Make Me Wanna Shout

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Break out the industrial-strength earplugs.

"GOOOOOOOD! RAAAAAAAAA! MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!"

—Akira Hibiki, Brave Raideen

The power of supersonics (pun probably intended). Able to shatter glass, crumble rocks, and knock down buildings. Er, in the world of fiction, anyways. Characters who have supersonic screams or other sound-based superpowers can usually do something like vocal mimicry, scream out sonic booms, and screech so loud it can paralyze people by making their eardrums bleed.

It's also interesting to note that in Real Life, this power would be Awesome but Impractical seeing as a sonic boom would practically level everything in a spherical radius from the hero. Comes with an unusually high level of Required Secondary Powers (most importantly, super-resilience in their own eardrums), and often involves Acceptable Breaks From Reality—a visual that indicates the sound—to depict.

Glass-Shattering Sound is a sister trope. Sometimes combined with Razor Wind. Can overlap with Breath Weapon. Compare Loud of War, Musical Assassin and the sonic variants of Brown Note. For a related but less lethal weapon trope, see Sonic Stunner. Sound sources other than voices that have an effect on people or things is covered by Gale Force Sound.

Examples of Make Me Wanna Shout include:

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Anime and Manga

  • The mermaids of Seto no Hanayome can do this.
  • The several members from the village of Sound in Naruto, although none of them make the noise with their own voice.
  • Bleach: When Grimmjow Jaegerjacquez performs his release, the first thing he does is howl loud enough to throw up gale-force winds and momentarily stagger the protagonist.
    • Wonderweiss destroys the ice imprisoning Harribel with his creepy shrieking.
  • Several martial artists in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple are able to do this. Siegfried knocks one of his opponents unconscious by screaming at a hellish pitch, Silcardo Jenazad is able to cause an avalanche with his voice, and the Elder at one point screams with enough force to knock over everybody in a stadium - while the Elder's strength was limited to 0.0002% of his usual power.
  • Scrapped Princess: Pacifica doesn't have the capacity to fight like her adopted siblings, but whenever tragedy strikes around her (people dying, people trying to kill her, etc.), she emits a scream that sends out a massive shockwave. It doesn't kill anybody, but it is useful for breaking them free from mind control. It's because her powers as the anti-Peacemaker program only trigger under extreme stress.
  • In the spirit of the series' ridiculous power levels, Buu in Dragonball Z uses this to escape confinement in another dimension (it was partially out of desperation—there wasn't anything to eat there).
    • He later attempts to destroy the whole of creation in a similar manner, and is only barely stopped by Vegetto (the only time in that entire fight that had Vegetto looking worried... or showing any kind of effort for that matter).
  • In Yes! Precure 5 The Movie, in which Pretty Cure 5 go to a Mirror Universe and meet a team of "Dark Cures", Dark Lemonade has a supersonic scream ability. Ultimately, it just gets her killed, though.
  • Early in Sailor Moon, the title character exhibits a "supersonic whining" ability. This, like many of her secondary powers, is discarded pretty early on.
  • The classic Super Robot Raideen had this as one of its stronger weapons.
    • As does RahXephon, which was heavily inspired by Raideen.
  • The Suzuki aliens from Gantz have an attack that is basically this in beam form.
  • Ragnarok in Soul Eater has this ability, known as Screech Alpha.
    • This trope is Crona and Ragnarok's entire schtick, pretty much. Other meister-weapon teams use a technique called 'Soul Resonance' to power up: Crona and Ragnarok use Scream Resonance.
      • Black*Star disrupts it with a roar of his own.
  • Shikabane Hime had a Shikabane whose scream could propel a human several metres, and make bullets explode.
  • The Iron Howl spell in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which works like a flashbang grenade minus the flash, stunning all unprepared people within the area. This is actually more like a magical version of Sonic Stunner.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, the first team that Negi and Kotarou faced as prize fighters in the Magic World included a Tiger Man capable of emitting a roar powerful enough to match Negi's Beam Spam.
  • The title character in Betterman uses this when he transforms into his Nebula form. The frequency is tuned to the specific enemy he's fighting, so bystanders are left unharmed.
  • One of the contractors in Darker than Black has this ability. She's an overweight former opera singer and while she mostly uses it to cause ludicrous amounts of structural damage, she can also neatly and quietly stop someone's heart.
  • In the finale of the '80s Astro Boy, the final robot, "Bora", has this ability.
  • Kamen no Maid Guy gives us MAID GUY VOICE. It's capable of preventing people from moving.
  • San Otonashi and Kanade Kamiya of Rosario + Vampire are both Sirens. Kamiya uses his songs to cause unbearable pain to all who hear it, while San uses her own songs to protect the heros from Kamiya and cause Kamiya to disintegrate from the inside out.
  • One Piece:
    • El Dorago from the first movie.
    • I AM WHITEBEARD! Indeed, when Newgate simply bellowed his nom de plume at the Battle of Marineford, most of the Marines ran for cover! He's that badass.
  • Ryu Kumon, a foe of Ranma ½ whose fighting style has a paralyzing scream due to surprise. It's usually something like "FREEZE!", but can be anything suited for his enemy. "LOOK! YOUR MOTHER!" (It Makes Sense in Context)
  • Natsu in Fairy Tail defeats an enemy who can hear people's thoughts, by roaring very loudly.
  • In Toriko, the fourth and final member of the Four Heavenly Kings to be introduced is a colossal man called Zebra, who takes this power Up to Eleven, demonstrating the ability to use echoes to generate an artillery barrage and even more or less nuke countless powerful monsters with a single shout.
  • Yuuki of Code Breaker has the power of sound: he can hear exceptionally well and control sound, which means he can pack quite a punch with his sonic booms and even move at the speed of sound. He's considered one of the most powerful Code: Breakers.
  • A basic attack of Level 4 Akumas in D.Gray-man is to screech and stun the enemy. It's super effective.

Comic Books

  • The alien version of Starman.
  • The Justice League's Black Canary, pictured above, with her "Canary Cry".
    • Similarly, Lady Lark from Squadron Supreme, an Expy of Black Canary.
    • Also Shy Crazy Lolita Canary of the Super Young Team.
  • Former Teen Titans member Herald gained this power through a super voice box. Unfortunately, as Vox, he can't turn it off—while he can control sound, anything he actually says will kick the ass of the entire area. Not as bad as Black Bolt, though—see below.
  • Spider-Man villain Shriek. Also, Philip Urich, the heroic Green Goblin was indicated to have a "Lunatic Laugh" that leaves people stunned in pain and is powerful enough to harm symbiotes, which have noise-sensitivity as their Achilles' Heel. Interestingly, the power was premised on the idea that the Green Goblin (whoever he/she was) had a creepy high-pitched voice, but more recently, the Green Goblin is presented as Evil Sounds Deep.
  • The X-Men's Sean Cassidy aka Banshee and his daughter Theresa aka Siryn. Screaming also lets them fly, somehow. Oh, and they can talk while using it. Hilarity ensued in the animated series when Banshee had to give Wolverine a ride.

Wolverine: With you making all that noise, we might as well try sneaking into this place with a marching band.
Banshee: If you think that's bad, you should hear me sing.

    • On the villain side, there's Ruckus.
  • The all-time champion is probably Marvel's Black Bolt who can level buildings just by whispering due to the fact his voice isn't just super-sonic but actually causes massive disruptions in electrons. When he declares war, he's not mixing metaphors. In an Alternate Universe, he committed genocide by yelling at the top of his lungs. However, since he cannot actually control it—as in any whisper from him will destroy buildings, etc. -- this makes his position as King of Attilan and leader of the Inhumans extremely reliant on his cousin and wife Medusa's ability to read his body language. He's gotten so good at laser-guided body language that characters have commented on how uncanny it is that they always know what he means.
    • One Marvel What If? asked: "What if Black Bolt got the hiccups?" [cue destroyed Manhattan]
  • Cosmo, the psychic dog from Nova, seems to have a sonic bark.
  • Marvel's Iron Fist ranks the "Silent Scream" among his "upper-tier abilities". A hypersonic attack that can KO an entire room of thugs, it also leaves him unable to speak for a month.
  • Songbird of the Thunderbolts in the Marvel Universe was formerly Screaming Mimi, who had traditional sonic powers. After her lover, Angar the Screamer (whose screams could induce hallucinations) died, she screamed so loud that she essentially melted a forest and blew her throat out. Zemo recruited her and gave her a harness that turned her screams into energy constructs, using technology pirated from the supervillain Klaw, who does the same. Of course, Klaw was not thrilled to learn of this theft... Later on, in the New Thunderbolts title, Songbird temporarily lost her powers while using them to hold up the UN building, but eventually got her voice back.
    • Did we mention Klaw? Ulysses Klaw can use sound as a battering ram, but he prefers to turn it into energy constructs, making sound a Green Lantern ring. Turns out that his own body is a sound construct: the same sort of tricks or Phlebotinum that will disrupt his powers cause him to vanish, leaving behind only the loudspeaker-looking device he has for a hand.
  • The Wolverine story "Roar" features a beast whose roar is so powerful it leaves an entire town with bleeding ears, and when Wolverine shows up he has to keep regrowing his eardrums to fight it.
  • The Authority arc "Godhead" brings us Sister Voice, who leveled Salt Lake City with a powerful rendition of Paul Anka's Puppy Love.
  • The Swedish comic James Hund once featured the Tibetan Scream Ninjas, who practiced the "especially Oriental" art of screaming buildings apart.
  • Accomplished Perfect Physician of the Great Ten has a variation on this; the original Perfect Physician devised a way to use sound to find and heal ailments, using a mere click of his tongue to cure cancers. His successors extrapolated this ability: the second learned to stop earthquakes with a growl, and the third turned back a Mongol horde with a shout. Because the collective memories of the Perfect Physicians are passed on to each new title-holder, successive Perfect Physicians have been able to perform all these feats and more.
  • In a Darkwing Duck miniseries, one-time character Screaming Mimi could send several men flying backwards with one scream. Alas, she wasn't so useful once they learned to squirt water into her mouth.
  • The Global Guardians had the Taiwanese Liang Xih-k'ai aka Thunderlord, a Religious Bruiser who could not only use sonic screams but also imitate voices and sounds.
  • Tyroc of the Legion of Super-Heroes has a variety of effects that he can make with a variety of screams (there's a different sound effect for each... effect.)
  • Long time Superman foe Silver Banshee is not only loud, but if she knows your real name, then hearing her scream results in instant death. She can't kill Supes because she doesn't know his real name, Kal El. She can still blow out his eardrums, though.
    • Fellow banshee Jeanette, of the Secret Six, can leave you comatose with her screams.
  • Superman, usually only displayed when he loses someone close to him.
    • In Final Crisis, Superman finally kills Darkseid by screaming so loud that the evil god shatters. The effort nearly ruins Supes' vocal cords.
  • Howard the Duck's enemy Doctor Bong uses sonic weapons, but he doesn't shout. Rather, his helmet is shaped like a bell, while his severed right hand is replaced by a giant clapper; by striking the bell-helmet with the clapper, he produces dangerous sonic projectiles.

Fan Works

  • Cure Vanilla's first attack in Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy, "Pretty Cure Vanilla Echo", had her scream into a giant yellow megaphone made of light, producing soundwaves that went straight to the enemy, killing it as of episode 5. Word of God says that Cure Tangerine's upcoming power-up attack, "Pretty Cure Tangerine Silver Wail", has her scream out orange soundwaves which do the same thing. Beware the Nice Ones indeed.
  • In Keepers of the Elements, Air Keepers gain this as one of their abilities.
  • This is one of the more common superpowers that turns up in Rise of the Galeforces, and one of the rare few to be used by more than two Supers. Apparently, the Sonic Scream, as it's officially called, used to be quite popular.
  • The Scream Horn from Calvin and Hobbes The Series invokes this.
    • Also, the "Stupendous Scream" from "Wild Movie".
    • One of Dr. Brainstorm's trademark shouts manages to knock Jack off his feet in "Thunderstorm".
  • Shadowwalker of Warriors Alpha in Drunkard's Walk II has a scream that seems to be the sonic equivalent of a laser, a beam of coherent sound that pounds, slices and shatters whatever it touches.

Film

  • In Bolt, the title canine thinks he has this power (among others), unaware that he's actually just a TV actor and that the "power" is a combination of on-stage stunts and special effects added in post-production.
  • Meet Dave, albeit unintentionally. He's tweaking his voice and accidentally set the pitch so high it makes empty wine bottles explode.
  • Another unintentional example: Splash. The mermaid language does not function well in land-dwelling society.
  • The roulette wheel scene in Lola Rennt (a.k.a. Run Lola Run)
    • She does it two times before, in the opening and discussing with her father in the bank.
  • Used by Beowulf against Grendel (and combined with I! AM! BEOWULF!) as a result of Grendel having freakishly sensitive eardrums.
  • The Landlady from Kung Fu Hustle uses a technique known as The Lion's Roar that's basically this. In the fight against The Beast, she breaks the top off a large bell and uses it as an amplifier for the attack, blasting him(and most of the rest of the room) through several walls.
  • The Incredible Mr. Limpet gained a vocal weapon when he was turned into a fish. Though it's less a sonic shriek and more a sonic boom, as he generates a thundering percussive shockwave. It's put to good use at the climax of the movie when he uses it to guide "thrum" seeking German torpedoes to destroy the Nazi U-boats that launched them.
  • The giant pterosaur Rodan, of Godzilla fame, can generate sonic booms through the fast speeds at which he flies. This is demonstrated in Final Wars, in which Rodan flies through a city and the windows of the buildings shatter in his wake.
  • Gyaos, the monstrous reptilian bird foe of Gamera, uses a hypersonic shriek amplified into a laser as his primary offensive weapon. It's powerful enough to slice through anything but Gamera's shell. The Gyaos mutation Irys can also use the sonic laser, but fired from the pincers on the ends of her tentacles, and these one CAN penetrate Gamera's shell if they're focused long enough on one spot.
  • The monster portrayed by Awa in Dark Floors is a ghost with a glass-breaking screech. Tobias refers to her as "the Scream Queen", and she is the only one given an in-movie name.
  • The Bleeders in Push have this power, and they get their name from what happens to people who listen to their screams.
  • During the Master Exploder song in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny JB's capable of setting a microphone on fire and literally blowing somebody's mind with his voice alone.
  • In Dogma, God's voice kills any mortal who hears it, forcing the Metatron to speak on Her behalf instead.
  • Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum can shatter glass by yelling. This may have been the inspiration for a similar trait of Lola in Run Lola Run.
  • Coach Boomer from Sky High. Woe betide anyone who disagrees with his choice of 'Hero' or 'Sidekick'.

Coach Boomer:''' SIIIIIIIDE-KIIIIICK!!!

Literature

  • The "divine wind" ability of Celestial dragons in the Temeraire series, which is demonstrated to be powerful enough to cause a mini-tsunami in the case of skilled users.
    • That can sink an entire fleet of warships in one shot.
  • The Howlers from Animorphs have a scream that plays havoc with their prey's nervous systems (the more so the more complex the nervous system).
  • The Mandrakes of mythology and, among others, Harry Potter, have screams of instant death.
  • In Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, one of the mutant things had this ability.
  • Magnus has the 'Sword of the Lord', a sonic scream powerful enough to trigger earthquakes.
  • Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum.
  • Zhang Fei in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms during his stand at Chang Ban bridge, shouted so loudly it halts the advance of Cao Cao's army. Also rumoredly, one peon DIES at the mere shout of it.
  • The short-lived Ace Howler in the Wild Cards series.
    • Drummer Boy from the later books gets a strange variant. He's a Joker-Ace (superpowered individual with obvious mutations) who got his powers soon after he got his first drum kit, which resulted in six arms and chambers in his body that produced percussion when drummed upon. He later found that he could generate hyperfocused vibration through proper manipulation of these chambers, and used this to destroy the brain of a tyrant's pet Ace.
  • In Catherine Webb's book Mirror Dreams, Laenan Kite weaves a spell into his scream, manipulating the pressure of the air so that glass shatters and the guards are killed.
  • Discworld's Agnes Nitt, AKA Perdita X Dream. She once threated a man of screaming so hard that his brains will came out of his nose. And yes, she can do that.
  • The Great Shout in The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip can start avalanches (if you're not careful), knock down towers and complete the year's nut harvest remarkably quickly if you do it right.
  • In The Runelords books the big bad Raj Ahtan gets enough voice augments that he goes from having a compelling voice to a sonic weapon capable of bringing down castle walls.
  • In the Percy Jackson and The Olympians novel Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth Pan gives his panic causing cry to Grover, who uses it to help win the battle.
  • In James H. Schmitz's The Witches of Karres, the Leewit (do not call her just "Leewit") can whistle at, and thereby break, almost anything. Glass, crystal, eardrums...
  • In The King of Katoren, the birds populating the city of Decibel have had this ability for so long that the city's inhabitants have gotten used to it by constantly using earplugs and shielding their walls and windows; Stach, the main character, notes that due to the ensuing loss of interpersonal communication across the years, the two people in town who actually more thoroughly studied the problem have never been able to share their plans and combine them into the actual solution to the problem.
  • In A Practical Guide to Monsters, the Yrthak (an eyeless, green wyvern with a unicorn horn) is described as being able to unleash a noise from its horn capable of knocking a foe to the gound.

Live-Action TV

  • Kira's Ptera Scream from Power Rangers Dino Thunder; she can even do this in her "civilian" identity.
  • Catalina's Sonic Blast on Space Cases, which apparently all people from Saturn have.
  • Lorne of Angel can hold a song note at any pitch, pretty much forever. His screams brought several demons to their knees holding their ears in pain, and, judging from the background noise, it can shatter glass as well. The real irony is that where he comes from, singing in general is considered a sonic weapon because they have no concept of music; he's viewed as something akin to a Person of Mass Destruction with none of a nuclear warhead's huggableness. In a multi-episode arc where the group goes to his home dimension, he holds off a lynch mob by bursting into a Mo-town number (until someone rides by on a horse and just knocks him out).
    • Buffy also used this, with a group of villains called The Gentlemen who could be defeated by a human voice.
  • Echo DeMille in the Heroes webisodes and Jesse in the show proper. And Sylar too once he kills Jesse and takes his power. And just like every other power besides telekinesis that he just had to have, he never actually uses it.
  • Myth Confirmed: A trained human voice singing a sustained high note can shatter a glass. This only works because of resonant frequencies. A glass has a very simple shape, so it will have a resonant frequency that you can use to build up vibration in the glass until it shatters. Objects with complicated geometry and things made up of a variety of different materials (like buildings) won't normally have a single resonant frequency that knocks them down.
    • The exceptions to this rule are usually spectacular and expensive. After the horrible counterexample of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (the bridge pictured in the linked footage), engineers try not to build structures with a resonant frequency any more.
  • Jool from Farscape.
    • Notable in that her scream melts metal.
      • And as she's a Spoiled Rich Bitch, she screams a lot... Much to Crichton and D'Argo's dismay.
  • Pink Puffle Girl's superpower in the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Superhero?.
  • In The Librarian Simone Renoir shatters all the windows of a defunct abby-turned-nightclub with a single high C. Of course she is a vampiric opera singer who's had centuries keep her voice well trained.
  • Da Chief from Get Smart can do this, which comes in handy when a villain with eyeglasses is holding him and Max at gunpoint ...
  • Queen Mab from the 1998 miniseries Merlin. Apparently, she was the inspiration for the myth of the banshee.
  • From the other Merlin is Mordred. On being surrounded by knights he lets loose a terrible scream which kills them all.
    • Also Morgana, who lets loose a scream that causes destruction and structural damage to the castle after Morgause is badly wounded.
  • Kamen Rider OOO: The Orca Medal gives OOO echolocation powers.

Music

Newspaper Comics

  • A crowd-pleasing sight gag in Peanuts was a character (either out of anger or exultation) shouting something so loudly that it literally blew away whoever was standing next to him or her, causing the person to flip backward in a somersault.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • The spirit of Irish Folklore, the Banshee, is often depicted as having some of these powers as well. But this is not original: Actually, the Banshee announces the impending death of a human being with a terrifying wailing or screaming. Since she does only announce, not cause death, she is not an evil spirit, rather a benevolent one (she wouldn't cry, if she didn't care about human affairs). Modern depictions in pop-culture however usually treat her as an evil being, who can (and tries to) kill people with the terrifying "cry of the banshee", giving rise to the notion of the banshee as a being with "Sonic Powers".
  • The Chinese children's tale The Ten Brothers is about ten mystically-borne siblings that exhibit X-Men-worthy superpowers—the youngest of the ten has a super-destructive cry.
  • From the Byliny (great epic poems of Russia), we have Solovey-Razboynik, or Nightingale the Robber, a human/bird hybrid monster who could stun or kill with a whistle. He was one of the arch-enemies of the Russian folk-hero Ilya Muromets.
  • Simeon is described in a portion of The Bible's Expanded Universe, The Book of Jasher to have a scream so loud that all pregnant women within a twenty-five mile radius will have a miscarriage.
  • Older Than Feudalism: The goat-god Pan in Classical Mythology is able to do a cry that would cause deranged terror in all mortals who heard it, and is the source of the English word "panic".

Tabletop Games

  • One of Mortasheen's iconic monsters, the Shreeg, has this power.
  • D&D
    • As of third edition at the latest, officially includes "sonic" as one of its energy/damage types and provides spells, magic items, and monsters that make use of it. (In 3.0 and 3.5 at least it was arguably one of the more effective damage types because few creatures had inherent resistance to it—unlike, say, fire or cold—and an object's hardness would not protect said object's hit points against it.) This is to say nothing of effects that invoke the trope but don't technically do sonic damage, such as "Wail of the Banshee".
    • Banshees, of course, could slay living beings with their terrible wail. Other monsters with attacks like this include the imp-like screaming devilkin, and the destrachion, a weird beast with no eyes.
    • Savage Species introduced at least one Feat that did stuff like this. Sadly, most of these required you to be at least Large, if not Huge. Blowhard could literally bowl over your opponents. It was also restricted in that you couldn't combine your breath weapon with it.
    • 4th edition has "thunder" damage, which is basically sonic damage with a misleading name.
  • Noise Marines from Warhammer 40,000. They mostly use their Blastmasters or Sonic Blasters to tear apart enemies with The Power of Rock, but the Doom Siren weapon—appearing as either an amplifier over the mouth or a backpack-mounted mini-pipe organ—allows vocalists to get kills too. Also, Slaaneshi daemons have the Warp Scream ability that paralyzes foes with fear, while the Eldar field units of Howling Banshees whose technology achieves similar results.
  • A Nobilis character with enough points in Aspect can (with effort) shout loud enough to kill someone, and with a little extra push, deafen entire countries.
  • There are weapons in GURPS: Ultra-Tech, appropriately called "screamers", that can melt a person with soundwaves.
  • In Cybergeneration, a spinoff of R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk, you could play an "Evolved" character which is basically a kid that's been enhanced by nanomachines that are spreading like a virus. The supplement MEDIA FRONT gave us an Evolved type called Jammers whose modification was that their throat, eustachian tubes and ears were replaced with a non-newtonian, metallic super-carbon polymer kind of like living mercury. In addition to the standard screaming, they could alter their throats to mimic any sound, or sounds, use the vibrations in their voice to hypnotize or persuade, and modify their ears to enhance their hearing.
  • One of the character classes in Orpheus is the Banshee Shade. The base skill, Wail, ranges from causing subtle changes in emotions to ripping apart someone's body and mind with a scream.
    • This itself is a take on the Keening Arcanos from the predecessor game, Wraith: The Oblivion. Practiced by the Chanteurs, it also ranged from emotional manipulation to rending someone's corpus with a shout.
  • Gamma World. In 1E the Sonic Attack Ability mutation damaged all creatures within 10 meters.

Video Games

  • There are pins that allow Neku to do that...
  • In The Elder Scrolls lore, some special Nords known as Tongues use a power known as the Thu'um, which is used to shout with various effects ranging from sharpening swords, teleporting to wherever their shout lands, and various other things. The strongest Tongues, known as the Greybeards, are said to be so powerful that they have to gag themselves and use sign language in order to not destroy everything around them by simply talking.
    • And in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, we actually get to use the Thu'um, where it is explained that it is literally a Language of Magic wherein voicing the Thu'um makes what you spoke happen. The Thu'um is actually spoken using the dragon language, as dragons naturally have the power to alter reality by simply speaking. When they're "breathing" fire, they're actually commanding fire to come into existence.
    • We also get to meet the Greybeards. When they call for the dragonborn, all of Skyrim can hear it. When they whisper it shakes the mountain they live on.
    • The Dragonborn is special because s/he can use the Thu'um without any training after absorbing dragon souls, thanks to being born with the blood of a dragon.
  • The Mercenary (Melee Area of Effect) class in Dragon Nest has an entire range of shout skills. One of the higher level ones actually creates a vacuum when he inhales to bring enemies closer so that the actual shout can hit more of them.
  • Kirby with his "Mike" powerup.
  • Pokémon has a few attacks like this, such as Uproar and Hyper Voice. There are also sound-based status-affecting moves such as Screech and Supersonic, and the Pokémon ability Soundproof can protect a Pokémon from any sound-based attacks. The evolutionary line of Whismur/Loudred/Exploud are also all based on this trope.
  • Queen Sindel from the Mortal Kombat. Notable in that she can scream the flesh off people.
  • Redeads in The Legend of Zelda can stun people with their screams.
    • Skull Kid in Majoras Mask, whose scream speeds up the falling of the moon.
    • Pol's Voices can be stunned by the player shouting into the microphone—on systems that have one, that is. Phantom Hourglass was the first game where this was possible outside Japan, but it could be done in the original The Legend of Zelda using the microphone built into the Famicom's second controller.
  • There's two whole sonic powersets in City of Heroes, one of which somehow protects allies.
  • Warriors in World of Warcraft get a few "shout" attacks. They don't damage, but at least one causes "fear".
  • In Guild Wars Shout skills are simply skills that have no cast time (and, indeed, can be used while you're casting or using another skill) and have an effective range of "earshot" (which is approximately aggro range). Their effects are generally damage modification (either increasing or decreasing it), but one shout, "You Move Like A Dwarf", actually damages, knocks down, and cripples whichever foe you have targeted when you use it.
    • Similarly, The Lord of the Rings Online has many, many damaging shouts. Minstrels alone get at least three ways to kill via yelling, with bonus points to Dwarven minstrels, whose shouts, rather than wordless "AAGH!" of every other race, consist of the war-cry "Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu!"
  • The barbarian of Diablo II has a number of vocal capabilities (howl, taunt, shout, battle cry, battle orders, war cry and battle command) with a number of effects on enemies ranging from fear, stunning or status penalties all the way to immediate damage. And they can grant allies temporary buffs.
  • In Condemned and its sequel, there's a whole cult with this ability. You're one of them, and gain it for the last level of Condemned 2.
  • Mega Man and Shade Man had the sonic weapon "Noise Crush" in 7, but that came from their Arm Cannon.
  • In a twist on this trope, the Street Jam psych from The World Ends With You is triggered when the player stimulates the DS' mic. It comprises of Neku summoning giant speakers that blast sound into every Noise in the current battle. A variant, the Twister psych, turns mic stimulation into gusts of wind that blow enemies up and then slam them down.
  • Fortissimo from Freedom Force vs The Third Reich.
  • Ecco the Dolphin gets various weapons-grade augmentations to his voice over the course of his games; he is a dolphin, after all.
  • Magical Battle Arena turned Naga's Noblewoman's Laugh into this for her Limit Break Super Move, where she encases her target in ice with a Freeze Arrow then simply laughs beside her hapless victim, dealing massive damage. Somehow, this just feels right.
  • In Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 the Allied attack dog and Soviet war bear have functionally-identical stun abilities based on their roar/bark. The dog has an amplifier to help, and can pass this along to the Multigunner IFV if the dog hops in the shotgun seat. The Allied dolphin has an amplified sonic weapon as an actual damaging attack that can take out boats of they attack in groups.
    • There are also GDI Sonic emitter weapons in Tiberium Wars, originally intended as a device to control the spread of Tiberium, they weaponized it after finding how destructive it can be. Incidentally, the Scrin made heavy use of tiberium, making the Sonic weapons brutally devastating against them.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II has the force scream power.
  • The sirens in God of War II have a migraine inducing attack of this nature
  • The Sonic Boom weapon in Destroy All Humans!, which uses audio waves from Crypto's Flying Saucer to bring down buildings and send vehicles flying.
  • In the Godzilla games, Anguirus's only ranged attack is his roar.
  • Cynder in The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon has one of these, officially called "Fear" in-game.
  • The Sonic weapons in X-COM: Terror From The Deep, which are this game's equivalent to the first game's Plasma weapons.
  • OH MY GOD IT'S A SCREAMING LINE DRIVE!
  • Guile of Street Fighter II has Sonic Boom and Flash Kick as special attacks. It's explained as him punching/kicking so hard that his fist/foot reaches supersonic speeds.
  • KYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! (Screen distorts) Mr B! Mr B! Big Sister doesn't want you playing with me...
  • In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Bowser does this in the final battle, but it doesn't do any damage, just pushes you back a little.
    • Bowser Jr. uses sound waves as part of his super ability and mega strike in Mario Strikers Charged.
  • The Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl enemy in The Haunted Mansion video game uses this attack.
  • The Sjas in Ghouls vs. Humans can attack with supersonic shouts (and even when he doesn't attack this way, he screams bloody murder all the time.)
  • Rikuo/Aulbath from Darkstalkers has a special move called Sonic Wave, where he emits ultra-sonic waves to stun his opponents and that inflicts some damage on them.
  • City of Heroes offers Sonic Attack and Sonic Resonance as powersets. The default animation for these powers are a range of screams and shouts. Oddly, while Sonic Attack damages targets and renders them vulnerable to more damage, Sonic Resonance includes a number of powers that make your allies tougher instead. All by making strange shrieking noises.
  • One of the warrior's abilities in Dragon Age: Origins is "War Cry". When upgraded it can knock enemies off their feet.
  • Some minor enemies in Golden Sun games can use a vocal attack. Bats unleash sonic waves, Harpies let out a shriek, and Scuttlers bellow a bloodcurdling cry. These deal damage and sometimes prevent an action or even stun a character. Also, until Dark Dawn, unleashed weapon techniques were narrated as "(character)'s (weapon) lets out a howl! (technique name)!"
  • In Brutal Legend, General Llyonwhite does this to a mirror falling on him. Unfortunately for him, his scream breaks the mirror and the huge, sharp shards kill him
  • Popka from Klonoa has this as his Limit Break in Klonoa Beach Vollyball.
  • In Monster Hunter, the majority of the monster's roars have the ability to stun you and, for the most part, can only be avoided by rolling or blocking with your weapon. However, some monster's roars (such as the Tigrex)have roars powerful enough to inflict minor damage and send you hurtling dozens of feet across the landscape.
  • In Archon, Banshees have this as their power. It has very short range, but they are the only melee unit that can move and attack at the same time.
  • In Dune II, after getting the IX building upgrade, House Atreides can manufacture Sonic Tanks, capable of hitting multiple targets if they're all in the line of fire.
  • In the flash-based webgame Swords and Sandals 2, a valid min-maxing strategy is to focus mostly on Charisma, so that your Taunt skill becomes your free, deadly, ranged, and only, weapon.
  • Mauru, the resident Totoro Expy in Waku Waku 7, is Cute but Cacophonic, and has a very loud shout as his Limit Break.
  • Dead Rising 2: Metal band Angel Lust obliterates an entire horde of zombies by blowing up their heads with a deafening Big Rock Ending. This specific trope would best apply to Jeanna, the band’s sultry siren of a lead singer, but her Metal Scream is only implied, and never actually heard on the soundtrack.
  • Averted with Super Sonic, despite the name.
  • Orc barbarians in Heroes of Might and Magic V are forbidden from learning magic, instead they get a selection of battlecries that function as buffs for their soldiers.
  • Kyouko Kasodani in Touhou is a yamabiko with the ability to perfectly imitate and greatly amplify sounds with her voice. Perfect for reciting Buddhist sutras she doesn't understand and generating lethal blasts of compressed air.

Web Comics

Web Original

  • The Global Guardians PBEM Universe features many characters with this power. Rebel Yell, a member of the White Legion (white supremacist hero group... yes, you read that right), has an ultra-sonic "rebel yell" as his name implies. His twin brother Johnny Reb has the same power, but not the same attitudes toward minorities. The King, the Anthropomorphic Incarnation of the popular image of Elvis Presley, can belt out ultra-powerful rock-and-roll songs. Crescendo sings into the ultra-sonic ranges as well. Golden Eagle has a super-powerful "eagle scream". Crybaby, Vox Populi, the New South Wailer, Warcy, Heuler, Screech, Grito, and the Voice of God all do the same thing.
  • In the webfiction Whateley Universe, there's an entire category of mutant superpower covering this: the 'siren'. At the Whateley Academy, there are plenty of examples: Vox and Glissade can imitate any sound and even make people do their bidding; Screech is so superpowered that she can't open her mouth for fear of disintegrating everything and everyone in front of her.
    • In Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy, those three and a couple others are in a 'special topics' course in Winter Term where the whole course is learning how to do more things with their Siren powers.
  • In Darwin's Soldiers, Deathwind, a Dragonstorm experiment, can create a painful and very destructive noise by vibrating his wings. It is implied that some other experiments have the same power.
  • The bizarre centaur-like Grimm that Team RNJR encounters in the village of Kuroyuri in the last two episodes of RWBY Volume 4 has some kind of howl attack that seems equal parts physical and mental.

Western Animation

Actor!Toph: I don't "see" like you do--I release a sonic wave from my mouth, like this: (releases an ear-curdling scream). There! I just got a pretty good look at you!

  • Transformers Animated Starscream apparently can develop one of these. Although even he's not sure how he did it.
    • Also, Soundwave from the original Transformers cartoon, as fitting both his name and radio alt mode. Thundercracker had this power in the Marvel comic.
    • Plus the appropriately-named Nightscream in Beast Machines.
  • In the episode "Hidden Talents" Kim Possible is entered into a talented contest by her sidekick Ron, which she's not happy about because of her awful high notes. It turns out her singing can break six feet of ice, useful when the villains trap her under that, though never mentioned again.
  • In one episode, Eek! The Cat tries to get the lemons while climbing on a lemon tree at Sharky's backyard, but fails and eventually falls into a thorn bush, which prompts him to scream so loud that the camera shakes and the lemons fall off of the tree and bury him.
  • Subverted in The Simpsons, when Lisa trains her voice for an "American Idol" competition. Just after she appears to break a glass by hitting a high note, the camera pans out and Homer says that he was shooting the glass with a BB gun every time she did so.
  • Tanya Mousekewitz is able to break glass with her singing voice in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.
  • Horribly and hilariously used in Celebrity Deathmatch. Mariah Carey's singing makes Jim Carrey's head explode. Literally.
    • In another episode, Jerry Stiller's shouting had powerful concussive force.
  • Used in Courage the Cowardly Dog, when Courage's 41-second-long scream breaks the foundations of his house and sends a villain team up falling into the resulting hole.
  • The EVO Circee in Generator Rex can shout with varying intensity at most any frequency. The can knock people back, create horrible noises, and hit resonance frequencies to shake things appart.
    • It was said that in an off-scene incident, she accidentally hit the natural resonance frequency of cotton and blew a bus driver's pants off.
  • The Garfield and Friends segment "Screaming with Binky", where Binky The Clown disturbs someone who is doing an activity that requires concentration.
  • In Star Wars: Clone Wars, Ithorian Jedi Master Roron Corobb was able to let loose a roar from his dual mouths that bowled over General Greivous' assassin droid's and nearly knocked over Greivous himself. (But he was winded for a few minutes after doing so.) Given what Shaak-Ti said, this sort of thing is common to Ithorians, but Corobb's was amplified by his Jedi skills, making it "as powerful as any Force blast".

Real Life

  • Surprisingly, Truth in Television. The SR-71 Blackbird, if at its operational max speed of Mach 3.5 above a city (let's just ignore atmospheric friction for the moment...) at anything less than 10,000 feet, would level said city. Hell, simply flying a fighter jet as close to Mach 1 and at near the minimum altitude as they're allowed during peacetime can severely rattle a house. As in lock-the-cupboards-or-everything's-going-to-fly-out-of-them rattle.
    • The idea of the SR-71 leveling a city is dramatically overstated, as was demonstrated recently[when?] on MythBusters, where F/A-18s flying at 200 feet above the deck at Mach 2 were unable to break so much as a wine glass. While there would be a certain amount of damage from the pressure wave hitting flexible sheets of glass, otherwise, there's just not enough energy to do severe structural damage, even at Mach 3.5.
    • For one SR-71's final flight before its donation to the Smithsonian, it set a world record for fastest Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. flight at 59 minutes. Unfortunately, the flight path took it directly over a Mormon temple, shattering all of its stained-glass windows. Oops...
    • This is referenced in an episode of Garfield and Friends: Jon reads about the sonic boom, calls Garfield for lunch... and the cat arrives at the speed needed for it to occur and start destroying the kitchen.
  • The Other Wiki talks about Operation Bongo II over Oklahoma City which lead to the US halting SST development.
  • Tigers use their partly-subsonic roar to stun and drive off rival tigers.
  • Those Wacky Nazis tried to develop an explosive-driven sonic "Wunderwaffe" that could knock down planes. It actually worked, producing waves of sound which were highly destructive—within a range of about a dozen yards. Back to Zeichenbrett!
  • It was hypothesized that Sperm Whales used intense beams of sound to stun their prey.
  • Pistol shrimp used their claws to form a cavitation bubble that then explodes and stuns or kills their prey with a shockwave.
  • Dynamite fishing—illegal in most places—uses this trope. The shockwaves from a dynamite explosion can be much stronger under water, and will stun all fish in the vicinity.
  • If a pursuing predator catches up to a chicken, the chicken can escape by slapping its wings against its own body. The resulting thunderclap will only disorient its pursuer for a second or two, but that can buy it enough time to get away.
  • Not quite as impressive as some of these, but Welsh singer Tom Jones has been known to break microphones with the sheer power of his voice.
  • When frightened, a pig's squeal can reach 115 decibels. A jet plane at takeoff is about 113... Something to consider before you play pranks on a farm.
    • And if you think that's just a measly two decibels, remember that decibels follow a logarithmic scale. That means those two little decibels make a big difference.
  • The bow-mounted low frequency sonars mounted on submarines and larger surface ships have to be powerful enough to bounce a signal off a target at a range of dozens of nautical miles. Said sonars are appropriately powerful (especially since sound follows the inverse-square law), and the most powerful ones can apocryphally boil the water right next to the emitters. There are plenty of reports of whales being caught in a sonar beam and dying from multiple internal organs rupturing.
  • It is believed sauropods defended themselves by cracking their tails like whips, causing a sonic boom.
    • It is not physically possible for them to have been able to generate a sonic boom strong enough to have caused any sort of significant damage to an attacker. They'd have had to actually connect with their tail to hurt anything. Any resulting boom (which would likely have sounded more like a bull-whip) would have simply been a side-effect of them swinging their tail, though it would probably have served as a deterrent noise to most predators.
  • The sound a sonorous[1] object, for example a wine glass, makes is what's known as its "resonance frequency". It's essentially a sound which it makes when it vibrates (e.g. by dampening your fingertip and running it around the edge of the glass) with the sound being louder the more it vibrates. Conversely the same sound will make the object vibrate. This means that if you play back an object's resonance frequency loudly enough you can quite easily make it vibrate enough to shatter through sound alone, particularly with brittle materials like glass.
  1. ↑ i.e. It rings if you tap it
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