Sound in a Jar

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If someone says something into an object, such as a jar, and then closes it, the sound will be preserved and released upon opening or the object’s destruction.

Examples of Sound in a Jar include:

Literature

• Soul Music has sound-capture boxes,

Live-Action TV

• On the Daily Show, John Stewart swore into a veterans affairs swear jar; in a later episode, original airdate 5/19/2014, he opened the jar and (censored) profanity came out.
• In Last Week Tonight (original air date 7/1/18), John Oliver gave some advice that involved screaming into a cardboard box and if someone said they won't vote because they don't like either candidate, open the box and blast them with said scream.

Web Original

• In the The Stinger of the Cyanide and Happiness short Harry the Handsome Butcher: Part 3 [1].

Western Animation

• In SpongeBob, this happens in Naughty Nautical Neighbors, with bubbles
• In The Amazing World of Gumball Darwin is underwater and speaks, bubbles come out, pop on the surface, releasing his words for gumball (and us) to hear.
• In an episode of South Park when the kids are alone in the town and have no working phones, Cartman demonstrates this when he speaks a message for Butters into a jar and has someone take it offscreen. The jar was returned and opened a couple of minutes later and Butters' voice came out of the jar with the reply.
• In an old episode of The Smurfs, the smurfs have a problem with a magical barrier sealing them away from their home village. The barrier can only be broken by a specific sound. In the end the smurfs manage to acquire from a good wizard the required sound in a jar - the sound of a pin dropping.

Real Life

• The field of Archaeoacoustics opened up the possibility of a variation on this idea, that under some circumstances it might be possible for pottery thrown on a wheel to accidentally encode, in the manner of an old Edison cylinder or vinyl LP, nearby sounds. Around the middle of the '00s, the idea caught the public imagination and started showing up everywhere. Sadly, the MythBusters showed that only the most general of acoustic phenomena could get so encoded.