See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Kaneda: Tetsuo, are you OK? Who's this freaky kid? And why don't these helicopters make noise until after they've been hovering overhead for several minutes?
Colonel: RARR NUMBERS.

— Toastyfrog Thumbnail Theatre: Akira (part 1)

In TV and movies, when we're not supposed to see something yet, we can't hear it either, regardless of how little sense that makes. Cars will not be audible until they come unexpectedly screeching around the corner or over the hill or out of the alley, people will turn up without having made any footsteps, an animal will not start its low growling until it's in shot. Sometimes when the reveal is being made by a camera pan, the sound will Fade In as the subject becomes visible, as though the sound was being made the whole time, it's just we weren't at the right angle to hear it before.

This is often justified by the protagonists' attention being somewhere else so that they (and by extension, the audience) don't hear what otherwise would be perfectly obvious until it's right on top of them. It's only justifiable up to a point, though.

Sub-Trope of the Rule of Perception. Compare and contrast It's Quiet… Too Quiet, Nothing Is Scarier, and Paranoia Fuel. The total inverse is Hell Is That Noise, when you hear something bad but can't see it. Opposite Trope of Sound-Only Death, you can only hear this person dying, not see it.

See also Surprise Vehicle, Stealth Hi/Bye, and Behind the Black. Often overlaps with Enemy Rising Behind, Right Behind Me, and The End... Or Is It?. Not to be confused with the Monkey Morality Pose, which is a trio of characters each covering their ears, eyes, or mouth.

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Examples:

Advertisements

• "Can't Look": This 1999 British ad is about child abuse and presents its message this way. The camera pans over a baby's bedroom full of posters and toys —each character is covering their eyes over the sound of off-screen yells and sobs. Pretending not to see something doesn't make it disappear.

Anime & Manga

• AKIRA: A military helicopter comes out of nowhere in an early scene and lands in the middle of the road, taking up most of the scene. The helicopter sound effect doesn't start playing until after it has been onscreen for a second or two.
• Fate/stay night: Berserker and Ilya's sudden appearance in the middle of an empty street completely catches Shirou unaware. This is justified because, like any other Servant, the humongous and usually quite noisy Berserker has the ability to recede into spirit form. This occurs in the original visual novel, but the anime makes it more apparent.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: Inverted in episode 21. Mion desperately yells "gomen-nasai" while fading out as the camera view switches to Shion. And Shion isn't even paying attention anymore.

Fan Works

• Entropy: The Wisers are the literal personifications of this concept.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien vs. Predator: Lex is climbing up a sheer ice cliff when she receives a call on her cell phone and answers it. If that wasn't illogical enough, she continues climbing during the conversation, and when she arrives at the top, she discovers that the person she's talking with was standing in front of a helicopter (!) at the top of that very ice cliff.
• Attack of the Clones: Padmè and the Jedi rescue squad are backed into a ring in the centre of an arena. Though surrounded only by the relative quiet of droids making clicking noises, it still takes Padmè to shout "Look!" and a shot of the sky to trigger the BRRRRRRZZZZZ of the descending clone gunships. This is doubly surprising when one considers the arena has the shape of a giant ear.
• Cloverfield: The titular monster is somehow able to sneak up on the protagonists after the helicopter crash in the middle of a park with considerably less noise and movement than one would expect, despite the fact that he was in the middle of several buildings a few blocks away perhaps a minute before. In strict fairness, rewatching the key scene reveals warning footsteps and camera-jounce vibrations, but it's still somewhat credibility-stretching how quietly the monster manages to move for this key moment.
• The Day After Tomorrow: Frustratingly enough, a street full of people is unable to hear or feel a 300-foot tidal wave until it's within a hundred feet of them.
• Final Destination: A bus that smashes into a lead character with a spectacular roar the instant they step off the curb but approached in utter silence before then.
• The General: This happens a lot in silent movies, where the lack of synchronized sound makes the illusion easier to get over. Here, Johnnie does not hear an entire Union Army regiment passing right behind his back.
• Goldeneye: James and Natalya are under the impression that they are alone in a field. When Jack Wade approaches and gives the reinforcements the command to come out of hiding, several men pop up out of the grass. While it may be plausible to never notice the soldiers, it's quite a stretch to not notice the multiple helicopters directly overhead, which can suddenly be heard the second they drop into view.
• Hellboy: It demonstrates that this trope is senseless in any sense. Abe Sapien's introductory scene features rotten eggs which can only be smelled while in-frame, despite having been present in the scene for several minutes. Joked about on the commentary: "Is it too late to send this back to editing?"
• Jurassic Park (1993): The Tyrannosaurus rex —whose footsteps make the earth tremble— appears out of nowhere during the climax, apparently having snuck in. The scene was added late in the production (the book doesn't feature the dinosaur) because the producers were so impressed by the T-Rex model that they wanted to show it off more.
• The Long Kiss Goodnight: A helicopter shows up from behind Dedalus' house without having made a sound until the heroes see it.
• The Longest Day: A squad of American paratroopers is holed up in a house. Despite having somebody on watch a Tiger tank sneaks up on them. It's quite funny -.every time the lookout turns around for a cigarette or quip with his mates the tank silently glides out of an alley and across the street into one on the opposite side.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • The Two Towers: Aragorn hears the Riders of Rohan and pushes Legolas and Gimli to hide behind a rock. None of the Horsemen, however, notice the three heroes despite the fact that before hiding, they were standing 20 feet ahead of them, right in front of them, on top of a hill, in broad daylight. However, once they've passed and Aragorn yells at them, then they notice.
  • When the band of Rohirrim rides right by, the three give each other quizzical looks as if to say "huh ... they didn't notice." This was on account of the cloaks from Lothlórien, which make it difficult to see against any background — green, grey, brown.
  • In the original book, they spot the Riders from very far off already (five leagues by Legolas' estimation), consciously move down to the foot of the hill so as to not present an easily visible silhouette, sit huddled in their Elven cloaks, and have to wait for some time.
• Terminator Salvation: Marcus, Kyle Reese, and Star are in the base of some non-Resistance humans. The base is being approached by a completely silent machine hunting squad consisting of a prisoner carrier, a Hunter-Killer, and a HUGE Terminator. Only seconds before they attack does Star sense their presence; the sound the Terminator makes can be heard milliseconds before he strikes.

Live-Action TV

• Firefly: At the end of "Shindig", Mal and Inara are sitting on the edge of the gangway over the main cargo area, seemingly alone. It's only when the camera shot changes to a view of the whole deck, that we see the cargo of cows, who are audibly mooing.

Theme Parks & Rides

• Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast: Poultra's thunderously-loud footsteps cannot be heard by the characters until she walks right inside the throne room.

Video Games

• Dead Space: This is an actual gameplay element. While you can hear necromorphs in most situations, if they're sneaking up on you (especially in a vacuum), you won't be able to hear them, and there won't be a scare chord until you actually look at them. Paranoia-inducing the first time you discover this.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: In the opening cinematic, a Machine enters the frame moments after Rost's narration mentions their existence for the first time. Once on screen, it makes loud mechanical noises as it moves, which should have also been audible during its off-screen approach.
• Nintendo Entertainment System: Occurs in NES video games, usually due to technical limitations. Especially egregious with scrolling games on 8-bit consoles. This is because the system simply didn't handle offscreen objects; if an object left the screen, it just disappeared. (It caused notorious respawning issues and is widely seen as one of the most artificial ways possible to increase the difficulty of a game.)
• TRI: Of Friendship and Madness: The fox can be seen throughout several of the chapters sitting in an out-of-reach location or trotting along the walls. He'll make a jingling bell sound, but only if you're looking straight at him.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Devilsaur is a gargantuan Bigger Than T-Rex in Un'Goro Crater, who is still able to sneak up on most players.
  • Developers took an attempt to avert this with the Burning Crusade starting zone Fel Reaver: it ignores normal visibility range so it can be seen miles across, its steps have audible stomps and quake the earth, it frequently gives off a foghorn... And still manages to sneak up on players.

Webcomics

• Evil Diva: In the tenth issue, Diva is brought to an extremely crowded party. Bodies are pressed against one another so tightly that she and her sister, Tia, practically need a snowplow to get through in some panels. However, after Diva sits down with compulsive rapist Tommy, the action focuses on the two of them. The massive clusters of other people vanish from the room mysteriously, and soon Tommy decides now would be as good a time as any to go to prison for raping a little girl. The struggle goes on for a whole page without a single other person in the room noticing, even with Diva shouting at the top of her lungs (although Tia, who went outside, can hear Diva just fine). Then, miraculously, Diva summons her magical wand into her hand, an action that creates a small popping noise. We get a reaction shot from the other partygoers. The ones that were standing there next to the entire thing the whole time. Now that the audience can see them, suddenly they're shocked about a rape situation going on ten feet from where they're standing.

Western Animation

• Big City Greens: During one of the musical numbers in "Green Christmas", Bill sings in a muffled voice due to having a candy cane in his mouth. The thing is, his voice only becomes muffled when he turns his head so the audience can see the candy cane, despite the fact that it would logically have been in his mouth for the whole line.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Father Time!", Timmy goes back in time to see his parents when they were his age. The two of them introduce themselves to him (unaware that he's their son), and when they say their names, a conspicuously out-of-place truck blares by, totally obscuring their identities to the audience.

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