Road Apples

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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Any comedy featuring animals, especially pets, is required amongst the typical gags to make at least one poop joke, regardless of how lame, or poor, or tasteless, or yes, shitty it might be.

The Trope Namer is a euphemism for horse manure.

If eating said Road Apples is involved, then the trope is I Ate What?

Often a subset of Refuge in Vulgarity.

Examples of Road Apples include:

Anime and Manga

  • Shows up at least three or four times in Digimon Adventure, complete with raunchy noises taken out of the English dub (Digi-Sludge!).
  • Even Pokémon cannot resist: One first-season episode involving a fossil dig has Gary discover a fossilised Pokemon dropping.
  • In Kamikaze Girls, Momoko's daydreaming is cruelly interrupted by the realization that she just stepped in some cow poop.
  • In Azumanga Daioh, Osaka goes to Yukari to ask a question, which Yukari initially assumes will be about exams, but it turns out to be about what would happen if all the members of an American family stepped in dog poop and got all the way home without realizing it, since there's no universal American protocol regarding wearing shoes inside one's own home. That'll teach Yukari to tell Osaka, "Ask me anything!"
  • In Blade of the Immortal Manji's sister Machi finds a 'bean cake' on the ground and gives it to him. It is (of course) horse shit. A few panels later Manji absentmindedly takes a bite out of it, but being the titular immortal it doesn't seem to do him any lasting harm.
  • If there's a steaming pile on the ground, Naruto will step on it.


Film

  • The first long trailer for the Live Action Adaptation of Alvin and The Chipmunks had an infamous scene involving coprophagy. Anyone with a pet probably already knows what this means; anyone else probably wouldn't want to know.
    • The same director ripped off his own movie in his next one, Hop. The difference is that it's the Easter Bunny, he defecates jelly beans and a human eats the droppings.
  • The remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds has a dog belonging to one of the heroes eat the keys they desperately need. They feed the dog laxatives and take him for a walk. The pooch just happens to "go" when a group of people looking to kill the heroes show up, and they're so disgusted by the man digging through (presumably runny) dog poop that they run off.
  • In Ice Age, Sid accidentally steps on glyptodont poo. Then wipes it on two rhinos' salad. Then gets some on one of the rhino's face. You can't blame the rhinos for wanting to kill Sid after that.
    • Sid enters Too Dumb to Live territory by not only attempting to wipe his feet on their lunch, but also conversationally telling the rhinos that, as a species, they have very small brains. Oh, and he eats the last dandelion.
  • In the movie K-9, Jim Belushi's character decides to teach the dog who's boss by locking him in a walk-in pantry overnight. Fast forward to the next morning, and it is discovered that the dog has won the argument in its own way.
  • Jurassic Park heaped a great big steaming pile of shit at the protagonists. Dr. Ellie Sattler went elbow-deep in it, too. The trike's excrement isn't really played for laughs, however—the animal's gastrointestinal distress is due to the poisonous plants and berries placed around its paddock, and is one of the first (of many) signs that the Park wasn't as well-designed as its creators thought.

Malcolm: That is one big pile of shit.

    • The third movie has the protagonists going after a cellphone in a pile of dino dung.
      • Which at the start of the movie was on one of the pilots that had gotten eaten.
  • The chipmunk Pip in Enchanted lets one out when he sees the villain's henchman at a bar, although this is more of a literal "Oh shit" moment.
  • Problem Child 2 has Nippy, Big Ben's dog, being snapped out of Junior's botched trance by a brand new dog food known as Chow Down. Its main side effect is Nippy leaving behind a very big turd afterwards.
  • American Wedding has Stifler following a dog, picking up some turds, pretending they're truffles, and eating them to cover the fact he lost the wedding ring.
  • In Sleeper, an electronically rehabilitated Woody Allen is oriented to his new futuristic home, including a robotic Scottie dog ("Woof, woof! Hello, I'm Rags!"). Allen asks "Is he housebroken, or is he going to leave little batteries all over?"
  • The chimps Phil and Mason on Madagascar talk about going to Lincoln Center to fling poo at Tom Wolfe.
  • In Joe Dirt Joe describes to a DJ host about his travels where at one point he found what he thought was a meteor that had crashed near him. He pulls it along his travels, even eating off it at one point before taking it to an astronomer to confirm it's real. Unfortunately for him he finds out it's not a meteor but a big turd ball from an airplane that froze during is waste descent.
  • The Shawshank Redemption has a scene where the supporting characters are searching for rocks that Andy can carve. One brings one up and asks what kind of stone it is, only to be told it's petrified horse dung.
  • Pink Flamingos ends with a notable example of this. Using real dog feces.
  • In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye steps in something in the barn at the end of his dance for "If I Were A Rich Man". He casts a reproachful look at the heavens, presumably thinking that God decided to take him down a peg.
  • In The Smurfs, Grouchy lands in a candy dish full of blue M&Ms which he thinks are "Smurf droppings" before he eats them.
  • Jar-Jar Binks steps into "icky-icky goo" when arriving to Mos Espa in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
  • In Caveman Gold Digger Lana is dumped by Dogged Nice Guy Atouk into a big pile of Dinosaur crap at the end.
  • In one scene in Willow , the protagonist and Madmartigan are arguing, until the latter steps in what looks like dog doo. Cue an Oh Crap expression from both of them, as they know it's not from a dog, but from a troll, which means those dangerous monsters are probably around. And it just goes downhill from there...
  • If one watches carefully during the scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where Hagrid introduces Buckbeak to Harry's "Care of Magical Creatures" class, it is possible see the hippogriff drop a long, large turd in its first few seconds on the screen.

Literature

  • Stephanie Plum has a dog, Bob. He eats everything. Stephanie has a mortal enemy, Joyce. Joyce has a lawn. Joyce is not amused.
  • This trope forms the entire plot of the children's book The Mole Who Knew it was None of his Business, as the titular animal questions everyone from beetles to birds to horses to find out who accidently did their "business" on his head. Surprisingly, for a picture book about poop it restrains from vulgarity and is pretty damn funny. Now available in a "plop-up" edition.


Live Action TV

  • M*A*S*H has Colonel Potter's introduction to his horse end with a "tiptoe through the tulips".
  • The Firefly episode "Safe" sees the crew smuggling a "cunningly concealed herd of cattle" to another planet, with Simon stepping in a cow patty on his way out of the ship. Later, Mal, stepping around the cow patties, mutters, "This is the last time...last time with cows..."
    • 'Hear there was an idea regarding beagles? They have smallish droppings?'
  • Truth in Television: A certain well-known incident involving a baby elephant in the Blue Peter studio.
  • In a famous episode of To Tell the Truth, Garry Moore literally had a mess on his hands when a guest brought an armadillo into the studio.
  • On The Office, Andy and Angela are touring Dwight's farm in the hopes of staging their wedding there. Andy steps in animal dung in the barn, which is to be expected, and then steps in some more in Dwight's kitchen.
  • A famous TV blooper has Red Skelton on his live show doing a bit with a cow, who lets go on camera - for a long time. Red quips "No ad-libbing!" to her.
    • It was also done on other shows, most famously I've Got A Secret. The week after, however, is another story.
      • "...about 6,000 people in the audience began to go... (mooing noises) 'Hey Garry, where's your cow?'"
  • In one episode of The Sopranos, Ralph purchases a racehorse. His mistress, Valentina La Paz, tricks him into stepping into horse manure; partly as a prank to make her and the others laugh and partly because according to superstition, accidentally stepping in horse dung is a sign of good luck.
  • Mark Evanier relates a hilarious story of one day when, as a head writer for a comedy show, he realized that he could ask the producers for anything for a sketch and they would get it for him. So he went a bit crazy and asked for a live elephant. Long story short, the elephant did a little improvising during the taping, to general hilarity. Read it here: [1]
  • Even the sober-toned Planet Earth documentary series couldn't resist showing its cave episode's film crew, marveling at how they've just spent days filming the world's largest pile of bat poop.


Myth and Legend


Newspaper Comics


Video Games

  • It seems that Some are involved in the certain later levels in an Xbox360 Indie game Maid_San's Caving Adventure
  • Conkers Bad Fur Day has more than a few jokes about animal feces, even if you don't count the Great Mighty Poo as an animal.
    • One level has you turned into a vampire bat and you can only fight by pooping on things. It's described as the end result (heh) of all the antigravity chocolate you'd eaten previously.
  • In Dragon Quest VIII, one of the items you can get is a 'cowpat'. When you 'use' the item, it says "Hero grips the cowpat tightly. Hero deeply regrets his decision."
    • These have actually appeared as useless items since Dragon Quest IV. In the NES version of that game they were actually called Road Apples, although this was mainly due to Nintendo's censorship policies that prevented them from calling them anything else.
    • In Dragon Quest IX, you can throw a "cowpat" on some poor guy's fire. Needless to say, he doesn't appreciate it.
  • Similarly, in Animal Crossing, fossils can be dug up, such as trilobites, the Peking Man, a dinosaur track, a dinosaur egg, and... dino droppings. So close...
  • World of Warcraft has a reference to the Gone in 60 Seconds bit above, where you have to lead a felhound around and kill demon pigs, then rummage through the...leftovers... to find the keys to a shredder.
    • World of Warcraft loves to do this. Three different quests involving handling or looking through poop, and there's another where you eat seeds that are supposed to be planted in a farmer's field. Guess how you get them back.
    • As of Cataclysm, monkey pets, gorilla NPCs, and Ogres have an attack called "Fling filth", it's exactly what it sounds like, and the spell description ends off with "How rude."
  • Dinosaur King has dinosaur feaces (yes, it's called that in game) as something you can dig up. They sell for a very high price.
  • Breath of Fire IV actually has a variant of this as an integral part of a Game Plot fetch-quest chain.
    • Specifically, you have to be knocked out, go to the dream world where the fairies live, run out monsters who have invaded their homes...for which you receive a fresh, steaming "Fairie Drop" as a reward (complete with aforementioned fairie relieving hirself in the bushes to give it to you and even saying at the end "Wow, that was a big one!" Ewww...) This is so that a broken sword can be reforged (the fairie poo is a magical component) and a party member can be sprung out of prison. (And yes, the Drunken Master of the party even explicitly states in horror that you're carrying around a piece of fairie shit.)
  • In the world of Grim Fandango, racing on giant cats is a celebrated sport (much like horse racing), and the player gets to visit a cat race track in Rubacava...and discover the giant cat litterbox behind it.
  • In Blue Dragon, there is a race of enemies called the Poo Snake. Three guesses what they look like. A large one of them even uses a flatulence attack.
    • There's a Mecha-Dinosaur boss that has a large one of these as a minion in the boss fight. If said poo snake dies, the dinosaur...umm...replaces it.
    • Enemies will also sometimes leave behind droppings when they are defeated, and the heroes can actually search through it to find treasure.
  • Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist requires you to collect horse farts and pick up a cow patty. It's a Sierra game by Al Lowe, what did you expect?
  • In Okami you can drop a weaponized goddesspat.
  • In Glitch, piggies and batterflys produce dung, though it's generally useful.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword features the return of Guays, previously seen in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. However, in this game, instead of dive-bombing you to attack they... take craps on your head. Huh.
  • Used in Dragon Age II DLC Mark of the Assassin. During the Wyvern Hunt, Hawke can examine wyvern dung to aid in the quest.

Fenris: Aww, Hawke stepped in the poopy.

  • In Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, the first time Luigi catches the Polterpup, he seems to step in dog doo, given his expression as he looks at his shoe.

Web Comics


Western Animation

  • My Gym Partner's a Monkey occasionally does poop jokes - not surprising, considering it's about a school for animals. Examples include Jake eating bat guano, Mr. Hornbill (a rhinoceros) offering the lunch lady a "rhino pie" he made himself, and the Animas Rock from the You Mean "Xmas" episode "Have a Joyous Little Animas".
  • In Chuck Jones' Drip Along Daffy, Western Hero Daffy ends up declaring "I told you I'd clean up this one-horse town!" and we see he's been made town street-cleaner - sidekick Porky (who's been made sheriff) tells us "Lucky for him it IS a one-horse town!". This last line gets cut from tv viewing nowadays.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar: the very polite and well-spoken chimp Mason is still keen to fling faeces at people in one episode, claiming it's "traditional". He also mentioned doing so in the original movie, Madagascar.


Real Life

  • The most expensive coffee in the world, the Kopi Luwak, is made from beans that have been eaten and excreted by Asian Palm Civets.
    • Thinkgeek sells this coffee, but doesn't even try to cover up where it comes from, possibly to avoid I Ate What?
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