The perils of sharing a bathroom with someone in a Hive Mind.
Restrooms in a workplace or public area, along with the usual business, can be a potent source of unusual goings-on, which usually leads to two circumstances. In one, a character is in a stall right beside wherever the weirdness is happening, and they either hear everything and react to it in some way, or they can't make sense of what they're hearing, causing confusion and/or irritation. In the other, one or more characters are doing something in a stall for whatever reason, only for someone who's in an adjacent stall to suddenly either speak up or walk out and comment on whatever they heard.
Toilet Humor may or may not be involved; if it is, whether or not the person hearing it thinks it's funny is another factor entirely. Extreme embarrassment can set in if someone is overhearing people getting busy in the next stall. A Grossout Fakeout can happen if what's being overheard is mistaken for a really bad bowel movement. Can lead to Toilet Horror, a Bathroom Brawl, or even The Can Kicked Him if what's happening turns violent, especially if it spills into the stall of the person doing the overhearing.
Sister Trope to Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults, where the overheard shenanigans are merely someone trash-talking someone else.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In chapter 6 / episode 3 of Wasteful Days of High School Girls, Yamai follows Shiori "Robo" Saginomiya to the bathroom and uses the stall next to Robo's. Yamai suddenly starts hearing weird mechanical noises from Robo's stall, causing her to go Blue with Shock and run out of the bathroom, suspecting Robo is literally a robot. It's implied that Robo invoked this just to mess with Yamai.
Comedy
- In the Olan Rogers routine "Ghost in the Stalls", Olan talks about pranking the guy in the stall next to him by making noises while keeping out of sight. He ultimately yells, "RUN!" which the guy does... leaving his pants for Olan to report to the attendant.
Films — Animation
- Zootopia: During the "You're Dead" montage of Judy's police training, she enters a bathroom stall sized for mega-fauna. Unfortunately, when she tries to jump onto the rim, she misses and ends up falling into the bowl. Major Friedkin, her Drill Sergeant Nasty instructor, happens to be in the next stall and proclaims it another fatality.
Major Friedkin: Filthy Toilet! You're dead, Fluff Butt!
Films — Live-Action
- In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin's visit to the can is interrupted by an assassin
, who he eventually overpowers and drowns in the toilet. While this is going on, the guy in the next stall is keeping a running commentary on what he's hearing.
[Austin puts the assassin head-first into the toilet]
Austin: Who does Number Two work for?!
Other guy: That's right, buddy, you show that turd who's boss!
[the assassin starts noisily drowning]
Other guy: Hey, uh, that sounds pretty nasty. How about a courtesy flush over there? - Copycat: When Helen goes to the bathroom in the prologue, her bodyguard checks the other stalls and discovers that there's nobody there except another woman in the stall next door in high heels. This turns out to be escaped Serial Killer Daryll Lee, who simply put on the heels to trick the bodyguard, then ambushes and attacks Helen by putting a noose up and attaching it to the bathroom stall next door.
- Exploited in Femme Fatale. The opening heist involves female thief Laure seducing a woman in a bathroom stall, slowly dropping her jewelry as she undresses her. Unbeknownst to the woman, Laure's accomplice is hiding in the next stall, deftly switching out her jewels for lookalikes.
- Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle: At one point early in the movie, the titular characters are in Princeton University and hide from campus security in the women's bathroom. In two other stalls, a pair of twin sisters are playing a game of "Battleshits", eventually prompting the other duo to run away in disgust.
- In La Haine, the three main characters are on the run from the police and hide in a bathroom, where they make a phone call and squabble about Vinz's attempt to kill a police officer in the previous scene. An old Russian man emerges from a bathroom stall, having overheard everything, to tell them an allegorical anecdote about his experiences taking a dump in the Gulag. This leaves them all confused, though it has symbolic meaning for the film's larger themes.
- In Scream 2, Omar Epps' character goes into a stall since the urinals are occupied, but hears strange noises coming from the next stall. He puts his ear against the partition to try to hear better, only to have Ghostface fatally stab him through the partition.
- In Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie scolds Venom for wanting to eat Detective Mulligan, and Eddie heads into a restroom before Venom can be spotted by other people. As they argue in a stall, the woman in the next stall looks frightened at first and then peeks under the wall to see what's happening.
Live-Action TV
- This happens twice in the first season of House of Anubis:
- In one episode, Nina is trying to study a strange clue she and Fabian had found and hides in a bathroom stall to do it. Then it turns out Amber was in the stall next to her; she rises over the wall to ask Nina what she's up to and threatens to tell Mr. Sweet that Nina is "doing something weird and (she) doesn't know what it is" if she doesn't.
- Toward the middle of the season, Fabian is in the boy's bathroom deciphering a clue by repeating the riddle out-loud to himself and then determining that it's pointing to the living room clock. It's then revealed that Alfie overheard this as he starts poking fun at Fabian's strange behavior from the next stall, throwing Fabian into enough of a rush to leave that he drops the artifact and accidentally fuels Alfie's suspicions about what he and his friends are up to.
Video Games
- This is actually incorporated into Catherine. Vincent has several conversations with his friend Orlando in the bathroom about the strange things happening to him, but Orlando is often lost to some degree on everything as he can only go by what Vincent's telling him. This also leads to some snarky humor.
Vincent: Does all this feel like a dream to you?
Orlando: Who dreams of taking a shit with another guy?
Web Comics
- In Grrl Power, during Sydney's introduction to ARCHON's higher-ups, she makes a couple of comments while talking to one of Harem's bodies that crack up another Harem who's currently using the restroom and "overhears" the conversation. Unfortunately for Sandy, Arianna's assistant in the next stall, Harem's first laughing outburst startles her enough that she drops her phone in the toilet.
Western Animation
- A variation in BoJack Horseman's "Best Thing That Ever Happened". Princess Carolyn keeps giving herself pep talks in the restaurant bathroom mirror, and a Running Gag is that a woman in a nearby stall keeps asking her what's going on, thinking that she's watching a movie or something. Princess Carolyn gets concerned for why the woman's been on the toilet for so long, and the woman assures her that she "got up and came back later."
- Dexter's Laboratory: Dexter tries to give himself the ability to hear other people's thoughts but instead makes it where everyone else can hear his thoughts. After a day at school struggling with students and teachers hearing every inconvenient thought he has, he goes off to cry in a bathroom stall. Unfortunately, his mental thoughts on his bad day are worded in a way that makes it seem like he's having major constipation issues, causing two guys who heard it to frantically run out of the bathroom before he stinks things up.
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "Substitute Teacher", Billy tries to flush a skeleton model down the toilet, screaming louder and louder as he gets increasingly frustrated. Pud'n, who is in a nearby stall, listens to everything with a worried expression on his face, which turns into sheer horror when one of the fake bones slides into his stall.
