Chick 1 says:

Welcome to Troperiffic Tuesday!  This week we delve into the world of audio and look at a scream that has been the last sound uttered by nazis and stormtroopers, cowboys and orcs.  This week’s trope is the Wilhelm Scream.

(If you don’t know what a trope is you can check out the first article in this series, Manic Pixie Dream Girl.)

The Wilhelm Scream is a stock sound effect that has become unbelievably popular in movies of the last few decades to the point where it has become a Hollywood in-joke.  It was originally created for a 1951 Gary Cooper movie called Distant Drums.   In the movie, a man is attacked by an alligator.  The team doing the foley (creating sound effects) had an actor do a series of screams to use during the attack.  The screams were used in a variety of movies in the 50s including a western called The Charge at Feather River.  It was used when a character, who for some reason is called Wilhelm, is shot in the leg with an arrow.  The name stuck.

It became popular when sound designer Ben Burtt was working on a little indie pic called Star Wars and used it as the sound effect for a stormtrooper being shot and falling into a chasm (See the No OSHA Compliance trope).  It happens right before the brother/sister kiss and the swing across said chasm.

It was soon in all of the films of those two upstart filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  It spread like wildfire and it’s been a staple of films ever since.  The video below is just a small sampling of the many uses of this scream.