"Can't you hear the music?! That's a 4/4 string ostinato in D minor! Every sailor knows that means death!"
— Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob SquarePants, "Clams"
A Wham Moment is usually punctuated by a visual element, or a line from a character, that flips the story on its head or completely bursts a buildup that has been building for a long while.
However, the Wham is not always visual or part of the script. Other times, it's part of the soundtrack, whether diegetic or not, or just plain a sound that does the upending. The sound itself doesn't even have to be physically loud, like an explosion. That's not exactly what "Wham" means in this context. It's also not to be confused with Kung-Foley or any other sound that results from a collision. It's the impact that the sound has on the story and its stakes. It can be as soft as a music box, or as loud as a crash.
In short, it is a sound or a piece of music that presents the Oh, Crap! revelation in a piece of media.
May involve For Doom the Bell Tolls. Sometimes associated with Hell Is That Noise. See also Record Needle Scratch, Bad Vibrations, and Musical Spoiler. Contrast Sudden Soundtrack Stop, where a lack of sound conveys the impact.
As this is a trope that involves a surprise element similar to a Wham Shot or Wham Line, all spoilers will be unmarked.
Examples:
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Film — Animated
- Flushed Away: In The Stinger, Sid the Rat knows he's in danger when his owner Tabitha comes home with a second pet... and it's heard meowing.
- Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has both Ichabod and his horse-driven nearly mad from fright and paranoia by what they think are hoofbeats from The Headless Horseman's steed, only to sigh in relief when they discover the sound was only being made by several cattail plants beating against a hollow log. The pair starts laughing loudly at how silly it was to get so worked up over some dumb ghost story, but stops cold when they're suddenly joined by otherworldly and evil-sounding laughter from close by... signaling that The Headless Horseman has indeed arrived.
Film — Live-Action
- GoldenEye: From the scene where James Bond meets with the leader of the Russia-based Janus Syndicate, the leader introduces himself with “Hello, James.” The Wham Sound here is the leader’s distinctive accent, which alerts both Bond and the audience to the leader’s true identity a split second before we see his face.
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): At the film’s end, it looks like Matthew managed to escape capture at the hands of the Pod People. Nancy, who’s also survived, manages to find Matthew and calls out to him. As she approaches him, Matthew points at her and releases the same guttural howl that Pod People make whenever they find a human that hasn’t been replaced yet. This reveals that Matthew has in fact been replaced by a Pod, and Nancy is now very likely the last human in the city. Roll credits.
- It Was Just an Accident: The distinctive clicking sound of Eghbal's prosthetic leg is what allows Vahid to recognize his torturer from his time blindfolded in prison. In the final scene, we hear that same sound approaching from behind as Vahid stands frozen, knowing without looking that Eghbal has found him.
- The final battle in The Last Samurai involves massive casualties on both sides, with Katsumoto's samurai ultimately deciding to make their last stand in one final charge against Omura and his army. Despite taking significant losses from the enemy guns, the samurai succeed in breaking the last line of defence and are rapidly bearing down on Omura and the artillery. With Omura screaming at his men to get the new guns ready, but the crews fumbling the ammunition for the new weapons, it at first looks like Katsumoto and his men may just pull out an improbable victory... until the artillerists finally succeed in getting their guns loaded, signalled by a characteristic chattering gunfire that instantly cuts through the din of the battlefield (and accompanied by a Sudden Soundtrack Stop just to drive the point home). Even before the dramatic shots of the samurai getting cut down, it's immediately apparent that the battle is lost just by the sound design.
- The Menu: Throughout the film, Chef Slowik punctuates each course of his elaborate dinner with a loud, heavy clap to command everyone's attention. When Margot finally realizes how to challenge Slowik and escape with her life, she stands, turns to the kitchen, and claps just as he does, signaling that she's figured out his tests and is taking control of the situation.
- Rogue One: The Rebels aboard Raddus' flagship get trapped behind a closed door as the power goes off. Then they hear someone breathing...
- Superman II: A slow crunching sound followed by General Zod's pained moan reveals that Superman had depowered the Phantom Zone prisoners, and instead still has his powers.
- Tremors 1: As the group hides from a Graboid in Chang’s shop, Rhonda warns them to make no sound, no movement, and no vibrations to avoid attracting the Graboid’s attention. As everyone falls silent and still, we hear the sound of Mindy bouncing on her pogo stick outside…
- World Trade Center:
- At one point, the firefighters and paramedics called to rescue people from the Twin Towers begin to hear loud, heavy thuds every few minutes. While nothing is shown, they quickly realize that it's the sound of victims leaping to their deaths because they can't be saved in time and fear a slow, painful death. It's a sign of just how bad things are—and how much worse they're about to get.
- Later, after the towers have collapsed, a long shot shows tons of debris littering the ground. Suddenly, loud alarms begin blaring—they're PASS alarms, which firefighters wear; if the alarm doesn't detect any motion for thirty seconds, it automatically goes off to signal for help. The fact that hundreds of those are alarms are going off at once indicates just how many firefighters are trapped beneath the rubble with no hope of rescue.
Literature
- "The Blanks": A written version. The night that the Blanks come for Callum, Rachel lets herself think that maybe nothing will happen because a long time passes in silence. Then "a pane of glass in the front door breaks. It’s a tiny sound, a small silver crack followed by the single chime of a shard hitting the floor, but it’s the loudest noise in the world."
Live-Action TV
- Breaking Bad: In "Face Off", Gus is getting ready to kill Hector. Hector starts tapping his signal bell in response, but it isn't ringing properly. This serves as a sign that Walter helped him strap a bomb on the bottom of Hector's wheelchair, allowing Hector to kill Gus and Tyrus via suicide-bombing.
- Chernobyl: The very end of Episode 2 punctuates the problem of the volunteers becoming irradiated, sent to drain the water tanks that would become dangerously explosive, with an increasing clicking and eventual screech of a Gieger counter playing in the background, as the volunteers plunge into darkness with their failing flashlights.
- Doctor Who:
- Happens twice in the two-parter, "The End of Time".
- The Tenth Doctor's regeneration is prophesied by Ood Sigma, who cryptically tells him that just before it happens, someone "will knock four times". This is implied to be The Master, since his motif features a repeated sequence of four beats. Sure enough, when confronting the Doctor again, the Master loudly drums four beats on an oil drum in a junkyard, and the two fight. The Master strikes the Doctor in the chest with his Agony Beams, which seems to be fatal, but the Doctor is able to survive it, implying he's averted the prophecy through sheer willpower.
- At the climax of "The End Of Time, Part 2", the Doctor (with the Master's help) defeats Rassilon, foils his plan to destroy the universe, and collapses with joy at having seemingly averted the prophecy...then he hears four knocks. Wilfred Mott, his human companion, is trapped in a control booth that's about to be flooded with a lethal amount of radiation, and is knocking on the glass door, asking to be rescued. The Doctor realises the only way to do so is to take his place, and despite Wilfred's protests, he does exactly that, fulfilling the prophecy in a Heroic Sacrifice.
- A recurrent one plays throughout the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctor's tenure, aptly named "the Giggle", a musical palindrome ("Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha-ha-ha!") that is the distinct laugh of the Toymaker, a member of the Pantheon of Discord that was initially used to drive almost the entire human race insane. Everytime afterwards, if a certain character emits this laugh, that's how you know they're part of the Pantheon.
- Happens twice in the two-parter, "The End of Time".
- Power Rangers RPM: After a "Eureka!" Moment involving the two keys found within the prison where he and his sister were held, Dillon uses them to start the music chimes within his heirloom pocketwatch, but this time, it starts playing "Farmer in the Dell", the same music that Tenaya 7 whistles before she's about to attack. This signifies to Dillon that Tenaya 7 is actually his long-lost sister.
- As an end credits example, in the Stranger Things episode "The Flayed", two of the Mind Flayer's hosts, Tom and Bruce, suddenly liquefy into gooey puddles oozing toward each other. As Nancy and Jonathan chase the puddles down the hallway, the lights go out, and the next shot is an exit sign lighting up over a red, monstrous silhouette as the credits cut to black, and a roar is heard.
Theatre
- Hamilton: At the end of "Blow Us All Away", the countdown in Philip's duel with George Eacker is interrupted at the count of seven by the sound of Eacker shooting Philip in the back.
Video Games
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: At the end of Act I, the Expedition has defeated the act boss and Gustave and Maelle are sharing a heartwarming moment together. While they're talking, we suddenly hear a cane hitting the ground. Renoir has arrived, and is about to kill Gustave.
- Katawa Shoujo: At the end of Lilly's route, Hisao tries to chase her down before she can leave for Scotland, only to suffer a heart attack and collapse just as he catches sight of her. While he survives and is taken to hospital, he's left despondent at having lost Lilly forever... until he wakes up from a nap to the sound of the music box he had bought for Lilly earlier. Sure enough, Lilly herself walks in a moment later, revealing that she heard what happened and decided to stay.
- Portal 2: After putting Wheatley in charge of the Aperture Science Research Facility and demoting GLaDOS, Wheatley is overjoyed at finally being put in charge and is about to send Chell to the surface, laughing joyously at finally being able to right all the wrongs GLaDOS did to the facility. Then his laughing starts getting more sinister, and Chell's elevator abruptly stops, as Wheatley reneges on his promise and keeps you there.
- In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, near the end of the game, Cal Kestis has defeated the Second Sister and Cere appears to have gotten through to her. But then, everyone hears a distinctive breathing, and the Second Sister has a look of pure horror on her face, moments before Darth Vader shows up for the finale.
- As a Swan Song to the Mario series on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, the final boss battle of the game pulls out all the stops. First, the preview of the upcoming battle is bad enough when Kamek enlarges Baby Bowser, destroying his castle, but the game really ups the stakes when, instead of the cheesy organ music normally associated with the game's world-end boss battles, it starts to pull heavy metal guitar riffs, normally not associated with the cutesy Mario series, much less a cutesy storybook-like game such as Yoshi's Island.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate uses a Wham Sound in one of the DLC trailers to tell you who the next fighter is gonna be before they appear onscreen. The trailer starts with the Big Bad Galeem charging up a big attack, before taking a vertical slash from an unseen assailant and stopping in its tracks. After Galeem splits in half, "One-Winged Angel" starts to play before a zoom-in reveals a figure in the distance a couple seconds later; Sephiroth.
- In Tales of Vesperia, Captain Schwann's first audible line is a Wham Line not from what's said ("I guess there's no fooling the nose of a dog") but from the fact it's clearly Raven's voice, revealing that he'd been The Mole all along.
- Combined with the visuals of the game glitching out, Undertale shows that something is seriously wrong when the music starts stuttering on one note in the (changed) intro, in one's first neutral run through the game.
Visual Novels
- The Ace Attorney series is normally an inversion, as a correct evidence present is usually accompanied by the background music stopping. One correct deduction in the final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice is instantly accompanied by a Scare Chord, emphasizing that not only is this Awful Truth absolutely real, but that it's going to hit the cast like a truck.
Web Animation
- Muldoon's Logs: At the end of "Log #11", just as Muldoon starts walking away from the shed the Big One was trying to get into, he hears the distress cry of a Velociraptor. Seconds later, something starts beating on the inside of the shed door.
Western Animation
- Batman Beyond: Wham Line and Wham Sound all in one! In the episode "Out of the Past", an elderly Bruce is met by a still-young Talia al Ghul who offers him a chance to return to his youth via the Lazarus Pit, which Bruce takes. In the process, he learns that Ra's al Ghul had died in an event called the Near-Apocalypse of '09 and that the Lazarus Pit couldn't restore his body. However, when he and Terry attempt to escape Talia's compound after realizing that they are prisoners, Bruce hears Ra's' voice coming from a nearby room and investigates, finding only Talia. Talia confesses she had hoped Bruce would never discover the secret. The last word, however, abruptly switches from Talia's voice to Ra's'.
Talia: I did not want you to find out this way, but I suppose what's done is done. Detective.
- The Owl House: At the end of "Them's the Breaks, Kid", Raine is handed another does of the mind control tea Terra's been giving them for the past several episodes and a distinct whistling sound is heard when they blow on it, revealing that they'd been faking their brainwashing the entire time by using their "alter liquids with sound waves" spell that's triggered by whistling.
- The Simpsons: In "Who Shot Mr. Burns?: Part 1" a tense encounter with Mr. Burns at Springfield town hall, everybody leaves and there's an eerie stillness till Marge asks "Where is everybody?", and a gunshot goes off, after which Mr. Burns staggers into the town square, clutching his hands over a bullet wound before collapsing onto the town sundial, with his hands pointing to the sundial's "W" and "S".
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Played for Laughs in "Clams", when Mr. Krabs knows there is danger approaching him and the crew of his ship when he hears sinister music playing. He then sees a live-action band playing the music and yells at them to stop playing it.