Masochist's Meal: Difference between revisions

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'''Frank''': Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These Texans are crazy. }}
 
The masochist'''Masochist's mealMeal''' is any food that is so unpleasant, painful, disgusting, or even outright ''dangerous'' to eat that the only reason any sane man ''would'' eat it is to be able to say that he did. Real-Life examples abound, to the point that fictional analogues tend to be really over-the-top.
 
The food equivalent of a [[Gargle Blaster]], often prepared by a [[Lethal Chef]]. Can overlap with [[Foreign Queasine]] and [[Eat That]]. See also [[Fire-Breathing Diner]], [[Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce]], and [[I Ate What?]]
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'''Mad:''' "Ah, you're a man who knows your breads." }}
:* Apart from dwarf bread, dwarf cuisine consists of "what the dwarfs found underground -- rats, snails, worms (useful protein), bits of stone and so on". Dwarfs are famed for their sauces, since no-one would eat rat without something to hide the taste. In Ankh-Morpork, "fusion" cusine aimed at humans is designed to ''look'' a bit like actual dwarf cookery, while being in a very real sense nothing like it.
:* In ''[[Discworld/Pyramids|Pyramids]]'' there's a parody of fugu which contains a poison that, if not removed, causes the eater to expand like a blowfish and explode. It's traditionally served with roots that need to be prepared exactly over several days, or else they react catastrophically with stomach acid. This is described as 'fish and chips For Men'.
:* This shows up again in ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'', being used by the [[Evil Chancellor]].
:* Further ''[[Discworld]]'' example: CMOT Dibbler's sausage-inna-bun. It's possible that the books exaggerate, but they're described as the culinary equivalent of a B-movie: [[So Bad It's Good|they're absolutely awful, yet somehow appealing.]]
:* His [[Discworld/The Last Continent|Fourecks]] counterpart, Fair Go Dibbler, serves a meat pie floater. Apparently you have to be astonishingly drunk to consider eating one a good idea.
:* And yet another: Sam Vimes is the first man to be brave enough to refuse to eat the "tribal delicacies" of the D'hregs, guessing that the D'hregs are having him on and that nobody could eat that rubbish. {{spoiler|He's right.}}
:* Although it's doubtful that he actually intended to ''digest'' the thing, a performer in ''[[Discworld/Maskerade|Maskerade]]'' is seen applying mustard to a blade in preparation for his sword-swallowing stage act.
:* In ''[[A Hat Full Ofof Sky]]'', one of the flashbacks Tiffany experiences from a past victim of the Hiver is that of a long-ago desert queen who'd poisoned her enemies. Emerging from the memory-flash, the young witch groggily murmurs about a scorpion sandwich.
* ''All'' of Pervian food in Robert Asprin's ''[[Myth Adventures]]''. As Aahz once put it: "The biggest problem with Pervian food is to keep it from crawling away from your dish while you are eating it..." And it stinks.
** In the comic book, they mention that they serve this stuff on purpose to scare away would-be interdimensional tourists.
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* The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' novel ''Dragon's Honor'' seems to take this to its logical extreme. Our intrepid crew is having dinner on a planet based on ancient China, and Picard's politeness regarding the local (hideous) cuisine bites him on the butt. The emperor orders the most elaborate dish possible. It hasn't been prepared in a hundred years, and it's an honor just to be part of the staff cooking it. It's a vile conglomeration of miscellaneous animal parts, mostly from venomous creatures. Picard has been eating stuff that makes fugu look palatable all night, and says that he can't eat it. Continuing to be dense, the emperor suspects that Picard may not want any because it was prepared wrong. He tosses a bit of it to a dog, who dies within seconds.
** The dog died because the dish was poisoned on purpose, not because it was improperly prepared. But that wasn't why Picard refused to eat it. It's just that after all the other vile pieces of 'gourmet cuisine' he had consumed over the course of that wedding feast, he just couldn't bring himself to swallow something that smelled like a Klingon locker room.
 
==== [[Periodicals]] ====
* From ''[[Mad|MAD #161]]'', Don Martin's "One Evening in Spain" starts with a fat lady sitting at a table in a restaurant next to a guy eating soup:
{{quote|'''Fat Lady:''' So, how's the garlic soup in this restaurant?
'''Male Customer:''' SUPERB!
'''Fat Lady''': ''(now with an [[Ash Face]] and burned hair, to waiter)'': One garlic soup, please.}}
 
=== [[Live-Action TV]] ===
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'''Holly:''' No bugger will drink it!}}
* In season 3 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', the Ascension - the ritual where the Mayor plans to turn himself into a demon - requires a lot of preparation, which includes eating the spider-like creatures that reside in [[Artifact of Doom| the Box of Gavrok]]. He doesn’t remark on the taste but does claim they are high in fiber; even one of his vampire minions looks grossed out watching him.
 
=== [[Periodicals]] ===
* From ''[[Mad|MAD #161]]'', Don Martin's "One Evening in Spain" starts with a fat lady sitting at a table in a restaurant next to a guy eating soup:
{{quote|'''Fat Lady:''' So, how's the garlic soup in this restaurant?
'''Male Customer:''' SUPERB!
'''Fat Lady''': ''(now with an [[Ash Face]] and burned hair, to waiter)'': One garlic soup, please.}}
 
=== [[Tabletop Game]]s ===
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'''Kyoko:''' That sounds disgusting…
'''Kaori:''' It is!}}
* Delicious Fruit is what the people of ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'' eat. You know, those enormously lethal, gravity-defying apple/cherry/things that kill you in one hit? ([[One-Hit-Point Wonder|just like]] [[Everything Trying to Kill You|everything else]]) According to the creator of the game, people have to knock them off trees with sticks and then they boil them ''three times'' to eliminate all the poison. If you only boil a Delicious Fruit twice, it turns into a bouncing ripe red ''engine of death'', as evidenced by the ''Breakout'' level. And people ''eat'' these things!
** But... they're Delicious...
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' has all kinds of unpleasant foods, like [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Brain-meltingly-hot_chicken_wings brain-meltingly-hot chicken wings] or [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Centipede_eggs centipede eggs], which inflict damage, substat-loss, or a negative status effect if you eat them. [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Dwarf_bread Dwarf bread] is included as a shout-out to the Discworld example above, and although you have the option of eating it, you can also throw it at enemies to stun them. However, special mention goes to [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Black_pudding_(food) black pudding], which is described thusly: "This is either a sausage made of congealed animal blood, or an acidic underground-dwelling scavenging ooze. Either way, mmmm-yummy." Sure enough, if you try to eat it, it has a 35% chance of ''attacking you''. There's actually a trophy you can earn for defeating 240 of them in combat... which takes about ''three straight months'' (real-world time) of stuffing your face with black pudding ''every day''.
** There are several meals and drinks that can only be created when your bartender-innabox or chef-innabox explodes. They're universally horrible things, such as the "white chocolate and tomato pizza" and the "tomato daiquiri". Consuming enough of these two get you the Weeping Pizza and Disgusting Cocktail trophies, respectively.
** Another special mention must go to [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/World%27s_most_unappetizing_beverage World's most unappetizing beverage], which is... [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|you know]].<ref>It consists of hair dissolved in depilatory cream.</ref>
* In ''[[Jade Empire]]'' you can meet Chai Jin, an exotic chef. The dishes are revolting and downright damaging - depending on what you choose you'll hurt your body, mind or spirit - but if you sit through three courses of escalating grief to your system, you won't have to pay. You can then also try his newest meal, which is so horrid he won't even describe it, and which he hasn't even tried himself yet. If you survive the thoroughly harrowing cuisine, you can either warn him of its danger or tell him it's delicious. If you choose the latter, he will sample the food and ''drop dead''.
* Lampshaded in ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]''. In one dungeon infested with undead, you can find a piece of cheese. If one didn't think a piece of cheese found in thousand-years old ruins would be bad to eat, the description for the cheese even says "It's quite smelly and no doubt highly deadly. Only the unwise would eat it." Eating it results in a big Damage over Time-effect that lasts for 20 minutes, in addition to the character title "The Unwise".
* Cuisine in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is a bizarre and frightening thing. You can buy innocuous enough food from vendors, like grapes, bread, fruit juice, tea, or filtered water, but if you pick up the Cooking skill, bad things start to happen immediately. If you can kill it and it's not obviously sentient (with the exception of murlocs), somebody's figured out a way to make it into a stat-boosting food. You can learn to make bat wings, rat stew, spider cake, wolf steak, bear burgers, rhino stew, ravager sausages, chimera chops, and a brand of chili so hot that it causes you to randomly breathe flame, among many other options.
** Bear is the odd man out on this list, as it is in fact quite a tasty meal.
* Subverted by the "Sinner's Sandwich" in ''[[Deadly Premonition]]''. Upon hearing its long list of bizarre ingredients, York assumes it's this type of food, meant to be eaten as atonement for one's sins. Upon actually trying it, however, he announces that it is in fact delicious.
** To wit: [[Cordon Bleugh Chef|Turkey, jam, and breakfast cereal on your bread of choice]]. There are more than a few posts on various websites and forums [[Truth in Television|that attest the sandwich is in fact as delicious as York says it is,]] with the cereal and turkey creating a pleasant balance of crunchy and firm textures while the jam takes front and center on the flavor.
* [[Lethal Chef|Chie and Yukiko]] in ''[[Persona 4]]'' make something like this, Yosuke aptly names it "Mystery food X", you can choose to eat it willingly (granted your courage is high enough) or be forced to eat it because there's no other way out, one bite makes the protagonist and [[Fan Nickname|Brosuke]] faint with a very loud crash as they hit the table.
* In ''[[Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro na]]: Moonlight Cradle'', Trattoria Samon begins offering intensely spicy pasta dishes. One of the side stories involves Karen and Wreathlit trying to one-up each other: Karen succeeds in finishing the spiciest dish available, while Wreath gives up in the final round, leaving Karen to finish her plate.
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'', for one quest you have to imitate a world famous chef and make his signature dish (which you have to improvise for), the player has the option of adding some absolutely insane ingredients (Vampire dust? A septim? ''[[Squick|A giant's toe?!]]'') Humorously enough, if you choose the most outrageous options the dish actually turns out ''fantasticly'' despite the dodgy items you put in there.
 
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
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* ''[[Fairly Oddparents]]'' has an episode with this. The pain lovers pizza (land mines, barb wire, sand bags, bomb stuffed crust.) and the unlucky pizza (after eating he got an anvil on his head, a safe, a piano with a player(cupid))
* In one ''[[Tom and Jerry]]'' cartoon, it's Spike's birthday, and his (and Tom's) owner has prepared a delicious-looking steak and birthday cake for him; but is saving them for ''after'' taking Spike to the pet groomer. As Spike is dragged away (with the owner stating they'll be back in an hour) he orders Tom to keep an eye on the food; Tom makes an honest attempt, but Jerry intervenes, and both the cake and steak are destroyed. Tom panics and makes some hasty replacements, taking a circular piece of wood and painting it to look like a steak, and then puts some toy wagon tires together and covers them with frosting. Amazingly, when Spike gets back, he not only fails to notice this, he starts eating it as if there's noting wrong. Sadly for Tom, just when it seems he's going to avoid any punishment, Spike decides to share with him, and won't take "no" for an answer.
 
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* Delicious Fruit is what the people of ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'' eat. You know, those enormously lethal, gravity-defying apple/cherry/things that kill you in one hit? ([[One-Hit-Point Wonder|just like]] [[Everything Trying to Kill You|everything else]]) According to the creator of the game, people have to knock them off trees with sticks and then they boil them ''three times'' to eliminate all the poison. If you only boil a Delicious Fruit twice, it turns into a bouncing ripe red ''engine of death'', as evidenced by the ''Breakout'' level. And people ''eat'' these things!
** But... they're Delicious...
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' has all kinds of unpleasant foods, like [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Brain-meltingly-hot_chicken_wings brain-meltingly-hot chicken wings] or [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Centipede_eggs centipede eggs], which inflict damage, substat-loss, or a negative status effect if you eat them. [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Dwarf_bread Dwarf bread] is included as a shout-out to the Discworld example above, and although you have the option of eating it, you can also throw it at enemies to stun them. However, special mention goes to [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Black_pudding_(food) black pudding], which is described thusly: "This is either a sausage made of congealed animal blood, or an acidic underground-dwelling scavenging ooze. Either way, mmmm-yummy." Sure enough, if you try to eat it, it has a 35% chance of ''attacking you''. There's actually a trophy you can earn for defeating 240 of them in combat... which takes about ''three straight months'' (real-world time) of stuffing your face with black pudding ''every day''.
** There are several meals and drinks that can only be created when your bartender-innabox or chef-innabox explodes. They're universally horrible things, such as the "white chocolate and tomato pizza" and the "tomato daiquiri". Consuming enough of these two get you the Weeping Pizza and Disgusting Cocktail trophies, respectively.
** Another special mention must go to [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/World%27s_most_unappetizing_beverage World's most unappetizing beverage], which is... [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|you know]].<ref>It consists of hair dissolved in depilatory cream.</ref>
* In ''[[Jade Empire]]'' you can meet Chai Jin, an exotic chef. The dishes are revolting and downright damaging - depending on what you choose you'll hurt your body, mind or spirit - but if you sit through three courses of escalating grief to your system, you won't have to pay. You can then also try his newest meal, which is so horrid he won't even describe it, and which he hasn't even tried himself yet. If you survive the thoroughly harrowing cuisine, you can either warn him of its danger or tell him it's delicious. If you choose the latter, he will sample the food and ''drop dead''.
* Lampshaded in ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]''. In one dungeon infested with undead, you can find a piece of cheese. If one didn't think a piece of cheese found in thousand-years old ruins would be bad to eat, the description for the cheese even says "It's quite smelly and no doubt highly deadly. Only the unwise would eat it." Eating it results in a big Damage over Time-effect that lasts for 20 minutes, in addition to the character title "The Unwise".
* Cuisine in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is a bizarre and frightening thing. You can buy innocuous enough food from vendors, like grapes, bread, fruit juice, tea, or filtered water, but if you pick up the Cooking skill, bad things start to happen immediately. If you can kill it and it's not obviously sentient (with the exception of murlocs), somebody's figured out a way to make it into a stat-boosting food. You can learn to make bat wings, rat stew, spider cake, wolf steak, bear burgers, rhino stew, ravager sausages, chimera chops, and a brand of chili so hot that it causes you to randomly breathe flame, among many other options.
** Bear is the odd man out on this list, as it is in fact quite a tasty meal.
* Subverted by the "Sinner's Sandwich" in ''[[Deadly Premonition]]''. Upon hearing its long list of bizarre ingredients, York assumes it's this type of food, meant to be eaten as atonement for one's sins. Upon actually trying it, however, he announces that it is in fact delicious.
** To wit: [[Cordon Bleugh Chef|Turkey, jam, and breakfast cereal on your bread of choice]]. There are more than a few posts on various websites and forums [[Truth in Television|that attest the sandwich is in fact as delicious as York says it is,]] with the cereal and turkey creating a pleasant balance of crunchy and firm textures while the jam takes front and center on the flavor.
* [[Lethal Chef|Chie and Yukiko]] in ''[[Persona 4]]'' make something like this, Yosuke aptly names it "Mystery food X", you can choose to eat it willingly (granted your courage is high enough) or be forced to eat it because there's no other way out, one bite makes the protagonist and [[Fan Nickname|Brosuke]] faint with a very loud crash as they hit the table.
* In ''[[Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro na]]: Moonlight Cradle'', Trattoria Samon begins offering intensely spicy pasta dishes. One of the side stories involves Karen and Wreathlit trying to one-up each other: Karen succeeds in finishing the spiciest dish available, while Wreath gives up in the final round, leaving Karen to finish her plate.
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'', for one quest you have to imitate a world famous chef and make his signature dish (which you have to improvise for), the player has the option of adding some absolutely insane ingredients (Vampire dust? A septim? ''[[Squick|A giant's toe?!]]'') Humorously enough, if you choose the most outrageous options the dish actually turns out ''fantasticly'' despite the dodgy items you put in there.
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Food Tropes]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]