Did You Know Some Of The Most Iconic Sounds In Films Have Really Surprising Origins?

Everything we love has a memory attached to it. Like when you watch Star Wars for the first time, the “pew-pew” of the blasters strikes you. This sound becomes synonymous to the bigger franchise and gets engraved into our collective psyche. Some of these very popular sounds have interesting origins.

Here are a few of those interesting stories about the origins of these sounds.

1. The Willhelm Scream is used in almost every famous movie from the ’70s and ’80s.

Be it every episode from the original Star Wars trilogy or the Indiana Jones franchise, the Willhelm Scream is a sound that you’ve definitely heard. It is used as a special sound effect every time someone is shot or in pain.

2. Samuel L. Jackson used the word “mother-fucker” to overcome his stammer/stutter.

According to the internet lore, the ‘L’ in Samuel L. Jackson stands for Motherfucker. The famous Hollywood actor has used this slang more than any other counterpart in movies. He started using this term to overcome his stutter. Praise the lord for he gave him a stutter and that gave us a “motherfucker” from him.

3. The Star Wars blaster sound is a guy smacking a cable with a hammer.

The iconic “pew pew” sound of a blaster was accidentally made by one of the extras on set when he smacked a cable, from the set of the Millennium Falcon, with a hammer. George Lucas thought that it was a great noise for the blasters and used it in A New Hope. It’s great that one of the most loved sounds from the biggest franchise in the world was a result of an accident.

4. The sounds of the velociraptors communicating with each other in Jurassic Park are that of turtles having sex.

The dinosaur sounds from the famed franchise are basically the sounds of whales, horses, turtles and koala bears. The raptor noises from Jurassic World is basically the sound of turtles having sex. It must be pretty interesting how the sound engineers for the movie had come across the turtles mating video.

5. The opening of the doors on the Starship Enterprise is paper sliding from an envelope

Star Trek is loved by millions across the world. When the show first started out, they faced a huge challenge of filming a space adventure series with limited budget. These futuristic sound effects were really creative because who knew that day-to-day objects would sound just like a space ship that travels through the universe.

6. The Doctor Who TARDIS noise is keys scraping on piano wire

‘Time and Relative Dimensions In Space’ aka TARDIS is one of the most revered ‘rides’ in pop-culture. The weird glitch-y sound it makes is basically a key scraping on piano wire. Considering the time when Doctor Who first started, this extreme jugaad is a story that everyone needs to know.

7. The voices of LoTR’s Balrog and Ringwraiths are a concrete block and plastic cups.

The second greatest trilogy in pop-culture has its fair share of interesting jugaad in the making. When they needed to come up with the voices for some of the more fantastical creatures, they couldn’t just let a voice artist to do the same. Instead, they looked for some seemingly common items and created a voice out of it.