Everyone: GASP!
Stan: Yes, you'd better gasp collectively!
Stan: Yes, you'd better gasp collectively!
Nothing says "Drama!" like gasping it, often preceded by a nicely dramatic Double Take. Originally came from Theater, since people far away had to see how terrified the actors were. Then used in silent films for similar reasons. There was an interview once with an old actress, who says that they gave her lessons on how to scream, and that they were taught to deliberately over-act, and always raise their hands up in half made fists to cover their mouth.
Now a Dead Horse Trope in live-action, save for comedy, where it's often exaggerated for maximum comic effect. But in Animated Shows, it's often played perfectly straight. But that doesn't make it any less out of place when it's used in animation that tends to be otherwise more subtle than typical Melodrama.
Bonus points if they actually shout the word "GASP!"
A Sub-Trope of Melodrama and The Take.
Compare Oh, Crap!, Milking the Giant Cow, Large Ham, Chewing the Scenery, Rule of Drama, Big "WHAT?!", Big Word Shout, Big "NO!", Comical Overreacting, Jaw Drop, Eye Take, Eye Pop.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Partnership to End Addiction: In "Needle," the addict gasps, with a One-Eyed Shot, right before he gets impaled with the giant needle.
- Suzy Puppy: The little girl gasps with glee when she first receives Suzy.
Anime and Manga
- Gasps are used extensively in manga (as SFX text) and in anime. Some intrigued folks have made compilations of gasps from different anime
. They tend to be used alongside moan-like sounds made when eating (which are often utilized to cover the fact that the voice actors weren't actually eating anything), and fake animal sounds (usually meows and woofs).
- Dragon Ball Z would use this tons of times, with gasps that lasted the greater part of a full minute. And they always make weird sounds and faces while doing it, to the point where it becomes a Large Ham moment instead of a significant effect.
- Chiaki Konaka loves this one very, very much. Watch Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze and Ghost Hound in case of doubt.
- Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist does it all of the time.
- Hellsing: Rip van Winkle does this in the 4th OVA when Alucard suddenly smashes her alarm clock, alerting her of his presence. She does it again when he catches the bullet she was firing at him in his mouth.
- Nichijou is just as guilty as any other anime. However, it has one subversion because it features Mai who's silent most of the time. She's actually meant to have a very eccentric personality anyway, and at the end of the day, it's more normal to gasp and moan all the time in anime.
- Occurs often in Gankutsuou.
- Sailor Moon's gasp in the SuperS movie is really overblown, moreso in The '90s English dub. Isn't there any oxygen left in the castle?
- Akagi. Have a compilation.
- Pokémon the Series: Gasps are common in the Pokémon anime, often to indicate surprise. Since Team Rocket's disguises almost always fool the twerps they follow and the majority of the episodes feature them as the primary villains, expect a gasp from our heroes Once per Episode.
Asian Animation
Comic Books
- Bone: The Barrelhaven regulars do this when Phoney tells them he's seen a dragon. Phoney then snipes, "I've got news for ya, gasping-boy! You got a lotta weird stuff in this crazy valley, so don't go blamin' us for your dragon problems!
- One issue of Groo the Wanderer has a large crowd perform a COLLECTIVE GASP!
- The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: The Simpsons, Professor Frink, and half of the Planet Express crew do this when they arrive at the Nuclear Power Plant and see that Mr. Burns has captured Hermes and Zoidberg, with the latter also being suspended over a barrel of toxic waste.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes parodied this, during a series of strips where Calvin floats away with his helium balloon, it pops and he figures it must be a dream. To try and wake up, he looks down toward the ground and "GASP!"s repeatedly. It doesn't work.
Films — Animation
- Cars: Mater does this many times whenever he's excited about something.
- Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. Jonah, Khalil, and the Pirates all take turns at dramatic gasping when they see just what "The Slap of No Return" is, before all doing a simultaneous gasp.
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Emmet does a hilariously long one when he discovers that Lucy was one of the singers in "Everything is Awesome".
- Open Season 2: A slightly aged Elliot does a long gasp after a slightly older Boog says to a slightly older Giselle, "We're partners, right?".
- Open Season 3: Giselle, Gisela, and Giselita all gasp after Doug, who is disguised as Boog, yells at them to go get him more berries and to massage his paws.
- Shrek 2: The three girls who discover the newly human Shrek dramatically gasp (and smile) when Donkey says "First we need to get you out of those clothes."
- Several women in the crowd during the climax of Mulan do this when the Huns show up, complete with shaking their heads 'no'.
- Everyone (and we do mean everyone) in the town of Swallow Falls does this in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs after Flint's food machine produces a rain of cheeseburgers. Flint's gasp is especially and hilariously protracted.
- Titanic: The Legend Goes On: Angelica gasps dramatically several times when she's on the boat.
- Beauty and the Beast: Belle does a quick gasp and turns away in horror when she first sees Beast.
- The Emperor's New Groove: Kronk, his shoulder angel, and even his devil gasp in shock when Yzma claims that she never liked his spinach puffs.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Esmeralda gasps in horror when she realizes Quasi's face is Not a Mask.
- Turning Red:
- Mei and her friends all gasp when Tyler threatens to blackmail Mei.
- Ming gasps when she finds out Mei has snuck out.
- Mei has a more positive gasp, complete with Tears of Joy, when she see 4*Town singing "Nobody Like U" to help with the ritual that will transform Ming back to normal.
- The Bad Guys (2022): Chief Luggins does this near the end when finding the Zumpango Diamond after it falls off Marmalade, believing that he was presumably the Crimson Paw.
Films — Live-Action
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel: The Chipmunks and Chipettes gasp upon seeing each other.
- Done for comedy in Spaceballs. When Dark Helmet orders Colonel Sandurz to go to "Ludicrous Speed!" everybody on the bridge gasps.
- Floop gasps and twitches when Minion turns on him in Spy Kids 1.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Envy gasps as part of her natural scenery chewing.
Vegan Police: On April 4th at 7:30 pm, you partook of a plate of chicken parmesan.
Envy: GASP!
Todd: [nervously] Chicken isn't vegan? - Ash pulls off an amazing one in Army of Darkness (while his face is covered in soot for good measure) when he goes to squish one of his tiny, evil mirror copies and ends up getting a huge nail through his foot instead.
- Back to the Future 1: Doc Brown gets a classic reaction face when a burning wind-up car drives into a pile of oily rags.
Music
- Imagine Dragons: Dan Reynolds in Radioactive:
- I'm breathing in...the chemicals...*huuuuuuh* *ahhhhh*
- Busta Rhymes in the middle his famous Motor Mouth verse from Chris Brown 's "Look At Me Now" to really draw comical emphasis on how fast he's rapping.
- Matt Bellamy of Muse, and how. He does this in between almost every lyric he sings, intentionally or unintentionally, and quite loudly to the point where fans often joke about it. It's especially bad in albums like Absolution where he's basically fighting for his life.
Podcasts
- Episode three of Mystery Show revolves around a lost belt buckle. Among other impressive ornamentation, it includes a miniature toaster that ejects tiny toast. Starlee lets out a Gasp when she sees it in action for the first time.
Puppet Shows
- In "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" puppet skit, the boy gasps when he sees the wolf approaching him before the wolf reveals to the boy that he isn't really evil.
- In the "Gunni Wolf" puppet ski, the little girl gasps repeatedly.
Radio
- I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again had characters saying 'gasp' pretty often. The most notable example is probably when the entire cast, upon being told that their in-universe radio station is being closed down, react with "SHOCKED GASP!"
Theatre
- The Book of Mormon: During "Spooky Mormon Hell Dream," we have the spirits of Genghis Khan, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolf Hitler, and Johnnie Cochran show up in one verse to sing about the horrible things they did in life that damned them. Elder Price then proceeds to claim he's worse than all of them for the thoughtless way he treated his mission companion. Hitler, Genghis Khan, Dahmer, and Cochran all gasp in horror.
- Parodied in Urinetown, when Pennywise reveals that Hope is her daughter, the poor react with a "Gasp." When she follows it up with the fact that she is Hope's mother, the poor give a much more dramatic, "GASP!"
Video Games
- Brain Dead 13: Lance does this painfully and in fright when he sees that one of the giant worms in the Spooky Silent Library has burrowed its way through his chest in one death scene.
- A comically frequent mannerism of Toan throughout Dark Cloud.
- Discworld Noir: The film noir-ish protagonist Lewton is usually pretty hard-boiled and cool, but when he meets Death in person, he gives an enormous gasp, with the overacted line, "You're DEATH!" What's even funnier is that the character onscreen isn't animated any differently than usual, so it's all in the voice acting. Unfortunately, unlike most things Discworld, this is likely not meant as parody and is just a case of bad acting.
- The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: Played for Drama in the first announcement trailer. Takumi gasps as he sees Karua's unconscious body a few feet away from him. Even as Sirei shows up, he can only stare in horror at seeing his best friend so close to death.
- In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II, this is the only reaction Rean can muster when he finds out that the Evil Chancellor Giliath Osborne, who is one of the scariest political figures in all of Western Zemuria, is his biological father.
- This Starry Midnight We Make: After the third quest for her, learning about Yi Xinghua's missing brother, Yi Xingli:
Hamomoru & Shingoh: (gasp)
- Tales of the Abyss: Oh, Jade Curtiss, you never disappoint:
Jade: GASP!
Luke: What?! What is it?
Jade: It's a recipe we don't know yet!! - Happens with regularity in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, almost Once Per Chapter. It starts becoming rather funny hearing the whole cast "GASP" when some huge plot revelation is dropped... which is frequent.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Manana verbalised a 'gasp' when she attempted to go for seconds at dinner and found that everything in her pot had already been eaten. The following morning, Sena, who had an occasional habit of mimicking the speech patterns of those around her, found that their food supplies had been stolen during the night, and let out a 'gasp' of her own as she raised the alarm with the others.
Visual Novels
- In Double Homework, the player can get this reaction from Johanna and Tamara by answering Johanna’s question about what he did with Tamara the previous night:
Protagonist: We made out in one of the booths.
Web Animation
- Battle for Dream Island has a very recycled sound used by the contestants, it has been used in the entire series.
- The Demented Cartoon Movie! takes this to its logical extreme, with everyone letting out a "gasp" before the white screen appears with a "GASP".
- Spelled out in Bonus Stage episode Evil's New Groove.
- Homestar Runner uses a "GASP!" stock effect whenever a character declares they're going to do something daring (or what they think is daring.) A good example is A Death-Defying Decemberween.
Webcomics
- Seen in this episode of Darths & Droids, then doubled for good measure an episode later.
- In El Goonish Shive, Elliot and Ashley both say "gasp" during an argument with each other in response to the same comment said by the other person.
- Captain Kirk does this in Planet of Hats when damning video evidence is shown to him during his court martial.
- In Sequential Art has Kat gasping with an extra Jaw Drop when she realizes that she just saw her old arch-enemy Hilary affably hanging out with her roommate.
- SideQuested: When Charlie contradicts the king in front of the entire court, everybody gasps. When she refuses to fight back in a duel, they all do it again.
- This xkcd-strip.
Web Original
