Bathroom Brawl

"I don't remember who threw the first punch, but it all went to shit after that."

Bathrooms are intended for people to... uh, do their business. However, one or more characters decide that it's the perfect place to duke it out. A bathroom brawl can occur in either a public bathroom or a private one, although it is more common for fights to happen in public restrooms. Locker rooms also apply.

Common weapons/attacks that be used in a bathroom brawl may include, but are not limited to: Swirlies, feces or urine, toilet paper, the sink, the mirror, the stall doors, etc.

Similar to Camping a Crapper, although the difference between this trope and Camping a Crapper is that the latter is typically an attack that is planned, while a bathroom brawl does not have to be organized in advance. Often times, it can start out as a simple conversation or an argument, and then build up into a huge fight. Contrast with Bathhouse Blitz where the attack is stealthy, premeditated, and usually takes place when the combatants are nude or only wearing a Modesty Towel.

Can overlap with Toilet Horror if the fight gets incredibly violent or the characters fight something or someone horrifying. See The Can Kicked Him for when someone ends up getting killed in a bathroom brawl. May involve a Full-Frontal Assault if at least one of the characters was naked (and possibly bathing) at the time the fight starts (which is a given if the fight happens in a locker room since people will be getting naked in there anyway).

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Canaan has a scene where Canaan and Alphard get into a fight in the bathroom.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: The episode that introduces Scanty and Kneesocks, the demon sisters, has Panty and Stocking engage in a lengthy battle with them in the high school toilets, including swirlies.

Comic Books

• SpyBoy: Before he discovers that he's a Manchurian Agent Teen Superspy, Alex is attacked by a couple of bullies in the school bathroom after classes.
• Watchmen: Rorschach takes time out from being broken out of prison to pursue Big Figure into the bathroom and kill him.

Fan Works

• In Chapter 90 of By Baker Street Station, I Sat Down and Wept, Sirius and Snape get into a fight in the lavatory. When Petunia's guests hear the noise, she claims that they're "poltergeists".
• Chapter 3 of Iron Touch is a fight between Michelle and her Stand, Iron Maiden, against Cynatra and her Stand, Bad Sneakers.
• In Meridian Sinister, a very one-sided brawl occurs when a young Leopold who, after discovering Florence being bullied by Gryffindors, not only one-hit K.O.s one of the bullies, but injures himself just before the prefects show up to make it look like THEY were attacking HIM.
• Downplayed in Persona EG on 9/2. Flash punches a guy in the face and shoves another one after they and a couple other guys make fun of Twilight and Pinkie Pie, but none of them fight back. They end up reporting Flash to Principal Celestia and he almost gets in trouble for it. Thankfully, she understands why he did it and doesn't punish him, but she tells him not to resort to violence next time.

Films — Animation

• In Bee Movie, Vanessa's boyfriend Ken tries to attack Barry in her bathroom, which causes her to break up with him.

Films — Live-Action

• The Accountant (2016): When two professional killers enter Dana's apartment, she fends one off with a stove burner grate, and then retreats to the bathroom. When the killer starts breaking through the door, she attacks him with a toilet tank lid. As the killer finally breaks through the door, Christian arrives, slams the killer's head into the sink, and shoots him.
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: Austin fights the assassin Patty O'Brian when the latter ambushes him in the restroom. A man outside the stalls overhears Austin grunting "Who does Number Two work for?" and assumes he's just constipated.
• Subverted in Billion Dollar Brain. Harry Palmer is knocked out by a Soviet soldier, then wakes up in a barracks bathroom Buried in a Pile of Corpses. He works himself free only for two KGB thugs to charge in and grab hold of him, wet a hand towel...and then sponge the blood off his face and take him to their colonel.
• Blood and Bone: James Bone is confronted by some prisoners while in the prison bathroom. He proceeds to get the drop on all of them without breaking a sweat.
• The Bourne Ultimatum: The fight between the titular assassin Jason Bourne and a younger assassin named Desh inside of a small apartment spills into a bathroom, where Desh picks up a shaving razor and Bourne uses a towel to defend himself. After disarming Desh, Bourne finally gets the upper hand and chokes Desh to death.
• Played for Laughs in The Cable Guy when Chip attacks Robin's date in a restaurant bathroom.
• Casino Royale: James Bond (Daniel Craig) gets his first kill fighting an informant in a bathroom (which is revealed to be that of a cricket club in Lahore, Pakistan, in a deleted part of the scene). Bond shooting him turns into the Bond Gun Barrel, which segues into the opening titles and theme.
• In Charlie's Angels (2000), Natalie is attacked by a thug in the bathroom and is almost choked with a chain, but she gains the upper hand and kicks the guy into a mirror.
• The climax of Danny the Dog has Danny fight The Stranger in an apartment bathroom (while interrupting a woman who was taking a shower at the time).
• Death Grip: The Sacred Coin of Judas gets flushed down an automatic toilet and this leads to Torch trying to kill Kenny. The entire bathroom nearly gets destroyed in the ensuing brawl.
• Jack Reacher gets attacked in a tiny bathroom by a pair of Stupid Crooks armed with a crowbar and an aluminum baseball bat. They end up inflicting more damage on their surroundings and each other than Jack.
• In Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, an assassin gets into a fight with Jack in his hotel room's bathroom and Jack ends up drowning him in the bathtub.
• In Le Jaguar, François Perrin is ambushed in the toilets of Orly airport (in France) just before he flies off to South America by the loan sharks he owes money to. Beforehand, they make sure no-one will be around when they torture Perrin and get rid of a man who was on the crapper by pulling his feet to have his head hit the flush, knocking him out. Just as they're about to torture Perrin, Campana (Jean Reno) comes in and kicks their asses, saving Perrin.
• In Kill Bill Vol. 2, The Bride fights Elle Driver in a cramped trailer, eventually spilling over to the even-more cramped bathroom.
• The Last Detail: Buddusky, a sailor, spots a group of Marines enter a bus station bathroom and follows them in to pick a fight.
• In The Man from Nowhere, Cha Tae-sik tracks down Du-chi and Bear to a nightclub bathroom and stabs Du-chi to get him to reveal where So-mi is. Ramrowan walks in and fires off a gun that kills Du-chi in the crossfire. A fight ensues between him and Tae-sik which ends with the latter getting shot.
• Two bathroom brawls happen in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.:
  • When CIA agent Napoleon Solo and KGB operative Ilya Kuryakin are first introduced to each other for a special joint-forces mission, it's in a public restroom in a park. The two have a history, and they knock down most of the stalls in their initial tussle before their handlers intervene to keep Kuryakin from choking Solo.
  • The second occurs at a party thrown by villainous Victoria Vinciguerra. After being insulted by his fake fiance's uncle, Kuryakin slips away to a bathroom for a moment of peace and quiet. When three young Italian aristocrats prevent him from using the sink and tell him to use the ladies' washroom instead, he roughs them up to blow off some steam.
• In The Matrix, Morpheus gets into a fight with Agent Smith in a bathroom, which ends with the latter smacking his head on the toilet bowl and shattering it.
• In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, one of the major brawls involves Ethan, Walker, and a man believed to be John Lark brawling in a bathroom. Lark completely wiped the floor with both Ethan and Walker, and nearly killed Ethan had Ilsa Faust not intervened in the fight.
• Our Man Flint: While in a restaurant bathroom, Derek Flint has a fight with Hans Gruber and ends up stabbing him to death.
• In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, T-850's fight against T-X results in the total destruction of a public restroom at Edwards Air Force Base. Highlights include T-850 ripping a urinal off the wall and whacking T-X with it, shoving her through several stalls, and T-X grabbing him in the junk, picking him up and ramming him through the wall.
• In True Lies, Harry's first personal encounter with the Crimson Jihad and their leader Aziz starts with him fighting several mooks in a Mall's bathroom, then having to dodge gunfire when Aziz barges in with an AK-47, then chasing Aziz through the streets of Washington on a horse.
• In True Romance, Virgil attempts to torture Alabama in a bathroom to get her to reveal where Clarence and the drugs are, but she ends up getting the last laugh when she blinds him with shampoo, hits him with the toilet cover, sprays him with hairspray, stabs him, shoots him multiple times with a shotgun, and then beats him with the shotgun barrel, just in case.
• Upgrade: Grey lures one of the assailants that killed his wife into the bathroom of a bar and uses STEM to torture him.
• In Vigilante Diaries, Mike Hanover is attacked by an assassin in the restroom of a taco restaurant. He survives and manages to kill his attacker more through luck than any skill on his part.
• The Warriors: The title gang is pursued into a subway bathroom by the Punks, a rival gang. They hide in the stalls, so the Punks square off, one man in front of each stall. As one, the Warriors burst from the stalls and attack, triggering a huge rumble.
• The World's End has the fight in the men's restroom in The Cross Hands, where Gary gets into a scuffle with a teen and ends up knocking his head off, revealing him to be a Blank. When a few more Blanks come in, Gary and his friends have to fend them off as well.

Literature

• In Ender's Game, Ender gets attacked by a Gang of Bullies while he is in the shower. Ender goads the leader, Bonzo, into fighting him one-on-one while completely naked, to which he accepts. It ends in Ender's favor.
• Harry Potter
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a troll gets into Hogwarts and attacks Hermione in the girls' bathroom. Fortunately, Harry and Ron come to the rescue and defeat the troll.
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry fights Draco in a bathroom and uses the "Sectumsempra" curse on him. When discussing the film version, Tom Felton famously described the scene as, "Me and Daniel had a wand fight in the bathroom... God, that sounds wrong."
• Nightside: An assassin tries to attack John Taylor in a public washroom, assuming he'll be off-guard. The fight ends as quickly as it begins when John magically swaps the air in the assassin's lungs with the toilet water.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
  • The first book has Clarisse La Rue and some of her sisters from the Ares cabin trying to push Percy's head into the toilet, which devolves into a short brawl ended by Percy soaking them in toilet water.
  • In book 4, the Empousai attack Percy and co. in the bathroom.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow: In "Inmate 4587", there's a prison showers variant where Oliver is jumped by his enemies who are in the prison with him.
• Burn Notice: Michael tricks his kidnappers in the first episode into taking him into a bathroom so he can attack them and escape.
  Narrator Michael: In a fight, you have to be careful not to break the little bones in your hand on someone's face. Never happens in movies, but in real life a busted hand will get you killed. That's why I like bathrooms. Lots of hard surfaces.
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: In "The Mandrake", Sabrina is attacked in the bathtub by Madame Satan's golem, only being saved by Nick's intervention.
• WKRP in Cincinnati has an epicly hilarious one in "Fish Story". Nowhere else will you see a man dressed as a carp wrestle a man dressed as a pig on the floor of a college bathroom over a pay toilet.
• The Punisher (2017). Rachel attempts a Bathroom Breakout from a public toilet in the roadhouse, only to get caught and interrogated there by Pilgrim's mercenaries. Frank Castle turns up to save the Damsel in Distress and does what he does best.
• Cowboy Bebop (2021). Spike gets jumped in the bathroom at a wedding by a Syndicate assassin.

Pro Wrestling

• WCW The Great American Bash 1996, June 16, 1996. The Falls Count Anywhere match between Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan included Sullivan trying to stick Benoit's head in a toilet and each guy slamming a stall door on each other's heads. (In fact, Sullivan has had a few examples of this. Norman The Lunatic d. him in a Falls Count Anywhere match at NWA/WCW Clash of the Champions X on February 6, 1990 that ended in a bathroom.)
• WWE Raw, September 6, 1999. The hardcore WWE Women's Champion Ivory vs. Tori match started with them in the locker room, going into the bathroom, with a Modesty Towel-clad Jacqueline running from the shower, and included Ivory using tampons as weapons.

Video Games

• You can get into and start fights in the bathrooms of Bullworth Academy in Bully. One mission in particular involves escorting Algie to the bathroom and protecting him from the bullies that come in there to beat him up.
• Dark Forces features an optional blaster shootout in a less-than-sanitary stormtrooper restroom. The game expects you to open all the doors in your haste to find loot and suddenly discover a half-dozen Imperials relieving themselves between shifts, all of whom are armed with rapid-fire blaster rifles (lethal at ranges of one bathroom or less). Crafty players will roll a grenade into the nearest urinal and leave the problem to solve itself.
• Left 4 Dead's tie-in comic for The Sacrifice reveals that Louis fought off his very first Infected when it ambushed him in a bathroom stall. In the absence of proper weapons, he made do with using the toilet paper dispenser to bludgeon it.
• River City Girls and River City Girls 2 (since the latter recycled most of the maps from the first game) feature several restrooms that you'll wind up fighting in. Sometimes there are quests associated with them (for example, someone asks you to beat up the punks in the restroom so they can use it) and there's at least one item shop being operated out of a bathroom stall.
• Street Fighter Alpha 2 has a public bathroom as Birdie's stage.
• In the boss fight of Chapter 2-4 in Super Paper Mario, Mario has to fight Mimi (who has transformed into a spider) in the ladies' restroom in Merlee's basement.
• At the beginning of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Drake gets into a Bar Brawl, which eventually makes its way to the bathroom where he has to fight a Giant Mook.
• Yakuza 0:
  • One of these occurs while Kiryu is fighting his way through a building filled with hostile yakuza. It ends with Kiryu slamming Yoneda face-first into a (just-used) urinal and then kicking him out the window.
  • Sagawa drags Majima into a bathroom and nearly strangles him after Majima sneaks off to visit Nishitani in prison.

Web Animation

• In the Cyanide and Happiness short "Public Bathroom", a guy takes a full roll of toilet paper from the stall next to him and the guy in that stall comes and starts a fight with him. The fight starts in the men's room, but eventually makes its way to the women's room and ends when the guy who stole the TP gets thrown into a tampon dispenser and a bunch of tampons fall on him.

Web Original

• Cobra Kai: In the episode "Esqueleto", Miguel and his friends are confronted by Kyler and his gang in the boys' locker room during the Halloween dance. After being left to fight on his own, Miguel kicks Kyler down, but is quickly apprehended by the bullies. Johnny ends up discovering him badly beaten afterwards.

Western Animation

• In the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Villains' Night In", Fink comes in through the toilet in the bathroom at Gar's Bodega and fights K.O. in her Turbo form.
• In the Rick and Morty episode "Meeseeks and Destroy", Mr. Jellybean attempts to sexually assault Morty in a tavern restroom, but Morty has a sudden adrenaline rush and manages to beat him up.
• South Park: In the episode "Stunning and Brave", PC Principal assaults Cartman in the faculty bathroom for using the term "spokesman" instead of "spokesperson".

Real Life

• Searching up "bathroom fight at school" on YouTube will net you with tons of results of this trope occurring in school bathrooms.
• "Dutch" Schultz, one of Al Capone's henchmen, was taken out by a hitman who followed him into the men's toilets in a diner in Chicago, waited for Schultz to start focusing on the matter in hand, and then shot him several times in the back whilst his guard was down.

---