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[[quoteright:350:[[ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Garfield_diet_7446.jpg]]]]

->''"I suspect it would be like most cartoons. You know, we'd start to go nuts after a while and I would look at Homestar and he would look like a big steak. And then Homestar would look at me and I'd look like, you know, some kinda brownie sundae. So we'd chase each other around the island, trying to eat each other. And at some point, my foot would look like a sandwich, and I would put salt on it and try to eat it, and it's like 'Oh, it's my foot!'"''
-->-- '''Strong Bad''' (on living on a desert island with Homestar), ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner''

A character has been suffering from hunger for days or weeks, and begins to hallucinate. Is that a delicious steak dinner, a giant hot dog (or a large roast fowl) sitting right next to him? No, it's one of their friends, who is now staring back at him oddly, wondering "{{Why are you looking at me like that}}?"

This most often occurs with shipwreck survivors or castaways (especially if stranded on a FarSideIsland), but it can occur in less dire consequences too, such as fasting or dieting.

Note that the particular hallucinations are ''always'' some manner of FoodPorn; never has a castaway visualized their shipmates as, say, ground Tofu paste or Brussels sprouts.

If said character goes through with it, it transitions to NoPartyLikeADonnerParty. Not to be confused with [[WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents Meat Vision]]. Compare VeinOVision and ColdTurkeysAreEverywhere. See also DeliciousDistraction and ObsessedWithFood. HorrorHunger can have vampires, werewolves and other monsters [[WarmBloodbagsAreEverywhere looking at humans like this]] should they go without for too long.
----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Advertising]]
* A currently airing Planters commercial is essentially nothing but meat-o-vision; a guy sees his shipmate as a giant sea-salted peanut -- except that the shipmate gets drawn as Mr. Peanut, not an actual peanut.
* An Oh Henry ad showed a hungry university student seeing his English Literature professor as a giant Oh Henry bar... and chasing said professor down the hall.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''[[Manga/FullMetalAlchemist Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood]]'' uses this during the survival part of the Elrics' TrainingFromHell.
* Happens in ''Manga/OnePiece''. Most egregorious example: Luffy and Sanji chasing Chopper. Even if he wasn't part of their team yet, they at least seemed to notice it was an intelligent creature, and they didn't care.
* In the manga version of ''Anime/HeatGuyJ'', Kyoko is dieting (read: starving herself), so that she can look good in a bikini at a pool party her crush has been invited to. She's working at her computer, and visions of ice cream and cakes come out from the keyboard.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* In ''The Crab with the Golden Claws'', when Franchise/{{Tintin}} and Captain Haddock are lost in the middle of a desert, Captain Haddock sees Tintin as a mirage of a champagne bottle, and throttles him, trying to remove the "cork".
* The heroes of ''ComicBook/GorskyAndButch'', a SaltAndPepper pair of policemen suffer this when in the desert, seeing each other as a bottle of mineral water and cola respectively.
* Parodied in an issue of ''ComicBook/TheSimpsons'' comic, all the main characters are dumped on an island made of trash by Mr Burns. Before long, Homer looks at Lenny and Carl and sees a hot dog and a hamburger with his friends' faces. Then it transpires that, searching for clean clothes on the island, they put on some [[BurgerFool fast food mascot]] costumes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Strips]]
* ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide''
** A comic has a cow and man starving in a life raft. The cow pictures the man as covered in grass and flowers.
** Another strip references this trope: two haggard-looking men in a life raft, with one telling the other that he doesn't want to make the situation worse but he's really close to [[EvilLaugh laughing maniacally]] and seeing his friend's nose as a German sausage.
* Happens just about every time ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} is dieting.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Madagascar}}'': An interesting twist, in that the character in question (a lion) is looking this way at a zebra, which in the wild ''would'' have been among its prey, but they're from the zoo and don't seem to know that.
* In ''JamesAndTheGiantPeach'', a starving Centipede first sees the Grasshopper as cheese and a drink bottle, then the Earthworm as a hot dog, and finally a seagull as a roast chicken. He almost eats the last one.
* In ''[[Disney/PeterPan Return to Neverland]]'', after the [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute kraken]] has a taste of Captain Hook for the first time, it sees him as [[http://magicalscreencaps.com/images/returntoneverland/gall/returntoneverland144.jpg a big red codfish]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* Oddly enough, the first example of this trope was in live-action, in the 1925 Creator/CharlieChaplin film ''Film/TheGoldRush''.
* In the movie ''Manga/CityHunter'', Creator/JackieChan hallucinates that a woman's bodily parts are food (the breasts are burgers, the legs are chicken legs). The woman is pulled away before he can even attempt to eat her.
* Another live-action example in a ''[[TheLittleRascals Little Rascals]]'' short where Stymie and Spanky are living on the streets Stymie briefly imagines Petey the dog as a hotdog.
* ''Film/StrangeBrew'': When Bob and Doug forget to feed their dog Hosehead, the dog sees the duo dressed as giant steaks.
* ''Film/VampiresSuck'' has [[ParodyName Becca's]] face morph into a hamburger during a parody of the papercut scene from ''NewMoon''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* From ''[[ParanoiaFuel The Paranoid's Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You Can Just Feel Coming On]]'''s entry for [[IMAHumanitarian Wendigo psychosis]]:
-->''You love your wife. Your beautiful wife. Your beautiful, succulent wife. Your beautiful succulent delicious wife. Your succulent delicious steak. You love your steak so much. Rare.\\
Hang on a second. Were you just imagining your wife as a steak? You should know better then that. You should never imagine your steak as a steak. Steak. Eat steak.''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/FatherTed''
** Played with in an episode: for Lent, Ted tries to give up cigarettes, and makes Jack give up alcohol and Dougal give up rollerblading. About halfway through, Ted sees Jack as a giant cigarette, Jack sees Dougal as a giant pint of Guinness, and Dougal sees Ted as a giant rollerblade.
** Weirdly averted in another episode, "The Mainland": when Ted and Dougal are lost in the caves, and Dougal declares "Ted! I'm so hungry I'm beginning to hallucinate". Ted then steps into the shot having turned not into food but [[HistoricalHilarity Abraham Lincoln]].
* Referenced in an episode of ''Series/{{Friends}}''. Joey and Chandler have been waiting a long time to be served at a restaurant, and Chandler quips, "If this were a cartoon, you'd look like a ham by now."
* In ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', Newman pictures [[spoiler:butter-covered and sunburnt]] Kramer as a roast turkey - after [[spoiler:reading a book about cannibalism]].
* Parodied in an episode of ''Series/TheMightyBoosh'', when the main characters are trapped on a deserted island; before long Howard wants to eat Vince and the camera flashes to Vince made of food. Then the camera goes to the regular Vince, who says "Hey, Howard, why don't we eat this guy? He's made of eggs and sausages."
* ''Series/TheColbertReport''
** StephenColbert, while reporting on a food shortage, becomes increasingly hungry and starts eyeing up his stage manager Bobby. Soon, Bobby becomes a giant chicken rotisserie. An interesting example in that Stephen is already established as an occasional cannibal -- and then we come back from the final commercial break to find him licking barbecue sauce off his fingers. Bobby, it turns out, has [[IncrediblyLamePun tendered]] his resignation, and in a later episode Stephen eats Bobby's ghost.
** When the New York Times reported the number of weeks' pay that a worker would receive for losing a limb, Stephen chopped up the article with a paper cutter... then started seeing his fingers as giant dollar signs. In the end he decided not to do it, because he needed his hands to cut off the ''other'' things.
* The ''Series/NewsRadio Film/{{Titanic}}'' parody ended with Bill and Matthew on a liferaft in the middle of the Atlantic sizing each other up as a hamburger and a soft drink.
* In ''Series/TheXFiles'', a brain-eating mutant starts seeing other people's heads this way. Also inverted when he hallucinates that the hamburger patties he's cooking look like little brains.
* In ''Series/{{Glee}}'', Mercedes starts to see her fellow students as food just before she passes out when she is on Sue Sylvester's starvation diet. Also, Quinn asks her if she saw everyone as food before passing out, explaining that the same thing had happened to her.
* In ''Series/MyNameisEarl'' When Randy went a day without food he started describing Earl's body as different foods.
* In ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', Frank starts to hallucinate with hunger and see Mac as a rum-soaked ham after they find themselves adrift at sea. About [[JerkAss 30 seconds after they find themselves adrift at sea]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music Videos]]
* In the music video for "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BieVgyrfglQ Learn to Fly]]" by Foo Fighters, a fat woman on an aeroplane looks at another passenger and his head turns into a hamburger.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:New Media]]
* ''TheOnion''
** Parodied in [[http://www.theonion.com/content/news/c_c_sabathia_prince_fielder_keep an article]]. Which is a poor case of research failure, as most sports fans know (because it's just so damn funny) that Prince Fielder is a vegetarian. Big home run hitter. Vegetarian. Nope, it still doesn't compute.
** Also in [[http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31598 another one]].
* The Podcast/RiffTrax [[http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/lord-rings-return-king description]] of ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings: The Return of the King'': "Frodo and Sam continue onwards towards Mt. Doom, despite Frodo increasingly appearing to Sam as a walking roast turkey."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/Kirby64TheCrystalShards''. ExtremeOmnivore Kirby and the rest of his FiveManBand are traveling in the desert when Kirby starts hallucinating his buddies as food. Good thing Adelaine can paint things to life!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* Referenced on ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' in the Strong Bad E-Mail [[http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail52.html island]], where Strong Bad remarks on what it would be like if he and Homestar were to be stranded on a desert island, resulting in the above quote.
* Stephen Merchant from ''Radio/TheRickyGervaisShow'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ0QTtmOGHo tells a story]] about how, after buying a PS2, he realizes too late that he missed out on a deal that would have saved him $20, and has this same reaction afterwards (though his his case, he's seeing money instead of food).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick''
** Used as [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0031.html a mind flayer]] sees the heads of each of the party members as different kinds of food, depending on their intelligence level and personality (for example, [[TheDitz Elan]] is a can of Diet Coke, while [[TheSmartGuy Vaarsavius]] and [[GeniusBruiser Roy]] are a hamburger and a roast turkey, respectively).
** Also used for a non-food product: injured members of the party see Durkon, the healer, as a box of Band-Aids.
** In [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0124.html another comic]], Belkar is ticked off that he's the only member of the team not to gain a level and starts killing rats in order to make up the difference. Elan points out that he needs to kill something closer to his level... at which point Belkar sees his head as the letters "[[ExperiencePoints XP]]"...
* [[http://catandgirl.com/?p=744 One strip]] of ''Webcomic/CatAndGirl'' might be considered a subversion. As much as a trope like this is subvertable.
* ''Webcomic/CyanideAndHappiness'' [[http://www.explosm.net/comics/2464/ played it straight]].
* ''Webcomic/BrawlInTheFamily'': "He's a threat to Popstar, [[http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2009/07/16/172-turnabout-kirby-part-2/ to my succulent, golden-brown skin..."]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* An early episode of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' features Garfield playing with a cardboard box in various scenarios. When he imagines the box to be a lifeboat adrift on the ocean, he imagines Odie as a club sandwich. He briefly imagines onion rings, too, but he changes his mind.
* Plenty of ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' shorts:
** ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wackiki_Wabbit Waikiki Wabbit]]'' (BugsBunny)
** ''Along Came Daffy'' and ''Holiday for Drumsticks'' (DaffyDuck)
** Many of the [[RoadRunnerVsCoyote Road Runner/Coyote]], Wolf/Sheepdog and Sylvester/Tweety shorts.
** Henery Hawk often sees Foghorn Leghorn this way.
* The Creator/TexAvery MGM cartoon ''What's Buzzin', Buzzard?'', about two starving vultures who try to eat each other.
* The ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' short ''His Mouse Friday''.
* The ''WesternAnimation/WoodyWoodpecker'' shorts ''Pantry Panic'' and it's remake ''Who's Cookin' Who?''.
* Parodied by ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'', "Dinner Is Swerved", in which Bloo, lost with Mac in the seemingly endless hallways of Foster's, pursues a running chicken drumstick in a fit of delirious hunger... and it really ''is'' a chicken-drumstick-shaped imaginary friend instead of Mac (Kids stuck in Diet Camps can get rather single-minded, it seems).
* Toot, the show's ExtremeOmnivore, has these sometimes in ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'', like in "Wooldoor Sockbat's Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!" (the episode with the Terminator).
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', Quagmire gets a case of this that makes everything look like an attractive woman -- [[UnpopularPopularCharacter except Meg]].
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' had one episode where Cyborg was infected with a computer virus and hallucinated that everything he looked at was food. This led to him eating everything from a stop sign to the cash right out of an ATM (and nearly the ATM itself). It stopped being funny when [[spoiler: he mistook a transmission tower for a giant lollipop, threatening to spread the virus to the entire city]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', after fleeing from the annual "We Hate the KND Barbecue" and subsequently being stranded in a sea of asparagus, Numbuh Four starts seeing Numbuh Three's Rainbow Monkey as a cheeseburger. Before you suggest "eat the goddamned asparagus", [[StockYuck if any of them actually liked the prospect of eating the stuff]] we'd still be having this dilemma due to the sheer quantity of it all. And let's not forget that Wally STILL wants to go after the "cheeseburger" when the team comes under attack from a GREAT WHITE ASPARAGUS!!!
* Not necessarily because of desperation, but in ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'', when [[RobotGirl Jenny]] gets new eyes and flips through the settings, one of them is "Sausage Vison".
* In a ''WesternAnimation/RenAndStimpy'' episode in which they are trapped in a log cabin buried beneath the snow imagine each other as various food items, and in another one where Ren lives in a cave he imagines bats as a pair of cow's udders which he starts sucking on before one of them smacks him away.
* ''WesternAnimation/HiHiPuffyAmiYumi'' "Tsunami Yumi", while lost at sea Ami imagines Yumi as an enormous sushi roll, because they're Japanese of course.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{The Fairly OddParents}}'' did an interesting spoof. When Timmy's parents are given super-powers, Timmy's Dad gains "Meat vision" (to complement his wife's "heat vision") basically, he can now make meat products appear at will just by looking at some empty space and squinting. Instant hot dog! (When they were forced to give up their powers, Timmy's Dad said this power is what he would miss the most)
* ''WesternAnimation/{{SpongeBob SquarePants}}'' had a subversion in "Fear of a Krabby Patty" where [=SpongeBob=] develops a fear of Krabby Patties, and sees Mr. Krabs and the customer as them.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'', Dog suffers this [[ColdTurkeysAreEverywhere after going on a diet.]]
* 'WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''
** Bart has been sent to his room without any dinner, and eventually feels so hungry he begins to visualize Santa's Little Helper's head as a pizza box, with his tongue as a slice.
** "Marge Vs. The Monorail" has a variation; Homer is trapped on the out-of-control monorail train and needs to find an anchor. He looks to Bart, and visualizes him as a large ship's anchor. Bart, for understandable reasons, urges him to think harder.
** On another occasion, Homer fantasizes that Mr Burns is a giant ice cream cone and starts licking him.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'', the neighborhood is flooded, and after having gone without food for a while, Rolf imagines Johnny's head as a turkey. Even though there was a cow, goat, pig, and several chickens on board the raft with them.
-->'''Rolf:''' If we do not find dry land soon, I will be forced to feast upon your succulent noggin!\\
'''Johnny:''' O-kay...
* In a camping episode of ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife,'' Rocko, Heffer and Filburt imagined each other as food complete with the background audio: (Ding! Order Up!)
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/OggyAndTheCockroaches'', one of the roaches gets a snootful of mushroom spores and hallucinates that Jack is giant roast chicken. And then tries to eat his leg.
* Owen starts hallucinating that his teammates (and Chris) are food after his jaw is wired shut in ''WesternAnimation/TotalDramaAction''.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'''s episode "Which Came First?", when Billy and Mandy's class is stranded in the desert, Pud'n freaks out, saying that they'll have to eat each other to survive. Sperg looks at Billy and Irwin, seeing their heads as a drink and a burger, respectively.
-->'''Billy:''' What are you lookin' at, Sperg?\\
'''Irwin:''' Yeah, what are you lookin' at?\\
''(a pickle falls out of Irwin's mouth)''\\
'''Billy:''' [[LampshadeHanging You dropped a pickle.]]
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/KickButtowski'', the title character has to prove that he can refrain from doing stunts for 24 hours, or he'll be shipped off to a military academy. At one point, he imagines Gunther as a skateboard, and even tries to ride him.
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheProudFamily'' features a starving Oscar and Felix imagining each other to be burgers and hot-dogs. (They also attempt to eat a bowling ball that they believe to be a cherry.)
* The smurf-colored glasses that Handy created in the eponymous ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs Smurfs]]'' episode, which enabled Smurfs to see anyone as handsome and harmless, allows Bigmouth to see Gargamel and Azrael as a pair of walking delectables, which caused Bigmouth to chase Gargamel and Azrael into the forest while the Smurfs make their escape.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'', Bob becomes obsessed with winning an arcade game where the player battles food items. While high on pain killers, he hallucinates that two boys in the arcade are enemies from the game and chases after them shouting "Chicken leg!"
{{/folder]]
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