Speech Bubbles Interruption

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Speech Bubbles are graphic interpretations of characters' speech. Therefore, cartoonists show interruption or talking over another person's speech most conveniently by Painting the Medium—specifically, obscuring a speech bubble with something.

Obscuring with another speech bubble means that the character is interrupted or drowned out by another. Obscuring with Written Sound Effects means the same for sounds. Sometimes a speech bubble may even be obscured with an object: Either this object produces loud and specific sounds that drown out the speech or the character stops talking immediately.

The Wall of Blather uses this on Wall of Text to indicate "long lecture that no one listened to."

A form of odd-shaped speech bubble, and so a Sub-Trope of Painting the Medium, often used for Curse Cut Short. When the speech bubble blocks something else, it's Speech Bubble Censoring. See also Sound Effect Bleep.

Examples of Speech Bubbles Interruption include:

Comic Books

• It appeared in Empowered at least once. Searches needed.

Comic Strips

• Played with, hilariously, with Get Fuzzy. In order to make their lives "edgier," Bucky begins censoring Satchel by yelling beep over his speech bubbles. He even tries to use a little black box to cover up written swearwords. Of course, Satchel reveals he is trying to say, "oh sugar," but with Bucky beeping him, all you see oh s--." Rob ultimately stymies him by holding up a speech bubble out of Bucky's reach.
• There was a For Better or For Worse strip that did this a few years ago, in which April cut off her friend Becky with an overlapping speech bubble when Becky referred to a mentally disabled character as a "retard".
• Invoked in Achille Talon, when the titular character tries to explain the conception of a strip but gets a bubble saying "that text" glued onto his speech by an incompetent assistant. The entire end of the strip has him trying to speak while the glued bubble gets in the way of his text.

Literature

• In the Horrible Histories book The Awful Egyptians, the narrator refers to the fact that at times, after great military victories, ancient Egyptians would gather the genitals from dead enemy soldiers and pile them up in public. In a caricature illustrating such a pile, a son says to his father, "Look at this huge pile of" "That's enough, son!"

Video Games

• The PlayStation 1 Final Fantasy games do this—all three of them.
  • This is how Cloud accomplishes a Moment of Awesome against Sephiroth: Cloud interrupts Sephiroth's Hannibal Lecture with a flat "Shut up" that appears over Sephiroth's text box.
• Occurs in the supplemental comics of Team Fortress 2.

Web Comics

• Rusty and Co
  • Suppressing the villain's name.
  • And summarizing the Wall of Text.
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja combines this with Curse Cut Short: In earlier chapters, Doc's swears would be cut off by a Mook screaming, "HE SAID A BAD WORD!"
• This comic from Something*Positive. Wil Wheaton isn't interrupting Davan, but his Speech Bubble means we don't find out whom Davan's addressing.
• Occurred in an Eight Bit Theater strip when Sarda put the team into yet another deathtrap airship.

Black Mage: You know what? Sarda can just go fu--

• Gunnerkrigg Court does this at least twice: once when Zimmy is trying to say "Bastard" and has her bubble cut off by the sound of thunder, and another case when the "End Chapter" symbol cuts off Kat as she says, "What a bitch."
• Adventurers! did that, also.
• Happens in Penny Arcade too many times to list.
• This Strip in Books Don't Work Here.
• As pictured in the VG Cats panel above, Aeris shows us how to effectively cut off Leo's idiotic banter.
• In The Wotch, all information about a Noodle Incident is censored by the results of an Education Through Pyrotechnics class.
• Footloose Nevermind the rules. ^{[dead link]}
• Dork Tower: To indicate he really did tell the adventure.
• Order of the Stick: "DON'T say it! It's trademarked."
• Concerned has this in an early strip where Frohman introduces himself:

Citizen: The Sausage King of Chica- Frohman: No.

• Nobody Scores does this fairly often.
• This strip of Awkward Zombie, last panel.
• Doc Franken does this to Iggy on occasion in Nosfera.
• Precocious
  • Here
  • And here
• Thistil Mistil Kistil: In context, you can even make out what was overwritten.
• Nip and Tuck: The details on why the rabbit has so many children.
• In Sinfest Yo. Time out.
• In Sequential Art interrupting a mean-spirited joke.
• String Theory: on a date.
• The Fuzzy Five
  • In this strip a villain pops Meredith's (thought) bubble.
  • At the end of the first storyline, the box declaring the end obscures Nina Jr's assertion that no unseen force was going to interrupt them.
• Electric Wonderland: NJ and Trawn interrupt the narrator sharing details the readers already learned (or should have learned) after reading the two previous comics.
• Schlock Mercenary. The "blind date with a". And here. Also, Schlock "is like a giant child made of".
• In Ears for Elves, Myari cuts off Tanna in this way. It fits with her hyperactive personality. Later, a VERY angry Tanna does this to Rolan three times in one panel.
• In No Rest for The Wicked, the Boy interrupts Ricardo's explanation to ask if some girl beat him up.
• Happens at least once in Little Dee.