Brain Bleach/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Spider-Man goes to shower after seeing J. Jonah Jameson Sr. in bed with his Aunt May.
    • Happened before during J. Michael Straczynski's run on Amazing; Peter visits L.A and accidentally sees a man (a rather heavy-set man, no less) cross-dressed in lingerie. He thinks to himself:

"Just keep going, Peter, it's nothing that gouging out your eyes and washing them in sulphuric acid won't fix..."

"Image...scarred into...forebrain...Scarred..."

  • X-Men has a few during Joss Whedon's run, the most specifically invoking this trope being:

Emma Frost: J. Jonah Jameson'll be tongue-kissing Spider-Man before the X-Men catch a little public favor.
Shadowcat: Why do you insist on saying things I can never unhear?

  • A truly horrific example: Alan Moore's "Love and Death" arc on Swamp Thing started with Abby Arcane Cable ripping off her clothes, trying unsuccessfully to burn them ("She had become a little crazy by this time.") showering heavily and then scrubbing herself bloody with a vegetable brush after she learned that her husband Matt was really an animated corpse containing the spirit of her evil uncle Anton Arcane. Unintended necrophilia and incest? Yeah, all the brain bleach in the world won't wash that away.

And she thinks, "How long have I been married to...?" And she thinks, "How many times did...?" And she knows what the bad thing is, and where the stench is coming from.

    • To give people ample warning on that spoiler: scrubbing her flesh until she passes out with horror and blood loss is so far removed from what's under the spoiler, that people reading the comic frequently forget that Abby likely mutilated herself in an unsuccessful attempt to get clean after her realization. You have been warned.
  • Amelia Rules is kind enough to offer the readers time to apply Brain Bleach to erase what images Ninja Joan's story about how she caught her fellow ninjas skinny dipping might have conjured in their minds:

Ninja Joan: They were N-U-D-E naked, and swimming in this pond. So I get an eyeful of this scene, and like, totally freak. Aaagh! My eyes! My eyes! So they all go running behind this shrub, screaming Get out of here! Get out!
Amelia: Wait a second, if they were in the water and then behind a shrub, you didn't really see anything, right?
Ninja Joan: Weeell...it was a very small shrub.
(beat)
Amelia: (voice over) Why don't I give you a minute to erase that horrible image...Okay, ready?

"Only death can release me!"


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