That's a spicy meat-a-ball!
A character eats a bomb (or anything explosive), unknowingly or not, and the resulting explosion will either cause death, slight indigestion, burping a fireball, or nothing at all. May be intended as Bomb Disposal or containing the kaboom.
For a more weaponized version (such as Video Game Boss Battles), see Feed It a Bomb.
See also Dinner Deformation.
Eating the Enemy has the same idea, except it's done to a sentient being. Subtrope of Artistic License – Explosives, as Jumping on a Grenade is generally a much more efficient way to make an Heroic Sacrifice. Subtrope of Contain the Kaboom.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Mr. 5 from One Piece, due to being immune to explosions thanks to having eaten the Bomu Bomu no Mi (Bomb Bomb Fruit) not only can eat bombs but also "taste" the quality of the explosive.
- Majin Buu does this in Dragon Ball GT, neutralizing one of Baby's attacks that threatened to destroy the city by swallowing it whole. Also doubles as Heroic Sacrifice, since it ends up blasting him from inside.
- Toriko has to eat a Nitro Cherry in one of the latest chapters. If the explosive is left inside, it's the equivalent of eating a stick of dynamite. Due to Coco's fortunetelling and smart thinking, Toriko had eaten something beforehand that softened the impact of the explosion, but it still caused considerable internal damage. He got better.
- At one point in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency, Esidisi swallows a lit stick of dynamite. Since he's Nigh-Invulnerable, like all of the Pillar Men, it makes his stomach balloon out for a second but does no damage.
- Somewhat averted in the Galaxy Angel manga adaptation. Takuto's latest bid to get away from the enemy is to have Vanilla use her nanomachines construct a bomb which is disguised as one of his teeth. The bomb is revealed, turning the tide on their captors and almost buying them their freedom. A brawl ensues as Takuto, Vanilla, and Milfeulle escort their prisoners back to the ship, and the bomb goes flying out of Takuto's mouth and into Milfeulle's, who swallows it and makes it irretrievable. Milfeulle's abdomen is actually in pain by having swallowed the tooth, and the end result is not expected to be very pleasant, so the bad guys let them get away. Then, the whole situation is subverted when Takuto reveals that the bomb is a fake. A later examination by one of the ship's doctors reveals that Milfie's pain is a slight case of food poisoning.
- In Macross Dynamite 7, the poachers get their hands on a Reaction Warhead and decide to use it to try to kill the White Whale. The Whale responds by eating it... and being completely unharmed by the detonation. That is the cue for the poachers to give up and surrender; when your intended prey can No-Sell eating a nuke, there's really not much else you can do.
- Lupin III has an episode where Lupin is forced to swallow a pill-sized bomb by a man claiming to be a descendant of Lawrence of Arabia to prevent the thief and his gang from following him. Lupin, uh... "retrieves" the bomb intact after a night in the bathroom, and it ends up in Fujiko's hopefully well-washed hands. She then slips it into a drink she prepares for Lawrence III; after the rebel leader swigs the beverage down and drunkenly reveals himself as a fraud, his betrayed followers are all too happy to take the remote control to the bomb off of Fujiko's hands...
- Bolt Crank of Eat-Man disposes of an assassin's bomb in this manner. This is of course in keeping with his nature as an Extreme Omnivore who has established a precedent for disposing of adversaries' weapons by devouring them.
- This is how the main character of So I'm a Spider, So What? disposes of a bomb that is about to destroy the planet. Amusingly, this doesn't kill her, but instead allows her to achieve apotheosis and become a god.
Asian Animation
- In episode 3 of Boonie Bears, after his attempt to hurt the bears with apples laced with spicy sauce doesn't work, Logger Vick gives them more apples, this time laced with bombs. Some of the bombs explode inside Bramble's stomach before Briar realizes what's going on and triggers one of the bombs before eating the apple it's in, leaving both bears with ashes all over them.
Comic Books
- Superman does this all the time. It was his first line in Lois & Clark, (*burp* Excuse me.) though Clark Kent had lines throughout the episode. In one of the issues from The Death of Superman storyline, he force-feeds a bomb to Clawster and it explodes in his mouth, causing him to collapse and say "Good thing Clawster invulnerable."
- In one Super Goof comic, the Beagle Boys try to get rid of Super Goof by feeding him an exploding peanut. It causes him to swell up like a balloon and then expel the explosion in a huge belch.
- Matter Eater Lad pulled this stunt, long ago, in the DCU's Legion of Super-Heroes comic. The "bomb" was a potentially universe-destroying Reality Warper called the Miracle Machine, and the "slight indigestion" was being driven insane, but it still fits. Notably, Matter-Eater Lad eating more mundane weapons and explosives was very much in the "nothing at all" category, although he occasionally remarked on particularly exotic weapons as being spicy, and he did once knock out two attackers with the blast wave from a belch after he ate an entire silo full of grain.
- In a Looney Tunes comic book story, the Tasmanian Devil ate a pressure cooker disguised as a cake in order to keep it from producing a massive explosion.
- In The Smurfs comic book story "Smurf Soup" (and its Animated Adaptation episode "Soup A La Smurf"), Bigmouth eats one of Jokey's surprises, thinking it was food, and it explodes harmlessly in his mouth.
- Mortadelo y Filemón:
- Happens often when a thrown grenade hits a wall and unexpectedly bounces back into (most of the time) Filemon's mouth. An explosion ensues, usually followed by some comment from Mortadelo in the lines of: "Boss, if you were that hungry, why didn't you have a sandwich instead?"
- Played with in a short story. The Súper and Filemón think that Mortadelo has eaten a sandwich with a sausage that had a time bomb hidden inside. They try to get Mortadelo to the hospital to have the bomb removed, without letting him know so he won't get nervous, and also preventing him from falling or getting a sudden shock. Turns up that Mortadelo had eaten only the bread, and had put the sausage apart; when he retrieves the sausage, the bomb explodes on the three of them.
- The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe: While harassed by Spiderman, Daredevil and Wolverine, Frank comes across an amnesiac Bruce Banner, who'd been kidnapped by the criminals who witnessed his transformation. Frank feeds Banner stew made with hearty ingredients like Mystery Meat, C4 and detonators, so when the three heroes gang up on him, he flees to Banner's location and starts kicking the crap out of him. When Banner Hulks out, the heroes are eliminated in no time flat, leaving Frank to detonate the C4 in the Hulk's guts. The pain is such that he has no choice but to revert to Banner. And then he kills them all.
- One issue of the Silver Surfer has an involuntary, downplayed version, where the Surfer is tricked by a shapeshifting enemy taking the form of his current cosmic adventuring partner. When he rushes to aid his seemingly injured friend, the shapeshifter stuffs a grenade in his mouth. It's downplayed in that he can't swallow it, but he survives it going off in his mouth due to being Nigh-Invulnerable. Still, as his thought bubbles reveal, he finds it quite humiliating.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): This trope occurs a couple times with explosive results. The Many at one point try defeating Rodan by shutting their jaws around his head, which produces visceral tea kettle-like results. Godzilla at one points pulls a Feed It a Bomb on Ghidorah's middle head when Monarch's military force drop a "bunker buster" bomb.
Film — Animated
- In Despicable Me 2, one of the things that Kevin eats after being injected with the PX-41 serum is a live bomb that makes him expand for a bit.
- In Minions, Kevin swallows the Lava Bomb and then grabs the escaping Scarlet Overkill to propel himself into the sky so that the detonation won't hurt the people of London.
Film — Live-Action
- In Agent Cody Banks, the titular young hero chucks a cube of ice, containing nanites capable of melting through any substance, which ends up right down the Big Bad's throat. The subsequent outbreak ends up destroying the whole base.
- Casino Royale (1967) ends with Evil Overlord wannabe Woody Allen tricked into swallowing his pill-size bomb, and blowing everyone up.
- In Casper: A Spirited Beginning, Casper does this in the climax to prevent his home (and his human friend Chris) from being blown up.
- Godzilla (2014): The U.S. military's plan is to more or less invoke this trope on the MUTOs by using an armed nuclear warhead as bait and then detonating, in the hopes that the resulting nuclear explosion will obliterate both MUTOs and Godzilla. However, the MUTOs steal the nuke before it's been moved to a safe distance and build their nest around it before the plan ever gets that far.
- Hot Shots! Part Deux has Charlie Sheen's character tossing a pineapple grenade at an enemy soldier. It lands in his mouth and he reflexively swallows it and blows up.
- The Mask has both the "slight indigestion" (expanding stomach
) and "burping fire" version, after stretching his mouth out to swallow a bomb the bad guys set up.
"That's a spicy meat-a ball!" - In The Tuxedo, the Big Bad accidentally swallows not an explosive, but an insect carrying lethal bacteria. Which turn him into a withered husk within seconds.
- In Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Mike Teevee accidentally tries Wonka's Exploding Candy in his R&D lab (and despite being Blown Across the Room and possibly losing a few teeth, claims it's "great stuff"). Wonka says it's supposed to be given to enemies, but claims he hasn't perfected it yet - it's not strong enough.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- "The Pandorica Opens": River Song acquires a vortex manipulator this way. More specifically, she gets it from Dorium Maldovar, whose drink she has spiked with micro-explosives. She trades it for one of her earrings, which contains the detonator. Needless to say, Dorium is all too happy to accept.
- "The Tsuranga Conundrum": The Doctor gets the Pting to eat the ship's self-destruct bomb, which she removed, both neutralizing the bomb and giving the Pting an energetic enough meal that it won't endanger another ship in search of a meal for a long time.
- In the 2007 Flash Gordon series, Baylin uses her Bizarre Alien Biology to disarm a bomb by neutralizing the alkaline components with her highly acidic stomach acid. Even though the bomb didn't go off, they still used the burp gag, minus the fireball.
- Get Smart. In "Run Robot Run", a KAOS saboteur has planted a chemically-treated picked onion in Max's apartment, so when he mixes up a gin and dry vermouth he'll blow himself up. When the drink starts to bubble ominously, CONTROL robot Hymie quickly downs it. Cue sound of explosion and Hymie breathing smoke.
Hymie: Max, you sure do mix a strong Gibson.
- One episode of Lexx has the Lexx, a huge organic spaceship, being infiltrated by a saboteur with a nuclear bomb. The bomb detonates inside Lexx, but fortunately, it is much too tough to sustain any damage. "I think I have eaten something hot," it mutters.
- Happens in the pilot episode of Lois & Clark; Superman eats a bomb to save a space mission from disaster.
- In an episode of She Spies, the Cold Open has the girls captured by a villain gloating about his tiny, but powerful bomb. Cassie then kicks it out of his hand, catches it in her mouth, and swallows it. Since the bomb is heat-activated, the villain is forced to set them free before the bomb warms to Cassie's body temperature and explodes in the middle of his base. The girls run to freedom and the opening credits start to run... only to be shoved off the screen by Cassie complaining that she has just swallowed a live bomb and will not survive through the credits. Once she coughs up the bomb (and kicks it back down into the villain's base where it explodes), she allows the credits to resume where they left off.
- Torchwood: Children of Earth has the horrible death followed by slow painful regeneration version. Naturally, it happens to Captain Jack.
- Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Colin Mochrie did it in an "Impossible Mission" game.
- A recurring character on The Carol Burnett Show is a Cloudcuckoolander soldier played by Tim Conway, who annoys the king and queen of England, but they have to honor his wishes because he saved his entire platoon while in battle by swallowing a live hand grenade. Consequently, it has left his body completely hollow as the grenade destroyed all of his internal organs. The queen would demonstrate by shouting "Hello" in his mouth. It echoed.
- In the climax of Season 2 of Pennyworth, when Alfred, Dave Boy and Gulliver Troy are running out of options to defuse the Deadly Gas bomb of the Raven Union that's about to decimate the population of London, Troy decides to sacrifice himself and swallows the bomb in order to contain the gas within his body. He doesn't die of it, however, and even gets empowered by the gas, and becomes a Superweapon Surprise for the English League against the Raven Union in the urban battle for the control of London.
- In the Henry Danger episode "Whistlin' Susie" a nuke is about to go off in the cave. Schwoz deduces the only parts of the bomb that will explode are three tiny balls so the gang pressures the indestructible Captain Man to eat the balls so no one gets hurt. It works, but Captain Man is left with severe indigestion.
Multiple Media
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- The Avengers (2012): Bruce Banner sarcastically suggests that he should do this with the Tesseract.
- In a Call-Forward, Goose, the Flerken in Captain Marvel (2019) does this; later, she pukes it back onto Fury's desk.
- What If…? (2021): In "What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath?", Strange Supreme neutralizes a galaxy-sized explosion produced by Infinity Ultron via condensing and then eating it, with no apparent effect done to himself save for his eyes briefly glowing with orange fire.
Pinball
- One animated sequence in Johnny Mnemonic shows the cartoon hero Captain Courageous doing this. His head expands for a bit after it explodes, but otherwise he's unharmed.
Radio
- Crops up a fair amount in The Goon Show.
Eccles: Ooh! A big red cylindrical cigar with a wick on the end! (Sound of inhaling smoke; sound of enormous explosion) Mm, strong.
Video Games
- The fourth-to-last main level in Amateur Surgeon features this trope, after the patient ate an Incredibly Obvious Bomb "hidden" between two bread slices, after being tricked by a vigilante into doing so, subsequently forcing you to carefully defuse it in around one minute. Fail, and this trope will be treated in a VERY realistic manner.
- One of the classes in Battlefield Heroes has a skill called I Eats Grenades. Not only that, he gets HEALED by eating grenades in this fashion.
- In Donkey Kong 64, Klump is sometimes seen eating orange grenades, which explode inside him. He is shown to be unaffected by them, as he merely belches afterwards.
- Wild Tickers in Gears of War 3 can eat grenades (friendly or enemy) and deliver them to the enemy at the cost of their own life. They can also eat spare ammo.
- Kirby: When Kirby eats a bomb, he gets a bomb-related power. Depending on the game, this can be Bomb, where Kirby tosses bombs like the Poppy Bros., or Crash, where Kirby explodes and damages all enemies. (Unless, of course, it's the Egg Catcher minigame from Kirby's Adventure.)
- League of Legends has Ziggs, Hexplosives Expert, whose joke emote has him eat his own bomb and burp out the explosion.
- Can be done in Postal 2, where pressing K and then clicking with the left mouse button makes the Dude put a live grenade in his mouth while saying "I regret nothing", followed by an explosion that kills him and anyone nearby.
- In Super Mario World, Yoshi can eat Bob-Ombs even mid-explosion without adverse consequences.
- Kirby, King Dedede, and Wario can eat explosive items in Super Smash Bros. Brawl onward, though that will hurt them (And in Wario's case, anyone who's standing too close to him). It doesn't cause any knockback to the devouring fighter, though, and the damage is usually less than being in the blast of the explosive itself.
- In the Taz-Mania Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, if Taz gets too close to a bomb, he will eat it, which explodes inside him and takes away his health. He also does this in the sequel, Taz in Escape from Mars, which not only has bombs, but also cakes with sticks of dynamite in place of candles.
- On the menu of WarioWare: Touched!, you feed a bomb to Wario-Man to change him back to Wario (to access Wario's levels).
- A DS game called Zubo showed a character having a move called bomb burp.
- Warframe has Extreme Omnivore Grendel, whose primary ability is to simply inhale anything in front of him and eat it. This includes enemy grenades, which he can eat, intentionally or otherwise. Fortunately for Grendel, he has a semi-literal iron stomach and the grenade explosion won't bother him. Unfortunately for enemies eaten by Grendel, the same cannot be said for them, and they can suffer the ignominious fate of being blown up inside Grendel's stomach by their own grenades.
Webcomics
- Parodied by Cyanide and Happiness here.
- In A Girl and Her Fed, Ben takes care of a grenade this way.
- A variant happens in Grrl Power, where Achilles (who has Complete Invulnerability) mentions having once swallowed a vial of "super-ebola" in order to dispose of it. It worked.
- Happens in Schlock Mercenary, when Schlock eats a Plasma-Grenade. Being a Carboscilicate Amorph, he's incredibly tough, reforms if torn apart, and keeps his mind and memory distributed throughout his entire structure. Plasma, however, is one of the very few things that CAN hurt him, and the resulting explosion destroys 80% of his body, leaving him with a childlike mind and few remaining memories. He does, however, manage to save his two friends, who were in the same room as him, since his body absorbed most of the energy from the explosion. Also, he gets better when he travels back in time and merges with his old, non-blown-up self.
Web Original
- In Black Rhino Ranger's short "Now That's What I Call Skylanders Polka", there's a brief gag where The Gulper stops dancing to eat a bomb, which explodes and makes smoke come out of his ears.
- In the early Homestar Runner animation "Marshmallow's Last Stand", Strong Bad actually shoves a bomb into Homestar Runner's mouth during a wrestling match. Homestar, thanks to eating too many marshmallows earlier in the cartoon, actually pukes the bomb back up, where it sticks to Strong Bad and blows him up instead, winning Homestar the fight.
Western Animation
- One episode of American Dad! has Stan get an invite which he is told he must memorize within the next ten seconds. He does so, then eats the paper. He is then informed that the paper will self-destruct. Everyone else's paper crumbles into ash, and Stan breathes a puff of smoke.
Stan: I'm pooping blood tonight.
- Upchuck in Ben 10. He can eat anything, universe-destroying explosives included.
- In the final episode of Bonkers, Bonkers swallows a bomb and lets it explode inside him, doing no damage save for some slight indegestion.
- At the end of Donald Applecore, Donald Duck loads an agricultural helicopter with explosives to get rid of Chip 'n Dale, who has been eating all of his apples, but as he is gunning down the two chipmunks, one of the explosives lands inside a chicken coop and is eaten by one of the chickens, who then immediately lays an egg... ...a ticking egg that then explodes and destroys the entire apple orchard, leaving behind an extremely huge and extremely deep hole in its place, causing Donald to fall inside the hole and wind up in China upon falling out the other end.
- In the Five-Episode Pilot of DuckTales (1987), the Beagle Boys are in prison, when they get a box of bombs from "El Capitan" disguised as chocolates. Burger, the Big Eater of the group, thinks they are chocolates, and eats one, with rather unpleasant results.
Bigtime Beagle: Those aren't bon-bons, Burger, they're boom-booms!
- Bender in Futurama puts a bomb in his belly to save his friends while attacking the ball planet. Being a robot, Bender has his entire chest cavity stretched out to double its original size, and after some extensive repairs is good as new.
- In Legion Of Superheroes, as a Mythology Gag to the comics, Matter Eater Lad pulls out a ticking bomb in his Legion audition and proceeds to eat it, swallowing the timer last. He suffers no ill effects and, incidentally, gets the job.
- Looney Tunes:
- The Tasmanian Devil gobbles down an assemblage of dynamite Bugs passes off as Wild Turkey Surprise. Result - a second of distension, mild indigestion, and a polite "pardon".
- "Curtain Razor" has this punchline: a wolf performs his idea of a sensational act — drinking a variety of explosive substances, followed by a lit match, and exploding. The act goes like gangbusters, but as the performer's disembodied spirit points out, "I can only do it once."
- "Show Biz Bugs": Daffy Duck in drinks explosive stuff, which is followed by a lit match, and then BOOM! His spirit says he can only do it once.
- "Bye Bye Bluebeard": The serial killer Bluebeard is tricked into eating several bombs before he can kill Porky Pig. He tries to mix multiple tonics after realizing what he did, but explodes before he can drink it.
- "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips": Bugs Bunny tricks a platoon of Japanese soldiers into eating ice cream bars with hand grenades hidden inside, which blow them all up. As Bugs prepares to leave, one ash-faced soldier chases Bugs down... because he won a freebie. Bugs obliges and gives him a double-size bar, which blows the guy up again.
- The Animated Adaptation of The Mask one-ups the original film by having our hero swallow an entire nuclear missile right as it was about to land.
- The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Atomic Superman", Superman tests a new explosive by swallowing it. It has the side-effect of causing him to breathe atomic fire.
- Rico from The Penguins of Madagascar, and he's able to regurgitate it with fuse. The aptly named episode "All Choked Up" actually revolves around what happens when he can't spit up an activated bomb thanks to Alice's medicine.
- In the Sam & Max cartoon, they're escorting a criminal on a plane who manages to escape, leaving behind a bomb. Sam orders Max to dispose of it while he's chasing the criminal down; Max eats it and then ducks into the overhead compartment to contain the explosion. Being Sam And Max, he's somehow okay after this.
- In SpongeBob SquarePants, Squidward thinks he accidentally fed SpongeBob a bomb-shaped like a pie. He spends the rest of the day trying to make Spongebob's last day the best ever, only to find out Spongebob was saving the pie for later. He then drops it and it explodes in his face.
- A very strange version in The Tick. Instead of a bomb, it's a loaf of bread which is designed to swell to enormous sizes and destroy the building it's placed inside. Tick eats it, then has to keep punching it (i.e. himself) as it tries to expand out of his body until he can digest it. It gives him indigestion.
- Transformers: Animated:
SlagSnarl swallows a missile, which explodes within him to no effect. - In What If?, Ultron decides he's had enough of his assailants and unleashes a galaxy destroying explosion, and is baffled when Strange Supreme reverses the explosion, condenses it so it fits in his hand, and pops into in his mouth like a sweet with no effect beyond a momentary flare of fiery eyes.
