6. What Gives The Hypnotoad That Distinctive 'HHNGNGRRGGHGH' Noise
20th Television
Obligatory "all glory to the Hypnotoad!" comment out of the way first, and we can get on with the rest of this entry.
Futurama's Hypnotoad was a small but hilarious inclusion to the show, with the tyrannical frog using their intense mind control powers to gain a permanent captive audience. A lot of the humour comes down to the fact that A: he's a toad, and B; his expression never changes, but arguably the best element of the gag comes down to the sound.
Y'know, the one that's all "HHHRRNNNNNGGHHHHH". That one.
Well, turns out there's an actual story about how that noise came to be. The recording is actually the sound of a turbine engine being played in reverse, and it was initially a placeholder effect too.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
