Obscuring with another speech bubble means that the character is interrupted or drowned out by another. Obscuring
◊ with Written Sound Effects means the same for sounds. Sometimes a speech bubble may even be obscured with an object: Either this object produces loud and specific sounds that drown out the speech or the character stops talking immediately. Or perhaps it just shows that the other characters weren't listening.
The Wall of Blather uses this on Wall of Text/Textplosion to indicate a "long lecture that no one listened to."
A form of odd-shaped speech bubble, and so a Sub-Trope of Painting the Medium, often used for Curse Cut Short. When the speech bubble blocks something else, it's Speech-Bubble Censoring. See also Sound-Effect Bleep.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Bloom Into You has an unusual example that is not only Played for Drama, but involves a character cutting herself off. Yuu has Touko over, and learns that Touko hates herself, and doesn't want Yuu to love her, since Touko can't love someone who loves what she hates. After Touko leaves, Yuu has a brief internal monologue in which she more or less admits to loving Touko, and not wanting her to hate herself, which Yuu interrupts by loudly calling Touko an idiot.
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War has a single person example, when Kaguya gets so excited by Shirogane using the fan she gave him for his birthday that she can't properly focus on whatever her plan for the chapter was.
- Karen in My Monster Secret is an occasional victim of this, notably in her introduction chapters where her "demon" act falls apart and no one listens to her threats.
◊ More generally, the author seems to have become particularly fond of this trope in part 2 of the series. He even adds some variation, where out-of-bubble lines are interrupted (such as this scene◊ or this scene◊).
- Pokémon Adventures used this to avoid revealing Lady Berlitz's first name until the release of the game she'd be named after. (It turned out to be Platinum, after Platinum Version) Every time she'd introduce herself, it would be covered up by another character's speech.
- In Shi ni Aruki, as Takahito accuses his adoptive younger sister Tokiko of killing his father and two of his siblings, his older sister Miyuki cuts him off, admonishing him for painting the teenager as a cursed and amoral Doom Magnet.
- Soul Eater:
- Excalibur is infamous for interrupting other characters' sentences with his own non-sensical speech, and his speech bubbles reflect this as well. A particularly notable example appears in the last chapter, where he obscures most of Kid's mourning speech about his father.
- Black*Star provides another example when he fights Crona. When he starts screaming in response to Ragnarok's scream resonance, his screaming bubbles block out Ragnarok's scream bubbles.
- Played for drama in the Episode 3 manga of Umineko: When They Cry, when Battler screams to not hear the self-destructing red truths that Beatrice delivers to eliminate the witch EVA (because he believes he has to discover these truths by himself).
Comic Books
- Invoked in Achille Talon, when the title character tries to explain the conception of a strip but gets a bubble saying "that text" glued onto his speech by an incompetent assistant. The entire end of the strip has him trying to speak while the glued bubble gets in the way of his text.
- It appeared in Empowered at least once. Searches needed.
- In The Green Lantern, the Lanterns of the Multiverse are all reciting their oaths at once. Darkest Knight's speech bubble clips the edge of Magic Lantern's, covering the word beginning "sh" in the lines "When other Lanterns lose their sh-/We'll keep the Magic Lantern lit!"
- In The Tick, when our hero first encounters the Chainsaw Vigilante, his nigh invulnerability gives CV some difficulty. CV's investigation is censored as follows...
CV: He has an upper arm of steel! I chin of steel! An elbow of steel! MY GOD! He has a...
The Tick: HEY WATCH IT! (The words are centered on his crotch)
CV: ...of steel!
Comic Strips
- There was a For Better or for Worse strip that did this a few years ago, in which April cut off her friend Becky with an overlapping speech bubble when Becky referred to a mentally disabled character as a "retard".
- Played with, hilariously, with Get Fuzzy. In order to make their lives "edgier," Bucky begins censoring Satchel by yelling beep over his speech bubbles. He even tries to use a little black box to cover up written swearwords. Of course, Satchel reveals he is trying to say, "oh sugar," but with Bucky beeping him, all you see ''oh s—." Rob ultimately stymies him by holding up a speech bubble out of Bucky's reach.
Literature
- In the Horrible Histories book The Awful Egyptians, the narrator refers to the fact that at times, after great military victories, ancient Egyptians would gather the genitals from dead enemy soldiers and pile them up in public. In a caricature illustrating such a pile, a son says to his father, "Look at this huge pile of" "That's enough, son!"
Video Games
- Final Fantasy:
- The PlayStation games do this—all three of them.
- In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud interrupts Sephiroth's Hannibal Lecture with a flat "Shut up" that appears over Sephiroth's text box.
- Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden: Camera Abuse covers up a swear, presumably:
Chika: Tch. You littl[ ]..
- In Mario & Luigi: Brothership, it's a Running Gag with the Extension Corps that Ecks and Ten will often talk over Shun and say what he was about to; shown by their speech bubbles overruling his. Near the end of the game, Shun finally manages to talk over them for once.
- Occurs in some of the supplemental comics for Team Fortress 2.
Webcomics
- Occurred in an 8-Bit Theater strip when Sarda put the team into yet another deathtrap airship.
Black Mage: You know what? Sarda can just go fu—
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja combines this with Curse Cut Short: In earlier chapters, Doc's swears would be cut off by a Mook screaming, "HE SAID A BAD WORD!"
- Apricot Cookie(s)!: Cream interrupts Apricot like this before she can describe the 30 St. Mary Axe, presumably using some… inappropriate words.
- Awkward Zombie has Marth do this to give Roy a Preemptive "Shut Up".
Marth: Don't.
- Concerned has this in an early strip where Frohman introduces himself:
Citizen: The Sausage King of Chica-
Frohman: No. - In this Consolers strip, some of Konami's text is part of a pixeled-out square of the panel, as part of a joke about microtransactions.
- DM of the Rings uses this all the time because the characters continually interrupt the DM's monologues. There's also Gimli's Critical Failure at diplomacy.
- In Ears for Elves, Myari cuts off Tanna in this way. It fits with her hyperactive personality. Later, a VERY angry Tanna does this to Rolan three times in one panel.
- Electric Wonderland: NJ and Trawn interrupt the narrator sharing details the readers already learned (or should have learned) after reading the two previous comics.
- The Fuzzy Five:
- In this strip a villain pops Meredith's (thought) bubble.
- At the end of the first storyline, the box declaring the end obscures Nina Jr's assertion that no unseen force was going to interrupt them.
- In this strip
- Gunnerkrigg Court does this at least twice: once when Zimmy is trying to say "Bastard" and has her bubble cut off by the sound of thunder, and another case when the "End Chapter" symbol cuts off Kat as she says, "What a bitch."
- Happens at least once in Little Dee.
- The usually bubbling Claudia interrupts her mentor in this panel of M9 Girls!.
- Motherlover: When Imogen is listening to the voice mail from her lawyer, the speech bubble with the actual amount of money involved in the settlement offer is hidden behind her head.
- In No Rest for the Wicked, the Boy interrupts Ricardo's explanation to ask if some girl beat him up.
- The Order of the Stick: "DON'T say it! It's trademarked."
- In Parallels, a speech bubble breaks up a long-drawn out (bubble-less) scream.
- Schlock Mercenary: The "blind date with a". And here. Also, Schlock "is like a giant child made of".
- SideQuested:
- When Peony startles Charlie while she's climbing under the rope bridge, Charlie curses her out, but the text bubble is conveniently covered by the boards of the bridge.
- As Charlie is telling Robin the story of her experiences dealing with Leopold, she suddenly ends the story and starts talking about how tired she is, with that speech bubble covering the one where a servant is talking about how good a queen Charlie will be for Leopold.
- Sleepless Domain:
- In Chapter 3, while Undine is being attacked by a monster, her Inner Monologue is interrupted by Heartful Punch's dynamic entry:
Undine: But that's why... I can't die yet!! Not until I know what—
Heartful Punch: Hey Curls, get back! - Later, when the girls in the Training Club are splitting up to practice, Harley grumbles about her training partner Bud trying to "push [her] ship", but Bud cuts her off while pushing her out of the room:
Bud: oh don't worry it'll be the best let's go ol' buddy
- In Chapter 3, while Undine is being attacked by a monster
- In Sluggy Freelance chapter 44, Torg accidentally gets affected by an emotion-enhancing psychotropic drug when he's kind of angry, making him so uncharacteristically angry he calls Gwynn a "hyper-violent four-eyed bitch." Presumably. The last word is obscured by Kiki jumping up holding a sign saying "BLEEP!" in front of it.
- This comic from Something*Positive. Wil Wheaton isn't interrupting Davan, but his Speech Bubble means we don't find out whom Davan's addressing.
- Squid Row does it here when Randie's quip about "little woodland fairies" obscures B.B.'s full name.
- In Stand Still, Stay Silent, this is almost guaranteed to happen in Sigrun and Mikkel, as long as they are in the same room. And the team's Awesome Personnel Carrier only has so many rooms.
- The Wotch: Kate and Jason discuss a past Noodle Incident, but what they say is covered by an Education Through Pyrotechnics incident.
Web Original
- Some of Seanbaby's articles for Cracked do this, in conjunction with his irreverent, highly stylized writing, such as in "Man Comics: Number One Adventure Series Among Non-Pussies!" when Captain Marvel Jr. finally confronts The Punchmaster:
Captain Marvel Jr.: The good citiz—(PUNCH!)This spoiler tag is just here to better demonstrate how there's a huge speech bubble, but only the first two and a half words are in it and he's cut off by the sudden punch to the face.
