
"For goodness sake, Calvin! Take a breath before you pass out on the floor!"
Calvin's mother, Calvin and Hobbes.

A character freaks out about something, and screams. And screams. And screams, to the point where it becomes hilarious. (Although, sometimes it goes even longer than that.) Sometimes, the character takes a deep breath to continue screaming, and even comments something like "Why do they make buildings this tall? Everyone knows you should be able to fall to your death in the same scream!"

This is almost always intentionally Played for Laughs; unintentionally hilarious long screams qualify as Narm.

May overlap with The Scream, Big No, Heroic BSOD or Faux Horrific. Reactive Continuous Scream is a subtrope.



  • Bill and Teds Bogus Journey: They fall down a pit to hell, screaming the whole way, but the pit is so deep that they eventually get tired of repeatedly screaming and start playing 20 questions.
  • The film version of Ronja the Robbers Daughter has a memorable one.
  • Journey to The Center of The Earth (the 2008 film) - When the main characters fall down the hole leading to the center of the earth. Of the "take a deep breath, then continue screaming" variety.
  • Home Alone: Macaulay Culkin's Overly Long Scream became practically iconic, and his "scream face" made up 90% of the trailers and marketing materials.
  • The Fifth Element: Chris Tucker's ear-molesting performance as Ruby Rhod. Akin to a seemingly endless loop of a stuck pig.
  • Austin Powers:


  • Westley does it in The Princess Bride, when Humperdink charges into the Pit of Despair and cranks Rugen's life-sucking machine to its maximum setting.
  • Walter in The Muppets, upon learning of the trouble his heroes' studio is in, screams across several short scenes. (Odd that nobody tried even to muffle him on the bus.)


  • In Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron uses up two whole lines of text to scream "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" after he wakes up to find Sirius Black standing over him with a knife.

Live Action TV

  • The Closer: A 6-year-old girl did this in the police station to demonstrate what her parents told her to do if the recently murdered child molester living next door ever approached her.
  • Supernatural: In the second-season episode Hollywood Babylon the brothers investigate a possible haunting on a movie set. This trope is one of the signs of how terrible the horror movie being filmed is.
  • A non-comedic example in Torchwood Series 2 episode Adrift: a boy gets zapped through a spacetime rift and returns seven months later (but 40 years older). What he saw on the other end of the rift drives him mad and he ends up in a mental hospital screaming for twenty hours straight, every day.
  • Definitely non-comedic in The Monocled Mutineer, where a condemned deserter screams like an animal all the way to the firing squad and during his execution. One of the soldiers threw up afterwards.

Newspaper Comics

Video Games

  • Used as an Overly Long Title for the game AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.
  • Unintentional version: In the Tomb Raider series, if Lara falls more than a certain distance, her death scream starts playing, on the assumption that she'll die from impact damage when she lands. There are a handful of places in the early games where you can fall so far that the scream loops multiple times before she hits the ground (and at least one place where Soft Water will allow her to survive such a drop).
  • In Shadow Warrior, if Lo Wang is falling from a dangerous height, he will scream all the way down. Find a pit deep enough and he will actually pause for breath and then continue shouting.
  • Non-comedic example: in First Encounter Assault Recon, the intro combines this with Distant Reaction Shot to show the full extent of the second Synchronicity Event.

Web Animation

  • Used a lot in Siblings's first April Fools' Day cartoon called "Siblings Untitled 01", such as the part where Rob and Johny ride a mine cart to a tropical forest screaming. Also at the end, Rob does this before Johny smacks him in the head with a chair.

Web Comics

  • Happened at least a couple of times in Freefall, in accordance with Cap'n Sam Starfall's philosophy, "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!" Helix is usually eager to join in. In one noteable incident near the beginning, the two of them are running in circles and screaming for long enough that they have to stop to take a deep breath (synchronized, even) before continuing. Florence comments on how inexplicable it is that Helix, who is a ROBOT, needs to stop for breath... Then she tears out his voicebox to shut him up, and offers to do the same to Sam if he doesn't quiet down.
  • Alex's Atomic F-Bomb in Captain SNES.
  • In Witchprickers, Ilemauzer the bat has one when she discovers she became a lot more humanoid.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The Simpsons: The family goes to a nightclub/restaurant. Homer gets hypnotized by a stage hypnotist, and unearths a traumatic childhood memory and starts screaming. He continues screaming as they leave, he tips the valet, drives home, brushes his teeth, and lies in bed. The next day Lenny and Carl bring him home from work still screaming; it was interrupting naptime at work.
  • Adventure Time
    • Lemongrab screams all the time as his default speaking voice, but this trope is invoked after he is pranked. In the scene, Finn and the princess leave a sign by his bed that says, "You really smell like dog buns." After he reads it, Lemongrab clenches his fists tightly, starts shaking, opens up his eyes wide, opens up his mouth wide, and screams loudly for several seconds, his tone rising in pitch until it cracks.
    • In a later episode, Finn does this while running away after a few clown nurses hold him down while kissing his toe.
  • Happens in Johnny Bravo when Johnny and Carl go over a waterfall, and at one point, stop screaming to take a breath.
  • Peter Griffin does it in Family Guy, when the experimental drug that temporarily turned him gay wears off in the middle of a group sex session. Also his shriek of acclamation when the drug first kicks in and Lois asks if he has turned gay. Also when his doctor performs an intimate anal examination.
  • On SpongeBob SquarePants, Plankton did it once in the episode where he and Mr. Krabs switch places.


    • Squidward's scream when SpongeBob and Patrick walk in on him during his bath, in a scene from "Have You Seen This Snail?" that has been subjected to Memetic Mutation.
  • In Taz-Mania, the Dingo and Taz are both knocked off a tall mountain and start to fall. They take so long to fall that they have to draw for breath and Dingo has time to admire his house.
  • Bender from Futurama is quite fond of these;

 Leela: They're {{[[[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] the Omachronians}}] back!

Bender: We're Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo- {{[[[Beat]] stops to inhale}}] -oooooooooooooooooooooooooomed!

 Sheen: "Wow, Jimmy, you just screamed for just 4 minutes."

  • In the second Eek the Cat episode, Eek has a very long scream after his dream ended with his head exploding.
  • In The Amazing World of Gumball, Richard did this as a child when he found out that magic doesn't exist. He didn't stop for 15 years.