Bowel-Breaking Bricks



A Comedy Trope that also functions as a sort of Tension Breaker, in which a character is so shocked or surprised that they lose complete control of their bowels. Of course we don't actually see this happen, we instead get a quirky little visual metaphor to let us know what they mean. It's a subtle way of (wait for it) Getting Crap Past the Radar.

Bricks, due to the phrases "to shit bricks" and "to brick it," are especially popular.

When the joke goes the other way, then it's an Ass Shove.

Related to Potty Emergency (and especially its subtrope, Potty Failure), Drop What You Are Doing ... Ewww...

Anime and Manga

 * In a rare non-comedy example, during Highschool of the Dead episode 2, "Escape From The Dead", a student in the infirmary drops a push-broom in this manner when one of the victims they are tending to starts to reawaken as a zombie.

Film
"Boo: Ew."
 * Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade:.
 * Toy Story 2: Mr. Potato Head's rear compartment pops open spilling his accessories after seeing the luggage conveyor belt.
 * Finding Nemo: Nemo's classmate, Pearl the octopus, "inks" on two occasions.
 * This is actually the default reaction for ink-producing mollusks when faced with a dangerous or stressful situation - they do this to use the ink as cover/an irritant and swim away.
 * In Shrek the Third, Gingy deposits a little gumdrop when he faces the palace guards.
 * And on Shrek Forever After, a goose spooked by Shrek lays an egg.
 * Rover springs an oil leak when intimidated by General Grawl in Planet 51.
 * In We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Elsa claims that when she first tried a hot dog, she was so mesmerized she "laid an egg." Her embarrassment of the feat makes it similar to soiling oneself. It's gets awkward later when she claims she feels like "laying an egg" when she looks at Rex romantically.
 * Or maybe she means something else by laying an egg...
 * In Robots, Fender lays an egg after facing a huge array of robots that want to recycle him/her. He looks in surprise, as s/he didn't know s/he could do that, since s/he only had the female legs for a short time.
 * In Ice Pirates, the robots are being sent into battle. One of them drops oil and some included nuts and bolts before being shoved into the fray.
 * In Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, Pintel and Ragetti each grab a cannonball, planning to drop them on the bodies floating in the water while escaping Davey Jones' Locker. As they're about to, they see Tia Dalma standing there. The camera cuts to their lower bodies, as they drop the cannonballs in a way that resembles this trope.
 * In Monsters Inc.: After nearly being discovered by Randall in the bathroom, we see a huge splash in the stall Sully, Mike, and Boo are hiding in. Boo sums it up best.


 * Subverted in the next scene, when we see an up-close shot of Mike's legs completely soaked, implying that he slipped and fell in, with Boo still understanding how gross that was.

Literature
"Don Francisco Nasi: ... I think State will be responsible for the brick that will be found, come the morning, in the privy of Gustavus Adolphus.""
 * Referenced in 1635: The Cannon Law, one of the books in the 1632 series -- which has a modern West Virginian town sent back in time to 1632 Germany by Alien Space Bats (long story). Don Francisco Nasi makes this observation regarding the American town's Protestant ally, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and his possible reaction to Mike Stearns's decision to approve political sanctuary for Pope Urban VIII and his clan. His wording makes it extra hilarious.

Live Action TV

 * Kamen Rider Den-O introduces us to Deneb, a benevolent demon who randomly distributes candy, which he sometimes keeps in his pants - one day he gets such a huge shock that candy starts dropping out of his robe.
 * In an early episode of Scrubs, Elliot did this in one of J.D.'s fantasy sequences.
 * In the Courtney Cox series Dirt, the slimeball producer is having a hot work affair with a young intern who makes him wear a butt plug to work one day. It so happens that this is the day that an unhinged gunman takes the staff hostage, and when he turns the gun on the producer, the plug falls down the leg of his pants and rolls away.
 * The opening of the pilot for New Girl has Jess doing a surprise striptease for her boyfriend only to discover he's been cheating on her. We cut to a shot between her legs of a bow hitting the floor. Where that was originally is anybody's guess.

Newspaper Comics

 * A Far Side cartoon that showed a spider dropping silk after a fright.
 * This troper has seen that in real life, when a garden spider found a daddy-long legs in its web.

Video Games

 * Ratchet and Clank: When Clank is confronted by a robot commander, he jumps to a fighting stance. A smaller robot drops out of the back of the commander and he legs it.

Web Comics
"Thurl: The metaphor monitor indicates that Ennesby has vented his virtual bowels.
 * Schlock Mercenary:

Kevyn: I can see that, but where'd the virtual bricks come from?

Narrator: Goodnight, kids!"

"Petey: [...] I was going to employ Tagon and company to extract you, but they declined. Apparently they'd rather see you dead.
 * In another strip, in a conversation with King Xinchub in his bathroom:

Petey: You look like you're thinking maybe the plumbing in here needs to accommodate flushed bricks."

Web Original
"(thump) That was a brick. That was really a brick."
 * Optimus Prime lost a considerable deal of oil after seeing The Terminators of Terminator Salvation in this review.
 * Despite being typically vulgar on his show, The Nostalgia Critic invokes this after watching a scary scene of the Care Bears movie.

"Nostalgia Critic: Though the best scene comes in the very end where he and you can't count the bricks we shat after seeing this scene."
 * Also mentioned in Top 11 Scariest Nostalgic Moments about the scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit where Judge Doom.

Western Animation

 * As pictured in Futurama this happens whenever Bender is frightened and he literally shits bricks. Something of a Running Gag.
 * Or when he eats chips with Olestra in them.
 * The writers got quite a bit of shit bricks past the radar in Lethal Inspection when Bender suggested everyone get brickfaced.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants: "Chocolate With Nuts" After being cornered by "The Chocolate Maniac," who reveals that he wants to buy all their chocolate. A pile of chocolate bars fall out of Patrick's pants and is crowned by a tiny chocolate kiss.
 * In one episod of Avatar: The Last Airbender, (The Fortuneteller) a scared Platypus-bear spontaneously lays an egg. Then a hungry Sokka picks it up and sniffs it.
 * It Got Worse. Later he get so angry, he loses hold of the egg and it lands on his head. That's sort of a Fridge Logic way of Crossing the line twice.
 * An obscene storyboard drawn as a joke by Rugrats artists shows Tommy flapping around on the floor and dropping "malt balls" after Stu hits his wife, verbally abuses Tommy and takes his juice, demanding tribute as the "Alpha Male."
 * Behold.
 * Oh my God... the last the last two panels! Oh my God!
 * In one episode of The Fairly Odd Parents, Timmy's dad becomes an astronaut. Built into their spaceship is a compartment that you can go to the bathroom through. When you go about your business, it makes a beeping sound. When a monkey is told that he has to go on a mission all by himself, his spacesuit makes the beeping noise.
 * At the beginning of one episode of Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot, a trigger-happy hick in a mech was about to vandalize the Lincoln Memorial, until Big Guy showed him his "Mag Popper." The pilot then surrendered and ejected out of his mech's rear end.
 * My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: When Pinkie Pie (wearing a chicken costume) is frightened by Princess Luna in "Luna Eclipsed," she bolts, leaving behind an egg.
 * Several times during Re Boot, a baby binome is shown with a suddenly expanding diaper whenever something startling happens, such as Megabyte unveiling his latest scheme to take over Mainframe or a massive portal to the Web opening in the sky.