Brain Bleach/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • One of most famous, and oft-referenced, examples is from Hardcore, when Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott) sees his own daughter doing porn on the screen in front of him.

Jake: Turn it off, TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!

  • Jack Carter, in the 1970 version of Get Carter, accidentally discovers that his niece - who is quite possibly his daughter - was cajoled into porn, when he idly turns on a projector in the house of a local gangster's moll. As the film runs, tears well in his eyes; he takes his mind off this by embarking on an orgy of revenge.
  • In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Ace reacts to the realization that a woman who he was sexually attracted to used to be a man by vomiting his entire stomach's contents into the toilet (using a plunger on his face), burning his clothes, and then scrubbing himself down in the shower while sobbing.
    • That scene was a spoof of The Crying Game. And even came with the song (as sung by Boy George) in the background.
    • The next scene, he's in his car, chewing a whole package of Big Red gum.
      • "Your gun is sticking into my hip. Eyuh!"
        • "It wasn't a gun! IT WASN'T A GUN!"
    • Oh, it gets better. When he reveals the fact to entire SWAT squad, the whole group starts spitting and puking.
      • SO DOES THE GODDAMN DOLPHIN! (er, both of them, as in Dan Marino and Snowflake.)
      • There's more to that. When Ace strips her down to her underwear but she still appears to lack the evidence, Dan Marino calls his attention to reveal one more detail. Ace strolls back to her and turns her around, revealing that she still has her equipment...on her ass. Cue the SWATs doing the retching routine. And they even put in the same music as when he had his own revelation!
  • Taken to its Cronenbergian conclusion by Darryl Revok in Scanners, who drilled a hole in his forehead to let out all the voices. The scar becomes his Red Right Hand.
    • This is homaged in X 2 X Men United, where Brian Cox's character reveals that his wife drilled a hole in her temple to let out some different voices. Unlike Revok, she died.
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about what it would be like if Brain Bleach really existed. Note that Jim Carrey, responsible for the Ace Ventura example above, plays it painfully straight here.
  • The neuralyzers in Men in Black, while normally used to brain bleach others, can also be used on yourself.

K: I've just been down the gullet of an interstellar cockroach. That's one of a hundred memories I don't want.

  • Quick Change. After witnessing a faux-medieval event in a poor Hispanic neighborhood with two men jousting on bicycles with rakes, Loomis sums up the mood perfectly.

Loomis: It's bad luck just seeing something like that!

  • In 8mm, after being told that the snuff tape is real, Mrs. Christian commits suicide.
  • In Whip It, Pash is incredibly drunk and about to puke, but it won't come out. Bliss tells her to imagine her dad naked. It works.
  • Inland Empire: The face.....th............th-THE FACE!
  • Johnny's reaction to Sue stripping down in Fantastic Four: "I'm gonna need therapy."
  • Played dead straight in the Korean revenge thriller Oldboy. Near the end, Oh Dae-su learns the horrific extent to which he has been manipulated throughout the story. He undergoes hypnosis in order to forget it.
  • Serenity: he doesn't witness it, but Mal is nonetheless horrified by Kaylee's description of her, um, dry spell:

Kaylee: Goin' on a year now I ain't had nothin' twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries!
Mal: Oh, God! I can't know that!
Jayne: I could stand to hear a little more.

  • Jason's reaction to Greg putting milk up his butt in Mystery Team. Charlie had a similar reaction.

Back to Brain Bleach