Brown Note: Difference between revisions
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** ''Everything's Eventual'' revolves around a man who can make people kill themselves by sending them a seemingly random pattern of symbols and a word that is significant to their life over email.
** ''[[IT]]'', the sight of the title monster's [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|true form]] causes whoever views it to go completely insane.
* The scrimshaw Turtle in ''[[The Dark Tower|Dark Tower VI]]'', a [[Clingy MacGuffin|Clingy Artifact]] which
** The [[Artifact of Doom|"Black Thirteen"]] crystal ball from the ''[[Dark Tower]]'' series has similar effects from an evil perspective. Left alone, it would kill everyone it comes in contact with by causing them to kill or commit suicide and/or [[Speak of the Devil|release the Beast into the world]]. Fortunately, the heroes, who are [[I'm Not Afraid of You|pressed for time]], decide to leave it in a long-term storage locker {{spoiler|under the World Trade Center}}.
* The {{color|blue|house}}, particularly the deeper parts of it (such as the Grand Hall and the Spiral Staircase), in ''[[House of Leaves]]''. Some would argue that ''[[Tome of Eldritch Lore|the book itself]]'' is a [[Real Life]] Brown Note. Seriously, it's that strange. It has managed to cause [http://www.houseofleaves.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1759&highlight=dreams+ inspired nightmares].
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** 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 Magician's Nephew]]'', which mentions the [[Words Can Break My Bones|Deplorable Word]], was written in 1955, just as the Cold War was starting to get serious. Aslan's final speech reads 'some wicked one of your world will find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things.' He then goes on to reference the World War. One might [[Author Filibuster|almost think]] [[C. S.
** In fairness to Lewis, the [[Atomic Hate|Bomb]] ''is'' the first weapon humanity has ever invented that ''seriously'' has the potential to depopulate the planet. Given the antagonistic politics of the day, and the fact that the Soviet Union had until recently been ruled by a genocidal madman, and well, the ongoing danger of nuclear weapons, he was right to be worried.
*** And despite the fact that the [[Cold War]] has ended and the Soviet Union disbanded, the fact that the United States and China still hold more nukes to destroy the world at least four times over more or less turns this into an allegory for "''He who launches a single nuke on a populace effectively ends all humanity''".<ref>Reminder: cockroaches are immune to nukes as well as damn near anything but a whole lot of blunt trauma, so it wouldn't be the end of all life on earth, just everything but cockroaches and microscopic organisms underneath the Earth.</ref>
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* Ted Chiang's short story ''Understand'' features two super-intelligent people duelling by trying to implant deadly Brown Notes in each other. {{spoiler|The one that succeeds had been subconsciously planted in its victim in the previous few days; it is then triggered when his enemy tells him to "Understand"}}
* One of [[Bentley Little]]'s perverse stories involves a numerical code that causes anyone who looks at it to suffer a crippling orgasm. The military considers using it to end all wars.
* The hero of one of [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s ''SERRAted Edge'' novels uses the entire discography of [[They Might Be Giants]] to do this to a group of psychics sicced on him by the [[Big Bad]]; the theory was that the nonsensical nature of the band's lyrics made it impossible to sing along to without devoting a considerable amount of conscious thought to them, meaning his (and their) minds would be too preoccupied with thinking about the lyrics to do much of anything else. (It helped that the psychics trying to pick his brain were culturally stuck in the Middle Ages and had no ''possible'' context by which to even begin to grasp what the hell was going on in his head; one of them was led off wailing helplessly about alchemical formulae.) Also, they were [[Ear Worm]]s, so every
** However, one of the hobgoblin servants found the tunes quite catchy and was also singing them before {{spoiler|being bitch-slapped by his boss}}.
* In ''[[Animorphs]]'', at one point they fight a race of aliens called Howlers, who have a screaming cry that has very nasty effects on any sentient creature who hears it.
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* Henry Kuttner's short story "Nothing But Gingerbread Left" a semantics professor develops a German-language ditty so catchy that a person hearing it will be able to do nothing but think about it. Broadcast in occupied Europe, the song drives the Nazis so insane, they lose the war.
* In ''[[More Information Than You Require]]'', anyone who looks at an axolotl (a type of salamander) for too long will become one.
* The short story/long sentence "[http://www.ichorfalls.com/2008/10/27/the-fulcrum The Fulcrum]" features a ''punctuation mark'' that will destroy your understanding of language, which in turn leaves you incapable of comprehending reality. This was
* In P.C. Hodgell's ''[[Chronicles of the Kencyrath]]'', the cry of a rathorn (a vicious, carnivorous unicorn-like creature) induces terror in those who hear it. The Kencyr house of Knorth adopted the rathorn as its banner and its cry as their [[Battle Cry]]; members of the House appear to be immune to the sound.
* The ''[[Ravenor]]'' series of ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' novels contains the arch-villains quest to learn Enuncia, the language of the gods. A single, out-of-context syllable read aloud causes the speakers mouth to bleed, a nearby servitor's head to explode, and drives another berserk enough to smash its head to itty-bitty little pieces against a stone wall.
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