to drive himself to paranoia wondering what SpongeBob might be doing in his absence. When he finally starts to relax, he hears SpongeBob's signature laugh outside, and thinks SpongeBob is spying on him, but when he checks, the sound turns out to be a coral branch scraping against the window.
  • In "Gary Takes a Bath", Gary runs away from SpongeBob when the latter tries to bathe him. SpongeBob later finds what looks and sounds like Gary meowing in a tree, but when he gets to the top of the tree, he finds out that it is really an old-fashioned record player painted to look like Gary that plays an audio recording of his meow. Gary then takes the ladder that SpongeBob used to climb up the tree so that he can't climb back down it.
• Strawberry Shortcake: In the Berry Bitty Adventures episode "Fish Out of Water", Plum Pudding hears a frog croaking and wonders if her stomach was growling.
• Tom and Jerry: In The Duck Doctor, a mallard duckling gets shot down by Tom as he's flying south with his flock for the winter. Jerry takes him to safety and treats his injured wing, but throughout the cartoon, Tom keeps using a duck-call device to lure him back out, which leads to him getting shot repeatedly. After this happens several times, the duckling ends up looking like a Bandage Mummy and Jerry ties him to an anvil to prevent him from leaving until he's healed.
• Total Drama: "So, Uh, This Is My Team?": Beardo often uses his expert beatboxing to perfectly imitate sounds that mislead his fellow contestants. For example, he makes construction sounds that fool Team Kinosewak into believing Team Maskwak is ahead in the building challenge.
• Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race: In "A Million Ways to Lose a Million Dollars", the Police Cadets get out of a traffic jam by imitating a police siren, convincing the cars to move out of their way.
• Underdog: One episode has Riff-Raff set up a diversion for Underdog to leave his post in guarding a trainload of gold by sending Sweet Polly Purebred up in a hot-air balloon along with a hundred other balloons, each one playing a record of Polly repeatedly screaming "Help! Help!" Sure enough, it confuses Underdog for a while, until Polly's balloon springs a leak...
• What's New, Scooby-Doo?: In "There's No Creature Like Snow Creature", Daphne hears an avalanche outside and believes Velma sneezed.

Real Life

• Alarms that make the sound of a barking dog are sometimes used to deter intruders.
• Sometimes, people have believed houses to be haunted because of mysterious noises, which had a rational explanation. One extreme example was of knocking sounds that had been coming from the ceiling for several years. This was actually caused by a mechanical alarm clock on a chair in the bedroom above, making the faintest of tapping sounds, which were amplified in the room below.
• Witnesses to shootings sometimes report that they initially thought that gunshots were something innocuous, like a car backfiring or something heavy falling. It only dawns on them what they're hearing when the sound continues or repeats.
• An urban legend about the M1 Garand, the standard American military rifle from 1936 to 1957, argued that after firing all eight shots from the en bloc clip, the empty clip would be automatically ejected and made a distinct "pinging" sound as it hit the ground. Enemy soldiers supposedly learned to listen for this sound and would emerge from cover to fire back as the American reloaded; the Americans would then start keeping an empty clip on their person and drop it during engagements, fooling the enemy into thinking he was out of ammo and then picking them off. The story is a complete myth: while the M1 clip ejector did make a distinctive noise, it wasn't nearly loud enough to be heard from an enemy position, especially not during battle, and in any case a squad or fireteam were very unlikely to all run out of ammo at the same time.

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