http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect

The reality tends to color people surprised.

Dorothy L. Sayers, introduction to , introduction to The Man Born to Be King "It is doubtless true, as somebody pointed out, that a yoke of oxen would be driven, not with a whip but with a goad; but the lash of a whip can be heard on the air, whereas it is useless to ask the studio-effects-man to stand by making a noise like an ox-goad."

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The Coconut Effect describes any sound effect, special effect, or design feature that is unrealistic, but still has to be included because viewers have been so conditioned to expect it that its absence would be even more jarring.

The trope namer is the traditional foley effect of using hollow coconut shells to recreate the sound of horse hooves in theater, and later radio, film and television.

Horses hooves do sound like a pair of coconut shells being tapped together... when the horse is walking on cobblestones or some other hard pavement. However, it's fair to say that the vast majority of depictions of horses are upon dirt, grass, or other unimproved terrain where the sound would be muffled to inaudibility. Nevertheless, filmmakers and radio producers stuck the coconut sound on the audio track even when the horse was on grass or gravel (rarely even in synch with the movement of the horse) until audiences came to expect the specific audio cue. Real recorded hoofbeats on later, more sophisticated productions sounded "wrong" to test audiences (or more likely, clueless producers).

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Many other Stock Sound Effects are prime examples:

This trope does not apply exclusively to sound, but to any instance of an element that is used simply because the audience, consciously or unconsciously, expects it to be included, and/or because Stock Visual Metaphors allow writers to avoid long expositions via Show, Don't Tell:

This trope has a sister trope in the Rule of Perception, which explains why one would bother with any of these effects at all.

The color version of this trope is Stock Object Colors and Typical Cartoon Animal Colors.

See also Reality Is Unrealistic, Artistic License, Science Marches On, Common Hollywood Sex Traits, Mickey Mousing, Radio Voice, Vinyl Shatters, and the semi-related Extreme Graphical Representation. Related in concept is The CSI Effect and Eagleland Osmosis. Nothing to do with Coconut Superpowers (except insofar as both relate to Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Thankfully, this won't be causing any real-world casualties. We hope. Compare Aluminum Christmas Trees and Small Reference Pools. Also see Necessary Weasel.

Examples:

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Media in General / Common Tropes

Anime and Manga

In many anime, most noticeably Rurouni Kenshin, every time a sword moves while drawn, it makes a metallic clicking noise. This is usually used like gun cocking to indicate that a character is serious. This is only Truth in Television for a loose sword with an all-metal hilt, not a common construction for Japanese katana. Oddly enough, the Trust And Betrayal OVA (which is done in a more realistic style than the TV anime) actually uses this clicking sound in the correct context — it shows that the sword has not been used for some time and has not been maintained and emphasizes the desperation of the situation. Under normal circumstances you should never hear this sound.

Pani Poni Dash!: When Becky and the 1-C class go into Himeko's mind, Himeko serves a meal of crab...only it tastes like cheap imitation crab, which Himeko is more familiar with than the real thing.

More casual anime fans and non-fans in the West expect anime to have a particular character design, with semi-realistic bodies and distinct eyes and hair, commonly called the "anime style." As a result of this, some of these fans tend to either be baffled or react negatively whenever there's an anime that doesn't fit into their tunnel vision perceptions of Japanese media, forgetting that artists have vastly differing styles and unaware of the fact that Japanese animation was inspired by Western animation. Even hardcore anime fans run into this problem; with the increased involvement of Western studios helping with Japanese animation in The New '10s, some think the more "non-standard" art styles are due to demands from said studios rather than the Japanese studios themselves. What further muddles it is that some of the more notable character designers that helped in Western animation throughout its history were in fact Japanese, meaning their time working on those series would inevitably rub off on them when they did original properties (as was the case with the team behind The Big O).

Expect any crime anime that takes place in the United States during Prohibiton to exclusively use Italian hoods, Irish and Jews be damned.

One Gundam technical text says that Mobile Suit computers will supply sound effects for their pilots' benefit while acknowledging that Space Is Not, In Fact, Noisy. However, this doesn't change the fact that every single Gundam universe has sound effects in space battles...

Comic Books

The Flash has long been able to use his super speed to perform a great many feats which make absolutely no sense note (and we're not just talking "man who can run at the speed of light" not making sense, we're talking "his speed is given as the explicit reason that he's able to do things that have nothing to do with how fast he's going" not making sense) , but kind of feel like things a speedster should be able to do: he can vibrate the molecules of his body at super speed note (unlike normal folks, who can only make their molecules vibrate at normal speed) , to let him become intangible note (in real life, this would be known as "evaporating" and would be fatal) ; he can run across the ocean or up the sides of buildings as if he were running on the ground note (which could maybe work if you assume he's actually launching himself at superspeed and hurtling up/across as opposed to actually running, except that (1) he can change direction while doing it (2) he doesn't require any kind of ramp or slope to transition from running horizontally to running vertically, and (3) he would hit escape velocity and rocket off into space if he moved that fast) ; he can carry people at near-light speed without hurting them note (the fact that he can do it without hurting himself is a Required Secondary Power note (it would make sense if he moved his hand at the same speed as the bullet as he caught them and then gradually slowed it down, but this would take more than a few inches to do) . Needless to say, every other speedster in The DCU has to be able to do all these things too. In fact, they've added a special phlebotinum to the Flash canon - the Speed Force - to explain the more impossible ones (it lets him absorb speed from bullets, impart it upon people he carries, and gives him total control of his body's molecules). Most non-DC speedsters won't be able to turn intangible, but they'll still be expected to be able to run across water and along walls and ceilings and to catch bullets as though their palms were armored - hey, the Flash can do it, why the heck can't Quicksilver!? The running across water is justified: it's been calculated that someone running at 100 kilometers an hour (more or less, depending on bodyweight and foot size) or greater would be able to run across water.

, but kind of feel like things a speedster should be able to do: he can vibrate the molecules of his body at super speed , to let him become intangible ; he can run across the ocean or up the sides of buildings as if he were running on the ground ; he can carry people at near-light speed without hurting them . Needless to say, every other speedster in The DCU has to be able to do all these things too. In fact, they've added a special phlebotinum to the Flash canon - the Speed Force - to explain the more impossible ones (it lets him absorb speed from bullets, impart it upon people he carries, and gives him total control of his body's molecules). Most non-DC speedsters won't be able to turn intangible, but they'll still be expected to be able to run across water and along walls and ceilings and to catch bullets as though their palms were armored - hey, the Flash can do it, why the heck can't Quicksilver!? The running across water is justified: it's been calculated that someone running at 100 kilometers an hour (more or less, depending on bodyweight and foot size) or greater would be able to run across water. The use of huge, gaudy onomatopoeia (or, depending on how people describe the phenomenon, "sound effects", "Batman words", or even "noise words"). It's obviously a ludicrous convention in more serious comic works (bright red letters saying "BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA" and "ZARTZ!" and "KRA-THOOM!" look downright grotesque in the middle of a realistic shootout with blood spraying everywhere), but artists still have to include them or otherwise "it wouldn't look like a comic book."

Whether or not Clark Kenting is used effectively, or if Clark doesn't change his mannerisms at all other than wearing glasses, it doesn't matter-every incarnation of Superman will use some variant of the classic trope. He is the Trope Namer, after all.

Comic Strips

In FoxTrot, Jason Fox is eating a watermelon and tells Andrea how it doesn't taste like his watermelon gum. Naturally this earns a weird look from her.

Fan Works

In one chapter of the Fanfiction Nightmare Night And Nyx, Princess Luna decided to tease her older sister by wearing a Nightmare Night costume... of Celestia as a "Pretty Pretty Pony Princess." Along with deliberately ridiculous levels of girly accoutrements and shades of pink, it featured its own cloud of twinkling lights— that made actual tinkling noises and even, on occasion, said the words "twinkle twinkle" in tiny voices...

Films — Animation

In Incredibles 2, Elastigirl rides an electric-engined motorbike — but it sounds like a petrol-engined bike. This is probably because most people wouldn't know what an electric vehicle sounds like, and because they expect a bike to sound like, well, a bike.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

The short story Damned Spot by Julian Rathbone, a Deconstruction of historical whodunnits, notes that oak darkens with age, so the dark oak we associate with Elizabethan architecture and furniture would have been quite pale at the time, before deciding that it's more important the setting fits the modern perception of Elizabethan era.

In the Hyperion Cantos, farcasters are implanted with devices to make a person stepping through feel like he is traveling.

Taking aim at the hourglass/spinning wheel/whatever which is there to convince you that your computer is actually doing something, Discworld's Hex, which is as close as they have to a computer (or more precisely a semi-sentient magical computerish thing) will sometimes drop an actual hourglass from a spring in order to demonstrate that Hex is doing something. Of course, nobody really knows if he is or not, but they do wait patiently.

The Cyril M. Kornbluth story The Marching Morons features this in cars, which have speedometers that go to somewhere around 200 MPH and exhausts that literally belch fire, both purely for effect. The modern-day "protagonist" notices that when the speedometer reads 140 he feels like he's going maybe 60, and then later notices that the engine roar cuts off a fraction of a second AFTER the car stops (because it's an effect added to make it seem like the cars are faster and more powerful than they really are).

Live-Action TV

Music

The warmth of analogue recordings is caused partly by tape hum, which often makes people think digital recordings sound cold and sterile by comparison. Note that this largely depends on the type of music. The same could be said of the faint hum and crackle of vinyl: people missed it so much that it actually resurfaced as a medium and vinyl records of brand new albums can be found in stores.

The Loudness War has led to certain people thinking that maximum loudness, low dynamic range, 'whispering' on the voices (caused by parts of the vocal track to have come off) and excessive brightness are a sign of improved technology, when most of the time they are just to make the music louder.

We've gotten so used to hearing some type of post-processing on vocals (be it reverb, double-tracking, flangers, phasers, you name it) that just hearing raw vocals on a track can sound jarring. Don't believe me? Try it yourself. Actually, this sounds jarring because studio recordings are made in sound-dampening rooms to avoid accidental undesired effects on the music. Real-life sound however sounds very different, because the acoustics of the surroundings produce echo and reverberations. This is why there's a science to the construction of auditoria and theatres used for live music. Thus some post-processing is required to make studio recordings sound more realistic. Of course in practice, the amount of post-processing used goes way beyond adding realism, and wraps back to unrealistic.



Professional Wrestling

Back in the '60s, televised Professional Wrestling placed a microphone under the ring which made some very impressive sounds when wrestlers jumped off the top rope or stomped their foot during a forearm smash. They still do that. It's why fights backstage seem to fall a bit flat - the bumps don't have the same 'oomph' as bumps in the ring.

Fans often tend to complain at the 'dead crowds' on WWE television. The seemingly uninterested crowd are in fact very animated but the sound is just not being captured. If you watch fan footage recorded on someone's phone from the crowd, the noise is deafening. WWE just doesn't mic up the crowd because it runs the risk of people's personal conversations being broadcast on the air among other things. So the only time you'll actually hear a lively crowd is if they're screaming insanely at the top of their voices.

The big smack you hear when someone gets superkicked or big booted is of course the wrestler slapping their leg for dramatic effect. Slapping your leg and stomping for dramatic effect is falling out of practice these days. Also the big smack made when someone gets kicked in the head is usually caused by the kick pads the wrestler is wearing. Also wrestlers are taught to throw punches with the meaty part of their arm because it makes a nice impactful sound when hitting off the face.

Blading. Since the 1970s (if not earlier), American audiences have grown accustomed to fight scenes in action movies that cause the combatants to bleed like stuck pigs, when in fact mild bruises and maybe a few chipped teeth are bound to be the results of a real-life fight. If pro wrestlers didn't bleed as much as they do, spectators might suspect that they "aren't really hurting each other" (even though they are), or that the staged fights aren't "realistic" enough. Hence, the custom of wrestlers slicing themselves on the sly for that good old "bloodbath" effect.

Radio

The Reduced Shakespeare Company Radio Show mentions the use of coconut shells as a character starts to ride away.

In the 1930s, Australian radio broadcasts of cricket overseas weren't actually done from the ground. The commentary was based on ball by ball telegraphs, and sound effects such as canned applause and an artificial bat-on-ball sound were used. The trope didn't come into play because listeners knew the difference from having listened to local games; "synthetic broadcasts", as they were known, were abandoned in 1938 when shortwave reception had improved enough that the action could be delivered directly.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air used the classic coconut effect in the first scene of the first episode, an adaptation of Dracula, as Jonathan Harker's coach makes its way to Dracula's castle.

Tabletop Games

Laser weapons in Rifts are said to come with built-in noisemakers to satisfy customers who expect sci-fi-style sounds when they're fired. Otherwise, they would be mostly silent.

Lasguns in the Warhammer 40,000 universe have explored every angle of this trope they could find. In the art and the video games they are huge highly-visible coconuts, because otherwise you wouldn't know they were firing. In the fiction they are described as firing invisible, near-silent beams. There is a button to make the beam visible again, but this is officially for training purposes (read: playing laser tag) rather than actual combat. The only 'Pew', so to speak, is the audible snap of the air ionizing. This also comes up when lasguns are given to Guard regiments who come from planets where most readily available weapons use chemical propellant. Guardsmen who expect guns to make a loud bang and flash when fired get fake noises and lights because the familiarity is good for morale. Guardsmen from less developed worlds are used to the relatively silent bow or crossbow and get no special treatment, while Guard regiments on appropriately advanced worlds are already used to las weapons. In a similar fictional case, the guns in Gantz make a pathetically small sound and do nothing more than glow at the barrel. In reality the predominant noise is the sound of cooling fans and water pumps. Occasionally, there will be a soft "pfft" sound when the laser fires, and that comes from the noise of the Xenon flash tubes used to pump the laser. High power microwave sources are also silent except for the cooling. What fun is a death ray that sounds like your air conditioner? High power laser weapons actually might not be silent so much as they would switch which end the noise is on. The impact of a laser weapon on a target would actually produce a loud bang since it's vaporizing material into a rapidly expanding gas cloud; AKA an explosion. This might incidentally make them pretty crappy stealth weapons since the sound is inherent to their damage mechanism and can't really be dampened.

Also in Warhammer 40,000, the Orks manage to justify and exploit this trope. Because their latent reality warping abilities make anything a sufficient number of Orks believe become true, Red things go faster, louder guns do more damage, and things that look science-y and have most of the wires in the right place can do whatever a halfway competent Mekboy says they can. A commonly held theory is that orks specializing in stealth gain much of their inexplicable ability to infiltrate locations despite being, well, extremely large, heavily armed, green slabs of muscle with impulse control issues from the fact that most orks believe stealthy, disciplined orks do not exist. It's canon that they get a considerable boost from the fact most humans don't believe they exist, and so get lazy about perimeter security.

Toys

Figures of Ben Reilly as the Scarlet Spider invariably includes his hands in Spider-Man's classic "web-shooting" pose. However, Ben never actually did that; he modified his web-shooters to fire without the pose. But the pose is so iconic that it gets included anyway.

Video Games

Web Comics

Western Animation

Reflections of shiny objects in many animations often appear as sparkles even if the objects or light sources weren't moving at all. "Ting" and "ping" and sometimes metallic "whii" sounds are quite common to accompany with reflections.

The Simpsons: From the episode "Radioactive Man": Martin: Uh, Sir, why don't you just use real cows?

Painter: Cows don't look like cows on film. You gotta use horses.

Ralph: What do you do if you want something that looks like a horse?

Painter: Ehh, usually we just tape a bunch of cats together. You can also thank the opening (as well as numerous episodes, like the Treehouse of Horror short The Terror of Tiny Toon) for making a lot of people think Plutonium is a glowing green rod. So much so that a lot of people are surprised that Plutonium is actually a silver-gray metal that glows red or orange. Radium is the material that glows green, and even then it doesn't glow green on its own: as it decays it releases ionizing radiation which excites fluorescent chemicals to cause the glow.

Done in the CG Clone Wars show with R2-D2, where effects like brush strokes (as if he were hand-animated) were included on it to make it appear like it had been produced by hand. Lampshaded on Ace of Cakes, when Charm City Cakes were commissioned to make a cake to look just like that version of R2, and they noted that they had to also include those elements, which they generally tried desperately to avoid.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Being a setting populated by sentient equines, the show uses the old "two coconuts banging together" sound effect in interesting ways. For example things that would normally involve hand sound effects are replaced by the coconut sound effect to reflect the fact that the characters are hoofed creatures who are using their forelegs as a substitute for hands.

Exploited Trope In-Universe in Batman Beyond by an infiltration android that Grew Beyond Their Programming and was hunted by the NSA for it. After taking heavy fire and falling several stories, said android (named Zeta) is left a burning wreck. Turns out, he was using his holographic projector (that allowed him to pass for human by superposing the hologram over his robotic frame) to fake the flames, and the agents, clearly believing that Damage Is Fire, were fooled by the holographic flames long enough to convince them to break line of sight so that he could create a new human like illusion and leave before the agents get in line of sight range again. And then Batman drops explosive to create some rubble and make it seem like Zeta self-destructed. The NSA team leader was Genre Savvy enough to order his squad to dig into the rubble until he finds what's left of Zeta or is forced to realize he's been had...

Lampshaded in Rick and Morty, when Rick's ship gets a flat tire in the middle of space. Morty:It's just crazy, how much it feels like a regular flat! Rick: Oh, no, no. That's just my custom-programmed, fully-immersive flat tire indication experience. I...I can turn it off. (He does. The ship stops shaking.) I thought it was cooler than the celebrity voice package, but here. (Presses another button.) Christopher Walken: Flat tire? You should be Walken! Morty: Oof. Rick: Yeah.

Real Life