Glass-Shattering Sound

"A shock wave struck while one young lady was performing at the recent Youth Folk-Singing contest, doing damage to the venue. Fortunately no one was injured."

— Sunken Scroll 1,^note The singer in question being a young Pearl Splatoon 2

Sound is a vibration, which can be transmitted to a physical object, such as glass. If the pitch of the sound matches the natural vibration frequency of the object, and if the volume of the sound is loud enough, then the resulting vibration can cause the object to break. In the case of glass (usually wine crystals), the notes that cause resonance vibration are rather high-pitched.

As a result, shattering glass has become a fictional shorthand for indicating that a sound (often someone singing) is particularly loud or high-pitched, or otherwise to indicate that they're a terrible singer (an acoustic analogue to Mirror-Cracking Ugly)... or alternatively, a really good singer, confusingly enough. (The last one is probably the closest to reality, as the singer would have to match the exact frequency of the tone that the glass makes when struck and create destructive resonance by holding the note long enough. Not a feat many people can pull off. As Mythbusters demonstrated, it also requires being extremely close to the glass, so Don't Try This at Home.)

Sometimes coupled with Dramatic Shattering. Compare Super-Scream and Make Some Noise, which cover all-purpose (i.e. not limited to brittle materials) sonic attacks. Related to Gale-Force Sound, which affects things other than glass. Frequently happens at the performances of a Dreadful Musician or an operatic Brawn Hilda.

Compare Cute, but Cacophonic.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Did Somebody Say Just Eat?
• One Bud Light commercial has two dudes going to an opera with bottles of the beer. Cue one Brawn Hilda soprano aria...all of the bottles pop. Another dude turns around and shows the other two that they should have brought cans.
• The Dairy Queen Lips sing the classic Kit-Kat jingle ("Give me a break, give me a break, break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar!") to advertise Dairy Queen's Kit-Kat Blizzard. The Lips sing the last word in such a high-pitched voice that it cracks the screen, with the cracks remaining visible for the rest of the commercial.
• One commercial for Diet Mountain Dew ends with a lady topping her two eagle-tattoo sporting co-workers by letting out a piercing eagle-esque scream and shattering all the glass walls. Then she lets out a smaller eep to destroy the glass vase sitting on the table.
• Table tennis legend Timo Boll breaks his robot opponent's glasses this way in a match of glass harps in an ad for Kuka.
• One of Memorex's "Is it live or is it Memorex?" TV commercials, where Ella Fitzgerald breaks a wine glass by singing a high note... and then replaying the recording of Ella singing also causes glass to shatter.
• Seen in this Nickelodeon station ID from the 1990s, where an opera singer with a huge orange "Nickelodeon" wig sings a high note that causes the conductor's eyeglasses to break.
• Skittles: In "Rock the Rainbow", Steven Tyler has his portrait made out of Skittles and declares it "High-diddly-dee-sgusting!" Said portrait is alive and to prove itself to its owner it keeps singing "Dream On" higher and higher until it falls apart. Only its mouth stays in one piece and continues to sing.^note In a funny turn of events, when this commercial was shown on a segment on This Morning in the UK the commercial broke the autocue.
• In this Walkers Crisps ad, Mariah Carey gets into a quarrel with an elf over the last pack of chips, and she ends the quarrel with an Incredibly Long Note which, among other things, breaks a crew's glasses.

Anime & Manga

• Pecola: In "Coco's Concert", Coco's terrible singing repeatedly causes nearby glass objects such as windows, a blender, etc. to shatter.
• In the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman episode, "Murder Music," has a scheme of kidnapping a rock band, forcing them to perform special music and then have a special ship with giant speakers that emits that music superloud that can shatter whole buildings and drive people insane.
• In Tamagotchi, specifically the "Three Hell Devil Sisters" episodes, Hapichamatchi's crying is so loud that it can make other Tamagotchis faint. In episode 94a, her crying is demonstrated to also be loud enough to break several glass windows in the palace she's in.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 3 episode 26, the sound of the Supermen using a special team attack to defeat the villains is loud enough to crack the lens on Big M.'s binoculars slightly.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 12, Jodie calls for Mr. Slowy when she wakes up to find Goat Village completely destroyed. Her yelling is so loud that it breaks the glass on a picture of Mr. Slowy hanging in his room.

Comic Books

• The Adventures of Tintin:
  • When Tintin first encounters Bianca Castafiore in King Ottokar's Sceptre, they're in a car together and she starts singing. Tintin internally comments that fortunately, the windows are made of safety glass.
  • In The Calculus Affair, the objects randomly breaking in Marlinspike Castle turn out to be the results of Professor Calculus's ultrasound experiments. This gets him kidnapped by Bordurians who want him to develop weapons of mass destruction for them (and Syldavians who try to steal him from the Bordurians for the same end).
• Black Canary's "canary cry" has been used to shatter glass.
• Gaston Lagaffe's dreadful instrument, the Gaffophone.
• Watchmen: Nite-Owl's Owlship screecher speakers have that effect on glass.
• Wonder Woman (1987): At a distance and before she really picks up volume Silver Swan's scream can shatter glass. Once she's at a target and as loud as she can be she can shatter brick and destroy buildings as she did to Cassie Sandsmark's school. Just how powerful her scream is depends on which Silver Swan is in question however, Valerie can blow out eardrums and shatter glass but cannot scream down a brick wall.
• X-Men: Banshee has used this a few times.

Comic Strips

• Hägar the Horrible: When Hägar's wife Helga gets in the mood to sing, she proves perfectly able to shatter goblets with her voice... iron goblets.

Fan Works

• In the Parody Fic B'Elannarella, the Doctor starts pounding away on his Excessor Organ.
  The keys lit up as Doc pounded on them, the noise of his opus shattering all glass objects within a ten-mile radius and fritzing air traffic control processors across half the planet. Multi-tentacled aliens tied themselves in knots as the harmonics disrupted the equilibrium of their inner ears. Sympathetic tremors collapsed intercontinental single-span bridges. A primitive tribe in the Ice Forests of Wier thought the noise was the thundering of an angry God, and so committed mass suicide by having sex with horrible slibberdorphs.
• In the opening to Garfield in: "Along Came a Splut", Garfield blasts Simon & Garfunkel at full volume, shattering every window in a five-mile radius. (Why it didn't break the TV nearby is unexplained.)
• Pokémon Wack: Sound-type moves are super effective against Glass-type Pokemon, likely for this reason. There is also the move "Glassbreaker" that shatters the barriers put up by Reflect and Light Screen.

Film — Animation

• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: At the end of The Wind in the Willows, Rat, Mole and MacBadger gather for a New Year's party at Toad Hall, and they have a champagne toast to celebrate that Toad had reformed at last. However, their glasses are broken by a loud crash from outside, and they look out to witness Toad's newest obsession: an aeroplane.
• The Adventures of Tintin (2011): The villain hires opera diva Bianca Castafiore, knowing her voice will shatter the bulletproof glass cabinet displaying a model ship he is planning on stealing.
• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West: The villains have Fievel imprisoned inside a glass bottle, but fortunately his sister Tanya takes the stage at that point, and her song breaks the bottle.
• Lilo & Stitch: The first time Stitch plays the guitar, he plays a chord that shatters several windows and a coffee pot.
• Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers: Clarabelle somehow manages to shatter the full moon during her high note.
• Recess: School's Out: When Mikey leaves for singing camp, he sings goodbye to T.J. in his Robert Goulet voice, causing one of the bus windows to crack.
• Shrek the Third: Prince Charming shatters the audience members' wine glasses, opera glasses and even pearl necklaces with his girly high-pitched singing during his play.
• Sing: In the Logo Joke, a minion does a loud off-key yell that causes some of the letters in the Illumination Entertainment logo to burn out.
• Superman: Red Son. Superior Man does a Dynamic Entry by flying over to Moscow and shouting a challenge to Superman so loud it breaks every window in the Kremlin.

Film — Live-Action

• Invoked and parodied in The Absent-Minded Professor: The opening scene features Professor Brainard attempting to demonstrate this with a trumpet and a glass placed on the table. His playing fails to crack the glass but manages to shatter every other glass object in the room, including beakers full of chemicals that fill the room with smoke as the opening credits roll.
• Batman Returns: Catwoman, beaten by Batman, falls into a greenhouse and emits a scream of frustration so powerful it shatters the glass roof and walls.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind: At the Devil's Tower rendezvous, the scientists attempt to initiate dialog with the mothership with the five-note salutation. They play it several times before the ship joins in, quite loudly, shattering some control booth windows.
• Enchanted: After Nathaniel fails her for the last time, Narissa screams so loudly, she shatters 'every single glassware in the cavern.
• Parodied in the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The fat lady tries to sing high enough to break a glass; when she fails, she just shatters it against her frame.
  Fat Lady: It's amazing! And just with my voice!
• Herbie Rides Again: Alonzo Hawk sends his nephew Willoughby Whitfield to try to convince Mrs. Steinmetz to give up her old firehouse so his uncle can tear it down to build a new skyscraper in its place. However, Mrs. Steinmetz's protector, Nicole, who had been displaced by Hawk, convinces Willoughby to see his uncle for the ruthless so-and-so that he is and to help protect the old lady as well. Not the bravest man in the world, Willoughby tries to call his uncle from a glass phone booth to convince him to call off his construction project. In response, Alonzo Hawk sees this as a betrayal and yells gibberish at his nephew through the phone, culminating in such a loud roar of rage that it actually manages to shatter the glass windows of the phone booth his nephew is in.
• Last Action Hero has this in Movie Land when the Lieutenant screaming after Jack Slater causes his windows to break.
• The Mermaid, another comedy involving a, uhm, mermaid, did a Splash reference with the titular character (a mermaid posing as a call girl to investigate a property tycoon) going on a duet and raising her voice unexpectedly while at an outdoor market. Cue glass refrigerator doors, wine glasses, beer bottles, light bulbs, and everything made of glass from within a 100-meter-radius shattering.
• In Pokémon Detective Pikachu, the underground fighting ring has a lot of Loudred in it that produce music for the battles that are held in it. When they inhale some R, they start spewing out some dubstep so loud that it causes a tank with a Magikarp in it to break, leaving the Magikarp flopping on the ground.
• In The Saddest Music in the World, Roderick creates a high pitched sound with his cello that makes Helen's glass legs break.
• She Creature: When the mermaid screams, the glass in the lanterns shatters.
• In Splash, Madison saying her real name in her native language causes all the TV screens on a department store to shatter.
• They Call Me Bruce (1982). In a Shout-Out to the above-mentioned advertisement, a kung fu master tries to instruct Bruce how to make a Kiai shout. When Bruce tries it, a nearby glass cabinet shatters.
  Master: Was that you?!
  Bruce: No, Memorex!
• Transformers (2007): Bumblebee (who is in disguise as a ratty old Camaro) turns on his radio at a high enough volume to shatter the windows of every other vehicle in the used car lot he's infiltrated, forcing the dealership owner to sell him at a price within his target's budget.
• In Victor/Victoria, Julie Andrews' character does this with some frequency. By dint of Rule of Funny, it's also capable of stunning people and popping champagne corks.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Roger's glass-breaking "steam whistle" after drinking strong liquor.
• Sean Cassidy, a.k.a. Banshee in X-Men: First Class. Charles points out all the science to Sean.

Literature

• In Chronicles of a Strange Kingdom, after a failed coup, king Shellar gets fed up with his Nobility Counsil to the point he snaps for the first time in his life and gives them an epic dressing-down, brutal and vicious enough to cause terrified obedience, several heart attacks and a bad case of stutter. He only calms down after his voice blows out several windows in the room.
• Discworld:
  • Maskerade: Agnes's voice can do that and so much more.
  • Referenced with regard to Nanny's Dreadful Musician abilities in Lords and Ladies:
    There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny's high C could clean it.
• Part of the explanation of the mystery in the Father Brown story The Flying Fish.
• In The Fourth Bear, Judy's scream is so shrill, it makes a nearby flowerpot shatter.
• Goblins in the Castle: Bwoonhiwda is introduced this way in Goblins on the Prowl, as Herky suddenly brings her into the castle and she proceeds, upon seeing the missing toad statue, to let out a shriek that shatters the glass pitcher Igor had brought a little earlier. It's also loud enough to wake Hulda out of a sound sleep, which is quite the achievement considering the latter is mostly deaf.
• The key to the murderer's plan in "The Face of Helen", from the collection The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie: a glass bubble filled with poison gas and a radio broadcasting a concert featuring a very high note.
• The purpose of the screaming clock in The Three Investigators.
• Played for Drama in "The Glass Collector", a Whoniverse short story in the book Time Lord Fairy Tales. The heroine's screams of grief, rage, and horror are sufficient to destroy jars of collected tears and more importantly People Jars.
• Discussed in The Vampire Lestat, when, as part of a musing on subtlety, Marius points out that "a singer can shatter a glass with the proper high note, but the easiest way for anyone to break a glass is simply to drop it on the floor."

Live-Action TV

• Arrow: In "Dark Waters", the Big Bad has placed our heroes inside a glass walled Gas Chamber that's being filled with Deadly Gas, so Laurel Lance breaks the glass with her Canary Cry.
• The Amanda Show has this when Amanda demonstrates the audience if she can break a wine glass with her voice. All the glass around the studio breaks, but not the wine glass until she just purposely breaks it herself.
• In the first episode of Baal Veer, when Baal Veer first appears, he makes a Ground-Shattering Landing that's hard enough to crack a nearby man's glasses.
• In one of the episodes of the Batman (1966) series, Batman and Robin get trapped in a glass dome. They break free by making a glass-shattering voice of F sharp above high C.
• A skit from Cleveland's ''Big Chuck & Lil John Show" parodies the ad for Memorex cassettes with Rememorex cassettes.
• An episode of Bonanza revolved around a man with a glass-shattering voice. The Cartwrights had to protect him after he broke every glass in Virginia City and the enraged beer drinkers came looking for revenge.
• CSI: NY did this in "Not What It Looks Like." Three women dressed as Holly Golightly used a frequency on an iPod to shatter glass counters in a jewelry store so they could make off with the jewels.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Partners in Crime": When the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver and Miss Foster's sonic pen on each other, the resulting noise is ear-splitting enough to shatter numerous glass panels around the office he's in.
  • "The Waters of Mars": Those infected by the Flood have screeches high-pitched enough to crack the glacier beneath the base in which most of the Flood is frozen.
• Get Smart:
  • In "The Hot Line", the Chief goes undercover as a singing waiter and lampshades the trope. 99 asks him to demonstrate on a glass which he does, only to shatter a nearby mirror instead (which Max bills him $40 for). It proves to be a Chekhov's Skill when he uses a high D to break a bad guy's glasses when We Need a Distraction.
  • In "Pheasant Under Glass", a Brawn Hilda opera singer is recruited to hit a high note to shatter an unbreakable Glassy Prison holding a Kidnapped Scientist. When her note breaks all the glass in the vicinity except the booth, she squares her shoulders and just walks right through it.
  • In "The Groovy Guru", Max and 99 are locked in a sound booth that amplifies all noise. In one of his rare moments of genius, Max uses the tuning fork from his watch to produce the right sound to blow open the door.
• In The Goodies episode "The Stolen Musicians", our heroes rescue all the kidnapped musicians except for Cilla Black because they can't stand her high-pitched notes. She turns up at the end of the episode to get her revenge, singing a note so high it brings down the building on top of their heads.
• iCarly: There's a video where a girl sings a note so high it shatters one of her mom's really good glasses.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart", Claudia screeching "SO WHAT?! GET OUT OF MY ROOM!!" causes her mirror to crack.
• The Jim Henson Hour: In the Batman Cold Open to "Power", a singer presented by Leon does this when she hits a high note, shattering several TV screens in MuppeTelevision. When Kermit shows a clip of her doing that, it ends up shattering the screen it's playing on.
• Is presented by Jonathan Creek as a solution to part of the mystery in "The Judas Tree".
• Played with by real-life opera star Renee Fleming on an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman where she delivered "The Top Ten Opera Lyrics," giving a demonstration that "As a pro, my voice can shatter stuff." She cheats and smashes the glass on the floor instead, saying, "Close enough!"
• The second series of Look Around You demonstrated how singing a very high note can shatter glass. The episode then goes on to demonstrate how singing a very low note can reconstruct the broken glass. It's that kind of show.
• An episode of Mission Top Secret involved the bag guys pulling a Not My Driver with a limo on a famous opera singer and his son. The singer's son dismantled the limo's hi-fi and rigged it to amplify his father's voice enough to break a glass and escape.
• In 1999, MTV held the Video Music Awards at the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time. A couple days before the show, they ran a promo special about the history of opera, and they humorously challenged that year's nominees to shatter a glass by hitting their highest notes (though some simply screamed at it). None managed to break the glass, but they all came to the conclusion that if anyone could pull it off, it'd be Mariah Carey (who unfortunately didn't attend that year).
• The Muppet Show:
  • In one episode, special guest Ethel Merman shows Miss Piggy and Kermit what note you need to hit to shatter a glass.
    Kermit: Did you also double as an air-raid siren during The War?
  • In another episode, guest Beverly Sills hits a high note and breaks Scooter's glasses.
  • A series of newspaper comics had Piggy trying to do it herself. Her first attempt cracked the table.
• MythBusters tested this one (explicitly referencing the Memorex commercial with Ella Fitzgerald above) and managed to replicate it. Jamie wasn't able to hold the right note long enough to break the wine crystal (he made the mistake of singing an octave too low), but Adam was, and the metal singer they brought in to give vocal lessons was able to break it without even using any amplification. The show did highlight how difficult the latter feat was, however; even the metal singer (Jaime Vendera) required 20 attempts to break even one glass sans amplification, and he had his mouth right next to the glass - the high-speed shows that the glass shatters and spreads out for quite a while (relatively speaking, of course) before he reacts and pulls away, so he could have easily been hurt.
• Parker Lewis Can't Lose: A Running Gag has Principal Musso's screams of rage shattering the window in her office door.
• Scrubs: In the episode Her Story II, Carla is insulted about not being as hot as another Latino nurse. JD imagines Carla releasing her rage by screaming so loud that every nearby piece of glass shatters into smaller pieces.
• Sesame Street did a variation on this with Diva La Diva, a one-off character who visited the street in a 90's episode. Professed to be "the world's loudest singer," La Diva's pipes are definitely loud enough to cause damage and while there's one instance of her voice shattering some glasses on the counter at Hooper's Store, her voice mostly causes trembling and making shelves, with items on them, fall in the Fix-It Shop and Hooper's. At the end of the episode, a cassette tape of her voice makes everything in Big Bird's nest fall off the walls - not even the Mr. Hooper picture was safe!
• There was a Spitting Image sketch in which Margaret Thatcher's voice was so high it could shatter the glass in people's spectacles until she was coached to speak more deeply. (The sketch ended with her sounding like Adolf Hitler.)
• The first case of Stick With Me Kid (covering the first two episodes) invoked this with a chemical that, when sprayed on glass, would make any loud sound shatter it. It was used to post-date a diamond theft and replacement with a fake by spraying it on the (actually already swapped) diamond's case during the day and simply tripping the alarm at night.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody has a scene where Ms. Martin tries to give London singing lessons. They start with the simple "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do", but once London reaches the last Do, the note shatters a glass on the table in front of them.
• On Supernatural, angels' natural voices tend to shatter all the glass in the vicinity. This is one of the reasons they need human vessels.
• Tales from the Crypt: In "Lover Come Hack To Me", Peggy's orgasmic scream shatters the glass face of the grandfather clock: stopping the hands at midnight.
• In an episode of That's So Raven Raven's grandmother came to visit and demonstrated this ability which she taught to Chelsea who then uses it in her own singing audition. However, as the episode's main story line was how Raven's friends became annoyed with how Raven's visions tended towards dragging them into embarrassing situations they force her to promise not to tell them about any visions she gets and she got a vision before the audition. You can obviously guess what happens when all the judges are wearing glasses...
• The Thundermans: In order to help Nora get over her fear of rats, Hank and Barb get Max to show her a pet rat. Nora ends up screaming at a pitch humans can't hear, shattering a nearby glass vase.
• Wednesday: Wednesday demonstrates her vocal range to a group of sirens by means of a note that only dogs can hear. The sirens are confused until their DJ's glasses crack.
• Wheel of Fortune: Referenced in the September 20th, 2022 episode, where, during the post-game talk with Vanna, Pat jokes that three audience members' glasses broke from how loudly the winning contestant was screaming after having solved the bonus puzzle.

Music

• In the Diablo Swing Orchestra's song "Balrog Boogie", there's a sound effect of breaking glass as singer Annlouice Loegdlund hits the high notes in the second verse.

Music Videos

• Christina Aguilera and Latto: Did Somebody Say HipOpera
• One of Vitas' best-known video clips has him taking a very high note in despair, with the result of explosively shattering all glass within sight.

Pinball

• In Monster Bash, when the Bride of Frankenstein practices her singing, she causes the display to shatter. However, it's unclear if this is due to her appearance or her voice, as neither one is extreme enough to invoke either trope.

Tabletop Games

• The Atavism "Siren's Treacherous Song" in Beast: The Primordial allows Siren-like Beasts to make sound blasts through the expenditure of Satiety, which in addition to doing lethal damage and deafening anyone who hears it, also shatters any glass in the immediate area.
• Dungeons & Dragons, starting from AD&D2, has the "Shatter" spell that breaks fragile objects through sound.
• In the 3rd party subsystem Spheres of Power for Pathfinder, this is doable by any spherecaster with the Destruction sphere and either Reverberating, Shattering, or Thunder Blast. However, two abilities stand out in particular. Shattering Blast does Exactly What It Says on the Tin and is better for breaking objects. And with the Skilled Casting (Perform (sing)) drawback, this can even be tied to a character singing what is, presumably, a very high note.

Video Games

• Brütal Legend: General Lionwhyte is shown to use his Metal Scream to shatter glass. It doesn't help him, though. Having a bunch of large glass shards fall on you is no better for you than being hit by a glass pane. Who knew?
• Cassette Beasts: Included among the game's Bizarro Elements is the Glass-type. Air-type attacks (which include moves like Sonic Boom) will inflict the Resonance status on Glass-types — three stacks of Resonance and the Glass-type is instantly defeated.
• In The Crystal Key, you have to use a portable Arkonian radio and tune it to one of its dead stations, one that emits a high enough frequency that can shatter the glass panel protecting the last piece of the Crystal Key.
• In Ghost Master your ghosts can learn the Shattering Song power, which is a wail so loud that it breaks glass and greatly scares people. It can also be used to free some of the restless spirits.
• Invoked and subverted in the Henry Stickmin Series game Fleeing the Complex. Henry attempts to break a glass window in his cell using a Sonic Pulse blaster, but instead it just causes his head to go a-splode.
• LEGO Adaptation Game:
  • Willie's special ability in LEGO Indiana Jones is to scream, which breaks nearby glass.
  • The same ability is possessed by Syrena and Philip in LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • And by Black Canary and Man-Bat in LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes.
  • In LEGO Harry Potter, you use Mandrakes to break glass, but your character has to put earmuffs on first.
    • If you use the "Singing Mandrakes" cheat, this makes the Mandrake's screeches into beautiful singing while still shattering the glass.
  • In LEGO Dimensions, Homer Simpson can break glass by belching after drinking Buzz Cola.
  • In LEGO The Incredibles, Kari McKeen and Tony Rydinger can break glass by screaming. In the same game, Sulley can break glass with his roar.
  • In LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2, Spider-Gwen can break glass by playing a drumkit.
  • LEGO Jurassic World also has this ability for characters such as Lex Murphy, Kelly Malcolm, and Amanda Kirby.
• Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work: After getting trapped in K-RAP Studios, Patti aims the microphone so it's pointing just below her mouth, cranks up the volume on her control room's monitor speakers to an ear-piercing level, and lets out the strongest High C she can, which easily shatters the window in the recording room.
• If you play the Tentacle mating call recording in a room with glass fixtures in Maniac Mansion, it will shatter them. This includes if you mail it to the Three Guys That Publish Anything.
• Mortal Kombat 11: This is Sindel's Friendship; she holds out A Glass of Chianti and lets loose one of her trademark power-shrieks — instead of the glass shattering, the screen cracks.
• In Reah: Face the Unknown, a glass door blocks the player from entering the basement of a temple. The player has to ring four gongs in the correct sequence to create an echo loud enough to shatter the glass.
• Sam And Max Save the World: In episode 2, "Situation: Comedy", Sam can hit high notes well enough to crack glass with the help of Bosco's "chemical-based voice modulator" (made from a crazy straw, an inhaler, and a helium balloon). This becomes important in the final puzzle.
• In Syberia, one of the puzzles requires you to acquire a special cocktail so an aging opera singer can recover her singing voice, which she naturally tests with this trope.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Implied at the end of case 3-3. The culprit's Villainous Breakdown has him screaming loudly enough to cause a blackout in the courtroom, presumably because the light bulbs shattered.

Web Animation

• Monster High: One webisode has Operetta breaking Ghoulia's glasses as well as the glass on the school's windows with a sneeze. Cleo's screaming has also broken windows multiple times.
• One animation features Newton talking to the power by plugging the microphone into the USB cord and later sings so loudly that he causes his own bulb to shatter into pieces.
  Newton Pud: (inhales) I CAN'T PAY ELECTRIC BI—
  (Newton Pud's head explodes and the video ends)
• Sackboy: A Big Adventure: Vex has it in the video "Vex can break glass"; featuring Sackboy and N.A.O.M.I. playing Toxic. However, Vex shows up singing so horribly that it causes the glass to break off screen.

Web Comics

• In Poppy O'Possum Kit Darling's excited fennec shriek shatters multiple coffee pots.
• xkcd strip 812 averts this trope. The glass is intact, but the water turned into blood. Apparently Physics was upset they were looking for the Higgs Boson and decided to fuck with them.

Western Animation

• In the episode "Spelling Bee My Baby" of American Dad!, Hiko Yoshida saves her daughter Akiko from a glass cage. At first it seems like she's readying herself for the perfect ninja punch, but suddenly she starts singing and works up to a high note that ultimately shatters the glass.
• One episode of Big City Greens has Tilly practice an Incredibly Long Note for a choir concert in a squash court, causing the glass walls to break apart.
• Exaggerated in an episode of Celebrity Deathmatch, where Mariah Carey's ultrasonic voice shattered the arena's lights, made nearby dogs suffer and caused Jim Carrey's head to explode.
• Played with in an early Code Lyoko episode as it's not initially realized that sound (supersonic and generated by XANA) broke the "glass" in question. Rather the plastic cup happened to break when Yumi, angry at Sissi, squeezed it while lecturing her. Still this trope is lampshaded when Ulrich points out that it's a plastic cup, not "Venetian crystal" while tending to Yumi's cut hand.
• At the end of the Dennis the Menace episode, "The Life You Save", Margaret practices her scales, but her dreadful singing causes the window behind her to break. She blushes in embarrassment after this happens.
• In one episode of DuckTales (1987), someone brings in a bird whose calls shatter all glass within a very large radius of itself. This becomes a problem for Scrooge when the glass cases he keeps his non-money valuables in shatter too.
• An episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy has Nazz yodeling, which breaks several objects, including drink glasses, a vase, and Ed.
• In The Fairly OddParents! episode "Chip Off the Old Chip", a Running Gag involves Timmy's terrible voice breaking glass, while Chip Skylark's voice makes the glass magically unbreak. When Timmy and Chip wind up switching voices, Timmy now has the ability to fix the glass Chip broke with Timmy's awful voice.
• A Family Guy Cutaway Gag involves Peter's great-aunt Ella Fitzgerald Griffin hitting a high note and breaking a glass cup, the shards of which blinded Ray Charles.
• In one episode of Futurama, Zapp Brannigan's terrible karaoke shatters the "In case of emergency, break glass" glass in front of the button for the escape pods, which was about to be broken anyway by the fleeing "audience."
• The Gravity Falls episode "Double Dipper" has a parody of this when Pacifica sings a high note and shatters a plastic cup.
• Exaggerated at the end of one episode of Johnny Bravo: when Johnny drowns, Carl gives him CPR, but Johnny wakes up and lets out a scream that cracks Carl's glasses, makes a flock of birds fly away, blows out all of the windows on an office building, and cracks the ice underneath a man fishing in the Arctic.
• Kaeloo: In Episode 143, the gang is stuck in a situation where if all the lights go out, they get attacked by monsters, so they each hold a lightbulb, flashlight or mirror to keep some sort of light with them. Unfortunately, one of the monsters grabs Stumpy's mirror, and since he Screams Like a Little Girl, everyone else's lightbulbs, mirrors, flashlights, etc. get broken due to the high pitch.
• Kim Possible. In "Hidden Talent", Kim uses her painful attempt at a high note to break through a layer of ice in one of Drakken's death traps.
• Let's Go Luna!: In "House Music", Bazzle's glasses shatter after hearing opera music.
• Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny makes opera singer Giovanni Jones ("Long Haired Hare") hold a note so long it literally brings down the Hollywood Bowl.
• In one Making Fiends episode, Vendetta's kazoo-playing shatters a mirror.
• In the Mickey Mouse (2013) short "Bottle Shocked", one of the obstacles Mickey has to avoid while trying to return to Minnie with a bottle of champagne is an opera singer whose voice threatens to shatter everything in the vicinity made of glass, the bottle included.
• The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries episode "The 'Dooby Dooby Doo' Ado" shows Scooby's singing voice causing glass objects to shatter.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • The episode "Nuthin' Special" has Buttercup trying to find out what her special power is, only to be matched and one-upped by Blossom and Bubbles. One of them is their "sonic scream," which shatters every glass window in the downtown area. The crowd gathered around seemed to be more interested in this sibling contest than in the collateral damage to the city.
  • The episode "Tiara Trouble" from the 2016 reboot has Bubbles able to sing so high it shatters glass. She uses it to defeat a possessed Princess Morbucks by shattering the cursed tiara she's wearing.
• In The Real Ghostbusters, the Slimer! short "Slimer's Silly Symphony" has Slimer ask his friend Chilly Cooper if she can sing. When Chilly demonstrates her singing, it causes several objects made of glass in the background to shatter.
• A Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III sketch has the bounty hunter droid IG-88 introduce other bounty hunters to his cousin THX-1138, who shares a name with the first movie George Lucas directed, and speaks by bellowing the THX Deep Note. He shakes the bar and breaks glasses by simply saying "Hello", resulting in Dengar kicking him out of the party.
• The Rock, Paper, Scissors, episode "The First Lou Episode", has Lou produce a high "C" sound under the guidance of Rock so, he can learn to sing, when he sings loudly a third time it causes his voice to shatter the glass behind the recording studio.
• In one episode of Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures, Katie and Sadie's singing is so bad that it cracks Lemon Meringue's mirror, which wasn't even in the same house.
• The Simpsons:
  • When Bart's class visited the Springfield PD, Bart lined up about 20 megaphones, turned them all on, and said "Testing" into the first one. This shattered glass for miles around.
  • Parodied in another episode where Lisa hitting a high note seems to cause a glass to shatter, only to reveal Homer has shot the glass with a BB gun.
  • In one instance when the family visits the movie theater, a short parody of the THX sound test is played. The sound is so loud it shatters Hans Moleman's glasses — then another guy's teeth, the emergency exit signs, parts of the ceiling, and culminates in making a poor sap's head explode. Even then, Grandpa is implied to have not heard it clearly.
    Abe Simpson: Turn it up! Turn it UP!
• Les Sisters: In one episode, Nath and Loulou show a group of teenaged girls a magazine with the famous pop star Joy Dee on the cover, and they squeal so loudly that every breakable object in the vicinity ends up getting shattered.
• In The Smurfs, Harmony's playing the triangle at a pitch that makes Brainy's glasses crack in "Smurphony In 'C'", and Denisa's scream that makes the vials in Gargamel's hovel shatter in "Denisa's Greedy Doll".
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Band Geeks", on the last day of rehearsal before they play at the Bubble Bowl, Squidward suggests to his band that people will think they're good if they play loud enough. They play so loud that they blow out all of the windows in the building.
  • In "Krusty Love", after receiving a bill that's even worse than the one he thought he got, Mr. Krabs screams so loud that the ship-in-a-bottle fancy restaurant that he and Mrs. Puff were dating at shatters.
  • In "Single Cell Anniversary", Plankton sings a note that shatters Squidward's glass of iced tea and Sandy's air helmet.
• In an episode of Thomas & Friends "Thomas, Percy, and the Squeak" an opera singer named Alicia Botti sees a mouse in one of the coaches and her scream shatters windows around the dockyard.
  Gordon: Definitely a coloratura.
• In the Trolls: The Beat Goes On! episode "Hitting the Sky Note", Poppy tries to convince Sky Toronto to sing for the first time, and to do so puts on business attire and shows him a nonsensical graph. Knowing that she won't stop until he agrees, Sky lets out an off-key note that shatters the lenses of the glasses Poppy was wearing.
• In the VeggieTales episode "Princess and the Pop Star," Princess' high notes cause one of the band member's glasses to shatter on multiple occasions.
• Wakfu: During the credits of "The Voice Thief" Amalia sings the theme song. Near the end she hits a high note that ends up breaking the camera lens.

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