Comfort Food/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A person eats food to comfort themselves after stressful situations

  • Straight: Bob experiences a tragedy and eats to calm his nerves
  • Exaggerated: Bob witnesses the end of the world as we know it and feels better after eating a slice of pizza
  • Downplayed: Bob nibbles on a snack and that's all we see.
  • Justified: The food was made by someone Bob loves or the food has special connections to Bob's past
  • Inverted: Bob has a slice of pizza and feels bad for breaking his diet so his punishes himself to feel better
  • Subverted: Bob is offered a slice of pizza after he gets fired, but he refuses, seemingly too proud for help.
  • Double Subverted: But then his girlfriend calls saying she's breaking up with him and that prompts Bob to say "Hand me the pizza."
  • Parodied: Bob stubs a toe and is seen huddled over a tub of ice cream shoveling it into his mouth blubbering like a baby
  • Deconstructed: Bob develops a weight problem from eating so many high calorie foods he inevitably becomes morbidly obese and dies.
  • Reconstructed: Bob learns to replace unhealthy comfort foods for healthy varieties, the more fattening foods become special occasion foods for holidays and family gatherings, and the occasional slice of deep dish pizza if he has a REALLY bad day.
  • Lampshaded: "Everytime Alice breaks up with me, I've got a Kleenex in one hand and a hot dog in the other."
  • Averted: Bob does not eat to comfort himself, or does not eat onscreen as it is not relevant to the story
  • Invoked: Fast-food joints advertise their foods as comfort foods to get people like Bob to eat them.
  • Exploited: Alice makes Bob his favorite food/dessert/drink after he gets fired
  • Discussed: "Bob really eats like a starved man after a break up!"
  • Conversed: "Look at Bob eat....this show really makes me want an Ice Cream Sundae."
  • Played for Laughs: Bob stuffs himself after his girlfriend leaves him to the point he has a Balloon Belly afterwards
  • Played for Drama: Bob is using food as a substitute for love, comforting himself at the with a Polish sausage every time Alice breaks up with him, causes him to develop a weight problem, this causes a downward spiral where Bob becomes increasingly shy and withdrawn and steadily grows more and more weight
  • They plotted a perfectly good waste: Looking at all those Double Dutch Ice Cream Sundaes and Gourmet Ice Cream Sandwiches a lot of people think the movie's comfort food fixation was just an excuse for lots of food porn...which it was

Back to Comfort Food