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"Well, I feel that films — the film industry — has increasingly failed to reflect reality as people live it. No-one goes for a piss in Star Wars, you can watch the whole of Ghostbusters and no-one brushes their teeth, and in Lost in Translation, nothing happens at all."
That Mitchell and Webb Look, Series 2 Episode 1

You know that children's book, Everyone Poops? Well, they lied. Not everyone does.

Sure, real people and animals in everyday life might, but you're not likely to see a fictional character going to the bathroom.note  This would detract from the plotline, and besides, nobody really wants to see that sort of thing. If something's not crucial to the story, why include it?

Sometimes, of course, it is crucial to the story, and this trope is averted. Maybe there's a Potty Emergency; maybe someone uses a bathroom break to escape custody; maybe someone suffers an Undignified Death by being killed in the bathroom — or worse, killed with a toilet; or maybe there's just some good old-fashioned Toilet Humour. Maybe it isn't crucial to the story but is included anyway.

This trope is sometimes averted without showing anything by simply having a character excusing themselves for a moment. Creatures with A Head at Each End beg the question of whether this trope literally applies.

The page lists lampshades of the phenomenon; straight examples and aversions are too many to count.

Even the dead aren't immune to this trope, as evidenced in the subtrope No Dead Body Poops.

Compare Bottomless Bladder, No Such Thing as Dehydration, Exposed to the Elements, Frigid Water Is Harmless, and No Periods, Period.


Lampshades:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • City Hunter: Lampshaded in the second Union Teope arc: after finding out that Ryo had not left her behind to go into battle but was in the toilet, Kaori screamed at him that nobody had ever heard of a hero that goes to poop before the battle, only for Ryo to reply that it's the smart thing to do (and calling her constipated).
  • In Naruto, it is explicitly stated that White Zetsu, being part-plant clone things, do not poop. They're actually rather curious about it, to the point of one asking somebody who until recently did have to poop what it felt like.
  • Luffy's first question to anything unusual in One Piece is "Do you poop?" The only time anything's answered that is when Brook admitted he does.
  • Sgt. Frog: Averted normally, and exaggerated in one Kero Zero chapter. Basically, the mothership taking our heroes to Earth starts rationing all food and water when its onboard farms fail to produce any crop - our heroes wind up holding it all in for a week when they can't even use the toilet, then desperation forces them to dump it all all over the onboard farms, inadvertently fertilising the soil and allowing it to function again. They don't actually touch the food produced for some time, though.
  • In Super Dreadnought Girl 4946, the titular giant girl is asked about how she goes to the toilet. She responds that she doesn't leading to a discussion on the topic since no one believes her. Later we learn that since her size is supernatural in origin, she doesn't require food to live and thus doesn't poop either.

    Comic Books 
  • Batman: A Wizard special focusing on Batman had one questioning if the Batcave has any bathrooms or if Bruce has to run back up to Wayne Manor for a bathroom break (though this is averted in canon as one of the comics shows someone on the toilet).
  • In Father Christmas, this is averted as there's a scene of Father Christmas sitting on his outside toilet. However, the author's wife complained about there being a children's book where a character was "performing an act of personal hygiene" and demanded he remove the panel and apologise. He didn't— and he hung the angry letter in his own lavatory.
  • During one of the early issues of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) Sonic says that bad Chili Dogs "Go straight to my gut." In the Knuckles spinoff, it is implied that a kid that Knuckles is babysitting needs a Diaper Change. And in the Sonic universe spinoff Bean the Dynamite does a Potty Dance.

    Fan Works 

  • The AU CSI fic ''H5N1” takes place after an apocalyptic The Plague situation. There’s a mention of Grissom and Sara having to make an improvised bucket commode since they lack running water in their cabin. Grissom also pees outside the house when coyotes become a problem. He’s hoping they’ll be deterred by smelling the pee of another male animal, a potential larger predator than them.
  • A running gag in The Legend of Korra Abridged Series Project Voicebend is that there are no bathrooms in Republic City, and the citizens somehow don't need to use them.
  • Snape lampshades this in A Little Light Reading as he notes that "the book hasn't mentioned so much as a bathroom break."
  • In this The Lord of the Rings fanfic, Legolas is unconscious for days. Gimli later lampshades this trope by pointing out that it would have all been a lot more embarrassing if Legolas had had to go to the bathroom. Justified in that Legolas is an elf.
  • Minecraft plays this straight, and some people have had fun with that:
  • In Princesses Don't Potty, a fanfic of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic set before Twilight herself became an Alicorn, Twilight originally thought that this applied to Alicorns— she thought regular ponies pooped and peed, but Alicorns didn't. When she hears Princess Luna (an Alicorn) make a drunken joke about taking a royal whizz, she wonders if Alicorns do go to the bathroom and decides to conduct an experiment by spiking Luna's sister Celestia's tea with diuretics. They work, but Celestia tries to hold her pee so she can trick Twilight into thinking Alicorns don't pee.
  • In The Two Sides of Daring Do, Daring Do is brought to life from her book. Since she has no knowledge of anything not mentioned in the books, AK Yearling has to patiently teach her how to go to the bathroom.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Anzu comments in episode 3 while on the ship that she 'needs the bathroom, but the woman dubbing me won't say so'. This is a callback to the fact that 4Kids edited out Anzu saying she needed the bathroom on this line in the English language dub.

    Films — Animation 
  • Played for Laughs in Coco:
    Miguel: Con permiso, I—need to visit the restroom. [quickly exits] Be right back!
    Clerk: [Beat] Uh, should we tell him there are no restrooms in the Land of the Dead?
  • The Mitchells vs. the Machines: The pods that PAL traps most of the humans in are lacking toilets. Justified in that her plan is once they're launched into space, they will all suffocate and die.
  • Zigzagged in Turning Red. Mei's giant red panda form is properly seen by someone for the first time right after Stacy Frick exits a bathroom stall and a flushing sound can be heard. Later, however, that same (wheelchair accessible) stall is used to store and display red panda related merch as if nobody would need to use it for any other purpose.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Apollo 13 took the opportunity to depict how astronauts in the Apollo era used a hose-like apparatus to relieve themselves and the waste was then dumped into space. Fred Haise refers to it by the astronauts’ Real Life Running Gag-“the constellation urion”
  • In The Brady Bunch Movie, one of the neighbors reveals that he once tried to use the family's bathroom but couldn't find a toilet, alluding to how the original series never showed one.
    Steve: One bathroom for nine people? And I never did see a toilet.
  • Lampshaded in Bubble Boy, when Slim bluntly asks Jimmy how he takes a dump while wearing his mobile bubble suit.
  • There was some Lampshade Hanging in a deleted scene from Galaxy Quest, where one of the Thermians mentions to Alan Rickman's character that Earth's "historical documents" (television programs) did not contain any information regarding waste facilities on the ship and "we extrapolated based on your anatomy" — revealing what looked to be the most horrendously painful toilet ever created.
  • Much like the Leave It to Beaver scene below, the film Psycho was the first American movie to show a toilet, implying people have to use it. This was Serious Business at the time, no pun intended.
  • Pleasantville makes a point of this — Jennifer enters the bathroom to discover that there are no toilets, because they aren't necessary.
  • Lampshaded in Star Trek: First Contact, where Zephram Cochrane asks Geordi if anyone pees in the 24th Century after noticing their one-piece Future Spandex jumpsuits.
  • Lampshaded in the song "Silver Screen" from Teen Beach 2. "Every line's a perfect take/Never need a bathroom break"

    Literature 
  • Adrian Mole: Subverted in that toilets (or more usually "lavatories") are mentioned frequently, and lampshaded in this line.
    The lavatory on the Moscow train defies description. However, I'll try. After all, I am a novelist.
  • Dave Barry once mused that Batman never goes to the bathroom. "Maybe that's why he's always grimacing."
  • Zigzagged in The BFG. Despite extensive mention of "whizzpopping" note , it is never mentioned how or when the giants relieve themselves. As they believe that "burping is filthsome", perhaps it is not polite for them to talk about it. However, at the beginning it is mentioned that the children in Sophie's orphanage are punished if they go to the lavatory at night.
  • Chrysalis (RinoZ): Anthony notices that his ant body genuinely doesn't produce any waste products at all, even though he's shovelling in biomass for both food and mutation fuel. He simply doesn't understand how it's working.
    I don't know! I just eat things!
  • Diaspora: Justified since the characters are all either AIs or uploaded brains who exist in a virtual environment. One character intentionally customized his Digital Avatar with the ability to urinate; he muses that, much as he enjoys taking a physics-defying leak off his balcony in the morning, he's never felt any nostalgia for the human business of defecation.
  • In the Discworld novel Snuff, it's conversed when a little boy whose favorite book so far has been The World Of Poo "was beginning, with encouragement, to read books in which nobody had a bowel movement at all. Which, when you came to think about it, was a mystery all by itself."
  • In the second Legend of Jig Dragonslayer book, a magically created monster dies because the person who created it didn't think to fully implement its digestive tract - the two-headed snake could eat, but not excrete. One of Jig's colleagues admits that this is a terrible way to go.
  • Lampshaded in Donaya Haymond's Legends of Laconia series. In Waking Echoes, the prison cell Ty spends three days in has a toilet, and in Bite Me Matthew asks Dianne if her father goes to the bathroom, saying he's always wondered about those in his condition.
  • Lampshaded in the Kevin Brooks novel Lucas - while waiting for the antagonists to walk past, so she can stalk them, Cait realises that she really needs to pee, and she decides to go in some nearby tall grass...only for the antagonists to find her when she's still got her pants down. She muses in her narration that you never see anyone got to the toilet in films, and if you do, it's only because something dramatic is going to happen when they're in the toilet - being attacked by an enemy, for example.
  • MAD once featured an article, "Just Once We'd Like to See..." Included, "A diaper commercial that indicates babies do something besides wet."
  • Lampshaded in The Neverending Story. Bastian has to deliver a fax, and wonders why the characters in the books never seem to have that need. He guesses there's no reason to interrupt the story in order to include irrelevant details. When he eventually enters into the world of a book, bodily functions are not mentioned again.
  • The Night Mayor is set inside a virtual realm that runs on movie logic. At one point, Tunney observes that since he entered the realm he hasn't felt a need to go to the men's room — which is just as well, because he also hasn't seen any sign that there are men's rooms.
  • Taken to its logical extreme with Nobody Poops But You by W.U. Ming, a parody of Everyone Poops that is Exactly What It Says on the Tin; a world where nobody except the reader has to poop.
  • Actress Tamzin Merchant wrote a hilarious poem discussing this, called "Ode to a Toilet".
  • In Ramona the Pest, after the teacher reads the class "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel", Ramona asks why there is no mention of Mike going to the bathroom. This kicks off a brief debate among the other children, before the teacher simply states that it wasn't an important part of the story.
  • Lampshaded in Second Foundation, where a girl sneaks aboard a ship and hides there, like she read and saw a lot in popular culture. Then she realizes that the books failed to mention some things, and she cannot remain in her hiding place for long....
  • Simon Bloom: The Gravity Keeper in which the main characters find out their adventures are being recorded down by a Narrator using a machine that writes down everything that happens. One of them asks whether the machine records when they poop, to which the Narrator replies, "Of course not! That wouldn't be interesting."
  • One of the later 1632 books — 1635: The Eastern Front — includes a scene where a radio transmission was delayed because one of General Stearns's staff colonels was "taking care of urgent business."
    Long: If it's urgent business, he may be occupied for a while yet.
    Stearns: He should be finishing up any second now. It's the sort of pressing business that never makes its way into fiction.
  • The Stephen King short story "Umney's Last Case" features a distraught author trying to muscle out his most famous creation so that he can enter the world of fiction and live without pain. He succeeds, and while the character is getting used to the real world, he wets himself because he's never actually had to use the bathroom before.
  • In Secret Window, Secret Garden, also by Stephen King, an even more embarrassing variant occurs: The author has to rush out of the bathroom to take a phone call and thinks to himself that, forget pooping, fictional characters are never depicted wiping either....
  • In Sword Art Online, the light novels explicitly state that the residents of The Underworld don't have bowel movements.
  • Lampshaded in The Well Of Lost Plots, in which Thursday remarks that living in fiction has its ups and downs: people rarely eat breakfast but, apart from in Chaucer, there's not much farting either.
  • In Words of Radiance (second book of The Stormlight Archive), Shallan derails Adolin's account of bravely leaping into battle while hugely outnumbered by asking how he goes to the bathroom while wearing Shardplate. After continuing for a line or two, he realizes she hasn't followed the normal script and comments that he's told that story a number of times and no one had ever asked anything like that before. He acknowledges that it basically always requires someone to help before or after the battle, but yes, on three occasions he's done it straight in his armor. He doesn't try to regale her with tales of daring-do again.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Discussed and Defied on Burnistoun. In a sketch, a Soap Opera director discusses criticism for not including characters using the toilet. Cut to a series of clips from the soap opera with characters pooping at dramatic moments, including a climax where several guys fight each other for use of a toilet while crying hysterically.
  • Of all the rooms in Finders Keepers, one of them was a bathroom without a toilet. Referenced by Harvey in his spiel: "The world famous Finders Keepers bathroom - toilet not included!"
  • Arrowverse: On The Flash (2014), fans spent a long time wondering how Barry's prison in the particle accelerator handled prisoner biological needs. The cells are small, and the prisoners are too dangerous to be escorted to the bathroom on a regular basis. In the Elseworlds (2018) crossover, Oliver brings it up, and Barry reveals that the toilets are just hidden in the wall of the cell most of the time.
    Oliver: I spent the past seven months in a maximum security prison, and no matter how bad things got—and they got bad—EVERY CELL HAD A TOILET!
  • Played with in the episode "USS Callister" of Black Mirror. In the Star Trek homage, programmer Robert Daly digitally clones his co-workers for his own private mod of the game he works on. He modifies their code which removes their genitals, preventing them from sexual pleasure, and... answering the call.
    Shania Lowry: Can't even shit. Can't even have the basic fucking pleasure of pushing out a shit.
    Elena Tulaska: [sigh] I miss taking shit.
  • Up until the airing of the Dinosaur Train episode "Dinosaur Poop" in 2009, this trope was commonplace for shows airing on PBS Kids aimed at preschoolers. note  There were three major exceptions, though. note  The first was Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which had part of episode 1723 discuss potty-training. The second was The Noddy Shop, where the episode "Skunked" has a scene where Whiny and Whimper mistake a smell for one of them "having an accident", and the third was Caillou, which had at least four episodes where the titular character suffers from potty emergencies.
    • While Odd Squad had a few moments of Toilet Humor with the Mathroom being used as a pun for the bathroom ("I have to go to the Mathroom"), this was dropped midway through Season 1 when the Mathroom stopped appearing. After its final episode, "Not So Splash", Toilet Humor became nonexistent, aside from one scene in "Hold the Door" where Olive, Otto and Oscar devise a lie to Oprah about Ori having lunch in the one bathroom of Precinct 13579.
  • In the Doctor Who episode "Smile", Bill asks about the communication units:
    Bill: Hold on, is there a mute button though, like what if you're in the loo?
    The Doctor: Who needs loos? There's probably an app for that.
  • Bridget Hennessey tries to invoke this trope around herself in 8 Simple Rules. She apparently sustains an illusion of never having to use the bathroom.
  • In Hannah Montana, when best friend Lilly Truscott is forced by Miley to go to the toilet, so that Miley can talk to a boy she likes. This is lampshaded when she gets back, after much drama has unfolded with Miley, when Lilly mentions how all the good stuff happens when people go to the toilet.
  • The pilot episode of Leave It to Beaver ran into some trouble regarding this. The plan was for the characters to hide a baby alligator in their toilet tank, but since it was considered indecent to show a toilet on TV at the time, the network forbade it. A compromise was eventually reached wherein only the tank of the toilet, not the bowl, was shown.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: According to Durin, the Elves do, and it takes them forever.
  • One episode of The Orville has the titular crew confined to the space bridge for several hours. Gordon and others resort to using a designated "pee corner."
  • The theme song for Shameless takes place in the bathroom, looking at the toilet the whole time, including characters using it.
  • One sketch in That Mitchell and Webb Look features an interview with a film director who wants to be realistic and complains that film industry "failed to reflect reality as people live it". In his World War II drama The Gathering People, an important cabinet meeting is interrupted when one of the members has to go to the bathroom.
    Director: What makes me incredibly proud of that moment is that when it was first shown in the cinema, quite a lot of the audience actually went to the loo at the same point. Well, I assume they went to the loo...they left, anyway.
  • Averted in the NCIS episode "Philly", where Torres sees photos of a location where an MI6 agent was supposedly held captive for days, and notes that there's no bathroom, or even a bucket to use as a toilet. This observation pokes holes in the agent's story and ultimately exposes him as a Dirty Cop.
  • Averted in the Star Trek: Picard third season opener "The Next Generation" as Riker notes to Picard that the quarters Captain Shaw put them in remind him of some of his accommodations as a cadet, but that he has to pee a lot more now than he did back then.
  • The hapless newlywed Bob Ferris is seen on the toilet in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?. He drops his trousers and settles down to relax... only to find his clingy wife Thelma can't bear being separated from him even for five minutes, much to his shock and consternation. She tries to carry on a lovey-dovey conversation through the closed bathroom door, leading Bob to wail back that "I'm on the toilet, Thelma!"

    Music 
  • Comical songwriter Bryant Oden, creator of Songdrops, wrote a song about this titled "No One Ever Needs to Pee in Movies" that talks about how movie characters never need to pee "and don't even get me started on number two". He also mentions that other bathroom-related things aren't present in movies such as toilets flushing and bladder pain, along with things that aren't bathroom-related but still don't happen in movies, such as hairbrushes and tuning old guitars.

    Radio 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Especially in earlier days and editions, when the game's focus was more on world simulation and the detailed logistics of adventuring (counting arrows and torches, keeping track of food and water, deciding who should carry what loot...) were emphasized more, advice on dungeon design would almost inevitably manage to squeeze in a bit about not forgetting that any place inhabited by intelligent living creatures had better include toilets of some sort.
    • Present to this day in all editions is the fact that several creatures are explicitly described as having incredibly efficient metabolisms that simply digest everything they consume with no waste. The tarrasque and the various species of dragon are the most famous for this.
  • "The (More or Less) Complete Guide to Hygiene For Fantasy Role Playing Games", among other things, contains lengthy speculation on how would waste be dealt with in a fantasy world.
  • In Nomine: Invoked. The Archangel Khalid can grant an attunement to his human followers which, as long as they maintain a very strict fast, will put all their biological functions on hold. Among other things, this means that they will not need to either urinate or defecate for as long as they can keep up the fast.
  • Promethean: The Created: Prometheans are corpses given life by the Divine Fire. This is not a metaphor - though it isn't a physical fire, it has the traits of one, including needing fuel and consuming that fuel entirely. As such, Prometheans need to eat (they don't need to drink, though it causes them no ill effects if they do), but they do not need to excrete. (As a side effect, they also need to breathe - fires require oxygen to burn, after all.)

    Video Games 
  • Averted in 60 Seconds!.
    • The journal entries repeatedly mention "the bucket in the corner", including an event where Ted and Dolores argue over whose turn is to empty it.
    • If Ted goes insane, he may destroy the map, mistaking it for toilet paper.
    • In an event where the family considers if they should banish Timmy from the shelter after finding out he has "propaganda books", they state in the entry for the "no" option that they'll use the books as toilet paper.
  • The player character can poop in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to get rid of excess food energy that’s used to break rocks and move trees. Naturally, there’s no nudity involved, the character just sits on the toilet and then gets a message that says “And that takes care of that”.
  • Lampshaded in Ad Verbum, which revolves around exploring an old house. When you get to the bedroom, the narration will point out that the house does not contain a bathroom, before concluding that that's an aspect of life that a game like this is better off passing quietly over.
  • In Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun clicking on a toilet results in Poirot saying "Although I am sure the sight would amuse you Hastings, I will not indulge in that activity for the duration of this tale."
  • Bayonetta 3 has its first two stealth missions where Jeanne can regain health by going to the bathroom after acquiring the toilet paper.
    Jeanne: Ahh, Back to business.
  • Black & White's treatment of this trope is too weird not to mention. The Creature starts out needing to poop like any animal, but if you slap it enough times when it does it, it somehow learns not to poop. The biological need just magically goes away permanently without any side effects. Now if only that worked on humans...
  • Crawler's Delight states in the introduction that not very many of the adventure games the main character played mentioned the urgent need for a bathroom break after several hours of captivity, then awards you your very first point for taking a piss under similar circumstances.
  • Dark Forces developer commentary revealed that they had to build levels on their own initiative and were not given any good blueprints of in-universe ships or architecture. The complete absence of bathrooms led one dev to comment something to the effect of "does poop just not exist in Star Wars?" Other devs found this funny and quickly followed up with the deliberate inclusion of a bathroom in one map, just so the Imperial Mooks would have some place to pee (and so Kyle Katarn could add "blew up the only Imperial bathroom" to his list of crimes against the Empire).
  • Doom: The first two games were noted even in their heyday as having rather abstract and stylised level design with very few visual cues as to what a particular area was used for, and one thing that became a bit of a running gag in parts of the fandom was the Riddle for the Ages of just where the hell all the toilets were.
  • Humorously played with in Dragon Quest Builders 2. This trope is in effect in the beginning, and always for the Builder, but on the first island one of the villagers asks the Builder for a particular kind of room. He awkwardly dances around just why he needs it, but it's obvious he wants a toilet. Once it's built, the villagers will all rush there after eating, and you can periodically harvest "night soil" which is a component of things like worm food and fertilizer.
  • EarthBound (1994) lampshades the aversion to the trope. They have bathrooms in the game, but they all are occupied or otherwise unusable. In the first bathroom you come to, walking towards the door will result in a cutscene where one guy rushes in ahead of you. Attempting to enter will make him say: "Occupied!"
  • In Fairy Fencer F, discussion of use the restroom is actually fairly frequent. But the real humor here is there being something of a Running Gag in the game that Sherman actually doesn't poop, though this is only explained in the Vile God timeline in Advent Dark Force in which we learn that his robotic fairy partner, Ryushin, is somehow absorbing his bodily functions.
  • Final Fantasy VII has several deleted scenes in the Mt. Corel region that in which Yuffie complains she's busting for the toilet the entire time, if you take her in the party ("I could go over there, but...").
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel of all games has an example— on rare occasions during the game's intermissions, one of the kids on the Taranis will have their desire in the notebook written as being "…", and their model will be shown perspiring in-game. It's at this time where a duck-themed potty will appear on the roof on the Taranis, and when the child in question selects it, a small cutscene will be shown of their expression changing, followed by art of a field of flowers. Per interviews with Famitsu, CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama insisted that this mechanic (the "Secret Garden") be implemented as the intermissions already had mechanics that involved the kids eating, farming and doing laundry, despite how the game was already significantly late in development and over-budget by that point. Reportedly, creative director Yoann Gueritot's response to this was to tweet, "My boss is crazy".
  • Haunting Ground has a bathroom with open stalls. If the player pushes the interaction button facing it Fiona comments that she better "hold it" for now. It isn't mentioned again.
  • Lampshaded and zig-zagged in the inFAMOUS games: Cole MacGrath, being a Conduit with electrical-based superpowers, cannot submerge himself in water without electrocuting himself, which one would think might complicate things when he has to drink, bathe or pee (none of which he ever does). Though this only applies to large amounts of water, as he can drink and sponge bathe without getting harmed and as for the bathroom issue, Eugene in In Famous Second Son outright says – albeit offhandedly – that Conduits do not have to use the bathroom, though he likely meant that they do it less frequently than regular humans, as Hank Daughtry said that the Conduit prisoners in Curden Kay prison were bound so that they couldn't use their powers, "which also meant they had to feed us, wash us and even wipe our goddamn asses".
  • Island Saver: Loudly and proudly averted by each and every bankimal. In fact you need their poop to make fertiliser, so it's a good thing they poop!
  • In Jimmy Neutron vs. Jimmy Negatron, you can at one point make Jimmy go into a bathroom, which triggers a cutscene of him walking out and thanking the player for thinking of it, because he hadn't gone all day.
  • A special Bad Moon adventure in Kingdom of Loathing parodies this: you're looking at a toilet in the Haunted Bathroom when you suddenly realize that you've never emptied your bladder, ever. You don't get a chance to "go" right there, though, as you're interrupted by a voyeuristic ghost girl who died on that very toilet. This gives you a Potty Dance effect that boosts item drops.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • In Majora's Mask and Oracle of Ages, there is a character identified only as "???" whose hand emerges from within a toilet requesting some paper. In the latter game, it will exchange a "Stink Bag" for some.
    • In Breath of the Wild, the Horned Statue notes that one of the common problems he has to deal with while trapped in stone form is being unable to clean off the frequent bird droppings.
  • In No More Heroes, Travis uses the toilet to save. One assassin at the end of the game is even clever enough to attack him as he's saving, so to speak.
  • In Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards you can use Lefty's toilet, but flushing is deadly.
  • In Police Quest 1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel you can walk into the offscreen bathroom in the coffee shop and the hotel room and use it. The police station has a toilet, but it is always occupied by someone "giving birth to a sergeant".
  • Lampshaded in promotional material for the Resident Evil 2 remake – one of the very first things shown in trailers was a shot of a public restroom in the R.P.D. precinct, with Word of God saying it was done specifically to address jokes from the fandom about the original game's infamous lack of shitters.
  • RuneScape eventually made a minor Running Gag of the lack of bodily waste— Ali the Bartender mentions that there are no toilets in Runescape, Ava the scientist mentions that adventurers lack many bodily functions, one April Fool's update proposed outhouses for when the player's had enough tea, and even in the spooky haunted mansion of "Broken Home", you find bathrooms with elaborate tubs and sinks... and a conspicuous empty space anywhere a toilet would go.
  • System Shock: This became something of a Running Gag for the fandom after the game was released in 1994, as Citadel Station was equipped with offices, executive suites, and even indoor gardens, but no bathrooms. As such "There are no toilets on Citadel Station" became a common refrain. The sequel averts this, and the spiritual successor, Bioshock, turns it into a sort-of scavenging mechanic where the player has to pay to open coin-operated bathroom stalls and hope whatever they find is worth it.
  • The Sims do use toilets (literally, as the only word given is "Use"). One of their motives is Bladder; unlike Energy or Hunger they can't die of it being too low, but will soil themselves, making their Comfort and Hygiene needs empty. However, The Sims Medieval doesn't retain this, meaning that many players will enact this trope by not making Sims use chamberpots unless a quest tells them to. Interestingly, male Sims will sit down on the toilet if their Bladder is below half, otherwise they'll use it while standing up; likewise, urinals can only be used if the motive is above half.
  • Lampshaded in Space Quest V: The Next Mutation: as you're approaching the final area of the game ( the mutagen-contaminated SCS Goliath), you can look at as per usual. Rather than giving a description of it, however, the narration points out that you're actually pretty scared, and also realizing that you haven't got to the bathroom for the entire game, which is rapidly becoming a problem, as you're not in a position where you can do that. It's only a throwaway gag, though.
  • In Spandex Force 3: Champion Rising the Blizzard Wizard addresses the player character after they earn their first stat point as a superhero.
    Blizzard Wizard: How do you feel?
    Player character: I feel like I need to go to the bathroom.
    Blizzard Wizard: Do not be silly! No one goes to the toilet in a comic book.
  • START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: a prologue: After coming across a bathroom, the heroes wonder whether or not The King ever has to use it. They then discuss taking a bathroom break themselves, teasing The Fighter for not wanting to admit that he needs to go.
  • In Star Trek: Elite Force you can explore the quarters of the U.S.S. Voyager crew, and (in keeping with the T.V. series) the bathroom has a sonic shower but noticeably lacks any sort of toilet, unless it folds out of one of the counter drawers (which, given Star Trek's technology level, isn't out of the question).
  • Street Fighter has Ibuki asking Dudley if he ever takes off his gloves, even if he is eating or uses the bathroom.
  • The Trail Of Anguish informs you, "You don't need to use the bathroom right now. It's an adventure game, after all."
  • Undertale explains this by stating that monster food, being made of magic, is digested completely, leaving nothing to... come out the other end. A monster in Grillby's talks about human food being "gross" for passing all the way through the body, and expresses interest in trying some. This doesn't stop Papyrus and Alphys from getting out of awkward situations by claiming they need to use the bathroom. This becomes a Chekhov's Gag regarding Alphys' seemingly-rendundant bathroom in light of this fact, since it's actually an elevator to the True Lab.
  • In Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders both Zak and Annie's apartments lack toilets. The plane has one and Zak can use it (the camera will tactfully move to the right). The presence of the toilet is justified since Zak is supposed to clog it to distract the flight attendant.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • This video from Burakku Channel has Akane state that she (and Oni in general) don’t go to the toilet. Averted for Burakku himself as he states that he has to go the toilet (and does so with Akane waiting outside) a bit earlier.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • In Alice and Bob, this trope is lampshaded:
    "Surprisingly, nobody really seems to have to take a dump in fiction. Like, I used to play Elf Forest, which was overly realistic. You could pretty much do anything but relieve bodily wastes. The only game I recall in which you can do that is Simmy Buddies which I think had that toilet meter.
  • On this article for cliches used in online roleplays of The Loud House, one of them is that the Loud family doesn't use the bathroom (or eat or sleep). While it may be understandable that the roleplayers might find those boring, it's kind of odd for a show that has two bathroom-related lines in its theme song and several plot points and episodes focusing on all three.Such as?
  • On this Mental Floss article, it talks about how this trope is played straight in Clifford the Big Red Dog and they wonder where Clifford poops (since a dog his size would produce big poops). They decide that he must've been trained to poop in a dumpster.
  • Lampshaded and averted in The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles. Tebow reads a Bible story to his teammates, and they're surprised when taking a dump turns out to be a major plot point.
    Tebow: A little later, the king's servants try to come back in and find that the door's locked. They're like, "He's probably in the bathroom."
    Mitchell: So people took shits in the Bible?
    Tebow: Sure. Everybody poops.
    Someone told me that a while back, and rarely do you hear so much helpful perspective stuffed into two words. No matter how legendary or important, "everybody poops."

    Web Videos 
  • This tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory says that the viewer is the only human who poops, and that generally people don't need to pee either but babies and people with Alzheimer's sometimes do— but that's what diapers are for. It also claims that not pooping and rarely peeing is what makes humans superior, that pooping would've driven humans extinct if everyone did it, that toilets are for getting rid of spiders, that poop jokes are absurdist humour, and that on the off chance you've seen human poop it's just done with mirrors.
  • This is joked in the Smosh video "Twilight: New Moon Deleted Scenes 1", where Bella asks Edward if he poops on account of the fact that he only ever consumes blood. A disgruntled Edward responds that no he doesn't, which confuses Bella.
    Bella: That doesn't make sense because it says right here in this book that everyone poops. [Bella holds up the book "Everyone Poops" by Tarō Gomi]

    Western Animation 
  • Lampshaded in The Cleveland Show by two viewers outside of the 4th wall.
  • In the 2015 revival of Danger Mouse, Professor Squawkencluck is seen entering the women's privy just seconds before being assaulted... by octopus tentacles.
  • Family Guy:
    • Similarly lampshaded when Peter is looking for a potty-training book, getting recommended the classic "Everybody Poops" and the less-popular "Nobody Poops But You". After Peter mentions his family is Catholic, he's suggested "You're A Naughty Child And That's Concentrated Evil Coming Out Of You".
    • In the episode "Brian Goes Back to College", a throwaway joke reveals that no one at the New Yorker has an anus after Brian sees inside their bathroom (which has chairs and fireplaces instead of toilets).
  • Nobody poops in the world of Dr. Seuss. They "go to the euphemism". (Halloween Is Grinch Night)
  • The animated series of The Magic School Bus plays it straight, even when the subject of the episode is the digestive system. The producer end-segment, though, provides a very good reason why:
    "It's natural, it's normal, but do you really, really think they'll let us show that on daytime TV?"
  • The title characters of Ren & Stimpy are occasionally seen sitting on the toilet, and from time to time the mother of the boy whose house they were staying at would inform them that "Cartoon characters don't do that!"
  • Parodied and lampshaded in one episode of 6teen where Jonesy hears Nikki in the bathroom and then falls face first into the aftermath. It's explained to him that now he's aware that women are "just as gross" as men and will never be attracted to them the same way again. He gets over it by the end of the episode, though.
  • Steven Universe:
    • This one is so ingrained in culture that when the crew had to submit an episode description to the TV guides for a pivotal episode without revealing any major plot events, they settled on "We finally see inside Steven's bathroom." And so we do, when someone is trapped in said bathroom. Said character later states, regarding said time trapped in the bathroom, "I've seen what goes on in there, and I want no part in it".
    • It's a minor running joke that circumstances keep forcing Steven to pee outside, due to plot events rendering the toilet unusable. It's also implied at one point that he has resorted to using a sink for same, when he's caught washing himself in said sink and says that's the least embarrassing thing he currently has to do in it.
    • It's heavily implied that the Gems would still need to use the bathroom if they were to eat or drink anything. Pearl is disgusted by the concept and tries to avoid it, whereas Amethyst is amused by the sensation of "goop" passing through her.
    • A cut scene involves Peridot trying out eating for the first time. When she asks what happens next, Amethyst whispers something to her, and she looks suitably horrified.
  • Lampshaded in Teen Titans (2003): When all the Titans save Cyborg are trapped in Atlas's "Trophy Cases," Raven asks if they get bathroom breaks. given how sociopathic Atlas is and how he made it clear there was no way out of the cases and he said he'd keep them as trophies, they'd likely have died of dehydration in those cases of Cyborg hadn't saved them.
  • Lampshaded for laughs in an episode of ReBoot: when Bob and Mike the TV are waiting around for something in “The Tiff”, there is montage of them bored and shifting position slightly in each shot. One shot shows only Mike, with Bob nowhere to be seen; after a moment, the sound of a toilet flushing offscreen is heard.
  • An episode of Wander over Yonder has the titular character inform Hater that Sylvia isn't present because she has to use the restroom and adds that Zbornaks only do so once every five months so it takes a long time. She appears when the episode finally ends.

    Real Life 
  • Some newborn mammals such as small rodents cannot pee or poop unless stimulated by their mothers' bathing them. This may help ensure that their nest doesn't get smelly enough to attract predators in the mother's absence.
  • There exists a rare developmental complication where a baby is born without the required openings to remove waste. If this isn't solved via operation, the baby will not survive long; due to the accumulated waste inside of them either rupturing their internal organs, poisoning them, or both. For example, Shiloh was born with “mermaid syndrome” and lived to be only ten.
  • The larval states of some insects, like antlions, ants, bees and wasps, don't produce any waste until they pupate. These larvae live in the same spot until they pupate (e.g. antlion larvae live in pitfall traps), so this trope is necessary to avoid dirtying the place where they live. Some of these insects can remain in their larval state for several years.
  • Jellyfish, anemones, and others of their phylum have a digestive system with only one orifice - a mouth - so they don't poop. Whatever they can't digest from their food, they vomit out instead.
  • Lethal white syndrome is a condition in horses that causes them to be born with an underdeveloped digestive system. These horses are normally put down because they can't defecate and otherwise will die very painfully within a few days. The gene that causes this incidentally also causes these horses to be completely white, hence the name.
  • While everyone poops, the topic doesn't usually come up in casual conversation – one might know more about a friend's sex life than their poop life - and certainly doesn't come up in any formal or business settings. The taboo surrounding bodily waste functions in general is a very enforced trope in real life - unless it's of immediate relevance, people seem to be under a non-verbal agreement to never bring up defecation or urination. In more extreme cases, theocratic leaders have even denied having to poo at all.
  • It was the case that British Army field rations were deliberately devised on the three-day principle. This is to say, when a unit goes into the front line, the foodstuffs are selected and packed to very deliberately bring about mild constipation. Ideally, a minimum number of men should be out of the line and unavailable for fighting at any time. The rations issued ensured that a man would only need to excrete, at a minimum, once every third day. One soldier boasted he once went twenty-one days without having to take a shit, but he may have been exaggerating.

 
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The Songdrops song "No One Ever Needs to Pee in Movies", about this trope.

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