Raw Eggs Make You Stronger
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When I was a lad, I ate four dozen eggs |
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When a character is trying to get stronger or improve his exercise routine, he'll almost always be seen drinking raw eggs at some point. One common reason for this is the belief that raw eggs have more protein than cooked eggs.
In Real Life, this is more likely to put you at risk for salmonella poisoning (unless the eggs are pasteurized, or at least very clean, ahead of time) than make you look like a badass.
Made famous by Rocky, so this trope shows up frequently in Training Montages set to "Gonna Fly Now" or "Eye of the Tiger."
Examples of Raw Eggs Make You Stronger include:
Anime and Manga
- Ed's father does this in Cowboy Bebop.
- Spoofed in Excel Saga when Pedro does it.
- Saeba in City Hunter drinks raw eggs every morning.
Fan Works
- Played with by Saurial (Taylor Hebert) from the Worm/Luna Varga crossover Taylor Varga. She consumes raw eggs (complete with shells) by the dozen. Not to build up muscle mass -- she's already so strong that she blows the top off the standard scale for Parahumans -- but just because she likes the taste.
Film
- Disney's Beauty and the Beast has Gaston eating several dozen eggs for breakfast every day. Possibly with shells on.
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When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large |
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- In Stand by Me, this trope is subverted, where Lard Ass Hogan eats a raw egg to ready himself to vomit on cue.
- Rocky. The famous "egg drinking scene" is the Trope Maker.
- In You Don't Mess With the Zohan, the Phantom hatches eggs and eats live full-formed chicks from them.
- As part of the Training Montage in Run Fatboy Run, Dennis attempts to drink raw eggs. but immediately spits them back up.
- Referenced in the song I will make you a man in the Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Played for Laughs in Never Back Down. The protagonist and his best friend are shown drinking eggs during a training montage, and the friend immediately chucks them back up, to the dismay of the hero.
- Parodied in They Call Me Bruce. The main character tries to do it but decides it would be better to make egg foo-young with them.
- Played reasonably straight in the movie Hanna. After being on the run and having met up with Knepler, Hanna asks if she can have an egg when being offered breakfast, which she drinks raw, displaying both her survivalist roots and how badass she is.
Live-Action TV
- Subverted and Played for Laughs in That '70s Show. Kelso attempts to impress Jackie by working out and during a conversation with her announces that he's going to drink a cup of raw eggs. She tries to say something and he rudely stops her, drinking the eggs anyway. When he's done, she reminds him that he's allergic to eggs.
- Lizzie McGuire's mother served her glasses of raw eggs as she trained for a rhythmic gymnastics competition, but Lizzie dumped the eggs into a frying pan instead of drinking them.
- In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will prepares to fight the guy who spun him on his head on the opening credits. He goes through a full Training Montage, complete with drinking raw eggs, and by that we mean, trying to swallow them and then instantly spitting them out and fainting.
- Hal on Malcolm in the Middle trains for a race-walking competition by drinking a shake mixed with this, plus raw ground beef and some supplement powder.
Newspaper Comics
- In one Peanuts strip, Charlie Brown adds a raw egg to Snoopy's dog food to give him a shiny coat. Snoopy doesn't like this.
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Snoopy: BLAH!! So much for suppertime! |
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Western Animation
- Done in Duck Dodgers episode about Queen and High telling anecdotes about Dodgers based on gags omitted form other episodes. One flashback has Marvin trying to invoke this trope, but finds out that Dodgers loves raw eggs and that the way he drinks it is too disgusting for poor martian eyes.
- Steven Rogers apparently drinks raw eggs for breakfast in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
- Harold from Hey Arnold! tried drinking raw eggs while training for an arm-wrestling match, but they made him want to throw up.
- In another episode, as part of a Training Montage, Grandpa cracks some eggs in a glass... only to pour them into a skillet.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "The Great Snail Race", SpongeBob puts Gary through Training from Hell to win the snail race. At one point, he maxes Gary an "energy drink" which includes raw eggs, simply "because it's a cliche!"
Real Life
- Raw eggs are good for dogs, giving them lots of vitamins and protein without the salmonella risk (being exclusively carnivores, a dog's system can handle raw meat far better than humans can), and they do make their coats shiny. Although, cooked eggs are good for them too.