Make Some Noise is a Panel Show on independent streaming service Dropout. Each episode, three comedians are given abstract prompts by host Sam Reich and asked to make the noise that that prompt would make, and assigned an arbitrary amount of points for their answers. In the second round, the comedians work in pairs, and the final round sees all three given the same prompt. The winner of each episode goes home with the Golden Ear trophy.

The show was originally a series of episodes from Dropout's "anthology" game show Game Changer, featuring recurring contestants Josh Ruben, Zac Oyama, and Brennan Lee Mulligan, aka the "Noise Boys." Make Some Noise was made its own show after getting an episode in the first four seasons of Game Changer.

For the trope about sound-based superpowers, see here.

Now Sam, don't you come 'round here not havin' no tropes.

• 420, Blaze It: After one prompt in "Lou, Ross, and Jiavani Drink Your Milkshake," Sam gives the performer 420 points "because of weed."
• All for Nothing: One prompt in "The Noise Boys Hype Each Other Up" has Brennan give a very long, impassioned speech about how great of a comedic genius Josh Ruben is and how his upcoming performance will be the greatest thing to grace dropout.tv. What's the prompt Josh is given right after?
  MR. PEE-PEE PANTS PEES HIS PANTS AGAIN
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: "A Cop Pulls Over His Mommy." In an extra little touch, Kurt plays this one like a grown man who goes right back to being a sulking, embarrassed teenager as soon as he recognizes his mommy. In turn, Kimia immediately starts nagging him.
  Kurt: [sigh] Mom.
  Kimia: Honey.
  Kurt: We've talked about this.
  Kimia: When else am I gonna see you?
  Kurt: I call all the time! I literally call once a month!
• Anti-Humor: One of the "alternate Spider-Men" is "Spider-Man, but he's in the movie Waterworld".
  Brian: ...Well, this fuckin' sucks.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Brennan's prompt "The Ghost of Saint Patrick's Day Past" asserts that St. Patrick "driving the snakes out of Ireland" was really a euphemism for killing pagans. There is no historical evidence of a purge of pagans in Ireland led by St. Patrick or a coverup of one; the 5th century Church wasn't exactly shy about boasting about killing people when it did, and St. Patrick was more likely to convert non-Christians he met rather than kill them. The legend of St. Patrick and the snakes is a "Just So" Story about why there are no snakes in Ireland.
  • Vic's Running Gag about Evelyn Tucci, Stanley Tucci's fictitious paternal grandmother, claims she was North Irish. All of Tucci's real grandparents were Italian.
• Badass Boast: In "The Long Awaited Meeting Between Times New Roman and Comic Sans", Times New Roman brags about the other fonts he has defeated in the lead up to this fateful encounter:
  Times New Roman: The fields behind me are littered with the bodies of fonts braver and more cunning than you. Baskerville lies dead in the dust. Apple Chancery is nothing but a distant memory. I struck down Helvetica!
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • "A Track Announcer Who's Clearly Attracted to One of the Horses".
  • "Mr. Beastiality."
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Since Sam is the CEO of Dropout as well as the show's host, any time a player openly mocks Sam it comes across as this.
  • "Catty Teens Roast Sam's Outfit". The prompt quickly turns into roasting Sam in general.
  • One of the clowns in "A Cutscene in a Video Game That's Glitching Out"'s naming minigame is clearly based on Sam.
  • A non-Sam example: "Brennan's Real Thoughts About Our Loosey-Goosey Points System". He really doesn't hold back about the show's lack of clear feedback.
  • If and when a prompt makes mention of streaming services, be assured that the contestants will make reference to Dropout, often in a teasing manner.
  • A game of "If It Could Talk" is filled with stock photos that players have to voice, and Jacob takes a moment to point out that since there's no watermark, Sam paid to use these ridiculous stock photos in perpetuity, leading the whole cast to stop the proceedings just to needle Sam over it.
  • Pete Holmes devoted his entire appearance to roasting Sam every chance he got. Josh Ruben and Caitlin Reilly are just dying watching it.
    Pete: You look like if I put a tape cassette in your back, you'll read me a bedtime story.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In the "Who Are You Supposed To Be?" minigame from "Lou, Ross, and Jiavani Drink Your Milkshake", Lou's costumes include "knife witch," "Grandma Minion" (also known as "Beedo Meemaw"), and "Beedo Meemaw as a knife witch."
• Brick Joke:
  • In "A Cutscene in a Video Game That's Glitching Out", producer Paul Robalino cameos in the "Name That" minigame as a cowboy clown. Later in the episode when a prompt ends up mentioning a guy with a big cowboy hat, the camera zooms out to reveal Paul wearing the hat and waving.
  • In "Thinking Every Restaurant Has a Secret Menu," Vic spends the entire "Name That" minigame telling stories about Stanley Tucci's (entirely fabricated) grandmother Evelyn Tucci, to Sam's chagrin. A season later in "A Date That is Only Red Flags", as Sam is doing his opening spiel, they tell him to look under his desk, where he finds a card taped to the underside of the desk reading "Fondest regards, Evelyn Tucci."
• British Brevity: A bit about the "small number of Mr. Bean episodes." All done in very posh British accents.
  Paul: We used to build things in this country... there was a time when—
  Sam: Stop. Ross?
  Ross: —a show like Dad's Army would be on the air for years uncounted, while one Mr. Rowan Atkinson poured his genius into literally only like a dozen episodes or so!
• Call-Back: Almost every time the hats, wigs, and props come on stage so the cast can play "Who Are You Supposed To Be?", the cast will, amidst the original suggestions, splice in a lot of call-backs from earlier in the episode.
• Celebrity Impersonator: Once in a while, an episode will be entirely based around impressions. Though they do bleed into the regular episodes, like Josh Ruben and Pete Holmes spending a scene ("A Celebrity's Unflattering Wax Figure Reveal") doing a Jeff Bridges impression face-off.
• Childish Play Squabble: One prompt is "A Child's Lore Dump Before Their Friend Joins Playtime," during which a kid (played by Jess) explains her overly-complicated backstory and rules for her imaginary world to her friend (played by Anna). This results in an epic meltdown when the friend steps into the backyard and, according to the kid, accidentally crushes some of the magical creatures living there. The scene is capped off by the kid's mom (played by DJ) coming outside to see what the commotion is.
  Jess: [in tears] MOM! SHE CRUSHED THE QUEEN!
  DJ: Sweetheart, are you playing too strict again?
  Jess: Yes...
• Couch Gag: Every episode during The Teaser right before the opening title sequence, Sam introduces the three players with unique prompts on how they enter the stage. Even returning players get different prompts with each appearance. Additionally, Sam makes a different comment about the Golden Ear trophy in every episode.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Lampshaded by Josh as he acts out the prompt "Godzilla vs. Josh Ruben."
  "THIS IS VERY UNEVENLY MATCHED!"
• Cuteness Overload:
  • Vic's answers for the "Name That Dog" minigame in "A Date That is Only Red Flags" rapidly devolve into incoherent babbling when they realize the dogs are real puppies in silly costumes and not just photos. It takes almost three dogs before they can give a "real" answer.
  • "A Couple Calls For The Check But Doesn't Know The Hand Motion" parodies this with the prompt "Going Home With Someone Who Has A Really Specific Voice For Their Pet." Hannah Pilkes fawns over a dog with an utterly bizarre, guttural, barely legible voice... and then switches it out for an even more bizarre voice.
• Deadpan Snarker: Zac Oyama is really in his element here as Dropout's resident "comedy sniper."
• Dude, Not Funny!: One of the bits in season 1's cut special was a three-player prompt that Jacquis Neal took wildly off the rails. The prompt was cut because it was in too poor taste, and the other players are visibly uncomfortable and try to pull out of the bit before Sam calls it. We only saw the prompt because Jacquis Neal approved it for the cut special, since it was so ludicrously offensive that it looped back around to being funny.
  Sam: "America's Got Talent Judges Judging the Craziest Act They've Ever Seen". [...]
  Jacquis: That was so bad, that, uh... I might put myself back in the slave trade and go back to...
  Anna: What?!
  Jacquis: That's how bad it was, man. I might put myself...
  Ross: Was that an option?
  Jacquis: This is so bad that I, you know, I don't wanna be free here no more, because this ain't freedom.
  Ross: I can't believe I'm saying this, but watching what you did also made me want to amend... amend the Constitution.
  Anna: [clearly tapping out and uncomfortable with the joke] I didn't... I don't wanna do that...
  [after Sam cuts it off]
  Sam: [through laughter] Jacquis, you can expect an email from me about whether or not... [everyone cracks up] ...you really want to put that in the show!
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Sam's ubiquitous buzzer is notably absent in the first season, and the first two seasons go right into the one-player prompts with no warm-up minigame.
• Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: In a segment parodying Knights and Knaves, the puzzle is given to an adventurer... as a distraction while the two guards struggle to figure out an answer to his first question.
• Fun with Subtitles: This YouTube highlight clip uses a serif font for the subtitles when Jeremy's pirate stops sounding so rough in the throat.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In "A Dramatic Video Game Cut Scene Transitions Awkwardly Into the Gameplay", Oscar as Luigi confronts Brennan as Mario on his brother about him cheating on Princess Peach, leading to a heated argument ending with normal Mario gameplay.
• Gasshole: One of the Alternate Universe games is alternate Batmans, and Caitlin Reilly proposes "Fart Batman." It's just... Batman running around and farting all the time. Sam can barely bring himself to buzz her out because he wants to see how long Caitlin will just keep farting.
• Genki Girl: Erika Ishii. When Erika shows up, they are an absolute chaos goblin at all times, with gigantic facial expressions and very little ability to sit still. Part of the fun of Erika's appearances is just them reacting to things.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Several bits play on this trope, such as "Good Cop / Fad Cop," "Good Cop / Rad Cop" and "Good Cop / Comrade Cop."
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Happens all the time, but to list one of the most frequent examples, the Noise Boys episodes tend to have a lot of this between Brennan Lee Mulligan and Josh Ruben (while Zac Oyama evens things out as the resident Deadpan Snarker). Their series of prompts based on old sea captains trying to one-up each others' stories exemplifies this trope.
• Height Angst: In the episode "Ross, Echo, and Corin Try to Recruit You," one of the prompts is just Sam (who is quite short) asking Ross and Echo what it's like to be tall. The two tall players emphasize the benefits of being tall while Sam gives them an upset look.
• I Have Your Daughter: This trope, and the Taken franchise in general, are parodied mercilessly with "Two Liam Neesons Kidnap Each Other's Daughters."
• In Memoriam: The last episode of the fourth season contains a pseudo-in memoriam for Vic Michaelis, who was busy with another project in Budapest for the duration of the season's production and therefore didn't appear as a contestant. The segment is sure to frequently confirm that Vic is very much alive and just busy. It ends with "RIP" — which is clarified to stand for "Regrettably In Production."invoked
• In the Style of: Some of the musical prompts, like Ross improvising a song called "Slip n' Slide" in the style of the Beastie Boys.
• Insult Comic: Anna Garcia and another female performer fill this role when they get one of the "Catty Teens" prompts, and they have to roast Sam's outfit, or Josh's performance. (Anna feels terrible after doing these prompts.)
• Knights and Knaves: One of the prompts features "One Guard Always Lies & One Guard Always Tells The Truth", with Brennan introducing himself as one of the guards explaining the puzzle, but when Matt asks them "Which one of you is the liar?", Ross responds with "I am"... which they quickly realize breaks the whole logic of the puzzle. As the guards attempt to sort it out, Ross offers a different puzzle involving crossing a river with a fox, a bag of grain, and a goose.
• Large Ham: Brennan Lee Mulligan and Ross Bryant stand out, but the cast is full of ham. Vic Michaelis is a variant in that their hamminess manifests by how they constantly explore the space of the whole set, up to and including Sam's desk.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: Season 4 introduces special prompt types: "Doozies" (extremely long prompts), "Gift Prompts" (thought up by other people), "Round Robins" (Round 3 prompts where players take turns answering), and "Fill-in-the-Blanks" (where another player fills in one part of the prompt).
• Literal Maneater: "Off-Brand Bond Villain Vagina Plenty," who swallows James Bond whole with her vagina and then moves on to Anna before Sam cuts the bit off.
• LOL, 69: Defied. As a Running Gag for any prompts that are sexual in nature starting from Season 4, Sam jokingly laments that there is no sex-related number of points he could give the players involved.
• Mood-Swinger: In the prompt "Laying Off Your Imaginary Friend," Mr. Gaboomp acts just like a typical goofy imaginary friend right up until Kimia tells him he should find work elsewhere, at which point all pretense drops and he abruptly flips out.
  Mr. Gaboomp: What the fuck am I gonna do!? You're kickin' me out!? You provide my healthcare through the union! If you let me go, my kid dies!
• Mood Whiplash: At one point, Brennan was to give the next contestant, Josh, a heartfelt glowing forward before Josh gets his prompt of "Mr. Pee Pee Pants Pees His Pants Again".
• Ms. Fanservice: "A Female Sci-Fi Character Written by a Man," who seems to move in ways entirely designed to make her breasts jiggle around and dumps a bottle of water over herself for absolutely no in-universe reason.
• Musical Episode: ""Not Really My Thing" by Harry Styles". Improvised songs in the style of different artists.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: "A Female Sci-Fi Character Written By A Male Writer." Given, of course, to expert character actress Caitlin Reilly. As soon as she's done miming Gainaxing, she proceeds to immediately fail the Bechdel Test by giving her scientist character a more famous and respected scientist father.
• No Periods, Period: Subverted with "A YouTuber Welcomes Viewers While Losing a Lot of Blood". Lisa casually begins her intro to a makeup tutorial by announcing that she's doing so while on her period, then calls Sam out for not thinking about women.
• Once a Season: Every season has two episodes with the original three "Noise Boys" from the show's Game Changer incarnation (Josh Ruben, Zac Oyama, and Brennan Lee Mulligan), being their respective season's premiere and finale.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: One prompt is about Australian actors playing Americans whose natural accents keep slipping out.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • One minigame in "Thinking Every Restaurant Has a Secret Menu" asks the players to name facial hair styles. Vic refuses to play the actual game and keeps describing Stanley Tucci's grandmother.
  • Vic does this again in the "Who Are You Supposed to Be?" minigame in "An Open-Heart Surgeon With the Attitude of a Cool Hairdresser," where they put two plastic fish under their sleeves and dress as "Edward Fish-Hands" every round, combining it with other costumes after the first.
  • For the "Character Catchphrase" minigame in season 1, nearly all of Lisa Gilroy's proposed catchphrases are long barely intelligible rambling or growling, provoking Sam to ask each time if the character really says this every episode.
  • A prompt early in season 3 takes up almost the entire screen, even with a much smaller font size than normal. And Josh acts out all of it.
    "Trying To Sneak Out of Your Old, Rickety-Ass House When You Accidentally Knock Over a Porcelain Vase, Waking Up Your Grandmother. We Cut Back-And-Forth Between Your Grandmother Waking Up To Investigate the Noise and You Hurriedly Putting the Vase Back Together with Superglue."
  • Starting in Season 4, the show would make especially long prompts into their own minigame, dubbing them "Doozies".
  • During the "Take Some Direction" minigame of "Lou, Ross, and Jiavani Drink Your Milkshake", Sam goes beyond the established standard of giving the first player a line with no direction and asking the next two players to give him "more" — instead of continuing with varied requests after the first three, he keeps asking for "more". Aside from one "lactose-intolerantly," every direction Sam gives is "more," resulting in a hilariously over-the-top delivery by the end of the minigame.
    Ross: Sam, is this the whole show?!
• Perspective Flip: Parodied with Nick Mandernach and his usual gusto with "#boyboss."
• Pirate Song: Ross improvises "a sea shanty about struggling socially on the ship."
  Passing through the waters in between so many nations
  Why haven't I ever had a really deep conversation?
  I think the captain hates me; the botswain's out for me
  They've never really said it, I just read their energy.
• The Points Mean Nothing: Sam can give one point in one round, a googolplex in the next, and it'll still be unclear who wins. Most of the time the points don't even include numbers, like "a bronze amount of points". In some episodes, the producers have even earned points. The very competitive Brennan hates this, and at one point Sam gives him a "prompt" that's just to let him rant about how he hates the "loosey-goosey" point system.
• Potty Failure: In "This Dream Is Too Messed Up Even for Freddy Krueger," one prompt involves two people having a conversation while they both desperately need to defecate. Both of them end up soiling themselves by the end of the skit.
• Revisiting the Roots: The "Back to Basics" minigame evokes the style of the original "Make Some Noise" episode of Game Changer by giving the players more simple sound effect prompts and allowing them to challenge each other for the best impression.
• Rhyming Title: "Zunk, Junk, and Dunk" from season 4.
• Robosexual: "A Smart Toothbrush Knows Too Much." Instead of taking an A.I. Is a Crapshoot route, the toothbrush gets intimate with the user.
• Running Gag: Not to the extent of the show's spiritual predecessor, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but they do have their moments.
  • The cast members love having a weird, non-sequitur reaction whenever Sam calls their name before a prompt comes up. Some notable ones are Jiavani's high-pitched "Jiavaniiiii!" and Lou Wilson's "Don't you come 'round here not havin' no prompt."
  • Jacob Wysocki will make a weird bleepy sound or utter quotes from Star Fox 64 over his buzzer noise. Bonus points if he announces that it is, in fact, his buzzer sound.
  • Pete Holmes roasting Sam in between scenes, at any opportunity.
    Pete: You look like the prize in a box of Grape Nuts.
  • In "A Singing Telegram Serving You for Property Encroachment," the cast play "Wrong Answers Only" and have to explain what they see in Rorschach tests. The game is full of running bits, like D.J. Mausner answering "my mom" for almost every single one, Anna Garcia running right up to the screen to explain everything she answers with, and Jess McKenna punctuating most of her answers with "I'm sorry, was that too right?"
  • Brennan answering Sam's Once an Episode line about the players having never seen the prompts before by pointing out that, until they see the prompts, they can't know whether they've seen them before or not. He does it enough times that Sam ends up making a commemorative plaque for his 10th time being pedantic about it.
    • The next time Brennan gives this response, Sam reveals that the commemorative plaque is ALSO a running gag, and gives one to Brennan for doing the bit 11 times.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Brennan spends "A Takedown of Billionaires Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Oprah" desperately trying to find an off-ramp for the prompt. When that doesn't work, he tries to flee by floating away on an umbrella and burrowing out of the set. Josh and Zac refuse to let him off that easy.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Ross is given a prompt about the new McDonald's sandwich, the "Macbeth". Each one is made from a cow that trusted the butcher with its very life, and it's a meal ye will wish to enjoy tomorrow... and tomorrow... and tomorrow. In a subsequent episode, he's asked to promote Burger King's "King Lear", a sandwich that you divide into three parts, one for each daughter...
• Simple Country Lawyer: One episode’s prompt is an inversion of this trope: "Just a Complicated Country Lawyer."
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Just like in the show that spawned this spin-off, the contestants are against each other in name but the real game is everyone against Sam. Lisa Gilroy made this trope her trademark; Sam's never safe when Lisa's around.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: One prompt has Brennan make a political ad to sway one specific voter. Brennan gives a speech in his made-up ad about his accomplishments as mayor and how everyone voted for him to be mayor...except for one person named Doug.
• Sophisticated as Hell: "Shakespeare's 'Dude, Where's My Car?'"
  Ross: [referring to his car] Nay, there where it is wont to haunt, its resting place outside our domicile, it hath absented itself therefrom, dude!
• Speaking Simlish: Anna improvises the "Simlish Pledge of Alliegance."
• Special Guest: A few have come up now:
  • Wayne Brady of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame competes in season 2's ""Not Really My Thing" by Harry Styles".
  • MADtv (1995)'s Lauren Pritchard has been a special guest on season 2 and 3, partly because she was Jacob Wysocki's favorite improv coach at UCB.
  • Comedy Bang! Bang! legend Carl Tart appeared in season 2's "The Speech MLK Really Wanted to Give Instead of 'I Have a Dream'," and returned for season 3.
  • Pete Holmes competed in season 3, being an old friend of CollegeHumor.
  • Ben Schwartz and Angela Giarratana from Smosh both appeared in season 3, and returned for season 4.
  • Rachel Bloom was slated to appear on season 3's karaoke episode, but the episode was never aired due to unfixable issues with the audio. She still appears in the season trailer briefly.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: "A Dom DM." Brennan breaks the whole room with his performance, especially his wife Izzy, who's standing right next to him. Meanwhile, the other contestant, Erika, just collapses into their hands at hearing Brennan say "like a good little girl", and by the time Sam buzzes, Erika has practically melted into the floor at Daddy Brennan.
• Supervillain Lair: "A Villain and Their Real Estate Agent Tour Volcano Lairs".
• Take That!: "A Job Interview With the Same Arc in Quality as Game of Thrones."
  Brennan: All of the world for the past seven years has been talking about how great at healthcare management you are. [...]
  Izzy: And then I just thought I could kick dogs in the face and body.
  • "What's In The 'Elon Musk' At An NYC Deli" also has Brennan barely keeping character to take some very unsubtle potshots at the man in question.
  • For "Dumb Reasons Your Kid Is Crying", Kurt initially sets it up with typical childish whining and excuses, and then whines that no one likes his tariffs.
• Toilet Humor: "This Dream Is Too Messed Up Even for Freddy Krueger" uses toilet humor in multiple skits, including one about a Ouija board that summons a ghost who soiled himself upon death and still smells horrible.
• Too Hungry to Be Polite: A mini-game in "The Wicked Switch of the West" has Paul Robalino bringing out different swords for Izzy Roland, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Erika Ishii to name. One of them is made of pizza, and Erika (already unhinged as it is) goes positively feral with hunger over the thing. After that segment's over, Paul offers Erika some, and Erika sprints across the room and has a big chunk of it in her mouth before Paul has time to think.
• Transparent Closet: Anna Garcia and Hannah Pilkes performing "The 'Friendship' Between Two 'Straight' People Who Will Both Come Out In College." Neither are even the tiniest bit subtle (they both admit this prompt hits way too close to home).
  Anna: [uncomfortably close to Hannah] It's like, I wish we could be closer.
  Hannah: I wish I could climb inside of you and live there.
  Anna: I wish I could climb in your mouth and feel the moisture of your mouth.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The main rounds of the game are split up with minigames that put new spins on the main "make sounds" gameplay.
  • "Make It Sing": Sam plays a sound and the players are given an object. They have to make the object make that sound.
  • "Name That": Players give names to a series of things. While it initially consisted of images, it now has production assistants walking onstage holding elaborate swords or dressed in clown costumes.
  • "Take Some Direction": The players repeat one line over and over as Sam gives different stage directions for each attempt.
  • "Translator": One player is a foreign politician speaking gibberish and the other two have to translate what he's talking about based on a vague topic.
  • "Soundscapers": A silent clip of a movie is played and has to be given sound using Foley equipment.
  • "Multiverse": Players are given a category like "even more alternate universe Spider-Mans", then have to pitch and perform what that would look like.
  • "Back to Basics": The players compete to make the most accurate sound effect, much like the Noise Boys did in the beginning of the first "Make Some Noise" Game Changer episode.
• Unfinished Business: Jessica McKenna's intro in "A Singing Telegram Serving You for Property Encroachment" is "The ghost of a Victorian child with unfinished business, it's Jess McKenna!"
• Verbal Tic:
  • Josh Ruben's "no problem" before a prompt. It caught on so much it eventually became a shirt (which Josh wore on the show).
  • Jiavani saying her name in a high-pitched voice whenever she's called on.
  • Jacob Wysocki making random noises or references to Star Fox as his "buzzer noise".
  • Kurt Maloney asking Sam to call him "Mr. Kurt".
• Vocal Dissonance: One prompt has the deep-voiced SungWon Cho improv-dubbing for the soft-spoken Brian David Gilbert.
• Wildlife Commentary Spoof: "David Attenborough F***ing Hates Toads".