Noodle Implements

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This is going to be great, guys!

Wow, with a goose? I didn't even know that was possible...

Sometimes the best way to describe something is to give a few hints and let imaginations run wild, especially if you aren't allowed or can't be bothered to get explicit. One common way is to imply the general feel and mention a few outlandish items to be used but not how they are used.

Noodle Implements (related to the Noodle Incident) is used to suggest an act that would normally be unthinkable to show, by listing a set of objects in context. The most common uses are for an especially Zany Scheme, some delightfully exotic sex or some truly ingenious torture. The phrasing and circumstance makes it obvious, but the unknown act appears much more intense. Or more silly.

If the Noodle Implements are used erotically off-camera while a character or characters observe, they may find the results Head-Tiltingly Kinky.

Noodle Implements can cause Fridge Logic (and/or Fridge Squick) if you attempt to work out exactly what you do with a snorkel, a feather boa and a stuffed giraffe that's so incredibly erotic. Unfortunately, someone will have worked it out. There's probably pictures online. If the use is well known, it may become a form of Shout-Out.

In some cases, Genre Savvy characters will intentionally invoke this trope when questioning someone they've captured. Differs from Maximum Fun Chamber in that the character in question doesn't really know how to use the items to torture someone.

See also Maximum Fun Chamber and Lost in Transmission. Compare Cow Tools, That Mysterious Thing.

Examples of Noodle Implements include:

Anime and Manga[edit | hide | hide all]

  • The Region 1 DVD of Excel Saga has, in place of the standard legal warning, a parody thereof which warns that violations will be "dealt with in the most severe manner possible, most probably involving chicken feathers, cod liver oil and a very, very depraved walrus."
  • When Nozomu is following Abiru's father around in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, believing that he's abusing her, even the most mundane of items (and a copy of Strawberry 100%) are taken as tools of abuse in some way that people aren't quite clear on.
    • The reason Itoshiki fears Abiru's father buying Ichigo 100% is because apparently there was a famous lone soldier who took down an army with a copy of Kimagure Orange Road.
    • A later chapter in the manga had a Sales Girl whose hobbies was to guess the use of various Noodle Implements the shoppers bought. She became so obsessed with finding out what some of the more confusing implements were for, that she kidnapped Nozomu and demanded answers, a la Saw.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima does a Continuity Nod involving some of these; when Chizuru and Natsumi are trying to nurse Kotaro back to health, and Chizuru suggests some sort of folk remedy involving shoving a spring onion up his rear end. Much later on, Natsumi drops by the Confessional to ask for advice concerning an incident involving "a large number of spring onions". One can only wonder exactly how far the initial idea managed to escalate...
    • Presumably, this is an actual folk remedy. This method is also suggested (and apparently actually used) when Yuuto, the main character of Omamori Himari, has a cold in chapter 34. That or Matra Milan just likes Negima, which would make sense, all things considered.
  • In one episode of Di Gi Charat Nyo, Puchiko's guardians get ready to make a Phantom Cake, pulling out everything they need, which amounts to quite a pile, including (but not limited to) a bucket, a cactus, a tire, an umbrella, a drum, a moai and a Christmas Tree.
  • Durarara!! has mention of barrels of gasoline being rolled down the third floor of the highschool back when Izaya and Shizuo attended. No further information, not even a quirky name for this incident, is given.
  • The dub version of Axis Powers Hetalia features Germany claiming to have "killed a man in his sleep with only his own moustache and a grape".

Comic Books[edit | hide]

  • Don Rosa's Uncle Scrooge story "The Treasury of Croesus" opens in the aftermath of "Magica de Spell's most complex and bizarre scheme yet" to get Scrooge's Number One Dime. Apparently it involved, among other things, fireworks and animals in ridiculous costumes.
  • Johnny the Homicidal Maniac does this in the end of his last issue when he attacks Squee's dad and says he may go blind, but that means Squee can get away with stuff more easily. He then decides to completely disable him, asking if he has a lick-em-aid stick to cause deafness and tweezers and shoelaces to alter his central nervous system and render him unable to "Fine Tune his Sensitivity to Vibrations"...Then realizes he might become an Olfactory Ninja.
    • Earlier he claims to have done "horrifying things with salad tongs," and on his twitter he says he murdered someone with a cheeto.
  • In an early issue of All-Star Superman, Lex Luthor is remote controlling a monster on a solar probe. For some reason, he's also holding a baseball bat. According to the writer, this was meant to convey Luthor's stance as someone whose mind just operates at a different level than everyone else's, and that, to Luthor, holding the bat was an integral part of the plan.
    • In The Movie of the Book, Lex uses it to simulate smashing the probe's control board since the monster seems to respond to his movements.
  • Nextwave's Dirk Anger claimed he killed his wife because she would no longer do "that thing with the wig and the chickens and the bath of acid" for him.
  • Amelia Rules has them playing a game called 'Thank God you're open,' which specifically invokes this trope; you're supposed to rush madly into a shop with $5 or so, breathlessly tell the cashier the name of the game, and ask for the most outrageous combination of items they can get.
  • In Twisted Toyfare Theatre, Jim Kirk had to deal with mirror universe versions of Vulcans that embraced non-logic. So, he told the highly insecure and polite version of himself some implements he needed: Three teenage girls and a squeegee. That plan was promptly dropped when the Vulcans took him by surprise.
  • An issue of Batman: No Man's Land has a scene where the Joker, one of his past torture victims (that is alive at the time of the scene), and some of his goons threatening said victim with yams. The victim's reaction says it all: "No please, not the yams!"

Commercials[edit | hide]

  • A Mastercard commercial starring Richard Dean Anderson as MacGyver implies that he fixed a truck using a paperclip, a ballpoint pen, a rubber band, a pair of tweezers, some nasal spray and a turkey baster.

Fan Works[edit | hide]

  • The Naruto fan fic Naruto the Overlord Kage (a crossover with the game Overlord) had this memorable line in chapter seven from Axel. "Okay, we got mace, grenades, six-pack of beer, bazooka, flamethrower, a box filled with genetically enhanced mutated demonic vermin, and a ticket for a free bowl of ramen, ok, we're all set!! Let's go cause some chaos!!" Turns out the rats grow 10 times their size when lit on fire so they never got around to using much of the other items.
  • Another Naruto fanfic, Uprooted, has Tsunade recite the following to the Third Hokage: "You don't get a say in this, old man. Tar. Feathers. Gelding knife. Superglue, walnut groats and two hundred rabid squirrels. Do not tempt me."
  • Yet again, with a little extra help has the Pirate Space alien Giraffe bondage incident (also a Noodle Incident).
  • From this House of Leaves parody: "'Wax' got his nickname after an especially colorful incident in the Himalayas involving three empty water bottles, a ball of twine, one extremely smelly and hideous yak, and two sherpas with a warped sense of humor. Trust me, you do not want to hear the details."
  • The Ranma ½ fanfic One More, From the Top, had Soun mention (towards Genma) the Tendo Family Torture, which involves "bubble gum and fluorescent light bulbs". Once Genma leaves the room, Kasumi mentions that she's never heard of the Tendo Family Torture. Soun reveals that he just made it up, that he had no idea how to torture someone with bubble gum and fluorescent light bulbs, and that Genma "always did have a... creative mind."
  • Potter Puppet Pals short "Wizard Angst": "You will be dragged by your ears to the basement, where a drunken Filch will be waiting with a cactus and a croquet mallet..."
  • The short "Wizard Swears" also gives us the dreaded Elder Swear: "Your mother is a [bleep][bleep][bleep]ing [bleep] lorem ipsum [bleep][bleep][bleep] admitem venium [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] traguna [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] hippopotamus [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] Republican [bleep][bleep]ing Daniel Radcliffe [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] with a bucket of r[bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] in a castle far away where no one can hear you [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] Soup! [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] with a bucket of d[bleep][bleep] Mickey Mouse [bleep][bleep] and a stick of dynamite [bleeeeeeeeep] magical [bleep][bleep][bleeeeeeeeeeep] alakazam!"
  • The Evangelion/40k crossover Thousand Shinji has Shinji (having converted to the worship of Tzeentch, god of Magnificent Bastardry ) feeling pleased at having finally "managed to perfect the plan involving a car battery, a geisha, a metric tonne of boiling ramen, and a rubber chicken" that could kill off his father (although he never actually uses it).
    • He also wonders "But where would I get that much tapioca?"
  • The Neon Genesis Evangelion 'fic, Misato's Second Childhood has Gendo torturing Kaji with 'a live trout, a feather duster, a fireworks Sparkler, a nine-iron, a pack of already-chewed-bubble gum, half a pound of salt, two 6-inch candles, a rusty grill scrapper, two rolls of duct tape, and a copy of "Barney the Dinosaur Goes To Washington".
  • Another Eva fic, Nobody Dies, has Kei Ayanami (sic) demanding some... interesting things from Tokyo-3 after taking over one of NERV's outposts, including one million helicopters, one dollar, and Shinji and Asuka dressed only in ribbons.
    • Rei herself is no slouch in the use of Noodle Implements: she seems to have a thing for doing unspecified things to people with vegetables (it's a really bad sign if she decides to use cabbage).

Maya: "I have no idea how she managed to destroy Fuyutsuki's car with [a squeaky mallet]!"

    • There is also Gendo's and Yui's conversation about subtly undermining Kyoko Sohryu's authority: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "I think so, but I don't know where we're going to get that much Saran Wrap."
  • From a Harry Potter fansite, this guide to being a Death Eater includes the line "The next meeting is scheduled for midnight, 11th June, when I trust we will have the pleasure of watching your initiation ceremony. Please remember to bring a clean handsaw and enough twine. It's so distressing when people don't prepare for these events properly."
    • Any lists in said guide invariably have similar implements. For example, the equipment list has "Disguise kit, containing: Nun's outfit, false beard, beekeeping veil, Muggle policeman's costume, etc" and a pointy stick, and the list of skills includes yodelling.
    • 99% of all good Harry Potter humor fic about the Marauders includes a list of Noodle Implements. Because sadly, some people just don't have Rowling's imagination.
  • South Down The Coast, a Final Fantasy VIII fic has Quistis doing paperwork and receiving the following supply request: "One hundred metres nylon rope. One nun's habit. Motorcycle. Seven rolls duct tape. The list grew longer. Hyne, what did they need ten packs of Triple Triad cards for anyway? Not to mention the fertiliser."
  • Zelda fic The Legend Of Zelda Big Brother House mentions that the reason Link never talks in the video games has something to do with Like Likes and Fire Keese in a bathroom and some yeast settling. Then there's the ingredients to Zant's meals, which include ingredients that try to run away.
  • In Kiss And Tell, a Doctor Who fanfic, the Doctor has left the Master with Jack. The Master decides to 'kiss and tell' as revenge, so the Doctor walks in on the following exchange: "Jack was choking out, 'The thing with... the thing with the riding crop... I've had something like that happen... you just need to have some antiseptic on hand... but when you add bananas...' 'Don't forget the corset!' 'Stop it! Shit, I'm going to die here... best death I've had... and... and... and a set of bagpipes...' The Master could barely talk between wheezes. 'It wasn't only that... it turned out Frisbees are... you know... like I said before... but the paint was too hot... and....' " Later, playing croquet in the shower is mentioned as another "activity".
  • In Red Witch's Galaxy Rangers fic Abandon Sanity All Who Enter Here Niko has to try and throw off a spy masquerading as a BETA psychologist. When asked to read his mind, she feigns Dirty Mind Reading and scares him out of the room.

"YOU PERVERT! I would never do that with a banana! And the monkeys and French Maid outfit is out of the question! Vanilla pudding! You want me to do what with vanilla pudding?"

  • In Wondy Goes to WalMart Green Lantern needed the following items to fix his green lantern ring: A roll of duct tape, a knife with a gut-hook, three popsicle sticks, four feet of 30-amp dryer cord, a caulking gun, a USB cell phone charger, a ping-pong ball, a lithium ion-powered wrench, a carbon filter, a bug zapper, and a rotisserie chicken.
  • Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Harry buys a Feather-Falling Potion, Gillyweed, a bottle of Food and Water Pills, and a medical kit. He also asked goblins how much it would cost to mint a ton of silver into sickles, and had trouble answering when asked if he was trying to Take Over the World. He bought most of that stuff just to be prepared, but McGonnagal didn't realize that.
  • New Games a Yu-Gi-Oh! fic, does this with several items including a Simon playset, a joy-buzzer and a rubber chicken.
  • In the Teen Titans fanfic The Joker's Wild, the Joker sends Harley Quinn out to get torture implements, and when she gets back he asks her "Did you get everything? The drills? The nails? The acid? The matches? The custard?"
  • Andy's overly long list of objects needed to take Sherman to the vet in Calvin and Hobbes The Series:

Andy: "Let's see… Iodine, band-aids, gauze, bullwhip, small strait-jacket, helmet, pan, shampoo, gloves, tranquilizer, chloroform, tennis racquet, ice cubes, Banana Peel, cage, snare trap, baloney, modem…"

Film[edit | hide]

  • In Pulp Fiction, Marsellus Wallace tells Butch that he's going to call several of his men to "go to work" on his rapist Zed with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, then proceeds to tell Zed that he's going to "get medieval on his ass." [1]
  • The 1970s film Charley Varrick is the source of Pulp Fiction's famous "pliers and a blowtorch" line.
  • One scene in The Three Musketeers 1973 shows a group of torturers preparing to torture Monsieur Bonacieux in the Bastille, with the usual rack and branding irons and such, with a rather incongruous shot of a fist-sized potato being placed in a copper bowl near the end. What they were planning to do with it, God only knows.
  • The MacGyver smoker from Half Baked, comes up with two different sets of implements for making a bong.

MacGyver Friend: Hey, man, we're out of papers.
MacGyver Smoker: All right. Then get me a toilet paper roll, a corkscrew and some tin foil.
MacGyver Friend: We don't have a corkscrew.
MacGyver Smoker: All right. Then get me an avocado, an ice pick and my snorkel. Trust me, bro. I've made bongs with less. Hurry up!

  • In the Weird Al comedy UHF, one of the characters has a public access television show. "Hello, my name is Philo and welcome to...Secrets Of The Universe. Today we are going to learn how to make plutonium from common household items." The additional footage that was cut lists "an egg beater, a car battery and a bowl of strawberry Jell-O. Put these items in a microwave for twelve minutes at 8000 degrees, and leave your house for several hours."
  • In The Wrong Guy the main character is told its possible to kill someone with only two teabags and some wax paper. When attacked by the villain he waves these items around in the air since he has no idea how it's supposed to work.
  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Explain again how sheep bladders can be used to prevent earthquakes?" (at 0:09-14)
    • It probably has to do with the fact that animal bladders can be cured and blown full of air like balloons, making them absorb the vibrations in large enough numbers.
  • John Spartan never does learn how to use those three seashells in Demolition Man. According to the director, two of the seashells were to be used together to pick up most of the crap, while the third was used to scrape away the rest.
  • The Danish Olsen-Banden (The Olsen Gang) movies are largely a subversion of this trope. Pretty much all of Egon's plans involve a number of baroque requisites. The subversion comes when we actually get to see all those items being used for surprisingly coherent purposes. The same holds true for the Swedish remake Jönssonligan and the Norwegian remake, which includes six nappies, a violin, a crowbar and a machine gun.
  • In the 2008 Get Smart movie, the nerdy scientist's angry coworker claims to know how to kill people several ways with any of the office supplies on their desk, including the post-it notes.
  • Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Tara, the tomato turned sex-slave turned independent woman apparently has a knack with, "a lawnchair, six milk bottles and a tuning fork."
  • Four Rooms: Ted the Bellboy brings a bizarre laundry list to drunken entertainment moguls in the penthouse on New Year's Eve: "A block of wood. A doughnut. A ball of twine. Three nails. A club sandwich. A bucket of ice. And a hatchet as sharp as the devil himself." We learn the use of most of these, but the ball of twine and the nails are only to confuse the bellhop.
  • In Shanghai Knights, Lin escapes from imprisonment in the Scotland Yard with several...interesting items.

Lord Rathbone: Perhaps you could explain to me how Looney Lin managed to escape from the confines of Scotland Yard under the watch of the most respected police force in the world.
Doyle: Yes, of course, it's absolutely fascinating. She picked the lock using a deck of rather risque playing cards. Then scaled the walls with a mop, a fork, and various pilfered undergarments. I've got to hand it to the Chinese, they're awfully ingenious, Lord, aren't they?
Lord Rathbone: Does your incompetence know no bounds?

  • In The Great Muppet Caper, scenes of the diamond thieves going over their list of thieving equipment are inter-cut with scenes of the Muppets going over THEIR list of equipment, which includes a whoopie cushion, rubber vomit, underpants, and a variety of other odds and ends.
  • In Down By Law, the jailbreak plan.
  • "What's New Pussycat?" - at a country hotel which is a popular rendezvous spot, the desk clerk on the phone calls out to her husband "The party in the 'Marquis de Sade' suite asks for a Boy Scout uniform and a dozen loaves of bread!"
  • In Brazil, the torture tools seem regular, until you see the bouncing ball and the pacifier.
  • In Ratatouille, one of the chefs claimed to have "killed a man, using only this thumb!" Also, he "robbed the second largest bank in France using only a ballpoint pen".
  • In Grosse Pointe Blank:


  • Paycheck. Ben Affleck's character has had his memory erased after reverse-engineering a complex device. Rather than the huge sum of money he was promised for completing the job, he leaves himself a series of seemingly unrelated items—among these, a ring, a lighter, a key with a BMW logo on it, a digital wristwatch—each of which later ends up being useful.
  • In Fight Club, when Tyler is interrupted having sex with Marla, he's wearing a heavy-duty rubber cleaning glove on one hand. Its purpose is never explained.
  • From The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. As the group is running through the Banzai Institute after the Lectroids, New Jersey sees a watermelon in a metal press and asks what it's for. Reno just says, "I'll tell ya later." Explained later by Word of God: The Banzai Institute is developing ways of delivering food to famine-struck regions of the world by breeding a watermelon capable of being airdropped. Eggs are next.
  • In Ocean's Twelve, when there's three of the twelve who are NOT in jail yet, they go over a list of popular heist schemes, one of which is called "Hell in a Handbasket", to which Linus replies "We... can't train a cat that quickly."
    • Likely a throwback to a similar gag in the first movie, when they're trying to figure out how to blow the power in Vegas after their first plan becomes undermined.

Danny: Well, we could always...
Rusty: By tomorrow? No.

  • Stripes and Bachelor Party both feature a gag about a common handheld egg beater being brought into play in the bedroom. A noodle kitchen implement?
  • The Hangover features an entire room of noodle implements when the boys wake up in the morning, including a chicken, a flaming office chair, a baby, and a tiger. More are discovered throughout the day. Over the course of the film, the gang finds out how everything/everyone got into their room, except for the chicken. Presumably it was meant to feed the tiger.
  • In the movie Hexed, Claudia Christian breaks into the hero's apartment wanting to play sex games with him. She askes him if he has mayonnaise and a rake.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides has Captain Jack describe his scheme to release The Black Pearl from Blackbeard's bottle in the film's closing moments:

Jack: We shall need a crossbow, an hourglass, three goats, one of us will have to learn to play the trumpet while the other one goes like this (waggles hands)

Literature[edit | hide]

..."An' then... then I'm gonna get medieval on his arse."
There were more pressing problems, but this one intrigued Mr Pin.
"How, exactly?" he said.
"I thought maybe a maypole," said Mr Tulip reflectively. "An' then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-field system, several plagues and, if my --ing hand ain't too tired, the invention of the --ing horse collar."
"Sounds good," said Mr Pin.

    • Pratchett also had a lot of fun with this one in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe (Although it's possible to figure out what they were going to do with the items). In order to make sure William Shakespeare gets born and can write his plays (long story), the wizards need (at different points):
      • "a length of string, a leather ball of some kind, and a large bunch of flowers." (Problem: Shakespeare's parents failed to meet)
      • "the probable date of conception, a stepladder, and a gallon of black paint." (This one is passable if obscure, as in Yorkshire, I believe, painting the ceiling black in the kitchen is a folk remedy to ensure a male child.)
      • "some strong disinfectant"... "and a lot of carbolic soap." (Problem: Shakespeare died of a childhood illness)
      • "some drab clothing, a dark lantern and a very large cosh." (Problem: Shakespeare is killed by a gameskeeper while poaching)
    • Perhaps the best example of all, from Wyrd Sisters, is the terrible fate* of King Murune of Lancre (709-745).
    • And then we have The Ginger Beer Trick, a surprisingly minimalist example of this trope which nonetheless manages to Squick characters and readers (in part) by never revealing the particular orifice involved. Word on is that it's your nostrils that get fizzed (true, and reportedly used in both Mexico and Colombia) but that's unnecessary knowledge for the gags.
      • The trick is done with a bottle of Coke in the movie Traffic.
      • And also by Miguel Prada's unhinged brother Ramon in the nostrils of someone he suspects of being the Skinner in the third season of Dexter.
    • Leonard of Quirm is described as having 'accidentally blown up the Alchemists' Guild using nothing more than a glass of water, a spoonful of acid, two lengths of wire, and a ping-pong ball.' (Jingo)
      • Which sounds like he figured out a battery using acid and two different types of wire and electrolysised the water into hydrogen and oxygen. And then blew it up (old-style ping-pong balls were made with nitrocellulose, which, after ground, is a common component in modern explosives). Most of Pratchett's Noodle Implements are actually references to real things.
      • Unless it's something that "Bloody Stupid" Johnson was involved in, as he apparently achieved the same effect using nothing but water and common sand.
    • And of course there's the joke in Carpe Jugulum about "the old woman, the priest and the rhinoceros", which even Nanny Ogg didn't understand until she was forty.
      • Probably a reference to the joke about the priest, the nun, and the camel. Stranded in the desert.

Punchline: Then stick it in the camel and let's get the hell out of here!

    • The Rite of Ashk'Ente. All we know is that it's a way to summon Death, involving three small sticks and 4ccs of mouse blood (or two sticks and a fresh egg).
      • This one was actually shown in Discworld II: Missing, Presumed...?! PC adventure game. Let's just say it's... somewhat less epic than one could judge from the description.
      • While the purpose of the sticks is unclear, the mouse blood or fresh egg are most likely required because something living needs to perish if you want Death to come for a visit. The minimalistic amounts of the living substance just indicates what is the bare minimum that counts for "life".
    • Then there are those rumors about the manufacture of scumble, which is made mainly from apples, but is also alleged to make use of: rats, snake heads, lead shot, a dead sheep, and/or a trouser button. Subverted in that these Noodle Implements are a complete fabrication, although the rumor about the dead soldier isn't.
  • Invoked in the Wheel of Time series. Juilin Sandar asks for a basket of figs and a pair of mice when questioning someone, squicking not only the subject but his allies. The subject quickly starts singing like a canary. When asked, Sandar admits he has no idea what he'd do with the items, either - he was simply counting on the subject's own imagination coming up with something horrible enough to get her talking.
    • He does it again asking for salt and cooking oil.
    • A fair number of Elayne's curse words work like this. We're informed that they're particularly vile, but as Elayne doesn't know what they mean the reader is never informed. For example, Mother's milk in a cup and Bloody buttered onions.
  • In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Zaphod Beeblebrox is the son of Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, who is the son of Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third, and so on, due to an "accident with a prophylactic and a time machine." In Life, the Universe, and Everything, bored immortal Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was granted his immortality in a Freak Office Accident involving "a liquid lunch, a particle accelerator, and a pair of rubber bands."
    • The latter is explained in And Another Thing. He was working through lunch, and flicked a few rubber bands into an inactive particle accelerator. He tried to get them out, someone turned on the accelerator, whammo, instant immortality. Effectively the same thing that happened to Dr. Manhattan.
    • Another novel by Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, includes a reference to a horror writer who habitually orders a dozen live chickens to his hotel room, where they are never seen again. Towards the end of the book, however, one character reveals they know someone who had the job of smuggling them straight out again.
  • In the comical Scifi novel Illegal Aliens by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio:

"As Einda casually wandered towards the bar, she passed by a hairy blue male sitting alone at a four-person table and playing with a piece of string and a small fruit, which explained why he was sitting alone in a crowded bar. Nobody smart bothered an assassin."

  • A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe has a sex scene in which the characters do "that thing with the cup". Wolfe has admitted that he himself has no idea what they're doing.
  • Salamandastron in the Redwall series; Samkim, Arula and Spriggat loudly discuss Arula's supposed talents of information extraction in front of a captured rat; "On me oath I 'opes never to see that done to a living creature again, 'specially the bit with the three squashed frogs an' those maggoty apples..."
  • Arthur Conan Doyle played with this sometimes, making Dr. Watson (or Sherlock Holmes himself) mention in passing a few outlandish details of some "off-screen" case. Most memorable one is probably from The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger: "The source of these outrages is known, and if they are repeated I have Mr. Holmes's authority for saying that the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant will be given to the public."
  • Or, from The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire:

Holmes: Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.

    • Sophia Matilda Briggs was the daughter of Benjamin Briggs, captain of the famous Mary Celeste. Conan Doyle was deeply interested in that story and even wrote a fictional account of it, J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement.
      • The Firesign Theatre, a radio show, did an episode inspired by this, entitled "The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra" starring Mr. Hemlock Stones, The Great Defective.
  • Played with in Robert Rankin's book Sprout Mask Replica: The protagonist narrator and the love interest are in a hotel room, and she says if he orders a bottle of Tabasco sauce and some ice cubes she'll show him something amazing. The narrator recognises this trope, and suggests leaving it there, before pointing out that he has no clue what sexy thing could be done with them. Then they put the sauce on their sandwiches and the ice in their drinks and she shows him something amazing: a mint-edition copy of # 1 of Starburst magazine, complete with free gift.
  • The novelization of the Iron Man movie has Tony, held captive by the terrorists and required to build them a missile, demanding a long list of missile-building things that ends in a washing machine. He tells Yinsen that they'll be confused enough by the washing machine that they won't wonder too much about the other things.
  • Happens in the X Wing Series novel Starfighters of Adumar.

Wedge: We'll need a wheeled transport, one of the flatcam units our pursuers are carrying, and four sets of women's clothing.
Hobbie: Boss, please tell me you're not putting us in women's clothing.
Wedge: Very well. I'm not putting us in women's clothing.
The Next Chapter
Hobbie: You lied to me.

    • Those are only temporarily Noodle Implements; Wedge has a plan, which we do see in enough detail to figure out his scheme: use the flatcam to film themselves "killing" an innocent cam-wielding civilian, i.e. a chunk of brick on Hobbie's other shoulder, so that the crowd leaves the four "women" alone.
    • There's also the notorious lanvarok. All the books mention is that it's a weapon, it's built by the Sith, and it's a distinct advantage to be left-handed when using it. Draw your own conclusions.
      • Other Expanded Universe sources did tell us what it is. It is... a wrist-mounted device that throws up to a dozen razor-edged metal disks in an unpredictable pattern. ... oh well.
  • In A Series of Unfortunate Events, Violet is commonly stated as trying to invent things with specific noodle implements. Often, she does. For example, making a machine for making staples that uses: a potato, a fork, shoes with clappers on them, and several crabs that live in their room. The "machine" consisted of them using the shoes to herd the crabs, the potato, that looked kind of like a toe, which they snapped at a lot, to get them to snap at it, quickly switching it with the metal wire they're making the staples out of to cut them, and the fork to bend them.
    • I'm not sure it's the trope if we know what she does with them.
    • In Lemony Snicket's autobiography it's established that VFD members are equipped with a standard Noodle Implement disguise kit. (One photograph purports to show a young woman convincingly disguised as a 1950s-model pickup truck.)
    • In place of a summary on the back of the book, any of these books will typically have a letter to the reader that explains the setting, provides a typical Snicket Warning Label, and lists many a few of the tragedies and horrors (read: random things) that will befall the characters, ending with a case of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking. For instance: "Truth be told, within the chapters that make up this dreadful story, the children will face snapping crabs, strict punishments, dripping fungus, comprehensive exams, violin recitals, S.O.R.E., and the metric system." These things always eventually show up in the story, but at first reading, the blurb seems like nothing more than a list of Noodle Implements.
  • In The Joy of Work, the author suggests a method of avoiding work by invoking this method. Simply carry a pair of unrelated objects (such as a flashlight and an oil funnel) with you and walk in a hurry through the office. If anyone asks what they're for, quickly say "You don't want to know" and walk off.
  • Dave Barry's Guide to Marriage and/or Sex:

Q. Listen, I, ummm, I have this kind of weird sexual hangup, which is that I, ummmmm... this is very embarrassing...
A. Go ahead! Say it! Don't be ashamed! That's what we're here for! To help!
Q. Okay, but I want to whisper it. (whisper whisper whisper)
A. My God! Really?
Q. Um, yes.
A. The Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Q. Well, yes.
A. How do you get the hamsters into the accordion?

    • Also from Dave's columns; "how to have some real "old-fashioned" Halloween fun! Start by gathering these materials: a commercial air compressor, an acetylene torch, a marine flare gun and 200 pounds of boiled pig brains. Next, select a neighbor who ..."
  • The Silver Gryphon has one of the main characters suggesting that a monster threatening her partner can "do several highly improbable, athletically difficult, and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish."
  • Edward Gorey wrote what must be the apogee of this trope, an illustrated short story called The Curious Sofa: a pornographic work, in which, depending on your point of view, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happens until the very end, or a group of people spend the most perverted week imaginable. "Colonel Gilbert and his wife, Louise, came in after dinner; both of them had wooden legs, with which they could do all sort of entertaining tricks." "They called up to Alice, who, having put on an ingeniously constructed bathing slip, met them in the pool." "Later, Reginald, another remarkably well-set-up young man from the village, provided everyone with the most astonishing little device." And the ending: As soon as everybody had crowded into the room, Sir Egbert fastened shut the door, and started up the machinery inside the sofa. When Alice saw what was about to happen, she began to scream uncontrollably.....
  • In the short story "Wikihistory" by Desmond Warzel, a character helps maintain Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act by getting Hitler expelled from an Art Academy due to "an elaborate prank involving the Prefect, a goat, and a substantial quantity of olive oil."
  • In the second book of The Darksword Trilogy, Simkin whispers to the emperor of Merilon. The words "Contessa", "Chafing dish" and "Discovered naked" are audible to those around. The emperor surprises everyone by proving he can indeed laugh.
  • Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark features several examples; the method of hunting a Snark, for example, involves thimbles, care, forks, hope, a railway share, smiles and soap.
    • But at least what is used for what was explained once per fit from 3 to 8. Though not in details, sadly—like how exactly you charm a snark with soap.
  • From Forever by Robert Sheckley: "The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens' eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here."
  • Horrible Histories example: "Yay! Our gallant navy has captured the nasty Spaniards with only one small leaking boat, two men, one cannon, a pistol, a sharp stick and a sponge!"
    • Another one (from the show), where a prehistoric human is explaining in a whisper how they built Stone Henge: "Woah! And what did you do with the jelly?"
  • In the first of G K Chesterton's Father Brown stories, the priest explains how he knew master criminal Flambeau was a wrong-un: "It's that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet." The fact that none of us have ever heard of the spiked bracelet is intended to show that Father Brown's knowledge of the underworld is something special. He follows it up with what might be called Noodle Techniques: "I rather wonder you didn't stop it with the Donkey's Whistle... I couldn't have countered it even with the Spots myself; I'm not strong enough in the legs." This works because we know that criminals have picturesque names for classic scams like the Gypsy Switch (which Flambeau uses on Brown, though he doesn't call it that,) and since there really is one called the Badger Game, there might be one called the Donkey's Whistle.
    • To make matters worse, by the time Father Brown gets to the Spots, Flambeau doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Some things are too wicked even for him.
  • The second Doom novel ends with Arlene and Fly trapped in a building with the monsters, and Arlene asks Fly to get "some duct tape from the toolbox, an armload of computer switch wiring, and the biggest goddamned boot you can find!" Sort of subverted in that the next book opens with Fly and Arlene relaxing on the beach, giving their companions conflicting accounts of just how they used those objects to escape.
  • In Only The Good Spy Young, the girls consider ways of getting into an underground, highly booby-trapped vault- the last Item on the list is as follows: " That thing Bex's parents did in Dubai with liquid nitrogen, an earthquake simulator, and a ferret." They rule out this option because they don't have a ferret.
  • In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the character Jack Thorne is notorious for having pulled these on his students at the university as a form of engineering improvisation. Such assignments included constructing a chair to support a 200 pound man using only paper Q-tips and thread, pulling the answers to the final exam off the roof using only a shoebox containing licorice and toothpicks, and dropping an egg off the building and ensuring it doesn't break using only cardboard toilet paper rolls (that one famously didn't work). Eddie Carr later notes the irony when they face a similar situation making a cast for the baby Tyrannosaur, although eventually they figure it out.
  • Invoked in The Thief Lord, when an incident which the readers got to hear about in detail is only described as having involved "pasta and tomato paste".
  • In The Pale King, Toni is last seen hauling around a dozen bricks and ordering several feet of copper tubing. Given how mentally unbalanced she is, the results probably won't involve construction.
  • According to a Babylon 5 Expanded Universe novel, part of Ranger training involves telling a funny story to the other trainees. Catherine Sakai told a story about an incident from her time attending the EarthForce academy involving a hated drill instructor, a visiting senator, an exotic dancer, a keg of beer, the academy's goat mascot, and several mistaken identities. No further details are provided, except that her story was funnier than the teacher's.
  • In The Dresden Files, Harry first met Father Forthill when he asked him to sanctify an entire keg of water. We know that this holy water served to surprise some ghouls, but precisely how Harry used it is never stated.
  • From Jurgen (1919) by James Branch Cabell:

Then Jurgen tricked Phobetor by an indescribable device, wherein surprising use was made of a cheese and three beetles and a gimlet, and so cheated Phobetor out of a gray magic.

Live Action TV[edit | hide]

  • This is how every episode of MacGyver works, hence the parodies. Though we do get to see how he puts it all together, he can make anything out of anything. So if you've got Noodle Implements, he can get it done. Duct tape usually helps, though.
  • Subversion: Most of the lists of things the MythBusters need to carry out their plans only SOUND like this—but then again, why WOULD you need a piano tuner on a bomb range? Or a microwave, for that matter? Not to mention the cement truck... And then there's the pig viscera and the diving suit...The duct tape, the lard, the air tank, the Pykrete, the tongue stud, the Tesla coil and the playing cards..You know, MythBusters needs a folder all its own on here. To be fair, we see on-screen how the stuff eventually gets used, but I DARE you to come in never having watched the show before and figure out how anybody can do science with a jar of salsa, rubber cement and eight raincoats. Or a duck, some bulls, old glassware, liquid nitrogen, 400 cigarette lighters, a cell phone, silicone breast implants, some tubes of biscuit dough, an octopus, buttered toast, a semi-automatic and an airline toilet. Also, Jamie's wall in the back of M5 has many, many totes with names of these taped on them, including one allegedly containing "Raw Meat".
    • Played straight in the following exchange:

Jamie: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Adam: I think so, Jamie, but it's gonna be hard to find four oak doors and 30 feet of greased chain!

    • In Katie Tiedrich's animated parody, Adam lists of a number of decidedly-not-duct-tape supplies he's going to need, which includes seventeen gallons of pudding. Tory gets to feed the leopard.
      • WARNING! SCIENCE CONTENT! Pudding comes in more than two flavors!
  • This happened Once an Episode, at the end of Kenan and Kel. Kenan devises a Zany Scheme to make up for what happened in the episode and tells Kel to get some stuff for him and meet him somewhere.
    • The most explicit example of this trope was an episode in which Kenan's Zany Scheme was described as:

Now, get something, something else, a third thing, and meet me over there. Now come on, Nickname.

      • That worked great as a subversion to the trope, as did the exchange which caused the normally aghast Kel to say:

But I don't wanna go swimming with no cheerleaders... Wait a minute. Yes I do! Ah, here it goes!

      • One of the last episodes featured a montage of Kenan requesting Noodle Implements from Kel, and then Kel shows up with all of them.
    • Now get some hair dye, a printout from a Master Mind website and a dead yak and meet us in Santa Barbara!
      • But what about all this possum fat! "Do you have any idea how hard it was to find a fat possum"
    • "Get me a roll of toothpaste, a shower curtain, 10 bottles of apple juice, and Gameboy! and meet me at my house around seven"

[CatchPhrase: "awwwwww, here we go again"]

  • The Britcom Allo Allo had two German officers who were turned on by the waitresses with wet celery, egg whisks and flying helmets, among others.

Colonel: (in response to whether he wants the egg whisk) "No, not the egg whisk. The electric mixer!"
Yvette: (horrified gasp)

  • In an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place, Justin asks Alex's advice of how to get rid of a clingy girlfriend. She tells him he's going to need a road flare, a barrel of maple syrup and a mini trampoline. He realizes after some time what she meant by that.
  • Red Dwarf tended to allude to sex like this, although at times, they've used it for torture: "Rasputin! Bring in the bucket of soapy frogs and remove his trousers!"
    • Actually, if you think about it, it's pretty obvious what they do with those things.
    • "Rasputin! Bring hither the skin-diving suit with the bottom cut out, and unleash the rampant wildebeest!"
      • That too.
    • In the sixth series, a Running Gag involved Rimmer constantly try to cite Space Corps Directives that were pertinent to their current situation, only to completely mangle them have have Kryten inform them what they really were, usually in this fashion ("'Eight-eight-oh-nine-seven-stroke-c'? Doesn't that require a live chicken and a rabbi?")
    • When Lister learns that he's God of the Cat People:

Lister: I'm supposed to have given them five sacred laws. Five sacred laws! I've broken four of them meself. I'd have broken the fifth, but there's no sheep on board.

    • In the episode Legion, Kryten drops references to some literal Noodle Implements, as the crew attempt to use Mamosian anti-matter chopsticks:

Kryten: For my cooking duties, I'm programmed to be proficient in all known off-world eating techniques, including Jovian Boogle Hoops, and the often-lethal Mercurian Boomerang Spoon.

    • Not to mention several instances of ice cubes and any pocket cavity...
  • In Blackadder III: "Baldrick, believe me, eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me and this pencil."
  • In the first episode of Salute Your Shorts, a kid is threatened with an "awful waffle". It apparently involves maple syrup and a tennis racket.
    • This is actually a real camp hazing ritual where you pour syrup on someone's stomach, then smack them repeated with the tennis racket so a sticky grid of marks is made. However, we never see it actually performed, and later episodes add more and more unrelated items to the mix.
  • In one episode of Stargate Atlantis, Sheppard finds himself stuck with Lucius Lavin, trying to come up with a plan to rescue his teammates. Lavin throws out some truly ridiculous ideas which end with him suggesting they get "a magnifying glass and some tape. .....Some poisoned tape."
  • In one early episode of Malcolm in the Middle, the boys were locked in their room until one of them confessed to some misdeed. When we see them next, they're wearing helmets with flashlights taped to them, have strapped pillows to themselves, and are trying to remove a light fixture from the ceiling. Malcolm comments "I swear, on paper this was a great idea." In the DVD commentary, the writers admit that they had no specific escape plan in mind and had just come up with something random.
  • From Castle

Esposito: What does that thing do?
Ryan: Looks like a potato peeler.
Esposito: Oh that is nasty.
Castle: And illegal in 12 states.

  • Although J.D.'s fantasies in Scrubs usually don't fit this trope, as we see exactly how his wacky schemes play out in his head, we do get a straight example in the episode "Their Story", in which rather than hearing J.D.'s thoughts, we can hear the thoughts of Jordan, Ted and The Todd:

The Todd (thinking): Oh great, there he goes off into his fantasy world. Now I'm stuck here waiting until he snaps out of it with some weird comment.
J.D. (coming out of one of his fantasies): But we'd have to find a whole lot of gnomes!
The Todd (unimpressed): That's helpful.

  • Friends: In preparation for a night out with an old friend who always gets him into weird adventures, Ross packs his passport, an extra pair of socks, and a snakebite kit. To which Chandler rolls his eyes: "It's not going to be exactly like last time!" Although Chandler prepared himself with some Canadian money, since at least one adventure involved a boat headed for Nova Scotia...
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer does this with sex scenes in the (fictional) movie Le Banquet D'Amelia:

Buffy: I've never actually seen... well, uh, from the title I thought it was about food.
Angel: Well... there was food.
Buffy: Right, the scene with the... food.
Buffy: We can't actually do any of those things. You'd lose your soul, and besides, I don't even own a kimono.

    • A possibly slightly more innocuous example from Season 2:

Devon: What does a girl need to do to impress you, Oz?
Oz: It involves a feather boa and the theme from A Summer Place... I can't discuss it here.

Bernard: I did do Belly Savalas.
Bernard: (In a flashback, drunk) "What? I can't hear you Belly Savalas!" (pulls lollipop out of belly button) "Who loves you, baby?"
Fran: You didn't do Cobumbo, did you?
Bernard: No. (pause) I didn't have any cigars.

Presenter: stop us from revealing your name, the name of the three other people involved, the youth organization to which they belong, and the shop where you bought the equipment.

      • One audio version of Blackmail has Michael Palin narrating the blackmailed videotape (because there is no video to go along with it).

Narrator: Wait, what's she doing to his - is that a chicken up there - no, no, that's just the way she's holding the grapefruit. Oh, ho, ho! [buzzer sounds]

    • There's Gavin Millar(rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)'s speech about Neville Shunt's railway drama, which is essentially one Noodle Implement after another in rapid succession.
      • "...and the railway crossing: an electric elk called Simon."
    • John Cleese introduces one audio segment with '...and several butcher's aprons.'
    • "...with a large piece of wet paper. Turn the paper over - turn the paper over keeping your eye on the camel, and paste down the edge of the sailor's uniform, until the word 'Maudling' is almost totally obscured. Well, that's one way of doing it."
    • Let's face it; the show is filled with this trope.
  • Night Court. Judge Harry has left his job and begun collecting bizarre objects to organize the "ultimate prank." (He never plays it.) Averted in that, at the end, we see what he's built and can conclude what the prank must have been intended to be.
    • For the record, It involved the Statue of Liberty and the world's largest pair of goofy glasses.
  • From It's a Living, we find the following description of a man one of the girls met in a bar. "He knows ten ways to kill a man with a drinking straw! Eleven if you let him keep the wrapper!"
  • On an episode of Barney Miller, Harris has gone undercover to make a porno. (As director, boys and girls.) At one point while the squad is watching the finished product, Inspector Luger gets a look of queasy awe and says, "I used to eat that cereal."
    • For the record, Harris apparently makes a cameo. "Thank you, Black Stallion," is the line heard, IIRC. At which point Barney says, "Harris!" and Harris responds, "Well, Hitchcock did it!"
  • In 3rd Rock from the Sun, Tommy manages to divert the massive hotel bill they've racked up onto George Takei's account with a laptop, a modem, the keycard to their room...and a shower cap.
  • Men Behaving Badly, Gary is trying to get out of his impending marriage by imposing ridiculous provisos on Dorothy: "And you have to consent to any sexual act, even if it involves..." (casts about wildly) "...enormous vegetables!"
  • The Drew Carey Show: At the Tracy Bowl I, Drew tries to humiliate Lewis.


  • On Frasier, Sam Malone whispers Niles some advice on how "to really put a smile on Maris's face." Niles responds by asking where he's supposed to find whipped cream and a car battery at this hour. In another episode, Bulldog suggests a party game,

All right Doc, I'm going to need a blindfold, whipped cream and a glass coffee table. [everyone looks mystified] What? Nobody went to camp?

    • Isn't it obvious? He intends to attach the car battery via alligator clips to her nipples, and the whipped cream, well that's pretty self explanatory.
      • Its Maris. The alligator clips obviously would go on Niles's nipples.
    • In the episode "Daphne Does Dinner", a visual version of this occurs, as the episode opens in medias res as infuriated guests storm out at the tail end of the Crane family's bizarre, unmitigated disaster of a dinner party. Something about Tourette's syndrome, live goats, flaming kababs, and Martin pretending to be a French count — and the kicker is that this could totally be part of a real episode of Frasier, so it doubles as an Offscreen Moment of Awesome.
  • In Torchwood:

Ianto:'re interested, I've still got that stopwatch.
Jack: (confused)
Ianto: Well. Think about it. Lots of things you can do with a stopwatch.
Jack: (grinning with understanding) Oh, yeah. I can think of a few.
Ianto: There's quite a list.
Jack: I'll send the others home early. See you in my office in ten.
Ianto: (pulls out the stopwatch) That's ten minutes and counting.

  • In Stephen Colbert's Christmas Special, after a long (and entirely bleeped out) explanation of what Jews use mistletoe for, Jon Stewart ends: "with a lambshank!"
    • He got back into the act on his show. While speaking about the changing of 90-year-old Canadian magazine The Beaver's name to Canada's History because the magazine's title was getting blocked by on-line porn filters, Colbert mentioned that the Canadians must not know that in America, the term "Canada's History" is a euphemism for a sex act so depraved he couldn't describe it on television. He could only mention that it involved moose antlers, a jug of maple syrup, and the Stanley Cup.
    • And again on The Daily Show. When Jon Stewart and John Oliver are discussing torture, at one point John Oliver pulls a turkey baster out of his pocket and suggests that Jon "use it on him." We never find out exactly what he means by that, although we can guess...
  • In an episode of NCIS, the team needs to question a pair of teens, but Gibbs refuses to use actual interrogation techniques. Tony picks up the phone and tells the "person" on the other end that he needs to requisition a pair of "genital cuffs", pausing briefly to ask the teens if they have any family history of testicular cancer. When he leaves, the teens spend some time trying to figure out if genital cuffs really exist, and what their specific uses could be—and their fear leads them to reveal the information the team is looking for, right in the range of Tony's off-the-hook phone.
  • The opening quotes of an episode of Andromeda described a variety of bizarre implements not the least of which was a nuclear device followed by an explanation 'Surprise party for the ambassador'
    • Specifically: "Requested: One Mark V ECM unit, 1000 km of Fullerene cable, one low-yield nuclear warhead. Purpose: Surprise party for foreign dignitary. --Argosy Special Operations requisition form, CY 9512"
  • In an episode of The Muppet Show, Gonzo the Great volunteers to perform his new act in front of a hostile audience. All he needs is a typewriter. When Kermit the Frog tells him they don't have a typewriter, Gonzo says, "Then I'll use a cow!" Unfortunately Gonzo is pelted with rotten vegetables and booed off the stage before the details of the act are revealed.
    • Other implements shown on stage before the curtain fell included a trampoline and a flaming hoop.
  • Textbook example in How I Met Your Mother, when Victoria tells her most embarrassing story which involves, "a game of truth or dare, a can of whipped cream, and the hot tub at my grandparents' retirement home." Ted then freezes the image telling his kids the story is too inappropriate to tell them, but it wasn't that great. Cut to Marshall saying, "That is the greatest story ever!"
  • Tom Bergeron, when he hosted America's Funniest Home Videos, he talked about how he wasn't able to swear on the show. He then launched into a bleeped-out rant that ended with him saying "and some SHEEP!"
  • In an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Hilda and Zelda are preparing a surprise party for Salem and decide to cast a spell to see his "ideal party". The spell transports them to Ancient Rome right in front of Caligula...

Caligula: [to a servant] Get these women some fig leaves. [grinning sleazily at Hilda and Zelda] I'm going to show them the secret handshake.
Zelda: I've seen enough! [hastily teleports them back]

Chris: Everything you could ever want from an evening. Songs, choir girls, colourful costumes, fellatio, rabbits...
Maxxie: Rabbits?
Chris: Don't ask man.

  • The reason behind the Food Network's Last Man Standing show Chopped. What dish would you make in 30 minutes that incorporates bone-in pork loin, watercress, taro root, and a melon?
  • Beakman's World: One mysterious experiment calls for a bowling ball, a chainsaw, a Macintosh apple, and a picture of Raymond Burr in short pants sitting on vinyl furniture.
  • From the Bolivia Special episode for Top Gear (subverted, in that they used nearly everything):

Richard: [Voiceover] Finally, we were all off the ramp, and as a reward, the producers gave us a box of things to help us survive the perils that lay ahead.
Jeremy: [Going through box] ...Some rubber tubing... Durex...
Richard: Condoms?!
Jeremy: Vaseline... Tampax... and er... Viagra.
James: I know we're going to be in the jungle a bit together but, that's a bit extreme.
Richard: What kind of party are they planning?

  • The House episode "House Divided":

Wilson: Every time I go to one of your parties, I end up embarrassing myself in some new and unexpected way.
House: That whole thing with the duck was hardly unexpected.

    • And "House Training" brings us the following gem (Cuddy and Wilson at a rather weird art exhibition):

Cuddy: That is such a bad idea... There is no way that won't cause damage to the large intestine.
Wilson: Are you keeping us here to torture me? (Leaning forward.) Is that a - bicycle pump?

    • An episode focusing on Wilson gives only brief glimpses into the patient of the week; House's completely unexplained first theory revolved around the fact that his patient was a tennis pro.
  • As announced on Argumental one of John Sessions sexual fantasies involves Liza Minnelli, a crossbow and an alsatian.
  • Played with on Whose Line Is It Anyway? with the Party Quirks game. Collin Mochrie plays an overly dramatic private investigator finding ridiculous clues to a murder.

Colin: What we have here is a pickle.. A piece of thread... And a Don Ho album.
Chip: You're MacGyver!

    • Another game, Scenes From A Hat, had the topic "Unusual things for a neighbour to ask to borrow".

Colin: Hi, I need some monkey testicles and a cola.

  • Burn Notice's Michael Westen is an expert at turning collections of ordinary items into implements of doom, including the old standby.

Michael: Fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart.

    • Averted in this case, because we see exactly what he uses the duct tape for.
  • In a story presented on Weekend Update of the 30 January 2010 episode of Saturday Night Live, a Roman Catholic priest in Illinois was arrested for attempting to shoplift some butter and a sofa cover from a Wal-Mart. The joke was, "It's unfortunate that they didn't follow him home so they could at least find out what part 2 of that plan was."
  • One of the more memorable editions of To Catch a Predator involved a man who requested his prey to have a cat and cool whip when he came. We never do find out what he was going to do with this.
  • Titus: "Look in your medicine cabinet. If it can fit in your ear, my mom can kill you with it. Except a wet-nap, you know, with a wet-nap she can only maim you."
  • On Channel 4's Alternative Election Night (on the night of the 2010 UK election) Jimmy Carr noted that he's not allowed to say what he really thinks of the election candidates until after the results are in. We then see a message of what he'd supposedly like to say to Nick Griffin, in which every word is censored except 'car park' and 'tethered to an alligator'.
  • In episode 2.02 of White Collar, "Need to Know", in which FBI Special Agent Peter Burke and Mozzie, a criminal, have three hours to retrieve $10,000 hidden by their mutual friend Neal Caffrey:

Mozz: But first, some ground rules. I want full immunity about anything you may see or hear tonight.
Peter: Let's just say I'll owe you one.
Mozzie: I accept your counter-offer. I need your shoelace.
Peter: My shoelaces are going to get us the ten thousand dollars.
Mozzie: Rule number two: no further questions.
Peter: [as he unlaces one shoe and gives Mozz the shoelace] I'm doing this more out of a morbid curiosity than anything else.
Mozzie: I'll also need a magnet and a Sports Illustrated.
Peter: This is a scavenger hunt now?
Mozzie: I refer you to rule number two.
Peter: Magnet...No Sports Illustrated, I've got the New York Journal magazine supplement.
Mozzie: "That'll do, pig. That'll do." Oh, I also need a twenty-dollar bill. [Peter gives him a twenty] Great, thanks. [Mozzie uses the magnet and shoelace to retrieve a hidden key] Just a key, yes. Another piece of the puzzle. And don't forget, a hammer, a crowbar, and a radio.
Peter: Scavenger hunt!
Peter: Jimmy Buffett.
Mozzie: Right.

    • Partially subverted in that Mozzie eventually uses most of the items on camera; however, while we hear him wield the hammer and crowbar we can't see what he smashes, so we don't know exactly why he's in such a hurry to leave afterward.


  • In Psych, Shawn Spencer's plan to deal with hostile reptilian aliens requires a Speak-N-Spell and seven pounds of mashed potatoes.
  • In the second season of Chuck, Morgan is trying to get his girlfriend to not want to move in with him, enlisting the aid of Jeff and Lester to repulse her with weird hobbies and odd demands. It doesn't work, leaving them to wonder if perhaps Anna is Unrepulsable. Jeff insists that he can repulse ANY woman.

Jeff: No, sir, not on my watch.
Morgan: What are you suggesting?
Jeff: You're going to need a quart of peanut oil, some bubble wrap, and as much yarn as you can find.

  • In A Bit of Fry and Laurie, this is combined with In My Language, That Sounds Like...: the interpreter says he could demonstrate what "after-sale service" meant in his language, "if I had a goat, and four pairs of marigold washing-up gloves, a very short billiard cue, and a local radio weatherman. --But that would only hint at what the word means."
  • Doctor Who; in "The Impossible Astronaut" the Doctor asks for "A SWAT team ready to mobilize, street-level maps of Florida, a pot of coffee, twelve Jammie Dodgers, and a Fez." He's sitting in the Oval Office while saying this.
    • At the end of Blink, as the Doctor is dashing out, he says that things are happening,

"Things Happening. Well... four things. Well... four things and a lizard."

    • It should be pointed out that while he's saying this, he's carrying a long-bow, while Martha is carrying a quiver of arrows.
  • Royal Canadian Air Farce:

Barack Obama: Larry, I admit my greatest moral failure in high school was using marijuana, cocaine and alcohol. But there's no truth to the rumor I went to the sophomore toga party with a duck and a can of Crisco.

  • The Addams Family: You're never entirely sure how Pugsley manages to get money out of a living piggy bank.
  • Col. Flagg from M*A*S*H was infamous for this. In the midst of preparing for a manhunt, he gives Radar the following instructions:

Col. Flagg: And, uh, round up a box of scorpions. About a dozen.
Radar: You mean, uh, "scorpions" scorpions?
Col. Flagg: Big ones.
Hawkeye: What the hell are you gonna do with a box of scorpions?
Col. Flagg: It's personal. Gift for a friend.
Col. Flagg: If you can't find scorpions... get two snakes and a rat.

  • In Game of Thrones, while "confessing" his "crimes", Tyrion Lannister starts confessing one incident, but is cut off before he can give more than the noodle implements.

Tyrion: I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel--*

  • In Pair of Kings, Brady and Boomer are trying to prevent the dark side from reaching Zadoc(a stone statue) which will allow him to back to life. Leading to this exchange:

Brady: Since the dark side has moved 2 feet, we're gonna buy this island some time and move Zadoc back 4 feet.
Boomer: Impossible! We'll need like 20 yards, a thick rope, an intricate pully system, and at least several strong men.
Brady: I got 2 skateboards and a stick of butter.
Boomer: That'll work too.

  • In The Young Ones episode "Bomb" three things Vyvyan needs to use to dispatch the bomb are "the drill, the hedge trimmers, and some ordinary household bleach."
  • In iWant My Website Back, Mandy's plan involves three zebras. She doesn't get to the rest of her list, because Sam immediately cuts her off.
  • Mock the Week has a game called "If This Is The Answer, What Is The Question?" (rather like Jeopardy!). Sometimes the words given seem to make up a set of noodle implements, and the panelists have great fun with this trope by suggesting what the items might be used for, with varying degrees of detail and/or Squick.
  • Wings: Roy finds the subject of one's parents having sex distasteful:

Roy: Look, my mother was a saint. My father was a pillar of the community. The last thing I want to do is imagine mom wrapped in cellophane and dad wearing tights and a miner's helmet. I didn't wake up and ask for a drink of water again for 25 years.

Music[edit | hide]

  • Sufjan Stevens wrote a song titled "To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region: I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and It Involves an Inner Tube, Bath Mats, and 21 Able-bodied Men." It has no explanation and no lyrics.[2]
  • From Rent's "La Vie Boheme:" "Mimi Marquez, clad only in bubble wrap, will perform her famous lawnchair-handcuff dance to the sounds of iced tea being stirred." (The line is spoken in jest, but the mental image is nonetheless interesting.)
    • And then there's "Maureen Johnson, back from her spectacular one-night engagement at the 11th Street lot, will sing Native American tribal chants backwards through her vocoder, while accompanying herself on the electric cello . . . which she has never studied."
  • From a parody of Mister Wizard on the Doctor Demento show:

Mr Wizard: Today Timmy, we're going to learn how to make a nuclear reactor out of this spatula, an old inner tube and some macaroni noodles!
Timmy: Gee Mister Wizard, aren't nuclear reactors dangerous?
Mr Wizard: No Timmy, but macaroni noodles are, that's why I'm going to have to ask you to wear these safety goggles.

  • Ray Stevens' classic "It's Me Again, Margaret" describes an obscene phone caller, who in the last verse uses his one phone call after his arrest to call the titular Margaret one last time. He informs her that when he gets out, he's coming over with a weed whacker, a live chicken, and some peach preserves. The video goes one further, having Margaret show up at the police station with said items.
    • Another Ray Stevens song "Shriner's Convention" featured some spoken lines where Bubba the Illustrious Potentate is scolding a Shriner named Coy over the phone. Several Noodle Incidents and implements are mentioned:

Oh! Hello! Coy? Where have you been? No, you wasn't at the meeting! Well, I found out that at three o'clock this mornin' you was out there in your Fruit of the Loom's in the motel swimmin' pool with a bunch of them waitresses from the cocktail lounge! I just hope Charlene don't find out about this, Coy! What? Well, how'd you get that big motorcycle up there on the high dive, Coy?

  • "Fairie's Aire and Death Waltz." (One piece, two pages, more may exist.)
    • . ....The Hell?
      • Tune the Uke? Please tell me I just got told to Have a Gay Old Time...
      • It means "Ukelele". Mind OUT of the gutter.
      • It's got penguins and explosives. There are less logical assumptions.
  • Unsure whether this belongs in here or Western Animation, since it's a Real Song Theme Tune, but Bowling For Soup's "Today is Gonna Be a Great Day" lists supplies required for... something. Said list includes, among other things: yogurt, gumballs, rubber bands, a unicycle, and a beach towel. Given the show in question, I'd say that a "Great Day" is what we should be expecting, by this point.
  • The Traveling Wilburys' "Cool Dry Place" has a moderately eclectic set of things, many of which are musical instruments though the list also includes "old athletic shoes" and "things that sometimes hum." However, they're not actually being used to build or do anything, they just apparently all need to be stored in a cool dry place.
  • Tom Waits' "What's He Building?"
  • A mammoth one in The Fiery Furnances' "Seven Silver Curses"; Matt's grandmother and her sister are running all over town collecting items to cast a spell on her husband so he'll stop cheating on her:

Quick, for the potion, we have to get three dozen crabapples that fell off a raggedy old tree right in the southwestern corner of Columbus Park!
Faster, we have to go up to Caputo's Produce and Fruit Market on Harlem and get the garden snake that lives in the banana bin!
Hurry, we have to get the mercury out of the old thermometer they have through the north-facing doors to the left by the shoe-shine boys in the lobby of the Monadnock building!
And don't be late, for you must get the silver out of the teeth of one George Karmalitis, who as we speak lies dead under a dirty wool blanket in the basement of the morgue of Laretto hospital:
The silver teeth of a man killed by a jealous wife!

  • The song "Odalisque" by The Decemberists contains this line: "What do we do with ten baby shoes, a kit-bag full of marbles, and a broken billiard cue?"

Music Video[edit | hide]

  • "Gimme a bottle of anything... and a glazed donut... to go!"

Newspaper Comics[edit | hide]

  • Garfield and Odie devise a plan to get Jon out of bed that involves a wagon full of random objects. Jon gets up immediately upon seeing them... or whatever they crafted it into. Which may have been Garfield's Plan all along.
    • In this new Garfield strip, we have a rather hilarious example. What on earth happened to Jon that would require these...random objects?
      • A belt to hold up the remains of his pants, a Fire extinguisher to put them out, and... I don't know about the fishbowl.
        • The fishbowl is to help put out the pants if the Fire extinguisher runs out.
  • In Dilbert, Alice temporarily becomes a telecommuter. The Pointy Haired Boss and Asok develop a plan to get her back in her cubicle, which involved tranquilizer darts, a giant flatbed truck, and a giant shoehorn (harpoon optional).
    • It's not that hard to figure out which each of them is used for, knowing in the context that Alice has gained considerable weight due to sitting in home all day.
    • Not to mention they scrap that plan in favor of building a giant cubicle around her house.
  • Brewster Rockit. Read the strips for September 18 and 19 of 2007 for a glorious example. The July 20, 2004 strip contains an example including a chicken suit and monkeys in space.

Radio[edit | hide]

  • An implied example: The Goon Show, "Tales of Old Dartmoor". Grythpype-Thynne asks Neddie for a "strange request". Neddie announces he'll do it at once. After some receding footsteps, most of a minute of strange sound effects including grinding, slams, bells, and then approaching footsteps, Neddie returns and says...

Ned Seagoon: What was it you asked for again?
Grythpype-thynne: Never mind, I'll smoke one of my own.

  • Another of many possible Goon Show examples: the episode 'The International Christmas Pudding' contains the following list of 'vital equipment':
    • One knee-action, self-reciprocating Christmas Pudding gun.
    • One hand painted inflatable Christmas Pudding decoy with rubber hollow.
    • One portable plastic and gravel road.
    • One long bent thing with a sort of lump on the end.
    • One waterproof cover for same.
    • One same.
    • Thirty-three boxes of yellow kosher boots.
    • Another long bent thing with a sort of lump on the end.
    • One uncooked leather trilby with sugar feather.
    • One sixty foot explodable granite statue with built in plunger.
    • Detailed plans of what to do with long bent thing with a sort of lump on the end.
  • Douglas Richardson manages to steal some extremely expensive whiskey without getting caught, despite the fact that he is on everyone's watch list, using nail varnish and a non-existent television aeriel.
    • The following year he manages the same feat, even though he is constantly supervised and frisked twice. He used a treatment for nail-biting, that time.

Stand Up Comedy[edit | hide]

  • One of Jeff Foxworthy's jokes involves the fact that singles have more interesting sex lives than married folk. "So there I was, tied down to her bed. Had motor oil smeared all over me. She came in with a saddle and a pair of jumper cables..."
  • Australian comedic trio Tripod had a song explaining what happens when Mummy and Daddy love each other very much... basically Daddy installs a special sling from the ceiling, Mummy wears a pig mask and Daddy wears scuba gear, then they put on their favourite H.R. Pufnstuf video and it's apparently on for young and old. Who knew?
  • Comedian Rich Hall joking about how easy it is to buy absolutely anything in Walmart:

'OK, try aisle 12.'

    • It's true though. Where else can you save the world on a beer budget?
  • George Carlin's famous bit "A Place For My Stuff", as it progresses, tends to accumulate more and more Noodle Implements.
    • Another great line from Carlin (when describing the removal of a growth): "This was a part of my head a minute ago! But not anymore; I pried the bastard off with paint thinner and a Phillip's-head screwdriver."
  • Carlos Mencia once related an incident where he attempted to purchase vaseline and jumper cables (for his car repair) and a box of condoms (favor for a friend who was out). The cashier came to the conclusion that these were all for the same event and asked "Dude, what are you going to do to her!?!"
  • During one of his shows Larry the Cableguy said he once went to Cosco and bought a 10 gallon drum of ky jelly and 5000 cocktail weiners, just to mess with the head of the cashier.
  • British comedian Lee Evans discusses how detergent ads always come on when a serial killer is on the loose:

There's always an advert with a wife sorting her husband's washing, and she's all "Oil? Blood? And grass stains? Ha!" she not the slightest bit fucking suspicious?!

Tabletop Games[edit | hide]

  • World of Darkness game books describe each skill or ability with a paragraph or so vignette describing a situation in which it's used. For the Intimidate ability in one Old World of Darkness book, a character asks for a combination of threatening items (but ones which don't make much sense when you put them together). He reveals to his companion after the subject squealed that he was leaving it up to the subject's imagination.
  • At least one Forgotten Realms novel and one game accessory mentions Green elf druidess Aerilaya who "made vague comments about being involved in a scandal with a Chauntean monk, an oak tree, and a cask of ale (as well as [...] garrison commander and an elven archer with a traveling circus), and implied that her life would be somewhat more sedate" after retreat from that continent.
    • The Dean of Abjuration from the Wizards Guild of Raven Bluff dislikes gnomes to the point of rudeness and not even speaking directly to his fellow Dean of Illusion. He refuses to speak about the incident which caused this, but it's known to involve an obelisk, a five-headed dragon and talking spiders.
    • In spin-a-yarn the first of Shorter Buckleswashers adventuring band was killed in an incident involving "a narcoleptic dragon, several angst-ridden teen-aged mages, a flying carpet that was convinced it should be their leader rather than a mere possession, and a magical glowing chicken that turned out to be a transformed and furious drow priestess."
  • In a scene from the DVD that accompanied the Demon Hunters core rule book, one of the Demon Hunters, Gabriel, is addressing the audience. He is relaying advice his mentor once gave him saying, "Whatever you do..." which fades out to static. Through the static, a few words can occasionally be made out. Eventually, the picture returns, with Gabriel still speaking. He continues, "...with a yak. That's the worst way to go."

Put me in the rack, Put me in the pillory, But don't let me go like Sir Edmund Hillary.

1549. The totalitarian government tends to notice large purchases of cows, trebuchets and surveying gear.

  • Any time a Junker builds a Magitech device in Deadlands: Hell on Earth, you can get a list like this quite easily. Justified since it's After the End; They're generally working with scraps from other devices.
  • One Pathfinder expansion lets your bard tell a story so funny, it can free creatures turned to stone. The description notes that this story is about a humorless old woman who was eventually made to smile by "increasingly unlikely events involving a cart of horse manure, a king, and a flying carpet."

Toys[edit | hide]

Video Games[edit | hide]

  • "I need scissors! 61!"
  • From this very wiki's Cherry Tapping page: Ganondorf, arguably the epitome of Nintendo evil, can be defeated by: A butterfly net, an empty bottle, nuts, and a fishing pole.
  • Quest for Glory IV has this in The Ultimate Joke, a joke so funny it's guaranteed to make anyone who hears it become paralyzed with laughter on hearing it the first time (it is said to work only once). The joke is never told, the narrator (none other than John Rhys Davies) only mention that it is "...the one with the wizard (chuckles) and the farmer's daughter... (further chuckling)" when you opt to tell the joke to the BigBad, so he's stuck laughing and you can kill him with a spear.
  • World of Warcraft uses this trope in several of the female Draenei's 'flirt' and 'silly' emotes, including one involving butter and jumper cables and another is a recipe involving 2 gnomes and 2 eggs. Unfortunately, the one asking about whether gnomes have a vibrate setting didn't make the final cut.
  • From Conker's Bad Fur Day:

Panther King: You know what happened last time.
Professor: [nervously] Only too well, only too well...
Panther King: Don't make me get out the duct tape again.

  • The hero of The Secret of Monkey Island asks the friendly natives of the titular island about the whereabouts of his true love who has been kidnapped by a ship crewed by ghost pirates. Unfortunately, it didn't come out quite right.

Guybrush Threepwood: I'm looking for thirty dead guys and a woman.
Meathead: Whoah, I'm not sure what you're planning there but count us out!

"I got through that level with a chain, a Fairy Godmother, a tranqulizer gun, and a baseball bat. You?"

    • Also a fair description of Kingdom of Loathing. Many of the items have a logic as to how they fit together, it's just that one wouldn't normally think to combine a skewer and a rat appendix to make a rat appendix kabob.
  • The climax (ahem) of Leather Goddesses of Phobos involves handing a list of objects, one by one, to your sidekick so he or she can build a device to save the world. The items are: A common household blender, six feet of rubber hose, a pair of cotton balls, an eighty-two degree angle, a headlight from a 1933 Ford, a white mouse, a photo of Jean Harlow (or Douglas Fairbanks), and a Cleveland phone book. Despite the game's naughty theme, the objects aren't used to build some sort of sex toy.
  • In Oblivion, the required offering for Sheogorath's quest is a spool of yarn, a head of lettuce, and a soul gem. Justified in that he * is* the Lord of Madness.
    • Just to qualify, this one has nothing to do with the Shivering Isles expansion. By "Sheogorath's quest", it means one of those Daedric quests you can do if you find one of those Daedra statues in the vanilla game.
  • In Tonic Trouble, Doc constructs a catapult out of six each of the following items: springs, propellors, jumping stones, domino stones and piggy banks. While in this case, we do know what he does with them, we don't ever get to see how.]
  • One of the medic's quotes from StarCraft II.

Medic: Here's some lotion, a comb, and a blowtorch. Good luck!

  • Due to the nature of the item system of Dwarf Fortress, some descriptions of events a player does, especially in adventure mode, can seem like this. Even if the character is a master thrower and picks up whatever they can find, the descriptions can just be confusing.

Man, this is just like that time with an bronze giant, two whales, some sand, that flaming bush, and the king's gaurd. Well, actually, I don't have camelskin bag this time.

    • Then there's strange moods, which will leave you curious about what they intend to do with a lump of tetrahedrite, two cut gemstones, some alpaca wool, a wolf skull, a mussel shell and some platinum bars.
  • Team Fortress 2: The Heavy reveals that he has a PHD in Russain Literature in Poker Night At the Inventory. When asked if it is useful in his line of work, Heavy claims, "More than you think..."

Web Animation[edit | hide]

Montrose: What we need is a distraction.
Ellis: If only my uncle were here. He could do things with a beet and a chicken that would distract anybody.

    • and

Ellis: I was getting tired of the nightmares I had where you'd murder me in my bed with an eggbeater and some perseverance.

Sarge: Donut! Initiate 'Traitorous Simmons Plan Number 11'!
(Donut then shoots Grif)
Grif: (OW!)
Sarge: No! Number 11!
Donut: Where the hell am I going to get a steamroller?!

    • Also Andy, the sentient bomb, which was build by Tex from parts of an old protocol druid and other of "her personal items".
    • In Chapter 7 of Recreation:

Sarge: Alright, let's get going. Everybody packed?
Caboose: Yep.
Grif [to Caboose]: Where's your stuff?
Caboose: Oh, I only carry a washcloth and six toothbrushes.
Grif: I'm gonna assume that makes sense to you.
Caboose: Yeah, it does.
Grif: Yeah, I thought so. We'll just go ahead and leave that one alone.

  • Lampshaded and played straight in Apocalypse Lane, when there is an incident where they need to break into a safe. Lampshaded when Mickey drunk on a vodka martini so he thinks he's James Bond asks for yogurt... because it helps him think. Played straight in the next scene.
  • Sometimes representing math via interpretative dance can get tricky.
  • Just about any Improbable Weapon User will have this.
    • How does Setzer attack with dice?
    • People must really not like the words in books or the notes played with a musical instrument. Or they're hit over the head with them.
    • We can think of several ways Janice attacks with carrots. None of them are fun.
  • The Homestar Runner short "Best Caper Ever" featured the end result of a prank where Strong Bad and The Cheat stranded Homestar on a tiny ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. However, Strong Bad and The Cheat are both bugged because all they can remember is stealing Homestar's melonade and The Cheat whizzing in it, and thus they can't properly gloat about their success.

Webcomics[edit | hide]

  • In Everyday Adventures of Joovia & Friends our redhead heroine, Joovia just got her new favorite toy. She ran into Jeremy at their spot in the coffee shop.
  • In Order of the Stick, Elan's original plan to get to Azure City involved a corkscrew, some skis, a box of soap, a basketball, a traffic cone, dressing Thog in a leprechaun costume, and stuffing a giant wooden alpaca with potato salad. It should be noted, however, that, Prestige Class notwithstanding (and he didn't even have one at time), Elan is not precisely the sharpest spoon in the drawer, so his plan wasn't necessarily something a normal person would expect to work. And yes, "spoon" is the intended word. This was, of course, lampshaded in the episode's title: "As Good an Explanation as is Forthcoming"
    • Later, when they need an excuse to leave the room...

Elan: Uh, dad? Haley and I need to go have sex.
Haley: Come on, V, and bring the cat.
Tarquin: ...Huh.

"For this performance, the Mechanikopera has recreated the original choreography, including all seventeen soup waiters, three ladder teams and the original roller skating giraffe!"

Is it the plan where they need finger paint, water skis, poker chips and inflatable cacti?
It's the plan where they disable the teleporter.
Too bad, the other one sounds more interesting.

  • In this strip of |Bite Me, Claire declares that in order to start a good-size revolutionary riot, all she needs is three tomatoes, a size nine-and-a-half shoehorn, a bit of string and a small wooden spoon. When questioned, she sighs "They ALWAYS ask about the spoon..."
  • We get one of these near the end of Narbonic, though it does get explained over the course of the next few weeks:

Dave: I have to retool the teleporter, crash the Dave Conspiracy, and buy a large bucket of fried chicken. Fast.

  • One of the many deaths Kaguya and Mokou of Touhou fame inflicted upon each other in this installment of Touhou Nekokayou apparently involved "a toilet plunger, the Buddha's stone bowl, a kendama, a Christmas tree, and three stuffed rabbits" and it "took weeks to find all the patches from (Mokou's) overalls again." (The creator "just wanted to make a comic involving death-by-noodle-implements.")
  • A running gag in Cheer involves a character coming up with a plan that requires "two geese, a roll of duct tape, twenty-three toothpicks, and some sodium benzoate." It was initially coined by Tamara, though Jo and 32 have also used it.
  • In this comic, a guest artist actually speculates on how exactly those items could be used to "crush spirits and ruin lives, all while delivering a healthy dose of funny". He ultimately concludes that he has no idea but that they can set a "genuine sense of fear amongst those with weak constitutions".
  • This Insecticomics comic.
  • Starslip Crisis. "Remember the Harakkon disaster of '37? That was me. And six trained goldfish." (Link.)

Aldus Vanderbeam: I also learned I wasn't good at talking to nude models, art professors, the dean of the art department, and campus police. You will never hear that story.

Dr. Lee: You're threatening me with something you're not authorized to tell me about.
Number Fifteen: Okay, okay, it involves walnuts. Don't ask me again.

Scout: Look, everyone loves bacon, and everyone loves fireworks! What could possibly go wrong?

    • Apparently, jury tampering was required to escape responsibility for the resulting Noodle Incident.
  • This Ménage à 3 strip lists "Zii's spectacular get lucky kit. Satisfaction guaranteed!": "Condoms, lube, different sized condoms, music to get her in the mood... Good. Then you need about 4 liters of canola oil, a pair of hard-soled boots, two different types of rubber hose, a pair of handcuffs and an extra set of keys..."
  • In Gunnerkrigg Court Kat constructs a fully functional anti-gravity unit out of a thermos and coat hangers. (And she wasn't even that interested in the anti-gravity field itself; she just wanted to be able to run her protein experiment for a Science Fair.)
  • A little bit more obvious than other examples, but Adam and Jamie from Irregular Webcomic "seem to have vanished completely attempting to pull a tooth with string, a doorknob, and 30 sticks of dynamite".
  • In Chasing the Sunset, the majority of Leaf's plans seem to be something like this. While in the Void, he decides that, in order to escape, he'd need three sticks, a sheet of paper, and two hundred spans of thread.
  • Played with in this Xkcd.

"And you were thrown out of microsoft headquarters for...trying to feed a squirrel through a fax machine?"
"I forgot about that! It was part of an argument with Steve Ballmer about Vista. Which I won, by the way."

'Cause in this world, no one ----ing cares about you. No one gives a ----ing ---- if you ---- or just ---- ---- ----ing ---- ----ing ---- ---- with a rubber hose!

Mr. Kyokasho: Did you find any?
Tristan: Maybe.
Mr. Kyokasho: (casually) I hope you didn't find out about that incident with the water hoses and the ketchup in St. Louis.
Tristan: Uh...

  • Homestuck: the incident in question is actually seen on-screen, but Jade's explanation still counts.

GG: all that stuff blew up
TG: blew up
GG: its a long story that involves a pinata and a gun and a very naughty doggie
TG: i completely understand everything about that practically entirely

Web Original[edit | hide]

  • An old, discontinued serial called "Gothic Survivor" (twelve stereotypical Goths are sent to survive amidst the light and joy of Disneyland for 48 days) featured this. A relationship arises between two of the Goths, Angry Kitty and Doomboy, leading to some implied sex with rather kinky toys. Their idea of foreplay involves "a charred top of a grill and two barbeque forks;" they later run off to play with "a recently acquired pair of hot dog tongs and a pizza cutter." A later entry mentions Doomboy's thoughts of "Angry Kitty in a bikini, with a weedwacker and a stack of moist towelettes." Yeah.
  • Professional wrestler John Cena used to do a Q&A session on called "5 Questions with the Champ." When a fan would ask a question such as "How did you spend your birthday?" or "How do you plan to spend the holidays?" he would say that "to protect the guilty," he wouldn't say exactly, but that it did involve [ Insert Noodle Implements Here], some of which were: packets of Mayonnaise, children's golf clubs, a Samoan, Pay Per View cable, and massive amounts of alcohol.
  • Galertruby is a master of this trope. As a zombie who's missing his jaw, most of his blog posts come out as complete gibberish, but the mouse-over hyperlinks work just fine. So when you come across a post titled "Galertruby's Guide to Dating" which is mostly composed of five paragraphs of nonsense, but which includes hyperlinks to a broken wine bottle, a gnome effigy, a flask of Big Mojo, and a set of plate-armored leggings, you know there's gotta be a good idea in there somewhere.
  • Chester A. Bum in this video.
    • The Nostalgia Chick review of Grease features a subplot of BFF Nella being forcibly given a makeover from the Makeover Fairy. Tools the Makeover Fairy uses in her attempts to beautify include an eggbeater, a hammer, a skull, a power drill, an iron (implied use on clothing not removed from her body, a sanding file, pliers...
    • In Bennett the Sage's Twitter account, several are referred to in relation to his upcoming review:

Shit, I've got less than two weeks to shoot Bending for Bennett. Anyone know where I can get five otters on short notice?
Alright, I've got the Otters, but the next procurement is gonna be a bit more challenging. Anyone know where they're keeping JFK's brain?
So I've got the location pinned down for JFK's brain, and I'm getting a case of otters on its way. Now all I need is a woman....

I'm sorry, but have you ever tried to get a seal to lick hot cheese off your nips? I mean, besides that weekend in Aruba?

    • The "Mexican car wash" Running Gag on Transmission Awesome. Enough said.
    • The assorted ways The Nostalgia Chick and Marz Gurl were pleasured by Linkara, or so they tell him in "Linking Up With Linkara: the "Cincinnati Helicopter", the "Oklahoma City Taco Stand" "I don't know how he did to both of us at the same time..."
    • In The Nostalgia Critic's review of The Thief and the Cobbler, he asks the prerecorded voice of Vincent Price why the character he voiced, Zigzag, only spoke in rhymes. He tells him that he does not remember the reason. Or rather, all that he remembered is that it involved Rock Hudson and a banana cream pie.
  • College Humor's Hardly Working began their third all nighter by giving one of the hired hands a long list of increasingly odd things to get. Examples include: 'this is a comedy show, we're going to need poo, vomit, fake poo, fake vomit, dog poo, dog vomit, fake dog poo, fake dog vomit, your poo...' later 'two words for you: Barack Obama Two more words: his poo!' I'm not sure what they're doing, but I want to see the next 11 videos.
  • In Nina Kimberley The Merciless, Nina's magical clone apparently used a training technique called "Spike and Cucumber" to whip the barbarian horde into shape. When they're threatened with it later as punishment, they all shudder at the thought.
  • This bash quote.
  • From Not Always Right:

Customer: "Hi there! Where do you keep your ping-pong balls?"
Me: "Right over here." * walks her over to them*
Customer: "Oh great! Now, where do you sell your Vaseline?"

    • An even more worrying one in a phone call to a grocery store:

"Do y'all sell erotic movies?"
"Hm. D'you know where I can find some bullets?"
"Nowhere within a hundred miles of here!" *hangs up*

"I don't sell utility drugs, Holmes. You came by last night asking for eight Mephedrone, four tabs of X, 17 reams of Buzzers, three Round-outs, a can of Raid with a drinking straw, and the venom sack from a North African Running Lizard. And that's what I gave you, because I am the best goddamn drug dealer in the entire country."

  • What makes a trashed house, a featureless doll, a box of pills, a bloddied sink and a bag full of videotapes so terrifying? We don't know other than that The Slender Man is involved.
  • In the final scene of Awkward 6, Kevin fumbles a box and spills fruit and condoms all over the table. Some questions are better left unasked.
  • Mr. TARDIS Reviews once wrote a letter to the man who caused the hiatus of Doctor Who. It was narrated, but a bleep covered all but the following "Dear Michael Grade. Fu-" and the end "...with a Dalek sink plunger.
  • Option 3 here. (Actually the first two items are included in the plot.)
  • This entry from the SCP Foundation.
  • Seanbaby loves to use these in his articles, but they usually involve someone getting hurt (for making awful games). One particularly interesting article has him being given these 3 suggestions to be happy: report crimes you've witnessed, try new sex positions, and avoid toxic chemicals. He claimed that he cannot possibly accomplish that because a new sex move he had in mind required glow in the dark lube that also kills sharks.
  • The opening montage of Project Million features the cast members packing their suitcases with some of these. Most of them only have one or two odd things, such as a baseball trophy, a giant dinosaur plush, far too many playing cards, and their cat. Robert's on the other hand contains noodle implements and nothing else. He packs a bra, a hard hat, a porcelain duck figurine, a cinderblock, a clown wig, candy canes, a Bedsheet Ladder, and a Renoir.
  • This spin-off to the popular Downfall Parody Meme begins with a Russian finishing a humourous anecdote that apparently involves a pineapple, a space station, John Mallory, and a Blu-ray copy of A Night to Remember.
  • Skippys List has examples:

200. My chain of command is not interested in why I "just happen" to have a kilt, an inflatable sheep, and a box of rubber bands in the back of my car.

Western Animation[edit | hide]

  • In the Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity", when Bender is getting released from jail and is receiving the objects that were confiscated from him upon arrest, he receives a hat with a large feather on it, a roast turkey, and an accordion.
    • In "Cold Warriors", Zapp Brannigan brings up the penultimate-resort plan for dealing with a common cold epidemic in Manhattan, called Protocol 62. President Nixon shoots it down, saying "Impossible, we don't have nearly enough piranhas!"
    • Almost everything Bender pulls from his "compartment of mystery" qualifies. A short list includes: Charlemagne's skeleton, a human infant, the severed arm of the Prime Minister of Norway, and John Laraquette's spine,
  • Whatever it was that Pinky was pondering in Pinky and The Brain. ("I think so Brain, but how will we fit two flamingos into one pair of capri pants?") Of course, Pinky is insane, but what if he's not?
    • "I think so, Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?"
    • One take-over-the-world plan involved Brain posing as a human, getting an office job, and suing his workplace for damages after being "turned into a mouse" in an accident involving a microwave oven and non-dairy powdered creamer. The logic behind this was that nobody could disprove it because nobody knew how either of those things worked.
      • When Brain takes the case to court, the company's lawyer does know how a microwave works and thus proves that it couldn't have caused the "accident"...only to go "oh" at the mention of the non-dairy powdered creamer.
      • "I think so, Brain, but this time, you wear the tutu."
    • A list of further pondering examples can be found here .
  • Invader Zim had a "final test" to determine who his new best friend would be in the episode "Bestest Friend". It involved him walking menacingly towards the contenders with a beaver and a toy taxi, followed by a lot of horrified screaming.
    • "Hello my Tallest! I'm in a bear suit."
    • Also another example in the episode "Zim Eats Waffles," the escaped evil flesh-eating demon squid comes out of nowhere with an army of "cyborg" soldiers, and Zim is shown as a shadow holding a strange device, yelling, "Don't make me use this! I'll do it!" As Nick asks, "What's that thing Zim's got?" a shockwave blows everything offscreen in a burst of light.
    • In Megadoomer as Zim walks down the street, talking to a kid who he obviously don't know, he keeps talking about how Dib will pay... but we never get to know why or if there even is a reason, or if he just wanted someone to talk to.
    • Thanks to a ton of cut scenes from the show, a great amount of these appear on the show. The sandwich Zim recieves in the first episode, the little cup cake creatures Red and Purple have covering their faces, the room filled with chickens in Dib's Horrible Life of Doom... and the list just goes on.
  • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, "Wrestle Maniacs": The Mystery Inc. kids get thrown out of the office of the manager of a cut-rate wrestling stable by "The World's Strongest Accountant". All we see is the gang getting thrown out the door in a heap, upon which Shaggy remarks "Like, I've never seen someone do that with a calculator before!"
  • One episode of Batman: The Animated Series showed a clip from a fictional wacky sitcom, in which Baby Doll had managed to cause a huge mess. Somehow, it involved the dog, a zebra, a giraffe and a pair of Scotsmen on rollerskates.
  • In the Ren and Stimpy episode "Stimpy's Invention", two of the tools used to build the Happy Helmet are a beaver and a duck.
  • In The Simpsons Marge is suffering from stress to the point where hair is falling out. She gets some relaxation time and her hair is strong enough to hold a parasol large beach umbrella. Homer takes this opportunity to ask her to come to bed. She smiles and removes the parasol. Homer's response: "No no - leave it in." They promptly scamper upstairs, leaving the viewer alone to think up a few Squicky images.
    • In the episode "Summer of 4 ft. 2," in a scene spoofing American Graffiti, Homer is attempting to buy illegal fireworks from a Kwik-E-Mart and makes several other purchases in order to "act casual". His list of purchases includes a porno magazine, a box of condoms, some Old Harper, panty shields, and two enema kits. Marge's reaction upon his return:

Marge: I don't know what you've got planned for tonight, Homer, but count me out.

    • And the next morning she wakes up with a dreamy look on her face. This could be an accident, but stealthy radar work is possible...
    • Lionel Hutz uses people as Noodle Implements in "The Day the Violence Died" when Bart tells him to stall a trial while Bart retrieves a piece of key evidence. Hutz brings in all of his surprise witnesses again, including Ralph Wiggum, a guy with a ventriloquists' dummy, a Santa Claus with a broken leg, and those two obese twins who rode around on mopeds. How all of these characters were "surprise witnesses" in a cartoon plagiarism lawsuit is best left to the viewer's imagination.
  • Spoofed in Dave the Barbarian. As Dave works feverishly, the narrator informs us, "Thinking quickly, Dave fashioned a megaphone using only a squirrel, some string, and... a megaphone."
    • The episode ends with Dave appearing to the audience behind-the-scenes-style. He says, "I bet a lot of you are wondering why I tied a squirrel to a megaphone." Beat "Well, bye!"
    • Also,

Sparkles the Unicorn: I had that dream again. The one where I do horrible things to penguins with a croquet mallet.

  • In The Mr. Men Show, Mr. Scatterbrained planned to milk a cow using a cuttlefish, a bowl of steam, and a hubcap; justified in that he's, well, scatterbrained.
  • This was a recurring gag in the later episodes of Ned's Newt where Newton would always be on the verge of solving the problem of the episode with some sort of comedy number involving a bicycle pump and a rubber duck. He never got the chance to show us.
  • Family Guy: Peter discusses Lois' prowess in bed while a representative from the FCC blows an air horn to censor him.

Peter: You know what I'm talking about, when you [horn] a lubed up [horn] of toothpaste in my [horn] while you [horn] on a cherry [horn] Episcopalian [horn] extension cord [horn] wetness [horn] with a parking ticket. That is the best.

    • Quagmire answers the door in a baby bonnet and diaper, while a naked couple on a tractor drive through his living room behind him. His explanation?

Quagmire: Well, as you can see, my family's here. It's game night. We're playing,

    • On another occasion, this trope is played solely through Quagmire's reenactment, as Peter has covered Stewie's ears. According to Quagmire's hand gestures, whatever he did to the two homeless twins who lived under the overpass involved spanking his butt, making fish faces, putting his legs behind his head and spinning on his butt, and humping a plunger that he got out of nowhere.

Quagmire: And this is the hand that caused all the trouble.

    • And another time, also involving Quagmire, had him handing Lois and Peter Stewie's pacifier and telling them that it should never, ever be used again.
    • Possibly worst of all, Quagmire's cavity search, in which the items recovered included a cellphone, a doorknob, a wedge of Swiss cheese, a DVD copy of the Nickelodeon movie Good Burger (though this could be a Stealth Pun on how "crappy" the movie is), a xylophone, a toy car, and a live fish.
  • One episode of the Earthworm Jim cartoon had Jim talking to Santa's elves (in typical fashion of the series, Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-Filled, Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt had kidnapped Santa Claus with the intent of brainwashing him to conquer earth. In even more typical fashion, Santa revealed that the "Jolly St. Nick" gig was a retirement job, and in his youth he was a Horny Viking God of Justice, promptly pulling out the old sword and helmet and whaling on the Queen once Jim set him free) and accusing them of being involved when they claim to not know who took Santa. They promptly reply that they keep their eyes on their work, as Santa has a hideous punishment for those who slack. We're told that it involves figgy pudding and nothing else.
  • An episode of Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, "It Came From Outer Ed", featured Ed devising a scam/curse. The process involved Eddy wearing a top hat and death's head facepaint, Edd moving boulders onto an "X" painted on the ground that was actually a Q, painting a cement mixer drum like an Aztec temple, Ed biting out the belly of Jimmy's stuffed bunny, and Edd handing Eddy a stack of pancakes while wearing a parka and a space helmet, all in an attempt to beseech Evil Tim to summon crows. It was actually quite disturbing. Although, what was really disturbing was the fact that IT ACTUALLY WORKED!!!
    • In The Movie, the only evidence of a Noodle Incident the Eds pulled to get everyone trying to lynch them is seen in short scenes of the remains of the aforementioned scam gone horribly awry. Among the carnage is a paint-splatter on a wall with the clean silhouette of someone screaming in horror. Somewhat spooky.
      • Johnny also had a bear trap stuck on his head. Ouch.
    • "If only we had a sack of potatoes!"
      • Lampshaded by Edd "Ed, potatoes wouldn't aid us in any way."
  • One episode of Blazing Dragons shows Count Geoffery setting up another evil scheme to conquer Camelhot. One of his henchmen is carrying a large horn, and nearby we see a trampoline, a bucket of lobsters, a cow, and an anvil tied to a tree.
  • The short Looney Tunes "Scaredy Cat" features this. The premise of the episode is Sylvester and Porky Pig are spending the night in an eerie hotel that's overrun with evil mice that lurk in the shadows. In one scene Sylvester falls asleep on a platform that lowers him down into an unspecified location. About three hours later the platform raises up. It's never specified what occurred, but Sylvester shambles off, complete with stark white fur and a thousand yard stare.
  • The Canadian series Whats With Andy (which revolved around the titular character's pranking adventures) had a Running Gag built around the phrase "forty-nine unopened cans of whipped cream".
  • Invoked in one Sushi Pack episode when Wasabi proposes a plan that somehow involves him wearing mukluks.
  • On one episode of Muppet Babies, the kids have fun with an activity book that Nanny has given them on a rainy day. As they each excitedly inform her of what they plan to do based on the book's suggestions, Gonzo offers this gem:

Gonzo: And I'm going to make my own nuclear reactor! All I need is some plutonium, a cement mixer, and a paper plate. [beat] Do we have a paper plate, Nanny?

Brainy Smurf: Th-the comb is in his- Oooooooh... A-and the lipstick is... Aaaauuugh...!

  • In the episode of South Park "The List" the boys ponder over how to extract an important list from the girls. The first plan (ambush the list-carrying girl in the mess hall and kick her in the balls) fails, so Cartman concocts an even more intricate and faultless plan. We only get to hear the beginning before the scene cuts: "Kenny, first you spit on the ground...". It works.
    • The episode "Insheeption" begins with Cartman finishing a story: "And then, the guy hits the ping-pong ball with his dick, and it goes right in the other guy's mouth."
  • In the second episode of Clone High, Joan of Arc comes to JFK's house with a plan on how to win the school presidential election. She whispers her plan to him and he responds with, "Well, how about (whispers), dental dam, (whispers)?". Joan slaps him for this, to which he responds, "Okay, no dental dam."
  • Before the premiere of the MTV animated series Undergrads, there was a special "hosted" by one of that show's characters (I forget the name) showing a number of animated short films, and after each one plugging Undergrads. At the end of it, he signs off by telling people to watch the show when it aired, and if they don't... "Well, I can't legally say what I'm going to do to you, but it involves a truckload of peanut butter, your social security number, and evil clowns."
  • The Trickster's second revenge plot in the Justice League episode "Flash and Substance" called for '50,000 rotten eggs and a chainsaw.'
  • American Dad: You did the Tennessee Logjammer? Where are the other two guys? And did you at least put my ladder back?
    • Another episode has Steve completely getting what Toshi said wrong (as usual): "Gross, Toshi, she'd never agree to that. And besides, where would we find that many ping-pong balls?"
  • "I'll get the monkey and the trampoline!"
  • In The Critic Jay's father comments in one episode that he is working on the "'ll be bigger than the badger-blaster."

Real Life[edit | hide]

  • Troping wikis. Not being able to make head or tail of a trope example referring to very Story Arc- or 'verse-dependent events from a show, book, movie, etc. that you are not familiar with, when it is not put in context for those who are not familiar with it, and is described using lots of in-jokes, meta-references, and ambiguous sentences hyperlinked to other tropes that are self-evident only to the familiar, is one of the most entertaining and infuriating aspects of this wiki.
  • Cashiers sometimes have fun trying to piece together exactly what the random pile of stuff in a person's shopping cart will be used for.
    • One post on Failbook had someone posting that a customer had just bought a Miley Cyrus DVD, some lub, and a box of tissues...squick.
  • Misha Collins (Castiel in Supernatural) has done this on Twitter: "Out of Gitmo. not going to go into details, but long story short, it involved 250 gal. gasoline, a catapult, a bandaid & a pr of raybans"
  • Amateur radio operators have the wouff-hong and rettysnitch, tools meant for the enforcement of law and order and decency respectively on the airwaves. The wouff-hong, allegedly named after a garbled message received by pioneering ham Hiram Percy Maxim W1AW, is made of wood and vaguely resembles an offset "rabbit" dildo; the rettysnitch is a metal rod with a handle and a spiked wheel on it. No one is sure exactly how they were supposed to be used, and frankly, no one wants to know.
  • People have been known to break out of prison using the following; a potato and some shoe polish;[4] dental floss;[5] chilli powder;[6] a green felt tip pen.[7] A man on death row once committed suicide by making a pipe bomb using only a leg from his bed and a pack of playing cards.[8] Seriously.
    • Yeah, well, that playing card thing is highly overrated. The kind of cards you need to pull it off aren't even made anymore.
      • A very few companies still sell them, but in such low volume that the price is jacked up. They are only purchased by people with antiquated tastes and magicians with specific needs for an effect.
    • The one who takes the prison-breaking cake would definitely be the following. An Indonesian teenager once broke out of juvenile detention by making a hole on his cell wall... and the tool he used? A load of fermented cassava. Significantly less (or more) mind-boggling is why he broke out of prison: to see his mom.
  • According to one of the cast members of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (I think it was the woman who played Laura Palmer), one day during filming she asked someone what was going on "behind that door" and they said, with extreme nonchalance, "Oh you know, David [Lynch] is in there with the trampoline and the chimpanzee and they're filming." (No scene with a trampoline and chimp appears in the finished product but a few entire hours were cut from the film.) This is a Real Life example instead of a Film one because despite having to do with a movie the event itself is nonfictional and not in-universe.
    • Similarly, David Lynch requested "one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack" on incredibly short notice while filming Inland Empire.
  • Kenneth Tobey made a couple of westerns with WWII veteran Audie Murphy, who was known for his weird practical jokes and his unofficial work with law enforcement. Tobey once accepted Murphy's offer of a lift out to the remote location where they were shooting, and was somewhat alarmed to discover that his costar kept guns, chains, handcuffs, and a live rattlesnake in his car.
  • The Society for Creative Anachronism's general pursuit is sometimes called "the Dream". One poster on, Sfi Mordehai ben Yosef Yitzhak, wrote in his .sig file:

This is not the Dream. This is what I do on weekends to have some fun.
The Dream involves 4 sets of identical twins, 2 gallons of Cool Whip, 5 quarts of chocolate syrup, 2-1/4 pounds of strawberries, satin sheets, a magnum of champagne, a trapeze, and a python.

  • Any time you go to the store to buy items for two unrelated projects. For example, chili powder and shaving cream. They just happen to be the two things you've run out of today, but anyone witnessing you purchase them might think you're up to something... strange.
    • This becomes the basis of Wal Mart's latest commercials, though in a subversion, we see exactly what happens to the bought items.
      • People buying items they are embarrassed about (such as condoms) will often buy several other items which often consist of snacks, pens, etc. Most shopkeepers are Genre Savvy enough to know exactly what this means, but some might think this person enjoys eating snacks and drawing whilst having protected sex. An awkward variant is if someone buys baby items or items for the opposite gender but doesn't have their baby or partner with them, the shopkeeper may think the person in question is a fetishist and is going to use these items themselves.
        • This has become a game (appropriately titled the 'condom game') where you buy a pack of condoms, and two more odd/random/disturbing items and see who can gross out their cashier the most.
        • One internet story claims a lot of fun can be had by buying a selection of increasingly larger condoms, along with plastic wrap and rubber bands.
        • Conversely, the opposite assumption can be quite useful to fetishists who ARE going to use those items themselves.
  • After the Libyan rebels conquered Tripoli, under its largest university they found a secret chamber, previously only accessible by the deposed Muammar Gaddafi and a select few associates. Among other things, it contained a bedroom, jacuzzi, and a complete gynaecological equipment setup.
  • For the development of Left 4 Dead 2, they had a whole folder of injuries to model the textures for the Zombies, so they can be realistically damaged. It was so horrifying that they had to use Potato skins and Insulation foam instead. One can only imagine what went through the cashier's mind when Valve Employees showed up with this in their basket.
  • Usually the implements come in a group and that's where the comedy comes from. And then, there was the story of how Kevin Smith had to have the idea of "Prince World", the paradigm Prince lives in that seems to be made completely of Insane Troll Logic, explained to him thus:

Prince's Producer: "Prince will come to us periodically and say things like, 'It's 3 in the morning in Minnesota. I really need a Camel. Go get it.'"

Tropes[edit | hide]

Comedy Tropes[edit | hide]

  • Anything involving a Henway. Go to the page to find out what a Henway is.
  • There's a joke out there where in a juried trial, a list of increasingly strange items is listed in the evidence. At the end, the jury finds that "They each would have paid a hundred dollars to have seen that fight".

Memetic Mutation[edit | hide]

  • An ordinary room contains 1231 things that Chuck Norris can kill you with. Including the room itself.
    • That's not even noodley. Just collapse the ceiling.
      • The roof is # 1230. The room itself is # 1231.
  1. Pinch skin with pliers, apply blowtorch, make burn hole?
  2. Note: this is the song title as listed on the vinyl version of Illinois, which extended the titles of several tracks. For this particular song, the CD version of Illinois omits everything after "Predicament".
  3. Going to Monkey Island via voodoo spell
  4. you carve the potato (or a bar of soap) into a gun shape, and use the shoe polish to color it so that it looks more like a real gun and less like something you carved out of a potato
  5. floss is one of the strongest strings you can buy, it is able to saw through steel bars
  6. use it as a pepper spray to blind your guard and run away
  7. get enough pens, dye your white prison uniform green, walk out with the prison cleaning detail
  8. the red dye on old fashioned cards are made from nitrocellulose, which explodes when soaked in water and heated