Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

The tendency of writers to have a character repeat dialogue spoken to them that the audience wasn't able to hear. This often happens with phone conversations, or when the person speaking the unheard dialogue is [[The Unintelligible]], speaks [[Bilingual Dialogue|a different language]], or is a [[Silent Bob]].

 

See also [[Let Me Get This Straight...]]. If you can hear both sides, it's [[Parrot Exposition]].

 

* A particularly funny example occurs in the ''[[Pokémon]]'' anime:

{{quote|'''Giovanni''': "''Hello. ...What?! ...Pokémon Land has been totally destroyed?!''"}}

* Parodied in ''[[The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin|Reginald Perrin]]'', when Reggie plays this trope straight for several lines, before saying "Yes, I ''am'' repeating everything you say, Mrs. C.J."

* Several of the ''[[The Shadow|Shadow]]'' pulps are set in various Chinatowns. When talking to his usual Chinese contact, the Shadow speaks Mandarin out of courtesy. That contact then translates for us as he replies in English (being polite right back at the Shadow).

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* This is how ''Sooty and Sweep'' communicated with the human characters.

* ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' did this. Shamelessly.

* One-sided telephone conversations were a staple of Bob Newhart's standup act, long before he had even one television show. ''[[The Bob Newhart Show]]'' contains one in practically every episode. Newhart himself tried to avoid pure Repeating So the Audience Can Hear as much as possible in his stand-up act because he believed much of the fun for the audience was imagining what the guy on the other end of the line was saying.) For example, his Walter Raleigh routine:

{{quote|Are you saying "snuff," Walt? What's snuff? You take a pinch of tobacco ''(starts giggling)'' and you shove it up your nose! And it makes you sneeze, huh. I imagine it would, Walt, yeah. Goldenrod seems to do it pretty well over here. It has some other uses, though. You can chew it? Or put it in a pipe. Or you can shred it up and put it on a piece of paper, and roll it up - don't tell me, Walt, don't tell me- you stick in your ear, right Walt? Oh, between your lips! Then what do you do to it? ''(Giggling)'' You set fire to it! Then what do you do, Walt? You inhale the smoke! Walt, we've been a little worried about you...[[It Will Never Catch On|you're gonna have a tough time getting people to stick burning leaves in their mouth]]...."}}

* ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'' can sometimes be pretty guilty of this. Due to his [[Cannot Talk to Women|Selective Mutism]], when a woman is in the room Raj has to resort to whispering in Howard's ear to communicate. It's often [[Justified]], because in addition to the audience, the other characters want to hear, too, though there are some cases where the comment was meant almost exclusively for Howard and there's no reason to repeat what he said.

* ''[[Mister Rogers]]'' used this often to make sure the kids understood what was going on.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

 

== Webcomics ==

{{quote|'''CDFML''': Eshishish.

'''Maureen''': Doreen has started a cult in which everyone involved acts depressed and tries to kill themselves? And you joined up while I was away seducing the headmaster? And you've tried to kill yourself three times since then? Are you kidding me?

'''CDFML''': No. }}

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' plays it straight in [http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/20p40 this strip] and, atypically for the comic, without a lampshade hanging.

 

'''Caboose:''' Ah, Red Base no, uh, I'm in the ship. The shiiiip. Sheila, I think O'Malley has driven him crazy, uhm, he's talking nonsense. }}

* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'', this usually happens when anyone talks to The Cheat or Pom Pom.

{{quote|'''Linkara (as Gordon):''' Repeat what you say so we don't have to show the other side of the conversation?}}

* The [[Barats and Bereta]] short [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHiLgRdLQuU Emoticon Eric] does this to explain emoticons that actually make sense following the explanation.