History Main / DumbStruck

* Paramount's 1961 Modern Madcap "Crumley Cogwheel" has the titular character a drone in an office pool who is called into the boss's office because in the twenty years he's worked for the company--Michigan Nuts And Bolts--he has never asked for a raise. His timidness leaves him tongue-tied and incapable of rational speech, so he is given a week to ask for a raise or be fired. Cogwheel apparently finds the courage through liquid courage...he gets drunk during a lunch break, interrupts a board meeting and forcibly demands a raise.

Sometimes your HeroicBSOD is so bad your language software crashes. In non-geek terms, this means the character that had the HeroicBSOD is unable to talk. Usually resolved by means of EpiphanyTherapy.

* Phoebe and [[spoiler: Rita Rossi]] from AshitaNoNadja.

* In the film ''Film/{{Amy}}'', a young girl feigns deafness and doesn't speak after her father is killed.
* In ''{{Jumanji}}'', ever since Peter and Judy's parents died, the former stopped speaking to everyone except the latter (who apparently is the only one who knows he can talk at all).

* This is the plot of the book ''Silent to the Bone.'' The character who's silenced is accused of dropping his little sister and nearly killing her. However, this seems out-of-character for him, and his best friend tries to work with him to make him speak again. [[spoiler: In fact, it was a negligent nanny. However, I believe the boy had a crush on her, so he kept silent.]]

* In one stage adaptation of ''Literature/TheTurnOfTheScrew'', Flora has stopped speaking after whatever it was that happened with the previous governess (heavily implied in this version to be sexual abuse).

* Haley was like this for a long time in ''Webcomic/OrderOfTheStick''. She wasn't actually mute, she could just only talk in cryptograms which changed every comic.

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* Koji Nanjou in [=~Zetsuai1989~=] goes mute after he's in a nearly fatal motorcycle accident. He's in a coma for a while and does come out of it, but when he wakes up he can't talk. This is a problem because he's a singer by profession.

* In ''{{Crysis}}: Legion'', when Dr. Gould describes [[spoiler: the true purpose of the Nanosuit]] as [[PrecisionFStrike "gay rape on hanging flies"]], even the nearby wounded are stunned into silence. ItMakesSenseInContext, but still...

* ''DeathNote'': One of the effects of Mello's kidnapping of [[spoiler:Light's sister Sayu]] is leaving her unable to talk. And walk. And do pretty much anything, really. [[spoiler: By the end, she's starting to get better.]]

* Rose in the first ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist'' series.

* In the film ''{{Amy}}'', a young girl feigns deafness and doesn't speak after her father is killed.

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* In one stage adaptation of ''TheTurnOfTheScrew'', Flora has stopped speaking after whatever it was that happened with the previous governess (heavily implied in this version to be sexual abuse).

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[[DescribeTopicHere Describe DumbStruck Here]]

* In the RockOpera {{Tommy}} by TheWho, the title character becomes psychosomatically "deaf, dumb and blind" after witnessing his father being killed by his wife's lover and then being told, "You didn't hear it / You didn't see it / You won't say nothing to no one."

* Rose in the ''FullmetalAlchemist'' Anime.
* Misato from ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', after surviving the Second Impact and seeing her dad getting killed by an Angel.

* The character Koji in [=~Zetsuai1989~=] goes mute after he's in a nearly fatal motorcycle accident. He's in a coma for a while and does come out of it, but when he wakes up he can't talk. This is a problem because he's a singer by profession.
* ''DeathNote'': One of the effects of Mello's kidnapping of [[spoiler:Light's sister]] is leaving her unable to talk. And walk. And do pretty much anything, really.

* The girl in ''{{Firefly}}'', in the village that kidnaps Simon and River; River reads her mind, leading to the village wanting to burn her as a witch and the trope-naming BigDamnHeroes moment.
* The hybrids which control the Cylon ships in ''{{Battlestar Galactica}}'' appear to (at least some extent) show this phenomenon. One of the original Cylon models (Leobin aka 2) theorizes that their seemingly nonsensical rambling is actually highly complex and coded prophecy. Later, Baltar and Diana (and later still Baltar and Rosalin) interpret a random statement about 3 seeing 5 as Diana (model 3) seeing the final five. Eventually, this is proven true.

* One of a couple of possible explanations for Ike's muteness in The Young Riders.
* In an episode of ILoveLucy, Fred (a notorious penny-pincher) is completely unable to speak after realizing he wasted hundreds of dollars on a [[TheAllegedCar lemon]].

* Haley was like this for a long time in OrderOfTheStick. She wasn't actually mute, she could just only talk in cryptograms which changed every comic.

* Played for humor in OnePiece; when the Mugiwara Crew's bounties are updated after Enies Lobby, Sanji is so upset with the picture on his (they couldn't get a photo, so it ends up as a {{Gonk}} version of him) that he stops speaking intelligibly for a while.

* Chapter 10 of ''[[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force]]'' reveals that Lily Strosek used to be able to speak, but the emotional damage from her life as a lab experiment eventually made her unable to project her voice.
* Young Clare in the {{Claymore}} Flashback Arc.

* ''{{Scrooged}}''. The Tiny Tim stand-in is a little boy who hadn't spoken since he saw his father killed five years earlier.

* Chapter 10 of [[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Magical Records Lyrical Nanoha Force]]'' reveals that Lily Strosek used to be able to speak, but the emotional damage from her life as a lab experiment eventually made her unable to project her voice.

* TruthInTelevision for some on the autistic spectrum, albeit only temporarily.
** What do you mean by "albeit only temporarily"?