The Wilhelm Scream
Author: Ockshun Jockson
Just came across this particular stock audio sound. Here's some great background on the scream.
There are tons of compilations on YouTube. Here's an example:
Spider-Senses... tingling.
Enter Sandman (take my hand.... and we're off to never-neverland!)
It's hard out there for a daggit...
Languatron
Smurf me a Lemur, Motherfucker!!
So fucking hardcore, it"s awesome!
It's weird how, in a lot of these clips the "scream" is used more as a random sound effect that isn't really motivated. (In a lot of the examples, there isn't an obvious "screamer," or the screamer & the scream don't really match.) Almost as if the scream has come to = chaotic excitement as a kind of audio shorthand, whether the sfx fits the visual of the screamer or not...
It's kind of reminiscent as to how Kirby crackle are misunderstood & misused by many artists, who don't understand how Jack Kirby developed the technique from images of lightning bolts... while the "dots" have come to signify "cosmic power," in their original form, the negative space they create is the real point -- a different way of drawing a lightning bolt or explosion in lieu of jagged lines.
There was a short documentary on The Wilhelm on our On-Demand a few months back (Comcast, ughhh). It had interviews with some old school Hollywood sound people, the origins of the sound etc.
The sound was legitimately in a studio's effects library for a long time. In the last 10 years or so it's just become widely available (via the internet) and is kind of abused. The people doing cartoon sound effects use the hell out of it, as the video showed. It's kind of become a joke though. Look at the Wikipedia entry and you can see how its usage blew up.
As a legitimate sound effect, it worked in the 70s and 80s (90s?) and the general public would never realize that it was being recycled like that.
Sound effects are often recycled like that. Most of them are just not as obvious. The wikipedia article mentions some classics, like the red-tailed hawk and castle thunder. Since they are pretty much retired from films, those have more recently become a joke to abuse in cartoons.