Gross Gum Gag

"Is this her... gum?! Eeewwwww!"

Chewing gum, whether it's being used for bad breath, blowing bubbles, or simply for flavor, is unique in the world of snacks and candy due to the fact that it's not intended to be swallowed and thus needs to be disposed of in another way. As the result, chewed gum is an easy source of gross-out comedy in a work because it is sticky, covered in someone else's saliva, and has the tendency of showing up in places that'll lead to the grossest outcome... especially since gum can be found just about anywhere, which makes this trope surprisingly versatile.

Here are just a few ways it can be played:

• Someone steps on or otherwise comes into contact with someone else's chewed gum. This can range from expected places, like the bottom of a school desk, or to the less expected, like in a Foul Ball Pit.
• There's a piece of chewed gum stuck to something, and someone has to scrape it off.
• Someone resumes chewing an old piece of gum, or they put the gum somewhere to "save it for later". Occasionally, the person chewing the gum won't be the gum's original owner, making it even grosser.
• Crafty characters may invoke this trope by putting someone in a situation where they have to come in contact with gum.
• The gum itself may be anthropomorphized as a slob, or more generally, be lumped in with other disgusting things or characters.
• Sometimes, the gum is gross right off the bat, skipping the "chewing" requirement in order to play with the concept. This may be because certain "tasty" flavors suddenly become less delicious in the form of chewing gum, or just because putting something gross in combination with something that becomes gross just increases the overall grossness.

Ultimately, in any situation aside from the gum being chewed and disposed of in a responsible manner, this trope is likely to come into play.

Supertrope to Bubblegum Popping and Gum In Hair, but unrelated to Chew Bubblegum.

Truth in Television. Anyone who's made the mistake of putting their hand under a city bench or school desk likely came in contact with someone else's chewed gum before, and it's not sold in Disney theme parks as Walt famously hated the stuff. That also means this is too common to discuss, though, so No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: One Betty & Veronica story has the girls laugh at a school rule that disallows chewing gum, since they seem harmless. Within the span of a few pages, they managed to repeatedly sit or step on various irresponsibly discarded gum, to their increasing disgust. By the end of the strip, they realize the benefit of the "No Chewing Gum" rule, and they force Reggie to throw his out when he tried to offer them some chewing gum later on.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • In one strip, Calvin reaches into his pant pocket, and winds up with a sticky, blobby mess covering both his hands. He complains that he can't tell where his old chewing gum ends and his Silly Putty begins.
  • In a Sunday strip, he puts on his lucky rocketship underpants, hoping to have a good day. He has a terrible day that starts with accidentally sitting on some gum that was stuck on his chair at school.

Film — Animation

• In Turning Red, there is a shot where Miriam, who wears braces, chews gum, with her mouth open, right in front of the In-Universe camera and is called out on it being gross.

Film — Live-Action

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: At the start of the film, Fregley offers some pizza to Greg and Rowley, but they don't know until after they start eating it that it was used pizza found on the floor. Greg suddenly finds a used wad of gum in his mouth, which Fregley takes off of him and sticks behind his ear, saying he'll keep it for later.
• Elf: Santa warns Buddy not to eat gum on the street in New York City because "it isn't free candy." Later, when Buddy is walking around New York for the first time, he sees some gum stuck to a fence and, either forgetting or ignoring Santa's warning, grabs it and puts it in his mouth.
• Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: A drunk Caroline keeps chewing the same piece of gum (which she got from Randy's mouth while making out with him) throughout the entire movie. At one point she loses it in a sewer, finds it again, and sticks it back in her mouth. It eventually ends up in Nick's mouth and he spits it onto the back of Randy's neck.
• The Sex Trip: After having sex in the first scene of the movie with a girl who was more interested in her gum, Eddie steps on that chewed gum with his bare feet and lifts it up to show a string attaching him to the floor.
• Spider-Man: Homecoming: During his fight against Shocker II, Peter gets punched into a bus and notices some gums stuck under the seats, grossing him out.
  Peter: Ugh. Gross.

Literature

• Big Nate: In "In the Zone", Nate sits at a table in the cafeteria and says he feels like he's got a target on his back because of all the bad things that have happened to him lately. Then Dee Dee comments that he should worry more about the gum stuck to his butt.
• In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, compulsive gum-chewer Violet Beauregarde boasts that she chews the same piece of gum for days on end, sticking it behind her ear during mealtimes, and sometimes sticks it on elevator buttons as a prank.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In the original book, Ricky Fisher's establishing moment is Greg stating that he'll pick the old gum off of the bottom of desks and chew it if you give him fifty cents. Greg is not too thrilled to have this guy on his independent study group.
  • In "The Ugly Truth", Rodrick spits out his chewed gum at a swarm of moths, but he misses and hits Frank in the face with it. Frank gets so frustrated that he chases Rodrick around the parking lot, only to trip and twist his ankle (though he lies that he tripped over a toy car).
• In The Janitors Boy, Jack tries to prank his school janitor dad by chewing the biggest, grossest wad of bubblegum he can before sticking it on the bottom of a desk, and even goes so far as to calculate which kind of gum is the worst. As punishment, he has to work for his dad for three weeks and scrape the gum off desks.
• Sesame Street: In the book "Grover's Bad, Awful Day", Grover steps in gum at one point, much to his annoyance. He simply ditches his sticky galosh and storms home without it.
• In The Slimy Book, the narrator at one point mentions that he should've listened to his mother, who advised against chewing a type of bubblegum that stuck to everything including his nose.

Live-Action TV

• CSI: NY: In "The Ripple Effect," a chewed piece of purple gum is found stuck to a victim's clothing. Lindsay determines that it's violet-flavored.
  Jo: Violet-flavored? Like the flower?
  Lindsay: Yep. Makes for a nice bubble-bath, but I don't think I'd want to chew it.
• House of Anubis:
  • While blackmailing Mara, Jerome forces her to do a variety of chores. Aside from doing his table-setting duty, we see her forced to scrape chewed gum off the bottom of his shoes. She questions how he could possibly step in so much gum, and he claims he was just unlucky... seconds before Alfie walks in, notices some of his missing gum, and resumes eating it, much to Jerome's amusement and Mara's disgust.
  • Downplayed when Mara takes on her "bad girl" persona. She comes into class chewing gum, which isn't allowed. After being berated, she rolls her eyes and puts the gum behind her ear, which creates some grossed-out reactions from her classmates.
• Mr. Bean:
  • In "Mr Bean Rides Again", Mr Bean is on a train journey, with a fellow passenger who cannot stop laughing at his book. Mr Bean tries many ways to block out the sound of this, and finally finds some discarded chewing gum under the seat, which he stuffs in his ears. This works so well that he is completely unaware of the ticket inspector approaching.
  • In the "bus stop" sketch, a baby in a pram cries, and Mr Bean tosses some chewing gum into the pram to silence the baby. The mother then pulls it out, as a long strand.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In "Manos: The Hands of Fate", the riffers make several jokes portraying The Master's house as a particularly unpleasant hotel. They reinterpret Torgo as the busboy, and quip that he left chewed-up pieces of gum on the guests' pillows (instead of mints).
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: In "Guide to Bad Habits", Cookie attempts to break his nail-biting habit with a gum chewing one. This results in him becoming addicted to gum chewing, to the point where he chews multiple packs at once. When Ned and Moze force him to spit it out, the result is a massive wad going right in the trash.
• In one of the Saturday Night Live "Candy Slice" skits, Candy shows up late to a recording session and demands a hair brush, cigarettes, booze and finally a piece of gum before she'll start singing. Fed up, her agent takes his own gum from his mouth and puts it in hers. Candy, being a hot mess ne plus ultra, actually chews it like that was a normal thing to do, then sticks it on the microphone.

Toys

• Gooey Chewie of The Grossery Gang is a pre-chewed wad of gum and member of the Sticky Sweets team. His mouth is made up of gum strings, and his "trace amounts" label warns of him possibly containing things such as "phlegm, drool, and fillings".
• Scum Gum from The Trash Pack is a chewed up piece of gum that's a member of The Grubz team. He's described as a piece of gum that's found hiding under a desk, along with all the boogers.

Video Games

• I Expect You To Die 3 allows you to eat some gum you find in a crane. Your handler, disgusted, calls you out for this.

Web Animation

• Gooey Chewie is adapted into The Grossery Gang webseries. A chewed up pile of living gum, he's one of the rotten objects that was turned into a Grossery by the Yucky Mart's poor condition.
• Scum Gum is given an adaptation in The Trash Pack webseries. A living pile of chewed up gum, his grossness is often compacted by the pack that he has the tendency to get even more trash stuck on him.

Websites

• Neopets: While there are a lot of gum-related items that aren't considered gross or weird at all, this trope still comes into play when you look at the "Gross Foods".
  • The "Chewed Gum Ice Cream Cone", coming with Flavor Text that specifies that the gum was all chewed "by the cook".
  • The "Pack of Snot-Flavoured Gum" is a clear plastic bag of sticky green cubes with "an extra burst of snot flavour".
  • "Sardine Vinegar Gum", "Peanut Seaweed Gum", "Lime Chilli Gum" and "Sausage Mayo Gum" all depict gross, gray sticks of gum in an open package with an extra gross food added for good measure. The text even calls them all "repulsive".
  • "Dandergum" combines gum with dandruff; as in, the gum itself has a dandruff problem.
  • "Chewing Dung" is, essentially, chewing gum made from dung.

Web Video

• Dhar Mann: In "Thief STEALS From The WRONG GUY, What Happens Is Shocking", one of the thief's many karmic punishments is that he steps on a recently chewed wad of gum, a payback for having stolen a pack of gum earlier in the story. The camera cuts to a shot of it stuck to his shoe to emphasize how gross it is.

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • In the episode "My Dad, the Garbage Man", Francine keeps her friends distracted by spitting her gum on the school bus ceiling. Everyone including Muffy is disgusted by this.
  • Francine does it again in another episode. Just like the last one, she spits her gum on the bus ceiling and grossed everyone out.
• Back to the Future: The Animated Series: Verne spends most of one episode chewing gum. At some point when hiding under theater seat, he pulls one from the seat's underside and starts chewing on it, much to his brother's disgust. Verne claims it's his own gum from before they dove under the seats.
• The Loud House:
  • "The Sweet Spot" establishes that one of the seats in "Vanzilla" the family van is covered in chewed gum, and thus nobody wants to sit in it.
  • In "No Spoilers", Lana uses gum to make into balloons.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Brain Drain", one of the things Dr. Doofenshmirtz makes Perry the Platypus do with his mind-controlling De-Volitioninator is pick up chewed gum from the sidewalk. Doofenshmirtz stops Perry before the latter actually puts it in his mouth, but then he makes the platypus go through it a second time.
• Piggy Tales: Third Act: In "For Pig's Sake", one of the pigs sits down in a chair, and gets stuck to the chair by a wad of gum.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: In "Gossip Boy", Randy recalls how he once saw the school janitor chewing some old gum he'd just scraped, with the resulting bubble containing an insect within.
• Regular Show: The beginning of the episode "Fancy Restaurant" has Muscle Man spitting a wad of chewed gum on a piece of paper and then planting it on the ground for someone to walk on, laughing uncontrollably when it happens.
• The Ripping Friends: The first episode "The Indigestible Wad" has a little girl's beloved bubblegum (that she's been chewing since she was a fetus after her mother swallowed it) comes to life after being exposed to the dentist's x-ray machine. It becomes a supervillain craving people's fluids, jumping in their mouths to suck out their saliva. At one point, Chunk is drained into a withered husk, and Jimmy the Idiot Boy has to chew him back to normalcy. Which he does competently, up until he tries to blow a bubble with Chunk's head...
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Upturn Girls", Pearl takes Narlene out to see the city. The first thing she does is step in some gum, which she removes from her foot and chews, enjoying it. Pearl is disgusted.
    Pearl: The city also has lots of things that aren't totally gross!
  • In "Plankton's Pet," when Plankton thinks his new pet amoeba, Spot, ran away, he and SpongeBob ask a random fish if they've seen him. The fish asks if the chewed wad of gum on his shoe is Spot, then puts it in his mouth when Plankton tells him it's gum.
    Fish: Gum? I've been looking everywhere for this!
  • In "The Gift of Gum", Patrick gives SpongeBob a massive ball of chewed-up gum, that is full of dirty laundry and trash. SpongeBob is disgusted and spends most of the episode trying to get rid of "Gummy".
• Total Drama:
  • In "I Triple Dog Dare You", one of Beth's dares force Owen to eat a piece of Harold's old gum, to which Owen enthusiastically accepts to the horror of everyone else. He notes that it has a "crunchy center", which is implied to be a booger due to the image of Harold picking his nose.
  • In "Super Crazy Happy Fun Time Japan", Cody has to get into a giant pinball with Sierra, who has a massive crush on him. He comes out of it Covered in Kisses and with a piece of her gum stuck in his ear, which makes him scream in disgust when he pulls it out in the confessional.
• Bubblz from The Trash Pack cartoon series is an adaptation of Scum Gum. While less disgusting than her toy and webseries counterparts, she's still a chewed up wad of gum that was brought to life due to poor littering conditions.
• True and the Rainbow Kingdom: In "A Snoozy Sleepover", Bartleby brushes his tail, only to find chewed-up gum stuck in there. He decides to chew it again, and True is appropriately disgusted.

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