History Main / SurpriseVehicle

* In the first episode of ''Manga/HanaukyoMaidTeam La Verite'', a helicopter appears right next to the two main characters with no noise warning of its approach.

* In the first episode of ''Anime/HanaukyoMaidTai La Verite'', a helicopter appears right next to the two main characters with no noise warning of its approach.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheMightyDucks'' animated movie had bored TagAlongKid Nosedive come to the rest of the ducks rescue when they thought he'd stolen there only means of escape and left them stranded.

* ''Film/BlueThunder''. The title helicopter appears from below the side of a bridge to save a woman being (unjustly) pursued by the police. The helicopter actually has a "whisper" mode that can be turned on to make it quieter than normal. Apparently, it is not a good idea to use it all the time; it most likely reduces the performance in exchange for sound reduction.

* ''Film/CharliesAngels'' had a helicopter rising up over a castle.

* ''Film/SkyCaptainAndTheWorldOfTomorrow''. Dex suddenly appears in one of Totenkopf's hoversleds to save the heroes from pursuing robots.

* ''Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier''. On the planet where "God" is imprisoned, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey rises up over a hill to rescue Kirk.

* Cyclonus makes his appearance like this in ''VideoGame/TransformersPreludeToEnergon''.

* This happens in the final scene of ''Film/TheMist''. The main character is saved by the U.S Military but he never heard the rolling of the tanks which are rather hard to miss as they make plenty of noise as they shake the Earth as they move about. A fog shouldn't effect the clarity of sound, only sight.

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/BlueThunder''. The title helicopter appears from below the side of a bridge to save a woman being (unjustly) pursued by the police. The helicopter actually had a "whisper" mode that could be turned on to make it quieter than normal. Apparently, it was not a good idea to use it all the time. It most likely reduced the performance in exchange for sound reduction.

* ''Film/{{Aliens}}''. When Ripley and Newt are about to be attacked by the Alien Queen in the atmosphere processing plant, the dropship rises up from below the edge of the platform they're on - partially justified due to the explosions all around them.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''[[Creator/{{Syfy}} Fact Or Faked Paranormal Files]]'' once showed how improbable this trope is in reality when a UFO video was speculated to actually be a helicopter with a light rig attached to it, but when they tested this themselves they quickly realized that at the highest altitude the chopper could go with the rig still visible they could still clearly hear it from the ground, with the noise level exceeding [=100dB=], which would have been picked up by the camera in addition to the ambient noise (people talking and such) that it ''did'' pick up, and no one on the ground would have mistaken it for anything but a helicopter as a result. Later tests showed that the rig had mostly likely been attached to a silent weather balloon.

[[folder:TabletopGames]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Most videos of people getting hit by trains, but especially [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUGLglJ2azo this]] fake video of a girl walking in front of an oncoming train. Note that not only is the roaring train too quiet for anyone to hear, but it's apparently traveling without any lights on until the last second... and apparently not traveling on train tracks.
** As parodied in Cirno's Perfect Math Class [[http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/112/460/cirno-getting-hit-by-a-train-o.gif here]].

* ''{{WesternAnimation/Up}}'' has a scene right when Carl and Russel are just about to release Kevin into her natural habitat, and the [[UsefulNotes/{{Airships}} Zeppelin]] ominously, silently rises up behind them, and only ''after'' it's snuck up did they see the floodlights and hear the roaring engines as the airship hovered to a stop.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/BackToTheFuturePartII https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bttf2_surprise_1435.jpg]]]]

* ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' does this with the reveal of [[spoiler: Haruna's airship]], which provides a way for Negi to get to Nodoka in time to save her from a group of bounty hunters. Repeated with the same vehicle during the Governor's Ball.

* Many helicopters, perhaps most famously the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UH-1_Iroquois UH-1]], are so loud that you know there is a helicopter nearby, but due to echoes, etc. it is sometimes difficult to know ''where'' it is unless you see it.
* Rumor has it that the U.S. military was working on a stealth helicopter that would not only have a low radar cross section, but could also hide quietly behind terrain for minutes or maybe hours at a time, then pop up to fire antitank missiles when needed.
** A popular urban legend/conspiracy theory is that the sinister [[TheMenInBlack Men in Black]] government agencies behind all the conspiracies have silent [[BlackHelicopter black helicopters]] that allow them to conduct operations without being observed.
* [[UsefulNotes/{{Airships}} Zeppelins]] in World War One were equipped with mufflers to silence their approach as they stalked in the nighttime clouds over their targets. In order to navigate in the clouds at night, they had a "cloud car" tethered to a half-mile-long cable in which an observer surveyed the land below and communicated using a telephone.

** The Thunderbirds, the Air Force's F-16 flying team, does a similar stunt, going so far as to [[LampshadeHanging explain]] it as a relatively common tactic in air-to-ground operations. If the anti-aircraft gunners are looking the wrong way, it's much harder for them to shoot you.
* TruthInTelevision where jet fighters in general are concerned (as anyone who's been to an airshow anywhere in the world will tell you) as the things are moving so fast you generally don't hear them until ''after'' they've past overhead. This is only if the fighter in question is moving at trans- or super-sonic speeds, in which case you will not hear the noise until the plane is past, when you will hear a sonic boom.
** Even at subsonic speeds, you are still dealing with an aircraft traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. If they are using terrain-following tactics, or if the visibility is low, you will usually be surprised when they finally appear, regardless of if you could hear them or not. The way the sound of the jet engine bounces off of every available vertical surface (buildings, terrain, etc.) add to the difficulty in figuring out where they will appear.
** The plane is a hundred feet above you so it will take about a tenth a second for the sound to reach you, giving the plane time to travel from dozens of feet away to directly overhead and to go past your location.
** Some attack aircraft are designed with relative silence in mind. The American A-10 Warthog uses high-bypass turbofans (think of the big engines typical of airliners) rather than the low-bypass turbofans favored by most other combat aircraft because they trade raw power [[note]] not as useful to the Hog as it might be for jet fighters like the Blue Angels' Hornets or the Thunderbirds' Fighting Falcons[[/note]] for reduced noise. Flying at low speed and low altitude towards a target, these planes have been known to induce puckering-level amounts of fear and surprise even in the troops that ''called them in''. The first indication that the troops usually have of the aircraft's attack is the target suddenly being blown to pieces, followed by the hellish buzzing of the rounds from the cannon, and THEN the sound of the Warthog itself.
* In the Sixties the CIA realised they needed a stealth helicopter for infiltrating countries like North Korea. Although realising a completely silent helicopter was impractical, they took a standard Huey and worked on reducing the noise signature of each component -- modifications included replacing analogue components with early electronics and adding an extra rotorblade. Eventually they came up with an aircraft that when flown at a particular speed, along with nap-of-the-earth flying, was unlikely to be detected unless you were specifically listening for it.
** The Army purposefully built a stealth helicopter for reconnaissance in the early 2000s, but the project was scrapped before being put into production.
* An [[AmazonBrigade all female fighter planet unit]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches the 588th Night Bomber Regiment]], also known as the Night Witches or Nachthexen in German, used this trope to their advantage for the purposes of psychological warfare during World War II against the Nazis. At night using old biplanes the women would climb to as high an altitude as they could, cut the engine and then silently glide down until they were right above the German lines, at which point they would release their bombs and any Germans on the ground [[BringMyBrownPants promptly found themselves in need of new trousers]], with the worst part for them being that they could usually hear the planes going ''up'' but after the engines were cut [[ParanoiaFuel had no idea when or where the bombs would actually hit until they already had]].

* The Felreaver patrolling Hellfire Peninsula in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. It's a 50-foot-tall demonic robot that shakes the ground with its footsteps and makes a sound not unlike a locomotive from hell, yet it still manages to surprise (and crush) unwary players who weren't paying attention to their surroundings. The game also has the dreaded Surprise Devilsaurs, which are even worse because they are actually quite sneaky (as sneaky as a T-rex can be).
** And then a classic GoodBadBug made the Fel Reavers into normal-size {{bears|AreBadNews}}. Which still shook the ground with their footsteps and made the locomotive from hell sounds. So, screaming stealth bears.

* Cyclonus makes his appearance like this in ''TransformersPreludeToEnergon''.

* ''Film/{{Aliens}}''. When Ripley and Newt are about to be attacked by the Alien Queen in the atmosphere processing plant, the dropship rises up from below the edge of the platform they're on - partially due to the explosions all around them.

* In ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' a humunguos tree-dozer '''SUDDENLY''' appears in the middle of the forest and starts wreaking terrible chaos and destruction all around it.

* The Felreaver patrolling Hellfire Peninsula in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. It's a 50-foot tall demonic robot that shakes the ground with its footsteps and makes a sound not unlike a locomotive from hell, yet it still manages to suprise (and crush) unwary players who weren't paying attention to their surroundings. The game also has the dreaded Suprise Devilsaurs, which are even worse because they are actually quite sneaky (as sneaky as a T-rex can be).

** Then there's the picture-perfect example of this trope in the Halls of Reflection dungeon, as you're running from the Lich King, just as you reach a cliff, your faction's ''flying base'' apears out of nowhere. These are the size of Naval battleships, and one of them is carried in the air by two separate zeppelin balloons.

** The plane is a hundred feet above you so it will take about a tenth a second for the sound to reach you, giving the plane time to travel from dozens of feet away from directly overhead to directly overhead.

'''Virus:''' Helicopters? Try VTOL jet aircraft, dude. And there's no such thing as "light-absorbing paint". It's actually a resin matrix of nanoscopic piezoelectric metacrystals. Active noise-cancellation is civvy technology already used in sound studios, you just need a lassive number of CPU cycles to make it work 3-dimensionally on a whole aircraft. Techno-angelic cloud-computing makes CABAL the most powerful supercomputer in the world, of course, so that's not a problem.\\

* Castellan Ursakar E. Creed's "Tactical Genius" special rule in ''Warhammer40K'' allows him to infiltrate a single unit before the battle (see MirrorScare for how it's supposed to look). MemeticMutation has extended this to entire Baneblade tanks or even ''building-sized Titans'', often through use of BehindAStick.

See also SeeNoEvilHearNoEvil; SilentRunningMode; StealthHiBye; RuleOfPerception; and LookBothWays.

* ''Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier''. On the planet where "God" was imprisoned, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey rose up over a hill to rescue Kirk.

* In ''TraumaTeam,'' Gabriel Cunningham pulls this when confronted by Ian Holden late in the game, by stepping back off the roof of the hospital and grabbing onto a helicopter's ladder. How he wasn't sliced to ribbons by the propeller is anyone's guess.

* ''[[Creator/SciFiChannel Fact Or Faked Paranormal Files]]'' once showed how improbable this trope is in reality when a UFO video was speculated to actually be a helicopter with a light rig attached to it, but when they tested this themselves they quickly realized that at the highest altitude the chopper could go with the rig still visible they could still clearly hear it from the ground, with the noise level exceeding [=100dB=], which would have been picked up by the camera in addition to the ambient noise (people talking and such) that it ''did'' pick up, and no one on the ground would have mistaken it for anything but a helicopter as a result. Later tests showed that the rig had mostly likely been attached to a silent weather balloon.

* ''Series/TheSarahConnorChronicles'', Cameron steps out onto the street when SMACK. She gets hit by a car and her head goes through the windshield and she tells the people inside to remain calm.

* Averted in ''RatchetAndClank: Going Commando'' when Ratchet asks if Clank hears something before the Thugs-4-Less Leader reappears in a helicopter.

* ''TheAmazingSpiez'' episode "Operation Spy-Sitter" had a WOOHP helicopter appear outside the window of the kids' house.

* ''Webcomic/ExterminatusNow'' has [[http://exterminatusnow.co.uk/2010-12-06/comic/non-storyline/randoms/boy-did-you-pick-the-wrong-table/ a hilarious example]] with its subversion of BlackHelicopters.
--> '''ConspiracyTheorist:''' BlackHelicopters! With silenced, counter-rotating blades and light-absorbing paint! They're ''real'', man! Don't be suckered in by the media lies!\\
'''Virus:''' Helicopters? Try VTOL jet aircraft, dude? And there's no such thing as "light-absorbing paint". It's actually a resin matrix of nanoscopic piezoelectric metacrystals. Active noise-cancellation is civvy technology already used in sound studios, you just need a lassive number of CPU cycles to make it work 3-dimensionally on a whole aircraft. Techno-angelic cloud-computing makes CABAL the most powerful supercomputer in the world, of course, so that's not a problem.\\

* Castellan Ursakar E. Creed's "Tactical Genius" special rule in ''Warhammer40K'' allows him to infiltrate a single unit before the battle (see MirrorSurprise for how it's supposed to look). MemeticMutation has extended this to entire Baneblade tanks or even ''building-sized Titans'', often through use of BehindAStick.
-> Where did that Baneblade come from?! Only a tactical genius [[OutGambitted could ha-]]''[[SayMyName CREEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDD!!!!]]''