Faceplanting into Food

"What exactly was it you said? Why did it cause that owlish gentleman to faint? And shouldn't someone lift him out of his soup? He's stopped making bubbles."

— Fallen London

Sometimes mealtime isn't enough to keep you awake. Maybe you've just been given some Knockout Gas or slipped a mickey. Perhaps you've received some shocking news just as your plate hit the table. Potentially, you're very, very drunk. Or you've just flat out died (maybe from some poison in the dish). However you slice it, it's likely that whichever scenario played out, it ended with you Faceplanting Into Food.

Faceplanting Into Food is when someone either faints or falls asleep into their food. Played for Laughs, this often results in them waking up a moment later with their face a mess (typically with certain foods arranged into an amusing pattern on their face), but Played for Drama, it can be a sign that the character has health problems or is very sleep-deprived. Sleepyhead characters tend to be prone to this.

Compare Overworked Sleep (same setup, but without the plate of food), Food Coma (where the food itself makes someone sleepy). Contrast Hunger Causes Lethargy. When this is done deliberately to someone by another, this becomes Food Slap.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A commercial for Dunkin' Donuts showed Fred the Baker (Michael Vale) nodding off at a dinner party, with his wife explaining that "he's on call day and night" and that his work demands "absolute consistency". The other woman asks if he's a brain surgeon. Just then, Fred falls asleep in his plate of mashed potatoes. He sits back up, muttering, "Time to make the donuts..."
• One Duracell battery commercial featuring The Puttermans has the titular family host a barbecue at their house. At the barbecue, one particularly talkative relative is shown to be running on a lesser battery. When she stops talking, she face-plants into her plate of pasta. Flo notices this and asks her husband, "Herb, did you slip her one of those other batteries?!". Herb asks, "Me?", which everyone laughs off.
• One extremely dark example of the death variant occurs in a British Public Service Announcement about reporting gun crime: a boy falls into his breakfast after his mother shoots him in the head.

Animation

• BoBoiBoy Galaxy: Adu Du uses Knockout Gas on Tok Aba's restaurant to steal Motobot. Even the patrons fall unconscious, including Mr. Kumar, whose face lands in the food which was just served to him.

Anime & Manga

• One Piece: Happens to Ace (more than once) when he falls asleep while eating at a restaurant in the Alabasta Arc.
• Penguindrum: In episode 8, Ringo serves Shouma and Tabuki drugged montblancs. In the next scene, Shouma is seen passed out with his face buried in his montblanc.

Comedy

• Rowan Atkinson's "Guys After the Game" routine, where he plays an Indian restaurant waiter dealing with a bunch of drunk English Football Hooligans who have to be looked after with some care.
  Waiter: Yes, look, I think we'd better wake up your friend here. Well, no, he's not "just having a little nap." He's having a little nap face-down in a pitcher of beer. He's going to drown.

Comic Books

• Not an uncommon fate for unfortunate Batman characters that fall victim to Joker venom. The Long Halloween features such a scene in its Christmas chapter.
• Bone: In Tall Tales, during the Eating Contest, one of the contestants faceplants into a tray of fruit cobbler when he can't eat anymore.

Comic Strips

• Foxtrot:
  • One strip has Roger talking about all the delicious, fattening food he's eating in enormous quantities (steak, baked potatoes, corn with butter, onion rings, an entire rack of ribs, a pie...) before revealing he's passed out in a plate of his wife's horrible health food.
    Jason: It's almost as if Dad falls asleep during dinner on purpose.
    Andrea: Just ignore him. More tofu slaw, anyone?
  • One of the Thanksgiving strips has Peter, after completing a marathon eating session, pass out from exhaustion right into his plate. Roger and Andy think they can finally call Thanksgiving over, only for Jason to remark "Wait...wait, I hear chewing."
• Garfield:
  • In one strip, Jon forces Garfield to get up early so that they can watch a sunrise. After Jon is done describing the beauty of the rising sun, it is shown that Garfield is lying facedown on a plate of scrambled eggs, snoring.
    Jon: Get your face out of the scrambled eggs, Garfield.
  • In one strip, Jon tells Garfield that he told his date stories about his childhood. He then says she "nearly drowned". Garfield glances at the audience and says this is the third date this month to fall asleep in her bowl of soup.
  • In one strip, Garfield is lying facedown in a dish full of cat food, saying that he's about to doze off.
    Garfield: This is it. I've reached the pinnacle of laziness and gluttony... how depressing. There's no place to go after you've reached the top.
  • In one strip, Garfield discusses the trope while he's lying facedown in a bowl of soup, saying that a philanthropist called J. Worthington III was found lying facedown in his tomato soup. He says that it could be because he was about to write J. Worthington IV out of his will.
• In one Peanuts strip, Linus goes out for ice cream with a chatterbox of a girl named Tapioca Pudding. Tapioca bores Linus so much he faceplants into a sundae.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles:
  • In "The Rings", Mittens complains to Bolt about his inadvertently knocking her face first into her breakfast earlier that morning.
    Bolt: [giggling after giving Mittens a wet, slobbery slurp on the cheek] Hey, you know, you taste pretty good today. You wearing a new cologne, babe? Caviar No. 5 or something?
    Mittens: [licking a paw and trying to clean herself off] Jeez, still smelling it, huh? Well y'know, that's the tuna I had for breakfast this morning. Remember? You came hurtling into the kitchen like a freight train and sent me face-first into my food bowl. Been picking fishy bits out of my ears ever since. You need to toot your warning signal when you come to a crossing gate there, Casey Jones.
  • In "The Insomniac", Mittens references the idea of falling face first into your food dish while dying.
    Mittens: Or does everything end, just like that? You drop flat on your face into your kibble one day and then... nothing?
• The Kedabory Verse:
  • Defied in the Punch-Out!! fanfic Home Sick (NoonboryKedabory); Disco Kid tries to keep Aran Ryan awake so he doesn't fall asleep into a bowl of applesauce.
  • Defied in Twinkling in the Dark: Akaoni holds Joker's head up to keep him from slamming his face into a bowl of okayu.

Films — Animation

• In Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, Princess Hadley faceplants into her breakfast after staying up all night dancing.
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Cal, who is lying down on a mound of candy, groans that he's not feeling well before he puts his head down into the pile.
• Despicable Me 2:
  • Shannon is about to expose Gru as bald, but Lucy comes in and shoots her in the ass with a tranquilizer dart, causing her to pass out right into her plate of spaghetti. Later, she briefly wakes up and groans like a moose before putting her head down again.
  • When Eduardo performs a salsa dance for his restaurant patrons, three lovestruck women faint, face-planting into their food.
• The Emperor's New Groove: Kuzco faceplants into his dish after drinking from the chalice Yzma and Kronk poisoned, making it appear their plan has worked. Subverted, since there was no food in the dish and he wakes up a moment later, unaware of what happened.
• Monsters, Inc.: When a commercial mentions that kids are getting harder to scare, a clip is shown of a boy sleepily watching a movie and faceplanting into a bowl full of cereal.
• The Tale of Despereaux: A rare Played for Drama example in the movie. When the queen witnesses Roscuro coming out of her bowl of soup, the resulting shock causes her to die on the spot and she faceplants right into her soup.

Films — Live-Action

• Batman: When the Joker fills the air of a museum with a lethal nerve gas, two of the patrons eating in a restaurant die and have their heads fall into the food on their plates.
• In Battle of Britain, as the air war drags on, exhausted pilots on both sides are seen slumping over their respective dinner tables and falling into their food.
• In A Clockwork Orange, the freshly-reformed Alex, eating with Mr. Alexander and unaware his food is drugged, ends up passing out with his face plonking into his spaghetti.
  Alex: And I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me. [passes out]
• Conan the Barbarian. After the three thieves successfully rob the Tower of the Serpent, they're shown indulging in Wine Women And Song thanks to their ill-gotten gains. After a while it becomes too much even for Conan, and he's shown faceplanting in his soup after passing out drunk. When Valeria tries to rouse Conan when the City Guards come to arrest them, he just slides off the table onto the floor.
• The Con is On: When Gabriel announces Vivienne as his muse on national television, Gina faints and face plants in the cake she has in front of her.
• Dark City: When the clock strikes midnight and the entire city falls asleep at once, one couple drops into the bowls of soup they were eating.
• Paul Kersey's first on-screen kill in Death Wish V: The Face of Death, the mobster Chicki Paconi, who is eliminated when Paul spikes his Cannoli with poison in the middle of a riot and causing Chicki to face-plant into his half-eaten meal.
• The first victim, "Gluttony," in Se7en is found face down in a large bowl of spaghetti.
  Detective Somerset: What time did you confirm the death?
  Officer Davis: Like I said, I didn't touch him, but he's had his face in a plate of spaghetti for about forty-five minutes now.
  Detective Mills: Hold on... you mean you didn't check for vital signs?
  Officer Davis: Did I stutter? Believe me, he ain't breathing, unless he's started breathing spaghetti sauce.
• Men in Black: At the dinner, when the tall man/alien discussing with the Arquillian prince in a Mobile-Suit Human is killed by Edgar the Bug, he faceplants into his plate of pirogi.
• The Princess Bride: A hungover Inigo falls face-first into his bowl of stew out of shock when Fezzik reveals the identity of the Six-Fingered Man Inigo has been searching for.
  Grandpa: [narrating] Considering Inigo's lifelong search, he handled the news surprisingly well.
  Inigo: [faceplants]
• Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams: At the party of O.S.S. elites, the adults' drinks are drugged, and they all fall unconscious during a toast. Several adults, including Juni and Carmen's parents, plant their faces into their plates of food.
• Youngblood: At a free skating event, Dean and Jessie get the guard to chase them. They lead him towards a table with food set up in the middle of the rink, then swerve at the last moment, causing him to crash face-first into the cake.

Jokes

• There is a Russian joke that when you show a foreigner the photo of a man with his face in the salad, they will say with certainty "murdered", while a Russian will, with the same certainty, say "drunk".

Literature

• Stacey of The Babysitters Club once fainted into a bowl of soup due to diabetic shock, prompting a hospital visit.
• The Bridge Kingdom Archives: The first book begins with a dinner, during which all king Silas's daughters present (with the exception of Lara) fall victim to poison. Marylyn lands with her face in the bowl of soup and then Lara moves her face so that she does not suffocate - the poison was in fact just a very powerful narcotic.
• In The Stand, a "superflu" virus escapes and kills everyone in a secret military lab almost instantly. The security monitors at the command post show scientists lying around wherever they were when the accident happened; one of them died in the cafeteria with his face in a bowl of soup. The general finds the sight disturbing. When he goes to the lab himself, he sits the dead man upright and wipes the congealed soup off of his face.

Live-Action TV

• Brand New Cherry Flavor: When Lisa tracks down Boro's family (who haven't seen her since she vanished ten years prior), Boro cooks a spaghetti dinner for them and promises to explain what happened to her. It's all a ruse; she's drugged their food with a small amount of poison, and one by one they fall facefirst into their pasta, unconscious. She has to move her daughter's head to make sure she can breathe.
• In The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jon breaks into a rant about Chicago-style deep dish pizza being inferior to New York pizza. Among his complaints is the idea that, should he drunkenly pass out into his pizza, he would drown in the former.
• Eerie, Indiana: In "Zombies in P.J.s", Marshall and Simon try hard to prevent themselves from falling asleep (by slapping each other, since they're too young for coffee). They last through the night, only to fall facefirst into their breakfast.
• Fawlty Towers: In "The Hotel Inspectors", Mr Hutchison faints into his cheese salad, after Basil Fawlty has handgagged him for a long time to stop him ranting loudly and furiously.
• Kamen Rider OOO: Kousei Kougami, president of the Kougami Foundation, is a birthday-obsessed eccentric who spends a lot of time baking cakes but is rarely seen eating them. That task falls to his secretary, Satonaka, who handles it with the same businesslike efficiency as the rest of her job. When she's called on to help fight the Yummies, Kougami is forced to hire a temp, the only thing we see of whom is him collapsing face-first into a cake, surrounded by the remains of others. Kougami, looking on, sadly notes that it’s the tenth cake of the day and that he doesn’t have Satonaka’s fortitude.
• In an episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Coach Leroy Fedders, under the influence of liquor and cold medication, faceplants into a bowl of Mary's chicken soup and drowns.
• Merlin: In "A Herald of the New Age", Merlin finds Arthur asleep in his stew from the night before, having spent the night brooding over the abandoned druid camp they found. Merlin awakens him and, unaware he still has stew on his face, Arthur pretends he fell asleep while reading. When Arthur shows up for sparring with stew still in his hair, Merlin... "covers" for him.
  Gwaine: [to Arthur] What's that in your hair?
  Merlin: It's stew.
  Leon: Why have you got stew in your hair?
  Merlin: Because he was reading.
• Sister Boniface Mysteries: In "Queen of the Kitchen", the Victim of the Week is poisoned with belladonna and collapses: falling forward and face-planting in her cake.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In "Sacrifice of Angels", Quark bails some of his friends and his brother out of the brig. He makes a souffle and presents it to the guard, then while the guard is busy inspecting the souffle, Ziyal gives him knock-out drugs and he blacks out into the souffle.
    Quark: Now you've ruined it.
  • In "Body Parts", Quark is eating scrambled eggs when Garak suddenly appears and snaps his neck, causing him to slump over dead into his food. Seconds later, this turns out to be a holodeck simulation.

Podcasts

• Quest in Show: While the Sorcerer Supreme is performing magic for the Trottleara officials, one of them is discovered to be facedown in their meal, unresponsive. A vial of poison is found in the kitchen, where the victim’s food was prepared.

Puppet Shows

• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: The Skeksis, particularly the Gourmand, are prone to doing this when they overindulge at the dining table. It can be quite cute until you remember what horrific monsters they are.
• Fraggle Rock: A non-fainting example occurs in "Uncle Matt Comes Home". Matt ruins his "welcome home" radish-meringue cake when he trips, landing face-first in it.
  Red: Wow! You were right, Gobo, he IS a great explorer. He found the cake.
• In Judy Collins' episode of The Muppet Show, the Swedish Chef plants his face into a bowl of salad after taking a coconut to the head.

Video Games

• In The Sims 2, if your Sim has a low energy level while eating, they will fall asleep on their plate.

Web Animation

• AstroLOLogy: At the end of "Sleepy Sweetie", Cancer, who was sitting on a plane and previously unable to sleep while placed between Scorpio and Taurus, passes out in her complimentary birthday cake.

Webcomics

• Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: In "Unaccompanied", Bruce recalls that he doesn't want to bring Tim to a gala because the last time he did so, Tim was so exhausted he fell asleep into his food.
• Faux Pas: In one story arc, Randy has been heavily sedated to ease the pain of his burned feet during a commercial shoot. He's still feeling the pain-killer's effect when he returns home and collapses face-first into his food dish.
• Girl Genius:
  • After a drugged Agatha spills the beans to Aaronev and Tarvek Sturmvoraus about her identity, her past, and her adventures up to that point, she declares "And this is just a lovely torte!" and face-plants into her dessert.
  • When the "mysterious, invisible hand" of a Smoke Knight knocks out Martellus with a sap, he face-plants into the "fine cake" he was eating.

Web Videos

• David Earle's Dining Room or There Is Nothing features this trope dragged out for an uncomfortably long amount of time. The video begins with a robotic woman speaking backwards, only to then flop face-first into her cereal bowl for a good two minutes. She then rises up and says, "There is nothing," symbolizing that she had just died when she faceplanted into her cereal and experienced The Nothing After Death.
• In Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party, the first episode ends with the first murder victim found facedown in the red herring soup. H.G. Wells, thinking this is part of a game, follows suit. It later turns out Eddie Dantes was only Faking the Dead, so the trope was invoked as a way to convince the other guests he really died.
  Lenore: Right in the soup!
• Twelve Hundred Ghosts: Jacob Marley died by choking on his cereal, which leads to him face-planting into the bowl, and drowning.

Western Animation

• Arthur: In Arthur's Perfect Christmas, Buster's subplot throughout the movie involves his very-stressed single mother constantly waking him up early every morning thinking it's Christmas. This leads him to fall asleep in his food a few times, including the cake at Muffy's party. This is the thing that gets Brain to suggest he and his mom not celebrate Christmas.
• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Pretty Poison", Harvey Dent falls face-forward into his food after being poisoned by Poison Ivy. It's Played for Drama, as Harvey is on life support for most of the episode.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • During a flashback in "Crawl Space", Al briefly dozes off and faceplants into his breakfast, causing Gloria to shout his name in annoyance.
  • In "The Land Ship", Tina is so exhausted from her nightly graffiti excursions with Jordan that she keeps falling asleep at random times. After she falls asleep in her cereal, a suspicious Louise points out that's the fourth time she's fallen asleep in her food that week.
• Camp Lazlo: In the short "The Eternal Flame", various scouts are having a baked bean eating contest. Many contestants woozily faceplant into the beans when they've had enough.
• Duckman: In the episode "Sperms Of Endearment", Bernice decides to have a baby by way of artificial insemination. When she finds out that the sperm she was inseminated with is Duckman's, she goes, "Aaaaargh!" and faints into her soup. Then, when Duckman realizes Bernice might be carrying his baby, he also goes, "Aaaaargh!" and faints into his own soup. Ajax, having watched them both do it, just goes, "Argh?", and passes out into his soup.
• Family Guy: In "Peter's Got Woods", after Stewie stays up all night reading The Da Vinci Code, he falls asleep in a bowl of oatmeal at breakfast the next morning.
• Freakazoid!: Upon being drugged by Dr. Mystico, Freakazoid, Cosgrove, and Lobe all pass out face-first into the casserole the doctor set out for them.
• In Making Fiends, Vendetta faints face-first into a tray of lunch food after learning there were vegetables in her food.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Fluttershy is looking after Celestia's apparently-sick pet bird Philomena and serves her a bowl of soup. Philomena apparently passes out right into the soup. Subverted since it turns out that Philomena isn't sick at all, just about to enter her burning cycle (she's a phoenix) and she faked all her symptoms besides the molting.
  • In "Castle Sweet Castle", Twilight avoids living in her new castle by helping her friends with their chores. At the breakfast Twilight holds for her friends, she falls asleep at the table and uses the pancakes as a pillow. She almost does it a second time, but Rarity uses her unicorn magic to scoot her plate of pancakes away.
  • In "Grannies Gone Wild", Rainbow Dash does this deliberately (into a bowl of nachos), out of frustration that she won't be able to ride the roller coaster she went there to ride.
• Rick and Morty: In "Pilot", a drowsy Morty faceplants into his breakfast because he's been out with Rick all night.
  Summer: [dully] Oh my God, his head is in his food. I'm going to puke.
• The Simpsons:
  • At the beginning of "Holidays of Future Passed", Marge gets the family ready for their Christmas card photo after Thanksgiving dinner is over. She raises a sleeping Grampa's face from a plate of mashed potatoes and puts on him a Santa hat which, combined with a potato "beard", makes him look like the big guy.
    Grampa: I'm Santa? Oh, now I'll never die!
  • The first segment of "Treehouse of Horror XII", "Hex And The City", has Bart gaining a very long neck after becoming affected by a Gypsy Curse which Homer had been given. Eventually, he can't take it anymore and commits suicide by faceplanting into his cereal.
  • In "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge", Home gets so excited about eating "The Ark", a colossal ice-cream sundae, he passes out and faceplants into it.
  • In the "Treehouse of Horror IX" segment "Hell Toupee", Homer (possessed by Snake's hair) rips Moe's heart out with a corkscrew. Moe groans "Aw, for cryin' out loud", and falls headfirst into his bowl of cereal.
• South Park: The deathly version in "The List". Bebe and Wendy get into a physical brawl, resulting in Bebe's gun being set off. The bullet flies into the window of the McCormick household and shoots Kenny in the back of the head, causing him to faceplant into his cereal bowl.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "No Free Rides", SpongeBob and his parents throw a party for Mrs. Puff after she gives him his driver's license. When Mr. and Mrs. SquarePants unveil a surprise gift for SpongeBob, a new boatmobile, he faints and falls backward onto the cake.
• Young Justice: Dr Stone falls face-first into the bowl of soup he was eating at his desk in the Season 3 episode "Triptych", after he gets stunned by an attack from Livewire.

Real Life

• This is a relatively common behavior among toddlers, as they're prone to falling asleep wherever they happen to be when they run out of energy.
• Anecdotal reports claim that there have been cases of people falling into their plates and dying of botulism after consuming contaminated food, but these are considered dubious since it usually takes 12-36 hours for the symptoms to start.
• Sir John Sparrow Thompson, fourth Prime Minister of Canada, suffered a fatal heart attack during a formal luncheon at Windsor Castle, where he had just been appointed to Queen Victoria's Privy Council. Reportedly he passed out once just as the meal was being served, recovered briefly, then fell over dead during the appetizer. It is unclear whether this trope was actually in effect, although writer George Bowering, in his book Egotists and Autocrats: the Prime Ministers of Canada, made a quip about Thompson dying "with his face in the soup".

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