The question mark is a common, handy visual representation of confusion, surprise, or just being plain weirded out. It can manifest as several question marks floating around the nonplussed character's head, a single such symbol hovering over the character, or pop up as the contents of a thought bubble (or a regular Speech Bubble, in which case it seems to represent the "huh?" sound). Compare Visible Silence.
See also My Name Is ???, where it is used as a symbol of the unknown. Compare Alertness Blink.
Examples:
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Advertising
- An short made by the National Film Board of Canada for UNICEF's Cartoons on Children's Rights called "Conditions
/Why?" ends with a shot of three question marks, implying on how the world are gonna accomplish the goal.
Animation
- In Happy Friends, occasionally, characters might have a question mark pop up next to them when they are puzzled about something.
- In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, when characters are confused or surprised, question marks might briefly appear over their heads.
Anime & Manga
- Cap Revolution Bottleman: In episode 22, Momo has a question mark when she asks what the name of a certain team is, as they hadn't come up with one yet.
- Hanaukyō Maid Team:
- Episode 9. Konoe Tsurugi refuses to have her picture taken because she doesn't want the camera to steal her soul. When she hears this, Mariel has three question marks appear next to her head, one at a time.
- Episode 11. When Ryuuka asks Taro if he's interested in someone else, he looks at Mariel. Mariel then has question marks to each side of her head. Later, when Ryuuka appears before Taro in his bath a question mark appears over his head.
- Episode 12. Ryuuka has just given Taro a giant cake shaped like her for his birthday. When she sees him staring at it, a question mark appears over her head.
- Episode 15. Taro has a question mark appear above his head several times when he's puzzled.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: In various instances when some characters are bewildered by a particular situation, they have a brief question mark appear besides them.
- Diamond is Unbreakable: Josuke is surrounded by them when the self-styled alien Mikitaka and his mother both pretend that the other is wrong.
- JoJolion: Joshu develops a few questions marks when several shop owners directly ask him if he encountered The Milagro Man.
- One Piece: Used by the Gorgon sisters and Luffy when they find out the latter is immune to Hancock's petrification powers.
- Pokémon the Series: Used quite frequently by Pokémon to communicate their befuddlement, particularly Misty's Psyduck (who is implied to be even dumber than is usual for its species).
- In the 'Who's That Pokémon?' bumpers that appeared during Pokémon Journeys, one appears over Pikachu's head after he examines the silhouette to be identified and looks towards the viewers.
- In the Warrior Cats manga Warrior's Refuge, when Millie starts speaking Dog, the two dogs look at each other and one has a question mark appear over its head.
- In the Yu-Gi-Oh! episode where Joey is forced to wear a dog suit, he actually holds a sign with a question mark on it when he's confused about Dungeon Dice Monster's rules.
Board Games
- Chess notation marks bad moves with one question mark, blunders (very bad moves) with two.
Comic Books
- The Batman Adventures: In one story, Batman catches the Riddler by pure luck when he tries a heist at the same place and time as the Threatening Three. When the Riddler asks how Batman solved his riddle, he admits that he didn't (being preoccupied with the Threatening Three). A question mark over his head represents Batman's puzzlement as Riddler reacts with exuberant joy even as he's taken off to prison (as far as he's concerned, he won).
- Wonder Woman Vol. 1: When Diana lifts a car that was about to hit a child a large question mark appears by the driver's side of the windshield, as both Diana and the child had been in a blind spot.
Comic Strips
- Beetle Bailey. General Halftrack sometimes has a question mark appear over his head when he comes upon members of his staff acting in a bizarre manner.
- Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom uses a lot of question marks in individual speech bubbles. It's probably no coincidence that both strips were created and written by Lee Falk.
- Peanuts uses the "'?' in speech bubble" variety.
- All Popeye comic strip artists have used this, but none so more than Bud Sagendorf, who downright littered his strips with question marks. A panel with question marks in four or five individual speech bubbles were hardly unusual.
- Spy vs. Spy often had question marks appear above the title characters in early stories.
Films — Animation
- Aladdin (1992, Disney): Genie's ponytail forms a question mark as he wonders what riding animal to turn Abu into.
- In at least two of the Japanese trailers for Mirai, a question mark shows up next to Kun when he sees teenage Mirai for the first time. It doesn't appear in the actual film.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Bright New Dawn: One of Wolffy's attempts to explain that he smells the dark force doesn't work because he is a baby and cannot talk. The goats look at him with question marks in place of their faces.
- In Yellow Submarine one of the cat-like Butterfly Stompers has a tail that momentaily goes question mark.
Literature
- Done in The Colour of Magic to represent that the tourist Twoflower doesn't understand what the Ankh-Morporkeans are saying.
Live-Action TV
- Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger: In response to Yanma Gast's explanation of Time Dilation in #34, the other monarchs' confusion is expressed with question marks popping up above their heads.
- Saturday Night Live: Invoked when Christopher Walken appeared in the recurring Pat sketch.
Christopher Walken: [Upon seeing Pat] If I were a creature of animation in a cartoon I would have a bubble with a question mark over my head, but I'm not, I'm a real person in a most unreal situation.
Music
- Psychedelic band ? and the Mysterians.
Toys
- On the Tamagotchi handhelds, giving a Tamagotchi certain toys can invoke this.
Video Games
- Angry Birds:
- In the opening cutscenes of the early chapters, Red and Bomb look at their empty nest with question marks over their heads wondering where their eggs went, and one of the Blues also has a question mark over his head when he notices the pigs’ footprints.
- In the Golden Eggs menu, Red is seen in the bottom right corner looking at them with question marks over his head, also giving hints to how some of the eggs are to be obtained.
- The Animal Crossing games have this as one of the emotions/expressions/reactions (terminology depends on the game) that villagers can display and the player character can learn from Wild World onward. It's only called "Confusion" in Wild World; otherwise it's "Curiosity". Even renamed, villagers use it for this trope if the player enters a villager's house or an occupied campsite tent but leaves without interacting with the villager.
- ANNO: Mutationem: In moments when someone becomes confused by a bemusing event or pondering something that's right in front of them, a question mark appears in a brief speech-bubble overhead.
- BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: A Pictorial Speech-Bubble of this is used by Catie in the opening, after which she says:
...where am i?
- Item Crash with a key in Castlevania: Dracula X and your character will flash a question mark. The same happens in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night if you use the Shield Rod's special ability with the Alucart Shield equipped. More humorously, transforming into a bat while your Bat familiar[s] are equipped will cause them to fall in love with Alucard (with a heart symbol appearing over their heads) and fly close to him in formation, and then a "?" appears over the head of each bat once he reverts back to human form.
- In Cave Story, trying to examine an object without something to examine will cause a question mark to pop up over your character's head.
- Nospikes from Commander Keen 6 like to charge at you, but if they run off a ledge, they stand in mid-air for a while and a question mark appears above their head before they fall.
- Deltarune: In Chapter 2, Noelle's ACT-ready animationnote shows her mimicking Kris's thinking pose with a confused expression and question marks over her head.
- Disgaea has no confusion status effect, but it uses question marks to represent amnesia (the "silence" Status Effect) instead.
- Disney Dreamlight Valley exploits the trope in the quest that introduces Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, wherein he and the player are advancing through a cavern to get to a MacGuffin before Jafar does, and the question marks and exclamation points Oswald produces when surprised/confused are used in leu of a lever and winch respectively to operate machinery in the cavern to get to it.
- Characters in Final Fantasy V regularly have a speech bubble with a vibrating question mark appear over their heads to indicate confusion or curiosity, owing to their sprites' extremely limited capacity for expressiveness. One such moment was when Amnesiac Hero Galuf is introduced, and tries and fails to remember anything beyond his name. Much later, when he spontaneously gets over his amnesia, this is symbolized by the usual question mark bubble appearing, whereupon he physically grabs it and throws it away.
- If the Elite bosses from Hero Core try to use an ability Cast from Hit Points with only one point left, a question mark will appear above their heads.
- In the Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy, these appear over an NPC's heads when you distract them with a coin or object, or do something unusual in their presence for a few seconds. In some cases, they'll do this when you offer them food or drink when disguised as a waiter or chef.
- Hyrule Warriors has three characters with confused titles: Agitha the "Insect... Princess?" Tingle the "Reincarnated Fairy?" and Linkle "The Heroine?"
- Knights of Pen and Paper 2: The "Confusion" Status Effect symbol is a purple question mark, and the afflicted character has three of them coming out of their head.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time contains a hardcoded check in its main text routine that clears some temporary Event Flags when speaking to Ingo as an adult for the first time, something which there's no apparent reason to do in this context. The source code suggests that even the devs couldn't remember why they wanted to do that, as this branch also contains the debug message "???????????????? z_message.c ??????????????????"note , as though asking "why do we even HAVE this lever?"
- When a soldier in Metal Gear sees something unusual, a question mark appears above their head (followed by an exclamation mark if they see you).
- In Ōkamiden, since Chibiterasu relies on his partners for exposition, any time you try to examine something without your partner, all you get is a whimper and a ? above Chibi's head.
- The Other: Airi's Adventure: Pictorial Speech Bubbles of question marks are used when people get confused, like with Airi, when she finds out that the Park has become an Unnaturally Looping Location.
- Ouchi Mainichi Tamagotchi: If you speak to the Tamagotchis through the microphone and they can't pick up what you're saying, they will all briefly display a question mark above their heads.
- Paper Mario: When a character gets confused or wondering about something, a red question mark pops up.
- The protagonists of Persona do a large question mark overhead to indicate confusion.
- Pokémon:
- In Pokémon Red and Blue, the confusion status effect was indicated by two question marks appearing above the Pokémon's head, each accompanied by a sound effect suggesting the "huh?" sound.
- From Generation 1 to this day, the appearance of question marks serves as the animation for the status move Amnesia, which grants a +2 to Special Defense.
- In the Pokémon Stadium games, question marks appeared above a confused Pokémon's head. In other games, it is usually portrayed by birds flying around its head.
- In the Pokemon Mini game, Togepi's Great Adventure, after Togepi completes the Tower Of Origin, Togepi comes across a Donphan that accidentally collides with Togepi to send it flying (thus kicking off the Tower Of Adventure), prompting Donphan to stop and glance behind it in puzzlement, with a question mark appearing above it.
- In Psychonauts, the icon for the "confusion" power depicts a perplexed head surrounded by question marks, and the confusion projectile itself looks like a giant question mark that the protagonist throws at the enemy, after pulling off the dot like a grenade pin.
- Remnants of Isolation: Multiple times of such a Pictorial Speech-Bubble from the Girl who would be named Celesta:
- In the opening cutscene, she has one after the door to her cell mysteriously disappears.
- When leaving her cage, she says one when looking back to where the barrier was, presumably confused even after confirming its disappearance.
- In Shadow Hearts, if you pass over an item on the ground, a question mark speech bubble appears over your character's head. Plot-important items are marked out with an exclamation point. Porn magazines elicit a heart.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- In Sonic the Fighters, right after Dr. Eggman zaps your character with a cloning ray (which produces a grayscale doppelganger).
- In Sonic Adventure, the Chao sometimes turn the floating balls atop their heads into question-marks.
- In Stealth Bastard, a question mark appears over to robots and cameras if they detect the presence of the player but haven't gotten fully alert yet.
- The "Use" command in Tombs & Treasure depicts a man scratching his head with one of these floating next to him.
- A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: A Pictorial Speech-Bubble of this is used by Gainer when sneaking into his house, and is confused, and then he says:
Gainer: Where are all the servants?
Web Animation
- In the Puyo Puyo Happy!! episodes where Suketoudara is a robot aiding Arin and Ralph with scientific studies, he has a screen on his belly that displays at least one question mark when he is unable to identify a thing for Arin and Ralph.
Web Comics
- Awkward Zombie: Samus gets an increasing amount of these in this comic after seeing Fox McCloud barefoot with a regular fox's haunches because she's used to seeing him straight-legged with his boots on.
- Daughter of the Lilies: Old Master Wu gets a small flock of these, followed by an Idea Bulb when he realizes that the person he's been told off for berating is actually a stranger and not one of his students.
- Erma never says an audible word, so the artist had to find another way to show when she's confused by events. Mild puzzlement is shown by a single question mark above or next to Erma's head; when she's really confused, the question marks come out in force.
- In El Goonish Shive, multiple:
- The Goo has a single question mark over one of its heads here, when confused by the actions of the person it is fighting.
- In the 2002-11-30 comic, it's said in a Pictorial Speech-Bubble by "Claire", a.k.a Grace, when she is confused by the form she transforms into.
- The Goo has a single question mark over one of its heads here,
- This Jailbreak page (and several others like it.)
- A single question mark has been spotted above some character's heads in Ladies In Waiting.
- Out-of-Placers: This is how baxxid visually express confusion to the audience since baxxid can't make facial expressions. Kalgkur does it on this page when Kass casually reveals that she used to be human and male without giving further context.
Web Original
- The standard emoticon for confusion is a colon and question mark, thustly: :?
Web Videos
- Doraman: The thumbnail for "Who is Doraemon?" shows Doraemon with pink question marks surrounding his head. This indicates that the video is asking who the character is.
- The trademark of the perpetually confused Blitz on The Funday Pawpet Show. A question mark was put on a stick and floated above him.
Western Animation
- Variation: The Beatles cartoon "Penny Lane" has an exclamation mark over Paul's head when he and the boys discover that the crime they were trying to thwart wasn't at Penny Lane in Liverpool but with heiress Penelope Lane, which secret agent James Blond had already thwarted. Earlier in the episode, the group had question marks over their heads when they see a panhandling trumpet player taking a lunch break.
- In the Classic Disney Short "A Gentleman's Gentleman", as Pluto the Pup wonders how to get a gumball from a gumball machine, one of his ears forms a question mark.
- A question mark appears above DM's head at least once in Danger Mouse. In the episode "The Duel," it happens when Greenback gives him a rifle (for a carnival target contest) with the barrel bent back.
- Felix the Cat would often pick up the question marks that form over his head and use them as tools. In at least one cartoon, his tail turns into a question mark.
- Kaeloo: In "Let's Play Teachers", several question marks appear next to Kaeloo when she asks Stumpy who Mr. Coolskin is.
- The Patrick Star Show: In "Is There a Director in the House?", GrandPat's directing choice is a Silent Movie. Unfortunately, this comes in right as Sandy is about to warn Bikini Bottom of imminent danger. Sandy's first explanation results in a Cue Card of physics equations appearing. Patrick doesn't get it, so a card with "?" appears. After some more pantomime from Sandy, a card with even more physics equations appears. Patrick shrugs at the camera and a "??" card appears.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), despite the generally serious tone, one of these appears for a split-second, maybe a frame, over Dr. Robotnik's head when he falls into a pit trap set by Antoine.
- In a nod to Felix the Cat as listed above, in the Tom and Jerry cartoon "Ah, Sweet Mouse-Story of Life," Jerry ends up walking off a construction beam and a question mark appears above his head just before he falls. In a Ninja Prop moment, he grabs the question mark and uses it as a hook to latch onto a ledge. Tom later attempts the same thing, but before falling he becomes shocked rather than surprised, getting an uselessly straight exclamation mark instead. To his credit, Tom is clever enough to bend the exclamation point into a hook, but by then it was too late.
- In Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner episode "Soup or Sonic", a question mark appears over Wile E. Coyote's head when he's uncertain if he ran off a cliff or not. When he gets conformation that he did, he grabs the question mark and shapes it into an exclamation point, and then he falls.
Real Life
- If a Apple Macintosh computer cannot find a bootable hard drive on startup, it will display a flashing question mark.
- Can happen on any text-based messaging platform, from instant messaging to comment sections, where responding in nothing but question marks is perfectly possible. Sometimes people react to a particularly perplexing story or image with just a string of dozen or more question marks.
- According to one story, Ernest Hemingway, living in Paris and wondering how well one of his books was selling, sent the publisher in New York a telegram with just "?" to avoid the horrific expense of international telegraphy. As the book was doing quite well, the publisher sent back a telegram with just "!". However, this story has also been told about Oscar Wilde (in Paris on tour, publisher in London) and both Victor Hugo and Émile Zola (in England in exile, publisher in Paris), so its veracity is suspect.