Brown Note: Difference between revisions

* The ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' film ''[[Live and Let Die (film)|Live and Let Die]]'' opens with an assassination carried out through sound piped through a diplomat's translation earpiece.

* According to the Metatron in ''[[Dogma]]'':

* ''[[Pi]]'' was about a number sequence that helped define the universe. However, the process of determining this number was fatally destructive to a computer, be it machine or human.

* The film ''[[Pontypool]]'' is about a memetic virus that is spread through human speech, leading to confusion and murder.

* ''The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz'' features the Tuning Fork of Annihilation. When played back over the emergency broadcast system, it causes the destruction of all TV sets and kills all children who hear it.

* In Steve Sullivan's ''[http://www.stevesullivan.co.uk/heap.html A Heap of Trouble]'', any man who hears the naked men singing about walking down the road has an irresistible urge to join them.

* The Sick Sticks in ''[[Minority Report]]'' cause the victim to projectile vomit.

* The [[David Lynch]] film version of ''[[Dune]]'' shows Atrades advanced weaponry is sonic in nature, using ultra and/or infrasound to shatter structures, inflict pain in enemy soldiers, etc. {{spoiler|When Paul becomes [[The Chosen One]] he acquires the ability to imitate the effects of this sonic weaponry with just his voice}}

'''Soldier:''' And his word shall bring death eternal for all those who stand against the righteous! }}

* In the ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' movie, the villains use a television program that causes the viewers to become zombies and attempt to broadcast it across the United States so Fearless Leader can become president.

* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''

** Vogon poetry in a form of [[Cool and Unusual Punishment]].

** The "Total Perspective Vortex" (a machine that displays a map of the entire universe with a tiny beyond microscopic dot pointing out where you are) causes anyone run through it to feel so insignificant that they go mad (except Zaphod, and that was under special circumstances).

* The [[Father Brown]] story "The Blast of the Book" has a book that supposedly causes anyone who tries to read it to vanish into thin air and never be seen again. {{spoiler|It's actually all just an elaborate practical joke.}} [[Robert Anton Wilson]] brazenly plagiarizes this in [[Masks Of The Illuminati]]

** Not to mention the '''{{color|red|Minotaur}}'''. Seriously, [[Incredibly Lame Pun|don't mention it]].

* [[Mark Twain]]'s witty essay/short story ''Punch, Brothers, Punch!'' (also known as "A Literary Nightmare") concerns a tune which the narrator is unable to force from his head, and is unusual in that the killer verse is presented for us in full -- and the nature of the silly little ditty is such that just reading the lyrics really ''is'' enough to get the damn tune [[Ear Worm|stuck in the reader's head]]! He finally banishes it from his mind {{spoiler|by tricking a friend into getting it stuck in ''his'' head.}}

* ''Centerburg Tales: More Adventures of Homer Price'' by Robert McCloskey has a story where someone puts a horrible song on the jukebox in the lunch counter. Anyone who hears the song-- whether the original jukebox tune or someone else's rendition-- can't get it out of their head. Ultimately the main character gets it out of his head by using ''Punch, Brothers'' (above), then gives it to the rest of the town. Now he's cleared but they have it. So, he tells them to sing it to the one person who hadn't been in town. Now everyone is cleared except that person, who now has to be smuggled out of town to keep from reinfecting the whole town.

** The flip side of the same record causes the listener to {{spoiler|get hiccups at the thought of the words "pie" or "Mississippi".}}

* In [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'', Dr. Hilarius, [[Those Wacky Nazis|That Wacky ex-Nazi]], claims to be able to cause madness by making weird faces at people. And then those nice young men in their clean white coats come to take him away (ha ha).

* The [[Words Can Break My Bones|Deplorable Word]] from ''[[Narnia]]'' was used by [[God Save Us From the Queen|Jadis]] to destroy [[Alternate Universe|Charn]], her homeworld. We don't learn what the word is--only that [[Take Our Word for It|it sounds horrible]]. We do learn that, whatever it is, it does not work on Earth.<ref>Magic isn't the same from world to world. So the White Witch had to spend ages learning how to use Narnian magic.</ref>

** Presumably it doesn't work in Narnia either, else she surely would've used it there when she realized she was about to become lion-chow.

*** Popular opinion holds that because [[An Ice Person|Jadis's powers]] [[The Magic Goes Away|are diminished]] in The Wood Between Worlds / Narnia / Earth, she simply didn't have the juice necessary to use the Word as she did in Charn. Plus, the Word was her absolute last resort, since she preferred destroying everything than submitting to her sister and her armies. Besides, destroying everyone and everything on Earth or in Narnia before she had a chance to conquer would [[Pragmatic Villainy|just be silly]].

** The full length film following it, Everything That Ever Wasn't, was apparently such a Brown Note that it completely destroyed itself, as well as the theater and anyone watching it.

* In ''[[Zones of Thought|A Fire Upon the Deep]]'', high-protocol networks use supersentient packets. These are dangerous. Reading them can assimilate you into the blight (a fate that may be worse than the death of your entire civilization). There exist defenses, but they aren't fullproof. After discovering they have been subverted, a security firm offers the following advice:

* A lesser example than some of these, but nonetheless: in ''[[Tales of Kolmar]]'', the [[Our Demons Are Different|Rakshasa lords]] must have their true names spoken for them to be summoned. Demon summoners are practiced in this and manage, but a non-summoner overhearing is driven to vomit. Late in the series, we see that the sound of the Demonlord's laughter has the same effect.

 

* In ''[http://www.jaydenandcrusader.com/2008/06/27/page-74/ Jayden and Crusader]'', the character Third can apparently utter proofs of the non-existence of God so powerful Priests have heart attacks because of the conflict of their profession and the utter logic of the proof. We are of course not told what this proof is.

* For [[Final Fantasy VII|Cloud]] in ''[[Ansem Retort]]'', "[[One-Winged Angel]]" is this: it makes him flash back to to Sephiroth.

** Unfortunately, that song is also Axel's [[Theme Music Power-Up]].

* ''Ubersoft'' employes were once shown only the shadow of a new Apple product, since it's beauty drove a small percentage of the population insane when they looked directly at it. When asking how big a percentage, the answer was approximately the same small percentage of the population that had been allowed to look at it directly.

* The Doom Bell of [[Girl Genius]] painfully knocks out all those who hear it for the first time.

** Agatha on the other hand, only seems mildly surprised.

** Mama was surprised, though, that Gil found the sound "beautiful" as it meant Agatha was still alive and fighting. It's been implied, though, that Gil may be "modified" in some way related to the Jägermonsters, which may account for his immunity.

* Draconic, the [[Language of Magic]] in ''[[Nahast: Lands of Strife|Nahast]]'', drives people mad if they don't learn it properly.

* On one episode of ''[[Family Guy]]'' Peter is warned not to watch [[The Ring|a video that kills anyone who watches it]]. He scoffs and takes the [[Schmuck Bait]], and promptly keels over. The film? ''Mannequin''. [[Take That|A certain amount of]] [[Truth in Television]], to be sure....

** On another episode Quagmire tells Peter a dirty joke with the punchline {{spoiler|"P.S.: Your vagina's in the sink!"}}, which Peter finds so funny he poops himself every time he hears it. So Quagmire and Joe keep telling him the punchline through various means (texting him, having [[Nightmare On Elm Street|Freddy Krueger]] tell him in a dream).

* In the ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'' movie, Shake's horrific self-written song "Nude Love" forces the Insanoflex to kill itself upon hearing it.

* In one episode of ''[[Fish Hooks]]'', Bea attempts to make friends with Albert by playing the violin. [[Dreadful Musician|Her playing is so bad]] Albert's face cracks and his organs fly out.

* [[Super Mario Bros Super Show]] episode "Stars In Their Eyes" established that certain sounds could disrupt 'Moonman' Koopa's technology. In order to save the Marios from being blown up by Koopa's spaceship, the quirks- an alien race Koopa enslaved- use their double-snouts to toot a kazoo-version of the Zelda theme.

* In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', the episode "The Stare Master" features a cockatrice, with the penalty of looking it in the eyes of the "turning to stone" variety rather than "instant death" (after all, this is a ''children's'' show). And {{spoiler|the cockatrice}} has the power to reverse it {{spoiler|if one can convince it that it should stop turning creatures to stone, as Fluttershy successfully does}}.

 

* The infamous Blaster Beam musical instrument, most notably employed in ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture|Star Trek the Motion Picture]]'' and by Japanese musician Kitaro, has been reportedly able to cause female audience members a... climactic degree of stimulation (at least, in live performances, lest female tropers rush to their nerdy friends to borrow a copy of ST:TMP).

* Due to the nature of work with Thermodynamics being pessimistic, statistical mechanics is infamous for the number of famous suicides among the scientific founders. One text book has this as the opening paragraph.

** Similarly, several of the founders of modern metamathematics - Cantor and Godel being the two most notable - suffered from serious mental problems. This lead to the idea of the [[These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know|"Black Theorem"]], a mathematical result that, once proven, drives the prover insane.

*** Given as how the ''non''-insanity-causing theorems in that field include such gems as "there are as many fractions as there are counting numbers, but there are ''more'' numbers between 0 and 1 than there are fractions" and "there are things in math that are true but unprovable, and it is possible to prove that individual instances of this are unprovable", the existence of the Black Theorem suddenly seem a lot more plausible.

* According to ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s [http://www.cracked.com/article_20678_5-bizarre-animal-chain-reactions-our-daily-lives-are-causing.html 5 Bizarre Animal Chain Reactions Our Daily Lives Are Causing], humans' ships' sonar gives squid fatal seizures.

* In a 1999 lecture, [[Douglas Adams]] described how human industry in China was having this very effect on the blind dolphins of the Yangtze River, and how he and his camera crew on tour there ([[It Makes Sense in Context|after a frenzied search across Shanghai for condoms]]) dipped a microphone into the river to record how it sounds to the dolphins in there, who navigate using sound. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S2jsD7gy_E Adams attempted to emulate] the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKscVC3tvwY sound for the benefit] of the audience:

* Speaking of the [[Loudness War]], a ''really'' badly brickwalled track played through a really cheap and nasty pair of speakers or headphones will put many people on the fast track to a terrible headache.

* For sound decibels and hearing damage refer to this chart [http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html\] [http://www.noisehelp.com/noise-dose.html\].