The Quiet One: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"I ain't quiet''

 

 

If he's a member of [[The Squad]], he'll either [[Blood Knight|enjoy killing a bit too much]] or suffer anguish over the fact that he has killed and must continue to kill. If this is ever explained, it's credited to his former civilian occupation being one that abhors death and destruction. Often, this is the member assigned to carry the [[BFG]].

 

 

 

 

{{examples}}

** ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'' on the other hand, this treatment is given to the ''main character'', more or less. In the very first episode, Yusei Fudo ''didn't even open his mouth'' until near the end. And as tradition, his first on-screen words were "Hey... duel me."

* Akira Okochi and Zazie Rainyday in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' take this in two different directions. Akira doesn't speak ''much'', but talks normally when she does. Zazie, on the other hand, can hold entire conversations without speaking ''at all''. She answers a phone call and [[Silent Bob|relates how her day is going (apparently) without ever saying anything apart from a few ellipses and is understood perfectly]].

* Heero Yuy from ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam|Gundam Wing]]''

* Sasuke, [[Aloof Big Brother|Itachi]], Shino, Neji and Gaara in ''[[Naruto]]''. Although Sasuke and Neji [[Deadpan Snarker|used to make remarks, once in a while, about how stupid the others were]]. More or less the only female example is [[Shrinking Violet|Hinata]].

* Rey Za Burrel from ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny|Gundam SEED Destiny]]''.

* And, well, outside his Gundam, there is Shani, one of the Druggies from ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED|Gundam SEED]]''. Get him in his Gundam, [[Ax Crazy|however...]]

* Guts, Pippin from ''[[Berserk]]''.

* Commander Gendo Ikari from ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''.

*** In the original episode "Someday In The Rain", Yuki spends about a third of the episode on-screen, but neither [[Minori Chihara]] or [[Michelle Ruff]] are credited...because she doesn't speak throughout the entire episode.

* [[Big Badass Wolf|Zafila]]/[[Spell My Name with an "S"|Zafira]] of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', so much so that the trainees in ''StrikerS'' didn't even realize that he could talk until their second mission.

* Mugi from ''[[Hitohira]]''. Due to her [[Character Development]] she moves out of this, helped by the fact that she's somehow still [[Romantic Two-Girl Friendship|rather popular with other girls]].

* Maggie from ''[[Read or Die|R.O.D. The TV]]''. Has a habit of "nesting" with piles of books in small, enclosed spaces.

* [[Gungrave|Brandon Heat]]. So much so, he was often [[Lampshade Hanging|mocked]] by other characters for being such a man of few words. He only usually has one or two lines per episode, and in the video game, with one exception, he says [[Heroic Mime|nothing at all]].

* Luciola from ''[[Last Exile]]''.

* Rocket from ''[[Ginga Densetsu Weed]]''

* ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'''s Hiei tends towards this. Chuck Huber, his voice actor, told a humorous story in the commentary; he once watched an episode of the show with his family, and all Hiei said through the whole episode was "Hn."

{{quote|"[His wife] was like, 'Wow. They pay you for that?'"}}

* Occasionally, Ryu Sanada of ''[[Kimi ni Todoke]]'' will speak in ''whole'' sentences. But not often.

* Kamemon in ''[[Digimon Savers]]''. The PawnChessmon count too, but they never actually talk on-screen.

* Ichise from ''[[Texhnolyze]]''.

** Ditto for [[Emotionless Girl|Ran]].

* [[Toriko|Melk]] {{spoiler|the First}} is said to be a quiet, shy man. {{spoiler|He's actually very talkative, its just that he literally talks so quietly no one can hear him.}}

* Kenshiro from ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' acts this way most of the time. Most of his lines are less than five words long, and he usually has less than 10 per episode, despite being the main character.

* In ''[[Saint Beast]]'', Luca is always brooding but rarely speaks his thoughts, which is part of what makes him [[The Confidant|good for counsel]].

* Robin in ''[[One Piece]]''. She is not as heavy of a case anymore, though, but certainly was when she had just joined the Straw Hats - probably because she didn't want to open up to her new crew because she believed she would leave soon. But even nowadays, she is not that talkative unless the conversation really interests her, she needs to give a warning, or if someone asks her for [[Mr. Exposition|exposition]].

 

== Comic Books ==

* Omega from [[Omega the Unknown]], who says nothing for the first few issues, though he eventually deems it important enough to ask a suicidal woman how she could conceive of ending her existence, and opens up a little after that.

* Cougar in [[The Losers]].

 

== Eastern Animation ==

* ''[[Technotise Edit I Ja]]'''s autistic math genius Abel, who is, well, a quiet autistic math genius.

 

== Fan Works ==

* Andy from ''[[Calvin and Hobbes: The Series|Calvin and Hobbes The Series]]''. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Socrates:

{{quote|(trying to find Andy) "Well, [he] was never the talkative one. Admittedly, [[Character Development|he's gotten better]] [[Medium Awareness|this season,]] but...}}

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Predator]]'' the quiet one was the Native American tracker "Billy" whose contributions were things like "Something is out there." Poignant because, sure enough, something ''was'' out there.

** ''[[Predators]]'' has Hanzo, who at first seems to be this because he doesn't speak English. But then it's revealed that as a [[Yakuza]] member, [[Yubitsume|he lost fingers]] for "speaking too much".

* Gaear Grimsrud from ''[[Fargo]]'' is an almost mute character, though he is also a demented sociopath.

* Captain Miller from ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'' possesses some of these traits.

** Also Jack Fairy, who doesn't say a word until the Death of Glitter concert.

* In ''[[The Magnificent Seven]]'', there are ''two'' Quiet Ones:

** [[Robert Vaughan]]'s Lee (the gambler) has a whopping 16 lines.

* The abovementioned Britt was of course based on Kyuzo, the taciturn master swordsman from ''[[The Seven Samurai]]'' (played by Seiji Miyaguchi).

* The Driver from ''[[Drive (film)|Drive]]'' speaks less than twenty whole sentences in the movie, and he's the viewpoint character. The reason for this is left ambiguous, but it's possible he has a mental disorder.

* Matsu, the protagonist of the ''[[Joshuu Sasori|Female Prisoner Scorpion]]'' series is very quiet. She says little in the first film (one of her lines is "you talk too much"), but the second is her most sparse; she's onscreen for most of the 92 minute runtime, but says only eight words across two sentences. By contrast, Yuki in the first film seems to be literally mute.

 

== Jokes ==

* A farmer tells the new farmhand: "I don't talk much. If I give you a nod, you'll come." The farmhand: "Guess we'll work together well, boss, 'cause I don't talk much either. If I shake my head, I won't come."

 

== Literature ==

** Then subverted when he usually has to explain what his one-word outburst means anyway.

* Benjamin, the donkey from ''[[Animal Farm]]''.

* [[The Emperor|Emperor]] Gregor Vorbarra from the [[Vorkosigan Saga]].

{{quote|We all turned to look at her. She was visibly annoyed. “I’m not mute,” she said. “I just don’t talk much. This deserves comment of some kind.”}}

* Mac, from ''[[The Dresden Files]]''. Getting words out of him at all is rare, and if you see him speaking in actual ''sentences'', you know things are very, very serious.

* The Silent from ''[[Black Company]]''. {{spoiler|He speaks only once through entire series, when he performs ritual to bind Lady's powers.}}

* Ruth in ''[[Someone Else's War|Someone Elses War]]''.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** ''[[Power Rangers Mystic Force]]'': Madison (insert "Who's Madison?" joke here).

* Nathan Wournos in ''[[Haven]]''

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

* Everyone by now knows [[Christian]] to be a bit of a Loud Mouth...but before that happened, he and [[Edge]] were part of a group known as the Brood (a gimmick of pseudo-vampires). He didn't even speak the first few months...until Ken Shamrock ankle locked him to revealing where [[Stephanie McMahon]] was during the [[Ministry of Darkness]] era.

* [[The Undertaker]] is also one; unless he's cutting one of his amazing promos.

 

== Radio ==

* Fred Norris of ''[[Howard Stern|The Howard Stern Show]]''. Although he's in the studio, his job is sound effects, and they'll often do more talking than he does. When he DOES talk it could be just a quip or a punchline to jokes or impressions or even responding to Howard or Robin. If you even DARE insult him or call him on something, run he has been known to react VERY strongly to criticism, sensitive issues in his life among other incidents, once Howard looked in his bag and Fred nearly quit the show after an ugly outburst.

* The classic [[Jack Benny]]-[[Mel Blanc]] "Sí, Sy, Sue" routine might fit here, with Blanc's character responding entirely in deadpan monosyllables that are, in context and timing, hilarious.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The Dark Angels and their successor chapters are known for this. They rarely speak to anyone outside of the chapter, and in one noticeable instance, the entire Consecrators Chapter deployed ''en masse'' and relieved an [[Redshirt Army|Imperial Guard]] force by fighting for six straight hours and killing the enemy's leader without sending a single transmission to the guard.

 

== Theatre ==

* In the musical ''[[How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying]]'', Miss Jones is the quietest of the secretaries until she lets loose in "Brotherhood Of Man".

 

== Video Games ==

** In the Japanese version, Fujin talked in only one kanji at a time. It's not a bad English equivalent.

*** Her last line of dialogue in ''Final Fantasy VIII'' is (in both versions) relatively long and spoken normally. In addition to highlighting the importance of what she has to say, it surprises the other characters, who presumably thought she was incapable of normal speech.

** For a character of ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', Lexaeus of Organization XIII.

* Cloud of ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' canon seems to fit this trope, with other characters going so far as to praise him for his calm and collected mindset. He also speaks relatively few words to the other Warriors of Cosmos, not to mention it seems like he's always in a perpetual contest with himself to see how he can express a thought in as few words as possible when he does speak.

* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]''-Radigan Conagher, the Engineer's grandfather, is "a man of many ideas and few words."

** This is what the official bio for the Heavy claims him to be. He [[Boisterous Bruiser|cheers up]] once he starts mowing people down with [[I Call It Vera|Sasha]].

 

* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' [[The Big Guy|Roofus the Robot]] is probably the least talkative castmember, and he's nearly monosyllabic when he does speak. He's also probably the least intelligent of the regular cast (apart from wacky neighbors like Floyd and Heywood), though he comes across as one of the most [[Do Androids Dream?|soulful]] because he is so quiet. "Will I see the sky... when I am off?"

* X of ''[[A Magical Roommate]]'' has never once spoken more than four words or six syllables in a single panel.

* Zz'dtri from ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]''. Fitting as he is the [[Evil Counterpart]] of [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|Vaarsuvius]].

* Kanryl of ''[[Ears for Elves]]'' fits this, possibly because he spends most of his time with animals.

 

== Web Original ==

* Evek is the most silent of the [[Freelance Astronauts]], but then, given his competition, it's not exactly a hard title to achieve.

* Jennifer O'Connell from [[Behind the Veil]] communicates entirely through written notes, sign-language and text-to-speech programs, but only because of psychological reasons (her parents were killed in a car crash and she was trapped in the car with them for several hours because she had been paralysed for years and couldn't escape herself). She is still capable of speech, and recently began talking to her step-mother, but limits herself to short sentances.

 

== Western Animation ==

** To elaborate, starting with Season 2, he normally only says "Eeyup" or "Nope"... Apart from two times, one in which he switched speaking roles with Applejack, and one where he was under the influence of the a Love Potion.

* Brainy on [[Hey Arnold!]] has only said eight words in all the series: “something”, “I dunno”, “Hi Helga”. “I’ll go with you”. However, it’s because his [[Vader Breath]].

 

== Real Life ==

*** Indeed, we get the term "laconic" from "Laconia," a shortening of "Lacedaemonia", referring to the region in which Sparta lies, and often used to refer to Sparta itself.

*** The story goes as such: An emissary from Philip of Macedon (father of [[Alexander the Great|this guy]]) goes to Sparta and reads a long speech: "If we enter your lands, then we shall impale your men, violate your women and slaughter your children, burn your granaries, and put all priests to the sword..." and so forth. The Spartan king doesn't say anything until the end, when he replies: "If."

* In [[The Beatles]], [[George Harrison]] was often considered the 'quiet one' being overshadowed both by the songwriting genius of Lennon & McCartney and the good natured clowning of Ringo Starr. Later, when he was allowed to write songs, he proved his innate talent was the equal of his comrades with 'Something' and 'Here Comes The Sun' amongst others.

* John Entwistle, bassist for [[The Who]], would later claim the title of "the quiet one" for himself - while his bandmates would flail wildly about the stage and destroy their instruments, he stood still as a statue, single-mindedly playing his bass, and rarely opening his mouth. He would eventually write a song called "The Quiet One" about himself.

** He got the name for having the genius idea of ''not discussing his plans in bars where other people could hear them'', not for being laconic.

* Helmuth Count Moltke, who masterminded the Prussian campaign against Austria in 1866 and the German one against France in 1870/71, was known as "der große Schweiger" (the Great Silent).

* Introverts, especially [[Myers-Briggs|IxxPs]], tend to act like this.

* John Deacon of [[Queen]]. When the band was together, he never sang on the albums and only answered questions in interviews if they were specifically directed to him. After Freddie Mercury died, he dropped out of the band and, aside from one single released in 1997, retired from the music business entirely.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Silence Tropes]]

[[Category:Index With a Heart of Gold]]

[[Category:The Squad]]

[[Category:Introversion Tropes]]