If you get squeamish easily, then this game is not for you.
"It's time to learn about secretions"
"And what the stomach does to food"
"We will examine our excretions"
"And every body noise that's rude"
"It's time to learn our body functions"
"And which eruption stinks the most"
"We hope that you don't lose your luncheon"
"It's time to learn what's gross"
Planet Dexter's Grossology is a 1997 PC game developed by Appaloosa Interactive and published by SegaSoft. It's an educational science game that focuses on the grosser, and presumably more fun, aspects of biology. You follow Ginger Vitis as you jump from different bodily-related topics, ranging from poop, to farts, to puke, to B.O., to scabs, each with their own unique instructor and even minigames to play. The game is notable for being much more crass compared to other children's games back in the 90's and dabbling in topics that edutainment games normally wouldn't touch.
Not to be confused with the Canadian cartoon series of the same name, though they both have the same basic concept, and are both based off the same book series.
This game provides examples of:
- Ambiguously Human: Paul Plumber looks more like a goblin or troll than a human. Most of the other characters would count too with their exaggerated features.
- Ambiguously Jewish: Shirley Snotgrass, who has a Gag Nose and speaks in a stereotypical Jewish-American accent.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Greatly averted with Prissy. Despite being a beauty pageant queen before being a UR Gross instructor, she's a relentless Big Eater and her image as a beauty queen was ruined after she ate some bad sushi and barfed all over the judges, and after the league of judges found out about her late-night gorges, she was kicked out of the pageant circuit.
- Big Eater:
- Prissy Polly, who's stated to be not so prissy when it comes to food. Her game even revolves around eating.
- Ginger could count too. The "Vomit" segment has her talk about eating 12 burritos from the cafeteria (granted she gets sick and vomits from it).
- You can also diagnose patients in the vomit game with "overindulgence" and one of the patients is even a pie-eating champion.
- Cool Teacher: Most of the instructors would count, but especially Ginger, who even refers to herself as an "all-around cool cat".
- Edutainment Game
- Expy: The Scab and Wounds instructor is fittingly a Rocky Balboa expy.
- Extranormal Institute: UR Gross is a university, but it seems to only focus on gross anatomy-related stuff in a fashion more unconventional than your typical medical school.
- The Food Poisoning Incident:
- Prissy got kicked out of pageantry after eating bad sushi and...well, you probably know the rest.
- Food poisoning is also touched upon in the Dr. Sleuth game.
- Gag Nose: Lawrence Lick and Shirley Snotgrass have this.
- Gasshole: Darryl and Paul, who's specialty involve burps and farts, respectively. Darryl even belches after most of his sentences.
- Getting Sick Deliberately: Defied; Ralph Alloverem says that you should never force yourself to vomit because it'll cause several complications, such as tooth decay and throat pain.
- Green Around the Gills: All the patients in the Dr. Sleuth game appear a sickly color, usually green.
- Gross-Out Game: You think?
- Informed Attribute: In the "Zits" segment, Ginger complains about a huge zit on her nose, despite the fact that there is obviously nothing there, or at least anything noticeable there.
- Mini-Game: Each lab has its own minigame, and each of them are a variation of an existing game.
- Zit Attack - Tetris, where you must prevent the playfield from filling up with oil, resulting in a zit.
- Something Special In The Air - Basically Concentration, where you match the different pictures of different odor-related objects like shoes, armpits, and feet.
- Booger Block - Kaboom! where you have to prevent snot from dripping out of Shirley's nose into her mouth making her sick.
- Poo-Poo Pinball - A toilet and poop-themed pinball game.
- Don't Pee Your Pants - Pipe Dreams where you must connect the urethra to the bladder.
- What A Wound - Othello where your goal is to help white blood cells heal a wound.
- The Drool Show - A typical game show-type game where you find out what foods make Prissy's mouth water.
- Burp-O-Rama - Simon Says, but with burping.
- Dr. Sleuth - A watered-down version of Life and Death, where you must diagnose patients with various vomiting-related illnesses.
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Memetic Mutation: ANAL SPHINCTAH - Motor Mouth: Ginger talks a lot.
- Potty Emergency: The Excuse Plot for “Don’t Pee Your Pants”...
- Potty Failure: ...and if you lose the game, the instructor will suffer this.
- Prone to Vomiting: Ralph Alloverem, as his name suggests. Ginger mentions he holds the record for puking in class the most, and he vomits as an animation.
- Punny Name: Quite a few characters have one. Examples include Ginger Vitis, Buddy O'dor, and Ralph Alloverem.
- Quintessential British Gentleman: Ralph Alloverem.
- Southern Belle: Prissy Polly.
- Toilet Humor: As expected, the game's full of it.
- Too Much Information: Ginger is prone to this. Then again, it is a gross-out game.
- Verbal Tic: Rocky has the tendency to punctuate his sentences with "man", man.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Dr. Sleuth gives you the opportunity to diagnose patients' illnesses and watch them recover happy and healthy...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...though on the other hand, you can also deliberately misdiagnose them and watch them lay there still violently ill in bed.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The game actually shows the vomit when characters throw up, unusual for a children's medium.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Paul Plumber speaks in what is quite obviously a very cartoonish New York accent, but his bizarre pronunciation of certain words tend to invoke this in most players.
- World of Ham: Pretty much all the characters have Large Ham tendencies. Some are more hammy than others.
