History Main / EyeOfNewt

%%* ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'': The TropeNamer comes from the witches' song.

* ''Literature/MoongobbleAndMe'': In book 3, Moongobble creates a MagicPotion made up of some strange ingredients, designed to make Edward shrink. Said ingredients include "tiny mushrooms, an earthworm's eyebrow, several ant toes, and some fuzz from a baby bird". Plus some stuff Moongobble brought from home.

** Spellcasting in many versions (''D&D'' 1e, ''AD&D'' 2e, and ''D&D'' Third Edition) can require use of material components. For standard spells, like ''fireball'', this requires something trivial and commonplace (like bat guano and sulfur rolled into a ball). Spells that are particularly powerful or create more permanent effects, such as Raise Dead, can require expensive components, limiting the number of times you can conveniently use them. Non-valuable components are usually [[HandWave Hand-Waved]] with a spell component pouch, but the [[SkillScoresAndPerks feat]] Eschew Materials and the PrestigeClass Recaster allow players to cast spells without them.
** 5th edition allows magic users to ignore non-valuable material components, either by using a component pouch (which is assumed to contain the various required components) or a spellcasting focus such as a magic wand or a holy symbol.
** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'': The eyes, hearts and brains of catoblepas are valuable spell components. ''Elminster's Ecologies'' describes the Marsh Drovers, a human culture who have taken to herding the beasts in order to sell these parts to wizards.

* ''Film/RobinHoodMenInTights'': Parodied when Latrine is apparently putting together a scrying spell with all sorts of gooey ingredients, including "eyeballs of a crocodile". A moment later we learn she's not a witch at all; [[{{Squick}} she's the cook]].

* ''Franchise/TheWitcher'': Subverted -- wizards do display impressive collections of mysterious ingredients all over their labs and everyone knows stories about elixirs made of "blood of virgin killed by bolt of lightning on a cloudless night". It turns that mundane replacements work as well, but wizards encourage gossip since it keeps smallfolk away from carrying on their own experiments.

* Hoodoo folk magic is made of this trope. Components can include (but are by no means limited to) red brick dust, graveyard dirt (preferably from the grave of a soldier or a child. Or, for best results, a {{Child Soldier|s}}), coffin nails, dried bat hearts, and raccoon penis bones, not to mention various bodily fluids. Much of the lore comes down from rural areas in the 1930's, when such ingredients were much easier to obtain than they would be today (or not: a random Google search can and will turn up various shops selling such items online, many disturbingly authentic).

Not related in any manner whatsoever, to the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

* ''WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck'': In "[[WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts Trick or Treat"]], Huey, Dewey and Louie enlist the help of a witch to get back at Donald for pranking them. She whips up a potion with quotations from ''Macbeth'', and partway through she leans over to the nephews and says "This is the real stuff, you know. Right out of Shakespeare."

Sometimes this trope is used to justify PlotCoupons as necessary ingredients. This can result in a GottaCatchThemAll plot if one spell calls for several items. Improbably specific requirements can be used to set up {{impossible task}}s. If one of the "ingredients" happens to be the caster's immortal soul, then it's a DealWithTheDevil.

* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'': All Getafix will reveal about the ingredients of the [[SuperSerum magic potion]] is that it contains mistletoe harvested with a golden sickle and lobster. The lobster is optional, but it improves the flavor. A few other ingredients are revealed through plot contrivance -- such as a tiny drop of "rock oil" (petroleum), although [[SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic through research it is determined that it]] can be substituted with beetroot juice which has the exact same effect, is easier to get and doesn't taste as bad, and "reasonably fresh fish". It's implied that insofar as its chemistry goes it's really just a mediocre vegetable soup, albeit with added magic effects. Several times its obscure ingredients are used as PlotCoupons, such as in ''The Black Gold'', ''The Great Crossing'', and ''Asterix in Switzerland'' (although that was for [[FlowerFromTheMountaintop an ingredient]] needed to brew an antidote for a poison).

--Stoke the fire for the cauldron \\