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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"Mice to me mean the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing screaming on tables in early Sixties sitcoms..."''|'''Arthur Dent''', ''[[The
A staple of early domestic comedies in both film and television. The mere sight of a mouse (or sometimes another animal who is the subject of [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|a common phobia]]) will drive a housewife up onto a chair or a table, where she stands shrieking, stomping her feet, and clutching the hem of her skirt until the rodent is captured or driven away. This is largely a [[Dead Horse Trope]] today, rooted in a very specific and [[Double Standard|sexist image]] of women [[Values Dissonance|dating back to the early part of the 20th Century]], but it is still visible in old [[Looney Tunes]] cartoons and in the odd [[Screams Like a Little Girl|ironic reference]].▼
▲{{quote|''"Mice to me mean the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing screaming on tables in early Sixties sitcoms..."''|'''Arthur Dent''', ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]''}}
[[Looney Tunes]] cartoons will sometimes [[Playing
▲A staple of early domestic comedies in both film and television. The mere sight of a mouse (or sometimes another animal who is the subject of [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes|a common phobia]]) will drive a housewife up onto a chair or a table, where she stands shrieking, stomping her feet, and clutching the hem of her skirt until the rodent is captured or driven away. This is largely a [[Dead Horse Trope]] today, rooted in a very specific and [[Double Standard|sexist image]] of women [[Values Dissonance|dating back to the early part of the 20th Century]], but it is still visible in old [[Looney Tunes]] cartoons and in the odd [[Screams Like a Little Girl|ironic reference]].
See also [[Cower Power]] and [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]].▼
▲[[Looney Tunes]] cartoons will sometimes [[Playing With a Trope|play with this trope]] by crossing it with the old myth (recently deemed plausible by the [[Myth Busters]]) about mice frightening elephants, resulting in elephants that shriek and leap up onto some (possibly insufficiently-strong) object upon sighting a mouse.
Not to be confused with ''[[Eek!
▲See also [[Cower Power]] and [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes]].
▲Not to be confused with ''[[Eek the Cat]].'' Also not to be confused with the Jamaican reggae artist "Eek-A-Mouse".
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== [[Advertising]] ==
* There was a commercial that had a woman do "EEK a Mouse!" bit and her husband hunts the mouse down but before he can dispatch it the wife see the mouse cornered and now it's a cute little mousey and she stops him. End of commercial has couple cuddling on the couch and mouse in a cage running on a wheel.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKLyHTcZqOs This] Samsung Infuse commercial, only with the image of a large spider.
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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Freya from ''[[Kenichi:
▲* Freya from ''[[Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple]]'' is, among other things, a [[Badass]] [[Lady of War]] [[Action Girl]] [[Hot Amazon]] with [[Boobs of Steel]] and has apparently eschewed femininity. However, she still freaks out when she sees [[Sexy Mentor|Shigure's]] pet mouse.
* Used for a second in the last episode of ''[[Gakuen Alice]]'', where Hotaru uses a gang of robot mice to keep two [[Girly Girl]] classmates at bay.
* In ''[[
** [[Hand Wave|Don't worry]], [[Running Gag|he trains]].
* In ''[[
* ''[[Kekkaishi]]'' had [[Lady of War|Tokine]] perform this trope, right after fighting a much bigger rodent ''that could breathe fire''. She and her grandmother also have a similarly disproportionate fear of cockroaches.
* In [[Ranma
* Rabbit Team of ''[[Girls und Panzer]]'' bail out of their tank like it's on fire when they discover a [[Creepy Cockroach]] has taken up residence in it, and nobody else wants to go near their tank until it's dead. Perhaps because they fear that [[Speak of the Devil|speaking its name will attract its attention]], nobody calls it by its full name (''gokiburi''), instead calling it a "G". To take the gag even further, it's also drawn as a capital G (with antennas) rather than as a roach.
* In the ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' [[Visual Novel]] ''Tomo to Kimi to Senjou de'', Athrun decides to make a robot pet for his crush Cagalli. He ends up giving it a hamster design, but when she first sees it she has this reaction and smashes it. Kira steps in and explains, and Cagalli is both very touched by the gesture and very apologetic for destroying it.
* ''[[Inuyasha]]'': Kagome can handle [[Youkai]], blood, guts, wounds, two-timing boyfriends, time-travel, saving the world while trying to pass exams, lifting the spirits of the depressed, downtrodden and bullied and can even befriend the reclusive, the painfully shy, and aggressively hostile, but ask her to help a giant beast-faced [[Half
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[Tintin]]''. The Thomson twins are startled by mice used for experiments in "[[Tintin
▲* ''[[Tintin]]''. The Thomson twins are startled by mice used for experiments in "[[Tintin (Comic Book)/Recap/Destination Moon|Destination Moon]]".
* This once happened in ''[[Archie]]'' when Ms. Grundy jumped on her desk and Jughead took a picture of it for the school newspaper. She actually was worried that the picture would be about how scared she was of a little mouse but instead it turned out to be proof the school needed an exterminator.
* The protagonist of ''Jennifer Blood'' takes advantage of this stereotype in issue 3, when a neighbor who's convinced she's attracted to him has cornered her in a bathroom and exposed himself to her. She doesn't want to ruin her "perfectly ordinary suburban housewife" facade by maiming or killing him, but as someone who moonlights as a brutal [[Vigilante]], that's all she's trained to do. So she starts shrieking about a pretend mouse.
== [[Fan
* The main plot of the ''[[Calvin
== [[Film]] ==
* There is a great scene in ''Conan the Destroyer'' where Grace Jones' character, who up until now has been afraid of nothing, taking on whole villages and men much larger than her in combat fearlessly, jumps and screams at the sight of a mouse. When all of her party look back she looks sheepish.
* The 1959 movie ''[[
* The 1934 film ''Hollywood Party'' has a whole roomful of women doing this when one of them sees a mouse. It turns out to be [[Classic Disney Shorts|Mickey Mouse]].
* In ''[[She's the Man]]'', Duke and Viola scream and leap on the bed, hugging each other, when a big spider enters their dorm room.
* The two female leads in ''Eight Heads In A Duffel Bag'' take this kind of behavior [[Up to Eleven]] when they find a disembodied head in their luggage during a family vacation. ("Eek, A Head!"?) One shuts herself up in a closet and refuses to come out (until the protagonist jokingly suggests that the dead guy's body might be in there), while the other ''attacks the protagonist with a fork''. The latter is especially hilarious because what causes her to snap is the protagonist innocently asking, "Would you like an enchilada?"
* Disney's ''[[Bedknobs and Broomsticks]]'' has the "mouse frightening an elephant" version. During the animal soccer game on the Island of Naboombu, an alligator uses a mouse to scare the elephant goalkeeper of the opposing team.
* Timothy Q. Mouse uses this to his advantage against the cruel female elephants in ''[[
* ''[[An American Tail]]'', in the scene with the wax cylinder gramophone.
* During the Wizard's Duel in ''[[The Sword in
* ''[[Journey Back
== [[Literature]] ==
* In one of the ''Clue'' mystery books, Mr. Boddy reveals that several white mice have escaped. The first one to actually do this trope is the duel-crazy Colonel Mustard, but the other guests don't laugh because they're doing the same thing.
* The non-fiction book that inspired ''[[Homicide: Life
* Happens in a ''[[Doctor Dolittle]]'' story: A smaller African kingdom is warred upon by a bigger, expansionist one, whose crack troops are Amazons. The White Mouse who lives in Doolittle's pocket points out that while they are fearsome warriors, the Amazons [[Values Dissonance|are still women]], and gather a force of local mice who scares them away.
* Played with and justified in the last Hawk & Fisher story, where a crime lord keeps a bunch of naked Amazons as bodyguards. Rather than fight them, Hawk and Fisher turn a sackful of ravenous sewer rats loose in the crime lord's lair, and the bodyguards start climbing the furniture in a panic when the starving rodents swarm them to bite their bare toes.
* In ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'', [[Badass Adorable]] Talking Mouse Reepicheep wants to be a herald, but he's too small to be seen until he's up close (and therefore not very impressive). Of course, since he's [[Badass|very]] [[Berserk Button|touchy]] [[Honor Before Reason|when it comes to his honor]], nobody wants to tell him this, so they tell him that it wouldn't be quite fair to their enemies since some humans are afraid of mice.
* In ''[[Mousenet]]'', this is part of the "EEEK Test," a test used by mice to gauge a humans' feelings towards mice. Jumping on a chair results in a "Loud EEEK" and a grade of C, with fainting being the worst possible response and earning an F. Talking to or touching the mouse is "No EEEK" and an A+.
* In ''[[The
== [[Live
* The ''[[
** Spinoff the [[The Ropers]] featured a gender-flipped version of this trope: it was ''Mr.'' Brooks, not his wife, who leaped up onto the couch screaming at the sight of a white
▲* The ''[[Threes Company]]'' episode "The Best Laid Plans" revolved a mouse being loose in the trio's apartment, with Janet being the mouseophobic one.
▲** Spinoff the [[The Ropers]] featured a gender-flipped version of this trope: it was ''Mr.'' Brooks, not his wife, who leaped up onto the couch screaming at the sight of a white mouse--safely in a cage, no less.
* [[Monk|Adrian Monk]] frequently [[Screams Like a Little Girl|reacts this way]] to a variety of analogous situations.
** Justified in the episode when it was a ''venomous snake'' that was loose in the room.
* Used in an episode of the Adam West version of ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]''; villainess Nora Clavicle manipulates Gotham City into hiring only women police officers, then unleashes an army of tiny mechanical mice. At least Batgirl remains "immune".
* Referenced in ''[[
** Also referenced (and inverted) in ''Punky Business'' when a mouse trying to assure Tim that he is ugly tells him that when he walks into a room all the mice jump onto a chair.
* On ''[[Imagination Movers]]'', Knit Knots wasn't scared by Warehouse Mouse to the point of panic, but did urge the Movers to keep the "woodland creature" away from him. An episode of the show also focused on the Movers helping a TV repairman to get over his fear of mice, so that he could stick around to fix their TV and not be afraid of Warehouse Mouse.
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* Subverted (actually, double-subverted) on an episode of ''[[Unhappily Ever After]]''. Ryan, who believes the old legend that the Earth would spin out of its orbit if all the Chinese people in the world jumped off their chairs at the same time, panics when he spies a group of Chinese exchange students standing on their chairs in the school cafeteria. One of the students explains that they had just seen a mouse, causing Ryan to calm down. Once Ryan is gone, though, the student gets angry and mutters: "Curses! They're onto us!"
* The late 80s sitcom ''Kate And Allie'' spent an entire episode dealing with a mouse, complete with jumping on chairs and tables in fright(Allie's son Chip was taking care of his classroom's pet mouse and it got out of its cage). Subverted in that 1) they realized that they were [[Genre Savvy|behaving like 60s sitcom housewives]], 2) Kate and Allie were running a catering business at the time and were justifiably concerned about mice on the premises, and 3) Allie's sportscaster boyfriend also turned out to be deathly afraid of mice.
* A late episode of ''[[El Chavo
* This is how Ma Gorg reacted to Fraggles on ''[[Fraggle Rock]]''.
* In ''[[
* In the Mexican [[Soap Opera]] ''[[Carrusel]]'', [[The Prankster|Pablo]] releases a mouse in the middle of class. All but one of the girls start screaming and crying. {{spoiler|The one girl who isn't scared, [[Tsundere|Valeria]], "punishes" Pablo by pretending to pass out and tricking him into believing she had a heart attack.}}
* In a ''[[Sex and
* ''[[
* Averted in the premiere episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. The heroine doesn't even twitch when a sewer rat runs over her foot.
== [[Tabletop
* ''A Challenge of Arms'' had a ''mastodon'' that was afraid of mice.
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* Ellie in ''[[Donkey Kong Country]] 3'' is an elephant who rapidly runs away from any Sneeks (basically rats) that she sees. One level requires the player to either dispatch the Sneeks from a distance or in the dark (apparently, she doesn't mind if she can only barely see them), and another features her running madly away from a trio of Sneeks, with the player only able to control her jumping until she settles down.
** Also quite funnily used in the 101% ending of ''[[Donkey Kong 64]]'', where Dogadon (aka the huge dragon who's fought twice in the game) is scared of a tiny mouse squeaking. Well, among various other jokey scenes, as seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZihf09JkLU here]
* Princess Zelda in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
** And hence why stage 2 of the final battle has Link having to take down the ghost mice used to attack Zelda by Chancellor Cole.
* Played with in ''[[Galaxy Angel (
* HanPan from ''[[Wild
* ''[[
* [[Comix Zone|Mongoria]], an otherwise extremely formidable enemy, had this as her weakness.
* Elh from ''[[Solatorobo]]'' absolutely ''hates'' bugs and insists that Red kill them as quickly as possible when you come upon them (which is a good idea, since the bugs attack you [[Everything Trying to Kill You|like most everything else in video games]]). There are also ''two'' [[Protection Mission
* Played with for a laugh in ''[[
* Can be invoked for rewards in the PS2 release of ''[[The
== [[Web Original]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Referenced in ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Eek, A Penis!" where a mouse frightened women with a genetically engineered human penis growing on its back.
** Actually they were frightened by the penis. But the trope still stands.
* Monterey Jack actually uses this trope in the ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (
* Done many a time in ''[[
** Including a short where the "Eeker" was Tom's cowardly identical cousin.
** The Elephant variation is averted in one episode where Jerry befriends a baby elephant, then disguises it as a giant mouse.
*** Also defied in a [[Chuck Jones]] short where it gets overridden by [[Androcles' Lion]].
* Several old ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' shorts utilize this trope.
** In one short, a mouse mocks the way the housewife panics.
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* The Dog's reaction to rats in ''[[Footrot Flats]]''. The cat, Horse, has the opposite reaction.
* Bella from ''[[Fireman Sam]]'' often freaks on seeing mice, regardless as to whether they're real or clockwork ones.
* ''[[Titanic:
* ''[[Video Brinquedo|Ratatoing]]'' plays this trope straight too.
* In the special ''Toot and Puddle: I'll Be Home for Christmas'', the boarding of Toot's train home is delayed by an elephant who doesn't want to be left alone in jumbo class. He's afraid that a mouse might sneak in. When Toot expresses disbelief that a big guy like him would be terrified by a small mouse, the elephant responds "What can I say? It's genetic." Toot agrees to ride with him to watch for mice.
* Subverted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' at Apu's wedding. When a mouse runs out in the the elephant's path, the elephant recoils for a moment... and then proceeds to deliberately step on it.
* Taken to ridiculous lengths in an episode of [[The Powerpuff Girls]] where a rivaling villain reanimates a mammoth (which appears as comically large as any city destroying monster) to cause destruction in Townsville. To stop it, Mojo-jojo instructs the girls to leave a large hunk of cheese to attract the town's mice and scare the mammoth off. And you know what? It works!
* Played straight and then subverted in an episode of [[
* The main villain of the second half of Disney's ''Goliath II'' is a mouse in which only the titular elephant can get rid of.
* [[Tex Avery]], naturally, built an entire cartoon out of this trope. "Slap Happy Lion" has a mouse scaring a much-feared lion simply by saying "Boo!" at him. The cartoon ends with the mouse being scared by a much smaller mouse.
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* When Captain Fanzone winds up on Cybertron in ''[[Transformers Animated]]'', this is basically the Transformers' response.
* In the silent ''[[Krazy Kat]]'' cartoon "Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus", Ignatz [[Genre Savvy|knowingly employs this trope]] this to scare a woman in the circus dressing room. When Krazy tries it himself, he gets hit with a broom.
* In the ''[[Chip and Potato]]'' episode "Chip's Field Trip", Chip leaves her pet mouse Potato behind at the museum. The loudspeaker comes on and tells everyone to evacuate. Later on, Chip's classmate Howie finds Potato inside his lunch bag, and everyone panics even more.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* While elephants don't typically leap onto small objects at the sight of a mouse, research has provided a possible reason for the elephant's fear of mice: an elephant's eyes are located on its head in approximately the same position as a human's
▲* While elephants don't typically leap onto small objects at the sight of a mouse, research has provided a possible reason for the elephant's fear of mice: an elephant's eyes are located on its head in approximately the same position as a human's ears -- add this to the elephant's large body, (relatively) poor eyesight, and sensitive hearing, and what the elephant sees turns from a small, furry rodent into a small, barely-visible, blurry and mostly-unidentifiable squeaking blob somewhere near its feet.
▲** This was actually tested by the ''[[Myth Busters]]''. Myth Plausible.
** If a mouse is ''brought close and shown'' to an elephant, however, it's generally not alarmed in the slightest, and may even lift the rodent in its trunk for a better view. The reality may be that elephants are wary of '''any''' small moving critter on the ground, just in case it turns out to be something a lot nastier than a mouse (e.g. a scorpion or coiled-up cobra).
* Semi real-life, with another type of vermin rather than a mouse: The late [[X Japan]] guitarist hide and the drummer/bandleader Yoshiki were/are both terrified of cockroaches. One story has it that when the band members were in Los Angeles for the first time, a roach had gotten into the room hide and Yoshiki shared. This trope ensued with both, according to the story, jumping up onto the bed and shrieking until it was finally agreed that ''someone'' had to kill the roach, and depending on who's telling the story, either Hide or Yoshiki finally did.
* Real life: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vDD5Up3SWE weatherman vs. cockroach].
* Psychologists who studied the
** Besides, as humans have co-evolved with mice ever since the dawn of agriculture, screaming, shouting and stamping if a mouse enters your kitchen is a moderately sound response- perfectly sensible for a woman to aggressively protect her food-store by trying to frighten away small invaders.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100613221753/http://learnfrommyfail.com/2010/06/07/fail-story-lfmf-learn-from-eeks-fail/ Learn From EEK's Fail].
* In the nonfiction book ''Retail Hell: How I sold my soul to the store'', this happened in the "Big Fancy" store when someone returned a product to the handbag department that had a ''huge'' Cockroach in it. Naturally; this trope ensues and Freeman is told to kill it as the ''sole'' male working the department.
* In [[Real Life]], there's very good reason to be afraid of mice. House mice in particular [
* Inverted with mice and rats as pets, which are far more popular with women than men. This was even so in Victorian times, where some upper-class young ladies would keep them almost like [[Mister Muffykins|toy dogs.]]
* Actress Jaimie Alexander has admitted that, while she has no problem with things like snakes or spiders, she is ''terrified'' of mice. You read that right - [[Thor (
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:Rodent Tropes]]
[[Category:Discredited Trope]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:Panic Tropes]]
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