Spider-Man’s always had a curiously animal-heavy rogues gallery compared to other superheroes. While a number of those classic villains like Scorpion and a dragon-esque Green Goblin make brief appearances in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the film also managed to sneak in a new bit of bestial energy, one that gives its most terrifying villain some added texture.

The Prowler plays a significant role in Miles Morales’ journey to becoming his universe’s Spider-Man and features largely into one of Into the Spider-Verse’s meatier subplots. But because he isn’t the film’s biggest bad, co-directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman wanted to give the villain a little extra flair to make his handful of fight scenes with Miles feel as emotionally intense as they do for Miles. The trick? Giving the Prowler a very peculiar, haunting audio cue that always lets you know that he’s charging his way towards Spider-Man, ready to go in for the kill.

When we spoke with the trio of directors recently, Persichetti explained that while they initially considered simply going with a frightening song to telegraph the Prowler’s presence, the movie’s composer Daniel Pemberton ended up fiddling around with the sound of elephants trumpeting to create the signature sound:

“That came from our amazing composer Daniel Pemberton and… it’s an elephant. Weirdly enough an elephant through a filter and it’s really just became his siren. It’s really unnerving and disturbing.

We used to have a song in there that had, not that exact sound but something that had the same expressive quality as that, and it was the beginning of a song. It was a mixed song and we just played that over and over and he turned it into something much more organic. It’s really haunting, man”

Here’s a lengthy thread Pemberton posted this week detailing his creative process: