Screams Like a Little Girl

Rose: They're rats! Dozens of rats, vacuum-packed rats.
The Doctor: And you decided to scream. Mickey: It took me by surprise!
The Doctor: Like a little girl?
Mickey: It was dark, I was covered in rats!
  
The Doctor: Nine, maybe ten years old. I'm seeing pigtails, frilly skirt...
—Doctor Who, "School Reunion"
As a tough masculine fighter, you never cry, never wince at a hit, and talk in a manly baritone. But it's amazing how a Groin Attack, little needle, or garter snake can make your voice rise four octaves into a three-year-old's scream. It seems inherently funny to see this grown man emit a girly scream. This trope is usually played for laughs, as it is hard to take the image of a man who Screams Like a Little Girl seriously. This is sometimes associated with a Camp Gay or the Non-Action Guy character.
See Also: The Scream, Screaming Woman, Screaming At Squick.
==Examples==
===Anime and Manga===
*Kyon's theme song from Suzumiya Haruhi includes one of these for no apparent reason (he NEVER does this in the manga or anime).
*Code Geass: Even anti-heroes scream in high-pitched voices
*In Sonic X, Chris screams like a little girl when he sees Cream behind curtains.
*Yu-Gi-Oh!, Noah screams in high-pitched voice when he finds out that Chris followed him in the real world. Also, Marik does this frequently when he was overwhelmed by Aelita's visions from the mind meld, and was flung away from Téa's body. Joey and Tristan seeing Perfect Chaos revived itself, they perform a seldom seen double girly scream. Duke Devlin does this when he encounters the Biolizard.
*In Dragon Ball, Goku screams like a woman when he sees a needle Alexis brought here.
*In Transformers Armada, Carlos does a girly scream upon meeting Starscream and Demolishor... but first he uses a small pitch-pipe to find the correct octave.
*From Pokemon 2000:
**Bulla: Any chances?
**Oolong: Yes. Can Zapdos, quite suddenly, zap me with his lightning, screaming like a girl?
**Bulla: What?
**Oolong: (is zapped by Zapdos) AAAAAAAAAAH!
*Nozomu's "IIIIIIYYYYYYAAAAAAA!!!!!!" from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. One of the funniest instances is when he does this after the girls see him naked during the Hot Springs Episode, and the Deadpan Snarker Abiru lampshades that "that should be our reaction".
*North Italy in Axis Powers Hetalia at one point screams "Kyaaaa!"
*Zoicite screams like a girl when confronted by rats in the original Japanese version of Sailor Moon. And people wonder why he was rewritten as a female in the English dub. Later in that same scene, Zoicite screams "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! IT'S A WALL OF RAAAAAAAAAAAATS...!"
*Early in Azumanga Daioh, a war against a cockroach begins after a very high-pitched scream erupts from one of the students. Afterward, it's revealed the source of that scream was Sakaki who, while being an actual girl, is also Tall, Dark and Bishoujo and normally has a deep voice.
*Ramiel, the octohedral angel from Rebuild of Evangelion.
*In the Pokémon anime, James has a high-pitched girly scream. Brock comes to think of it, pretty much all the guys on that show do this, but his is definitely the most girly. Cilan lets out a very girly scream in one episode.
===Films — Animation===
*Nobody screams like a girl while falling to their death like Gaston!
*Lampshaded in Disney's version of Mulan, with adviser Shi Fu's line, "I do not scream like a girl." This is, of course, immediately followed by the girliest scream imaginable.
**Made even better in the commentary when the directors and writers discuss how the screenwriter voiced the girly scream, and he was a man. They tried getting a real woman to scream, a child to scream, but decided to keep the screenwriter's scream, because "no-one can scream like a little girl like he can."
*President Buffoon in Monsters vs. Aliens shrieks like a frightened girl the first time he sees Ginormica. Especially amusing since the previous four identical girly screams were from an actual girl. The scene is even funnier when you consider that Ginormica was the only one of the monsters that scared him. Shows that a powerful, unstoppable woman is what all men fear most — even the President!
*In one of the trailers for the CGI film Chicken Little, the title character's father warns him that in a few seconds he's going to scream like a little girl as they try to avoid the meteorites being hurled upon them. Sadly, this never happens in the actual film.
*From Flushed Away:
**Spike: Any last requests?
**Roddy: Yes. Could you fly, quite suddenly, off the boat, screaming like a girl?
**Spike: What? (is jerked off the boat by a cord) AAAAAAAAAAH!
*In The Road to El Dorado, upon both Miguel and Tulio (pictured above) seeing the giant stone Jaguar activated by Tzekel-Kan, they perform a seldom seen double girly scream.
*Roxanne points out that Megamind does a pretty good example.
*Lampshaded in Resident Evil: Degeneration when Claire and the other survivors are holed up in the small office they hear a high pitched scream and Claire decides to investigate. A few scenes later she comes back with an unknown man and people ask where the "girl" is.
===Films — Live-Action===
*A scene from the classic 1980's comedy Silent Night, Deadly Night demonstrates how a man screaming like this can turn horror into Narm.
*Marv (Daniel Stern's character) in the Home Alone movies screams like a woman when he gets a tarantula put on his face by Kevin in the first movie and when he's attacked by birds in the second.
*Maybe that's just the way Daniel Stern screams, as it also shows up in City Slickers II
*Back to the Future: When he inadvertently time traveled back to 1955 from 1985, the first thing Marty does when he gets his breath back is to scream. Then scream some more. Then crashed into the Peabody's barn, screaming. Marty has another absolutely hilarious one while surviving scares from Indians, a bear, and even the Cavalry.
*In an ironic exception, Ichabod Crane from Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow does practically everything like a little girl except scream.
*And, conversely, the heroine of Raiders of the Lost Ark lets loose a series of decidedly tomboyish screams when she's trapped in the Well of Souls — and, ironically, while wearing a lacy white gown.
*When trapped in a laboratory with Count Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Lou Costello screams like a girl... twice.
*Accepted has Jonah Hill screaming like a little girl upon finding a corpse: "It would be really cool if you guys didn't tell anyone I scream like that..."
*Mystery Science Theater 3000
**Arguably the best moment in the excellent episode Space Mutiny was the big finale where the hero, Dave Ryder, emits an enraged one of these just before calmly hopping out of the "space buggy" he's about to ram into the bad guy.
**Earlier...
**Ryder: (surprisingly high-pitched scream)
Mike: (high-pitched voice) Who took my purse?!
**Reb Brown again, in Yor: The Hunter from the Future.
*When attacked by Alice in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the first thing Sam does when he gets his breath back is to scream. Then scream some more. Then scramble out of the room, screaming. Understandable though, under the circumstances.
**Sam has another absolutely hilarious one during the highway chase of the next sequel, Dark of the Moon. During the chase, one of the Decepticons deliberately topples over a truck carrying construction pipes, right in front of Bumblebee (who has Sam inside him). In order to avoid getting hit, Bumblebee transforms, jumps over the truck whilst throwing Sam over it as well, then grabs him in mid-air before they hit the ground, and transforms back into vehicle form whilst putting Sam back into a perfectly seated position. Sam, having gone through the entire transformation process whilst inside Bumblebee, freaks out as soon as he's back in his seat.
*When running from a series of explosions and gunplay in The Fifth Element, radio host Ruby Rhod screams incessantly like a little girl through several minutes of scenes.
*In What's New, Pussycat?, Woody Allen is getting cozy with Romy Schneider at his grubby little artist's garret — he produces a cigarette and suavely lights it — and burns his finger. He excuses himself, gets up and rushes to the bathroom, pulls shut a flimsy curtain to close it off, and lets out a shrill girly scream (causing her to jump) — he emerges a moment later with an insouciant swagger.
*Jesse, the main character of the second Nightmare On Elm Street movie.
*The Lord of the Rings: Merry and Pippin stole Gandalf's best firework and light it prematurely —while inside a tent. When it actually goes off, Pip lets out the girliest scream you can imagine.
**Billy Boyd didn't know that the thing was actually going to explode, so the scream is real. Also, according to the commentary, during said scene, Boyd wet himself, earning the amusing nickname "Pissylegs".
*Fans love Stargate Atlantis actor David Hewlett's scream, and it makes for great comedy several times in his movie A Dog's Breakfast.
*Averted and then Invoked in the film version of Spawn. After Al realizes that he's been dead for five years, he lets out a primal scream. The Violator then says "Aww, c'mon! You scream like a little girl! Scream like a man! Here, like this!" and then lets out a very shrill, high-pitched, feminine shriek.
*Near the end of Rear Window, when Mr. Thorwald throws Jeff out the window a woman's scream is dubbed over his as he falls.
*Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood, particularly when he's getting slapped around by Daniel.
*In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, when Harry gets electro-tortured his screams are remarkably high-pitched (although it's somewhat justified considering the part of his body that is being shocked). This comes off as either hilariously funny or disturbing, depending on how screwed up you are.
*In a particular The Three Stooges short set during the Civil War, in order to get rid of a couple of Confederate soldiers, Curly sneaks up on them and puts ants in their clothes, and the two soldiers fled scooting their butts on the ground and screaming like little girls. It's much more hilarious when you actually see it.
*Ben Stiller in the zipper incident in There's Something About Mary. The policeman arrives saying that someone "... heard a girl's scream."
*An episode of Mighty Ships set on the largest carrier in the world, the USS Nimitz, showed a rookie pilot getting his callsign, which is usually done by consensus of other pilots in the rookie's flight group. This particular pilot had made no mistakes even when landing on a carrier at night, but when catapulted off for the exercise had, in his own words, screamed like a little girl. Another pilot noted that "screams like a girl" could be acronymed into "slag", which is also a British slang term meaning, roughly, slut, and (though this wasn't mentioned on the show) is originally an industrial term for waste product from smelting. Congratulations, Lieutenant Slag....
*Jason in Mystery Team.
*Wesley Gibson (played by James McAvoy) spends about 20 minutes in the beginning of Wanted doing just this after Fox (Angelina Jolie) takes him on a wild car chase.
*A Scary Black ManGiant Mook gives one of these right before he dies in Transporter 2.
===Live-Action TV===
*In the Soap OperaPassions, Ethan was attacked by a demon from the Bennett's closet to Hell. The shriek he let out was very girlish. So girlish in fact, many people commented on it on the internet and one of this Troper's co-workers said "Not even my 3 year old girl screams like that!"
*In Castle, the title character gives one when a dead body tumbles out of the fridge he opens. Naturally, he attempts to protect his dignity by covering it up as a cough.
*Frasier. Both Frasier and Niles scream like a girl.
**In the episode "Boo!":
*Frasier: That is not funny! You don't sneak up on someone and startle them!
*Martin: First of all, it's very funny. And secondly, I only did it to prove a point.
*Ronee: And you called it: he does scream like a woman.
*Frasier: I do not scream like a woman. It was a manly throaty wail.
*(Niles comes in the front door)
*Niles: Frasier, you may want to call security. As I got off the elevator, I heard a woman screaming hysterically.
**In the episode "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", after a womanly high-pitched scream was heard.
**Daphne: Are you all right?
**Niles: Yes. I just jumped into bed with your mother.
**Daphne: Oh, dear. No wonder she screamed.
**Niles: That wasn't her.
*Friends. Ross screams like a little girl when Rachel and Phoebe come out of his apartment's curtains and shout danger to scare him.
*Will and Grace, where Grace's apartment got burgled.Will: Did I just scream like a woman?
**Grace: Don't flatter yourself. You screamed like a girl.
*The X-Files
**In the episode "War of the Coprophages", Mulder has a discussion with Scully regarding a childhood encounter with a praying mantis...
**Mulder: I had a praying mantis epiphany, and as a result I screamed. No, not... not a girly scream, but the scream of someone being confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet I inhabited.
**Scully: Mulder... are you sure it wasn't a girly scream?
**In a later episode with the same writer ("Jose Chung's From Outer Space"), we get to hear Mulder's girly scream upon spotting "a real live dead alien body" — at least according to one version of the story.
*Adrian Monk of Monk.
**In "Mr. Monk Goes Camping", when the eponymous obsessive detective encounters a bear, the previews feature actor Tony Shaloub's own scream, whereas the scream in the episode is overdubbed with a little girl's.
*Supernatural
**Dean does this hilariously in the episode "Yellow Fever", when he's infected with a paranormal curse that makes him scared of quite literally everything. Including cute little lap dogs with pink bows.
**And in the meta episode "The French Mistake", when the character of Misha Collins is kidnapped and then murdered by an angel, he does quite a lot of high-pitched squealing.
*In the Heroes episode "Into Asylum", Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squeak of terror as Fake!Sylar is about to meet his end made the Internet laugh its collective ass off. Unfortunately... it doesn't appear to have been played for laughs!
*How I Met Your Mother
**When Ted gets his tattoo removed.
**Barney has a couple of instances of this as well.
*Used numerous on Psych.
**After Shawn and Gus are at a seance. A ghost appears, and then the lights cut back on. Shawn's love interest wonders where he and Gus went. Cut to the outside of the building, where Shawn and Gus are running for their car while screaming incomprehensibly, thus. What makes it funnier is that they're running out of a sorority, but none of the girls inside screamed.
*Nev from CBBC's Bear Behaving Badly.
*Bottom: Eddie does this after Richie sticks an umbrella into his groin. And opens it.
*In The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Carlton screams like a little girl.
*Howard Borden, the "wacky neighbor" on The Bob Newhart Show, does this.
*Probably the second reason to watch America's Funniest Home Videos, after the groin shots.
*Used in the season finale for Season 4 of Bones:
*Zack: I yelped! I didn't scream.
*Fisher: He screamed like Slutty Girl Number One in a cheesy horror flick.
*From the DVD commentary on the Criminal Minds episode, "Revelations":Matthew Gray Gubler: So, we were filming the scene in which my character was being tortured. And in between takes, everyone was laughing, and I couldn't figure out why. And finally, at the end of one take, the director came up to me and said, "Okay, but can you try screaming in a way that does NOT sound like a little girl?"
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Laser-Guided Amnesia Season 6 episode "Tabula Rasa": Spike, who has fallen asleep lying on top of a shop counter as the result of a spell, rolls/falls off said shop counter with a girly scream.
*Star Trek
**Chekov was famous for doing this on Star Trek: The Original Series (and also in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek The Wrath Of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).
**Harry Kim do too on Star Trek: Voyager.
**So did Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
**The Ferengi as a species made an art form of it. Played for laughs 99% of the time, but when Nog was badly injured in "The Siege of AR-558" it suddenly stopped being funny.
*Marion Moseby of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and The Suite Life on Deck does this when startled, which is ridiculously easy to do.
*From Leverage:
*Eliot: Hey. What smells like crank and screams like a girl?
*(breaks meth-head kidnapper's knee, making him scream like a girl)
*Eliot: Right answer.
*iCarly: Nevel, when he gets locked in a fighting octagon with Sam, Shelby and Carly.
*An actor in The Bill had a scene where he fell off a platform while chasing a criminal in an Abandoned Warehouse. He mentioned that his scream as he did this stunt had been too high pitched, so they had to dub a more 'manly' scream on afterwards.
*In Community, when the going gets tough Troy has a tendency to regress into the personality of a six-year-old girl, completely with girly screams and panicky dancing."MY WHOLE BRAIN IS CRYING."
*Farscape. Season 3, Episode 13. Scratch N' Sniff. Crichton and D'Argo get slipped mickeys and rolled. Crichton wakes up in a window without clothes.(Well, he had fishnets, at least.)
*In the Eureka episode "Up in the Air" Sheriff Jack Carter's reaction upon seeing how high in the air he is while trying to get inside a floating bank.
*In one early episode of Sesame Street, one sketch with Bert and Ernie shows Ernie unable to sleep, so Bert tells him to count sheep, but Ernie finds it dull and tries to count something else, finally deciding on balloons. An imaginary balloon appears and grows to a huge size before finally exploding and rocking the room, startling Bert awake, screaming.
===Western Animation===
*Often used as a gag in Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Tex Avery shorts, et al.
**The episode where Spike the bulldog screams like a woman, after seeing Tom's fake dog-mask walk away on its own with Jerry underneath (because he thinks it's a real head), deserves special mention.
**Parodied in the Tex Avery short Who Killed Who?; the detective does a girly scream upon meeting the killer face-to-face... but first he uses a small pitch-pipe to find the correct octave.
*The Simpsons
**Ned Flanders sometimes screams like this.
**As does Homer.
*The Human Torch does this constantly in the new Fantastic Four series.
**As does HERBIE.
*Mr. Turner from The Fairly OddParents is pretty prone to this trope.
*Johnny Bravo did this a lot in seasons two and three. In the Spanish dub, he does even more often.
*Occasionally a character in Ren and Stimpy would scream like this. Depending on the situation, they would either have Billy West or John Kricfalusi do it themselves, or dub in an inappropriate female Stock Scream. Lampshaded once, where Stimpy actually says "Girlish Scream!" while doing so.
*On The Venture Bros., Dean Venture screams like a girl in the episode "Love Bheits", prompting a eunuch to quip "I'm fixed, what's your excuse?"
*Duckman's scream has, on occasion, sounded exactly like a little girl.
*When Disney took over Doug, it became rather obvious that Roger Klotz now had someone else providing his voice whenever he screamed in terror. While (in the Nick series) the title character didn't scream like a little girl, he sure did have a high-pitched scream!
*Transformers Animated
**When a massive stack of metal falls on him in the episode "Autoboot Camp", Sentinel Prime screams like a little girl.
**So does Grandus, when he encounters the "scary organic" Captain Fanzone in "This is Why I Hate Machines". For some perspective on that last bit, Grandus transforms into what looks like one of those vehicles they use to carry the space shuttle around, and is the Autobot equivalent of a sumo wrestler.
**Don't forget Soundwave in the original cartoon. Given that he's supposed to be a cold, heartless Decepticon, it's surprisingly hilarious.
*Neil, of Class Of The Titans. Very bad for his image.
*Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Space Ghost took this one step further. The body snatcher pods arrived, and he screamed once. Trying to leave the building, he finds it's been covered by The Blob; another scream. Then, he flies back into the studio and babbles incoherently in a little girl's voice before clearing his throat.
*Futurama
**The Robot Devil.
**Bender does this when Roberto tries to stab him in "Insane in the Mainframe".
*Xiaolin Showdown; Jack Spicer does this frequently.
*The Super Mario Bros. Super Show: Luigi took this one step further. Scatch and Grounder showed up, and he screamed once. Trying to get a "genius chip," he finds the Bob-omb; another scream. Then, he runs back to Mario and co. and babbles incoherently in a little girl's voice before clearing his throat.
*Michelangelo in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon does a pretty good girly scream when he's freaked. Donatello sometimes panics too.
*In the South Park episode "Preschool", Cartman screams like this after being threatened by a bully that had just been released from juvie and had a score to settle with the boys.
*Drawn Together does this a few times. Captain Hero: "I said I'm on the phone!" Also the driver of the Satanmobile: "You just killed the one-legged man!" ... "Stop this truck right now!"
*Nick Dean in Jimmy Neutron does this when he encounters Poultra.
*Subverted in Scooby-Doo.
**Daphne: Fred, quit screaming like a little girl!
**Shaggy: Like it's not him, Daphne, it's me. (starts screaming)
**Velma: Oh. Shaggy, quit screaming like Fred!
*Blitz from Road Rovers is known for this.
*Courage the Cowardly Dog was known to indulge in this from time to time, for example in the episode "Son of the Chicken From Outer Space" (5:45 in this clip).
*Dexter of Dexter's Laboratory screams like a little girl when also dressed like one.
*Toad of X-Men Evolution has a high-pitched girly scream.
*Cyborg of Teen Titans. Come to think of it, pretty much all the guys on that show do this, but his is definitely the most girly.
*Subverted in Megas XLR.Coop:
**Jamie, quit screaming like a little girl!
**Jamie: It's not me, dude, it's him. (points to driving instructor, who screams again)
**Coop: Oh. You, quit screaming like Jamie!
*Odd Della Robbia, a few times in Code Lyoko. Notably at the end of episode "Guided Missile". Ironic since he's dubbed by a male voice actor, unlike other young boys in the series who have Cross-Dressing Voices.
*The Mayor did this for several seconds in an early episode of The Powerpuff Girls.
**Mojo Jojo also did this in "Meet the Beat-Alls" when he discovers Moko Jono's true identity.
*ReBoot: Bob, Dot, Enzo and Mike the TV get trapped in a Dungeons & Dragons type game and come across a giant spider. Cue high pitched scream. Bob looks at Enzo. Enzo looks at Dot. Dot shrugs and points at Mike (the source of the scream).
*Ben 10: Alien Force After Ben sees a television advertisement for Sumo Slammers the motion picture, he does this in a very fan-girly way.
*Bobby Hill in King of the Hill. Bobby screamed like a little girl in excitement when Hank applied him in a rose contest in which he broke his promise not to scream like a little girl as told by his father.
*In The Weekenders, Tino making these was something of a running gag (a trait he inherited from his father). One episode even has him worried he's too effeminate (becoming Tina in an Imagine Spot).
*In the Transformers Prime episode "Scrapheap", Bulkhead lets one out when the lights go out. Miko then lets one out when she freaks out over a spider.
*Often done by Sid on Hey Arnold!, usually to something no one else considers frightening.
*Jackie Chan Adventures: Wesley Rank lets one out when he sees a giant snake.
**Rank's Camera Man: Rank may not know how to treat little girls, but he sure knows how to scream like one!
**Lampshaded with Jackie's uncle's line, "I do not scream like a girl." This is, of course, immediately followed by the girliest scream imaginable.
Category:Stock scream
Category:Sound effects