"You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
— NASA mission control during the Apollo 11 landing
Humans instinctively hold their breath during tense situations. This is probably an evolutionary holdover from back when we had to hide from predators, as holding one's breath reduces the amount of noise a person makes, possibly keeping them alive if a predator is nearby. This makes the act of taking a breath all the more rewarding when the predator finally leaves. Even now, when hiding from predators is no longer a regular occurrence for people, we still inhale and exhale deeply in response to stress relief.
Whether it be a bomb ticking, a pending execution of an innocent party, a plane doing a nose-dive or one of other countless many situations of a tense or suspenseful nature, characters shown experiencing the nail-biting, breath-holding uncertainty of pending doom will inevitably breathe heavily when the situation relaxes.
In cartoons and comedic works, the action is often accompanied by a forehead wipe (sometimes with sweat flying off the hand) and an audible "Phew!" Compare Hyperventilation Bag and Deep Breath Reveals Tension. Can present as Visible Sigh. Is sometimes paired with Take a Moment to Catch Your Death if the writers are feeling particularly cruel.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: "Beyond Rei's Heart" reveals (in flashback) the traumatic disaster that ensued the last time Rei tried to activate Unit-00. In the present, Rei sits in the cockpit for another test with her usual Emotionless Girl demeanor, calmly completes every step, and activates Unit-00 without incident. The test ends. As she relaxes, a small bubble of air floats out of Rei's mouth into the fluid surrounding her. She was hiding her fear, and Not So Stoic.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Godzilla MonsterVerse):
- In Chapter 15:
- Everyone on Castle Bravo's bridge collectively sighs in relief when the Many construct outside is killed. Then they realize that something about it was too easy.
- Vivienne anxiously awaits news of what happened at Castle Bravo after she found out the Many were attacking, and she sighs in relief when she hears there haven't been any fatalities.
- Barnes releases a relieved sigh after the Osprey carrying him narrowly escapes getting blasted by an EMP wave from Keizer Ghidorah.
- In Chapter 15:
Films — Animation
- Alice in Wonderland (1951): Exploited by the Queen of Hearts during her croquet match with Alice. Despite blatantly cheating, she still fans herself and sighs as if relieved to have made such a difficult shot.
- Inside Out: A far more relaxed, tearjerker example. At the climax of the film, after Sadness is given the chance to let Riley pour her heart out to her parents, she hands control back to Joy. When this happens, Riley smiles as she sighs, having let go of the pain of moving.
- In Turning Red, Tyler does this after talking an angry Mei out of her giant red panda form and hearing him out.
Films — Live-Action
- Batman Begins: The people monitoring the water mains get to do this after the pressure finally settles.
- The Matrix. The protagonists must shut down the ship's power and hide from the Sentinels. The Sentinels appear, search around for a while, and leave. After they do, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
- Kong: Skull Island: Mason Weaver is holding her breath when she and Conrad see Kong up close near the film's end, right up until Kong departs.
- In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, immediately after the Battle of Pelennor Fields, the Dead Men of Dunharrow insist that Aragorn hold their oath fulfilled; despite Gimli's suggestion that he hold onto them, Aragorn grants their request. The King of the Dead lets out a sigh and gets this really relieved look on his face as he and the rest of the Dead Men all fade into the wind, as if he's saying, "Oh, that feels soo good."
- Schindler's List. Oskar Schindler gives a speech to the guards at the camp who have been ordered to kill all the Jewish workers. When it actually works and the guards leave without killing anyone, Oskar gives this trope showing his calm and confident demeanour during the speech was just a facade.
Live-Action TV
- Castle: At the climax of a two-parter episode involving a domestic terrorist plot to set off a dirty bomb in the city. Castle and Beckett find the bomb, but with only mere seconds left on the clock. After seemingly resigning themselves to their fate, Castle goes ahead and rips all the wires out, preventing the explosion. Once the shock wears off, Beckett starts gasping with relief.
- Firefly: Wash and Mal share in some heavy breathing after the Reavers don't attack them.
- The Newsroom: Invoked during the episode Fix You; the crew is waiting on confirmation that Gabby Giffords has been killed. When they get the news that she is in fact still alive and awaiting surgery, the technical director tells the graphics guy to "breathe normally."
- Person of Interest:
- Held captive and under torture, Fusco can do nothing but sob and offer vain comfort while his son is about to be executed over the phone. Once the gunshot is revealed to be Shaw who arrived in time to save the kid, Fusco has a sighing fit.
- Taken to the next level in the follow-up scene, where Fusco escapes his restraints and overpowers his captor before strangling him to death. This is followed by another sighing fit.
- Harold has been known to do this often, usually when he's unsure if his friends are alive.
Video Games
- Crash Bandicoot (1996): If you lost a life or more in the process of completing a level, Crash will let out a sigh when he steps on the level's "finish pad" before he's teleported out of it.
- Crystal Quest: When the player completes a stage by passing through the exit gate, older versions of the game play a sighing sound, obviously meant to represent the player's relief. However, the female voice and inflection used made it sound like something else.
- Deltarune: While she's a Guest-Star Party Member, Noelle's victory animation has her sigh in relief.
- LEGO Legends of Chima Online: In the "A World of Adventure Awaits You" trailer, a Lion tasked with keeping tabs on where their troops have been sent looks visibly nervous upon realizing that the lack of soldiers available to go help their Prince means he might have to go out and fight. Upon Longtooth saying they obviously can't send him, he promptly wipes the sweat off his brow and sighs in relief.
- In Mass Effect 2, after making the hyperspace jump through the Omega 4 relay, the Normandy ends up smack in the middle of a giant space debris field left behind by all the ships that attempted to use it before. After some tense maneuvers, Joker, your resident Ace Pilot, finally lets out the breath he has been holding for a minute and utters only "Too close".
- In Pokémon X and Y, the female protagonist sighs in relief after the Big Bad Lysandre is defeated for the last time.
Web Comics
- Girl Genius: In the 2020 Solstice side story Wilhelm Diamant and Ignitheus Plumm both let out a relieved whew when the castle chooses to play along with their Solstice plans at the last minute and stop questioning their choice to have someone fill in for Agatha at the last minute.
Web Videos
- At one point in Chris Stuckmann's review of Nine Lives (2016), after going on an uncharacteristic rant about how much he hates the film after talking about how the cat owners in the film put a cat's litter box right next to its food, he exhales sharply before quietly saying, "I'm actually physically sweating, I'm-I'm physically sweating."
Western Animation
- In the Gravity Falls episode "Summerween" the Summerween Trickster tasks Dipper and Mabel and friends with gathering five hundred pieces of candy or he eats them. He gives them until the last jack o' melon goes out, so when the kids inevitably wind up short they desperately try to keep the last lantern lit. They manage it and, all gathered around the jack o' melon, heave a big sigh of relief... that extinguishes the lantern.
- Voltron: Legendary Defender:
- Low-risk example: After being banned from the Garrison for espionage, Katie Holt infiltrates it as a male student named Pidge Gundarsson. For fear of being recognised by the headmaster, she covers her face with her left hand as he walks past; he assumes she is saluting, says she is using the wrong arm, but continues walking. After he is far enough away, she lets out a sigh.
- Happens again, this time during Allura and Shiro's infiltration of a Galra ship; Allura fumbles through allaying the suspicions of a Galra officer, and sighs heavily after seemingly convincing him all is well.
- In The Little Rascals episode "Science Fair and Foul", Darla does one from behind a stack of crates, after Buckwheat fails to discern that his voice-activated robot was damaged and is now being operated from inside by Spanky and Alfalfa.
- Justified in The Owl House episode "King's Tide" where Luz lets out a sharp exhale after tricking Belos into a handshake so she could mark him with a coven sigil because she had been using her invisibility glyph (which only remains active as long as she can hold her breath) to hide the branding glove on top of it being a very stressful situation.
- The Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "First First Contact" has Captain Freeman slump in her chair with a relieved sigh when she is informed by Ransom that the mission to rescue the Archimedes (which required the entire crew working nonstop for 11 hours and nearly resulted in her daughter getting killed right in front of her) is finally over and everyone made it out alive.
Real Life
- Immediately after the original moon landing, mission control actually said this to the Apollo 11 crew: "...you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
