Bumomo Bumomomomo Bumo!
A character who speaks, but is for one reason or another unintelligible to the audience.
A variant of He Who Must Not Be Heard. There are many possible reasons the audience cannot understand the character: muffled voice, thick accent, foreign language, very limited vocabulary, a robot communicating only in beeps. Other characters on the show may have no trouble understanding them if they are an example of a Sub-Trope of this, Intelligible Unintelligible. This leads to a lot of repeated dialogue that'd make little sense if we could understand both characters. ("Are we going to Dagobah?" "That's right R2, we're going to Dagobah!")
An awful lot of unintelligible or barely-intelligible characters' speech disruptions take the form of them only being able to say their name: Pokémon Speak.
The Voice, when in the "only calls on the phone" variation, is sometimes also The Unintelligible. Their dialogue is usually distorted mumbling gibberish, and almost always angry-sounding (possibly because half of it is cussing). A good example of this is The Mayor's wife on the Christmas Special The Year Without a Santa Claus, although it is possible to make out the occasional word, mostly "galoshes."
See also Speaking Simlish, where non-playable video game characters speak nonsense, and Elective Unintelligible, where a character can speak normally, but chooses to speak nonsensically. Starfish Language is a related trope, where the character is unintelligible because they're not even using human words. Not to be confused with The Illegible, which is when a character has outrageously horrible handwriting. Sometimes The Unintelligible has a friend who acts as his Translator Buddy. When caused by their accent, then it's an Unintelligible Accent. Also not to be confused with The Unpronounceable, where a name is very difficult to pronounce.
Example subpages:
Other examples
- The Hamburglar from McDonald's commercials combines regular words with mumbling. Originally, he had a partner named Captain Crook (a rather stereotypical pirate) who translated for him; Crook was eventually written out, and the Hamburglar was made "cuter", but these days, it's easy for the other characters to understand him.
- AIR: The TV series featured a cute dog creature named Potato that "spoke" exclusively using the word "piko" and, occasionally, "pikori". Her owner, Kano, could understand him perfectly, but nobody else could.
- ARIA: President Aria is described as having human-level intelligence, but speaks only with the syllables "pui" and "nyu". Similarly, President Maa also only says "maa" (and was named so named for that very reason). Somewhat justified in that they are both cats — they're special breeds that can understand human speech, but they aren't capable of producing it.
- Keyop in Battle of the Planets. He had lines in Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. One fan rumor had it that he used too much profanity for the US networks. Probably not true though.
- Jinpei, the original character, spoke and acted like the smart-ass 10-year-old that he was. Not something the moral guardians wanted to see in an Americanized cartoon. (Joe was the one with the blunt way of speaking.)
- Black Clover has Gordon Agrippa. It's one of the reasons people find him creepy as he's always mumbling. It makes him look like he is always casting curses, which makes him seem even more intimidating. Over time he speaks louder, allowing his squadmates to actually understand him.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Within the setting, messenger crows assigned to hunters have been taught how to speak human language. Zenitsu's messenger though is a sparrow that cannot speak normally, and tries to communicate by just repeating "chu, chu, chu" over and over again accompained by gestures; narrator text will sometimes translate to the audience what the bird is trying to say, but Zenitsu will remain lost on what Chuntaro is saying. Tanjiro on the other hand can understand the bird perfectly.
- Eyeshield 21: Daikichi Komusubi communicates mainly through grunts and short sentences. It's said he speaks in pawa-go ("Powerspeak"), which only strong men, like his "sensei" Kurita, can understand (though oddly enough, Mamori seems able to understand him as well).
- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu: This trope is made fun of when Sousuke (using a suit of Powered Armor whose voice filter turns every word he says into "fumoffu") and a man dressed in a pony mask (don't ask) have a discussion consisting entirely of "fumoffu fumoffu" and "pony pony". Kaname then yells at them for reaching an understanding just by exchanging unintelligible words.
- The series does play it straight however, in the fact that Kaname can actually understand Sosuke in the suit.
- Isn't she wearing a comm headset in those scenes?
- She seems to be able to translate the One-Liner when he rescues her from some Yakuza. She didn't have the headset then.
- The series does play it straight however, in the fact that Kaname can actually understand Sosuke in the suit.
- .hack//SIGN has Macha, whose lips move and the other characters all react as though she's speaking normally... yet no sound can be heard. Apparently, her words are displayed in the in-game text chat, which isn't displayed in the anime.
- Hamtaro: Penelope can only say the words ookyoo or ookwee; her "older sister" Pashmina is always on hand to explain what the youngest member of the group says.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers: Sweden often becomes this in Fan Works, after an attempt at localizing his Tohoku accentnote in Scanlations gave him truncated words and occasionally missing vowels. And after Flanderization, Sweden's often shown sp'k'ng l'k' th's. Strangely enough, most of the Nordics speak in similar dialects (Tsugaru for Norway and Iceland, and Ibaraki for Denmark), but none of them get the same treatment in scanlations or in fanon.
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: Blade Knight in the English dub speaks with such a thick accent, it's very hard to tell what he is saying. However, key names and points of interests are said much more clearly.
- Last Period has Iwazaru. In keeping with her "speak no evil" theme, everything she says comes out as an unintelligible mumble. Kikazaru translates for her.
- Magic Knight Rayearth: Mokona can only say "Puu". While he may not seem to act like it and is accorded little respect, Mokona is arguably more intelligent than anyone else in the cast — but the details are a spoiler of monumental proportions. (Also The Voiceless.) Hikaru is able to interpret his sounds.
- Pokémon the Series: Almost all Pokemon can say only their names or parts thereof. With a little careful listening to regular cast members (such as Pikachu) in the original Japanese, though, it's possible to make out patterns. Ash (Satoshi) is "Pikapi", while Togepi, during the seasons that Misty (Kasumi) was with them, was "Pipipi". Likewise, Misty herself is "Pikachupi" and Team Rocket was "Pipikachu". Here's a list
. The human characters understand them just fine; actions speak louder than words, after all.
- Ranma ½ has Satsuki, Sentarou's girlfriend. Only Kasumi, a fellow Yamato Nadeshiko, can understand what she says.
- Reborn! (2004): Young I-Pin is supposed to be speaking Chinese, but no one else among the group can understand her. Aged-up I-Pin is somewhat easier to understand, having "taught herself" to speak the language (still not perfectly, but she's getting there).
- Sailor Moon: The Monster of the Week usually suffered from Pokemon Speak syndrome.
- A Silent Voice: Shouko, due to her hearing impairment, has a very difficult time vocalizing and many characters do not understand what she is saying.
- Tenchi Muyo!: Ryo-Ohki, the Weasel Mascot, can only say "Miyaa", but is clearly an intelligent being capable of communicating complex ideas to the people around her. This is mainly due to the fact she is still very young. In Tenchi Muyo! GXP however, she is fully capable of speaking clearly. (Also The Voiceless)
- The Minicons in Transformers: Armada speak in beeps. Towards the end of the series, they start actually talking. It's not clear how that works.
- The other characters' ability to understand them also varies. The humans get it most of the time, but Jetfire can't understand them at all and most of the others only vaguely know what they're saying some of the time. It's possible they just have really, really thick accents.
- Targetmasters in Transformers: ★Headmasters also speak in random sounds.
- Urusei Yatsura: Lum's Mother, due to her lack of knowing Japanese, speaks in her native language, which humans can only interpret as gibberish (shown quite clearly in the manga, using various symbols in place of text). Naturally, Lum and other aliens don't have trouble understanding.
- Yumeria: Mone-chan only says "Mone" or parts thereof. (It is unknown whether or not "Mone" is her real name; it was (unsurprisingly) the only thing she said when asked what her name was.)
- Zombieland Saga: The Legendary Tae Yamada, being a zombie, can only "speak" through groans, grunts, shrieks, and occasionally garbled imitations of others. And also chicken noises.
- In the current version of Blue Beetle, the scarab communicates with Jaime using strange letters that represents an alien language that Jaime can understand because he's "linked" to it. Whether this is Wingdinglish or just random symbols seems to be Depending on the Writer (or possibly Depending On The Letterer).
- Mumbles in Dick Tracy dpesn't have a speech impediment, but speaks so lazily that he doesn't bother to enunciate every syllable. This causes many of his words to blend together or have additional sounds that make it difficult to interpret what he's saying unless you have one of his co-workers translate.
- One of The Flash's villains is a Serial Killer named Murmur, who cut off his own tongue then sew his mouth shut. When he speaks, it's in slurs and he cannot pronounce vowels.
- In Great Ten, Shaolin Robot speaks solely in hexagrams from the I Ching. Thankfully, his speech is usually shown translated in a footnote - and often he only expresses one concept or idea at a time.
- Groot of Guardians of the Galaxy can only say "I am GROOT!". According to Maximus The Mad, he's actually a brilliant scientist who speaks in Techno Babble. Which makes sense, given that Groot first appeared as a fully articulate Mad Scientist and alien conqueror in Marvel's monster comics. This got fixed after Groot encountered the Gardener and he restored Groot's voice.
- In Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2018), Shift's constantly amorphous biology allows him to shapeshift, but makes it difficult for him to remain completely solid for any period of time. This makes it impossible for Shift to maintain vocal cords to enunciate words, resulting in all of his attempts to speak coming out as a "Glurp" sound.
- Bini from Mingamanga, despite being the only native German of the four boys. Mustafa lampshades it: "And they tell me I have to learn German!"
- In PS238, there's an alien who becomes a student at the school. He's called 'Prospero' because no one has any idea what his real name is. His speech is represented as squiggles, and only Angie understands it. Word of God is that his speech is written in English using the Camouflage font, which is all squiggles. This doesn't help much; one of his speeches is actually a recipe.
- Arseface in Preacher, whose face was destroyed by a shotgun blast in a botched suicide attempt. Most of his dialogue is subtitled (in a comic!), but somewhere in the middle of the story it dropped out for a while. Thankfully, a careful reader can make out pretty much all of his lines with a little sounding out of his gibberish. Apparently, the only characters who could ever understand him were Jesse and Lorrie Bobbs.
- Eventually, we actually hear a conversation from Doop's perspective and understand him perfectly, though this isn't until Nation X.
- He does prove capable of speaking English on at least one occasion, after temporarily absorbing Thor's hammer.
- Eventually, we actually hear a conversation from Doop's perspective and understand him perfectly, though this isn't until Nation X.
- Downplayed in The Sandman (1989). Mazikeen is a demon who is missing half of her face. Neil Gaiman apparently wrote her dialog by trying to speak using only half of his mouth and wrote down what came out phonetically. It's almost impossible to understand what exactly she's saying. But it's possible to decode what she's saying based on context and by sounding out her speech slowly, but this would still be difficult to understand in a casual conversation.
- Drywall from Scud the Disposable Assassin can only be understood by creatures without a soul, like robots and lawyers, with his dialogue typically represented by straight lines in lieu of letters. He gets the hang of English after he gets a bit older, though he flips back to his original method of speech when he gets particularly emotive.
- Shazam!: In The Marvel Family #50 "The Theft of Speech", evil Professo Gilbert Thorne builds a giant Speech Scrambler machine, which makes everybody unable to speak anything other than gibberish, so that he can conquer a collapsed civilization.
- In the Star Wars comic Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith, the upper-class Sith, most of whom have at least some human ancestry (Naga Sadow barely looks like an alien at all) speak Basic (which is rendered in English for the benefit of the reader, of course). The narrator then reveals, however, that there are several castes of Sith - and the thug race, the Massassi, are the most ape-like of the species and cannot speak intelligibly at all, instead using the ancient Sith tongue, which looks and sounds to non-Sith like barbaric growling. The letterer even rendered their speech in a bizarre-looking font to emphasize how weird it is. Presumably, the crossbreed "human" Sith are bilingual and can understand them.
- Doop, from Peter Milligan and Mike Allred's run on X-Force/X-Statix, spoke entirely in his own alien language, which other characters apparently could understand, though they would reply in English. His word bubbles were unintelligible until a reader figured out the substitution cipher used to write his dialogue. It is later established that "Doop-speak" is an actual language (that, as a member of the team, you eventually come to learn) with its own grammar and rules, and that while Doop can easily understand English, he seems genuinely incapable of speaking anything but Doop-speak.
- "Mumbles" in the syndicated cartoon strip Dick Tracy, as well as the movie based on it, where he was played by an uncredited Dustin Hoffman. In the movie, his speech appears to be modeled on that of Marlon Brando. In the post-Chester Gould period of the strip, writer Max Alan Collins created Merky, a man whose speech is totally incomprehensible, being made up of original symbols.
- In a Garfield Sunday strip, Odie stands on a fence and tells a joke to an invisble back alley audience. However, since Odie can't talk (not even "thought speech", like Garfield), he barks the joke. Not only does the audience understand him, but they think the joke is really funny.
- During his first appearances in Get Fuzzy, Mac Manc McManx spoke almost completely unintelligibly. Not by virtue of having muffled speech or talking like a real animal, mind you, but simply because of the unholy way he mixed and matched however many British slang dialects one could think of into each of his sentences. This was later toned down to make what he said somewhat more comprehensible.
Mac: [from his first appearance] Been havin' a butcher's for your flat all day, mate, thought I'd cocked summat up! I'm well knackered, I can tell you! I could do with a bevvy and a kip! [...] Plus. Some bloke diddled me brolly in the queue for the khazi back in Blightey.
- The Imp in Little Nemo in Slumberland. In the words of the Princess: "He can't understand English or any other language!" (He can talk to lions, however). In his own words: "Gimmel iggle ip soggle opp sog!"
- Woodstock and the other birds from Peanuts; their dialogue is represented with hash marks. Snoopy, however, understands them.
- Snuffles, the cat from Pearls Before Swine, only talks in meows. Somehow, everyone else can understand him.
- In Hans Von Hozel's fics, The Beatles can only say "Liverpol".
- Code Prime: Bumblebee, as has become the standard practice of late. For the sake of the audience, whatever he says is bracketed, letting us now it is something only other Cybertronians can understand. Lelouch and the Black Knights eventually get earpieces to translate what the Autobot scout says. C.C. can perfectly understand him, much to everyone's shock, while Rakshata is able to understand Bumblebee by mentally analyzing the sounds and deciphering the code in her head.
- From the Gensokyo 20XX series, we have this Reimu and Youmu at different points. Reimu was this to a degree, before she regained her language skills, that is, she would mostly string together syllables and make noises and, in the case of the latter, this comes from the fact that she was a toddler at the time, saying, "Muh", phasing out of this as time goes on. However, both doubles as the Intelligible Unintelligible, in that they can be understood.
- Harry Potter in the beginning of The Havoc Side of the Force
can only be understood by HK-47 as the only two languages he speaks are English (which hasn't been invented yet) and Parseltongue (which is also the language of a primitive species that other species can't learn). He later learns Basic from Anakin, though Harry notes that Anakin picked up English much faster.
- Mayor Joe Biden from Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises stutters enough during speeches and routine conversations that he's basically this.
- Wyvern: Taylor can't speak English when in wyvern form unless she's really large, which has its own problems, limiting her vocabulary to simple noises, nods, head shakes and shrugs.
- The giant teddy bears called "The Teds" in the first DVD for Bella Dancerella "Let's Dance!" They whisper silently to each other, but Bella can hear and understand them from twenty feet away.
- The Baroque Cycle: The Scottish Lord Gy speaks with such a thick Scottish Funetik Aksent that he's unintelligible to Englishmen. An extremely polite and effete English lord eventually has to confront him on the fact that he is not speaking English.
- The Blind Side has Ole Miss' head coach Ed Orgeron, aka Coach O, whose thick Cajun drawl borders on gibberish to everyone except fellow Louisianan (though not Cajun) Sean Tuohy.
- In Craig Shaw Gardner's Bride of the Slime Monster Roger visits a beach-party musical world where the antagonists are the Mad Mumbler and his Motorcycle Mob. As befits his nickname, the Mad Mumbler speaks so unintelligibly that even his second-in-command/interpreter Sneer has trouble understanding him at one point.
- Lorna of The Curse of M is a Downplayed example. Her Dublin accent is so thick that when she goes to America, she's asked more than once if she speaks English. Only two characters have no trouble understanding her, and one of them can read her mind.
- In Dave Barry Slept Here, Senator Sam Ervin speaks a Deep Southern language "similar to English, only unintelligible."
- Discworld:
- The Librarian says only "ook" and "eek" but can be understood by some characters. There's a Lampshade Hanging in Moving Pictures, where the Bursar tries to explain to the Archchancellor the difference between the "ook" for "yes" and the "ook" for "no," and it becomes apparent he doesn't really know how he understands what the Librarian says.
- The Death of Rats only says squeak, but has no problem getting his opinions across (or if he does, Quoth the Raven can translate).
- The Discworld Almanack quotes Friar Boy Odious, Master of the Scumble, as saying "Fw'yo huzzy bwoy willups hut? H'shush say wint!" (Scumble being a Gargle Blaster of a hard cider, traditionally made with bizarre alchemical additives, in presses made of lead.)
- The Divine Comedy:
- In the fourth circle of Hell (where those who hoarded and wasted their wealth are punished), Dante and Virgil meet Plutus, the Roman god of wealth, who is heard muttering random gibberish to himself.
- Like in the Book of Genesis, those who built the Tower of Babel are punished for their prideful attempt to surpass God by having new languages randomly imposed on them. The only one to keep the first tongue is Nimrod, the only person still able to understand it, leaving him to babble, unable to relate with others due to betraying his most essential relationship, that one with God. His fate foreshadows the madness and isolation of the leader of Hell, Lucifer.
- The Devil, despite having three mouths, has lost all reason to communicate with others. Now, his mouths are only used to rip his fellow damned apart like meat grinders, corrupting his ability to love and connect with others as a tool to destroy and shred.
- Tinker Gnomes in the Dragonlance universe speak extremely fast and have to be reminded constantly to slow down so other races can understand them.
- The Famous Five:
- Five on a Hike Together: When Dick and Anne ask a man with a horse and cart for directions to Blue Pond Farm, he replies to every question with "ar", and points in vague directions. Unsurprisingly, Dick and Anne get lost.
- Five have a Wonderful Time: The old woman selling the tickets to Faynights Castle mumbles and is very difficult to understand. Julian just about managed to get some information out of her about some men who visited the castle. The woman eventually tells him what he needs to know by pointing to a name in a book.
- Baby Kayla from The Giggler Treatment can only say 'a-bah' but everyone understands her anyway, because they love her so much. To the point where Mr. Mack actually mistook 'a-bah' for Kayla's first words... "Mind the poo!" (which were, incidentally, said by Rover the dog. It makes sense in context.)
- Lost Voices: Before Luce turns into a mermaid, her only friend is a mentally disabled ten-year-old boy named Gum, who speaks mostly in moans and gibberish.
- Subverted with Toth from The Malloreon series. Written in the prophecies as "The Silent Man", he only communicates with vague hand and arm gestures, yet anyone paying attention to him seems to understand him clearly. It takes until the last book, "The Seeress of Kell," for Durnik to finally catch on to what's really happening: his gestures conceal the fact he's actually a telepath.
- Spook from Mistborn: The Original Trilogy. It's not that he can't speak, it's just that his speech patterns are absolutely steeped in a specific dialect of street slang that almost nobody else uses anymore, and he leans into it so much that it renders him nigh-incomprehensible to all but a few. Just to give you an sense of what its like, when trying to say 'I was running to that place', Spook says it as 'Wasing the run of there'. Hilariously subverted in the Sequel Series, set over 300 years later, where Spook's bizarre slang is now regarded as a real language called High Imperial by clueless historians, effectively becoming the setting's equivalent of Latin.
- From Peter Pan and most adaptations, one particularly iconic example of this trope is Tinker Bell's fairy language, which sounds like...well...a tinkling bell.
- Gornab's speech in Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures is so messed up, only his chancellor can understated him. OTOH, he consistently manages to speak all words exactly backwards (by syllable, not by sound or letter).
- Jonas from Saving Max speaks gibberish that only his mother understands. This makes it much easier for her to abuse him without getting caught.
- Sunny from A Series of Unfortunate Events talks only in babyspeak, which is translated either by her siblings, or by Lemony Snicket's distinctive and verbose definitions. As the series goes on she gradually becomes more intelligible, going from gibberish to slurred words to distinct words to her first full sentence: "I am not a baby."
- Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire says exactly one word: Hodor. In fact, it's not even his name (his real name is Walder). Though Bran occasionally notes that he doesn't know what Hodor's trying to say, it's generally pretty obvious from the context.
- Twig: Dog has been so heavily modified that his jaw no longer functions really well and as a result, he can't speak English. He communicates in a grunting, growling fashion. However, he's far from stupid, and his longtime partner Catcher is able to understand what he's saying, and usually acts as an interpreter. Gordon also took the time to figure out Dog's speech, which goes a long way toward endearing him to Dog.
- David Weber has fun with this — neither the Orions in the Starfire books nor the Rish in In Fury Born have the necessary vocal apparatus to speak English. On the other hand, both races can understand English perfectly well, and vice versa, even if it can be a bit hard on the human ears. There is one Noodle Character who can speak High Rishathan, but the same person could also "reproduce exactly the sound of a buzzsaw hitting a nail at 8000 RPM"...
- Razorback of the Whateley Universe can only make weird growling and barking noises. Since he looks mostly like a velociraptor, it's not really surprising he doesn't have a human larynx.
- Wuthering Heights has a meta-example in the form of Joseph. It seems the author tried a little too hard to communicate his accent. It leaves you wondering if what is typed is language at all. Luckily there's an entire website dedicated to helping readers understand what he says, one of which can be found here.Joseph:Yon lad gets war und war!' observed he on re-entering. 'He's left th' gate at t' full swing, and Miss's pony has trodden dahn two rigs o' corn, and plottered through, raight o'er into t' meadow! Hahsomdiver, t' maister 'ull play t' devil to-morn, and he'll do weel. He's patience itsseln wi' sich careless, offald craters—patience itsseln he is! Bud he'll not be soa allus—yah's see, all on ye! Yah mun'n't drive him out of his heead for nowt!'
- Lexy Lightspeed - Escape from Earth: Lookie speaks entirely in grunts and grumbles.
- The Super Sonic Robotic Comic in The Party Zone tells jokes in high-speed nonsense, but everyone else laughs uncontrollably anyway.
"He's not funny, he's FAST!"
- In Ripley's Believe It or Not!, the Idol speaks in high-pitched gibberish.
- The Invaders from Twilight Zone speak in an incomprehensible electronic gibberish.
- CHIKARA mainstay Delirious speaks in a loud, rambling matter, occasionally spitting out a coherent phrase or sentence. Appropriately, his team with Hallowicked and Frightmare was called Incoherence.
- The Thirteenth Hat, January 28, 2012, opened with a skit involving UltraMantis Black using the Eye of Tyr to cast a spell freeing Delirious from Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes. Delirious grabbed the Eye, ran off and smashed it, yelling "I REMEMBER EVERYTHING!"
- The Iron Sheik. Really, the only word he says that is generally and universally understandable is the one that Botchamania has adopted as a slogan.
- Ahmed Johnson, unfortunately, was notorious for this.
- Bob & Ray would occasionally feature agricultural reports from the consummately unintelligible Dean Archer Armstead, of the "Lackawanna Field Station."
- Dead Ringers did this with their parodies of real-life Labour ministers John Prescott and Robin Cook (which, though exaggerated, was somewhat Truth in Television):
John Prescott: I think you'll find that in point of fact that I make no apology for the fact and thank you you've had your say and now I'll have yours as well years of Tory neglect and the Prime Minister agrees with me on this and I think you'll find that the Government's position has been consistently that and!
Robin Cook: Hvee shaw hvay hmm hmm ethcal furn pulsie? - Dimension X's "Universe": The mutant, Bobo, was born without the power of speech. He makes some noises so that the audience can tell he's present, but no words.
- The Goon Show's
- Little Jim always spoke in gibberish except for his Catchphrase: "He's fallen in the wa-ter!" This was lampshaded in the one-off revival show The Last Goon Show of All.
Little Jim: (Gibberish)
Bluebottle: Eccles, I do not understand what he is saying.
Eccles: Just a minute, I'll ask him. What did you say, Little Jim?
Little Jim: (Gibberish)
Eccles: He said that he doesn't understand what he's saying either.
Bluebottle: Oh. He's one of Mrs. Thatcher's incomprehensives. [A reference to Britain's controversial Comprehensive School system]. - Michael Palin, talking about how influential the show's Absurdity Ascendant principle was to Monty Python and other British comedy/culture, said that when his father walked in while he was listening to The Goon Show he thought the radio was broken.
- Little Jim always spoke in gibberish except for his Catchphrase: "He's fallen in the wa-ter!" This was lampshaded in the one-off revival show The Last Goon Show of All.
- How Green Was My Cactus: In this Australian comedy, King Bonza (a riff on then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke) evades the questioning of a journalist well known for his gravelly speech by offering him a lolly to chew on, then deliberately misunderstanding his now unintelligible questions.
- The Boston-based Howie Carr Show has an occasional feature in which he plays recordings of Mayor Thomas Menino speeches and invites listeners to try to figure out what His Honor is saying.
- It's That Man Again: At least one episode of this wartime sitcom featured an ambassador from an unnamed European country's government-in-exile whose dialogue consisted entirely of the word "Dvorak" (like the composer). This was, of course, translated into perfectly comprehensible English by his interpreter.
- The Unbelievable Truth: In one episode, Sally Philips buzzes soon into Henning Wehn's lecture because she can't understand his German accent. David Mitchell states that being unintelligible is a key part of Henning's entire game strategy. Henning gets back at her by engaging in Translation by Volume when he starts again, then later on claiming he can't understand Sally during her lecture.
- The daily video game magazine Digitiser, which ran on the UK Teletext service throughout the 90s, had the recurring character Zombie Dave, who communicated entirely through barely-intelligible mumbles. This was usually used to get outrageously offensive things broadcast in an ostensibly family-friendly magazine.
Zombie Dave: [Describing Lara Croft] Thrr brrrd wrrz thrr tttrrrdz.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: After Mike Teavee gets shrunk in the Television Room his voice just sounds like a series of squeaks.
- Cirque du Soleil loves this. Most of the shows use imaginary language for all the characters (save for opening announcements), though foreign-language lyrics may turn up in some of the songs. Since The '90s, there has been a tendency towards shows with more English dialogue and lyrics worked into the action: Corteo, KOOZA, Delirium, Zumanity, and their Jukebox Musical variants based on the work of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson. In the meantime, the emcee in Mystere not only speaks both English and gibberish, but is mocked for the latter by both his puppet and the principal clown Brian Le Petit (who speak English).
- In Peter Schickele's Hornsmoke A Horse Opera, the four characters never speak, but they sometimes play their musical instruments in the manner of speech.
- In The King and I, any line spoken in the Siamese language is represented by instruments of the orchestra. This is subverted during Anna's first conversation with the Kralahome, when he angrily dismisses the interpreter and shows he can speak English.
- Played for laughs in Orpheus in the Underworld when Jupiter tries to seduce Eurydice in the form of a fly; his portion of the song is nothing but buzzing.
- In GoAnimate videos, Dora's father and grandmother, as well as Alejandro from Total Drama, speak in extremely heavy Spanish accents.
- In Baman Piderman, Tuba can only speak in tuba sounds.
- The Homestar Runner universe has several. Pom Pom speaks in bubbling sound effects. The Cheat speaks in animalistic squeaks and growls. Strong Mad originally spoke by yelling the word "DUH!" but eventually graduated to yelling intelligible words and short phrases. And Sherlock, the "star" of the "crazy cartoon" Sweet Cuppin' Cakes (who is described as looking like "a cross between a cow and a helicopter" despite actually resembling neither) only speaks in "these weird sounds, and no words." This is lampshaded in episode 2 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, in which Pom Pom reprimands Strong Bad for repeating everything he says.
- Both Strong Mad and The Cheat are sometimes capable of speaking intelligibly. The Cheat, in particular, does the voices for all the "Powered by The Cheat" cartoons according to the creators—the voices sound like half-assed impersonations of the main cast, which are all delivered by the less vocally talented half of the two creators in reality.
- There's also Homsar, who speaks English, but nothing he says makes any sense whatsoever. In episode 2 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Strong Bad finally discovers a way to understand Homsar and speak his "language." If he imitates Homsar's usual speech pattern after this point, Homsar will ask him "Why are you talking gibberish, Strong Bad? You sound like a two-year-old boy!"
- If we're talking about Homsar, then let's not forget Senor Cardgage.
"Carrageenan, Monteljohn. Can you detect me to the nearest bus stamp?"
- There was a competition between Homsar and Senor Cardgage for the title of Non Sequitur Champion. Cardgage lost, and his prize for losing was having to complete a coherent sentence, which took him three tries. "Grape Soda Banked" is apparently as close as he comes to actual coherence.
- Lampshaded in the Strong Bad E-Mail episode "Animal". Strong Bad imagines himself as some sort of monstrosity complete with a proboscis. Said proboscis made it so that he could only make incoherent gurgling noises.
Homestar: I say, Monstrosity, do you know the times?
Monstrosity Strong Bad: (Incoherent gurgling while foaming at the mouth)
Strong Bad: Oh, I guess I couldn't really talk with that proboscis. Not that I'd have much of an answer for "Do you know the times?" anyway. - The Drive-Thru Whale is a borderline example; it speaks in extremely garbled and distorted English and its sentences are almost complete Word Salad.
Strong Bad: Could you repeat that? I thought you just asked me to sever my leg.Whale: (Garbled) Sever your leg please. It's the greatest day.
- Boing Gloing has a lot to say in The Demented Cartoon Movie!, but never says it intelligibly.
- The eponymous character of Spoilsbury Toast Boy. Though most of the characters' voices are garbled, they're relatively understandable. Toast Boy, on the other hand, speaks only in odd tones that require subtitles to be understood.
- All the characters in Happy Tree Friends. The one who comes closest to making sense in speech is Pop.
- The only other exception is Disco Bear, who says his Catchphrase "Oh yeah" and occasionally "Oh no" in normal English. He doesn't say anything else besides grunting, however.
- There are only about 3 characters in Weebl & Bob whom the viewer can actually understand, which is even lampshaded twice. The only way the eponymous characters can understand each other is by reading their speech bubbles.
- In Red vs. Blue, after being shot multiple times in the throat, Maine can no longer speak (not that he did much anyway) in anything other than a growl or snarl. Somehow Wash is still able to understand him just fine in season 8.
- Also we have Lopez in-universe do to so few characters speaking Spanish, to the point where Lopez starts taking advantage of it to relentlessly mock and insult the rest of the characters to their faces without their knowledge. Bites him in the ass when Carolina turns out to be bilingual.
- The aliens we meet have an entire language made of only two words:"honk" and "blarg". This causes a few problems until Andy the Bomb starts acting as a translator.
- Ultra Fast Pony has multiple examples. Scootaloo only communicates by scatting (complete with translated subtitles). Diamond Tiara has a high pitch and a weird impediment (sort of a real version of the "ermahgerd" meme) which makes her difficult to understand. Bon Bon talks in an irritating, high-pitched "Ya ya ya ya!" (though she began speaking more intelligently in later appearances). Braeburn does speak English, but he's a Motor Mouth with a thick Irish accent, so other characters in the show have difficulty understanding him.
- Mr. Malice of Bonus Stage is a strange case, he only ever speaks in music (not lyrics, but actual music), or other assorted sound effects (including the Mega Man Classic boss intro theme, the intro to Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th symphony, or Matt Wilson beatboxing), and is subtitled whenever he speaks.
- Bzzt the fly in Lucas the Spider can only communicate in buzzing noises. It's unknown if Lucas can understand Bzzt or if he mistook the fly's buzzing for introducing himself.
- Archie the robot from Minilife TV only speaks in beeps, similarly to R2-D2.
- Two characters from Otherworldly Ravenous Beast have this, but the way they speak are not the same. Loop only speaks in vowels, but everyone can understand her just fine. However, the same may not be said for Citrus, who speaks entirely in gibberish.
- Kasulouh from Japanoschlampen because she has tentacles in her face.
- Bloxzy has a couple of these, in its supporting cast. Beep talks in the music used in the crazybus title screen, Squeaks makes sounds you would hear out of a dog toy, and BLORG's speech is always reversed and distorted.
- Japanoschlampen:
- Kasulouh has tentacles in her face which makes her hard to understand.
- Midori sometimes lapses into this due to her braces.
- Puppycat from Bee and Puppycat speaks in gibberish with voice of Oliver. Luckily he's given subtitles.
- Mr Socks, from Commander Kitty, is a Ferret whose native language sounds like either "Dook Dook Dook" or "HRBLRUHBLRUBH" (or some variation of those letters). It's unknown if all inhabitants of Ferret speak like this, or if Mr Socks is unique in this way, though Ace at least seems to understand him
.
- In Kukuburi, Zomgz speaks in electronics symbols, but it doesn't seem to hinder him. See this comic
.
- In The Order of the Stick, Haley, one of the principal characters, is traumatized and finds herself unable to speak intelligibly for 150 strips. It's represented in the text by writing her dialogue in a Cryptogram, with a different translation key for every episode. All of her lines still make sense if you can read them, leading to a rather long-running Bilingual Bonus.
- The Pyros in Cuanta Vida are muffled by their masks, and it's very hard even for their teammates to actually understand what they're saying.
- All major characters in Listening to 11.975 MHz are this. It isn't because they all speak foreign languages (or mathematical equations), it's because translating them gets you gibberish. The secondary characters are not much better.
- The Allosaurus from Irregular Webcomic!. "RAAARRRHH!!!
"
- And he's the President of the United States!
- Parodied in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja — Judy, the gorilla receptionist, can speak very fluently in sign language, which is subtitled for the readers but which the doctor doesn't understand a word of. She also speaks Gorilla, but it just sounds like grunts and stuff, even though it's a full-fledged language. A flashback story show she used to have a sign language translator that spoke out her signing in English, but it worked so horribly she obviously decided that even being the Unintelligible was better.
- Everyone and everything in Grumble is written in an unreadable language cipher. Even the sound effects.
- Kandra Corentin in Unity. Lampshaded in this strip
.
- The eponymous protagonist of Capt'n Crazy.
- Becsprite in Homestuck can only speak in .gifs of green, black, and white. Jade even lampshades it, deciding to keep conversations with him to a minimum from now on.
- After prototyping it with Jade's dreamself, the issue has gone.
- Later on, Mituna's quirk is almost completely unreadable due to it's mix of misspellings and 1337speak.
- Exillon from Our Little Adventure is of the BEEPing variety. Brian seems to understand it, but isn't translating it for his other minions.
- Shinka: The Last Eevee has Phi the Porygon-Z, who speaks only in Webdings. It mainly serves as an Easter Egg for any reader who takes the time to translate what he's saying.
- In Something*Positive, one of Rory's friends, Sherri, initially spoke in letters too tiny to read. Starting in her second arc
, however, they're small but intelligible. As of 2016
(and following a bit of a character redesign for the gang because "apparently kids grow"), she just talks normally.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal #21
has the Hamburglar as ambassador to Zombie Island. The discussions don't go that well.
"Robble robble!""Braaains." - Nebula: Ceres' thought bubbles are jumbled gibberish; it's impossible for anyone, the other characters or the readers, to understand what they're saying. It's heavily implied that this (among other things) is because of Black Hole's influence.
- In El Goonish Shive, the Writer's Block communicates almost entirely in weird noises. It did say one intelligible word once,
but that word was censored.
Writer's Block: Mee moo f@&$. - Simon And Freddy: Tatum the tarantula only speaks by making purring noises.
- Dregs: The nudist understands English, but cannot speak it. Instead she communicates almost exclusively in variations on the sounds "heh" and "bup".
- In Yokoka's Quest, if the perspective character doesn't understand a particular language, its speech bubble is shown as illegible markings (with each language having a corresponding style of markings).
- SideQuested: John, after he rushes through the portal without waiting for the mind-cushioning spells. Boopsie can sort of understand him, it seems.
John: Aaahpleb cabba-cabba. Meb heb badda-poop snrrrrrph! Bamble fambedeh!
Boopsie: Love, pieces of your language skills are still eighty kilometers northwest.
John: Blorp.
- There are times where Achievement Hunter member Jeremy Dooley will devolve into this. The fans refer to this as his "Weiss voice" after he spent his playthrough of RWBY: Grimm Eclipse making "HAP HAP!" noises.
- Ask Fluffle Puff: Fluffle Puff communicates only through blowing raspberries and pantomiming, yet the others still understand what she's trying to convey, with the audience being the only ones left out of the loop.
- Some ASMR videos have the ASMRtist whispering or mumbling in incoherent nonsense speech to use the flow of the spoken sounds as the trigger for the ASMR response.
- Defunct pro-wrestling parody site Brawlers on a Budget had Dr. Thrilla, who has replaced his teeth with a beartrap. His lines are written as "(metal clanging)", sometimes with an emotion tagged on. His manager, a "weedy Englishman" (as he's always described) named Cecil, is able to translate for him.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
- Lord Slug Special had Lord Slug fill this role prior to his wish for youth. The two readily understood instances were the word "Dragonball" and his response to a minion's complaints (about having to find all seven Dragon Balls in an hour): "Oh, bitch bitch bitch!"
- Android 14 from Super Android 13 Abridged has corrupted voice drivers which Dr. Gero cannot find the replacements for, so all his dialogue comes out as static-laced whining sounds. He's far from stupid, however...
By metal, my life was given. By metal, my life has been stripped away. No dreams before, nor after. Only the end.
- The Garry's Mod popular character, the Vagineer. His lines are actually spoken backwards, and depending on the creator of the videos they can be meaningful or simply nonsensical.
- Gorilla from Glove And Boots is only capable of saying "Meh!". The other characters do seem to understand him, but mostly through context. When he's supposed to be saying a full sentence or non-monosyllabic word, it can seem more like he's speaking English in an accent that renders most (but not all) syllables as "meh". For instance, the setup to The History Of Television
involves Gorilla mimicking the "Vitameatavegamin" bit from I Love Lucy, which he pronounces something like "meh-ta-meat-ah-meh-ta-mah".
- The Head of Podcasts during his phone calls in the second series of The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show.
- Shack Tactical similarly has EvilScotsman, whose heavy Scottish accent is mixed with an even-heavier slur, and who is prone to saying things that don't make sense even if you actually manage to figure out the words. Taconic typically serves as his Translator Buddy, but at the same time he also toys with Scotty mercilessly to get him to say the most ridiculously unintelligible things.
Taconic: Scotty, say "cow".
EvilScotsman: Coo. - SovietWomble's clan has a member named "Holynevil" (meant to be "Holy N' Evil" but usually dubbed "Nevil") who can never speak coherently. It's clear he has a strong Vietnamese accent and a bad microphone, but it still doesn't entirely explain how incomprehensible his speech can get.
Over the next few years, he would get a clearer mic and start to become more intelligible, but his thick accent still remains.
Womble: Nevil, you're in command.
Nevil: Sonarifrity err bat bat errr long ray radio if you cam.
Random Squad Member: Oh, shit. - The gimmick of Twitch Plays Pokémon is hundreds or thousands of people typing random inputs into a game system. Needless to say, coherent text input is impossible, and humans and Pokémon are routinely given completely nonsensical names that form the basis of nicknames that the mob can actually pronounce.
- Wild Life SMP: One of the potential consequences of answering a Trivia Bot question incorrect on Days 5 and 8 is to have a voice-changer automatically applied to oneself so that they are unable to speak in anything but distorted robot noises (indecipherable to anyone but the player themself in their own recording) until their next Trivia Bot spawns. The Life series being a social game, the resultant Poor Communication Kills can lead to serious issues, especially when it comes to talking to one's team-mates or trying to help a fellow server-mate answer a question.
- There are a number of videos on YouTube that are unsearchable since they use uncommon characters. Perhaps the most well-known is a Mario Kart Wii clip titled "!?"
that has appeared in people's recommended pages from time to time.
- The CollegeHumor skit "Font Conference"
features anthropomorphic personifications of various Microsoft fonts. The symbol font Wingdings is represented by a mental patient who cries out the names of various symbols (e.g. "diamonds candle candle flag!"); as a result, nobody understands the message (communicated to the audience by subtitles) he's trying to convey.
- The bailiff from Musical Hell is an imp that talks in Murloc-like chirping, that only Diva can understand.
- While on land, Aquaman in Solid jj's "Classic Aquaman" sounds like he's constantly gargling on water, and it's only because of the subtitles that the viewers can understand him. The other members of the Justice League aren’t so lucky, and Batman admits that he's mostly been guessing what Aquaman was saying during their conversation. This way of his speaking also appears in other videos featuring him.
- What the Fuck Is Wrong with You? has Arlo P. Arlo, who speaks with an impenetrable southern accent combined with slurring, what sounds like non-use of teeth, and frequent mumbling. Fortunately, he has subtitles.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The Abridged Series.
- Chumley mostly speaks in monosyllabic grunts, but the characters can still understand him perfectly. Plus he does speak when a joke calls for it.
- Dartz speaks in an extremely thick accent that's borderline understandable to the viewers. In-universe, a lot of the characters understand him only partly or not at all.
- The Voynich manuscript
is a textual example. This codex of unknown origin is written in an unknown language that will probably never be deciphered.
Waldorf: I don't think even he knows what he's saying sometimes.
Statler: Or what he's cooking?
Both: Dohohohohohohoho!