Stock Sound Effects

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"

There are many different sounds in the world. However, you wouldn't know it from watching television.

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. 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 the Super-Trope to the following tropes:

Now, see if you can name each and every time you've heard one of these sounds:

Sirens

Anime and Manga

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.
    • Justified in that it's almost always used on ships built by and for the same star-going civilization, who would want a standardized sound for "the shit just got real, get your ass where it's supposed to be" across all their ships, stations and installations, and probably bled from there to civilian-sector ships built by that same civilization.
    • 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 the shuttle is approaching the Death Star II at the beginning of Return of the Jedi.
  • 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.
  • Whenever a fire alarm goes off on a movie or TV, whether a building is burning or it's a fire drill or some punk decides to pull the alarm for fun, it is almost always a bell that sounds similar to a school bell or a general signaling bell. In America, bells used as fire alarms is VERY scarce, being now mostly replaced by loud electric buzzers or electric horns with flashing lights.)
    • Sometimes, the aforementioned air-raid siren stock sound is used for a fire alarm or fire truck siren on TV.
  • 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.

Video Games

  • Security alarm sounds. The alarm sound in the Nintendo 64 adaptation of Golden Eye 1997 is also used for the gates in Gradius IV's High Speed Stage, and appears in the Dance Dance Revolution song "Dead End". Another stock alarm sound is used in both Tomorrow Never Dies(the game) and Perfect Dark.
  • The Bullhorn Klaxon.
    • There's also the alarm when a submarine dives. A stock sound similar to this is used in Halo 3 when a Scarab is damaged or exploding. This sound was also the boss warning klaxon in Ikaruga.
  • Another submarine-type klaxon was used as an alarm sound in Soldier of Fortune II.
  • Some of the sets of Big Win Sirens used on Game Shows, especially those heard on Scrabble.
  • A certain Star Trek-style alarm sound is used in the Deus Ex games, and on some TV security commercials.
  • Air raid sirens, particularly the "attack tone", are nigh-invariably "nuke goes here" or Silent Hill. The latter's seems to be sampled from a Castle Castings siren.
  • Anything made by Compile Heart or Idea Factory will count as this.
  • Nuclear reactor alarms. One is used in Doom 3.

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.


Aliens and monsters

Film

  • The "krayt dragon call" in Star Wars that Ben Kenobi uses to scare the Sandpeople is also the sound of Dewbacks and a few other creatures.
    • Chewbacca's growls are a mix of different animal stock sounds, including lion, walrus, bear, and tiger.
      • There's a source somewhere which details his vocalizations as a bastardization of how Malamute dogs sound.
  • The Godzilla Roar—Prerequisite for giant monsters, more high pitched than what you'd expect from something that big.
    • Intriguingly, at least originally, this was played by someone wearing a leather glove dragging their hand along the strings of a bass guitar from body to neck.
    • 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.
  • Another stock roar is commonly used as well. It has been used for Motaro in Mortal Kombat, the Dragonzord in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Obsidius in Godzilla: Unleashed, and the Octavo from the TV adaption of Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic'.
    • The sound in question can be heard at 2:36 into this video. The high-pitched squeal/screech made by Obsidius, whose entire vocal library is made up of stock monster roars from classic American films.
  • 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. The new Avatar movie uses those exact same Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor screams for the Thanator, a panther-like creature.
    • Steven Spielberg uses these again for the Skitters in his Falling Skies TV series.
  • The shark's bellow in Jaws: The Revenge was a semi-common stock roar in older movies, famously used for Spot the dragon's roar in The Munsters and in the Tom and Jerry short "The Milky Waif" (one of it's earliest appearances) where Jerry gets so mad at Tom he lets loose the bellow; not heard much today. The roar also appears in the classic giant insect B-movie The Deadly Mantis, where it may have gained notoriety.
    • Spielberg used this roar in the original Jaws: listen carefully and you hear it as the shark sinks. He also used it in Duel when the tanker truck went off the cliff.

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.
  • The roar for Kraid, as noted below, was also used for the Tyrannosaurus rex in the last section of "Sea Monsters", and was one of King Kong's roars in the 1976 remake.

Video Games

Animals

  • Owls always hoot the same way, the eagle always screeches that way (It's actually the cry of a Red-tailed Hawk, no matter how often it's used for an eagle or vulture.), 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 'hawk screech' mentioned above.
    • The monkey sound is actually a kookaburra, as said below.
      • 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 Australia and New Guinea.
    • Including the Tarzan pictures, which include their own set of stock jungle animal sounds, including a hyena, an elephant trumpeting, and whatever was going "aaAA, aaAA, aaAA.." which the robots occasionally imitate on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
      • The "aaAAA, aaAAA, aaAAA" actually is the call of the common peacock. Go figure.
  • 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)
  • 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; "Dinosaur Planet" uses it for baby Saltosaurus, "The Future Is Wild" uses it for baby Snowstalkers.
  • If you ask anyone what a frog sounds like they will go ribbit, but only frogs native to Hollywood make that sound. You'll probably never hear a frog meowing/"sirening" or barking in fiction land.
  • That Poor Cat
  • Squeaks for mice/rats/small rodents aren't nearly as vocal as stock sound effects make them out to be.
  • The Bat Screech, which sounds more like a hawk than a real bat.
  • There is also the "Panther roar" sound effect.
  • 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.

Anime and 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.

Film

  • 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 (plus, Israel/Palestine being in the Northern Hemisphere, to South African viewers morning looks like evening and vice versa).
  • The MGM lion.

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, The 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 "cougar/panther roar" stock sound 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 [dead link] 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. 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.
  • The Pinky Demons in Doom 3 use a lion roar sound. The same sound was used for the Purr-Lin War Clubs in Turok 2.
  • 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.

Western Animation

  • The bear sound made famous by The Bear from Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law can also be heard in the El Tigre episode "Oso Solo Mio".
  • 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.
  • If animal sounds are heard in any cartoon made in the last 30 years, chances are Frank Welker provided them.


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—Inexplicably used for stinky objects.
    • Possibly because it is a way to refer to flatus sounds without running afoul of censors.
    • Another possibility is the fact that sea ports can stink of rotting fish among other things, and the foghorn is meant to evoke that smell.
    • Originated in 1930s radio ads for Lifebuoy soap; they prominently featured a stentorian cry of "Beeeeeee Ooooooooooooh!", in the tone of a foghorn, to evoke the soap's protection. ("B.O." was a euphemistic abbreviation for "body odor".) Bugs Bunny quotes/spoofs this in at least one of his cartoons.
  • The Trombone of Failure, AKA Losing Horns: 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 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.

Live-Action TV

Music

  • A metallic grinding noise sample is used in many electronic music tracks, eg. BT - Flaming June, Veracocha - Carte Blanche, and Signum - First Strike. Also used in the I-70 Mountain Bridge music in Syphon Filter 2, and on Deadliest Catch.
    • Another common sound in electronic/trance music, taken from the Distorted Realities sound libraries, is that noise at the beginning of "Exhale" by System F, which is also used in "Gargoyle" by Sanxion7(producer of "EternuS-", featured in Dance Dance Revolution Supernova 2).
  • The sound of a shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) in Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" is a standard sample on E-MU synthesizers. It was used a year prior to Peter Gabriel's single in songs by Tangerine Dream ("Yellowstone Park") and Wang Chung ("Wake Up, Stop Dreaming").

Video Games

Western Animation

  • The bullhorn of failure (uuuuuuuh uaaaaah) in Ren and Stimpy.
  • The "Yabbity Yabbity" sound originating in an early 1930's Looney Tunes short 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 is bongo drums played very fast. 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 [dead link] —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.
  • 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.

Film

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

Live-Action TV

Video Games

  • There's an equally widespread sample used for wooden doors. Appears in Diablo and around 1000 movies.
  • There's also the rusty metal trapdoor sound. Heard as a scare sound in the Halo series on Flood-infested levels. It, or something similar, is also used in the Tomb Raider series.
  • Many doors and elevators use the "Big Door", "Platform", and "Heavy Platform"(also heard in the Quake series starting with II) sounds from the Marathon series. The ambient sounds in those games are also mostly stock sounds, eg the wind, the loon sound, water dripping, water sloshing, and the Pfhor ship ambience.
  • Prison door slamming and locking. Heard in Wolfenstein 3D and the Sim games.
  • The sound when the Icon of Sin spits out an enemy in Doom 2 is also used for airlocks in some sci-fi, and the Fusion Pistol shot impact sound in Marathon 2: Durandal.
    • The same sound is also heard when the second boss of Donkey Kong Country 2 throws a fireball, and also in the opening cutscene of an old Warhammer 40,000 game called Rites Of War.
  • The Beamos statues in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess rotate with the same sound as the elevators in the original Quake.
  • The "creaky hanging object" sound heard in Silent Hill 2 during the Historical Society Abyss descent.
  • Though not a door, the sound of the 'mechs falling over and getting up in Mechwarrior 3 is the Doom Door sound but shortened slightly
  • The aforementioned Star Wars door sound appears in Perfect Dark.

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.

Film

Rick Jones:The whole world's going batty! Even this kookie radio - it won't play! All it gives out is static!
Banner: That's no radio! It's a Geiger Counter! It measures radiation! Listen to it! It's going wild! It's getting louder and louder! Faster and faster! What's happening??

  • Monsters, Inc.—the devices used by CDA.
  • 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 4th season of Battlestar Galactica.

Radio

Video Games

  • Half Life
  • Psychonauts (around green bubbling goo).
  • Fallout 3
  • 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.
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade has clicking when near Tiberium, though this may be the Tiberium itself making the noise rather than radiation.

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 (as in Universal's Frankenstein) is the most well-known of them all. Used in many Disney movies made from the 1930s to the late-1980s and on many pre-1991 Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which often had their own distinct stock sound effects 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 often recorded specifically for them, and do not have the campiness or charm level as the old thunder did. (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. Did you ever hear that sound in a real storm?
      • Those type of sounds occur when lightning strikes close to the viewer. It's not actually thunder, but the sound of the lightning arcing.
    • The "CHTAOW!" thunder sample featured in the Pet Shop Boys song "It's a Sin".
  • Then there are stock sound loops of wind howling and most of them sound like they're passing some kind of wind corridor. 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.

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.
  • 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.
    • There's another "happy baby" sound that was used extensively in the mid 80s to early 90s in almost every baby commercial. A two syllable "AAAH-ahh" with emphasis and rising intonation on the first syllable.
  • When jungle-themed music plays, it's quite common to hear the stock tribal sounds which go "Uh" "ah" "ussi" and "buielabuielamammare".
  • The Amen Break
  • 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.
  • There is a common sound of a baby crying, heavily used with the character of Kate in Arthur, mainly in the earlier episodes. It's still used to this day.

Film

  • A stock crowd gasp is heard in The Muppets (at least in the trailers) during a scene in which Kermit is hit by an opening door.

Live-Action TV

  • Whenever a child's innocent laughter needs to feature in a scene, it's almost always the same sound clip. Used in a Dannon yogurt commercial, Rambo (2008), the opening sequence to Diddy Kong Racing, and one of the alternate Windows 95/98 shutdown sounds, among numerous other places. It's also the same sound used in:
    • The game Roller Coaster tycoon
    • Star Wars Episode 1 when the kids are playing around the pod racer before the race
    • Stargate SG-1 used this sound clip eleven times in the single episode "Learning Curve".
    • It appears in the Doctor Who episode "The Family of Blood".
    • Also heard in a The Venture Brothers episode when kids were playing around a dead parachutist.
    • It can also be used to creep the hell out of you as it was used in Conker's Bad Fur Day's Haunted Castle level.
    • It's also used in Baldur's Gate for the random children villagers.
    • Used in U.S. Army commercial around April 2009, of kids playing outside.
    • Pixar AFLAC Toy Story 3 commercial, around May 2010
    • A V-Tech commercial that aired around October 2009
    • The film Gladiator, during the glimpses of the afterlife.
  • 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.
  • The Sesame Workshop laugh.

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?"
  • "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 5 have a re-occurring sound of someone saying "The new stereophonic sounds spectacular"
  • There are several stock Ominous Latin Chanting samples.
  • The "Hey!" sample used for Navi in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was also used in The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)".
  • 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.

Video Games

  • Generic police radio: a female voice going "Seven eight six five, code six, one-oh-five North Avenue . . ."
    • That, or some other police radio stock sound, was used throughout the Grand Theft Auto series and in SimCity 3000 when one builds a police station.
    • Someone has been compiling a list of occurrences of this sound effect on YouTube. Apparently Law and Order and The X-Files are indeed repeat offenders.
  • The first edition of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time used stock sound samples of Muslim chants in the Fire Temple music. These, of course, were removed in later versions.
    • The Egyptian stage from the N64 port of Cruisn World also used this, along with the fighting game Kakuto Chojin: Back Alley Brutal for the Xbox. The latter was pulled from store shelves because of this.
  • One of the Nintendo GameCube alternate boot screens ends with a rather familiar laughing-baby sound effect.
  • The scream of peeps on a downward heading coaster in Rollercoaster Tycoon seems to be popping up all over the place in advertisements these days.
  • The vocal sample in the San Francisco Rush music "Rave Rush" is also in the BGM of Einhander's first stage(about 15 seconds in).
  • The guttural voice in the third part of "Mausoleum Suite" from Halo 2 makes an appearance in "Armacham Rooftops" and other music from F.E.A.R..
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl use a stock crowd gasping whenever a player misses grabbing a ledge.
  • Some of the aforementioned stock jungle vocals were used in the Halo soundtracks.
  • The Muslim chants used in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Fire Temple (v 1.0) are a common stock sample.

Western Animation

  • Also the sound of children cheering in any cartoon featuring a little league baseball game, also heard in Recess many times.
  • A very common sound of children playing is used rather prolifically in Codename: Kids Next Door. You'll know the one when you hear someone yell "oh no!"

Technology

  • Virtually every time someone off-screen (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.
  • Gooey (GUI) sounds—In almost any movie or TV show, when a character is shown using a computer, everything they do makes a sound. Opening a new windows? Sound. Resize a window? Sound. Zoom in on an image? Sound! If real computers worked this way I would kill myself after about 15 minutes.
    • Actually, this is potentially truth in television -- if you want to spend the time to turn on all the sound options that exist but are turned off by default in your operating system.
  • 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 strip light is on in an otherwise silent room, and also create a faint mains hum on any nearby speaker because of the changing magnetic field.
    • Heard in Marathon, along with the "electric spark" stock sound effect.
  • The Sonar Ping—a constant in low-grade submarine movies. 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.
  • 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.
    • 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 chrono-johns inDay 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.
  • "Beep beep boop beeb beep beep beep!" The sound a Hollywood Cell Phone makes when a character makes a call using the internal phonebook, as though it was actually dialling the number.
  • The distinctive "sssschhiiing!" of scissor blades parting.
  • The 'Tron' footstep pnnk-pnnk sounds that appear repeatedly in anime from the eighties onward; notably 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 (unintelligible) 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Film

Live-Action TV

  • The sound of the sensor pings in Star Trek too, "Pinng plink plink plink pinng" Used in almost every bridge scene in a futuristic universe.

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 [dead link] "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.
  • 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.
    • Apoptygma Berzerk's song "Incompatible" uses the death sound from the arcade version of Legendary Wings.
    • 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 1 and 2 (first heard at the beginning of Truth & Reconciliation Suite on the OST).
  • 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 sound in/from Quake 1.

Vehicles

  • The two-honk doppler-effect truck pass.
  • 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 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.
  • The "clank" sound, used for car crashes, which can also be heard in some racing games such as San Francisco Rush.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Violence

  • The *ting-ting* sound [dead link] when something explodes which sounds like metal pieces tinking off each other. Commonly used used when tanks, cars, and some buildings are blown up.
  • 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 RPG launch sound effect is often used as a generic explosion sound effect, even in music videos
  • 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 with sometimes among glass seems 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 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.

Film

  • 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, and the Imp fireball throwing sound, which is used for certain BLEVE explosions on TV, as is the aformentioned Icon of Sin sound. See also Doom Doors.
  • The Dynamite Explosion, which is also 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 Marathon "cyborg exploding" sound also appears in Tomb Raider when you kill an enemy with explosives.
  • The stock "arrow shot" 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.

Western Animation

  • The loud chink heard in several Disney and later 1960s Looney Tunes shorts 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.

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, the magnum in The Godfather video game, the Red 9 in Resident Evil 4 uses a variation, the .357 Magnum in Half-Life 2, Desert Eagle and Steyr AUG in Counter-Strike, and so on.
  • 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.
  • The high-pitched whistle which gets higher and precedes a powerful explosion. Usually indicates an explosive which has been activated.
  • In the definitive TV documentary history of WW 2, 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 WW 2 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 Wins the War, 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 Syphon Filter and Perfect Dark.

Other

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.

  • That little musical sequence modems make. Kriiiii-doooo-bedoobedoobe-doooo...
  • 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".
    • The sound of somebody throwing something (usually Fred Flintstone bowling) goes back to 1958 and is one of the H-B studio's most prolific sound effects.
    • To elaborate on their popularity, these sounds were incredibly common during The Eighties and Nineties. Nearly every show from those two decades made at least minor use of them. (ironically, Hanna-Barbera themselves began to stop using them during the nineties, such as in Fish Police, Swat Kats and The Halloween Tree.) In fact, some shows continue to use them today. They've even been used several times in Anime. No surprise, really, given that Wacky Races was a huge hit in Japan.
    • The use of Hanna-Barbera's sounds outside of H-B goes back even further than the eighties. During The Seventies, Ruby-Spears Enterprises, Filmation and even Chuck Jones' studio used them a lot as well. In the late 60s, the Warner Bros. studio used them which figures since their cartoons at the time resembled early 60s H-B cartoons.
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