Basic Trope: One culture's delicacy is another culture's Nausea Fuel.
- Straight: Aerith, the Foreign Exchange Student from Wikistan brings a dish involving octopus tentacles to school. Everyone else, with peanut butter sandwiches and other foods typical of Tropestan, is Squicked out.
- Exaggerated: As soon as Aerith opens her lunchbox, everyone starts vomiting and running away in horror.
- Downplayed: Aerith's meal is quite normal, but may contain seasonings or a sauce unusual in Tropestan.
- Justified:
- The people of Tropestan are not familiar with foods like this.
- Pain de chien is too Kick The Doggish for Tropestanians.
- Wikistani foods are usually made by Cordon Bleugh Chef.
- Inverted:
- Aerith thinks Bob's peanut butter sandwich is disgusting.
- The Tropestani kids adore Aerith's Wikistani food.
- Subverted:
- One day, Aerith brings in an unusual food, but no one is grossed out. Some may even genuinely like it if she lets them try it.
- It's not traditional Wikistani food, Aerith was just messing with everybody.
- Double Subverted: But then the next day, she brings in something smelly, which grosses everyone else out.
- Parodied: The people of Wikistan don't actually eat chilled monkey brains. Aerith just says so to troll the locals.
- Zig Zagged: Some people like Aerith's dish, others hate it.
- Averted:
- Aerith's food is just like that of the Tropestani kids.
- Aerith's food is unfamiliar to the people of Tropestan, but they don't find it disgusting.
- Enforced: The work is created by a Tropestani author at a time when relations between Tropestan and Wikistan are sour. The execs make the writer add some anti-Wikistan propaganda.
- Lampshaded: "Eww! I can't believe they eat octopus tentacles in Wikistan!"
- Invoked: Some Wikistani no-goodniks decide to serve octopus tentacles in the hopes that their Tropestani visitors will be scared off before they have a chance to uncover the Wikistanis' Evil Plan. (As a side note, this was why the quasi-Hindu cultists served such disgusting food in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but the movie didn't spell this out clearly enough, so it just came off as culturally insensitive to a lot of viewers.)
- Exploited: Aerith uses this as a means to keep other kids away from her, so she can enjoy her lunch by herself.
- Defied: Aerith just eats what everyone else eats.
- Discussed: "Uh, Aerith? Why is your lunch moving?"
- Conversed: "Look, I know live squid look gross, but it's delicious!"
- Implied: Bob is visibly disgusted when he peeks inside Aerith's lunchbox. We never see what it contained.
- Played For Laughs: Bob visits Wikistan, gets hungry and desperately searches for a WcDonald's.
- Played For Drama: Aerith is bullied by the other kids because they find her food disgusting.
- Deconstructed: Food is part of culture, and Aerith is under heavy pressure to give up on hers because no one likes her food, causing much angst.
- Reconstructed: Other kids let Aerith eat what she wants, as long as they don't have to eat it.
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