Sound in a Jar

If someone says something into an object, such as a jar, and then close it, the sound will be preserved and released upon opening or the object’s destruction.

Literature

 * Soul Music has sound-capture boxes,

Live-Action TV

 * In the Daily Show John Stewart does swears into a veterans affairs swear jar, in a later episode, original airdate 5/19/2014 he opens the jar and (censored) profanity comes out.

Western Animation

 * In SpongeBob, this happens in Naughty Nautical Neighbors, with bubbles
 * In The Amazing World of Gumball Darwin is underwater and speaks, bubbles come out, pop on the surface, releasing his words for gumball (and us) to hear.
 * In an episode of South Park when the kids are alone in the town and have no working phones, Cartman demonstrates this when he speaks a message for Butters into a jar and has someone take it offscreen. The jar was returned and opened a couple of minutes later and Butters' voice came out of the jar with the reply.
 * In an old episode of The Smurfs, the smurfs have a problem with a magical barrier sealing them away from their home village. The barrier can only be broken by a specific sound. In the end the smurfs manage to acquire from a good wizard the required sound in a jar - the sound of a pin dropping.

Real Life

 * The field of Archaeoacoustics opened up the possibility of a variation on this idea, that under some circumstances it might be possible for pottery thrown on a wheel to accidentally encode, in the manner of an old Edison cylinder or vinyl LP, nearby sounds. Around the middle of the '00s, the idea caught the public imagination and started showing up everywhere.  Sadly, the Myth Busters showed that only the most general of acoustic phenomena could get so encoded.