It's Quiet… Too Quiet

aka: All Too Easy

But with all those bulletholes, it must have been quite noisy at one stage!

"It's quiet... too quiet...
[gunshot; bullet whizzes past his head]
Now, suddenly, it's too loud. I preferred it when it was quiet."

— O'Malley, Red vs. Blue

The setting is ominous: a dungeon, perhaps, or a dark wood. Not one where the wary or cowardly tread, that's for sure. The heroes, (no idiots, they!) ready themselves for an enemy attack that could come at any moment. After all, there MUST be danger nearby... right? It seems safe for now, though... or is it?

Someone has to break the silence, and only one line will do: "It's quiet... too quiet."

This trope describes any moment in a narrative where the action has hit a low point when anyone who's paying attention would notice that a Random Encounter could, or should, appear at any instant. Fairly often something will happen within a minute, which will lead another character to say "You Just Had to Say It".

When you start to suspect something is about to happen because the narrative is too positive, rather than too uneventful, that's a Hope Spot.

The Stock Phrase itself is long since discredited and made fun of so often it can now be considered a Dead Horse Trope. Exception is made if it is lampshaded by adding in a sign on WHAT is quiet, e.g. "Why have all the forest noises stopped?" the answer usually being "the Monster of the Week killed/drove away all the wildlife". Compare We're Being Watched.

Often happens when the Jungle Drums stop.

Compare Nothing Is Scarier and Absence of Evidence. For the background music going silent, see Sudden Soundtrack Stop. For when a person going quiet is a bad sign, see Lost Voice Plot, Dumb Struck, and Silence of Sadness.

At least partially Truth in Television; in forests and crowded cities, there's always stuff making noise — insects, birds, etc... unless they're hiding from something.

Here is a compilation with a lot of examples.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Parodied in this UK Rice Krispies advert from 1991. The reason it's too quiet is that a Mad Scientist supervillain has stolen all the sound.
• This ad with slightly unnerving kung fu clowns starts with the main clown walking down an empty road: "It's quiet— maybe too quiet!"

Anime & Manga

• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, once Bucciarati revealed he's a walking corpse, before Giorno can ask anything else, the group arrives in Rome and are immediately alarmed that the city is silent... just as a body is dropped on the top of their car.
• Kagewani has Takeru getting scared when he realizes that the forest got a bit quiet after he didn't hear back from the crew returning back from the lake to get replacements for their "fake" cryptid propeller.
• Princess Mononoke: At the beginning of the film, Ashitaka tells a trio of village girls that something strange is going on and they should head back to the village for safety, and they say that the birds and animals of the forest have disappeared. The audience has already seen a giant, powerful being moving through the forest, which shortly thereafter reveals itself as a giant monster.
• Rurouni Kenshin parodies this in their Blooper Reel.
  Kenshin: Where are the animals? The birds?
  * pause*
  Kenshin: I can't hear any FISH!
• YuYu Hakusho: Kurama remarks on the quiet in episode 74.

Comic Books

• Arkham Asylum: Living Hell: Dr. Arkham immediately realizes something is wrong when he notices that the asylum is too quiet one night.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Played with in Season 8:
  Kennedy: It's quiet.
  Willow: Are you about to say that it's "too quiet", dear?
  Kennedy: No, I'm gonna say I think we're okay.
• In Dark Avengers #10, the Sentry is regarding a small town from the air and says that it's quiet.
  Sentry: I'd, you know, say it's too quiet, but I don't like saying things like that. But it is.
• ElfQuest: Even the normally prosaic comic couldn't resist having a character say "it's too quiet" in the expanded version of Volume One.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): Lampshaded in the "Chaos Theory" arc, where Starlight comments on the suspicious quiet and a nervous Pinkie mentions how of course it's going to be quiet until the other shoe drops or the dramatic music starts.
  Starlight Glimmer: It seems quiet...
  Pinkie Pie: Of course it seems quiet! It always seems quiet until the aliens invade or the volcano erupts or the orchestra starts playing the scary music! (everyone glares at Pinkie) Sorry, jitters.
• Ultimate Vision: The Gah Lak Tus module lands in a military base. Vision and Tarleton arrive at the place to find nobody around. Even the comms chatter has ceased, except for the automated distress calls.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: When Maj. Keith Griggs and Lt. Lauren Haley are walking the streets of a war torn town and all the kids playing and people who were outdoors quietly disappear inside they are both quickly put on edge by the sudden silence. Moments later they are ambushed.
• An old Mad Magazine has a couple of parents wincing at the loud noise and rock music coming from the basement where their teenage kids are having a party. They are shown smiling in relief when it quiets down, then exchanging anxious looks. The final frame has the father standing at the top of the stairs yelling "Let's hear a little noise down there" at a basement full of teenagers making out.

Comic Strips

• Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!: One strip has Brewster say this, only for his Red Shirt companion to mock this trope at length. When said Red Shirt is inevitably killed, this also how Brewster points out the silence.
• Calvin and Hobbes: On a few occasions, Calvin's mother notes that when she hasn't heard from Calvin for longer than two minutes, it usually means he's getting into trouble. She's always right with her assumption.

Fan Works

• Agent Carter: Phantom Pain: While scoping out a potentially HYDRA-affiliated location in Santa Clarita, Michael and Emily find the area eerily quiet - not even wildlife can be heard. It's not until later when they leave and stop some distance from the location that they can hear the wind and cicadas as normal.
• Boldores and Boomsticks: Despite the area being filled with tracks, team RWBY doesn't see even a single Grimm.
  Ruby: It’s quiet... too quiet… heehee, I’ve always wanted to say that!
• The Boy Who Cried Idiot: Lincoln's nightmare begins with silence.
• ''Equestria: A History Revealed': After retaking Canterlot during the Equestrian Civil War, the characters note that things seem a little suspicious. Turns out it was all a Defensive Feint Trap, as Celestia's tired army is then assaulted by Nightmare forces triple in number, beginning the real Battle of Canterlot.
• Fate/Gamer Night: While on his way to his new swordsman instructor, Shirou suddenly notes that the forest is silent, made even worse because while trekking through the forest he'd gained the abilities Sense the Unnatural and Sense Presence. Then his Sense Presence alerts him that there's someone standing only a few inches behind him.
• Final Fantasy VII: Another Side: After they escape from the Shinra cells, Cissnei realizes that it's entirely too quiet, as though nothing else on the floor is moving. She realizes why that is right before they come across the scene of a massacre.
• In The Hill of Swords, Kirche and Louise say this verbatim right before they are attacked. Shirou lampshades it.
• New Game Plus (One Piece): Buggy says this word for word when they arrive at Syrup Village. And that's before he gets any indication at all that Usopp booby-trapped the entire beach.
• A couple of instances in The Night Unfurls:
  • Once Kyril and the Black Dogs successfully enter the Black Fortress via a secret entrance, Kyril is rather concerned with the empty passageway, seemingly bereft of any life inside. He internally notes that everything is going to plan, going far too well for his liking. Then they've got company.
  • The streets of Rad are ominously silent, a far cry to the city that was once a bustling place. A good sign that Kyril and his company are being lured in to be surrounded by mutated mooks from all sides. This does happen later on, but not before the hunters proceed onward to the hornet's nest without the troops, in order to avert a potential case of Redshirt Army.
• In The Nightmare House, the first sign that Lincoln's sisters have been kidnapped and replaced by impostors (in his Nightmare Sequence) is that the house is quiet. Makes sense when you consider that the story is based on a program called The Loud House.
• In The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, as they are investigating the Gaunt Shack's surroundings, Moody notices how odd it is that they haven't run into any magical protections, and does so with a long periphrase. This ensues:
  Hermione: So in essence, what you're saying, is that it's quiet... too quiet.
  Moody: ...Yes, but I was hoping to sidestep the cliché there. Points for concision though.
  Sirius: I hate to disturb... no, wait, I love it. But anyway, if you know we're diving headfirst into the Land of Clichés, you know what comes up, don't you?
• In Patterns of the Past, Olesya comes across a room at the White Dress Hop that the Patternista has marked with a sign that says, "Patternista's Evil Lair - DO NOT DISTURB". She thinks to herself that finding the villainess was easy...almost too easy. Sure enough, when she and the rest of the rescue team barge into the room, all of them, save for Olesya, are trapped in a net suspended in midair.
• During particularly creepy and/or suspenseful scenes in the eponymous hacked game in Pokémon Strangled Red, the narrator notices that the music has stopped.
• In Robb Returns, Brynden Tully does not like the silence settling over the Bloody Gate, rightly fearing that the Vale clans may be planning something. Fortunately, they are actually planning to leave for the North, following Ned's call to arms.
• The Weaver Option:
  • After Taylor becomes a Living Saint any ship that carries her through the Warp is subject to constant and intense daemonic assaults. When she leads the forces of Operation Caribbean to Pavia however the Warp is not only quiet but actually seems to speed their trip. As she correctly guesses, Tzeentch had laid a trap in Pavia and wanted her to arrive at the right time.
  • During the battle of Commorragh Taylor notes that the daemonic incursions they'd been dealing with had stopped and things were too quiet. Not long after a massive daemonic horde led by Fulgrim makes their entrance.

Films — Animated

• Disney:
  • The Fox and the Hound:
    • Vixey is afraid to enter a copse when she realizes that it's too quiet, while Todd, who unlike her was raised in captivity, has no such qualms and narrowly avoids falling foul of Copper, Amus' shotgun and a shitload of bear traps.
    • Copper also falls into this when he is sniffing for Tod up the cliff and picks up a new scent...From a giant bear!.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a scene where Captain Phoebus doesn't like the quietness of the catacombs:
    "Speaking of trouble, we should have run into some by now. You know, a guard, a booby trap..." (his torch is blown out leaving only complete darkness) "...or an ambush."
• Shrek: The titular ogre utters this line when he and Donkey enter a deserted Kingdom of Duloc. In this particular case, rather than heralding some imminent threat, the quiet is because everyone has gone off to watch the tournament.

Films — Live-Action

• Airplane!: Robert Stack says the line to Lloyd Bridges as their characters await the arrival of the airplane.
• Alien: Covenant. The crew of Covenant land on what appears to be the perfect colony world with beautiful mountains, plenty of fresh water and flourishing plant life. Then someone points out there's no sound of any animals or birds. It's because the Xenomorph virus has killed off all local lifeforms.
• Aliens in the Attic:
  Jake: It's been quiet. Too quiet.
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God: When Native Americans who aren't slaves show up for the first time, the ambient sounds (birds and insects mostly) go dead. The "Emperor" makes this remark, and soon a spooked horse kicks some fire onto a gunpowder barrel.
• Arachnophobia: At one point during the movie, the main characters notice that the crickets have stopped chirping. Turns out the spiders ate them all.
• Assault on Precinct 13 (2005): In the remake, one character remarks that it's "awful quiet out there", and Lawrence Fishburne replies that that's what worries him.
• In Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra: Edifis, trapped in Cleopatra's palace under Roman siege, utters this line as everything is silent and a tumbleweed rolls by. Right after, the Romans show up with siege engines.
  "It's quiet... too quiet... I like it better when it's a little more less quiet..."
• In The Big Chill, Nick says this as he, Harold and Sam are trying to catch a bat that's flown into the attic.
• In The Bridge at Remagen, a US Army unit approaches a German town and the Lieutenant orders all stop because it looks too easy; there are no apparent defences of any kind. His Captain upbraids him for cowardice and proceeds ahead as point and is promptly killed by a hidden panzerfaust wielding soldier.
• Dune (2021). After the Atreides forces have landed on Dune, Duke Leto is surveying the city of Arakeen with binoculars and comments, "So quiet." Gurney Halleck replies, "Yeah, that's what worries me too." Both of them are expecting Harkonnen sabotage attempts, so it's not surprising they take this attitude; the Duke then orders Gurney to put extra guards on the spice refinery and spaceport, the two most crucial areas.
• Drums Along the Mohawk: Said word for word right before the Tories launch their final assault on the fort.
• The Elite Squad: Baiano says this near the end. BOPE attacks moments after.
• The Fog. When the title weather phenomena (and the zombies inside of it) are approaching the home where Mrs. Kobritz and Andy are staying, the frogs suddenly stop croaking, resulting in complete silence.
• Galaxy Quest: Done in the first scene, right before an ambush attack on Tim Allen and company.
• Goldeneye. During their raid on a Soviet chemical plant, James Bond remarks to fellow agent Alec Trevelyan, "It's too easy", realizing that they've encountered zero difficulty in breaching what should be a very secure facility. He's right, of course. Not only do alarms finally start to go off once they reach an inescapable area, but the whole thing is also a setup to allow a cover for Trevelyan's defection.
• Gone with the Wind: Cited when the screen description mentions that Atlanta was under siege for weeks. "...then fell a silence, more terrifying than the sound of the cannon." And with good reason — the army has stopped fighting back because the opposing army is invading.
• In KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, Paul Stanley remarks this, leading Ace Frehley to quip "Why didn't you say so?" and begin singing.
• Lake Placid: A variation occurs where one character, shortly before another attack by the giant alligator, says: "I suddenly got the feeling that everything's perfectly safe".
• The Little Drummer Girl. The terrorist leader Khalil becomes suspicious of Charlie because of the extreme quiet around the country house they're in. There's a Mossad team outside waiting to move in and assassinate him on Charlie's signal.
• The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra: Inverted:
  Ranger Brad: These things just don't happen! Noises? In the woods?
• The Marksman: The main character runs back late to the extraction point, he can clearly hear the helicopter waiting although he's still in enemy territory, he turns around frequently watching for potential pursuers, but after a while he stops and notices no one is chasing him. He correctly assesses he and his team have been set up, and the extraction chopper is destroyed shortly after by a traitor.
• Mimic: When the main characters are travelling through the New York sewers, they notice that they've not seen any rats, which should be scurrying everywhere. Of course, the audience would understand that they've either all been eaten or they've fled after the arrival of the giant, flesh-eating Judas Breed.
• In The Muppet Christmas Carol, this is what tips Scrooge off that something is wrong when he arrives at the usually bustling Cratchit house with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. He quickly realizes that Tiny Tim has died.
  Scrooge: So quiet. Why is it so quiet, Spirit?
• Sleepy Hollow (1999): In one scene, Young Masbath points out to the city slicker Ichabod Crane how quiet the forest is, and has to explain that forests are supposed to be noisy, with crickets and birds and stuff — noises that the forest lacked at that point.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze: Used seriously at first, but sets up a joke shortly afterwards when the turtles keep remarking on how things are a little too quiet, a little too easy, a little too Raphael...
  Donatello: The perimeter's quiet.
  Leonardo: Yeah, a little too quiet.
  <they knock out the only two guards>
  Donatello: Well, that was easy!
  Leonardo: Yeah, a little too easy.
  <they see Raph tied up>
  Donatello: Look! It's Raph!
  Michaelangelo: Yeah, a little too Raph!
  <Leo hits Mikey on the head for turning it into an Overly Long Gag>
• To Have And Have Not: Harry mentions this right before the shootout in front of the hotel.
• We Were Soldiers:
  • A variation on the trope is seen when Colonel Moore arrives at a section of the American Line that's too quiet. When asked what's wrong he explains, "There's nothing wrong here...except that there's nothing wrong..." He orders the troopers at that position to fire a few shots at anything that looks suspicious, and they end up flushing out a whole bunch of North Vietnamese soldiers who had been sneaking up on their position.
  • Later in the movie, during an especially dark night, one character starts freaking out because it's so quiet, and his commanding officer asks for a flare to see by...revealing that it was quiet because the Vietnamese soldiers were a couple of feet away, trying to sneak attack.

Jokes

• "Silence is golden, unless you have children, puppies or both. Then silence is very, very suspicious."
• One of the Russian Holmes and Watson anecdotes goes like this.
  Dr. Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville are having supper in Baskerville Hall when they are startled by a terrible howl.
  - What was that, Barrymore?
  - That's the dreaded Hound of Baskervilles, sir.
  A gut-wrenching meowing wail is heard.
  - What's that, Barrymore?
  - That's the Cat of Baskervilles, sir.
  Eerie, bone-chilling silence follows.
  - What's that now, Barrymore?
  - That's the Fish of Baskervilles, sir.
• A man worked on the production line at the same company for over 50 years. He woke to the sound of the same alarm clock every weekday at 7 AM. During the whole of his working life never missed a single day. Finally, the day arrived, a Tuesday, when he was able to take his well-earned retirement. He arrived home after attending a works ceremony in which he was presented with an engraved tin mug. He kissed his wife and told her that the next day he was going to have the first-ever long lie-in of his life. He took the alarm clock out into the yard and smashed it to pieces with a hammer. At 7 AM the next morning, the absent alarm clock duly failed to ring. The man jumped up from his sleep and yelled, "What the hell was that?"
  • Another version has a lighthouse keeper sleeping like the dead until the 'house's enormous blaring foghorn suddenly fails.
  • A quantum physics textbook invoked a similar joke to explain antiparticles.
• Orchestra performers decided to play a joke on their conductor during practice, and at a pre-arranged bar in the score, they all abruptly stopped playing. The sudden unexpected silence so startled the conductor he fell off the podium.
  • An orchestra actually did this once to guest-conductor Prince Charles. He didn't fall off the podium, but he gave an enormous horrified jerk of surprise.

Literature

• Below: When the party reaches the dead city of Lowcastle, Cirawyn notices that the creatures in the ruins have thinned out in their area. Gareth theorizes that an underground version of a natural disaster has severely impacted the wildlife. He's right.
• CoDominium: In Falkenberg's Legion, Falkenberg says, "Things are going well. When that happens I wonder what I've overlooked."
• Constance Verity Destroys the Universe: Not having gone without something weird or suspicious happen within the span of a few hours, it becomes rather worrying when days pass by without a call, text or Random Encounter whisking Connie away on some grand adventure.
• Danny, the Champion of the World: This happens twice.
  • The whole story about poaching begins when Danny wakes at night, notices that he cannot hear his father's breathing from the bunk above his, or the comforting sounds from the workshop. He investigates, and discovers that his father is missing. Danny sits on the caravan steps, and listens for his father, who eventually appears, and tells him he went to Hazell's Wood to poach pheasants.
  • A week later, Danny again wakes at ten past two to find his father missing, who had promised to be home by ten-thirty. Certain that something terrible has happened to his father in the wood, Danny drives to the wood to investigate. When he arrives, he describes the overwhelming silence of the wood at night, and feels that like him, all the creatures in the wood are listening; and even the silence is listening to silence.
• The Day of the Triffids: Used to terrifying effect in combination with Nothing Is Scarier. The protagonist is in hospital recovering from an eye injury that left him temporarily (he hopes!) blind, and the first chapter alternates between exposition and narrating his increasing alarm at the fact that there's no sound of traffic from the nearby main road, the nurse should have come in by now and he has no idea what's going on... Turns out he's literally Slept Through the Apocalypse.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, the northern parts of Providence are strangely silent and devoid of activity. Rob notes that while this seems to be better than the news of raiders coming from all other regions of the land, it's still creepy and suggests that there's something worse happening there.
• Discworld: Parodied in Jingo, in which a soldier thinks to himself that after ten years of guerrilla warfare, nothing can be too quiet and the best part of war is the waiting (especially when you're waging war against the D'regs).
• Doc Savage: In Land of Long Juju, Monk remarks on how he does not like how the jungle has suddenly gone silent.
• The Fellowship of the Ring: The Fellowship is resting in hiding near the entrance to Moria when a vast ominous silence falls on the countryside, so much so that even non-Ranger Sam realizes something is very wrong.
• Fire & Blood: At the end of the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra arrives at Dragonstone, normally her home, but is so frazzled by everything that's happened to her recently (losing her crown, her dragon, all but one of her children) she doesn't notice how the docks are suspiciously absent.
• In Five Hundred Years After, one of Khaavren's guardsmen says that since most of the civilians were evacuated, Dragaera City is so quiet that the Guards aren't really needed. Khaavren asks if he's ever spent any time in the jungle, where there are dzur or dragons? The guardsman says he has. Well, if he was out in the jungle and all the birds and little critters suddenly hid or went quiet, would he feel safe? The guardsman sees Khaavren's point.
• H.I.V.E. Series: Nigel specifically tells Franz not to say this. After Nigel leaves, Franz says it anyway.
• The Hounds of the Morrigan: The main characters are looking for a McGuffin that, in their hands, will bring down the Celtic goddess of war; in hers, it'll bring down everything else. However, every time the goddess's attention is focused somewhere, her ears absorb all the noises of the surroundings. Therefore, she cannot spy on or attack the main characters without unwittingly creating complete silence, which promptly tips them off. Several times.
• A House With Good Bones: One of the early signs that something is badly wrong at Sam's late grandmother's house is that the rose garden is completely silent — there is no other life there, not even insects. The sterility is a stark contrast to the kind neighbour's yard, a lush wildlife refuge.
• The Hunger Games: Explained and developed, particularly during the Quarter Quell. Katniss comes from a mining district and knows that when a mine canary stops singing, the air is growing foul and danger is imminent. One tribute is singing constantly. The group figure — correctly — that when she stops singing, danger is approaching them and they should get out of there.
• Keeper of the Lost Cities: In Neverseen, while walking through the forest at Brackendale, Sophie realizes what feels wrong about the place — it's far too quiet.
  That was when Sophie realized what was wrong with the forest.
  It didn't rustle.
  Or crackle.
  Or make any of the sounds trees normally made.
  Other than the roaring boobrie, the whole place seemed to be holding its breath.
• The Magician's Nephew: Polly and Digory feel this way when they enter Charn, and find themselves in a ruined palace, which has clearly been deserted for centuries, and has nothing but a cold dead silence. They note that the Wood between the Worlds was also silent, but was rich and full of life, in that you could almost hear the trees growing. Later, they end up in the empty and dark Narnia just before all life is created by Aslan, and for a moment, they believe they are back in Charn at night.
  Jadis: This is not Charn. This is an empty world. This is Nothing.
• At least once in the Newsflesh series, reporters in the field are alerted to zombie activity in the vicinity by everything getting too quiet as animals either hide or clear out.
• Old Scores: The vampire king Shafax (whether intentionally or simply by being present) has imposed unnatural silence on St. Brigid's Cemetery.
• Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers: Played with a bit when Lister is released from cryostasis. As he wanders the ship's corridors wondering why he hasn't seen anybody else, he suddenly realises he can hear a strange noise that he eventually realises is the fans of the ventilation system. He'd never consciously heard it before because it was impossible to pick out from the persistent background hum of mining and ore-processing machinery, the ship's transit system and all the miscellaneous white noise that comes from being onboard a massive industrial spacecraft with a crew of several thousand people... background noise that's now ominously absent. Everybody's Dead, Dave...
• Resident Evil: Leon's first clue that something is seriously wrong as he drives into Raccoon City is just how quiet the streets are. Poor Claire has it worse: being on a motorcycle, her first clue is the smell.
• Shaman Blues: When exploring a hospital, Witkacy notes that despite places like this usually teeming with ghost activity, this one is eerily empty and quiet, hinting at what's really roaming the building.
• Silent Spring: Used metaphorically in the title, but also a plot point; one of the first signs that something has gone badly wrong is the eerie silence in the countryside as wild bird populations decline.
• Tomorrow Town. The protagonists are in a "community of the future" and spend the night in a house humming with gadgetry. They wake up in the middle of the night because all the gadgets have suddenly gone dead, as someone decided to Cut the Juice before trying to murder them. This only means the killer then has to crank the door open manually, giving those inside plenty of time to prepare for his attack.
• Tortall Universe: In Trickster's Choice, Aly notes that the jungle animals are all quiet...however, her sneakiness and the experience of the guards thwart the subsequent ambush.
• Invoked in Usher II by Ray Bradbury, where the protagonist seeks to reenact the events of The Fall of the House of Usher and has his workmen bring in ten thousand tons of DDT to kill off every animal and insect in the area.
• What Feasts At Night: The vampiric Moroi's presence brings an unnatural silence that muffles all ambient noise. The protagonist first notices the phenomenon in the forest without understanding it, then exploits it later to estimate the Moroi's location when it's out of sight.
• In The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, this trope is invoked in numerous ways; wildlife of all kinds instinctively flee when they detect Solanum, the virus responsible for reanimating zombies. In areas abundant with noisy wildlife such as jungle and swamps, silence means that the undead must be close as these areas would never, ever be silent normally. In addition, heavily infested areas are found devoid of any wildlife by survivors as everything has been consumed by ghouls, so cities especially but also other areas known for constant noise, whether human or wildlife created, become jarringly and eerily silent.

Live-Action TV

• Adam-12: In one episode, Reed comments on the suspicious quiet when he and Malloy are on a prowler call that they suspect is a setup to lure them into an ambush. It turns out to be just the "normal" amount of quiet after all, as it was, in fact, just a prowler call.
• Babylon 5:
  • Psi police agent Bester finds that a part of the B5 station is "just too quiet" and so this must be the place where telepaths are hiding because they suppress all their thoughts.
  • Earlier in the series, Commander Ivanova states that she is more comfortable when there is something going wrong. Because on Babylon 5, something is always going wrong. Thus, if everything seems to be going smoothly, it simply means you don't know what is going wrong yet.
  • In the TV movie In the Beginning, the EAS Lexington is moving in on a seemingly disabled Minbari ship, but Sheridan begins to think something's off when he doesn't pick up any Minbari signals, not even a distress call. It turns out to be a set up for a Hyperspeed Ambush.
• Bananas in Pyjamas: At the end of the "In the Jungle" song, there's a brief moment of silence followed by B2 noting "It's gone very quiet, B1", to which B1 replies "It's gone very, very quiet B2. Maybe even..."
  B1 and B2: ...too quiet.
• In Band of Brothers, O'Keefe mutters that it's "awfully quiet" while a handful of soldiers are on patrol in the German woods. Moments later, they stumble across a Nazi concentration camp. There often are no sounds anywhere around the concentration or death camps; the fires and smell and other outputs from the camp tended to drive most normal animals away. No birds singing, no animals making any noise... nothing. Those places are eerily quiet. But considering that over six million people died in those places... it's easy to see why.
• Invoked and discussed in Battlestar Galactica (2003) episode The Farm. Kara is wounded in an ambush and wakes up in a hospital room, with a Doctor, Simon, informing him that she is in a La Résistance hospital. Already suspicious of her surroundings and the fact that she saw nobody but Simon, Kara remarks that the hospital is eerily quiet and she has not heard any of the sounds she would expect to hear in a medical facility operating on a nuked-out world. Simon explains that most patients there are not suffering from gunshots or injuries but rather acute radiation sickness, which he describes as unpleasant but quiet. The real reason why the place was so quiet turns out to be much worse.
• Better Call Saul: In the season 2 finale, Mike is on a hilltop with a rifle, preparing to take out Hector Salamanca. The bugs and insects go mysteriously quiet right before his car alarm is set off by a shadowy individual, tipping off Mike that someone knows where he's hiding.
• Blake's 7: "Hostage" opens with Vila and Avon saying how quiet everything is. Moments later twenty Federation pursuit ships launch a coordinated attack on the Liberator.
• Blue Bloods: In "The Bitter End," Officers Jamie Reagan and Vinny Cruz pursue a purse snatcher into the playground of the Bitterman Housing Projects, shortly after the Los Lordes criminal organization (who operate within the Projects) has declared war on the NYPD. Upon entering the Projects, Jamie suddenly notices that the area is completely deserted, something highly unlikely in this neighborhood in the middle of the day....unless everyone's hiding because they're being set up for an ambush. A split second later, a sniper on a rooftop opens fire on them. Vinny is killed while Jamie barely escapes intact.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • When things are quiet in Sunnydale, it's usually a sign that something extra evil is brewing. A Justified Trope as the Big Bad tends to use the resident vampire population as henchmen, so they're not roaming around feeding on people and causing general mischief.
  • "Hush": Magical creatures who do not themselves speak steal everyone's voices, resulting in most of the episode taking place in a very disturbing quiet — even the deaths happen soundlessly.
  • "The Body" deals with the (non-supernatural) death of Joyce and has absolutely no music in it at all, apart from opening and closing credits. The entire episode feels unnaturally quiet, and the effect is more than a little unsettling.
• Burn Notice came at this sideways in a fourth season episode. They didn't drop the line, but Michael did notice that people weren't making eye contact, conversation was muted, they were putting food in their pockets...
• In Chernobyl, a doctor at Pripyat's hospital is unnerved that they haven't seen any casualties from the fire at the power plant, since she would have expected it from an explosion like that. The casualties who eventually come in are affected by something far worse than thermal burns—Acute Radiation Syndrome. By morning, the corridors are overflowing with plant workers, sickened first responders, and citizens who had the bad luck to be downwind of the smoke.
• Doctor Who puts a twist on this on a couple of occasions when, rather than it being quiet when it shouldn't be, there's noise when by all rights it should be quiet. Two excellent examples of Oh, Crap! moments (both courtesy of Steven Moffat) follow.
  • "The Doctor Dances":
    • The Doctor, Rose and Jack are listening to a recording of the Empty Child when Rose wonders what that mysterious flapping sound is...
      Rose: Doctor...
      The Empty Child: I'm here; can't you see me?
      Rose Tyler: What's that noise?
      The Doctor: End of the tape. It ran out about 30 seconds ago... I sent it to its room. This is its room!
    • A boy is using a typewriter to write a letter to his dad. The sounds of his typing are under the dialogue of the scene, until Nancy, the leader of these kids, points out that the boy isn't typing anymore. It's typing by itself.
  • "The Girl in the Fireplace": The Doctor realizes that something's wrong with a clock when it keeps ticking despite being obviously broken.
    The Doctor: Okay, now that's scary.
    Reinette: You're scared of a broken clock?
    The Doctor: Just a bit scared, yeah. Just a tiny bit. 'Cause you see, if this clock's broken, and it's the only one in the room, then what's that ticking?
  • Played straight when the TARDIS materializes on what appears to be a construction site in the middle of London. The Doctor seems ill at ease and when his companions call him out on this, he points out that they've been there for nearly twenty minutes and not heard anything. "No sound of birdsong, no voices, no sound of shipping, and not even the chimes of old Big Ben. It's uncanny. Uncanny."
  • "Voyage of the Damned": The Doctor decides to sneak Astrid onto Mr. Copper's tour group that's teleporting from the Titanic to Earth. When they arrive, they're on a street in the middle of London. The Doctor realizes something's off because the streets that should be packed with throngs of last-minute Christmas shoppers are abnormally deserted. As in, no people around at all. Except for a newsstand vendor, Wilfred Mott. When the Doctor approaches him for answers, Wilfred explains that, with now-yearly Christmas disasters like the spaceship Christmas before last and a Christmas star electrocuting people and draining the Thames the year before (which involved Wilfred's granddaughter Donna), most people have decided to head out to the country for the season on the logic that something is probably going to happen this year as well.
  • "Empress of Mars": Just before the Ice Warriors attack, the Doctor remarks that things are quiet, then immediately lampshades it by adding that tradition requires him to add "too quiet".
  • "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror": The Doctor and Tesla are on a train being pursued by a hooded assailant. As the companions and Tesla's assistant have gone ahead, leaving the two of them alone in the car as the Doctor holds the rear door shut, Tesla notices it's gone quiet moments before the attacker comes in through the ceiling.
• Kingdom (2019): One of the first signs that something's amiss is the forests around Jiyulheon being unnaturally quiet, as they are devoid of wildlife.
• MacGyver (1985): "MacGyver, something's not right. It's a little too quiet out here" — Charles Alden, "Trumbo's World".
• The Mandalorian. A variation in "The Rescue" when our heroes come across a seemingly empty corridor on the Imperial cruiser they've just boarded.
  Koska: All clear.
  Bo-Katan: A little too clear.
• M*A*S*H: In the episode where BJ is introduced, they are changing a flat tire when a group of Koreans walk past their jeep. Suddenly Radar and Hawkeye notice that the people are no longer on the road. BJ asks what's wrong and they say that usually means they are about to be shot at by snipers. Sure enough, bullets start flying and they beat a hasty retreat.
• Masters of the Air: The bomber crews have to tend with near-constant flak barrages as they fly over Occupied Europe and Germany to and from their targets. The only time the flak lets up is when they are about to be attacked by fighters.
  Buck: Flak stopped. You know what that means, boys.
• Merlin (2008) has this exchange just before the characters are ambushed:
  Arthur: Quiet. Listen.
  Merlin: I don't hear anything.
  Arthur: Exactly.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • In "Zombie Nightmare", the original movie's use of this trope parodied by Mike and the Bots:
    Crow: It's a little ominous in here.
    Mike: A little too ominous.
    Crow: A lot of cars in here.
    Mike: A little too a lot of cars in here.
  • In "Cave Dwellers", when the hero of the titular movie remarks that it's "too quiet", Crow adds, "Yeah, too too quiet."
• MythBusters: The line is sometimes used by the Mythbusters just before they perform an experiment likely to make things very loud. Or when they try to detonate a bomb and it doesn't.^note This means that they now have a live explosive that could go off at any time, basically one of the most dangerous situations that ever happens on the show.
• Person of Interest: This happens twice in "The Day the World Went Away":
  • The first instance happens when Reese and Fusco go to an office that they suspect is a front for criminal activity. After a few minutes in a waiting room, Reese says "What do you hear?" Fusco responds "Nothing." They realize the busy office has been evacuated, just before the hit squad arrives for them.
  • In the same episode, Samaritan realises that criminal mastermind Elias is hiding out in a Truce Zone he's created between two gangs because they've stopped fighting each other.
• Power Rangers Dino Fury:In "Numero Uno," the Rangers set a trap for the bad guys, using Void Knight's saber as bait. While waiting for the bad guys to appear, this line is said.
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: One episode has the rangers patrolling the city, and two of them independently note that it's too quiet. Might be worth mentioning that the delivery of the lines make the dialog feel a little more natural, rather than the characters just repeating a cliche.
• Primeval: While investigating a possible creature sighting on a golf course, Abby notes that it's too quiet. In this case, she's specifically referring to the absence of birdsong. This is coupled by the lack of anomaly despite the magnetic disturbances associated with one. It results in them looking up, finding the anomaly in the sky above their heads and figuring out that the creature can fly.
  Stephen: No trampled or broken vegetation. No track marks and no sign of any anomaly, but there is one hell of a magnetic field, so it’s to be here somewhere. Unless there’s a pylon causing interference.
  Abby: Can’t see anything.
  Nick: Be quiet a minute and let me think here. Quiet!
  Abby: We didn’t say anything.
  Nick: No, I mean it’s too quiet. Listen. There’s no birdsong.
  Abby: Not a peep.
  Stephen: They’re scared off.
  Nick: What would scare the birds away? You were wrong, it’s not a pylon. There is an anomaly.
  Stephen: Where?
  Nick: We’re standing right underneath it.
  (All three look up and gasp. The anomaly is quite a way above them.)
  Stephen: It’s an aerial predator.
• The Professionals. In "Old Dog with New Tricks", a London Gangster has taken everyone in a police station hostage, demanding the release of his brother in the nick. One of his men warns him there's no sign of anything going on outside, which he takes as a sign that the police aren't trying anything...until he's told that there is no-one outside; neither police cordoning off the street or civilian onlookers.
• Red Dwarf: In "White Hole", Kryten's invoking this trope in a rather Captain Obvious-like manner at first gets everyone else to think he's gone loose in the head, until Lister realizes that it's gone quiet because the ship's engines are dead.
  Kryten: Listen! Can anyone hear anything?
  Cat: No.
  Kryten: Precisely. No one can hear anything! And you know why we can't hear anything?
  Rimmer: Why?
  Kryten: Because THERE ARE NO SOUNDS TO HEAR!
  Rimmer: Kryten, isn't it 'round about this time of year that your head goes back to the lab for retuning?
  Lister: No, no, he's right. There's no sounds because the engines are dead. We've lost all power!
• Rome. When the assassins of Julius Caesar claim their action was a justifiable tyrannicide, Marc Antony points out that the streets of Rome are quiet, because people are hiding in their houses in fear instead of celebrating the death of a tyrant. Thanks to a clever Batman Gambit, Antony soon rouses the people...against Caesar's killers.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • "Urgo" plays with this. O'Neill comments that it's quiet, but that's just because the annoying little man who'd been implanted in all their heads was gone.
  • Used much straighter but minus the Stock Phrase in "Morpheus". Teal'c realizes there's something seriously wrong with the planet they're on (besides the entire village being long dead in their beds) when he notices there's no birds singing in the woods, and in fact no animal life of any kind.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Quark uses this line literally on noticing the ambient noise in his bar is 35 decibels below normal, which makes him the first to realize something is wrong with his clients. His clients at the time were Klingons, who tend to be hard-drinking, hard-partying and prone to starting barroom brawls. None of these things are happening. When Klingons are quiet, you know something's up.
• Star Trek: Discovery: When Ensign Tilly is being bothered by a telepathic alien manifesting as her dead friend May, characters believe something is wrong with her because she is speaking less. In the first episode, Stamets actually wanted her to speak less, but he changed his mind when she did start speaking less.
• Supernatural:
  • Alluded to in "Wendigo" when the brothers notice that everything has gone quiet, even the insects.
    Dean: You hear that?
    Sam: Yeah... not even crickets.
  • Sam is suffering hallucinations while going cold turkey after being hooked on demon blood. Suddenly he stops screaming.
    Dean: You hear that?
    Bobby That's a little too much nothing.
• UFO (1970): In the episode "The Sound of Silence", twice while near a lake, a woman mentions that there's no sound from local animals. This is because there's a UFO hiding in the lake and a body-snatching alien wandering around nearby.
• The Wire:
  • When Herc and Carver are on stakeout duty at the Pit, they find that the Pit is unusually deserted. As it turns out, it's because the Barksdale crew is playing a basketball game against the east side drug crew (or the teams they each get), hosted by Proposition Joe.
  • McNulty says this line to his wife, speaking of their children's bedroom.
• Without a Trace: In one episode, after the Victim of the Week takes his girlfriend and an FBI agent hostage, he readily agrees to surrender. Another agent notes, "That was too easy". Indeed, the man is planning to commit Suicide by Cop and promptly runs out of the house, raising his (unloaded) gun.

Music

• The Vaporwave album News at 11 by 猫 シ Corp. uses an audio sample of The Early Show's Mark McEwen from the morning of September 11, 2001 (as detailed under Real Life below) on the track "8:46 AM".
  "Other than that, it's kinda quiet around the country. We like quiet. What is it — it's quiet. It's TOO quiet."

Podcasts

• The Magnus Archives:
  • The first thing that unnerves the narrator of the episode "Killing Floor" is the strange absence of the usual sounds of the slaughterhouse he works in.
  • In "Boatswain's Call" the crew of the ship strenuously avoid talking to each other, until after one of them disappears, seemingly having been chosen to be thrown overboard.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost mentions that some Beasts come from a jungle where the only silence is when the jungle's Fae lord is on the hunt. As a result, those Beasts who escape from him prefer to live in the city. In the city, it's never quiet...

Theme Parks

• Universal Studios:
  • The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man: During a news report in the queue line, one of the live reporters says that "In a city of tumult and turmoil, Wall Street sits eerily silent tonight, while Doc Ock and his gang rain havoc on the rest of Manhattan..." cue Scream showing up and creating chaos.
  • Earthquake: The Big One: The former attraction started off its ride portion in a quiet subway tunnel, where nothing but faint subway noises could be heard; at least until the earthquake happens.
  • Twister...Ride it Out: The setting of the main show, with the exception of a few faint noises in the distant, is eerily silent...that is until the tornado comes in.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla:
  • During the Cent arc, Eivor and Basim return to the church where their ally lives, after their last plan went belly-up and see no-one, absolutely no-one, is there. Both the Viking and the experienced assassin note how unnaturally quiet it is, and figure it's a trap. It is. Their ally has been murdered by the person they were trying to lure out.
  • At the start of the "Dawn of Ragnarok" DLC, Odin and Frig walk through the capitol of Svartelheim and note it's far too quiet, even without the fact a good chunk of it is covered in lava. Soon, the Muspels make themselves known.
• In Bear & Breakfast, Sabine occasionally remarks that woods of Sawdust is "peaceful and quiet these days. A little too quiet."
• Betrayal at Krondor: One of the dialogues that can come up when detecting an ambush is one member of the party noticing that the birds have stopped singing for some reason.
• In Call of Duty: World at War during the mission Ring of Steel, Sgt. Reznov tells his men to be quiet when they are moving through an asylum. Sure enough, though, there's an ambush up ahead.
  Chernov: Do you hear something?
  Reznov: No, that is why I am suspicious.
• In Chapter 11 of Chaos;Child, when the Big Bad traps Takuru in a delusion, making him think he's subjected to Woodburn Heron's sensory deprevation experiment for a month (in reality, only about thirty minutes are stated to pass), all sound disappears, both background music, sound effects and even Takuru's own inner voice. And since the screen turns completely black, aside from the narration appearing as text, it can seem like the game tries to subject the player to said experiment.
• City of Heroes: In an NPC exchange when the Rikti have taken a human sympathizer hostage, the usual script is modified to match the Rikti's robotic speech:
  Rikti Captor 1: Status: Quiet.
  Lk'Onik: ...: ...
  Rikti Captor 2: Status Correction: Too Quiet.
  Lk'Onik: ...: Heh.
• Command & Conquer:
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade's first mission opened up as follows:
    First Soldier: What are we looking for again?
    Second Soldier: An imaginary base.
    Officer: Quiet!
    Second Soldier: Exactly. It's too quiet.
    Needless to say, they shortly fall prey to a Nod ambush.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 has Crazy Ivan, a soviet unit, saying that "it's too quiet here". Inverted Trope, as Crazy Ivan is a Mad Bomber and is the one who may drop some dynamite on some building or unit.
  • Command & Conquer: Generals: GLA general Rodall Juhziz had, or would have had, as one of his campaign lines, "It's quiet out there, general...you know what quiet means right? BOOM...HAHAHAHA!!"
• Darius Gaiden does this with the soundtrack. Zone M, part of the fifth layer of stages, features a conspicuous lack of music in the main body of the stage. About 30 seconds in, the huge battleship warning plays to herald the apperance of Titanic Lance, a six-screen-wide boss that's by far the longest and most difficult boss in this set of stages.
• Dead Rising:
  • This trope is what first tips Frank West off that the situation in the small Colorado town is more than what meets the eye. In his words, "It doesn't sound like civil disobedience. It's too quiet."
  • Late in the game, commandos will show up and start slaughtering the zombies. You've gotten used to the place being full of the undead by now, so seeing it empty is eerie.
• In Detective Grimoire Tangle Tower, Grimoire tries to invoke this. Sally refuses to participate.
  Grimoire: It's quiet...
  Sally: Mhm.
  Grimoire: ...You're supposed to say, "Too quiet."
  Sally: It's not. It's an appropriate amount of quiet.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, at one point in the Dalish Elf origin, Merril mentions that all the woodland animals are silent. She speculates it's because the Darkspawn are in the area. She's right.
• Dragon Age II: In Mark of the Assassin, as your party searches for signs of a wyvern, it suddenly becomes very quiet.
  Tallis: Wait, what happened to the birds?...Uh oh.
• The Elder Scrolls: In Oblivion and, to the lesser extent, in Skyrim, when you travel cross-country, there's usually soft music in the background. When you enter a dangerous area with enemies lurking about, the music fades and there is a brief moment of silence before enemies engage you and the combat music starts playing. When playing a stealthy character this can raise the suspense of stalking and being stalked.
• Evil Dead:
  • From Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick:
    Ash: [It's quiet.] The "what the hell happens next" kind of quiet.
  • And then in Evil Dead: Regeneration:
    Sam: It sure is quiet...
    Ash: Yeah, too quiet. Let's make some noise!
• Fallout 4: MacCready will randomly say this, before he bursts out laughing and says he always wanted to say it.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Said word for word by one the guards at the beginning of a Stormblood dungeon, just before the Player Party storms the stronghold.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: It's noted that even the area's naturally occurring sounds are gone (such as animals), indicating that they're surrounded.
• Fire Warrior: An Imperial Guardsman will occasionally say this phrase. You can take the cue to make things noisy.
• Ghost Hunter, when going through the scrapyard, Lazarus and Richmond bring up this trope and lampshade it when Richmond asks which one of the two should finish the script.
  Lazarus: "Seems quiet."
  Richmond: "Hmm... are you going to say it, or am I?"
  Lazarus: "Heh heh heh... too quiet."
• Halo:
  • A chapter in Halo: Combat Evolved is ominously titled "It's quiet..."
  • There's also this exchange in CE's "Into The Belly of the Beast" section of "The Truth and Reconciliation":
  Marine A: No Covenant defenses detected... contact! Lots of contact!
  Marine B: No Covenant? You HAD to open your mouth!
  • Halo: Reach, in a Call-Back to the first game, has a chapter titled "...Too Quiet."
• Haunting Ground: Purposefully invoked. Whenever one of the characters in pursuit of Fiona is in an adjacent room or hiding somewhere, waiting for you, in the current area, the disturbing background music will be replaced by a deafening silence (and possibly the sound of Hewie growling), either until they burst out of wherever they are or Fiona puts enough distance between herself and them.
• House of the Dead 2: Said almost word for word. A later scene also has James say something similar when looking around the baddie's base: "It's like they're inviting me in..."
• Left 4 Dead:
  • An area is usually only clear of zombies after something has happened... or when something's about to happen.
  • In Left 4 Dead 2's single-player mode called "Last Man On Earth", you're the only survivor in the game. Not only does your survivor continually talk as if the other survivors are still there, they occasionally shout out something along the lines of "Hello?" or "Is anyone out there?". There is also a lack of "normal" Common Infected, making the game overall much quieter, but also giving the eerie feeling that something else is going on around there.
  • Louis spells it out during a relatively quiet moment in the "The Sacrifice" comic, comparing the regular zombies to piranhas by saying they're not picky on who they attack - if there aren't a lot of them around to attack, it means there's a bigger threat around the corner, which in this case ends up being a Tank.
• The Legend of Dragoon observes how the sudden vanishing of nighttime animal noises generally heralds approaching forces prior to the nighttime attack on Hoax.
• The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: At the end of Dante's Freezer, on entering a large, empty cave containing Volteer, the Guardian they had come to find, Spyro remarks that it's too quiet and that reaching Volteer like this is too easy. Sparx flippantly dismisses this, but a moment later the Ice King awakens and attacks.
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park: Uttered after a lengthy dinosaur chase. Cue the T. rex crashing right through the wall in front of you (just before delivering the final shot)!
• Mass Effect:
  • Discussed by Tali in the first game. She sleeps in the engine room because she hates quiet. Members of her race spend most of their lives aboard rickety, salvaged ships requiring constant maintenance, but the Normandy is brand-new and state of the art, so it makes almost no internal noises at all, and her instincts are insisting that something is horribly wrong. In later games Tali notes that she actually missed the quiet and the Normandy in general, indicating she got over this fear.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the Collector Ship mission has this vibe. The squad reaches the mission's goal without encountering any Collectors, alive or dead. One of the party members comments on this. Sure enough, it's a trap!
  • In Mass Effect 3, Shepard gives a callback to Tali's line in Mass Effect if he romanced her, offering to find her someplace noisier if she still thinks the engine room is too quiet. The third party member will have either a Too Much Information reaction (if they weren't in the previous game and therefore didn't know that Shepard and Tali had hooked up) or Get a Room! (if they did already know).
• Metal Gear Solid:
  • After Solid Snake reunites with Meryl in the Nuclear Storage Facility, they exit the bathroom to find all the guards are conspicuously absent, and Snake points out that the music has stopped too. Turns out it is because Psycho Mantis is preparing a trap for Snake by taking control of Meryl's mind.
  • When Solid Snake reaches the titular mech, he remarks over radio to his friend Otacon that there is a conspicuous complete lack of guards or any security at all for that matter. Turns out it is because the villains want Snake to reach the Metal Gear as a part of their plan.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the stunning lack of background music in the underground room with the entrance to the Pit Of 100 Trials provides a big clue as to how deathly serious that pipe in the middle of the room is.
• Prince of Persia (2008):
  • Lampshaded in a banter line where the Prince says that you should never remark on the quiet — it's just make bad things happen.
    Elika: It seems quiet.
    Prince: Don't say it's quiet. Don't EVER say it's quiet.
  • During a boss fight in that level, the Prince might say, "I told you, never say it's quiet." If you knock the boss off a cliff, he says "Now it's quiet."
• Randor Lande: Yoshi says the exact words, and later we find out that... no, there's no traps, the villain's second in command simply forgot to set any.
• Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time: According to Captain Qwark, this particular phrase is one to be strictly avoided in tense situations, much like "everything is going to be all right" and other ways of Tempting Fate.
• In The Sand Man 2014, Sophie is just trying to sleep when she suddenly notices that she can't hear her clock ticking anymore. She soon learns that some mysterious force has made time stand still, and has to figure out some way of fixing it.
• In Silent Hill, this is one of Harry Mason's first lines after exiting his car after a crash and deciding to explore the town and search for his missing daughter.
• Star Fox:
  • Star Fox 64: The asteroid belt has Peppy say this just before Fox is ambushed by a swarm of smaller ships. It can possibly be ruined by the fact that the game's lock-on system will mark the first enemy (hidden behind an asteroid) way before the "trap" goes off.
  • Star Fox: Assault has Fox note that the Katina Outpost that was sending a distress signal is far too quiet, and in preparation he draws his gun. A few seconds later, Fox is locked in as Aparoids begin showing up.
• Star Trek Online: Invoked in the "The Vault" mission as the player is exploring the inside of the massive space station.
  Elisa Flores: "Quiet in this area — too quiet."
• Trouble in Terrorist Town: People usually banter over the microphone during the matches, and for the sake of gameplay, dead players and spectators can't be heard over the microphone by the living players (they can also only use team chat while they're dead, and their team is always marked as Spectator, which means communication from the dead to the living in this game can only be done by cheating). If an innocent notices that everything has gone silent, it likely means that they are the last innocent alive and the traitors are sneaking around trying to kill him.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: When exploring a cave network that's home to a powerful, hostile elder vampire, Regis observes that they're getting close when they can no longer hear any rats, bats, or other sounds of life.
  Regis: As I said, he despises guests.
• Valkyria Chronicles: Enemy Chatter parodies this when one commenter remarks on how visibility is good... almost too good.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue:
  • Played for Laughs, as provided by the page quote.
  • In the mini-series "MIA", Tucker notes that it's become quiet, but refuses to say the trope as he thinks doing so would be lame, "And there might be chicks listening". Church, however, pressures Tucker into saying the whole line.
  • The trope is done more seriously in season 12; to reach Sarge, Donut, Lopez, and Wash, the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew cause a little havoc in the military base. After some exposition is delivered, Simmons realizes that everything has gone quiet; what happened to the alarms?

Web Original

• Resident Evil Abridged: While exploring the basement area of the Spencer Mansion, Jill stumbles upon a large empty room and notes the absence of background music. Which immediately tips her off that she's just entered a boss room.

Webcomics

• Arthur, King of Time and Space: In one space-age arc, Guevevere says this to Morgan. Morgan puts on some music.
• In Girl Genius, Augie mentions this was what tipped him and Lars off to the fact that something wasn't right in the area near Passholdt. There were no animals, birds, nests, droppings, or bones. Anywhere. When they reached Passholdt, they found it overrun by a savage form of revenants.
• Paradox Space: Fitting for an In-Universe Cliché Storm, the Noir Episode "Indemnity Double Reacharound" has Inspector Berrybreath narrate this just before his client enters.
• In Rusty and Co., one hipster vampire fears this cliché.
• Times Like This: Spoken by Cassie & Bethany as they time-travel right into the middle of the Vietnam War.
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic page "Watching the Fireworks" starts with Adwen's observation that "it's so quiet" and, as the title suggests, gets better.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: Said by Doc as the team is patrolling the streets of Tortuna. Doc was probably being his usual Deadpan Snarker self with the comment, but quiet streets on a planet that puts 1700's Port Royale to shame usually does mean trouble.
• Animaniacs: In "Dot's Quiet Time", Dot says this line after she finally finds some peace and quiet atop an isolated mountain. The trope itself, however, is not played straight, since it's not "too quiet" in the sense that something bad is happening, she just dislikes the quiet.
  Dot: Gee, it's so quiet. Too quiet... terribly quiet... awfully quiet...
  [Dot screams]
  Dot: [singing] I thought I wanted quiet, I thought I could apply it, but now that I have tried it, I'm sick and tired of quiet!
• In Code Lyoko, if the Lyoko Warriors get close to the tower without encountering one opponent, their thoughts are this.
• The Crumpets: In "Amnesia", just before his siblings ambush and chase him for a bath, the reeked King looks at an empty, quiet hallway.
  King: Something's not quite right, I can tell!
• Donkey Kong Country: In "The Big Chill Out", our first peek at K.Rool's lair shows a flurry of activity and noise. (Normally on the show the hideout is quiet) The next time we see K.Rool's lair, things have mellowed out.
  K.Rool: Klump... do you hear that?
  Klump: Hmm... negative, sir! All's as quiet as a gator in a purse-factory!
  K.Rool: That's precisely what I'm talking about, you lunkhead! Where are the pounding hammers? Squeaking machinery? Moaning Kritters? They're supposed to be busting their tails building my KCC-BM!
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • When Timmy wishes his life was an action movie, he uses this line when he arrives at school via Jet Pack. He is immediately attacked by ninjas.
  • Timmy later uses it when he's deep sea diving. Cosmo responds with "And it's wet... too wet!" while a little fish swims around in his diving helmet.
• Discussed in the Futurama episode "War is the H-Word" when a grizzled soldier describes the worst part of war being the quiet before the battle.
  Fry: And then the battle's not so bad?
  Soldier: Oh... right, I forgot about the battle. [whimpers in fear]
• The Loud House: Typically, the Loud family, with the exception of Lucy and, to an extent, Lincoln, lives up to their surname, so if they're being quiet, it's a bad sign. For instance, in "One Flu Over the Loud House", it turns out to be because Lori, Lynn, and the twins have the flu and the rest are hiding. In "Snow Escape," the siblings are hiding from Lynn during a snowball war, and this phrase is uttered.
• Mighty Mightor: In "The Tiger Men", Tor says "I don't like it. It's too quiet tonight... I sense danger tonight." before the Tiger Men attack.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Stare Master", this is how Fluttershy realizes that the Cutie Mark Crusaders, whom she was babysitting, have snuck out of her house — her house is suddenly quiet and peaceful, but the crusaders haven't shut up all day.
  Fluttershy: Aah, peace and quiet... [ear flicks up, gasps] too quiet!
• The Octonauts: In "Enemy Anemeones", Kwazii whispers that "It's quiet, too quiet" and that he doesn't like it. Captain Barnacles then asks him that if it's too quiet, Why Are We Whispering?
• Rick and Morty: In "Mortyplicity", when the Smiths run through a forest to hide from renegade decoys, Rick tells them to stop as he suspects it's too quiet. Then Summer points out that Rick skipped "It's quiet" with Rick complaining that it's obvious the area is quiet enough before getting shot with Tranquillizer Darts.
• Shelldon: "Alien Encounter" opens with two police officers, one stating that it's quiet, and the other suggesting that it is perhaps too quiet. The first says to enjoy it while it lasts, and indeed, almost immediately after they begin chasing after the "U.F.O." that is the focus of the episode.
• The Simpsons: Parodied in "Lisa's Rival", in a scene at an apiary after all the bees leave to steal Homer's sugar.
  Beekeeper 1: Well, sure is quiet in here today.
  Beekeeper 2: Yes, a little too quiet... if you know what I mean.
  Beekeeper 1: Hmm... I'm afraid I don't.
  Beekeeper 2: You see, bees usually make... a lot of noise. NO NOISE... suggests no bees.
• Star Wars Rebels: If an area under Imperial occupation suddenly has a lot fewer Stormtroopers walking around, it very reliably means that they've pulled back in preparation for a massive assault.
• In the Street Fighter episode "New Kind of Evil", Guile, Blanka and Chun-Li are searching for mutant creatures in the sewer. They say that it is "Quiet", "Too quiet", then say they would prefer to battle their opponents face-to-face instead of being ambushed.
• In Taz-Mania, dropped into the middle of one of Wendall T Wolf's neurotic monologues: "..and then suddenly the jungle gets quiet [insane paranoid Aside Glance] too quiet.."
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003):
  • Leo says it in the Garbageman episode, and Mikey (who spends most of the episode trying to come up with cool lines) lampshades it by wondering how Leo makes it work.
  • Mikey says it himself a few episodes later and immediately adds that he'd always wanted to say it.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Subverted for laughs in "Showdown":
  Kraang: It is quiet. Precisely the correct amount of quiet. *is set up for a (literal) fall*
• Teen Titans (2003): Used in "Hide n' Seek" by Raven:
  Raven: [upon hearing Timmy scream] Teether just took Timmy's blankie... [Teether screams] Timmy just took it back. [screams cease] And now it's quiet... [stops walking] too quiet. [runs back to monastery]
  • While the exact words aren't said, Raven feels the same in "The Prophecy" when she returns to Azarath and notices the place is completely deserted.
• The Transformers: Used in an episode where Prowl even lampshades it by saying "Yeah, like they say in the movies, too quiet."
• In The Weekenders when they stay in Lor's house (the house with 13 run-around brothers) after they can't stay in other houses. But they decide to leave instead when it's just too quiet.

Real Life

• This first developed from the fact that natural background noise in the wilderness will disappear when the animals making the noise are alerted to intruders. If you are in the woods, and everything suddenly goes quiet, it is a safe bet that you are not alone. It can be so eerie that some people swear they had a brush with the supernatural after experiencing "The Silence." Scuba divers are also warned to take note if all the fish disappear, as there's a good chance that they're fleeing a predator — a shark, a giant squid, etc.
• Whenever a city has to be evacuated due to impending disaster, like a hurricane or a flood, it can lead to surreal images of practically deserted downtown streets in the days before the disaster hits.
• Can be a result of environmental disasters, be they manmade or natural, due to the area being dangerous to animal life.
• Sudden still, dead calm in a severe weather setting often means you're in the part of a severe storm just before the tornado.
• The loss of ALL power and telecommunications, even battery-operated, means that an electromagnetic pulse has occurred, either from a solar flare or a nuclear detonation.
• This is actually a usable rule of thumb in counter-insurgency operations. If a street is filled with people, you're probably safe. If it isn't and it should be, you're probably about to be ambushed.
  • It can also be a subversion where the people have left because they know that the soldiers are coming and that the insurgents will probably follow to try to blow the soldiers (and any civilians around them) up.
  • It also depends on how unscrupulous the insurgents are. Some groups want to avoid civilian casualties. Others see civilians as acceptable losses, and the really nasty ones actually want the population to live in fear and misery.
• Josef Stalin demanded that no one around him ever walk quietly because he was very paranoid about possible assassination. Five assassination attempts could have something to do with that. Anyone caught without shoes in Stalin's hardwood-floored dacha was to be shot on sight.
• Many parents of young children consider "too quiet" an urgent signal to find out what the kids are up to.
  • In his stand up special Lock 'n Load, Denis Leary mentioned how much he missed quiet in his house with 7 and 5-year-old kids, and one day when he was reading the paper enjoying a rare dose of quiet, it suddenly hit him that he hadn't seen the kids in a while. Turns out one of them was defacing his truck, and the other was giving the dog a bath. In the toilet.
    • In a similar fashion, many people find it worrying if others they live with are asleep and are absolutely silent. Whilst many find heavy snoring or sleep breathing annoying, it is at least a sign the person is ok. Sleep apnea is particularly bad about this because you can always notice when the person has stopped breathing, which will happen several times during the night.
  • If young children are present and evidently not causing trouble, but just aren't being as loud as they usually are, some parents see this as a sign the kid is sick or in a bad mood, or is possibly planning to cause trouble.
  • The same goes for puppies or badly-trained dogs. If the puppy is running around playing with toys, barking, and generally making noise, that means they're okay - if they're suddenly quiet and not just sleeping in your sight, they're likely getting into trouble of some sort. If they're suddenly tired and lethargic and there's no good reason for it such as having just had an intense play session or very hot/cold weather? Take them to a vet, immediately because this can be a sign of severe illness.
• In the early morning of September 11, 2001, Mark McEwen on CBS' The Early Show commented on the mostly mundane news and weather reports — as opposed to the previous evening, in which a local ABC affiliate featured a rather raunchy headline involving a group of high school students hiring a stripper to visit a party they were holding — by saying that the situation in New York City and beyond was "kinda quiet around the country... too quiet."
• Many people will always put music or TV on if they are home alone due to the silence being too eerie otherwise.
• In 2008, the USAF held a major air exercise over Alaska, primarily to test the F-22. Observers of the exercise (220-to-0 kill ratio in the F-22s' favor, in case you were wondering) noted that the conventional "Red Force" had its usual share of radio chatter, but the F-22s had... silence. All the information was data-linked, and the only radio messages were for kills. More than one Air Force officer said that it was rather eerie.
  • Walk out on a USAF flight line on a rare day when no one is working and you'll have to clear your throat to make sure you still have your hearing.
• Volunteer medics like St. John Ambulance personnel can testify to the injunction to "never use the Q-word" as it will ALWAYS guarantee a lot of work in casualties coming in. Especially if you've just made coffee.
  • Not as ominous, but call center workers will also admonish each other for use of "the Q-word", for similar reasons.
  • On forums for recreational sailors, there’s a joke that the most dangerous words to say when underway are “Quiet” and “Bored” because they’re just Tempting Fate.
• Techs will also be unsettled if the shop's gone too quiet. A noisy server room means the fans are working. A quiet one means the fan or the server has gone out — neither of which is good news.
• A TIME Magazine article describes the first half of the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season as this.
• Seismologists in Parkfield, California, a town where an earthquake would strike about once every 22 years, were perturbed when no earthquake occurred between the predicted window of 1985 and 1993. The reason why was because earthquakes are releases of energy from the ground, and it was probable that even more energy than normal was building up during the years the ground remained calm and would all spring up at any moment with a particularly destructive quake. This became a Subverted Trope when Parkfield finally received a quake in 2004 at normal strength. Some still worry, however, that this excess energy exists somewhere — it just wasn't used up for that tremor.
• Anechoic Chambers are designed to negate the reflection of sound. They are so quiet that you can hear your own heartbeat, stomach gurgles, and respiration. The lack of sound is so disorienting that it becomes easy to lose your balance. They've been known to cause hallucinations similar to a sensory deprivation tank if someone stays in for too long (as little as 15 minutes if the lights are turned off), and the longest a person has been recorded sitting in the most effective ones is about 45 minutes before demanding to be let out.
• During World War II, a Russian nuclear physicist came to the conclusion that the Americans were working on an atom bomb because American science journals were no longer publishing articles on nuclear fission, which he thought meant that their research was getting classified. This led to the Soviet nuclear program, which had been put on hold after the German invasion of 1941, to be relaunched. Actually though, even before the launch of Project Manhattan, the scientists working in the US had already come to a voluntary agreement not to do so in order to prevent German nuclear scientists from making use of it to build a nuclear weapon for Nazi Germany.
• Something similar occurred with Nazi German assessment of US chemical weapons development that may have deterred them from using their own more sophisticated chemical weapons. German scientists first realised that organophosphate pesticides were also extremely deadly to people in 1936, and by the outbreak of war, they had discovered Tabun and Sarin. Then they noticed that there was no more organophosphate research in American journals.^note This may not have been the only reason; by the time Germany was losing badly enough to have good reason to use them, the Allies had air superiority over Germany and were launching continual large bombing raids on their cities; even if they only had mustard gas, German use of chemical weapons would have risked reprisal in the form of a full-sized bombing raid with chemical weapons, with a horrifying likely death toll.
• Germany's greatest defensive tactician of 1943-44, General Gotthard Heinrici, was famed for an almost psychic talent for predicting when a Soviet Combined-Arms Army was about to begin a Breakthrough-Offensive Operation in his sector — which he humbly and somewhat misleadingly attributed to the trope of suspicious silence. In fact, it derived from close observation of previous Soviet bombardment schedules. ^note  In this period, Soviet offensives were always preceded by earth-shatteringly large artillery barrages on all known and suspected German artillery, AT, and machine-gun positions — but due to the inexperience of the gunners, they tended to be too formulaic and whenever they were forced to rush offensive preparations they often re-used bombardment schedules from previous offensives. By taking note of these tendencies, Heinrici was able to repeatedly withdraw troops from their positions and then rush them back in time to conduct a stronger defense from prepared positions against the assault by the Soviet Combined-Arms Army's assault guns + tanks + infantry. Heinrici's 'talent' faded as his opponents' skills and repertoire grew, but he had one final success during the Berlin Offensive of April 1945, when Georgy Zhukov was demoted from the Strategic role in which he excelled to Operational command of the 1st Belorussian Front. As always when he had taken Operational command, Zhukov tried to use a Boring, but Practical preparatory bombardment — and was outfoxed by Heinrici, giving Ivan Konev's 2nd Ukrainian Front a two-day head start in the race for Berlin.
• The internment of Japanese citizens in the US was justified, in part, by General John DeWitt because, "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." Clearly Japanese-Americans were not committing sabotage not because they were loyal, but because they were waiting for the right moment to strike.
• Babies typically cry right after being born, so when a baby doesn't, it can mean that they aren't breathing or they have a problem with their facial muscles. This idea is so well-known that there is a misconception that "not crying = not breathing" all the time, when actually babies can be born totally healthy but not cry right away. Not that knowing this would help anyway, as a baby being quiet right after being born will send any parent into a panic until someone can confirm that the baby's fine.
• When people are dying of old age, they make loud rattling sounds when they breathe, so if the sounds aren't there anymore, it means that the person has stopped breathing and is either dead or as good as dead.
• Some nuclear power/reprocessing facilities use an alarm system that plays a continuously repeating sound to show that all is well. People working in those parts of the plant learn to "tune out" the sounds but immediately notice when they stop. The sound stopping means the system has either (1) developed a fault or (2) detected an unexpected surge in neutron radiation. Either way, the correct response is to stop work and be ready to leave. (2) is usually followed by an additional alarm, but if the alarm somehow failed to sound (due to power failure, faulty equipment or Finagle's Law), the sudden quiet has already warned staff that something is wrong.
• In the old days of Professional Wrestling, it was said that an unusually silent crowd was the most dangerous kind of crowd because that meant they were no longer invested in seeing the babyface (hero) beat the heel (villain) but were instead preparing to take matters into their own hands by rioting and getting to the heel. Old-timers called this silent heat, and it was a sign that the heel needed to finish and get the heck out of there.

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