Follow TV Tropes

Following

Eek, a Mouse!!

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eek_a_mouse.png

"Mice to me mean the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing screaming on tables in early Sixties sitcoms..."

A staple of early domestic comedies in both film and television. The mere sight of a mouse (or sometimes another animal who is the subject of a common phobia) will drive a housewife up onto a chair or a table, where she stands shrieking, stomping her feet, and clutching the hem of her skirt until the rodent is captured or driven away. This is largely a Dead Horse Trope today, with old examples rooted in a very specific and sexist image of women that dates back to the early part of the 20th Century, but it is still occasionally visible in cartoons and in the odd ironic reference. In some media, this is a unisex trope and involves a Mouse Hole or a Swarm of Rats for scare factor.

Cartoons will sometimes play with this trope by crossing it with the old myth (deemed plausible by the MythBusters) about mice frightening elephants, which results in elephants that shriek and leap up onto some (possibly insufficiently-strong) object upon sighting a mouse. Other common ways to subvert this trope include showing the wife standing unfazed while her husband shrieks and leaps to safety.

This trope is arguably justified by evolution. For the vast majority of human existence, the animals commonly associated with this trope — rodents, snakes, spiders, etc. — were potentially venomous or carriers of disease, and a human's fear of it could be an evolved self-preserving instinct.

See also Cower Power and Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?. May overlap with Screams Like a Little Girl. See also A Mischief of Mice, You Dirty Rat!, Spiders Are Scary, and Squirrels in My Pants. Contrast Nice Mice and Resourceful Rodent. In Japanese media, frogs are often used instead. Supertrope to Elephants Are Scared of Mice.

Not to Be Confused with Eek! The Cat. Also not to be confused with the Jamaican reggae artist "Eek-A-Mouse".

Truth in Television, of course, as many people do indeed fear mice and rats, for various reasons both rational and irrational.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • There was a commercial that had a woman do "EEK a Mouse!" bit and her husband hunts the mouse down but before he can dispatch it, the wife sees the mouse cornered and now it's a cute little mousey and she stops him. End of commercial has couple cuddling on the couch and mouse in a cage running on a wheel.
  • This Samsung Infuse commercial, only with the image of a large spider.
  • A cheese advert in New Zealand in the mid-1990s featured local celebrity Lana Coc-Kroft in this situation. She finds a wedge of Gouda cheese to ward off the mouse, only to frown and pause for a moment before eating it herself. Oops.
  • One of the bumpers for the Cartoon Network in the early 2000s had a housewife doing this bit as part of the promotion: leaping onto a chair, lifting up her skirt, and then lifting up various underskirts until she got to the one displaying the channel's checkerboard logo.
  • The beginning of one Bananas in Pyjamas toy commercial has a mother freaking out over her kids playing with a rat... which turns out to be a Rat In A Hat toy.
  • An early '60s commercial for Soaky bubble bath paired up Mighty Mouse with Bozo the Clown, who says "Eek! A mouse!" when Mighty Mouse flies in during a scene with the product.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Ai Yori Aoshi: Miyabi is capable of bodily throwing someone across the room if she even suspects someone is trying to harm Aoi, but completely flips her lid at the sight of bugs. Unfortunately for her, the Sakuraba house's pet ferret, Uzume, develops a habit of bringing her dead bugs.
  • In Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad, Tabasa the witch is terrified of mice, which Sinbad uses against her more than once.
  • Don't Meddle with My Daughter!: Athena is the world's greatest superheroine and a seemingly unstoppable force of justice... except she's still scared of mice. So it's good that it isn't something she often has to deal with.
  • The eponymous robotic cat from Doraemon is ironically afraid of mice; rightfully so, as a mouse chewed off his ears when he was younger.
  • In Dragon Ball, Goku is fighting General Blue of the Red Ribbon Army. Blue has Goku paralyzed with telekinesis and is about to finish him off... when a small mouse appears. Blue flips his lid, freaks out and loses focus. Goku is grateful enough for the unwitting save that he rescues the mouse when the cave they're fighting in collapses.
  • Galaxy Angel: Played with as, in an Amazon Brigade full of girly-girls, the one with the paralyzing phobia of mice is the powerful and intimidating, gun-collecting, ultra-violent Bifauxnen Forte. Though in her case it's justified because she's allergic to the animal.
  • In Hayate the Combat Butler, Maria is scared of cockroaches (they even have a nickname within the story so they can be talked about around her). Shiranui brings one into the house and she shrieks standing on Hayate until he apparently shoos the kitten away. Still trying to figure out how he did anything with her standing on him like that. But don't worry, he trains.
  • Inuyasha: Kagome can handle youkai, blood, guts, wounds, two-timing boyfriends, time-travel, saving the world while trying to pass exams, lifting the spirits of the depressed, downtrodden, and bullied and can even befriend the reclusive, the painfully shy, and aggressively hostile, but ask her to help a giant beast-faced hanyou in his herb garden when there's an earthworm in plain sight and she'll fall to pieces.
  • Freya from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is, among other things, a Lady of War Action Girl and has apparently eschewed femininity. However, she still freaks out when she sees Shigure's pet mouse.
  • Used for a second in the last episode of Gakuen Alice, where Hotaru uses a gang of robot mice to keep two Girly Girl classmates at bay.
  • Kekkaishi had Tokine perform this trope, right after fighting a much bigger rodent that could breathe fire. She and her grandmother also have a similarly disproportionate fear of cockroaches.
  • In the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Visual Novel Tomo to Kimi to Senjou de, Athrun decides to make a robot pet for his crush Cagalli. He ends up giving it a hamster design, but when she first sees it she has this reaction and smashes it. Kira steps in and explains, and Cagalli is both very touched by the gesture and very apologetic for destroying it.
  • In Ranma ½'s second movie, all the girls run away from a horde of mice. Ranma stands there unaffected and comments on how silly they are to be afraid of mice, until she discovers that cats are following said mice. At that point, she starts screaming in terror.
  • In Saber Marionette J, in order to make the marionette robots as much like (stereotypical) women as possible, every one of them is programmed to be afraid of mice — except the tomboyish Lime, who merely finds them cute. This actually saves the heroes in one episode, when Cherry (reluctantly) punches the cave's ceiling and makes a whole colony of mice fall on them, sending Tiger and Panther running away in fear.
  • Silent Möbius: Nami Yamigumo is a Miko who fights alien monsters and evil spirits on a regular basis. However, when exploring a cave she spots a mouse and jumps behind the wall until it leaves, begging it not to come back.

    Comic Books 
  • This once happened in Archie when Ms. Grundy jumped on her desk and Jughead took a picture of it for the school newspaper. She actually was worried that the picture would be about how scared she was of a little mouse but instead it turned out to be proof the school needed an exterminator.
  • The protagonist of Jennifer Blood takes advantage of this stereotype in issue 3, when a neighbor who's convinced she's attracted to him has cornered her in a bathroom and exposed himself to her. She doesn't want to ruin her "perfectly ordinary suburban housewife" facade by maiming or killing him, but as someone who moonlights as a brutal vigilante, that's all she's trained to do. So she starts shrieking about a pretend mouse.
  • Mouse-Man, a Silver Age foe of Wonder Woman, naturally did this one time for one of his schemes, using his mouse motif to scare women into dropping their jewelry. Perhaps not the greatest triumph for feminism to occur in Wonder Woman.
  • When Spider-Man teamed up with Dazzler, she took him back to her apartment to recover after a fight. Come morning, she suddenly freaks out when she sees a spider with his things. It turns out to be one of his tracking devices. She is not amused when he laughs at her.
  • A 1940s Superman story had a dream where Lois gains Superman's powers. When first getting used to her new strength, she tests it by picking up a massive cabinet and moving it across the room while the workers are on break. When they come back and ask how it was moved, she boasts that she lifted it herself. But before she can prove it, a mouse runs across the floor, making her scream as the workers have a good laugh.
  • Tintin. Thomson and Thompson are startled by mice used for experiments in Tintin: Destination Moon.
  • In Violine, this happens several times to several characters, though not with Violine's pet mouse, only with other groups of mice.
  • The Monica's Gang story "A Mouse's Love" (as well as its Animated Adaptation within the franchise's debut feature film) plays with this. During a costume party at Franklin's place, Monica, who is dressed like a mouse, stumbles upon one of his inventions (which, as Franklin points out later, even he can't figure out what it's meant for) and gets caught in it. The invention, as it turns out, is a Shrink Ray, but Monica doesn't figure this out until she walks back into the party and is mistaken for an actual mouse, scaring the party guests into shooing her away.
    • One Monica strip, which sees the debut of Maggy's pet cat Vanilla, sees Jimmy Five and Smudge attempting to invoke this trope, by sneaking a mouse into the box with Monica's birthday present for Maggy, with the intention of scaring both girls. When Maggy opens the box, however, the mouse is nowhere to be found, as it turns out the present was Vanilla.

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 
  • The main plot of the Calvin at Camp episode "Bringing Down the Mouse."
  • In Disney's War — A Crossover Story, when various Disney villains have teamed up to go after other villains' opposing heroes, of all people, Gaston suffers from this; when he tries to take Cinderella hostage during the campaign, the appearance of Jaq and Gus results in him falling out of a window.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path: Like in canon, Edelgard is scared of rats. Claude actually (accidentally) uses his joke about there being a rat at her feet (moved forward to the Mock Battle from its original place in the Battle of Eagle and Lion) to defeat her.
  • In the Thomas & Friends fanfic Gordon's Stowaway, Emily freaks out at the sight of several mice that have come into the shed to shelter from the cold.
  • In The Great Alicorn Hunt, Rarity has this reaction to Mudpuppy's menagerie in chapter 26.
  • In The More Things Change Series, Maria Novak, the first person La Fay possesses has a deep fear of all rodents. Unfortunately, Le Fay can't override such weaknesses and as such, becomes crippled with fear at the sight of Rufus, something Kim and Ron take advantage of while fighting her.
  • Lampshaded in Rocketship Voyager when Captain Janeway encounters her first non-anthropoid alien, in this case, a man-sized rodent called Nee'Lix.
    Janeway was not the type of girl to jump on the nearest chair and shriek when faced by a giant rat, but she could not deny a feeling of wrongness, of alienation — the instinctive psychological rejection of a creature that was in the form and manner of a Man, yet was not.
  • The Rock Farmer's Daughters: Taken to an unusual extreme in the chapter titled "Unusual Incentive": Marble opens a cupboard, and a waterfall of mice ends up falling onto her head, while everypony else finds mice seeping out of every nook and cranny. Cut to Igneous and Maud outside, hearing Marble shriek. She spends most of the chapter curled up on the table while the others drive the mice out of the house.

    Films — Animation 
  • The 3 Little Pigs: The Movie: Susette the mouse, Felix’s girlfriend, creates an offscreen diversion at the farmhouse so that Felix and the Pigs can sneak away before the butcher and the farmer realizes they are gone, with the latter freaking out at the sight of her.
  • In Cinderella, the newly arrived mouse Gus is trying to hide from Lucifer. His hiding spot turns out to be under Anastasia's teacup, causing her to scream in terror and accuse Cinderella of putting a "big ugly mouse" on her tea tray on purpose.
    • In Cinderella II: Dreams Come True, the Fairy Godmother manages to undo Jaq's human transformation and turn him back into a mouse just in time to stop a rampaging elephant.
    • In Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, Jaq and Gus help Cinderella get into the palace by scaring the kitchen servants while Cinderella poses as the "royal mousecatcher".
  • In Dumbo, Timothy purposely scares the circus elephants as payback for being cold and ignoring poor Dumbo. Just appearing front of them sends them all shrieking and fleeing in terror.
  • Of Unknown Origin is about a New Yorker obsessed with eliminating the large rat that keeps invading his apartment.
  • Ratatouille plays this trope straight too where everyone freaks out over seeing rats in a restaurant. Even the health inspector is shocked to see hordes of them running the kitchen!
  • The Sword in the Stone: During the Wizards' Duel, Mad Madam Mim turns herself into an elephant to get the upper hand (or rather, trunk) on Merlin, who has turned into a walrus. But Merlin then turns himself into a mouse, which scares off Elephant!Mim, but only briefly as she then retaliates by turning herself into a tiger and chasing after Merlin.
  • The Rescuers: Madam Medusa freaks out when she sees Bernard and Bianca in her boat and jumps onto a chair. She quickly realizes she's Surrounded by Idiots (Snoops' attempts to squash the mice with a broom results in a broken chair and two concussed alligators) and pulls a shotgun on them.
  • Titanic: The Legend Goes On had a scene where Angelica's stepsisters were scared by mice.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag: The two female leads do this when they find a disembodied head in their luggage during a family vacation. ("Eek, a Head!"?) One shuts herself up in a closet and refuses to come out (until the protagonist jokingly suggests that the dead guy's body might be in there), while the other attacks the protagonist with a fork. The latter is especially hilarious because what causes her to snap is the protagonist innocently asking, "Would you like an enchilada?"
  • Carry On Constable: When the quartet are trying to creep around a run-down house, Gorse suddenly sees a mouse and screams, almost blowing the group's cover.
  • Conan the Destroyer: In one scene, Zula, who up until now has been afraid of nothing and fearlessly taken on whole villages and men much larger than her in combat, jumps and screams at the sight of a mouse. When all of her party look back she looks sheepish.
  • Friday the 13th Part 2: Played for Drama. While hiding under a bed from Jason, a rat crawls up to Ginny's face. This causes Ginny to wet herself, informing Jason of her presence under the bed by a trickle of urine coming down from the bed. However, according to the director, it was the rat that did it.
  • In The Hazing, Delia acts like this when she tries to collect the Terrifying Pet Store Rat for the Scavenger Hunt; especially after it somehow gets tangled in her hair. While this might have been part of her Obfuscating Stupidity, she squeals again when the rat comes through the portal after she has dropped her Dumb Blonde act, so it's possible that she actually is scared of rodents.
  • Hollywood Party has a whole roomful of women doing this when one of them sees a mouse. It turns out to be Mickey Mouse.
  • In Hussar Ballad, Sweet Polly Oliver Shura fearlessly fights French soldiers throughout the entire film, being vastly outnumbered most of the times, but shrieks and faints at the sight of a mouse.
  • Invoked by Becky in A Little Princess (1995). As the students are stealing Sarah's locket from Miss Minchin's office, Becky screams to distract Minchin and eventually stammers that she thought she saw a mouse.
  • Moscow — Cassiopeia has a rare male example. Lob tears through the entire ship and ends up accidentally causing it to travel faster than light all because of a mouse. May be justified, as the window was blown up and made tiny Pafnuty seem like a giant monster.
  • The Mouse That Roared: The film opens with the Columbia Studios girl-with-torch logo suddenly hiking up her gown and fleeing from a mouse at her feet. (The title is a metaphor for a tiny, innocuous nation that ends up holding the fate of the world in its hands.)
  • Movie Crazy has a long comic sequence in which Harold Lloyd accidentally puts on a magician's coat while at a fancy nightclub. The sequence ends when Harold accidentally opens a box of mice concealed within the coat, causing mass panic among the women on the dance floor.
  • My Science Project: While Michael is exploring the abandoned fallout shelter in the aircraft boneyard, Ellie sees a rat and screams, attracting the attention of a security guard. He has to coax her off the piece of machinery she's climbed onto before they can flee.
  • The Name of the Rose. The monks hear a shriek, then laugh at a Camp Gay monk on top of a stool with a mouse below. They quickly shut up when an elder friar starts shouting at them. This turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun re the motive of the killer, who hates laughter.
  • National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation After Uncle Lewis accidentally burns down Clark Griswold's Christmas tree from chain-smoking cigars, Clark desperately wants to continue to have a perfect family Christmas by chopping down a pine tree in his own front yard, smashing his neighbor's window in the process. Unfortunately... things turn out worse with a squirrel (not a mouse) popping out of the new tree, scaring everyone throughout the house. Clark Griswold tries to catch it in his Santa coat and smack it with a hammer. But in the end, Cousin Eddie's Rottweiler Snots eats the squirrel, right on the angry neighbor Margo's collar, as soon as she enters the front door. "Gone", calmly says Clark right afterwards.
  • The Ocean Waif: Millie jumps under the covers of a bed in terror after seeing mice leaving a mouse hole in the mansion.
  • Subverted in Phase IV. A woman screams when she sees a mouse wandering around in the desert via a closed-circuit video screen. Then she and the other characters gape in horror as they watch the ants quickly devour the entire mouse in a matter of seconds.
  • In The Prince of Thieves, Maude does this deliberately to switch Lady Christabel's note before the seneschal can read it. She screams that she has seen a mouse and leaps up on to her chair. While everyone is looking for the mouse, she switches the note for a harmless poem.
  • Pups Is Pups: Happens when the pets of the Our Gang kids get loose in a hotel ballroom. One lady rather overreacts to the sight of a mouse riding a turtle as both pass through her legs. The lady freaking out because a duck's on her head has a better reason to be upset.
  • Riffraff: Done for a jailbreak! Harriet aka "Hat" is doing a stretch in a women's prison. One of Hat's friends has managed to trap a rat in a cage. They let it out. Everybody freaks out in terror, guards and inmates alike, except for Hat and her friends who take advantage of the chaos to race out and jump into a storm drain.
  • In She's the Man, Duke and Viola scream and leap on the bed, hugging each other, when a big spider enters their dorm room.
  • In the opening scene of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), April O'Neil leaves the news studio only to get frightened when she sees a brown rat by the parking lot.
  • Happens a few times in some The Three Stooges shorts. Justified for the time period.
    • Perhaps the most famous is in "Horses’ Collars", where, any time Curly sees a mouse, he flies into a violent rage while screaming, "Moe, Larry, the cheese!" The other two Stooges have to feed him cheese to calm him down.
  • Lt. Alexis in The Wildcat is The Casanova to an absurd extreme. When it's time for him to leave for his next duty station on the frontier, literally hundreds of women throng the streets, obstructing his car. The other soldiers finally get the crowd of ladies to disperse by dumping a barrel of mice.
  • In one scene in Willow, a woman shrieks at the sight of mouse-sized humanoid creatures called brownies.

    Gamebooks 
  • On Titan, the world of the Fighting Fantasy, Calacorms are large, two-headed Lizardfolks that are quite dangerous in combat... but they are terrified of rodents, especially mice. This is explained as an ancient superstition coming from the legend of Suthis Cha, the Lizard God, who choked to death while trying to eat the Mouse God Karreep.

    Literature 
  • Animorphs:
    • Naturally averted with Cassie, who works with animals every day. One story has Marco wonder how you can tell a female Hork-Bajir from a male, such as being weird around bugs and snakes. Cassie raises an eyebrow and throws a (harmless) snake at him. Marco Screams Like a Little Girl.
    • Genderflipped when Cassie morphs a rat to figure out why it won't complete a maze when two dumbasses enter the lab and try to kill the rat. She runs up their pants legs to get them to leave.
    • Played straight when Marco gets Ax to morph a mouse with him so he can eavesdrop on a girl who didn't invite him to a party. On finding out why she didn't invite him (it involved a prank with a chocolate bar and a pool) he runs across her toes, prompting mass panic in the girls, macho bravado from the boys, and annoyance from Jake and Cassie, who very quickly catch on when the mice seem to understand English.
  • Asperger Adventures: In Lisa and the Lacemaker, Lisa shows Granny May her mouse Paddy, thinking she'll be interested. Instead, Granny May screams and drops her teacup.
  • The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Alexander is rather bemused when his young wife Tatiana has this reaction, as he's seen her brave 500-kg bombs, cannibals, and starvation in the Siege of Leningrad. He points out that mice can climb, so standing on the furniture does no good.
  • Chocoholic Mysteries: Discussed in Mouse Trap. Lee learns from Chief Jones that the night Julie Singletree died, the fish tank she used for her pet mouse Blondie was knocked over, and the animal escaped. Both get a chuckle out of the thought of it popping up and triggering this reaction from one of the officers who's looking around the apartment.
  • In The Chronicles of Narnia, Badass Adorable Talking Mouse Reepicheep wants to be a herald, but he's too small to be seen until he's up close (and therefore not very impressive). Of course, since he's very touchy when it comes to his honor, nobody wants to tell him this, so they tell him that it wouldn't be quite fair to their enemies since some humans are afraid of mice.
  • Clue: In book 17 (chapter 2: "Say Cheese!"), Mr. Boddy reveals that several white mice have escaped from their cage (they were his sister's pets and she accidentally left them behind when she was visiting). The first one to actually do this trope is the duel-crazy Colonel Mustard, but the other guests don't laugh because they're doing the same thing.
  • "The Dinner Party" by Mona Gardner has two dinner guests arguing about this trope, with the woman saying that women have outgrown the era of "jumping on a chair when they see a mouse" and the man arguing that a woman's first response to any danger, percieved or actual, is to scream. The hostess settles the argument by keeping calm when a cobra slithers over her foot.
  • Doc Savage: There is an odd Out-of-Character Moment in Land of Long Juju (not one of the better books in the series) where Action Girl Pat Savage has to restrain herself from flinching when several field rats scamper out of the jungle.
  • Happens in a Doctor Dolittle story: A smaller African kingdom is warred upon by a bigger, expansionist one, whose crack troops are Amazons. The White Mouse who lives in Dolittle's pocket points out that while they are fearsome warriors, the Amazons are still women, and gather a force of local mice who scares them away.
  • In the schlock novel The Feminists by Parley J. Cooper, both the Straw Feminazi authorities and La Résistance have such an irrational fear of rats they won't even mention the word. This causes problems when La Résistance have to hide in the sewers.
  • In The Finishing School Series, which parodies many Proper Lady tropes, Sophronia and her friends create a distraction by having Bumbersnoot run around under the rug and screaming "Rat!" causing them all the other girls to scream, faint, and leap onto furniture. To be fair to them, Bumbersnoot is a mechanical dachsund and thus far bigger than any rat should be.
  • Forest Kingdom: Played with and justified in book 4 (Beyond the Blue Moon) when Hawk and Fisher confront a crime lord who keeps a bunch of naked Amazons as bodyguards. Rather than fight them, Hawk and Fisher turn a sackful of ravenous sewer rats loose in the crime lord's lair, and the bodyguards start climbing the furniture in a panic when the starving rodents swarm them to bite their bare toes.
  • In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent associates mice with cheese and women standing screaming on tables in early Sixties sitcoms.
  • The non-fiction book that inspired Homicide: Life on the Street mentions that one of the detectives had been called home by his wife to deal with a rampaging mouse. "I disposed of the body, but considered leaving it as an example to others."
  • In the Realms of the Unreal by Henry Darger has a hysterical escapade where the little princesses of Abbiennia sneak into a meeting of evil Glandelinian higher-ups and release a bunch of mice. The men shriek and cower and get up on chairs and tables.
  • Defied in the Lord Peter Wimsey book "Strong Poison":
    Mr Pond: You're not afraid of mice apparently?
    Miss Murchison: No. In your days I suppose all women were afraid of mice.
    Mr Pond: Yes, they were, but then, of course, their garments were longer.
    Miss Murchison: Rotten for them.
  • Lester Leith: "The Girl with the Diamond Legs'' has a thief release a mouse at a party, knowing that one guest is deathly afraid of mice and her hysterical reaction willl provide a distraction for the theft.
  • In The Marvelous Land of Oz, Scarecrow and his friends enter his palace (taken by rebels), and are captured immediately, to be brought before their leader. However: 1) the rebels are all women and 2) Scarecrow has recently met the Queen of the Field Mice and asked for permission to take a few of her subjects along.
  • In Mousenet, this is part of the "EEEK Test," a test used by mice to gauge a humans' feelings towards mice. Jumping on a chair results in a "Loud EEEK" and a grade of C, with fainting being the worst possible response and earning an F. Talking to or touching the mouse is "No EEEK" and an A+.
  • Ready, Freddy!: In Talent Show Scaredy-pants, when Robbie's pet mousenote  runs loose in the house, Mom completely flips out and is seen having taken refuge on the table.
  • Second Chance Cat Mysteries (a Cozy Mystery series by Sophie Ryan): The climax of the first book features this — Elvis, the titular "second chance cat" (a former stray adopted by the owner of a second-hand/repurposing shop) drops a nearly-dead mouse on the killer's foot, distracting her before she can shoot Elvis's owner (who's able to duck behind a counter with the time given). This also gives the cops time to burst in and arrest the panicking killer before she regains her senses. Elvis's owner also takes a few nervous steps back when someone points out, after the arrest, that the mouse is real — and still twitching — and not a toy like she thought.
  • Sugar Plum Ballerinas: In one book of the series, Jessica brings her pet rat, Shakespeare, to ballet class, and hides him in her duffel bag in secret. However, he escapes, and the sight of him causes the other ballet students to panic.
  • The Tale of Despereaux takes this to an extreme: when the rat Roscuro falls from a chandelier into Queen Rosemary's bowl of soup, the queen is so horrified that she dies instantly of a heart attack. From then on, her distraught husband King Phillip bans both rats and mice from the kingdom.
  • In The Witches Bruno's mother flips into hysterics when the witches start turning into mice thanks to drinking their own potion. She literally climbs over her husband screaming about them climbing up her skirt. Although in this case, it's completely understandable since there are over a hundred of them running around.
    • The reason that the potion transforms children into mice in the first place is because the Grand High Witch hopes to exploit this trope, thinking the mouse-children will be so revolting that their teachers will kill them.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Batman: The villainess Nora Clavicle manipulates Gotham City into hiring only women police officers, then unleashes an army of tiny mechanical mice. At least Batgirl remains "immune".
  • Bewitched: Cousin Serena both invokes and inverts the trope when, while talking about a woman she finds disgusting, she comments about how mice are likely horrified by her.
    I'll bet when the mice see her, they climb up on chairs.
  • The Brady Bunch:
    • Happens with Alice on when a pet mouse gets loose. Although it's averted another time — she hands it to the boys and isn't scared.
    • In a different episode, Cindy runs into the kitchen asking Alice if she has seen her pet lizard that escaped its box. Through a clenched-teeth smile, Alice answers, "Yes I have. He's over there." Camera zooms out to reveal that Alice is standing on the table.
    • Invoked and subverted in a third episode. Bobby and Cindy complain to Emma that there is a mouse in the house. Emma tells them to make a pet out of it. Bobby and Cindy are shown petting it and clearly not afraid of it.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Averted in the premiere episode. The heroine doesn't even twitch when a sewer rat runs over her foot.
    • Buffy does jump at a sewer rat in "I Will Remember You", but that's a sign that she's nervous over working closely with Angel.
    • Inverted in Angel when Gunn and Wesley freak out over a rat and Cordelia is the one to get up and deal with it.
  • Carrusel: Pablo releases a mouse in the middle of class. All but one of the girls start screaming and crying. The one girl who isn't scared, Valeria, "punishes" Pablo by pretending to pass out and tricking him into believing she had a heart attack.
  • El Chavo del ocho:
    • One episode has Quico playing with a mouse while snickering — and later Dona Florinda and La Chilindrina screaming and fainting due to the mouse.
    • A late episode has Doña Florinda's restaurant plagued by mice. She and Chilindrina exhibit the expected reaction throughout, especially in a hilarious scene where Chavo unknowingly brushes the latter's leg with the broom he is using to hunt the mouse; she has an absolute panic attack, thinking it's the mouse climbing up her leg.
  • Cinderella Chef: Exploited. When she thinks she's going to be sacrificed Jia Yao yells that she sees a mouse, and while Song Qi panics she runs back into her cell.
  • In Community episode Environmental Science Troy freaks out when a lab rat accidentally escapes.
  • Danger: UXB. A sapper screams when he encounters a rat, just when Lieutenant Ash is about to defuse a bomb designed to blow up at the slightest touch. He is not amused.
  • Dollhouse. At the start of Season 2, a pissed-off Dr Saunders puts lab rats in Topher's cupboard, in a not-too-subtle message of what she thinks of him. His female assistant Ivy has to retrieve them while Topher climbs the nearest railing to get away.
  • Fort Boyard: Some of the challenges involve being in close proximity to mice and rats, especially the Jars of Fear, in which the contestant has to rummage in jars of mice, and the Searching Head, in which the contestant's head passes through a chamber with rats.
  • Fraggle Rock: This is how Ma Gorg reacts to Fraggles. Fraggles are considered pests by the Gorgs, as they often steal radishes from the garden and, to a Gorg, a Fraggle is about the size a large mouse would be to human.
  • The Golden Girls had one, revealing why Dorothy's nickname is Pussycat. Instead of catching it as the other girls expect her to, Dorothy talks the mouse into escaping.
  • The Goodies:
    • Referenced in "Kitten Kong", where a housekeeper (suspiciously similar to the one in Tom and Jerry, we even hear her shouting for "Thomas") jumps on the table and shrieks at the sight of the team dressed as mice.
    • Referenced and inverted in "Punky Business" when a mouse trying to assure Tim that he is ugly tells him that when he walks into a room all the mice jump onto a chair.
  • Hope & Faith: Played with. When the two title characters get office jobs together, the ever-immature Faith dangles her computer mouse into Hope's cubicle and yells this trope name.
  • On Imagination Movers, Knit Knots wasn't scared by Warehouse Mouse to the point of panic but did urge the Movers to keep the "woodland creature" away from him. An episode of the show also focused on the Movers helping a TV repairman to get over his fear of mice so that he could stick around to fix their TV and not be afraid of Warehouse Mouse.
  • Kate & Allie spends an entire episode dealing with a mouse, complete with jumping on chairs and tables in fright, when Allie's son Chip is taking care of his classroom's pet mouse and it gets out of its cage. Subverted in that 1) they realize that they're behaving like 60s sitcom housewives, 2) Kate and Allie are running a catering business at the time and are justifiably concerned about mice on the premises, and 3) Allie's sportscaster boyfriend also turns out to be deathly afraid of mice.
  • A M*A*S*H episode has Hawkeye reacting this way to Radar's pet mouse. When they enter her in a race against group of Marine patients, Hawkeye screws up the courage to "pet her for good luck"... and one tiny stroke is enough to set him grimacing and cowering away.
  • The Mentalist: Jane once escaped from jail by scaring a rodent-phobic guard with a live mouse he'd caught.
  • Monk: Adrian Monk frequently reacts this way to a variety of analogous situations. Justified in the episode when it was a venomous snake that was loose in the room.
  • MythBusters: When testing the effects of mood on gas consumption, Grant was forced to drive a course while a pair of mice were allowed to run loose inside the car; his reaction screamed this trope.
    Grant: [upon realizing he lost track of the mice] Where did you go? WHERE DID YOU GO?
    • They also find out that elephants actually do fear, or at least avoid, mice; they explain it as, due to elephants' terrible eyesight, a blur moving around on the ground could be a venomous snake as easily as it could be a harmless mouse, and they're better safe than sorry.
  • My Wife and Kids: In "Of Mice and Men", Jay finds mouse droppings in the house and demands that Michael hire an exterminator to get rid of them, but, as usual, Michael is determined to handle it himself. Hilarity Ensues.
  • The Noddy Shop turns this into a running gag for Aunt Agatha, with her thinking the goblins are rodents. One episode, "The Fish Story", has her dress up as a cat to scare away mice that she believes stole a ring belonging to Kate's mother.
  • Odisea Burbujas: Mimoso Raton (a baby mouse) is shown entering a room during his theme song. A woman jumps up onto a chair because she is afraid of him- and presumably of mice in general.
  • In Orange Is the New Black, this gets played straight in season 6 when the girls of D block dump rats into the prison's cheese business as a Halloween prank to get at their rivals in C block. Everyone freaks out like expected, and it kills one of the cushiest jobs C block had while also killing a pipeline D block had to smuggle drugs.
  • Pan Am has Laura reacting this way to the appearance of a lizard in her hotel room in Rangoon, as she jumps on her bed to get away. Maggie calmly appears to pick it up and put it outside then joins Laura on the bed shrieking upon discovering a snake in the bathroom.
  • Phoenix: The only female member of the Major Crimes Division is mocked by her sergeant when she has a fender-bender accident after a spider drops out of the sun visor in front of her. At the end of the episode he hands her a can of bug spray and declares he's not going near that car until "that horrible monster" has been killed.
  • The Ropers features a gender-flipped version of this trope: it was Mr. Brooks, not his wife, who leaped up onto the couch screaming at the sight of a white mouse—safely in a cage, no less.
  • Rumpole of the Bailey: In "Rumpole a la Carte", when a mouse finds its way onto the plate of Claude Erskine-Brown's date at a particularly arty French restaurant. Admittedly, a plate in a three-Michelin-star restaurant is the last place you would expect to find a live mouse, but do you really have to stand on your chair and shriek?
  • Rupauls Drag Race: An argument between two of the queens is cut short when they spot a spider in the workroom and almost all the contestants lose their shit, including Mayhem Miller who jumps right on a nearby table then leaps to another table like a gay black Superman.
  • Sesame Street:
    • In an early 1970s sketch, Prairie Dawn and an Anything Muppet boy visit a “haunted” house, where the boy is repeatedly frightened by various sights and sounds, each of which Prairie explains and says there is nothing to be frightened of. Finally, the boy finds a little white mouse, at which point their roles reverse and Prairie reacts with this trope, right down to the titular exclamation:
      Eek! A mouse! A mouse! Oh, that is something to be frightened of! Eeeeeeeek!
    • In another sketch from the same decade, "What's My Letter?", Guy Smiley challenges Prairie Dawn to name the letter that comes after D. Despite Guy's hints, Prairie struggles until he prematurely shows her the prize:
      A mouse?! Eeeeeeee!
  • Sex and the City: In one episode, Charlotte dates a Camp Straight man and they both react to a mouse in a similar way.
  • Three's Company: "The Best Laid Plans" revolves a mouse being loose in the trio's apartment. Larry kills the mouse, but Jack doesn't want the girls to find out because Janet won't sleep in her bed as long as the mouse is around and Jack is using it as an excuse to sleep in the same room as Chrissy. Meanwhile, Mr. Roper doesn't want Helen to know the mouse is dead because he was using it as an excuse for Helen's mother to not visit.
  • In Thunderbirds, The Hood sneaks a camera disguised as a mouse aboard Thunderbird 2. The plot fails because it was attracted to, and only photographed, the screaming Lady Penelope. And The Hood never gets to try again since he destroys the mechanical mouse in a fit of rage.
  • The Tonight Show: In one episode, Johnny Carson freaks and jumps into Ed McMahon's arms after a cheetah cub hisses at him.
  • Unhappily Ever After: Double-subverted. Ryan, who believes the old legend that the Earth would spin out of its orbit if all the Chinese people in the world jumped off their chairs at the same time, panics when he spies a group of Chinese exchange students standing on their chairs in the school cafeteria. One of the students explains that they had just seen a mouse, causing Ryan to calm down. Once Ryan is gone, though, the student gets angry and mutters: "Curses! They're onto us!"
  • In Vel Vet, Clara shrieks when she sees a rat. Her sister Rita does not even flinch. The supervisor, Emilio, thinks it is probably just a mouse- but he orders the crew to hunt down the rodent just in case. Eventually, Rita catches it while Luisa and Ana shriek- and it turns out to be just a cute little mouse!
  • A subplot in the very first episode of Victoria has the rats of Buckingham Palace being displaced from the 'downstairs' part of the building (where the servants live and work) to the 'upstairs' part (where the Royal Family lives and works) because of technicians installing gas for lighting, heating, and cooking. This culminates in some rats crashing Queen Victoria's 19th birthday party, and Victoria having a Freak Out when she sees them sitting on her birthday cake.
  • The Worst Witch: Exploited when Helibore and Rowan-Webb have a wizard duel (no not like that one). Helibore turns Ethel into a goose girl and Rowan-Webb counters by turning himself into a mouse to scare her.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess: Gabrielle (not quite an Action Girl yet) is hiding from some bad guys when she notices a rat crawling about. She has to remain perfectly still and silent lest she blows her cover, and Hilarity Ensues as she stares at it with wide eyes and covers her mouth before a whimper comes out.

    Music 

    Myths & Religion 
  • According to one of the stories about the Chinese calendar, the reason why the rat is the first in the list instead of the ox is this trope. The people were shown the ox and the rat, and only the rat was called "huge". Well, if it's bigger, then it should be first.

    Podcasts 

    Radio 

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • In The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Ms. Glass leaps onto her desk and shrieks for the school principal if Willy reveals Horny's presence in his backpack.
  • Amazon: Guardians of Eden: Darlene is afraid of rats which is why she hates Jason's work. When a rat is placed next to her by him, she shrieks, lifts her hands, and runs away.
  • The Bard's Tale: This can be invoked for rewards in the PS2 release by summoning and dismissing the rat in bars. In fact, this is how the eponymous Bard starts the game.
  • In Brain Lord, Ferris screams her head off when she encounters a room full of mice in the Tower of Light.
  • Chrono Trigger: Frog manages to frighten Lucca when they first meet. Later, if Marle is in the party when Crono and Lucca see him off from Guardia Castle, he'll approach Marle to comment on her resemblance to Leene, prompting her to shriek.
  • Mongoria from Comix Zone, an otherwise extremely formidable enemy, had this as her weakness. Drop Roadkill, Sketch's pet rat, in front of her and she'll actually say the trope name before jumping off the page.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day: In the "Barn Boys" chapter, the larger female block standing on top of Jack is afraid of mice, and in order to get her off him, Conker has to get rid of Marvin the Mouse. To do so, Conker has to feed Marvin three pieces of cheese. After the third piece, Marvin becomes so gassy that he inflates and explodes.note 
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Monomi and Monokuma are revealed to be terrified of mice in chapter 4.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Used in the 101% ending of Donkey Kong 64, where Dogadon (a huge dragon who's fought twice in the game) is scared of a tiny mouse squeaking.
  • In Deltarune Chapter 2, Noelle freaks out at seeing mice in Cyber City, especially in the puzzles where Kris has to move rotating tiles to lead them from one hole to another. She'll even tease Kris for "deliberately" scaring her with the mice if they fail to solve the puzzle several times.
  • In Dot's Home, Dot freaks out at a mouse after time traveling to her parents' old apartment in 1992.
  • Dragon Quest VIII has Prince Charmless who refuses to undergo the hunt for an Argonian Lizard to prove he's worthy of the throne because he's afraid of lizards. All lizards. Even little ones. You have to scare him out of a room he's holed himself up in at one point by nudging a lizard into it, provoking this trope as a reaction to it.
  • Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light: When Aire meets Torte the mouse sage, she screams in fear and disgust. He, too, screams — because Aire is presently a cat and he doesn't want to be eaten. (They team up after calming down.)
  • Played with for a laugh in Final Fantasy IX. Incognito princess Garnet picks up an oglop (a beetle-like insect), having no problem with the little critter whatsoever. However, since she's supposed to be undercover as a normal country girl when an old woman comments that most girls hate them, she squeals theatrically and flings it into the air. Meanwhile, the Knights of Pluto — doughty bodyguard Steiner included — positively flip out when confronted with the bugs.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, the mere sight of a -apparently huge- cockroach flitting around sends Lucina and her sibling (which depending on her mother could be Cynthia, Inigo, Kjelle, Brady, or Morgan, all of whom are experienced warriors who have survived a zombie apocalypse) into a panic. With Cynthia this is a fairly straight example, but it's even funnier when it's one of the guys, or Kjelle, who wears 24-Hour Armor and is still afraid of it.
      Lucina: Breathe, [sibling]. Calm down and tell me what happened. You have nothing to fear now that I'm here.
      [Sibling]: B-b-bug! A bug!
      Lucina: ...A bug? ...As in...an insect?
      [Sibling]: As in a huge, freakish nightmare, with gross, hairy legs... It's HORRIBLE!
      Lucina: You're telling me all of your screaming and flailing was over an INSECT? *sigh* I thought the Risen had come. You could have sent the camp into a panic.
      [Sibling]: AAAAAH! It's back! And it can fly?! S-stay away! Don't come near meee!
      Lucina: Come now, I don't see what all the fuss I— EEEEEEK!
      [Sibling]: See? SEE?! It's the stuff of nightmares! Now hurry up and kill it! Kill it with fire magic or something!
      Lucina: Oh, no—I'm not going near that thing! It's HUGE!
    • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, should Edelgard engage Claude in battle at ‘the Battle of the Eagle and Lion’, Claude will say that there’s a rat by her feet, causing her to freak out. Claude will lampshade how he didn’t think that would work while Edelgard will call him out on it. Although it becomes less funny when it's revealed that Edelgard was subjugated to experimentation to give her a second crest, and she was trapped in a cell that was infested with rats.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Princess Zelda reacts to mice in this manner. Seeing her cower like this is a bit silly when she's animating a steel-clad Phantom. This is why stage 2 of the final battle has Link having to take down the ghost mice used to attack Zelda by Chancellor Cole.
  • Love & Pies: Joe jumps into Amelia's arms after mistaking a burnt piece of paper Amelia's dog was holding for a mouse. It turns out to be the receipt of Freya's boat trip the day before the arson, proving her innocent.
  • Elh from Solatorobo absolutely hates bugs and insists that Red kill them as quickly as possible when you come upon them (which is a good idea, since the bugs attack you like most everything else in video games). There are also two Protection Missions in which the goal is just "don't let the bugs get near Elh" (this includes if you accidentally throw a bug across the line because apparently even a dead bug is creepy).
  • Tales of Graces: In a skit in the Updated Re-release, Tales of Graces f, Cheria is freaked when Sophie discovers a mouse in Pascal's invention, Mecha-Asbel.
  • In Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object, upon encountering Nazrin, Sanae has this reaction, nearly word-for-word.
  • Wild ARMs: HanPan uses this to his advantage in several places in the game to spook certain NPCs and make them move.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: An amusing fantasy equivalent happens when, while exploring a ruin with Keira Metz as part of a sidequest, Geralt ends up separated from her and hears her screaming for help. He finds her encased in a magical shield, between two rat nests with the critters scurrying around her feet. As Geralt points out, she is a master sorceress who could've wiped them out with a mere twirl of her wrist.

    Web Animation 
  • Porkchop 'n Flatscreen! has a mouse showing up and scaring... the girl called Mouse. She panics and tries to smash it with a baseball bat, which then flies out of her hands, conks her on the head, and lets loose her Superpowered Evil Side.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • The Facebook game MouseHunt features the king of Gnawnia hiring a team of mouse hunters to rid Gnawnia of their mouse problem.

    Web Videos 
  • Often Florida wildlife will invade the live webcast of The Funday Pawpet Show, leading Ezra to envoke this trope, while Mutt commands the show's border collie to "Eat it, Bandit! Eat it eat it eat it!"

    Western Animation 
  • Arthur: The opening teaser of "Pets and Pests" has the entire Read family, sans Baby Kate, demonstrate a highly over-exaggerated version of this when Dad unveils his banana bread and there's a mouse on it. It ends with them all running out of the kitchen screaming, only for Mrs. Read to run back in and grab Baby Kate.
  • Bob the Builder: Lofty has a fear of mice, to the point where he mistakes some animals (like squirrels and hedgehogs) for them.
  • Caillou: In "Leo's Hamster", this is done with a hamster when Leo's hamster, Buddy, whom Caillou is petsitting, gets loose.
    Caillou: Mommy, why are you standing on the chair?
    Mommy: Me? (giggles nervously) Oh, no reason.
  • Central Park: In "Garbage Ballet", Paige hates rats and the garbage crisis at the park increased her fear due to the increased rats in the park. Paige spends their sick time setting traps if any rats enter her home while Cole stays home to stop her. In the end, she was just hallucinating the rats in her house due to her flu.
  • In The Chicken from Outer Space, the pilot to Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage was afraid of a mouse in the beginning. Muriel plucks the little rodent and sets it loose outdoors. But after the battle with the titular chicken from outer space, we see Courage looking at it again as it fed on the ashes of the fallen fowl. The mouse's eyes turn bright red as a result. It was a Justified Trope as Courage screams in terror.
    Courage: This shouldn't happen to a dog!
  • Chip and Potato:
    • Potato is a mouse but only Chip knows this, and all of the other characters think that she's her snuggly toy that she totes around with her everywhere. It's implied that Chip keeps Potato a secret because the other characters would react this way if they believed her to be a real live mouse.
    • Sure enough, this happens in "Chip's School Trip" after Chip is forced to leave behind Potato in a dollhouse in a museum. To the point that there's a scream and a voice comes on a loudspeaker telling everyone to make their way to the exit. Then, when Howie opens up Chip's lunch bag, he spots Potato in her mouse form, screams, and tosses the bag and sends everyone else into a panic.
    • When Chip first reveals the truth to Nico in "Hospital Trip Chip," he tells her to call the nurse, but after realizing what's going on calms down.
  • Monterey Jack actually uses this trope in the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "The Carpetsnaggers" to chase humans from one side of a flying house to the other to prevent it from hitting any buildings.
  • In The Crumpets "Ghosts In The Attic", up in the attic of the house, Caprice freaks out thinking there's mice when it's in fact her young twin siblings sneaking through her. Later at the preparation of the voodoo ceremony, however, Granny holds a mouse in front of Caprice and the latter finds it cute.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: In "Mom & Jerry", Dexter accidentally swaps his brain with that of a lab mouse. Hilarity Ensues when Dexter (in the mouse's body) ends up in the kitchen, causing his mother to freak out and start trying to chase him out of the house.
  • Fireman Sam: Bella often freaks on seeing mice, regardless as to whether they're real or clockwork ones.
  • Gasp!: In "Mouse Fishin'", a mouse scares Ginger out of the kitchen. This sets in motion the episode's Zany Scheme as Gasp ropes the pets into helping him capture and then evicting the mouse.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures: In "Tough Luck", Finn has a Terrible Interviewees Montage while trying to find minions. One of the applicants displays impressive swordsmanship, but when Finn is about to hire him, the man shrieks at the sight of a mouse and runs away.
  • In an episode of Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch!, after a misguided matchmaking for Mr. Peavely, leaving him with a oversized shrewish bully of a woman taking over the zoo. Though she would threaten any animal in the zoo and chase after the bears relentlessly in any vehicle she can get her grubby hands on, the bullyish broad was cowed by a tiny mouse who was telling the zookeeper and his would-be wife he and his friends' last goodbyes. Instead, the would-be wife ran away terrified, never to return.
  • Krazy Kat: In "Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus", Ignatz knowingly employs this trope this to scare a woman in the circus dressing room. When Krazy tries it himself, he gets hit with a broom.
  • Little Einsteins: In "Hungarian Hiccups", Rocket is spooked by a little mouse which coincidentally, is what scares his hiccups away.
  • Little Princess: In "I Want a Sleepover", when the "dragon" that Algie and Little Princess discover actually turns out to be a family of mice, Maid screams as if there actually is a dragon.
  • Looney Tunes: Several old shorts utilize this trope, usually those starring Sylvester the Cat. "Lighthouse Mouse" is one example.
    • In one short, a mouse mocks the way the housewife panics.
    • With each of these shorts involving a black and white cat, this is used twice: Once in "Pied Piper Porky" and the other in "We, the Animals Squeak". Difference is the unnamed cat from the first short is male, the other from the latter short, named Kansas City Kitty, who is female, featured this moment as a recycled animation. The first has Porky ordering the male cat to get rid of the mouse, but the feline is easily frightened by it. The second has Porky giving a present to Kansas City Kitty, which is revealed to be a mouse and Kansas City Kitty is frightened by it after what she had been through with some other mice.
  • The first Madeline special introduces Madeline's fondness for mice by showing her happily playing with them in the kitchen while the other little girls all quake and "Eek!" on top of a stool (where somehow all eleven of them fit). Later, the nurse at the hospital also cries "Eek!" when Madeline asks for some mice to play with.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Taken to ridiculous lengths in an episode where a rivaling villain reanimates a mammoth (which appears as comically large as any city-destroying monster) to cause destruction in Townsville. To stop it, Mojo Jojo instructs the girls to leave a large hunk of cheese to attract the town's mice and scare the mammoth off. And you know what? It works!
  • Producing Parker: Employed and then subverted when Parker shrieks at the sight of a mouse in Dee's office. Dee, who has been turned into a human/reptile hybrid by experimental snake venom-based drugs, promptly claps her jaws shut on the little critter and gulps it down.
  • The Real Ghostbusters episode "Stay Tooned" had Janine freak out after seeing a cartoon cat and a cartoon mouse come to life and leap out of the television set. When the Ghostbusters ask her what happened, she stammers "I...I saw a mouse", causing them to initially think that Janine was scared by an ordinary mouse.
  • Ren & Stimpy: Played with "The Boy Who Cried Rat", in which Ren impersonates a rodent so that Stimpy can earn his keep by catching him.
  • In Roary the Racing Car, Tin Top sees a mouse in one episode and freaks out.
  • Rugrats: Stu has a moment like this when he discovers the thing wrecking his garage wasn't a rowdy Spike, but a mouse. He even apologizes to his dog when he "saves" the day by chasing it away with a bark.
  • Referenced in South Park episode "Eek, A Penis!" where a mouse with a genetically engineered human penis growing on its back frightened women. Actually they were frightened by the penis (and who wouldn't be—even if a mouse or a human penis wouldn't freak you out, seriously, a mouse with a human penis growing out of its back?). But the trope still stands.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: "Eek, an Urchin!" which involves the titular creature terrorizing the Krusty Krab.
  • Tex Avery, naturally, built an entire cartoon out of this trope. "Slap Happy Lion" has a mouse scaring a much-feared lion simply by saying "Boo!" at him. The cartoon ends with the mouse being scared by a much smaller mouse. The narrator of that cartoon — a mouse — even wonders why anyone would fear a mouse.
  • Thomas & Friends "Thomas, Percy and the Squeak": Opera singer Alicia Botti shrieks upon seeing a mouse in one of Thomas' coaches. She shrieks so loudly, in fact, that she shatters windows all over the town.
    Gordon: Definitely a coloratura!
  • Thunderbirds: The subject of a subplot in the episode "The Mighty Atom". Yellow Peril terrorist for hire the Hood steals an autonomous camera disguised as a small brown mouse and sends it into Thunderbird 2 to gather information on the technology inside. Unfortunately, it's programmed to focus on faces, the idea being to take pictures of operators at control panels to see which parts merit the most attention. And since Lady Penelope is the only one inside, and she's simply terrified of mice, all it gets are photos of her looking frightened, causing the Hood to smash the camera in a rage.
  • Tom and Jerry: Done many times.
    • In one short, the "eeker" is Tom's cowardly identical cousin.
    • Averted in one episode when the lady who owns Tom buys a pet white mouse (actually Jerry painted white that Tom had sold to the pet store earlier in the cartoon).
  • Transformers: Animated: When Captain Fanzone winds up on Cybertron, this is basically the Transformers' response.
  • Turned into a Running Gag in the T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "Share-a-Lair", in which T.U.F.F.'s elephant agent repeatedly freaks out at the sight or mention of Agent Rodentski.
  • Who Killed Who? has a ghost who scares the protagonist, laughs, then promptly gets scared of a tiny mouse, in the classic housewife way.

    Real Life 
  • Semi real-life, with another type of vermin rather than a mouse: the late X Japan guitarist Hide and the drummer/bandleader Yoshiki were/are both terrified of cockroaches. One story has it that when the band members were in Los Angeles for the first time, a roach had gotten into the room Hide and Yoshiki shared. This trope ensued with both, according to the story, jumping up onto the bed and shrieking until it was finally agreed that someone had to kill the roach, and depending on who's telling the story, either Hide or Yoshiki finally did.
  • Psychologists who studied the Eek, a Mouse!! phenomenon concluded that it's not the mouse itself which the typical distressed housewife is afraid of, but her awareness that she'll probably have to kill the animal to remove it from her residence. The mouse is harmless, killing is Squicky.
    • Besides, as humans have co-evolved with mice ever since the dawn of agriculture, screaming, shouting, and stamping if a mouse enters your kitchen is a moderately sound response — perfectly sensible for a woman to aggressively protect her food-store by trying to frighten away small invaders.
  • In Real Life, there's very good reason to be afraid of mice. House mice in particular can carry deadly diseases and there have been reports of ones growing so large they attack albatross chicks nearly one meter tall. In addition, in 1993, Australia was beset by one of the most devastating mouse plagues in the world; mice began eating the livestock alive.
  • Inverted with mice and rats as pets, which are far more popular with women than men. This was even so in Victorian times, where some upper-class young ladies would keep them almost like toy dogs. Values Dissonance: Perhaps in North America and Northern Europe. In many other parts of the world, mice and rats are still (mostly) seen as the domain of boys.
  • Actress Jaimie Alexander has admitted that, while she has no problem with things like snakes or spiders, she is terrified of mice. You read that right — The warrior goddess Sif is afraid of mice.
  • In the pregame of the Florida Panthers' home opener in 1995, a mouse entered the Panthers locker room and startled the players. One of them hit the animal with his stick. Given in that same game he scored two of the goals in the 4-3 victory, Panthers fans embraced the rat theme with pleasure, including throwing plastic mice into the ice every time a goal was scored (nowadays doing that after every goal becomes a two-minute delay-of-game penalty on the Panthers, something which is of major concern for the Panthers if unscrupulous fans of the opposing team toss a rat onto the ice to try to snag a cheap power play. There is one exception, however: if one of their team's players scores three goals in the same game, then Panthers fans are permitted to throw their toy rats onto the ice in celebration).
  • Akira Toriyama, creator of Doctor Slump and Dragon Ball as well as the character designer for Dragon Quest, has an intense fear of mice, such that his work suffered when his workplace had an infestation since he was too scared to step inside.
  • Rat on New York City subway scares passengers

Top

Rats on a birthday cake

Queen Victoria's birthday party is ruined, first by a sarcastic gift from her mother, then by rats crawling on her birthday cake.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (3 votes)

Example of:

Main / BirthdayPartyGoesWrong

Media sources:

Report