A repetitive event in the background slowly drives characters up the wall.
Compare Funny Background Event, Meaningful Background Event, Annoyingly Repetitive Child, and Dripping Disturbance.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Age of Bronze:
- The Greek fleet is stuck at Aulis by contrary winds that blow all the time, represented by replacing the panel borders with "sh sh sh".
- Agamemnon tries to hold a council of war but Philoktetes bellows of pain keep interrupting.
- Titeuf: One strip has the kids make weird faces for the whole strip before the last panel reveals they're doing this in front of a window to distract one of their friends who's giving a violin recital.
Fan Works
- "Drop the KoAkuma
": This Touhou Project fanvid has Patchouli's reading constantly interrupted by Koakuma dancing in the background.
- The Winx Club Play Dungeons and Dragons: Zig-Zagged. On the cover's background, Roxy and Bloom are getting roughed up by the Monster of the Week while Tecna and Flora try to help them. This is annoying to Musa, Stella, and Layla (who are in the foreground and are just taking a break from the fight) because they are fed up with having to beat random monsters all of the frigging time.
Films — Animation
- Shrek 2: During the carriage ride to Far, Far Away, Donkey makes himself useful by making popping noises with his lips once he gets bored of asking Are We There Yet?.
Films — Live-Action
- Iron Man 2: During the scene where Tony is trying to apologize to Pepper, Tony is continuously distracted by the motions of a kinetic sculpture on the desk, eventually interrupting himself and moving so he can't see it. At the end of the scene, he tries to stop it from moving... and fails. Even better, that wasn't in the script. Robert Downey Jr. actually got distracted by the prop while shooting the scene.
- Yojimbo: Gonji the inn owner is annoyed by his neighbor, the coffin maker, who doesn't stop loudly hammering wood in the background, until he's shouted at to stop by Gonji.
Literature
- Discworld:
- Lord Vetinari's antechamber has a specially designed clock that ticks irregularly. By the time he lets his visitors in, they're severely stressed by the unrewarded anticipation of a tick that always come a fraction of a second too late or too early.
- Reaper Man: While having tea with Mrs. Flitworth, her clock's ticking irritates Death to the point where he asks her to make it stop.
Live-Action TV
- Dead Like Me: Team Dad Rube and Team Cloudcuckoolander Mason are stuck in an airport with a crying baby in the background. It's complicated by Mason smuggling a (leaky) package of cocaine up his rear end and Rube attracting attention from security when he cracks a bit and mutters that he wants to "kill that fuckin' baby."
- Gilmore Girls: In "Sadie Sadie", the entire town gradually gathers behind Lorelai and Rory as they walk to the diner, and then they press their faces against the window to see her tell Luke about Max's proposal.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Folly", the SVU office is undergoing asbestos testing and some construction. Benson's desk goes missing, Fin is so afraid of asbestos that he wears a mask, and the whole squad is forced to move to a different section of the building...a cramped one. Whenever they have a briefing, the background is filled with sounds of hammers and wooden boards being moved around.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus: At the beginning of the cheese shop sketch, we see two men dancing in the shop accompanied by a bouzouki, occasionally visible in different camera shots. As Cleese's patience slowly erodes due to the lack of cheese in the shop, he finally snaps at them to stop the music.
- MythBusters: In an episode, Fun Personified Adam and The Stoic Jamie are testing whether a person wearing a latex mask of another person would pass scrutiny. While Jamie is explaining their testing procedure to a camera, Adam (dressed as Jamie) is in the background doing a bizarre dance. Jamie glares at Adam when he finishes the piece to camera. Adam hastily stops dancing and innocently puts his hands in his pockets.
- The Office: While Michael is giving a presentation, everybody's attention is fixated on the screensaver behind him, all of them hoping this will finally be the day they see the logo bounce right into the corner instead of just missing it. Naturally, every near miss corresponds with Michael making a suggestion, so he mistakes their frustration for actual criticism. Finally it goes in the corner and the meeting breaks up, Michael rejoicing in his newfound teamleading skills.
- In one episode of Psych, Detective Lassiter is giving an interview with a news crew. Gus and Shawn, naturally, have to mess with him by goofing off in the background of the shot—Gus stands up and flops like a fish on a hook, while Shawn does a Russian squat dance. Naturally Lassiter turns around and yells at them to knock it off.
- Still Game: There's a scene where Tam's grandson, Ryan, says repeatedly to Winston "You've got a fat belly", to which he screams "I've got an underactive thyroid, you prick!"
Webcomics
- Lore Olympus: In Episode 168, while Ares and Hephaestus are discussing their mother, Hades and Persephone use their respective powers to mess with one of the potted plants in the room. It culminates with Hephaestus suddenly snapping, "Could you two go flirt somewhere else, for Gaia's sake!?"
Web Original
- For some reason, Connor really loves to cause these in TekkitLive.
- He continuously plants a sapling between Schlatt and Fitz while they're having a conversation, irritating Fitz greatly.
- He also tries to break into Sun Whale's base several times while Schlatt is trying to make a deal with them. This leads Cooper offering him redstone in exchange for him to just stop.
Western Animation
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the episode "Mac Daddy", Mac and Bloo discuss what to do about Cheese, while Cheese is playing with a toy horse just off frame. Eventually, Bloo gets sick of Cheese's horse and yells at him to cut it out.
