Just get some rice; I'm sure it'll be fine.
"KEEP BEACH CITY WEIRD IS BACK! I've been off the grid for the summer. Not because government was on my tail, but because I... dropped my phone in the toilet. And then I was googling 'how to remove a phone from a toilet in a way that isn't gross' and I... dropped my laptop in the toilet."
Toilets are meant for specific functions and to contain specific things, which are not meant to be interacted with once in there. However, sometimes a character will have a moment of clumsiness and end up dropping something into a toilet that very much should not be there, such as a phone, keys, or a toy. In the best case, the toilet hasn't been used, and so the item can be retrieved without too much fuss, other circumstances notwithstanding. In the worst case, it happens after things have... processed. The character now has to face the awful prospect of fouling their hand(s) (if not more) in the process of retrieving the item, and possibly dealing with trying to clean what was dropped. In either case, the character may decide to just leave what was dropped in the toilet and deal with its absence. Afterward, if the item is retrieved, it's likely to have an inescapable squick factor associated, even if it just landed in water. The toilet may also get flushed by accident with the item still in it, which can lead to plumbing issues or a convoluted quest to get the item back.
Can lead to Toilet Humour depending on the circumstances. Overlap with Next Stall Shenanigans is possible if someone in an adjacent stall hears what's happening. A Disgusting Public Toilet can significantly ramp up the grossness of the situation.
Compare:
- The Dreaded Toilet Duty, where cleaning toilets is portrayed as a gross job.
- Flush the Evidence, where someone flushes something incriminating to get rid of it.
- Fun with Flushing, which is all about playing with toilets by flushing things.
- Goodies in the Toilets, a gaming trope where important items can be found in toilets.
- Revolting Rescue, when a rescue has to be done in disgusting circumstances.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- In a commercial for 1-800-Contacts (an online supplier for contact lenses), a young woman drops one of her contacts in the toilet while attempting to insert them before going to work. She checks the box only to find it empty, so she scrunches up her face, turns her head, and slowly reaches toward the bowl before deciding it's not worth it and ends up wearing, to her shame, an obviously outdated dorky-looking pair of glasses instead.
Anime & Manga
- Played for Drama in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion. When Yasuho Hirose uses Paisley Park to enter a cell phone and infiltrate the Higashikata Estate, Jobin Higashikata finds her out and drops the phone in the toilet to try and kill her from electrocution so that Yasuho doesn't learn about the New Locacaca plant. When Jobin's wife, Mitsuba, finds the phone and pulls it out because she feels she owes Yasuho her life, Jobin urges her to place it back in the toilet, to which Mitsuba reluctantly complies, and Yasuho is only saved by last-second interference from Jobin's father, Norisuke.
Comic Books
- Monica's Gang: In "Peteca", Junior's peteca
falls into Jimmy's toilet bowl. Jimmy is too disgusted to retrieve it despite Junior's pleas, but changes his mind after the latter coerces him by dropping his beloved "Aguaman" action figure into the bowl. The boys then tie a knot around another toy and use it to fish the other two items out.
Comic Strips
- Dilbert: In one strip, Dilbert asks his boss for a new pager because his fell in the toilet. When the boss tells him to reach in and get it back, Dilbert tells the boss that when he tried to do that, his cell phone and a wide variety of writing implements also fell in; the boss then yells at him to go back and get everything out of the toilet. The last panel shows Dilbert at home; Dogbert asks him where his glasses are, and he tells Dogbert to shut up.
- For Better or for Worse: After graduating college, Michael Patterson took home Naked Ned, a novelty of a naked man with suction cups on its hands and feet. Mike and his wife Deanna have a daughter, Meredith. Meredith got hold of Ned, and threw him into the commode, flushing it away. Both Mike and his college roommate, Joe Weeder, were saddened at the loss of Ned. However, Ned managed to clog the sewer lines enough the necessitate a plumber, who retrieved Ned from the drainage pipe. Joe Weeder took possession of Ned to preclude Meredith from imperiling him again.
Film — Animated
- Luck (2022): Sam drops her lucky penny in the toilet, and she accidentally flushes it down while trying to get it back.
Film — Live-Action
- The Abyss: Bud Brigman, in a moment of temporary spite about his ex-wife coming to his underwater rig, tosses his wedding ring inside of the chemical toilet he just vacated, but instantly regrets it and fishes it back and puts it back on. This decision ends up saving his life later on when his hand is trapped on a closing hatch and the ring stops the hatch from crushing it.
- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: A very drunk Caroline ends up throwing up in a toilet in the Port Authority bathroom. She gets her phone out of her purse to call Norah, but drops it in the toilet, and then lets her gum fall out of her mouth into the toilet as well. Visibly disgusted, she fishes out the cell phone and calls Norah, and then fishes out the gum...and puts it back in her mouth.
- Trainspotting: Exaggerated for extreme squick value. Renton has a Potty Emergency, and ends up going into what's labeled as "The Worst Toilet in Scotland" to void his bowels. However, once he's done, he realizes that the opium suppositories he had in are now also in the toilet. He tries to fish them out, fighting off trying to throw up the whole time, but can't reach them. The scene then shows him diving head-first completely into the toilet, swimming through pristine water and retrieving the suppositories from the bottom of an ocean bed, and then emerging from the toilet horribly befouled.
Literature
- Captain Underpants: In "Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000", when Melvin becomes a superhero called Big Melvin, the townspeople begin to take advantage of his help and ask him to do menial tasks for them. One guy even asks him to fish his wallet out of a toilet.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In "Hard Luck", Greg is so shocked when his aunt Veronica tries to video-chat with him while he's on the toilet that he drops his phone. It lands in the toilet, and while he does get it out, it no longer works.
- Outlander: While attempting to shoot a snake behind the outhouse, William and Young Ian are so startled by the snaking lunging up at them that Young Ian bumps into William, accidentally knocking him into the chest-deep waste pit, covering the boy head to toe in human waste. Young Ian is forced to go get the adults, who playfully mock the mortified William as they work to find a way to get him out. However, when they realize that the boys also dropped Lord John's very expensive military pistol (hard to replace in Colonial America) in the muck, they make Young Ian go in to retrieve it in spite of his complaints that the pit will destroy his clothes and take days to get the smell off of his skin. Even 10 years later (6 books later in the series), William is still embarrassed when he recalls having fallen into in the waste pit.
Live-Action TV
- The Brittas Empire: In "The Christening", Helen dunks the head of a woman called Philippa in the toilet, causing one of her earrings to fall in. Brittas is thus forced to spend several hours attempting to retrieve it for her, with the studio audience even reacting in disgust when it cuts to him pulling out gunk from the piping connecting the toilets.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake shows up to work late and tells Captain Holt he had problems with his alarm clock. Cut to a flashback of Jake sleeping when the alarm clock on his smartphone went off and Jake threw it into the toilet.
Jake: Also, I'm going to need a new department issued phone.
- Law & Order: SVU: "Head" opens with an attorney accidentally dropping her phone into a toilet. While trying to get it out, she finds a spy camera inside the bowl, which sets the plot in motion.
- New Girl: In "Landing Gear", Winston plans to streak during Schmidt and Cece's wedding as a stalling tactic while Schmidt is stranded at the airport. He is changing in a portable toilet when Jess calls him to stop, and that's when he drops his clothes and phone inside the toilet. This forces him to wear "pants" made of toilet paper, and he later swaps those out for the curtain from a phone booth.
- Seinfeld: One of the plot points of "The Pothole" is Jerry accidentally dropping his girlfriend's toothbrush in the toilet and not telling her before she uses it. This causes him to start obsessing over the toothbrush being in her mouth, which affects their relationship.
Elaine: You still couldn't kiss her?
Jerry: She has a taint. I can't see it, but I know it's there.
Elaine: Oh, so now you're finding fault on a sub-atomic level. - Succession: In "Honeymoon States" Tom claims that Logan Roy, the show's patriarch, died from an embolism after trying to retrieve his phone from a clogged airplane toilet.
- Victorious: In season 1, episode 16, on the play's opening night, Tori assures a panicking Jade there's nothing to worry about. Cue Cat showing up and saying she dropped her costume in the toilet.
Jade: *in a sarcastic Southern Belle accent* "Nothing to worry about!"
Tori: I don't talk like that!
Music
- Songdrops: "Not Even for a Friend Like You" is a song about how the singer would do many things for their best friend but not certain things. One of the things he wouldn't do is take his friend's phone out of a dirty toilet.
Web Animation
- JaidenAnimations: In "An Uncomfortable Trip to the UK", Jaiden recounts how on her trip to the U.K., she ended up losing her wallet, and it wasn't until she got back from dinner that she realized it slipped out of her women's jean pocket into the toilet, and came to the realization that she peed on it in the process.
Webcomics
- Grrl Power: Downplayed when Harem spooks Arianna's assistant Sandy by laughing in the adjacent stallnote , causing her to drop her phone.
[Sandy enters the conference room and speaks to Arianna]
Arianna: Sandy? Why didn't you call?
Sandy: (giving the Harem there an icy look) I dropped my phone in the toilet. Harem.
Harem: What? How is that my fault? - Questionable Content: While pondering whether or not to call her father, Liz drops her phone into the toilet. She does retrieve it, but her reaction when she reaches in indicates that her hand got dirty, and the the cracked screen means that it got damaged, which she angrily vents about.
I NEED A HUNDRED BEERS AND A NEW HOODIE AND A PHONE THAT ISN'T FULL OF PEE WATER
Web Original
- CalebCity: Exaggerated in "Dropping anything in the bathroom" where somehow anything Caleb drops will, on its own volition, travel to the bathroom and fall into the toilet, even when he's nowhere near the bathroom. This includes a cellphone which crawls there from the living room, snakes under a closed door, locks the door so Caleb can't stop it, and then finally dunks itself in the toilet.
- Keep Beach City Weird: In the August 21, 2014 post, Ronaldo announces that the blog is back, and that he was off the grid for the summer...because he dropped his phone in the toilet, and then dropped his laptop in the toilet while trying to look up a way to retrieve the phone that isn't gross.
Western Animation
- Bob's Burgers: In "Turkey in a Can", Bob finds that someone keeps putting the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner in the toilet. It turns out to be Bob himself, who has been sleepwalking due to allergy medication, dreaming of the time he toilet trained Tina.
- Family Guy:
- In "12 and a Half Angry Men", Peter thinks he dropped his phone in the toilet and describes the filthiness of it in graphic detail, but then he realizes it actually fell behind the toilet.
- In "Prescription Heroin", Lois gets addicted to Brian's painkillers. Jonesing for a high, she finds a pill in the bathroom but drops it in the toilet, so she grabs Stewie and sticks him head-first into the toilet to fish out the pill. Fortunately, Brian comes in and saves Stewie before he drowns.
- Futurama: Zigzagged in "Anthology of Interest I" when Fry says, "I should've left you floating in the toilet!" to his noisemaker. It's unknown if this means he dropped it in the toilet but then continued to use it anyway, or if it was floating in the toilet when he originally found it. Either way, it highlights how much of a gross slob Fry is that he used it afterwards.
- King of the Hill: In "Hank's Unmentionable Problem", Hank becomes constipated. At one point, Peggy hears something splash while he's on the can and thinks that he finally went, but then Hank reveals that he just dropped his glasses into the toilet.
- MAD: In the segment "Gross and Beyond Gross", the announcer says that a guy accidentally dropping his cell phone in the toilet is gross. He then says that the cell phone the guy fished out of the toilet isn't his, which is beyond gross.
- Oh No! It's An Alien Invasion: In "The Royal Flush", Emperor Brainlius III accidentally drops a cootie catcher in his toilet, and then he flushes it out of force of habit, much to his horror. This sets off the plot for the episode, as he ends up clogging all the pipes in the city. The episode ends with him dropping it in there again.
- Pet Alien: In "They Took the Toilet to Outer Space", Dinko tosses his favorite ball and it lands in the toilet. He tries to "shake hands" with the toilet as a peace offering by pulling on its handle and flushes his ball by mistake. Dinko is distraught about this and decides to banish the toilet to space, not wanting to admit that it was his own mistake that led to this.
- Rugrats:
- "Waiter, There's a Baby in My Soup" begins with Tommy putting his father Stu's favorite tie in the toilet. Stu is horrified when he finds out, especially since it isn't the first time Tommy's done this.
- In "Ruthless Tommy", Tommy is captured by Bob and Mike, a pair of criminals who mistake him for the infant son of millionaire Ronald Thump and hold him for ransom. While in their apartment building, Tommy finds some stolen jewels and tosses them in the toilet. When Bob and Mike find out, they are horrified, and argue over which one of them is going to get the jewels out before Tommy can flush them.
- The Simpsons: In "Treehouse of Horror X", Bart and Lisa receive superpowers and use them to fight crime. Bart, now Stretch Dude, uses his stretchy arms to help Homer retrieve his watch which was dropped and flushed down the toilet.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- Done deliberately in "Nasty Patty". Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob think that the health inspector visiting the Krusty Krab is a phony out to get free food, so they decide to serve him a Krabby Patty that is repulsive beyond belief. At one point, SpongeBob dunks the patty in the toilet, and Mr. Krabs tells him to fish it out so he can wipe it with his sweaty gym socks.
- In "The Pink Purloiner", Patrick confesses that he accidentally dropped SpongeBob's toothbrush in the toilet, and then put it back without cleaning it. Hearing this causes SpongeBob to run around screaming and scrubbing his tongue with his hands.
- Steven Universe: Invoked in "A Single Pale Rose" when Steven ventures inside Pearl's gem to retrieve her new cellphone, at one point ending up in a memory of the immediate aftermath of the Gem War.
Steven: (disturbed) It better not turn out that her phone was in her pocket. Or she left it on the dresser, or dropped it in the toilet. Seems about as likely as putting it away in your repressed war memories.
- What A Cartoon! Show: In "Lost Control", Godfrey and Zeek accidentally flush their TV remote in the toilet, forcing them to tour the sewage treatment plant to get it back. However, they get so bored with what's on TV that they deliberately flush the remote again so they can go back to the sewage plant to find it again.
