Laxative Prank
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"It's amazing how easy it is to tamper with baked goods! (holds up laxative, then starts singing) Fast acting... for strong, reliable relief! Sucker!"
—Heather, Total Drama Island
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Sometimes people want revenge on someone or to cheat in a contest. One thing they do is just put laxatives in their drink or food. Why laxatives? Because ideally one of two things will happen:
- They will suffer a Potty Emergency and forfeit the contest/run away to use the bathroom.
- They will soil themselves and completely embarrass themselves. Even better if it's in a stadium, especially one with a Jumbotron.
In fiction this is normally Played for Laughs, but occasionally it is Deconstructed to emphasize the dangerous dehydration element of it.
A frequent variation is using something that induces vomiting rather than defecation.
Examples of Laxative Prank include:
Anime and Manga
- Futaba Kun Change — In a beauty contest, The Rival puts laxatives in a tea given to the heroine to calm her. Unfortunately for the rival, some of the other contestants drink it to annoy her. Hilarity Ensues, and you can guess happens after they drink it.
- In Dragon Ball, Bulma does this to Oolong when he refuses to cooperate with her in helping find the Ox-king. She gives him a candy that he thinks is delicious, but really it's a laxative, and every time she whistles, he will have an emergency. Goku tries this on Oolong, too.
- In the Cotton Drifting arc of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Satoko uses this as part of an elaborate prank against some punks who are trying to take advantage of Shmion during the Angel Mort dessert fest.
- In Trigun, it's arguable that Kaite does this to Vash in episode 7 "B.D.N."
- Attempted by the King and Rosario in Dragon Half to get Mink out of the tournament, in the form of an "energy drink." Lampshaded by Mink's friends, but ignored by Mink... who then proceeds to give it to Dick Saucer, who is thus unwittingly victim to this (and who blames Mink for it, naturally).
- Gamble Fish has the character Tsukiyono getting a cow laxative put in her drink, so the main character has no help in the tournament.
Film
- In The Iron Giant, Hogarth tricks Kent Mansley into eating a chocolate-flavored laxative-laced sundae.
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Hogarth Hughes: First, you take a chocolate bar. Any bar'll do. Do you mind if I...? |
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- Hogarth does this not (just) to make Kent Mansley suffer, but also as a means to escape and buy him time to cover up the existence of the Iron Giant.
- American Pie has this cruel prank played on Finch.
- Mr. Bean did this to a security guard in The Movie, along with mixing up the key to the bathroom with a bunch of other keys, giving Mr. Bean a chance to fix the painting of Whistler's Mother that he accidentally screwed up.
- Lloyd Christmas does it to Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber as revenge since he supposedly stole Mary Swanson from him.
- Used in the first Mission: Impossible movie as part of a distraction to infiltrate Langley.
- That one was an emetic (the victim was throwing up, not pooping).
- In The 51st State or if you live in the US, Formula 51. In a choice between two bowls, a gang of skinheads are tricked into eating red pills. You can guess what happens next.
- John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) does to Sack Lodge in Wedding Crashers.
- In Van Wilder, one character does this to her Jerkass soon-to-be-ex boyfriend by pouring what appeared to be half of a large bottle of "Colon Blow" into a special shake. This goes careening into Comedic Sociopathy when you see him race through his law school test (utterly failing) and when he gets stopped by his professor and introduces him to his future bosses, he's forced to drop trou and take a very large, loud crap in his professor's wastebasket.
- This is one of the ways the Three Ninjas defend themselves against a trio of bumbling kidnappers. Not exactly what you expect from "ninjas," but this is an early 90s kids' movie, so there we are.
- In Major Payne, the recruits try to do this with Payne's cupcake. It backfires. Literally.
Literature
- Done seriously in A Song of Ice and Fire - Tyrion is too busy trying to save the city to struggle with Cersi's schemes so he uses a mild poison to get her out of his hair for one day.
- In The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Malicia puts laxative powder in the Rat Catchers' tea, then tells them they've been poisoned and holds the antidote hostage until they do as she says. The "antidote" is laxative powder too.
- In Jean Shepherd's short story "A Fistful of Fig Newtons", originally published in Playboy, a scrawny college student challenges a Big Eater football player and several fellow college students to a laxative-off. They each took one piece off Brand X Ex-Lax stand-in Boomo-Lax every 5 minutes, and whoever has a Potty Emergency first loses. The Big Eater figured he'd have no problem, but he ended up heaving half his insides out while the little guy wins, having built up an immunity in the past.
- Sometimes The Stainless Steel Rat will neutralize people in the vicinity of one of his crimes with nonlethal gas weapons that produce Potty Failure AND vomiting AND sneezing AND.... Note that he does this not only to security guards, but innocent bystanders as well.
Live-Action TV
- In Hollyoaks, India eats a pizza that Hayley has spiked with laxatives. She wins a contest for a car after an accident.
- Once subverted in MythBusters, when Kari gave Tory and Grant a placebo.
- This is one of the many pranks that the Janitor plays on J.D. in Scrubs. The Janitor attempts to give J.D. some pie that he refuses to eat, though The Todd does. Todd experiences what J.D. says is "what can only be described as 'epic diarrhea'". Later, the Janitor convinces J.D. to eat the pie anyway by eating it himself. They both experience the effects of the laxative.
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J.D.: Who would do this to themselves? |
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- House: In one of the petty battles between Cuddy and House, Cuddy replaces House's Vicodin with laxatives. Being House, he finds a way to amp up the stakes:
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House: I know when my Vicodin isn't Vicodin. Do you know when your birth control pills aren't birth control pills? |
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- In the episode "Dine and Dash" from That 70's Show, the rest of the gang split out of a meal early and leave Donna and Eric with the check. To "show that they're good sports", Donna and Eric make a batch of special brownies. Afterwards, they reveal that the special ingredient wasn't marijuana but Chocolate Super Lax.
- Often done by the crew on Hustle to temporarily incapacitate someone for the purpose of a con.
- In the pilot episode of the 2011 version of Charlie's Angels, Abby does it to a pair of Rich Bitches.
- Done in '80s Aussie Prison-Soap Prisoner Cell Block H with a massive bar of chocolate-laxative, only it goes a bit wrong and the wrong person gets it. A Potty Emergency is a serious thing when your locked in a cell with no toilet facilities, a hose is required for a start.
- Investigating a death during a high-stakes poker game, the heroes of CSI discover that the waitress put eyedrops in the victim's drink as payback for him being a lousy tipper. She'd meant to give him diarrhea and force him to leave the game early, but he died before they kicked in.
- In Weeds, Celia gives Isabelle laxatives, making her publicly soil herself, but she does it to make her lose weight, not as a prank. Isabelle retaliates by given Celia anti-laxatives.
- In 1000 Ways to Die, in "S**t Canned," where one person tries to do this this to the bride in a wedding. As karma would have it, he takes the spiked drink instead. A Karmic Death as usual in this show ensues.
- The Middle: Axl does this to Sue in "Foreign Exchange", just before the family takes a long car trip.
- In one episode of Amazing Stories, a pair of troublemaking kids do this to one of their babysitters, disguising it as hot chocolate. She leaves the house on an ambulance stretcher, but it's still played (mostly) for laughs.
Music
- The video for "Smile" by Lily Allen has this.
Newspaper Comics
- A Garfield strip had Jon mention this as one of the mean things that Garfield does to Mrs. Feeny.
Professional Wrestling
- WWE: Eddie Guerrero did this to The Big Show using a bagful of spiked burritos.
- TNA: Jay Lethal, Alex Shelley, and Chris Sabin slipped laxatives into Petey Williams' water bottle.
Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy
- In one skit, Jeff Foxworthy said that he believes that, if a 16-year-old shows up at your door trick-or-treating without a costume, it should be perfectly acceptable to give them Ex-Lax. Larry the Cable Guy then pipes up that he's been on both sides of that particular prank.
Video Games
- Required in Enhanced.
- In one level of Hitman: Contracts you can poison some soup with laxative to help lure your target to the toilets.
Web Comics
- The CRFH Joe Average Life At Bayside crossover.
- A Shortpacked strip has Mike handing out candy to people in return for them irritating Ethan by repeatedly telling him about Star Wars Transformers (which had already been out for some time). The "candy" comes from a box marked "Lax-O".
Web Original
- Coach Random has this [dead link], along with some Prozac.
- In the Smosh short "Going to the Mountains", Anthony gets tricked into eating broccoli laced with laxatives.
Western Animation
- Total Drama Island:
- Heather does this in the fake finale of the first season. She offers Gwen a laxative-spiked cupcake. Unfortunately for everyone wanting Owen to win, Owen eats the cupcake instead...
- In the second season, the pizza they all (well, everyone but Leshawna, because "dairy and [her] do not agree.") eat is laced with itching powder and laxatives.
- The Simpsons: Dr. Nick Rivera has an Infomercial about a suntan lotion that's also a laxative.
- One episode had Homer sabotaging a youth group's candy sales by adding laxative to the candy. The youth group still managed to the sell the most candy, by selling it to the constipated residents of the old folks home.
- South Park: "Bass To Mouth" has Cartman give Jenny Simon a laxative-laced cupcake, to distract the school from Peter Melman's recent Potty Failure, as they do not want him to commit suicide, as Cory Duran did this happened to him. Cartman's plan backfires when the obvious ensues, and Jenny ends up attempting suicide. Cartman's way of fixing everything? So nobody gets singled out, the staff and Cartman attempt to give the students laced Pizza Hut pizza, so everyone will crap themselves.
- At the end of the episode, Cartman gets thrown in front of a school bus by the school school staff and was declared that he committed suicide. Cartman gets back at the staff with certain cupcakes...
- During the strike episode of Stoked!, Bummer has Wipeout offer the strikers laxative dosed doughnuts.
Real Life
- Alfred Hitchcock did this to one of his cameramen in Real Life.
- Since the 1990s (in America, at least) acceptance of this prank as "harmless fun" by police and the legal system seems to have been replaced with a hardnosed redefinition of it as a "poisoning" attempt. Recent incidents have resulted in arrests [dead link] and other consequences not commonly seen in comedy.