Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,483
edits
Ring Ring CRUNCH: Difference between revisions
→Live-Action TV: put a {{verify}} tag on the phrase "if I remember correctly"
No edit summary |
(→Live-Action TV: put a {{verify}} tag on the phrase "if I remember correctly") |
||
| (13 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:endless alarm.jpg|frame|Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.]]
{{quote|<poem>'''Ocho''': You're late too?!
'''Gumball''': Yeah, the alarm clock went back to sleep mode, and I didn't have the heart to wake it up. You?
'''Ocho''': My alarm clock didn't dare wake me up, not after what I did to the last one!</poem>|''[[The Amazing World of Gumball]]''}}
Our lives are increasingly filled with small electronic devices that make [[Most Annoying Sound|annoying]] shrill noises at us, usually when we least want them to. This often results in sudden, shocking violence toward such devices. Thus, makers of alarm clocks will never go out of business.
Line 9:
The oldest examples of this trope are all alarm clocks (or occasionally the even older non-digital form of the annoying wake-up, the rooster). Only relatively recently, with the arrival of the ubiquitous cell phone, has this trope wandered out of the bedroom and into public places.
The advent of cell phones has also instituted the expansion of the trope to violence directed toward devices owned by people other than yourself. It's not all that easy to justify whacking someone else's alarm clock (unless it's that pesky rooster owned by the neighboring farmer), but grabbing and smashing the cell phone of an inconsiderate
Other annoying modern noisemakers that may also be subject to this trope include smoke detectors/fire alarms, car alarms (usually requires demolishing the entire car to stop the noise), and carbon monoxide detectors.
A common tactic if the cruncher is [[Not a Morning Person]]. See also [[Cutting the Electronic Leash]], a cellphone-specific and generally less violent related trope, [[Agitated Item Stomping]], [[Shoot the Television]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Black Blood Brothers]]'', Jiro turns off Mimiko's alarm clock by cutting it in half (since, according to Kotaro, he isn't good with new technology).
Line 27:
* More of a 'tick tick tick tick SMASH. CRUNCH.' and then probably stomping on the parts in ''[[Tsukihime]]'' when Shiki is getting some spillover from Roa/SHIKI and causing violent rage of which he's not really aware. He wanted to lie down and get rid of his headache so he could talk to Ciel without... getting... horrible destructive. Good luck, Shiki!
* The Rare Hunters do this to Tea/Anzu's mobile phone in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''.
* After the [[Time Skip|time skip]] in ''[[Allison & Lillia]]'', Allison is shown to be very hard on her bedroom clocks.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In the ''[[Fantastic Four]]'' comic book, Ben Grimm was forever forgetting his [[Super Strength]] and smashing his alarm clock to bits when he went to turn it off. The next panel would usually show him tossing it onto a pile of similarly-smashed clocks.
* X-Men:
** In the new ''[[Fantastic Four]]'' cartoon, Ben has passed the (ahem) torch of alarm clock abuse to Johnny Storm, who keeps melting his.▼
** In
** Cyclops on the other hand, merely ''[[Eye Beams|looks]]'' at his alarm clock.
* ''[[Strangers in Paradise]]'' had Katchoo go through a new alarm clock every day, often with a large-caliber bullet from a gun she kept under her pillow. She accumulated a large pile of ruined clocks before the [[Running Gag]] faded from the series. Interestingly, the story included a [[Dream Sequence]] that explained, in heart-wrenching detail, ''exactly'' why Katchoo is so upset at being awakened.
Line 43:
* In the Soviet short ''[[His Wife Is a Hen]]'', the husband has this reaction to the alarm clock after awaking from his nightmare.
== [[Fan
* In ''[[Progress]]'', Princess Luna is startled awake by Sundance's alarm clock and blasts it through a door and an outside wall. To be fair, it was her first time ever using one.
== [[Film]] ==
Line 59:
* A Variant of this occurs in ''[[Rain Man]]'' when Raymond's attempts to get breakfast trigger the smoke alarm in Charlie's apartment, freaking him out until Charlie destroys it.
* Another variant occurs in ''[[Animal House]]'' when Bluto stops an annoyning crooner's song by smashing his guitar against the wall.
* ''[[Up (animation)|Up]]''. The old man protagonist does this as a matter of habit, with serious consequences for a bullfrog that wakes him up later in the movie.
* In ''[[Brain Donors]]'', this is part of handyman Jacques' morning routine. He even has a dresser drawer full of broken alarm clock parts and a closet full of new clocks for this purpose.
Line 65:
* Played with in ''[[Dresden Files]]''. Harry has a Mickey Mouse alarm clock specifically so that he doesn't do this.
** He couldn't live with a guy who'd hit Mickey Mouse.
* Ring Ring CRUNCH is the central theme of [[Ray Bradbury]]'s short story, ''The Murderer''. The protagonist becomes fed up with the ubiquity and intrusiveness of radios, phones, and the like, so he begins to systematically destroy the intrusive devices in his life. {{spoiler|He pours ice cream into a speaker grille, stuffs another device in the garbage disposal (which, as a useful and nonintrusive technology, is the only thing he feels sorry about), and even uses an EMP on the bus and basks in the panic and subsequent civility as people are forced to
* In ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'', when Randy's wristwatch's alarm goes off, Amy cuts it off his wrist with a kris and throws it into the ocean.
** Similarly, in ''Zodiac'', ST is forced to take the back off his wristwatch and screwdriver it into silence after an alarm to remind him to call his ex-girlfriend goes off while he's breaking into a chemical plant.
Line 74:
* The third volume of the [[Light Novel]] series ''[[Allison and Lillia|Allison]]'' opens with "''Crash!''" and then the prologue's narrator, Allison's daughter, explains, "That crash just now was the sound of Mom chucking the poor, hardworking alarm clock against the wall."
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Chuck]]'': Sarah kills her alarm clock with an expertly thrown knife. She's wearing a night mask at the time, too.
* Variant: In an episode of ''[[Friends]]'', Phoebe caves and decides to move in with her cop boyfriend. They are woken in the morning to a bird singing a beautiful song. The boyfriend smiles, takes out a gun and shoots the bird. She apparently learned a bit from him, as she would later hammer her beeping fire alarm. It still didn't stop beeping.
Line 85 ⟶ 84:
* On ''[[NCIS]]'', Gibbs is notorious for accidentally/intentionally destroying his own cell phone when it gives him any trouble, either by malfunctioning, ringing too much, or simply ''existing''. He's even dropped one into a jar of paint thinner. The other agents on his team now keep plenty of spares in their desks, ready to hand to him at a moment's notice.
* Subverted in ''[[Scrubs]]'' with a cellphone belonging to Turk. He's talking to an ex when JD throws the phone on the floor. It carries on working. He then jumps up and down on it. It carries on working. Frustrated, he throws it out of the window, and the scene ends. Later, someone else picks it up and returns it. Completely undamaged and not even having ended the call. JD wonders what it's made of, and says he has to get one for himself...
** Overlaps with [[
* Both played straight and averted in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. In the first season, she accidentally destroys her alarm when she forgets her true strength. But by the sixth season in the musical episode, she is so filled with ennui that she merely picks it up and holds it, listening to it ring.
* ''[[Star Trek: The
** Which is a reference to a scene in ''[[Animal House]]'' where Bluto smashes a folk singer's guitar before uttering the same line.
* In ''[[Drake and Josh]]'', Drake turns off his alarm clock by dropping a dumbbell on it.
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' has a fairly tame version. When Jack and Teal'c were off fishing in one episode and Daniel tried calling them, Jack took out the batteries and threw them in the lake, if I remember correctly.{{verify}}
* ''[[The Goodies]]''. Hilariously spoofed in "Lighthouse Loonies". Seeing the fog closing in around the Jolly Rock lighthouse Graham switches on the foghorn, startling an over-sensitive Tim who yells at him to turn it off. Graham does so but the foghorn continues to blare, even after they repeatedly flick the switch, pull out the power cord, rip the foghorn to bits and jump up and down on it. Finally in desperation Graham swallows the part emitting the most noise, whereupon silence ensues. Until he opens his mouth to speak.
** Also present in the second episode, "Snooze", with a radio. It seems that Graeme has built a hammer into his wall for the primary purpose of smashing his radio. [[Fridge Logic|One wonders why he doesn't just throw it out.]]
* In ''[[Drop the Dead Donkey]]'', Damien is trying to do a to-camera piece and keeps being interrupted by various things (tramps, a Hare Krishna parade, a piano falling off a hoist...) culminating in a nearby car alarm going off. The camera goes to black and he rips the wires out of the car, apparently bare-handed.
* In ''[[Seinfeld]]'', the subplot to The Marine Biologist has a woman named Corinne being unfortunate enough to be hit on the head with two thrown noisy devices. Eccentric author Yuri Testikov throws Elaine's pocket organizer out a car window after she's unable to stop it from beeping. The second time, Elaine and Jerry visit Yuri at his hotel room to secretly collect evidence of this action by using a tape recorder, since Elaine wants Yuri to cover the bill for Corinne's injury. Yuri hears the noise from the tape recorder and throws it out of the hotel.
* In an episode of ''[[Honey I Shrunk the Kids (TV series)|Honey I Shrunk the Kids
* Has happened at least once on ''[[The Red Green Show]]''.
* In ''[[Corner Gas]]'', there is a montage of Brent repeatedly hitting the snooze on his alarm clock until he finally wakes up and says "Whoa. [[All Just a Dream|What a weird dream]]. I dreamed that I had an alarm clock. I should probably think about getting one of those." He does get one, and later in the episode he smashes it to pieces when it wakes him up and says "Oh yeah, ''that's'' why I didn't have one of those." At the end of the episode, he also smashes Hank's new electronic organizer when its alarm goes off and wakes him up.
Line 114 ⟶ 113:
== [[Radio]] ==
* The cellphone variant was used in "The Frequent Flyer"; a very funny parody of "The Ancient Mariner" by Sebastian Faulks on [[The BBC]] Radio 4 literary [[Panel Game]] ''[[The Write Stuff]]''.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* This is probably the justification for the little alarm clocks that actually run away and hide after you hit the snooze button once.▼
* The ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwZLUpQiolA Gun O'Clock]'' toy-clock-thing.▼
== [[Video Games]] ==
Line 145 ⟶ 140:
* The computers that hand out assignments to agents of the ''[[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]]'' tend to have obscenely loud alarms, especially if the agents ''dare'' relax for a moment. At least one was threatened with [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|conversion into a toaster]]. The Canon Analysis Devices have a similar flaw and [[Explosive Instrumentation|an even greater mortality rate]].
** Though in the case of the CADs, their cause of death is much more likely to be an inability to handle [[Readings Are Off the Scale|especially high]] levels of [[Canon Defilement]] than pissed-off agents. The latter is still far from unknown, though, since the shrill alarm has a nasty habit of blowing their cover.
* Two video fragments from ''[[Serbu Firearms]]'': were you ever awakened by your neighbour's lawnmower? Then you surely craved to do something like [https://web.archive.org/web/20111002043622/http://www.serbu.com/legacy/lawnmwr.htm this]. Admit it.
* For a visual, check out [https://web.archive.org/web/20100813115057/http://thereifixedit.com/2009/11/25/alarm-clock-preemptively-broken-and-flung-into-wall-for-your-convenience/ this entry] from "There, I Fixed It".
* Part of the basis for the short animation [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN83DfmH9Tw "ALARM"]. The main character has several alarm clocks in his apartment. Three of them annoy him to this point. One on top of his TV has its battery ripped out, another is chucked out of a room and smashes into the fridge. The third is shot after he wakes up from the [[All Just a Dream]] sequence.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ihwfQipfo&feature=context&context=G22917f3FAAAAAAAAAAA Alarmageddon]
Line 157 ⟶ 152:
* One episode of the ''[[Pink Panther]]'' cartoon starts with an alarm clock waking the titular character up. Pink tries to turn it off, but it keeps going anyways. He reaches under the bed for a mallet and pummels the clock into submission. He then gets up and puts the clock into a drawer that was already full of broken alarm clocks...
** There was a similar episode where Pink first smashes the alarm clock using a massive wrench (from a drawer full of wrenches), then cuts the cable to his radio alarm (with clippers from, yes, a drawer full of clippers). The episode was then dedicated to Pink's new cuckoo-clock. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* [[The Simpsons (animation)|Bart Simpson]] does this to his alarm clock in the song ''Deep Deep Trouble'' from the album, ''The Simpsons Sing the Blues''.
* In one episode of ''[[Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi]]'' featuring the girls' stay at a farm, Yumi is woken up by an alarm clock modeled after a rooster. She smashes it, then goes back to sleep; however, a REAL rooster lands in the open window and issues an even noisier wakeup call, to which her response is less than polite ("You stupid turkey!").
* In the classic [[Looney Tunes|Warner Brothers' cartoon]], "A Bear For Punishment", Junyer has a whole table of alarm clocks. When they all go off simultaneously, Pa Bear frantically tries to shut them off one after another. Junyer silences the whole array {{spoiler|by putting a finger to his lips and "shushhing" them}}.
Line 171 ⟶ 166:
'''Alarm Clock:''' Life's tough, pally.
'''Felix:''' ''([[Cartoony Tail|turns his tail]] [[Beware My Stinger Tail|into a mallet]] and smashes the clock)'' You can say that again, Clarence. }}
* ''[[Dan Vs.]]'': Instead of smashing it,
* In the episode The Uncle of ''[[The Amazing World of Gumball]]'', Ocho mentions his alarm clock being to scared to wake him up based on what he did to the previous alarm clock that woke him up. The setting sometimes has normally inanimate objects talk and think and such.
▲
* In the old ''[[X-Men (animation)|X-Men]]'' cartoon, [[Wolverine]] once sliced up his alarm clock with his claws before he could actually think about it. When he woke up a little more, he said something to the effect of "Hate it when I do that."
* This is subverted in an episode of ''[[DC Super Hero Girls]]''. At the start of the episode, it looks like Kara (as in, [[Supergirl]]) is about to do this when her clock radio wakes her up with a story about Superman (whom she [[Sibling Rivalry| is very jealous of]]) but she stops when she realizes it is actually about her.
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* This is probably the justification for the little alarm clocks that actually run away and hide after you hit the snooze button once. (That, or forcing you to get out of bed to turn it off.)
▲* The ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwZLUpQiolA Gun O'Clock]'' toy-clock-thing.
{{reflist}}
Line 179 ⟶ 182:
[[Category:Ring Ring CRUNCH]]
[[Category:24-Hour Trope Clock]]
[[Category:Timepiece Tropes]]
| |||