History Main / WateringDown

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* The old Polish comedy ''Gangsters and Philantropists'' featured a story about a hapless lab technician who accidentally takes a hydrometer with him after leaving work. He goes to a restaurant, orders a drink and absentmindedly starts stirring the drink with the hydrometer. The restaurant manager sees this and thinks that the guy is a government inspector testing if the restaurant is watering its drinks. As the protagonist is leaving the restaurant, he is handed an envelope with money as a bribe to not report the restaurant. Once he figures out what happened he starts regularly going to restaurants with lab instruments and supplements his income with the bribe money. Later he resorts to weighing steaks since the restaurants are also likely serving less meat than advertised on the menu.
* ''Film/OceansEight'': In her first scene [[TheFixer Lou]] is supervising as her nightclub's employees water down vodka, giving them strict instructions on how to make it seem convincing ("three fingers from the top").
* {{Discussed}} in Film/ScaryMovie. Cindy's dad, before he leaves her at home for the weekend, tells her he "left her a little present in the coffee can", and reminds her that if she's going to cut and sell it to use baking soda, not baking powder.

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

* In one episode of the comedy series ''The Detectives'', the titular police officers go to a dodgy criminal pub where they confront the landlady with the fact that one of her regular customers had recently been pulled over by a squad car having previously consumed a truly ridiculous amount of alcoholic drinks at her establishment, leading to this exchange:

* Mentioned by Vlad in VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV. He says that Mikhail cuts his cocaine with laxative, causing Niko to be {{Squick}}ed out when he mentions the effect it has on him.

* Tragic real-life consequences ensue when impoverished parents do this to infant formula, which is expensive, to make it stretch longer. It seems harmless but unfortunately, too much water dilutes a baby's normal sodium levels, leading to a potentially fatal condition called "water intoxication" in infants under one year old.
** Sometimes to counteract the watering down, unscrupulous dealers might [[MedicationTampering add something to give the impression of a stronger product]], such as small amounts of poison, or in case of opiates, Fentanyl which has a high risk of causing an overdose.

* TruthInTelevision to a massive degree. While alcohol with a little bit of water is often forgivable, ScareEmStraight DrugsAreBad presentations like pointing out how dealers cut marijuana and other drugs with everything from carpet strands to hair. Even camel shit. One would think that dried plants (you know, the thing pot ''is'') would be more plausible, but then, plausibility doesn't scare anyone.
** Ironically, this is exactly why it's ''legal'' in the Netherlands. The government can't do quality control on illegal stuff, after all.
** The same line of thinking is a major argument legalization proponents the US use, too. (Along with the argument that incarceration for pot use causes way more social ills than pot use itself.)
** In places where marijuana and hemp are both legal, marijuana users would use hemp in their joints or blunts to reduce the amount of THC they are taking in (particularly the really strong strains) by balancing it out with CBD.

This can overlap with ExpensiveGlassOfCrap when the watering down consists of mixing small amounts of [[LuxuriousLiquor fanncy aged booze]] with larger quantities of mediocre or crappy "plonk".

Diluting an alcoholic beverage (or some other drug), usually with water for alcohol, but sometimes [[{{Squick}} other substances]], is fairly common in both the real world and fiction. Street drugs are also almost always cut with other stuff. It is usually done so as to get more saleable product from smaller amounts of genuine ingredients. For example, lactose powder may be added to cocaine to bulk it out. Yet sometimes, adulterants are added for other purposes.

Adding products to make a drink or drug serm ''stronger'' is not this trope. For example, drug dealers add PCP to cannabis to enhance the perceived psychedelic effectiveness.

Diluting an alcoholic beverage (or some other drug), usually with water for alcohol, but sometimes [[{{Squick}} other substances]], is fairly common in both the real world and fiction. Street drugs are also almost always cut with other stuff. It is usually done so as to get more saleable product from smaller amounts of genuine ingredients. For example, lactose powder may be added to cocaine to bulk it out. Yet sometimes, adulterants are added for other purposes. Some drug dealers add PCP to drugs such as LSD to enhance the perceived psychedelic effectiveness.

Diluting an alcoholic beverage (or some other drug), usually with water for alcohol, but sometimes [[{{Squick}} other substances]], is fairly common in both the real world and fiction. Street drugs are also almost always cut with other stuff. It is usually done so as to get more saleable product from smaller amounts of genuine ingredients. For example, lactose powder may be added to cocaine to bulk it out. Yet sometimes, adulterants are added for other purposes. Some drug dealers add PCP to psychedelic drugs to enhance the perceived strength of the product.

Diluting an alcoholic beverage (or some other drug), usually with water for alcohol, but sometimes [[{{Squick}} other substances]], is fairly common in both the real world and fiction. Street drugs are also almost always cut with other stuff. It is usually done so as to get more product from smaller amounts of genuine ingredients, yet sometimes used for other purposes.

This can overlap with ExpensiveGlassOfCrap when the watering down consists of mixing small amounts of good booze with larger quantities of mediocre or crap booze.

* [[https://youtu.be/3tYrWFlop9g In this]] ''Series/HorribleHistories'' sketch, a milkman during the First World War watered down his milk to make it go further. [[Squick Just don’t ask him where he got the water from.]]

* ''Film/TheSting'': When Henry Gondorff is performing the initial con against Lonnegan on the train, he [[PlayingDrunk makes himself up as a drunken slob]] by taking a bottle of gin, splashing some of it on his face, then pouring half of it out and filling the bottle back up with water before taking it with him to the poker game.

** In places where marijuana and hemp are both legal, marijuana users would use hemp in their joints or blunts to reduce the amount of THC they are taking in by balancing it out with CBD.

* The profitability of this trope actually led to [[TheMafia Italian organized crime families]] getting into the business of stealing premium quality olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese that was then cut with cheap fillers and labeled as being pure, then sold around the world.

* And as for good old fashioned watering down beer? The trick isn't to water it down with water. That gets spotted. Instead, you water down expensive beers with cheap beer.

* Watered-down wine is used as a metaphor in the Book of Isaiah in Literature/TheBible as God's way of telling His people Israel that their spiritual life isn't as pure or as potent as it used to be.
* Used by the writer of [[Literature/SecondMaccabees 2nd Maccabees]] at the end to compare with writing a good story.
-->''For just as it is harmful to drink wine alone, or, again, to drink water alone, while wine mixed with water is sweet and delicious and enhances one’s enjoyment, so also the style of the story delights the ears of those who read the work. [[TheEnd And here will be the end.]]'' (2nd Maccabees 15:39)
* In Literature/TheBible, when Jesus performed his first miracle (turning water into wine at the Wedding at Cana), he turned it into ''the very best'' wine. One of the guests passes comment about it to the host, since the usual practice was to water it down and use cheaper wine overall.