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Jon Favreau has tweeted that "The Wilhelm scream is in" Iron Man 2. For film lovers with deep knowledge levels of sound effects that little packet of info will be welcomed but for the rest of us, what the heck is a Wilhelm scream and what's it doing in Iron Man 2?

The scream began being heard in the early 1950s and became a defacto death scream for bad guys and good guys but more importantly generic background guys. Then, in Star Wars sound effects maestro Ben Burtt used the scream in the picture. Burtt began using it throughout the other films he worked on after Star Wars and soon people that watched a lot of movies began to take notice of the telltale yell. Now the Wilhelm scream is heard in hundreds of movies and has become an audio easter egg hunt. The name comes from the name of a character that is heard yelling the scream, Private Wilhelm, in the 1953 movie The Charge at Feather River.

Here's a compilation of Wilhelm screams throughout some of cinema's best and biggest action movies: