Power Echoes

Power reverbs. The more power, the more echo. So when a magical person such as a witch, wizard or some other type of spellcaster is reciting the lines of a curse/spell, or when a seemingly omnipotent being makes itself known, their voices suddenly becoming booming and echo-y is practically a given. Same thing goes for when fighters, even the most mortal, are announcing their attacks.

The phenomenon could be attributed to the character's supernatural qualities, but let's face it, echoes just make recitations cooler.

When a character speaks, not with an echo, but with multiple voices simultaneously, that's Voice of the Legion.

See also: Power Glows, Power Floats, Power Makes Your Voice Deep.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Just about everyone in Dragon Ball Z, although it depends on the dub.
• Digimon in all its incarnations (except Savers echoes attack names. Can become Narmish if the attack (or its name) is something that's particularly un-badass.
• A common staple of Super Robot pilots when calling their attacks. An almost funny example is found in the Super Robot Wars series (Alpha, mostly), where Kushua's voice echoes with authority when in the cockpit of her Humongous Mecha, but she's rather soft-spoken otherwise.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann! Lagann... Lagann...
• My-Otome: "MATERIALIZE!"
• The claim of Masami Eiri to be a god is reinforced by the reverb effect of his first appearance, although this effect is intermittent in his later appearances in Serial Experiments Lain.
• Spell incantations in Negima! Magister Negi Magi anime are said in Japanese and dubbed in Latin, making it sound echo-y.
• The English dub of Final Fantasy: Unlimited adds echo to Kaze's lines whenever he uses the Magun. Strangely, the original Japanese track has no such echo....
• In Bleach the Visoreds including Ichigo get this when they put on their Hollow Masks.
• Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 has Shinji and Rei echoing during the Take My Hand! scene. Additionally, Rei has an otherworldly overlay in her English dub during the same scene. It ceases once she's extracted from Zeruel.
• Tekkaman Blade has every Tekkaman gain an echo when they transform. Makes it much more impressive when they use Voltekka
• Hellsing uses this for most of it's more powerful characters. Especially Alucard and late, Seras.
• Whenever someone calls an attack in the Funimation English dub of One Piece, there will often be an echoing effect applied to the attacker's speech.

Comic Books

• Galactus of the Marvel Universe. A staple for when incarnating or parodying the character.
• Speedball of New Warriors fame had a voice that echoed, befitting the kinetic nature of his powers.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): This trope crops up a few confirmed times; with Monster X's voice, and the ancient Bone Singers in San's memory; and implicitly also many other times with the Titan voices' Comic-Book Fantasy Casting choices. Unsurprising considering some the author's interests.
• Advice and Trust: When Rei faced Kaworu and taped into her hidden power, her voice reverberated.
• Child of the Storm: a number of the more powerful characters do this when they're really cutting loose, and mostly when they're possessed - the Phoenix, especially the Dark Phoenix is a particular example.
• In Children of an Elder God, when Yui uses the power stolen from the Elder Gods to ascend to godhood, her voice echoes when she talks.
• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: Midnight talks this way. Or at least talked, until Twilight demaned from her to stop. After that, her voice changed from an ethereal echo to just smug and sultry.
  Twilight: Okay, I’ll hear what you have to say, but there are some rules I’m setting down first.
  Midnight: Oh? What rules would those be?
  Twilight: First rule; stop doing that thing with your voice and talk like a normal person.
  Midnight: What thing?
  Twilight: That thing! The weird and entirely unnecessary echoing quality. Just talk in a normal voice, otherwise I’m going to be distracted the entire time wondering how you’re even doing it in the first place.
  Midnight: Fine, ruin all my fun why don’t you?
• In Power Girl fanfic A Force of Four, Mars' voice is definitely booming.
  "Stop," said Mars, in a voice that might have reverberated throughout his entire world, somehow.
• In The Loud House: Revamped, as characters get incresingly powerful transformations, their voices start to echo.
  Lincoln: (Divine Echoing Godly Voice of The Harmonious United Friendship Elemental Thunderbird Buffalo Vampire Werewolf Phoenix Angel and Divine Godly Universal Mythological Cosmic Friendship, Truth, Justice, Love, Compassion, Hope, Forgiveness, Valor, Virtue, Determination, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Kindness, Selflessness, Courage, and Trust) Now, to make sure you stay dead and gone for good. LIFE ENERGY DRAIN!
• In The Night Unfurls, Celestine can produce this effect by magically amplifying her voice to be more echo-y.
• Thousand Shinji: Shinji ends up using this during the invasion of the Geofront when he's angry. Later on, when he, Asuka and Rei ascend to a higher plane of existence, their voices boom.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
  • Sunset Shimmer's voice echoes after going One-Winged Angel.
  • And when Twilight Sparkle announces each of her friends' Element of Harmony during the Magical Girl transformations, her voice echoes a lot.
• In BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, Makuta delivers his line "Come. Join my brothers and me" with an echo effect added over his voice. In most dubs, though, they simply enhanced his already deep, robotic tone to create a wholly different effect.

Films — Live-Action

• Used and promptly lampshaded in Batman Forever by the Riddler with his delightfully hammy "If knowledge is power, then A God Am I!"
• The Hobbit:
  • The dragon Smaug's voice is underscored with a deep reverberating growl.
  • In the third film, when an outraged Thorin is about to throw Bilbo from the battlements, Gandalf lets a bit of his true self show when shouting at him to let his burglar go.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
  • Gandalf's voice gets deep and echoes when he declares: "BILBO BAGGINS — DO NOT TAKE ME FOR SOME CONJUROR OF CHEAP TRICKS!! I AM NOT TRYING TO ROB YOU!" Also: "YOU... SHALL NOT... PASS!!!''"
  • Heard when Saruman is chanting the spell to "bring down the mountain" on the Fellowship in the Pass of Caradhras.
• Space Amoeba: Yog has an echoing voice, even while speaking through a human being.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: Apocalypse displays this when his Voice of the Legion activates.

Literature

• Discworld:
  • Death's voice in the Animated Adaptation of the novel Wyrd Sisters echoes with power constantly. This is a substitute for his voice in the books, which is rendered Like This, and is described to sound "like a lead weight in your mind."
  • Also used in the animated adaptation of Soul Music. Of course, since he's voiced by Christopher Lee, there's really no need for an echo.
  • The same effect is used in the Made-for-TV Movie of Hogfather.
  • His granddaughter Susan can turn the effect (known as the Voice (No)) on and off. When it's on, people obey her without thinking.
  • There are, however, limits to what The Voice can do. For one, it is impossible for even a voice of eldritch command to get more money out of a Head Schoolmistress (in Thief of Time).
• In the Young Wizards books, spellcasting sometimes echoes.
• Mrs. Which's voice in A Wrinkle in Time.

Live-Action TV

• In How I Met Your Mother, there is a flashback to Ted's days as Dr. X, a pseudo-revolutionary radio host. It is basically just Ted in front of a microphone, so he doesn't have any sort of effects and does the echoes himself. "X marks the spot-ot-ot-ot-ot."
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: When Galadriel spurns and threatens to reveal him, Halbrand fully reveals his true form as Sauron, shouting that if she does so, she will be exiled or worse due to having helped him, his voice growing distorted and echoic with rage.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • In the episode "Return to Tomorrow", when the aliens possess humans they gain echoing voices.
  • In the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the crewman altered by the galactic barrier gets this as well, as his condition gets more dangerous.
    • Also semi-lampshaded by this crewman. The first time he does it is deliberate to screw with Kirk.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Trance", Leonard Randall speaks with an echo effect whenever the strange voice takes control of his body.

Podcasts

• Binary Break: A voice filter over all the Digimon's attacks, and the humans calling for "Fractal Code Purify", makes them echo dramatically.

Public Service Announcements

• Used to spooky effect in "Lonely Water", a 1973 British PSA that's essentially a mini-horror movie for Scare 'Em Straight purposes. Donald Pleasence voices the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, a Grim Reaper-like figure who's always there whenever a child drowns while playing unattended near water. The Spirit can be defeated by sensible children, but as he warns at the very end, "I'll be back-back-back..."

Radio

• Dimension X: During the Title Sequence, the title is given a reverb and echo. "Dimension X!... X!... X!..."

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000: The Eldar, whenever they speak, have a slight metallic echo to their voices. It's not explained why that is.
• In Spheres of Power, this is a possible manifestation of the Magical Signs drawback.

Video Games

• Almost all Dungeons & Dragons-based games with voice do this when characters are casting spells. Taken to a ridiculous extreme in Neverwinter Nights 2 with the epic spell "mass fowl" which sounds like a evil chicken clucking.
• Anders in Dragon Age II gets a more echoing voice after merging with the spirit of Justice.
• In Final Fantasy IV DS, Golbez echoes ominously with every word in voiced cutscenes. The echoes stop when he's freed from Zemus' control.
• In the Half-Life 2 Mod, Entropy : Zero 2; the Combine Advisor that is 3650's/Aiden Walker handler has this whenever it speaks, having a vaguely feminine sounding voice. And as the final battle show's, it is very powerful with its telekinetic abilities. Later scenes show that all advisors "speak" like this when actually using their telepathy.
• Lampshaded by Annah in Planescape: Torment after you unite with the Transcendant One in one of the endings and your voice gains that echoing quality.
• In StarCraft, Kerrigan's voice echoes slightly after being infested, and Lt. Samir Duran also has an echo-y voice when he becomes Infested Duran. Though in this case, it might have more to do with the Hive Mind than the power.
• Rosalina from Super Mario Bros. has a constant echo behind her voice in several of her appearances, including her original debut in Super Mario Galaxy. Very appropiate, considering her place as the Mother of the Cosmos.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Character voices echo when they activate their powerful Final Smash.
  • Both Mewtwo's and Rosalina's voice have a constant echo behind them. The former is a powerful psychic Pokémon, and the latter is a Physical Goddess.
• Anakaris, an ancient God-Pharoah Mummy in the Darkstalkers series speaks like this in the original Japanese versions.
• Inverted in Dawn of War II, as powerfully Chaos-aligned characters tend to have a reverse-reverb to their voices; in other words, you hear the echoes before they start talking!
• World of Warcraft: In the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the voice of the Lich King — Evil Overlord, Physical God — is accompanied by eerie and powerful echoes from every direction. It goes beyond the usual simple reverb. Additionally, when he's injured at the Wrathgate, you can perhaps hear two separate voices as he growls. He does have the souls of two beings combined.
  • We learn later in the expansion that the echo is apparently coming from the Lich King's Helm of Domination as in the Fall of the Lich King cutscene which plays after his defeat, the helmet falls off of Arthas' head and his voice is back to his normal tone from before him putting the helmet on. Afterwards, when Tirion Fordring puts the helmet on Bolvar Fordragon, players actually get to hear Bolvar's voice go from his current voice, to a downright demonic-sounding growling rumble, with the echo kicking in towards the end of the sentence he says after having the helmet put on him.
  • Members of the Infinite Dragonflight speaks with a heavy, reverberating echo.
• Diablo II: Mephisto's voice has a kind of echo in the cinematic before the final act. It has a peculiar quality that, while not making it an actual Brown Note, somewhat fits the narrator's description of it being "like a thousand needles in my heart."
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Midna has a subtle reverb to her voice. The Twilight Realm causes every sound to echo, but even in the middle of Hyrule Field, her voice retains the slight rumble, alluding to her potent magical abilities.
• The Liir of Sword of the Stars are psychic and hermaphroditic, their "voices" not only echo but consist of a male and female speaking roughly in unison. The telepathic predatory Zuul have an echo as well, and so do the Suul'ka
• Characters in Super Robot Wars games who pilot Super Robots tend to be given reverbs, even outside of Calling Their Attacks, in their voices as opposed to the more "mundane" Real Robot pilots. This happens even if the pilot never had one in their own series.
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, all demons speak with a distortion in their voice, whether through grunts or full words. Apocalypse does have one subversion in the form of Krishna - while both games' new designs made the demons look more alien, Krishna is the sole newly designed humanoid demon, so he lacks the echo. DLC also applies this to the Demi-fiend from Nocturne, a Half-Human Hybrid.
• In Pokémon X and Y, A Pokémon's cry (the in-game "noise" that they make upon being sent out into battle) gains an echo when it Mega Evolves.
• Whenever Rean in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel uses Spirit Unification, his voice has an echo whenever he talks or growls.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak Shizuna Rem Misurugi also has an echo after revealing that she knows Spirit Unification after seeing Rean use it once in a side story from The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie.
• The titular Bayonetta normally speaks with only a slightly louder voice when summoning her demons, but when summoning her last demon, Queen Sheba, the ruler of Hell, her voice reverberates to indicate that the demon is so strong it can overpower the God of Paradiso.
• In Triangle Strategy, the voice of Idore echoes after he absorbs Aelfric energy in the Golden Route and transforms into his demigod form.

Web Animation

• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: Champion of Slaanesh, flamboyant rapist, and host of a Warp prank show, Lucius the Eternal has a very soft echo behind his voice, heard clearly in his short. The Emperor has one himself, though his is more because the sound of his speakers echoing off the walls of his expansive throne room.

Web Original

• Any of the titular fair folk or long-time residents of Arcadia in The Hidden People have this kind of voice. It's described as being the Hidden accent.
• Nightmare Time: When Miss Holloway uses her powers of suggestion, her voice echoes as an indicator of her magic.
• Whateley Universe example: the demon of "Ayla and the Grinch" speaks like this.
• Given that it's one long Homage to Dragon Ball Z and the Rule of Cool in general, characters in Super Mario Bros. Z have a tendency to do this when powered up. Mario in particular gets an impressive one when obtaining a fire flower.
• When using magic in Phaeton speech echoes, this is actually the sound of the voice extending to the various planes of existence.

Western Animation

• Ben 10:
  • Ultimate Alien: Aggregor's voice sounds deeper after his transformation.
  • Omniverse: Invoked, parodied, and subverted with Collectimus, who has a deep, echoing voice as a feature of his chair. When he turns it off, his actual voice is stereotypical nerdy.
• Final Space: Ash's voice gains a menacing distortion when she powers up.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Shendu's voice reverberates when he's in statue form or possessing someone. His more humanoid-looking son Drago's voice is distorted and echoic, emphasizing that he's a powerful draconic demon.
• In Justice League:
  Doctor Fate: So fate demands! So... fate... demands...!
• Gwen, the Magical Girl of Ben 10, is quite possibly the current undisputed champion of this trope in the west.
• Teen Titans: Raven, when she recites the spell to release Malchior and later to open the portal to Azarath.
• Spoofed in an episode of Hercules: The Animated Series, in which the Egyptian god Ra speaks with power echoes, but after a while, presses a button on his staff that turns it off. He felt that while good for introduction, the echoing tends to grate on you.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): "I-I HAVE-AVE-AVE THE POWER-ER-ER-ER-ER-ER!!!!!"
• Invader Zim: SPAAAAAAACE MEEEEEAAT!!!
  • Not having access to that technology, they make theirs out of "Napkin".
• In The Penguins of Madagascar, "Two Feet High and Rising" features King Julien declaring a new law, and Maurice adds echoes for dramatic effect.
• Centurions: "POWER EXTREME!-REME...reme...reme..."
• In an episode of The Tick, when Arthur starts using Baron Violent's power belt, along with making him bigger, stronger and more aggressive, Arthur's voice starts to echo.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Parodied in the episode "The Secret Snake Club". Club leader "Wiggly" repeatedly refers to the club's secret "AGENDA"; each time he says the word "AGENDA," it's accompanied by a booming echo, dramatic chords, and lightning. After a few times:
  Viper: I want to try that! AGENDA! [echo, chords, lightning] ...Nice?
  • Wiggly gets fed up with this, and institutes a new rule...
  Wiggly: From now on, I am the only one who can say AGENDA [abrupt echo/chords/lightning] you got that?
• Bionic Six: "Bionics On! On... on...on..."
• Magic-users of sufficient power have this in W.I.T.C.H. — it's demonstrated by Cornelia when wielding the combined powers of the Guardians, Nerissa after absorbing the powers of the original guardians, Phobos both when he's combined his power and Elyon's and when using the Seal of Nerissa and Cedric after eating Phobos and acquiring his and the Seal's power.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Princess Luna DOES THIS ALL THE TIME. She's struggling to break the habit after having been gone for one thousand years, due to outdated royal protocols. She manages to rid herself of the echo eventually, but has more trouble shaking off the Flowery Elizabethan English that comes with it.
  • King Sombra mixes this with Evil Sounds Deep — when he even talks, that is.
• In Bravestarr, the titular hero does this when he calls on his animal-based super powers Strength of the Bear, Speed of the Puma, Eyes of the Hawk, and Ears of the Wolf. Interestingly, when the Shaman gives Bravestarr the powers, he has no need for added echo.

Other

• In the days when TV stations regularly signed off for the night, some stations did this with the announcer doing the sign off (as well as the sign on). One example is KTSM-TV channel 9, the NBC affiliate for El Paso, Texas.

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