The sound comes from Call of Duty: World at War, the 2008 first-person shooter set in the Pacific and European theaters of World War II. PT boats appear in the game's Pacific campaign missions, where players fight across islands and waterways, and their engines became a familiar audio cue for fans of the series. The clip later surfaced on user generated soundboards, where war edit creators and gaming channels adopted it as a compact naval engine effect. It remains in use for historical edits and gameplay montages.