Force Feeding

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"PLEASE STOP FEEDING ME!"
Tompkins' Virtual Pet, Teen Girl Squad Issue 13

Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Sometimes considered an example of Cold-Blooded Torture. Can be played for laughs.

A person is restrained and possibly put into a straitjacket, or strapped to a chair. A funnel/tube may be put in their mouth and something like raw eggs mixed with milk or some other yucky mess is forced down the victim's throat into their stomach. Sometimes, there is no physical force involved at all because in that particular case, threats are just as effective. May cause Nausea Fuel, for both the person being force-fed and for people actually watching it happen. And, of course, Nightmare Fuel should not be ruled out.

Note that an Orifice Invasion through the mouth is a different thing. And then there's the exact opposite, starvation. Many times this can work in tandem (starvation for a week, then force fed several times a day for a week). May be used if prisoners attempt a hunger strike.

Examples of Force Feeding include:

Anime and Manga

  • Nodame Cantabile: Chiaki gets frustrated with Nodame and tries to force-feed her mushroom and cheese risotto after she lies and tells him that she has no appetite, even though she is actually very hungry.
  • The end of Umineko Ep. 2 (Turn of the Golden Witch) has a scene in which Rosa is force fed the remains of her siblings.
  • Bleach: Ulquiorra threatens to force-feed Orihime, strap her down on a table, and give her IVs when she refuses to eat after he orders her to.
  • Episode 2 of Cowboy Bebop: the Mark of the week, Hakim, repays being bumped by a passing drunk by crushing a cockroach, placing it in a glass, and forcing him to drink it.
  • A particularly scary version of this occurs in the anime Narutaru, which is pretty much a horror show all on its own. One girl is frequently harassed by a trio of cruel bullies and on one occasion is forced to ingest a bunch of worms from inside a test-tube which she quickly vomits back up.
    • In the manga the girl is only scared into swallowing one worm, but not actually force fed it. A straight example occurs later in the revenge when Oni grabs Aki Honda by the head; palm facing her mouth and starts producing worms that she has to swallow until her stomach bulges visibly. Then he kills her. *Shudders*
  • Played for laughs in Ranma 1/2 where Ranma comes up with a martial arts technique that involves force feeding everyone else the food on his plate (It Makes Sense in Context).
    • Then there was the time that Happosai was injured to the point of having a full bodycast. Naturally, Ranma Saotome snatches up the golden opportunity to dish out a little pay-back. So what does he do? He force-feeds him Akane Tendo's cooking. Now that's just cruel...
  • Also played for laughs in Mahou Sensei Negima, when the girls "interrogate" Ku Fei.
    • And earlier when Asuna force-feeds Negi the Love Potion he made for her. Unfortunately, it was an area-effect potion centered on the drinker...
  • In chapter 6 of Sakura Gari Sakurako tries to literally force Tagami to eat some of the food she made for him. He's reluctant to do so because the last time she fed him something she had secretly snuck in some glass.
  • Ren from Skip Beat! tends to forget to eat since he was often force-fed as a child by his Beloved Smother to the point that he was unable to breathe.
  • In One Piece, Luffy flicks his booger into Zoro's drink as a prank, only for Zoro to spot it at the last second. He irately forces the drink down Luffy's throat.
  • In Arakawa Under the Bridge this is Nino's idea of hospitality.
  • In one of the Galaxy Express 999 movies, Captain Harlock forces a mechanised thug to down a pint of mink.
  • In Angel Sanctuary Rosiel force feeds Katan one of his undeath-granting feathers to keep him alive.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki is half ghoul/human but wants to maintain his humanity by avoiding eating human flesh. Any attempts at eating human food now results in him barfing. To have him avoid starving Touka force feeds him some human flesh.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS, minor character Sushiko Maki uses a sushi-themed deck with Trap Cards that use a variety of effects that, as a cost, increase the opponents' Life Points, the Solid Vision interpreting this effect by creating sushi that is fed to the opponent. As Romin discovers, these illusory sushi rolls are tasty, but make her hungry... which for her, is not a good thing...

Comic Books

  • Johnny the Homicidal Maniac once force fed food to some hapless guy all the while asking if the food is fresh. Turns out he really just wanted to know if his food was fresh since he hasn't paid his electricity bill in a while. The guy is then let go without any consequence.
  • In The Filth Spartacus Hughes forcefeeds a ship's captain (a staunch vegetarian) meat. Which is raw. And Hughes tells us the animal was tortured before being killed. And the animal was his daughter.

Fan Works

  • In the Danny Phantom fanfic titled "Narcissism" by WTF Wonder, Dark Danny threatens to do this to Danny.
  • In the Death Note fanfic titled "Stolen" by SekushiAi a psychopath presses a scalpel to Light's tongue, cutting it open. And then he pours some liquid which contains vinegar into Light's mouth right afterwards. Light tries to cough it up, but the psychopath holds his mouth shut and pushes his head back, forcing Light to ingest the liquid laced with vinegar and the resulting blood that was pooling in his mouth from when his tongue was cut.
  • In the Team Fortress 2 fanfic titled "Afterwards", someone tried to blackmail the Medic, he escaped. "But zat was after I pulled out all his teezh, fed him his own testicles, drilled a hole into his skull and zen poured in ze acid…"
  • In The Dark, Melanie was likely forced feed LSD-laced meals during her time in captivity. Later, when she's brought to the hospital, Melanie is hooked up with a feeding machine thanks to malnutrition and starvation. Joan and Geri tries a kinder version of this with a strawberry and banana in hopes of Melanie being able to trust food again.
    • Later in Chapter 55, the LSD-Laced product Melanie was forced to drink was deer blood. Talking about Nausea Fuel.
  • Astral Journey: It's Complicated: Both Emma and Melanie were subject to this. The former was due to her jaws were wired and had sent two weeks in a coma, preventing her from eating. Once her jaw was freed, Emma is re-introduce to food slowly, which she was rather glad.
    • The latter was thanks to being underweight and kept refusing treatment.

Film

  • This trope is used in the 1962 Mexican movie Caperucita y Pulgarcito contra los monstruos. Former villains Wolf and Ogre are tormented using the water torture described in the Real Life section (played for laughs).
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has Indy force-fed human blood in a ritual.
  • Plays a part in the movie Iron Jawed Angels, as the women are all suffragists whose lobbying tactics get them thrown in prison, and once they go on a hunger strike for their cause, they are viciously force-fed raw eggs.
  • Matilda: Involves a overweight kid who is forced to eat chocolate cake, as punishment for supposedly stealing Miss Trunchbull's cake, while Miss Trunchbull watches. In other words, he is not allowed to stop eating until he has finished the whole cake, and it's HUGE too (18 inches in diameter). Even if he gets sick, he has to keep eating. To add insult to injury, Miss Trunchbull announces that the cook who baked the cake, "baked her sweat and blood into the cake, but the children don't realise it's a figure of speech and, given Miss Trunchbull, it might be literal. He manages to eat the whole thing, but not before looking incredibly sick while doing so as he stuffs morsel after rich morsel into his mouth. Nausea Fuel incarnate. For a kid's film at least.
    • Dude, Roald Dahl wrote it. And considering Trunchbull's other antics, she may not have been exaggerating.
    • In the book, the rest of the school's kids are sure there is more to this punishment: 1) the cake's poisoned, and he will die a slow, painful death; 2) it's poisoned with arsenic, and he'll be dead in five seconds; 3) it will explode.
    • On the other hand, the kid turns this into a victory against the Trunchbull in the book - he gets his second wind about halfway through and after taking the final bite, grins at the gathered schoolchildren, looking much like an overstuffed grub. Miss Trunchbull even breaks the plate on his head in a rage afterwards, but he's so stuffed that it doesn't even faze him.
      • In the movie, everyone cheers him into that second wind, led by Matilda, so Trunchbull punishes the lot of them more conventionally. With lines. Allowing Matilda the offhand line: "The principal kept the whole school late because this boy ate some chocolate cake."
      • And then after this Bruce Bogtrotter, Lavender, and Matilda are all friends.
  • The sequence in Young Sherlock Holmes where a teenage John Watson hallucinates that his legs are bound with sausages and that pastries are trying to force him to eat them. On YouTube here.
  • Done with a liquid in the final scene of Get Carter.
  • Also occurs in Requiem for a Dream. An elderly woman named Sara becomes addicted to weight loss drugs and is sent to a medical facility where she is interrogated by doctors, strapped into a chair, and force-fed. Sara doesn't respond to the harsh treatment and is given electric shock therapy.
  • The first murder in Se7en.
  • A whole lot of horror movies feature force-feeding segments, especially films involving cannibals. The typical set-up of the scene involves a captive protagonist being forced to eat the flesh of his or her friends by his or her captors. Examples include:
    • The main character of Ravenous is forced to eat human flesh twice (arguably, three times) when his life is endangered.
    • The Final Girl of Frontiers is force-fed her friends by her Neo-Nazi captors.
    • The heroine in Captivity is strapped to a chair and forced to drink through a funnel a mixture of blended human body parts; eye, nose, ear, and intestines.
    • In A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 The Dream Child, Freddy Krueger has a girl strapped to a chair and forces her to eat her own intestines in a nightmare sequence.
    • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series is known for the trope, being that the infamous family of the films makes and sells barbecue from human flesh, often forced upon captives.
    • And all too many other films. Trailer Park of Terror (human jerky), House of 1000 Corpses (human flesh), I Drink Your Blood (blood), Boogeyman 2 (fat), Island of Death (paint), Return to Sleepaway Camp (Gasoline), and so forth.
  • Theatre of Blood: an actor is killing critics in ways based on Shakespearean plays. Titus Andronicus, where the evil queen is tricked into eating her two sons, here becomes a "queenly" (and gluttonous) critic being force-fed his two surrogate-children pet poodles until he chokes.
  • Caligula. Red wine, a dagger and ... a ... bootlace. (shudder)
    • If you were wondering (warning: details not pretty)... A man gets his penis tied off so that he can't urinate, and then is forced to drink massive amounts of red wine. Once his stomach bulges, they cut him open...
  • In The Witches a boy is held down by a bunch of witches and has a potion that turns him into a mouse forced down this throat.
  • In Changeling Angelina Jolie's character is force-fed pills by a mental hospital staff after refusing to take them.
  • In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Grinch is force fed desserts by the townsfolk for a taste contest.
  • In the British horror film Alone a serial killer breaks into a young woman's house, binds her to a chair, and jams microwaved dinner and custard down her throat. The police then find the woman dead after the ordeal.
  • In the Japanese film Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom high school girls drag another girl into the bathroom and force her to drink water from a faucet. This is so she gets humiliated when she has to pee her pants in the classroom.
  • In The Cook the Thief His Wife And Her Lover a bookshop employee is tortured to death by being forced to eat book pages.
  • In the film Double Dragon a bad guy gets force fed spinach through a funnel as torture.
  • In the film Urban Legend a guy is killed by having his hands tied to a toilet and pop rocks and drain cleaner are forced down his throat through a funnel.
  • In the Film Cord aka Hide and Seek a pregnant woman has a milkshake pumped down her throat via a tube while she's tied to a bed.
  • In the film Rang De Basanti, a flashback shows the characters' film-within-a-film counterparts being force-fed in prison after they go on hunger strike.
  • In Popeye, during the climactic battle Pappy throws Popeye a can of spinach and Bluto catches it instead. Upon finding out Popeye hates spinach Bluto force feeds him the whole can. You can guess what happens next.
  • In Aladdin, Iago's revenge against the Sultan for feeding him stale crackers is to force feed him the same crackers. (No, not literally the same crackers.)
  • In Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror a woman is tied to a bed and is forced to consume caviar being forced down her throat through a mask placed over her face until her stomach bursts.
  • In An American Werewolf in London, Nurse Alex Price forces David (the werewolf) to eat some of his hospital food after he says he doesn't want to eat; holding his nose to get him to open his mouth so she can make him take a bite.
  • In Beverly Hills Ninja Chris Farley and Nicollette Sheridan dump a concoction of herbs, called "The Laughing Mushroom", down the throat of an agent (Will Sasso) to make him reveal information. He is unconscious as the herbs are being poured in his mouth.
  • In the horror film Ice Cream Man Clint Howard (the ice cream man) shoves ice cream down a boy's throat inside his ice cream truck.
  • Used as water torture in the opening scene of the movie Salt. Agent Salt gets a water hose shoved in her mouth as torture.
  • In the 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave the rape victim has one of her attackers tied to a tree and then proceeds to shove fish guts in his mouth.
  • In Hocus Pocus, the witches force various people to drink their potions.
  • The last surviving character in Cornered is killed by being forcefed donuts, his favorite food.
  • This is the entire premise of The Human Centipede.
  • In The Stinger to Ralph Breaks the Internet, Ralph interferes with an online kids' game where the goal is to distribute two different kinds of food between two cartoon animals. Despite Vanellope's warnings, he innocently force-feeds pancakes to a bunny rabbit until it explodes (mercifully off-screen).

Literature

  • A Goosebumps book, "The Pumpkin Heads", took place during Hallowe'en. Two of the characters appear to be kids who are friends of the protagonists, wearing pumpkin masks over their whole head. They take the protagonists and the bullies who are forcing them to trick or treat with them, to a hidden suburb behind a forest where everybody has a pumpkin head. The Pumpkin Head kids force the other kids to take as much candy as they can carry in pillow cases, then eat everything in the bag. Then, they try to force the kids to go for more. The bullies run off and leave the protagonists but the pumpkin heads turn out to be superpowered aliens who are the protagonists friends. But then, after they laugh at the bullies running scared, they admit that they actually eat fat adults, but the protagonist is not old enough or fat enough yet.
  • In Stephen King's Misery sometime during the later half of the book Annie cuts off one of Paul's thumbs. And then puts it on a birthday cake and serves it to him, making a not-so subtle threat to force him to eat it. "Special candle," indeed...
    • Near the end of the book Paul lights his manuscript on fire. As a stunned Annie attempts to rescue the manuscript, Paul seizes the opportunity to throw the typewriter at her, knocking her down. He then stuffs several handfuls of the burning paper down her throat telling her to "eat it till you choke, you sick fuck!" This part was also used in the 1990 movie adaption.
  • Appears in the Vorkosigan Saga book Mirror Dance, but the victim, Mark Vorkosigan, is Too Kinky to Torture because of his Split Personality.

Technician: I hate to be the one to tell you this, Baron, but your torture victim appears to be having a wonderful time.

  • In The Last Knight, a quasi-Mad Scientist character force-feeds the main character potions to give him magical powers. She also tests the potions on her mentally ill servants, but tries to justify it because, to her mind, they just don't understand that she's trying to help them. At the end, the main character uses the same funnel to force her to drink a potion that will make her compliant long enough for the heroes to escape.
  • Inverted? Subverted? in the book I Am Morgan Lefay. When she goes mad with grief, (literally mad) and starves herself, Morgan's friends/servants with good intentions force feed her to keep her alive.
  • In one of the earlier Wheel of Time books, Jaichim Carridin is a servant of the bad guys. He keeps screwing up because he likes to drink too much. After he's screwed up once too often, his superiors have him gruesomely murdered as an object lesson. They strap him down, force a funnel into his mouth, and pour an entire keg of brandy in. He drowns.
  • American Girls Collection: In the first Addy book, the slave driver makes her eat slugs off the tobacco plants.
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there is a portion where Harry has to force Dumbledore to drink goblet after goblet of unpleasant poison. To be fair, Dumbledore told him he would probably have to do so, and asked him to, and Harry doesn't end up forcing it down as much as pushily coaxing him to drink, but that doesn't make it any less creepy.
  • Morbidly done in the Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear series, where the book's villain force-feeds a minor character poisonous berries, killing him so that he can be used in the man's experiments for a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Michael in the Knight and Rogue Series is given experimental potions in The Last Knight. When he refuses to drink them they shove a funnel down his throat and pour the concotions down that.

Live-Action TV

  • Dave Lister of Red Dwarf is forced to eat a living tarantula in Demons and Angels.
    • It's also claimed that Rimmer once angrily attempted to force-feed Lister a fridge. As in, an actual fridge, not the contents thereof.
  • In the Farscape episode "Crackers Don't Matter," D'Argo forcefeeds Rygel an entire boxful of crackers in a fit of rage after catching him sneaking a few crackers out for a snack.
  • Played for Laughs in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. After former The Ditz Munch returns from his travels a religious, reasonably intelligent person (by comparison), Gaz force-feeds him Vimto to return him to his former self.
  • Gaius Baltar is subjected to this as part of his pre-torture by the Colonials on Battlestar Galactica when he was refusing to eat, though we don't actually see it. This short time after he had suffered Electric Torture from the Cylons. As was often the case, he sort of deserved the rough treatment, but was actually innocent of much of what the torturers were asking about.
  • In a season two episode of I Love Lucy called "Ricky Loses His Voice" Lucy forces her husband Ricky to drink his cough medicine after refusing it.
  • In a season five episode of Nip Tuck called "Kyle Ainge" a rival talent agent is knocked out, taped to a chair, and killed by having teddy bear stuffing pellets forced down his throat through a machine.
  • One early episode of Oz had Schillinger order Beecher, his sex slave, to eat the pages out of his law book. When Beecher refuses, Schillinger promptly grabs him in a chokehold, tells him "Don't fuck with me, prag. Eat the damn page!", proceeds to tear out the pages, and forcefully feeds them to him.
  • In an episode of Fringe Joshua Jackson gets force fed a worm while strapped to a table by two Asian criminals.
  • Inverted in an episode of Supernatural when the forced feeding wasn't the torture, but the cure to torture: Dean is writhing in agony on the floor coughing up blood due to a hex when Ruby busts down the door and bodily hurls him onto the bed before forcing a black liquid down his throat, breaking the hex and saving his life.
    • Played straight in a later episode when Dean tortures Alastair by pouring a whole container of salt in his mouth.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran a daylong Thanksgiving marathon in 1992, in which the episodes were tied together with a series of sketches where Dr. Forrester forced TV's Frank to consume a series of movie-themed turkeys.
  • In the episode "King of the Hil" of Nickelodeon series Space Cases Harlan Band is forced to drink from the Cup of All Words by the Hil people.
  • In Life On Mars, Billy Kemble is force-fed his own stash of cocaine in a bid to get him to reveal information by Ray. Kemble dies and Carling is demoted to DC.
  • The comedy show The Vacant Lot had a sketch where a prisoner is force-fed candy (still in the wrapper) and eventually lots of small plastic toys. He is then used as a pinata for the warden's daughter's birthday party.
  • The Office: In "Ultimatum", Michael forces Kevin to eat a large piece of broccoli after he makes a New Year's resolution to eat more vegetables.
  • Inverted on Angel, where Fred had to be forced to drink alcohol to force out the slug that was dehydrating her in "The Price".
  • Subverted on Bones, where it appears a professional eating contestant is being force-fed by her coach, but he insists it's just training her after Pregnant Badass Bones takes him down.

Music

  • In the video for "Bad Romance," two extras force Lady Gaga to drink a glass of what's apparently vodka. It makes as much sense as anything in that video does.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Albuquerque" begins with his mother tying him to a wall, sticking a funnel in his mouth, and force-feeding him nothing but sauerkraut until he was twenty six and a half years old.

Newspaper Comics

  • Shows up in this Garfield strip, using scrambled eggs.
    • In another strip Garfield forces Jon to eat a smart phone.

Professional Wrestling

  • In Ring of Honor, during the CM Punk vs. Raven feud, Punk was forced to drink beer against his straight-edge beliefs.
  • In an episode of Smack Down, Mickie James (nicknamed Piggy James) is held down by Beth Phoenix, Michelle McCool, and Layla El in the ring and gets stuffed in the face with a cake shaped like a pig. After that she then has fruit punch dumped on her head.

Video Games

  • In Phantasmagoria, one of the previous victims was pinned to a table with a large funnel forced into her mouth, and was force-fed large chunks rotting meat until she choked to death - her crime? "Being a pig".
  • Essentially the main strategy for the final boss of Super Mario Bros. 2.
    • Super Mario Sunshine features three separate boss battles where the solution is to force-feed the boss.
  • A certain invincible yet immobile boss in Quake IV can only be killed by turning it's feeding apparatus back on, despite the readout saying that it had been fed just moments ago.
  • American McGee's Alice, in which an insane and catatonic Alice is force fed by two employees at the asylum she's kept in. She gets revenge by stabbing one in the cheek with a spoon.
  • The Great Mighty Poo from Conkers Bad Fur Day is fought by force-feeding him bog roll.

Web Comics

Web Original

  • The page quote is from Teen Girl Squad Issue 13, where Mrs. Tompkinsrobotmomerson admonishes Tompkins that he can't even take care of his virtual pet. Cut to Tompkins' game system, where a cartoonishly bloated blob (next to an indicator saying "Food: 600%") is begging Tompkins to stop feeding him. Tompkins just laughs and keeps pushing buttons.
  • This sort of stuff is way too easy to run across at art sites. Be thankful for the thumbnail previews.
  • During a small arc in Concession, some of the characters are secretly feeding Rick fattening foods. While Kate and Angie are more subtle, Joel ambushes him in the night and slams a jug of lard into his mouth.
  • In Chad Vader, Chad is harrassed by The Marshmallow Bandito, only for Chad to beat him up and stuff his own marshmallows into his mouth.

Western Animation

  • Totally Spies!: The three main characters are bound in chairs in the episode "Passion Patties" and force-fed addictive cookies.
    • At the end of the episode they get back at the Big Bad by forcing her to ingest a test tube filled with the ingredient that made her cookies so addictive in the first place.
  • Teen Titans: In the episode "Mother Mae-Eye Mother Mae-Eye binds Starfire in a baby chair and tries to force-feed her pies using a conveyor belt.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Elmyra forcefully shoves handful after handful of popcorn into her cat's (Furball) mouth in the beginning of a Halloween special.
  • Family Guy: In one episode Lois overeats and Peter eventually finds that he likes sex with her more now that she's fat. So he literally keeps stuffing food in her mouth in one scene upon realizing finding that she's hotter fat.
    • In another instance, Lois and Peter are sitting in bed feeding each other strawberries. Peter delicately brushes a strawberry across Lois' lips before feeding it to her; she does the same thing to Peter with another strawberry; then Peter produces a giant slice of watermelon and jams it into her mouth until she's gagging and spitting out seeds.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: Grandma Stuffum, a villainess with satanic food, in her debut episode literally cooked up an army of alive "homemade meals" that forcefully jammed themselves down the throats of the helpless Kids Next Door and rendered them immobile and stuffed to the point of pain. What's worse was it seemed that was just the appetizer had it not been for the army of hamsters that saved the day.
  • And don't forget the gravy! The Looney Tunes short "Chow Hound", directed by Chuck Jones, dates from 1951, originally illustrated this page and may have come fairly early in this trope's life - funnel and everything. A little context: a mean, gluttonous, lazy dog has been using a cat and mouse in a scheme to get food (he usually bullies the cat into giving him the food from his various "owners", and slapping the cat, grumbling "You forgot the gravy!"). He eventually parlays the scheme into earning him enough money to buy a stocked butcher's shop, the contents of which he devours in an off-screen frenzy. While he's lying there bloated and ill, the cat and mouse he used to bully show up, claiming that "This time, we didn't forgot the gravy..." Cue the terrified (and helpless) dog begging for mercy, while the cat and mouse calmly stuff a funnel on the dog's mouth and start pouring the contents of a nice big container of gravy...
    • A much earlier Looney Tunes short, "Pigs Is Pigs", involves a greedy piglet - an early version of the character who later became the iconic Porky Pig - having a dream about a scientist who straps him to a machine that feeds him until has a Balloon Belly and then he eats one more piece of food, explodes, wakes up, and doesn't really think about the dream and just goes on being gluttonous.
    • Yet another early Looney Tunes short, "Wholly Smoke", has a dream sequence of Porky being forced to consume chewing tobacco.
    • "A Tale of Two Mice", featuring the Abbott and Costello expies Babbitt and Catstello, ends with Babbitt scoffing at the cheese Catstello has brought back for them: "You know I don't like Swiss cheese!" Castello slaps him about the head before shoving hunks of cheese into his mouth, saying, "Well, Babbitt, you're goin' ta' loin ta' like it, right now!"
  • Spoofed (possibly as a shout out to "Pigs Is Pigs" above) in The Simpsons' fourth Halloween Episode when Homer goes to Hell, having sold his soul for a donut. He is given an ironic punishment: eat all the donuts in the world. However, the punishment doesn't bother Homer as he just keeps growing fatter and fatter and fatter with no sign of displeasure. The torturer is left confused, as "James Coco went mad in 15 minutes".
  • The Walter Lantz short "Apple Andy" where Andy Panda's evil side tricks him into eating green apples (as in, unripe apples painted red) until Andy gets sick and collapses. Cue the dream sequence where he's force-fed apples, apple sauce, apple cider, etc, while his evil side laughs at his misfortune. Eventually, Andy's good side comes to his rescue and snaps him off from his nightmare.
  • In the Tom and Jerry episode "Baby Puss" a girl punishes Tom by forcing him to take a spoonful of castor oil. While Jerry's laughing at Tom's misfortune quite a bit of the oil drips out of the bottle and covers Jerry, including falling into his open mouth.
  • In "Butterscotch & Soda", Little Audrey is strapped to a chair and has a huge bag of candy dumped down her throat in a nightmare sequence.
  • In Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, this is the way Eddy "trains" Jimmy when trying to make a Sumo wrestler out of him.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: One episode had Sandy Cheeks forcing huge amounts of water into Spongebob as revenge for getting popular on jokes made at her expense. Being a sponge, however, it's relatively harmless.
    • Another example had lima beans.
  • There was also this weird cartoon called "Shnookums and Meat" about a pet cat and dog that were trying to get fit and ended overdoing it. Their owners then had to start forcefeeding them to return them to normal. The short ends with a typical Balloon Belly.
  • Played straight in The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, to awful effect ("Fancy Pants").
  • One episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers had the Planeteers force fed polluted food.
  • The Megas XLR's oil gauge reads from "Empty", "Need a little", "Almost There", "Enough", "No really, I'm fine", and "PLEASE STOP!"
  • A Gumby episode had Gumby constantly mooching snacks from his friends, then he has a nightmare about being force-fed ice-cream, soda, and hamburgers by a humanoid Pokey.
  • There have been occasions in which Bluto has crammed a cup or even a full can of spinach down Popeye's throat. Guess how well that turned out for him.
  • In the Lego Friends episode "Rabbitouille", Stephanie, trying to recreate her carrot cake, force fed her friends until they begged for mercy. In the end of the episode, they ran out of her house, screaming and clutching their stomachs, at the mention of carrot cake.

Real Life

  • For medical purposes, an unconscious or disabled patient may be fed via a tube that goes through the nose and down the throat. Unfortunately, if it's placed improperly, the tube can wind up in the lungs by accident. Getting feeding solution in the lungs can be fatal.
    • Longer term feeding (over one month) is more often done via a gastrostomy—a tube that extends through an incision in the abdomen, directly into the stomach. A patient with such a tube can be fed continuously, 24/7, even if comatose or totally unable to swallow.
  • A serious essay/article on the subject coming from the hunger strikes of the women's suffrage movement. How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed
    • The general route was to feed them soup via a tube; this led to one unfortunate incident where the tube wasn't inserted correctly and the woman in question had soup poured into her lungs.
  • Truth in Television: Foie gras. The waterfowl that get fed like this end up with a disease that makes their livers enlarge, and would kill them if they didn't get slaughtered.
  • One terrible Real Life example is a form of water torture, called Waterboarding, where the victim is strapped to a bed and water is forced into his throat via a funnel in its mouth. The victims would constantly feel like choking, and they say sometimes their stomach could in fact burst. This is known as dry-drowning, and the victim undergoes what feels to them is an execution; they feel like they are dying.
    • The above-described version of waterboarding was used during the Spanish Inquisition; the modern version used in places like Gitmo involved pouring water over cloth on the victim's face. Far less (maybe even no) water is ingested but the drowning and panic reflexes are triggered due to feelings of suffocation.
      • No water makes it past the cloth, but the weight of the water pushes the closh most of the way down the victim's throat.
      • Modern version of waterboarding works specifically due to so-called "mammalian diving reflex"—remember that you're always short of breath after washing your face with a cold water? That's it—most mammals have a inborn reflex, where the touch of a cold water on a face (or any cold, for that) brings several unconscious reactions that improve our chance of survival if we're thrush into a water suddenly. The most significant of them is the involuntary blockage of breathing passages, so the waterboarding victims literally start to suffocate.
  • Force-feeding was allegedly practiced in Guantanamo Bay on prisoners who "refuse[d] to eat".
    • There's an article where a man recounts how he went on a hunger strike while in a Moscow prison, and it was decided that he would be force-fed through the nose to break his will.

The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit.

  • Force-feeding was also used on hunger-striking suffragettes in turn of the (twentieth) century England. It made pretty good publicity for the cause.