Right Through the Wall

Tonight I get my revenge. I have a loud girlfriend too. AND an elliptical reflector dish.

"We share a wall. So either he's great in bed or she just liked to agree with him a lot. Loudly, and a lot."

— Chandler Bing, Friends

In works set in apartment buildings, characters will inevitably have to deal with their noisy neighbors. In more risqué comedies, this becomes especially problematic when the neighbors aren't merely loud about their daily business, but also their bedroom business. How the characters respond to overhearing these noises is up to them, though frequently, they decide to provide their own noises in response to give the loud couple next door A Taste of Their Own Medicine. If the main character themselves are doing the noises, expect them to deal with a Cranky Neighbor.

Sometimes the trope is turned on its head, with the main characters trying to be heard right through the wall for some reason — to prove how great their sex life is, or to make their neighbors feel uncomfortable, for example. Another popular variation involves the noise turning out to be something completely innocent like moving furniture.

When not set in the world of comedy, this trope is quite often used as a means of reminding the audiences that this particular apartment building our character has just entered really is as shady and populated with a bunch of suspicious characters as it appears from the outside, the reasoning behind this being, of course, that Sex Is Evil. This can also be Played for Drama if the character overhearing the sex is hurt or jealous because they are romantically involved or interested in one of the couple.

Anyone who has lived in a college dorm or an apartment will know that this can be Truth in Television. See also Ceiling Banger for a similar trope (and what something like this may very well elicit). Nothing to do with Right Through His Pants. Or, for that matter, when someone moves right through a wall. For couples whose sexy times are so vigorous that they break the wall, see Destructo-Nookie. For when the sex is just exhausting see Post-Coital Collapse. See Wall Bang Her for when couples are literally having sex right against a wall.

Can have some crossover with Calling Your Orgasms, The Grunting Orgasm, and The Immodest Orgasm. Compare Don't Come A-Knockin', for a more visual effect communicating the same thing. Contrast Sex in a Shared Room, where the point is that there is no wall between the passive observer/witness and the couple. Has nothing to do with glory holes.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Invoked and Played for Drama in Corsair after Ayace bluntly announces his relationship with Canale in attempt to dispel Aura's ideas of marrying Canale. Ayace goes to Canale's room and makes sure to have lots of loud sex because he knows Aura is going to come by later to talk to Canale and will hear them. Aura is crushed. It comes up more humorously in other places though, especially with poor Harold.
• Don't Meddle with My Daughter!: After reuniting with her husband, after almost 20 years of separation across space-time, Athena and BM spend every night making up for it. They've tried to keep it down so they won't disturb their 17-year-old daughter Clara, but she can still hear them because she's inherited Athena's Super-Senses.
• Louise and Saito narrowly avoided subjecting their classmates to this in The Familiar of Zero, when Saito reacts to Louise's priestess outfit with extreme enthusiasm. The passionate semi-roleplay gets quite intense until they hear a knock on a wall warning them not to do anything improper in rooms with thin walls, and then concluding "Lemon-chan? Really?"
• Naturally, it happens in Futari Ecchi. Yura and Makoto are scared of having sex while staying over at her parents' because they fear they'll be heard and interrupted, despite being married already. IIRC, it actually turns out Yura's parents are kiiiiinda loud...
• Variant: In the omake of Future Lovers, Akira, after moving in with Kento and his grandparents, is initially reluctant to have sex with Kento where his grandparents could hear them, but Kento reassures him that they're too hard-of-hearing to hear them go at it. Cut to the morning-after scene, where Kento's grandfather asks if there was an earthquake last night and his grandmother just gives them a Look.
• A possible variation, more aptly called Right Through The Wall And All The Way Over To Other Countries, occurs in Hetalia: Axis Powers when Greece tells Japan that it's best if he enjoys having sex more. Cut to a view of the Asian continent and Japan screaming so loudly that China yells at him from his own country (i.e. across an entire sea) to shut up.
• A subversion from Oreimo: Kirino's Squees over her H-Game can be heard by her brother next door. He is not amused by this.
• Roll Over and Die: A Played for Laughs Yuri example. At the end of Volume 2, when Milkit is cleaning Flum’s ears they hear strange noises from Eterna’s room. As it turns out, she could hear everything in their room. Due to their dialogue and Innocent Innuendo, Eterna thought they were engaging in more adult activities. Other misunderstandings ensued until Ink, who has a strong sense of hearing, finally made it clear Milkit and Flum were merely cleaning each other’s ears.
  • Due to Ink’s strong sense of hearing, she is able to hear things through the walls or even on another floor. During Volume 04/Episode 05, Ink overhears Flum and Milkit having a rather intimate conversation, and she asks Eterna what the nature of Flum and Milkit’s relationship is to which Eterna can’t give an answer.
• My Dress-Up Darling: When Gojo and Marin are at a Love Hotel for a cosplay session (due to Marin not checking properly the place when she rented it), they naturally start to hear the moans from the room next door. This kicks Gojo's hormones into overdrive and even getting a Raging Stiffie while Marin is sitting on top of him.

Comedy

• Australian comedian Josh Thomas tells the story in one of his stand-up routines (and on his album "Things I Have Said Before") about the first time he lived with a loud roommate, and how heartbroken he was at the sound of him having loud sex because he thought sex that good/loud was a myth from pornography.
• Jeff Foxworthy has a story about a couple in the apartment room next to his and his wife's not only being loud enough to hear, but it also went on for two hours straight! He said he was tempted to get the man's autograph.
• Billy Connolly has a routine about being kept up at night during a tour of Australia by a couple having loud sex. The woman keeps screaming "YES! OH YES!" to which Connolly answers by pounding on the wall and yelling "Would you stop asking her the fucking question?"

Comic Books

• A Running Gag in Invincible, where many of the characters are loud about their sex lives.
• This happens in Lost Girls. When Wendy's husband Harold goes to tell Alice and Dorothy to keep quiet, he sees that they're both women and loses his nerve.
• In Prison Witch, Tanya is cellmates with Kalia and Shawn, and can hear them having sex. Every night. For hours.
• In Runaways, when the team is sent back in time to 1907 and have to share quarters, Molly banishes Xavin from the "girls' side" of the room on the grounds that she can already hear what they and Karolina do even when they aren't all confined to a single room.

Fan Works

• Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: There's an...interesting...example in this story.
  "LUDWIG! KIKU!"
  "FELI-KUN! LUDWIG-SAN!"
  "FELICIANO! KIKU!"
• In A Gun to Love's Head Light and L's room is above Mello's and while Mello is grounded he can hear them going at it right through the ceiling.
• Used in this Metal Gear Solid 3 fanfic, where the noisy couple in question are Colonel Volgin and Major Raikov. Considering that canonically their sex is probably pretty kinky, one can't blame Ocelot for going to extreme lengths to get a little shut-eye…
• The Good Omens fanfic "A Precise and Accurate History of Monday, Eleven Years Later" has Crowley moving into Aziraphale's small house in a small town (complete with nosy neighbours). The neighbours had long suspected Aziraphale to be gay and Crowley found this amusing, so while Aziraphale is at work, he spends his days banging against the wall and shouting Aziraphale's name.
• A dark variant is present in one chapter of the Watchmen fanfic I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company. Nelson Gardner is stuck being able to hear Hooded Justice having in all probability very violent sex with a young Adrian Veidt.
• At the end of Chapter 71 of Family of the Shield, Itsuki and Rishia are both left red-in-the-face while staying the night at their hotel room in Cal Mira; because their neighbors are having sex in the next rooms over with one of these rooms occupied by Naofumi and Raphtalia enjoying their second time together.
• In the hilarious Hetalia: Axis Powers Kink Meme fill "Are You There God? It's Me, Canada", one of Canada/Matthew's recurring problems is having his bedroom be right next to England/Arthur and France/Francis's and hence hearing his fathers go at it every single night. In fact, when Arthur and Francis don't have sex because of an argument, Matthew actually loses sleep because he's become so used to hearing them every night.
• Weightless had Garrus's neighbors who were very punctual in their "business", right down to the habit of not turning off the TV, which was not very helpful for a turian who had just gotten rejected by Shepard. Later, he (unintentionally) paid them back with her.
• In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Smurfette's Inner Beauty", Hogatha's got the doors and windows of her castle shuttered up by magic so that the Smurfs couldn't enter while she's making out with Harlequin. By the time Empath, Brainy, and Duncan McSmurf arrive, they could hear the sounds of intimate activity going on through the shutters. In "Grouchy And The Love Doll", Grouchy's sexual grunts could be heard from outside his Smurf house.
• The Avengers fic Walk a While Beside You alludes to this re: Natasha and Clint. The former is characteristically stealthy and quiet, but the latter is not.
• Advice and Trust:
  • In chapter 9, Asuka and Shinji could hear Misato and Kaji having sex despite Misato trying to be quiet. Made especially frustrating for Asuka since Misato had forbidden her and Shinji from having sex until she turns fifteen.
    Asuka: We are so getting her back once we hit my birthday.
  • Asuka and Shinji also took this into account back when they were keeping their relationship a secret, only having sex when Misato was either out of the house or had gotten drunk before going to sleep.
• Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship: Spike and Rarity had what the narration describes as "five hours of a sex scene so hot I couldn't write it" and it turns out they went far beyond the wall:
  "Yeah," Spike breathed softly, as he let Rarity rest her head on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her. "I just hope we didn't wake anypony."
  Little did Spike know, that at the Crystal Empire, the six Knights of Harmony laid in bed with their eyes wide open, unable to sleep thanks to the noise "Whoa." was the group call.
  "Whoa," Tirek said, laying in bed in Tartarus.
  "Whoa, I am impressed," Dark Conquest said, looking out at the skies from his headquarters. Then he gave a thumbs up.
• In The Lovers Left Broken Thea briefly teases Oliver by revealing that due to the Queen's mansion's old/thin walls, she could hear him having sex.
• In yet another Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic, Brothers Under the Sun, our four Muggle protagonists were "kept awake [that] night by a very loud gay couple next door"...said couple including their Heterosexual Life-Partner (even though of the five, there's one bi guy and a gay Nation) that they were looking for after splitting apart in WW2.
• In ch. 22 of Take a Stand Nick and Judy's neighbors call the police on them, ironically, thinking they were dealing with an intruder.
• The main plot of the Sith Academy story "The Night of No Sleep", in which Darth Maul is kept awake by Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi having Destructo-Nookie in the apartment next to his.
• In Project Voicebend, the sex between Tenzin and Pema is loud enough that everyone in Republic City can hear them.
• The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Spaceship," Bolt expresses concern that his tryst with Mittens may have been overheard.
  Bolt: [anxiously] Y’know, we were pretty noisy just now. Think anybody heard us?
• The Star Wars Rebels fanfic Rain/Fall has Sabine and Ezra trapped in an inn due to heavy rain, followed by drunken sex. The next morning they find out that the entire inn heard, and they all congratulate Ezra. By name. Turns out Sabine is... vocal.
  Ezra: How do they know my na—oh. Right.
• Guys Being Dudes: Specifically Defied by Sierra, who instructs Spark and Arlo to blast whatever music they want as loud as they want specifically so she doesn't hear them having sex if they choose to.
• Ouroboros LIS: The morning after Max and Chloe have sex for the first time, Chloe opens the door to leave to find Victoria, who advises her to bite down on a belt next time. Notably, Victoria's room is not next door to Max's, but across the hallway.
• Multiple Hades fanfics (such as this one) point out that Zagreus's bedroom doesn't have a door, so everyone in the House of Hades gets an earful every time he has sex. These fics usually end with someone attempting to defy this by commissioning a door.
• In the Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfic Designated Duty, it's mentioned that Steve and Sharon's arguments over getting involved in each other side missions invariably leads to them making up and having sex which the rest of the team can tell from the loud noises coming from their room at night. Execept for Wanda who assumed that sounds were coming from the pipes in the walls until Natasha explains it to her.

Films — Live-Action

• Georgette and Joseph in the café bathroom in Amélie, making all the cups and crockery rattle. Amelie covers up the sound of The Immodest Orgasm by running the espresso machine.
• The Jackie Chan movie Armor of God II, has Jackie and a woman fighting with two thugs in her apartment at night. The hotel manager downstairs thinks it is this.
• In Analyze That, Ben Sobel and his wife get annoyed at Paul Vitti's "friend" moaning for forty minutes. Ben goes complaining, a discussion ensues ("We don't think it's necessary to wake the neighbors every time we have sex.") …only for the friend to restart ("I told her if I wasn't back in two minutes to start without me. I gotta go.").
• In Art of the Dead, Kim is disturbed to hear Dylan and Gina screaming and grunting as they have loud sex in their bedroom. Unbeknown to her, it's because of the Lust painting.
• Beetlejuice — as the Maitlands try to scare Mrs. Deetz in her bedroom, their ghostly moaning is heard by Delia in the next room, as she grumbles in disgust thinking it's her parents.
• Bird Box. Melanie walks in on two members of their group having Wall Bang Her sex in the laundry. She quickly excuses herself and is discussing her Brain Bleach reaction with Tom outside when they both hear a rhythmic banging start up. Melanie and Tom give an awkward laugh and decide to do their laundry another night.
• One Cheech & Chong movie made it seem like two characters were having very loud and rambunctious sex inside a van, much to the embarrassment of those outside. However, the guy was moaning and banging the wall because of a cramp in his leg, while the girl was trying to demonstrate the noises her roommate made while having sex.
• At the end of Class Act, Duncan's parents hear a banging in the room above them. Due to the Mistaken for Gay storyline borne out of their lack of understanding of urban black culture, his dad fears Duncan is having sex with Blade. He goes up there and catches Duncan instead having sex with Damita. After dad explains to mom what happened, mom gets horny and pounces dad.
• Timmy Lea of Confessions of a... Series has rather loud sex with a woman attempting to bribe him as he's the judge of a beauty contest in Confessions From A Summer Camp. Timmy is at least cognizant of his brother-in-law next door and tries to keep it quiet but fails and his brother-in-law is very unamused, especially because his wife isn't in the mood. Later on in the film, Timmy has sex with the woman running the music all over camp... with her microphone on. Once again, his brother-in-law is unamused, but at least his wife decides to put out this time.
• In Delicatessen, a butcher and his mistress have sex. The squeaks coming from the bedsprings provide a rhythm for the activities of the other tenants in the apartment building — painting, knitting, cello-playing, and so on. This scene was used as the original American trailer.
• In Fight Club, the main character gets exasperated at how he can hear Tyler and Marla having wild sex upstairs every single time, with the plaster on the ceiling even crumbling with their movements. Becomes downright weird when you realize that the main character and Tyler are the same person.
• In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the two couples end up with rooms next to each other. Peter and Rachel are intentionally loud to annoy Sarah. Sarah retaliates by faking, much to her partner's annoyance.
• The Tim Allen movie For Richer or Poorer has his character Brad and wife Caroline (Kirstie Alley) staying in an Amish home. Despite long, tiring work-filled days, their hosts provide rigorous, squeaky-springed sound effects almost every night. When Brad and Caroline rekindle their relationship, their hosts get treated to the same sound effects.
• In the Alan Alda film The Four Seasons, he and his wife are in one of the staterooms on the yacht the three couples have rented, listening as they hear one of the other couples on the boat going at it hot and heavy.
• L.A. Story, at one point, has Steve Martin and his date in one room of a motel, and the woman Steve Martin's character is in love with and her date in the next room.
• Loud sex sounds pervade Jimmy's ground floor flat in the opening scenes of Lesbian Vampire Killers as his girlfriend breaks up with him (again), underscoring just how much of a loser he is.
• In Lizzie Borden's Revenge, Janice dares Ashley and Leslie to make out. Ashley and Leslie adjourn to Ashley's room and do so. Their orgasmic squeals can be heard in the lounge: to Janice's delight and the other girls' discomfort.
• Mädchen Mädchen 2 has an early scene where Inken has disappointing sex against the wall of the apartment next to hers (her roommates watch the wall vibrate). Later on, Inken reacts by faking the best orgasm she's ever had, again ramming herself against the wall.
• Passages: Played for drama: Agathe not only hears Martin and Tomas having sex in the next room, she stays awake the entire encounter. And then promptly breaks up with Tomas.
• π: Brilliant but reclusive mathematician Max Renn can hear his neighbor having sex with her boyfriend right through the wall of his apartment. Not played for laughs, however; at the same time, Max is obsessively working on his computer to pursue the universal number which he is researching, emphasizing how detached he is from everyday life.
• In The Saddest Music in the World, Fyodor and Roderick walk in to hear Chester making loud sex with Narcissa upstairs.
• Michael J. Fox's character in The Secret of My Success is a victim of this trope. Best sequence is when at one point, when his horny neighbours are getting it on while he's trying to work, he goes to the fridge for a canned beer, grabs a stick, and begins waving it like he's holding a conductor's baton. We know that they do this a lot because he can mouth along with their dirty talk, and cracks his (overflowing) beer right at the moment of climax. Then he sits down at his desk and says, "You guys were good tonight." Unfortunately, the neighbours later on have another round, so he puts his head under his pillow trying to keep the noise out, but is unsuccessful, upon which he bleakly mimes being an orchestra conductor to the beat of the couple's increasing wails.
• At the end of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, this is taken extremely literally, in a most physical level. It's not just noise that goes through the wall, but the participants as well.
• The short Thin Walls was all about this. A hot woman moves in next door to a nerd, who can hear her at night (I remember the boyfriend as a member of The Knack). He bribes a co-worker into recording passionate screaming, which he plays back at high volume to attract the neighbor.
• Göran in Together is forced to listen to his girlfriend Lena and Erik having loud sex next door.
• In Unknown (2011), at Gina's place, we hear noisy sex from the next room which leads to an awkward moment between Gina and the hero.
• Warlock III: The End of Innocence: Jerry can hear Kris and Michael going at it in the adjacent dorm room. He looks sad rather than annoyed, hinting at his feelings for her.
• In What Lies Beneath, Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeifer's characters hear the neighbours going at it and decide to compete with them.

Jokes

• A personal account where a person noted that the floors and ceilings act as amplifiers for sounds from adjacent apartments, making it very easy to hear the bed scooting on the floor and the headboard banging against the wall. After 5 minutes, it was funny and kind of embarrassing. After 10 minutes, it became annoying. After 15 minutes, it was frustrating as it was preventing them from sleeping. After 20 minutes, it was kind of impressive.

Literature

By Author:

• A short mystery story by Steven Saylor has an amorous couple in ancient Rome (well, the countryside near it). The detective's teenage son listens eagerly but is shy when they heavily flirt in front of him.

By Work:

• The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Insatiable Newlyweds Tatiana and Alexander have a loud argument, then equally loud sex in a communal Soviet apartment. Afterwards, they start a seditious discussion which Alexander quickly shuts down because the neighbours are likely NKVD informers. Tatiana just quips, "Well they've heard everything else."
• In The Girls, Evie is uncomfortable when Julian and his teenage girlfriend Sasha are screwing loudly in the next room. Later Evie realizes that Julian, who is The Sociopath, knew she could hear.
• In Green Hills and Daffodils, the manor house of Cwm Cudd has thin walls, so Rhys overhears a lot of Innocent Innuendo from his tenant Jane.
• Talia in the Heralds of Valdemar gets an interesting variant on this. Not only can she hear her "enthusiastic" neighbor, but she also has strong enough empathy that she can 'overhear' sex that way too.
• High Fidelity. There, it's a major plot point — Rob recalls listening to Ray having sex with various girlfriends while he was still with Laura, and when they break up and Laura begins seeing Ray, he recalls it all and becomes intensely neurotic about it.
• In John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire, the prostitute Screaming Annie's claim to fame is that she fakes orgasms so loudly, everyone in the hotel can hear her. As it turns out, the orgasms aren't fake. Every single one of them is real.
• Loveless: On Georgia's first night at her dorm room, she can't sleep due to the thumping noises caused by the couple having sex in the room above. It's subverted when it turns out later on that the sound is coming from the washing machines in the laundry room instead.
• Old Kingdom: In Sabriel, the title character, while bathing at an inn, overhears a man and woman having sex in one of the rooms next door to hers. She assumes that the man is her travelling companion and is upset, although she tries to convince herself it's not important until her sentient magic cat-thing informs her that Touchstone's room is actually in the opposite direction and he's downstairs in the common room, to Sabriel's relief.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Lysa Arryn tells Littlefinger on their wedding night that she fully intends to be loud. She wasn't lying, and everyone else in the rather small castle they're in gets an earful.
• Edmund spends a couple of chapters of To the Ends of the Earth trying to figure out how to avoid embodying this trope.
• Occurs as comic relief in Frank Yerby's novel The Voyage Unplanned: the hero's Love Interest accuses him of having had very loud sex with another woman the night before. The supposed other woman was actually a terrorist who tried to murder him, and the orgasmic screams really came from the hotel room next to his. He proves this by banging on the wall and calling:
  John: Hey, kids! Time's a-wasting! Or are you going to let one night wear you out?!
  Unnamed girl: Eric! Oh my Gawd! The man next door! He — he heard us!
• Played With in Warbreaker. Siri quickly discovers that Susebron's priests are listening through the wall when she goes in to see him every night to try to make sure she's fulfilling her wifely duties. Since she isn't, largely because Seb is a bit of a Manchild and doesn't even know what sex is, she starts beginning every evening by bouncing up and down on the bed and making very enthusiastic noises while her husband stares at her like she's gone nuts.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory:
  • One episode when a drunken and frustrated Penny decides to have sex with Leonard. Which is heard not only by their roommate Sheldon but also by their downstairs neighbor.
    Sheldon: FYI, my noise-cancelling headphones proved ineffective last night.
    Penny: Yeah, sorry about that.
    Sheldon: As a native Texan, I must say I've never heard the phrase "yee-haw" used in quite that context.
    Penny: Oh, God.
    Sheldon: "Oh, God". That I've heard on multiple occasions.
    [...]
    Mrs. Gunderson: Good morning, Leonard. Or should I say "yee-haw"?
  • In a later episode, Sheldon unwittingly gets his own back, as Leonard and Penny overhear the sounds of him and Amy having sex from the hallway.
    Sheldon: Oh Amy, you naughty vixen!
    Amy: My goodness, that form of stimulation is highly efficient!
    Leonard: Should we give them their privacy?
    Penny: I want to, but I don't think I can.
    Sheldon: Whoopee!
    Penny: Okay, I'm good now. [runs inside]
  • An earlier episode also had Sheldon casually mention that he could hear Penny having sex in her apartment for the past three years he had lived next door to her. She was appropriately mortified.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Touched", the Scoobies and Potentials are all holed up in Buffy's house for mutual protection. Willow and Kennedy finally get a bedroom to themselves and act appropriately. In the kitchen, Anya complains to her former fiance Xander about the noises they can hear; after all, they've stopped having sex, so others should have similar consideration. When we cut back to them, they're making out on the kitchen floor.
• There is an extremely disturbing version of this in Carnivàle, where the noises are of a girl being raped. The character who's hearing all this is paralyzed, though, and can only stare in terror at the wall.
• Castle
  • In one episode, a suspect's alibi was that he had been having sex with the victim's wife when the victim was murdered. This is verified by talking to the neighbors who recalled hearing it (it was a warm night and the windows were open).
  • The episode "Watershed" features a subversion. Neighbors of the victim frequently heard sounds of sex coming from her room, which is part of the reason they thought she was a prostitute. She was really playing a CD of those sounds specifically to produce that conclusion while she worked on computer hacking.
• Cheers: In "Those Lips, Those Ice", when Eddie shows up at the bar after a long time on the road, Carla takes him out to the front door. Then the gang has to uncomfortably listen to a lot of orgasmic moaning from the other side of the door.
• At one point in Coupling, Sally complains of having a listening flatmate. When asked if this means she has to be quiet, she explains, "No, loud, we're very competitive."
• At the beginning of the Criminal Minds episode "The Inspiration," we see a couple in their apartment complaining about the noise from above. The girlfriend first guesses they're putting together furniture, then that they're "Doing it on the floor!" This being Criminal Minds, the truth turns out to be far worse. It's a Bound and Gagged woman flailing desperately to escape.
• The titular Cuckoo and Rachel are doing the deed much to the annoyance of her parents. They shrug it off as they're newlyweds and they were like it once… although nowhere near as long. They also make Dylan trade rooms with them so they won't hear them anymore.
• For one episode of The Drew Carey Show Mimi (Drew's nemesis) and Drew's brother are temporarily living in a trailer in Drew's backyard. Kate notices Drew is acting tired and we get this jewel.
  Drew: I didn't get a wink of sleep between the trailer rocking and the screaming.
  Kate: Screaming?
  Drew: I started screaming when I realized why the trailer was rocking.
• Desperate Housewives: In "Being Alive", Kat and Orson's conversation is interrupted when they years Bree's orgasmic screech that could be heard throughout most of the neighborhood. Cut to Bree collapsing in bed next to Karl, both sweaty and wrapped up in their own Modesty Bedsheet.
• Dickinson: Implied. In the episode "You can not put a fire out", as Emily and Sue lie in the garden after making love, Emily reflects that she already feels sorry for the dead that day. ^note In other words, they were loud enough to wake the dead.
• In an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, Robert is purposely thumping a chair up and down so his mother will hear it through the walls and think he and Amy are trying to conceive.
• Farscape
  • When Aeryn and Crichton finally have sex (while the crew is aboard an immature, and thus small, Leviathan), Rygel grumbles the next morning about being unable to sleep, and further is disgusted that it sounded like Crichton was exerting himself. Cut to the blissful couple snuggling. Crichton bangs on the wall with his fist and makes loud moans; Aeryn laughs that he was "even louder than that, if you can imagine".
  • In the first episode of "Look at the Princess", Crichton barges in on Chiana having sex with D'Argo after mistaking her cry of "Yes!" as an invitation to enter. In the next episode, D'Argo complains that the Royal Guards burst in on them likewise after hearing her screaming.
• Frasier tackles this one a couple of times.
  • In the season 3 episode "Shrink Rap", Daphne tells the story of how her neighbors used to do much the same thing until she stopped them with her own gratuitous sex noises designed to give them a taste of their own medicine.
  • In the season 2 episode "Adventures in Paradise, Part 2", Frasier thinks his ex-wife is having sex in the next room, so makes loud sex noises so she thinks he's having a better time than he is. He ends up jumping on the bed, slamming the headboard against the wall, and yelling at the top of his lungs. And then Lilith and her boyfriend walk by the room.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air uses a variation involving mood music during an episode where Jazz and his wife Jewel crash in the pool house with Will and Carlton while their apartment gets repainted. Will and Carlton find themselves woken up in the middle of the night at one point by "I Got You (I Feel Good)" blaring out of the bedroom, then after Will shouts in at them to cut it out, they try again...this time with the Washington Post March.
• Friends
  • "The One Where Chandler Can't Remember Which Sister" dealt with a loud, but charming, upstairs neighbor. Monica and Rachel couldn't bring themselves to ask him to keep it down, so Phoebe went up to do it. Phoebe and the neighbor ended up having sex, which everyone downstairs heard. Later that episode, they find out that he is seeing other women when they overhear those sex noises, too.
    Ross: Maybe he's just jumping on a pogo stick and really likes it? [a woman's moans joins in] Maybe the pogo-stick likes it too?
  • In "The One with Phoebe's Uterus", Chandler starts going out with Kathy, Joey's ex, and is apprehensive about having sex with her because he's worried about how he'll compare to Sex God Joey, as he considers himself rather inept in bed. Monica tries to dissuade him, saying that Joey can't be that good in bed, but Chandler disagrees given the noises that came from Joey's bedroom.
    Chandler: We share a wall. So either he's great in bed or she just likes to agree with him a lot.
  • In "The One Where Rachel Finds Out", Joey is describing to Chandler how much his girlfriend appreciated him being there "just for her". He described her response as being like a ticker-tape parade. Chandler remarks that is his room is "very close to the parade route."
  • Joey has similar complaints about Chandler and his girlfriends. In "The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy", when Janice insists that they spend the day together because, " That's how long it takes to love me", Joey mutters under his breath, "I know. I sleep in the next room."
  • In "The One After Joey And Rachel Kiss", when the Friends go to a conference in Barbados, Monica, Chandler, and Phoebe are in a room that's caught up between two situations. Namely Rachel and Joey hooking up, and Ross and Charlie getting together. Chandler then squicks out Monica by asking why she's listening to the wall that has her brother on the other side.
  • One Christmas episode involving Monica trying to get to know her neighbors better introduced "the woman downstairs who always has sex really loud".
  • In season four Chandler falls in love with Joey's girlfriend and ends up sleeping on Monica's couch to get away from hearing them have sex through the walls.
  • In "TOW George Stephanopoulos", Phoebe is being kept awake at night by her grandmother and her new boyfriend loudly reassuring each other that they're having a good time during sex. After Phoebe falls asleep in the coffee house Monica invites her to crash at her place for a few days so she can get some rest.
    Phoebe: My grandmother has this new boyfriend, and they're both kind of insecure in bed. Oh, and deaf.
• Game of Thrones: In "First Of His Name", Sansa is grossed out by her aunt Lysa's loud screaming during her having sex with Petyr. The take they used was the only one where Sophie Turner didn't laugh.
• General Hospital: Maxie is tired of hearing Johnny and Lulu's sex life, so one day she makes loud sex noises in her bedroom. They think she's with Spinelli, but when he comes through the front door...
• In Gossip Girl's third season Nate and Serena start to date and apparently have loud sex in the kitchen right outside Chuck and Blair's bedroom (now that's just rude). They are then treated to the sounds of Blair having The Immodest Orgasm, which they assume is her not wanting to be outdone. Then Nate gets a phone call from Chuck, who's apparently not having sex with Blair at the time. It turns out Blair is just reading a fashion magazine and mocking Serena's bedroom noises to point out that the walls are thin.
• Grey's Anatomy: In "The Self Destruct Button", Meredith and Derek were loud enough to keep her roommates Izzie and George awake.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Referenced. Lily thinks there might be some truth to the theory that Robin (who was Ted's girlfriend at the time) used to be a porn star.
    Lily: She does have the fake orgasm noises down.
    Ted: Hey!
    Lily: What? The walls are thin.
    Ted: That's not what I was "hey"-ing you about!
  • A vertical variant is seen in "Bagpipes"; Ted's upstairs neighbors are loudly playing the bagpipes. When Ted can take no more, he confronts them but backs off when he realizes they're an elderly couple. Later in the episode, Lily and Marshall's bagpiping is seen to have a similar effect on their downstairs neighbors. Then it turns out that the loud noises were from the couple above the elderly couple.
• Hustle. While Stacie and Danny are posing as a married couple, they hear someone in the next hotel room and think it might be the mark, so they fake having loud sex to maintain their cover. Actually Danny suspects it's Mickey and just wants to make him jealous, but he's not fooled (their orgasms are too well-timed for a couple who haven't been together for a while).
• Imposters: Twice Jules is stuck in a room close to Richard as he's loudly having sex with a woman (in the second case, this is her sister, making her doubly unhappy) so she hears everything.
• The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Savant" involves the detectives solving a brutal assault case by interviewing the victim's preteen daughter, who has a rare condition that just happens to give her superb hearing (to the point that she could hear the assault despite being in a different room) and the ability to recognize any voice she's heard. Alas, the same condition also leaves the girl unable to sort through her memories easily, and thus the detectives are treated to the spectacle of the girl helpfully impersonating the perp's sex talk and her mother's orgasmic gasping and moaning.
• Lip Service: Tess can't sleep when Sadie is having sex with an Italian tourist named Gabriella (who is quite loud). Lexy, meanwhile, is also getting it on with a woman at the same time (not so loudly, but still to a degree she can hear). The next morning, she lets them all have it.
• A similar issue comes up in Living Single. The ladies hear a couple making noises and thumping around throughout the episode, only to discover at the end that they are elderly and practitioners of Tai Chi. Kim Fields' character is then seen furiously flipping through a dictionary wanting to know what Tai Chi is and where she can get it.
• In Lost, as David Reyes, Hurley's Disappeared Dad who returned after his son won the lottery, is waking him up:
  David: What's with the earphones?
  Hurley: It's for the noise.
  David: Well, your mother's a very passionate woman.
  Hurley: That is disgusting.
• Lucifer (2016). Thanks to his Daddy Issues Lucifer is seriously annoyed by this trope thanks to the Big "OMG!" that accompanies the sounds of sex.
  Lucifer: You're not the one being taunted all the while! "Oh God" this and "Oh God" that! He's popping up everywhere and spoiling my favorite things!
  Chloe: I'd really hate to be in your head.
• In an early episode of Mad About You, Paul and Jamie meet their neighbors Hal and Maggie, who recognize their voices...
  Hal: We hear you through the walls sometimes.
  Maggie: Our kitchen is right next to your bedroom.
  Jamie: [mortified] Oh, my god—
  Hal: That's her!
• Variation in The Office (US). Jim and Pam, who are exhausted due to their new baby keeping them up all night, try to sleep in the warehouse crew’s secret nap spot. Unfortunately, they are right next to where Dwight and Angela's secret meet-up spot for their contractually obligated five sexual encounters. They’re shown wide awake having to stay perfectly silent listening to the whole thing.
• The second episode of Rome includes Octavia overhearing her mother Atia having very loud sex with Mark Antony, which she mockingly imitates at a party later. Antony's comment: "She has you exactly."
• Roseanne:
  • In one episode, she accuses her younger daughter of having sex with her boyfriend (who spent the night). Darlene asks why on earth she would even risk doing it in the next room. Her mother counters that she could have been quiet.
    Darlene: You can't!
    Roseanne: You can hear us!?
    Darlene: I had to tell David you were moving furniture!
  • Darlene also invokes this to play a trick on Becky. After Becky and Mark elope, they return to the Conners' house to stay the night. After an argument over whether they can sleep in the same room that night or not, Roseanne concedes and the house goes to bed. As Roseanne and Dan are discussing what to do in their bedroom, loud banging noises come through the ceiling.
    Dan: I'll be in the garage.
    Becky: [shouting from upstairs] Very funny, Darlene! Stop jumping on DJ's bed!
• An episode of Sex and the City involved Samantha experiencing loud neighbors who had vocal sex every night immediately after the late news. After she 'joins in' with her own noises, she receives a note from them inviting her to join them in person. Though she is originally keen on the idea of a threesome with the couple who seem to enjoy sex so much, she soon realizes that the couple are overweight and unattractive, so she just tells them to keep it down in the future.
• Shades of Blue: After Harlee and Nava sleep together for the first time, he mentions he will have to write an apology noise to his neighbors for all the noise they made. Justified since Harlee knew she was still wired and her creepy FBI handler that has a crush on her was listening in, so it's implied she brought her A-game and made herself louder in bed just to mess with him.
• In Silo's first episode, Allison and Holston have sex in his sherriff's office despite his protests that his coworkers can hear. In the other room, their coworkers' knowing smiles and chuckles inform the audience that they definitely can, though given the population controlled setting are indulgent and accommodating instead of embarrassed.
• Sister, Sister has Lisa and Ray making loud sex noises through the wall so Lisa's mother thinks they're really married. Played with in that they quickly grow tired of it.
  Ray: [bored voice] Saddle up, pony girl!
  Lisa: [whispers] You are twisted.
  Ray: [holds up book] I'm reading a Western!
• In ABC's short-lived drama Six Degrees, Carlos is searching for a new apartment to allow for some privacy for his roommate. At a particularly tiny one, he overhears a couple making love, so the real estate agent pretends they're having vocal sex to annoy them. It turns out that it's his roommate at her boyfriend's apartment.
• Spaced has Tim and Daisy faking sex noises as part of their fairly lazy ruse to trick their landlady into thinking they are a couple.
  • Also, in a non-sexual example, "You never know who's listening" "Nobody's Listening!" Ironic Echo Cut.
• On an episode of Spin City, Stacy is at Mike's apartment, and Mike apologizes for his noisy neighbors. We hear the noisy neighbors copulating for a second.
  Stacy: You think that's loud? (voice filled with pity) Oh, Mike.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In "Someone to Watch Over Me", Seven of Nine explores human "mating rituals" by studying the Official Couple Tom and B'Elanna. B'Elanna discovers this and starts reading Seven's notes about this, which results in the following memorable dialogue:
  B'Elanna: [reading from the PADD] "Stardate 52648, 0300 hours: intimate relations resume." [addressing Seven directly] How the hell do you know when we're having "intimate relations"?!
  Seven of Nine: There is no one on Deck 9, Section 12, who doesn't know when you're having intimate relations.
• Titans (2018): Dick Grayson stays at a No-Tell Motel during his return to Gotham, and the sound of someone having sex in the next room serves as Mood Dissonance when he's on the phone with his family in California. Then the banging suddenly gets a lot louder, activating his Chronic Hero Syndrome.
• Trigonometry: Given she's sharing an apartment with them, Ray can hear when Gemma and Kieran are having sex, which starts to turn her on in Episode 3.
• In the pilot episode of The Tudors, Henry VIII is having sex with his wife's lady-in-waiting while his men are standing out of his room, smirking. Then, in another episode, the two grooms stationed outside his door actually make commentary on his latest 'liaison'. This is done yet again in Season 4 with his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, and her two ladies-in-waiting (Joan Bulmer and Lady Rochford) are in the next room listening to it. Joan was pretty amused with it while Rochford does not.
• In the Wings episode "Bye-Bye, Bunny":
  Helen: Oh come on. Lowell and Bunny were so loud, they kept you up all night?
  Brian: Morning too. I was halfway down the block, I could swear I heard them yodeling.
  
  Lowell: I'm gonna go out and find an apartment for me and Bunny. I don't know, with other people in the house, we feel inhibited.
  Brian: THAT was inhibited? When you were finished, *I* smoked a cigarette!
• Young Sheldon: In "Passion's Harvest and a Sheldocracy", Mandy is looking for the bathroom when she hears Mary and George having loud sex. She decides to just use the garage sink.

Music

• Edguy's "Do Me Like a Caveman" is a hilarious song about trying to sleep at a hotel while a couple in the next room are banging each other's brains out.
• From James's "Laid":
  This bed is on fire with passionate love
  The neighbors complain about the noises above
• If taken entirely literally, Metric's "Satellite Mind" is about laying in bed listening to next door having sex:
  I heard you fuck through the wall,
  I heard you fuck.
  

However from Word of God it probably shouldn't be taken literally at all.

• "Paper Thin Walls" by Modest Mouse.
  These walls are paper thin
  And everyone hears every little sound
  Everyone's a voyeurist, they're watching me
  Watch them, watch me right now
• From Paul Simon's "Duncan":
  Couple in the next room
  Bound to win a prize
  They've been going at it all night long
  Well, I'm trying to get some sleep
  But these motel walls are cheap...
• Phil Collins' "Thru These Walls" is about a man who likes to...listen with his glass up to the wall.
• From Vienna Teng's "1BR/1BA", which is about apartment-hunting:
  My upstairs neighbors are making sounds that I never want to hear
  I hope they're just moving furniture around and really liking their ideas
  • Sometimes in live performance, she will then add a chirpy spoken word "Oh yeah, right there! Oh yeah, right there!"

Radio

• The Navy Lark: When Commander Murray and his wife are sharing a house with her parents, she refuses to have sex because the bed squeaks and her parents will hear them. Murray's frustration levels are not helped when he puts his back out attempting to fix the bed, and his crew assumes he put it out indulging in a different bedroom activity.

Roleplay

• In The Gamer's Alliance, the sorceress Shyralis tortures King Marcus with her magic in order to keep him under her power. When the knights guarding the door hear the loud noises coming from the king's bedroom, one of them ponders if everything is alright but his commanding officer Signan jokingly implies that the sorceress and the king are having sex which would explain the loud grunts.
  Guard: D-Do you think everything's okay in there?
  Signan: Seems our boy Marcus likes it a little rough, that's all.

Tabletop Games

• In the card game Chez Geek, a high-scoring Nookie card can force other players to discard Sleep cards they've already played.

Theater

• Avenue Q: In "You Can Be As Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)", Kate and Princeton have loud, nasty puppet sex that elicits angry calls from the neighbors to the building superintendant, who refuses to intercede.
  You're not allowed to be loud at the library
  At the art museum or at a play
  But when you and your partner are doing the nasty
  Don't behave like you're at the ballet!
  
  'Cause you can be as loud as the hell you want
  When you're making love (when you're making love)
  You can be as loud as the hell you want
  When you're making love
  
  Don't let the neighbors stop you from havin' fun
  They'll have peace and quiet when you're good and done
  Be as loud as the hell you want
  When you're making love!
• In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Gooper and Mae know that Brick and Maggie are not having sex because they share a wall, and they hear her pleading and his refusal. Brick says that they could've done it without them noticing, because not everybody is that loud.
• The musical Island Song has "Wall Lovin'," about a guy in unrequited love with his apartment neighbor. He's never met her face to face, but he listens in to her sex noises every night, hence the title. One day while he's listening, she stops and knocks on his apartment door, and he's embarrassed... until she asks him for batteries and he realizes that she was making those noises all alone. He hits it off with her, and he ends the song boasting that both of them will be giving some "wall lovin'" to another neighbor that night.

Video Games

• An entertaining scene in the second chapter of A Dance with Rogues, if you choose to have sex with Vico and if you brought the dwarven cleric along he mutters "how's a faithful dwarf supposed to get his spells back like that..."; if you have Pia with you she is rather embarrassed when you get her to admit to having been listening. Bran won't barge in and try to 'rescue' you from Vico, which he does otherwise.
• Deus Ex: in one location, a hotel, a couple can be heard having sex behind a closed door. Lampshaded by the fact they never stop, not even if the player engages in a fierce gun battle with grenades right outside the door.
• Dragon Age
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, this can come up a couple of times with the warden and his/her romance options. Justified in that the Player Party spends nights camped in tents in the wild, so there's not much of a wall to be had.
    • If a female warden is romancing Alistair and has gone to bed with him, Zevran can make comments on how the affair is going based on things he overheard.
      Zevran: It did seem as if you just got going when all grew quiet. You are... feeling all right, yes? Perhaps you are tired?
    • If a male or female warden is romancing Zevran and has gone to bed with him, Wynne can bring this up to you in a lecture about appropriate behavior for a Grey Warden.
      Warden: You know about Zevran and me?
      Wynne: I almost wish I didn't. Half of us aren't getting any sleep, the way you two carry on all night.
    • Wynne may also lecture the player about the noise if he is romancing Morrigan.
    • Also, if the warden is romancing Zevran, Oghren can bring this up in party banter, advising Zevran that "you might wanna, you know, keep it down".
    • Leliana will also make the rather cutting remark to Morrigan if they are both romancing the Warden.
      Leliana: I suppose he must like your shrieking, you sound like a genlock being murdered — a sweet, sweet sound to a Grey Warden. You should try a little harder next time he takes you. I don't think they heard you in the Anderfels.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, as a female Inquisitor if you choose to pursue a romantic relationship with Cullen, their first time ends with a Desk Sweep of Passion followed by a Sexy Discretion Shot. Apparently, at least Sera heard them at it, as she later jokes to the Inquisitor about how "desks need to beware".
    • Sera also pokes fun at a romanced Blackwall following his Roll in the Hay with the Inquisitor:
      Sera: (teasing) I know what you diiid...! You two, in the loft.
      Blackwall: Uh, h-how did you—?
      Sera: Just do. 'Cause I know things.
      Blackwall: (whispers) Could we not speak so loudly about these things that you know?
      Sera: Too late for that. You're the one scaring horses, getting hay up your nooks. Crannies.
      Blackwall: (sighs)
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto V: During a randomly generated sequence, Michael's daughter can be heard having loud sex behind her locked door in his mansion.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: When C.J. chooses to have "coffee" (sex) with one of his girlfriends, the camera stays outside the home and the sounds of them having sex are muffled, as if we're listening to them through the wall. Later games with this option, Grand Theft Auto IV (and its DLCs) and Grand Theft Auto V, also keep the camera outside during "coffee" or "booty calls", but the sounds are no longer muffled.
• In The Sims 2: Apartment Life, loud noises will occasionally leak through the walls, annoying your sims who can bang on the walls to get the neighbors to shut up. One of the things that can leak through the walls is Woo-Hoo interactions.
• In The Sims 4: City Living, the same thing occurs as in the second installment of the series when living in apartments. The household Sims will get angry mood buffs due to the neighbors being loud, ranging from music, to arguing, to them Woo-Hooing audibly, which is indicated by hearts floating out from their apartment door.

Visual Novels

• Invoked in Miyabi's route of Enchanted in the Moonlight: Miyabi wants to make sure all the other guys know that the protagonist is with him. Much eye-rolling ensues among the rest of the cast, save for a very mortified Samon.
• Invoked during one scene in The Sagara Family, in nymphomaniac Arisa Sagara's route. Arisa and the protagonist have noisy sex inside a house with 4 other women. This results in an awkward breakfast the following morning, where one of the other characters comments on the need to soundproof the walls.

Webcomics

• Subverted early in 8-Bit Theater. Black Mage hears bedsprings creaking and White Mage moaning in the next rooms; turns out it's just Black Belt jumping on the bed, practicing his kung fu.
• Subverted in Avialae, where it turns out to be just a joke. Not that this is any comfort to the still-mentally scarred third party.
  Jamie: So how did things go with Gannet last night?
  Bailey: [spit takes] Y-Y-You heard us?!
  Jamie: WHAT?! No! Oh my god, I was kidding! Fuck, I'm gonna have to burn that couch now.
• This happens in Better Days chapter 20 when Fisk and Beth and Tommy and Lucy go to New York and stay in rooms next to each other. Both boys try not to "finish" before the other, and the next day they both have sore backs when they have to visit museums.
• Candi: Candi and her suitemate overhear a couple during Spring Break, thinking it's one of their friends and his girly — not knowing it's her ex and one of her other friends as well. It's a twofer!
• Concession: Artie and Kate engage in one of the few explicit sex scenes in the comic, and are heard Right Through The Wall by Artie's very Squicked grandmother. (page 146)
• Cosmic Dash: Guugel's internal monologue mentions having this problem:
  I would tell them to get a room, but her bunk is next to mine. I hear everything.
• Exaggerated in Ennui GO!. Adelie and Bella are so loud when they have sex that Adelie's sister Izzy can hear them with perfect clarity... when she's 26 floors above them.
• In Gaia, Viviana sets up a noise-canceling device before her first time with Ilias, mentioning how thin the walls are. She notices the next morning that the device was missing a key component, making it ineffective.
• In The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, Amal, apparently. "Y'know, you are one noisy motherfucker."
• Mac Hall: In one strip, Micah gets W-40 metal lubcricant as a Christmas gift from Matt, because Micah's creaky dorm bed keeps Matt awake whenever Helen spends the night.
• Apparently, the walls in Ménage à 3 are pretty thin.
  • Gary and Zii have to listen to DiDi and her boyfriend until they rush out of the apartment.
  • At the end of the "Backstage Pass" story, Gary and Dillon are kept up by Zii and Yuki having sex.
  • Matt and Dillon also used to hear Gary masturbating when they still lived with him. Moreover, when they decided to become a gay couple, they record his "sounds" and play them back to enhance sex with each other.
• Invoked in Partially Clips. An English couple on holiday, when war with Germany is on the horizon, plans to have loud sex to annoy a German officer in the hotel room next to theirs.
  I shall never have been prouder to Lie Back and Think of England.
• PvP: Subverted in that Cole hears Brent and Jade having sex in their office, realizes he's probably making assumptions like he has lots of time before, and comes to the conclusion that they're just moving furniture. They're not.
• Penny Arcade: Apparently this was an issue during the hallowed days of Apartment 26 when Tycho and Gabe were still roommates, both in real life and the comic.
  Tycho: Sometimes, I couldn't hear The X-Files!
• In Questionable Content, Momo is rattled in the next room by Marigold and Dale's enthusiastic lovemaking, thinking that she'll encourage them to invest in a new bedframe.
• Two of Ralph Hayes, Jr.'s webcomics have used this joke.
  • Goblin Hollow has Penny in an online chat room with her friends, and one of them asks if her house (an extremely old mansion) is really haunted. Penny says she actually does think so and describes how she heard a whole bunch of incredibly scary feral animal noises the first night while laying in her bed. One of her friends however points out that Penny lives with her older sister Lily (a mountain lion), and Lily's husband Ben (a grizzly bear) and that the two are newlyweds. Penny starts typing out "What does that have to do with it?" when she suddenly realizes what they are implying.
  Penny: OH, EWWWWWWW!
  • Nip and Tuck has a brief arc where Nip and Zelda are interrupted in the middle of sex by a group of extremely nosy old women who could hear them all the way from the street. One of Nip's neighbors even yells out that he can hear Nip and Zelda making love all the way from the end of the holler only for Nip to yell back that Jim Bob is a hog-nosed bat, he could hear a flea fart from the peak of Mt. Everest.
• Something*Positive:
  • Fairly early in the run of the webcomic, Davan gets sick of hearing his neighbour's loud sex noises — not so much for the noise, but because it's very obvious that the woman is faking it. He finally storms over to them and angrily gives the man detailed written instructions on how to please a woman. Found here.
  • Also, this strip references how thin the walls are within Davan's family home.
• In the S.S.D.D. arc "Backfired" Norman moves up from the basement to the bedroom next to Richard and Anne, who keep him awake for a week before he takes some "sleeping pills" and conks out on the couch with his eyes wide open.
• Sticky Dilly Buns is largely set in an apartment with rather thin walls, enabling this trope to be invoked repeatedly. The neighboring apartment also has a non-soundproof front door, as it turns out.
• xkcd shows how to take advantage of this trope: Cueball, annoyed by his neighbor's loud sex keeping him up at night, builds an elliptical reflector dish so the sounds of his girlfriend's screams converge in his neighbor's bedroom.

Web Originals

• From The Onion: Used blatantly in "Couple Upstairs Going at It Again" and a man tries to induce this in "Man Hopes Hot Woman in Next Apartment Can Hear How Well He's Fucking His Girlfriend"
• Not Always Friendly provides a solution for this.
  • Unfortunately, this couple from Not Always Romantic woke up the neighbors while the husband was at work.

Web Videos

• Ryan from Thin Wall Challenge made a game out of it by challenging himself to complete a complicated task before his neighbors finish.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: When Linda's parents visit the Belchers in "Crawl Space", their lovemaking is so loud that Gene records it and plays it for the class the next day at show-and-tell. The sound also invades Tina's dream, in which lascivious zombies suddenly sound like her horny grandparents.
• Comes up in an interesting conversation in Danny Phantom:
  Danny: I couldn't sleep [last night] with my Arch-Enemy in the guest room next to me.
  Sam: My parents sleep in the bedroom next to me. It's not the same, but I can't sleep either.
• One episode of Downtown has Jen complaining about her roommate having extremely loud sex with her latest boyfriend.
• Happens twice in Duckman:
  • Bernice and King Chicken have very loud sex in the next room in "Cock Tales For Four" to the point where everything they say can be heard clearly and a wall gets repeatedly bent inward several feet. Duckman knows what's going on but Honey Chicken is too drunk to notice. The final episode reveals though that they've never actually had sex.
  • Bernice and Cornfed do the same in "Pig Amok". It's so loud and destructive the walls start to crack. Duckman is too busy with his own thoughts to realize it, though.
• Done at least twice in Family Guy, once during a cutaway gag with "that Persian woman in the attic", and again when Peter is trying to sleep on Cleveland's couch. The second viewer mail episode shows Stewie hearing it and dreaming about them as lumberjacks.
• Futurama:
  • Subverted in one episode when the suggestive squeaking noises keeping Fry up turn out to be two robots mounted on bedsprings playing cards. One of them oils his spring, and the squeaking stops.
  • Played straight in a much later episode when Bender and a promiscuous ladybot go through the whole night, except for the occasional break to play country music right next to Fry's bed... and some activity involving a pneumatic drill.
• A variant is played for laughs in Mission Hill, where Kevin can overhear his gay neighbors arguing over whether the condoms Gus bought are adequate for their purposes.
  Gus: What was wrong with our regular brand? These'll snap right off!
• In The Oblongs, the sex life between the father and the mother is so good that every night she's saying "Oh God" repetitively. The younger son, having lived his entire life listening to them, finds himself incapable of having a good night's sleep without it, and gets insomnia when their relationship becomes rocky.
• Marge and Homer often are these people in The Simpsons. Their loud lovemaking has been the subject of at least two gags, both times with reaction shots from Bart, Lisa, Maggie, and Ned Flanders (their next-door neighbor). On at least one occasion, the family holds a conversation about this habit while remaining in their bedrooms. Bart even punches through the wall to prove the kids' point.
• Rick and Morty: At the end of the episode "Bethic Twinstinct", Rick, Summer, and Morty overhear Jerry and the two Beths sort out their issues with each other and they each try desperately to think about literally anything else as they all hear the Beths having sex while Jerry watches, encourages them and then joins in with them. The siblings are clearly uncomfortable and eventually break down in tears, having no way to simply leave.
  Morty: Wh-fo-Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!? Why? WHY!? [weeps]
• South Park: In Post Covid, Cartman, who has grown up to become a devout rabbi with Jewish family, stays at Kyle's house while the town is under quarantine. That night, Kyle is kept awake by Cartman and his wife having sex in the next room while he shouts things like "You like how Abraham trusted in the one true God?!", which inflates his suspicions that Cartman is faking it all to mess with him.
• The Venture Bros.: A college flashback has Doc Venture sharing a dorm room with Brock, lying horrified in the lower bunk as Brock has loud, furious sex with a succession of girls just above him.
• Yes-People: It turns out that 1) the older couple have a surprisingly vigorous sex life for their age, and 2) the apartment building has thin walls. Both the middle-aged couple and the mom & son are made uncomfortable by the older wife's moaning and screaming.

---