Your Mime Makes It Real

Silent but deadly.

"Who needs a gun, when you've got imagination!"

— Tucker, Danger 5

Primarily a Comedy Trope, Your Mime Makes It Real is when a character mimes an action and this mime causes a real world effect to occur. For example, miming aiming a gun at someone and pulling the trigger causes an object to go flying out of their hands. Or miming peeling a banana and dropping the Banana Peel on the ground will cause someone to slip over.

A standard method for dealing with this is to mime a situation the attacking mime must deal with, such as miming locking a door or sealing them in a glass box.

A standard tactic of the Enemy Mime. And a variant on (as well as a terrible pun on) Your Mind Makes It Real. Compare Full-Contact Magic.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Yoshikage Kira activates his explosive stand by miming clicking a detonator. If someone can prevent him from making the hand gesture, he can’t detonate the bomb.
• Pokémon: The Series: Mr. Mime has the ability to create Invisible Walls by miming them. By the 8th generation equivalent series, Delia's Kantonian Mr. Mime, Mimey, can mime a vacuum and can produce the desired sucking up.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy Galaxy: The mime alien antagonist Panto can summon and use invisible vehicles, firearms and a giant robot. Justified by his power sphera of invisibility, Invibot, being close by. Once the heroes figure this out, they mime out their own things to use against Panto.

Comic Books

• The mimes guards in De Cape et de Crocs (later revealed to be members of a tribe of mute Selenites communicating only through gestures) call for help by miming the action of shouting, which successfully attracts the attention of other mimes who were a room away and definitely not in line of sight.
• One Deadpool short has him fighting a bunch of mimes in full mime costume who have just stolen a device that allows their mimed weapons to actually work. Deadpool comes out second best in the fight until he stops trying to use his real weapons and starts miming back at them.
• A criminal from the Watchmen universe called Mime appears in Doomsday Clock together with with lover Marionette. He displays the ability to do things like pick a lock or even blow a guy's brains out by miming it, but it eventually turns out that his tools and weapons are actually quite real, just rendered invisible somehow.
• Emilka Sza (Emily Hush), a Polish character created by Maciej Kur and Magdalena "Meago" Kania, embodies this trope. Emilka is a "born mime" which means she has pale white skin, can't produce sounds and is such skilled mime she mimed entire hospital where she was born. Not only does Emilka use pantomime objects like normal ones all the time (however it's ambiguous whether she creates objects at will or they were always there) but her entire house is pantomime.
• The Mime from Mister Blank was a street performer who developed powers styled after her mime persona. These include the creation of invisible fields or "boxes", and the creation of powerful winds.

Fan Works

• The Elements of Friendship: When Twilight approaches, Pinkamena mimes being trapped in a box. No matter how she tries, Twilight can't push past the invisible box.
• The premise of Silencio is that Taylor triggered with the power of telekinesis that manifests via miming. She/"he" thus makes her hero identity mime-based, taking the codename Marceau (after Marcel Marceau, a famous French mime artist). Hilarity and shipping ensue.

Films — Animation

• In A Goofy Movie, Max and Goofy see a mime pretending to pull something up. Goofy plays along and mimes cutting the rope, which causes a real piano to crush the mime.

Films — Live-Action

• In Bruce Almighty, Bruce mimes throwing a lasso at the moon and then pulling it, and the moon does come closer, before he mimes tying the rope onto his balcony. He also blows gently, causing a gust of wind to lift a girl's skirt up, and he mouths gibberish, forcing Evan to say it. Justified, he's almighty.
• Subverted in Crank, during the final confrontation. Chev "fires" a Finger Gun to one of his enemies lackeys, only for the guy to get a Boom, Headshot!. Turns out The Cavalry has arrived (one of them shot the guy) and are helping him because of an Enemy Mine situation.
• Subverted again in The Losers. Jensen claims to be able to do this thanks to a secret government experiment. When the bad guys try to call his bluff, he mimes firing his Finger Gun at them and they start going down. Of course, it's his buddy Cougar doing the shooting from his vantage point outside the building.
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu:
  • Pikachu decides to get physical with a Mr. Mime suspect. But as stated above in the Anime folder, Mr. Mime can create invisible walls via miming, so when Pikachu leaps... cue the Glass Smack and Slide.
  • Tim plays his trick right back at him by using a "secret door" he imagined to get into Mr. Mime's invisible room and douses him in imaginary gasoline. After Mr. Mime's following attempts at extinguishing the imaginary matches he lit, he exits and threatens to light him up from the outside, causing Mr. Mime to finally relent and spill the beans. The lit match is then accidentally dropped onto the gasoline, and we do not get to see what happens right after their Oh, Crap! moment.
• In Way Out West, Stan Laurel has the ability to flick his thumb like a lighter and produce a flame, much to the consternation of Oliver Hardy.

Literature

• Felicia, Sorceress of Katara: In The Cult of the Rubber Nose, Felicia runs into a group of mime assassins who not only use invisible walls to try and stop escapes, but mime things like invisible bows and arrows. She captures one by turning his powers on him and miming a small box around him, then gets him to talk with sodium pentathol.
• The Meaning of Liff defines "Scosthrop" as the act of miming using a pair of scissors while searching for them, in the hope that it will favourably influence your chance of actually finding them.
• In Swellhead, Stacy whimsically pretends to shoot at a ghost with a Finger Gun, and it reacts as if had actually been shot.
• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: While expanding her dungeon, Delta accidentally connects to the remains of an old circus, containing a mime ghoul who has this power. And he's hungry for magic, such as, oh, the crystal core of her dungeon. Cue her monsters getting tangled in mimed ropes, trapped inside mimed boxes, and shot with mimed cannons. Even a mimed match, though, can fail to light if affected by the Dark Drake's curse of bad luck.

Live-Action TV

• Played with in 3rd Rock from the Sun when an Evil Twin mimes a box around Dick Solomon, when he's actually activating an invisible forcefield. Just to lampshade the trope, Dick reacts with horror when he realises his efforts to subsequently escape look like a mime-impersonation.
• Danger 5. Tucker uses a Finger Gun to make Your Head Asplode after losing his own weapon.
• The Goodies: This is the primary weapon of the mimes in "Daylight Robbery on the Orient Express". Mimed guns allow them to shoot musical instruments out of the Goodies hands, miming carrying a Sheet of Glass across a road causes nasty accident, a mimed tack on the road causes a blow-out on a wheelchair, etc.
• Penn & Teller: Fool Us: Penn and Teller's magic act with Billy the Mime ends with Billy accidentally stabbing himself in the heart with a mimed knife and dying on stage, complete with 'real' blood.
• In Scrubs, JD tries to get rid of Todd by doing the old "invisible tennis ball throw" that anyone with a dog will be familiar with. Todd falls for it, but somehow returns with a real tennis ball.
• The Slammer: In one episode, an escaped mime uses this to wreak havoc in the prison.
• Wayne and Shuster have this for their "Comedy Olympics" special. The case in point is the gold medalist for pantomime. Here, we see a Marcel Marceau type mime doing his "Walking on Stairs" act and physically ascends about 10 feet off the stage without any physical steps in place.
• El Chavo del ocho: There's one instance when Quico mocks el Chavo for playing tennis without a racket or a ball. Then he sees la Chilindrina rope-skipping without a rope. When he laughs at her, she uses the "imaginary" rope to strangle him.

Music

• Art vs Science's "Parlez Vous Francais?" starts an epic Mime on Mime battle when one mime has their hat shot off by a mime bow and arrow.
• Crazy Frog has been shown to be able to conjure a pretty fast invisible "imaginary" car when he needs to, most notable in Axel F.
• In the music video for Ariel Pink's "Only In My Dreams", while sitting in the park with one of the several women he's wooed, he's approached by a woman in the full archetypical mime costume, who mimics taking a photo of the pair, and after a Fade to White she's holding a polaroid, which she hands them.
• In "Weird Al" Yankovic's "My Own Eyes", one of the many things the singer wishes he could unsee is a mime being hacked to death with an imaginary cleaver.

Radio

• The Goon Show: In "The Moriarty Murder Mystery", Seagoon is told that Moriarty killed himself by pointing his finger at his head, and saying "bang".
  Seagoon: That’s ridiculous. [Laughs] How can a man shoot himself by pointing his finger at his head like this and going -
  [Gunshot, body falls]
  Undertaker: Mine, I think.

Tabletop Games

• Champions: An illustration in the UNTIL Superpowers Database sourcebook shows a supervillain with a mime motif doing the "glass box" bit to set up a force wall between himself and two superheroes.
• The Mutants & Masterminds 3rd party supplement "Escape from Alcatraz" has The Mysterious Mime, a marooned alien who was adopted by a circus troupe and channels its telekinesis through miming.
• Spheres of Power has the Skilled Casting drawback, has you use a Perform, Profession, or Craft check to use your magic, so you can use Perform: Acting to literally mime an invisible wall into being.

Toys

• SuperThings: Clowny's iteration in the toyline, after being imported from the webseries, has a special ability called "Mega Mimic", fitting his mime-like design. It allows him to to create any object he can think of, with the caveat that it's always invisible.

Video Games

• Wes the French mime in Don't Starve. He is first seen trapped in an invisible jail which looks more like a pantomime performance at first. As a playable character, the only item he will mime is the paddle used when riding a boat.
• The Mime class in Final Fantasy has this as its power. Apparently, they mime any action last performed by an ally or enemy, and it becomes a real repeating of this action.
• God of War: Chains of Olympus: The Mime of War alternate costume has Kratos dressed up like a mime. He simply waves his empty hands and his enemies are sliced up.
• Mimes in Guild of Dungeoneering cast magic by pretending to perform an action, at the cost of being The Silent Bob.
• In the beginning of the third The Legend of Kyrandia game, you can encounter a mime. Being the jerk that you are, you have an option to mock him. If you overdo it, he mimes shooting you with a bow... and you die.
• One of Johnny Cage's movie roles in Mortal Kombat is Ninja Mime, represented as an alternate costume in X, 11 (a different costume than in X), the Mortal Kombat Mobile cell phone game (using the X version), and Legends: Cage Match (again using the X costume). In 11, he also gets a "Mime Time" special move (not limited to the Ninja Mime costume) that parries opponents' basic attacks and can continue into an "At The Dooooor" Brutality involving slamming an invisible door into the opponent's head until they die.
• The mime enemies in Penny Arcade Adventures all do standard mime acts to attack. Sometimes they don't make sense.
• A mime in Planescape: Torment mocked a passing mage by imitating his walk, so the mage cursed him to be sealed in an invisible box and unable to speak. If the Nameless One tries to touch him, he is repelled.
• Pokémon has Mr. Mime. Previously a full Psychic-type, this Psychic/Fairy-type Pokemon uses the pink pads on its finger tips to harden the air in front of it and create barriers. Their habit of mimicry confuses foes and people and gives them an advantage.
• In Space Station 13, a mime player can do the invisible wall routine to create an actual invisible wall that blocks other characters. And then the mime is torn apart by security players.
• Space Station 14's mimes have the power to create temporary invisible walls by "brushing up" to them, unless they break their Vow of Silence.
• Team Fortress 2: Heavy's taunt for his fists is him miming a Finger Gun... and actually killing an enemy with it.

Web Animation

• Mime from Happy Tree Friends seems to be able to do this in some episodes. In the episodes "Easy for You to Sleigh'' and "Mime to Five", his house doesn't even have any visible furniture; it's all mimed.

Web Comics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Donald McBonald is a mime with this ability. Our hero defeats him with a pantomime of an invisible rocket launcher, while King Radical simply decks him while yelling "I don't believe in mimes!" When McBonald nearly succeeds in killing Dr. McNinja in a Feed It a Bomb attempt, it turns out that it takes a bit of Clap Your Hands If You Believe: it's implied that it would have worked if Dr. McNinja hadn't incited some self-doubt that resulted in it failing.
• Awful Hospital: Maggie's "diptomancy". For instance, she has a "Flyreball" spell where her dipterites "embody the notion of fire" and "Flylighningbolt" where her dipterities "embody the idea of a lightning bolt." It doesn't even matter that technically they aren't even '''real''' flame◊ or lightning. Anything she casts these at, alive or otherwise, will react as though they've been burned or electrified.
• Similarly, the Mime Assassin from Casey and Andy. His first shown spree is stopped when Quantum Cop manages to ensnare him in an invisible box.
• In Ennui GO!, one of "Florida Man"'s sidekicks is a strange-looking woman who is revealed to be an exceptionally convincing mime.
  Sarah: [...] But every so often... A mime exists who can fool senses beyond sight. I'm afraid this is going to get incredibly silly.
• The Mime Assassin from The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: The humorous article SCP-5040-J about two mime gangs who fight each other with their telekinetic abilities (though sometimes they end up trapping themselves in invisible boxes).
• Whateley Universe: Marcel, Robur's right-hand man is an Enemy Mime who kidnaps Envy and Daphne. He silences Envy to prevent her from using magic, and traps Daphne with an invisible box.
• Played for pitch-black comedy in the Saw Fan Film "The Silent Treatment," where an overly-committed mime ends up in one of Jigsaw's ironic Death Traps... which to the viewer looks like a completely empty room. At first, it appears the mime is only acting like he's up in chains and forced into a sadistic life-or-limb scenario, but once he "mimes" cutting himself and very real blood starts coming out of him, it's left really unclear just how imaginary the trap was.

Western Animation

• In the Animaniacs recurring segment "Mime Time", a mime mimes something which then comes true. For example, he'll mime pulling a rope and it turns out he's pulling a tiger towards him.
• Dexter's Laboratory: In "The Laughing" Dee Dee stops Dexter, who has turned into a "were-clown", by taking mime classes and using what she learned to "trap" Clown Dexter in an invisible box.
• The Family Guy episode "Foreign Affairs" uses this in a gag regarding "mime on mime" violence in Paris; One mime holds up another, his finger pointing like a gun. After taking his victim's wallet, he "shoots", causing a wound to appear in his chest. After the victim drops, the crooked mime "shoots" him in the head twice, blowing it to bits.
• Grojband: Used by the mimes Grojband get in a fight with in "Myme Disease".
• In Miraculous Ladybug, the villain known as "The Mime" is able to conjure up virtually anything simply by miming it, from a simple sword to a working car. The drawback is he can only mime one thing at a time, causing any previous things he created to stop existing. Also, since mimes don't speak, if he talks, this will also immediately dispel a mimed object, as discovered when the heroes are trapped in a game world involving past villains.
• ¡Mucha Lucha! has a minor character named French Twist who is a wrestler who happens to be a mime, and has the power to turn the imaginary objects he acts out into real invisible objects.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In the season two premiere, Enid has taken up mime, but she insists it's a new ninja art she learned over the summer. She's able to do things like pour her teacher an invisible cup of coffee (and accidentally spill real coffee on his crotch) and drive an invisible car. Unfortunately, Enid's new powers prove to not be very effective in a fight with Big Bull Demon.
• Subverted in the Phineas and Ferb episode "Picture This". When all the mimes (and a robot-posing street performer) in Danville Park are trapped in invisible boxes, it wasn't because their mime illusion is made real, it was because Dr. Doofenshmirtz made a device to trap the mimes in invisible boxes as revenge for when a mime mocked him.
• Robot Chicken: One of the sketches involves a mime who ends up trapped in an invisible box while the people around him is laughing. He ends up being rescued by firefighters and gets mad because the people didn't help him.
• Came up on an episode of Totally Spies! that featured Jazz Hands, a mime who turned evil after people mocked him for being a bad accordion player. He's fond of mime-themed Death Traps, like the time he tied up Clover and Alex in an "invisible mime rope" and started to slowly lower them into a vat of flesh-eating mime makeup. Alex tries cutting the invisible rope with a miniature buzz saw, but the saw gets deflected and ends up shearing off some of Alex's hair instead. Just when everything seems hopeless, the girls' handler, Jerry, shows up in Jazz Hands's hideout and finally manages to untie the rope... by pretending to untie the rope. ("What better way to untie a mime rope than with mime?")
• Le Mime from Xiaolin Showdown and Xiaolin Chronicles is capable of making invisible objects by simply miming them into existence. In Xiaolin Showdown, it's shown though that these objects can actually be changed ever so slightly by others if they mime new characteristics on said objects. Such a case happened when Raimundo mimed that the perfectly solid box he and his fellow monks were in had bars and, later, when Omi mimes an unlocked door.

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