History Main / PinkElephants

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther'' crashes for the night in someone's home. When the occupant, three sheets to the wind, comes home and encounters the panther, he immediately calls his A.A. sponsor in panic.
** Another cartoon had a sloshed reveler mistaking the panther as one his D.T.-fueled visions and invites him to stay at his place provided his wife doesn't find out.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}'' features the most infamous example where a drunk Dumbo and Timothy blow alcoholic bubbles and start seeing literal Pink Elephants on parade, leading to a nightmarish DisneyAcidSequence musical number. When they wake up, they find themselves stuck on a tall tree.

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[[quoteright:349:[[Webcomic/QuestionableContent https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/qc4.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:349:The Beast of Bourbon. [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand ♪ "Ain't I drunk enough?" ♪]]]]

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* {{Discussed}} several times in the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' comic "Western Circus": Luke sees a circus elephant in the middle of American prairie, and later mentions that if it was pink and he was drunk, he wouldn't have any questions. Some time later, after the elephant goes on a rampage chasing a guy who wronged it, Luke calms it down, saying that it was just hallucinating pink men.
* ComicBook/GastonLagaffe:

* ''ComicBook/ActionComicsNumber1''. When Lois Lane relays her story of Superman rescuing her to George Taylor, the editor sarcastically retorts "Are you sure it wasn't pink elephants you saw?"

* In one episode of ''ComicBook/DeGeneraal'', the eponymous general has his latest DoomsdayDevice disguised as a wooden horse, prompting a drunk to complain, "What's in this rotgut they sold me? When I'm drunk, I wish to see pink elephants! Or blue ones, I'm an open-minded guy. But not two Santas riding a wooden horse!"

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* Used as a plot point of the {{wuxia}} film, ''Film/TheBloodyBladeOfKingLanling''. The film's main villain is an EvilVizier and TheUsurper who wants the throne for himself, pretending to be loyal to the Emperor, and managed to convince the Emperor that the Gods of Heavens are making a visit to the palace... by spiking the Emperor's wine. As the Vizier plays a tune on a flute, the Emperor then sees the Gods descending, and giving a royal decree to abdicate the throne to the minister... Lanling's timely arrival in the final scene, beating a drum to break the Vizier's flute music and [[ShatteringTheIllusion dispelling the false vision of Gods]] jams a wedge into the Vizier's plans.
* ''Film/EuroTrip'' has the four teens take a drink of absinthe at a rave in Bratislava and start seeing a green fairy.
* ''Film/TheLostWeekend'' has a particularly terrifying use of this trope, as Don hallucinates a bat swooping in and eating a mouse in the wall. Unlike many films, which have people seeing their Pink Elephants during their drunken binges, this one gets it right, and has Don seeing his mice and bat ''after'' his spree, when he's going through withdrawal.
* George Valentin hallucinates a tiny version of himself, and then a whole scene from his last movie, while drinking himself into a stupor in ''Film/TheArtist''.
* In ''Film/DrKildare's Victory'', a severely intoxicated man is running through the halls of Blair General trying to find his pink elephants.

* In Nelson Bond's "The Gripes Of Wraith", pink elephants seen in an alcoholic daze are referred to as "beasts of bourbon" by a PungeonMaster.

* As seen in the page quote, the TropeNamer is Creator/JackLondon's memoir about life as an alcoholic.
* In chapter 18 of Creator/RaymondChandler's 1943 Literature/PhilipMarlowe novel ''Literature/TheLadyInTheLake'', a character refers to a doctor "who ran around all night with a case of loaded hypodermic needles, keeping the fast set from having pink elephants for breakfast."
* In ''Literature/LordJim'', a minor character ruins his brain with alcohol and ends seeing a swarm of toads staring at him.

* In Creator/CharlesDeLint's ''Jack of Kinrowan'', an inebriated young woman sees a biker gang hunt down and kill a little man in a seemingly magical way one night. She first assumes the scene to be a hallucination, but one item from the scene remains: the dwarf's red cap. She later discovers that whenever she dons the cap, it allows her to see into the land of Faerie. Few humans can see it, but her drunken state allowed her briefly to break through.
* In ''[[Creator/SimonRGreen For Heaven's Eyes Only]]'', a GargleBlaster is described as being so potent that when you order one, it's ''served'' by a tiny pink elephant.
* In James Joyce's (in)famous novel ''Literature/{{Ulysses}}'', there is a chapter called Circe that's ''150 pages long'', written as a playscript, which almost entirely consists of drunken hallucinations. These include William Shakespeare as a ventriloquist dummy with antlers, two floating Oxford professors with lawnmowers giving Stephen advice, Bloom's grandfather appearing to talk about sex, a nightmarish KangarooCourt, a PowerFantasy that lasts more than thirty pages but takes up less than a second of real time, and a GenderBender hallucination in which Bloom turns into a prostitute and is raped. This is a classic work of literature, everyone.
* In Creator/PGWodehouse's ''Uneasy Money'', Nutty sees a monkey and assumes this. Elizabeth, who wants him off the drink, pretends not to see it.

* In Creator/SeananMcGuire's ''Literature/OctoberDaye'' novel ''One Salt Sea'', Toby hopes that a shrieking mermaid in a wheelchair will be taken for this.
* In the original ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon'', Paddy sees a "cluricaune" leprechaun and red rats after a rum binge, but he knows they are not real; "as real-looking as the real things, and though they possess his mind for a moment, almost immediately he recognises that he is suffering from a delusion."

* Discussed in ''Literature/ANightInTheLonesomeOctober'': Quicklime remarks at one point that he keeps out of the way of people with hangovers because he's been told it's bad for people in that condition to be seeing snakes, though he's never understood why.

* Invoked in the short story "Dave the Mighty Steel-Thewed Avenger" by Creator/LauraResnick. Dave is a law student coming home after a night out. When he meets a large rodent which stands up on its hind legs and starts trying to tell him about his destiny, his first thought is "did this mean that two beers were enough to give me alcohol poisoning? Should I proceed immediately to the campus medical center and check myself into the detox unit?"
* In ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'', Pap, coming down from a binge, hallucinates first snakes crawling on him, then that Huck is the Angel of Death.
* In Aleksis Kivi's ''Literature/SevenBrothers'', Eero describes Simeoni having talked about one-inch-tall men swarming around him during the return part of the alcohol-rich trip to the city. Days later, when Simeoni is finally found in the forest, he claims that he has seen [[{{Satan}} Lucifer]] himself, as they flew together to the Moon, where he foresaw the [[TheEndIsNigh end of the world]] from a tower built out of boot leather, after which he fell back down to Earth.

* Series/RabCNesbitt sees a pink elephant, the "Heebie Jeebie", after being told to give up drinking by his doctor in the season 1 episode "Drink". It spends the episode trying to convince him to continue drinking.
* Invoked in the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode "Regeneration" when Captain Archer recalls [[Film/StarTrekFirstContact a story Zephrem Cochrane told]] about cyborgs from the future attempting to disrupt the warp-speed pioneer flight that led to Earth's first contact. T'Pol dismisses the story, noting that Cochrane was known for [[TallTale telling "imaginative stories"]] and was "frequently intoxicated".
* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. At the end of "Rescue", Villa (who's been [[DrowningMySorrows drowning his sorrows]] for most of the episode) decides NoMoreForMe after seeing the antagonist RapidAging and then turn to dust. "It'll be pink [[InSpace asteroids]] next."

* Referenced in the ''Series/DadsArmy'' episode "Getting the Bird". Sergeant Wilson is caught drunk during a platoon meeting and summoned to Captain Mainwaring's office for disciplining. Meanwhile, Private Walker has hidden a flock of doped pigeons in the room next door to Mainwaring's office with the intention of selling them to the butcher, but they wake up and enter the office through a hole in the wall. When Wilson complains that he keeps getting distracted by birds, Mainwaring quips back "Well, makes a change from pink elephants."

* Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians' "Pink Elephants":
-->Pink elephants on the table\\
Pink elephants on the chair\\
Pink elephants on the ceiling\\
Pink elephants everywhere

* Referenced, in a way, in ''VideoGame/AmongTheSleep'': One of the protagonist's toys is a stuffed pink elephant. [[spoiler:This foreshadows that the "supernatural" events of the game are the protagonist's way of coping with the abusive behavior of his alcoholic mother.]]
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' references this when describing aquae lucidius, an incredibly potent liquor brewed from ''wyvern poison'', which supposedly leaves the drinker "seeing purple dragons for days".
* In ''VideoGame/NexusClash'', the [[AchievementSystem Achievement Badge]] for drinking sufficient amounts of booze is actually called "Pink Elephant Rider". Due to the StatGrinding system inherent to Nexus games, it actually makes you more powerful. Exactly ''how'' is one of the few things the series' elaborate lore doesn't attempt to explain.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'' has the [[http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=474 Tequila Monster]] and [[http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=719 Beast of Bourbon]] waiting for you at the end of the bottle.
* In ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', the Baron sends not soldiers but strong drink to a celebration in Mechanicsburg. One guard observes that a few drinks of that and you'll be chasing flying pink mimmoths.

* Lampshaded in ''Webcomic/TheLastDaysOfFOXHOUND''. Decoy Octopus manages to get drunk at 10 am, and decides to hang around the seemingly incompetent genome soldiers. After they display a significant increase in performance (read: being capable human beings), Decoy reports it to Liquid Snake. Liquid dismisses it as Decoy imagining it due to his intoxication, and Decoy counters with "I'm drunk, not schizophrenic".

** An earlier cartoon, "Calling Dr. Porky", has a patient being harassed by a band of pink elephants.
** Yet another cartoon ("WesternAnimation/HoboBobo") has the young elephant Bobo trying to get to New York from India, and told that the best way to sneak onto the ship is to paint himself pink. Because nobody will admit to themselves that they're seeing a pink elephant. It works, but it turns out to work a little ''too'' well once he gets to the city.
** In the ''Merrie Melodies'' short "A Day at the Zoo", flying pink elephants make up one of the exhibits. The narrator calls them "some things left over from that last New Year's party".
** It is implied that Daffy Duck had been out boozing in "Daffy Duck Slept Here" as he's the only guy in the room who sees Hymie the kangaroo. Roommate Porky Pig is most doubtful.

* ''WesternAnimation/ClosedMondays'' involves a drunkard who goes stumbling into an art exhibition and sees the exhibits come to life in weird and disturbing ways.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheOldLadyAndThePigeons'' While drunk, the gendarme hallucinates that the old woman has turned into a turkey.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheHairBearBunch'': In "Ark Lark," the bears are staging a BavarianFireDrill to sneak out of the zoo, posing as tree surgeons carting a tree to the hospital. Bubi diagnoses the tree's ailment as Delirium Tremens.
* WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther crashes for the night in someone's home. When the occupant, three sheets to the wind, comes home and encounters the panther, he immediately calls his A.A. sponsor in panic.

* ''Series/AdamTwelve'': A Season 4 episode, "Day Watch," has a drunken wino insist to officers Malloy and Reed he had seen a pink elephant, and even offers to show them. It turns out he had seen a prop outside the Pink Elephant, a local nightclub, and the officers have likely passed by it many times on their beat.

[[caption-width-right:349:The Beast of Bourbon. [[Music/TheRollingStones ♪ "Ain't I drunk enough?" ♪]]]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}'': In ''Recap/TintinAndThePicaros'', General Alcazar's men have been enjoying the shipments of whiskey parachuted to them by Alcazar's archnemesis General Tapioca. When a bus full of tourists drops into their camp, one of them comments on the sight, with his buddy asking where the pink elephants went.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheHairBearBunch'': In "Ark Lark, the bears are staging a BavarianFireDrill to sneak out of the zoo, posing as tree surgeons carting a tree to the hospital. Bubi diagnoses the tree's ailment as Delirium Tremens.

* In chapter 18 of Creator/RaymondChandler's 1943 Literature/PhilipMarlowe novel ''Literature/TheLadyInTheLake'', a character refers to a doctor "who ran around all night with a case of loaded hypodermic needles, keeping the fast set from having pink elephants for breakfast."

* As seen in the page quote, the TropeNamer is Creator/JackLondon's memoir about life as an alcoholic.

* In Nelson Bond's "The Gripes Of Wraith", pink elephants seen in an alcoholic daze are referred to as "beasts of bourbon" by a PungeonMaster.

** ''Action Comics'' #7 (December 1938), in a story in which {{Superman}} lifts an elephant over his head while performing at the circus, a drunk in the crowd exclaims, "I don't mind seeing pink elephants, but (-hic-) this is too much!"

* In ''Action Comics'' #7 (December 1938), in a story in which {{Superman}} lifts an elephant over his head while performing at the circus, a drunk in the crowd exclaims, "I don't mind seeing pink elephants, but (-hic-) this is too much!"

* In ''Webcomic/ImpureBlood'', [[http://impurebloodwebcomic.com/comic/chapter-1/page-009/ diju shee the big red thing in the sky?]].

* In ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'', [[http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=1520 seeing Slick and Monique for once sweet, Squigley (not unnaturally) concludes that he's hallucinating after his binge.]]

* ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'': [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3207#comic "If I drink less, I'll stop having vivid hallucinations, Chuck."]]

** Yet another cartoon ("Hobo Bobo") has the young elephant Bobo trying to get to New York from India, and told that the best way to sneak onto the ship is to paint himself pink. Because nobody will admit to themselves that they're seeing a pink elephant. It works, but it turns out to work a little ''too'' well once he gets to the city.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MerrieMelodies'' short "A Day at the Zoo", flying pink elephants make up one of the exhibits. The narrator calls them "some things left over from that last New Year's party".

[[quoteright:320:[[Webcomic/QuestionableContent https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/qc4.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:320:The Beast of Bourbon. [[Music/TheRollingStones ♪ "Ain't I drunk enough?" ♪]]]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Dumbo}}'' features the most infamous example where a drunk Dumbo and Timothy blow alcoholic bubbles and start seeing literal Pink Elephants on parade, leading to a nightmarish DisneyAcidSequence musical number. When they wake up, they find themselves stuck on a tall tree. This BigLippedAlligatorMoment was even the former trope image.

Should not be confused with [[AmazingTechnicolorWildlife literal pink elephants]] which ''can'' occur in RealLife as a result of albinism. A drunk character who sees them may mistake it for this trope, causing them to [[NoMoreForMe swear off drinking]]. Can combine with YouHaveToBelieveMe or CryingWolf (if the drunk person routinely claims to see pink elephants, and now there's one in their backyard).

** In "The Springfield Files" Homer sees what he thinks is an alien while going home from Moe's bar. The creature he saw was real (''sort of''; [[ItMakesSenseInContext it was actually just Mr. Burns]]) but nobody believed him.

From now on I'll stick to [[DrunkOnMilk milk]]\\