Hell Is That Noise/Advertising

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Burger King: Don't go to bed before the king.
  • There was a radio commercial in the mid-1970s for Stephen King's novel The Shining. It begins with the sound of a whimpering boy and an angry father knocking on his door. The knock intensifies to pounding and the voice rises to a yell, then drops suddenly to a gutteral "Open this doorrrrrrr..."
  • A recent American PSA for the adult pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine uses thirty seconds of a sick baby coughing and wheezing and choking and sounding like it's suffocating to get its message across. Even worse, it shows a woman telling you that holding a baby could give the baby the illness in a way that makes it look like she just came back from a future where 90% of humanity was wiped out by pertussis while fazing in and out of leering, scratchy yellow screen. It ends with the last baby cough echoing off the way a scream does in drama when it's the last noise that person ever makes. It seemed almost to be saying "Don't ever touch your children or you will kill them.
  • The Yoplait yogurt advertisement airing on TGWTG has 30 seconds of cheery music punctuated by the most terrifying organic crumpling noise ever as various fruits change form. And this is supposed to make us hungry. No.
  • Those accursed talking smiley ads. Every time you mouse over them, "OHMAHGAWD NOWAI! HELLL-OOOOO!!! SAY SUMTHIN'!!" Goes beyond Most Annoying Sound to the point where seeing an ad like that causes this troper to lunge for the refresh button.
    • On the note of going far, far beyond Most Annoying Sound, there are a number of commercials for Comedy Central's broadcasting that involves the sound of an alarm clock. THE WORST ALARM CLOCK
  • An ad which seems to air on Adult Swim a lot about the drug Avandia being linked to serious side effects and now people who were affected or knew someone that was can get financial compensation. The guy talking is deadpan and has a creepy low-pitched voice, and repeats "DEATH, HEART ATTACK, OR STROKE" at least three or four times. There's been at least a couple of times this troper has seen it air twice in a row, too.
  • The 2-3 seconds of orchestra music before one of J G Wentowrth's horrid "opera" commercials, makes this troper mute the tv or turn the channel every time.
  • Apaches: Say what you will about the rest of this classic public information film, but the hysterical screams of the girl dying an excruciating death from chemical poisoning will be with you until the day you die. Here’s the clip -- it begins at 17:48. You Have Been Warned.