It Tastes Like Feet

Well... I guess that's understandable.

"The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease."

—Worst Analogies Ever Written in a High School Essay

For some reason, people tend to describe foods that taste terrible in terms of things that no sane person has any right to know what it tastes like.

The name comes from the episode of Friends where Rachel accidentally combines an English Trifle and a Shepherd's Pie, making the world's first (and hopefully last) Shepherd's Trifle. See it here. Meat, onions, whipped cream and jam? And just how would Ross know what feet taste like? A sister trope to Lethal Chef.

In Real Life, some examples of this trope are physiologically justifiable. On its own, the tongue is only capable of detecting a few basic tastes - salty, sweet, bitter, sour, savory. The more subtle and complex flavors associated with foods are actually due to the sense of smell, as aromatic molecules travel from the mouth up into the nasal cavity from behind. Thus, the smell of a non-food item can often be considered a reasonable guess as to its flavor. Of course, this only works for concrete examples of the trope ("this tastes like shit"), as opposed to more abstract/metaphorical uses ("this tastes like death").

Also, some people probably would know what feet taste like, such as Quentin Tarantino, or Joss Whedon.

Contrast with Tastes Like Chicken. Not to be confused with an instance of someone actually tasting a foot. Or metaphorically tasting their foot. If someone is really eating a foot, then the trope might be I Ate What?

See also Tastes Like Purple, for things it shouldn't even be possible to taste. May or may not be invoked for Foreign Queasine or A Tankard of Moose Urine.

Examples of It Tastes Like Feet include:

Anime and Manga

  • In a an infamous episode of Pokémon (see Lethal Chef), James describes May's culinary disaster:

James: "It has a hint of...how you say...jet fuel. With ze aftertaste of burning tortoise."

    • Wait, doesn't he mean burning Squirtle?
    • Inverted with Dawn's mom's Poffin recipe for her Glameow, the Meowth of Team Rocket likes it—and both are cat-based Pokemon.
  • In Moyashimon, Tadayasu describes the taste of hongeohoe (stingray sashimi that's been fermented in the ray's own urea and digestive juices) like this: "You know how at campsites, the filthy cramped men's bathroom just has one long urinal trough? I feel like I just picked up a piece of toilet paper that's been stewing in there for a few weeks and put it in my mouth."
  • In an early chapter of Gintama, Gin puts some of everything in the fridge into their nabe. When Kagura tries it, she comments, "It tastes like Gin-chan's feet." Promptly lampshaded by Gin.
  • Crayon Shin-chan: According to Shin-chan, green peppers taste like crotch.


Comic Books

  • In the comic Preacher, there is a scene in which an FBI agent is offered more coffee by a local sheriff. He refuses, stating that it tastes like someone came in it. The sheriff makes a sarcastic remark about how he couldn't control himself, rather than wondering how the agent recognizes the taste.
    • Also seen when Jesse laments his lack of gravy with a meal:

Cassidy: "That stuff they make from bacon grease? It tastes like fucking semen!"

  • pause*

Cassidy: "...or so I'd assume."

  • She Hulk has offered Valkrie a light beer. Val's reaction after a swig? "It tastes like my horse crawled into my mouth and died." It doesn't stop her from asking for "more of this swill" later, though.
  • In Astro City, Astra Furst says her breakfast tastes "manganese-flavor" (after her mother tells her it is supposed to be grape-flavor). Still, if anyone is going to know what manganese tastes like, it's probably Astra.
  • A variation occurs in one episode of Suske en Wiske (Spike and Suzy). Two cigarette-smoking Mooks are guarding a shed when it catches fire, prompting one mook to ask the other "Hey, are you smoking your mattress?"


Fan Works

  • In Mister Asterisk's Neon Genesis Evangelion The Abridged Series, when the entry plug of EVA 001 fills with LCL Shinji comments that it tastes like primordial soup, subverted since LCL is primordial soup but as with this trope Shinji would have no reason to know what that tasted like.
  • In Megami33's Sailor Moon Abridged, when Serena gets some of Darian's blood on her hand, she thinks it's ketchup and licks it, saying, "This tastes like pennies." Serena, is there anything you won't eat?
    • Blood does taste rusty, and pennies smell rusty, so it's an understandable assumption.
  • Let's not forget the greatest Harry Potter fanfic ever: "How does Ronnie Ron taste, master?" Harry spat out an eyeball. "Like some kid with eyes."
  • In chapter 5 of Mystic Knight Online: Worlds to Sow, a Harry Potter/Sword Art Online Crossover, Harry invokes the trope name when describing the flavor of Polyjuice potion:

"...there's this little potion that can change your form into someone else." He shuddered. "Tasted like feet marinated in snot and left out for a week to ripen..."


Film

  • The 1998 Parent Trap remake. The mother has just drunk one of those hideous hangover cures that only bartenders in movies know how to make. "I think I just drank tar."
  • In It Takes Two, a character samples escargot for the first time, and comments that it tastes like a balloon. She had a point.
    • Since blowing up balloons involves putting them in your mouth, anyone who's ever decorated with non-helium balloon knows what they taste like.
  • The taste of dung is occasionally described as "nutty" for whatever reason, such as in this example from the second Austin Powers movie:

Austin: Basil, this coffee smells like shit.
Basil: It is shit, Austin.
Austin: Oh, good then, it's not just me.
[Drinks]
Austin: It's a bit nutty.

  • In the Steve Martin vehicle L.A. Story, the protagonists best friend gives him a glass full of some sort of experimental beverage. Upon being asked how it is, he replies "It's exactly like licking a shag carpet."
  • You may recall the scene from The Matrix, where the Nebuchadnezzar's crew is sitting around the mess room talking about the taste—or non-taste, as the case may be—of chicken.
  • In Tremors 2, survivalist Burt gives Earl and Grady some of his MREs to eat:

Earl: Ugh. This tastes like toilet paper!
Grady: Earl, that is the toilet paper.

  • In Mother, the titular mother has a large vat of orange ice cream that she has kept in her freezer for years. She offers some to her grown up son, who disgustedly proclaims "it tastes like an orange foot."
  • Anchorman: "It smells like Bigfoot's dick!"
  • Down Periscope

Goddamit, Buckman, this tin's been here since Korea!
It still tastes like creamed corn, sir...
Yes, Buckman, but it's DEVILED HAM!

  • In Scotland, PA: "I can't believe I drank that water. It tastes like ass."
  • In The Other Guys, Detective Gamble (played by Will Ferrell) tends to be verbally abusive to his wife (Eva Mendes) for reasons known only to himself.

"Who would slow-roast a dog's ass over a fire and serve it to their husband?"

What was that maniac drinking? Tastes like the Volga River at low tide.

Ladybug: This tastes just like crap.
Beetle: Really? Let me try some. Hey, it is crap. Not bad.


Literature

  • In Dave Barry Does Japan Dave describes trying out a Japanese energy drink called Hugo, and all he can say is "it better be healthful, because it tastes like coyote spit."
  • In Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books, a character is made to drink willow tea, which she complains tastes like horse urine. Coolly, the healer informs her that horse urine tastes far worse.
  • Parodied in the Discworld book Monstrous Regiment. Igor comments that the beer tastes like horthe pithth, and when asked if he's ever drunk horse piss, responds in the positive. Later, after the barkeep has been "persuaded" to produce the good stuff, Igor sticks with the original beer, commenting "Look, I never thaid I didn't like it."
      • Possibly Shown Their Work, as all Igors are primitive doctors, and taste-testing urine samples is an ancient means of diagnosing ailments such as diabetes.
    • Much earlier on, in Equal Rites;

Esk (to bartender): "Milk. You know, milk. You get it from cows."
Narrator: All the bartender had was beer, which his customers claimed he got from cats...

      • In Ankh-Morpork, you don't buy beer - you rent it (just think about it for one minute). Of course, it's better than the river "water".
        • Which is only called such because it's too thin to plow...
    • In The Last Hero, one of the Silver Horde tells the inexperienced bard they're dragging with them that the fish-demons they just chopped up will make a perfectly good meal because "When you're hungry enough, everything Tastes Like Chicken". He's right.
  • At one point in Stephen King's Dark Tower series of novels, Eddie asks Roland if raccoon-like billy-bumblers make good eating. Roland answers no, they're horrible: tough and gamy, and he'd sooner eat dog. When quizzed, he confirms that, yes, he's also eaten dog meat.
  • In Animorphs, this is Lampshaded when Rachel comments that a force field they're swimming through generates a sensation 'like chewing on aluminium foil with a mouth full of fillings' and Marco asks her how she'd know what that feels like...
    • And Inverted every time Ax morphs into his human form, as he truly enjoys such things as motor oil and cigarette butts.
  • The book Good Morning, Miss Dove had a flashback sequence in which the title character, teaching about the habits of a species of bear, mentioned that they liked to eat red ants, which taste like cinnamon. A smart-alecky student asked how the textbook's writer knew how they tasted. "Did he taste some? Or did he ask a bear?" (Miss Dove reprimanded her; raising a legitimate question was fine, but the "ask a bear" part was going too far.) In the story's present day, it's revealed that the student later actually ate some red ants as an experiment and found that they do taste like cinnamon.
  • A character in Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities says that Chinese wine tastes like dead mouse. In this case the phrase probably comes to him because The Dead Mouse is his nickname for his boss.
  • One of the stories in one of the Clue books revolves around the characters' favorite soda flavors. Most of them are innocuous, albeit strange flavors for soda: mouthwash, yams, grape jam, chicken, and squash. Mrs. White's favorite, however, tastes like floor wax (as in, that's what it's actually supposed to taste like).
  • Example of a positive comparison in Paper Towns: Lacey tastes a GoFast bar for the first time and says it "tastes like hope feels". Ben describes the taste of GoFast bars as "what blood tastes like to mosquitoes", which was probably intended as a positive comparison but makes them sound a lot less appealing.
  • How does Harry Potter's Dumbledore know what earwax tastes like to compare Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans?
    • Well, God (or rather, J.K. Rowling) knows what his relationship with Grindlewald entailed...
    • Probably Truth in Television for people who have a lot of earwax. They get into the habit of wiggling the ear round to make it easier to hear, get a little bit of earwax on their finger and then accidentally end up with said finger in their mouth.
    • Besides, even Dumbledore was six once.
      • If you don't get out of childhood without knowing what earwax tastes like, you've got issues.
      • So you mean to tell me that you've never scratched the itchy inside of your ear with a fingernail, then forgotten and later licked something off said finger? Lies.
    • In part 1 of the film version of Deathly Hallows, Mad-Eye Moody claims that Polyjuice Potion "tastes roughly like goblin piss", and Fred Weasley can't resist making a joke about how Moody knows what goblin piss tastes like.

Fred: ...Just...trying to diffuse the tension.

  • In Shadows of the Empire, Lando spends an hour making Giju stew but apparently uses too much Boonta-spice. Luke compares it to "old boot plastic and fertilizer drenched in pond scum".
  • One of the Wayside School books has a story where the main character eats ice-cream everyday, but is getting bored with the flavours. Ms. Jewls creates ice-cream named after her, but she can't taste it because it tastes the same as when she's tasting nothing; everyone else claims it tastes wonderful. The next few weeks have them going through the entire class, with everyone having a taste relating somehow to their personality, and everyone agreeing that Todd tastes the best. He apparently tasted so good that every so often, the ice-cream girl would try to take a bite out of his arm.
  • Subverted in one of Joan Hess's Claire Malloy mysteries, where a character takes the time to specify that he's never tasted horse piss, but suspects it's a lot like the lousy homemade beer he's sampling.
  • A character in the short story 'Luvina' in the book El Llano en Llamas by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo mentions that warm beer tastes like donkey piss (which prompts the question if cold donkey piss tastes like beer...)
  • In the book Skinnybones, the main character's grandmother says she doesn't feed her cats a certain kind of cat food because "It tastes like rubber." The main character remarks that he isn't sure if he should be more concerned that this means she's tasted the cat food herself, or that she's eaten rubber.
  • Agatha H and The Airship City:

But this - this was new low. He looked at the crudely printed label on the bottle in his hand. "Beetle Beer" it proclaimed. Fair enough, he thought, I can believe that.


Live-Action TV

  • The Tenth Kingdom has a subversion. Tony tastes baked beanstalk (no, not baked beans. BEANSTALK). "It tastes like an old mattress!" "No, it doesn't. Old mattresses have a sweaty, meaty taste."
  • In the Supernatural episode "Malleus Mallificarum," Ruby saves Dean from coughing up a lung (it's a long story) with a disgusting cure. While it's witchcraft, he seems to think "it tastes like ass," leading to gleeful viewer speculation as to whose he's been tasting.
  • A similar joke to the one above takes place in an episode of Charmed, complete with a Last-Second Word Swap that doesn't make things better. Piper drinks a potion, gags, then says, "Ugh, it tastes like ass... phalt."
  • In an episode of Monk, the titular character, a mysophobe, freaks out after discovering that the wine he has been drinking had been pressed by feet. He remarks, "It's foot wine...I can taste the feet...and toes."
  • From British comedy show QI:

Jeremy Clarkson: "I had a seal flipper, and it looked exactly like a marigold glove filled with wallpaper paste. And it sat and you thought, "Ooh...!" And it tasted exactly like licking a hot Turkish urinal."
Sean Lock: "I'm very concerned that you used the word 'exactly'..."

    • Alan once delivered an anecdote which included being given a chocolate bar by a pensioner, which tasted like 'Old ladies' cupboards.'
  • Dead Like Me used this one:

Mason: This juice tastes like ass! Here, you try it!
George: No thanks, I'm trying to stay off the ass juice.

  • A Whose Line Is It Anyway? Scenes From a Hat sketch had Colin boasting, "I make murals from my own feces!" Later in the same segment but with different parameters, Wayne complained that a drink "tastes like a painting by Colin Mochrie!"
    • A variation from a different episode where the suggestion was "rejected perfume fragrances":

Wayne: "I call it, 'Like Ass'!"

  • In Scrubs, Elliot was throwing Carla a baby shower and one of her baby shower games was "Guess the Baby Food Flavor" that she made Keith play to get people interested. Keith remarked that it tasted like "cab-driver feet".
    • Elliot's response: "It's turnips! Now you have to eat the whole jar."
  • Related joke: In one episode of Night Court, Bull is struck by lightning. Art speculates that it must have been like French-kissing a light socket. Bull, trying to be helpful, replies, "No, that feels different."
  • Friends: The shepherd's pie/trifle incident. Though it's almost definitely just a joke, with no intention of any sort of Continuity Nod whatsoever, there is an earlier episode where Rachel implies she likes having her toes sucked, and Ross and Rachel were together for a while.
    • Note that even after everyone expresses disgust with the dish, Big Eater Joey still eats it and loves it. Afterwards he even sneaks around and finishes up the portions that everybody else abandoned.

"What's not to like. Whip cream? Good. Jam? Good. Meat? Good."

    • Friends used this joke on another occasion. Monica was experimenting with mockolate (mock chocolate) and made mockolate chip cookies. Phoebe says "This is what evil must taste like!" The line was originally "These must be the cookies they serve in hell!", but Lisa Kudrow couldn't get through the line without laughing.
  • I Love Lucy: Upon tasting watercress, Lucy remarks "Very tasty... if you like buttered grass."
  • Bear Grylls of Man vs. Wild once compared drinking from a natural watering hole to "a bit like drinking from the loo bowl".
    • He might not have been talking about the taste...
  • On an episode of Good News Week, Paul McDermott referred to Fosters as tasting like "watered down horse piss". There was a moment's pause and then he asked "How do we know that?".
  • In an episode of Corner Gas, Brent says Oscar's cooking tastes like bug repellent.

"Oh, really dad, it tastes like you beat a skunk to death with a salmon!"

  • A slight variation from an episode of MythBusters: Kari is working with a pile of some noxious goo, and she comments that it "feels like guts". She then immediately adds "and, yes, I know what guts feel like. I've been working on this show for years."
    • Subverted when Kari was filling a Goliath beetle simulaid with yogurt "bug guts": "Yes, I do know what bug guts taste like. Thanks to this show."
    • In another episode, Adam was the official guinea pig to test a mouthwash myth. Of course, before testing, he needed to have really bad breath. He described one of the culinary delights offered up to create this as "stinky foot cheese".
      • He was probably talking about Limburger, which certainly smells like feet: it contains literally the same bacteria.
  • Jessica in True Blood, on the taste of A- flavor True Blood: "Less like ass than the A+, but more like ass than the B-."
  • According to Rick Castle, the coffee at NYPD tastes like a monkey peed in battery acid.
  • Averted/subverted/lampshaded/whatever in Web Soup - after the host shows a clip of a polar bear defecating in its pool, he brings out a drink based on it and takes a swing. "It tastes like something I shouldn't recognize the taste of!"
  • An episode of Harry Enfield and Chums had a sketch with the Slobs:

Waynetta: Wayne?
Wayne: What?
Waynetta: Your breath really stinks.
Wayne: So what?
Waynetta: It's disgusting, its' like kissing the dog!
Wayne:...How do you know?
Waynetta: I just... know.

Dad: This one has too much cheese, this one needs barbecue sauce, and this one tastes like armpit... How did we even know that?
Max: Wrestling.

  • In The Sopranos episode "The Strong, Silent Type," Tony and Junior are sampling some wine Furio brought back from Italy, which Junior grumps "reminds [him] of people's feet." After which, he continues drinking it.
  • In an early episode the Swedish children series Pip-Larssons: Kastrullresan, the titular Larsson family had cabbage soup (consisting of nothing but cabbage) for dinner, not because they wanted to, but because they couldn't afford anything else. While they were eating, the husband tried to placate his upset wife (since it was his fault they had no money) by saying that the soup tasted really good, whereupon one of the youngest children deadpanned that it tasted like sock.
  • Russell Howard was given an ice lolly made of soup in an episode of Genius. He described it as "what I imagine licking a 70-year-old woman's ankle would taste like."
  • Rob Schneider once appeared on a talkshow in Singapore, during a regional tour to promote Deuce Bigalow - he was treated to several regional fruits, including the durian which he described as tasting like "men's locker room".
  • An episode of Better Off Ted had a professional food tester try out some lab-grown meat. He decides it tastes like "Despair".
  • Dr. House rules out the possibility that a patient had accidentally eaten large quantities of horse chestnuts by pointing out that they "taste like a horse's lower-than-chest nuts." How he knows what that tastes like is not specified.
    • While possibly being hyperbolic in the above example, House in one episode determined a patient was diabetic by Squick tasting her urine and declaring that it tasted sweeter than normal urine.
  • Hyde talking to Kelso in That '70s Show:

"What's convenient isn't always what's best. If it was, this frozen pizza wouldn't taste like monkey butt."

  • One episode of Arthur of the Britons had Arthur attempting to unite two tribes. During a feast, he suggests the two tribes swap their bread. This almost leads to a riot as each side tries the other's bread and declares it to be 'frog spawn' or some other insult.
  • Somewhat averted on Salute Your Shorts when Sponge drank some of Telly's bulk-up formula.

Sponge: This tastes like Donkeylips's socks' smell!

  • In Porridge, Fletch tastes the brew made by the local moonshiner which comes served in a disinfectant bottle. Fletch remarks that they're supposed to take the disinfectant out first.
  • In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon, who hates Greek food, indulges Leonard and tries a lamb kebab:

And what a civilization is the Greeks. They gave us science, democracy, and little cubes of meat that taste like sweat!

Marshall: When you've had the best burger in New York City, every other burger tastes like my grandpa's feet. But you guys eat up, enjoy my grandpa's feet.

  • Subverted in Leverage. Parker walks up to a guard and asks, "does this smell like chloroform to you?" before knocking him out with it.
  • Gordon Ramsey can get a bit colorful when describing one of his chef's badly cooked dishes on Hell's Kitchen. He at one point describes a soup as tasting like gnat's piss, and also describes an undercooked meat as being "like a bison's penis."
  • Averted in 'Lost Girl. Foot soup actually tastes pretty good. So good in fact, Kenzi didn't know it was foot soup until she was told. She didn't take it well.
  • Happens with Gabe's homemade health tonic in Life With Boys. In a Strange Minds Think Alike moment, everybody who tastes it likens its taste to some kind of mythological creature in a bathing facility of some kind; e.g. "a gnome's steam bath" or "a hairy troll's hot tub".
  • In Party Down, Steve Guttenburg tries to teach some of the caterers how to be cultured by giving them fine wine. They give a variety of responses as to what they taste, including "rope" and "dirt." Guttenburg compliments them.


Music

The beer still tastes like glue


Newspaper Comics

Pierce: When I burp, it tastes exactly like caterpillars.
D'ijon: I don't even want to know how you know that.

    • In another strip, Jeremy describes wheatgrass juice as tasting "like licking the underside of an old John Deere riding lawnmower!"
    • And, according to Pierce, if you dip Salisbury steak in pudding it tastes just like squirrel.
  • From Garfield:

Jon: "Irma, Is this tea or coffee?"
Irma: "What does it taste like?"
Jon: "It tastes like turpentine!"
Irma: "Oh, that's our coffee. Our tea tastes like transmission fluid."


Stand-Up Comedy

  • After someone described the taste of Vegemite as "like licking a cat's ass," comic Billy Connolly asked "How does she know?"
    • Amanda Palmer has an entire song on the evils of Vegemite, which includes "It tastes like sadness. It tastes like batteries. It tastes like asses." Enjoy it for yourself.
  • Dave Chappelle has described grape "drink" (not to be confused with grape juice) as consisting of "sugar, water, and of course purple."
  • Dylan Moran once gave a summary of the consistency of a particular wine as follows: "Moccasins... denture fixture fluid... it's extraordinary. Lovely for when you're being chased by the Stasi. In a railway tunnel. Going to meet The Monk."
    • That was more of a mockery of professional wine tasters - there being in his own opinion "two kinds of wine - wine that makes you go "Mmm, that's okay, can we have eight of those? Give us eight of those!" and another one that makes you go "Arrrrgh Jesus, what is that?!"."
      • "...and occasionally, you get a subtle one, that makes you go 'Urk! Ack! Hmm, that's quite all right!'"
  • Original flavor NyQuil: Let Denis Leary explain:

I love NyQuil, man. Because NyQuil has never changed, man. It's never changed. All the other medicines are doing that inner-child thing. "We know that there’s a small child inside of you, so now we have grape and cherry and orange flavor." Not NyQuil! They still have the original green death fucking flavor! You know why!? Because it doesn't matter what it tastes like! It's so strong you go, wheeze "Hey this stuff really tastes like..." Bang! Yer in the coma already!

  • Nick Swardson said, at one point, that he wants to be very difficult when he's an old man, and as an example said that he would complain about restaurant food, specifically, sending it back while complaining that it tastes like "wolf pussy."


Urban Legends

  • A high school biology teacher tells the class that human semen is 80% sugar. A student (usually female) raises her hand and asks, "How come it tastes like salt, then?"
    • He responds (incorrectly) that the taste buds for sweetness are at the tip of the tongue, not the back of the throat.


Videogames

  • In Deus Ex, the following exchange takes place in a bar:

JC Denton: "How are the drinks here?"
Renault: "Great if you like rat piss."
JC Denton: "Never tried it."

Moira Brown: "Hey! I think I've discovered a new way to cook Radroach meat! Still tastes like old feet, though."

  • One of the beverages in Dragon Age, a mead, is described as "Sweet and flowery as a spring morning, with a bitter aftertaste of daddy's-going-off-to-war-and-never-coming-home".
    • In Dragon Age 2's Mark of the Assassin DLC, an elven servant offers Hawke and Tallis ham that "tastes of despair"; another party guest can be heard commenting on its unique flavor later on.
  • A background conversation in Mass Effect 2 has Engineer Daniels complain to Engineer Donnelly that "all haggis tastes like ass", to which Donnelly replies "Aye, but in the right hands, it can taste like mighty fine arse."
    • There's also a conversation between a crewman and the chef after Shepard provides provisions:

Crewman Hawthorne: Rupert! There's something different with tonight's meal! Seems like you put in more food and less ass.
Mess Sargent Rupert Gardner [sarcastically]: Yeah, yeah, keep talkin'.

Three Sheets Dutong: I hate that restorative potion! Ugh! That stuff tastes like vomit baked in a glaze of goat hair and garnished with a sprinkling of horse dung.

  • The Sims Medieval has a moodlet "Tasteless Treat: That tasted like sheep hooves, only worse!"
  • A quest in World of Warcraft has you passing around a sample of beer to three NPCs. Two like it, the third says it tastes like engine degreaser.
  • In The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC of Borderlands, the titular General Knoxx describes Pandora as smelling like "Hemorrhoids wrapped in bacon".


Web Animation

  • In Salad Fingers, "Hubert Cumberdale, you taste like soot and poo."
    • Too bad we'll never find out the taste of Jeremy Fisher. Unless...?
  • In Red vs. Blue, Grif, while under the effects of a malfunctioning speed unit, mentions that he can smell clouds.


Webcomics

  • One Friendly Hostility strip features Derringer, at Fox's urging, brushing his teeth with expired toothpaste. He promptly exclaims, "Gross! It tastes like going down on a chick on the rag!" When Fox looks at him sceptically, he says that toothpaste should not be used after six months; Fox replies, "Shut up, Captain Redwings."
  • One Real Life Comics strip has Greg trying the "Potion" drink marketed in Japan to promote Final Fantasy XI. He takes one sip, then comments that it tastes "like ten thousand asses".
  • Filthy Lies: The cast taste a certain kind of beer for the first time and all find it horrible. Ted declares that it tastes "like going down on a dead hooker." When the others look at him strangely, he says "What? I thought she was just bored!"
  • A non-food-related Lampshade Hanging can be found in this Suicide for Hire strip.
  • Done literally in this Punch an' Pie.
  • Lampshaded in this User Friendly strip.
  • Between Failures: Carol sums up the taste of game-themed drinks nicely in this strip.
  • Junior in 1/0 has described both the smell of burnt eyeball (himself), and the taste of a homemade joint as being "like an old Arab woman".
  • Blip: In the immediate aftermath of a Funbag Airbag incident, K wonders "Where am I? Why does it smell and taste like boobs?"
    • Later, a Power Bar when she's famished prompts the line, "Oh my! It's like a concert in my mouth and I'm Madonna!"
  • Gai-Gin describes Japanese seafood as smelling "like a sperm whale just vomited" and "like a shark's vagina".
  • Aubrey in Something*Positive doesn't quite fulfill this trope when she complains that her coffee tastes "like a diaper smells"—but she almost does when she adds that she "could menstruate a better cup of coffee than this!" At another point, PeeJee describes a polluted swamp thus: "If a shit were to take a shit, I'm pretty sure that's how it would smell."
  • Dmitri in Spacetrawler claims that his coffee tastes like asteroid. Justified as it is actually synthesized from space debris.
  • It has a funny taste. You can't put your finger on it, but if you had to describe it you would say it has the flavor of INTENSE PAIN.
  • Kia's cooking apparently tastes like a clown raping one's mouth. Good luck figuring that one out.
  • Litteraly used in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures.


Web Originals

  • A comment regarding that reading the recaps of a particular recapper at the website Television Without Pity was "like drinking gasoline," prompted one of the owners of the website to comment "...stop drinking gasoline…the hell?"
  • The Binder of Shame: The appropriately-nicknamed El Disgusto "passed out while cooking and got kind of saturated", resulting in a smell which was described by Johnny Tangent as reminding him of "a fire in a restaurant or clowns crying or something".
  • The website How Much Is Inside once did a tally of the phrases within a bag of candy hearts. They also taste-tested each color and concluded that the "pink" hearts taste like "cherry cough syrup and foot."
  • In the Zero Punctuation review of the Bionic Commando reboot Yahtzee compares the taste of Pepsi to the taste of "someone wringing out his old gymsocks into my mouth."
  • In Freeman's Mind, Gordon says bullsquid snot "tastes like dead caterpillars." Similarly, based on the smell after roasting the tentacles in Blast Pit, he says he's pretty sure it tastes nothing like chicken. He surmises it would instead taste like grasshoppers, admitting he's never tried them.


Western Animation

  • In The Simpsons, Ralph Wiggum comments upon tasting Homer's tomato-tobacco hybrid plant ("ToMacco") that it "tastes like Grandma." After tasting it himself, his father, Chief Wiggum, agrees.
    • Once, when the kids from the Model UN were stuck on that island, Ralph tried to eat some wild berries. He responds with "It tastes like burning." Happens a lot to the poor kid.
  • On Futurama, Hermes investigates the by-product of Prof. Farnsworth's glow-in-the-dark-nose-making machine:

Hermes: It looks like toxic waste. Smells like toxic waste.
Fry: What's it taste like?
Hermes: Delicious fig pudding! Ooh, that's good. But a distinct aftertaste of toxic waste.

    • When Fry eats a bad egg salad sandwich in another episode, he says "It's like there's a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up!"
    • Fry also seems to know what colors taste like

What tastes like purple?

    • In "Benderama", microscopic Bender clones turn Prof. Farnsworth's bath water into alcohol. Bender drinks it and says it tastes like "fine cognac with just a hint of aged scrotum."
  • In an episode of Duckman, the title character tastes a microwave burrito and comments "I think I just bit into a squirrel". His partner Cornfed reads the label and rattles off a long list of ingredients including rat feces and ocelot sphincter. "But no, no squirrel."
  • Pelswick's critique of his sister's cooking: "Chewy, with an aftertaste like licking a bathtub plug."
  • In Home Movies, the episode "Yoko", Eugene urinates in Coach McGuirk's canteen. After taking a swig from it and spitting it out, McGuirk demands to know which of the kids is responsible, asking rhetorically, "You know what that tastes like?" Brendon and Melissa counter by asking him, "How did you know what it was?" and "How did you identify it so quickly?" McGuirk admits that he's tasted it once before.
  • In The Replacements episode "Todd Strikes Out, Riley and Todd are handed protein bars, leading to this exchange:

Riley: "This tastes like tree bark!"
Todd (reading the label): "Now with 48% more tree bark."

Billy: "It tastes like my cat."
Dwarf: "They taste like everyone's cat!"

  • In one episode of Beetlejuice, Lydia is learning to cook, and offers one of her salads to BJ to taste. He takes a bite, hesitates, sees Lydia's warning glare, and, straining for a compliment about the salad, finally concludes that "It tastes... uh... green!" This from a guy who snacks on beetles.
  • Stewie in Family Guy: "What's that smell? Smells like sweat, anger, and shame!"
  • The Venture Brothers - Phantom Limb offers Dr. Girlfriend some Asiago cheese while pompously holding forth on its quality; she grimaces and comments "Tastes like the inside of an old Thermos!"
  • Jude from 6teen once used "This tea tastes like a dirty gymsock."
  • A two-part episode of Invader Zim is titled "Gaz, Taster of Pork". In it, Gaz gains the powers of the Shadow Hog, making everything taste "like pig".
  • A Running Gag on Rugrats (Each one makes sense in context):

"This coffee tastes like mud."
"It is mud."

  • In one Bad Future episode of Conan the Adventurer, the titular barbarian hero has to drink an antivenom potion that he disgustedly proclaims to taste like "fermented camel spit". Considering one of the ingredients is venom from the serpent demon-god he's fighting, the taste is probably somewhat justified.
  • In a Johnny Test episode, Johnny's Dad is trying to make healthy cookies and gives some for Johnny to try. Johnny then proclaims that the cookies taste like dirt. Johnny's Dad then produces a plate of dirt which he then insists that Johnny eat for comparison. Johnny apologizes for saying the cookies taste like dirt, because the dirt tastes better.
  • Noodle of Gorillaz declared in the Radio 1 webchat that Murdoc smells "like halitosis on toast". More recently, 2D declared that Murdoc's singing sounds "like someone treading on a duck".
  • In an episode of Robot Chicken, Emperor Palpatine speculates that Darth Vader, after flying around in his TIE fighter for a week, "must smell like feet wrapped in leathery burnt bacon!"
    • Another sketch inverted this trope: A mother tells her little girl that Grandma's bones are brittle "like peanut brittle". The girl immediately tries to eat Grandma, assuming Mom was talking about her bones' flavor.
  • Total Drama Action: after being forced to kiss Duncan in one of the challenges, Heather disgustedly exclaims that he "tastes like street!".
  • Happened in Doug when the school is selling chocolate door to door. Doug couldn't make any sales because the residents complain they taste like cement. Doug eventually discovers this was because cement got into the chocolate in the factory.
  • On a related note, Eduardo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends once had to pretend he liked the taste of feet, licking people's toes while gushing about the "footy goodness". He was actually covering for a puppy that he'd been hiding in the house, and it's clear that he (unlike the puppy) found the flavor revolting.
    • In the episode that introduced Cheese, a girl named Louise emerges from a bathroom saying "Your soap smells like feet."
  • In Jimmy Two-Shoes, an old lady says that Lucius' ice cream "tastes like old feet". According to Heloise, that's the secret ingredient.
  • An episode of Beavis and Butthead had the boys try some frozen yogurt. They decide it tastes like paint, so they use it as paint to vandalize the mall. Granted, Beavis and Butt-Head may have tasted paint. One ep did show them getting high off the fumes.
  • When Private is accidentally dosed with a Truth Serum in The Penguins of Madagascar, he confesses that Skipper's monkfish surprise "tastes like elephant sweat, but everyone pretends they like it to spare Skipper's fragile ego".
  • The Mutilation Ball episode of Robotomy had this trope when the janitor gives Thrasher and Blastus a performance-enhancing serum that "tastes like gasoline and feet" and comes from a pipe down by the playground.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: "This candy takes like horse poop, Cap'n!"
    • Flapjack is, it should be mentioned, attempting to eat a flower at the time.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants, when Squidward is subbing for SpongeBob at the Krusty Krab grill.

Customer #1: You call this food? My sandwich tastes like a fried boot!
Customer #2: My sandwich is a fried boot!

    • And in "Whale of a Birthday", when Pearl's friends drink from the punch bowl...

Pearl's Friend: Ew, it tastes like dishwater!
Squidward: It is dishwater.

  • Said almost word for word by Bobo in the Generator Rex episode "Badlands" when he drinks an expired can of soda:

"This tastes like feet! And not the clean kind!"

Rigby: "It tastes like how Muscle Man smells!"

  • In Girl Stuff, Boy Stuff, everyone but resident vegetarian Reanne thinks tofu "tastes like feet".
  • Spliced: Entrée, who was a giant at the time, says "He tastes like feet" after he attempts to eat Two-legs Joe.
  • In Code Lyoko, this type of situation happened twice. Both times it was Odd commenting on the foods in the school's vending machine. The first was that the soup "tastes like dish water" (though apparently having your mouth washed out with dish soap will produce that flavor) and the second was the hot chocolate (just that day for some reason)tasting like "dirty sweatsocks and an old pair of sneakers". The latter prompts Ulrich to snark "Odd the gourmet".


Real Life

  • Thanks to Jelly Belly manufacturing real life analogue of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans, now people will be able to say for certain that something tastes like feet. Or boogers. Or earwax.
    • Which prompts the question of how the Jelly Belly company's R&D people determined whether or not those beans tasted anything like the real thing...
      • According to Modern Marvels When making the Vomit flavor, they used an old rejected Pizza formula, added extra pepperoni, and just a hint of citric acid.
    • Once on The Tonight Show, Rupert Grint and Adam Sandler were sampling an array of the candies, and Adam went straight for the booger flavor. He responded "Doesn't taste like my boogers."
    • Most of them taste nothing like what they are supposed to; the Grass, Dirt, and Sardines flavors would be difficult to replicate in a jelly bean due to the fact that none of the three taste even remotely like they contain sugar.
  • Ian Fleming was infamous for having taste in food so atrocious you wonder how he managed to make James Bond a connoisseur of such gourmet meals. One of his friends is quoted admitting to repeatedly telling him, "Ian, it tastes like armpits!"
  • The Jones Soda Company sells a soda called simply Pink. The taste was somehow perfectly evocative of its namesake color.
    • There's also flavors such as Perspiration, Fun, Happy, Dirt, Natural Field Turf, Sweet Victory, Sports Cream, Bug Juice, Dave...
  • Since Marmite is made from yeast, and since athlete's foot is a fungal infection, it's just within credibility for those who dislike Marmite to claim it tastes like unpleasant feet...
    • Might be stretching it a wee bit. Yeast is a necessary ingredient to make bread and ferment alcohol, which many people often forget. Though I suppose bread can smell like feet up close.
      • Bread smells fine. Homemade beer on the other hand, will knock you to your ever lovin' knees.
      • Unless your local homebrewer is putting some weird-ass flavors in there, or has some kind of philosophical issue with proper sanitation, you've been drinking bad beer.
  • European travel guru Rick Steves reports in his guidebooks that he once went cheese shopping with a Frenchman who "took an orgasmic whiff, and exclaimed, 'Ahh... it smells like zee feet of angels!"
  • Limburger cheese almost literally smells like feet. And since taste and smell are highly interrelated...
    • That's not all, the cheese is made by using a certain culture of bacteria. The same bacteria is known to cause foot odor.
    • The smell is close enough that limburger will attract several kinds of mosquitoes - the species that specialize in feet and ankles.
    • Most soft, aged cheeses are similar; such as the French Delice de'Borgogne and German Schlosskäse.
  • Animal feet are edible. Chicken feet is a common Chinese dim sum dish. When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States, some mention was made in the media that Puerto Rican-style pigs' feet with chickpeas was one of her favorite dishes.
  • Cool Blue Gatorade. Even the people who make it can only describe it as "Blue".
    • On older vending machines you can see that it used to be Cool Blue Raspberry, but apparently they gave up the ruse and just call it Blue now
    • Grape Kool-Aid can be considered this as well, as it can be described as tasting like purple.
    • "Red" is another (wholly artificial) flavor, found in drink mixes, Popsicles, etc.
    • This is true to the point that many people in the US military no longer refer to flavors, simply colors.
  • For thousands of years, before the advent of chemical assays, physicians would diagnose certain ailments (such as diabetes mellitis) by smelling and tasting a patient's sweat, spittle, and/or urine. If a doctor back then were to complain that his beer tastes like pee, he could've meant it literally.
  • Fermented soy literally smells like sweaty feet. it tastes about the same, too.
    • Cho Doufu, or "stinky tofu" is made by fermenting tofu.
  • Sea urchin sashimi (uni) has been described as tasting a little like rockpools, presumably in a rotting seaweed-and-brine way.
    • See also urchin roe sushi, which has the added bonus of a consistency not unlike phlegm (which most of us do know).
  • The Chinese spirit baijiu (white alcohol), when sampled by Westerners, is usually compared to the taste of kerosene, gasoline, or other petroleum distillates.
    • Westerners who have been to Kenya and been brave insane enough to sample the local moonshine, changaa, might know what they're talking about.
    • Also, the weakest baijiu is allowed to be is 40% ABV, or 80 proof (standard proof for most Western liquor); maotai (one of the more renowned forms) often clocks in at 53% (106 proof). Many other forms are 60% (120 proof), and a few forms, such as fenjiu and gaolangjiu[1] can get up to 63% or 65% (126-170 proof), at which point they are literally flammable. When you remember that we actually do use alcohol for fuel... And at banquets, Communist Party officials are likely to take several drinks of baijiu, sometimes taken as shots (particularly if a toast is proposed). Suffice it to say that when it comes to drinking, the Chinese do not play games.
  • Came up at this entry of (The Customer is) Not Always Right.
  • Anthony Bourdain is fond of using these, both in No Reservations and when he's a judge on Top Chef. He once told a cheftestant that his dish "tasted like a head shop."
  • In several places on this site, the rather vocal Hatedom of Foster's beer has described it as the urine of various different animals, complete with local variations. The Australians consider it cat piss, while the British think it's horse piss.
    • Even Americans familiar with other beers liken it to tasting like piss (We need our own version, though. Dog piss?)
      • Horses and goats are the most common comparison.
  • Speaking of beer, an old style of beer common to Belgium is the "wild ale"; a saison or "farmhouse" style (so named because it was common at one time for every farmer to brew his own beer). Unlike most beers, which are brewed with cultured yeasts of the Saccharomyces family, Wild ales are brewed with wild yeasts, which also includes strains of Brettanomyces. "Brett" yeasts impart a taste which is commonly described as "like a barnyard, including the animals".
  • Virtually anything grape-flavored can be described as tasting very purple. Most of them taste nothing like grapes.
  • A less specific real-life example. How many times haven't you heard someone describing something as "tasting like crap"? Most people have probably used a comparison like that themselves at some point.
  • Uncoated pills often have a (usually faint) smell that is very similar to wet paper towels; considering the correlation of smell to taste, it's not unusual for someone to claim the pills taste like wet paper towels, especially since they taste stronger than they smell.
  • Joseph Mallozzi, former writer/producer for the Stargate TV franchise, has a blog on which he occasionally does a "Weird Food Purchase of the Day." Astronaut ice cream in Nov '10 got this reaction from writer Carl Binder; "It's like eating a shoe. Including the aftertaste."

Mallozzi: What flavor did you try?
Binder: Shoe.

  1. ↑ If you've seen Zhang Yimou's first film, Red Sorghum, this is what they're making at that distillery
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