History Main / WayPastTheExpirationDate

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'' when Darwin and Gumball buy a bunch of near-expired food sold for a discount. The ''instant'' [[CriticalExistenceFailure it reaches its expiration date]], the food not only becomes inedible but is destroyed completely in seconds: the eggs hatch into chicken, meat is devoured by maggots, and a canned rat ''[[BackFromTheDead spontaneously comes back to life]]'' and runs away.
** In "The Game", Nicole cleans out the boys' room, which includes some food. She asks them what was in a glass she found and is told it's milk. When she turns the whole thing over, it slowly slides out as one piece, with Gumball [[VerbalBackspace amending]] that it's a glass of cheese. Then it finally dislodges from the cup, crashes straight through the floor, and practically caves in Richard's head. Gumball amends it's a glass of stone. Afterwards, there is a moldy slice of pizza that is so old [[ItCameFromTheFridge it sprouts legs, screeches, and crawls out the window]].

** Homer does this ''twice'' [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer Billy Beer]] (also mentioned under Web Videos); he finds a can stashed in his old "concern-going jacket" in 1992's "The Otto Show" and happily chugs it down (Billy Beer was discontinued in 1978), and in 1997's "Lisa The Skeptic", reveals he's been keeping a whole six-pack of the stuff as a collectible. Surprisingly, neither time does he suffer from drinking a 15-20 year old beer that wasn't all that good in the first place.

* ''Series/CornerGas'': Hank and Brent find a "[[BlandNameProduct Dingle Puff]]" with an expiry date in 1973. Oscar plays a prank on them by making them think he ate it and [[ObfuscatingInsanity pretending it made him delirious]]. Then Brent and Hank discover he was just pranking them and prank him back by making him think he ''actually'' ate it by mistake instead of the decoy he prepared. Then Emma actually ''does'' eat it, but the episode ends before we find out what happens to her.

* In the ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan'' episode "The Couch!", Shrek eats expired cheesecake, Mario eats expired peanut butter, and Rosalina drinks expired milk. All of them end up having diarrhea on the couch, ruining it.

** Homer does this ''twice'' [[with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer Billy Beer]] (also mentioned under Web Videos); he finds a can stashed in his old "concern-going jacket" in 1992's "The Otto Show" and happily chugs it down (Billy Beer was discontinued in 1978), and in 1997's "Lisa The Skeptic", reveals he's been keeping a whole six-pack of the stuff as a collectible.

** In "Worst Episode Ever", Homer eats a box of baking soda from the back of the fridge that Marge claims came with the house when she and Homer first bought it.

* ''WebVideo/BradTries'' is all about the titular host consuming food and drink that's either from exotic countries or was discontinued decades ago, like [[AnyoneRememberPogs Crystal Pepsi]] from 1993 for example. Of particular note was his episode on Billy Beer, a beer from the '70s. Not only was he risking getting ill from the beer, he risked getting tetanus from the can.

** In "[[Recap/ThePatrickStarShowS1E24StuntinOllyOllyOrganFree Olly Olly Organ Free]", the food in Patrick's fridge has mostly degenerated into green sludge, with one burger staying in so long it's gained sentience.

** In another episode, Homer eats a box of baking soda from the back of the fridge that Marge claims came with the house when she and Homer first bought it.

** A classic joke from the early seasons revolved around Homer bringing home a giant party sub sandwich from a company picnic, and kept eating it over the course of several weeks, even as it began to spoil. Finally, it was visibly rotting and covered in fungus, and he ''still'' wouldn't stop trying to eat it. It finally came back to bite him when he got food poisoning and couldn't visit Duff Gardens. Even then, Marge finally had to put her foot down and make him throw the sandwich out.

* A frequent topic of complaining on ''Series/{{MASH}}'' is the food, some of which (it is claimed) came from WWII or even WWI.

* ''Series/TheMuppetsMayhem'': In "[[Recap/TheMuppetsMayhemS1E5Track5BreakOnThrough Track 5: Break On Through]]", the Electric Mayhem band eat some marshmallows that expired on June 1992, which results in them hallucinating.

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle''. In order to get the vinegar needed for an invention, you must find a bottle of wine in the past and put it in a time capsule. Crack the capsule open in the future and you'll find it's turned to vinegar.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': In an early episode/chapter, Naruto finds himself running for the toilet constantly throughout the entire episode, usually leading to [[ToiletHumor comical hijinks]]. At the end of the episode, his teacher discovers that the milk he drank that morning had expired a long time ago.

* In one ''Anime/LupinIIIPartII'' episode, Lupin steals a two-century-old bottle of rare French wine that was laid down by Napoleon, and was to be given as a gift to the President of the United States, swapping it out with a cheap bottle of store-bought wine. After a successful heist, Lupin watches the president drinking the cheap wine and calling it "remarkable" on TV. The gang then laugh to themselves, and try a glass of the real wine... but find that it hadn't been aged properly and turned to vinegar.

--> '''Eddie:''' What's this pot of cress doing in the fridge?
--> '''Richie:''' That's not cress, it's the yogurt you started during the Gulf war.
--> '''Eddie:''' You could have told me. Might as well finish it.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "The Power of Three", Amy and Rory return to their house after another trip with the Doctor and start trying to work out how [[TheSlowPath long they've been away]]. Amy starts going through the fridge and listing off how out of date the contents are.

* Hal from ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'' makes the mistake of eating canned food donated to the family and requires a trip to the ER when Lois checks the can and discovers the "olives" he was eating were actually peaches.

* In ''Series/SaluteYourShorts'', [[TheVoice Dr. Kahn]] announces over the speaker that there was a shipment error for their food, and advises the campers to disregard any milk containers dated for 1983 (bear in mind the show aired in the early '90s).

* A scenario similar to the aforementioned ''Day of the Tentacle'' one was also used in Season 2 of ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice''. In that case, upon traveling back in time, Sam would have to deliberately leave a bottle of wine open for years in order for it to become the vinegar used to solve a puzzle.
* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' has Soldier, who by the time of the Pyromania update was left homeless (kicked out by his MonsterRoommate, the comically IneptMage Merasmus) and reduced to being a [[CrazyHomelessPeople deranged, violent hobo]]. Where he previously survived on a diet of fast food ribs, army surplus soup, and stolen heart medication, he ends up eating out of old cans of ''expired'' army surplus soup. The game takes place in 1968, so for the soup to be army surplus (and therefore not from what would be considered current, Vietnam-era stock) it must have been canned during the ''Korean War'' at the earliest, and therefore is a minimum of 15 years past its canning date. The game [[PlayedForLaughs uses this for comedy at Soldier's expense]], mostly to mock his moronic and jingoistic ways--he's been shown stealing other items that are of more current vintage, but he is so dedicated to the [[PhonyVeteran pretense of having been in the US Army]] that he will gladly eat the outdated rations, no matter what unseen distress may follow.

** In one hourly comic Norrin complains to Katie that the only mustard they had was horseradish mustard, and that it expired months ago. Katie tells him to stop being a baby and eat it.
** In another hourly comic Katie finds a can of Chef Boyardee that expired in May (this was in October). She shrugs and dumps it into a bowl anyway.

** When the Loud siblings visit their mom's Aunt Ruth, she feeds them pudding from old canisters that she keeps at her house. One of those canisters, as pointed out by Lisa (the second-youngest sibling and a ChildProdigy) has an American flag with only 48 stars on it, meaning the pudding was made sometime between February 14th of 1912 (when Arizona became an official state) and January 3rd of 1959 (when Alaska became an official state). Assuming the episode took place in 2016 (the year it aired), the pudding that Ruth was feeding to Lincoln and his sisters could've been anywhere from 58 to '''104'''-years-old.

* In ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', Mordecai and Rigby find cans of soda from 1984 in their attic. They serve the sodas at a party, though no one gets sick. However, soda "pop top" cans are very tightly sealed, so it's unlikely they were expired-or even flat.

** In "Future Schlock", Filburt has been keeping a banana in Rocko's refrigerator for seventeen years, as he put it in there the last time he saw Rocko and Heffer before they were blasted off into space by a monkey who was a test subject for Conglom-O. When Gilbert and Norbert, Filburt's children find it, they come to Filburt so he can tell them about it.

* In 1951, meat from a mammoth found preserved in the Siberian tundra was served at a very exclusive dinner. Or so the story goes, DNA analysis of a piece left over showed it was actually sea turtle meat. Although other stories have surfaced claiming it's edible but tastes about as bad as you'd expect meat more than 200,000 years old to taste.

--> '''Richie:''' That's not cress, it the yogurt you started during the Gulf war.

* In the ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow'' duology, it's possible to find spoiled milk as a dropped item. It "expired three years ago". Drinking it normally will do a flat 33% of your max health, more at lower levels, but equipping a soul (Flesh Golem in ''Aria'', Ghoul in ''Dawn'') will make it palatable, turning it into one of the best healing items in the game.

** In the pilot episode, Ozzy identifies Frank's midnight snack as "jalapeños, refried beans, and nacho cheese ''way'' past the expiration date."
** In "Gas of Doom", [[FoulCafeteriaFood among the food at Hector's school there's the twelve-bean casserole which everyone deliberately avoids.]] After being dared to try the casserole, Hector actually enjoys it but later sees the lunch lady throwing it out because it was going to expire in March. Reading the label on the can, Hector informs her that the expiration date was for March of ''last year''.

* In [[https://www.whompcomic.com/comic/sweet-truth this]] ''Webcomic/{{Whomp}}'' strip, Ronnie and Agrias eat some Valentine's Day chocolates, which Ronnie says that he bought during a post-Valentine's sale... despite it still being the 14th. Agrias then asks what year did he buy them; Ronnie says that he was looking forward to seeing ''Film/TheMatrix'', and the strip was published in 2018, making the chocolates 19 years old.

* In the [[http://www.savestatecomic.com/comic/experience/ November 4, 2014 page]] of ''Webcomic/{{Savestate}}'' Kade finds a carton of orange juice in the mansion he and his sister inherited with a listed expiration date of 122010, unfortunately he's so groggy that he thinks the "EXP" stands for ExperiencePoints.