Origin of iconic sound effect you've probably heard that has appeared in over 400 films

If you watch films, you'll probably have heard one very distinctive sound effect, which has been used in over 400 different titles.

It's been heard in Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the MCU, The Lord of the Rings and Reservoir Dogs.

The sound effect has been doing the rounds for the past 70 years, with its origin story tracing back to the mid-20th century, when Hollywood was really picking up steam on a global scale.

But how did it go from a random movie studio in the 1950s to being in numerous wide-scale A-list films in the modern day?

The sound effect was born in a studio, almost by accident. (Getty Stock Photo)

Called 'The Wilhelm Scream', it's a stock sound effect that was first used in 1951.

It is widely known in the industry as an inside joke with sound designers on movies, and is also regarded as the most popular noise in the film industry, for some reason.

While recording it, the man screaming wasn't satisfying the recordist, who kept giving him directions to get the sound he wanted.

If you haven't heard it before, you can listen to the making of it here:

Originally recorded for the Warner Bros. sound archives in 1951, the exaggerated and silly scream is widely used to this day, with the National Science and Media Museum detailing that the trademark has been used in more than 400 films and TV shows.

The sound clip was first used in a 1951 film called Distant Drums, and it appears in a scene where a man is bitten by an alligator while going through a swamp and, that's right, screams.

And that was it - after this, it appeared in the 1952 Western Springfield Rifle, and then in 1953's The Charge at Feather River, which is where it got its name.

In this film, a character named Private Wilhelm is shot by an arrow, and lets out the iconic scream that was later coined in the 1970s as the 'Wilhelm Scream' by Ben Burtt, then a USC film student, and friend Richard L. Anderson.

The scream was named after the character, Private Wilhelm. (Warner Bros.)

The pair were going through a Warner Bros. sound archive, and apparently had 'no other way to identify' the unique scream, using it in their projects.

As the pair graduated and became sound designers and editors, Anderson used the sound in 1976's Hollywood Boulevard, though Burtt took it one step further.

He used it in George Lucas' sci-fi classic Star Wars: A New Hope, released in 1977, in a scene where a Stormtrooper falls off a ledge after getting shot.

Burtt and Anderson then reunited on Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, released in 1981, where you can hear the Wilhelm Scream in the iconic truck chase scene.

It only snowballed from here, with the scream heard in many successful films over the next few decades, with The Incredibles, Cars and Transformers being just a few of the modern films who utilised the scream.

It became a 'rite of passage for every sound editor' says Burtt, as it became a call-out between sound designers to listen out for.