Dramatic Stutter

Characters in some works, particularly anime, tend to stutter whenever even slightly surprised. This stuttering in no way contradicts the fact that the character is a badass.

(Alice, Bob's wife, returns home early, without going shopping) Bob: A... Alice! You're early!

Can also be written as "A-Alice! You're early."

Probably happens due to Rule of Perception applied to surprise.


 * Code Geass.
 * The girl who played Miranda on Lizzie McGuire did this in what seemed like every other line.
 * Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing has one character that stutters a lot.
 * SHODAN from System Shock, resembling a sound card malfunction.
 * "You cannot deny the emotional impact of the stutter-typing!"
 * Almost everyone in the Ace Attorney series does this at one point or another.
 * Girl Genius: in a mechanical humanoid body after "Unstoppable Higgs" kicked it a few times.
 * Kinda the whole point of The King's Speech.
 * Gaius Baltar does this constantly on Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. Unusual in that he's the only character who does so.
 * Gunnerkrigg Court uses this. In a flashback, the main protagonist's now-deceased mother implies she has fallen in love with quick-witted fox Renard, resulting in his use of this trope before she leaves him hanging with a mischievous smile. Happens again years later when, after returning to the Court, Surma's daughter Antimony says she'd let Renard return to the forest if he wanted (him not being able to escape so long as she didn't allow it, being the only reason he's not trapped in a large cell being tortured) and he repeats this action while telling her not to ask that of him, going on to say that the love he had for Surma, while not what he had once believed it to be, hadn't gone away and muses that someone has to be around to protect Antimony.