Porn Stash

"Whoa! Playboy, Hustler, Gallery...Computer Science Quarterly?!"

Kevin: (referring to box he found in his brother's bedroom) Is it ... pornography?

Jim: Nah. Andy's porn would never fit in a box that size.
—Mission Hill

Your Unlucky Everydude just got home and is settling into his place. It just has to be then that the girl across the street he's had his eye on walks in and looks around his room a little too closely. She's discovered the one thing every guy wants to keep secret—his porn stash. We never see much beyond the covers of these magazines, but the girl will not be pleased with it. If she's an especially touchy girl, the collection may not even live beyond the next scene.

This one is sometimes Truth in Television. However, with the rise of Internet streaming/downloading and the decline of physical video and print media, Real Life "spank banks" are more likely to be virtual caches hidden in obscure subdirectories and encrypted partitions on people's hard drives. Nonetheless, in-media uses of the trope are highly resistant to Time Marches On and Tech Marches On, preferring to stick with depictions of physical media stashes. The reasoning behind this is not hard to see; copyright owners are not about to promote a pornography consumption model that goes against their business interests.

Occasionally, a character will use his porn stash to hide something else he doesn't want people to find. The idea is that other people stop looking when they get to the porn stash, because they think the porn stash is what the character meant to hide.

Related to Caught with Your Pants Down. Not to be confused with a Porn Stache, which is something else entirely. See also Poor Man's Porn, for what people might turn to if their porn stash is insufficient.

Most often a Played for Laughs trope, very rarely explored seriously (except for porn addiction, which in itself may become a Compressed Vice or Very Special Episode).

Examples of Porn Stash include:

Advertising

  • In a recent Gamestop commercial, some poor gamer's parents discover his absolutely massive under-the-bed stash represented by blurred flesh-color magazines. The Spoof Aesop? Tell your parents what you want for Christmas or they will go looking for ideas.


Anime & Manga

  • Rouche, the lecherous father of the heroine of Dragon Half, utilizes decoy porn stashes to protect the real cache from his (literally) draconic wife.
  • In Cromartie High School, Maeda is horrified when his mom cleans his room and sees his porn, but says nothing about it. His friends go on to tell their tales of embarrassment. One guy saw a cute girl behind the video store counter when he was renting porn, one guy saw his childhood friend behind the counter, and one guy saw... Maeda's mom behind the counter.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima hangs a lampshade on an aversion. One of the chapter title pages is a diagram of Negi's room with comments on his various magical belongings. One of them goes something like "This is the drawer where Negi keeps his books. He's only ten, so there's no porn in it."
    • A subversion occurs later on when Yuna's father is reading something related to his job as a mage and hides it under some Ero Magazines when Yuna comes in (and promptly has a stack of books and papers fall on her because she's opened the wrong half of the door) and so was using porn as a distraction in the name of The Masquerade. The porn doesn't really bother her though; her only response is "Eh, I don't really mind; you're an adult, after all."
  • In Inukami!, Youko regularly torches the parts of Keita's collection he doesn't keep hidden.
  • Myself Yourself:
    • Narrowly avoided when Sana is unpacking his boxes for his new apartment and Aoi offers to help. Quickly realizing what the box she's going for contains, Sana hastily replies with, "No, wait, never mind, I'll unpack it myself."
    • Some episodes later, Aoi (who has the worst timing in the universe), walks in and sees the stash on the floor since Sana was searching for a special key. She also sees some tissues from when he was blowing his nose earlier and runs out, red with embarrassment.
  • Yuuji in Tona Gura wasn't so lucky. The box containing his "treasures" not only opened for Kazuki to see, it spilled all over the floor.
  • Mahoro from Mahoromatic is very serious about this. She spends a whole OVA episode hunting Suguru's porn, eventually capturing a bag of porn magazines. Then, completely by accident, she discovers dozens more hidden behind a fake wall- and Suguru later states that this still only represents 15% of the total.
  • Hideki from Chobits keeps lots of porn scattered about his room. When his cram-school teacher unexpectedly drops in when she's drunk, she finds them. She's not offended though, other than calling him naughty in a tongue-in-cheek way and dismissing it as "guys stuff", but Hideki's still horrified. Chi, his naive humanoid computer, keeps copying poses from them much to his horror, too.
  • In Great Teacher Onizuka, Onizuka's whole room is his porn stash.
  • Subverted in Mahoraba. When the male lead's room is searched by two of his female classmates, they express disappointment when they don't find a Porn Stash.
  • Light of Death Note, in order to provide an explanation why he locks his door all the time, gets a porn stash for his father (and the detective team) to discover.
  • Tenchi Masaki apparently kept a stash under his bed, which could just be seen near the end of the first episode of the Tenchi Muyo!! OVA if you knew what you were looking for. While no-one said anything about it in the show itself, the writers of 101 Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki Secrets saw fit to devote a page (question 23) to it and explain that they're magazines for healthy young men.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler subverts this one. Nagi, sneaking around Hayate's room, finds what she thinks to be a Porn Stash full of naked women, as expected. Subverted when it's revealed to be a sumo magazine. And then it turns out it's not Hayate's at all, but Tama's.
  • Godai's pile of mags in Maison Ikkoku make multiple appearances. First falling out whenever he tries to clean up. Later he stashes them with Yotsuya when he is entertaining female company and directly tells him not to return them while Kozue is around (he knows Yotsuya too well). Later after Yagami moves in and takes over (and Godai flees to another room), she tells him she donated "those magazines" to a recycling drive.
  • Genshiken... where do we start? First of all, the club room itself has a large stack of Doujinshi. Pretty much every member of the club (except Saki) has their own—even Ohno (fitting a Yaoi Fangirl). And at one point it's subverted, when Madarame uses a set of bondage DVDs to hide a real secret (several photos of Saki cosplaying).
  • For a female variant in Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun, Mayu's yaoi stash becomes a (very minor) running joke.
  • In the first episode of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl Asuta tries to cheer up Hazuma by buying him some porn (well they might actually just be Idol Photobooks—i.e. idols in bikinis—but the idea's the same) regardless of the fact that Hazumu isn't interested. Tomari discovers them and this leads to Asuta getting kicked in the head, Akagi on the other hand, takes an interest in them.
  • In Lucky Star we see Konata's computer screen, and it's a folder full of subfolders with names that might be fetishes (e.g. Meganekko, Meido, Tsundere). But, then, whether Moe points are fetishes in the eyes of an otaku is another matter...
    • Also subverted in the anime, when Kagami wondered if Konata put her Eroge stash in the closet. Konata answered that they were in her father's study as the two of them share the games.
    • Another discussion: Konata said her father does not peek into her communication records since he knew what would happen when "people peep into his D:\ drive"...
  • In the second Patlabor OVA, the discovery of the mechanic team's massive Porn Stash in their quarters at the HQ prompts the infamous Seven Days of Fire.
  • In Midori Days, Seiji Sawamura kept a very large collection under his bed, nearly all featuring the same girl. "Kept" being the operative word because Midori forced him to throw it all out as soon as she saw it, over his loud objections.
  • In Kannagi, when Nagi went to look for a bag to hide her magical girl wand/purification staff in, she mentions that she came across Jin's porn stash. Apparently he's a breast man. Tsugumi immediately looks down at her own bust after hearing this information. In episode seven, Jin becomes worried after Nagi locks herself in his closet, because that's where he keeps the stash. Nagi's not too pleased as she thumbs through his collection.

Nagi: Milky tits?

  • In To Heart 2, this happens in episode 2 when Tamaki visits Takaaki's room after their long separation.
  • Not exactly porn, but Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has a hidden folder on his desktop labeled after Mikuru which contains photos of her enforced cosplay. At one point, she notices the folder and he has to try and distract her. (Of course, then Haruhi shows up in a mood, rescuing Kyon... kind of.)
    • Considering that the tone when he saved it as such (and his frantic self-note to back it up when the computer club threatens to take the computer back) implies that for Kyon, it is essential. Why he keeps it on a school computer considering that is unanswered.
  • In Welcome to The NHK, as the main character frantically cleans his apartment for his mother's visit, he carries away his stash to hide it temporarily, but runs into his mother in the process and spills the magazines for all to see.
    • There's also another episode where his friend gives him a CD-ROM full of Hentai, to inspire character designs for an Eroge game they're developing. He doesn't make any progress at all.
    • Satou is shown to reach for a tissue every now and then, and after discovering that there's lolicon on the internet, he is shown surrounded by empty tissue boxes.
      • And in the manga, this goes further—his porn obsession eventually leads him to build a massive customized rig just for pornography, complete with cavernous hard-drive, several monitors, high-fidelity headphones and a leather massage chair. In his parents' spare bedroom. Needless to say, it does not end well.
  • Subverted in Clannad. When Tomoyo starts making it a part of her morning routine to make sure that Tomoya and Sunohara wake up and make it to school on time, she notices a magazine on the floor of Sunohara's room. Curious, she picks it up and looks at it, causing Sunohara to panic. However, she nonchalantly comments, "Oh, it's just porn."
  • Simarly in Parallel Trouble Adventure Dual, Mitsuki finds a part of Kazuki's stash, shows it to Kazuki (he's embarrassed and expecting tragedy) and then replaces it, all without saying anything. It's never mentioned again, and she even confesses to him later that episode.
  • Subverted in, of all places, Love Hina, when Su, being a bigger pain in the ass than normal (save for Molmol), finds Keitaro's porn stash while he and Naru are studying. Naru shrugs it off as normal for guys when Su asks if this proves Keitaro is a pervert.
  • In Dragon Ball, Master Roshi and Murasaki are shown to have large collections of porn.
    • Also when looking through Murasaki's hut Goku finds a huge porn stash and proclaims "it's Master Roshi's magazines, How did they get there?"
    • Bulma once accidentally opened one of her father's capsules when she mixed up his case of capsules with her own. The capsule ended up being full of porn. She immediately destroyed it.
  • School Rumble's Nishimoto gave away his porn stash to his classmates, Hanai confiscates the rest. Yakumo runs away from him when she senses his lust.
  • Discussed with a lampshade in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Every parent knows about those magazines and things under the bed.
  • Sora no Otoshimono: Our peace loving hero built a robot out of panties specifically to guard his porn. When things go wrong though, he knows that he must sacrifice the porn just to save his friend's life. In an episode in the 2nd season, the robot comes back into the picture, as does the porn. Thanks to a little bit of Ikaros' magic, Tomoki's porno mags are dancing happy to have him as their owner.
  • Seto no Hanayome has Nagasumi and his dad stumbling across a mermaid porn DVD in box of mermaid aerobics videos. When they both eagerly sit down to watch it, they're both stunned to find erotic footage of... fish. Nagasumi's dad casually questions his interests, and the humiliated Nagasumi dies a little more inside...
  • In an episode of Irresponsible Captain Tylor, as a reward for doing something heroic, Tylor is given a porn tape by the marines on the spaceship, with a dire death threat should he not return it. He starts to turn it on in a fairly disinterested way, and the episode ends up involving his frantic attempts to eject the tape when it becomes stuck in the player, all the while being constantly interupted by all female members of the crew to deal with their own feminine problems. Things do not turn out well for him, but nothing ever does anyway.
  • In an episode of Busou Renkin, a friend of the protagonist goes to deliver a porno to him, and bumps into the heroine, Tokiko while doing so, who calls him a pervert in a completely deadpan manner. After that incident, she makes an off-hand comment to the protagonist about him liking older women, and later on gets a shocked expression when the friend told him what happened, and he realizes what Tokiko meant.
  • Used in the harem comedy Ai Kora, when Sakurako discovers a stash of photographs of her and the other girls' "parts" Maeda has taken, and is understandably pissed off.
  • In To LOVE-Ru, when Zastin was possessed by a ghost they found him in his room going through some Ero-mags. Nana calls him on it, while Momo accepts it as he is a healthy man. She then immediately questions Rito about his stash. Though considering Rito, he probably doesn't have one.
  • In Mirai Nikki, Yukki has a stash that was once found by Yuno as she tidied his room. Curiously, she doesn't seem to care, which is surprising for the normally super Yandere Stalker with a Crush Clingy Jealous Girl. Yukki freaks out and snatches it off her, then accidentally shows it to his mother. Apart from a single line, no more is said about it. After all, her son just brought a super cute girl home.
  • Keiichi Morisato of Ah! My Goddess keeps a small collection of "dirty magazines" in his room. Every character in the series knows about it and knows where to find it (back of the bottom drawer of his desk), except maybe Belldandy, and its existence has been used to torture Keiichi on more than one occasion. Its location was a minor plot point during one arc.
  • In Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai! Kyousuke and his sister Kirino each have their own stashes. The latter actually spreads the former's stash around his room for his childhood friend Manami to see just to mess with her. Since Manami has an obvious crush on Kyousuke, she is pleased instead of freaked out that one of Kyousuke's magazines she saw was a Meganekko fetish mag.
  • Bishop Frau uses the church library to creatively hide his immense porn stash in 07-Ghost.
  • In Hidamari Sketch, Yoshinoya-sensei lists some places where Yuno's orange notebook might be... before realizing that she was thinking of typical places to hide porn. The principal was not pleased to hear this.
  • Played with in World of Narue. Kazuo brings the eponymous girl Narue to his house, but doesn't have his stash properly stashed. Additionally, his computer's wallpaper is of a busty bikini girl. Narue, being an alien, however, is oblivious to what these really are.
  • Germany, in Axis Powers Hetalia, is implied to have one in episode 8, giving rise to this gem from a traumatised Italy.

Italy: He's really sadistic, and he has lots of strange magazines and DVDs in his house! The last one I found involved dogs! Oh, and he really loves bondage! He was doing *censored* until a little while ago!

    • Germany has also received a box full of erotic books from Finland (who is representing Santa Claus) as a Christmas present.
    • Japan doesn't have one (that we know of), but Italy mistakes his ukiyo-e collection as one.
  • In Monkey High, Atsu threatens to tell Macharu's mother where Macharu keeps his. Much later, he does tell Haruna, who merely accepts its existence silently while Macharu can't even stammer an excuse for it.
  • Junpei in Strawberry 100% has one, which is discovered at various points by two members of his harem. Tsukasa hides it from him, to his frustration and embarrassment... but he finds it even more embarrassing when Aya makes a point to replace one she accidentally ruined.
  • We get a blink-and-you'll-miss-it look at Panty's stash in episode 3 of Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt. She has quite a few mags...along with her vast collection of dildos, handcuffs, and anal beads (among other things). But then, the rest of their place has mags that's she's dropped littering the place anyway.
  • Nanjirou Echizen from The Prince of Tennis has one, though it's Bowdlerized into a mere stash of cute bathing suit model's mags in the anime. Nanako still reacts in utter horror when she sees it.

Nanako: Aaaaaugh! Uncle, you're so GROSS!

  • Played around with in episode 3 of Tiger and Bunny. When Barnaby hides a folder on his computer screen from the cameraman and Cain Morris (director of HeroTV) during their filming of a documentary on him, Morris (mistakenly) assumes that he's hiding an online porn stash - to Barnaby's bewildered amusement.

Morris: I understand - I'm also a single man. I'll be sure to leave out anything that might ruin your public image.
Barnaby: Excuse me?
Morris: In return, please recommend some good sites if you know of any!
Barnaby: "..." (Smiles)


Comics

  • Recurring theme for the Viz character Billy No-Mates.
  • In Ralf König's Konrad And Paul, Paul once had to help a terminal AIDS patient clear all the "questionable" items from his house before his death. Another episode had a TV repairman asking to test if the VCR works, and the first tape he grabbed by random was gay porn.
    • Well, as Paul explained, why waste fifteen minutes of tape space after Out of Africa?
  • In Charlie Christensen's Arne Anka Arne had his friend Krille keep his porn stash after he was married. When Arne was divorced and tried to get it back, he was horrified to learn that Krille's wife had thrown them out when she discovered that they were lying in a different order than usual.
  • In Amelia Rules Reggie and Pajamaman sneak into their Ninja enemies' secret hideout to gain information and find a very interesting pin-up magazine. Hilarity Ensues when they are surprised by the Ninjas:

Ninja Kyle: HEY!!!
Reggie: MOM! I WASN'T LOOKING AT ANYTHING! IT WAS PAJAMAMAN. HE'S A BAD SEED! I WAS JUST UP HERE PRAYING AND... AND... OH. (relieved) It's you.


Fan Works

  • In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, after deleting the one on the SOS Brigade's computer, Kyon gains a smaller one on his phone, courtesy of Mikuru and Tsuruya.
  • In the "Never Say Never Say Never" chapter of The DysFUNctional Pirates, it is implied that Luffy, Chopper, and Brook are going through Sanji's secret porn stash while he was out with the wolfpack. Turns out, they were looking through Sanji's secret stash of food magazines.
  • The now-immortal Pippin Took in Bag Enders has, just as any eternal adolescent would, been collecting porn for six thousand years. (He was twenty-nine at the time of the quest, which to a hobbit is roughly the equivalent of a sixteen-to-nineteen-year-old human, and is now stuck at that age forever.) He keeps it all in his mattress. Unfortunately, he's in the bottom one of a set of bunk beds, and the collection is so huge that his nose now presses against the top bunk when he sleeps. The rest of the Fellowship have dubbed him the Porn Dragon.
    • After they find a perfectly preserved Da Vinci in the depths of the pile, perfectly preserved which they promptly sell on the black market, not wanting to explain where it was from and how it lasted so long. They also consider selling him to the British Library due to his preservative abilities, but decide against it on the grounds that they know where he's been.
  • In The Thessalonica Legacy, Pinkie finds a porn magazine when they're asked to search for "something suspicious". Fluttershy's reaction is absolutely priceless.

Fluttershy: Oh! Oh dear. Um… I'd say that still works the same way.

  • Played with in one of the side cartoons of Shadowjack Watches Sailor Moon, in which Usagi is revealed to have a stash of violin CDs hidden under her bed where no one will find them.


Films -- Live-Action

  • In the movie Birthday Girl, Nicole Kidman's character finds the protagonist's stash of bondage magazines, but rather than get creeped out she's willing to act out his fantasies. It turns out that it's just part of the plan to manipulate him so that he will love her enough to steal for her.
  • The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Slight subversion in that the title character's stash was thrust (so to speak) on him against his own wishes.
  • Subverted in American Pie when the girl finds the Porn Stash and starts masturbating.
  • In You, Me, and Dupree, husband and wife, Carl and Molly, catches Carl's best friend, Dupree, masturbating in their living room to a porno movie. Unfortunately, Dupree didn't put away a box labeled "camping gear" where he got the tape from which contained Carl's entire collection of Asian porn movies which his wife forced him to toss. Er, throw out.
  • In the Crowning Moment of Funny of the otherwise traumatically horrifying film Orphan, rebellious adolescent Danny shares his spoils with his friends in his treehouse:

"Page 43 will change your life... hey that one looks like your mom!!"

  • A scene cut from the movie Shaun of the Dead has Shaun and Ed searching their roommate Pete's bedroom for his car keys, at which point Ed would come across a stash of fat girl porn. This was a call-back to another cut scene in which Pete mentioned he did many things he wasn't proud of, including sleeping with a fat girl.
  • Skirted (not a euphemism) in the 2007 Transformers Live Action Adaptation: in what he thinks may be his final message to his parents, Sam states, "If you find Busty Beauties 4 under my bed, I'm holding it for Niles... okay, that's a lie, Uncle Charles gave it to me and I'm sorry." Later, when looking for Captain Witwicky's glasses in his room, he specifically states that Micheala should not look in one particular box of things.
    • And he calls it his "treasure chest." It's adorkable.
    • And then when his mom wants into his room and he won't let her in, she asks if he's masturbating. When his parents find he's got a girl in there, they're delighted and proud.
      • It's Megan Fox. What do you expect?
      • Maybe they underestimated their dweeb son's totality of game?
  • Hard Candy features a porn stash as a major plot point. There is a very, very good legal reason it is hidden in a safe...
  • In Final Destination 2, when one character believes he will be the next to die, he gives another character the keys to his apartment and asks him to remove all the porn and other contraband before his mother can find it.
  • Then there's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where James Bond cracks a safe to find documents linking a German lawyer to Blofeld. He finds the monthly Playboy in there too. And he, the evil bastard, steals the centerfold.
  • In Little Miss Sunshine, a State Trooper is going to search the family van because they are all acting so suspiciously (they are hiding their grandfather's body in the back), but instead he finds Grandpa's raunchy porn stash (with the uncle's gay porn on top) and suddenly "understands" why they were so evasive.
  • In the Watchmen film, Ambiguously Gay Adrian Veidt has a folder labeled "boys" on his computer. This was intended as in in-joke to fans of the Comic Book.
  • Parodied in Home Alone, believe it or not. Kevin McCallister finds some magazines in his older brother's bedroom and thinks it's gross that nobody's wearing anything.
  • A mother discovers her little boy's porn collection in Pieces after she finds him putting together a jigsaw puzzle featuring a naked woman. Matricide ensues.
  • There's a briefly seen porn stash, consisting of magazines depicting nude and partially nude women, in The Toolbox Murders. The owner of it was female.
  • In The Hairy Bird, the girls of the DAR plant Verena's father's porn stash in Mr. Dewey's briefcase to get rid of him, making sure Mrs. Dewey finds it and shows it to Ms. [McVane], the school principal.
  • The corner store owner in Cornered had some pornographic magazines lying around his hidden security room, which the protagonists discover while looking for a place to hide from the killer.
  • In the film version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Roderick has a magazine about girls and motorcycles in his bedroom. While not porn per se', the way his mother treats it later in the film makes it a case of Getting Crap Past the Radar in a kids film.
  • Invoked in The Last Starfighter (though it's the 10-year-old brother with the stash in this case). Alex has just met his simuloid duplicate, Beta, and the conversation naturally gets a little loud. Startled, Alex's younger brother Louis wakes up:

Louis: "What's up, Alex?"
Alex: "Back to sleep, Louis, or I'm telling Ma about your Playboys!"
Louis: (immediately fakes being asleep)
Beta: "You're blowing it, Alex."
Louis: "What the shit?!"
Beta: "I said, back to sleep, Louis, or I'm telling Ma about your Playboys!"


Literature

  • In Chuck Palahniuk's novel Rant, Echo Casey is the title character's "porn buddy" (see Coupling example). Echo is Rant's girlfriend.
    • Palahniuk has written a nonfiction piece where he mentions performing this service for a terminal AIDS patient.
  • In the Adrian Mole novels, Adrian's mother discovers the porn mags he has hidden under his mattress. She also discovers the phone bill (hidden for completely different reasons) and assumes there may be some additional perversion.
  • Quietly subverted in Death Star, in what might just be the only time in Star Wars this trope comes up. A guard is faintly amused at the thought of the reactions his fellows would have to finding that...

the holos hidden beneath his bunk were not racy images of Twi'lek dancing girls, but rather dissertations on various schools of metaphysical thought detailed by the galaxy's finest philosophers. Not that he had anything against Twi'lek dancing girls.

  • In his autobiograhy The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson writes about his childhood exploits in seeking out the porn stash owned by his father. A particularly favourite hobby was to swap magazines with friends who had found their own father's stashes, knowing full well they could do this without getting into trouble.
  • In Flora Segunda, when Flora and Udo are searching through Hotspur's old bedroom, one of the items they come across is a copy of Naughty Nan's Risque Review.
  • In Neal Shusterman's kid/young adult novel The Eyes of Kid Midas, a boy comes across a pair of magical wish-granting sunglasses. At one point, when his best friend and he are wishing up all sorts of cool goodies from catalogs, they come across one of their dads' Playboys. Interestingly, despite being pubescent males, the two blush, tell themselves "maybe later," and put it away. It never resurfaces.
  • In Needful Things the school principal, who's secretly a pedophile, is actually dumb enough to keep his collection of CP magazines in his own office, albeit in a locked drawer. Of course it bites him in the ass as a part of a Deadly Prank.


Live-Action TV

  • Used to great effect in Skins when Katie, who had spent half a season willfully ignoring it, was forced to acknowledge her twin-sisters lesbianism when she stumbled upon her porn-stash.
  • Subverted in an episode of Castle where a detective expresses his surprise in not finding any porn stashed on a victim's computer.
    • And mentioned again when Castle tells Beckett to hide his Porn Stash from his daughter Alexis if he dies.
  • Aaron on Wonderfalls, obviously afraid that his parents will snoop, keeps his porn stash locked in a safe.
  • Two of the male leads on Coupling have a deal where they are "porn buddies" with each other. Basically, if one of them dies, the other will immediately go over to the dead man's home and remove all the porn before any parents or family members show up. The porn so recovered would then be added to the survivor's stash, of course.

Jeff: So your best friend's dead - but there's an upside!

    • The plot of the episode "Inferno" revolves around a character finding the titular video tape (whose full title was Lesbian Spank Inferno) in her boyfriend's video.
    • The plot of a Season 4 episode deals with Geoff's Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Oliver, who has been single so long he's stopped hiding his Porn Stash, and has a girl coming up to his flat. Hilarity Ensues.
  • The porn buddy idea was also done on the UK version of Queer as Folk. After attending a friend's funeral Stuart and Vince go to his house and take all his porn so his mother won't find it.
  • In episode 8 of Mahou Sentai Magiranger, after Urara learns An Aesop about being honest with herself and her siblings, the first thing she tells Kai is to "not hide [his] magazines under the bed." It's never stated what these magazines are, but what else do you think a 17-year old boy would hide under his bed?
  • Barney on How I Met Your Mother has his porn out in the open in a special display case, so as to scare away any dates who wish to stay and start a relationship.
    • Lily told Barney that Marshall doesn't have porn. He tells her that notion is "cute".
  • The X-Files featured regular jokes about Mulder's porn stash (which in one episode was implied to take up his entire bedroom, in addition to what he kept stashed around the office). Unusually for the trope, he made no real attempt to keep it a secret from Scully, and she didn't seem to care, aside from occasionally teasing him a little.
  • On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jeff has a porn stash which he asks Larry to hide while he has emergency bypass surgery. Larry finds it, but stops to look through it. Naturally, this is when Jeff's parents walk in. Rather than be embarrassed, Larry casually states that he recently had dinner with the male lead in the tape.
  • In the episode of Men Behaving Badly titled "Pornography", Tony ends up getting dumped a girlfriend who wanted him to get rid of his collection of porn after he lied to her about getting rid of it, only to stash it in his guitar. The fact that as she was leaving he begged her to let him keep one particular magazine citing that it had 'sentimental value' probably didn't help.
  • In one episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Donna thinks she is doing Gaz a favour by tidying his room. He is horrified to find it has been completely girlified, then panickedly murmurs "me porn!" rushes to his gigantic porn cupboard, and then opens it to discover it's full of teddies (the bear, not the lingerie). Cue the Big No.
  • In an episode of Hot Properties one of the girls suspects her boyfriend is a chubby chaser, and decides to raid his porn stash to find out.

The fold-outs opened out, and down, and up, and across.

  • In 3rd Rock from the Sun, Officer Don has a collection of Playpen magazine, and after his girlfriend Sally thinks about posing to it, he gets infuriated and cancels his lifetime subscription—replacing it with a year-by-year one...
  • Married... with Children had Al Bundy and his stash of "Big 'Uns" magazines. In an episode, Fidel Castro was reading "Cub 'Uns", a spinoff of "Big 'Uns".
    • His African-American buddy Griff reads "Black Big 'Uns".
    • When the car was lost at the car wash Al said He had something valuable of His in the trunk of the car to which Peg replies it's probably just a copy of "Big 'Uns". At the end when the car is found, Al goes right to the trunk to retrieve just that a copy of "Big 'Uns". But hidden in the magazine was a photo of Him and His Family.
    • He also had a collection of Playboys handed down from his father.
    • Bud has his own collection as well, though he does borrow from Al occasionally.
  • Noah's Arc: In the first episode Noah is trying to find Wade's stash to determine if he's gay or straight.
  • Veronica Mars goes to a boy's house looking for evidence that he is planning to blow up the school, but instead finds his "Petite Blondes" porn. Veronica remarks, "At least I know I'm his type." In another episode, she finds where Aaron Echolls keeps his homemade-without-permission-starring-underage-girls porn in a locked cabinet in the bedroom, along with the sophisticated equipment he uses to run the several cameras.
  • On Arrested Development, MRF Rita gets her idea about sex from her Uncle's porn magazines. Due to the specificity of said porn, she believes a cricket bat to be essential to the process.
  • Six Feet Under: David and Keith, when first fostering Anthony and Durrell, find them giggling at their porn stash. David freaks out and declares that they have to throw it all away, despite the fact that it was hidden and the kids must have gone snooping for it. As it turns out, the stash is big enough to fill two large trash bags.
  • In one episode of Top Gear, the reward for one of the challenges in the lorry driving contest was "a year's supply of gentlemens' literature". We could see clearly it was a collection of top-shelf magazines.
  • On Lost, Charlie finds Sawyer's while looking through his stockpile:

Charlie: Well, he stole all this in the first place. I mean, people need food. They need medical supplies. They need... shocking amounts of pornography.

    • To be fair to Sawyer, he'd simply taken everything of value from all the deceased passengers' luggage, which raises some interesting questions of how many people actually fly with porn magazines.
  • My Family periodically references Michael's "magazines"... which are allegedly Nick's.
  • On Titus, Tommy asks Titus...

Tommy: Titus, if I die, please get the porn from under my bed before my mom cleans out my room. And also, if you look at it, keep an open mind.

  • Correspondent John Oliver recently begged Jon Stewart to get rid of his pornography if he died while in the field. Oliver said that porn was hidden in several places in his kitchen and living room, but that a box labeled "pornography" was actually "erotica" and should be donated to a library.

John Oliver: That is my legacy, Jon!

  • In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Some Assembly Required," on searching one of their suspects' homes Xander finds "a pornography collection so prodigious it even scared me."
  • A Desperate Housewives episode had Bree preventing her son from living with his grandparents by "accidentally" showing them his stash of gay porn.
  • Battlestar Galactica. On receiving an entire crate load of computer software from the Pegasus crew, Gaeta's first question is a whispered, "Got any porn in there?"
    • Huh, that puts the later revelation that Gaeta is gay in a new light.
      • With a name like Gaeta...
    • Yeah, but that revelation also showed Gaeta was Bi the Way, vastly increasing his porn options.
  • In an episode of Mad About You Paul accidentally puts a home-made porn tape in the wrong box and sent it to his employer or returned it to the video store, forcing him and Jamie to track it down before someone watches it.
  • One episode of Drew Carey's Green Screen Show (Spiritual Successor to Whose Line Is It Anyway?) involved the performers acting out their impression of a virus attack on a computer; at one point Brad and Julie go "We're all your porn" and start drifting away from 'protagonist' Jeff, who breaks out in a Big No.
  • The second season premiere of Leverage plays with this when Sophie stays over at Nate's apartment to make sure he was ok after he was injured in a fight. She notes that she didn't look under his bed because she knows that's where guys keep all of their "weird kinky stuff." Nate, of course, denies that there's anything under his bed.
  • A Running Gag in Generation Kill is the fate of Evan Wright's (totally innocuous) photo of his girlfriend. Because of the religious sensibilities of their host nations the Marines couldn't have any pornography, so Wright's picture gets stolen and becomes the porn. He spends the entire series trying to track the picture down and never does. On a side note, the Marines finally accept him once he reveals that he used to write for Hustler.
    • At one point the photo is even "pimped out" in exchange for some batteries.
  • In the opening of one NCIS episode, a kid isn't so much distressed that his mother has found his Porn Stash... but more worried that she'd also discover the handgun hidden underneath, that he'd picked on a crime scene.
  • In the episode "The Eleventh Hour", the Doctor abruptly commandeers a minor character's laptop, only to notice that the owner apparently (this being Doctor Who, nothing is made too obvious) has a porn stash on it. After returning the computer, the Doctor advises him to clear his browser history.
  • True Life explores this in an epsiode about porn addicts. One man was so addicted to porn that his wife had to put her own password on their computer. Which he promptly figured out.
  • There's a CSI ep where Greg's porn stash is stumbled onto offscreen and mentioned later.
  • Happens in a Tracker ep, with Cole being thrown off by the porn because it's in a teenage boy's room. He doesn't think it's appropriate, and Mel has to explain things a bit.
  • In Sherlock, Sherlock off-handedly mentions that John has "naked women" on his laptop; it's fairly clear that he's not referring to artistic nudes.
  • Matt in Friday Night Lights has porn magazines stashed under his bed, unusual given the episode was made in 2007. Lampshaded when a caretaker finds Them and points out that almost no one does that anymore and "there is such a thing as the internet".


Stand Up Comedy

That is one of my big fears in life, that I'm gonna die, you know, and my parents are gonna come to clean out my apartment and find that porno wing I've been adding onto for years. There'll be two funerals that day. I can see my mom going through my stuff. "Look, honey, here's Bill when he was a Cub scout. Look at how cute my baby is. His little short pants, his little hat, (crying) look how cute my baby was... I wonder what's in this box over here. (Beat) 'Rear Entry', Volumes One through Forty?!" I'll be the only guy going through the gates of Heaven with his mom spanking him. "Mom, they were on sale!"

Every man in here is hiding some porno in the crib. Not an illegal amount, just enough to get you by. And when we hide porno, we go all out. It ain't behind the refrigerator under the bed. We become Batman when it's time to hide some porno. You hit the light switch, the whole bookshelf shifts to the side, you go down two flights of stairs into your porno cellar. Janet Jacme, Kobe Tai, Jenna Jameson... that's right!


Video Games

  • At one point in Metal Gear Solid 2, Raiden can overhear a parrot making raunchy noises and chanting 'top of locker!' after overhearing an animated conversation between two guards. Kicking the relevant locker causes an impressive amount of pornography to fall from its top.
  • In Persona 4 during Yosuke's social link, he comes over to Souji's (Main Character) room. He states "So are the Goods under the Futon?" You(the player) deny it or say yes. Yousuke remarks that he used too until his mom found it cleaning. Later in the scene: "Alright. Let's check under that Futon." Souji starts to panic. What he had under there is left up to you.
    • Hell! There is an entire fanfiction talking about what happens when Yosuke gives his Porn Stash to other people to hide. Naoto refuses to give it back and forces him out at gun point. Kanji looks at it and gets bored. Nanako somehow gets ahold of it and asks Ryoutarou about it. "Daddy? Why are those two ladies naked and touching each other in their private areas?" "Um... Daddy's sleeping." "YOU'RE NOT SLEEPING DADDY!"
    • Also if you take Rise (a girl) into your room she'll look around a bit before outright demanding to know "Where you hide them." However, if you tell her she's more amused than anything and not really upset. On the other hand, saying you don't know what she means has her amused by your innocence, and denying you have a stash all together has her impressed that you would be such a gentleman.
  • In Legaia II: Duel Saga, there is an optional cutscene where Sharon finds Lang's stash at his house under the bed. Kind of averted in that Sharon seems to find it cute and funny instead of getting angry.
    • For what it's worth, you end up finding the Kama Sutra among the books at the monk temple in the first Legend of Legaia game... Understandable, considering it's a monk temple.
  • In Breath of Fire III, no sooner has Momo told the heroes about what a great man her late father was, then they enter his private lab... and find out that every shelf in there is filled with "adult material". (If you try to read it, the game gives them the message "you're not old enough.")
  • Taken to a Crowning Moment of Funny in Wild ARMs 3. You find some "adult magazines" in a bookshelf, but trying to read them gives you a message saying you're not old enough. Get your Migrant Level up to 18, however...and you fight the porn stash!!
  • In at least the Fan Translation of Seiken Densetsu 3, if you have Duran in your party and attempt to enter Duran's house in Forcena, he'll force the party out. If you also have Angela in your party, she'll tease Duran by pretending to assume that this is the reason why.

Duran: Let's skip this one house, it's mine. I promised not to return until I defeated Koren.
Angela: Aw, I wanted to see your room. But if you're hiding anything, like your porn collection, I understand.

  • Final Fantasy IV has a VIP room in one of the cities where you find a porno mag in the book shelf. The screen turns pink and the music changes to reflect the mood.
    • Final Fantasy VIII has you finding a copy of "The Girl Next Door" early on in the game. You trade it for a Shiva Card for the Triple Triad game later on.
  • In one of the sidequests in Crisis Core, Yuffie ends up finding Shinra secretaries' "treasure", which elicits the following reaction:

Yuffie: Nasty pictures! Ewww!! Sickos! Are Shinra employees trained to put TRASH in their treasure chests!?

  • Taichi from CROSS†CHANNEL had one, until Touko found it and burned it.
  • Lacy Comic from Inazuma Eleven, which a comic editor finds in his office and decides to burn it along with other things he has. The Hero's team tries to stop him, thinking he's going to burn a special move manual. The book ends up in the hands of Kabeyama, who later spends sometime later reading it. Somehow, the said manual's really hidden inside that Hentai manga.
  • You can sometimes find copies of books like 'The Lusty Argonian Maid' under NPC's beds or in bedroom-chests when snooping around houses in Oblivion.
  • Isabela of Dragon Age II apparently gave Hawke one, judging from Hawke's comments on the bookshelf: "Better keep Isabela's books on the top shelf; I don't want to scar Sandal" and "'101 Uses for a Phallic Tuber.' Thanks, Isabela, that's 100 too many."
  • In Mass Effect 2, Joker has a rather large porn stash that EDI sometimes comments on. In between the second and third game, it seems Cerberus's cyberwarfare division decided to attempt a remote take-over of Normandy. EDI, being unshackled and in full control of the Normandy's systems, naturally repulsed the attempt and retaliated by bombarding the Cerbies with spam data comprised of the zettabytes worth of Joker's porn; She weaponized the porn.


Web Comics

  • Misfile takes a different approach. Ash used to be a guy but is now a girl and living in a world in which he always was a girl from almost everyone else's point of view. When Emily (who is one of the few who knows) sleeps over he thinks that "at least there aren't any porn magazines under my bed for her to find." But there are, they've just been corrected for the universe (e.g. whatever it was is now "Yaoi Heaven"), squicking Ash out.
  • In one strip of The Perry Bible Fellowship, several boys using a Ouija board are guided to Grandpa's stash of girly books.
  • In Tsunami Channel, Onii-chan himself has no Porn Stash, but the Professor keeps trying to smuggle some Hentai to him, much to his dismay.
  • In Order of the Stick, it doesn't even have to be a human, in fact.
    • See also the awkward moment when Elan tells Julio Scoundrèl that his mom has a collection of "pictures of you in the drawer by the bed she thinks I don't know about".
  • Did you think Dominic Deegan has escaped this? Sorry, guys...
    • Though with a pseudo-subversive role-reversal.
  • Girl Genius: It's not quite porn, but Gilgamesh Wulfenbach showed Agatha into his heavily populated bookshelf and offered her her pick... and she went straight for In the Seraglio of the Iron Sheik. It's possible she didn't get the reference, however.

Agatha: ... In the Seraglio of the Iron Sheik?
Wooster: A particular favorite, I believe.
Gil: (turning a lovely shade of pink) GO CLEAN THE LAB!
Wooster: I'm gone, sir.

    • Which is more of a lesson in "Why one should not hire university friends as one's valet."
  • Loserz has Ben find a porn file on Jodie's computer, only to be Squicked when he opens it to find gay porn.

Jodie: When a man and another man and a black man and a bottle of lube love each other very very much...

  • Not porn, but similar: in Something*Positive, Jhim's mom helps him move into a new place. Upon seeing the box labelled "Toys", she says, "How cute, you kept all your old Transformers and things!" and opens it. Naturally, they are not that kind of toy.
  • In Achewood, when Teodor asks why Lyle still buys print porn, he remarks "Think about it. The power goes out, who holds all the cards?"
  • Insecticomics has a rather mind-bending example when Sideways infiltrates Shrapnel's computer... then with a horrified shriek, demands to know why he has TWO GIGS of LOCUST PORN. Hilarity Ensues here.
  • This Sequential Art strip.

Art: Have you been using my laptop again?
Kat: I like the way that folder is marked "reference material".

  • Piro from Megatokyo confessed having "embarrassing pictures" of Miho on his laptop... apparently sent by Miho herself.
    • And Yuki blackmails her older brother by threatening to reveal his stash of adult games to their mom.
  • Ctrl+Alt+Del Gives us this gem:

Lucas: No! Fuck you! I am NOT downloading 160 GB of porn for you!

  • Hunter of Suicide for Hire has his perfectly visible in the corporate headquarters of his respectable business.
  • Buck Godot: Even nigh-omnipotent alien overseers have them.
  • No love for Questionable Content? From Hannelore asking Pintsize to find pictures of sexy firemen (although it's debatable that it was porn, per se) to this strip.
    • There's also when Hannelore cleaned Marigold's apartment, only to be told she'd mixed up Marigold's yaoi with everything else. After being shown just what yaoi is, Hannelore immediately begs to keep it. Whether she gets converted to fully fledged yaoifangirl remains to be seen.
    • Pintsize's harddrive is... rather full.
    • Played for Drama when Dora pesters Marten about his Porn Stash, citing that she's never seen it before. Marten refuses, claiming it's private. Dora then goes onto his computer to find it—and when Marten catches her, he completely flips his shit about her violating his privacy. It's the catalyst for them breaking up.
  • Spiderwebs is taking the Misfile route.
  • Lampshaded in the toy comic Adventures In Aarons Room, here [dead link] , here [dead link] and here [dead link] .
  • This isn't a physical porn stash... Last Days Of Foxhound comic.
  • Subverted in Real Life Comics with Liz being quite cool with the Box O'Porn. Maybe because Greg does not seem to need it that much these days.
  • Exterminatus Now takes it to extremes, as Eastwood has the largest porn stash on the planet, which crashed the Inquisition's servers at one point.
  • This City of Reality side-comic reveals that Todo has really dirty magazines under his bed.
  • Played with in Red String. Reika notices a stack of magazines under Eiji's bed. When she pulls one out, he turns red and begs her not to look at it. It turns out he subscribes to girly romance manga.
  • MSPA has this in both Problem Sleuth and Jailbreak. Problem Sleuth has his Hunk Rump magazines, and so does one of the characters in Jailbreak. At one point, he even attempts to cheer up another character with them.
    • And more recently, Equius Zahhak of Homestuck has this as well. And in the interactive flashes, you can find them in chests.
  • In Greg, Ted gives Greg advice on how to consolidate his porn stash since Greg's four feet high mountain of dvd spindles full of porn might be construed as super perversion.
  • In Karate Bears one guy shows his Playboy Stash to some girls who thought they were going to make out!

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "Luck of the Ed" has Eddy trying to hide some pin-up magazines he inherited from his big brother... and then having to track them down again after Ed forgets where he put them.
    • He also has some under his bed..Along with tissues.
    • In the episode where Ed is grumpy because he has a pebble in his shoe, Edd and Eddy try to find something to cheer him up. They find under his bed a magazine titled "Chicks Galore." Let's just say it's not the "chicks" that Eddy was thinking of.
  • One episode of Family Guy shows Peter visiting a huge secure underground vault where he hides his porn stash from Lois.
    • And the episode where Peter gave his "skin bin" to Chris.
    • In another episode Stewie crawls under Chris' bed and finds some porn magazines, he is then curious as to what a vagina looks like he looks through the magazine and reacts in horror and shoots it with a machine gun.
  • In one episode of The Simpsons, Marge finds Homer's collection of vintage Playdude magazines. Homer claims that he is keeping them for the articles. Marge tests this by cutting out all of the pictures of naked women, after which Homer throws out the magazines. It's at this point that Bart and Milhouse discover them and are confused as to why Playdude is such a big deal...
    • "Don't look in my closet! In fact, stay out of my room altogether!"
      • An early episode clearly shows a "Playdude" under Bart's bed.
    • Subverted in a later episode: Homer shows Barney his stash of adult magazines—like such hot numbers as The Economist.
  • Subverted in Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Carl has no problem with openly displaying his Porn Stash.
  • In the third season Daria episode, "Speedtrapped", Daria has to go and look for a notebook under the bed of Trent, the older brother of her best friend, Jane. Daria has somewhat of a crush on Trent and says to herself as she starts to look under the bed, "Please, God, no amusing surprises."
  • Rare female example in Sealab 2021 with Debbie. Not porn per se, but when she dumps Quinn and takes up religion she gives her box of sex toys to Hesh.
    • "The big black one's their leader!"
  • In Beavis and Butthead, Stewart's father is shown to have a hidden porn collection much to their amusement.
  • In The Fairly OddParents episode "Hard Copy", Timmy receives a magic photocopier and the plot stops Timmy short of copying anything from his father's "Under the Bed Monthy" magazines.
  • There is an episode of Rugrats which centers around the babies trying to get into Phil and Lil's father's locked desk. Once they do they empty the contents and for a split second you can see a magazine with a woman dressed as a bunny on the cover.
  • From Futurama, "Bender's Big Score", Bender keeps fifty terabytes of robot porn on his hard drive. It's all deleted when the Time Code is erased.

Robot Voice: "Time Code and Obedience Virus Erased. Also fifty terabytes of porn."
Bender: "Hey!"
Nudar: "You've got no code, no porn, and you're ugly! Let's dance!" (The nudist scammers dance)


Real Life

  • Porn stashes are much more common than people understandably want to let on, due to the private/personal nature of the material. They are not restricted to perverts, single people, nor just men. The Internet has really expanded the ability to keep a stash—people are far more comfortable getting it in the comfort of their own home as opposed to having to drive out to a store on the other side of town.
  • A top SEC lawyer spent most of his workday downloading porn, to the point of filling his hard drive and resorting to burning DVDs. This came out in investigations into the SEC's lack of action to prevent the 2008 mortgage meltdown crisis.
  • With the advent of the TPM (Trusted Platform Module), it should be a lot easier to hide and secure a porn stash... And for its copyright holders to block your access to it or even delete it remotely.
    • Yeah, if only the TPM was actually secure. It can be hardware attacked, software emulated, and subverted in pretty much every way imaginable. There are even linux distros designed to read out TPM protected data after a quick restart or from a VM. Hacker pride *fist bump*
  • The now-memetic Loli Rape Bunker is a big secure stash for, well... Loli rape doujinshi.
  • It seems that your average Jihadist has quite an impressive porn stash.
    • "We have terabytes of this stuff," said one Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It isn't possible that they are encrypting messages in all of this stuff. Some of these guys are just perverts."
      • Not just your average Jihadist, either. Osama bin Laden himself had quite the stash!
    • Soldiers having porn on their laptops is about as surprising as a dog having ticks. The supposed irony comes from the hypocrisy of not practicing what you preach, only: Masturbation is not a sin, only a bad habit, in Islam.
      • Some Jihadists even tend to consider porn to be OK too - which is the opposite of what you'd except from extremely religious folks - based on some very, very creative scripture interpretation[1]...
  • Empress Catherine the Great sent her agents out to scour Europe for the best Western pornography.
  • Similarly, Queen Elizabeth I had a hidden library of nothing but pornography, though most of it wasn't in English.
  • The largest collections of pornography and related material in the United States are held at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, CA and the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, IN. Both require special applications to be used.
    • The Library of Congress may beat it, though its collection isn't entirely pornographic.
  1. ↑ Fill in your own conclusions about The Fundamentalist reinterpreting their scripture for what they want here.
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