Shut Up, Scary Thing!

"You shut the goddamn hell up, super monsters."

- Black Mage, Kind of a Raw Deal

Someone is talking, either to someone else or to the viewer. But slowly, creeping up on them, is a horrible monster or villain. You know this person's gonna die. Or they're in serious trouble. The monster begins to roar...

And the person turns around and says, "oh, be quiet." And the scary thing actually does.

This is a comedic trope used to create a sharp contrast between the large, mean looking thing and the considerably smaller person who tells it to shut up. This often takes the form of someone who's talking being interrupted by an intimidating, powerful looking beast, but also sometimes is done by having a little guy have a friend or pet or relative who's muscular, huge, and intimidating, but can easily be calmed just by being told, "be quiet."

In some cases, this can happen because the person telling the big scary thing to be quiet doesn't realize it's a big scary thing... yet.


 * The Gaming Pixie, in her Silent Hill 3 review, has one of the Silent Hill monsters show up at her door, but she calmly tells it to just go away.
 * In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, one pair of shopowners consists of a short little man and his enormous, muscular, roaring companion, who is repeatedly told to just be quiet.
 * In Doctor Who, the Doctor does this all the time. It tends to work (at least temporarily) either because the monster in question is astounded by his tenacity, or knows who he is. Tends to lead to Talking the Monster to Death.
 * Looney Tunes short "Bully for Bugs": Bugs Bunny turns to the bull breathing down his back, slaps it and says, "Stop steaming up my tail! What're you trying to do, wrinkle it?"
 * On the Tex Avery cartoon "Detouring America", the audience is presented with a split screen, one side showing a snarling Gila monster, the other a little girl reciting a nursery rhyme (for those who might find the Gila monster too scary). At the end the girl shouts "Shut up!" to the monster, who runs away whimpering.
 * In The Mummy, when Rick O'Connell meets Imohtep for the first time in mummy form, and he lets out his monstrous roar, Rick yells right back in his face.
 * In Home Alone, Kevin has a great fear of his basement, including his furnace, which he envisions as a growling, groaning monster. He eventually overcomes his fear of the basement in one scene: the furnace is growling and groaning at him like usual, and he simply says, "shut up." And it does.
 * In Beetlejuice, Barbara ends up in the sand desert outside the house. A sand worm threatens her. She slaps it on the nose and it goes away. Later she rides that sand worm to the rescue.
 * Cosgrove from Freakazoid! has stopped at least a couple monsters by simply telling them to "Cut it out."
 * Dragon Ball Abridged: When Goku arrives on Namek, he goes up to Krillin to offer him a senzu bean. Recoome, who was busy pounding the heroes relentlessly, starts to get riled up and ready to attack, but Goku sternly says "Excuse me, I'm trying to talk to my friend". Recoome actually apologizes.
 * As seen from the page quote in Eight Bit Theater the four fiends, each of which almost killed them when they fought it the first time, have returned from the dead and joined forces to kill them. But Black Mage is too busy squabbling with Red Mage, so they end up standing there until Sarda shows up to yell at them.
 * Happens in an early chapter of Bleach: Ichigo and Kon are arguing about Kon running around in Ichigo's body, as a Hollow is creeping up on them. When it tries to interrupt or at least draw attention to itself, they simultaneously kick it in the face telling it to shut up.

Examples of it being done unknowingly

 * In the Classic Disney Short "The Pointer", Mickey Mouse is unaware that there's a huge bear behind him, thinking it's Pluto. He keeps telling it to shut up, even slaps it on the nose without looking back. It's not until Mickey sees Pluto in front of him that he starts to wonder who's been following him all this time.
 * In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Willie is bothered by an elephant several times as she's preparing to go to sleep. Then, a large snake slithers onto her shoulder. Willie thinks it's the elephant's trunk, and casually brushes it off.