Mayor: Sam, I'm going to...
Sam: Hit me with a pie? Well, I suppose even the mayor deserves some fun now and then. Here you go. [hands her a pie] What? Waiting for an engraved invitation? Fine. Here you go. This is a direct order. Hit me with a pie.
Mayor: This is a trick, isn't it?
Sam: Hit me with a pie? Well, I suppose even the mayor deserves some fun now and then. Here you go. [hands her a pie] What? Waiting for an engraved invitation? Fine. Here you go. This is a direct order. Hit me with a pie.
Mayor: This is a trick, isn't it?
— Freefall
A classic gag, tossing a pie into another person's face. Usually, this is a cream pie to get the proper Covered in Gunge effect. For extra comedy value, the victim might take a taste of the pie and note it's not bad.
This Practical Joke was a staple of silent movie comedies, which came up with most of the variants. Often, a missed throw would result in an Escalating War pie fight. The all-out pie fight is a Forgotten Trope in movies, but still shows up elsewhere. A popular gag with this trope is where someone tempts fate by yelling "Let me have it!".
Real Life celebrities and politicians sometimes have this happen to them as a protest. For example, Anita Bryant and Bill Gates have been pied in public. note
On TV, the pie is often just whipped cream or shaving cream sprayed into a pie pan, which gives a similar effect while being much cheaper than baking up a whole pie just to throw it. Shaving cream is often considered better aesthetically than whipped cream, as unlike whipped cream, shaving foam does not melt under hot studio lights.
The trope is also one of the most common and ancient forms of Slapstick and has been applied universally almost ever since its inception.
See also Edible Ammunition, Food Fight, Food Slap, Food Shove Gag, I Taste Delicious, Produce Pelting, as well as Carrying a Cake (this is one possible, but not inevitable, result of performing that trope badly).
Example subpages:
Other examples:
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Advertising
- Throwing tiny pies at insects!
Somehow it has to do with cell phones.
- A couple of examples occurred in the commercials for Wilkins Coffee.
- In one, Wontkins, who hates the coffee advertised, is hit by a regular pie by Wilkins the frog:
Wilkins: Want some Wilkins coffee with your pie?
Wontkins: Nah, just give me the pie.
(Wontkins gets pied)
Wilkins: Sure you wouldn't like a cup of Wilkins to wash it down? - And in another one, he is hit in the face by a strawberry shortcake:
Wilkins the frog: Want some Wilkins coffee with your strawberry shortcake?
Wontkins: Can't say that I do.
(Wontkins gets... er, caked)
Wilkins: (pouring Wilkins coffee on the smashed cake) You can't say that you don't, either.
- In one, Wontkins, who hates the coffee advertised, is hit by a regular pie by Wilkins the frog:
- A Japanese commercial for the Xbox (which had absolutely nothing to do with Xbox) shows a woman trying to avoid a mechanism that keeps launching pies. Pretty soon, the music starts to build up as the mechanism winds up, and then...
Anime & Manga
- The Daily Lives of High School Boys skit about Hidenori celebrating his birthday ends with one of these, although with a strawberry cake. Hidenori even says that he wants to get a pie thrown in the face as a birthday gift shortly before this.
- Dropkick on My Devil: Jashin starts tracking down and pieing people who troll her on Twitter. As her pies are homemade, a side effect is that she becomes very good at baking pies. (French victim: "Tres bien!")
- Killua from Hunter × Hunter does this to Gon as a prank during one episode. When Gon tries to return the favor Killua outmaneuvers him and delivers another one pie to the face.
- Kill la Kill has a scene in Episode 4 where Ryuko and Mako are navigating a massive obstacle course set up by Honnouji Academy's Disciplinary Committee alongside fellow student Maiko... and then Mako notices a trail of cheese and is easily lured by it to a Box-and-Stick Trap. Ryuko pushes Mako out from underneath the box and knocks over the stick, and only has time to register that there's a pie underneath the box before she gets her face covered in cream. Mako reacts simply by stating the pie looks delicious.
Mako: Can I lick your face, Ryuko?
- There was an entire episode of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! dedicated to this after Dedede was seen getting pied on live television. Hilarity Ensues, and many of the pies thrown are simply eaten by Kirby. Dedede even had the Monster of the Week be a pie-throwing monster; its pies are so horrible that even Kirby won't eat them. Even Meta Knight is pied at one point.
- The opening sequence to the 1981 Time Bokan series Yattodetaman ends with one of the villains, Julie, being hit with a pie.
Asian Animation
- Happy Family: Season 1's end credits sequence has a scene where the mother opens a box and is hit by a pie that was attached to it with a spring.
Comic Books
- British comics such as The Beano and The Dandy thrive on this trope, custard pies being the usual ammunition of choice. They can be thrown by hand or with a suitably elaborate Bamboo Technology device designed for the express purpose of leaving the target Covered in Gunge.
- Fantastic Four: Ben Grimm once got a pie in the face from a spring-loaded box, courtesy of the Yancey Street Gang. Or, rather, Johnny Storm, who had been framing the Yanceys for his pranks for years.
- The Joker, as befitting his chaotic nature, once concocted an elaborate scheme whose sole purpose was to hit Batman in the face with a pie.
- In The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank story arc of The Punisher, Castle finally manages to stun The Russian by throwing hot pizza in his face.
- R. Crumb did a comic depicting the wonders of the city of the future, ending with the method of regulating population growth — when you turn 65 a squad of clowns come looking for you with a pie — "not just any pie — a cyanide pie! What a way to go."
- In a Richie Rich story, Richie keeps coming up with ideas for keeping their money safe from burglars. One comes from an old slapstick comedy in which a police officer pies a criminal. Richie's implementation is to mount a spring-loaded giant hand in a safe, with a giant pie in front; when the burglar cracks the safe, the pie is launched at him.
- In an old Scrooge McDuck comic, there's an incident where Scrooge, Donald, and the kids are trying to retrieve a rare coin from where it bounced into a custard pie in a bakery. The bakers misunderstand, and the whole situation devolves into a pie war.
- Suicide Squad has a Running Gag subplot about a mysterious attacker pieing their personnel and visitors (in one issue, Lois Lane was pied!). It turns out to be Captain Boomerang, who'd earlier arranged to attack himself with a boomerang pie to divert suspicion.
- There's a running gag of Prankster pieing Superman. Granted, on at least one occasion, the pie delivered an electric shock or other nasty surprise. Gotlib did the same gag on a U-Comix cover: Superman is Immune to Bullets, but his dignity is ruined by the pie.
- In Teen Titans, it is revealed that during the one-year-later arc Miss Martian joined and left the team. The reason she left? She saw a Three Stooges short and decided to throw a pie in Rose Wilson's (Ravager) face. Rose apparently yelled at her enough to leave her crying.
- X-Men #8. Gambit: "A plasma rifle 'gainst a boysenberry pie? Can you see the crazed psychopath in this picture?" Naturally, Rogue gets the pie in the face◊.
- In Scott McCloud's Zot!, he conducted a poll for which character the reader most wanted to get a pie in the face. Unfortunately, it was won by 9-Jack-9, an electronic being previously established as not actually HAVING a face. At the New Year's party featuring the pie, it passed through 9-Jack-9 to hit the runner up, Zot, in the face.
Comic Strips
- In Bloom County, Donald Trump (in Bill the Cat's body) gets a pie in the face from Opus after calling him a "little fat-nosed toad thing."
- The Far Side: One strip shows a cowboy having received one and a clown lying dead in front of him.
It was over. But the way the townsfolk called it, neither man was a clear winner.
- Garfield:
- A Running Gag was the "Splut" pies, which came out of nowhere and made the Written Sound Effect "SPLUT!" when they came in contact with Garfield's face. This gag carried over to Garfield and Friends.
Garfield: Yup... it's Splut Week.
- One time, Jon tells Garfield to not throw a pie at his face. Garfield complies... then he dumps the pie down Jon's pants!
- A Running Gag was the "Splut" pies, which came out of nowhere and made the Written Sound Effect "SPLUT!" when they came in contact with Garfield's face. This gag carried over to Garfield and Friends.
- Hägar the Horrible gets this in one strip, as shown in the page image.
- Pie-ing is the signature prank of Kokopelli in the cartoons in Muse Magazine. His pie of choice is banana cream, and his victim of choice is Urania.
- It also happened to Snoopy's brother Spike in one Peanuts strip.
- Tumbleweeds:
- Local spinster Hildegard Hamhocker bakes a pie for Tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds refuses the pie and insults her too. She responds by throwing the pie in his face.
- Tumbleweeds praises the cook Greasy for baking a blueberry pie and calls Greasy one of the best pie bakers in the whole world. Cue Tumbleweeds getting a Pie in the Face.
Greasy: "One of" don't cut it.
Fan Works
- In Being Romilda: The Correspondents' Dinner Romilda receives a remotely-thrown pie in the face courtesy of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.
- The Bolt Chronicles: Cake, in this case. After Bolt pushes Mittens face-first into the title object in "The Cakes" (and furthermore makes a Bratty Food Demand for some of the pastry, complete with saying "Let me have it"), the cat angrily drops a cake on Bolt's head.
- In The Cursed in retaliation for water beetles in the beds of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Fred and George send the Slytherin team boxes which, when opened, slam a pie into their faces.
- In Daphne Greengrass and the Preemptive Adulterer Daphne uses a self-propelled coconut cream pie to distract Lucius during a critical moment.
- The Disney Loops: It's Gargoyles canon that Goliath gets hit in the face with a banana cream pie (fired via bazooka). In the Loops, it's an unavoidable Running Gag that he gets shot in the face with it at least once a Loop. He finds it annoying, but ultimately harmless (especially compared to the Doctor getting shot by a Dalek and forcing a Regeneration), and is willing to let bygones be bygones... even when it happens multiple times in one Loop. To top it off, he's taken to collecting the abandoned pie-shooting bazookas.
- In The Guile of the Traveller Altair and Minerva make a Quidditch bet where the loser has to pay ten galleons and throw a pie at Dumbledore. Harry then ups the stakes by suggesting that the loser also take a picture of the results and send it to the Daily Prophet.
- In Harry Potter and the Alternative Tournament Harry casts a spell that hits Voldemort with a pie.
- In Harry Potter and the Dream Come True Harry talks the Potter house elves into throwing pies and other pastries at James, Sirius and Remus.
- Hope for the Heartless: As part of their scheme to alleviate tensions between the Horned King and Avalina, the Invisibles shove a cream pie straight to the Horned King's face. Avalina is unable to contain her laughter, and the lich grudgingly takes the humiliation with dignity, proving the plan a success.
- In Horcruxes Aplenty Harry buys a lemon pie, duplicates it fifteen times and throws the entire bunch at everyone in Grimmauld Place.
- The Ice Queen Cometh: When Rio Kamishiro/Merag attempts to confront Vector, he defends himself against Merag's attempt to kill him by throwing a cake in her face that says Happy Death Day Merag. Later, when the two of them begin their duel, Vector interrupts Merag's turns by invoking this trope two more times.
- In Path To Munchies, Taylor's first idea for using her power (she can make foolproof plans for anything as long as food is involved in the process) to be a hero is 'throw pies at Kaiser until he surrenders'. She decides not to go through with it when it turns out to be not only doable but rather sadistic, since it's months of him never being able to show his face without it getting pied. By the endgame, he's a broken shell of a man known by everyone as 'Pieser', and Taylor is thought of as a villain.
- In Rarity is Forced to Take Multiple Pies to the Face., Rarity agrees to help with a fundraiser without finding out what's involved. She, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack are all pied, but Rarity appreciates it more after the fact.
- Rise of the Minisukas: After the battle against Matarael, Rei pushes her apartment's door open and is hit in the face with a banana cream pie, courtesy of the Minisuka "Prankster".
- In A Time for Changeling Percy is hit with one during the first day of a riot about his policy changes as Minister of Magic. He takes it with good humor, calling it a "tasty pie" and stating that it's better than being hexed.
- In the Twice Upon an Age series, the side volume Agents Acquired is said to have been inspired by a letter Varric receives from Sera. Said letter includes a drawing of what appears to be Seneschal Bran, who has taken a pie to the face that may or may not have been thrown by Varric himself. In his editor's note, Varric mentions that he's going to have the drawing framed.
Films — Animation
- A Bug's Life: While the circus bugs distract the grasshoppers, Francis and Heimlich do a routine where the former hits the latter with a pie.
Heimlich: [playing a baby] Baba all gone! Baby wants PIIIIE!
Francis: Pie? He asked for it. Should I give it to him?
Molt: Yeah! Give him pie! Give him pie! - Care Bears: Journey to Joke-A-Lot: The pie-in-the-face is one of the funny things that Funshine Bear sings about in the song "Make 'Em Laugh."
Funshine: A pie in your face / A banana in your ear / Pull a chicken from your hat / And make him disappear.
- In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the faces of Mt. Rushmore get big ones—Except for Abe, who gets his in the back of the head, and the filling ''leaks out his nose''.
- Robin Hood (1973): During the chaos at the archery tournament, Maid Marian throws a pie at Trigger. Then, a runaway tent crashes into the pie stand, resulting in Little John getting hit with nearly a dozen pies.
Films — Live-Action
- Laurel and Hardy made money by selling pies to throw in their short film The Battle of the Century, which codified this trope.note For a long time much of the second reel that had the scenes setting up the pie fight (involving a fixed fight and a banana) was lost; however, in June 2015 a collector found a well-preserved full copy of the second reel. The restored film was screened in 2017.
- Beach Party: During the surfers' brawl with the bikers, Ava calls Von Zipper "my hero." Dolores says "That does it" and pies her. The brawl quickly devolves into a pie fight.
- Blazing Saddles, during the "Great Pie Fight" scene in the studio commissary near the end. Everyone gets pied; villain Hedley Lemarr tries to avoid the carnage by ducking back into a restroom, but someone's waiting for him in there, and Lemarr comes out with his face completely covered by the pie he was hit with.
- Bugsy Malone is a parody gangster movie with child actors (including a young Jodie Foster) and used pies instead of handguns. It also had "splurge guns", based on the Thompson submachine gun, with drum magazines that allow rapid pie firing. Ironically, in the climax, Bugsy and Blousey are the only characters to come out unscathed beyond the residue of the other missiles.
- Carry On Loving combines this with a Running Gag: throughout the film, which is about a matrimonial agency, there's a young couple who appear in various scenes just enthusiastically making out with each other. In the climactic Foodfight!, the young woman stops kissing her man long enough to look up and see what's going on and gets a cream pie in the face. She doesn't even wipe it off but goes back to making out again.
- Cats & Dogs: During the opening scene where the Brody family's dog Buddy was chasing a cat, they came across a woman who was baking a pie. The cat jumps on her and knocked her on the floor. The woman caught the pie just in time. When she got up to put the pie in the window, Buddy jumped on her, knocking her on the floor once again. She didn't caught the pie this time and it landed on her face.
- The Con is On: When Gabriel announces Vivienne as his muse on national television, Gina faints and face plants in the cake she has in front of her.
- Dawn of the Dead (1978) features a group of vicious bikers storming the mall, looting stores, firing at the heroes and... throwing pies at zombies. We'd call it a Narm moment, but George A. Romero might have been going for laughs here.
- Delusions of Grandeur: Blaze, as Don César, opens the fight against the nobles trying to kill him by sending the poisoned birthday cake in the faces of two of them, after cutting it in two with his sword.
- The "lost scene" from Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a massive pie fight in the Pentagon's War Room. Cut for not quite fitting the darkness of the rest of the movie; and because everyone was laughing during the one take they could shoot and they couldn't waste time doing another shoot.
- A Running Gag in Go West, Young Lady. Initially Bill throws her ruined pie at Killer Pete in anger at his destroying her Endangered Soufflé, only to miss and hit Tex in the face just as he was about to grab Pete. Later, she takes a second ruined pie and flings it over her shoulder—blaming it for everything that as gone wrong—only to hit Tex in the face as he comes in to propose (again).
- The Great Race has one of, if not the, largest pie fights ever. The scene cost 200,000 dollars to shoot over 5 days and required 4,000 pies. Including one that's so big, it can't be thrown; it's a huge multi-layer cake, and two different people get knocked into it at two different times (actually just Jack Lemmon playing two characters).
- During the carnival at the end of Grease.
- In The Monkees' feature film Head, Peter winds up with a pie thrown in his face (while riding a cow, of all things) towards the end of the movie.
- Pies being flung from homemade catapults are part of the Lost Boys' arsenal in Hook.
- Inverted in The Kentucky Fried Movie, during the "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble" segment; a woman's bare bottom is pied.
- Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Klowns throw acidic pies at a security guard, which reduces him to a pile of bones and whipped cream, ending with one of the Klowns sticking a giant cherry on top. Interesting to note that the pies used were not the traditional pie tin with whipped cream, but actual fruit pies that hit the guy with quite a bit of visible force.
- One of the earliest recorded pie scenes was a Mack Sennett short in which Mabel Normand is pied, but she does carefully remove her glasses first.
- The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob: Commissioner Andréani receives the cheesecake that was intended for David's Bar Mitzvah in the face, courtesy of Rabbi Samuel.
- Monty Python:
- The trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail puts one in the iconic Chess with Death scene.
- In Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Graham Chapman gives a lecture on The Art of the Joke. The last section shows various ways of throwing pies with Terry Jones getting the brunt of the pies.
- The trailer
- In The Muppet Movie, there's a variation on this trope — the heroes accidentally crash their car into a billboard for Aunt Amy's Custard Pies, sending the giant custard pie upon it flying right into the windshield of villain Doc Hopper's car.
- Nanny McPhee: At Cedric's wedding, after Mr. Jowls is laughed at by Mr. Wheen after being hit by a cake, he takes a cake and hits Mr. Wheen in the face with it, smearing it all around. Them erupting into laughter a moment later starts a food fight.
- Fatty Arbuckle did this early and often — his short A Noise from the Deep is the earliest known instance of the joke, and it was repeated many times in his later films.
- During the chase at the end of The Outlaws IS Coming!, the Stooges—who are in a chuck wagon—are reduced to hurling pies at their pursuers, which they do with devastating accuracy.
- During the brawl at the climax of The Pirate Movie, a cart of pies is wheeled out and a character predicts a pie fight — turns out it's pizzas being thrown around instead.
- The Tony Hancock film The Punch and Judy Man features a climactic pie fight, but it escalates too quickly to generate the right comic effect.
- The Return of Captain Invincible: Captain Invincible does a rapid fire version of this. In a gun fight!
- The Shaggy DA, notable for a cigar punching right through the pie.
- Singin' in the Rain:
- Kathy Seldon says "Here's one thing I learned from the movies"—lampshading her use of the trope as she throws a pie angrily at Don Lockwood. However he ducks and it hits Lina Lamont instead—as often happened in previous movies, so this is as much a straight as a subverted version of the trope. This also creates a It Began with a Twist of Fate, because this results in Lamont getting Seldon fired from her catering job, who is then amenable to working with Lockwood, so that they fall in love. Which is exactly what one would expect to happen in a romantic movie, ironically confirming Seldon's remark, and perhaps even an indirect way of Breaking the Fourth Wall, since her remark is made as if she was not in herself in a movie, but the trope plays out in a way which makes sense only if she actually is in a movie (as she is).
- Cosmo in his song "Make 'em Laugh":
You start off by pretending you're a dancer with grace
You wiggle 'till they're giggling all over the place
And then you get a great big custard pie in the face
- In the faux trailer for the proposed feature film The Slapstick Killers, a group of young friends are stalked by a killer schoolgirl who uses pies as her weapons of choice, smashing them in the faces of her prey right before she offs them.
- In the Mega Race of Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, one of the racers has a giant pie-throwing arm as a weapon.
Juni: Easy as pie.
- Stop! Look! And Laugh!: The movie concludes with a big pie fight courtesy of stock footage from the 1947 Stooge short Half Wit's Holiday (see below). Paul Winchell gets nailed in the face with a pie when he stops by to complain about the noise.
- The Three Stooges did this numerous times, most notably in the short In the The Sweet Pie and Pie.
- A savory variant occurs in Valley Girl when, at the Valley High junior prom, Julie shoves a platter of guacamole into Tommy's face. This sets off a food fight, which Julie and Randy use as cover to escape the venue.
Literature
- The Berenstain Bears: The Runamuck Dog Show has a banana cream pie hitting Dr. Hairball in the face while an angel food cake lands on Minister Jones' head while Hilarity Ensues.
- In Craig Shaw Gardner's Bride of the Slime Monster the residents of Bunnyland chase away Big Bertha, Menge the Merciless, Professor Peril and their henchmen by throwing five hundred lemon and chocolate cream pies at them.
- Discworld:
- Cream pies to the face are an occupational hazard of coming too close to the Fool's Guild.
- In Making Money, they're also portrayed as the greatest threat to Lord Vetinari's tenure as Patrician. When Mr. Bent throws a pie at Vetinari during a big public meeting, Moist takes the metaphorical bullet to save Vetinari from being publicly humiliated.
- "Bloody Stupid" Johnson once made an automatic pie-throwing machine for the Fools' Guild, but he screwed it up as always and it had to be mothballed after it was discovered pies to the face lose their humor when they fly at 300 miles per hour.
- They're a staple of Ankh-Morpork theatre — the Librarian is a frequent visitor and has simple, defined tastes in entertainment and a really good throwing arm for displaying his displeasure with a play.
- Goosebumps: Slappy (in ghost form) does this to Shep in The Ghost of Slappy in the lunchroom at school after possessing a bowl of spaghetti to fall on him.
- The Star Trek Expanded Universe novel How Much for Just the Planet?, by John M. Ford, ends with a pie fight between tuxedoed Enterprise officers and tuxedoed Klingons.
"Blueberry," Kirk thought instead of ducking.
Splat.
Blueberry it was. - Monster of the Year: During the Food Fight at Chez Stadium, someone discovers the dessert cart and throws a lemon meringue pie, which hits the snooty maître d in the face, and he retaliates with the fire extinguisher. Others get hit with pies too, including Myrna Smud, who's so offended by the whole thing that she takes her campaign against anything imaginative in a new direction, targeting the monsters themselves.
- In Stephen Manes' The Obnoxious Jerks four of the Obnoxious Jerks enter the school talent show. Instead of the act they auditioned with, they play a deliberately-bad kazoo rendition of "Roll On, Griswold". At a prearranged point, several other Obnoxious Jerks in the audience throw tomatoes at them, followed by lemon meringue pies.
- October Daye: At one point during Chimes at Midnight, the False Queen has one of her men hit Toby in the face with a pie made from goblin fruit - which is dangerously addictive to changelings and humans - in an attempt to undermine Toby's credibility as a threat to her power. It not only gets Toby addicted to goblin fruit until she finds a hope chest, but also leads to her unconsciously using her Dóchas Sidhe powers to make herself almost human, just so she can get a better high.
- Robert Bloch puts a nasty spin on this in his short story "Sock Finish".
- This is what kicks of the events of Sonic the Hedgehog in Robotnik's Laboratory. Sonic and Tails are bored, so they dress Tails up as a ghost, make a luminous custard pie, and attempt to lure Router out with a "special delivery".
- In Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson, this is done to David Icke during a press conference in the expectation of humiliating him (it's hoped he'll lose his temper on camera). But the pie misses and so the thrower ends up looking worse than Icke.
- Vorkosigan Saga: For a high-tech version of the traditional pie fight, see the butterbug butter battle near the end of A Civil Campaign.
- Wearing the Cape has the Pieman, a thrill-villain who always delivers two pies to his chosen public figures: the first by box and the second a few days later, in public, to the face. His ability to penetrate bodyguards and other deployed defenses makes him a matter of some concern to the forces of order, but since he has never graduated beyond baked goods he is considered a fairly low priority.
- Who Censored Roger Rabbit?:
- Roger reports having been pied by someone who was apparently trying to kill him. When Eddie Valiant asks why he believes it was anything besides a normal pieing, Roger explains in great detail the fine points of face-pieing.
- In Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?, Roger, while disguised as a human with the effects of Toon Tonic, hits a well-known movie critic in the face with a pie, confident that he'll get away with it due to his altered appearance.
Music
- Alanis Morissette in the video of "You Learn."
- The Beastie Boys in the video for "(You've Got to) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)", from Licensed to Ill.
- Bette Midler's video of "Beast of Burden".
- British rock band Charlie's video for their 1983 Top 40 hit, "It's Inevitable."
- Cobra Starship in the video of "The City is at War".
- Japanese "rock band project" Cocoa Otoko in their debut video, "Amai Wana Nigai Uso...", with cakes.
- David Rovics' "Song for the BBB" is a musical tribute to the Biotic Baking Brigade: a loosely connected group of activists famous for throwing pies in the faces of such figures as Bill Gates, San Francisco mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom, anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps, economist Milton Friedman, Swedish King Carl Gustaf, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, conservative journalist William F. Buckley, right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, former WTO head Renato Ruggiero, and Ann Coulter, among others.
- Elton John's frequent duet partner Kiki Dee, in his music video for "Wrap Her Up" (1985).
- Jonathan Coulton's song "Bozo's Lament" is about a clown who's grown weary of his job. Naturally, this trope is referred to in the course of the song.
- The video for the Josh Groban/Lindsey Stirling/The Muppets cover of "Pure Imagination" ends with Groban, Stirling, and most of the Muppets with faces full of whipped cream from a catapulted cake.
- From verse two of "Daydream" by The Lovin' Spoonful:
Tomorrow I'll pay the dues for dropping my load,
A pie in the face for being a sleepy bull toad - Ron Mael gets one on the cover of Sparks' album In Outer Space.
- Steve Aoki does this with a cake at each of his live performances. Fans usually line up in the front row with a "CAKE ME" sign in hand.
Print Media
- The cover of the January 1972 "Is Nothing Sacred?" issue of National Lampoon, giving one to Che Guevara.
Professional Wrestling
- A pie in the face is something any aspiring WWE Diva can expect at some point in her career, especially around Thanksgiving. Past victims include Sunny, Mickie James, Ashley Massaro, Michelle McCool, Kelly Kelly, Layla, the Bella Twins, Rosa Mendes, Joy Giovanni, Vickie Guerrero, and Stephanie McMahon. The men also sometimes get it in diva-related segments, as has happened to Big Show and Santino Marella.
- At the July 4, 2016 edition of Raw, a huge food fight broke out backstage. Kevin Owens thought he’d gotten through unscathed.... until someone (it was never found out who) hit him in the face with a pie.
- Toni Storm's final feud in WWE involved getting a pie in the face twice by Charlotte Flair on an edition of SmackDown; Toni puts a pie in Charlotte's face as revenge the following week.
Puppet Shows
- Fraggle Rock: In "Fraggle Wars," the World's Oldest Fraggle explains to Red that they're supposed to hate the Cave Fraggles because they have no sense of humor. He says that they think the best part of getting a pie in the face is cleaning up afterward. Hitting the World's Oldest Fraggle and the Cave's Oldest Fraggle in the face with pies turns out to be the key to preventing a war between the Rock Fraggles and the Cave Fraggles.
- A regular happenstance in Les Guignols de l'Info for French philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, following a pair of such incidents in Real Life. There was even a parody of the movie JFK, with BHL being pied in the face treated like JFK's assassination.
- The Mr. Potato Head Show: Queenie Sweet Potato loves her sugar cream pies. At one point, she accidentally got some pie slapped onto her face, and when Mr. Potato Head's test audience loved it, he added a segment to his for-Toddlers episode where a large number of pies were thrown in Queenie's face.
- The Muppet Show:
- In the Sandy Duncan episode, she gets pied by Behemoth for calling him ugly. (She's trying to say he's beautiful inside.)
- Fozzie gets one from a rival comedian bear in one episode, and from Paul Simon in another.
- At the end of the Candice Bergen episode, Kermit appears with a "pie for Fozzie Bear" (the culmination of a Running Gag where Fozzie would call there was "[X] for Kermit the Frog"). When he pies Fozzie, some of it splatters onto Bergen, and Fozzie says "Look what you did!"
- Sesame Street during the song "Surprise," with even the viewer getting pied.
- Tales of the Tinkerdee: The supernatural rules of the setting mean that, when a witch takes a custard pie to the face, lightning flashes. When Princess Gwendolinda and Taminella Grinderfall (witchiest witch of them all!) both claim to be the real princess, they pie them both to figure out who the witch is. Just roll with it, folks.
Roleplay
- At the climax of the Ninja arc of We Are Our Avatars, the Shredder was defeated with a Boston Cream Cake to the face.
Tabletop Games
- In Blood Bowl, one of the cards you can use to perform a sneak attack on opponents is called "Custard Pie", and it specifically involves this trope. For it, one of the players has snuck a pie into his jersey and throws it at another player. If it hits them, they get knocked down.
- Shown on the "Humiliation" Consequence card in Kitsune: Of Foxes and Fools, not to be confused with the "Humiliated" Trick card which depicts a plunger to the face.
- Netrunner gives us the ICE card "Pi in the 'Face". We assume the effect is virtual.
- Hasbro's juvenile game Pie Face! has a mechanical device with an arm that holds a sponge that is covered with household whipped cream to simulate the pie. On his turn, a player places his face in the target area of the device, spins the spinner, and twists the handle that number of times. Much like a slot machine, players never can be sure when the payoff will come. The player then scores points for the number he spun if he doesn't get the pie in the face.
- In the RPG Toon, this is a surefire way to Boggle a character.
Theatre
- Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. The sketch in question was originally written by Cleese and Chapman for a 1968 sketch show, We Have Ways of Making you Laugh. (It was of course only one of several recycled sketches the Pythons used on stage, most of the others being from At Last the 1948 Show.)
Theme Parks
- Fozzie accidentally pies himself with a remote-controlled one in Disney Theme Parks' Muppet*Vision 3D.
Toys
- The game Pie Face is all about this trope. Players roll a die for the number of times to turn the crank, stick their face through a hole in front of a hand holding a pie, and turn it that number of times. If the pie doesn't get launched in their face, they give another player a turn. Whoever gets hit with the pie loses.
Video Games
- Johnathan from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin can throw cream pies at enemies. When leveled up it's also one of the most powerful Dark-element weapons in the game, making it the perfect tool to take out superboss Richter Belmont.
- In Dead Rising there's a few places with pies, which you can eat for one hit point or throw at zombies. Score a direct hit to their face and the pie will stick, leaving them unable to see you. If you attack them and knock off the pie, you can pick it up and throw it again. This is also used as one of Frank West's attacks in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, where he throws a pie at the opponent's face. It only sticks for a second though.
- Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance has a Mystery Room in the Item World where a Fight Mistress will ask you if you want to use a pie. Say yes, and she'll use it to pie a Witch in the face (with animations ranging from using a whole stack of pies to one that explodes like a bomb!). Afterwards, the Fight Mistress will give the player a Pie (which counts as a Fist weapon; its Ambusher innocent ensures the target won't counter-attack the wearer).
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: If you agree to play pranks with Sera in the Trespasser DLC, what follows is a montage of the two of you gleefully pieing random people - and then each other. It's a Call-Back to a potential dialogue from the main game, in which Sera assures the Inquisitor that they're not evil enough to deserve any worse treatment than a pie in the face.
- Excitebots: Trick Racing features floating clown heads on some tracks. If you successfully land a pie on their face, you will be rewarded with three stars and the terrain shifting for a better route.
- In Injustice: Gods Among Us, The Joker's super move starts by throwing a pie into his opponent's face, allowing him to move in for the rest of the attack (filled with crowbar-smashing and explosions!). In Injustice 2, his new Limit Break is instead initiated by lobbing a gas canister at his enemy, but if he's equipped with "Side Order of Pie" gear, it returns to being a pie to the face.
- Kingdom of Loathing "This is a cream pie, which has been expertly balanced for throwing." Other players can be targeted giving them the 'Hilarious!' effect of 'Pie in the Face'.
- The only way to defeat the terrifying, monstrous, bloodthirsty Yeti in King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! is to throw a cream pie in its face. This was not one of its best puzzles.
- Makai Kingdom has these as weapons, though their basic purpose is to heal their targets.
- Super Mario Party: The minigame Pie Hard has two teams of characters throw cream pies at one another, with more continually being restocked on the tables in the back of their respective zones. As the characters get hit, they get more and more of a Covered in Gunge look.
- In the PC adaptation of Muppet Treasure Island, Pops runs a store where he has installed the Anti-Buccaneer Lunch Launcher, a catapult that tosses pies, to keep pirates from raiding his store. Pops pays you one doubloon for each pirate you attack, but takes one doubloon away for each customer you attack. You'll need to earn enough doubloons to buy one of his costumes to be more presentable to Jeeves, the butler of Squire Trelawney.
- NetHack has a cream pie item, which causes blindness. On the one hand, stealing from shops will result in Keystone Kops showing up to pie you and beat you with rubber hoses until you die. On the other hand, pieing something does not count as an attack, and the pie takes up the weapon slot, which makes it very useful for characters attempting the pacifist conduct.
- Pet Society had a mystery box that could either give your virtual pet some random cool item or an apple cake to eat, or the cake ended up in the pet's face. The pet would laugh at the incident.
- Power Pete: The clowns in the Magic Funhouse department are fond of doing this. Luckily, Pete can get them right back with the exact same weapon.
- Rugrats: Royal Ransom: This is how the clown enemies attack you.
- Peacock from Skullgirls has a pie in the face as one of her attacks, which fits into her repertoire of slapstick moves and cartoon references.
- One of the scenarios in The Three Stooges video game is based on the The Sweet Pie and Pie short mentioned above. To get the best score in this scenario, you have to throw all your pies, and avoid getting hit by pies thrown by the opponents. Like all the scenarios, it gets harder each time you redo it, with more pies required and the opponents becoming faster, but the payoff becoming greater.
- The Pie Throw is a whole gag (weapon) track in the MMORPG Toontown Online. You start by throwing slices, then bigger pies, and then you start throwing cakes at your enemies.
- The boss battle against the VP features this heavily in a real-time combat form, where you first throw a pie into a compartment in his body to stun him and then knock him back with more pies in the face until he reaches the edge of the arena and falls.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! Tag Force Games:
- In the ones with the GX cast at least, you can play a Dodgeball-esque minigame. One of the things you can throw is a Pie. It disables whoever is hit by it for a couple of turns.
- Also in the Third Tag Force Game there's a sandwich throwing minigame. One of the things that needs to be avoided is Pie.
- Twisted Wonderland: The Union Birthday/Birthday Jacket card sets always end with the birthday boy receiving the 'gift of good fortune' from whoever was summoned by the Magical Birthday Dice, which turns out to be this.
Web Animation
- The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: In “The Most Epically Inspirational Sports Movie Ever”, after Ridiculously Epic’s failed attempt at cheating in the skateboarding competition causes him to fall off of the platform, his face lands in a pie.
- In the RWBY episode "Best Day Ever," Weiss gets one in her own face compliments of Nora. Cue a massive food fight between RWBY and JNPR after that.
Webcomics
- The humorous comic Epic Battle makes pie fights Serious Business.
- Ennui GO!: Frequently done by Sarah as a mood lightener, and usually referred to as "creampies" with tongue firmly in cheek. The joke is taken to the extreme in one strip where Sarah jumps on Izzy and hits her in the face with a pie she's holding between her thighs.
- Freefall blatantly foreshadows it starting one strip. It only takes a few strips before the pies fly.
- It took more than a few tries for him to get it right, but Girl Genius has a minor Spark who's developed a special pie that calms people down when he tosses it in their face.
"Yes! Extra butter! Less nutmeg! I'm a genius! Ha! Take that, Brillat-Savarin!note "
- This EGS:NP strip in El Goonish Shive features pies that, when thrown in a person's face, transform that person and their clothes.
- Happens a few times in Homestuck, mostly from Nanna, who loves to play tricks on people, even her own grandson and her Alternate Universe self.
- In The Order of the Stick, Xykon is bribed into paying attention to a strategic discussion with Redcloak by the prospect of seeing one hobgoblin throw a pie in another one's face.
Xykon: Eh, seems kind of tame...
Redcloak: (sotto voice) They don't know that I infested the pie with acid-spitting beetles.
Xykon: Let's talk tactics. - At the end of Ozy and Millie, Millie's father starts a pie fight during the wedding of Ozy's father and Millie's mother. Strangely, this is a sign that he approves of the match (Food fights are a traditional part of dragon weddings. This is why they had so many pies lying around in the first place).
- Pacificators: Aphrodite did this to Muneca.
- In this PvP strip, fantasy LARP plus Civil War re-enactors plus Klingon LARP plus a broken-down catering truck equaled one rather bizarre pie-fight.
- In Rusty and Co., Mimic gets one from a bugbear channeling Fozzie Bear. And who doesn't know when to stop.
- In Scary Go Round Hugo gets hit in the face with an apple pie. It's so hot (one molecule away from magma!) that it grievously injures him, forcing him to drop out of the election.
- Schlock Mercenary opined that "a spontaneous celebration is really only one short hop away from being a riot." Then the chef made some pie.
Kevyn: That could have been worse. I could have chosen that moment to issue new weapons.
Tagon: I think I have pie crust in my spleen... - Sheldon: This strip has Dante throwing a mud pie in Arthur's face.
- UltraCar in Shortpacked!. It started out here and remains her (she body-swapped to a Robot Girl, long story) weapon of choice for humiliating meat-sacks.
- This was also UC's defining characteristic in Willis's early Ultra Car comics (with "sweet pickle pies"), but they're almost certainly non-canon.
- Carla, her counterpart in Dumbing of Age has only done it once, but it was an epic once.
"Oh, and I'll be billing you for the pie."
- This was also UC's defining characteristic in Willis's early Ultra Car
- Sluggy Freelance played with the cream pie to the face in one strip.
- A What's New? with Phil and Dixie strip about practical jokes in D&D says that since the point is loss of dignity, it's funnier to hit a paladin in the face with a pie than a tavern wench. The next panel shows a cheerfully pied paladin saying "Mmm, pie!" and a caption saying "...Sometimes".
- The Whiteboard:
- Doc receives one in this strip, ultimately revealed to have been set up by Bandit.
- In this strip Doc is shown to have been hit by multiple pies after Roger had pressed a button labeled "do not press".
- Sandy gets one here thanks again to Roger and that button he shouldn't be pushing.
- Weaponized on the paintball field, with Doc using a pie from Roger's lunch to tag out an opposing team member.
- "Pie tag!", courtesy of Bandit.
- Doc receives one in this strip,
Web Original
- The Onion: "Study Finds Link Between Being Struck By Cream Pie, Diminished Social Standing"
- In the middle of The Great Researcher Prank War at SCP Foundation, two people tried to win SCP-050 by throwing pies at each other. A frustrated Dr. Bright threw four pies at the current holder of the SCP, getting it himself much to his irritation that this trope could be considered 'clever'. Throwing pies soon got banned from the prank war.
- An April Fools' Day guest post on That Wacky Redhead answered the perennial question "If Taxi Driver doesn't exist in this timeline, what happens to John Hinkley Jr?" The (non-canonical) answer: he gets obsessed with a different Jodie Foster movie and throws custard pies at Reagan.
Web Videos
- Chuggaaconroy ended up on the receiving end of one during the 2010 Mario Marathon held by The Speed Gamers. He enjoyed it to the point where he forced himself into the pie, while the others speculated if he was just hungry, or he was simply shoving his face in it.
- The Nostalgia Critic gets pied in the face by Linkara at the end of the BloodRayne review. Then it escalates into a full-on Three Stooges routine with Spoony.
- Late in 2016, members of the Revelmode group participated in a series of 'Lie & Pie' videos that got released across the participating Youtubers' channels.
- Thomas Sanders gets one of his Pokémon Prank Vines turned on him when friend and fellow Viner Brittany Kelly nails him in the face with a pie as he comes up behind her.
- A variant: in one video, a guy and his girlfriend make a cake. When they are done, he (around 12 minutes in), shoves a piece of cake in her face. While she's a bit mad at first, she seems to forgive him pretty quickly, as the two of them start kissing while she still has cake all over her face.
Real Life
- The University of Victoria's Engineering Students' Society has an annual fundraiser on March 14, Pi Day (3.14 - get it?) One person makes a donation to have an individual of their choice pied; the victim can dodge the pastry by matching the donation. Some good-natured individuals allow themselves to be pied but donate as well.
- Same with University of Calgary's own ESS. Oh, Crap!. This would be a Berserk Button had it happened outside of Engineering or if an informal restraining order was never made.
- The Biotic Baking Brigade, a San Francisco-based left-wing activist group, specializes in throwing pies in the faces of those it regards as its political foes.
- Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was once pied by a member of this group. (It also happened to Stephane Dion, one of his key ministers; the difference is that Dion launched a lawsuit against them.)
- As mentioned at the top of this page, Bill Gates suffered a similar fate on a trip to Belgium.
- Indeed The Other Wiki has a page devoted to people who have been "pied" at some point. It goes so far as to note, "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it."
- And then there are the organizations that are dedicated to pieing people. Like these people. Or this guy.
- The King of Sweden was attacked by a Strawberry Tart in 2005 by a 16-year-old boy. The King was reportedly "Surprised, but unhurt". In a hilarious case of Over-reaction and Easily Forgiven, the Court then charged the boy with Lèse-majesté and Treason only to then sentence the boy with six months' probation. One assumes they wanted to put the fear of God into him.
- In recent years, it's become common for a professional baseball player who gets a game-winning hit to be rewarded with a shaving-cream pie to the face from his teammates. Actually, it can apply to any player who does particularly well during a game, i.e. a pitcher who throws a no-hitter.
- Skippy's List references one particular incident where pies, to be thrown at the unit CO, would be auctioned off for a charity fundraiser. The pies, however, would be "voluntarily" bought by individual soldiers. So Skippy, being The Loonie that he is, decides that a traditional cream pie would be too blasé, and goes with something a little nontraditional...
- In the 70s, science fiction critic Charles Platt pied magazine editor Ted White in the face at a convention. Sadly, White didn't see the funny side.
- The infamous anti-gay activitist, Anita Bryant, famously got a banana-cream pie smashed in her face by gay-rights activist, Tom Higgins, during a press conference on October 14, 1977. When Bryant's granddaughter publicly came out as gay in 2021, many media outlets were quick to joke that this was another pie in the face for her, albeit a figurative one this time.
- Since 2010, the Furry Fandom convention Rainfurrest has featured the tradition of pieing staff members in the face if their charitable donation goals are reached.
- The first time Fred Rogers ever turned on a television, he saw footage of people throwing pies in each other's faces. The violence disgusted him enough that he decided to devote his life to gentler television programming. Pies in the face are directly responsible for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
- A variant of this has been carried out in New Zealand with lamington cakes — twice.
- Per Rule 34, it is also a niche sexual fetish.
- The Belgian writer and anarchist Noel Godin specialises in pieing public figures who he thinks deserve it. After pieing Bill Gates, he supposedly said "My work is done here." Another target was Jean-Luc Godard, who found it Actually Pretty Funny, and a recurring target is French philosopher, socialite and TV windbag Bernard-Henri Lévy, who really, really doesn't find it funny at all (which is one of the reasons why Godin keeps doing it.)
- An activist once threw a pie at anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, injuring her eye in the process.
- In May 2017, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was pied in the middle of speaking a business conference, by a local Christian farmer who was protesting Joyce's support for marriage equality.
- As a variant, it's not that uncommon for newlyweds to shove wedding cake in each other's faces and the like. As they generally agree to it beforehand, it's not considered assault or the like. Although there have been cases where it was not agreed on beforehand, and some marriages have ended there and then.
- Emma Thompson seems rather fond of doing this. At one point, she even said "You can't imagine what satisfaction can be gotten from throwing a pie into someone's face."
