Cut a Slice, Take the Rest

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The big bit's the best.

A character is about to receive or take something. Maybe it's money or food. Either way a small fraction of the entirety is divided from the whole. This small fraction is what could be considered a normal portion. The character in question then proceeds to take the larger portion, leaving the small fraction behind.

This is most common with cake. A character will cut out a slice and take the rest for himself. It's also seen often with money, where a few bills are removed from a wallet as offered payment and the character takes the wallet.

Most often seen in Western Animation.

Compare I'll Take Two Beers, Too!

Examples of Cut a Slice, Take the Rest include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Skip Beat!, Kyoko cuts a normal slice of cake for her and then grandly presents the rest of the cake to the famous actor she's temporarily working for. He's touched she's learned his eating habits so well.

Comic Books

  • In Asterix and Cleopatra, Obelix is asked to cut three slices from the Special Iced Arsenic Cake. He cuts out two normal-sized slices and takes all the rest as his own piece. ("Well, I did cut three slices, didn't I?")
    • Of course, given the recipe, it was probably for the best that no cake was left afterwards.
  • One issue of The Dandy had Sneaker invite Crawford round for tea. He does this twice with cutting cakes ("One tiny little slice...for you! And the rest for me!"), and the third time he pours a small glass of pop for himself...and sprays the rest onto Crawford.

Film

  • In Mean Girls, during the time when Regina is unknowingly being manipulated into gaining weight, she can be seen cutting off the end of a loaf of French bread and biting the loaf. Tina Fey notices this on the first time during the DVD Commentary and actually remarks that Bugs Bunny used to do that.
  • A variation is used in The Nutty Professor 2 when Sherman's family devours an entire buffet leaving only the salad.
  • A Deleted Scene of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit was to have Wallace about to eat a wheel of cheese, but tells Gromit to make the slice smaller than usual. He, of course, eats the bigger part instead.

Literature

Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the natural leaf twisted. When they borrow a chaw they don’t generly cut it off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it’s handed back, and says, sarcastic:
“Here, gimme the chaw, and you take the plug.”

Live-Action TV

  • A variation in Red Dwarf, Lister carefully measures out a spoonful of curry powder, throws the rest of the can into his mix, and dumps the spoonful back into the can.
  • Bernard Black does a similar thing when making coffee in Black Books: he takes a spoonful of coffee from a full jar, then pours boiling water into the jar and drinks from that.
  • And Compo of Last of the Summer Wine does it with sugar and tea.
  • This gag was a staple on The Electric Company, the slightly more mature companion series to Sesame Street from the 1970s. When it was used in a live segment, the character doing so remarked that he'd "learned this from the Spellbinder" (Letterman's animated foe).
  • In an episode of The Golden Girls, depressed Blanche puts a normal serving of lasagna on a plate, then leaves the plate on the counter and begins eating the rest from the casserole dish.
  • The Benny Hill Show: During an extended sketch parodying Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Benny (as Butch) and Jackie Wright (as Sundance) are enjoying a stolen picnic dinner. Benny offers to cut a slice of cheese from a large - like 2 feet long - cube. Sundance makes him move the blade so the slice is thinner, and thinner, and thinner until it's practically a paper thin slice; after Butch cuts the thin slice, Sundance picks up the rest of the cheese and starts to eat it. (Seen here starting about 2 minutes in.)
  • In The Vicar of Dibley, this was done on more than one occasion by Geraldine, the titular vicar. She would cut a slice of cake and eat the rest, or break off a piece from a chocolate bar and then eat the rest, or one example when she poured a glass of wine, then downed the rest of the bottle in one continuous gulp.
  • On an episode of Family Ties Alex's uncle asks for a beer. He takes most of the six pack and hands one back.
  • On one episode of Home Improvement, one of the students from Tim's shop class does this with Jill's cake when Tim has then over for dinner.

Music

  • "Taxman", by The Beatles, seems to fit this trope well:

Let me tell you how it will be/There's one for you, nineteen for me/'Cause I'm the taxman,/Yeah, I'm the taxman
Should five percent appear too small/Be thankful I don't take it all/'Cause I'm the taxman,/Yeah, I'm the taxman

    • This was Truth in Television. When the Beatles recorded this song, 95% was indeed the tax rate in Britain at the top tax bracket, which the Beatles' earnings put them in.
      • Actually, at one point in the 1960s, the top rate on some earnings exceeded 100% due to sloppy surcharges. This also happened during WWII, but that case might well have been intentional.

Newspaper Comics

  • Seen in Garfield.
    • Indeed, in one episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield hesitates about taking the cake, realizing that Jon and Odie should have some. So he cuts a small slice, eats the rest, and says to the audience, "You knew I was gonna do that." Then he takes the slice and eats it too, commenting "You knew I was gonna do that too."
  • Also used in FoxTrot, where Roger noted that Peter had taken a normal-sliced piece of pizza and asked if he was feeling all right. While saying, "Sure, why do you ask?" he took the remaining seven-eighths and started munching on it, leaving the plate with the small slice in its place. This let Roger know that his son was still his gluttonous self.
    • He had the audacity to suggest that for one holiday dinner, the portions should be thus: a slice each for Roger, Jason, Andy, and Paige, and the rest of the turkey (or was it ham?) for himself.
    • Roger also did this once with coffee. He pours a cup and leaves it on the counter while grabbing the pot.
      • Andy then notes that Roger really is cutting back as she takes the mug for herself
  • In Hagar the Horrible, Hagar was at a party and the hostess encouraged him to take a piece of cake. Despite the fact that there was still about seven-eighths of a whole cake left, Hagar demurred, "Oh, I don't like to take the last piece"—indicating that in his mind, this trope is the normal way to take a piece of cake.

Web Animation

  • Helluva Boss. When Stolas' wife throws a "Not Divorced Party" simply to mock him but lets him attend, Stolas is understandably upset. He tells a servant to bring the strongest liquor they have; a different servant brings a bottle of absinthe (a spirit known for being very high-proof, mildly hallucinogenic, and borderline poisonous) and starts pouring it into a shot glass, but then Stolas grabs the whole bottle and starts to drink from that.

Web Comics

  • Played with in Ctrl+Alt+Del, when Ethan attempts to create a web show based off of "Will It Blend", using rocket fuel on various objects to see if they launch. Ethan says that he cleverly calculated the amount of rocket fuel needed to test to see if a brick will shoot off, and holds up said amount. Zeke then points out that since what he's holding is the calculated amount, Ethan just used the rest of the fuel on the brick. Cue an Oh Crap face from Ethan and a brick through the wall.
  • Done twice by BC Freedom team leader Marie in Girls und Panzer - Operation: More Love Love! Web Edition. First, Marie slices a cake for herself, Isabele, and Sofue; later, Isabele offers Marie a taste of her cake. Both times, Isabele holds a grudge and refuses to follow Marie's orders during the next practice match.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • As described above, used often in Looney Tunes, usually the cake variation.
  • Used in a Tom and Jerry short, "The Truce Hurts", where Tom, Jerry and the bulldog are trying to figure out how to divide a steak they've found.
    • In another short, "Baby Butch", Butch the alley cat cuts a small slice of ham, then takes the rest for himself.
  • In the opening of The Jetsons, George takes a few bills out of his wallet for Jane, but Jane takes the entire wallet instead.
    • Also used in this Jetson's sponsor's tag for Saran Wrap.
    • Spoofed on Family Guy where George yells at Jane for taking all his money and ends up throwing her out of the air car, killing her.
    • In the episode "Future Tense," George wins a pile of money at a horse race, at the end the 'interplanetary revenue service' agency takes the pile, hands him a stack out of the pile, and keeps the rest for themselves.
  • At the end of the Barney Bear cartoon: Heir Bear, the taxman comes to take "Uncle Sam's share" from the treasure Barney had just uncovered. He takes a coin... for Barney to keep while he collects the rest.
  • In an early Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck cartoon, "Orphans' Picnic", there's a sequence where Donald's laying out the picnic and trying to stop the orphans from making off with food before it's all ready. At one point, one of the orphans sneaks up to a cake, carefully cuts a slice, and then makes off with the rest of the cake, leaving the slice behind.
    • In another Donald cartoon, "Donald's Cousin Gus", Gus Goose does this with a chocolate cake.
  • In one episode of The Snorks, Willie does this after saying "piece of cake". He takes the cake minus one slice and shoves it in his mouth.
  • In the beginning of Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "A Glass of Warm Ed" where Ed sleepwalks into Edd's house and eats Edd's food from his fridge, Ed opens a pickle jar, takes out a pickle, waits a second, and pours the contents of the pickle jar into his mouth.
  • In the episode "Heavy Sleeper" from Chowder, Chowder takes an orange from a fruit bowl only to suck out the rest of the fruit and putting the orange back in the bowl.
  • Beetlejuice: Beetle Juice once found a huge gold rock. A tax collector took a small piece of it and did like the taxman from the Barney Bear example above.
  • In a Birthday Episode, Scooby Doo cut a normal slice of his birthday cake and offered it to Shaggy, who told him the birthday boy should take the first slice. Well, since it's this trope and Scooby we're talking about, you must know what happened.
  • As noted above, the evil Spellbinder did this in one of the animated segments of The Electric Company. After turning a farmer's "rake" into a "snake", the hero (wearing his "C" shirt) swoops to the rescue and turns it into a "cake". Which the sneaky villain promptly swipes via this Trope while the hero and farmer are occupied eating it.

Real Life

So, dimly remembering that Indians use bread when they've overdone the chillies, I cut a slice, threw it away and ate what remained of the very expensive Daylesford loaf, like a dog.


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