Lethal Chef: Difference between revisions

* ''[[One Piece]]''

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy2xSFcwokc Apis]'s inability to cook is something of a [[Running Gag]], as is everyone ''except'' Luffy finding his food inedible. Of course, Luffy [[Big Eater| will eat anything.]]

** Camie too, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Erm3k39zI0&lc=z13hfhpwhrztt5qyw04cdlrbolisvhfbw5o.1525614700233922 at least when she tries to cook for guests]. [[Fridge Logic]] shows this makes perfect sense, as she's a mermaid, who lives underwater, and likely would have a hard time preparing anything requiring an oven or stove.

** Wanz from the Water 7 Arc; he fancies himself a [[Chef of Iron]], but his fighting style - ''Ramen Kenpo'' where he swallows noodles and blows them out his nose, using them as weapons and armor - makes his cooking ''very'' unhygenic. Most everyone who sees this finds it disgusting and refuse to eat his cooking.

* ''[[Sorcerer Stabber Orphen]]'': Cleao. She even makes a soup called Stone Cold Killer Stew.

* Baldroy in ''[[Black Butler]]'' has a habit of destroying the kitchen along with the food. He seems to have gotten a little better later on though, even once managing to make a [[Cordon Bleugh Chef]] style pie, however clumsy and incompetently prepared. The other people were afraid to eat the pie though, fearing poison. It was a reasonable fear.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* Olive from ''[[The Beano]]'' (she's a "School Dinner-lady", who is a Lethal Chef subtype of her own). Her "Tea" was actually a highly-reactive acid-like corrosive; her oxtail soup moos and flicks its tail; the skin on her custard couldn't be broken with a pickaxe, and so on.

* Bruce Wayne. That's right, children, there's one skill [[Batman]] ''[[Memetic Badass|entirely failed to master.]]'' It goes from ruining the kitchen as he attempts to prepare chicken soup to, well...

{{quote|'''Allen:''' What are you doing?

'''Batman:''' Grilling.

'''Allen:''' Grilling a steak to relax? But a prime piece of meat has to be just right, not under--or God forbid--overdone. It is, and there's no sauce known to mankind--or the French--that can hide the fact the chef's to blame. That makes a steak the most stressful thing to cook, you know?

'''Batman:''' I know. }}

* Moira MacTaggert and her coffee. If there was a complaint desk in [[Excalibur (Comic Book)|Excalibur's]] Muir Island base, probably this would be on the top. To the extent that when Kitty volunteered to take Pete Wisdom to London to check on a friend of his, Brian told him "Buy some coffee while you're there! We've run out of Rory's good stuff." And it didn't even escape Xavier's notice. He once quipped that Jubilee was using Moira's coffee to lubricate her roller skates, and also remarked on it during a video-phone call with Moira:

{{quote|'''Moira:''' Och, it's noon and I'm still barely up. It's the break o' dawn wi' you and ye look fresh as a daisy. Ye make me sick, Charles Xavier.

** As part of their feud, the Sergeant once added motor oil to his soup. The soldiers didn't notice the difference until a motorist asked back his motor oil can.

* Monica from Brazilian comic ''[[Monica's Gang]]'' is prone to cooking awful things such as gumbo flan, yogurt pizza, or a "[http://www.monica.com.br/ingles/comics/dino/images/p09-03.gif health juice]{{Dead link}}".<ref>in case you're wondering, the characters become dinosaurs because of a serum that fell on the juice, not the juice itself</ref>

** Also, Orube, an alien friend who, when first arrived on Earth, mistook money for food (she complained it didn't taste well) and has apparently set on fire the kitchen the first time she tried to cook. Differently from Will, it's more about lack of familiarity with Earth cooking implements and ingredients (in a later special it's confirmed she never set the kitchen on fire again) and clumsiness when trying to cook for other people (she destroyed the water tap in her kitchen while preparing pasta due being in a hurry), even if she still has a long way to go (in that special she managed to [[Epic Fail|''burn the pasta'']].

 

== [[Fan Works]] ==

** His sister Chiyo also cooks notoriously badly, but while her food might taste so bad it almost kills you, it's so healthy you feel like a million bucks afterwards.

* Vili in ''[[The Tainted Grimoire]]'' put poison in the meal she cooked for Luso, Crow, Hurdy, Kanin and Adelle when she mistakenly thought it was just seasoning.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' for a example, the lead attempts to make a sandwich that is described as an explosion on a plate.

** Mulch [[Big Eater|eats it anyway]], and appreciates it. That's not actually reasuring since, as a dwarf, Mulch mainly eats ''soil''.

{{quote|"To be frank," said Nanny Ogg, "I think the cat pissed on some of it."

The spokesdwarf looked up, his eyes aglow.

"Hot damn!" }}

** Of course, the trope is also subverted by the Vimes household; Lady Sybil is a bad cook, but Sam has spent so much time eating low-quality food on the streets of Ankh-Morpork that he actually ''enjoys'' it.

** Let's not forget Archchancellor Ridcully, who swears by (or, swears ''at'') Wow-Wow sauce, a dangerous and highly unstable condiment that includes sulfur and saltpeter, and an [[Gargle Blaster|equally potent alcoholic drink]] called scumble. Wow-Wow sauce might have been a contributing factor in the explosive death of his uncle, who invented the stuff. He also had a charcoal biscuit to settle his stomach after he had a lot of Wow-Wow sauce. That didn't help much. {{spoiler|Gunpowder is made of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal (mixed properly).}}

** Albert counts too, but it's not so important when you're the cook in Death's household. He firmly believes in grease, fat and black gritty bits. Inventor and sole eater of fried porridge. ''It eats spoons''.

*** "Could I interest you in some yoghurt? Onna stick?"

** [[Bungling Inventor]] Bergholt Stutly "Bloody Stupid" Johnson took up cooking on a few points in his life. His attempt to make a pie took out a significant portion of Ankh-Morpork. The actual recipe was fine; it was just that Johnson approached it with his usual indifference to measurements, resulting in something so large that it achieved culinary instability and exploded under its own weight.

* Mrs. Samuel Whiskers from [[Beatrix Potter]]'s ''Tale of Samuel Whiskers and the Roly Poly Pudding''.

* There's an old anecdote about a maid who's supposed to bake a goose. Which she does by putting it right into the oven, as it is. With feathers still on and innards still in. As the narrator tells us, it was a big stunk.

* Fisk, in the ''[[Knight and Rogue Series]]''. Michael gives up on trying to teach him after only two days.

 

== [[Live-Action TV]] ==

** An interesting subversion is Wilson. He's a good cook, but his meals are of the [[Foreign Queasine]] variety (eel pie and tadpole soup, anyone?).

** Tim once tried to cook fish in the dishwasher. ([[It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time]]) He ended up with 'liquid fish'.

* Becky on ''[[Full House]]'' has this reputation, one episode even has a B-plot with her and Michelle learning to cook together.

* Thelma from ''[[Amen]]'' was a notoriously bad cook. In one episode following her wedding to the Reverend, she burned down their apartment while cooking chicken with the gang locked inside. Everyone panicked except for Rolly, who knew "Thelma's cooking would kill us all one day" and read the newspaper as smoke filled the room and the others made frantic calls to 911.

* Airi from ''[[Kamen Rider Den-O]]'' can brew a mean cup of coffee, but she also makes health foods for her brother Ryotaro that are... less than pleasant. Think "sesame seed milkshake". One episode actually has the two in a spat because Ryotaro called the cops to dispose of one of Airi's stews as a bio-hazard.

** Naomi, the waitress on the [[Cool Train|DenLiner]] has the opposite problem. She can prepare tasty foods like rice and pudding, but her coffee is a powdery, whipped cream-topped disaster that is only enjoyed by the Imagin.

** Before Mako, there's Yukito from ''[[Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger]]''. He's a horrid cook, but insists that he's THAT good and forces his teammates to eat his cooking, and if they don't, it's the cooking equivalent to [[TV Tropes]]' [[Memetic Mutation|"You have no soul"]] for them. Hell, his cooking rendered Asuka to hole up in the toilet for the whole episode.

* Maddie Magellan from ''[[Jonathan Creek]]''. Perhaps not truly lethal, but upon opening her oven and discovering the contents to be ''in flames'', she declared that it needed "Two more minutes" and closed the oven door again.

* Manny, at least according to Bernard on ''[[Black Books]]'': "You call this a tower of soup? Where are the minarets? The turrets?"

== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==

* An ancient Chinese story tells of a comatose general being saved from hunger by two beggars. The dish in itself was terrible (consisting of trampled spinach, rotten bean curd and unpotable water), but he didn't notice because he was semi-conscious, instead thinking it delicious. When he became emperor, he ordered said beggars to present said meal to his ministers. Afraid to lose face, they all gulped it down. The Emperor, realizing how horrible the dish was, still drank it all. The two beggars ended up rich.

 

== [[Music]] ==

'''Calvin's Dad:''' Your mom wasn't there, so she wouldn't know. Get the syrup out, will you? }}

* ''[[Hagar the Horrible]]'''s daughter, Honi, is such a horrible cook she even manages to mess up cooking water.

 

== [[Puppet Shows]] ==

* Parker in ''Mr Meaty''. This has got to be the reason why the food there is always so terrible.

* The Swedish Chef of ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' is generally a unique example of this (i.e. his cuisine is lethal to him), but he occasionally plays it straight- in one instance he went into cordon bleugh territory and made an onion cake; in another, he provided a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wtG5NI2HLc quite literal example].

 

== [[Radio]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'''s Kusuha Mizuha and her energy Drinks, best described [[Gargle Blaster|elsewhere]]. The real example occurs in the form of Leona Garstein, whose food tastes ''awful'' and has a habit of knocking people out, which is something she admits happens. In one scene, she cooks for her boyfriend, and as she cooks she pouts about how it's just going to knock him out again. However, this is apparently related to her taste in food; when given the advice to cook something she thinks would be awful, the others think it's delicious while ''she'' hates it. The first time Leona's boyfriend tried her cooking, he needed something to wash it down. Unfortunately for him, [[Gargle Blaster|Kusuha]] was the only person nearby.

** All the characters tend to pass out from Kusuha's energy drinks save Arado who for some reason is immune to this -also eat 5 servings per meal so it might just be that his stomach is like lead.

** As [[Supreme Chef|Shinjiro]] points out (pitying the burned pots along the way), Fuuka's failure in cooking is her tendency to not prepare in advance and to try to deviate from the recipe without first understanding the basics, and then panic and further compound her mistakes as a result. For instance, when making chocolate truffles, if the recipe asks for one teaspoon of liqueur, she adds ''[[Cordon Bleugh Chef|a cup]]'' on the basis that [[Oven Logic|she wants a bigger portion to share with everyone]]. Which is a moot point, since she mistakenly used ''vinegar''...

* All three main girls of ''[[Persona 4]]'' have very questionable cooking abilities, ranging from Rise ([[Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce|way too spicy]]), Yukiko (who can make an omelet that, through a process that can only be described as alchemical, has no taste ''at all'') and Chie (just plain awful). When the latter two combine their powers, the result is dubbed "Mystery Food X" and manage to take out both the main male leads in one spoonful. ([[The Anime of the Game]] implies that they put thick starch, three different kinds of pepper, kimchi, and soy milk into it.)

* Euphoria's cooking in ''[[Soul Nomad and The World Eaters]]'' is so bad that there is a body count associated with it. It is described as the rest of the cast as nothing short of biological warfare -- {{spoiler|Which turns into a [[Funny Aneurysm Moment]] once you've played the game through once and learned that Raksha was using her to develop a concentrated form of Scarlet Iago that was near-instantly fatal.}}

* The cooking contest in ''[[Breath of Fire|Breath of Fire 2]]''. Not only do you have to get the ingredients (cockroaches, worms and flies) yourself, in the end you are forced to [[Eat That|eat it all]]. Although I suppose this also has to do with the chef in question being a frog.

** It's strongly implied in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' that the Soviet chefs responsible for creating the Russian rations were absolutely terrible cooks, as the rations were very bad tasting, and doesn't even do moderate stamina recovery. Heck, even the dogs refuse to eat them if thrown to them.

* In ''[[Evolution Worlds]]'', Gre Nade can use his food as a special attack. It damages the enemies and chops their stats.

* Aurica of ''[[Ar tonelico]]'' is the Less-Than-Lethal version, as though her cooking ''looks'' strange, it actually tastes quite good, at least according to Lyner (though BBQ Soda just sounds ''weird'')...

** ...But Luca Trulyworth of ''[[Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica]]'' plays it straight with literal abominations for her cooking, including a dish that knocks out two residents of ''her own Cosmosphere'', two food-based Song Magics (one consisting of flinging food at the enemy, the other a food ''bomb''), and hell, even what she does at Skycat's place is an abomination, e.g. the horrendous "Trulyworthit Soup" which still has fish bones and seaweed sticking out of it, her "Chalonde Trois" which looks somewhat like [[Eldritch Abomination|something from the mind of Lovecraft]], to the okay "Baked Crackercake," which was ''meant'' to be a ''rollcake'' but somehow turned into a rice cracker. Jacquli is also one, but in the sense that her food is meant to be lethal... to her enemies.

* Overlapping with [[Chef of Iron]] and [[Evil Chef]], ''[[Luigi's Mansion 3]]'' has Chef Soulfflé, the boss of the Mezzanine. When Luigi first enters the kitchen, Soulfflé is totally hidden in a cloud of smoke from whatever he's cooking (presumably fish) that covers half the room. His kitchen is also a ''complete'' mess that most cooks would find unsanitary, and the walk-in refrigerator is worse, holding a ''gigantic'' angler fish inside! (Fortunately, it's not dangerous.) Of course, a common trend among the boss ghosts in the game is their incompetence at whatever job they're supposed to be doing. [[Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad|You know, seeing as they're ghosts]].

* Juliet in ''[[MapleStory]]''. In Zero’s questline, she asks them to take a lunch she made to Romeo. (Why can’t she bring it herself? [[Romeo and Juliet]] are [[Star-Crossed Lovers]], remember?) Unfortunately, when Zero does so, both Romeo and his mentor Yulette both collapse, apparently poisoned; Zero at first thinks Juliet did this on purpose, but when they go to tell her, she eats it herself to prove it’s okay and gets sick from it too. This is no surprise to Russelion (''her'' mentor), who quickly tells Zero that Juliet is indeed very skilled in brewing poison (this takes place in Magatia, [[Planet of Hats|a town whose “hat” is alchemy]]), but tends to do so by accident when trying to cook regular food. After getting the antidote, Zero asks her what the heck she put in it, and she says she used Balrog toenail, Zombie Mushroom pileus, and Evil Eye eyeballs, all things clearly not edible. Zero also takes this time to tell Romeo he might be better off seeing someone else, but sadly, as everyone knows, he and Juliet are far too smitten with each other to listen.

 

* Presumably out of amusement, Riko in ''[[A Profile]]'' occasionally makes completely inedible lunches for Masayuki. She's a perfectly competent cook, she just does it for fun.

* The cooking of Ryou in ''[[Clannad (visual novel)|Clannad]]'' made a piglet keel over after one bite. Meanwhile, Sanae and bread makes for an... interesting mix, though her regular cooking is quite delicious. Is it even possible for bread to glow in such ominous colors? Just don't say it in front of her or she'll run off around the city crying.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

*** From season four's "I Love Lisa," Lunch Lady Doris serves beef hearts to the kids...[[Nausea Fuel|after the delivery guy reluctantly dumps them on the dirty floor]]. If you listen closely, one of them is ''[[Nightmare Fuel|still beating]]''.

*** From season sixth's "The PTA Disbands": "There's very little meat in these gym mats."

*** From season seven's "Lisa the Vegetarian," it's revealed that Lunch Lady Doris doesn't cater to vegetarians (except for giving them a plain bun and deadpanning, "Yum. It's rich in bunly goodness.") and that the meatloaf she makes isn't made of meat.

*** On the season four episode "Marge in Chains" (where Marge is put in jail for 30 days after accidentally shoplifting bourbon due to being stressed out from her family being sick), Marge flashbacked to the last time Homer tried to cook for the family. He served fish that weren't quite dead—and the lobsters attacked him.

** Marge herself is implied to be kind of an uninspired chef ("''Eight'' spices? Some of those have to be doubles! 'Ore-gahno'? What the hell?"), but as her family just shovels it down anyways, there are not complaints. There's also a mention of her making Bart [[Cordon Bleugh Chef|butterscotch chicken]] (which, oddly enough, [http://www.101cookingrecipes.com/chicken-cooking-recipes/butterscotch-chicken.php people have actually made]) on the season eight episode "A Milhouse Divided."

** Luann Van Houten is heavily implied to be a bad cook in "A Milhouse Divided". When Luann mentions the time some high school punks egged her husband's Bonneville, Kirk (the husband) snarks that the punks should have hurled some bacon so he could have a decent breakfast for once. Also, Kirk mentions that he hasn't eaten this good (or that noisily, according to Luann) since he was in the Army. [[Played for Drama|It's from these two instances that gave the audience (and the characters) an early clue that the Van Houtens' marriage is on the rocks]].

* ''[[G.I. Joe]]'':

** Heavy Duty takes this to another level; he likes to use ''grenades'' to barbecue. This is an intentional contrast to his cousin, world class chef and gourmet Roadblock.

* Pleakley in ''[[Lilo & Stitch: The Series]]''. He's pleased by the fact that dog food makes its own gravy.

* That frog cook with the handlebar moustache from the old British [[Nickelodeon]] claymation shorts. He makes probably worse food then the Swedish Chef, though he seems to do all right with sea food.

** In the "Who Can You Trust?" episode, two contestants have to prepare blowfish to feed to a teammate. While Bridgette makes a perfectly edible meal (even presented as sushi rolls), Lindsay made a glob which sent Trent to the infirmary. He survived [[Made of Iron|(don't ask us how).]]

** One of the competitions in ''[[Revenge Of The Island]]'' involved the contestants finding food in the radiated island and cooking it. All four dishes were repulsive in different ways, and only one was edible in the end. During the preparation portion of the contest, Zoey's salad actively tried to kill her.

* ''[[Care Bears]]'':

** Mr. Beastly once tried to make cookies by following the instructions on Grams Bear's cooking show. Despite making an utter mockery of the recipe, the lone cookie he manages to make comes out of the oven perfectly fine. ''[[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|And fifty feet tall.]]'' The next time we see him, his monster cookie is chasing him across the landscape. Of course, we never learn if the cookie is actually ''edible'' or not, but it's probably safe to say that only [[Godzilla]] could answer that question.

** Double-subverted in one episode, where he makes something everyone loves at first. Problem is, Mongo himself doesn't even know what the [[Secret Ingredient]] is; he can't read and identifies the ingredients via labels. Turns out it's ''dog food'', not exactly something cats are keen on eating. Still, it's not a total loss; Leroy still loves it, seeing as he's an actual dog.

* Michelangelo in ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' (2012 version). In one episode, when he's complaining about no pizza shops being open, Donatello sarcastically suggests he make his own; Mikey actually ''does'', and his brothers are pretty revolted by what he comes up with, which includes worms from the garbage and a hot sauce called "Devil's Vomit". Naturally, nobody wants him to share it. "You take disgusting to a whole new level," says Raphael

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

** One reader said that in his teens, with his mother away from home, he'd attempted to follow the cookbook recipe for oatmeal cookies—but not realizing that oatmeal cookies are made with ''raw'' oatmeal, he added two cups of ''cooked'' oatmeal. (ISTR the description, "Even the chickens wouldn't eat them.")

** Another recounted a culinary experiment by one of his college roommates, which involved taking a large saucepan and emptying cans into it: canned chicken, canned tomatoes, canned beans, all manner of canned vegetables. When it had achieved a nice thick-soup consistency, with perhaps an inch of liquid at the top and another inch of space in the pot, the chef then stirred in a one-pound box of macaroni ... and walked away. Returning fifteen minutes later, he found a vertical ''column'' of solidified soup, with the pot lid balanced atop it, emerging from the pot.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Stock Characters]]

[[Category:Food Tropes]]

[[Category:Tomboy]]