Accidental Tickle Torture

Nobunaga: What are you doing?
Main Character: I was just fixing your collar. ...Nobunaga, did that tickle?
Nobunaga: Tickle? That was utter torment!
Nobunaga: (thinking to himself) I thought this woman was incapable of cruelty, but she's hiding a sinister side.

— Ikemen Sengoku

Accidental Tickle Torture is the result of when a ticklish sensation is caused but has (or had) neither friendly or malicious intentions. Most examples involve something curiously checking someone out by touching them in odd places, however there are times when a villain does something to a character that he intended to be Cold-Blooded Torture, only to wind up with their victim laughing from a ticklish response.

Compare Squirrels in My Pants since some of their cases has its victim laughing. Also I Didn't Mean to Turn You On.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In episode 8 of Ai Yori Aoshi's anime, Tina's new pet ferret manages to find its way up into Aoi's kimono. Aoi starts squirming and saying that it tickles.
• Lampshaded in the hentai Alien from the Darkness. Hikari has a pet ferret that crawls into her shirt, making her fidget around saying that it tickles.
• Basquash! features a scene with Dan being tickled by foot fetishist Haruka in their first encounter, where she caresses his feet, which drives Dan to tears with laughter. Considering she was only concerned about his feet than blatantly tickling him, it qualifies.
• In Digimon Tamers, Growlmon gets tickled while being painted in an attempt to hide him.
• Dragon Ball:
  • The Original Series
    • In the General Blue Saga, while looking for a Dragon Ball in the ocean with Krillin and Bulma, Goku gets tickled by a fish that swims into his swimsuit.
    • Additionally when Goku fights Octopapa, at one point when Octopapa grabs him, Goku lampshades this trope.
    • In the Japanese version of the ending of the World Martial Arts Tournament, a crowd picks Goku up and tosses him into the air. Goku complains that it tickles.
    • In the Piccolo Jr. Saga, Chi-Chi is wiping Goku's face with rag before his fight with Tien. Goku pulls away, saying that she's tickling him.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • In the movie Tree of Might, while Goku and Gohan are taking a bath together, Chi-Chi meets Icarus for the first time and freaks out, trying to get their attention. She does this by tickling Gohan while he's underwater.
    • In the first Broly movie, just before Broly attacks Goku the first time, Master Roshi is seen cuddling with Oolong's foot while dreaming. Oolong's reaction is this when Roshi rubs his mustache on his foot.
    • Another mild example occurs later during the Buu Saga, when Super Buu appears to fight Gotenks. Goten and Trunks are resting up from training and Goten starts licking Trunks foot in his sleep.
  • Dragon Ball Super:
    • After Goku revives himself with his own energy blast after Hit killed him, Goten runs up and hugs him. Goku lightly complains that Goten is tickling him.
    • During the Tournament of Power, when Magical Girl Ribrianne strikes Goku with her "Pretty Love Machine Gun," he clutches himself awkwardly while remarking that "something tickles"
• In Kiki's Delivery Service, while hiding from a Storm inside of a Box Car on a Train, Kiki's foot accidentally slips loose in some hay she was sleeping in and some curious Cows start licking her foot, causing her to burst out laughing for a short moment.
• One episode of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! has King Dedede becoming overweight from eating too much of a spiked food meant for Kirby. Granted Kirby manages to eat some of it by accident, but Dedede orders a Fitness-based Monster that forces him and Kirby through a series of torturous exercise routines. One of them involves muscle massaging, which briefly yet still very evidently is this exactly trope, hence Dedede and Kirby's laughing during the session.
• In an episode of Mouse, Hazuki is a giantess that just took off a Godzilla suit and is clad in only a bra and panties. After Sorata accidentally finds himself sliding into Hazuki's panties, she fidgets around, stating that it tickles.
• In Naruto, Jiraiya accidentally tickles Naruto when he's checking his seal.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Earlier in the series, Fate uses a Paper Talisman that summons water spirits to use against Asuna. The water spirits (which take the form of tentacles with hands at the end) proceed to tickle her into submission.
    Fate: So that's what that spell does.
  • Negi gets an accidental tickling when Ayaka asks him to lotion her back. when Negi panics and forgets, Ayaka demonstrates on Negi himself by lotioning his back, causing him to burst out giggling each time. Asuna however does take too kindly to this...
• One Piece:
  • In the English dub only of the Foxy arc, Nami screams "that tickles!" when Sanji hugs her at the conclusion of the Luffy's duel with Foxy.
  • Surume does this to Luffy while placing him on his back (per Luffy's request). At the time, Surume was being enslaved by the New Fishman Pirates.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Happens to Professor Oak during his lecture segment on Staraptor in the "Diamond and Pearl" series. After Oak unintentionally provokes them by looking at their head symbols, a pair of Staraptor peak furiously at his ribs, causing this reaction instead.
  • Squishy's debut episode in the XY series has one. When trying to catch the slippery Pokemon at one point, it flies up and lands inside of Bonnie's shirt. When it starts squirming around, Bonnie burst out laughing from how tickly it feels.
  • A combination of this and the friendly variant occurs multiple times in an episode of the Sun and Moon series, when Ash's Pikachu is checked out by many of the Pikachus residing in the Pikachu Valley.
• Sonic the Hedgheog gets tickled by Chris's Grandpa on their first encounter when the latter believes he is a machine.
  • In an episode where Sonic cannot stop running due to a microchip inside of him, when Sonic gets some hay stuck in his ear, Amy blows it out of him, causing Sonic to snicker due to him being ticklish. This is only in the original Japanese dub.
• Tenchi Muyo!:
  • When Ayeka and Sasami are introduced, Ayeka kidnaps and hold both Tenchi and Ryoko hostage to get answers out of where Yosho is. When Ryoko doesn't comply, she has her robots torture her with electricity, only to get this reaction out of her instead.
  • In Tenchi Universe, Ryo-ohki does this to Sasami after being scared into hiding by Mirei.

Comic Strips

• Exaggerated while being played for laughs in one strip of Garfield. When Garfield gets stuck hanging from a Tree Branch, a Butterfly comes in and lands on one of his toes. After Garfield states that it tickles, a swarm of them suddenly appear and all land on him, to his misfortune.

Fan Works

• In Lost Latte, a baby accidentally tickles Latte's neck, accidentally tickling her, causing her to get into fits of laughter she failed to supress.
• This Legend of Zelda fanfiction where Zelda falls asleep and wakes up with her bare feet in stocks. Then feathers and brushes start tickling poor Zelda's bare feet. It drives her into hysterical luaghter til she passes out. The whole time Link was playing with a strange white orb, not knowing what it does.

Films — Animation

• When meeting Dim for the first time in A Bug's Life, the children ants look all over him from his underside, and are promptly frightened away when Dim stomps around laughing from their antenna tickling his belly.
• In The Croods, when Guy and Eep meet for the first time, one of Eep's first reaction to seeing him is holding him upside down and poking his back curiously, which tickles Guy.
• Towards the end of The Jungle Book, when interrogating Kaa the Snake, Shere Khan does this to him when checking his middle coils to see if Kaa had eaten Mowgli.
• In Kung Fu Panda, when Tai Lung tries to kill Po with his Nerve Strike Attacks. Unlike his previous foes, all this does is tickle Po thanks to his immense body fat.
• In The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island, while the main cast is chasing down a Treestar, Duckie tries crawling over Cera to try and reach it first. Cera starts giggling and lampshades this trope.
• Pinocchio gets tickled briefly by a fish that swims into his shirt.
• In the middle of Disney's The Sword in the Stone, when Merlin and Arthur/Wart are transformed into fish as part of a lesson, this is both of their reaction when they are swimming through some seaweed.
• Tarzan unintentionally tickles Jane when examining her bare foot. She responds with a kick to the face after Tarzan tries to peek up her dress.
• WALL•E:
  • The cockroach that WALL•E finds tickles him from the inside as it goes up to the top of his upper torso. It does this to EVE, too when she meets it.
  • When meeting the Captain of the Axiom for the first time, one of WALL•E's first gesture is to give him a foot massage, only to turn into this trope.
  • Additionally, after the Captain sends EVE to get a check-up (after a snafu involving a Plant gets blamed on EVE), during her examination, at one point while checking her circuitry located in her underarm, EVE starts laughing hysterically. WALL•E, who is watching the whole thing outside, misinterpret this as torture.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, this is Drax's reaction when a group of police officers shoot at him.
• At one moment in the Dark Universe's Reboot of The Mummy, when confronting Nick, Princess Ahmanet pins him to the ground and tears off his shirt. While listening to his heartbeat, she runs her fingers on his exposed belly and ribs, causing him to giggle and fidget around.
• Happens in The Smurfs movie when Patrick Winslow tries to sneak the Smurfs into his office when he eventually runs into his female boss and then starts squirming from them tickling him.
• Happens a lot in The Three Stooges shorts:
  • "Three Missing Links" has Moe and Curly both being tickled by a Lion licking their feet while they're asleep.
  • "A Gem of a Jam" has Curly being tickled by a fish that gets stuck inside of him when an irate Moe kicks him into a Fish Bowl that gets stuck on his head.
  • "Hold That Lion!" has Moe being tickled by a Lion licking his feet while he's asleep.
  • Sing A Song Of Six Pants has Moe being tickled one of Terry Hargan's Mooks while they're looking a lost Safe Combination as part of a Heist.
  • "Hugs and Mugs" has Shemp being tickled by a flirtatious woman, unaware to him that she's after a Priceless Pearl Necklace.
  • During the climax of the 2012 Film, Curly is briefly tickled by his pet Rat, Nippy, when he crawls into his coat.
• Towards the end of X-Men, while Wolverine is recovering from his fight with Magneto and his mutants, Jean Grey is seen checking over his body to see all his wounds have healed. When running her hand over him, he scoffs and tells her it tickles.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine has both Logan and Victor subjected to a firing squad and surviving it due to their Healing Factor. When Col. Stryker checks up on them sometime later and asks how that went, Victor snidely replies that it tickled.
• In Yentl, Yentl (as Anshal) gets into a friendly debate with Avigdor over which one of Adam's bones God made Eve from, his rib, or his thigh.

Literature

• Rikki Tikki Tavi's first interaction with Teddy involves this when snuggling around his neck.
• In Emil of Lönneberga, no one could figure out why at least twenty attempts to shoe a certain horse failed (with it kicking every time someone tried to hold its leg), and in the end, it was offered for free to anyone who could hold it while it was being shod. Emil carried out the task by only holding the horse's hooves, realizing that it was merely ticklish.
• In The Naughtiest Girl, this happens when one of Jennifer Harris's white mice, which had been hiding in her uniform, starts running up and down the uniform.

Live-Action TV

• In Episode 2 of Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger, the giant Soujiki Grumer tries to clean up the Boonboomger Robo with its feather duster arm at the start of the fight. It ends up tickling Boondorio, who bursts out laughing, and Taiya has to bring him back to his senses.
• In an early episode of Drake & Josh, a girl Josh likes left a snake for him in his jacket that he left behind at a restaurant. When the snake slithers up his pants, he wiggles around giggling briefly, before figuring out why and promptly wigging out.
• Happens from time-to-time in Elmo's World, which comes as no surprise as this segment IS all about Elmo.
• In My Family's episode "Dentist To The Stars" silly Roger asks the famous actor to sign his chest. The marker pen tickles way more than he expected.
• Happens a few times in Gilligan's Island, mostly used on Gilligan himself.
• Jessie: In "Caught Purple Handed", the kids play a prank on Jessie by painting her hand purple fully knowing that she has been picked a hand model and is starring in a kichen utensil video. Jessie struggles hiding her painted hand from the producers including one instance where she tries to use a heavy cutting device by putting it under her armpit and the vibration of the device makes her giggle.
• In an episode of WWE Legends House, Jimmy Hart is shown getting his first pedicure. He laughs and says it tickles.
• Quite a bit in Zoboomafoo, particularly used on Zoboo himself.

Video Games

• In Mortal Kombat: Deception, this is the reaction of one particular girl that you can punch in the Chaosrealm during Konquest Mode.
• In Persona 3, this happens to Fuuka while using a stomach slimmer.
• In the Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors, when Sonic first merges with a few Wisps that he saved from Orbot and Cubot, he states that it tickles when they merge with him.
• Zniw Adventure: There is a blue Euoplocephalus stuck in the entrance of the bridge at Rivenn-na. When Zniw tries to climb over him, he is tickled by it, and he starts laughing and quivering so hard that Zniw almost falls into the river. Later, when Zniw gets around him and tries to pull him out by the tail, he gets ticklish again, and swings his tail uncontrollably, causing her to fall into the river for real.

Visual Novels

• In Ikemen Sengoku, the main character accidentally discovers that Nobunaga is ticklish behind the ears when her fingers brush against them while tucking his hair back. Hilariously, Nobunaga treats the ticklish sensation as the worst torture imaginable, hastily covering his ears when the main character teasingly threatens to keep tickling him.

Western Animation

• In the 6teen episode "All Pets Are Off", Caitlin's pet ferret escapes into the mall's air ducts when it runs into Jude. When Jude plays with it, the ferret crawls up into his clothes, leading to this reaction.
• While playing a game of hide and seek with his friends, Arthur gets accidentally tickled by a Snake that slithers up his back.
• Bartok the Magnificent features a combo of this and the friendly variant. During one of his attempts to get Piloff free from being frozen in place, Bartok simply tries pulling her off, only for her body to stretch without being released. As he's doing so, Piloff giggles and lampshades this trope.
• The 1st episode of Ben 10: Alien Force features a scene when Ben transforms into Swampfire for the first time to fight against the Forever Knights. Once the knights starts firing on him with their guns, Ben's reaction is this.
• In Big Hero 6: The Series, "Aunt Cass Goes Out", Mel unintentionally tickles Fred from outside his suit while trying to hide behind him.
• One episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog has Courage transforming into a Fly and Eustace trying to crush him throughout said episode. At one point he tries to stomp on courage, but thanks to a big hole in his shoe, it promptly leading to this trope.
• Happens in an episode of The Cuphead Show! In "Handle with Care!" After Mugman finds out that his handle has broke off, he freaks out. While toying with it, Cuphead gets this reaction out of him by tickling it out of curiosity.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode, "Flea Bitten Ed" Rolf's bunnies briefly jump into Ed's jacket, which causes him to squirm around giggling.
  • Ed gets tickled again in the episode "Ed Overboard," when he is kidnapped and tortured by the Kanker Sisters. Shortly after capturing him, May draws on Ed's belly with a crayon and a stamp, which causes Ed to burst out giggling while she does so.
• In The Fairly OddParents!, this happens to Cosmo quite often.
• Considering how spontaneous tickling occurs throughout Little Bear, this trope has occurred too many times to mention.
• In the Father of the Pride episode "Larry's Debut and Sweet Darryl Hannah Too," Sarmoti unintentionally does this to Larry when he pokes him in the chest, encouraging him he is a natural lead lion inside. This leads Sarmoti to doubt that Larry is "all lion", saying that "maybe a chimp schtupped his grandma."
• One Looney Tunes short entitled "Beanstalk Bugs" involves Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck retelling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, with Elmer Fudd as the Giant. When trying to catch Bugs and Daffy by smoking them out, Bugs and Daffy make an escape by jumping down his shirt, leading to you-know-where.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Magic Duel", Trixie unintentionally does this to Rainbow Dash at the end of the episode, trying and failing to do an Agony Beam.
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh features a scene where Piglet tries to hide in Pooh's shirt in order to hide from Tigger (who won't stop following Piglet around doing favors for him). This inadvertently tickles Pooh.
• In one episode of Peep and the Big Wide World, during a game of hide and seek, Peep and Chirp are looking for Quack, who has hidden behind a big blue ball that is the same size as him. They can't seem to find Quack, until he gets tickled by a ladybug walking across his foot, which makes him burst out laughing until the ladybug flies away.
  Chirp: We found you, Quack.
  Quack: Only because that ladybug made me laugh. I demand a rematch!
• One episode of The Penguins of Madagascar features Kowalski inventing a Super Ray that causes its subjects to be buffed up. Being hit by the ray tickles, as seen through Mort and Private.
• In an episode of Rugrats, Dil hides a duckling inside his diaper which tickles him A LOT. Considering how long he had the duckling in his diaper in the episode, and considering the type of baby that Dil is, no one really knows why Dil did that.
• Scooby-Doo
  • In Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Shrieko is subjected to this multiple times by anyone who goes straight through him.
  • In Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders when Shaggy and Scooby are being experimented on by the titular aliens, they stick them both with nerve stimulators. The aliens get this reaction out of them when one of the stimulators is stuck to Shaggy's neck, and one is stuck to Scooby's ribs.
• The Shaun the Sheep short, "Hide and Squeak," features a scene where a Mouse hides from Pidsley by hiding inside the fleeces of several Sheep in the flock. When its hiding inside of Shaun and Shirley's fleeces, it tickles them both.
• In The Simpsons, when Homer becomes morbidly obese in order to work from home, he plugs up the power plant's nuclear reactor in order to prevent a meltdown from occurring. When stuck inside the plant's gas tank, he is tickled by some hoses being sprayed at him from some workers inside said tank.
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • While trying to outperform Squidward so that he can be the "Employee of the Month", SpongeBob hides inside his pillow in order to destroy his alarm-clock. When Squidward notices something off, he tries ruffling his pillow, only for this trope to happen when SpongeBob giggles...
  • When attempting to join the "Jelly-Spotters", said group tries to trick SpongeBob into getting stung by Jellyfish multiple times to which none of them work. One of their attempts involves putting Jelly on SpongeBob's face for Jellyfish to feed off of, and SpongeBob comments on how tickly it feels when the jellyfish do.
  • After being stalked by Flats, the Boating-School Bully, who has threatened to kick SpongeBob's butt all throughout the episode, SpongeBob finally gives in and lets Flats have his way. Thanks to his spongy body though, he is able to take Flat's bullying without feeling any pain. At one point, he even giggles and lampshades this trope.
• In the episode "The Legend of Grimace Island" of The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald, Grimace gets tickled on his tummy by Ronald when he's offering a ride.
• In the VeggieTales film "The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's" (a parody of the Wizard of Oz,) While trying to rescue Junior Asparagus from the Dungeon, Larry (as Tin-Man) and Pa Grape (as Lion) un-stuff Mr. Lunt (as Scarecrow) in order to have him slide in and help Junior escape. While being un-stuffed, Lunt exclaims that the process tickles.

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