Radio Mouth

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"We fight for your right on many fronts. Unfolders, started the show, in a different place. Found us. Tried to stop us. A long war in another place. A win for the home team in overtime. Locked them up. Incarceration rates have increased dramatically."
—The Hierophant, That Insidious Beast.

A character who can only communicate, or who tends to communicate, using phrases made from radio and TV clips (and almost always old, easily recognised and public domain clips).

Reasons can include actually being a TV or radio, having learned English from watching TV or just being that quirky.

The longer one of these characters talks, the probability that they say one of "But Wait! There's More!", "Offer Void in Nebraska" or "Slices, Dices, and Makes Julienne Fries" tends to 1.

Examples of Radio Mouth include:


Anime & Manga

  • TK from Angel Beats! tends to speak in English song lyrics and titles. Possibly a parody as it's noted in one episode that despite this he actually speaks poor regular English.
  • Occidental Otaku Susana ("Sue") Hopkins from Genshiken 90% of what she says are Anime quotes (often quite obscure, but always relevant).


Comic Books

  • In the Transformers comic Shattered Glass, Beachcomber has a faulty processor, and after the Autobots land on Earth he starts speaking almost exclusively in song lyrics from the 60s and 70s, almost as if he were picking up a radio station.


Film - Animated

  • Wreck-Gar and all the Junkions from Transformers: The Movie: just as they apparently patched themselves up with jumkyard scraps, their speech was a stew of radio announcers and commercials and such. (Sample dialogue: "Stop, thief! No welcome wagon 'Hello, stranger' with that new coffee flavor for you!")
  • Radio from The Brave Little Toaster didn't communicate exclusively through radio phrases, but he did generally talk like a DJ and ocassionally did comments in the form of news reports or radio dramas.
  • Ibor from Twice Upon a Time communicates through video clips playing on the TV set that makes up his head.


Film - Live Action

  • In Explorers, the three kids meet aliens who pick up English From Watching Television. One did a better job than the other so the latter communicates by speaking out tv catch phrases and clips from old black and white tv recordings.
  • Bumblebee from the live action Transformers film had a damaged voice box and could only communicate via his car radio. This turned him into a bit of a Deadpan Snarker. (And one of the soundbites he plays is the alien from Explorers.)
  • Weebo in Flubber uses clips from old Disney films incorporated into her regular speech.


Literature

  • Mrs. Who from A Wrinkle in Time mostly spoke in quotes because plain human speech was so difficult for her.
  • The Doctor's conversation with Centcomp in the Doctor Who New Adventures novel So Vile a Sin. The system wasn't designed to have a voice of its own, so it speaks "in a jarring mix of words, snipped from media sources".

'I,' she said, in the voice of a little girl. 'Know,' said a deep-voiced man with a Southern accent. 'You,' said an elderly woman.

    • The living city in the Sixth Doctor short story "Walkin' City Blues" does likewise. Except instead of choosing the right words, it picks a programme that conveys the impression of what it's trying to say.


Live Action TV

  • John, from John From Cincinnati communicated almost entirely by means of repeating phrases that other characters had already said.
  • In the pilot episode of The Greatest American Hero, the aliens communicate with Ralph and Bill via radio: they're in Bill's car and the aliens cause Bill's car radio to switch quickly between radio stations, as they use what's already being said on the radio to communicate.


Theatre

  • In The Wiz, the Scarecrow communicates by reading quotes from the newspaper in his stuffing. His wish is to have a brain so he can have thoughts of his own.


Video Games

  • The Chanters in Dragon Age communicate only in scripture quotes.


Web Original

  • The Sparrow Hill Road series has Gary the car, who communicates by twisting his radio dial to songs that give appropriate voice to his feelings.


Western Animation

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