Everything Talks

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

On TV anything can be made to seem to talk. This is especially common in commercials, where everything from products, to signs, food, body parts, clothes and beyond has something to say. They all want you to buy something too, even your ratty old sneakers have sold out and are working for the man.

One might think that consumers would want their foodstuffs and household products not to be possessed by demons (in fact, a recent Sprite commercial featured a family running in terror from the smiling anthropomorphic sun that burst forth from a bottle of a Sunny Delight counterpart), but apparently advertisers don't see it that way. At its worst, can become quite disturbing. Often combined with Animate Inanimate Object.

Some specific subtypes of this are:


Examples of Everything Talks include:

Advertising

  • Ads for the dishwasher rinse agent JetDry feature a talking JetDry/Detergent dispenser as part of a dishwasher.
  • Long used in commercials for Parkay spread, where a tub of the margarine would contradict a housewife and insist that it was butter until she would taste and say "butter!", at which point the tub would smugly announce, "Parkaaaaaay!".
  • Recent[when?] Mothers Against Drunk Driving ads targeted at drug-impaired driving involved stoned and confused characters being lectured by otherwise inanimate objects (such as a t-shirt) regarding their condition.
  • A set of commercials for orange juice had a talking sandwich advise people opening the fridge to drink orange juice instead of going for their intended snack. The usual response of viewers was "If your leftovers are talking to you, your fridge is long overdue for cleaning..."
  • It appears that recent[when?] Dr Pepper ads use talking soda cans. The mouth is the hole where the soda would come out in real life.
    • They're singing, actually. In the voice of Flavor Flav.
  • Tide is running ads, and possibly a contest, called "The Talking Stain."[when?]
  • A Gillette commercial features a razor blade talking to a guy and telling him that he should replace the blade when the indicator strip changes colour.
  • A recent[when?] Quizno's commercial features a seductive, deep-voiced oven convincing an employee to advertise a new sandwich in unmistakably come-hither fashion.

Oven: Scott, I want you to do something . . .
Scott: Not doing that again. I burn.
Oven: We both enjoyed that.

  • Give me back that filet-o-fish! Give me that fish!
    • Walgreens sells the actual fish pictured in that commercial. It's hysterical.
  • In some car insurance commercials, things which cause damage, like a pipe which broke a tail light, a branch which broke a windshield, and a pot hole causing a flat tire, the things doing damage to talk with cliche accents. The pipe had a "Russian woman" accent, the branch had a "Brooklyn man " accent, and the pothole had a "red neck girl" accent.
  • Parodied in a commercial (forget which product) which starts out as a standard breakfast food commercial until the happy orange juice container chirps up, at which point the family screams in terror and runs away.
  • Sometimes Chevron airs commercials with claymation cars that talk to each other.
  • And old ad for Alka-Seltzer had a man and his stomach being interviewed about heart burn. At one point, the man says he likes pepperoni pizza, at which the stomach replies, "Do you like heartburn? Well, you're going to get heartburn whenever you eat pepperoni pizza" The moderator informs both about Alka-Seltzer and all is well again.

Fan Works

Literature

  • In the Xanth series of books, Magician Dor's talent makes this possible.
  • Harry Potter. Just don't trust anything if you can't see where it keeps its brain!

Live-Action Television

  • In an episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, he comments on an ad with a talking toilet, wondering why it wants its owner to shit in its mouth.
  • Pee-wee's Playhouse, in which pretty much every single object in the house could talk, including a chair, a window, a globe, a clock, a kite, food, flowers, all animals, and even the floor. His name was Floory.

Newspaper Comics

  • In a Garfield strip, Jon said it would nice if everything could talk, and the toaster would say "Good morning!". Garfield thought that every time a light bulb blew, it would be like a death in the family.

Video Games

  • In the Banjo-Kazooie series, NPC characters are usually a sentient version of an inanimate object, with googly eyes. This includes (but is by no means limited to) musical notes, honeycombs, hives, oranges, jigsaw pieces, Leaky the Bucket, Cheato the Cheatbook, Loggo the Toilet (!) and even the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day, which is essentially a Rated "M" for Money version of Banjo-Kazooie from the same company, continues using this trope, frequently to darkly hilarious effect.
    • Really, anything and everything can be a living, breathing character in a Rare game.
  • Following fairytale conventions, the Unreliable Narrator puts words in the mouths of trashcans, scissors, buckets, etc. in Rule of Rose.

Web Animation

  • In the beginning of Robert Winchester's "Half-Beard" flash cartoon, Rob has a conversation with his beard when he faces the necessity of shaving again. When he tells it to stop screaming in pain, it obliges.

Web Original

  • Taken to its logical, terrifying conclusion with this vid. "Stuff Talks When You're Not There 2: This Time, Everything Talks". Rated G.

Western Animation