Cute, but Cacophonic

Iron Man armor: strong against fire and bludgeoning, weak to sonic kittens.

"That's Senti's voice. Very distinctive. It damages the hearing regardless of the transmission method."

— Su, Honkai Impact 3rd

Usually, this trope is used for comedic effect, because it's hard to see it coming.

An extremely cute and/or tiny animal turns out to have a surprisingly loud cry. A gorgeous person has a voice that is grating beyond all possible belief. It often causes fear in other characters until one sees the speaker and is amazed such a horrifying noise could come out of something so innocuous.

This trope is the flipside of Killer Rabbit, wherein the cute thing looks innocent, fluffy, and harmless, but is actually vicious and deadly. Note that some Cute but Cacophonic animals are also Killer Rabbits. Beware the Cute Ones.

Truth in Television, as anyone who has ever encountered a cat who wants food knows. Also, having a surprisingly loud cry to scare the crap out of predators is a terrific defense mechanism if you are a tiny, cute animal who can't do much else. Some animals combine this with the ability to seemingly suddenly transform into a vicious monster. Either way, it isn't good for a predator's nerves.

A common trait of Mister Muffykins, particularly the older, nastier versions. A Cat Concerto can induce this, especially at nights. Not to be confused with Noisy Nature. Everyone is louder than they need to be in Noisy Nature.

In anime, this can combine with a Noblewoman's Laugh for a truly fearsome effect.

See also Loud of War. Sub-Trope of Vocal Dissonance, and often the result of No Indoor Voice. Not to be confused with a Silly Animal Sound. If the sound rises to the level of a weapon in itself, see Super-Scream. Contrast Beautiful Singing Voice.

For Real Life examples, do not add people as examples of this trope.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In the 1980s, a series of animated ads for Trio (a British chocolate biscuit bar) was launched, featuring a girl named Suzy who seems like a cute kid - until she opens her mouth and starts bellowing:
  TRIO!
  TRIIIO!
  I WANT A TRIO AND I WANT ONE NOW!

Anime & Manga

• The protagonist of Aggretsuko is a cute female red panda who sings metal songs in an angry male voice to express her rage at her annoying coworkers.
• Koyomi (Yomi) from Azumanga Daioh the Animation is reasonably attractive, and has an okay speaking voice, but is quite dreadfully bad at singing, as her friends discovered when she took her turn on a karaoke video game... save for Tomo, who knew, and registered alarm when she announced her intention to sing. Which is made even more hilarious by the fact that her actress is actually quite good, as you hear in Yomi's image songs. As if Rie Tanaka couldn't sing.
• Laura, the Prairie Girl: Both Laura and Carrie are small children, but Laura is a Genki Girl who gets overly carried away with herself, and Carrie shreiks whenever she's upset.
• Lizzy Midford from Black Butler, as well as Finny and Bardroy.
• Cells at Work!: Red Blood Cell AE3803 has a tendency to let out a horrified shriek whenever something goes wrong, whether it's being attacked by germs or getting yelled at by one of the Killer T Cells for making a wrong turn.
• A mild example exists in Code Geass when it comes to Nunnally's "meows".
• Mana Aida from Doki Doki! PreCure can and does do a lot of amazing things, but singing is not one of them, no matter how much or loudly she tries.
• Dragon Goes House-Hunting: Pip is an adorable baby bird, but he's capable of letting out a cry so strong it causes grown men to faint. Unlike most examples of this trope, he typically only uses this ability deliberately.
• Excel Excel from Excel♡Saga fits this to a T, so much so that it caused English VA Jessica Calvello to blow out her vocal cords halfway through the series. The Japanese Excel isn't quite so bad, but Calvello apparently thought "sandpaper on chalkboard" was the right direction to take things, which had the aforementioned effect on her larynx.
• Ryuuko from Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl is a teenage Genki Girl complete with Cute Little Fang. Just don't let her cheer you on unless she's a good ten or twenty feet away.
• Aoi from Hanamaru Kindergarten's Sakura class has watched her fishmonger parents at work for long enough that she can do quite the sales shout herself.
• Mr. Puffin, Iceland's friend and constant companion from Hetalia: Axis Powers, both speaks and acts roughly despite his very cute appearance. It's most evident in his attempts at hijacking Iceland's character song, With Love, From Iceland.
• In Jewelpet, Labra is a cute little baby polar bear who ordinarily isn't grating levels of loud. If she's sad, however, she produces a massively loud cry that can destroy buildings and other nearby physical objects.
• Nonon Jakuzure from Kill la Kill is a cute pink-haired girl whose voice is an interesting mix of rasp, growl, and squeak, tending towards the former two when she's angry.
• Tokino from the Kujibiki♡Unbalance OVA is a blonde Kawaiiko who has a singing voice like an angel... of the apocalypse.
• Lucky Star's Konata speaks in a manner (both endearing and irritating in equal measure) befitting her character, but her... unorthodox interpretation of the Dragon Ball Z theme can sour milk at five paces and will have you reaching for the ear bleach. Her voice actress is quite the accomplished vocalist and sang both insert songs featured in Haruhi Suzumiya. Incidentally, some fans just adore this version because of the exact same reason. Konata incarnates the soul of a true amateur karaoke singer.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS has cute, adorable Cheerful Child Vivio, who moments after being faced with the prospect of Nanoha leaving for a few hours to go to work, cried like a, well... cried like a real six-year-old actually, which as anyone who had lived with one will tell you, isn't exactly the most pleasant sounding of things.
• The title giant beast from My Neighbor Totoro is cute, but has a loud bellow some children find frightening.
• 4Kids Entertainment’s Ojamajo Doremi dub is known for its terrible voice acting, but Pop Harukaze/Caitlyn Goodwyn's voice is quite a migraine to the ears, even when compared to the main characters.
• One Piece:
  • Although a filler character, Kobato is a cute young woman with an ear-piercingly loud scream.
  • Also Perona's personal pet peeve. She adores all her macabre living stuffed animals (which she calls "cute"), but hates their monstrous voices and forbids them from talking. The cuter they are the less they're allowed to talk, such as her favorite companion, a man-sized stuffed bear named Kumashi. Ironically, for that matter, Perona herself is a pretty cute young woman, but her voice can get pretty loud and high-pitched.
  • Shirahoshi always has a very shrill cry, despite her arguably cute voice.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In Pokémon: The Original Series, Misty's Togepi had an annoying cry when upset, notably in the mini-movie Pikachu's Vacation and even "All Fired Up".
  • Marill lets out an ear-shattering cry when scared, in For Cryin' Out Loud!. To make matters worse, this particular Marill (an especially shy and easy-to-scare crybaby) is paired with Misty; she's driven crazy by the loud and incessant crying, and flips out on the poor thing, freaking it out again.
  • Ash's Larvitar also has an ear-piercing cry.
  • In The Ancient Puzzle of Pokémopolis, the day is saved by a gigantic Jigglypuff (with an EXTREMELY deep voice) singing the two battling giant Pokémon to sleep.
  • In Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea, Manaphy, no doubt, has a really shrill voice and cry, including the scene where it threw a tantrum over May's absence before it uses Heart Swap on Ash and Jackie.
  • Nebby from Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon has an almost supersonic cry.
  • Casey is an energetic, cute young girl who adores the Electabuzz baseball team, and the best way to show her love for her favorite team is to sing their victory songs in her shrill and loud voice. Ash and the gang always watch in embarrassment as she loudly sings the Electabuzz fight songs, and at one point Misty actually had to stop her because her singing was so bad.
• In Chapter 53 of Pokémon Adventures, when Ratty evolves into Raticate, a very distressed Yellow starts bawling at a volume that greatly startles Blue and said Raticate, eventually tiring herself out and falling asleep.
• Like Excel above, Poemi Watanabe of Puni Puni☆Poemi is very screechy and motormouthed, so much so that it caused her English VA to blow out her vocal cords on the first day of recording.
• Ranma ½: Kodachi Kuno technically has a Noblewoman's Laugh, but the shrill edge she has to it in the anime (particularly the first season) is so bad that it gives her an honorary placement here, even though many fans think she's not particularly cute. She gets better (well, less cacophonic) as the seasons pass, though.
• Sailor Moon's Usagi and Chibi-Usa manage to stun a monster with their screams — and Usagi has it as a weapon in the SNES fighting games. The game usage is probably a Mythology Gag, referencing her first fight as Sailor Moon, in which Usagi actually manages to stun a youma and its mind-controlled horde of drained humans with her crying.
  • It is said that, when they (Moon and Chibimoon) are transformed, their screams are amplified by the red hairclips they have on their odango and turned into supersonic waves, which is how they manage to cause so much damage. However, it does require a cry loud enough to activate this "weapon", apparently.
• Meru Otonashi from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei appears to be an extremely shy girl who is practically mute and can only communicate with others via e-mails and cellphone texting. When she does send messages to others online, she turns out to be insulting and abusive. Eventually, Meru is forced into a part of the classroom with no cellphone reception and when Kaere forces her to talk, the result is... not pretty.
• Reiko from Shomin Sample may be The Ojou when speaking, but never, ever let her sing.
• Slayers:
  • Naga the Serpent has shrill tones, loud enough that it sounds like she's screaming more than she's laughing, and obnoxious as all hell. What's more, Naga is such a stuck-up, egotistical Cloudcuckoolander that she's convinced that her laugh is a thing of wonder and beauty, growing quite offended at those who voice their disgust with it and mocking those who can't laugh like her.
    • In one episode she gets cloned off about ten times. When faced with her giggling doppelgangers she calmly takes in what she's seeing for a moment before declaring them self-evident shams. Although the laugh sounds identical to the originals to our untrained ears, Naga critiques everything wrong with their laugh — whereupon they immediately attach themselves to her. Now, imagine Naga amplified by about eleven times. Even the guy who created the clones for his nefarious purposes is horrified. Just for fun, it's hard to catch since Naga Prime and her knockoffs are laughing the whole time, the scene where they come charging to the castle to rescue Lina is underscored by a One-Woman Wail which makes it ridiculous, yet somehow still manages to communicate the utter horror of eleven of that woman coming to laugh at you.
    • In one episode she pimp-slaps a stuck-up noble girl, who instantly becomes her submissive servant (bringing with her the equally masochistic bandit chief and sorcerer whom she "enthralled" in the exact same manner) and proceeds to teach both of them how to laugh exactly like her, leading to a scene where the three of them are laughing into the sunset. The horrified Lina promptly envisions a scene of dozens of people, young, old, women, and men, all wearing Naga's outfit (including a geriatric old guy, a fat woman, and a burly man) and all voicing their own equivalent of Naga's laugh.
  • Lina Inverse is pretty in a petite sort of way, but her temper is so hair-trigger that sometimes people are surprised she even has a normal tone of voice.
• The mayor's son in Tiger & Bunny. Cute little baby, who cries loudly when left to be looked after by a group of rather clueless heroes (Kotetsu is a dad, but Sam wants his mummy and Kotetsu's child is a preteen so he hasn't taken care of babies in a while). Said baby is also telekinetic, so his screaming causes things to go flying.
• Never upset Maria Ushiromiya from Umineko: When They Cry. If you do, you will quickly understand why Rosa has a short fuse.

Asian Animation

• Noonbory and the Super 7: Kikibory, Lukybory's little sister, actually has this as a superpower. It's best to cover your ears when she does her sonic screech...
• Sheriff Biscuit: The Queen has a very high pitched voice, and is capable of screaming incredibly loudly.

Comic Books

• Black Canary, a blonde with her own hypersonic scream.
• Schecherazade, a small pet bird in Ralf König's Conrad and Paul, is taken for pet-sitting to the title character's home. She's very precious, but whenever she opens her beak, the "chirp" fills most of the page section. Trust it to her to completely kill any and all sex life going on in that apartment. Probably in the neighbouring flats too.
• In Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, being thrown into the "Kitten Cacophony" pit is Iron Man's Cool and Unusual Punishment for failing Kree Karaoke in an extreme sports contest. (Yes, really. We've got the picture up there to prove it.) For several panels after that, he is deaf.
  Iron Man: WHAT?
• X-Men character Syren is a gorgeous redhead with screaming powers.

Fan Works

• In Ghosts of the Past, sequel to Child of the Storm, this becomes a Running Gag - Jean Grey, teenage, already growing into a stunning beauty, tends to get extremely loud when particularly emotional (usually, when she's annoyed). This consistently leaves whoever's unfortunate enough to be nearby with a persistent ringing noise in their ears.
• Ma Fille: As an infant, Katrina was a loud crier, and once kept Joe up all night while she was teething.

Films — Animation

• The Soviet/Russian 1972–1995 animated series The Adventures of Baron Munchausen has it in The Peacock episode. The whole plot kicks off because Munchausen wants to listen to the song of the peacock. When he does hear what it sounds like, he faints (Truth in Television –- see the Real Life section on peacocks).
• The baby raccoon in Brother Bear 2 lets out a piercing scream of "MAMA!" after Nita gets her amulet back from it.
• Darla Dimple from Cats Don't Dance is cute (and is a visual Affectionate Parody of Shirley Temple), but has a harsh, grating voice. This may be a reference to the villainess in Singin' in the Rain, as there are several other homages to classic musicals in the movie.
• Glisten and the Merry Mission: Marzipan is a precious child, but Grizz feels the need to often tell her that she is quite noisy. She soon takes advantage of this to start an avalanche against the wolves.
• "Vanessa"/Ursula from Disney's The Little Mermaid once she loses possession of Ariel's voice.
• Baby Lickity-Split from My Little Pony: The Movie (1986), supposedly.
• The film Up has Kevin on this. She sounds like something awful's happening to a parrot.

Films — Live-Action

• Subverted slightly in Born Yesterday. Judy Holliday is a crooked tycoon's trophy mistress with a voice that can peel paint. She ends up educated by a tutor hired to "smarten her up." She uses her newfound smarts to take the tycoon to the cleaners and amazingly, even though it's still in the same register, by the end of the movie her voice isn't as near as annoying as it was in the beginning (Holliday got the Best Actress Oscar that year).
• Clara Bow, the It Girl, was considered the sexiest woman in film. According to urban legend, her career died when sound film came into popularity. In reality, her voice work was considered decent, and her sound films were popular. It was a nervous breakdown from mental illness and a bad reputation with Hollywood insiders that killed her career.
• Galaxy Quest:
  • The little "Psycho Teletubby" creatures on the alien planet. They also fit the Killer Rabbit trope, as they turn out to be noisy and vicious.
  • When the female Thermian Laliari is first introduced, her translator is broken but her humanoid disguise is otherwise still active. Suffice it to say, since they are based on undersea animals, the Thermians' native language is... screechy.
• Gizmo from Gremlins may be a Ridiculously Cute Critter, but his screaming is like nails on a chalkboard.
• In Grown Ups, the wives spend at the entire water park visit trying to get an extremely sexy lifeguard to walk their way. And then they find he's from Canada, eh?
• Eve Draper from Hot Fuzz is your run-of-the-mill cute blond but has a 'very distinctive laugh'. Only natural as she is played by Lucy Punch, who tends to go for those types of characters anyway.
• The Incredible Mr. Limpet is about a guy who gets turned into an Ugly Cute cartoon fish who can produce a "whale buster" strong enough to fight enemy submarines.
• James Bond girls had a tendency to be like this towards the late '80s, the most notable example being Stacey Sutton played by Tanya Roberts (A View to a Kill), followed by Kara Milovy played by Maryam d'Abo (The Living Daylights).
• The hooker from The Man with Two Brains. Gorgeous body, but her voice makes it all too easy to contemplate murdering her.
  "Duke Duke Duke Duke of Oyul, Oyul, Oyul..."
• The Desi Arnaz Jr. movie Marco had a mysterious, silent princess to whom Marco Polo was attracted... until they had a rendezvous, she opened her mouth... and had a screechy voice that shattered all his illusions.
• When The Mask is startled by an impatient motorist whaling on his car horn, he retaliates with a small bike horn... loud enough to blow out all the windows of Mr. Impatient's car.
  AH-WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-GAH!!!!! [blows]
• Officer Hooks from the Police Academy films has a light, soft, and very pleasant voice when she isn't angry. When she is angry, she terrifies even Hightower, the 8-foot cadet. Doesn't help that she also trends towards Suddenly Shouting, meaning people often get caught off-guard.
• In the 2005 version of The Producers, Camp Gay director Roger deBris (played by Gary Beach) speaks in a light, cultivated voice most of the time. Until he summons his production team to meet Leo and Max, when he bellows like a longshoreman, losing his posh accent in the process.
• Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain. "... An' I CEAAAAAAN'T STEEEEEEAND 'im!" This is a major plot point since she's a movie star at the time when sound films come into the mainstream.
  • Her actress, Jean Hagan, was actually a talented vocalist, as heard in scenes where Lina's spoken dialogue is being dubbed over to sound less shrill.
• Madison from Splash. While she normally sounds fine, when she tries to speak her name in her native language (she's a mermaid) she ends up shattering the screens of all nearby televisions.
• Star Wars:
  • R2-D2 is a Tin-Can Robot who communicates in beeps and whistles most of the time, but will let loose with a shrill scream when distressed.
  • When Luke Skywalker enters the Dark Cave in The Empire Strikes Back a fairly loud roar is implied to emanate from a small lizard.
• During the filming of War of the Worlds (2005), Dakota Fanning's scream when she sees the alien probe reportedly forced several sound technicians to rip off their headphones.

Gamebooks

• Fighting Fantasy: The Jib-Jib is basically a ball of fluff the size of a cabbage that runs around on two cute little feet. It also has a shriek that can be heard over a mile away and its default reaction when frightened is to start screaming, in hopes that either this will frighten away whatever threatens it or that an even bigger nasty will show up to eat whoever set off the Jib-Jib.

Literature

• This is one of the defining traits of Ruth Rose in the A to Z Mysteries books. On the surface, she's a sweet, ten-year-old girl who loves to wear outfits and accessories of one color. But when she's loud, she is loud. In The Bald Bandit, she even weaponizes this trope — when the titular villain (who's a six-foot-plus, muscular man) tries to take her hostage, she unleashes a scream so loud that it makes him (and everyone else in the room) physically recoil.
• In the Dr. Seuss story The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, the cat gets rid of a ring of pink cake icing in the tub by doffing his hat to reveal a smaller Cat A, who does the same for Cat B, on and on, who only spread the ring around and turn all the snow in the neighborhood pink — until Cat Z is revealed...he's microscopic in size, but under his hat is something called VOOM, which loudly cleans the mess up.
• Harry Potter:
  • The merpeople sound like these above the water. They can hardly be described as "cute", though.
  • Harry Potter has a lot of creatures like this in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. For example, there's the Fwooper, a colorful bird whose call makes listeners go insane, and the Aughrey, another bird whose call is rumored to be the last thing you hear before you die (in truth, they just react to impending foul weather). One wizard, Uric the Oddball, decided to experiment by living in an aviary full of both birds, and thought he had died the morning the Aughrey were all crying. He then preceded to knock himself out cold by walking into a wall because he thought he was a ghost, and suffered "a concussion of ten days' duration."
• In The Hobbit, Bilbo gives out a warning cry "which is surprisingly loud for a creature of their size."
• From the Jeeves and Wooster story "Clustering Round Young Bingo", wherein Bertie breaks into Bingo Little's house and encounters a Pekingese dog:
  It was a small dog—the sort of animal from which you would have expected a noise like a squeaking slate-pencil; but it was simply baying. It had retired into a corner, and was leaning against the wall with bulging eyes; and every two seconds it chucked its head back in a kind of pained way and let out another terrific bellow.
• Christine in Maskerade. She's pretty. She's rich. And when she sings, the universe cringes in horror.
• In the Nero Wolfe novel Might as Well Be Dead, Archie describes a suspect like this: "It was hard to believe, the contrast between what my eyes saw and my ears heard. Any man would have been glad to walk down a theater aisle with her, but there would have to be an understanding that she would keep her mouth shut." She also drank gin and ginger ale, which Archie insists he "wouldn't drink to get the low-down on Lizzie Borden."
• In Mirabile, Leo raises an alien "bird" from the egg, and names it Mabob (short for "Thingamabob"). It's Ugly Cute but equipped with a hundred-decibel inbuilt airhorn. GRONK!
• Subverted in The Patchwork Girl of Oz. The Woozy claims to be one of these, but when put to the test, has only a very small roar indeed.
• Redwall
  • Dorothea Duckfontein Dillworthy (or Dotti for short) from Lord Brocktree is a very sweet and pretty hare-girl who just happens to have the worst singing voice ever. Nobody has the heart to tell her.
  • Rosie from Mariel of Redwall and The Bellmaker (both of which were published before Lord Brocktree, but take place later chronologically) is another cute female hare whose singing leaves a lot to be desired. She also has a very loud laugh which she likes to let rip at every opportunity.
• This is applied to an entire sentient species in Alan Dean Foster's Taken trilogy — they're basically Cat Girls (even the guys) but have voices comparable to garbage disposals. In this case, symbolism rules, as they're initially quite charming and cute, but they're a Proud Warrior Race and their sanity is somewhat dubious.
• In Watership Down, Fiver, one of the smallest of the rabbits, falls into a psychic-coma during the climax. As he loses consciousness, he lets out such a terrible, alien sound it penetrates the burrow and scares the hraka out of the invading rabbits outside. Given what rabbit cries typically sound like (See Real Life, below) that says a lot.

Live-Action TV

• Milked for laughs on numerous occasions on Are You Being Served?, with the grating Cockney-accented voice of the otherwise pretty Miss Brahms.
• Bernadette on The Big Bang Theory, who has a pipsqueaky voice befitting of her tiny stature talking normally, but is a dead-ringer for Howard's screechy mom when she yells.
  Someone off-screen: WHO IS IT?!
  Sheldon: It's me, Sheldon, Mrs. Wolowitz!
  Howard: That's not my mom, it's Bernadette.
  Sheldon: Really? That's very unsettling.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, no-one played by Mercedes McNab could be ugly, but Harmony's name is thoroughly inaccurate. At one point Lorne nicknames her "Cacophony".
• Doctor Who
  • Sixties companion Victoria Waterfield has a notoriously powerful scream. In one episode, she, the Doctor and Jamie are on an oil rig being attacked by killer seaweed, so the Doctor hooks a microphone up to a sonic gun and has Victoria scream into it. This kills the seaweed.
  • Equally high-pitched, but never weaponized, was Mel's scream. At the end of "Terror of the Vervoids" part 1 her scream was timed to segue into the closing credits' opening sound effect— and Bonnie Langford could match its pitch.
  • The Chimeron princess from "Delta and the Bannermen" has the ability to produce a shrill warning cry to which the Bannermen (the story's antagonists) seem particularly sensitive. The Doctor exploits this by using some sound equipment to amplify her cry, leading to the defeat of the Bannermen.
  • Donna was also known for screeching when annoyed (she was played by Catherine Tate, after all), though she did it less as her Character Development continued. Even the Doctor would lean away from her, wincing, when she got going.
  • Tallulah from "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" is an attractive woman, but her voice could peel paint.
• Dr. Ken: Julie has a comedically high-pitched voice that gets even higher when she lies. But if the lie gets too big, her voice comes around the other side and drops an octave to a more normal pitch (aka Katie Simses's real voice).
• Jool from Farscape has a scream that can literally melt metal. This is often used to amazing effect by other characters.
• Janice from Friends was very attractive, but had an annoyingly nasal voice.
  • Not to mention her laugh...
  • Or when she experiences labor pains...
• On Growing Pains Mike sees an extremely hot girl at a school dance. When he talks to her, he's alarmed at her annoying high and squeaky voice, on top of not being very bright. Mike tries to put up with it because she's so gorgeous but finally can't take it after a while.
• This was common on Animal Planet's It's Me or the Dog and something that dog-trainer Victoria Stilwell often had to help dog owners deal with.
• Modern Family: Gloria, Jay's beautiful young wife, can get both screechy and condescending at times. Jay finally admits this in the episode where he is forced to admit he is losing his hearing — while Gloria is forced to admit her sight is failing. After some friction, they decide it's better this way.
  Jay: I won't be able to hear her. She won't be able to see me. We'll be together forever.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: Back when Gypsy was played by Jim Mallon in most of the original series, She speaks with an incredibly grating and jarring falsetto voice that could easily give Wii Party's Party Phil a run for the money.
• Fran Drescher's voice in The Nanny. Or anywhere else, for that matter. She engages in a little Self-Deprecation in her guest appearance on a The Simpsons Halloween special where she played a golem who, upon hearing her own voice, describes it as "like a cat got caught in a blender". "Hello," indeed.
  • She also played with it in a scene in "Val's Boyfriend", where Fran Fine overdosed on wasabi at a Japanese restaurant and her voice changed to a much sultrier voice — for a few seconds, anyway.
• Power Rangers had Rita Repulsa, who was played by a cute actress but spoke with a very obnoxious and screechy dubbed voice.
• Kate from Robin Hood delivers her lines in a shrill, whiny, screechy voice. This may have been done to make her as annoying as humanly possible since the actress speaks normally in other roles.
• Saturday Night Live alumna Victoria Jackson is also known for being cute with a girlish, high-pitched voice that sounds whiny and irritating. Other female SNL cast members like this include: Rachel Dratch, Abby Elliott (especially when she plays Anna Faris, Joan Cusack, and Khloe Kardashian), Nasim Pedrad (especially when she plays Kim Kardashian), and the late Gilda Radner (often when she played little girl characters, like Judy Miller).
• Kelly Kapowski of Saved by the Bell was pretty and had a pleasant speaking voice, but when she sang...
• Scrubs has Josephina, an "incredibly fun-sized intern", (roughly 4'10") who is infamous around the hospital for having an impossibly high-pitched voice.
  • STOP FINISHING MY AWESOME JOKES (of note: Zach Braff's "Oh my God!" in response was not scripted).
• Seinfeld:
  • Elaine hires Newman to kidnap a dog that has been barking loudly all night every night and keeping her awake. When she finally sees it in person, she is surprised to discover how small it is.
  • Jerry's girlfriend Naomi from season 4. She is physically attractive but, in the words of George Costanza, "has a laugh like Elmer Fudd sitting on a juicer".
• The Tribbles from Star Trek: ridiculously cute, but if you introduce them to Klingons, they make an unholy racket. And so do the Tribbles.
• Jackie Burkhart on That '70s Show is played by the gorgeous Mila Kunis, but has a voice that will set your teeth on edge, especially when she's annoyed. Which is often. She once describes herself as "a beautiful girl with a shrill, demanding voice".
  • When Jackie started dating Hyde, Eric didn't understand the attraction. Hyde told Eric to imagine her with her voice on mute. That was the first time Eric realized "She is hot!"
• One episode of Unfabulous had the main character attempt to babysit a little girl. The girl's favorite pastime was to apparently run around the house screaming at the top of her lungs.
• In Will & Grace, Karen (Megan Mulally) is physically painful. Her voice was relatively normal in the first few episodes, before Flanderization turned Karen from a Deadpan Snarker into the most outlandish character on the show.

Music

• Aerosmith lead singer and American Idol judge Steven Tyler — frequently adorable (or at least Ugly Cute). Frequently loud. Also demonstrates an inability to sit still for more than five seconds when he's excited.
• Emilie Autumn deliberately invokes this when singing raspily as part of her asylum inmate shtick.
• Eminem, circa 1999, had a Pretty Boy appearance and boyish mannerisms that more resembled the mass-manufactured boyband stars of the age than the other popular Turn of the Millennium rappers, and many interviewers remarked on how, when speaking out-of-character, his voice is unexpectedly soft and pleasant. The reason this was surprising is because his rapping voice was an obnoxious high-pitched, nasal squeak, even leaving aside the obscene and revolting things he'd use that voice to describe. While he toned down the squeaking on his later albums, he had fun inventing new ways for his voice to grate, such as experimenting with Metal Scream-influenced techniques, singing out-of-tune with no pitch correction, and (a decade later) dabbling with ironic Auto-Tune. His bio for his Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction described his voice as "somehow guttural and nasal simultaneously".
• Geddy Lee. Pretty freakin' adorable◊ or at least Ugly Cute. And then he makes noises like this. Yowza.
• Hello! Project:
  • Former member Yaguchi Mari; she's only 4'8'' or so tall with big brown eyes and a generally sweet disposition. She's also Hot-Blooded and tends to have No Indoor Voice when she does get riled up, which is not difficult at times.
  • Her former bandmate Takahashi Ai fits the other side of the trope; her scream is much lower than what you'd expect from a woman of her size.
• Janis Joplin. On the iconic cover of the Big Brother and the Holding Company album, Cheap Thrills, there's a panel depicting Janis screaming into a microphone, with the speech bubble saying, "Janis Joplin: Vocal", and then a smaller one saying, "And how!"
• Japanese musician, Kana (or MOON Kana she is now called) is actually very cute but seems to be aiming at this trope too hard. If not in her punk or rock image using her screechy vocals, she'll be an uncanny Genki Girl who sings songs about moons, cats, bunnies, fruits, dragons, or anything, all with a nasally small, sometimes tone-deaf, voice. Tries to talk like one, too.
• At an early Led Zeppelin show, the sound system broke down, but they kept playing anyway, and legend has it even the back row could hear Robert Plant's voice perfectly.
• R&B singer Michel'le is known for the vast difference between her sultry singing voice and her cartoonishly high-pitched speaking voice.
• Seiko Oomori dresses like a typical Idol Singer, but her music sounds like, as she puts it, "Disneyland from hell." For instance, her single, Kyuru Kyuru.

Podcasts

• In the Cool Kids Table Harry Potter-themed game Hogwarts: The New Class, Jake's pet gryphon Jomps is always screeching (which means so is DM Alan), much to everyone's chagrin except (sometimes) Jake's.
• My Favorite Murder has Georgia's cat Elvis.
  Georgia: Elvis, want a cookie?
  Elvis: *yowls*

Pro Wrestling

• The Beautiful Brenda, Famous B's valet on Lucha Underground, is certainly very attractive (if not very bright) but she has a voice that can strip the paint off the walls when she gets excited.
• Francine. Promoted in the original ECW as both a fearless Dark Action Girl and as Ms. Fanservice. Her voice, however, was an acquired taste.
• Nothing Jetta does turns crowds against her more than the squealing she makes when a match doesn't go her way.
• Wrestling model Kaci Lennox usually gains heat by screaching at her often battered Tag Team partner Derby Doll Layne Rosario.
• This is a popular opinion of TNA's locker room reporter Leticia Cline. Vinny suggested she apply to be a CMLL ring girl, play more to her strengths.
• Salina de la Renta has a fairly deep, soothing voice that she uses to get what she wants. Should it fail, brace yourself for her screeching tag team partner Aria Blake.

Puppet Shows

• The Dark Crystal has Kira's pet Fizzgig.
• In The Puzzle Place, Julie's obnoxious loud singing is a Running Gag. When the whole gang sings songs together, her singing is perfectly fine, but when she tries to show off her voice it becomes this trope.
• Sesame Street has Merry Monster, who usually speaks with a very meek-sounding voice, but has a roar that would give Kion a run for the money.
  • Since Season 28, Kevin Clash's falsetto as Elmo becomes a bit too jarring for parents, His laughter went from tolerable and cute to the annoying laughter everyone knows today. However, this is justified that Elmo is only a 3-year old kid.

Tabletop Games

• Old concept dating back to at least Red-book D&D basic edition. Shriekers are harmless-looking giant mushrooms, but if light (as, say, carried by adventurers exploring a dungeon) comes within so many feet of them, they start shrieking. Like with the aforementioned Jib-Jib, this isn't a good thing if there are more powerful monsters investigating the source of the racket: many predators in the Underdark use them as dinner bells...

Video Games

• Akatsuki Blitzkampf has the Dark Action Girl Marilyn Sue, who sounds like a little girl but is an adult Lady of War. The Ausf. Achse console version adds the Little Miss Badass Perfecti, who packs quite the shrill voice as well.
• Batman: Arkham Origins gives us Tracey Buxton, Penguin's second-in-command and one half of his Paid Harem. She's a very attractive blonde with a squawking voice and heavy Cockney accent like her boss.
• Yaya Panda from Crash Bandicoot, specifically her Nitro-Fueled incarnation. She looks downright adorable, but man is her voice grating. It gets even worse when it starts cracking...
• Every character from Don't Starve is "voiced" by an instrument of some kind. Webber, a sweet young boy who just happens to be permanently fused with a spider that tried to eat him, sounds like a discordant synthesizer. A fan once infamously asked the devs if Webber's voice was produced by dropping the synthesizer a flight of stairs.
• Dragon Quest VIII has the boss Don Mole, who stole a harp you need. His music is so bad that one of his lackeys passed out standing up from the pain. In battle, his music can confuse the whole party and his sidekicks too. Continuing the gag, later you find a journal in Castle Argonia that describes birds falling out of the air and deer and rabbits writhing on the ground foaming at the mouth at the horrible sound of his music.
• In Drakensang 2: River of Time one can buy a roaring hamster (German: Brüllhamster) whose roar is said to be loud enough to scare monsters away. The only chance you get to hear the roar, though, is when you Open the critter as if to read a book
• Anyone who remembers the first Ecco the Dolphin game for Genesis will remember the very shrill cry that the cute little dolphin character screamed when he got hit by an enemy. The sound was so annoying to many players that it was toned down in Tides of Time.
• In Escape from Monkey Island, the beautiful wooden figurehead of the Dainty Lady can be brought to life — turns out, she's got a voice like she's been smoking cigarettes since childhood, and she proceeds to grouse bitterly at Guybrush about her lot in life.
• In Fire Emblem: Awakening, Sumia's daughter Cynthia. Her introduction, should Chrom recruit her and if he's her father, involves her yelling in his ear. Indeed, one of her regular voice clips is a very childlike-sounding and loud "UWAAAAH!"
  Cynthia: Wait—then you really are...! Oh, Father! I missed you SOOOOO MUUUCH!
  Chrom: My... my ears...
• Five Nights at Freddy's World: Toy Chica, much like many other characters in the game, is the Super-Deformed, cute, and innocent-looking Badass Adorable animatronic, a far cry from her uncanny-looking canon counterpart. In Update 2's "Foxy Fighters" minigame, she was given her own dialogue and voice...a voice that is very noisy and squeaky, which gets even more ear-grating when she starts bugging the player about it, complete with the giant speech portraits of her obscuring the player's view.
  Toy Chica: YOU WON'T GET TIRED OF MY VOICE, WILL YOU?! YOU WON'T GET TIRED OF MY VOICE, WILL YOU?! YOU WON'T GET TIRED OF MY VOICE, WILL YOU?! YOU WON'T GET TIRED OF MY VOICE, WILL YOU?!
• Genshin Impact has Paimon, a tiny little pixie...thing who tags along as the Traveller’s self-proclaimed tour guide and Best Friend. She’s cute and lovable enough when she isn’t leaning into Annoying Video Game Helper territory, but her voice is very squeaky in every dub besides the CN one, meaning that listening to her for a long time (which any player going through the story and completing as many World Quests and Commissions they can will have to do a lot can get incredibly grating.
• Ghost Trick has Missile, an adorably fluffy Pomeranian who loves to bark. As expected of a small yappy dog, when he speaks in spirit form, he has No Indoor Voice.
• Grand Theft Auto V:
  • Michael De Santa's daughter Tracey, particularly during the missions "Father/Son", where she's arguing with her mom over a boyfriend, and Michael plays music on his iFruit phone to drown them out, and "Daddy's Little Girl", where her voice breaks when she screams at Jimmy for ruining her day.
  • Michael's wife Amanda can also be this at times, most prominently during the mission "Reuniting the Family".
  Michael: Ah, gee! Because all you do is whine at me!
  Amanda: Oh! "All I do is whine"?! Michael, could you please stop murdering people? Michael, could you stop endangering me and the both of your children? You kill people, and then you sit in the sun and drink and feel guilty about it! That is not work!
  Michael: I DON'T SEE YOU COMPLAINING ON THE WAY TO THE FUCKING BANK!!
• Guilty Gear has its own as well, in the form of Jam Kuradoberi. Listening to her voice for more than an hour will make your head explode.
  • Bridget actually started having a high-pitched but bearable tone in the original XX series, but when Yukiko Kato took over in the Accent Core series, her voice got more high-pitched to the point where it became ear-grating. Her re-appearance in -STRIVE- averts it, as while her voice is still high-pitched, it's not as grating.
• During one of the last levels in Hitman: Blood Money, there is a beautiful and Stripperific singer in an angel costume, who has an absolutely horrible voice and sings every single note off-key. As it turns out, she is an assassin who murdered the original singer in an attempt to get to you.
• In story, Misha from Katawa Shoujo. The teacher even outright states she's got volume control problems and it's mentioned several times that she's, well, loud. Since the game is set in a school for the disabled and Misha's exact disability was unknown until the full version was released, many fans leaned towards partial deafness, though this was Jossed in the final version which explains she's there to learn sign language.
• The King of Fighters:
  • "PSYCHO BAAAAAAALLLLL!!!". Though it depends on which seiyuu Athena has. The worse ones were Moe Nagasaki (95) and early!Haruna Ikezawa (98, 99); now Ikezawa still voices her with a high tone, but not nearly as high as the start.
  • Mai Shiranui actually started having a high-pitched but bearable tone in the Fatal Fury and early The King of Fighters games, but as time passed Akoya Sogi's voice got more and more high-pitched. When Ami Koshimizu took over, however, she lowered the pitch and now Mai sounds way better.
  • A rare male example is Sie Kensou. Around KOF 96, Eiji Yanou changed his pitch to try portraying him as more Hot-Blooded than before... and as a result, his voice became really childish for a guy supposed to be in his late teens. He had to tone it down around the start of the Ash Saga. He seems to return to being high-pitched once Yuuto Kaname takes over for KOF XIV.
• Kirby uses this as powerup that kills everything on screen. The animated adaptation as well as the original game's instruction manual, demonstrates this as Kirby having a horrible singing voice, which, when amplified, is a Brown Note to anyone who hears it.
• Yordles in League of Legends are known to have a relatively high-pitch voice, especially Teemo, where many players find his voice acting to be adorably annoying. Another yordle who fits the bill is Gnar, being an ancient yordle child who breaks free from being encased in true ice eons ago. The only two yordles that don't fit into this bill are Poppy (a serious-minded Ambadassador to Demacia) and Rumble (a very egotistical and arrogant yordle), where their voices are much deeper than a typical yordle.
• Shadow Kanji in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax has an extremely high-pitched voice in the Japanese track.
• The Pokémon Whismur has quite a loud crying volume for such an otherwise quiet and cute Mon (in the Pokédex, it's said that when Whismur starts crying, it's so loud that it startles itself and that makes it cry even louder!). It emphasizes much less on the cute and more of the cacophony when it evolves into the appropriately named Loudred, then Exploud. Furthermore, the moves Hyper Voice and Uproar, and Round play on this trope, as they can be learned by such cute Mons as Jigglypuff, Minccino, and Rotom.
• In Psychonauts, Bonita Soleil fits this to a "T", even having a small gag where she is crying to a recorded woman's voice. Something of note is that she is voiced by Stephen Stanton, who also voices Sasha Nein from the same game.
• Ragnarok Online has Baby Desert Wolves. Absolutely adorable, and they don't ordinarily attack the player — rather, they convince the player to attack them. [yip] [yip] [yip] [yip] [yip] [yip]...
• The Rabbids from Rayman series, and especially Raving Rabbids. "BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Cream the Rabbit, very much The Cutie and a Cheerful Child, has an unexpectedly high-pitched voice in the Japanese voice acting. All three of her English voice actors aim for a similarly high pitch to varying results, sometimes nailing it, sometimes sounding more shrill than lovable.
  • In Sonic Heroes, Charmy somehow manages to be even higher-pitched than Cream, even though he's supposed to be a young boy.
• Splatoon 2: Pearl is a diminutive Inkling whose voice is repeatedly shown to be dangerously powerful. One of the Sunken Scrolls shows her destroying the equipment during a singing contest as a child, she's heavily implied to be the source of an Urban Legend that Marie tells you about a screaming ghost on Mount Nantai, and in the Octo Expansion you can actually listen to a recording of Pearl "singing" that ends with her blowing out the speakers. Then there's the fact that when amplified with a Killer Wail, her voice is powerful enough to win a Beam-O-War with a doomsday device with enough power to destroy a city.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • The Toads, in most games when they're voiced. Early Nintendo 64 games like Mario Party and Mario Kart 64 gave them cheerful childlike voices, then for some reason, they decided to change the voice to being more high-pitched and very raspy and it's been that way ever since. ^note  Compare Toad in MK 64 to Toad in MK Wii.
  • Princess Daisy is a cute young princess like Peach. However, she's such a Genki Girl that she practically screams many of her lines, especially in later titles.
  • Baby Mario in Yoshi's Island. In Yoshi's Island DS Baby Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario and Bowser respectively all have different cries. This case is justified and enforced; playtesters failed to realize that if you leave Baby Mario alone long enough, bad things happen, so the developers intentionally made Baby Mario's cries loud and grating, so the player would hurry up and get him back before it was too late.
• Tales of the Abyss: The entire cheagle race, which Miue belongs to, are small, plush-like creatures with (usually) high-pitched voices. This is something that annoys the hell out of Luke, which he complains about almost every time Miue opens his mouth.
• Oosako Chikara from the third Tokimeki Memorial Girls Side game has quite a loud voice for a child...
• Even though we don't get to see it, Edy Nelson from Valkyria Chronicles found herself to be tone-deaf, which causes her to cease her one-sided rivalry with Rosie and decide to become an actress instead. Her voice on both the Japanese and English tracks isn't bad to listen to, though.
  • We do get to see it in a sidequest in the sequel, Valkyria Chronicles II. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Unless you're Anisette.
• The Boncas from Warcraft offshoot War Wind are big rhino-like six-legged cattle. Their children, however, are clearly some mutant forms of yappy dogs judging by the screeching they do when you attack them. Why would you ever want to attack such terrible things? Because they like to zip in and out of your buildings stealing resources, eating food, and smashing things randomly. Of course, you better be prepared because all that screeching will bring the whole herd close behind.
• Zenless Zone Zero has Corin Wickes, a maid for Victoria Housekeeping Co. Since she's 15, her voice is naturally high-pitched, but she's also an anxious wreck who's quite prone to squealing and squeaking at even higher pitches, like in most of her basic attacks. Fans of her sarcastically say that if you want the full experience of playing Corin, put on headphones and turn the volume to max.

Web Animation

• Battle for Dream Island: Bubble has quite a whiny voice, which gets on Match and Pencil's nerves until their eliminations.
• Friday Night Funkin' WITH LYRICS: While Girlfriend's high-pitched voice is usually quite tolerable, her singing voice (as demonstrated in Week 7 With Lyrics) can be rather shrill on some notes.
• Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls: Raku's voice is extremely high-pitched and whiny. It doesn't help that when she screams or cries, it can get very grating, especially in the fourth episode where she gets bitten by a squirrel.

Web Comics

• The Creepy Black Cat in the Girly comic is somewhat cute (for a cat whose back of the head can't be told from its front), but when it meows...
  • Marshmallow kitty!
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: Snookums the tentacle bunny is little and cute, but also very heavy, so when he hops toward you the accompanying noise is WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
• Princess Princess: Amira goes to rescue Sadie because she thinks she is screaming in distress... turns out she was actually singing.
• In this strip from Scandinavia and the World, where Sister America asks Denmark why Danish babies cry so infrequently. He brings out "the quietest baby" he has, which just sits there screaming its head off for the rest of the strip, for no discernible reason, much to Sister America's horror. Denmark is completely oblivious to how loud the baby is and insists that this is normal.

Web Original

• Neopets:
  • One of the Random Events that can occur is a Mutant Kadoatie incessantly meowing near you. It will stop only if you pay its owner 5000 Neopoints.
  • Kadoaties as a whole are described as incredibly loud. Their owners usually have to sleep with the lights on, because their Kadoatie will yowl and cry nonstop in the dark.
• SCP Foundation: Essy-Pee toothreethree and Steven— er, SCP-2337, "Doctor Spanko," is a corncrake capable of speaking "a language tangentially related to English." He's a friendly and chipper little guy, but has a serious case of No Indoor Voice; the minimum volume he can vocalize at is 90dB, and he can go far, far louder than that. During initial containment, he managed to rupture 3 people's eardrums while just trying to have a friendly chat.
• Singer and influencer Sophia Grace Brownlee was definitely this in her younger years. In her frequent appearances on The Ellen Show with her cousin Rosie McClelland, she had a tendency to scream at the top of her lungs whenever something made her excited, especially when she got to meet her favorite celebrities.

Web Videos

• Chester A. Bum is frequently adorable, but his constant No Indoor Voice can pierce your eardrums.
• Foxplushy may be a cute young woman, but constantly emits high-pitched, ear-piercing screams when frightened or really excited.
• hololive:
  • Miko Sakura's voice is normally high-pitched and squeaky, but she plays this up for all its worth, to the point where her voice ends up being likened to that of a toddler.
  • Subaru Oozura is the tomboyish manager of an MMA team and an e-sports club with some girly tics, but her voice by default is likened to a duck's.
  • Rushia Uruha's voice is cutesy by default, but whenever she screams, especially when angry or excited, she tends to be so loud they sound like they could wake the dead (fitting, given that Rushia is a necromancer).
  • Chloe Sakamata has a cutesy "Poe poe poe!", which she occasionally uses specifically to annoy her stream partners. Sometimes, this gets turned on her.
  • Risu Ayunda has a cute appearance and voice, but often emits ear-piercing screams when frightened.
  • Kobo Kanaeru has a very loud and high-pitched speaking voice, and she's prone to unleashing deafening screams when terrified or surprised.
  • Nene Momosuzu has a tendency to wail quite loudly when frustrated or distressed.
  • Luna Himemori knows her voice is somewhat annoying to the other hololive members and tends to play it up for all it's worth. Marine in particular jokingly refers to her as the kind of friend that one would punch in the face because of what she does with her voice.
  • Ollie Kureiji is energetic and cheerful all the time, but also seems to have No Indoor Voice, since most of her lines are shouted at the top of her lungs instead of spoken normally, and if she gets excited, you can expect damaged headphones.
  • Calliope Mori, on several occasions, has screamed really loud or in a really bizarre way, when she has gotten scared, frustrated, or excited, such as when everyone else made fun of her during a Jackbox collab stream, she found a shiny Giratina after 1680 tries and managed to catch it in a stream for Pokemon: Brilliant Diamond, and when she cleared the DLC act of Jump King.
  • Zigzagged with Mumei Nanashi, as while she is normally soft-spoken, she can get pretty loud if agitated enough.
  • Kiara Takanashi tends to make high-pitched screams whenever she panics such as when enemies creep up on her. It doesn't take away from her natural charm though.
  • Amelia Watson's usual voice is pretty normal. However, she has the ability to make noises that can be described as "inhuman," such as when she explains how her Time Machine works. Severe frustration in a game can also bring it out, as she moves from grumbles to the occasional screech and finally assorted gremlin noises. There are even compilations of these gremlin moments showing how common it is.
  • Mococo of FUWAMOCO definitely is cute, but she also can let loose sustained, high-pitched, or raspy shrieks (possibly best exemplified by their performance of "Crazy Frog"). She also has notably loud sneezes, when compared to Fuwawa.
  • Gura Gawr may be adorable, but tends to emit high-pitched, ear-piercing screams or shrieks when she's scared, frustrated, or excited.
• Dodo from Kittisaurus has a very long and loud meow, which Claire refers to as his warcry. He's actually the loudest of the cats, and given there's ten of them in total, that's saying a lot.
• TheMermaidscales is a beautiful woman, but she screams like a banshee when she's frightened, upset, or excited. This is especially true in her livestream where she celebrates reaching 12 million subscribers. Better have your earplugs ready and the volume turned down before you watch it.
• In his early videos, The Nostalgia Critic hadn't gotten his usual Screams Like a Little Girl talent down yet and so sounded like a howler monkey whenever he got pissy.
• In the Scamalot episode "Hong Kong", James mentions his plans to bring three small dogs with him when he stays at Cho's house.
• Trickywi: As adorable as she is, it's not recommended to watch her while wearing headphones, because she can go really high-pitched when excited.

Western Animation

• 2 Stupid Dogs had a recurring character based on the aforementioned Little Red Riding Hood. Her voice tended to fluctuate between a voice you'd expect from a young girl and something akin to a foghorn that learned English.
• 6teen:
  • Caitlin's speaking voice is fine when she's calm, but she has a seriously loud, ear-piercing scream, and her bawling can be grating as well.
  • The Khaki Barn clones all have childish, high-pitched voices. Although it befits their lack of intelligence, they tend to group Squee, which annoys Nikki to no end.
• Darwin, the adorable walking, talking goldfish and Gumball's adopted little brother in The Amazing World of Gumball, can scream high enough to break glass. Taken to extremes in "The Castle", when Gumball makes fun of his voice and he lets out a scream so shrill, it almost renders Gumball and Anais catatonic.
• American Dad!: Freddie, Roger’s friend for Steve from an episode, screams so loud everyone’s eyes pop out.
  Roger: Freddaaaaaaay!
• Weasel from The Animals of Farthing Wood. Her voice is annoying to other animals except for another weasel, Measly, who is attracted to her.
• Arthur: D.W. Read is also notorious in her early seasons up until season 15 in where she was a tantrum thrower and fits especially in "D.W.'s Very Bad Mood" in where she constantly throws fits over not getting invited to her friend's party and "D.W. The Picky Eater" where she gets berserk over finding that her plate has spinach, which D.W. hates.
• The Trope Inspirer was a cute little bird, something like a Tawny Frogmouth, in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Swamp". It's all fluffy and precious, and then it emits a loud call that sounds disconcertingly like a woman being murdered. This particular instance doubles as the mother of all Jump Scares.
• In Barbie and the Secret Door, Malucia's singing is so loud and high-pitched it shatters Grodlin's glasses while he's busy covering his ears.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn is pretty cute both in and out of costume in a Perky Female Minion way, but her voice provided by Arleen Sorkin is very nasally and screechy. Of course, this is intentional and based on Rule of Funny, and the episode showing her origin shows that she's capable of speaking in a more normal voice and only switched to the screechy one once she donned the costume.
• In an equally amusing inversion, Ben 10: Alien Force has a big tough alien Repo Man who has a high squeaky voice.
• Bluey:
  • Bluey is initially overjoyed to find her lost Chattermax toy, until its incessant noisemaking starts wearing on her nerves.
  • Muffin is adorable, but also very easy to set off. (Especially in "Sleepover" when she was underslept due to being in the middle of transitioning away from daytime naps.)
• Caillou: Caillou is a cute looking child who easily throws tantrums especially in the infamous circus episode.
  Caillou: Silly old car, silly, silly, silly! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!
• Brittany Taylor from Daria. Her high-pitched voice can make it hard to understand her sometimes, especially when she is hysterical. However, in "The Old and the Beautiful", residents at a retirement home take a liking to her voice.
• In Defenders of the Earth, Ming tried to wipe out the zuffoids because he couldn't stand the incessant sing-song chant they produce when several of them get together. Zuffy was thought to be the only zuffoid to have escaped the massacre, but, towards the end of the "Prince Kro-Tan" arc, the Defenders discover a whole colony of zuffoids on Mongo and use their chant as a weapon against the Monster of the Week. However, Mandrake at least seems to share Ming's sentiments about the noise:
  That's why Ming tried to destroy all the zuffoids!
• Timmy Turner from Fairly OddParents. When he gets upset, his screaming and yelling can get very shrill and grating.
• Chum Chum from Fanboy and Chum Chum is Fanboy's best friend and sidekick who is energetic and high spirited. Thanks to his actress Nika Futterman, he has a high-pitched voice and his screams are so loud that it could send Lenny flying!
• Felix the Cat character Vavoom was a cute little Eskimo fellow who could be called upon to make a Sonic Attack by saying his name. Walls would shatter. Mountains could be tunneled through if he said his name repeatedly.
• The title character in the Bill Plympton short Guard Dog is an Ugly Cute Angry Guard Dog of the "bred to sound much bigger and scarier than he really is" type mentioned below. And he's a Woobie.
• Olga Pataki of Hey Arnold! has a very grating high-pitched voice, especially when she gets excited or cries.
• Moofy from the Invader Zim episode "Girl Who Cried Gnome". She's very adorable and hilarious with the personality of Genki Girl, but her voice is awfully shrill whenever she loses it. It doesn’t help that she's emotionally unstable, this is due to her being a very spoiled young girl.
• Jellystone!: Augie's song in the first episode is so awful that it sends a bedridden patient into cardiac arrest, as well as making Yogi lose his appetite. The latter ends up saving the day.
• Kid vs. Kat: Millie Burtonburger looks very adorable, but she screams and whines a lot to the point that creates earthquakes and holes.
• Nancy Gribble of King of the Hill is the resident Ms. Fanservice and speaks in a sultry tone most of the time, but tends to sound very shrill when she loses her cool.
  • Luanne Platter's voice gets very shrill when she get emotional, and as of season 3 her voice is permanently shrill.
• Let's Go Luna!: Vlad from "Lullaby for Baby Vlad". He's a cute little bear cub, but his crying is extremely loud.
• Stitch of the Lilo & Stitch franchise has an incredibly nasal voice that is made worse by his gibberish-sounding alien native language, his broken and childish English, and his often-manic behavior. (Although, several fans of the character heavily disagree with this and even find his voice cute as he is.) His creator and primary voice actor, Lilo & Stitch co-writer and co-director Chris Sanders, stated that before he wound up voicing his character, he would use that same voice to mess with and annoy his co-workers.^note Sanders became Stitch's voice because the production staff got used to his vocalizations, and that he and his co-writer/co-director Dean DeBlois didn't want a professional voice actor or a celebrity to voice Stitch out of fear that Disney would force them to record more dialogue than what is absolutely necessary for the film. Despite this, Sanders also admitted in a Vulture interview in 2022 that Stitch's voice was so poorly received by test audiences that it was consistently the lowest-rated aspect of the film on their scorecards.
• Little Princess: The titular character is always prone to screaming at the top of her lungs when she is scared or frustrated, making a very wide-open face which is scary for kids contrasting her cute appearance.
• Looney Tunes:
  • A relatively early example in animation is the Bugs Bunny short Little Red Riding Rabbit. Little Red is extremely loud and boisterous, with a grating voice. She annoys Bugs and the Big Bad Wolf so much, it gets to the point where they decide to punish her (and since she annoys the audience too, it's a pretty satisfactory ending).
    Red: GRANDMA! HEY, GRANDMA!
    Bugs: I'll do it, but I'll probably hate myself in the morning.
    [cue Red switching places with the Wolf holding up the mountain of junk over a shovel of hot coal]
  • There was also a despondent duckling with a briefcase who, whenever Daffy Duck tried to comfort him or ask what was inside, would shout in a loud man's voice, NYAAAAAAAH, SHUT UP!!! By the end of the short, Daffy and the hunter chasing him have had enough of the little Jerkass, so they just take the briefcase and open it revealing something they both dread: a THE END title card!
  • Bob Clampett seems to have enjoyed this gag. Tweety Bird and other cute little creatures in his shorts could suddenly have a deep and very loud voice. This is also one of his Distaff Counterpart Sweety Bird's signature gags.
    Aw, da poor puddy tat. He fall down an' go... BOOM!
  • Another Looney Tunes short featured a bird whose cry sounds like an old-timey car horn for some reason.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Adorabat, as the name indicates, is indeed adorable. She's also terribly shrill when raising her voice, and tends to screech wildly at the slightest bit of excitement or anger.
• This is the basis of the MGM Oneshot Cartoon "Little Gravel Voice"; the short is centered on a little donkey who is very cute and friendly, but his bray is not only extremely obnoxious (and keeps botching his attempts to befriend the local animals) but literally harmful, as the wolf it encounters later finds out the hard way. Even after he wins over the other animals by scaring off the wolf, they still tie up his snout with his ears, just so they won't have to hear his braying anymore.
• Minnie Mouse may be adorable in several instances, but her voice is so high that it can grate on your nerves. Kaitlyn Robrock's performance as Minnie managed to tone down her cute voice compared to Russi Taylor.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Sweetie Belle is a cute little unicorn filly who proves to be this in the episode "Stare Master". She's actually a very good singer, but as Fluttershy discovers, also a very loud one. Especially if she starts singing "99 Buckets of Oats on the Wall".
  • Sweetie's older sister Rarity usually affects a very nice mid-Atlantic-accented speech. Get her to whining, however, and you'll give up carts full of jewels to be rid of her. Turns out she knows it and uses that voice on purpose to invoke Pity the Kidnapper.
  • Along with Sweetie Belle are her two friends Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. The three of them make up the "Cutie Mark Crusaders", and whenever all three yell at once the other ponies around wince and/or have their manes blown by the force of their yelling.
  • The Pinkie Clones from "Too Many Pinkie Pies". While Pinkie Pie's enthusiasm and general playfulness can be considered adorable, an army them repeatedly shouting "FUN! FUN! FUN!" while tearing Ponyville apart would drive anyone insane.
  • In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", all three Cutie Mark Crusaders loudly rejoicing in unison is enough for Discord to plug his ears with his own horns. Yup, pointy ends first; of course he's a spirit of chaos, so it isn't something that can harm him.
  • In "The Crystalling, Part 1", Flurry Heart gets so upset when forcibly separated from playing with Pinkie Pie, she produces an amplified wail that destroys the Crystal Heart.
  • Silverstream the Hippogriff tends to raise her voice whenever she's excited, which is to say a lot.
  • In Pahkitew Island, Ella is an adorable faux-princess with a Beautiful Singing Voice; however, her teammates find her constant and often inopportune singing to be annoying, especially Sugar. Chris is also annoyed by Ella's singing to the point where he threatens to boot Ella from the show if she sings again, and actually follows through with his threat.
• Peppa Pig:
  • George Pig can easily fit this trope due to his constant Prone to Tears.
  • In the Spanish dub, when Richard cries, he sounds like he's shrieking.
  • Baby Alexander's wailing is loud enough to be heard from quite a while away. Although it's justified, since he is a baby.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998). In "Nuthin' Special," Buttercup tries to find her special power and does a sonic scream. She is matched by Blossom and Bubbles. The Townsville folk seem to be more interested in this sibling contest than in the collateral damage it's causing. Bubbles as well, when she's upset or excited.
  "HE'S MAKING NEW POWERPUFF GIRLS!!!"
• Gus from Recess is adorable, and his speaking voice sounds fine when he's calm. When he starts screaming, especially in "Germ Warfare", it gets annoying.
• Rigby of Regular Show is lovable, but is nevertheless prone to anger whenever he's reminded of how short and weak he is. He will frequently yell out STOP TALKING! when he can't take it anymore.
• In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, "Day of the Flecko", while Rocko is trying to sleep, a cute little bird flies into a tree branch, chirping. But soon its chirps become louder and more obnoxious to the point of yelling "CHOIP! CHOIP! CHOIP!" Rocko retaliates with a Big "SHUT UP!", causing the bird to fall from the tree.
• Ruby Gloom: Misery sure is adorable, but her banshee wailing can shatter glass miles away.
• Rugrats:
  • Angelica pretends to be this. She's just plain bratty-yelly, though.
  • Tommy’s baby brother Dil when he cries, in the movie where he is introduced the other babies cover their ears when he cries and comment on how loud and annoying he is, Angelica complains at one point that he’s so loud she can’t hear the TV.
• The Simpsons:
  • The episode "The Frying Game" had the endangered screaming caterpillar (or "screamapillar"). It is cute when not screaming... or laughing at Homer being executed...
  • In "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington", Mayor Quimby redirects airplane traffic away from the motel where he conducts his affairs so he can hear his partner's (Miss Springfield) voice. When he discovers that she falls under this trope, Quimby laments "Now I regret buying you that opera house!"
    • The above is a reference to Citizen Kane, where Kane uses his fortune to finance his mistress's opera career — until everyone else finds out that her singing voice is horrendously mediocre.
  • "Margical History Tour": During the story of King Henry VIII, Henry (Homer) is looking for a new queen, spotting an attractive woman in the corner. Cut to their wedding, and when she gives her vows, she speaks in a shaky nasal voice. Henry has her executed immediately after the wedding.
• A lot of gags concerning Brak in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, The Brak Show, and Cartoon Planet invoke this trope. He has adorable mannerisms, but his easily-excited demeanor and tendency to sing about everything makes him less endearing to those around him.
• Sally Avril from The Spectacular Spider-Man. Cute cheerleader, but has a voice that could peel paint from the walls. Her personality doesn't help much either.
• Steven Universe: Steven Quartz Universe may be an adorable little boy, but has a tendency to get rather shouty at times.
• The Berbils from both versions of ThunderCats. Adorable, fuzzy little robot bears... who speak in an eardrum-torturing synthesizer voice.
• In special Toot & Puddle: I'll Be Home for Christmas, this is true of all of the puppies except for "Golden," named such because "Silence is golden."
• Total Drama:
  • Courtney's high pitched and childish voice does not mesh well with her uptight personality. In particular, in "Get a Clue", she whines to Chris about wanting a prize after she solves his first riddle then after she brought in two samples of DNA, with Chris giving her his bag of cheese puffs to shut her up.
  • Lindsay's high pitched and childish voice is appropriate for her level of intellengence, but in "Not So Happy Campers - Part 1", Lindsay whines about the communal bathrooms, in which Gwen covers her ears. Shortly thereafter, Lindsay screams bloody murder when she finds a cockroach in the cabin.
  • In Pahkitew Island, Ella is an adorable faux-princess with a Beautiful Singing Voice; however, her teammates find her constant and often inopportune singing to be annoying, especially Sugar. Chris is also annoyed by Ella's singing to the point where he threatens to boot Ella from the show if she sings again.
  • In the 2023 reboot episode "Launch Back of Notre Game", Emma, after being launched out of a catapult, lets out a rather long high-pitched shrill that made everyone cover their ears. Chris even remarks that "she has got some pipes".
• Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race:
  • Whenever Jen of the Fashion Bloggers freaks out, she screeches like a banshee. In "Bjorken Telephone", her screaming cracks a camera lens.
  • As the season progresses, Josee, in her Sanity Slippage, becomes more prone to shouting.
• Dr. Girlfriend from The Venture Brothers looks like Jackie Onassis but sounds rather like Harvey Fierstein. She says it's from smoking a lot but has inspired rumors that she's transgender.
  "Do you smoke cigarettes, or do you eat them?"
• Elsa the ghost angelfish from the "Monster Tail" segments of Wake, Rattle, and Roll. She has a very sweet and soft voice, but she shouts at the end of most of her sentences.

Real Life — Animals

• There are several breeds of domestic cat with rather loud or grating voices.
  • Siamese cats, particular, deserve a category all their own. They sound like they have an embedded caps lock key. While other cats may get louder, the Siamese still takes the prize because their cry is almost exactly at the same pitch as crying human babies, a sound most humans are sensitive to and find hard to block out (see above). This video showcases what happens when two of them get going at the same time, and even when they're kittens they can produce some pretty impressive meows. Also applies to Oriental Shorthairs, Balinese, and Oriental Longhairs, since those are the breed names for Siamese without color-pointing, long-haired Siamese, and long-haired Siamese with no color pointing.
  • Breeds with a lot of Siamese/Oriental in their gene pool, such as Cornish Rexes and Sphynxes, fall under this as well.
  • Bengals are roughly equivalent to three to five Siamese in raucousness. The fact that they're literally part wildcat probably helps on this front.
  • This cat produces an unusually drawn-out and loud meow akin to a civil defense siren: "MAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
  • When a she-cat comes into estrus and starts yowling. God help you if you're trying to sleep.
    • Some cats have a sort of disorder that has them in heat for months at a time, no breaks. It's not only loud as hell but can actually prove fatal for the cat.
  • Even a normally quiet cat can and will crank up the volume to get its owners to pay attention. "MURROWWWWWW..."
  • One cat even holds the record for the loudest purr ever, at roughly 70 decibels, roughly as loud as the dishwasher.
  • Domesticated cats in general, actually. Cats don't even "meow" to each other (aside from kittens meowing to their mothers); they reserve meowing to use towards humans, who are particularly sensitive to it, probably because a cat's meow is at about the same frequency of a human baby's cry. In general, communication between cats relies mostly on body language, but seeing as we humans (from cats' point of view) fail at body language, cats resort to vocal means of grabbing our attention, hence the meowing they don't even use between each other.
  • Ivan, one of the kittens in this video. Don't worry, you'll know which one soon enough.
• Many breeds of dogs, and in many cases this has been bred into them deliberately.
  • The smaller breeds of dog tend to have high-pitched barks or disconcertingly loud howls, hence the nickname "yap dogs."
  • That piercing howl-bark you can hear three blocks away? Probably a beagle. There's a reason they were bred for hunting.
  • The Dachshund is a breed bred to have a loud and fierce bark like it was at least five times its actual size. Which it proceeds to do whenever passersby — even people it has met before on friendly terms — walk past its owner's house. There's a saying among dog owners: "Rottweilers will bark when someone comes up to your fence, but Dachshunds will bark when someone comes within fifty feet of the fence." Since Dachshunds were originally bred to take on badgers in their own holes, it's the rare case where the dog's bark is actually not writing checks its bite can't cash.
  • Golden Retriever mixes can be this way. They tend to embody Keet, but if someone's at the door (or Hell, within 50 feet of the door), expect lots of barking.
  • The Lhasa Apso gains extra credit for being explicitly bred as a temple guard dog and living alarm, rather than hunter or retriever like most small dogs: it combines a very loud bark with a distrust of strangers. One of the Lhasa Apso's old alternate names translated to "Roaring Lion Guardian" or something similar.
  • The infamous Shiba Inu scream.
  • Shetland Sheepdogs are such beautiful animals that it ALMOST makes up for the noise.
  • The Basenji may not be able to bark, but as many videos on YouTube will attest, their howling "yodel" is no less agonizing, especially if there's more than one of them. And it's so hard to make them stop once they get going.
  • Huskies have similar yodeling skills to Basenjis, though they can also combine them with what can only be described as Chewbacca sounds. They are also similarly difficult to calm down once they're committed to making noise, especially if there's more than one.
    • Similarly, Alaskan Malamutes can also sound like this. Fittingly, Chewbacca was actually based on Lucas' Malamute, Indiana (and yes, this is the dog he named Indiana. Lucas had a lot of fond memories of that dog).
  • The Bouvier des Flandres is another one of those protective dogs that will bark at anything within eyesight. It's a beautiful dog, but IT SOUNDS LIKE BARITONE THUNDER.
  • Staffordshire Bull Terriers tend to make odd noises on par with a Tasmanian devil.
  • Jack Russel Terriers, really... love... to bark!
  • Keeshonden/ Wolfspitzen: fluffy, puffy, usually wolfy-coloured bundles of medium-sized... LOUDNESS (particularly in, but not restricted to, pack situations). Specifically bred to have this big bark in a medium package as a kind of... user-friendly (read "not eating you out of house and home") alarm-system you could find other work for (like dragging stuff) at a pinch. No, really. This noise was deliberate: has a great vocal range of other sounds not displayed here — which, is no help if you get one love-sick pining/ howling at night.
  • Corgis. They are very vocal, ranging from quiet "woofs", whining, to full on barking up tornadoes. They are also very cute. This comic attempts to explain their thought process behind the barking.
  • Greyhounds and whippets are normally quiet and docile, but when they whine, they can be quite shrill.
  • Brachycephalic dogs in general (i.e. bulldogs, boxers, Pugs, etc.) tend to make strange noises approximating that of human beings because of the shape of their snout.
• Flamingos. The noise they make is not unlike the trombone section of a really bad jazz band tuning up before the show...except that is the show.
• Peacocks are beautiful and stately but "grating beyond all possible belief" doesn't begin to describe their courtship song.
• Howler monkeys. They weren't given their name for nothing.
  • Worse, the whole troop tends to call at once, over and over and over.
    • There is a very good reason for this: Howlers eat mostly leaves, which are very low in nutrients. As a result, they are more sedentary than other monkeys, due to having less energy to expend on moving around. They also need larger territories to get all the leaves they need. The problem is how to defend a large territory against other troops when you can't move fast. The Howler's solution is to make as much noise as possible to proclaim their territories without engaging in actual fights with other troops.
• While on the subject of noisy primates, the siamang is a type of gibbon that whoops and hollers its fool head off, amplified by an inflatable sac in its throat, not unlike a frog's.
• The House Wren is no longer than your index finger, but his song can be heard from at least five backyards away. Fortunately, the song is cute too. Many wrens share these traits.
  • New World blackbirds and their relatives (icterids) seem to have this as their hat. Meadowlarks, for example, are pretty enough, but on a calm day their songs can carry for almost half a mile. A red-winged blackbird's song can be charitably described as an imitation of a malfunctioning fax machine. And the yellow-headed blackbird... well... just listen.
• Mockingbirds also have a very pleasing song... most of the time. But desperate bachelors resort to singing at midnight to attract prospective mates. Singing LOUDLY at midnight. And thanks to modern technology, some mockingbirds have taken to imitating cell phone ring tones, car alarms, and power tools.
  • God help you when you get one that's previously lived outside a house with a constantly crying child in residence.
  • The rare lyrebirds are basically noisier mockingbirds. Albert's Lyrebird in particular is known to imitate not just all of the local bird calls AND all the things listed above, but human voices, traffic, and chainsaws. Even when they're not mimicking, they have another call that consists of drum-like booming that can be heard for kilometers around.
• This trope applies to many species of parrots. For example, budgerigars can get grating with their constant chattering.
  • Oh God, budgies. Never mind the chattering, it's the screeching that you have to watch out for. It's like the sound of nails on a chalkboard, machine-gunned into your ears.
    • The screeching is soft and fluffy compared to the sound of a budgerigar that is trying to make friends with the most boring bird in the garden. The most boring bird in the garden goes "squeak", quietly, and inside the house is inaudible to human ears. The budgie then replies, at a volume calculated to get through the closed windows and be clearly audible outside. SQUEAK. It is so loud that you can hear your ears' AGC mechanism thumping in and out. And it happens every 10 seconds and goes on and on and on and on and on...
  • Did you know that cockatoos can achieve higher decibel levels than a jet engine?
  • Monk parakeets, also known as "Quaker parrots," have a shrill cry that will pierce your eardrums and, with enough exposure to said cry, give you a nasty headache.
  • Then there's the sun conure; its near-rainbow of orange, yellow, green, and blue feathers is definitely gorgeous, and it has an engaging, playful personality. But this foot-long bird has a scream that feels rather like someone is hammering a white-hot railroad spike into your ear. And yes, they can cause temporary deafness at close range. No wonder screaming problems are one of the biggest reasons why a parrot gets dumped in rescue.
  • Baby lovebirds and cockatiels look really cute starting when their feathers have grown in... And would've made great candidates for voicing those blobby black demon things in Ghost (1990)
  • If a parrot is left alone for a long time, it will get bored...and a bored parrot often lets out ear-piercing screeches, hoping to catch the attention of a nearby person or bird. On the other hand, being in a large group doesn't get them to shut up in the slightest. Rather, parrots in the wild chatter and call to one another continually, both for social purposes and just to keep track of one another's locations.
• The Eurasian bittern, A.K.A. the great bittern. It is medium-sized, has fluffy feathers, and is relatively quiet. But when the mating season comes, the males will make sounds that would put a bass drum to shame. In the middle of the night, no less. And they can be heard for 2 to 4 kilometers around.
  • Their American cousins are no slouches, either.
• Rabbits are fairly notorious for this sort of behavior. They are normally silent but will punish their potential enemies by producing a sound that will scar you for life. This is actually an effective group defense. The sound carries amazingly and acts as a massive dinner bell for pretty much all predators, meaning whatever caught it is likely to have its meal interrupted by something else. This might cause the predator to drop the rabbit, and may put it off hunting them again.
• Peaceful serenity is at least one thing that's definitely not better with penguins. At least not banded penguins (Magellanic, African, Humboldt, and Galapagos), also collectively known as Jackass Penguins, thanks to a call that sounds like a bad-tempered donkey.
  • The noises other penguins make are endearing, but not exactly conducive to peace. Case in point, if you live in the coastal areas of New Zealand or southern Australia, and your home happens to be located on top of a little blue penguin breeding colony, you can forget about sleep, what with the males' raucous mating calls. Just skip to the 20:24 mark of "The World of Penguins", and you'll get the idea.
• In the bird world, the King of Disproportionate Cacophony is the European Starling. His... song (to human ears, it sounds more like a series of ultrasonic squeals and shrieks) is grating to anyone who is not a Starling at any hour of the day. But especially at five in the morning. Right outside your bedroom window.
• The endangered Noisy Scrub Bird of southwest Australia is very hard to see but a cinch to hear, if one is skulking in the bushes near you and calls, it's almost deafening.
• Although not conventionally "cute," no one can deny, that the male capercaillie (A.K.A. Eurasian wood grouse) has an unmistakable courtship call: A series of guttural, rapid-fire clicks that accelerate to a cork-like "pop," before ending with a loud scraping sound.
• Cicadas. Especially, as with the Starling, for people who are sensitive to ultrasonic sounds. Tell us you'd expect something that looks like this to make such a racket. We won't believe you.
  • And if you've watched a lot of Neon Genesis Evangelion or When They Cry, they also cause fear and anxiety.
  • Australians will likely be familiar with the deep croaking sounds made by Bladder Cicadas at dusk in the summer. If your garden happens to be one they like, they can get loud enough that you'll want to close the windows at dusk to muffle the noise they make.
  • The regular sound of South-East Asian rainforest is not birds chirping or animals calling, it's the constant high-pitched whine of cicadas. It's quite awful to experience.
  • And the weird thing? Some breeds of cicadas have cries that can't be transmitted via cell phone. Now try explaining to the person on the other end why you just screamed, "SHUT UP!"
  • These are worse in urban areas of Japan because the taller buildings have a tendency to not only echo the cicada sounds but amplify them as well, making it hard for building inhabitants to rest.
• Australia has a number of distinctive examples (aside from the cockatoos, lyrebirds, budgies, and cicadas mentioned above):
  • Koalas. Yet another animal that is normally pretty quiet, but man, when one has something to say...
    • Male koalas' territory-marking calls sound like a capercaillie (see above) trying to imitate a donkey, with a few shades of swine and elephant seal thrown in for flavor.
    • When fighting over territory or stressed, koalas can also make an extremely shrill cry that carries for quite some distance.
  • When agitated, sugar gliders make a noise called "crabbing," which can be an extremely disconcerting sound coming from a creature smaller than your hand.
  • Australian ravens. The familiar Corvus corax of the Northern Hemisphere are actually rather quiet, and their distinctive soft "Grok-grok" flight calls might even be considered soothing. Australian corvids, on the other hand... some say they sound like little kids, others say they sound more like immensely upset cats or a mistuned kazoo, but generally, everyone agrees their "GAWWWWWWH" call is loud and too ridiculous to ignore.
  • Kookaburras might have one of the most distinctive and well-known calls in the bird kingdom. It's not even annoying to listen to.
  • Magpies singing are also quite pleasant to wake up to, though Youtube videos don't quite capture this.
    • Juvenile magpies, on the other hand, make shrill begging noises that sound like a squeaky toy.
  • On the much more obnoxious front, they also have numerous species of parrots, mentioned above. Rainbow lorikeets bear special mention for being (A) absolutely gorgeous and (B) prone to gathering in large numbers in wooded areas and shrieking their little heads off.
  • Real Tasmanian devils are much cuter◊ than their animated counterpart, but they are just as guttural, if not more so.
  • Quolls are also quite loud.
  • The extinct thylacine was also said to have a mating call similar in sound to a horse's whinny.
  • Brushtail possums resemble a cross between a monkey and a squirrel, and they have been known to make creepy nightmarish sounds.
  • Even kangaroos, which again, are a normally quiet species of animal, can be guttural if provoked into making some noise.
• Opossums, while not cute in the traditional sense, are widely regarded as Ugly Cute, and occasionally make a strange screeching sound when threatened.
• Crickets might not be very cute, but the amount of noise they produce is entirely disproportionate to their size.
• Woodpeckers get an honorable mention here. They don't usually sing much, but the amount of noise they can produce with their pecking can be stunning.
• The spring peeper. A frog no longer than the end of your finger, which manages to be one of the loudest animals in the world.
  • Speaking of frogs, you do not want to piss off a pacman frog.
  • Many frogs in general tend to start screaming when angry. The "REEEEEEEEEEEEEE" onomatopoeia actually came from someone looking up what actual angry frogs sound like, and it's quite accurate.
• "I didn't know squirrels could do that!" They sure can, buddy. They also make an obnoxious noise somewhere between barking and wheezing.
• One of the first filmed instances of a giant panda giving birth showed a possible reason why females often lose their first infants. The newborn cub was blind, naked, helpless, the size of a stick of butter, and so amazingly loud, its mom practically fled the birthing chamber in terror when it started squealing its lungs out!
• Guineafowl are used as watch birds in some rural communities in Africa because their obnoxiously loud, staccato alarm call will awaken the whole neighborhood to the danger as well. There's no such thing as stealth when sneaking past guineas...
• Quails. They're not all that much larger than a goose egg, but that trilling noise they make carries further than you'd think.
• Guinea pigs are utterly adorable, and very, very loud. And that particular sound is the one they make when they're happy about something or want to be held. Cute, cuddly, and friendly to a fault, but if you crinkle a bag, open a fridge or make any kind of noise that tells them food is coming, it's wheek wheek wheek all the way home.
  • Guinea pigs are often very quiet when held by new owners. Once they learn to trust you, however, they will not stop burbling, cooing, or grunting when they are with you.
  • Another, much rarer sound is called "chirping", and it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Are you wondering how a bird got in your house? Nope, it's your guinea pig.
• An editor on Cracked.com mentioned that while red foxes are cute, their calls are hideous. Behold.
  • Fishers make similar sounds (to the point that they're often mistaken for foxes and vice-versa) which is startling considering that fishers look like (and technically are) big weasels.
  • Fennec foxes are the cutest things on Earth, but when they get excited...
    • Fennecs make sounds that can sound like something between a solid squeal and a screeching monkey. The scary part is they make this noise when they're happy.
  • This fox makes a lot of noise when trying to play with a turtle.
  • This joke from Fox Dad only makes sense if you are familiar with what foxes really sound like.
• Hummingbirds can scream quite loudly when scared.
  • They snore, too. And it sounds ADORABLE.
• The banannaquit, a tiny yellow-and-black Caribbean bird with a cute little bandit mask on its face, a pink mouth, and an ear-splitting call, which it shrieks out every waking moment.
• Hedgehogs. No kidding.
• The Eurasian Blackbird (not to be confused with American Blackbirds) is a pretty-looking bird, and the males, when they sing during mating season, are well-known for some of nature's most Awesome Music. BUT... both sexes, all-year-long, are notorious for being the Nervous Wrecks of the bird world, and they are constantly shouting their alarm calls — which range from a sharp, endlessly repeated "SNIP!!! SNIP!!!" to an ear-piercing, shrill yell.
• The Barn Owl is normally quite a beautiful and elegant-looking bird, but it has a... very memorable display to scare off predators, puffing up and waving back and forth while making a sound that will haunt your nightmares.
  • That screech sounds hellish. This vocalization, however, is grating.
• Be very, very glad that bats' echolocation cries are too high-pitched for human ears to register, or else getting within a yard of most species would put you on the ground.
  • Flying foxes are among the cutest of all bats...and also, among the noisiest. And that's just chatter; a genuinely agitated flying fox sounds something like a miniature Tasmanian devil.
• The Birds of Paradise, named so because of their stunning plumage, have calls that... fall a bit short of their name. Especially during mating season.
• Hamsters are usually very quiet but can be pretty noisy when angry or frightened. You'd expect a hamster to squeak like a rat or mouse, right? Wrong!
• Tree hyraxes look like the lovable lovechild of a love triangle between a small dog, a guinea pig, and a bear. Their nocturnal call is comparable to the screams of a human woman undergoing prolonged physical torture.
• Many members of the deer family fall into this trope:
  • White-tailed and mule deer. Fawns, at least, can be very loud when crying out.
  • The mighty elk/wapiti. Cute when young, majestic symbol of the North American wilds when an adult. The bugle of a stag in rut is a metallic soprano squeal that sounds downright alien.
  • The chital (A.K.A. spotted deer or axis deer) of southern Asia emits a falsetto bark when it senses danger.
• Ocelots are beautiful felines. When excited, they make a sound that resembles an angry zombie. Makes more sense when you consider purring on housecats, and then ramp it up accordingly.
  • Cheetahs and pumas are the two largest of the small cats and can't roar. Both, on average, outweigh a leopard (which can roar) and are several times more massive than an ocelot. Both cheetahs and pumas can purr and, when a tame one is petted by a human they are comfortable with, their purrs sound like a very loud and never-ending low pitch growl.
  • Pumas are also infamous for their screech, which has been compared to the sound of a woman screaming.
• When they roost wherever they are not wanted, barn swallows. Their chirping while dive bombing any threats, real or perceived, is not only annoying but can be downright scary at times.
• The Potoo is a quirky, sometimes goggle-eyed bird that can nonetheless can pull off some pretty darn effective◊ Puppy-Dog Eyes. Its loud, hoarse, almost alien call sounds like a terrified baboon being strangled.
• While male mallards are usually quiet, females quack rather loudly, especially if there's more than 3 of them.
  • Geese, too, are also capable of making loud honking noises that some people think of as a nuisance. Like guinea fowl, geese were also used as guard birds for their loud honking as well as their aggression towards intruders.
  • The call duck is a small breed of duck originally bred to be used in hunting as a kind of living decoy. They're adorable and mild-tempered, so these days they're kept as pets. But true to their name, having been selectively bred to attract wild ducks, their calls are shrill and loud.
• Adult pigeons make soft cooing noises that can be considered soothing, but the same can't be said for pigeon nestlings, who make high-pitched squealing noises that can be heard from a tall tree or even a building.
• The Great Kiskadee. The sound it makes is not unlike a squeaky toy, only much louder.
• Rufous-vented Cachalacas, or guacharacas as they're commonly known. They look rather cute if a bit silly at times. And then they start belting out a call that sounds like a cross between an angry parrot and a hacksaw (depending on the area, there'll be more of one or the other) that can be heard over a mile away. Worse, they like to start at around 5 AM.
• North American porcupines can get pretty talkative when they're eating or upset. Especially the babies.
• The White Bellbird may look fairly cute, and definitely silly with the little thing that hangs from its beak at all times. It is the loudest bird alive, however, with its call sounding like some manner of prison alarm. It regularly hits 125 dB this way, twelve decibels quieter than a Long Range Acoustic Device, which is more than enough to cause pain and hearing damage to human ears; it's suspected the females of the species may be partially deaf from exposure.
• The screaming hairy armadillo is a chubby little lump of an animal that sounds, when disturbed, like a distorted one-second clip of a really angry cat stuck on repeat.
• Three-toed sloths are normally silent and cute, but during mating season females produce loud high-pitched screams as mating calls.
• Bluejays. They look like little songbirds, but they're actually more closely related to crows and ravens. They don't sing, or even caw; they scream.
• Baby elephants (both African and Asian) are very cute, but like adult elephants they can produce a loud roar that some have likened to the noise a dinosaur might make.

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