Covered in Gunge: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Does this need any explanation? People get covered in gunge (also known as slime). Another variant involves [[Carrying a Cake|a large cake]] and [[Rule of Funny|comedies]]: it is inevitable in such shows that someone will end up with their face in the cake. If the cake is big enough (as many wedding cakes are), they'll do a full-body dive into it.

A trope of the [[Saturday Morning Kids Show]] genre or anything else aimed at kids. This trope is also popular in a number of programs aimed at adults. The game show use of gunge was particularly ubiquitous during the [[The Eighties|late 80s]] and [[The Nineties|early 90s]], but it seems to have died down now as health and safety and general dignity take increasing hold.

 

 

 

Often an essential ingredient in a good [[Humiliation Conga]].

 

 

Not to be confused with something being [[Cover Version|Covered in]] [[Grunge]].

{{examples}}

== Game Shows ==

* Other Nickelodeon game shows from the same era that followed suit:

* Non-Nick shows from the same time period:

** ''[[Fun House]]'', arguably the most successful, both in the US and the UK. Whole lot of fun, Prizes to be won. While gunge is chucked about liberally.

** The most blatant ''Double Dare'' ripoff, ''Slime Time'', and its sister show ''[[Treasure Mall]]''.

* ''Noel's House Party'', a UK Saturday evening entertainment show from the 90s, is probably the biggest example of this for shows aimed at adults (as much as you could describe it as 'grown-up' at all). Gunge was a staple of the programme, and it featured throughout its lifetime:

** ''Gunge Tank'': Simply, a clear booth with a seat and a reservoir of gunge on the top. In its first form, on a precursor to House Party called Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow, a member of the audience would play a word game, with Noel and the celebrity of the week assisting them. The answers to separate clues would combine loosely to form a larger phrase, and the contestant would have to bet on how many of these phrases they could get in 90 seconds - if they failed to reach their number, the gunge was released.

** ''Stop the Snot'' was the last variant, where the show added a whopping great model nose to the front of the tank. This was similar to the very first game, except a celebrity was quizzed for a minute with the rule that they could never say "Yes" or "No", with results that should be obvious by now should they ever do so.

* Canadian game show Uh Oh!, which is played with teams of two. There were a few mini-games chosen by a wheel. The titular Uh Oh! space challenged the player who landed on it with a question. If the player got it right, the team got points, but getting it wrong results in slime being dumped... on their partner.

** And then, there was the premium option of "Uh Oh! Deluxe", which was the same. Except it was worth more points, or your partner got ''metallic'' coloured gunge dropped on them.

* ''Hangar 17'' was a children's magazine-type show that had a couple of sections of this - the first was a talent/variety show section where three acts were judged by a panel of kids while seated underneath giant prop ice cream cones - only the highest scorer was let off. The second section was called ''Teacher on the Hotseat'', where a teacher nominated by some of the audience had to sit inside a futuristic cockpit-like booth and answer three questions on the subject they taught, only being told if they had got the answers right (and therefore escaped) at the end. Only one teacher ever escaped the gunging, which was fairly vicious even by British standards, with the stuff being sprayed from all sides of the device before they were finished off with a torrent from above - when this happened, they let him out and put the girl who had nominated him in instead.

* ''Eyespy'', a UK show from the 80s, featured gunge cubicles as part of its final obstacle course round. After answering a question correctly to be allowed to start, contestants would have to find pieces of a code by picking from a row of ten cubicles, only finding out if they had picked one of the four safe ones once they had shut themselves inside.

* ''Clockwise'' was another children's show where the contestants risked their cleanliness - it often featured games in which one member of a team would have to save the other. Two memorable examples were the "steady hand" game where one team member would have to guide a loop along a twisted wire, with the addition that the buzzer was also wired up to a gunge tank with their team-mate inside, and a similar one where the teams had to shoot six targets with catapult-like contraptions before time expired. The final round was called the Tunnel of Time, where the winning team would ride a roller coaster car-like thing through a tunnel, having to answer questions while being covered by various devices throughout.

* ''Pump It Up'', another UK game show, used gunge as its entire scoring system - winning any of the games before the final would allow a team to turn off one of the "gunge zones" on the giant inflatable obstacle course at the end. If a zone wasn't turned off when a team reached it, a load of gunge would be spewed down on to them from the ceiling, making progress difficult at best, and if it happened to be on an uphill ramp, hilariously impossible.

* The British loved this, didn't they? ''Twister'' was a game show in 2001 that wasn't often messy, but occasionally had games that involved contestants being fastened in place under [[Up to Eleven|huge industrial hoppers]] and being covered in ''ridiculous'' amounts of gunge throughout. One of them was set up so that their team-mates had to avoid hitting "triggers" on the floor - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSdbE5uxINs#t=3m the resultant carnage can be viewed here].

* On the Israeli game show ''Crime and Punishment'', participants who made it to the final stage (after beating two others, so it was one finalist per episode) had to sit on a chair above a huge tank of slime while connected to a polygraph. They were told to answer five embarrassing questions truthfully: if they did, they’d get all the money they’d earned (usually around 2,000 NIS); if they failed, they’d fall into the slime and get nothing.

* Nickelodeon's ''[[Figure It Out]]'': Any panelist who triggered the "Secret Slime Action" got to see why that weird pipe was hanging ominously over his or her head.

 

* Happens in the [[Eiken]] OVA, in the infamous huge yogurt-slide... and then chocolate.

 

* [[Max Und Moritz]] by [[Wilhelm Busch]] are covered by dough after they break in a bakery. Their fault.

 

 

== Film ==

*** There's that ''and'' the fact that he was the male lead, and would be kissing the girl soon. Not very romantic kissing a man with as much marshmallow as the other Ghostbusters had on them.

** And in the sequel, after being hosed with the 'good vibrations' pink spooge, "Vy am I drippings vith goo?"

* In ''[[The Great Race]]'', due to a ''Prisoner Of Zenda''-like case of assumed identity, all of the main characters end up in a bakery throwing pies at each other. Throughout, the Great Leslie remains completely immaculate until the [[Action Girl]] feminist, blinded by the pie on her face, is spinning around with a pie in her hand and Leslie ducks a little too late.

* In ''[[Blazing Saddles]]'', the big fight scene at the end spills out of its set into another soundstage, then spreads into the studio commissary and escalates into a food fight. Hedley tries to evade it by ducking into a restroom, then emerges a second later with a faceful of pie.

 

== Literature ==

* At the climax of [[Daniel Pinkwater]]'s ''Young Adult Novel'', the Wild Dada Ducks are assaulted in the Himmler High lunchroom by the other students with one thousand portions of extra soggy Grape-Nuts cereal.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** The show was a big hit when it aired on [[Nickelodeon]], which adopted the slime part into... well, everything. Especially in [[The Nineties]]. To this day, various in-studio shows and events take joy in dumping green stuff on people.

* An episode of ''[[Fawlty Towers]]'' has Basil taking revenge on a man who he believed to have been a hotel inspector throughout the episode by hitting him with custard pies and pouring cream into his briefcase.

* ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' did this to Bulk and Skull REPEATEDLY. Cakes, usually, but just about anything could land on those two to end an episode...

** Bulk seems to have returned to his role as gunge magnet in ''[[Power Rangers Samurai]]''.

* More or less the entire Idea behind the Discovery Kids show ''[[Grossology]]''.

* ''[[All That]]'', being a [[Nickelodeon]] comedy, embraced this repeatedly, but particularly memorable was a combined [[Lampshade]]/ [[Subverted Trope|double subversion]]: A baker has sent the cast a roomful of cream pies, far more than they could possibly eat, in appreciation of the show. Several cast members ask pointedly what to do with the excess pies, when their [[Butt Monkey]] stage manager walks in. Someone decides to bring the extra pies to the zoo for the zebras. Stage manager calls them on it, and one explains that the baker had also sent over a large cake explicitly for throwing at him.

** A special mention for whoever decided [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=klm7VgQnrFA to give them champagne.]

* Jim Cramer of ''Mad Money'' throws banana cream pies at company CEOs. [[The Daily Show|Or so I heard]].

* In ''[[Dirty Jobs]]'' Mike Rowe, in the course of doing the job, usually gets filthy by the end of it. Sometimes the filth is wet. Are the fangirls pleased by this? Yes they are.

* In an episode of ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' after representing Lily in teen court (and proving to everyone's satisfaction that she was to blame for Lily's current predicament), Miley gets "served" some justice, and ends up covered in pasta and sauce.

* ''[[The Day of the Triffids]]'' (2009). The bodies of those killed by the [[Man-Eating Plant|Man Eating Plants]] are covered in triffid venom.

* In a [[Monty Python]] sketch at an Army Recruiting office, an applicant (Eric Idle) protests that he hasn't gotten any funny lines - the recruiting officer (Graham Chapman) offers to start a new sketch to let him be funny - where the officer becomes a fast-talking music hall burlesque comic who gets all the funny lines again. The sketch further degenerates into a circus setting where the officer is a clown, dumping water on Idle, dropping a large fish down his trousers, upending a bucket of whitewash on him, and shoving a pie into his face, all the time telling him "It's your laugh, mate, not mine!"

* In the ''Frasier'' episode "Are you being served?" Niles is in the restroom when Martin's Hot&Foamy shaving lather heater explodes. He comes out covered from head to toe and says "I'm all right, just a little hot. And foamy."

 

 

== Theatre ==

* ''[[Usles]]'' pantomimes, while done on shoestring budgets, still include slosh scenes, although water, talcum powder and shaving foam tend to be substituted for gunge, being both cheap and easy to clean up. Often leads to characters [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshading]] the inevitable mess with lines like, "Better put down this handy tarpaulin just to be on the safe side!"

* [[Martin McDonagh]] is fond of getting messy: he's got raw eggs to the head in ''The Cripple Of Inishmaan'', bone chips/dust in ''A Skull in Connemara'', torture with hot oil in ''The Beauty Queen of Leenane'', and [[Gorn]] that drenches the [[Blood-Splattered Innocents|innocent]] and [[Blood Is the New Black|not-so-innocent]] alike in ''[[The Lieutenant of Inishmore]]''. It's like he does it ''just'' to torment the [[Cleanup Crew|stage management]] team!

== Video Games ==

* A powerup like this will appear in ''[[Backyard Sports]]: Sandlot Sluggers''.

* This is your entire ''means of combat'' in the obscure platformer ''[[SP Ray]]: Spirited Prince Ray.''

** Which is [[Toxic Phlebotinum|something of a worry]] given this recorded announcement:

 

 

* This is a [[Running Gag]] in ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'', though it hasn't been seen as much as of late. Whenever Dejah, a living Slime, uses his "Slime Geyser" teleport spell, one of the teleported always, ''always'', gets covered in slime. It's always, ''always'' Luna (and she always, ''always'' has an exasperated look on her face when it happens).

* [http://sorethumbs.keenspot.com/d/20071005.html Ugghhh...] [[Sore Thumbs|Too many chocolates.]]

* [http://ysdtic.com You Shouldn't Do That In Comics]. Written/"drawn" by a WAM fetishist, and inspired by "You Can't Do That on Television"

 

* ''[[Industrial Zone]]'' at [http://www.furaffinity.net/user/iron-k FurAffinity] is a fictional game show series featuring this in vast quantities. Experience the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing whether you're reading porn or not.

* From ''[[The Onion]]'': [http://www.theonion.com/articles/exnickelodeon-stars-relate-horrors-of-green-slime,1174/ "Ex-Nickelodeon Stars Relate Horrors Of Green Slime Syndrome"].

 

== Western Animation ==

* Almost every episode of ''World of Quest'' features the Prince being covered in something. Usually three or more times.

* ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' had this as the end of the first season and opening of the second.

* In the ''[[Generator Rex]]'' episode "Breach", when Rex started destroying everything around him to cause Breach to create portals so that he could try to escape, all while Breach is throwing out the junk into different parts of the world, a portal appeared right over some Evo scorpions that Six and Bobo were fighting, dropping some junk and squishing the bugs. What came next was white goop (ice cream) covering both Six and Bobo. Bobo comments, "I'm not complaining."

** In the first episode, Sokka is instantly established as the local [[Butt Monkey]] when he gets covered in flying bison snot.

*** Which closely resembles good ol' green slime (it ''is'' a [[Nickelodeon]] program, after all).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Disgust Tropes]]

[[Category:Game Show Tropes]]

[[Category:Practical Joke]]