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The Snack Is More Interesting
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I'm sorry, you were saying?
A character enters what should be a serious situation for them, and yet seems completely bored with the events. Instead of giving the occasion his full attention, they seem more invested in the snack they rather conveniently happen to be eating.
Compare Autopsy Snack Time, Fruit of The Loon, Obsessed With Food, Inappropriate Hunger, Long Speech Tea Time (where an audience is bored) and Pass the Popcorn (where they're entertained by someone else's troubles). Often overlaps with Enemy Eats Your Lunch.
Videogames featuring Hyperactive Metabolism can offer the odd sight of player characters taking time out from fighting to the death to munch on a sandvich.
Contrast They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich, where a mealtime conversation is so interesting the food goes completely untouched.
Examples:
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Anime And Manga
Comic Books
Film
- In Star Trek, Kirk faces the Kobayashi Maru, but instead of reacting to the conditions of the test, he blows off everything as he gives the test a taste of its own medicine, munching on an apple the entire time.
- In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral Kirk has been marooned beneath the surface of Regula I by Khan, left helpless and unable to stop Khan from destroying the crippled Enterprise and taking off with the Genesis Device. For his part, Kirk seems unconcerned, munching on an apple while discussing the Kobiyashi Maru test he took in the Academy. Of course, Kirk has a plan he hasn't told the others about.
- In The Santa Clause, Scott spends a board meeting taking his time scooping a sundae dish clean.
- In Django (the movie, not the software), eating food is given as a textbook example of
douchecockery villainy. Watch and learn.
- This occurs in Pulp Fiction while Jules and Vincent are putting on a hit. Man, Big Kahuna Burgers are tasty. Jules actually has the gall to start up a conversation over burgers, and eat the burger of the guy they all know he's going to kill.
- In The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Denethor is more interested in eating his chicken and tomatoes than he is in Faramir's safety.
- In the remake of Ocean's Eleven Brad Pitt decided to play his character this way; he's snacking on street food in just about every scene except the heist itself.
- In Galaxy Quest, Fred is often seen with snack food, even in serious situations. (He was originally intended to be a stoner, but those references were taken out to make the movie PG, leaving a habit for snacking that's still pretty funny.) They may never mention any pot use, but damn near everything about Fred's personality implies that he's a stoner.
- Denied by Volstagg in Thor. Do not mistake his appetite for apathy!
- His buddy Thor eats the same way while on Earth. Understandable since he's never tried Midgardian food before, and enjoys it Asgard style.
- In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan: The Movie, Basco enters battle with the Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, and, once he was losing, turns to his monkey pet Sally for help. Sally was so preoccupied with eating fruit Yellow Buster gave to him that Basco had to give up.
- In 300, Leonidas is nonchalantly munching on an apple, musing about Persians while the other Spartans are laboring amidst mounds of dead bodies. He's also talking with his mouth full.
- In Good Will Hunting, Morgan just wants to enjoy his double burger instead of fighting the guy they saw at the baseball game. Chuckie sets him straight by telling him if he doesn't go out there, after they're done kicking the guy's ass, Chuckie's gonna kick his ass.
- In A Few Good Men, the scene where Kaffee and Galloway meet. Kaffee spends 30 seconds hearing the barest details of the case and promptly decides what plea bargain he can get, all while confidently munching his apple.
- In the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban film, while Harry interacts with Buckbeak the hippogriff, Draco Malfoy casually munches on apple to show his contempt with the proceedings.
- One scene in Little Nicky features a bunch of passerby chasing Nicky down the street because they think he's a monster. One guy starts to join in the chase, then decides his candy bar is more important and continues with that instead.
- One of the best examples can be found In the film adaptation of K-PAX - mental patient/possible extraterrestrial prōt (Kevin Spacey) interrupts his psychiatrist Dr. Powell (Jeff Bridges) during their first session to ask for one of the apples in a basket on the shelf, which he proceeds to noisily devour. Dr. Powell waits patiently at the beginning of their next session as prōt eats an entire banana without peeling it, continues to be distracted by a bowl of fruit in the office, and later keeps turning a serious conversation to the bag of fresh strawberries he's eating. In his words, "Your produce alone has been worth this trip.", as in, the 1,000+ lightyear voyage to Earth.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Doctor Who: The Third Doctor, in the middle of a sword fight with The Master, calmly pins his opponent to the wall by holding his sword point to his throat, then calmly eats a sandwich as he remarks about how violent exercise makes him rather famished. During all this he's basically treating the Master like he's little more than an amusing distraction at best.
- iCarly:
- Sam gets a call from her friends telling her they're trapped in a teacher's house. She says something along the lines of "that sucks," picks up an apple and takes a bite.
- Played Straight and Averted in the same scene with Sam in iSaved Your Life. Freddie's been hit by a truck, Sam runs in to to tell Spencer, and he realizes she's not joking (because they are currently engaged in a paintball assassin game) when she throws away the pizza he was about to eat. Once she's done telling him, she starts eating a taco she bought at the scene of the accident.
- Psych: Shawn Spencer does this from time to time.
- One example involves Shawn bluffing his way on to a murder scene...in search of spices to add to the Mee Krob he conveniently has instead of looking for clues.
- MacGyver: "Target MacGyver" has a scene where Mac builds a trap out of stuff he finds in the bad guys' kitchen; the first thing he finds is a bag of carrots, from which he carefully selects a single carrot that he then proceeds to not use in the trap in any way — but when the trap is ready, he picks up the carrot again and takes a bite of it Bugs Bunny style.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Xander, Willow and Anya annoy Riley by munching on a bag of chips, while he's trying to be stealthy when they're out patrolling with him after Buffy is laid up after being wounded by a vampire.
- The IT Crowd has Denholm, finished reading his Video Will, eating an apple with the camera still running ... for a long time.
- In Game Of Thrones, the Torture Technician called "The Tickler" spends all his torture sessions casually eating a pear while he questions his victims. The fruit, combined with the fact that he doesn't actually pay any attention to the answers he's getting, asking the same questions as an unbreakable routine, makes it clear that he doesn't really expect to get any answers out of the captives. Appropriately, when Jaqen H'ghar kills The Tickler by pushing him down from a window, he's seen munching on a pear in plain sight while everyone gathers to inspect the corpse.
- Patrick Jane from The Mentalist will often make himself a pot of tea or a sandwich using food taken without asking from the kitchen of the person who's murder he's solving (as well of the kitchen of almost every other house he visits over the course of the investigation). Sure, he's paying attention when he eats it, but he has to leave the room (again, without asking) for a few minutes to prepare it.
Theater
- For some time, it was traditional for productions of As You Like It to have Audrey eating a turnip the whole time Touchstone is attempting to "woo" her.
Video Games
- In a bonus video for Crash Twinsanity, Crash reacts this way to an accident that he caused by picking up the fruit in the first place.
- Big Smoke from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has this reaction when your car is attacked by a car full of rival gang members.
- Ema Skye in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Even in the middle of a crime scene she sometimes does nothing but munch her beloved chocolate snackoos.
- In Minecraft, if combat goes on long enough, it behooves Steve? to eat something to boost his Healing Factor, whether it be a slice of melon, some bread, or an entire cooked chicken.
- Inverted at the start of Metal Gear Solid 4, when it looks like Drebin's about to bite into an apple, but changes his mind and tosses it over his shoulder to his monkey instead.
Western Animation
- Bugs Bunny is frequently performing this with his trademark carrot, as a possible holdover from his days as a Screwy Squirrel. When asking "Eh... What's up, Doc?", he's often feigning caring, and is even asking and talking while chewing.
- Invader Zim often features Gir doing this.
- The Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Frankie My Dear" has Prince Charming trying to woo Frankie and all the while she's just staring at him unfazed while casually eating a slice of pizza.
- In the Freakazoid! episode "Hero Boy", as the villain is bragging about his latest plan, Freak' is more interested in the sandwich a minion made him, derailing the monologue to ask more about it.
- In the South Park episode "Volcano," geologist Randy Marsh discovers unusual seismic activity in the region. He exclaims "Oh my God! A volcano!" Then he takes a slurp of his coffee.
- Franklin has a non-food variant. In "Franklin Plays the Game," when Franklin's team plays against Bear's team in soccer, Skunk, Bear's goalie, sits and reads a book because the book is more interesting. Franklin's team never even gets close enough to goal to make an attempt at scoring.
- In an episode of Garfieldand Friends, Garfield has just caused the mail man to be fired because one his pranks. Jon chews him out about it, but Garfield is relaxing and eating a sandwich.
Jon: Because of you, he got fired but I don't suppose that bothers you any!
Garfield: How nice, a ham sandwich with a side of guilt.
Jon: Aren't you the least bit sorry for what you've done?
Garfield: Yes! I should have gotten pastrami.
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