Basic Trope: Food that's way past its sell-by date.
- Straight: Alice buys five-year expired milk.
- Exaggerated:
- The milk is a hundred years past its expiration date.
- The milk was from ancient times.
- Downplayed: The milk is six months past its expiration date.
- Justified:
- The store is lazy and didn't check their milk.
- The store purposely sells spoiled milk, for whatever reason.
- Alice has an upgraded digestive system that makes her the "unpicky eater" form of Extreme Omnivore, and she'd rather not throw away what is to her still perfectly edible food.
- It's a souvenir from Pripyat
- It was found at a farm from the 10th century unearthed by an archeological dig.
- Inverted: Alice buys the cow and milks her when they get home, in hopes of it being very fresh.
- Subverted:
- It turns out it was only five days past its expiration date.
- While the milk is, in fact, five years past the expiration date — the milk was also brought five years into the future!
- Double Subverted:
- The expiration date was indeed five days ago... last year.
- The preservative chemicals in the food go very bad the very second the "sell by" date passes. The Better Business Bureau is working on doing something about it, but the company is still skating by with the Loophole Abuse.
- It was five years before the time travel, not after! note
- Parodied: The milk is past its used-by date by five years, however, it somehow did not spoil.
- Averted: Alice buys only recently expired, or fresh milk.
- Zig Zagged: The milk is past its used-by date, but for how long, nobody knows.
- Enforced:
- To invoke The Food Poisoning Incident.
- To invoke It Came from the Fridge
- To set up Alice as someone immune to food poisoning.
- Lampshaded: "This milk is way past its sell-by date, let's chuck it out RIGHT NOW before something bad happens."
- Invoked: The store deliberately sells five-year-expired milk.
- Exploited: A certain potion actually requires milk that old.
- Defied:
- The store always checks the sell-by dates.
- Alice checks the sell-by dates before buying the milk.
- Discussed: "Ugh, that shop has terrible service, they sold me milk that's five-years past its expiration date."
- Conversed: "Those fictional shops better start checking their sell-by dates."
- Implied:
- Bob asks Alice if she remembers the "way-too-old milk incident" from a few years back.
- Alice notices the milk's country of origin does not exist anymore, or if it does exist, it's labeled under its old name.
- Deconstructed: Alice undergoes The Food Poisoning Incident.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice checks the label before actually drinking the milk.
- People with the milder (unpicky eater) form of Extreme Omnivore are common enough that there is an actual market for dirt cheap expired food product catering to them.
- Alice's event happens when she drinks milk one week past the sell-by date. Later she drinks (unopened, well refrigerated) milk one day past and nothing happens.
- Played for Laughs: Vulgar Humor.
- Played for Drama: Alice gets severely poisoned as a result of drinking the milk.
- Played for Horror: Alice is fatally poisoned and it's not a quick and painless death, either, probably full of Body Horror.
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