Right Through the Wall: Difference between revisions

[[File:loud sex.png|link=xkcd|frame|Tonight I get my revenge. I have a loud girlfriend too. '''And''' an elliptical reflector dish.]]

 

 

Characters in more risque comedies, particularly those set in apartment buildings, will inevitably have to deal with their noisy neighbours. It becomes especially problematic when the neighbours aren't merely loud about their daily business... just their [[Immodest Orgasm|bedroom business]]. How the characters respond to overhearing these noises is up to them, though frequently, they decide to provide their own noises in response to give the loud couple next door a taste of their own medicine.

 

Anyone who has lived in a college dorm or an apartment will know that this can be [[Truth in Television]]. See also [[Ceiling Banger]] for a similar trope (and what something like this may very well elicit). Nothing to do with [[Right Through His Pants]]. Or, for that matter, when [[Efficient Displacement|someone moves right]] [[Intangible Man|through a wall]].

 

{{noreallife|this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.}}

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Invoked and [[Played for Drama]] in ''[[Corsair]]'', after Ayace bluntly announces his relationship with Canale in attempt to dispel Aura's ideas of [[Unlucky Childhood Friend|marrying]] Canale. Ayace goes to Canale's room and makes sure to have lots of loud sex because he knows Aura is going to come by later to talk to Canale and will hear them. Aura is crushed. It comes up more humorously in other places though, especially with poor Harold.

* Variant: In the omake of ''[[Future Lovers]]'', Akira, after moving in with Kento and his grandparents, is initially reluctant to have sex with Kento where his grandparents could hear them, but Kento reassures him that they're too hard-of-hearing to hear them go at it. Cut to the morning-after scene, where Kento's grandfather asks [[Did the Earth Move For You, Too?|if there was an earthquake last night]] and his grandmother just gives them a Look.

 

* This happens in ''[[Lost Girls (comics)|Lost Girls]]''. When one of the characters goes to tell them to keep quiet he sees that they're both women and loses his nerve.

 

== Fan Works ==

 

== Film ==

* ''[[L.A. Story]]'', at one point, has Steve Martin and his date in one room of a motel, and the woman Steve Martin's character is in love with and her date in the next room.

* At the end of ''[[My Super Ex-Girlfriend]]'', this is taken extremely literally, in a most physical level. It's not just noise that goes through the wall, but the participants as well.

* In ''[[Forgetting Sarah Marshall]]'', the two couples end up with rooms next to each other. Peter and Rachel are intentionally loud to annoy Sarah. Sarah retaliates by faking, much to her partner's annoyance.

* Happens a lot at the beginning of ''Bound''.

* One [[Cheech and Chong]] movie made it seem like two characters were having very loud and rambunctious sex inside a van, much to the embarrassment of those outside. However, the guy was moaning and banging the wall because of a cramp in his leg, while the girl was trying to demonstrate the noises her roommate made while having sex.

* The Tim Allen movie ''[[For Richer or Poorer]]'' has his character Brad and wife Caroline (Kirstie Alley) staying in an Amish home. Despite long, tiring work-filled days, their hosts provide rigorous, squeaky-springed sound effects almost every night. When Brad and Caroline rekindle their relationship, their hosts get treated to the same sound effects.

* In ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]'', the main character gets exasperated at how he can hear Tyler and Marla having wild sex upstairs every single time, with the plaster on the ceiling even crumbling with their movements. {{spoiler|Becomes downright weird when you realize that the main character and Tyler ''are the same person''.}}

 

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[General Hospital]]'': Maxie is tired of hearing Johnny and Lulu's sex life, so one day she makes loud sex noises in her bedroom. They think she's with Spinelli, but when ''he'' comes through the front door...

* ''[[Hustle]]''. While Stacie and Danny are [[Undercover As Lovers|posing as a married couple]], they hear someone in the next hotel room and think it might be the mark, so they fake having loud sex to maintain their cover. Actually Danny suspects it's Mickey and just wants to make him jealous, but he's not fooled (their orgasms are too well timed for a couple who haven't been together for a while).

* On an episode of ''[[Spin City]]'', Stacy is at Mike's apartment, and Mike apologizes for his noisy neighbors. We hear the noisy neighbors copulating for a second.

{{quote|'''Stacy''': You think that's loud? (voice filled with pity) Oh, Mike.}}

'''Penny''': Oh, God.

'''Sheldon''': "Oh, God". That I’ve heard on multiple occasions.

Later:

'''Mrs Gunderson''': Good morning, Leonard. Or should I say "yee-haw"? }}

* The second episode of ''[[Rome]]'' includes Octavia overhearing her mother Atia having very loud sex with Mark Antony, which she mockingly imitates at a party later. Antony's comment: "She has you exactly."

* One episode of ''[[Castle]]'' a suspects alibi was that he had been having sex with the victim's wife when the victim was murdered. This is verified by talking to the neighbors who recalled hearing it (it was a warm night and the windows were open).

 

== Literature ==

{{quote|'''John:''' Hey, kids! Time's a-wasting! Or are you going to let ''one'' night wear you out?!

'''Unnamed girl:''' Eric! Oh my Gawd! The man next door! [[Captain Obvious|He -- he]] ''[[Captain Obvious|heard]]'' [[Captain Obvious|us!]] }}

* Edmund spends a couple of chapters of ''To The Ends Of The Earth'' trying to figure out how to ''avoid'' embodying this trope.

 

== Music ==

''I hope they're just moving furniture around and really liking their ideas'' }}

 

 

== Theater ==

* ''[[Avenue Q]]'' has a whole musical number about it: "You can be as loud as the hell you want when you're making love!"

* In ''[[Cat on a Hot Tin Roof]]'', Gooper and Mae know that Brick and Maggie are ''not'' having sex, because they share a wall, and they hear her pleading and his refusal. Brick says that they could've done it without them noticing, because [[The Modest Orgasm|not everybody is that loud]].

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** If a female warden is romancing Alistair and has gone to bed with him, Zevran can make comments on how the affair is going based on things he overheard.

{{quote|'''Zevran''': [[Speed Sex|It did seem as if you just got going when all grew quiet.]] You are... feeling all right, yes? Perhaps you are tired?}}

{{quote|'''Leliana''': I suppose he must like your shrieking, you sound like a genlock being murdered — a sweet, sweet sound to a Grey Warden. You should try a little harder next time he takes you. I don't think they heard you in the Anderfels.}}

* In ''[[The Sims 2]]: Apartment Life'', loud noises will occasionally leak through the walls, annoying your sims who can bang on the walls to get the neighbors to shut up. One of the things that can leak through the walls is Woo-Hoo interactions.

 

* Fairly early in the run of ''[[Something*Positive]]'', Davan gets sick of hearing his neighbour's loud sex noises - not so much for the noise, but because it's very obvious that the woman is faking it. He finally storms over to them and angrily gives the man detailed written instructions how to please a woman. Found [http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp08012005.shtml here]

** Also, [http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp06072007.shtml this] ''Something Positive'' references how thin the walls are ''within'' Davan's family home.

* Subverted early in ''[[8-Bit Theater]]''. Black Mage hears bedsprings creaking and White Mage moaning in the next rooms; turns out it's just Black Belt jumping on the bed, practicing his kung fu.

* This happens in ''[[Better Days]]'' chapter 20 when Fisk and Beth and Tommy and Lucy go to New York and stay in rooms next to each other. Both boys [[Testosterone Poisoning|try not to "finish" before the other]], and the next day they both have sore backs when they have to visit museums.

* [http://www.candicomics.com Candi] and her [[Black Best Friend|suitemate]] overhear a couple during Spring Break, thinking it's one of their friends and his girly—not knowing it's her ex and one of her other friends ''as well''. It's a twofer!

* Apparently, the walls in ''[[Ménage à 3]]'' are pretty thin.

** At the end of the "Backstage Pass" story, Gary and Dillon are kept up by Zii and Yuki having sex.

** Matt and Dillon also used to hear Gary's [[A Date with Rosie Palms|Dates With Rosie Palms]] when they still lived with him.

* In ''[[The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal]]'', {{spoiler|Amal, apparently. "Y'know, you are one ''noisy'' motherfucker."}}

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* Subverted in ''[[Futurama]]'': it turned out to be two robots made of bedsprings, just playing cards.

* In ''[[The Oblongs]]'', the sex life between the father and the mother is so good that every night she's saying "Oh God" repetitively. The younger son, having lived his entire life listening to them, finds himself incapable of having a good night's sleep without it, and gets insomnia when their relationship becomes rocky.

{{quote|'''Danny:''' I couldn't sleep [last night] with my [[Arch Enemy]] in the guest room next to me.

'''Sam:''' My parents sleep in the bedroom next to me. It's not the same, but I can't sleep either. }}

 

== Real life ==

* Apparently you can get [http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/uk-woman-jailed-noisy-sex-husband-2682822 arrested] for it.

* Any college student living in a dormitory has had to deal with this.

 

{{reflist}}