Action Figure Speech

When your character doesn't have lips or a mouth, or sometimes even any part out of which sound could possibly issue, in order to display the character is speaking, they will move their whole body around. Sometimes they just move once to indicate this, sometimes they're flailing wildly the whole time they're talking.

Named after, of course, the tendency to do this when playing with dolls and action figures, since their mouths have no moving parts.

Broader version of the Head Bob. If the character only talks through body language, see He Who Must Not Be Heard or Silent Bob


 * New Zoo Revue did this when their human size owls, frogs, etc. talked.
 * Most Traditional puppets (without a moving mouth) bob up and down when they talk; for specific example, Kukla of Kukla, Fran and Ollie (Fran was a human and Ollie had a moving mouth).
 * All the time on I'm A Marvel And I'm A DC. Then again, most of the cast are action figures...
 * Most all Machinima resorts to this in some way
 * Since nearly the entire cast of The Adventures of Mr. Gear and Clippy (with the exceptions of a few 'humanoid' characters) are a bunch of anthropomorphic objects with Invisible Anatomy, the characters tend to shake when they speak, though usually there are speech bubbles to let us know they're talking anyway. Mr. Gear sometimes even turns when he's not speaking, often at times during pauses in the dialogue (after which he will say something in response to Clippy's latest antics, or the villain's crazy behavior).
 * Action League Now. Again, justified in that the cast is all action figures.
 * The character performers in the Disney Theme Parks.
 * In the Doctor Who serial "The Wheel In Space", the Cybermen indicate they are speaking by rocking their entire upper bodies back and forth. Their air of menace rather suffers as a result.
 * The models in Age of Mythology do this, though their gestures are actually rather sensible. Arkantos in particular spends a lot of time facepalming at Ajax's stupidity.
 * Speaking of not being very menacing (at all), there's the titular aliens from the 50's classic (and MST3K ep) Robot Monster. The Ro-Men, looking for all the world like a guy in a gorilla suit wearing a space helmet flailed around wildly while speaking.
 * Most Tokusatsu shows, especially Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, do this with the heroes and the villains.
 * The video game version of The Phantom Menace did this whenever anyone talked. Including characters who were lying on the ground dying.
 * The Adam and Joe Show featured Toymovies - parodies of films or television series acted out with toys so naturally this was used.