Slow No

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A cousin to the Big No, a Slow No is one that happens when Bullet Time is used at the same time as a character going into denial. Usually used in places of war, explosions, just after death...yeah, it tends to be morbid. And occasionally subverted. Using it as a parody or in What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome? sequences are becoming increasingly common than playing it straight however, making it a Dead Horse Trope. (It's a time-tested source of Narm, since it tends to make the screamer sound kind of like a Wookiee.)

Not to be confused with Slow Mo. Can happen simultaneously with a Slow Motion Fall.


Examples of Slow No include:

Straight Examples

Films

  • The Slow No from EVE when WALL-E shoots her disconnected Arm Cannon in the robot repair ward.
  • Night Owl's reaction to Rorschach death in the Watchmen movie.
  • At the climax of the first Austin Powers, he does this as he leaps to stop a bomb.
  • Accidentally done in the film preview in Singin in The Rain, as the film got screwed up.
  • A Slow No occurs from Duke (Apollo's trainer) in Rocky III in which, near the end of the rematch, Balboa is making Clubber Lang angry enough to KO him; and another Slow No from Duke in Rocky IV after Apollo Creed was KO'ed (killed) by Ivan Drago in an exhibition match.
  • Shrek 2: When Mongo, the giant gingerbread man, falls into the moat during the Storming the Castle sequence, both Shrek and Gingi do a Slow No.
  • A non-death version happens in Star Trek: The Motion Picture as Decker is forced to speak slowly thanks to a failure in the warp drives trying to get Kirk to not order the firing of the phasers at an in-the-way asteroid (which he knows are offline). What does he say? "Nooooooooo! Beeeellllaaayyyy thhhhhhaaaaaatttt Phhhhaaaaasssseeeeeerrrrr ooooorrrrrrdddddeeeeerrrrr!"
  • Played With in The Mask in an attempt to modernize it: when a bomb is about to go off, everything goes into slow-mo, but rather than anyone giving a protracted and warped, "Nooooo!" it's a weird, echoing, "Get it!"
  • When a military helicopter is shot down by the aliens in Skyline, Jarrod lets out a Slow No, complete with silly camera angle. It's almost the cheesiest thing in the movie, which is really saying something.
  • Frodo had a Slow Big No in the first Lord of the Rings movie.


Live Action TV

  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In the season one finale Sisko does this while charging towards an assassin. The scene is in slow motion, making his already deep voice hilariously deep.


Theatre


Web Original

Yusei: I said, "Card games on motorcycles".
Jack: WHAT THE HELL IS A MOTORCYCLE?
Yusei: You're kidding, right?
Jack: HEY CROW, DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MOTORCYCLE IS?
Crow: Can't say that I do.
Jack: YEAH, WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.
Yusei: But we ride them all the time!
Jack: WHAT FOR?
Yusei: To play card games on!
Jack: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A REALLY STUPID IDEA.
Yusei: Jack, you're scaring me.
Jack: COME ON, CROW, LET'S GO PLAY A CARD GAME. WHILE STANDING COMPLETELY STILL. ON. THE. GROOOOOUUUUUND.
Yusei: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!


Web Comics

Knuckles: Whoa! Cool! I'm back in the comic!
Rouge: You mean to tell me that you don't remember a thing before this moment?
Knuckles: ... Uhm... no.
Rouge: We went to Vegas and got married!
Knuckles: *slow motion* NOoOOoooOoooOOooOOooOOo!!


Western Animation

  • Principal Skinner of The Simpsons has done it more than once. Ex.: "Bart's Comet", "Lisa's Date With Destiny", "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em"
  • Undergrads: Just before teetotaler Nitz is about to take his first sip of alcohol, Rocko, his alcoholic best-friend (who has been having hallucinations about a giant whiskey bottle and decided to abstain), lunges at him with a long, drawn out "Nooooo!" in slow motion.
  • In Danny Phantom when Danny's family and friends (and teacher) were about to be blown up to their doom in an alternate timeline, Danny cries one out, complete with slow motion movement.
  • Almost every Big No that has ever occured in The Penguins of Madagascar — and there are several — has been a Slow No.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Zuko when Azula breaks the rules of their Agni Kai and aims a lightning shot at Katara, goading him into Taking the Bullet.
    • In The Ember Island Players, the actress playing Aang delivers one of the looooooooooooooooo(...)ongest dying screams I have ever heard. It goes "Nooooooooooooooooooo(...)ooo!" of course.
  • Deadpool's reaction to getting his gun sliced in half by Wolverine in Slow Motion:

Deadpool: No! That was my favorite gun!


Parodies, lampshade hangings etc.

Advertising

  • Parodied in a commercial for Corn Pops, we see a box sitting on a ledge overlooking the San Francisco skyline, someone knocks it over, and tries to grab it before it falls, in slow motion along with the obligatory "Noooo!!!", only he fails, and the camera pulls back to show us that the ledge was only 3 feet off the ground of a hill overlooking the skyline. The man reaches down and retrieves the box.


Films

  • Hilariously parodied in Tropic Thunder: The penultimate scene has most of the characters' dialog in slow motion, including Jack Black screaming "myyyyyyy assssssssssssss!"


Live Action TV

  • iCarly:
    • Spencer beautifully evokes a "Non-Lethal KO" version in iSaved Your Life during a paintball assassin game sub-plot, complete with Slow Motion Fall and distorted voice effects.

Spencer: What's that, a lollipop?
Delivery Man: Yeah, except from where I'm from, we don't call it a lollipop.
Spencer: What do you call it?
Delivery Man: SUCKER! (slaps Spencer and dives on the floor)
(Sam hangs upside down from the doorbeam, blowtube in her mouth ready for the "kill")
Spencer: NOOOOOOOOOOO! (attempts to draw his blowtube but Sam strikes him with a headshot, claiming victory)

    • Carly also evokes this in iBeat the Heat (again, with distorted vocal effects) when Sabrina blindly tramples on her model of an Utopian City ala Godzilla.
  • Parodied to the max in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, in which practically every dramatic / tragic moment in the series will be punctuated by someone - usually Rick Daglass - screaming "Nooooooo!!!" at the top of his lungs, in slow motion, for at least a full minute. Usually more than once.
  • Frasier provides a hilarious slow-motion example when he tries to stop his girlfriend Faye—whom he's been accidentally calling by the name of his ex-girlfriend Cassandra, explaining it as the name of a favorite aunt—from meeting the real Cassandra, exposing his deception. Tables are overturned, dishes are dropped, people are knocked over, and, of course, it doesn't work.
  • A bit on Late Night with Conan O'Brien demonstrated what the show would look like as directed by an action movie veteran. Conan lets out one of these when Andy is shot.


Web Comics

  • Eight Bit Theater: Red Mage does this by casting slow and feather fall on himself for dramatic effect when Thief and BM talk about burning the Rat Tail they need to complete their side-quest. He overdoes it and gets stuck in mid air for several hours.


Western Animation

  • In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Bubble Buddy," SpongeBob does the Big No when Squidward is about to pop the bubble with a needle. It goes into ridiculously slow motion, and he starts randomly messing with the vowel, making this a spoof as well.
  • A very funny Slow No occurs in Invader Zim when a time-affected Dib is about to strike a similarly affected explosion.


Jokes

  • A guy just arrived in States and phones late in the night to a hotel:
-I want to know if there are any free rooms for one person, but my americano is very, very bad, so answer me very, very slow, okay?
—Nnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooo! - the receptionist answered