Fancy Toilet Awe

"They're years ahead of us!"

— Homer Simpson's view on a Japanese toilet, The Simpsons, "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo"

As regular everyday individuals, we are used to the conventional, no-frills flush toilet in Everytown, America or Suburbia. You sit down, you do your business, you wipe, and you flush the big chromed lever. Really, nothing else to it.

However, since the 1980s, there has an evolution in toilet technology and aesthetics. In higher-class establishments, like luxury hotels and a Chez Restaurant, toilets have evolved from utility to a costly type of luxury interior design and a form of Conspicuous Consumption. To make the toilet look as much like a modern sculpture as possible, the bowl may be shaped like an egg or look like a stainless steel cube, and the lid and flush button may be recessed or hidden.

However, for those who are not regular patrons of said elite establishments, this may lead to confusion, as in some cases the aesthetic is very minimalist without clear instructions to a Flyover Country plebian used to just a single flush lever.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have hi-tech toilets. like the infamous and yet oft-lauded Japanese luxury toilet. Those toilets have a variety of functions that go beyond your typical North American experience: a bidet with gently heated water spray for cleaning, a heated, auto-retracting seat, air drying, UV sterilization, background music and soft mood lighting hidden under the bowl (and even in the translucent tank), all controlled with a remote control full of digital buttons. It's a Millionaire Playboy or wealthy socialite's high-tech super-toilet.^note Some Japanese models have a fake flush sound effect, in case you said you needed to go to the bathroom, but really you just needed to get away for a few minutes.

In media, these fancy or hi-tech toilets (and in some rare extensions of the trope, high-end luxury bathrooms) result in amazement and in many cases, confusion by a non-elite character who has to use them. They'll marvel at the appliances and its elegance and functionality, but, most of the time end up confused by how the toilet (or expensive showerhead) works. Usually this trope is Played for Laughs, but in rare instances, it will be played straight to illustrate how wealthy and pampered a Blue Blood or other elite character is.

Overlaps with Toilet Humor, occasionally Toilet Horror, if the robot toilet is a threat. Sometimes precluded by a character saying they have to Go to the Euphemism. If the character doesn't end up using the fancy toilet and instead soils themselves, then it becomes Potty Failure. If the character intentionally defecates outside of the fancy toilet because of the confusion, then it becomes Pooping Where You Shouldn't. Compare Wondrous Ladies Room, and contrast with Disgusting Public Toilet.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A commercial for Kohler[1] takes place at a futuristic cocktail party, where several of the guests — who are robots — gather in the bathroom to marvel at the Veil Intelligent Toilet.

Anime & Manga

• In Astarotte no Omocha, after Lotte is temporarily transferred to the human realm, she's shown running out of the bathroom, apparently startled by the toilet's bidet function.
• Bakugan: Marucho, a Lonely Rich Kid, has a Fiction 500 level of wealth. It becomes a Running Gag that characters will mistake a toilet room in his house for his own room (it's a gigantic room decorated with gold and marble with a single toilet as its occupation).
• In Outbreak Company, when Myucel sneaks across the portal with Shinichi and stays in his apartment, not long after she arrives she uses the restroom and is shown staring at the control panel by the toilet, followed by her screaming about water spraying on her butt.
• In Wise Man's Grandchild, Maria is shown to be absolutely in love with the advanced toilets Shin developed.

Comic Books

• The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: In Chapter 4, in defense of his copper mine, Scrooge lures some claim jumpers inside his outhouse. The crooks admire that he has running water here... because the whole outhouse had been dunked into the river.

Films — Animation

• Cars 2: During the Tokyo section of the Grand Prix, Mater comes across the car equivalent of a Japanese toilet (it's an oil change bay) and is confused by the functions, particularly the bidet.
• In Beavis And Butthead Do America, they boys visit Yellowstone National Park, where they are in utter awe at the automatic motion sensor toilets in the restroom.

Films — Live-Action

• 2001: A Space Odyssey. In what is described as the only intentional joke in the film, there's a brief scene showing Heywood Floyd on a space "airliner", intently reading the instruction panel for a zero-gravity toilet. He bites his knuckle as he reads the ten paragraphs.
  • It's not actually as bad as it sounds. As you can see here [2], only some of the paragraphs are for the toilet; the rest explain how to use the sink and shower.
• Bullet Train: Ladybug is enamored by the Japanese toilets on the bullet train, playing with certain functions including the dryer and the retracting seat. He starts to find trouble however with the bidet and the automated messages but finds the toilet useful in dealing with a venomous Boomslang, trapping it in the bowl.
• Demolition Man: Discussed. When John Spartan returns from using the bathroom for the first time since being cryogenically frozen, he makes a point to note that instead of the toilet paper he's used to, there's a shelf with three seashells. While he's genuinely confused as to what the seashells are or how they're used, his new colleagues joke that he doesn't know how to use the three seashells. Later on, Spartan intentionally racks up a series of verbal morality statute violations so he can use the tickets as toilet paper.
• Elf: Downplayed. Buddy is amazed the first time he sees toilets in New York City, although this is not so much because they're fancy but because they're human-sized, and Buddy is used to elf-sized toilets due to growing up in the North Pole.
  Buddy: Have you seen these toilets? They're ginormous!
• Galaxy Quest: Played for laughs in a deleted scene. The alien Quelleck is showing actor Alexander Dane his quarters aboard the Protector II, not realizing that he is an actor portraying the alien Dr. Lazarus. When Quelleck showed the toilet designed around the (fictional) anatomy of Dr. Lazarus, Alexander Dane can only stare in terror.
  Quelleck: You're quite complicated, sir.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: When Adrian stays a night in a fancy hotel, he cannot work out how to flush the technologically advanced toilet, and sees nothing resembling a switch, a button or a lever. He resorts to spending twenty minutes using a cup to pour water down it, to make the contents disappear.
• Discworld:
  • In The Last Hero, when Leonard of Quirm describes the suction involved in the Kite's Mark II Experimental Privy for use in zero-gravity, the rest of the crew come to the decision to consume as little as possible until they're back on the ground.
  • Raising Steam also has the low tech version; after Harry King built his fortune collecting the contents of chamber pots and outhouses and reselling it as fertilizer his new business venture, trains, incorporate Charles Lavatory's new invention (at least in first class), noted by many passengers and the Ankh-Morpork Times as impressive. This is part of Mrs King's belief that the railway should be "hygenic". (They had to stop her putting a bidet on the Quirm line.) Flushing lavatories also come as standard in the new build housing provided to railway workers, although some of them can't get used to the new technology. Which proves to be a good thing when one of them happens across a railway saboteur while holding a very full chamber pot.
• Lord of Light has a low-tech version. In one chapter, a well-to-do medieval merchant is about to get an indoor, flushing toilet installed in his house, and is so proud of owning such a cutting-edge, nigh-miraculous device that he's contemplating throwing a dinner party just so all his neighbors can try it out and be duly impressed. In fact, he's even been saving up his family's... waste... in buckets ahead of its installation, so that when the gods review his karmic record they'll see he technically started using it eight days ago, demonstrating his rapid advancement in life.
• The Robots of Dawn: Toilets on Aurora can be equipped with holographic illusions that completely mask the actual appearance of the room. This gives Baley a lot of trouble when he has to use one unprepared.

Live-Action TV

• Better Call Saul: Downplayed and Played for Laughs: Jimmy goes to one of his potential new clients for a patent case. Roland presents him what initially looks like an ordinary toilet, before explaining that he had wired a motion sensor and speaker, called "Tony the Toilet Buddy" to speak affirmations to encourage toilet training for toddlers. However, those affirmations turn out to have more... sexually suggestive undertones. After a short demonstration, Jimmy, clearly confused, points out the obvious. He further outlines that a better market for his invention would be a wealthier Pacific rim nation. Roland, clearly oblivious, but obviously more offended, tries to explain that he invented the gadget for children, however he immediately demands Jimmy leave after he tries to draw a parallel to the invention of Viagra originally for hypertension.

  Roland: YOU'RE COMPLETELY DISGUSTING! YOU KNOW THAT!?

  Jimmy: Hey buddy, you're the one with the sex toilet.

  Roland: GET OFF MY PROPERTY!

  Jimmy: Hey, ya know what? I hope you do make a fortune because Chandler's going to need it to help pay for his therapy!

• The Beverly Hillbillies: Played for Comedy when the hillbillies first move into their mansion. Jed Clampett discovers a flush toilet, and thinks it's a "foot washer." Miss Hathaway has to explain to Jed and company what the device is really for. Up until then, the Clampetts had only an outhouse while living in remote Bugtussle.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • "Unsolvable" reveals that Rosa and Gina use a fancy private bathroom they call "Babylon" that they allow an impressed Charles to access for its great cell service to text Vivian. It used to be the Captain's private bathroom for a transit police squad that no longer is stationed in the Ninety Ninth Precinct, Rosa found it and she and Gina have been keeping it nice as well as hidden ever since. Unfortunately Hitchcock and Scully manage to figure out it exists and force Charles to tell them it's whereabouts and they wind up ruining it.
  • "Four Movements": When Gina and Jake get into a exclusive club for celebrities, Jake gets excited over peeing in the solid gold toilets the club has.
• The Golden Girls: In "Love, Rose", Rose has bad dating luck, so Blanche and Dorothy invent a fictional suitor named "Isaac Newton" (Blanche's idea) and send her phony love letters. Things go sour when Rose finds an Isaac Q. Newton in the phone book and invites him to a gala the girls are attending. When Blanche and Dorothy hesitantly tell Rose the truth, she runs into the ladies' room, which is connected to a powder room/lounge. Isaac (who's a nice guy, if a little dense) follows the group into the lounge and, thinking the whole thing is the bathroom, remarks that a giant couch is the fanciest toilet he's ever seen.
• Raising Hope: In "Sabrina Has Money", the Chances learn that Sabrina's family is rich. When visiting her father's home, Burt and Virginia are amazed by his high-tech Japanese toilet. Sabrina's father catches them admiring it and gifts them one. This causes a rift in their marriage as Burt is jealous of the attention Virginia shows the toilet and in the end they return it.
• Scrubs: While attending a conference showcasing diagnostic equipment, certain characters become fascinated with "Dr. Toilet," a stool-sample analyser. It's Played for Laughs.

Video Games

• In Death Road to Canada, one random event involves the party coming across a working toilet with a futuristic control panel. Since most toilets don't work in the post-apocalypse, everybody is excited to see it. The player is given the option to press one of four image-labelled buttons: jets of water, musical notes, flapping wings, or a butt.

Web Animation

• hololive: Sometimes brought up by non-Japanese members of Hololive who visit Japan for the first time. Gawr Gura, for example, expressed amazement at the concept of heated toilet seats and bidets during an early 2023 stream, joking that she'd never be able to going back to using regular toilets and wondering about how to get some for her own home. She was also impressed with the automatic bath in her hotel, which (according to her) would fill the bath, keep it at a stable temperature, and let her know when it was ready in an attractive female voice.
• Downplayed in the children's animated story Jack's Big Day. Jack, a little boy of around five, attends school for the first time and is impressed that he doesn't need a step stool to use the toilet.

Webcomics

• Itchy Feet: Has a comic here comparing using a Japanese toilet to an amazing high tech space adventure and how toilets elsewhere can't compare.
• Nine to Nine: Tor installs a bidet on the toilet in his and Andrea's new house, unfortunately Andrea discovers that their tap water is ice-cold when she tests it out.
• Team Fortress 2: In Old Wounds when Soldier and Zhanna rescue the other mercs they find out that the cell they're held captive in has a toilet and are amazed at how nice it is. When Soldier sees it even has a hole in the bottom he concludes that it must have been stolen from the president himself.
• Transmission: While Zombie Korma is on tour in Japan, Trevor has some difficulty remembering which button is to flush.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers:
  • "Ambergris": Felix Fischoeder is tasked with renovating the Bob's Burgers customer restroom. He opts for an ultramodern, ultra-fancy modernist aesthetic that does not match the restaurant, to Bob's frustration. When the restroom is opened, Bob notes that the sink and the toilet are indistinguishable and worse, the plumbing still doesn't work.
  • "O.T, the Outside Toilet" focuses on the saga of a fancy Japanese-style talking toilet that Gene discovers in the woods as well as the great lengths he takes to have it avoid being stolen by a toilet thief. Ultimately the talking toilet is returned to its rightful owner on Kings Head Island, to Gene's great sadness.
• Danger Mouse: One of the main threats in the revival is Doctor Loocifer, an advanced Japanese toilet given intelligence by a computer chip that Penfold dropped in it by accident.*
• Elliott from Earth: The first time Elliott, Frankie, and Mo enter an alien bathroom they're utterly amazed and play around in it as if it was a water park before Kane arrives to explain to them what it really is.
• Family Guy:
  • "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing" has Peter stumbling upon the Pawtucket Brewery's executive bathroom, which involves taking a helicopter ride across the sea to a secluded Jurassic Park-esque island known as "Executive Bathroom Island" that has a toilet in the middle of a jungle. Peter is so mesmerized by the experience that he decides to work to become an executive so he can use it whenever he wants, kicking off the episode's plot.
    Peter: (while sitting on the toilet) Well, this is peaceful.
  • "Road to the Multiverse": A variation. As Stewie and Brian explore an alternate reality where the Catholic church never attained political prominence in Europe, Brian mentions that he needs to poop. Stewie informs him that excretion is easy: just speak "Number two" aloud. Brian does so and discovers his rectum is suddenly empty, as his feces have been teleported away, which Brian finds fantastic.
  • "Spies Reminiscent of Us": Peter finds himself in need of a toilet, but with both bathrooms occupied he ventures over to Joe's house. Joe initially lets him use the bathroom, but the multiple harnesses and weird setup confuse Peter, leading Joe to say it's probably too complicated for him. When Peter further asks why there are two toilets, he explains the second one is for blood.
• Harley Quinn: In Season 3, Harley and Ivy are crashing at Catwoman's apartment and marvel at her expensive, high tech Japanese toilet. It becomes a plot point when the toilet captures a picture of the butt of the person that broke into Catwoman's apartment and stole Frank, which is their only clue of the perpetrator's identity. It turns out to have been Bruce Wayne.
• I Am Weasel by David Feiss has Weasel conduct a video call with the Queen of Yurp. Water ripples and peculiar reverb cause Weasel to ask if the Queen is on the commode. Indeed she is: "We're a poor country, so we've had to combine our technologies." Poop disposal and video conferencing in one; God bless Yurp.
• The PJs: The episode "House Potty" focuses on Thurgood's efforts to get a brand new high tech Grand Master Flush toilet for the building. The tenants, initially skeptical and already annoyed at him for cutting basic necessities in order to get the toilet, find themselves enamored by its functionality and inability to clog, using it as a communal toilet - essentially putting Thurgood out of a job. When Thurgood decides to inform the toilet of its true purpose, it has an existential crisis, however, Thurgood converts it into an art piece in the building courtyard.
• South Park: In "Japanese Toilets", Randy ends up buying a Japanese toilet from Home Depot and is enamored with its features and luxury, constantly bragging about it to the rest of the people of South Park and trying to get them into buying one themselves. However, in doing so, he angers his proctologist and also the toilet paper industry and nearly gets assassinated for it.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Simpson and Delilah", after being temporarily promoted Homer eventually is given access to the Executive Washroom of Springfield Power Plant which is huge and basically looks like a palace ballroom, complete with string quartet, huge indoor waterfall and live parrots. The actual toilet is hidden away at the top of a grand marble staircase. Homer and Karl are suitably impressed.
  • In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", the family's hotel room has a fancy Japanese toilet that awes Homer with its ability to create fountains. It also has a camera connected to the TV, leaving the family traumatized when they come across the feed just as it captures Homer going in it.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: "House Fancy" has Squilliam Fancyson giving a tour of his house which he deems to be the fanciest in all of Bikini Bottom. He states that his favorite part is the bathroom, where everything, including the toilet, is custom-made, complete with a jewel-encrusted toilet paper holder. The host of the titular show is amazed by the display of fanciness.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: Discussed In "The Spy Humongous", after the Pakled Rumdar is beamed back down to Pakled Planet from the Cerritos for being a spy (and defecating in an airlock, thinking it was the bathroom), he is asked by the new Emperor Pakled what information he gathered from his spying. His response includes this gem: "The Enterprise has the biggest bathrooms ever."
• We Bare Bears: In "Rooms", the bear bros swap bedrooms and discover they've all been keeping secrets from each other. Grizz is astounded by a toilet hidden in a passage under Ice Bear's refrigerator, a high-tech job that speaks Japanese and apparently has working Artificial Intelligence.

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