Gargle Blaster - Television Tropes & Idioms

Sadaharu Inui from The Prince of Tennis is infamous among his peers for making disgusting vegetable juices. He often uses them as punishment for players that fail their training exercises. One drink was even called "Penal Tea". The only two known survivors of the drink is Tezuka and Fuji (even then Fuji was KOed by one of the drinks and swore Never Again to be incapacitated by it by winning the next outing event).
In Martian Successor Nadesico, Megumi's opening gambit in winning Akito's heart through his stomach is an "energy drink" that's one of these, made from a nonsense list of horrible ingredients. She gives it to him as he's begging for something to wash the taste of Yurika's equally horrific Lethal Chef fare out of his mouth. It really, really does not help.
- In Japanese, the ingredients list is a combination of folk "potency" (prehistoric Viagra) remedies.
- The ungodly "energy drink" seems to be a fairly common trope in anime, and even Super Robot Wars uses it, going so far as to include it as an item with very unusual effects.
In Ah My Goddess!, the female lead Belldandy is capable of handling any liquor you may throw at her mighty fine (which makes sense given that she's a Viking deity), but let her drink a drop of any carbonated, caffeinated beverage (any kind of soda) and get ready to see her drunk to high hell nine ways through Sunday.

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In Knights of the Dinner Table, during a Hack Master campaign, a particular bar requires first-time patrons to order Gut Busters. They use it to weed out low-level characters; drinking a drink of it does 1d10 damage, which is more than most first-level characters have. Bob's character, after being assaulted by certain patrons, gets a double, forgetting both that he's been injured and that each shot does 1d10 damage. He dies from the drink, to the shame of his party members.
In the Achille Talon album Viva Papa!, the only product of the Banana Republic of Tapasambal is an alcohol made from cactus juice. The locals seem able to drink it without trouble, but when the hero and his sidekick Lefuneste sip a little, they instantly turn red and produce cartoonish jets of steam. Along with the obligatory Les Tontons flingueurs (see below) Shout Out: "Cha, ch'est une boichon d'homme, cha!" ("Now, jhat'sh a men'sh drink, jhat!").
Desperate Dan's favorite coffee was strong enough to hold a spoon upright.

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The Nutty Professor featured the "Alaskan Polar Bear Heater", a drink invented by the lead character and dictated to a barman. Although Buddy drinks it without any noticeable effect, the barman takes a sip and loses consciousness.
Back to the Future III has perfectly ordinary alcoholic drinks, but it's established that Doc just can't take his liquor, so the bartender's apprehension is similar. Sure enough, he downs a glass and drops like a brick, at the most inconvenient time. The "wake-up juice" they arrange handles the "elaborate mixture of death" side of things. The alcoholic drinks are perhaps not so ordinary; Marty hesitates before downing a shot of Authentic Frontier Whiskey when he notices spilled droplets are causing the bar to smolder.
Like Doc, Roger in Who Framed Roger Rabbit just can't handle his liquor. An ordinary shot of whiskey sends him into elaborate convulsions, turning different colors and finally shooting up into the air, shrieking like a steam whistle.
Quint gives Brody a glass of something he made himself in Jaws. Brody can't handle a sip of it without spitting it out, and tells Hooper not to drink it. Hooper downs it anyway, and merely coughs, so maybe Brody is just a lightweight.
There's whatever Honest John was drinking in An American Tail. Seems to do nothing to him but get him drunk, but it does burn holes in the floorboards.
A very famous scene of French movie Les Tontons flingueurs revolves around the gangsters drinking some Gargle Blaster in a kitchen. (This whole scene was intended as an homage to Film Noir Key Largo.) Some of the best parts, translated, can be found on the quotes page.
The Disney flick Condorman has the titular hero (a comic book writer pretending to be a CIA agent) order an "Istanbul Express" for a Russian spy he's trying to impress — and a double for himself. The waiter, shocked, says, "Nobody orders a double!" He promptly makes it a triple. As a spoof of the trope, the drink is actually served on fire, resulting in a hilarious Fire Breathing Diner scene.
Another Disney flick, Snow Dogs, features "soup", which is stored in a hip flask. When questioned about the quotation marks, the maker replies, "Well, there's soup init."
Revenge of the Nerds. Another Alpha Beta brother asks Stan Gable to try a drink called simply "Fireball". He has one sip straight from the bottle and promptly spits it out all over. As it turns out, it has a ridiculously high proof, and Ogre later spits it through a lighter's flame and burns down the AB house.
In The Rescuers, Luke the muskrat is always toting a jug of "swamp juice" which he charitably gives to anyone who looks a little tired ("It's good for what ails ya."), leaving the poor drinker with fire and smoke coming out of his mouth. That, and it gives the dragonfly a burst of energy, Luke a burst of energy, and is used for fuel in what resembles a jet ski. (The last of which could be considered a vision of the future; ethanol-fueled cars, anyone?)

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Bor-brew ale from the Lone Wolf series doesn't look that threatening and even has a pleasant taste ("malted apples"). It has a fearsome reputation because it's the favored beer of dwarves. The first time Lone Wolf can drink it, he runs the risk of falling unconscious and waking up with a hangover that robs him of hit points. Later it seems the brew became even more potent; the second time he can drink it, he runs the risk of suffering horrifying hallucinations, falling unconscious, and waking up with a hangover that again robs him of hit points. Yes, even the beer is trying to kill Lone Wolf.

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Scumble from the Discworld books is a particularly potent form of hard cider (it's frequently described as being "made from apples... well, mostly apples" and was said in the GURPS Discworld to have "some qualities of fresh apples in autumn and some of dimethyl hydrazine before liftoff"); typically sold in tiny thimbles because overindulging can cause all sorts of horrible side effects, including seeing horrible green hairy things bursting through the walls. Nanny Ogg's specific version is sometimes known as Suicider. The following quote details some of the mythology which is typical of a good Gargle Blaster:
"A lot of stories are told about scumble, and how it is made out on the damp marshes, according to ancient recipes passed down rather unsteadily from father to son. It's not true about the rats, or the snakes' heads, or the lead shot. The one about the dead sheep is a complete fabrication. We can lay to rest all the variants of the one about the trouser button. But the one about not letting it come into contact with metal is absolutely true..."
- As everyone knows, there's no danger of encountering watered-down scumble — because scumble reacts explosively when it contacts water.
- There's one humorous scene in Mort where, due to his naivety and duties as substitute Death, orders a pint of the stuff (to considerable surprise), downs the whole thing without being affected (to even more surprise), and then walks straight through the door without opening or damaging it (leaving everyone positively stunned).
- Although not a drink, Mustrum Ridcully's Wow-Wow Sauce (a condiment which contains scumble, the essence of a particularly pungent vegetable, and two of the primary ingredients in gunpowder) fits the trope, and is occasionally used as a weapon. An illustration in Nanny Ogg's Cookbook shows Ridcully preparing it in metal gauntlets, padded leather apron and welding mask, with the sauce bottle behind a cast-iron shield.
- In Monstrous Regiment, the troll equivalent of a Gargle Blaster, the Electrick Floorbanger, is prepared by dropping silver and copper coins into vinegar; the resultant crude battery temporarily shorts out the troll's silicon brain.
- Trolls also have a drink called luglarr, or "Big Hammer", a variant of Troll beer made by adding certain metallic salts to the drink that manages to make it even more dangerous — very hard to do. The effect is roughly the same as scumble, to the effect that anyone who can't simply be pushed over minutes after drinking some is considered almost preternaturally resistant to its effects, even by other trolls. To sum up: this stuff etches pavement.
- From Sourcery comes "Desert Orakh", which is a mixture of scorpion venom and cactus sap that's been left to ferment in the sun for several weeks. It's actually noted that it isn't drunk as an alcohol, but as a counter to Klatchian Coffee.
- Discworld also inverts this with the world's most potent hangover cure, made with the aforementioned "Wow-Wow Sauce' and said to contain "the essence of pure sobriety." It's so powerful, it cures the Oh God of Hangovers, who gets all the hangovers the God of Alcohol avoids. Who then figures out the connection goes both ways, and tunes into the home of the gods just as the God of Alcohol is about to drink one of these ("Does anyone hear a slide whistle descending...?").
Also not a drink, but a throwaway passage in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age mentions a bottle of sandwich sauce containing "imported habanero peppers", "butts of clove cigarettes", "uranium mill tailings", "nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes..." and a long list of similar items.
Maple mead from Lois Mc Master Bujold's Vorkosigan series is always discussed with trepidation by the main characters. The Dendarii mountain folk, who are backwards even for a backwards planet like Barrayar, don't mess around with their alcohol. In moderation, the drink doesn't have much kick. The first glass or two taste sickly sweet, the next few glasses taste pretty good... and then you wake up the next morning with a killer hangover.
The Yahtzee novel Fog Juice is named for the Gargle Blaster prepared by the protagonist to solve problems. It is said to be a recipe passed down through generations of university students, which can be summed up as every bottle in the kitchen plus a large mixing bowl. Its main advantage is that when you come round, whatever unfortunate situation you were in will definitely have resolved itself — however, you may have a few new problems, the least of which is working out where you are and how you got there. It also renders you completely immune to all other forms of alcohol in the future, even notoriously evil Pirate Grog. And Allows you to access the collective human unconciousness with an avatar of your inner self. For the main character, this is a terrifying floating mass of tentacles which are themselves made of vomit. The female lead, in disgust, wonders pointedly what this says about him.
The most popular drink in the titular country of the Welkin Weasels series is honey dew, "known to make angels out of hawks and devils out of hickory sticks." (Translation: It's really strong, though it may just be strong in proportion to the weasels, who are very small and presumably can't handle huge amounts of alcohol.)
The Commissar by Sven Hassel. While behind enemy lines in Soviet uniform, the German protagonists are stopped by suspicious NKVD men. Tiny invites them to take a swig from his bottle. The NKVD men do so, turn pale and collapse. Tiny then drinks from the same bottle with no ill effects.
In one of the Captain Future books, a character orders some drink which the others describe as something like "one ounce makes you feel like being hit with a meteor, two make you become one". Being an android, the character drinks the entire (ceramic) bottle with no visible effect, and then orders wine with radium chloride — which does make him drunk.
The titular hero of the Sten series drinks an alien brew called stregg, a vile libation named after said aliens' (extinct) ancestral enemy. Since even the Eternal Emperor—a whiskey-swilling immortal gourmand who is several hundred years old—is shocked by the potency of stregg, one can assume that it is literally the worst rot-gut in the universe.

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The cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 once invented a non-alcoholic Gargle Blaster in the form of the Killer Shrew, a drink that combined about twelve different types of sugar in a blender (chocolate ice cream, Sweet Tarts, vanilla cake frosting, Good'n'Plenty, Marshmallow Peeps, etc.). Joel had one taste, went into diabetic shock and passed out; Frank, on the other hand, had one sip and went hyperglycemic, singing "Ladies' Night" and attempting to dance with Dr. Forrester.
Star Trek The Next Generation featured a just-barely Gargle Blaster on the episode "Relics", where James "Scotty" Doohan was a guest star — it was apparently the only real alcoholic beverage on the entire ship. Data tasted it several times to try to determine its composition, was perplexed, and described it (accurately) as "... green."
- The big surprise at the end of this sequence — intended to showcase the hard-drinking Scotty's contempt for the weak, pampered, synthehol-drinking inhabitants of the 24th century — is discovering that Picard knows it as Aldebaran whiskey and, in fact, was the one responsible for stocking it on the ship.
- This was a Shout Out to an episode of Star Trek The Original Series where Scotty engages an Alien Of The Week in a drinking contest (and eventually drinks that alien under the table), and the only description he can give of the final beverage he brings out is, "It's grrrrrrreen".
Done straight (insofar as it can be) in a Lost in Space episode where Doctor Smith is mistaken for a lookalike gunslinger and plays it to the hilt, ordering the gunslinger's favorite drink in a saloon on a Western Planet, inspiring awe among the crowd. IIRC, the bartender actually has to assemble the ingredients wearing heavy gloves.
Granny's "tonic" on The Beverly Hillbillies.
Baxter's illegal hooch on Red Dwarf. In Rimmer's words, "That stuff is like 300% proof. A bottle of that will get the entire Greek Navy drunk!" At 300 proof, by the by, the drink is 150% alcohol. On the British scale, 300 degrees proof would be about 171% alcohol by volume. It pulls alcohol from another dimension when drunk. Or Rimmer is just an idiot... wait.
- In series 6, when the crew were without the Red Dwarf, Kryten brewed up an opaque liqueur which might fool the unwary into believing it looked like margaritas. It was in fact called urine recyc, and left stains that needed removing with turpentine and no happy drinkers at all.
- Another Red Dwarf example: in the episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", Kryten asks for "the stuff where you get your eyesight back in three days guaranteed." Later, Lister, Rimmer, and Cat presumably try the same stuff, causing Rimmer to throw up in somebody's hat.
Lister: Very smooth.
Cat: I was expecting something with a little more kick to it.
On Cheers, Carla is known for making strong drinks with names such as "Leap Into An Open Grave" and "I Know My Redeemer Liveth." The former gets Diane hammered, to which Sam comments, "Oh, Carla, you made her an Open Grave, didn't you?" The latter gets everyone hammered, resulting in Cliff and Norm getting embarrassing tattoos and Carla sleeping with Paul.
Possibly the "Recipe" on The Waltons, given the respect it was given by everyone who knew what it really was (unlike the two elderly sisters who brewed it from their late father's, um, recipe). However, no one was ever really shown getting blitzed on the stuff.
On Greek, the Honors Engineering students whip up a batch of "Aerosol Death Juice" for their party, and have one of the wildest parties ever to grace the Kappa Tau house. And if you consider that Kappa Tau is the Delta House of CRU's Greek Row, that's saying something.
Top Gear has made what James May dubbed the 'Bloody Awful' (Jeremy Clarkson, who came up with the recipe, called it "a man's V8 smoothie", while Hammond suggested "A Desperate Shag and a Skip"). It consists of several pounds of beef (raw, with bones), a dozen chilies, a half-gallon of bovril, what looks to be about two cups of Tabasco sauce, and, for extra bite, a BRICK. It was all mashed together with a V8-powered 'blender' of Clarkson's design. James May drank some down, because he is A MAN. Apparently, it wasn't particularly pleasant.
In the Australian soap opera spoof Let The Blood Run Free one character's "friends" are trying to corrupt him before his wedding night. After all else fails they resort to a glass of PURE ALCOHOL! (which is steaming onimously). He takes a swig, immediately declares that he's going to get his rocks off with a nearby prostitute, then collapses unconscious.
In a Murphy Brown episode where the crew is staying in a Mexican hotel, Miller and Frank order one of these. The bartender says "Dios mio." and crosses himself before making the drink.
Black Books has "Life Cry". Fran shows it to her friends and they fall silent, awed by what is apparently the most potent drink in the Black Book universe. As Fran remarks: "You know you're in for a good night when there's a picture of a polar bear bleeding on the label".

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Filksinger Tom Smith is particularly well-known among science fiction fans for his song "307 Ale", about a beer accidentally brewed in a tesseract and named for its resultant proof level. (This song probably inspired "357 Vodka" and the other beverages from the example above.)
It bubbled and it burbled and it glowed a fizzly green
And what it did to test equipment frankly was obscene...

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The aforementioned "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster" from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is described as the best drink in existence. It also says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick, and it sums the entire drink up as the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging. That is to say, expensive and bad for the head. It was invented by Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox who, naturally, has had a few.
Hitchhiker's Guide also features Old Janx Spirit. An old Orion mining song describes its side effects as: "my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die". Naturally, it's an ingredient in the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
- Won't you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit!
- In addition to getting one drunk, Janx Spirit also suppresses telepsychic power.
- There's a drinking game for the Old Janx Spirit that goes something like this: two players sit across from each other, with shot glasses in front of them and a bottle of the drink in the middle. Both of them try to telepathically tip the bottle over into the opponent's glass, after which, he'd have to drink it, and would possibly keep losing due to its psychic suppression. When enough is drunk, the one who drank the most must perform a forfeit, the specifics of which are never mentioned. Either because of the forfeit or to build up his telepathic powers (possibly both), Ford plays to lose, which may explain his immunity to Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters. The book noted that there exist a number of twelve step programs on numerous worlds that can help a person begin recovering from the drink. Not recovering from a drinking habit, mind you, just from one drink.

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The Gargle Blaster is a common running in-joke among several Tabletop Games groups, featuring such novel notions as alcohol proofs greater than 200 (such as the distilled vodka "357", which is somehow 178.5% ethanol) and a drink known as "Engineer's Entropy", which is so potent, it must be stored separately from other alcohol, handled with tongs, and served in a reinforced crucible. At worst, it causes instant death. At best, irreparable liver damage and a round of applause.
Warhammer's goblin fungus beer allows goblins (more or less a human-child in size) to easily swing around metal balls bigger than them. It also make them meaner and crazier, and you're never sure where they are going to impact.
Tales from the Floating Vagabond, is a sci-fi comedy RPG centered around a dimensional nexus that's also a pub. The house special is called "The Singularity", which only the Floating Vagabond's bartender knows how to mix without killing the person ordering it. There's a random table you roll on whenever you drink one. Some of the results from that table include "Imbiber instantly goes to maximum intoxication stage", "Imbiber is temporarily taken over by a past life", "Imbiber grows extra limbs", and "Imbiber's clothes come alive and gain sentience".
Battletech has the PPC, named after the Particle Projection Cannon, because it can "take your head off". Two shots of Everclear with your choice of either a shot of Peppermint Schnapps (Steiner), Tequila (Davion, Capellan March), Bourbon (the rest of Davion), Ouzo (Marik) plum wine (Liao), sake (Kurita), or MORE Everclear (the Clans)

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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City features the "Love Juice", the favorite drink of the band Love Fist: 3 fizz bombs, 1 part boomshine, 3 parts trumpet, and 1 liter of petrol. Boomshine itself could be considered a Gargle Blaster. It's potent enough to intoxicate someone on the fumes alone, and if put too close to an open flame, will detonate like a weapons-grade explosive.
The Adventure Game Quest for Glory featured "Dragon's Breath", which could actually make your character spontaneously combust if he drank it at too low a level. Of course, since any hot-blooded (or stupid) adventurer worth his salt will invariably order the Dragon's Breath the first time they enter the tavern, they may not get to find out how skilled you have to be to safely drink it. There's also the Troll's Sweat (which tastes as good as it sounds) that will cause you to pass out and wake up minus your cash the next morning.
Not a drink in this instance, but the barber's reaction to being asked for a "Cyber Razor Cut" and the various surgical instruments and implements of torture he prepared before giving it in the old Sega ads on British T.V. all add up to a similar feel.
The Monkey Island series of computer games does this to grog. Instead of plain-ol' watered-down rum, it's a drink made with a variety of bizarre ingredients, which may (or may not) include kerosene, propylene glycol, artificial sweeteners, red dye no. 2, rum, acetone, battery acid, scumm, axle grease, and/or pepperoni. Needless to say, it's capable of burning holes through reinforced pewter mugs in a matter of seconds. This apparently doesn't stop it from being sold in familiar-looking red-striped soda vending machines, despite the games being set in the 17th century. The unusual composition is no doubt why, in the second game, near-grog is described as being as nasty-smelling and foul tasting as the real thing, sans the alcohol, so even pre-fake-ID Guybrush is allowed to drink it. Or he would be, if the bartender hadn't just sold the last bottle to Captain Kate Capsize, who prefers to be sober when she runs her glass-bottomed boat tours.
Neverwinter Nights allows the player to engage in a drinking contest, with the final round (before the opponent passes out) being a beverage known only as scurrd. It is, from a game-rules perspective, statistically impossible for any normal human being to imbibe scurrd without losing consciousness—it requires a Constitution score one point higher than what a first-level character is capable of having. A character with magically-enhanced or dwarven constitution can safely drink the scurrd, which results in the opponent passing out, and earns the PC massive respect from his buddies. If you successfully drink it, it temporarily doubles your hit points. It's the game world spontaneously recognizing the sheer BadAssery of your feat. Hit Points in Dungeons And Dragons (of which NWN is a videogame version) are a blend of actual health and fighting spirit. Scurrd renders you too smashed to feel very much pain, and makes "survival instinct" a funny joke you tell your friends, so you can take a massive amount of punishment before you collapse.
Kusuha Mizuha from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation is famous for her "Health Drinks". The exact ingredients are unknown, but what is know is that a single sip is enough to knock adult men unconscious. However, once you recover you feel absolutely amazing. There exists a select few (mostly aliens) who actually enjoy the taste. Most other people run in terror the moment Kusuha offers them a drink.
- On Ryusei's route in the first game, Ryusei actually tries to explain to Giado and the others exactly what it is that goes into a "Kusuha Special" (something having to do with ground-up gecko tails and viper venom). Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Giado or his stomach.
- Elzam and Arado are among the few human characters who can withstand it. Elzam, being a Chef Of Iron, isn't intimidated by so-called "bad food", and Arado's undergone so much gene modification that he can consume almost anything that's generally edible. Heero Yui drank it in Alpha 2 without passing out. Of course, he's Made Of Iron, so it wouldn't be surprising if he had a cast-iron stomach.
World of Warcraft has you construct several of these on various quests. How potent they truly are really depends on what level the quest is, although the quest giver will always act like it's the strongest stuff out there. "Dragonbreath Chili" is one of the few foodstuffs in the game that can directly damage your enemies after you eat it.
Gemstone IV introduced a blackout-inducing drink called Eldreth's Death-rum, based on a real player-made concoction served during a gaming convention room party. Several employees watched as a brave attendee offered to try the stuff, pronounced it "not that bad" and started to walk away with no ill effects—before suddenly dropping to his knees five steps later.
The potion maker in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker uses a welding mask as described above when mixing up new potions. The process also involves small explosions and clouds of colored smoke. Link burps up a small puff of colored smoke after drinking one.
Kingdom of Loathing, of course, has the Pan-Dimensional Gargle Blaster. Drinking it gives you the message "You feel like your head is a gold brick with a slice of lemon wrapped around it."
When the MMO Asherons Call added brewing as an Item Crafting ability it became possible to brew "Tusker Pus" a beer so horrible it does 9999 damage when drank, several times more damage than a player character can possibly have hit points.
If you go to visit the nurse's office in Persona 3 while tired or sick, the whackjob who runs it (who also teaches a class on magic, mind you) offers you a concoction that is made of a number of poisonous substances and some good-luck charms (including rabbit's feet... in a drink). If you choose not to drink it, he gives you actual medicine; if you drink it, it boosts your Courage, because he congratulates you on having the guts to try.
White Gull is one of the few potions The Witcher can brew that isn't instantly lethally toxic to mortals. It can be brewed from any alcohol available, and makes the ideal base for any other potions. Even with his Witcher resistance to toxins, just one will make Geralt drift across the floor like a bobber on a fishing line, two will get him 86'd to wake up on the cobbles. Non-Witcher humans won't get through one. There is no canonical evidence of how much a dwarf can drink. It's sometimes used as an anesthetic on those already near death.
Space Quest 6 and the fan-made preques Space Quest 0 feature "Coldsaurian Brandy," an extremely potent and disgusting liquor (it has a rotting fish in the bottom of the jug). Roger doesn't drink the stuff, but it makes a mean Molotov cocktail, and it's good for poisoning purposes.
In Atelier Annie, nobody knows exactly what it is in Gillian's drinks, but know that the stench is so powerful it could fell a field of Punies from a mile away, so they (especially Annie and Pepe) don't go near the stuff. Gillian is oblivious to this sort of reaction, and guzzles her own concoctions like water.

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In the webcomic Freefall, John Jones Monroevian Moonshine: Fine sipping whiskey and high explosive. According to the ingredients list on the bottle, it contains "muskrat squeezings, nitroglycerin, and other additives both natural and unnatural." Also on the bottle is a statement of quality: "If you drink this, you will die." This is, of course, a Shout Out to the Kickapoo Joy Juice in Li'l Abner (made from ground up dead skunks and old shoes among other things).
The aforementioned Kickapoo Joy Juice is itself a Gargle Blaster, having been described as "more inflammable than jet fuel".
In Nodwick, Yaegar is fond of drinking "Skullwhomper Ale", much to the horror of the other characters. The effects are rarely shown in the comic itself, but its consumption almost invariably leads to some sort of Noodle Incident. The destruction of the tavern it is served in is a frequent component to these.
In Girl Genius, Theo's idea of a good home-brewed liquor can be expected to be at least 200 proof, and have other... interesting ingredients. "Hey, he's breathing again!" One cup of Lingonberry Snap will apparently give you hallucinations. "Ah. I'd wondered why they were playing the music backwards."
This strip of Planescape Survival Guide has the drink being handled with tongs, and the hilarious aftereffects of the drink itself.
Cadbury Egg Cereal. Skips over the entire wild bender and shows us only the result, to great comical effect: the victim has been elected to Congress.
Stickman and Cube has Una Muerte Con Mucho Dolor, which comes with several hours of warnings and disclaimers and must be served in a diamond glass.
Life and Death, this comic
Something Positive recently introduced an accidental one, with Davan taking a swig from a flask... not realizing Monette had dumped Everclear in it... and Fred had dumped moonshine in it... and PeeJee had dumped absinthe in it. He instantly started hallucinating imaginary characters from Girls With Slingshots, the comic whose characters' wedding he was attending at the time..

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SCP Foundation has SCP-294, an "universal beverage dispensing machine" that was once used to deliver a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. The Hideous Hangover Cure is an entire bottle of Excedrin. Other examples include "the perfect drink", which caused the one who drank it to commit suicide because everything seemed dull and uninteresting to him afterwards.

Close Web Original

The above-mentioned asbestos gloves, welding mask, and tongs were used in the Daffy Duck Looney Tunes short "Drip-Along Daffy", with the outlaw Nasty Canasta ordering two of "the usual" (one for him, the other for do-gooder Daffy, whom Canasta was holding at gunpoint) from a saloon bartender: a drink made with such ingredients as "cobra venom", "hydrogen particles", and "Old Panther whiskey". He then drops two ice cubes in it... which immediately jump out as if on fire and head for the coolness of the fire bucket....
- The preparation of many dangerous drinks in Looney Tunes cartoons usually ends with the mixer withdrawing a spoon whose bowl has been melted (or burned!) off while stirring.
- One similar, but not quite the same, Looney Tunes scenario, "Show Biz Bugs", has Daffy, tired of being consistently one-upped by Bugs in a vaudeville act, pull together the most incredible drink ever; ingredients include nitroglycerin, gasoline, and gunpowder, and topped off with uranium 238. He drinks it down, jumps up and down to shake, then drops in a match.... After the ensuing explosion, an impressed Bugs tells Daffy that the audience wants more, to which Daffy's ghost replies "I know, but I can only do it once!"
- Yet another Daffy example occurs in the cartoon Mexican Joyride. Daffy enters a Mexican bar, and, after an encounter with some of the local cuisine demands something to put the fire out. The bartender hands Daffy a drink, which he quickly downs-and then stiffens into a rigor mortis like state. The bartender picks Daffy up and chucks him into a nearby pile of similarly frozen patrons.
In an episode of The Simpsons, Bart and Milhouse drink a Squishee "made of pure syrup". It is treated exactly like a Gargle Blaster, and even leads to a Drunken Montage.
- Another episode features the Forget-Me-Shot, a concoction so powerful it erases the previous 24 hours off of the drinker's memory.
- And there's the episode where Bart and Milhouse are in the Flanders house unsupervised, and they discover Ned's Beatles collection; they each down a can of 40-year-old Beatles-themed novelty soft drink, and Bart's causes him to briefly hallucinate about Milhouse as John Lennon.
In Tex Avery's The Shooting of Dan McGoo, a character drinks a shot of straight whiskey and promptly shoots up to the ceiling like a rocket. When he lands, he complains, "This stuff's been cut."
In the Buzzy the Crow cartoon, Cat-Choo, Buzzy makes a concoction of mustard, black pepper, hot sauce, and other spicy foods for a "remedy" for Katnip's cold. When Buzzy finishes stirring it, the spoon has completely melted. After drinking it, Katnip's tail shoots out fireworks like a cannon.

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"Strawberry Surprise": grain alcohol and pepper spray. The surprise is that it tastes nothing like strawberries and everything like hurting.
The "Four Horsemen" normally consists of one shot each of Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, and Jose Cuervo. Some people choose to replace one of the three whiskies with Captain Morgan, which doesn't agree with the tequila in most people's stomachs. To quote an experienced drinker, who was holding a buddy's head up over the toilet at the time:
"You idiot! Captain Morgan is a racist! HE HATES MEXICANS!"
The "Aunt Roberta", which has caused at least 34 deaths, definitely goes here. It contains:
- Three shots of vodka;
- Two shots of absinthe;
- One shot of brandy;
- One and a half shots of gin;
- One shot of blackberry liqueur.
The theme camp, Spock Mountain Research Laboratories at the Burning Man festival has served a drink called "Hyper-Whiskey" for years. Though the recipe varies, it has usually contained some kind of chili sauce or horseradish.
A drink called the Chuck Norris, made from steeping Jalapeños in vodka until it kicks like its namesake.
The Drink called an "Adios Motherfucker" — White Rum, Tequila, Blue Curacao, Vodka and a splash of bar lime. Like Jäger, guaranteed to ail what cures you.
The infamous "Pájaro Verde" ("Green Bird") drink, which is illegally brewed and consumed in Chilean jails. It's strong enough to kill several interns every year.
The mix of milk and some bit of pot known as "Happy Milk". This is mostly done to leach the stuff out of weak pot, THC being lipophilic and milk being an emulsion of fat in water.
There's a lot of challenge drinks out there, but one of the nastiest is a Prairie Fire — tequila and Tabasco. A game based on this drink is "Russian Roulette" — your group orders one each, one of which has triple the Tabasco in it.
Tequila and tabasco are not an uncommon mix. There are variations with a third ingredient, such as Falun Snakebite (Tequila, tabasco and really cheap bourbon), or Flatliner (Layer sambuca and tequila in that order, add tabasco)
Most instances of homemade hard liquor — "Moonshine" — fall under this trope, being as it is generally not only stronger than an irritable rhinoceros but tastes like a combination of industrial cleaners and whatever vessel it was cooked up in.
Chinese peasant liquor certainly falls under this trope. It can best be described as smelling of death, and the experience of a half-shot was not unlike an aluminum baseball bat across the eyes. Due to poor brewing and distilling techniques, it often contains high concentrations of toxic methanol.
A franchise bar called "The Hub" in Japan has a drink on its menu that's similar to this. It was a shot that is 3/4 rectified spirit and 1/4 absinthe.
Usually absinthe verte (green) with about 70% alcohol (to preserve the coloring chlorophyll) is diluted before drinking. A bleue/blanche has usually about 50%. Lighting it came about in the 1990s and is not traditional in any way. For that matter, rectified spirit (which in any form qualifies for this trope in its own right) is usually not drunk straight. It is, though, just not often and mostly to show off. It's actually rather unpleasant.
A trick is popular among chemists to awe non-chemists. The effects of strong hydrochloric acid are demonstrated, as are those of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda). Carefully measured quantities of these are then decanted and mixed in front of the audience. Then the scientist downs the mixture. It is of course just salty water, as the two chemicals neutralize each other. Sensible people give the mixture time to react fully and let it touch the outside of the mouth before drinking any.
Another, just as dangerous, trick within chemistry is to drink 96% alcohol very slowly with an open mouth. Due to the high alcohol content, which is on the absolute border of what is possible under normal atmospheric conditions, the alcohol will evaporate in one's mouth. The trick is to breath out while drinking, or it will have the reverse effect: Alcohol vapor that enters the bloodstream directly through the lungs, skipping the stomach. It's not very healthy to say the least. But, done properly, one could down an entire bottle of 96% while still reasonably sober.
During this pub-crawl a group go out seeking the worst drinks possible for entertainment value, including such horrors as "the bloody tampon" and "the brush with death"... at one point the author appears to be summoning Cthulhu to come put him out of his misery.
This Experiment in which the goal was to get as much alcohol in a Jello shot as possible. Its Follow Up Experiment managed to get even more in, creating a highly flammable chunk of gelatin that melts into a flaming puddle when ignited.
Long Island Iced Tea. To clarify, LIIT contains equal amounts of vodka, gin, white rum, triple sec, tequila and Coca-Cola, and a wedge of lime. When properly mixed, it tastes like iced tea. While containing five-sixths hard liquor.
Not a drink per se, but certainly falling within the spirit of this trope is any hot sauce made by Blair's. Their hottest sauce, Blair's Sixteen Million Reserve, legally qualifies as pepper spray in some jurisdictions. Click here (warning: NSFW) for a first-person perspective on eating a curry made with one of Blair's death sauces. Blair's Sixteen Million Reserve is as hot as you can get, using capsaicin. It isn't a sauce, it's crystals of pure capsaicin. Its much, much hotter than pepper sprays (which usually is a 'mere' four or five million Scoville units).
Both Everclear & Golden Grain, at 190% proof, should be considered small-scale stand-alone Gargle Blasters due to their abilities to knock out anyone in 1-2 shots.
The Smerf has been there, done that and felt fine after. Outside of, you know, the burning.
Spirytus is also 190 proof, 95% alc by vol. Go from zero to under the table in 1 shot.
Habu Sake, another Japanese variant. It's awamori (not sake) served with a Habu Viper in it. Yes, a dead snake in the liquor. Supposedly the alcohol neutralizes the venom, but this troper knows sailors who swear the venom is just potent enough to keep your liver from purifying the alcohol from your system for a little longer than normal. Four shots of this, and you're down for the count.
Dubovka, a peculiar kind of Russian booze made by fermenting grain with oakwood splinters that was produced illegally during Gorbachev's anti-alcohol laws. It's green, tastes mild but makes you fall after the third shot.
For yet another case of ersatz booze, there are multiple methods of "purifying" denatured alcohol. For example, one of them included adding a common bathroom cleaner, decanting, and filtering through a loaf of bread cut in half. Dont Try This At Home, seriously. Similarly, Yerofeyev's Moscow Petushki included, Or So I Heard, such a line: "did you drink denatured with chicken shit?".
Anthony Burgess' homemade cocktail, Hangman's Blood. "Into a pint glass, doubles (i.e. 50ml measures) of the following are poured: gin, whisky, rum, port and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added and the whole topped up with Champagne... It tastes very smooth, induces a somewhat metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover."

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