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Fire Breathing Diner / Live-Action TV

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  • In one episode of Bottom, Richie invents a dish called "sprouts Mexicaine" which turns people into Fire Farting Diners.
  • A hot-pepper challenge episode of Chopped had habanero as an ingredient in the appetizer basket. One of the chefs was an elderly Malay lady who thought the pepper was pretty mild compared to what she was used to and used generous amounts in her dish. Cue all three judges - even Aaron Sanchez - practically smoking out their ears.
  • Death in Paradise: He doesn't end up literally breathing fire, but in episode #3.4 Inspector Humphrey Goodman accidentally eats a Scotch bonnet pepper, thinking it is a tomato. He is then shown being force-fed vast quantities of milk, as this the only alternative to taking him to hospital.
  • Played straight in an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Frank loses his sense of taste as a result of a side-effect of some herbal pills he got from a friend (for his "foot"), and can't taste anything; at first, Ray and Robert think it's just that he can't properly taste Marie's cooking, so they give him a loaded quiche with jalapeno peppers, wasabi sauce, and horseradish. When he doesn't react to that either, Robert eats the rest to check if they got something wrong. Turns out that their mix was just fine.
  • Invoked in an episode of Guy's Grocery Games with a "Spicy Dish Challenge" episode and deliberately choosing a judge (the late Carl Ruiz) who had a low tolerance for capsaicin. Guy, being a good natured Troll kept several ridiculous methods of dispensing whole milk on hand.
  • Played for laughs during a scene transition on Home Improvement. Al had been asked to fill in as host of a cooking show, with Tim as his assistant (in a reversal of their usual roles on the Tool Time show). Tim accidentally eats some hot peppers and scrambles around the scene to try to find a way to cool his burning mouth, concluding just before the transition with Tim guzzling down milk, then spraying flame into the air as Al smiles for the camera.
  • This is the result of eating one of the samosas made by Indie's grandfather in the How to Be Indie episode "How to Have Your Samosa and Eat It Too".
  • A major plot in the iZombie series. The only way zombies can taste real food is putting a LOT of pepper sauce.
  • The Muppet Show: after preparing a batch of Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce, steam is released from the Swedish Chef's ears. When he goes a bit overboard with the "pepper saucen" to finish the sauce, his hat is blown clean off by the resultant explosion, which is accompanied by the same volume of steam you'd get from boiling the Great Lakes. No actual fire is seen, though.
  • An episode of MythBusters showed Jamie trying a drop of habanero paste. Since his reactions are generally not visual, some special-effects wizardry was added in post to give him a red face and steam coming out of his ears.
  • Done in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide to break a Big Eater of his habit of eating other peoples' food.
  • In the episode "Leslie's House" of Parks and Recreation, Leslie's is hosting a dinner party at her home and Ron eats a whole red pepper which impresses his date... who happens to be Tom's ex-wife. A jealous Tom tries to eat a pepper as well, despite Ron's warning. Immediately after biting into it, he has to leave the table, and spends a good chunk of the party recovering in Leslie's bedroom holding a pillow against his mouth to drown out his screams of agony.
  • One of the side effects of eating at Curryworld in Red Dwarf was firebreathing after the first mouthful. Kryten didn't quite get the programming right...
  • In Reno 911!, the sheriff's department was being sponsored by Hottie's Hot Wings, with all the hot wings they could eat. Even the mild wings were incredibly spicy. But the real fiery sensation didn't occur until a few hours after eating...
    Dept. Kimball: I feel like I've been gastrointestinally raped!
  • Lampshaded in a Saturday Night Live sketch with Christian Slater. He and Victoria Jackson go to a restaurant to try the Buffalo wings, available in mild, medium, hot, or "super fire hot'. Slater says he wants to try the super fire hot. The waiter tries to talk him out of it — "They're very hot" — it escalates, the manager is called out to explain "They're very hot" — finally he has to sign release forms — he bites one, freeze-frame, and then the conventional effects of the trope are narrated in detail by a voice-over. The final joke is that he did all that, and they had secretly given him the medium-hot wings.


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