Ironic Nursery Tune: Difference between revisions
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== Anime and Manga ==
* Any anime or manga which quotes the ancient Japanese poem "Tooryanse"; the melody is known for being used at a lot of intersections, but the lyrics either talk about getting blessings for your child when it turns
** ''[[Amatsuki]]'' uses it to incredibly creepy effect, [[Creepy Children Singing|sung by a choir of children in an eerie whisper]] and accompanied only by the occasional [[For Doom the Bell Tolls|ringing of a bell]]. Now remember that [[Eldritch Abomination|the Yakou]] has a bell. Its sound drives people insane...
* ''[[Black Butler]]'': During an arc in the anime, a serial killer named Drocel keeps grinding his organ and sings a very creepy version of "London Bridge is Falling Down". His prey is young, beautiful girls that he turns into living dolls; the song is used to control said dolls and determine what materials to construct them from. Despite being male, he's kind enough to make an exception for Ciel.
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* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbaTy2RYhe0 This] Australian road safety advertisement uses "Happy Christmas" to absolutely soul-crushing effect.
* An old [[Public Service Announcement]] started with a closeup of a black mother singing ''Mockingbird'' to her toddler... and the camera slowly panning back to reveal she is kneeling in the middle of the street where her baby had just been caught in the crossfire.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkCoq7ZfzMU This Scottish ad for Friends of the Earth] uses "All Things Bright and Beautiful"
* There is a safety advertisement about overhead powerlines that used to be on the radio in Calgary, Alberta. It started out with the tune from Rock a Bye Baby, with the song slowing down and slowly becoming more sinister-sounding. It doesn't seem ironic, but considering that one of the ways you can come in contact (and one the ways they like to remind people about) is backing up while in a cherry picker, and the cherry picker can resemble a cradle in a way, and the lyrics for the end of the nursey rhyme are, "And down will come baby, cradle and all," well, it just brings up some fairly disturbing images.
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* In the opening seconds of ''[[The Lost Boys]]'', before the footage starts rolling, a little child's voice can be hears singing the first two lines of "Cry Little Sister". Although this song is also used with full vocal chorus and music at the beginning of the film, and has since been covered by several bands as a Gothic rock anthem, that first soft-voiced ''a capella'' rendition sounds eerily like a children's nursery song.
* Not actually a nursery rhyme, but Marla Singer in ''[[Fight Club]]'' as she leaves the Paper Street house. "Gotta get off...gotta get off...gotta get off this merry-go-round..."
** Marla Singer is quoting from "(Theme from) Valley of the Dolls"
* ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' has a couple of songs that evoked this feel through clever use of repetition and call-and-response, especially 'Zydrate Anatomy.' As the creator described it, "Gather round kids! We're gonna teach you how to shoot up!"
{{quote|'''Grave-Robber''':Zydrate comes in a little glass vial.
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* The climax of the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[Discworld/Thud|Thud]]!'' features a variant on this. Sam Vimes is lost in a cave, addled with pain, despair, and rage, and fighting off a pack of dwarfs {{spoiler|not to mention possession by the Summoning Dark, a diabolical "entity of pure vengeance" brought about by a dwarf curse}}, when out of pure force of habit he starts to shout the words to his infant son's favorite book, "Where's My Cow?" (since it's six o'clock, and he ''always'' reads "Where's My Cow?" to Young Sam at six o'clock). Understandably, the dwarfs aren't sure at first how to react to the threat of a man with an axe and a sword shouting things like "It goes 'baa!' It is a sheep! ''[[Punctuated! For! Emphasis!|That! Is!! Not!!! My!!!! COW!!!!!]]''"
* [[Agatha Christie]]'s novel ''[[And Then There Were None]]'' features a rhyme about Indian boys being killed one by one, which many of the characters recognized from their nursery days. Said characters are killed in the same manner as the Indians in the song. There are even Indian dolls in the living room that disappear as the characters are bumped off.
** This is an arguably benign and harmless bowdlerisation of the original. Both rhyme and book were originally entitled "Ten little Niggers", one paperback actually featured a hanged golliwog (a kind of [[Gonk]] doll based on a blackface minstrel figure) on the cover. It was later further [[
** Christie uses a lot of titles like this: ''Hickory Dickory Death'', ''A Pocket Full of Rye'', ''[[Five Little Pigs]]'', ''One, Two, Buckle my Shoe'', and ''Three Blind Mice'' (the story on which the play ''The Mousetrap'' is based). There's even a [[Lampshade Hanging]] in one book where Poirot chides himself for thinking about nursery rhymes so much. ''The Mousetrap'' also has a lampshade hanging, where one character likes to recite the creepy nursery rhyme of the title and another, noting the lyrics, wonders why children like to say such horrible things.
* S.S. Van Dine outdid Christie in his novel ''The Bishop Murder Case'', which features a series of murders each related to a ''different'' nursery rhyme. For example, the first victim is a guy nicknamed "Cock Robin", who gets shot with an arrow.
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''London Bridges''
''Mary, Mary'' }}
* An early villain in ''[[Abarat]]'' has realized the power of this trope, and sings tunes like these whenever he really wants to scare someone. They're not songs from our world, however, but openly sinister tunes apparently devised by [[Card-Carrying Villain|Card Carrying Villains]] for [[Enfant Terrible
* ''The [[Teenage Worrier]] 's Panick Diary'' mentioned that part of Letty's movie about war was a montage of child soldiers which she planned to set to a creepy distorted nursery rhyme soundtrack, but couldn't choose between "Humpty Dumpty" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
* ''[[The Underland Chronicles]]'' features a nursery rhyme that turns out to be {{spoiler|a ''prophecy'' detailing the [[A Nazi by Any Other Name|Holocaust-esque genocide]] of a group of innocent mice}}.
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* Happens as well in the eighth season finale of ''[[CSI: Miami]]'': ''ring around the rosie; a pocket full of posies... Ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN.''
* ''[[Storm of the Century]]'' has "I'm a little teapot..."
** Its memorable "Born in sin, come on in/Born in lust, turn to dust/Born in vice, say it twice..." doesn't really count,
** This also appears in ''[[Rose Red]]''. [[Stephen King]] certainly seems to love this rhyme.
* Subverted in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Empty Child," where a girl uses "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" to actually put a [[Creepy Child]] to sleep.
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{{quote|"Isn't it dark? Isn't it cold? Seek out the future before you get old. Once there were children. This is their doom. Now all the people are born from the loom."}}
** That creepy Zagreus rhyme in the [[Big Finish Doctor Who|audio adventures]] (Eighth Doctor). Turns into "extremely scary" when Zagreus possesses the Doctor. "Zagreus sits inside your head/Zagreus lives among the dead/Zagreus sees you in your bed/And eats you when you're sleeping." Sleep tight, Time Lord kids!
** ''The God Complex'' uses a real-life nursery rhyme ("Oranges and Lemons") which goes like this: "Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop."<br />...The
* It doesn't appear in the actual series, but the ads for ''[[Torchwood]]: Children of Earth'' used the melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star".
* The ''[[Angel]]'' season 4 episode "Soulless" has Angelus sitting in a cage creepily singing "Teddy Bear's Picnic" to himself.
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* In a second season episode of ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' Olivia D'Abo is forced to sing "Pop Goes The Weasel". As she gets to the "pop", she's blown to smithereens by the explosive vest she's wearing.
* In a fifth season episode of ''[[Rebus]],'' a man has had {{spoiler|his wife and two children killed when his house was firebombed}} and has been reciting nursery rhymes on occasion since then. {{spoiler|After shooting the two dirty cops responsible (killing one and causing the other serious brain damage)}}, he recites "Pop Goes The Weasel" {{spoiler|and then eats a bullet}}.
* [[WWE]] wrestler The Boogeyman speaks almost exclusively in
* A skit on ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' involves Conan pulling out a guitar and playing a soothing nursery tune, while scenes of horrific natural disasters show on the screen and Conan sings about horrible things. (after the Michael Jackson trial: "Watch out, kiddies, Jacko's free!")
* In ''[[The Wire]]'', Omar Little is fond of whistling "The Farmer's In His Den" when he robs drug dealers.
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{{quote|'''Tony''': Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir... but if you want to see it you'll need top secret government clearance.}}
* The ''[[Babylon 5]]'' episode ''Ceremonies of Light and Dark'', [[The Dragon]] of the episode, after explaining in detail how he spent seven days killing a prisoner, proceeds to go into a flat rendition of ''Dem Bones''.
* ''[[General Hospital]]''. Laura Spencer sings "Brahm's Lullaby" to her baby girl as mobsters take their revenge on her husband and his business partner. We get scenes of said partner's errand boy and his girlfriend huddling behind a car to avoid the gunfire, said partner's girlfriend diving to the floor of her shower as the hitmen spray the bathroom with bullets, and finally, the Spencer house being
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Turn out the light and lock the doors
Praying that he passes. }}
* Heather Dale's song "Mordred's Lullaby." [[King Arthur|Morgause]] is crooning to her infant son about how she's going to shape his very soul to utterly loathe his father, all so he can die enacting her vengeance against him. Talk about your [[Evil Matriarch
* [[Regina Spektor]]'s "Mockingbird"
{{quote|Hush little baby, here comes the Sandman
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** Probably the most creepy is when you have to slaughter nearly 20 splicers to the tune of "How Much is that Doggy in the Window?" in the Little Sisters' Orphanage... {{spoiler|which is secretly home to a conditioning lab that turns little girls into the ADAM-gathering Little Sisters.}}
*** It really doesn't help that, seeing as Rapture has, socially speaking, long since fallen apart at the seams, and is starting to do so literally as well, the jukeboxes aren't in working order any longer, so not only are you killing splicers to "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?" you're actually killing them to "How Much Is That Doggy In Th- Doggy In Th- Doggy In Th-".
*** The orphanage isn't the worst use of that song, not by a long shot. The worst use comes in Fort Frolic, where it's playing when you enter the flooded wine cellar. Why is it the worst? Because you enter the cellar by passing through two rows of plaster statues that are scariness personified all by
** Splicers are often heard singing "Jesus loves me, this I know..." when they are looking for you.
** In ''Bioshock 2'' the Little Sisters are sometimes singing to themselves when gathering ADAM. ''"Who watches over sleeping angels? I do, I do..."''
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Until the day the hero stops the nightmares. }}
** Of course, at the end of the game when the day is saved, the heroes compose a new, more hopeful version of the fairy tale.
* ''[[Starsiege]]'' (mech-combat precursor to the ''Starsiege: Tribes'' [[First-Person Shooter]] franchise) describes a conflict between humanity and [[Killer Robot
{{quote|''Teddy kicks some dusty
Cybrids are all rusty
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== Web Original ==
* In ''[[Kate Modern]]: Precious Blood'', drugged-up serial killer {{spoiler|Terrence}} calls "Little pigs! Little pi-igs!", probably referencing ''[[The Shining]]''. He also uses the ([[Cult|already slightly creepy]]) Breeniverse chant "The Hymn of One is fun!" after describing carrying out a ritualistic murder.
* Cillian Crowe in ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' singing 'happy birthday' to himself, while not exactly a nursery rhyme, embodies this trope perfectly. That is, if you consider that he was currently thinking about ''killing'' the person he was talking to at the
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BCGf8FjBPE&feature=channel Mockingbird] by FEWDIO Horror. Extremely creepy.
* Used extensively in the "French invasion of England" chapters of ''[[Look to the West]]''. When the French steam fleet sails up the Thames to bombard London, we get interludes of "London's Burning" and, of course, when their rocket ship clears the only barrier before them:
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* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', when Bart and Lisa believe Ned Flanders has killed Maude, we see him heading up to the attic, where Lisa's hiding, carrying an axe and singing "Mary had a little lamb". Even though the audience knows it must be a [[Mistaken for Murderer]] plot (even if they've seen it before, and know ''exactly'' what's going on), it's still very creepy.
** As a toddler, Bart imagined his [[Evil Clown]] bed saying "If you should ''die'' before you wake...* [[Evil Laugh]]* "
** In another episode Bart calmly strolls through an [[Abandoned Playground]] with an
** In one of the very first segments on the Tracy Ullman Show, the kids are each being put to bed with something said that keeps them awake and freaked out - Marge sings "Rock-a-bye Baby" to Maggie, who visualizes herself falling out of a tall tree on a windy day.
* In ''[[Shrek]]'' Lord Farquaad taunts the Gingerbread man by holding his missing legs and saying "Run run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!".
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* "Alouette" is a rather graphic description of the preparation of a bird for supper: it has to be plucked.
** And they just ''had'' to use it in ''[[Tom and Jerry]]''. To be exact, ''The Two Mouseketeers.''
** It was also used in the 1949 [[Looney Tunes|Pepe Le Pew]] cartoon "For Scentimental Reasons" (Pepe was singing part of it while the cat was trying to wash the
** Near the end of ''[[Tales of Monkey Island]] Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood'', the Marquis De Singe sings a twisted version of the song {{spoiler|while getting the Wind Control Device ready for pulverizing Elaine into a fine powder}}:
{{quote|'''De Singe:''' Alouette, I will live forever, alouette, immortalité... Who will live forever? Moi... Who will conquer nature? Moi... Alouette, I will live forever, alouette, immortalité...}}
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Alvin, Simon and Theodore: Can we sing it in English?
"If you love me, tell me that you love me, if you don't please tell me that you do! Tell me that you love me true, tell me that you really do! Do do do, love me true, aaaah!" }}
* Many tunes written by one [http://ingeb.org/hbaumann.html Hans Baumann]. He was a children's book writer eventually, and wrote in that style early
** While the linked version translates to "today Germany will hear us" both phrases were in use at the time. Just replace the words in bold with ''gehört'' to change the mood from hopeful/uplifting to creepy/sinister.
* Another German one:
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* Field Operation Manual for early Panzerfaust had a two-line stanza on every page, forming a short poem mimicking popular children's rhymes. [http://www.deutsche-stadtpost.com/phila/pumpenmeier/FMPro?-db=pumpen.fp5&-format=detail.htm&-RecId=45882&-find It begins with]: ''Der schwerste Panzer geht in Brand / Nimmst Du die Panzerfaust zur Hand'' (''The heaviest armor goes up in flame / Once the Panzefaust in hand you take''). May count for real-life example of [[Mood Dissonance]].
** Around that time there was another cheerful jingle written in the German language: ''Nach dem Arbeit, vor dem Essen, Haende waschen, nicht vergessen.'' ("After work, before eating, don't forget to wash your hands.") And where was this helpful reminder posted up? The synthetic rubber factory in '' {{spoiler|Auschwitz!}}''
* It should be noted (as any camp counselor will verify) that kids ''love'' dark humour and slightly gory songs. Classic camp songs/rhymes as examples (notable lyrics in brackets) include ''Sgt. Billy Madison'' (he jumped from 40 000
* There's a song known as 'Tuuti Tuuti', which is sung like a lullaby but is literally about a peasant mother singing to her dead child, wishing it safe passage into the afterlife. Translated verses include speaking about 'children in hell' and that there will be a lot of room and food over in the hereafter.
* We can't forget this little gem, which has been taught to kids as recent as the 80s. I remember reading it and wondering why we're supposed to dislike the subject character.
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