It's childish. It's wasteful. Yet it happens anyway. Every so often, someone will wrap a tree or other structure in toilet paper. This tends to happen most often around Halloween, but that's no guarantee some mischievous prankster won't pull it some other time of year. It may also be done as some form of revenge against someone. It's done in part because it's easy to drape items in toilet paper (traditionally done by throwing the roll up and over), but the toilet paper is difficult to remove, particularly if it gets wet, as the individual sheets shred and separate.
This trope is most often done by children, although it could be pulled by a Manchild as well. In any case, it's associated with immaturity.
This is a Practical Joke trope. Compare There Will Be Toilet Paper and Toilet Paper Trail. Often seen as a form of Halloween Trickery, along with Egging.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- A TV commercial shows a woman inspecting some TP'd trees. She is absolutely elated by how soft the paper is. Two boys, apparently the perpetrators, are hiding behind some other trees; the woman asks one of them what brand of TP his mother buys, and he answers, "Quilted Northern Ultra Plush". The last scene has her excitedly taking armfuls of the paper home.
Comic Books
- In Volume 6 of the Adventure Time Graphic Novels, Lumpy Space Princess's party gets pelted with toilet rolls.
Fan Works
- In Family Guy Fanon Season 16's "Halal-oween
", the B-plot has Lou get his apartment complex, Spinazola Apartments, T Ped on Halloween and Brian helps him get revenge on the kids who do it to him.
- In the The Problem Solverz crossover A New Problem, Alfe used to throw toilet paper on Thaz's trees.
- In the Back to the Future fanfic True Hero, Needles does this to Doc's house every year. He presumably gets away with it because of Doc's bad reputation.
Film — Animated
- In Monster House, a young girl surveys Zee about leaving candy and decorating the house, mainly out of worry of this trope.
- In Scary Godmother: The Revenge of Jimmy, Jimmy attempts to sabotage the Halloween party by covering the abandoned house in toilet paper. Which fails when Hannah decides the paper could be use as a decoration.
Film — Live Action
- The Baby-Sitters Club film has their rival Cokie Mason use toilet paper (among other methods like graffiti and shaving cream) to vandalize the green house the Baby Sitters Club had been renovating. They end up utilizing the toilet paper to clean up the paint and shaving cream.
- In Bumblebee, Charlie and Memo try to TP Tina's house as revenge for mocking the former's dead father. When they try teaching it to Bumblebee, he throws the paper too far.
- Near the beginning of Donnie Darko, Donnie's mother asks him if he toilet-papered a neighbour's house the night before, and he angrily exclaims that he'd stopped doing that in the sixth grade.
- In Off the Black, a young boy gets caught doing this, among other acts of vandalism, kicking off the plot.
- Satan's Cheerleaders: After being forced off the beach by the cheerleaders and jocks from Benedict High, the kids from Baker High go to Benedict and toilet paper the school. Which does not please the Crusty Caretaker Billy, who has to clean it up.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): During the Bullet Time sequence in the Bar Brawl, Sonic takes time to wrap up two people with almost all the toilet paper present in the restroom. Sonic later comments that the next person who uses the restroom there will have almost nothing to work with.
Literature
- A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag: Howard Newman drapes the SACGEN unit with twelve rolls of pink-flowered toilet paper and sticks it on with library paste to make it harder to remove. The principal and the SACGEN engineers frantically try to remove it all before a crew shows up to write a story about SACGEN, but one sheet of toilet paper is still visible in the magazine's photo.
- In the Babymouse Halloween story, Babymouse gets peer-pressured into covering a neighbor's tree in toilet paper by the popular girls. She's the only one who gets caught.
- In Big Nate: In a Class by Himself, Nate mentions that on one Halloween, his house got TP'd by some kids because his dad handed out healthy snacks instead of candy.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- In the first book, Greg and Rowley hide from some teenagers that are after them in Greg's Grandma's house on Halloween and the next day it's revealed that the teens covered her house in toilet paper.
- In The Long Haul, Rodrick admits during the road trip that he toilet papered a neighbor's house. Susan makes him call the neighbor and apologize to her.
- A plot point in one Dork Diaries book; Nikki and her friends TP the alpha bitch's mansion on New Year's Eve, which said alpha bitch uses to put her newest evil scheme in motion.
- No One Needed to Know: After Heidi becomes a Bully Magnet, her former friends cover her house in wet toilet paper and leave a note on her door that says "YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE." She and her family spend most of the next day cleaning it up. The next Monday, bullies ruin her school project, a model of a Native American longhouse, by covering it in shreds of white paper. Stacy laughs that it looks just like her real house.
Live-Action TV
- One Adam-12 episode has the officers called to one that leads later to a bigger fight...and a stabbing.
- In one episode of Cougar Town, Jules yells at some skateboarders, and the next day she finds her car TP'ed to look like a shark. To get even, she goes to what she thinks is the skater's house and TP's it. The house was actually one of the homes Jules was selling. It was all a ruse to get a romantic proposal from Grayson.
- In the Even Stevens episode "Uncle Chuck". Louis's titular uncle takes him and Twitty out to toiler paper Larry Beale's house. Chuck escapes on a "business call" and leaves the boys stranded when Larry and his father, playing chess, catch on as to what's going on, until Steve comes to their rescue. The boys go back to confess and clean up the mess at the end of the episode.
- In the Good Luck Charlie episode, "Scary Had a Little Lamb", Gabe makes Mrs. Dabney pay him $50.00 to protect her house from pranksters. However, when Gabe turns his back to change costumes to get twice as much candy, Mrs. Dabney's house is covered in toilet paper, and Mrs. Dabney makes Gabe work for her. In the end, it is revealed that Mrs. Dabney T.P.'d her own house as part of her plan to prank Gabe.
- In one episode of Hannah Montana, Miley's father mentions that the house is going to be papered because all the candy was eaten and he has no "treats" to stop the "tricks."
- Hawaii Five-0 has a Halloween episode B-plot in which Danny Williams finds his house TP’d and wanting to find the perpetrator. Near the end he looks under his bathroom sink cabinet to find their toilet paper gone, leading to the revelation that his daughter Grace was one who TP’d their house due to peer pressure from her friends; though she states that she chose his house (her parents being divorced and she lived mostly with her mother) because doing it to a stranger’s house wouldn’t be nice.
- In one Halloween Episode of The Middle, Frankie leaves her elderly aunts to hand out candy while she and the family go out. The aunts forget to hand candy, and when Frankie returns, the whole house is covered in toilet paper.
- Monk remembers one of his college classmates toilet-papering an area on "Mischief Night."
- Parks and Recreation:
- Leslie and Andy toilet paper Greg Pikitis' home after Greg vandalizes a park statue and the Parks and Rec office.
- Andy gets even with Dennis Feinstein for buying J.J.'s Diner by toilet papering his office.
- In a Halloween episode of Step by Step, the nerdy Mark gets caught doing this by a police officer and brought home to his parents to face the music. When he comments he'd rather go to jail, the officer replies that's exactly why they bring the kids home instead.
- The boys pull this on the girls' dorm at the beginning of "Prank Week" in Zoey 101.
Music
- The Smashing Pumpkins: Just after the party in the "1979" video, the kids throw toilet paper at a tree. At one point, we see a close up of one of the flying rolls.
- They Might Be Giants: In the music video for "Mr. Mischief Night", the eponymous character is seen throwing toilet paper into people's trees, and apparently has powers of invisibility and camouflage to aid in his pranks.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic has this part of "Young, Dumb, and Ugly":
We were born to be bad. You'd better not make us mad.
Or we just might toilet paper your lawn
Newspaper Comics
- Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin remarks on his dad's enjoyment of Halloween. It turns out he likes to "sit in the bushes with the hose and drench potential TP'ers."
Theme Parks
- One scene in The Cat in the Hat ride at Universal's Islands of Adventure has Things 1 & 2 spreading toilet paper all over the bathroom walls.
- On the day Stitch's Great Escape! opened at the Magic Kingdom, Cinderella Castle was TP'd and graffitied, obviously the work of Stitch.
Video Games
- In Kingdom of Loathing, you can prank other players by toilet-papering their campsite. Do it enough and the victim can salvage some for his or her own use when it's cleaned up.
- Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: One puzzle in "Baddest of the Bands" involves getting Strong Bad to TP local landmark the Stick and blame it on Coach Z.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: Strong Bad, Strong Mad, and the Cheat frequently spend their Halloweens TP-ing various locations. In particular, in "3 Times Halloween Funjob" they hit The Stick, then try to get Marzipan's house. The latter doesn't quite work because Strong Mad doesn't get TP-ing—he just hits the house's wall with a whole roll of toilet paper, over and over.
Web Comics
- Dear Children: Devin first appears with a big pack of toilet paper, which he proceeds to use to TP the houses and foliage of all his friends.
- Llewellyn of Ozy and Millie was in the habit of TP'ing his own lawn as a way of annoying the neighborhood association.
Western Animation
- At the beginning of the Action League NOW! episode, "Flippers of Fury", the Action League find that someone (later revealed to be the Red Ninja) has done this to Action League Headquarters. To add insult to injury, they used Stinky Diver's own private stash to do it.
- In Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "The Cubing", the so-called Wisdom Cube tosses a pallet of toilet paper at Carl's house to cover his azalea bushes while actively trying to get his attention to make him spot the toilet paper.
- On As Told by Ginger, Ginger and her class are tormented by a sadistic substitute teacher, leading them to vandalize her house with TP and eggs. Ginger bails on their plan after hearing about using the latter, causing her to shield the sub from the eggs thrown at her. The sub doesn't care about what the kids think of her either way.
- The Halloween episode of Beavis And Butthead has Stewart planning to T.P. something despite the hesitation of his friends. Before he can do anything, Beavis shows up in his Cornholio persona, demanding T.P. as usual. Stewart drops it and runs away. A music video segment also has the two discussing this, and they question why it'd be considered a bad thing since you'd get a bunch of free toilet paper.
- Bob's Burgers: In "Yes Without My Zeke", Zeke threw wadded toilet paper at the ceiling of the detention room so that it spelled out a bunch of curse words. He used a roll he always keeps handy in case of pranks or emergency poops.
- Camp Lakebottom: In "Late Afternoon of the Living Gitch", Buttsquat attempts to wrap Lakebottom in toilet paper. However, he ends up wrapped in toilet paper and hanging from a tree.
- In Code Lyoko's "Claustrophobia", new student Theo is told to mummify the school's skeleton. He gets in partway before Odd, Ulrich, and Kiwi intervene.
- One episode of Detentionaire has Lee in need of a distraction to divert the attention of a mall employee, so he calls the skaters, who ride by the store and chuck toilet paper rolls inside to get the store worker to chase them.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy
- In the episode "An Ed in the Bush", after the Eds scare the pants off the Urban Rangers and unplug their electronic fireplace, Rolf reilluminates the campsite to find it's been TP'd, then sets out to get revenge on them.
- In "A Case of Ed", Ed and Eddy TP Kevin's house as the first of many pranks they play on him while he's grounded.
- In one episode of The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, George and Harold make it their goal to wrap their entire school in toilet paper; however, they end up banned from their usual toilet paper supplier due to the number of pranks they've pulled. So they decide to use the large amount of fancy toilet paper their principal bought for the attractive new French teacher instead, kicking off the episode's conflict.
- The Fairly Oddparents:
- "Go Young, West Man": When Adam West (as his superhero alter-ego Catman) wishes to be a kid again, he decides to skip school and T.P. Mr. Crocker's house. He mentions that he doesn't mind wasting paper because he uses a litter box.
- "Old Man and the C-": Mr. Turner does it twice to his own house. This is done the first time when he drops out of school again and does it with Chester, Sanjay and Elmer after his former classmate, Melvin (now grown up and working as the school janitor), makes him fall for the "too cool for school" comment again as he did years ago. At the end of the episode, when Mr. Turner finally finishes fifth grade, all the way up to his high school diploma, he does it again with Timmy.
- In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Mac and Bloo toilet paper the interior of an apartment to try and get Duchess back to Foster's. Unfortunately for this trope, the prank backfires as the family that adopted her appreciated the fact that it came pre-unrolled.
- Gravity Falls: After Grunkle Stan fails to scare two jaded kids on "Summerween", they toilet-paper the Mystery Shack and then go inside to look for candy.
- Lilo & Stitch: The Series: In the episode "Bonnie & Clyde", Lilo and Stitch TP the Edmunds family's home as a distraction while the experiments of the day commit robbery.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Scare Master", the Cutie Mark Crusaders TP things as part of the night's festivities. At least they're considerate enough to TP only the tree next to Carousel Boutique instead of the boutique itself.
- The Rocket Power episode "The Night Before" had Otto, Twister and Sam sneak out for Mischief Night with Eddie, but never really get a chance to do any TPing to anyone; only Lars, Pi and Sputz do it, but Reggie, trying to get the gang to come home before they are busted for breaking curfew, takes the rap for it. Otto, Twister and Sam confess to sneaking out, and they and Reggie are all forced to wear matching pumpkin Halloween costumes in public, plus only get one piece of candy per house, as punishment the next day for it.
- Shrek the Halls: Referenced when Donkey sees Shrek's poor attempt at decorating his house for Christmas.
Donkey: You know, they usually just toilet-paper and run away, but whoever did this means business!
- One episode of South Park had the boys TP their art teacher's house as revenge for her giving them detention after they made an erect penis out of clay. In typical fashion, it was treated as a Felony Misdemeanor as if the boys committed a murder together, and the police recruit a TP criminal in juvenile hall for assistance. Kyle was even haunted by nightmares of their "crime", so Cartman decided that Kyle needed to be killed to keep it a secret.
- Steven Universe: Future:
- In "Bluebird", Bluebird Azurite attempts to TP Steven's car, but she's such a Fish out of Water she just places a neat stack of toilet paper rolls on top of the vehicle.
Steven: At least I don't have to pick up more toilet paper.
- In "Bismuth Casual", Pearl makes the habit of handing out toilet paper rolls as gifts, mirthfully remarking that they can be used for vandalism.
- In "Bluebird", Bluebird Azurite attempts to TP Steven's car, but she's such a Fish out of Water she just places a neat stack of toilet paper rolls on top of the vehicle.
- In Super Best Friends Forever, Supergirl wants to use Wonder Woman's invisible jet to TP Lex Luthor's mansion.
