Unconventional Smoothie

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At some point in your favorite Movie or TV show, one of the characters decides to make a smoothie, using all the usual ingredients. Into the blender goes blueberries, fruit juice, a banana, sausage? A chocolate bar with the wrapper on? A pen?

This trope occurs when unusual ingredients, often including some non-food items, are added to a blender. May occur after a character promises a "special shake", or some similar description. Often, the more typical items are added first, while the more "unconventional" items are saved for later.

May sometimes be an example of a Lethal Chef or Cordon Bleugh Chef. A Hideous Hangover Cure may be this. Despite the name, the trope applies to any sort of mixture that gets blended in a blender.

Examples of Unconventional Smoothie include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Cake Incident in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei.
  • Happens in the Touhou spinoff manga Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth. Kaguya is trying to lose weight, so Eirin mentions several different diets - the Banana Diet, the Yogurt Diet and the Natto Diet. Cue Tewi fixing up a Banana Yogurt Natto Smoothie.

Film

  • An American Werewolf in Paris, using human hearts
  • The Naked Gun: in the second movie, Jane makes such a shake while talking to Frank.
  • The 1987 teen comedy My Best Friend is a Vampire (starring Robert Sean Leonard in one of his earliest film roles), the hero is undergoing a slow transformation into a vampire. At one point, hungry but not knowing for what, he makes a smoothie out of a slab of raw liver (including the blood that had leaked into the bottom of the package).
  • Heaven Can Wait (1978 version). Joe Pendleton likes these.

Max: What's in this brown stuff?
Joe: That's mainly whipped liver...I put a little whey in it, then mix it with a little alfalfa sprouts, and some bean curd and spinach...It's a liver and whey shake.

  • Subverted in Stone Cold, where the protagonist makes a smoothie out of all sorts of odd ingredients (vegetables, raw meat, leftover pizza, candy bars, etc.), but it turns out to just be food for his pet iguana. The lizard doesn't seem to want it, either.
  • Benny and Joon offers a recipe including Cap'n Crunch, milk, peanut butter...
  • In the movie based on Bewitched, Uncle Arthur throws random ingredients into a blender while lecturing Jack. When Jack takes a sip and remarks on the awful taste, Arthur admits that it's not for drinking - he just loves to blend.

Live Action TV

  • Top Gear: The "Man's V8" made with the V8 blender. (Starting with raw beef, and finishing with a brick)
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Killer Shrews episode involves a drink called the Killer Shrew, which includes a candy bar with the wrapper on, among other very sugary foods.
  • The Bass-O-Matic in Saturday Night Live
  • CSI has an episode where Someone makes such a shake using human organs.
  • Great Lies To Tell Small Kids: "Everyone loves a meat smoothie!" And it shows the kid chucking in steak, lamb chops, sausages...
  • On a Kenan and Kel episode, the title duo managed to stumble upon a cure for the Common Cold by just throwing stuff like chicken, eggs, sardines, and, of course, orange soda. Unfortunately, neither one of them can remember the exact ingredients when Chris and Roger ask for some for their own colds, and they end up make a completely different smoothie that immediately puts people to sleep.
  • A staple of Fear Factor round 2.
  • The Freaks and Geeks episode "Tricks & Treats" begins with Bill accepting a challenge to drink one of these. Sam and Neil mix cayenne pepper, mustard, pickle juice, pickles, a generous handful of salt, sardines, vinegar, soy sauce, chili, a spoonful of grape jelly, powdered dairy creamer, and after-dinner mints. Bill actually likes it.
  • In the Monk season six finale, to give Randy an excuse for having out a drill to take off Monk's handcuffs, Natalie claims that her blender broke and puts a bunch of random (questionable) ingredients in, then uses the drill to blend them up and comes out with a very unusual looking substance. She then takes a sip. In deadpan, Randy asks her if there's oil in it.

Lt. Randy Disher: Is that oil?
Natalie Teeger: That is oil. It's uh, it's from the ground so it's organic, and it just... lubricates your organs. [puts down the glass and picks up the drill] Um, I'll just be washing up. I'll be right back. You can have it.

Newspaper Comics

  • Bucky has a fondness for tuna smoothies.

Radio

  • The BBC radio panel game The 99 p Challenge had a round based on coming up with these- suggestions included Bill Bailey's concoction of Praline and Seagull's Tears.

Video Game

  • The video game Dead Rising allows players to combine any two foodstuffs (including all juices, meats, vegetables, fruits, breads, frozen foods, rotten foods, etc.) in blenders around the shopping mall and turn them into smoothies that grant the player with limited power-ups, abilities, etc.
  • The Sims 2's Seasons expansion includes a smoothie maker that sims can use to turn the produce of their gardens into various juice blends or smoothies, which, depending on the quality of the produce involved can provide nifty beneficial effects (tomato soup warms the drinker, strawberry lemonade puts them into Platinum Aspiration, etc.). One can also make "pureed boot" from the boots caught while fishing, which causes sims to spaz out in various animations for a few seconds.
  • In Wallace and Gromit: Fright of the Bumblebees, Wallace makes plant growth formula by mixing a battery, a military ration bar, and a teabag in his blender.

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Wildcat in Batman the Brave And The Bold has the "Tiger Tonic", which comprises bananas, raw eggs, tuna and hot sauce.
  • Krieger in Archer: "The secret ingredient is... phone."
  • The Simpsons has an episode where Homer gets his stomach stapled, he can only eat the smallest amounts of solid food after the surgery, and he has to puree it in a blender and drink it down. We see him do this with the tip of a slice of pizza, cut with a knife and fork.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: Snips and Snails bring The Great And Powerful Trixie an oat smoothie with extra hay. Being ponies of course, that would be par for the course in Equestria.
  • When Beezy gets a butler in Jimmy Two-Shoes he becomes too lazy to chew, making his butler mix his sandwiches in a blender (with the plate it was on).
  • An episode of Ben 10 Alien Force had Ben almost obsessively drinking smoothies. When Gwen asks him how many he's had, he tells her "Enough to know that chocolate and carrot are two great tastes that don't go great together.

Real Life

  • Real Life: Monkey House Rocket Fuel is a smoothie for college students who need to cram for all-nighters: Use caffeinated water to brew coffee, then brew another pot of coffee with the coffee. Then add to caffeinated ice cream such as Ben & Jerry's "Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz", Penguin Mints, chocolate syrup, and add 1 cup of sugar, then blend.
  • Athletes, gym bunnies and other exercise enthusiasts may drink smoothies regularly for various reasons and some of the 'home brews' may seem downright horrific to the uninitiated, particularly those made by amateur bodybuilders. Raw eggs and oatmeal often go into the blender if the drinker can't afford an expensive protein powder.
    • Tuna shakes are notably popular in weightlifting forums.
  • British milkshake chain Shakeaway offer a "Wicked Wendy" milkshake, consisting of licorice allsorts, beetroot, and custard. They advertise it as "The world's worst milkshake".
  • They've got competition - or they used to. A couple of years ago, Japanese fast food chain Lotteria was unwise enough to run an online promotion where people could send in and vote on ideas for their next milkshake flavour. Thanks to the lovable trolls of 2ch, the winning flavour was kimchi.
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