I Ate What?

"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said... 'I drank what?'"

—Chris Knight, Real Genius

This trope covers instances when a character eats or drinks something that's not intended to be food. Most of the time, the character is not aware of what they're consuming; typically results in a Spit Take, Vomit Indiscretion Shot, or some other response once the discovery is made.

Inevitably produces lots of Squick and Nausea Fuel. Might lead to It Tastes Like Feet when the dust settles. Often played for laughs as a form of Refuge in Vulgarity.

Differs from Foreign Queasine, Reduced to Ratburgers, and Alien Lunch in that the stuff eaten wasn't supposed to be eaten by anyone, even in desperation. Bob drinking Rigelian bloodwine ("a delicacy on my planet!") is not this trope, but Bob drinking Rigelian rocket fuel is.

One of The Oldest Tricks in The Book. A very popular trope is Eating Shoes. Another subtrope is to mistake pet food for human food: see Dog Food Diet. Another is Tampering with Food and Drink in various forms to conceal drugs or medicines, ranging from Laxative Prank to Slipping a Mickey.

Compare Eat That, Secret Ingredient. Contrast with Gargle Blaster, Masochist's Meal, and Fire-Breathing Diner. Also see Lethal Chef and Evil Chef, two people who may be involved with this trope. Cool, Clear Water might be subverted for the drink-based version of this trope.

Note: If it's human flesh being eaten, then the trope is I'm a Humanitarian.

Examples of I Ate What? include:

Anime and Manga

  • Variant: Noi and Shin in Dorohedoro aren't thrilled to find out what they've eaten in En's restaurant. It's mushrooms, no real alterations there... but he grows them on corpses.

Comic Books

  • In American Born Chinese, the caricature Chin-Kee urinates into someone's can of Coca-Cola as part of a prank. When the character later discovers this, he throws up.
  • In Blue Monday, one of the events in an escalating prank war involved the boys sneaking pubic hair into the girls' food. When the girls find out, two of them shriek and fling their burgers away in disgust, but the third one doesn't mind the taste.
    • I think the implication was that only the first two got pubes, not the third one. Could be wrong, though.
  • And, of course, there's Chew, whose protagonist psychically knows the entire past of everything he eats (except beets). He ends up using his powers to take a bite out of crime as all he has to do is eat a piece of, say, a murder victim to know exactly what happened to him. Expect plenty of Squick.
  • Rat-Man author Leo Ortolani once made a spoof of the second Star Wars trilogy. The character Dark Mouse, a parody of Darth Maul, was asked by his master (an expy of Emperor Palpatine) about what evil deeds he did that day, and he answered: "Did you think it was beer in that glass I gave you before?". Some time later, the master replied: "Did you think the cake you ate before was a chocolate one?".
  • In a story from the Little Archie comic, one of Little Dilton's inventions receives an alien cooking show. Little Jughead makes up a batch of cookies, following a recipe from the show. People love them until they find out what is in them. Among the ingredients are wood chips.
  • In an issue of Secret Six, Cheshire and Dr. Psycho dined with Vandal Savage after failing him. During the meal, Cheshire suspiciously asks what the food was. The answer: Solomon Grundy. Cheshire throws up, while Psycho asks for more, and Vandal Savage delivers the immortal line:

Shut up and eat your Grundy.

  • Hellblazer had a story where the First of the Fallen showed up to collect the soul of Constantine's friend Brendan, a consummate drinker and magician. One of his last tricks was performing a working that would turn a spring under his house into pure stout, and John claims to want to "upstage" Brendan by sharing a drink with the prince of darkness. It's only once the stout goes down that John reveals the spring was blessed by a saint, making the base of the stout holy water. The First's reaction: "Interesting -- what?" And then John cuts off the spell, turning the stout back into holy water.
  • In Persepolis, for a while, the author has to wait tables in Austria. When one of the guests molests her, the cook sneakily avenges her by spitting on his schnitzel.

Fan Works

  • A terribly funny Knights of the Old Republic Dark Side Exile and Dark Side Crew invokes this. After a night of Dark Jedi revelry and backstabbing, the crew goes back to the Hawk. Where Visas Marr fixes cakes for dessert. Of course, seeing as they're all Dark Jedi, they end up arguing, lightsabers get involved, and half the crew dies. That's when the other half of the crew start feeling the effects of the poison Visas put in the cakes and they drop dead. Kreia comes out of hiding and congratulates Visas on a job well-done .
  • Poor Frankie has to endure one of these in the fanfiction Have a Drink on Me after she and the reader realize what the juice she is given really is. Wilt also kills and/or cooks Cheese and Terrance as well as Bloo, but thankfully no one almost eats them.
  • In a Breather Episode of Futari wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon, Binbeat, who's perpetually nine and can't read Japanese, accidentally eats the moldy bread from Mia's science project. He's sick for the rest of the day and doesn't even bother fighting back when his Monster of the Week is defeated, just going home and complaining about a stomachache.
  • In "Skittles", a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic, Pinkie Pie invents a new candy made to taste like Rainbow Dash's saliva. She also invents 'Rainbow Dash Spicy Muffins.' You don't want to know where she got that flavor.
  • In the Spice Girls AU RPF, Just Taken, Emma knew Melanie had been eating pet food in order to find something easier to swallow, thanks to a choking incident earlier, making this subverted. Victoria, Geri, Mel, Melanie's parents, and sisters, Jenny and Linn all discovered this.

Film

  • In Dumb and Dumber, a cop who pulls Lloyd and Harry over takes a sip from a bottle of pee which he thought was beer (Lloyd had to go to the bathroom that badly). They try to warn him, though after sipping, he immediately turns nauseated and tells them to get out of there.
    • Also happens when an enemy poses as a friendly hitchhiker, intending to drop pellets of rat poison into Harry and Lloyd's food. Before he can succeed in this, he needs first aid for a stomach ulcer flareup (which was induced by Harry and Lloyd's own practical joking). Harry and Lloyd try to administer his emergency medication, but they mistakenly feed him the rat poison instead.
  • In the second Austin Powers movie, Austin drinks Fat Bastard's stool sample, thinking it is coffee.
    • Well, at least he pours it thinking it's coffee...

Austin: Cor! This coffee smells like shit!
Basil: (sees the stool sample) ...It is shit, Austin.
Austin: Oh, good, then it's not just me. (drinks)

      • He most likely thought that Basil meant "shit" as in "terrible".
  • In the movie Fight Club, there are several references to people urinating or worse into food.

"Tyler was now involved in a class action lawsuit against the Pressman Hotel over the urine content of their soup."

    • Later in the movie:

Nameless main character: (after Marla orders clam chowder) Clean food, please.
Fight Club Member: In that case, may I advise against the lady eating the clam chowder.

Nick Rivers: [grabs bottle off of table] Mind if I have a swig of this?
Chocolate Mousse: Go right ahead.
[Nick drinks, then spits it out]
Nick Rivers: What the hell is this stuff?
Chocolate Mousse: Gasoline!

  • In Fruit Chan's Little Cheung, a disgruntled prostitute drops a used tampon in her pimp's cup of tea, and he drinks it without noticing.
  • Real Genius is the Trope Namer, but the actual example of this trope is in an unrelated scene, and subverts it. Chris gives Mitch a beaker of something to try, then claims it is something he found in one of the labs. As Mitch spits it out, Chris mentions that it is actually just yogurt.
  • Problem Child 2 has Junior doing this to Big Ben Healy with a pitcher of lemonade that he was asked to refill by two snotty twin girls running a lemonade stand. He tops off the lemonade by peeing in it.
  • In Waiting, a "beeyotch" makes the mistake of pissing off the waitstaff. Her food is... enhanced, so to speak. And made so that she doesn't even know what she's eating.
    • For the morbidly curious: The cooks put pubic hair, dandruff, and spit on her food. One guy even rubs the garlic bread in his pants and all over his penis and testicles.
    • And for those of you even MORE curious, yes, this is Truth in Television.
  • American Wedding (the third American Pie film) has Stifler waiting for a ring-eating dog to defecate. When he gets it, the bride's mother mistakes it for a chocolate truffle and Stifler tries to prevent her from eating it... you know, just by remembering this I feel nauseated. Figure it out yourself.
    • Clearly he has learned from what happened to him in the first two films. More of the same, different bodily products and delivery methods.
  • When Borat is interviewing a politician, he brings a gift of cheese, claiming it is a Khazakstan custom. After a beat, he adds that the cheese was made with his wife's breast milk.
  • In the first Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, Dave catches Theodore with a chipmunk dropping on the sofa. Simon insists it's just a raisin, and proves it by popping it into his mouth. After a satisfied Dave leaves, Simon spits it out, then tells Theodore, "You owe me one."
  • Epic Movie: Edward notices what he thinks is the chocolate river, and quickly gulps some "chocolate" up in enjoyment. After a beat, Willy points out, "That's actually the sewer line," causing Edward to gag in disgust. How could he mistake the taste of sewage for that of chocolate?
  • In Caddyshack, people freak out on seeing what appears to be a turd floating in the pool (it's actually a candy bar), so they have Carl empty it and steam clean it. Carl then finds it, realizes it's a candy bar, and eats it (the swells still think it's a turd). Of course, considering it's been floating in pool water, that's still pretty gross.
  • In The Lost Boys, the way someone's turned into a half-vampire is by being tricked into drinking blood, being told it's wine.
    • Also when Michael is eating rice with the vampires, David (Kiefer Sutherland) says to him, "Maggots, Michael. You're eating maggots. How do they taste?" - upon which Michael suddenly notices (or has been fooled into thinking) that his meal is a writhing mass of maggots; he reacts appropriately.
  • Subverted in Demolition Man. John Spartan orders a burger, then proceeds to heartily eat it. Upon being reminded to check where the meat's coming from, he finds out it's a rat-burger, which deeply disgusts his two partners. He looks at it for a moment, then cheerfully resumes eating it.
    • When every other restaurant in the world is Taco Bell, rat-burgers suddenly sound a lot more appealing.
  • 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea combines this with From My Own Personal Garden when Captain Nemo serves Ned Land octopus embryo-flavored gelatin.
  • In The Polar Express, The Boy accepts a cup of what is ostensibly coffee from the trainhopper. A Spit Take occurs when the hobo removes his freshly-cleaned socks from the kettle.
  • It's goat urine!
  • In Tropic Thunder, Tugg Speedman tries to prove a decapitated head is a movie prop. He licks blood from it and nibbles some of the insides while thinking it's just corn syrup and latex.
  • The The Private Eyes, Don Knotts sips liquid from a black bottle while interrogating the house staff. It takes a few sips before he thinks to ask exactly what it is he's drinking, and he is informed that he's been quaffing ink. A rare ink from the Middle East. Made of buzzard pus.
  • In Road Trip, a waiter licks a pancake and stuffs it down his pants before serving it. The customer, oblivious to the prank, cheerfully eats it, saying it is the best he has ever had.
  • In UHF, Weird Al's friend accidentally eats dog biscuits during the filming of a kid's TV show. As he's in character as "Bobbo the Clown", he has to fake a smile even as he's grossed out by the taste of the "cookies" he's supposed to be doing a product placement for.

"That's right, Yappy's Dog Treats! Your dog will love that real liver and tuna taste, with just a hint of cheese!"

  • The Human Centipede combines this with Nightmare Fuel.
  • Hollywood Knights: The heroes all urinate in the punch which is then served to the authority figures.
  • Kingpin

Roy: Hey, I hope you don't mind, I got up a little early, so I took the liberty of milking your cow for you. Yeah, it took a little while to get her warmed up, she sure is a stubborn one, whew.
[Takes a drink from the bucket]
Mr. Boorg: We don't have a cow. We have a bull.
Roy: I'm gonna brush my teeth.

  • In The Smurfs, Grouchy lands in a candy dish full of blue M&Ms in a toy store which he mistakes for "Smurf droppings" and ends up eating them. Earlier on, Clumsy mistakes liquid soap for something edible and tries it out, only to not like the taste of it before he burps out a bubble.
  • In Superman III, Clark Kent and Lana Lang have a picnic out near the wheat fields with her son. Clark tastes what he thinks was good pate that Lana made, only for Lana to point out that it was dog food. Clark still continues to eat it.
  • Subverted in the film version of The Devil's Disciple: after eating a bowl of soup, General Burgoyne asks one of his men what was in it. Clearly expecting this reaction, the soldier admits that it was rattlesnake. General Burgoyne doesn't even miss a beat before pronouncing it delicious.
  • In Paul, Agent Zoil drinks Clive's pee.
  • The "Rocky Mountain oysters"[1] in Funny Farm.
  • In Clue, Mr. Green has this reaction to The Reveal of the contents of the dinner eaten at the beginning of the film.

Wadsworth: And monkey's brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington, D.C.!
Mr. Green: ...Is that what we ate? [rushes off making retching noises]

  • Played with in The Illusionist when Tatischeff is being fed soup by Alice while also looking for his rabbit (that escaped without either of them knowing). The cookbook Alice is using is out on the counter but turned several pages when the wind blew through the window. Tatischeff looks at the cookbook to see what he's eating and it's on a rabbit recipe.
  • Holmes get chastised by Watson in Sherlock Holmes for drinking a bottle of a chemical intended for use in eye surgery. The sequel has a similar line when Holmes pours himself a glass of formaldehyde. Subverted in the fact that Holmes knew perfectly what he is drinking.
  • In Jan Svankmajer's short film "Shoes" the characters eat several unusual things: knives, flowers, clothes, tables, napkins, chairs, body parts,...
  • In Nine to Five, a comedy of errors, rodent poison "Rid O' Rat" uses a package design which looked just like "Skinny & Sweet" – an artificial sweetener.
  • A Running Gag of The Three Stooges involved various characters, usually the supporting cast, to drink what they assume to be coffee but what is really brown paint.
  • In National Lampoon's Vacation, during a rest stop, the family is eating lunch in a park. However they realize the food smells rather funky and is soggy. It's then that Ellen realizes that Aunt Edna's dog has wet on the basket. Clark, who was busy ogling a girl he had seen on the highway and had taken a bite of a sandwich, promptly spits it out. Edna on the other hand, shrugs and continues eating her sandwich.

Literature

  • In Animorphs, Ax's Sense Freak tendencies resulted in him eating non-foods on several occasions. He's lucky that morphing heals.
    • And yet he doesn't seem to care when he eats something that's not supposed to be eaten (engine oil, cigarette butts, etc). Everyone else complains, but not Ax.
  • The Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Timeless has Fitz doing this with a chunk of "cheese" he found in his friend Anji's flat, which had been abandoned for months anyway. She says she didn't have any cheese, and he is understandably perturbed.
  • In re-prints of the novel Fight Club, Palahniuk adds a foreword. In it, he notes that many ex-waiters told him that tampering with food was Truth in Television, including one man who claimed to be a former waiter at a 5-star London restaurant who bragged that Margaret Thatcher had eaten his semen five times.
  • In Pretty Little Liars Aria becomes a vegetarian after eating puffin.
  • The main character of The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams has to be told what "pixie dust" means when you're in a reality with actual pixies.
  • Laurence Yep's Dragon Series novel, Dragon of the Lost Sea has a boy named Thorn persuading the witch Civet into letting him cook a meal for her. He hides one of the Monkey King's hairs in her bowl of noodles. And after she eats them, he speaks the magic words that cause the hair to change into an unbreakable chain.
  • One Running Gag of the Nightside series is for Alex, bartender at Strangefellows, to offer a beverage called "Angel's Urine" to the unsuspecting. Sales declined after word got out that it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • At the end of the book/movie The War of the Roses, Barbara Rose makes dinner for Oliver, who compliments her paté. She says, "Don't thank me. Thank Benny." Benny is Oliver's dog.
  • Anodyne Liniment is a medicine that relieves aching muscles and is meant to be rubbed into skin, not taken orally. In Anne of Green Gables, Marilla breaks a bottle of the stuff and pours it into an old vanilla bottle. Anne Shirley gets such a cold that she couldn't tell the difference between the medicine and the bottle's original contents, and Hilarity Ensues when her cake is served for tea.
  • In Trainspotting (book only), a girl jobbing in a restaurant is hit on by some English Jerkass tourists. She retaliates by putting all kinds of squicky stuff in their food.
  • Played for Drama in The Silver Chair, when Puddlegum realizes that he and the kids were served a talking deer. They take this so badly that Puddlegum has a moment where he seriously considers suicide.

Live Action TV

  • In Fringe Walter is growing an artificial ear in an organic incubator, but Peter almost eats it thinking it's an omlette.
  • Night Court - Art, the courthouse's fix-it man, fixed Harry's coffeemaker and used some powder labeled "Herb" to test it.

Harry: Hey, this thing's empty!
Art: Oh that, yeah I'm sorry, Your Honor, I had to use that herb tea to test the coffee maker.
Harry: Art, this wasn't herb tea! This was Herb!
They look over and see Dan standing at the coffee maker, his mug frozen against his lips

  • The famous "Crunchy Frog" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. While one could make the argument that eating a chocolate-covered (raw, baby[2]) frog isn't that weird,[3] the "Spring Surprise" which shoots steel bolts through your cheeks definitely qualifies for this trope. (Besides, the ingredients were quite clearly listed on the label. It's your own fault if you don't read them.)
    • In the Life of Python retrospective, Eric Idle recounts a sketch he had written, which some of the other Pythons refused to do. It involved a wine tasting, where the taster would pronounce his judgement on a succession of wines, only to told after each glass that it was actually urine.
  • This happened in Married... with Children, Al Bundy was doing his famous Bundy burgers and needed ash from all his previous grilling in order to give it a flavor. Peggy spilled the ashes and so she sent her kids all around the neighborhood to get more ashes. Kelly found some in an urn at the Rhodes household that held Marcy's beloved Aunt Toody. The results of discovering it was hilarious. Steven, who hated Marcy's aunt, just grinned and took a huge bite of the burger.
  • In Friends, Joey sometimes experiences this (such as when he drunk from a glass of fat).
    • In "The One With the Racecar Bed", Rachel admits to adding body fluids to the drinks she serves to people who don't tip her sufficiently.
  • Occurs at times on the nature show Man vs. Wild. One notable example was when Bear drank water squeezed out of a pile of elephant dung.
  • On the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode The Pack, Xander, and a group of bullies, get possessed by a hyena spirit. At the same time as Sunnydale High gets a live pig as a mascot. They eat it. Needless to say, Xander is not happy to find out he ate a raw pig. At least he didn't eat the principal, like the rest of the pack.
    • Averted in the "Doublemeat Palace" episode, where everything was pointing to the fast-food hamburgers being made of people, but turned out to be merely beef, chicken, and vegetable matter.
  • This hilarious moment from the Game Show To Tell the Truth fits the letter of the law, if not the spirit. (Mentioning the more proper Trope would spoil it for you, the viewer.)
  • Squicky example: in one Ashes to Ashes episode, a man is killed in a chip shop and it's implied that some of his more personal bits have been cut off and fried. Cut to Ray in another room, picking up said fried bit and eating it, thinking it's a sausage. He spends the afternoon with a bottle of mouthwash. Alex later tells Ray that it was just a sausage and he's being pranked by some of the other guys from the station.
  • In the Red Dwarf episode "Tikka to Ride" when the crew winds up in an alternate Earth (where JFK's survival leads to an After the End situation in American cities), they run across a random corpse, which a guilt-chip-free Kryten later cooks for Lister and Cat.

Kryten: Did I do wrong? I didn't get any error commands... Obviously I thought about it, because without my guilt chip or moral imperatives, I have nothing to guide me. But it seemed to me that if humanoids eat chicken then obviously they'd eat their own species; otherwise they'd just be picking on the chicken.
Rimmer: One minute you're down, the next you're right back up again.
Lister: I said I was enjoying that!
Cat: I knew it didn't smell right! Oh my god...

  • Space Cases gives us a more comedic example, though we never find out what the mystery substance is. The Christa is stranded on a planet and three of the cast are sitting around a fire, where the following exchange occurs.

Harlan: Ugh! What is that?
Bova: Don't know. I found it over there. On the ground.
Harlan: ... Why are you cooking something that's not even food?
Bova: Why are you eating something that's not even food?

  • On Farscape, Jool was given fellip urine as as a very strange form of anesthesia to treat an arrow wound to the elbow. Because of the intoxicating effects of the painkiller, Jool is too amused to be horrified... until later. It gets played for laughs, however, and eventually leads to breaking her haughtiness.
  • On The Honeymooners, Alice takes care of a dog, and heats up some dog food on the stove. Ralph and Ed find it, taste it and like it, and Ralph sees a money-making opportunity to market this delicious appetizer, inviting his boss over to sample it - of course, that's when Alice tells them all what they've been eating.
  • In an episode of The Closer, Charlie makes "special brownies" (laced with marijuana a friend of hers gave her) which Brenda proceeds to eat. She gets very stoned. Fritz is not amused, to say the least, when he finds out.
  • Similar to the Honeymooners example, an episode of Three's Company had Mr. Roper eat some dog food he mistook for a stew Jack had whipped up. He reported it was much better than his wife's cooking and asked Jack to give her the recipe.
  • In Power Rangers RPM, Ziggy starts eating the pink goop Gem and Gemma cook up before being told it's plastic explosives.
  • In Yes, Dear, Jimmy starts eats a bite of homemade play-dough. After finding out what it is, he asks if it could hurt him, and when told it couldn't, continues eating. Another time he tastes 'yogurt' that is actually Apricot Face Scrub. This time, he doesn't bother to ask if it's safe before he continues eating.
  • An episode of The Golden Girls has Dorothy eating some snacks Rose left behind while the latter was taking care of a live chicken. Then the following dialogue happens:

Dorothy: Not bad. What is it?
Rose: I'm not sure. The pet owner calls it "chicken chow".

  • Subverted in an episode of Trailer Park Boys, when Bubbles falsely tells Barb Lahey that the hot dog she is eating (home-made by Sam Losco) had been 'licked by cats', in order to ruin Sam's date with Barb.
  • Done many times in iCarly. After coming back from a jog with his Girl of the Week, Spencer reaches for a glass of what appears to be water, then spits it out.

Spencer: That's not water!
Veronica: What is it?!
Spencer: I don't know!

  • Done in Malcolm in the Middle as a Briar Patching stunt. Malcolm is shown making the world's most disgusting sandwich, taking crud from the fridge, from the sink drain, from under the couch, and so on, putting it all between two slices of bread. He sits down to eat it... whereupon Reese immediately swoops in to steal it, and takes a bite before he realizes he's been had.
  • In one episode of A Different World, Lena is babysitting for Jaleesa's baby while Colonel Taylor has some friends over. They get thirsty and decide to drink the milk in the fridge. Cue several spit takes when Lena comes down to get the breast milk for the baby.
  • In one episode of Monk, Natalie is afraid of a voodoo curse and Monk takes her to a shaman to help her "get rid" of it. The shaman initiates a complicated ritual with a potion made of... questionable ingredients. She hurries to drink it, but the man, horrified, tells her it was supposed to be applied to the skin. Cue rush to the hospital with attempted homicide included.
  • In an episode of Criminal Minds, it is revealed at the end that the unsub had made a dish out of one of his victims and fed it to the townsfolk. Needless to say, they weren't happy.
  • On 30 Rock Liz underwent an episode-long pregnancy scare that turned out to be caused by her Sabor de Soledad Mexican cheese curls having bull semen in them. Not only is this seen as a selling point (young women use them for birth control, and a later cutaway gag showed them being advertised as having "mas semen del toro!"), it doesn't stop Liz and Jack from eating them after discovering the secret ingredient.
  • In the CSI episode "Crow's Feet", the victim was engaging in urophagia, aka urine drinking for medical purposes.
    • Similarly, CSI: NY had an episode with exotic insect cuisine. Insects are eaten in some places, but probably not the giant centipedes Danny and Flack get offered. Flack refuses, but Danny goes "I'm from the lower east side" and slurps it down. Later, more insect cuisine is consumed when it's brought back the lab. But only by Danny and Lindsay, the rest went for pizza in Mac's office.
  • In an episode of Lost Girl called "Food for Thought," Kenzi helped herself to some soup that was simmering on the stove in the kitchen of a fae household she was visiting with Bo and Lauren. She had already eaten some of it by the time they told her what it was made of. She was not pleased.
  • Midsomer Murders: In "The Night of the Stag", Barnaby drinks half a pint of cider from a barrel that has a dead body floating in it. It causes him to throw up even before the body is discovered.
  • Seinfeld - George served scrambled eggs secretly laced with lobster to Jerry's girlfriend, revealing it after she ate...many people would love this combination (she did until she knew what it was), but she followed a kosher diet. This was his revenge for her telling his girlfriend about his "shrinkage".
  • Being Human (UK) recently[when?] featured this trope twice in the same episode. A flashback to the 1950s involved vampire Cutler, who had been recently turned by Hal, and was still reluctant to kill, being ordered to kill his human wife. He refuses. Later we see the two vampires meet up again in a pub with a few other vampires, and his sire assures him that it's fine if he doesn't kill, as the group needs him instead for his position as a lawyer and pours him a glass of blood. He starts to drink it, while all the other vampires begin to laugh. Confused, he allows his sire to lead him down to a cellar, and is horrified to see his dead wife lying on a table, with a tube from her neck leading into a jar of blood. In modern times, the same vampire is trying to persuade his sire to take part in his evil plans for world domination, and persuades him to have his first blood in over fifty five years, by offering him a glass. The sire is then dragged downstairs to the basement, and it is revealed to be the blood of the now dead Scottish girl who was only in Wales on holiday with her family, whom Hal had been sort of dating. The sire is similarly horrified, and the two reveals of the source of the blood are juxtaposed.
  • In Little Britain, there was a series of sketches where a bigoted old lady would sample some food and initially love it, but when she found out a minority made it, she then would proceed to vomit everywhere.

Music

I saw a little kid
 As he walked around
 He picked a candy bar up
 Off the ground
 He chowed about a half
 And his face turned blue
 Turned out that candy bar was a doggy-doo

  • Also from the same band, one scene of the video for "Original Prankster" has a guy buttering another's bread with poop. The other guy cluelessly eats it.
  • Bob Dylan's "Po' Boy":

Othello told Desdemona,
 "I'm cold, cover me with a blanket
 By the way, what happened to that poisoned wine?"
 She said "I gave it to you, you drank it."

  • One version of the Godiva's Hymn, a traditional drinking song among student engineers, includes the verse "They drank three drinks, the Artsman fell, his face was turning green. But the Engineer drank on and said, 'It's only gasoline'!"

Newspaper Comics

  • FoxTrot combines this one with the running gag of Andy's terrible health food by having Roger sample something out of a soup pot, declare it to be the best thing Andy has ever cooked- only to discover that it's "a compound for sealing the cracks in the driveway."

Roger: Please tell me it's poisonous.

  • One The Far Side cartoon had a crowd of scientists gathered around a cup with one of them saying, "What's this? Lemonade? Where's my sample of amoebic dysentery?" while another scientist on the other side of the panel is drinking from a glass with a surprised expression on his face.
    • Even funnier when you remember that the most prominent symptom of dysentery is chronic diarrhea.
  • Suggested in this strip by Argentinian cartoonist Quino:

Chef: "This sir?"
Waiter: "This sir."

Professional Wrestling

Stand Up Comedy

  • One Eddie Murphy comedy concert had Murphy talking about how some people make fun of the accent or appearance of the owners of Chinese restaurants. In the bit the owner retaliates by making a "special Won-ton soup" for the person insulting him.
  • Utah Phillips' "Moose Turd Pie" sketch is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, although the guy eating the titular dish doesn't deploy this trope's title, as he instantly recognizes it.
    • This sketch is also known as "Good, though!", after the actual final words. Anybody who complained about the cooking got stuck with the additional work of being the new camp cook.
      • Which, of course, explains why the cooks keep serving the likes of moose turd pie.

Tabletop Games

  • In Paranoia, the Matter Eater mutant power lets you eat anything, and even get sustenance out of it if it's organic. Useful when you need to Eat the Evidence.
  • Also shows up as an anecdotal example in the Ancient Rome setting for Vampire: The Requiem. In the setting, vampires are capable of enthralling humans to serve them by giving them a taste of blood; with three tastes, the "blood bond" sticks for a damn long time. So this vampire whose family doesn't know he's dead keeps visiting them for dinner, and brings along these delicious blood sausages...
  • In Warhammer 40,000, Khorne Berserkers are fused into their power armor, which recycles the Space Marine's waste into a bland, tasteless nutrient paste.
    • For that matter, if you're invited to a party, and you even think that they might have something to do with Slaanesh, you don't want to accept in the first place, but you really don't want to know what's in the food, wine and drugs.

Theater

Seward: An unusual case. Zoophagous.
Harker: What's that?
Seward: A life-eating maniac.
Harker: What?
Seward: Yes, he thinks that by absorbing lives he can prolong his own life.
Harker: Good Lord!
Seward: Catches flies and eats them. And by way of change, he feeds flies to spiders. Fattens them up. Then he eats the spiders.

    • A step left out of this, but in the original book: feeding spiders to sparrows, then eating those. And Seward mentions he's repeatedly turned down Renfield's request for a pet cat.

Video Games

Theo: “There are things your kind is better off not knowing.” So I’ve been taught, which means... I mustn’t... But using THAT for cooking...

  • Downplayed a bit: In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 3: Lair of the Leviathan, Moose drinks the manatee ichor (kind of a bloodlike fluid or discharge) and, surprisingly, it doesn't sicken Moose at all (though Guybrush and Morgan do seem kind of grossed out by it). He even tells Guybrush that the orange ichor (which has "a bubbly effervescence with a tangy palette") has been pure and unfiltered since he got hooked on it when he and the other crew members of De Cava landed in the belly of the manatee. Moose adds that the other ichor, the yellow bile, is acidic and hazardous to the digestive system when drunk. Since De Cava only likes the orange ichor, Guybrush can trick him into drinking the yellow bile served on a mug for one of the key expressions in a Pirate Face-Off.
  • One can only wonder where Oghren's home-brewed ale comes from, as hinted by him and Zevran in Dragon Age Origins party banter.
    • The sequel has a companion quest that involves gathering components for a potion...one of which is crystallized sewage. Hawke reacts with a heartfelt "EEEWWW."
  • Haunting Ground has Daniella/The Maid cook a meal during an early stage of the game. Later, this meal is served, and after two spoonfuls and one hell of an awkward conversation, an obviously sickened Fiona excuses herself. Once the cutscene ends, all she can do is walk incredibly slowly, and clutch her stomach. If you examined the unattended cooking pot at an earlier point, there is a chance that Fiona will recoil in horror, realising that human hair and meat is what is being cooked inside.

Web Animation

  • Brain POP: In the Fractions video, after eating a piece of Moby's cake:

Tim: Three-quarters of a cup of...motor oil?
Tim: I have to... go to the... bathroom.
(Tim runs to the bathroom, then we hear spitting sounds)

  • Homestar Runner: Many characters have been known to eat inedible items, whether due to ravenous eating habits or just plain ignorance.
    • At least once, however, in one Strong Bad Email, there is an instance of a character eating something unintentionally, as when Strong Bad and The Cheat (wearing a towel) give Coach Z what looks like a bowl of ice cream (with toasted coconut), which he eats:

Coach Z: Ooh! Sweet mercy! This is awful!
Strong Bad: Aw, it's okay, Coach. You're the proud new eater of a healthy bowl of sour cream and The Cheat fur.
The Cheat: (takes off his towel, revealing the lower half of his body being shaved off) Ta-da!
Coach Z: (coughs up fur) Oh! I think I'm gonna puke my pants!
Strong Bad: Ugh! Please don't elaborate on that.
Coach Z: Naw, it's easy. I do it all the time.

  • The Team Fortress 2 fan video "Sniper Soda" is all about this. Sniper really has to pee, and since all of his jars are full, he pees in a soda can, and then Scout finds it and unknowingly drinks from it.

Scout: Yo man, keep yo' hands off the soda!
[he drinks from the soda can, and then vomits]
Soldier: Didn't they ever teach you to use the toilet like a normal person?
[Sniper makes a silly face]
On-screen text: THAT WAS SO FREAKIN' PREDICTABLE
[cut to Scout vomiting into Sniper's hat]

Web Comics

  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had a comic with the line of dialogue "You put what in my cereal?" The cereal in question was "Everything But Urine-Os".
  • Averted in Marry Me, where the characters ask what they're drinking before they consume it. It turns out to be blood. They drink it anyway because they'd allegedly done it before, one for a 'vampire marathon' and the other just for grins.
  • Double Subverted in an Awkward Zombie strip, Roy prepares a Coffee for both him and Marth, but before drinking Marth suspects he did something to it, so he switches cups and Roy just leaves annoyed. Then as he is drinking from the other coffee Link enters asking for Roy, as he had peed in his coffee.
  • VG Cats has this:

Leo: ...So I've been secretly peeing in her coffee ever since.
Aeris: So I've been switching our coffee ever since.

    • And then he drinks some coffee. Eeew...
  • Happens to Kirby occasionally in Brawl in the Family, obviously given his eating habits. One instance here.
  • Forgath in Goblins absentmindedly drinks Dragon Lung Lantern Fuel after a fight with Dellyn Goblinslayer.
  • Ansem Retort: Axel discovering that Chuck E. Cheese doesn't sell tequila.

"Ugh-oh. I think I've been drinking bleach for the past hour. Fuck."

  • After his shop gets doused in BBQ sauce, Doc from The Whiteboard mistakes a scrub brush for a piece of turkey. After realizing the error, he continues eating it anyway.
  • Osborne, from Wally and Osborne, does this here.

Web Original

  • Though it started off as a trailer for a scat porno, 2 Girls 1 Cup became infamous on the internet for depicting two women defecating into a cup, taking turns consuming it, and then vomiting it into each other's mouths. Though as with many other pornos, it's faked with chocolate pudding.

Western Animation

  • Double Subversion on The Simpsons. In one episode, Homer and Bart visit a Native American village, where the chief gives them a cup of something. As they drink, he says "The bear urine will make you strong", making Homer and Bart pause. The chief then admits it's actually Fresca, and then Homer spits it out.

* spittake* "Fresca?!"

Homer: What do you have to drink?
Vendor: [angry-sounding foreign accent] We have Mountain Dew or crab juice!
Homer: Ewww! I'll take crab juice.

  • Moral Orel once sold his urine as an energy drink for the school sports teams.
  • Happens lots of times on South Park:
    • The episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die" ends with Cartman feeding Scott the ground-up remains of his parents.
      • Especially disturbing after the episode "201", in which it's revealed that Scott Tenorman's father was also Cartman's father, which means that Cartman killed his own father and fed his ground-up remains to his half-brother.
    • Mr. Mackey drinks poop with his coffee in season 1's Christmas episode.
    • Kenny eats a bowl of antacids thinking it was mints, then drinks water and explodes.
    • Cartman makes cocoa out of Kenny's ashes.
    • Kyle is forced to drink pee, and then finds that the cure for pee rage is the food he hates the most, bananas.
    • In the episode "Ass Burgers," Cartman sells hamburgers—which wouldn't be so bad if the secret as to why they were so delicious wasn't letting them marinate in his pants. The many customers are disgusted, with Kyle exclaiming, "You were sticking these in your ASS, Cartman!?!"
  • American Dad: Stan drinks a toxic fluid that would liquify his internal organs 24 hours after consumption. It turns out that it was inert.
  • The Secret Show has a whole episode revolving around this. Anita appears to have caused an international incident by, while disguised as The World Leader, eating an alien ambassador. However, when the rest of the species shows up, the rest of humanity eats them as well (everyone except vegans, as the aliens smell like any given individual's favorite type of meat/fish). Those who do eat them, however, turn into deformed splotchy versions of themselves, until a second wave of (dessert-scented/flavored) aliens shows up. It turns out that humanity is actually part of an alien reproductive cycle; once the two aliens are eaten, the victim burps up a new baby alien, restoring themselves to normal.
  • The Futurama episode "The Problem with Popplers". It turned out those delicious popplers just happened to be intelligent alien babies. The episode ends with the Planet Express Crew agreeing that eating intelligent species is wrong and with them eating a smorgasbord buffet of unintelligent animals, including a suckling pig and a dolphin who wasted all his money on instant lottery tickets.
    • Made even more explicit and Squick-worthy in the episode "A Leela of Her Own"; with the Cygnoids' pizza parlor.

Mama Cygnoid: "It's 'Leela's Bean Pizza'. It has six kinds of beans, plus several things that look like beans."
Joseph "Fishy Joe" Gellman: "I don't care if it has manure in it."
Papa Cygnoid: "That's a-good."

Slurm Queen: And have you ever tried toothpaste?
Fry: Whose behind does that come from?
Slurm Queen: You don't want to know.

      • Also mentioned in that episode is that rats are crushed to make the wine. Fry, who's drinking wine, immediately does a Spit Take in Bender's face.
    • In "My Three Suns", Fry becomes Emperor of a planet of liquid-based aliens after accidentally drinking the previous Emperor.
  • In the Johnny Bravo episode "As I Lay Hiccuping", Johnny gets the hiccups and goes between curing them and getting them again. At one point, he eats something neighborhood geek Carl bought. Carl says that he didn't know that Johnny was a fan of slug kibble. Johnny spits it out upon hearing that and shivers.

Carl: Gee Johnny, I never knew you were such a fan of slug kibble!
Johnny: (with mouth full) "Slug... kibble?" (spits out slug kibble, shivers)

  • The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: In one episode Grim sells cookies made of some exotic ingredients. At the end, it is revealed that the secret ingredients are bugs, ticks, and nightcrawlers. When the secret gets out, people pause for a second, stare at the cookies, and then go back to eating them.
    • To be fair, they are apparently really good cookies.
    • Another episode had Grim and Mandy giving Billy a bag of special "steak sauce" which Grim got "fresh from the lawn". Billy has used it as a "shampoo" as well. Said stuff (which Billy eventually finds out at the end of the episode) is made from dog doo doo.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door has the episode Operation: P.I.N.K.E.Y.E., where Numbuh 2 was eating Nurse Claiborne's crumbles as he was investigating the mystery epidemic of pinkeye going around the school. Once it got out that it was Claiborne herself who was the one infecting the students with pinkeye, it also became apparent that she was using eye crust for her crumbles, making Numbuh 2 gag at the very fact that he was eating them. However, at the very end, he went back to eating them. However, Numbuh 2 may have second thoughts after finding out that the filling of the crumbles was mucus.
    • Her second appearance had her go into the cereal business by making the sweet bits from Rainbow Monkey dolls. Including one of Numbuh 3's most prized doll. Needless to say Kuki was not amused.
  • There are several episodes of Scooby Doo in which Shaggy and Scooby enjoy delicious soup cooking over a stove or on a fire, only to be informed that what they just enjoyed was somebody's washwater for their laundry. Cue urping up bubbles.
  • One episode of Kim Possible had Ron and Rufus finding a bag of chips that belonged to the current client and began eagerly eating them... at least, until the client tells them the chips were made from crickets.
  • The episode "Onwards and Upwards" of The Ren and Stimpy Show Adult Party Cartoon dealt with Ren and Stimpy living in a spittoon and savoring many of the...er, foods it had to offer.
  • A few Freaky Stories involve this, like:
    • A gourmet escaped from prison, starved for food with a bad cold finds a building without power and eats the contents of its fridge in the dark, wakes up to find it was laboratory and the fridge was full of human organs.
    • A glutton in a dormitory steals someone else's food overnight, not realizing it was in fact full of animal skulls full of mealworms.
  • An episode of The Proud Family involves Suga Mama's lemon squares becoming massively popular to the point of ending up on Oprah. This is the part where the whole world discovers that when she says she "puts her foot in it," she means it literally. As in sticks her foot in the batter. The audience promptly starts hacking.
  • Captain Planet combined this trope with Cool, Clear Water in one episode: Kwame drinks a bottle full of river water, unaware Wheeler didn't boil the water thoroughly. As it turns out, the water is polluted (Dr. Blight and Sly Sludge were operating a sewage dumping operation upstream), and the other Planeteers have to go on a Fantastic Voyage to blast the parasites from inside his body. The episode had an And Knowing Is Half the Battle at the end teaching viewers how to purify water.
    • In another episode, Wheeler gets sick when he unwittingly eats squid in its own ink. At the end of the episode, Wheeler eats grubs, thinking it's pasta. The other planeteers decide not to tell him.
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire did this with a bottle of nitroglycerin.
  • An exchange in Family Guy regarding the pronunciation of whip while Stewie is eating some pie that Meg gave Brian:

Stewie: Cool Hwhip.
Brian: Cool Whip!
Stewie: Cool Hwhip.
Brian: Cool Whip!
Stewie: Cool Hwhip.
Brian: You're eating hair!

"Heart...lungs...and liver?"

Nurse: There was a mishap with the baked goods!
Pinkie Pie: No, not baked goods... baked bads! *barf*

    • Now to be fair to Applejack, she was suffering from sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion at the time. And Spike liked them just fine!
  • Helga orders "cervelles braisees avec les oeufs brouilles" at a French restaurant on Hey Arnold!, not knowing what it was (but appearing as if she did). Of course, her spit take on this is vomiting once she digs into it and the waiter makes a comment about the dish.

Waiter: "Not many of our younger customers appreciate the Calf's Brain and Eggs."

  • There was an episode of The Fairly OddParents that revolved around Cosmo, Wanda, and Timmy attending a ceremony (or something like that), and Timmy having a Potty Emergency, trying to find somewhere to pee. The episode ends with Cosmo and Wanda drinking a yellow liquid from a pitcher, and Timmy saying "Speaking of relief, don't drink the punch!" Ewwwwwwwww...
  • In The Smurfs episode "Hogatha's Heart Throb", Gargamel disguised as Hogatha's dream date is offered a refreshment that he enjoys until the witch reveals that he was drinking "snail mead".

Real Life

  • There are several medical conditions that invoke this trope:
    • Urophagia, where people drink urine, ostensibly for health purposes.
    • Pica, a medical disorder where people regularly eat non-foods like clay, coal, soil, feces, and chalk.
  • Writer Jack London once gave a friend who had been out running a glass of kerosene instead of water, causing the friend to suffer burns in his throat. It was presumably by accident.
  • Some kids unfamiliar with sheep/goats may remark how many free olives/chocolate cereals/maltesers are lying on the ground.
  • There is an article about a kid in China who was found drinking gasoline to become a Transformers. (NSFW due to ads)
  • Saginaw Cheerleaders Prank Teammates With Urine-Tainted Soda
  • On the set of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach burned his throat when he accidentally drank a bottle of acid that had been improperly labeled by the Italian film crew. (It was originally a drink bottle, hence the confusion.)
    • That's why one of the basic safety rules in handling dangerous substances is that you never put them in a container labeled for something that might lead it to be so handled, i.e. never ever ever put acid in a coke bottle or rat poison in a food box, etc. Don't put medicine in the wrong bottle, even if it's a really convenient bottle, and so on.
  • There was a PostSecret card that described how the writer, as a child, gave his/her nemesis hamster poop in a Tic Tac container and claimed they were a new chocolate flavor.
  • Michel "Monsieur Mangetout" Lotito ate bicycles, shopping carts, televisions, and an airplane, along with other objects inedible to us lesser mortals. He did this for a living for years.
    • And the only things that make him sick are bananas and hard-boiled eggs.
  • French cyclist and multiple Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil sometimes ate glass to entertain his fans.
  • A minor, little-known hazard of spelunking, as many deep caves' environments are protected by strict rules that forbid anything—even human waste—from being left behind. Don't mistake the bottle marked "P" for a beverage.
  • There is an urban legend in the UK about somebody getting sacked by McDonald's for having A Date with Rosie Palms in a burger.
    • Similar, but actually confirmed, was an incident that got on a "restaurants from hell" style TV show was an incident where a cook was caught on CCTV urinating into the jar of tomato sauce and then using it to create takeaway pizzas.
    • And in another case, a disgruntled coworker was caught on hidden camera urinating into the office coffee pot.
  • There are many examples of drugs or medicines being packaged as "edibles" or sugar-coated in some manner to make them more palatable. This both allows pranksters to pass them off as food (the infamous Ex-Lax brownies) or risks their being eaten by mistake (a hazard with marijuana edibles or "hash brownies", as the maximum recommended dose is usually small - like one square from a cannabis-infused chocolate bar, not the entire bar).
  • If one was to travel to exotic locales, this may be something that one might say in response to trying some exotic cuisines. Cracked.com has a list of rather delectable dishes.
  • This Cracked.com article might, just might, convince you to switch to organic foods.
  • A trick is popular among chemists to awe non-chemists. The effects of strong hydrochloric acid are demonstrated, as are those of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda). Carefully measured quantities of these are then decanted and mixed in front of the audience. Then the scientist downs the mixture. It is of course just salty water, as the two chemicals neutralize each other. Sensible people give the mixture time to react fully and let it touch the outside of the mouth before drinking any.
  1. ↑ bull testicles
  2. ↑ Shouldn't that be a tadpole?
  3. ↑ They eat frog's legs, don't they?
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