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Stock Sound Effects
aka: Stock Sound Effect

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Singhez-Things: Pardon me, sir. There is a European fireman hiding in the waiting room.
Major Bloodnok: Well, tell him to wait in the hiding room while I paste these photographs into my hat. Paste! PASTE! [aside to listeners] Well, there's no sound effect for paste, is there..?
FX: [creaky door]
Seagoon: No, but there is one for doors opening!
The Goon Show, "The Burning Embassy"

Though films and television have gotten far better about the use of the widely varied Real Life sounds over the years, you could easily be forgiven for thinking they hadn't.

Many, many different sounds are used over and over and over... so much so, in fact, that many people can recognize the sound in question. It's not that the sound is similar. It's that the sound is exactly the same (or almost). And unlike Stock Footage, which is usually isolated to one show, these sounds span multiple shows, and even cross into other media, such as video games.

This is because it's cheaper to use Stock Effects, which are copyright-cleared and available for many studios on a collection of recordings, rather than pay a Foley artist to produce every sound effect. Hence, the primary reason for The Coconut Effect.

Compare GIS Syndrome, which is basically this trope but for images. Contrast with Signature Sound Effect. If it is a melody, it would be a Standard Snippet. See if you can name each and every time you've heard one of these sounds:


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    Sirens 

General

  • Apparently, the British company Carter Gents of Leicester has a global, temporal, and metaphysical monopoly on making air raid sirens, because, regardless of universe and time period, an air raid of some description will always be prefaced with the sound of a Carter Gents siren from World War II.
    • Meanwhile, for media set over the last few decades, if the scene calls for a storm siren, you can be sure it's probably going to be the throaty howl of a Federal Signal Thunderbolt 1000T Tornado Siren. This sound is particularly popular among the producers of EAS Scenarios, since it definitely sounds rather threatening!
  • Air horns.
  • Scoreboard buzzers like the ones used in basketball games and hockey games.
  • A ringing school bell, used most often in American schools to signal the start and end of class periods. Newer school buildings rarely use such bells, often utilizing an electronic tone or chime over the school's P.A. system.
  • Whenever a fire alarm goes off on a movie or TV, whether a building is burning or it's a fire drill or someone pulls a false fire alarm (either to create a diversion or just as a prank), it is almost always a bell that sounds similar to a school bell or a general signaling bell. In America, bells being used as fire alarms was once common but now very scarce, many of them having been replaced by newer electronic horn/strobe units that sound very similar to a common household smoke alarm, but "screechier." (At one time, loud electric buzzers similar to a scoreboard buzzer were often used as fire alarm horns, but are also being replaced with the newer electronic alarms.)
    • Many bigger newer buildings (including newer schools, hospitals, high-rises, etc.) often use "voice-evacuation" fire alarms. A humorous take on this appears in Gremlins 2: The New Batch.note 
    • In Canadian schools (in some parts of Canada, at least) it's the other way around; the fire alarm is a classic rapidly-clanging bell, while the class "bell" is a loudly buzzing klaxon on the outside of the building and a more pleasant electronic tone on the inside (a setup which is still called "the bell"). There are even some Canadian schools that actually use both actual school bells and fire alarm bells, though typically the inside school bells have smaller gongs while the fire alarm bells have bigger and louder gongs, sometimes ringing in a certain code instead of a continuous ringing. This was the type of setup often used in United States schools prior to around The '60s, when horns started to be used more as school fire alarms.
    • Sometimes, the aforementioned air-raid siren stock sound is used for a fire alarm or fire truck siren on TV.
  • Most of the time, this distinct sound of a emergency vehicle siren wailing has been used in several media since its debut in the 1991 film Body Parts, which was added a year later in the General Series 6000 library.

Anime & Manga

Live-Action Film

Live-Action TV

  • The Red Alert — All ships have the same red alert klaxon. You'll hear it prominently whenever anyone calls for one on Star Trek.
    • Similarly, there's the siren a submarine sounds when it's about to dive, usually rendered as "Awooga! Awooga!".
    • A somewhat higher-pitched alarm can be found in shows like Bones (usually during Establishing Shots of the lab), and especially Japanese Tokusatsu shows.
    • Another red alert klaxon is the one used in the Star Wars films, notably when the two Star Destroyers are passing each other in The Empire Strikes Back, and when Darth Vader's shuttle is approaching the Death Star II at the beginning of Return of the Jedi. This is based on the steam horn of a WWII Royal Navy destroyer. It also appears in pitched-up form when the Rebels are attacking the Death Star in A New Hope, and in the Rogue One trailer.
    • It should be noted that for decades US Navy warship's use more of a muted beep sound for General Quarters and have since at least the 70s ... but nearly every Navy movie or TV show made still uses the classic klaxon. Granted, the modern version doesn't actually sound as urgent as the classic, so definitely a case of Artistic License.
  • Factory alarms. There's a particular stock sound that is used everywhere.
    • Notably, the sound used in 24 during a CTU Red Alert lockdown.
    • Somewhat irrelevantly, this sound is also a ringtone on the iPhone.
  • Some of the sets of Big Win Sirens used on Game Shows, especially those heard on Scrabble.
  • A siren is sometimes used on Game Shows to mark failures. Notable examples are on shows like The Crystal Maze, where alarms mark strikes in games with automatic lock-in conditions, and Fort Boyard, where an alarm is used for the "Burglary" game.
  • Digital alarm clock buzzers. One of these is also used in game shows and video games for a "time up" or "wrong answer" beep.
  • Played with in an episode of Fawlty Towers, when Basil argues with the guests over the difference between the fire bell and the burglar alarm bell before a scheduled fire drill.

Music

Video Games

Western Animation

    Aliens and monsters 

Films — Live-Action

  • The "krayt dragon call" in Star Wars: A New Hope that Ben Kenobi uses to scare the Sand People is also the sound of Dewbacks and a few other creatures. Meanwhile, Chewbacca's growls are a mix of different animal stock sounds, eg lion, walrus, bear, tiger. There's a source somewhere which details his vocalizations as a bastardization of how Malamute dogs sound.
  • The Godzilla Roar — Despite being copyrighted by Toho it is a prerequisite for giant monsters, being more high pitched than what you'd expect from something that big. Even the 1998 film, as far-removed as it was from the franchise spirit, simply remixed the old reliable sound with elephant rumblings.
    • Intriguingly, at least originally, this was played by Akira Ifukube wearing a leather glove and dragging his hand along the strings of a bass guitar from body to neck. The 2014 remake instead uses a complex mix of other sounds, albeit with the same "notation," so to speak, of varying pitches.
    • Godzilla's roar has changed in pitch and timbre throughout his life, but the one most people remember is his late 60's-early 70's roar, which is the most high-pitched version. The Heisei and Millennium series have Godzilla's roar being deeper and more bestial.
    • Anguirus' roar has also become a bit of a stock roar, being heard in the Street Fighter games (Fei Long's stage), Super Metroid (Draygon's screech), and a few non-Godzilla films.
  • A series of stock roars, which were later made available on The General Series 6000's "Large Animal Roars", are often used for monsters and especially dinosaurs. Their best-known use in pop culture was when they were used for the Sharptooth in The Land Before Time. They are often assumed to be the work of Frank Welker, but there has never been any verifiable evidence to prove he was the one who made the roars.
  • Jurassic Park actually came up with the brilliant idea of taking multiple stock sound effects of various animals and mixing them together to create the roars of dinosaurs. The sounds would be inputted into a keyboard, where the Sound Effects team would "play" for individual scenes. For example, Tyrannosaurus rex's roar is a baby elephant mixed with a tiger and an alligator, and its breath is a whale's blow. No wonder it had won an Award for Best Sound Mixing! Unfortunately, this would cause many to use these sounds for their own dinosaurs...
    • ...or any animal meant to be seen as exotic and powerful. Avatar uses those exact same Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor screams for the Thanator, a panther-like creature. In fact, it and the above Godzilla roar are often completely interchangeable. The thanator also makes some growls reminiscent of sounds made by the Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3.
    • Steven Spielberg uses these again for the Skitters in his Falling Skies TV series.
    • In Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Carnage makes the lesser-used "purring" sound of the raptors a couple of times during his rampage through San Quentin.
  • The roar of an elephant was a semi-common stock roar in older movies, famously used for Spot the dragon's roar in The Munsters and in the classic giant insect B-movie The Deadly Mantis.
    • Spielberg used this roar in the original Jaws when the shark sinks, and in Duel when the tanker truck went off the cliff.
    • A reversed variation of the roars appears to have debuted in The Land Unknown as the roar for the T-rex. It too has been reused plenty of times in media.

Live-Action TV

  • The Gyrosprinters (or is it the Prongheads) in Alien Planet make the same sound as awakening Insane Cancer monsters in Silent Hill 3.
  • In Supernatural a fluttering sound is often heard before an angel appears or disappears, which is meant to represent the sound of their wings.

Video Games

Western Animation

  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In the Season 4 finale, Tirek's Mana Drain sound is the Alien Queen's shriek from Aliens.
    • In "Secret of My Excess", Spikezilla appropriately has a Godzilla roar.
  • The roar made by Zod in Challenge of the GoBots, which is literally a guy saying "Muuuuuuuoooooaaaaahhhhhrrrrrrr!", has also been used for the Sphinx in Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, various monsters and sometimes Godzilla himself in The Godzilla Power Hour, and a lot of Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
  • There are stock roars and other animal and monster sounds EVERYWHERE in Primal; contrary to how that might sound written out like that, it works to the series' benefit and really sells how savage and unforgiving the world it presents is. In contrast to Jurassic Park, which uses its own unique (though now-stock) sounds to better portray the dinosaurs less as monsters and more as animals doing what they do, the more vicious roars of Primal go very well with the violence and gore that's given center-stage as caveman Spear and tyrannosaur Fang fight to survive in these brutal lands against equally brutal creatures and monsters. Particularly, the infected sauropod in "Plague of Madness" uses the same roar as Kraid from Metroid multiple times; this roar itself originally comes from The Land Unknown and this and other sound effects from it are particularly prominent in Primal.

    Animals 
  • The cucco crow from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is often used in various media whenever there's a sunrise or, in the case of shows like Ed, Edd n Eddy, as a running gag.
  • Ducks are relatively loud animals, and each breed (and species) has its own distinctive style of quacking - many wild ducks don't actually quack at all, making sounds ranging from growling to whistling. But not on TV, that is. You can always recognise duck noises on television by the harsh 'MACK MACK' that usually plays whenever they are around, even if they're not making any noise in the footage itself.
    • There's also this common duck sound effect that sounds sort of like "Quacker-NACK-NACK-NACK-NACK-NACK-quack-quacker."
  • The BBC had to seriously up its game on agricultural soap opera The Archers, as it was aimed at a very knowledgeable audience. Who tended to write or phone in if the sounds were wrong. An early goof was playing the wrong sort of sheep noises while dramatic scenes played out among the human cast in the lambing sheds. Unfortunately for the BBC, sheep farmers complained that those were not the sounds of ewes giving birth nor were they of new-born lambs, and it had ruined their enjoyment. It was patently obvious those were much older lambs of about four months or so, and the bleating was just generic sheep-in-a-field, you know, sheep grazing in a field on a normal day, as opposed to being driven or rounded up or sheared, all of which are completely distinctive sounds, and not characteristic of birthing ewes at all. Couldn't the BBC get a simple thing right? The producer who'd naively thought any old baa-ing would do in the background got the point, and despatched researchers with tape recorders to get precisely the correct background sounds for any given scene. Some farmers still rang in to complain that the Aldridge family are stated to farm Romney Marsh sheep, yet the ones you hear in the show are quite clearly Bluefaced Leicesters, as anyone should know... The Archers has always striven to be absolutely correct since, and the BBC now boasts one of the best agricultural sounds collections in the world.
  • Owls always hoot the same way, all birds of prey always scream like the red-tailed hawk (which is strictly native to North America's South) (It's actually the cry of a Red-tailed Hawk, no matter how often it's used for an eagle, falcon or hawk.), the coyote always howls, all dolphins sound like Flipper, and all monkeys go ooh-ooh-ooh-ah-ah-ah. And not just similarly...the exact same way every time.
    • Any wide-open-spaced wilderness scene will have the stock 'loon cry' or the 'red-tailed hawk cry' mentioned above.
    • The monkey sound is actually a kookaburra. When the kookaburra's call is not used, the sounds of a chimpanzee are used for monkeys.
  • There is apparently only one recording of a kookaburra, and it's used in every jungle scene ever filmed despite the fact that kookaburras only live in Australian deserts and New Guinea's rainforests. Including the Tarzan pictures, which include their own set of stock jungle animal sounds, including a hyena, an elephant trumpeting, and even the call of the Indian peacock.
  • Geese are very vocal creatures, but in television they all sound like common farmyard geese, and make the stereotypical GAAA! or KWAAA! sound. In Shrek 2, they inadvertantly use geese noises to voice a pair of Mute Swans, which - as their name suggests, but doesn't truly apply - should be mostly quiet or making snorting noises.
  • There are a set of "wolf" sounds — cries, howls, and whimpers — which have been used for at least 50 years in various projects. There are a set of dog sounds that similarly pop up everywhere.
  • There is a horse whinny that's been used in many, MANY movies and at least a couple video games.
    • Also keep it mind that this is in spite of the very broad range of noises a horse can make, some of them bordering on Nightmare Fuel! (no pun intended)
    • Horses in media tend to be limited to three sounds, the snort, the whinny and the neigh. (Even the My Little Pony brand made use of them.)
  • Bear growls also get used for all sorts of animals and monsters, sometimes even ones that shouldn't even be able to vocalize.
    • Bonus points for using the stock bear cub cry for small/baby creatures.
    • Speaking of bears, if a bear shows up in any work of fiction made reccently, chances are high it's going to sound like this.
  • If you ask anyone what a frog sounds like they will go ribbit, but that sound is made by only one species; the Pacific tree frog. Hollywood uses that recording for frogs regardless of the species.
  • That Poor Cat
  • Squeaks for mice/rats/small rodents aren't nearly as vocal as stock sound effects make them out to be. With the notable exception of guinea pigs, which can be very loud and vocal and which have sometimes been used when the actual animal depicted is a chipmunk or prairie dog.
  • The Bat Screech, which sounds more like a hawk than a real bat.
  • Roars, growls, and snarls of big cats have been used for each other and other animals such as bears, gorillas, t-rex, wolves, etc, and monsters.
    • A tiger growl/roar is often used for various beasts.
    • One specific sound-clip of a cougar snarling has been used a lot, for everything from black-and-white Tarzan movies to the opening sequence of Twilight Zone: The Movie.
  • Many species of monkeys and apes tend to use the same 5 vocalizations.
  • Any scene in British countryside will have the same fox's bark/scream played within about 5 seconds of the scene starting.
  • To judge by this trope, every beach and coastline in the world is home to herring gulls.
  • Whenever cats meow, it's always this high-pitched "Rowrr" sound.
  • The "fwee-fweewah" sound in rainforests.

Anime & Manga

  • Easily 50% of all anime in existence use the same sound effect of buzzing cicadas at some point, either to show how hot it is outside or just a add a touch of melancholy to the scene.

Films — Live-Action

  • The Afrikaans dub of a dramatization of the Gospel According to Matthew uses stock sounds of morning and evening birdsong, from birds that only live in South Africa. Arguably justified because it helps to establish the time of day in the absence of other clues .
  • The MGM lion.
    • The lion actually had two distinct roars: a ferocious one from the classic days and a digitally-recorded roar that's used to this day. The former was also heard in several MGM cartoons (including Lonesome Lenny and King Size Canary), while the latter was used for in Poltergeist (which, coincidentally, was the first MGM film to use it on the logo), The Lion King, Power Rangers Samurai and in The Simpsons episode "Homer Alone" (when a stressed-out Marge roars at a driver after stopping her car on the bridge).

Live-Action TV

  • If there are ever any ducks quacking, especially in British media, it is usually the same soundclip. It's particularly jarring as if they used single quacks, nobody would notice that it's a stock sample... however, they instead use a sample which sounds like "Quack quack quack quock quock quack quack quock quock", which is downright unmistakable. Amongst other media, it has been used in Simon the Sorcerer, Teletubbies, and The Legend of Dick and Dom.

Video Games

  • The common loon call is used in many wilderness settings, even on other planets, as in the Marathon games.
    • The Marathon games actually have a vast array of sounds that either came from or eventually became stock sound effects, including the Magnum Pistol shot and the electric short circuit sound.
  • The Sound Ideas "cougar scream & growl" is used as the death sound for the dogs in Silent Hill 3 and 4. The ones in 4 also have a "lion grunt" sound when they attack.
  • Warcraft has the stock pig grunt they used in several movies and TV shows.
    • Warcraft 3 has the death screech of the kobolds, which is also sometimes associated with pigs in other media.
  • This seems to apply to ravens as well—the same caw can be heard in Diablo and Geneforge.
  • Camels always make the same annoyed groan in every single film and TV show ever seen. All the more noticeable, since this was the sound effect used — completely unmodified — for the demons in Doom. More recently, the same sound has been used for deer in World of Warcraft, and Torikos in Haven (2020)..
  • The Pinky Demons in Doom³ use a lion roar sound.
  • The horse whinny mentioned above is used in the Age of Empires games whenever you click on the stables. Play the game enough times and the sound effect will stick out like a sore thumb in other places.
  • The Ancient Vampires in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall uses a bobcat stock growl.
  • In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, a hawk screech is used at the beginning of Ernst's boss battle theme.
  • The sound of a dog barking that is commonly used for the Chain Chomps in the Super Mario Bros. games. The exact same bark can be heard in Grand Theft Auto V for Chop and 4x4 Evo 2.
  • In Ori and the Blind Forest, the Ominous Owl Kuro incorrectly has the stock red-tailed hawk screech.
  • The giant wolf and the Sand Worm in Ori and the Will of the Wisps use various "big cat" roars, while a lower-pitched version of the aforementioned Sound Ideas "Red Tailed Hawk Calling" sound is uttered by Shriek during the Final Boss fight.
  • The Pig Cops' alert vocalization in Duke Nukem 3D is a pitched-down bobcat growl, which is used at normal speed for the Ogres in Quake. Both also have jaguar snarls for their Enemy Chatter. Yet another wildcat growl sample is used for Zombie groans in the latter game.
  • In Pathways into Darkness, the Banshees/Specters use Series 6000 lion roars for their attack and death sounds, the latter sample also used by the aforementioned Doom 3 Pinky Demons, the Headless creatures have canine yelps when hit or killed, and the Nightmares' attack sound is an angry wildcat hiss.

Western Animation

  • Mel Blanc's animal sound effects have been used other media such as his monster growls most notably used for Gossamer the red hairy monster, his bird screeches, as well as Dino's scream from The Flintstones.
  • The standard "horse whinny" is heard when Twilight is trying to drag Fluttershy out of her house during "Luna Eclipsed". Justified; this is an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, so the whinny is likely Fluttershy herself as she's being forced out of her hiding place.
    • The Ursa Minor's roar in "Boast Busters".
    • In "Griffon the Brush Off", Gilda can be heard uttering a generic red-tailed hawk's scream as she flies away at the end of the episode.
    • There are two distinct frightened chicken clucks used in various cartoons, one of which was originated by Mel Blanc. An example of the first one is in Mulan when Mushu burns off Shanyu's falcon's feathers, the other is commonly heard in Disney cartoons after a feather has been plucked, an example is from the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode Luna Eclipsed after Twilight asks Pinkie Pie if she's a little old to be trick or treating while she's wearing a chicken costume.
  • Molly of Denali: In "Happy Trails," a bald eagle is given a convenient red-tailed hawk screech to accent its screen time.

    Background music 
Not audible to the characters. See also Standard Snippet.

  • The Sparklies — a sort of light tinkling noise heard whenever sparkles are present.
  • The foghorn — used for stinky objects.
    • Originated in 1930s radio ads for Lifebuoy soap; they prominently featured a stentorian cry of "B.O.!", in the tone of a foghorn, to evoke the soap's protection ("B.O." was a euphemistic abbreviation for "body odor"). In addition, seaports can stink of rotting fish, among other things, and thus the foghorn evokes that smell.
    • The sound is also reminiscent of flatus sounds, without running afoul of censors. A common gag later arose from its resemblance to the colloquial pee-ew (also spelled peeyoo or P.U.).
  • The Trombone of Failure: Mwah, mwah, mwahwahwah! Usually used in old cartoons to indicate that a character has comically failed to complete a relatively simple task.
    • There's also the "trumpet of failure" death chime on some early PowerPC Macintosh computers, is that also a stock sound? It was followed a "rim shot" sound similar to above.
    • A similar failure indicator, the "Crash and Burn" sound effect: squealing tires, followed by something metallic crashing into something solid.
  • The classic rim shot that you hear after a bad joke, which is actually called a "sting".
  • The Amen Break, a four-bar drum sample that turns up literally everywhere.
  • The Record Needle Scratch. A scene is going along normally then something shocking and unusual is seen and the Background Music will come to a screeching halt. At the moment the music stops, the record scratch is played.
    • The DJ scratch.
    • Letting the Air out of the Band
    • There's also the pop and hiss of a record needle in a record groove. Especially noticeable when the record comes to the end and the needle slides over to the spindle.
  • Loud thumps, clanks and whooshes in non-comedy film trailers, especially just before a sentence is said.
  • That very strange buzzing sound after an explosion or something bright and large taking up the entire screen.
    • The one that goes Ooo Oee Ooo Oee Ooo Oee
  • The "magical shimmer". Used at the beginning of the appropriately named song "Majick" by DJ Keoki. A different stock magical sound is used in the extended version.
  • The Industrial hammer. It is used in The Matrix right before the lobby shootout.
  • A rattling sound that sounds like a drumstick hitting the inside of a can or pipe. Used in The Art of Trance's Octopus, Covenant's Theremin, and Bad Water from the F.E.A.R. soundtrack.
  • The Vibraphone chord, essential element of any spy movie.
  • The retrofuturistic space sound: A Woo-OOOO-ooooo sound made with a Theremin that's rare today outside old or campy media, for example Lightning Point. A similar sound effect is used in Doctor Who where it's retained due to grandfathering.
  • The music made by an ice cream truck, commonly called the "Hello Song" it features a kid saying "hello" followed by a cheery chiptune of the Japanese children's song "Picnic" that incorporates sound effects including a blowing whistle, car horn, and a hand clap. Other times the same music box will play another common kid friendly song such as "The Entertainer" or "Turkey in the Straw". Other ice rceam trucks will have a more "chimy" sounding music box which may commonly be heard playing the classic Mr. Softee jingle.

Live-Action TV

Music

Video Games

Web Video

  • The very generic "plonky" sounding stock music that is often used by online videos that were made with minimal effort, and in more extreme cases has been used to overdub copyrighted music livestreamed on sites like YouTube or Twitch.

Western Animation

  • Parodied/Lampshaded in SpongeBob SquarePants. In an attempt to appease SpongeBob, Plankton offers him a brand new Spatula. Rather than playing the stock 'shiny' sound effects, he literally says the words "Ching! Sparkle, sparkle" as it shines.
  • The bullhorn of failure (uuuuuuuh uaaaaah) in The Ren & Stimpy Show.
  • The "Yabbity Yabbity" sound originating in the early 1930's Looney Tunes short "You Don't Know What You're Doin'!" was used many times in later shorts and other cartoons throughout the years, the sound usually occurs after a characters hits his head and shakes it to regain consciousness or if a character is preparing to charge into something. The sound was made by blowing a certain tune on a trombone and speeding up the sound.
  • The sound whenever a character in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon is preparing to run away (usually with a Wheel o' Feet) is bongo drums played very fast (although Hanna-Barbera's official name of the sound is the "temple block riot," despite sounding nothing like temple blocks). It is sometimes used in other cartoons one example is in the John Kricfalusi cartoon "Boo Runs Wild" in which during the fight scene between Yogi and Ranger Smith as they are exchanging punches the sound can be heard as the punches connect.

    Doors 
  • The Creaky Metal Door — Every metal door, no matter the size, no matter how fast they're opened, makes the exact same sound: A high-pitched squeak followed by a slightly lower-pitched whine. This is, of course, sample from Hollywood Edge's overused "Premiere Edition" library.
  • Doom Doors: the entire subtrope of them.
  • Doctor Who has its own set of door noises, most of which debuted in the first Dalek story. Oddly enough, they were only really used from Hartnell to Troughton; after that, the SFX seemed to fall out of favor.
  • Electric operators for garage doors have a range of motor sounds that vary based on the brand and age of unit, but pretty much all fictional ones always have the sound of a Stanley garage door operator from the early 80s.
  • Big Finish Doctor Who doesn't seem to have a set of door noises. Just the one.
  • Any commercial or radio play by Dick Orkin is recognizable by, among other things, its door sound.

Films — Live-Action

  • Star Wars door sounds are occasionally used, particularly in games set in that universe.

Live-Action TV

Video Games

Western Animation

  • Futurama uses the Star Trek door opening "zwoosh" sound effect for pretty much every door, even some where it might not make sense, but extends it by adding a pitched-up version after the original. This variant was actually introduced in Star Trek: The Animated Series.

    Geiger counter crackling 
  • "Clicking noise = Radiation" is very common, especially in video games — whether the character should have a detector of some sort or not. In Real Life, modern radiometers don't click at each particle, but can sound an alarm, with three exceptions: consumer models clicking for The Coconut Effect, models used for demonstrating in schools, and pro models that can be set to click, ensuring moderate values aren't shown due to frying ICs.
    • True for most stuff that only measures gamma (where solid state detectors are "good enough"), but the classic clicking is very much still in use - especially with hand-held alpha and beta instruments. In a radiological triage situation involving α/β emitters, for example, an operator will sweep each potentially affected person with a sensitive hand-held probe and check them for contamination (α and β radiation travels only a short distance in air). The operator will go mostly by sound, as this provides immediate feedback, and will only check any other kind of readout if a contaminated spot is detected.

Films — Animation

  • The Simpsons, on a nuclear powerplant.
  • Monsters, Inc.: The devices used to measure contamination from human children by the CDA.

Films — Live-Action

  • The War of the Worlds (1953 adaptation) — the first fallen "meteor" is sort of "warm".
  • James Bond:
    • Occurs in Dr. No when James Bond uses a Geiger counter on the part of Quarrel's boat where Strangways placed the samples from Crab Key. Averted later on when Dr. No's technicians check Bond and Honey Rider for radioactive contamination and there is no static at all.
    • Thunderball — in Bond's gadget camera.
  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. When the title character is in Dr. Totenkopf's uranium mine, he finds a Geiger counter and turns it on.
  • Used in the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica.
  • The M.U.T.O. Research Viral Marketing website for Godzilla (2014) uses this as one of its background sounds.

Newspaper Comics

  • Spoofed in one adventure of Moomin, where a miner is excited to find a deposit of uranium that's "so pure you can hear it crackle without a geiger counter!"

Pinballs

  • In Stern Pinball's Harley Davidson, the end-of-ball bonus summary is accompanied by the cry of a red-tailed hawk when tallying up the Eagle Bonus.

Radio

Video Games

  • Half-Life though the compression at the time made it come off as more of a bubbly, popping noise. Black Mesa gave the geiger counter a more defined ticking noise that helps make it more crackly when close to dangerous areas along with the player's vision becoming noisy.
  • Psychonauts, whenever you're around green bubbly goo. The first time this happens is in Milla's Dance Party, used as an Antepiece of the hazards that hovering can and can't protect against. Then again, these hazards are encountered within someone's mindscape most of the time, perhaps it's an in-universe example of The Coconut Effect?
  • Fallout 3 actually calls this one out by name over one of Galaxy News Radio's PSA's. "Tick-tick-tickity means run yo' ass outta there!"
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare — goes off around Chernobyl if you try to leave.
  • System Shock 2 when Player Character enters a radioactive area. Justified in that the hacker got an implant that feeds him a lot of audiovisual indication.
  • Deus Ex, in an unfinished building in Paris.
  • World in Conflict produces clicking noise in the speakers when zooming on a recent nuclear explosion site.
  • Metroid Prime, on Samus' power suit during exposure to Phazon.
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade has clicking when near Tiberium, though this may be the Tiberium itself making the noise rather than radiation being picked up.
  • Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light use this sound effect to indicate when you are in a radioactive area, which will kill you if you stick around too long, mostly on the surface of post-apocalyptic Moscow.

    The environment 
  • There are several commonly used thunder sounds. It is also because of the difficulty to record a pure thunder sound without rain in the background. While thunder caused by a lightning strike can last up to and over 40 seconds in Real Life, stock thunder sounds usually last only 1-5 seconds.
    • Castle Thunder, originally made for Universal's Frankenstein in 1931, is the most well-known of them all. Used in many Disney movies made from the 1930s to the late '80s, and on many pre-1991 Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which often had their own distinct stock sound effects library anyway. Scooby-Doo often featured the Castle Thunder, but beginning in the early 2000s they began phasing it out for newly-recorded lightning strikes and thunderclaps that were even sometimes recorded specifically for them (such as in What's New, Scooby-Doo? and similar direct-to-video movies), and were very LOUD and real-sounding. (More info on the sound effect.)
    • Generic Horror Thunder; that 'Tchik-ak-ak-ak-ak!' sound that the thunder and lightning always make in horror movies. Those type of sounds occur when lightning strikes close to the viewer. It's not actually thunder, but the sound of the lightning arcing.
    • Perhaps the two most overused thunder sound effects in the media since the 90s are this one from the Sound Ideas Series 6000 "The General" library, and one often known as the Dolby Digital Thunderclap" (named for appearing in the 90s Dolby Digital "city" sound system promo).
    • The "CHTAOW!" thunder sample featured in the Pet Shop Boys song "It's a Sin".
    • Another stock lightning/thunder sound is heard in the Hell sections of Jet Moto 2's Nebulous course, and in The Oregon Trail II when a thunderstorm occurs.
  • Then there are stock sound loops of wind howling and most of them sound like they're passing either some kind of wind corridor or a place with lots of scaffolding and/or guy wires. Wind rarely does those kind of sounds in Real Life where most of the sound is usually generated by foliage which the wind passes through. One of these is used in Marathon 2: Durandal, alongside a stock thunder sound, which is also used in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault's Sniper's Last Stand level.
  • The underwater SCUBA bubbling sound. Heard in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • There's a sound effect of bubbles that's commonly associated with Slippery Soap from Blue's Clues that has also been used in other shows such as The Noddy Shop (where it was used for Johnny Crawfish's aquarium) and The Ren & Stimpy Show.
  • "Various Slime Squishes and Oozes" from The General Series 6000 appears in Silent Hill 3, in the Otherworld Hospital's "Bloody Mirror" room.

    People 
  • Stock Screams (e.g. Wilhelm Scream) — used so often they have their own entry.
  • The stock stomach-rumble sound to indicate hunger, but sounds more like an angry cat.
  • Whenever a child's innocent laughter needs to feature in a scene, it's almost always going to be a sound effect from either the Series 6000 Original Library or The Premiere Edition Volume 1. The latter is often nicknamed the Diddy Laugh through its association with Diddy Kong Racing.
  • In the same vein, babies always cry the same screeching "ooowaaah ooowaaah."
    • Babies also always laugh with the same "Ah ha ha ha... heh!" giggle.
  • When jungle-themed music plays, it's quite common to hear the stock tribal sounds which go "Uh" "ah" "ussi" and "buielabuielamammare".
  • The Immodest Orgasm.
  • Breaking wind. More often than not it's rendered as a loud, cartoonish "honk" or drawn-out "blart", where in reality the anus produces a wide range of sounds—or, even, no noise at all. Said sounds will also be used for defecation. While it's normal to fart while pooping, the way it's used in media implies that it's the feces themselves that make the sound.
  • There's a stock "trickling pee" effect used to indicate someone (usually a standing male seen from behind or the unseen occupant of a toilet stall) is urinating.
  • The same "falling to his death" scream has been used, apparently unchanged, since those guys were thrown off the giant log by the original King Kong.
  • A stock crowd gasp is heard in The Muppets (2011) (at least in the trailers) during a scene in which Kermit is hit by an opening door.
  • The unmistakable sound of a large crowd cheering while someone goes 'WOO, WOOO!' in the background. It tends to loop, over and over, when Criss does his stunts in Criss Angel: Mindfreak. Even when there aren't many people there.
  • The "NBC cheer" is mostly a respectful round of applause, punctuated by someone yelling "OW!" and a few whoops. The clip is used in many '80s and '90s NBC game shows.
  • CBS had a stock recording of people reacting in amazement used in early episodes of The Price Is Right. It would later migrate to Match Game during Audience Match reveals.
  • There's another popular stock sound of kids laughing like the "Diddy laugh", which can be heard in the Sesame Workshop logo.

Music

  • The sound of a cooing baby is the same in many TV shows, movies and commercials. It's similar to the sound heard at the end of the Prince song "Delirious."
    • Also heard in the chorus of Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody?", and the intro of Regina's "Baby Love".
    • We now know where the "Happy Baby" came from! It's an excerpt from a track of the same name on Elektra Records' Authentic Sound Effects, Volume 8, a vintage 1960s sound-effects disc.
  • "Dr. Davis, telephone please" and "Dr. Blair, Dr. Blair, Dr. J. Hamilton, Dr. J. Hamilton" being paged in any hospital scene.
  • Many songs by the Pizzicato Five have a re-ocurring sound of someone saying "The new stereophonic sounds spectacular"
  • There are several stock Ominous Latin Chanting samples.
  • The high-pitched voice screaming "Wooh! Yeah!" is a sample of James Brown's voice taken from the song "Think (About It)" by Lyn Collins. It was most frequently found in 80s and 90s dance and hip hop tracks, as well as the Bill Nye the Science Guy theme.
  • Bizarrely, Brown's opening "(W)OW!" from "I Got You" also sees play, sometimes as generic shouts... but more frequently as a component of explosion foley.
  • "Look, now I'll start the melody on the organ", usually used in remixes during intros and interludes.
    • Hideki Naganuma's "Oldies But Happies", from the JSRF soundtrack.
    • "Abba Gabba" by Riot Nation
    • A remix of Santana's "Oye Como Va"
    • "It's Spare the Rock" by They Might Be Giants
  • "Digital storm going to rock your brain". Used in the 1996 rave tune "Typhiko" by Welcome, and DJ Taka's "Leading Cyber" from beatmania IIDX and DanceDanceRevolution.
  • The intro and ending of Laserdance's "Laser Fear" use a chopped-and-screwed baby cry sample, to creepy effect.

Video Games

Western Animation

    Technology 
  • When a digital signal is being transmitted, especially from a satellite to a ground station, it's often represented by two tones rapidly switching back and forth. This is called frequency shift keying, the most common form of which is radioteletype (RTTY). Here's a sample.
  • Virtually EVERY time someone offscreen (or with their back to the viewer) is typing, they use the sound of the SAME computer keyboard, the IBM Model M, largely because it's the only widely known keyboard on which typing is audible across an entire room.
    • Alps-based keyboards are also quite common since they make very loud clacks.
  • The Electric Sound — Whenever one sees electricity, they always hear the electric buzzing it might make, if real electricity made much sound at all. Alternating current will make a low 50 or 60 Hz (depending on which country's grid it is) hum because magnetic materials change their shape as the current flowing through them changes, which can be heard at electric substations and faintly if a fluorescent striplight is on in an otherwise silent room, and also create a faint mains hum on any nearby speaker because of the changing magnetic field.
    • Marathon 2 has both 50 hz and 60 hz electrical hums, the latter often accompanied by the "electric spark" stock sound effect.
  • The Sonar Ping — A constant in low grade submarine movies (or not so). Almost always heard when the boat is submerged even when there are no other ships in the area. Military submarines very rarely use their active sonar because it loudly broadcasts their presence to any other ships (or entities) in the area.
    • And it's always, always the same sound — the distinctive "pling" of the British WWII ASDIC sonar.
    • This file is even included in the sound database of some versions of Propellerhead's Reason Digital Audio Workstation — as a snare sample, oddly enough.
    • So pervasive, this sound was even used in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th to ensure audiences would recognize that the object the killer uses to spy on someone in the school bathroom is a periscope.
    • This is actually The Coconut Effect in action. German WWII submariners said the ASDIC sounded as if someone was throwing sand to the submarine's hull.
  • The Universal Studios telephone ring — Used in many older works. Sound engineers don't use it anymore because of a noticeable warble in the recording. This sound to be exact is the ringer of a Western Electric Model 500 rotary telephone, at one time the most commonly seen and used phone in North America.
    • Also phone-related, the "ding-ding" sound of someone putting a dime into an old three-slot pay phone. Those phones used mechanical bells to tell the operator how much money was being put into the phone: "ding" for a nickel, "ding ding" for a dime, and "gong" for a quarter. It's heard even when a character is using a modern pay phone that produces electronic coin sounds (which are short beeps: one beep for a nickel, two beeps for a dime, five beeps for a quarter), or even when pay phones cost more than 10 cents.
    • Common North American telephone sounds including the dial tone, ringback tone, busy signal, off-hook signal, and a Special Information Tone are heard just as commonly in media as they are in real life.
    • The "squark!" sound after every transmission (called MDC-1200 and actually used by some police radio systems)
  • Used in an incredible amount of media is the toilet flush from the chron 'o' johns in Day of the Tentacle. The same sound can be heard on television, films and other games.
  • Momentary Feedback on a PA system — Amazingly this usually fixes itself after a second or so. Or there's some guy who turns a dial back and forth a couple of times.
    • Hollywood PA systems appear to be equipped with intelligent microphones which can sense how nervous the person approaching the mike is and feedback accordingly. Thus, a generally nervous character who is dragged onto the stage will say "Hell—[WHHEEOOOOOO]—er ... um ... hello." Whereas a cocksure, confident character will never cause feedback, no matter how unexpectedly loudly he booms into the mike. There's an element of Truth in Television at work here. The standard Feedback Squeal isn't caused by the volume of the person talking into the mike, it's caused when the mike is pointed at a speaker that it's attached to. A confident person is less likely to wave the mike around aimlessly. Subverted in King of the Hill's "Now Who's the Dummy" episode, where, playing to a nursing home, the awkward 'mic' feedback is revealed to actually be coming from a resident's hearing-aid.
  • "Beep beep boop beeb beep beep beep!" The sound a Hollywood cellphone makes when a character makes a call using the internal phonebook, as though it was actually dialling the number. When sliding through the numbers in the phonebook if and only if the keyboard sound is activated, many phones will make a constant and very faint beep-beep sound.
  • Whenever anything is being built offscreen, you can any combination of hammers pounding in nails, jackhammers breaking up rocks and saws of all types cutting wood.
  • The distinctive "sssschhiiing!" of scissor blades parting.
  • The 'Tron' footstep 'pnnk-pnnk' sounds that appear repeatedly in anime from the eighties onward; notable Fight! Iczer-1 and the original Bubblegum Crisis/Crash.
  • Any time police cars are included in media (particularly Video Games) and the radio is heard, it most often has the same stock (unintelligeible) radio message.
  • Some cash registers and other electronic devices use familiar video game sounds, such as the "get ring" sound from Sonic the Hedgehog, the "secret found" sound from The Legend of Zelda, and the "Konami pause" sound.
    • Many cash registers will make the "ding, click" of the final transaction total apperaing on a display combined with the sound of the cash drawer opening.
    • It would also be impossible to mention cash registers in media without the iconic KER-CHING! sound of an older mechanical register's draw opening.
  • Anytime a freeze frame is taken to show that a photograph is taken, this transition will be accompanied with the sound of a chemical flashbulb.
  • The "message being displayed in capital letters at the bottom of the screen" sound. JAG used it all the time, as well as any number of military- or police-based movies and TV series.
  • The sound of TV static, or the 1,000 Hz whistle sound that usually accompanies a TV test pattern.
  • The Macintosh II Start Chime is typically used to indicate a computer or other such machine has just been turned on.
  • Whenever a digital single-lens reflex camera is used the sound is invariably that click-whirr of a film reflex with an automatic electric winder, despite the fact that digital ones obviously don't wind anything, and so only do a simple click when the mirror flips.
    • Electronic flashes are almost always depicted making a huge noise, first when charging, and then when fired, both clearly audible even in an agitated crowd of people. Sometimes even the ridiculously exaggerated explosion sound of a turn-of-last-century flash lamp stuffed with magnesium powder is used. Electronic flashes only make an almost inaudible click when fired, and charging is completely silent.
  • Printers often use the sound of a dot-matrix style printer that would have been used in the late 80s and early 90s.
  • That little musical sequence modems make. Kriiiii-doooo-bedoobedoobe-doooo...
  • The sound of a Kirby brand vacuum cleaner is often used when someone is shown using a vacuum cleaner.
  • Whenever a tape or piece of dialog is heard heavily sped-up, it's not uncommon to hear the following after slowing it back down:
    "As one of Canada's leading ethical pharmaceutical companies, we have researched and developed products of the finest quality, to the well-being of Canadians since 1954. Today, is no different. The success of Astra depends upon our ability to make the right moves at the right time."
    • It's been used in Red Dwarf, Steven Universe note , Adam Sandler's comedy records note , Virtual Springfield note , a BlazeNet Internet radio commercial note , and more.

Films — Live-Action

  • There's a "Charging" sound, heard in Ghostbusters (1984) and a ton of Anime.
  • All stadium-type lights in TV and Movies make a loud "du-chunk" sound when turned on or off, despite them not making this or any sound IRL (at least in modern times).

Live-Action TV

Music

  • There seem to be only a few stock sounds used for the static heard when tuning through a radio dial. For one example, the radio static at the beginning of Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." is identical to the "Radio Tuning 01" stock sound included with Apple's GarageBand. Another clip, from Simon Harris' sample CD, is used in both Bomb The Bass' "Megablast" and Eiffel 65's "Europop".
  • "Chchzooom!", used in most songs by Eiffel 65, including Blue.

Video Games

  • Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment has many stock sounds used, notably sound which is made when something is clicked, many of the electrical-sounding construction sounds when the protoss build a building
    • And the "zappedi-zap" sound of Lockdown. That one appears in movies and games all over the place.
    • The terran building liftoff sound also used all over the place, often used as futuristic door sound as well.
  • The magic or technology sound "schwep-schwep" sound, heard in Doom II's final level when the big-bad creates a new baddie.
    • Sometimes used as a door opening sound. Also used in the Marathon series for the fusion pistol's projectile impact sound.
  • Command & Conquer: The Tesla Coil and Chronosphere sound in Red Alert, and the "futuristic computer room" sounds during the EVA scenes in the FMVs.
  • The many "Alien Electronics" stock sounds: The holo-switches in the Halo games and the Alien Corridors music use such a sound.
  • Stock Arcade Sounds usually based on Atari 2600 Pac-Man.
    • And sometimes Atari 2600 Donkey Kong.
    • The song "Movement in Still Life" by BT uses sound effects from Defender, Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, and other 80s arcade games during its "break" section .
    • "Love Missile F1-11" by Sigue Sigue Sputnik uses the Ms. Pac Man death sound at one point.
    • Crystal Castles' "Air War" samples Mario's walking sound from Donkey Kong.
    • Supertramp's "The Logical Song" uses a sound effect from a Mattel Electronic Football game.
  • The sound of the fan in Silent Hill's alternate school has been used in many other places, including the wind tunnel in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, and the ventilation fan in the alternate mall in Silent Hill 3. BTW, it's the "Machine Room 1" sample from the Altered States sound archive.
  • The security camera rotation sound, e.g. the indestructible cameras in Splinter Cell. Sometimes this sound is used for other electronic devices too.
  • The teleportation sound used in Second Life shows up in several other contexts as well, such as the poisonous mushrooms in Star Fox Adventures.
  • The shimmering sound heard at many points in Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 (first heard at the beginning of Truth & Reconciliation Suite on the OST), as well as parts of the F.E.A.R. series, such as the "Docks Ambient" BGM.
  • The "Breaking Up" radio static sample from Spectrasonics' Distorted Reality 2 library is used for the ambiance in Silent Hill 2's otherworld hotel basement, and also in Twisted Metal: Black, particularly in the Prison Passage level.
  • The teleportation sounds ("MAGICAL ZIP 01" and "MAGICAL ZAP 06" from The General Series 6000) and the Shambler's lightning sound ("Magical Zap 01") in Quake. At least two of them also appear in Hotel Mario: one when Mario goes up the warp pipe in the cutscene, and another when Peach disappears after completing the 4th Hotel.
  • The "Drone Preparing to Fire" sound from Marathon 2 is also used as the Cypher drone activation sound in Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.
  • Euclid's C-Finder in Fallout: New Vegas uses the aforementioned dial-up modem sound.
  • The electronic flash charging sound is used in Splinter Cell and a few other series when the player activates night or thermal vision.
  • "Auto Plant Punch Press" is used for the Spider Mastermind's walking sound in Doom, and as an ambient sound in Marathon 2: Durandal. Other technological ambient sounds in the latter game include "Space Ship Interior 01" and "Space Ship Control Room", both heard on the Pfhor ships.
  • Pathways into Darkness uses the "zap" part of HIGH VOLTAGE SPARK, VERY LARGE for the Headless' projectile attacks, and the "sizzle" part for the Shocking Spheres in the Labyrinth and Nightmare projectiles.

Western Animation

  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has the "schwing!" teleportation sound, and the spacey sound when Twilight accidentally switches her friends' cutie marks in "Magical Mystery Cure".

    Vehicles 
  • The two-honk doppler-effect truck pass, coming from, once again, Hollywood Edge's "Premiere Edition" library.
  • The railroad crossing. Whenever there is a railroad crossing, you know well in advance the car will stop for whatever reason right in the middle of it, and you know exactly the stock crossing bells and train horn you will hear. In fact, you even know the sound the car will make while the hapless driver tries to start it again instead of doing something sensible like open the door and run away.
  • The ice cream truck music box. This is actually a stock tune known as "The Mister Softee Jingle" and was actually produced by a special music box within the truck. If not that, an ice cream truck has a music box playing another stock kiddy song (frequently public domain).
  • The Squealing Tyre Turn — Regardless of things like the differential which exist to prevent it, and regardless of the speed of the vehicle, all cars going around corners have squealing tyres. Even on dirt roads.
    • Which is basically what 'World's Scariest Police Chases' or virtually any police chase show John Bunnell hosts runs off. The shows 'Most Shocking' and 'Most Daring' are sometimes guilty of this, also. The same tire screeching sounds that are available in most Powerpoint applications are found in the shows, constantly re-used in the form of slowing it down, speeding it up, clipping it, or just simply changing the pitch of it. They do that with horns, crashes, people screaming, etc., and if you'll notice, one screech sound effect will be used when the assailant makes a risky move, but when they replay it in slow motion, they use a different one! For some reason, you can hear people scream, and hear clear, crisp car sound effects when they show footage from a helicopter... and you'll notice that every single chase sequence shot from the air involving any more than one police vehicle will have a collaboration of sirens consisting of two "wail" tones and one "yelp" tone going off incessantly until the clip ends.
  • Speaking of skidding tires, this skid while braking, heavily used in The Simpsons when a car stops. It's even used to this day.
  • The "clank" sound, used for car crashes, which can also be heard in some racing games such as San Francisco Rush.
  • The honking sound effect emitted by Herbie in The Love Bug and numerous other films that featured said vehicle are used very often in movies such as Armageddon (1998), Bad Company, Dude, Where's My Car?, Ed Wood, Enemy of the State, The Rock, Rush Hour and Scary Movie 2.
  • The "cough-whirr-cough-whirr" noise of a malfunctioning engine. It's all over the place; some works that have it are Knight Rider 2000 (whenever KITT uses the EMP to make an engine stop) and Sim Copter (when the helicopter is very damaged). Also the movie Universal Soldier, when the offroader runs out of gas, and in Hard Drivin' / Race Drivin. It's even in Half-Life 2: Episode Two if you exit the muscle car.
  • The sound of a dying aircraft engine, also used for the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars and the war rig in Mad Max: Fury Road. It's actually the sound of the starter that turns on the engine of a Messerschmitt Bf-109.
  • The "choo choo" train whistle. Even steam locomotives don't sound like that, and it's just plain wrong with a modern train. Also, the "chug chug chug" sound of the pistons. Conversely, the diesel locomotive horn sometimes gets used for steam trains.
  • The accelerating motorcycle, as heard in The Tom and Jerry Show opening sequence and many other cartoons.
  • The jet plane flyby/landing sound.
  • The chirp-chirp-chirp sound made by a helicopter's drive belts as they slow down and disengage. The only helicopter that actually makes this sound is the Bell 47-G. It's the one you see on M*A*S*H.
  • The siren-like sound of an airplane going down. This particular sound is applied to a number of films (both contemporary to the war and after the fact) set in World War II and up until around the time of the Vietnamese War, to show airplanes in a dive or after being shot down. This is almost always the Stuka Ju 87 "Jericho Trumpet" being heard, a propeller-driven siren designed for that particular dive bomber as a psychological weapon by the Luftwaffe.
  • Hanna-Barbera used to use a standard sound effect for vehicular crashes that sounded like two nearly identical collisions in succession followed by tinkling glass. It also got used on The Price Is Right during the "Cliffhangers" game whenever the "yodely guy" falls off the cliff.
  • Most police and fire department vehicles, including ambulances will be given an electronic siren sound, either wail, or yelp, even if the vehicle is shown with an electromechanical siren. Sometimes it's the reverse, where the emergency vehicle will make the distinctive "Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" sound of a mechanical siren, when the vehicle clearly has an electronic siren speaker mounted. Many large fire trucks in real life use a very distinctive sounding mechanical siren made by the Federal Sign and Signal Company, model Q2B. This siren has heavy power needs, so it usually is only used on large trucks. In films and TV you will often hear this sound made by police or ambulances which were unlikely to have such a large siren.
  • The whining jet flyby sound from 28 Days Later was later used in Sonic X, which is commonly used for the X-Tornado.
  • In Mirror's Edge, the subway train horns sound like that of a semi or fire truck rather than a traditional train horn.
  • In Max Payne 3, one of the Stadium ambient tracks has what sounds like a distorted subway or light rail bell sound.
  • Honking Arriving Cars sounding off with a friendly two-note pat of the horn, like a Bip-Biiip or a Toot-Toot.

    Violence 
  • The *ting-ting* sound when something explodes which sounds like metal pieces tinking off each other. Commonly used used when tanks, cars, and some buildings are blown up.
  • Toho introduced a huge number of stock explosion sounds that can be heard in many films, most notably their Kaiju features. You'll recognise the most popular one right away by its high pitch, and the fact that it's spliced and repeated several times towards the middle. In Onomatopoeic representation, it might as well be written as "BANG BAN-BA-BANG!"
  • Anytime a group (usually people) gets smashed by a large object, the noise is likely to be a Bowling Pin Smash.
  • The Half-Life 2's RPG launch sound effect is often used as a generic explosion sound effect, even in music videos.
  • Similar to the above, the sound of the AT-Stabber cannon firing in Battlezone is the sound of a moderately distant explosion. It's even featured as an ambient sound in the above game during the uprising in City 17.
  • Extended sound of glass breaking. You know the one. It goes on and on and finishes on a slightly quieter echo of the first crash. Shows up everywhere, especially in cartoon Overly Long Gags where falling through a window is played for laughs.
    • Not to mention that pottery will sometimes break among glass and seems to break with the same sound over and over. Video games are particularly heavy offenders.
    • Afterward, a single circular object may be heard wobbling to a stop, especially when it's following a variety of crashing noises.
  • The Mean Right Hook — When fist meets jaw, for some reason it resembles a drum beat.
  • The "Arm Swing and Punch Face, Jaw Sock" — When a fist or a foot meets the head, for some reason it sounds like a person being hit in the body. Commonly used in anime and quite a few videogames from the early 90's.
  • The muffled "Pshht!" fire sound which is often heard when someone's breathing fire of during some fireball explosions.
  • This is more common in anime, but any Laser Blade will do the 'snap-hiss' of a lightsabre igniting, and the 'vooooom' when it's swung through the air.
    • Particularly Zeta Gundam - the original Japanese version used several lightsabre sounds for the beam sabers, but these were replaced by standard Gundam sound effects for foreign releases, presumably to avoid crossing Lucas's lawyers. This also holds true for video games featuring Zeta-era machines.
  • For laser or energy weapons firing sounds, there are sounds from Star Wars like the firing sound of X-Wing and TIE-Fighters as well as the E-11 Blaster sound which have been used all over the place, notably in Gundam franchise.
  • Most swords seem to make the same sound when drawn or when sheathed.
  • The "deafened" tone - a sudden cessation of previous background noise and dialogue, accompanied by a rising pitch like radio feedback - used to signify that a preceding sound was powerful enough to overwhelm the characters' hearing.
  • Many of the gunshots, ricochets, car crashes, and glass breaking sounds from Lethal Weapon and it's sequels (except 4) were later used in late 1980's and 1990's Warner Bros. films, such as Above the Law (1988), The Last Boy Scout, Demolition Man, Hard to Kill, True Romance, and even in Bad Boys (1995) which is distributed by Columbia Pictures. Surpisingly, the aforementioned sounds from Lethal Weapon and its sequels (except 4) were even later used in some TV shows.
  • The glass shattering sound from Dr. Strangelove is commonly used in many movies and some TV shows.
  • There's a particular sound of clattering wood that gets used a lot when a wooden object is broken. One example is Grabbed by the Ghoulies when you throw a box.

Films — Live-Action

  • Nunchaku (and sometimes Chinese swords and polearms) all make the same swishing noise. Bruce Lee's Chinese Connection is a good example.

Video Games

  • The Doom explosion sound (Large Explosion 06), and the Imp fireball throwing sound (Magical swish 01), the latter of which Marathon 2 also uses in shortened form for Pfhor defense drone shots.
  • LARGE EXPLOSION 01 (Series 6000) is used as a random ambient noise in Marathon 2: Durandal's volcanic levels, and for grenade/rocket explosions in the Tomb Raider series and Soldier of Fortune: Payback. The same explosion is heard in Vigilance.
    • The Marathon "cyborg exploding" sound (Medium Explosion 01) also appears in Tomb Raider when you kill an enemy with explosives.
  • The stock "arrow whoosh and impact" sound also appears in Marathon, as the S'pht'Kr's projectile impact sound.
  • Most Pangea Software games recycle their sound fx. I dare you to play Nanosaur, Bugdom, or Otto Matic without hearing a lot of the same noises.
  • A common "rumble leading to explosion" sound (can be listened to here) can be heard if the player activates the Chronosphere in Command & Conquer: Red Alert, and also featured in the PlayStation version of Doom when the BFG9000 is fired. It's even used several times in Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation.
  • The crunch/splat sound used in Bungie's Pathways into Darkness and Marathon 1 for Skitter and Wasp projectile impacts, respectively. The latter game uses a similar sound when the player gets caught in a crushing platform trap. A slightly pitched-up variation of the former sample was used for zombie decapitations in the early Resident Evil games.

Western Animation

  • The loud metallic "BONNNG!" heard in several Disney and later 1960s Looney Tunes shorts and on numerous Hanna-Barbera cartoons when a character hits his head on metal, one of the most notable examples is in Peter Pan when Captain Hook hits his head on a cave wall after he tells Smee to row away from the crocodile, this sound has been used several times since, one of the most unusual uses of it occurs in Freddy vs. Jason when Freddy Krueger uses his powers to slam Jason Voorhees into a ceiling.
  • The loud chomping sound used most notably in The Flintstones whenever Dino bit Fred's finger has been used in several cartoons since, also present in some live action films especially comedies.
    • Even The Simpsons has often used Hanna-Barbera's "bone bite" sound effect for when an animal bites someone.

    War 
  • Gun sounds have their own page.
  • There's that one gun sound which appears pretty much everywhere, whether clear or in some variation (most gun sound websites list it as ".357 Magnum" or similar). Just to name very few examples, multiple rail-shooters such as Virtua Cop or Time Crisis, the magnum in The Godfather video game, the Red 9 in Resident Evil 4 uses a variation, the .357 Magnum in Half-Life 2, the Desert Eagle and the Steyr AUG in Counter-Strike, and so on. Yet another popular sound from the Premiere Edition 1 library.
  • The Universal Studios Big Gun Sound and Universal Studios Small Gun Sound. The former was also used for the explosion in Body Heat.
  • Several stock explosion sound effects are in widespread use.
    • One with a distinct crackle and falling debris that can be heard after it, has been used since The Black Cauldron and many other pieces of media. Also a Premiere Edition 1 sound effect.
    • Many explosions from the Patricio Liberson Explosions for the 21st Century sound library have found their way since the New Millennium.
  • The high-pitched whistle (which is actually a camera charging whine) that gets higher and precedes a powerful explosion. Usually indicates an explosive which has been activated.
  • Artillery and bombs are invariably accompanied by a falling tone. That's only correct if you're on the delivery end; on the receiving end the tone rises as the bomb or shell approaches.
  • When a fighter jet flies past, there's a good chance it will make a characteristic high-pitched whistling noise above the sound of its engine, as was the case in many science fiction films, Tokusatsu and Kaiju movies from the 60's and 70's.
  • In the definitive TV-documentary history of WW2, The World At War, it becomes patently obvious after a while that original 1940's filmstock and newsreel have been tarted up with modern sound effects. (well, modern for 1975). Exactly the same bullet-ricochet sound appears in places as far apart as Stalingrad and Okinawa, for instance, often with no obvious reason for it being there; old WW2 vets are on record as saying that is not the sound of a BREN machine-gun or a Jerry MG, somebody's spliced the wrong sound on; and quite often, an artillery shell-burst is out of synch with what you see on screen, or you can actually hear the "ghost" of the original un-enhanced sound in the background to the post production...
    • An American remake of The World At War has since been made; it screens on the History Channel in the UK and appears to suffer from the same post-production issues. (As well as an unhealthy dose of America Won World War II, with practically no mention of Britain and the USSR...)

Video Games

  • Civilization 2 has quite a few of these. Including the "swordfight" and "cannon" sounds that tends to show up a lot. Also the "bugle call" sound that dragoons and cavalry make. ("Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-raaaaa"
  • A common shotgun sound is used in Syphon Filter and Perfect Dark. It's even featured in 24 and in a variation in Doom³.
  • The "reloading" sound effect from GoldenEye (1997) pops up in numerous other FPS games, though some of the most recent examples would be Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light, where it's used when cycling the toggle-lock on the Uboinik/Shambler shotgun. It's even used in Death Wish V: The Face of Death. This is one of the more popular sound effects on CD 9 of The Premiere Edition Vol.1.
  • Doom and Doom II's pistol sound is used in Marathon 2: Durandal and also heard in this stock sound effect, known by many as the Operation Overlord battle ambience in Unreal Tournament. A second version, which shouldn't be confused with the first sound effect is heard in Die Hard Trilogy and Fox Hunt.
  • Marathon's TOZT-7 flamethrower and the Flame Crystal in Pathways into Darkness both use a stock sound recorded from an actual flamethrower.

    Other 
  • Stock fireworks whistle.
  • The aluminum bat hitting a ball. Common in high-school anime.
  • The "fly away" whistle-like sound effect. Find it in any clip of Osaka's dream sequence with Chiyo or Tomoyo kicking Sunohara into the air, among many others.
  • The '70s Rule of Cool guidelines dictated that EVERY Mecha or superhero anime should feature the "metallic flash" sound (you know it, sounds a lot like Audible Sharpness).
  • Jew's harp and string pluck for springs going off, whether it's from broken devices and furniture, springboards or spring boots. Or a Sound-Effect Bleep.
  • The "cha-ching!" of a cash register opening is closely associated with money.
    • Parodied in the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue Mockumentary In Search of Mornington Crescent, when BBC journalist Andrew Marr asks Humphrey Lyttelton if he'd like to talk about the game's history.
      Humph: I suppose so. For the usual fee.
      FX: Cha-ching!
      Marr: Not having any money about my person, it was lucky that Humph was prepared to accept the gift of an antique cash register.
    • In Turning Red, when Mei and her friends get the idea of hustling the panda to earn money for concert tickets, their dollar-sign eyes are accompanied by the cash register sound.
  • In the Marsupilami episode 5 ("Someone's in the Kitchen with Mars") from Raw Toonage, The kitchen alarm sound is the "Red Alert" alarm sound from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • The sound people and objects make when falling from somewhere really high up. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
  • It's hard to describe, being so short and easy-to-miss, but there's a very peculiar sound of a man grunting, "UH!" that's been used numerous times. MAD uses it a lot, especially in their parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
  • In general, Hanna-Barbera's sound effect library is arguably the most well known in the world. In addition to the "bongo run" and "chomp" sounds mentioned above, the company made such classic sounds as "tromboing" and "kabong".
  • Speaking of Disney, they have had their own memorable library of sound effects that was used in many of their cartoons and their older movies, many of them created by talents like Jimmy MacDonald. Disney began phasing out these sound effects during the 80s, though they'd occasionally pop up in some of their newer productions. Some of Disney's sound effects have also shown up on other companies' productions since the 90s, including various Nickelodeon shows. It helps that the now-defunct The Hoolywood Edge released a good amount of them on their "Cartoon Trax" sound effects library in 1992.
  • Anime seems to love borrowing sound effects from each other.
    • G Gundam, Dragon Ball, and Slayers all share a large amount of sound effects for powering up and energy blasts. Specifically, the sound made by Broly charging his energy waves is often used for when Domon uses hyper mode, and the whooshing noise made by the super saiyan aura in Dragon Ball is heard in both Mobile Fighter G Gundam and Slayers. There's also the "Newtype chime" that sounds when certain Gundam characters' enhanced senses kick in. It seems to have become a stock sound effect in anime when characters are reacting to a sudden incredible sight, such as the reveal that they're just meters away from a giant monster.
    • Toei loves to share its sound effects among its products, especially between its live action properties and its animated output. Teleportation sounds tend to be borrowed from Dragon Ball's Instant Transmission technique, for examples.
    • The sound effects heard in most anime are courtesy of Fizz Sound Creation, they're pretty much responsible for the majority of the stock sound effects that you hear in many, many anime (especially mecha) and early tokusatsu to the point where their sound effects have (and still are) been used in shows they or their employees didn't provide sound effects for. note 
  • Averted in the regrettable The Wacky World of Tex Avery, which uses a clip of Bowser roaring from Mario Kart 64 in one episode. Apparently, the guy in charge of the foley thought it was stock.
  • Anyone who uses a Macintosh is almost guaranteed to use iLife sound effects.
  • The highly cliched "Shock Horror (A)", a.k.a. "Dun dun duuuuuun" gets played in Dusk's Dawn when the heroes first encounter the villain.
  • A stock wet sound indicating that the Healing Factor kicked in and wounds are closing.
  • The two-tone whistle or flute used by tofu sellers to indicate to the neighbourhood they are in the area. See here. It can be heard in various animes about daily life, such as And Yet the Town Moves or The Devil is a Part-Timer!.
  • The "ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni" of the Martian Heat Rays from George Pal's The War of the Worlds, used commonly as a "laser" sound effect, doubly possible to hear it if the effect of being hit by the ray is being disintegrated, as a Shout-Out.
  • The weird electronic "Ping! Pong!" sound that shows up sometimes in anime, such as Pichu Bros. in Party Panic! or the first episode of K-On!.
  • The cuckoo clock chime that usually indicates a Cloud Cuckoolander. (BONG! Coo-Coo!)
  • The classic "zipping" sound also made its way into an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Specifically, "The Cutie Mark Chronicles," when Fluttershy was knocking on the hollow trunk of the squirrels' tree.
  • The aforementioned "Premiere Edition 1" sound effects library from the now-defunct Hollywood Edge was used and overused so many times since it was first used in 1990, that some effects on the library have now become cliched, such as the aforementioned metal door squeak, two-honk doppler truck horn and child laughter, a certain crowd gasp, and more.
  • Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge are two popular sound effects companies, and many film and television studios use these libraries. The Hollywood Edge unfortunately filed for bankruptcy in 2014, but Sound Ideas began distributing their libraries in their stead.
  • Spike Milligan was a perfectionist concerning sound effects to be used for The Goon Show. One day around 1953, he was so frustrated at not being able to get the exact sound he wanted for an effect - that of Neddy Seagoon being hit round the head with a sock full of custard - that he took off a sock during lunch and persuaded an assistant in the BBC canteen to fill it with custard. He then hit Harry Secombe around the head with it. Dissappointingly, this still wasn't the right sort of squelching thud that he wanted. Apparently, in the last year of post-war rationing, this was viewed by the BBC Catering Department as an actionable waste of good custard and a complaint was made.
  • Douglas Adams was meticuluous in his desired sound-effects for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978). He wanted the soundscape, in then-new stereo radio, to be as carefully constructed as the music on any concept album. His notes in the scripts, as to the exact sounds he wanted to hear, tend to be longer than the actual dialogue. The BBC Radiophonic workshop relished the challenge after years of work on Doctor Who. note 
  • Many brand-new sound effects originated by Milligan and Adams for their respective shows were in fact added to the BBC stock library as useful concepts to guide producers who followed them.
  • There's a certain sound that's used mostly in a non-diegetic form, that can be reasonably reproduced by going "T'hhhhhhhhh!" with your mouth. Among other things, it's the Sound of No Damage in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) when a robot has its shield up, and accompanied Pinkie Pie's gasp of shock in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic upon first meeting Twilight.
  • The "pop" sound effect that is commonly used in anime, most commonly in Pokémon: The Series for when a Poké Ball is opened. Despite being an anime sound effect, is has also appeared in some American animated shows such as Inspector Gadget and The Fairly OddParents!. A few video games feature this sound effect too: Super Smash Bros., for example, gets to use it thanks to the inclusion of Pokémon elements.
  • The works of Chespirito are remembered for many reasons, but one of the biggest one is his use of a boxing bell to punctuate whenever a character gets hit (usually in the head). Mostly seen in El Chavo del ocho and El Chapulín Colorado.
  • The sound the Warcraft III Undead unit Meat Wagon makes when gathering corpses has been heard a few times, such as in House of the Dragon when King Jaehaerys opens the wooden casket containing the deliberations of the Great Council to choose his heir.
  • Whistle sound when characters slip and fall.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Stock Sound Effect

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The Nostalgia Critic - "Whee" Sound Effect

The Nostalgia Critic criticizes the use of a Hanna-Barbera stock sound effect in "A Christmas Story 2."

How well does it match the trope?

4 (17 votes)

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Main / StockSoundEffects

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