Bottomless Bladder: Difference between revisions

== Film ==

* Subverted in one scene in ''[[A League of Their Own]]'', wherein not only does Tom Hanks' character take a leak, his all-female baseball team (whom he doesn't notice or doesn't care are there) actually time how long he pees.

* In ''[[The Usual Suspects]]'', the consistency of a character's urine becomes a major plot point.

* Played with in ''[[Pleasantville]]''. When the main characters are sucked into an idyllic 1950s, black and white TV world, they quickly find the bathrooms have no stalls or urinals.

** Cochran: "I gotta go take a leak." LaForge: "Leak? I'm not detecting any leak." Cochran: [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|"Don't you people from the 24th century ever pee?"]]

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in Austin Powers: Internation Man of Mystery after Austin is thawed from [[Human Popsicle|cryogenic freezing]]. He literally has a Bottomless Bladder during the evacuation scene, much to the dismay of the [[Computer Voice|female computer voice]].

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in Michael Stackpole's ''X-Wing: The Bacta War'' [[Star Wars]] Extended Universe novel, in which a character notices a stormtrooper coming out of the bathroom and wonders how they can possibly...

** It's worth nothing that the incredibly detailed diagrams of the Millenum Falcon have no bathroom. Although, one could potentially handwave it away by having Firefly-style toilets.

 

 

{{quote|'''Jack:''' "24 isn't very realistic. I mean it's already two o'clock and no one's gone to the bathroom yet."}}

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' gives rise to a famous debate as to why there aren't bathrooms in space, the first highly publicized form of this question poking fun at how such inevitabilities are overlooked on TV.

*** It's mentioned several times, but apparently the 24th-century polite term is "waste extraction".

** In an early ''Enterprise'' episode, Trip has to answer an Earth child's letter asking how starship bathrooms work. The fact that we don't actually get to ''hear'' his explanation is possibly a [[Lampshading]] of this trope.

** There is a tale of one unfortunate DM. A PC went to the bathroom and whined to the DM that he deserved [[Character Development|character roleplaying XP]] for the deed (since no one usually paid attention to that stuff). The DM grudgingly awarded him a few points of XP. The other PCs caught on to this, and by the end of the session the dungeon was so [[Toilet Humor|full of poop]] [[Crowning Moment of Funny|that the entire goblin army that inhabited the caverns had drowned.]]

* In Exalted, the Infernal Exalted have access to charms that permanently remove human weaknesses. The charm Transcendent Desert Creature means you never need to use the bathroom again.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In ''[[Betrayal at Krondor]]'' and its sequels, sleep and food are important concerns for the party on the go.

* ''[[Breath of Fire]] II'' had toilets in most homes, though the characters never seemed to need to use them, aside from diving into them during ''two'' game events (with an honorable mention going to a lift that performs double duty as a toilet). They could also barge into occupied bathrooms, which would invariably piss off the occupant.

* Averted to an extent in ''[[Bully (video game)|Bully]]''. Protagonist Jimmy Hopkins must sleep every night, and if he isn't in bed by 2 AM, he'll collapse from exhaustion. ''Bully'' also has both toilets and urinals, and while Jimmy doesn't actually need to use them, the game does keep track of how many times you've used each.

* ''[[Chibi-Robo!]]'' takes place inside a [[Mouse World|normal family's house from a small robot's perspective.]] While the house contains a number of well-outfitted and detailed rooms, ''none'' of these rooms is a bathroom.

* Subverted in the ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'' games by Origin Systems, a 2D-isometric shooter based on the ''[[Ultima VIII]]'' engine. While the titular Silencer was not depicted as actually using the toilet, and received no bonus for accessing it, you could in fact flush them. (This was much more exciting when the game came out in 1995.)

* ''[[Custom Robo]]'' for the Gamecube in the US. Near the end of the game, one of your characters sees a bathroom and "really has to go." It's a rather eerie setting, so he's scared and asks you to come with him. You can go with him, which will lead to a series of battles, or you can repeatedly refuse, which skips it altogether... though after you beat the game and get to the "[[Inevitable Tournament|pointless obligatory tournament]]" part, one of them takes place in said bathroom.

** Once the stormtroopers are dead, you can examine the urinals and discover that they have... staining...

* ''[[Darkseed]]'' forced you to sleep at the end of every day, at the risk of falling unconscious and losing all your inventory.

* As part of the general crude and over-the-top humor of the game, ''[[Duke Nukem 3D]]'' allowed the player to urinate into any toilets or urinals found in the game (of which there were several in some scenes). If the character uses a toilet or urinal, it flushes, then we hear him say, "Much Better!" and if his health is less than 100%, it is raised by 10% or until his health reaches 100%, whichever is less. He only gets to do every five minutes, subsequent flushes do not give him additional health. While the player wasn't required to do this, the game would at times mention that you "need to do something", and following this advice would restore some health points. If the player destroys a toilet or urinal, the player can gradually recover his health by drinking the fresh water billowing from the broken pipelines. It is possible, at least in the N64 version, to take a huge leak, destroy the toilet then regain health from drinking the water. Stay classy, Duke. Stay classy.

** Of course at the end of the game Duke does create a rather...unusual toilet for his bathroom break.

* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'''s inhabitants eat, drink and sleep (less often in the fortress mode so you can actually do things between sleeping periods), but do not use the bathroom, despite having intestinal tracts that can be quite realistically ripped off their virtual bodies. The developer, Toady One, has stated that he doesn't plan on modeling that aspect of dwarven life. The game is easy to mod, though...

* ''[[EverQuest]]'' and ''EverQuest 2'' both require your character to eat. You can't starve to death, but without food, you'll lose the ability to regenerate. "Better" food items allow for faster regeneration and stat bonuses.

** You also regain HP/MP just by wandering outdoors in the first three ''Avernums''.

** The above also applies to Exile, hence the "long wait" command that allows you to avoid doing the walking yourself. However, you also consume food inside towns or dungeons. You can actually starve to death if you don't happen to talk to Tor the supplier soon enough (there's still a lot of time to do it, though, starvation deals damage when you're supped to eat but can't so it's a slow death).

* And while you never needed to go to the bathroom in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' you are required to help someone else to so to complete the Cross-dressing quest and you need to enter the Shinra building's restroom to find an air duct opening in order to have a way to spy on a board meeting.

* Similarly, in ''[[Shadow Hearts]]'', there are a couple plot events and side quests that revolve around a bathroom in a tavern in Prague. None of the main characters ever need to use the facilities, but NPCs do.

* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]: San Andreas'', the main character has to eat occasionally. Sleeping is implied to occur when game time is skipped (when saving, periods in jail or hospital), but otherwise the player character becomes hungry after a somewhat realistic amount of time, first losing fat reserves, then muscle mass, then the health bar. If not countered by eating, you end up in the hospital.

* A perfect example of this trope (not a subversion of it) is ''[[Super Mario]] 64''. The player can visit every single room in Princess Toadstool's castle, and not one is a bathroom. Nor do bathrooms show up in any other incarnation of her castle seen in the past twenty plus years. Of course, this is the same princess who is routinely kept in small dungeons and cages for entire games without the problem of sanitation ever coming up, so perhaps this is justified.

** One could start to wonder what she needs a plumber for in the first place.

** Luigi's Mansion has at least two bathrooms.

* Although nobody uses them, the final area of ''[[Mother 3]]'' includes, of all things, a bathroom [[The Maze|maze]], where you have to choose the right stall to proceed. The other stalls may contain items, enemies, and the [[Nightmare Fuel|Ultimate Chimera]].

* In the early days, many [[Interactive Fiction]] games attempted to add "realism" by requiring the player to eat. This often added to the difficulty by requiring the players to find (rare) food items, pretty much constantly, as authors never really got how often a human in a crisis could go without eating. In one [[Egregious]] example, the protagonist of [[Infocom]]'s ''[[Planetfall|Stationfall]]'' had to eat almost hourly lest he fall into a coma and die (within the parody-[[Space Opera]] setting, this was explained by the comically low nutritional value of futuristic food).

** So many players complained about this "feature" in Infocom's ''Enchanter'', that at the beginning of the sequel, ''Sorcerer'', you find a magical potion that lets you go without food for the rest of the game automatically.

* ''[[Rogue (video game)|Rogue]]'' and its descendant ''[[Nethack]]'' both require the player character to eat, but at relatively realistic intervals. While ''[[Rogue (video game)|Rogue]]'' merely provided generic "food", ''[[Nethack]]'' includes a wide variety of comestibles, ranging from fruit and iron rations to the corpses of the monsters you slay (which may give you powers or weird afflictions) and on occasion even tins of preserved food (which the player can also make himself from monster corpses if he has acquired a tinning kit...). ''[[Nethack]]'' also tracks the freshness of various foods; it is possible to get sick and die from eating spoiled or tainted meals. On top of this, eating too much (usually to acquire stat boosts from monster corpses) can cause you to choke and die from a burst stomach. Food can also be used to tame enemies and to train pets to steal from stores.

* In the classic game ''[[Maniac Mansion]]'', you do encounter a restroom at one point, but your characters never feel the urge to use it. In fact, if you tell them to use it, they'll respond, "I'd like a little more privacy for that!" They do think it's fun to flush it, though.

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'': "While the adventurers don't need to eat, the monsters do. They eat adventurers."

** In the ''Hordes of the Underdark'' Expansion, the Protagonist's kobold companion Deekin will narrate your progress through certain areas. Often these are lampshades of this Trope, mentioning how sore his feet are and how he wishes that 'the Boss' would let him stop for a bathroom break.

** ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' also lampshades the bladder variant, in a small, random adventure:

{{quote|After travelling for a while, you discover a need to go to the bathroom (which rarely happens in these games, but hey, you've gotta go sometime, right?)}}

** Try getting a cop outfit so you're not arrested, then throwing a doughnut on the ground, pissing all over it, pick it up, then find a cop and give them a tasty treat. Also, your piss can be turned into a stream of napalm in [[New Game+|enhanced mode]], immediately setting people, cats, your dog etc. on fire.

*** Somewhat subverted within the game; early on in the last day, the player character says something along the lines of "I really gotta take a whiz". Doing so reveals his urine is now green and brown and thick: he's contracted gonorrhea, and he makes a note to get cured. Of course, [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|you can go on urinating on people all the same, causing them to vomit.]]

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', there are a few areas with toilets (Most notably the area before the [[Mind Screw]] Psycho Mantis [[Boss Battle]]) in which the guards can be found relieving themselves (A funnier example of this is in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]''), [[Fridge Logic|which leaves one to wonder]]: was it the nanotechnology in Snake's body that renders it unnecessary for Snake to take a break?

** Either that, or the suit's just very, very self-contained. Y'know. Like an astronaut's.

*** Considering the game takes place over the course of a few hours, tops, it's probable that he just ''holds it in''. Adrenaline can do that, ya know. Also, the notable time period where he ''is'' required to waste a lot of time (assumed to be three or four hours, maybe more), he's being ''tortured'', which tends to have the unfortunate side effect of loss of bladder control...

** However, even though Snake never has to use the bathroom, there is an easter egg in ''Metal Gear Solid 2'' where Raiden uses the urinal. Don't believe me? Watch Part 13 of MGC's LP of the game right [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_OUfieR98U here.]

*** It's implied that he does that whenever you save, along with sleeping.

* In the same vein of space suits that seem to possess extraordinary bladder-emptying technology, the Master Chief in ''Halo'' never seems to need the bathroom, or food.

* Samus Aran of the ''Metroid'' series also has no problem with this, though that might be what Save Points are all about. Not to mention you can return her to her albeit tiny ship regularly throughout the games and there may be a potty on it. Unlikely though.

** It's possible that her suit has some sort of recycling system built into it.

** It should be noted however, that in ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Oblivion]]'' while it isn't technically required, the player needs to sleep when they level up.

* The Commodore 64/Amiga game, ''[[The Little Computer People]]'' (basically the great-grand-daddy of ''[[The Sims]]'', circa 1985) featured a toilet, which your Little Computer Person would use at reasonable intervals. Also, if you didn’t top up his water tank and fill his cupboards when they were empty, he would sicken and eventually expire.

* Although Aya never eats anything in ''[[Parasite Eve]] 2'', she can drink soda to restore HP and MP, but never has the urge to go to the bathroom. You do get to find a few toilets in Dryfield, but Aya comments about the disgusting sanitary conditions they are in and won't go in the stalls.

* Jack Thompson's "A Modest Video Game Proposal" laid out a spec for a game in which the player character gets revenge for the murder of his son. As part of the revenge, the player murders the CEO of the company that made the game that his son's killer played, as well as the CEO's family, and then urinates on their brainstems, "like in ''[[Postal]] 2''." Though it was intended as parody, a few independent game designers created games based around Thompson's proposal. In one such game, "I'm O.K: A Murder Simulator," not only was the urinating on brains part included (as a bonus stage in which the brains bounce across the stage), but in later levels urinating can be used to put out fires.

** Further lampshaded by one of {{spoiler|Claptrap}}'s announcements over the PA system in ''Claptrap's Robot Revolution'': {{spoiler|"C'mon! Give in! You'll have fun being a robot! You'll never have to pee again, and I'll even let you pick your paint job!"}} Gearbox must've paid attention to the fan response to this trope.

* Averted in ''[[Tales of Monkey Island]] Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood'' where there is a bathroom in Club 41 and Guybrush does use it.

* Quest for Glory series require the character to both eat and sleep regularly, dying from exhaustion/hunger is very possible. Luckily, the inns provide both of these services in all games, and travel rations are always available at modest prices.

* In Episode 1 of ''[[Sam and Max]]: Season 1'', clicking on the bathroom door in Bosco's Inconvenience Store will cause Max to use it, and will make Whizzer have to pee upon hearing the toilet flush. (you will need to make good use of this gag later on, when you have to catch Whizzer) You can click on the door many times, and Max will keep using the toilet, leaving one to wonder if Max has a bladder problem just like Whizzer...

 

== Web Original ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]

[[Category:Bathroom Tropes]]