Some schmuck just "won" The Scary Maze Game, they'd say.
Dwight: What is this thing you just sent me?
Jim: Oh, it's so cool. It's a picture of the most relaxing meadow you've ever seen.
Dwight: I know what this is. It's supposed to lure me into a sense of calmness, then a ghoul pops up and scares me.
Jim: Now, why would I do that? Dwight, of all people, I know you're unscarable.
Jim: Oh, it's so cool. It's a picture of the most relaxing meadow you've ever seen.
Dwight: I know what this is. It's supposed to lure me into a sense of calmness, then a ghoul pops up and scares me.
Jim: Now, why would I do that? Dwight, of all people, I know you're unscarable.
A Screamer Prank (usually referred to as a "Screamer") is a type of Jump Scare that's combined with a Surprisingly Creepy Moment or Disguised Horror Story. Originating on the Internet, it pretends at first to be a game, a test, a still image, a video that is not meant to be scary, etc. (more often than not, you will be instructed to look very closely at the image or turn your volume up). Then a scary image (usually a Nightmare Face) pops up with either a scream or a Scare Chord, which is when you realize — after you've pried yourself off the ceiling, of course — that you've been pranked.
While the shrill female screams are more common, loud male screams are not by any means unheard of. All screamers are supposed to startle the viewer, for as a Jump Scare, they may give a viewer a brief sense of being attacked by what's more harshly going "Boo!" as though The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, though some take it further with the Nightmare Fuel and others are so comical or ineptly done that they end up being Nightmare Retardant.
These are known for utilizing Schmuck Bait to a shameless degree and one of the many reasons why one should be wary of clicking on certain links on the internet. Also see Shock Site (horrifying imagery without the Jump Scare) and Last Note Nightmare, the latter being when a song has a creepy ending.
Please refrain from adding Video Examples to this trope.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
open/close all folders
General:
Advertising
- Possible Ur-Example: A PSA from the 1970s showed a wind-up toy Cymbal-Banging Monkey while a childlike voice said, "They say that people on heroin have a monkey on their back. Isn't that cute?" Then the camera zooms in on the monkey's face as it turns more realistic (gaining claws, pure black eyes and curled fangs) while a loud primate scream plays. Here's a link to the PSA in question.
- This Japanese tire commercial features two Japanese men driving out in the snow before stopping at a female ghostly figure. At the 17 second mark, the figure immediately appears right on the windshield with a loud sound. There is a warning at the beginning that it is not for the faint of heart.
- This commercial for Carb Solutions takes place at a baby shower, where a guest offers another some snack food. When the person declines the food and instead decides to have the carb bar she's enjoying, the face of the other guest suddenly turns demonic.
- Busch Gardens' 2011 Howl-O-Scream TV ad is scary in and of itself, what with the creepy imagery and dark Nursery Rhyme being played in the background, but the kicker comes at the end, when the song ends ("Come play in my garden...") and a female zombie tears through the "O" and lets out a very loud scream. If you're that curious, here's the ad.
- This ad for the 2016 Six Flags Fright Fest starts as a normal ad, with people enjoying the park, and a woman voiceover saying "There's something for everyone at Six Flags". Cue a Monster Clown jumping onto the screen like in the K-Fee car ad and screaming.
- Universal's Halloween Horror Nights did this for the event's commercial in 2008, which had the theme of Bloody Mary. Considering the famous legend, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out when the screamer comes up.
- K-fee is a coffee beverage sold by a German company with a similar name. They have made nine different television commercials that imitate the screamers found online (they were actually shown on TV in Germany). The most popular one is the one featuring a car driving through a scenic country road and disappearing behind some trees, after which a green zombie jumps up with a loud monstrous scream; this is then followed with their slogan, "You'll never feel more awake." The reason why it is more popular than the other commercials is because it was passed around the internet, and an urban legend that went along with it claimed that it was a commercial that was never aired on TV because a ghostly mist would appear next to the car about halfway through the commercial. In all, there wound up being nine K-Fee screamer commercials:
- "K-Fee Car" - The infamous car commercial that started it all.
- "K-Fee Beach" - Shows a couple on the beach looking at each other, then when they are about to kiss, a pale-skinned gargoyle (alternatively known as "batboy") pops up with the scream.
- "K-Fee Boardwalk" - Shows a boardwalk panning to the right before the gargoyle comes from the top of the screen upside down with the scream.
- "K-Fee Buddah" - Shows a young girl meditating, then the gargoyle pops up with the scream.
- "K-Fee Golf" - Shows a golfer man preparing his golf shot, then the gargoyle comes from the top of the screen upside down with the scream right when the golfer hits the ball.
- "K-Fee Fish" - Shows a man fishing in the water, then the zombie comes out of the water with the scream.
- "K-Fee Meadow" - Shows a meadow with yellow flowers, a bike, and a tree, then the zombie pops up with the scream.
- "K-Fee Surfing" - Shows a man running out to the beach to surf, but before he reaches the beach, the zombie pops up with the scream.
- "K-Fee Yoga" - Shows a person doing yoga on top of a cliff from a far view during a sunset, then the zombie pops up with the scream, this time shaded from the dark. This is widely considered to be the scariest of all of the adverts.
- "K-Fee Car
- In 2006, there were three parody commercials released on German television to advertise a new variant of K-Fee coffee with less caffeine.
- "K-Fee Car Lite Parody" - Shows a car driving by and a girly man pops up where the zombie would pop up in the normal version. The music is also higher pitched in this parody.
- "K-Fee Beach Lite Parody" - Shows a couple on the beach looking at each other, then when they are about to kiss, a man in a bear costume pops up and makes a funny noise. The music is also higher pitched in this parody.
- "K-Fee Golf Lite Parody" - Shows a golfer man preparing his golf shot, then a right-side up man wearing a cheap devil mask pops up with an Un-Evil Laugh. (you can actually see the horns before he jumps up) when the golfer hits the ball. There are also many more birds chirping in this parody than in the original.
- "K-Fee Car Lite Parody
- Video featuring all of the K-Fee Commercials (including the parodies)
- Video featuring all of the K-Fee Commercials with their jump-scares removed
- Just for fun, all 9 K-Fee commercials playing at the same time in windows
- With The Last Exorcism coming to DVD and Blu-ray on December 27, 2010, a Christmas themed screamer was made to promote it with a woman wearing a Santa dress taking off her coat and gloves and stepping off the screen before coming back as a screaming scary woman.
- An ad for horror film The Nun drew ire for not only utilizing this trope in an ad played before YouTube videos, but also for imitating an iOS volume bar being lowered on the screen before showing the movie's monster appearing suddenly with a loud scream. This resulted in some people getting panic attacks or dropping and potentially breaking their phones. The backlash resulted in the ad getting taken down after attention was brought to it, and the site took action against the ad for violating its shocking content policy for ads. This ad would often play when someone was trying to watch completely innocuous videos unrelated to horror or the film.
- In 2012, Liberty University put out two advertisements for its yearly Scaremare event. The first one is 30 seconds long and contains no screamer. The longer version is twice as long, and as soon as you think it's about to end, a cloaked man with a scary-looking red and white striped mask abruptly comes from the side with a loud shriek and tries to hit you with an axe.
- A 18-rated British PSA from 1987 called Scavengers (watch at your own risk) takes this to the next level with animal flesh infested with maggots and flies coming out of a fur coat at 1:13 with multiple loud synth chords. The only time this advertisement was publicly shown was during the previews before horror movies in British movie theaters.
- For the DVD releases of certain Tales From The Crypt seasons, the website advertising the release would have a Screamer Prank load up on the splash page before the website did in which you could then forward the prank over to a friend as an e-card. For instance, Season 5's prank had a still image of an Ice Cream truck from the episode "People Who Live In Brass Hearses" whilst an Ice Cream van jingle started to play faintly, likely with some text to "Look Closely" at the image, only to quickly cut to a still image of the Crypt Keeper shaking up and down whilst his laugh played at a loud volume.
Anime & Manga
- In Toradora!, Minori actually pulls one of these on Ryuji personally to answer his question. It's funnier than it is scary and really must be seen to be believed.
Asian Animation
- BoBoiBoy: Computer demonstrates what a ghost is to Adu Du by displaying two similar images on her screen, prompting him to find their differences. The screen suddenly switches to a picture of a ghost, scaring Adu Du out of his wits.
Comic Strips
- An off-computer variant in Calvin and Hobbes, where Calvin performs an "Emergency Broadcast test" to his mother - it's just him screaming very loudly.
Calvin: Had this been a real emergency, the scream you just heard would have been followed by lots more like it...[Cut to Calvin having been sent to his room] Some day when the house caves in, she'll thank me.
Fan Works
- The Blue Pendrive: Gonzalo himself discusses this on the nature of whatever the hell the countdown brings when it hits 0, stating that the horrible, female scream he can hear sounds like such kinds of pranks but far worse. It's ambiguous if the game itself is actually an example of this, given the lethality and lack of an origin to it.
- In Megumi the Trickster, Megumi tricks Hime into watching a screamer video, which scares Hime right off her chair.
Films — Live-Action
- In-Universe in Bedeviled: Two of the main characters prank their friend into watching a video that is supposed to have hypnotic imagery, and film his reaction as it shows him a Jump Scare from a Monster Clown.
Live-Action TV
- Dick & Dom in da Bungalow essentially made this a game, in the form of Bogies. Dick and Dom (plus occasional guests and celebrities) would go to public places and gradually increase the volume when saying the word "Bogies". Eventually, they'd get so loud that the word would practically have to be screamed, and the camera crew made sure to capture startled reactions of people nearby.
- In-Universe in The Good Wife episode "Parallel Construction, Bitches". A couple of NSA techs acting as Those Two Guys are goofing off while on the clock and one of them shoots the other a video. The second one says it'd better not be one of those videos where a guy suddenly jumps up in front of the camera to scare you. The first one says it's a cat video. It's a guy-jumps-up-in-front-of-camera video.
- iCarly made one exclusively for the iCarly.com website as an "iGotcha" in which Spencer made a video in which focused on his giant robot sculpture to which if you were to look long enough, the robot would appear to be crying. After zooming in on the robot's face for a few seconds, Spencer jumps up from the bottom of the frame and screams at the audience.
- In the Modern Family episode "Undeck the Halls", Jay Pritchett watches Miracle on 34th Street which has had a screamer edited into it by Manny as a prank.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus could have had something like this. An idea was floated to create an episode where the master volume was slowly decreased throughout the broadcast, leading to viewers turning up the volume, perhaps multiple times, and then make an exceedingly-loud noise at the very end, perhaps even enough to blow up television sets. This was dropped when they figured that even their surprisingly lenient bosses at the BBC would probably cancel the show if they went through with it.
- Saturday Night Live: A 2010 sketch about victims of viral videos has one guy (played by Bobby Moynihan) get filmed playing a variation of The Scary Maze game. When he gets jump scared, he punches through the computer and cries about how it's not funny, as well as peeing himself.
- Space Force (2020): Dr. Mallory actually pulls one on the scientists working by showing them a video of 'bacteria' on his laptop. Turns out to be a Jump Scare of an evil face bursting at the screen with a loud scream. From the way it was shot, it wouldn't be out of the question that it was meant to startle the viewer too.
- On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon pulls this on The Roots by convincing some of them to watch the Fifty Shades of Grey trailer and give their reactions...not knowing that Jimmy snuck a screamer into it.
- In The New Russia, during the nineties, many TV programs were preceded by the vanity plate of the TV company ВИD (VID, pronounced "veed"). It is a strange image of moving lines and circles with jackhammer or film projector noise in the background, and then, after a few sparks and loud Scare Chord, a mean-looking scary mask appears. Many thought it was Yeltsin's, but in fact, it was a computer-generated image of a statue of Guo Xiang, edited to look mean. Word of God is that they picked this because it appeases their sentiment of uncertainty and fear among Russians due to the collapse of the USSR. Nowadays, this video is a hugely popular meme on the Russian segment of internet, because many of the modern Russian Internet users were kids during The '90s, and they were shit-scared by this video.
Music
- Love Automatic - NIGHTMARE is a stop motion claymation with a scary bluish clay monster popping out of the lower right corner of the screen with a screech at the 3:45 mark after the song ends.
Software
- NightMare is probably the precursor of all screamer pranks on computers. It was developed in 1990 by Patrick Evans for Commodore Amiga computers and distributed via Fish Disks. All it does is staying idle in the background then, every five minutes, a skull with a bleeding crack◊ appears all of a sudden for less than a second accompanied by a loud shriek. It is credited as first scareware of its kind.
Video Games
- A fairly popular web browser game nowadays is Agar.io, and considering the tens of thousands of people that can be on a server at one time, it's pretty brilliantly cruel that someone would make a screamer based about it. If you try to type in "agor.io" instead of "agar.io", you'll be greeted by none other than Jeff the Killer, whose face will be flashing repeatedly between regular and negative (epilepsy warning, of course) while an extremely loud droning scream is heard in the background.
- The Black Heart, which runs on the aforementioned M.U.G.E.N engine, has Noroko, whose moveset (including, but not limited to her Finishing Move) involves the liberal use of her lunging towards the camera with ear-piercing shrieks.
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has an enemy that does this, but you have to deliberately find it during the train ride (after killing the boss in a timed sequence, that is) by sitting on a chair in the first passenger carriage. Miriam will start to blink and slowly nod off when the train passes by the lake before being greeted by it. Good thing is that you can kill it, but trying to fight it right away without preparation will get you cursed and killed in short order.
- In the Call of Duty: Black Ops II "Mob of the Dead" campaign, if you zoom in on a fireworks display on the roof, a distorted picture of what appears to be Russman's face will appear for a split second, accompanied by a high-pitched scream.
- Cooking Breakfast 2, a Game Maker "game", claims to be an "all time family classic" which is supposed to "learn [you] in seven steps to create your very own breakfast". The true nature of the "game" is something a bit different; it shows a poorly-drawn MS Paint picture of an odd-looking face spinning, accompanied by Epileptic Flashing Lights and a gratingly high-pitched tone. And it has no exit feature; you have to turn it off via the task manager. If we are to believe the reviews, some people got seizures from this, and it's suspected that this game is actually the author's revenge against people who gave his previous games bad reviews. Footage is available for the morbidly curious.
- Epic Battle Fantasy:
- The series has the aptly-titled Screamer, a dark-elemental spell which flashes a photo-negative image alongside a loud scream. Whilst it doesn't deal much damage, it does provide a useful debuff (debuffing Magic Defense in EBF1-4, and debuffing Attack in EBF5).
- The fifth game also has a special comment for Screamer's use from all five playable characters:
Matt: *gasp* Don't do that.
Lance: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- Okay, it's over now.
Anna: WHAT THE- I wasn't ready for that.
NoLegs: ?!?!?
Natalie: Haven't you guys seen any horror films? That was nothing.
- Escape From the Coolsonian, a tie-in point and click Web Game released in promotion for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, became infamous for containing a very nasty one, especially in a game made to promote a movie for children. If the player uses a crowbar to open up a sarcophagus, a text message slowly fades in (written in a small, grey font against a dark background, forcing you to focus to read it) accompanied with eerie whispering sounds. The message is then interrupted with a sudden full-screen image of a skull/mummy with yellow eyes and a loud scream. This could terrify even adults if they didn't expect it, but this was a tie-in for a movie for kids.
- Escape From Lavender Town: It seems at first to be a simple top-down Town Escape Game, until you press the ESC key, whereupon the game's graphics become color inverted, disturbing images sporadically appear on the screen (including a color inverted image of a Cubone mourning its mother and a bloody hand holding a Pokemon Red cartridge) and the Pokémon Tower becomes filled with corpses. This is appropriate, as the game is based on the "Lavender Town Syndrome", a popular Creepypasta at the time.
- Eternal Damnation, a fan-made re-imagining of Postal 2 game (and included with it in the Fudge Pack box set) has a few scare faces thrown at the player during the first mission.
- How most of the animatronics attack the player in Five Nights at Freddy's qualify, specially in the second game after a game over. Rarely, instead of being taken to the front menu, the player gets to enjoy a few seconds inside an 8-bit minigame where they can wander around. While they are kind of interesting in that some of them portray a little bit of background of the game's setting, they have a tendency to suddenly end with one of the animatronics from the actual game lunging out of the screen.
- Game Boy Camera had the infamous error screens which could also be triggered by clicking the "Run" button. When activated, the screen would suddenly show disturbing "vandalized" faces of Nintendo employees, accompanied by ominous music and the messages "Who are you running from?" or "Don't be so silly!".
- On June 2nd, 2022 (though most noticed it on June 3rd), the creator of various Garry's Mod addons such as Glue Library updated the addons to include NSFW Screamer Pranks with shock images—including the infamous Goatse—when the player first pressed the W key.
- Doom Game Mod The Ghoul's Forest 3 and Ghouls vs. Humans:
- The Creeper has this as its attack — it's usually almost invisible and creeping across the ground, and attacks by suddenly jumping up in front of its victim's face with a scream, killing them.
- The Ghoul's Forest 3 and some custom versions of Ghouls Vs. Humans also have Yurei, a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl who has the ability to subject the player to a screamer prank, as a disturbing photo suddenly fills the screen. In the latter games, it's possible for players to turn off the screamers so that they can participate in matches without the fear of being suddenly subject to dead babies out of nowhere.
- INFRA: While the game is ostensibly not a horror game, unlocking door B2 in the Bergmann Tunnels chapter leads to a dead-end corridor and an ambush by the white-masked bogeyman Mörkö, which fortunately is not fatal and allows you to skip a chapter.
- Killer Escape 1 is a legitimate horror game that uses a severe jump scare at one point. You play as the latest victim of a sadistic pyromaniac murderer making your way out of his building/cells using a bunch of items and machinery, but at one point you must inspect some lockers, and whilst three of them are empty, a scary mutilated/burned woman's corpse will fly out in your face before collapsing on the floor when looking in one of the four. The sudden unexpected appearance of the killer at the end when he says "What the hell?!" is also slightly alarming.
- League of Legends champion Fiddlesticks's Crowstorm tends to be used to this effect. He'll jump out of the brush with no prior warning, and then you're getting eaten alive by a murder of crows.
- The PlayStation-licensed game based on The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea has Ursula popping up on the screen with a somewhat loud, evil laugh the very moment Ariel's health reaches zero.
- Mortal Kombat 9
- The game has the Krypt Monster, a little fucker that can pop up every now and then when the player is in the Krypt.
- Speaking of MK, one of Kabal's fatalities counts as this: he tears his mask off, revealing a Nightmare Face and screams at his opponent, which scares them so badly that their spirits exit their bodies & run away!
- M.U.G.E.N has a few characters that do this:
- Giygas, a boss character, randomly after being either defeated or winning a round, will randomly show a video clip in which, for example, the creator of this character (The_None), appears wearing a Jeff the Killer mask, admitting that the character is not scary, before a disfigured woman pops out of a book he opens with a loud scream.
- Dark Donald, a cheap character, is capable of doing this before a round starts, in which he randomly gets replaced with another character for a moment, before a scary picture (Usually Pennywise) pops up with a loud scream, and after this, Dark Donald appears normally.
- F-Sanae, a VERY, VERY cheap character has a move in which the screen darkens and turns to static, before the static shatters, revealing the eyeless face from What's Wrong With This Picture, but red with a loud roar.
- The Screecher: There are two occasions in which the game throws a screamer at the player. The first occurs when Bill encounters a male camper seated in a chair moaning in pain. On getting his attention, the camper's head snaps back, revealing that his face has been shredded away. During this reveal, a full-screen closeup of a man with a bloody face flashes into view for a split-second. The image coincides with the camper's dying scream and is rendered with more realism than the cartoony art style of the game. The second occurs when Bill encounters a screecher. Staring at it for too long causes it to screech in warning, which is immediately followed by a semi-realistic closeup of the screecher overlaid over the game screen. A second closeup may follow if the player doesn't look away immediately.
- A now-long-defunct location in the Second Life virtual world featured a "haunted" maze where visitors could wander the halls to find free money. Occasionally, however, the visitor will trigger a screaming face that appears on screen for a few moments.
- Soul, on Xbox Live Indie Games, does this. On one of the early levels, the shadowy figure of a girl can be seen standing on the course. When the player passes over the figure, the image of a monstrous screaming woman fills the screen, with appropriate sound effect. The same thing also sometimes happens randomly when you die.
- Upgrade Complete 2 offers one through the Heartrate upgrade. Upgrade Complete 3 has a three-level Heartrate upgrade. First level is a cartoonish, Stylistic Suck little bedsheet ghost that pops up immediately, second level is a slightly scarier one that still lacks the surprise element, and third level is of high quality and delivers the actual scare far later and very suddenly, often during the actual gameplay.
- Which Way Adventure, a flash game, features these as a running gag, and in fact the most common way to lose the game. Sometimes you can see it coming, but other times, particularly when you're doing something with a female character that is intended to be sexy, it will appear and kill you with a loud scream for no apparent reason. Hitting the play button again will lead you back to the start area, but clicking anything from there will lead to the same screamer. Persevering past that will lead to the manticore that's been killing you sitting in the playground you start in this time, and the same result. From the fourth go on, you can continue to play the game normally.
- The Japanese Namco arcade game Yokai Dochuki has the optional false goddess in Stage 4. While the game's real goddess was in Stage 2, Stage 4 has what looks like a goddess facing away from the player's character. But when approached, she will turn around and reveal her actually hideous self while this ten-second frightening tune plays.
Visual Novels
- Doki Doki Literature Club!:
- In the first act, with Sayori hanging herself. For this scene, she suddenly appears on the screen with a Scare Chord.
- Another one happens near the end of the game if the game detects you're recording/streaming, with Monika taking notice and greeting the viewers, before she offers to show them a trick. The camera then slowly zooms into her face, before she says she's just messing with the player. Seconds later, in the middle of talking, the camera rapidly zooms into her face, which becomes distorted and now sports a Slasher Smile, with a loud static noise. Monika then quickly lampshades this, asking the audience "Did I scare you?"
Webcomics
- The Bongcheon-Dong Ghost is a Korean webcomic which depicts a young woman's encounter with the titular entity; it's most infamous for a Jump Scare wherein the page hijacks your scroll bar to create the illusion of movement in order to show you the ghost's horribly scarred face (alongside a weird clicking sound). (It won't work properly if you have NoScript active on your browser, though.)
Western Animation
- BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows has one hidden at the very end of the credits. When the credits sequence ends and right before the Miramax and Creative Capers logos appear, we're treated to a terrifying close-up shot of a Visorak, screeching and displaying the buzzsaws in its Monstrous Mandibles. Sleep tight, kiddies!
- The Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City" fits this trope. He walks into an old abandoned building and starts opening doors, seeing things like King Ghidorah (from Godzilla) and Jaws 1. He finally opens up the third door and sees a realistic girl playing a violin from behind which Courage likes at first, but the girl turns around and scares him with a giant red CGI face and a scream. It was once the page image for Nightmare Fuel Western Animation.
- Gravity Falls:
- In "Summerween", Stan repeatedly tries to scare two jaded trick-or-treaters. When he asks them what they find scary, they show him a video of a cute kitten that suddenly jumps to a screaming, monstrous face.
- An interstitial short about Mabel watching Gravity Falls' public access channel featured a Kitschy Local Commercial for the Mystery Shack, which inexplicably ended with a sudden, brief close-up of Stan's face while he let out a maniacal laugh.
- In a Rabbids Invasion video called "Find the Rabbid," the viewer is asked to find the Rabbid, but there is no Rabbid... just a peaceful pond. A few seconds later, a Rabbid jumps out and screams, and then three Rabbids laugh, indicating that it was a Screamer Prank made up by the Rabbids.
- Smiling Friends: The episode "Erm, The Boss Finds Love?" has three: the first time when Brittney's face is revealed, the second time when the android resembling Tara the Android in Charlie's home screams at Allan, and the third time when the Boss pranks Charlie.
- The Simpsons: Bart's segment in Treehouse Of Horror II ends with a heartwarming moment that's interrupted by Bart waking up screaming at the camera as it zooms into his mouth.
- As if the Wander Over Yonder episode "The Pet" wasn't creepy enough, The Stinger animatic at the end of the episode shows Captain Tim sleeping near Lord Hater's bed. After more than a few seconds, Captain Tim suddenly lunges at the camera, screams, and licks it in his mouth.
Real Life
- Before the rise of digital videos on the internet, Japan already had live pranksters known as "random screamers" who would set themselves up somewhere they could find suitable random victims, such as on a street corner or by the doors of an elevator, and then SCREAM VERY LOUDLY at them at some opportune moment. Usually, this was done with a hidden camera somewhere nearby so they could send footage of the victims' flustered reactions to local TV comedy shows.
- This woman caught up in a publicity stunt by British lotto company GeoLotto decided to approach the two hosts through intense screaming when offered a five-pound note.
- Many Halloween props of the kind sold by companies like Spirit Halloween work on a similar pattern to screamers, with animatronic characters that draw a viewer in closer before some part of them pops up or jumps forward with a loud noise. "Peek A Boo Penny" is a particularly infamous startle prop. It appears to be a static life-sized figure of a girl holding her hands in front of her face talking quietly, but suddenly, her skull-like head pops up from behind her hands with a loud scream. Most of the people who watched the official video of the prop commented about how it startled them.
- The real-life game Hide and Seek can be played in which the hider jumps out and scares the seeker.
Parodies:
Parodies
- Parodied several times in The Amazing World of Gumball:
- "The Internet" centered on Gumball watching what is implied to be the K-Fee car commercial and his reaction becoming an Instant Web Hit.
- Carrie the ghost makes one in-universe in an online short that was later included in the episode "The Tape": she claims the video will let you see in 3D without glasses and instructs you to get closer, then makes a creepy face while yelling and laughs afterward.
- Part of Anton's Death Montage in "The Recipe" includes a Hollywood Heart Attack in reaction to something on a computer desktop that involves sudden screaming.
- When Anais tries to get Gumball to take her to a scary movie in "The Spoiler", he inexplicably pulls a Screamer Prank on both Anais and the audience by making the screen cut to a piranha on a black background. Cut back to Anais white with shock and falling back on top of a cake, much to Gumball's smug amusement.
Gumball: Ha ha, knew it.
- Played for Laughs in The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Nintendo Power. We first see a long, quiet shot of the Nerd's room with a few magazines piled up on the floor before the Nerd suddenly jumps into the screen and yells "ASS!"
- This was revisited again in the cold open of the 2019 sister episode "Video Game Magazines" featuring a similar shot of the magazines piled on the floor until the Nerd pops up and yells "ASS!" again, this time with slightly improved editing to make the scare more smooth than the original.
- Used as a comedic plot point in Episode 5 of Ask That Guy with the Glasses in which Ask That Guy demonstrates what a screamer is by attempting to hold a piece of paper closely to the camera which a small handwritten sentence, only to have Pazuzu's face from The Exorcist interrupt alongside Ren's scream from Ren and Stimpy. This is scary to the point where Ask That Guy suffers an immediate heart attack and keels over, only to have Chester A. Bum host the remainder of the episode and loot his body for change.
- Episode 31 of Chuggaaconroy's Let's Play of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has one with a picture of a RED RUPEE of all things after explaining that you only get the Giant's Wallet after completing the Oceanside Spider House on the 1st day, likely to show what the player is given should you complete the dungeon on any later day.
Chuggaaconroy: Just ask some of the other LPers what they think of that! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
- Dispatch: At the start of Episode 4, if you fired Sonar at the end of the last episode, Malevola gets back at Robert by rigging a screamer prank to play on his computer when he starts his shift in the morning.
- In Iron Twilight, the haunted house area includes a chest. But when you open it, it shows a little popup of you opening the chest. When it's half open, the screen turns static and you see a close up of Qem saying hello in Michael Rosen's voice. After the popup disappears, Qem appears on the overworld, talking to you. Turns out this was a setup before he teleports you into a small room where you fight him in a 1 on 1 tennis match. Thankfully, the fight is optional.
- "Not Scary" shows a picture of a kitchen, then it shows a picture of a face drawn on MS Paint with a guy going "Boogity boogity boogity boo". Then it switches between the room and the MS Paint face for a while until the guy's face says "Alright, I'm done. You can go away now". Then he says one last "Boogity boogity boogity!" with the face.
- In the Mario fangame Psycho Waluigi, in Static Void Kingdom, the whole level is surreal compared to the rest of the game, and there's one part of the level where the face from "What's Wrong with this Picture?" pops up for a second but with no scream.
- The Simpsons: In "Flanders' Ladder", Bart pranks Lisa by having her play a "Genius Maze" game that contains a screaming zombie face, and then posts her reaction online. He'd soon come to regret it.
- In the Smosh episode Superpowers! Anthony is standing far away holding several objects. He is far enough not to be able to hear him at all. That is until Ian suddenly pops up close to the camera and screams really loud.
Anthony: Hey, so, the funny thing about this is if you actually look really closely, you can see-
Ian: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! - A recurring character in Sr. Pelo's Spooky Month animation is the Ooga Booga Witch, a parody of Regan MacNeil with a troll face-shaped head whose role mostly consists of appearing suddenly and yelling "Ooga booga!" to scare other characters. In the Youtube versions of the first and second episodes her face appears in The Stinger to, again, say "Ooga booga!" and then laughing at "spooking" the viewer.
- SMG4: The episode "Mario in real life!"note had a segment where Mario sticks his head into Luke's PC monitor and pokes out of several other people's monitors, with all of them reacting in shock and terror. The footage was lifted straight from several famous videos of these pranks, but with Mario pasted over the screens.
- This video urges the viewer to stare at an image of a green fieldnote for ten seconds, while a rendition of the instrumental "Popcorn" plays. Then, a poor-quality, close-up image of John Lennon fades into view, accompanied by a weak-sounding groan.
