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Alcohol-Induced Idiocy

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Not exactly what they meant by burning your boat.

Stan: So you just built your store on an Indian burial ground?!
Store owner: Oh, hell, no. First I dug up all the bodies, pissed on them, and then buried them again upside-down.
Kyle: Why?!
Store owner: Why? I don't know. I was drunk.

Incidents of jaw-dropping stupidity brought about by a character's excessive consumption/usage of mind-altering substances. These substances are usually alcoholic beverages (as alcohol can be legally acquired in sufficient quantities to effect one's judgement in most places), but other mind-altering drugs sometimes get used instead (if the drug in question is illegal in the place where the story was made, it's often also part of a Drugs Are Bad message).

This tends to overlap with In Vino Veritas: Often, the character committing the act of alcohol-induced idiocy will be an otherwise sensible and reasonably intelligent person when sober. If the character is normally dimwitted, getting drunk will make him even dumber. In both cases, the character's inebriation usually results in him being a danger to himself and others.

Someone who becomes a Drunken Master when intoxicated is the direct opposite, though sometimes these tropes can alternate (e.g. a rock musician who is more capable drunk onstage than sober, but then gets beaten up after picking a pointless fight he has no chance of winning the moment he gets offstage) or can even co-exist (the thing the drunken mastery is of something that someone in any kind of rational mental space would not do, e.g. walking a tightrope above a guaranteed fatal drop without safety gear, wrestling an actual bear). Liquid Courage tends to be a more positive occurrence.

Alcohol-Induced Idiocy can be similar to the Idiot Ball or any other plot device that depends on Contrived Stupidity. Thus, this trope is related to Too Dumb to Live, Idiot Ball, Out-of-Character Moment, What Were You Thinking?, and Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity. The only difference is that this trope comes with a built-in excuse.

Can often lead to a character getting an Embarrassing Tattoo… or doing something much, much worse. Some of the other results of Alcohol-Induced Idiocy are covered in the What Did I Do Last Night?, You Wake Up in a Room, Alcohol-Induced Bisexuality, and Sorry Ociffer tropes. May overlap with Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb. Once the character sobers up and is taken to task for their actions they may attempt to explain that It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.

In comedy works, we (the audience) might not hear all the details of what happened while a character was under the influence, just humorous and tantalizing hints to feed our imaginations.

The Alcohol-Induced Idiocy trope can also be used as An Aesop about the dangers of over-consuming alcohol and drunk driving.

Unfortunately, instances of Alcohol-Induced Idiocy are so common that this is Truth in Television, and studies have shown that even casual booze consumption can cause cognitive decline.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Boarding School Juliet, the recently-heartbroken Hazuki gets drunk and challenges a White Cat leader to race her up a mountain the next morning. (She also bets her friendship with their shared crush on the outcome.) Because of the setting's unrealism and the intervention/near-death of a third party, this doesn't end as badly as it could have, though it is still considered an incredibly dumb idea in-universe.
  • In Brave10, a gargantuan magical crab attacks Jinpachi's ship in the middle of the drinking challenge against the Braves and the sailors are freaking out trying to get away from it when Kamanosuke happens to note it looks tasty. Isanami and the others concur, and next thing you know Saizo is killing it with his ninja techniques and asking Jinpachi to fry it with his lightning powers. This kind of reckless behaviour is what gets Jinpachi to join up with them.
  • This is the reason Inukai from Flying Witch turned into a dog-person. She got drunk off her ass and decided to snack on some magical chocolate designed to turn people into animals, refusing to listen when the creator of the chocolates told her that the spell wasn't ready yet.
  • Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun: Volume 8's extras has an omake where Kashima asks Hori to pay her head and hug him while he's gotten drunk off of brandy cake. The loud noises and Kashima looking disheveled as she goes to tell Nozaki and Mikoshiba, who are outside the same room as those two, make them realize it kinda seems just like when Hori's angry and beating Kashima up if they can't see it with their own eyes.

    Comedy 
  • Quite a few of these pop up for Blue Collar Comedy. Bill Engvall has a bit about drinking a Bahama Mama while high on Vicodin which lead to him wandering off and agreeing to go parasailing with some strangers, and there's also Ron White's infamous "thrown out of a bar in New York" routine (which has him admit to a previous arrest where he decided to screw with the officer by giving "Tator Salad" as an alias, which went on his record).
  • John Mulaney has had to give up drinking entirely because of his previous tendency to drink until he blacked out and wake up to strange consequences. Among other things, he's mentioned waking up with more money than he started the evening with (something he considers more unsettling than waking up to find he has less money than he started with), drinking a bottle of what could either have been whiskey or perfume ("It's perfume!"), and wondering if he stole some antique wedding pictures from the house of a classmate who threw a party there (it turns out he didn't. Another classmate apparently had a habit of doing that).
  • Mike Birbiglia's tale about being drunk at a laundromat, which involved him believing he was in a submarine "in a sea of dirty panties, with an all-Spanish crew!"

    Comic Books 
  • Very often in Asterix:
    • In The Laurel Wreath, Vitalstatistix and Obelix both overindulge at a family gathering, prompting Vitalstatistix to make a suicidal bet that he can bring them a stew spiced with Caesar's laurel wreath, and Obelix to enthusiastically endorse this stupid idea until there's no way anyone can back down — slurring "zigactly!" ("farpaitement!" in French). Asterix spends much of the rest of the adventure passive-aggressively using the word "zigactly" to remind Obelix of how much of a fool he made of himself.
    • In Asterix in Britain, the Roman soldiers are forced to sample hundreds of wine barrels to find one that contains magic potion. The unit starts out perfectly coordinated as they tap open the barrels, drink a little, and move to the next ones. We watch over the panels as everyone gets progressively less coordinated until they're lying in unconscious piles, at which point the Roman who did get magic potion decides to start a fight.
    • In The Chieftain's Shield, a Roman soldier, frequently disciplined for his excessive drinking, is ordered to dress as a Gaul and infiltrate a bar to seek information. As soon as he gets out of his superior's sight he makes a beeline for the bar, gets hammered and starts talking in Latin phrases, declining his Alcohol Hic as 'hic! haec! hoc!', and complaining about his Centurion, making his disguise so pathetic that the Gauls express a certain amount of pity for him. While it goes without saying that he learns nothing about the location of the shield, he does manage to blatantly give away every detail of the Romans' plot to find it.
    • Tremensdelirius, The Alcoholic legionary in Caesar's Gift, is made of this trope. He begins the story by sneaking off to get drunk the day before his retirement, and, despite being urged to keep quiet so the rest of the army doesn't find him, decides to start singing really loudly. When he gets discovered, he starts badmouthing Julius Caesar. When Caesar, who is preparing land gifts for the retiring legionaries, finds out, he decides to give Tremensdelirius the deeds to the Gaulish village full of super-powered Roman-hating madmen, in full knowledge that when Tremensdelirius goes to claim the land the villagers will make his life a living hell. On his way there, Tremensdelerius gets drunk and swaps the absurdly valuable deed with an innocent innkeeper in return for wine.
  • In The Autumnlands: Tooth & Claw the refugees of Keneil are specifically instructed not to start fires. They later get intoxicated and do just that which causes them to be attacked by giant bats.
  • The Avengers: During Under Siege, part of Zemo's plan of attack is getting Hercules completely piss drunk before he attacks. Thanks to a Honey Trap, it works. Even when Captain America and Wasp intercept him, he's too drunk to bother listening to Wasp and charges right on into the Mansion anyway. He gets nearly beaten to death for his troubles.
  • In an early issue of Boneyard, Ralph takes Michael out drinking. One panel of what happened shows a very soused Michael glaring angrily at a giant monster while Ralph eggs him on. It doesn't show the results but Michael wakes up feeling pretty bad in the morning.
  • Captain Haddock of Tintin practically lives by this trope. Highlights include: knocking out an airplane pilot mid-flight for not letting him use the controls, diving into the ocean without his helmet on, lighting a bonfire in a lifeboat, and exiting a space rocket to try to float back to earth. The bonfire example even made it into the film adaptation. He then has an appropriate Oh, Crap! reaction and attempts to put it out... by pouring whiskey on it. Cue big freakin' fireball.

    Comic Strips 
  • Bloom County:
    • Steve Dallas has a tendency to exhibit this after imbibing too much.
    • Opus, years later, gets into a scandal when he makes some offensive remarks after drinking too much, parodying the infamous Anti-Semitic remarks of Mel Gibson during his arrest for DUI.
  • When Farley covered the National Park Olympics, the most popular event was the Get Drunk and Do Something Stupid Freestyle.

    Fan Works 
  • The main premise of the Kingdom Hearts fanfic 11 Drunk Nobodies Play Slender is that the Organization gets drunk and this happens.
  • Boldores And Boomsticks:
    • The first time Yang got into Qrow's alcohol stash she thought her reflection was a separate person, so she broke all the mirrors she could find before begging Zwei not to leave her for said reflection.
    • The last time Will was in Alola, he got drunk at a bar and threatened a biker with "mind bullets".
  • The Cabin Fever fic, Cabin Fever: Parting Shot, which revolves around a set of Wild Beach Parties, is drenched in this trope. Everything from a rifle shooting contest between competitors who can barely stand upright, to drunken night swimming, and of course, copious impulsive sexual encounters between people with elevated blood alcohol levels.
  • The Chosen Six: Two Slytherin students, still under the effects of firewhiskey, decide to disguise themselves as werewolves during the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw Quidditch match... while Fenrir Greyback and his pack are rampaging across Britain. End result? Over 30 students injured in a stampede, five of which severely, and the two dumbasses expelled.
  • The Dance Is Not Over:
    • Ser Richard, the castellan of Deep Den decides that he needs several drinks when King Deaton lands his dragon outside the hostile castle at the end of the War of the Lions. Richard then surrenders, but his intoxication makes him slur or mispronounce many words, beg not to be fed to Tessarion, and babble about his Awful Wedded Life before he passes out. Also, his parlay flag is soaked with wine and he can barely stand. Once Richard wakes up with a hangover and recalls how many noblemen he humiliated himself in front of, he begs to be told that it was All Just a Dream.
    • When Eldric Arryn is exiled from the Vale for cuckolding Lady Arryn's heir and provoking a duel with him, he demands a trial by combat and requires a champion to fight for him after said heir cuts off his sword arm. The only champion he can find is Ser Yorbert, an alcoholic knight of House Lipps. Yorbert arrives to the trial late and drunk, and bumps into Eldric as he approaches the battlefield. He mistakes Eldric for his opponent, accuses Eldric of ambushing him before the fight could start, and starts dueling the man he came to defend. Throughout the duel, Yorbert rants about his nonexistent military exploits and staggers around so clumsily that Eldric survives the encounter with just a missing ear.
  • Demon's Luck has a drunk Hiashi bet all of his winnings plus two Hyuga maidens because he's confident he'll beat Naruto's lucky streak with his two kings; unfortunately for Hiashi, he only has one king and his drunken state just made him see double. Naruto promptly beats him.
  • Doing It Right This Time ends Chapter 4 with Gendo having a vaguely-described but very eventful evening in which he caused a minor riot and/or spontaneous mosh pit at a karaoke bar, wrote up an ad for a dating site that massively breached security ("Professional male, 48, single parent, WLTM woman 50-35 for casual social dates with a view to LTR. Must not be interested in throwing off the shackles of humanity and ascending to become an immortal godlike space robot.") and eventually ended up wandering the streets with no trousers on and clutching a traffic cone before being carted off by the police.
  • Not with alcohol, but with a Fantastic Drug substance called moonberries in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "The New Shop In The Village", where the Smurfs in their euphoric high from eating the berries start eating the roof of the shop, believing that the mushrooms that make up Smurf houses have magical properties in them that can produce hallucinations.
  • In Finding Joy in Your Long-Distance Relationship- the sequel to Worlds Apart- Giles falls victim to the enchanted beer rather than Buffy when he buys a drink to justify visiting Xander at the bar, although 'Caveman Giles' is more interested in making a fort out of books than attacking anyone.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic novel Fools And Drunks, this is how Snips and Snails wind up trapped in Sunney Towne.
  • A very popular subject of Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfiction, such as this, is having one or several of the Nations going out, getting hammered, and doing incredibly stupid things after. This is probably popularized by the fact that in canon, England, at the very least, can't hold his liquor at all, Germany and Prussia drink beer constantly, and the Nations aren't shown as being the most restrained of people even when sober.
  • The main force behind the fic, It Seems Like a Good Idea at the Time by Livin4Jesus. It features Tony and Clint getting drunk and doing stupid stuff.
  • The Kedabory Verse:
    • Anything for Family: Joker downs a whole bottle of rum and then acts weird during the night. He is unable to form coherent sentences and becomes uncharacteristically friendly.
    • Junior Officers
      • In his birthday chapter, Shellington acts like a dolt after downing five pints of beer.
      • In "Ladies Night", Dashi gets hammered in Hobart, Australia and proceeds to ramble like an idiot before eventually passing out completely drunk.
    • Shining and Sweet: Several of the boxers act foolish while drunk, including Aran Ryan stripping to his underwear and Don Flamenco chasing others with a guitar.
  • From Kill la Kill AU, we have the resident alcoholic Rei Hououmaru (otherwise known "Rei the Drunk Secretary") and, being rarely sober, she is prone to some hijinks, i.e sending kids on a beer run (subsequently getting herself whacked in the head with a baseball bat) or getting jailed for drunk driving, along with breaking & entering and assault & battery. Apparently, she is a third time offender on two of those accounts. Her drunken hijinks was also what put Soichiro in the hospital, which explains why he was absent in the Christmas pic.
  • When we're introduced to Vinyl Scratch in chapter 2 of A Kingdom Divided, she gets drunk, destroys her hotel room, and enlists to the Moon Army.
  • A Moon and World Apart: In chapter 4, Sunset recalls a party she'd attended where a thestral indulged in this, uttering the phrase "Hold my beer and watch this" before demonstrating his ability to use sonar and proving that with it, he could avoid any obstacle in his path without ever once opening his eyes in the process. Said demonstration also ended with a desperate need to repair Celestia's study and bribing her phoenix not to rat on them.
  • My Huntsman Academia: While Izuku is good at keeping his drinking in moderation, he doesn't think things through when he's feeling tipsy. While drinking at Ruby's birthday party, he intentionally pisses Katsuki off by stomping on one of his Berserk Buttons, getting chased around town for his troubles.
  • My Venom Academia: Symbiote's Justice: Volcano's initial refusal to let both Dusty and Gust have alcohol for their dinner is because of their one mission in Berlin on Oktoberfest, where the two got drunk and nearly blew up Brandenburg Gate.
  • In the Crack Fic The Night The House of Card Was Built, the High-Stakes Poker Game that Naruto attends has most of the players drinking alcohol, so it was inevitable that drunken idiocy would happen. In fact, the reason the poker game is so high-stakes is because the adults are drunk, which has them wager lots of money, expensive property, and even family members.
  • Robb Returns: After Robert disinherits him, Joffrey gets drunk and thinks that killing Robb and presenting his head to Tywin will somehow force his father to restore him to the Princedom.
  • The Smeet Series: In the third story, Indokani, Red gets so drunk while at a Sobrekt bar that he doesn't hesitate to sign off on Skoodge and Bob's rather idiotic idea to bet the Massive against a Sobrekt captain in a game. The next day, he's horrified when he realizes what he's done especially as Skkodge and Bob lost their bet.
  • Strange New World: The Phantom Thieves are investigating the abuses that are occuring at Kunizaku Okumura's factory. While doing reconaissance at one of the local taverns, Ryuji and Yusuke decide to mingle with some of Okumura's workers there. It ends with both of them getting completely smashed by the time the rest of the gang catches up to them. At one point, Ryuji blurts out that he and his gang are the Phantom Thieves, but everyone thinks he's so drunk that they dimiss his words as the ramblings of a drunken fool. Meanwhile, Yusuke starts spouting drunken haiku's, much to Futaba's delight.
  • Hilariously zigzagged in The Whiskey Revolution, where Lelouch starts drinking whiskey after Nunnally was seemingly killed by the F.L.E.I.J.A.. While he acts a bit more reckless, he's capable of achieving a few insights, such as calling out the Black Knights for trying to usurp him when they thought they were under his total control from his Geass, instead of acting like it was true to protect Kallen as in canon.
  • With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:

    Films — Animation 
  • Dumbo: While drunk, the clowns suggest Dumbo can survive a thousand-foot drop because they believe elephants are made of rubber.
  • In The Great Mouse Detective, Professor Ratigan congratulates himself on his outstanding villainy and celebrates with his minions in a Villain Song. One of them, Bartholomew, gets so drunk that he unwittingly calls his master a rat (which he is), Ratigan's Berserk Button. He takes Bartholomew out of his hideout and serves him up to his pet cat Felicia for lunch.
  • Treasure Island (1988) clearly attributes the majority of pirates' failures to this. In particular, Trelawny disposes of a dozen or more pirates using a plywood cutout of a bar selling fresh "rom" on the edge of a cliff. One of them even lags behind, sees the others all fall off the cliff, but still runs through it anyway.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Another Round: When the teachers decide to advance their drinking experiment into drinking to blackout, they go to a bar and go crazy, stealing liquor from behind the bar, standing on tables and jumping into the crowd.
  • In Barbarian, A.J. gets drunk and leaves a (lousy) apology to the co-star he raped, despite being told explicitly by his lawyer not to do that.
  • Best Night Ever is set at bachelorette weekend in Las Vegas and after the heroine and her friends start partying... well remember the photo montage at the end of The Hangover? Essentially that only female and in live action.
  • In Birds of Prey (2020), Harley says that she has all of her best ideas while drunk. This includes stealing a tanker and using it blow up Ace Chemicals. This very public breakup with the Joker paints a huge target on her back.
  • In Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, this turns out to have set off the entire plot. David drunkenly tried to open a wine bottle with his kukri for a TikTok video, and accidentally slit his own throat in the process. When the others discover his body and the bloody kukri lying next to it, they assume somebody murdered him, plunging them into a self-destructive cycle of paranoia that couldn't possibly be helped by their own inebriated states.
  • The Cherokee Kid: After Isaiah drinks liquor for the first time, he tries to kill a bear with his bare hands.
  • At the beginning of Cool Hand Luke, the title character vandalizes some parking meters after imbibing too much. Things don't get better for him afterward.
  • Doctor... Series:
    • In Doctor at Sea, Chippie's drinking habit leads him to have nasty turns and get violent.
    • In Doctor at Large, Kitty has a tantrum over not being able to see Dr. Potter-Shine, which she later blames on the brandy she had at lunch.
  • The backstory to Dogma is caused by this. Loki was the Angel of Death until the Tenth Plague, where afterwards, he and his friend Bartleby get drunk. Bartleby talks him into quitting, so an inebriated Loki goes to God, turns in his flaming sword, and gives God the finger. They're both kicked out of Heaven as punishment, and the Metatron, the voice of God, laments that it ruined things for everyone else, because after that, God forbade angels from imbibing alcohol (as soon as they drink it, they immediately spit it back out).
  • In Dr. Strangelove, when President Muffley talks to Premier Kissov on the phone, it's obvious that Kissov is drunk, even though we only hear one side of the conversation. When you consider the high stakes involvednote , this is the ultimate case of a bad time to be drunk.
  • The plot of Fantastic Four (2015) hinges on this. The team get their powers after Reed Richards, Johnny Storm and Victor Von Doom all get absolutely hammered and decide to drunk-drive into another dimension through an untested-on-humans dimensional transporter. Yes, really.
  • The Fly (1986): In retrospect, Seth Brundle should've waited until he was sober before deciding whether or not to test his matter teleportation device on himself.
  • It is unlikely that any of the bad events of The Gravedancers would have transpired had not Harris, Kira and Sid been drunk enough to think dancing on graves was a good idea.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) sees Drax "The Destroyer," drunk off his ass, decide that calling the genocidal Knight Templar and telling him where the Guardians and the MacGuffin they possess are located was something approaching a decent plan — in smaller words, he drunk-dialed Ronan.
  • At the beginning of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Harry meets his childhood love, Harmony... only to get drunk and sleep with her friend.
  • In The Longest Yard former pro football quarterback (Burt Reynolds in the original, Adam Sandler in the remake) steals his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend's car and leads the cops on a drunken chase, finally getting caught after he crashes and wrecks the car.
  • In A Man Called Horse, John's hired workers drunkenly fire their guns at a metal tub, attracting the attention of nearby Sioux.
  • In the Romantic Comedy The Marrying Kind, Chet Keefer gets drunk on cocktails, and then dances the rhumba with a slinky, attractive woman, and much to his wife's astonishment, kisses her at the end of their dance.
  • After drinking all night, the three main characters of My Effortless Brilliance decide to go hunt a cougar in the middle of the night.
  • The Newton Boys: Jess Newton (one of the last gang members to be captured) buries his cut of the Train Job loot in the desert while he and his taxi driver are both drunk and neither of them can remember where to find it afterward. His brother Willis is not amused.
  • Captain Jack Sparrow often stumbles & slurs his words, but he is the best Pirate anyone has ever seen. In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, his alcoholism turns him into this trope by causing him to trade his magic compass for a bottle of rum. Doing so releases the vengeful ghosts of the Spaniards he'd trapped in a magic prison decades ago, allowing them to come looking for him for revenge.
  • Please Turn Over: Two examples from Naked Revolt:
    • Aunt Una gets drunk in Dr. Gay's office and makes a spectacle of herself in front of Blanche, eventually passing out on the floor.
    • After Stella leaves Roger, he drinks scotch until he can hardly walk straight and mistakes a mirror for a coatrack.
  • Raising the Wind:
    • After drinking a few large brandies, a drunken Mervyn sells a tune to Sid and Harry, unaware that the tune in question is an existing piece of music (the "Alexandra Valtz"), putting him at risk of losing his scholarship and Sid and Harry at risk to get sued for using an existing tune.
    • After Mervyn, Malcolm, and Alex go out drinking with Jill, they return to their digs roaringly drunk and singing inanely as Jill tries to get them to their rooms.
  • Played for Drama in P.L. Travers's backstory in Saving Mr. Banks. Her father's alcoholism caused him to do truly stupid things like fight with clients at the bank, which in turn caused him to nearly be fired (he's only saved because his boss can't bring himself to fire him while his daughter's there). This eventually leads to him getting drunk before giving a speech honoring employees at the bank, which starts off decently and ends with him getting more and more disoriented until he stumbles off the stage.
  • The Titfield Thunderbolt: After spending some time drowning their sorrows over the wreck of the engine, Dan and Mr. Valentine decide to borrow a temporary replacement from the nearest big railway shed. Because they are drunk, rather than doing the smart thing and telephoning the shed, they go there to borrow an engine without asking the foreman, and end up driving it off the turntable onto bare ground, through the streets, and into a park where the locomotive stops when it crashes into a tree offscreen.
  • Deconstructed in Unforgiven. There is no source of clean water in the old west so everyone drinks whiskey. All of the horrible things that Will Munny had done in the past happened because he was dead drunk most of the time.
  • The Wedding Year: Mara meets Jake's ex-girlfriend Nicole at a wedding, then gets drunk out of insecurity, challenges Nicole to a dance-off while barely able to stand, yells at Nicole to stay away from her man, and throws up in the champagne bucket.

    Literature 
  • As P.J. O'Rourke explained in Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, his short story "So Drunk" about going on a bender with several of his friends and having all kinds of stupid drunken adventures was the only piece that National Lampoon refused to publish; the reason for this being that mostly the only sponsors willing to advertise in the magazine were liquor companies. When he was considering protesting to his boss about freedom of expression and First Amendment rights and so forth, his boss convinced him to drop the matter by inviting him to have another drink.
  • Bazil Broketail:
    • When an expeditionary force consisting of Argonathi legions and their Czardhan and Kassim allies arrives at the besieged Og Bogon capital of Koubha, one of the Czardhan knights, Hervaze of Gensch, gets drunk and comes up with the bright idea to challenge Bazil to a Duel to the Death, intending to keep his head as a trophy. Never mind that Bazil is a soldier of an allied army, nor that he's currently unarmed. Hervaze gets knocked off his horse for his trouble, though not without seriously injuring the dragon.
    • After ingesting some liquid courage, a street thug in Marneri named Kuvsly thinks it is a good idea to call Bazil an "overgrown lizard" to his face. The first time he says it, Bazil just gives him a Death Glare. When he proves stupid enough to ignore the warning and is about to say that again, he doesn't get to finish the sentence.
      Kuvsly: Forget about it, you overgrown— [cue Tail Slap]
  • In the original book of Roald Dahl's The BFG, after the giants are captured and imprisoned in a deep pit, three particularly drunk and silly men decide it's a good idea to climb over the fence keeping people from falling in. They, naturally, fall in, and are equally naturally gobbled down by the ravenous giants. Warning signs are then put around the fence to prevent this happening again — though how it's supposed to stop drunkards like these again isn’t exactly clear.
  • In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", Fortunato suspects nothing of Montresor luring him into the catacombs under his palazzo largely because he is drunk.
  • Played for Laughs in the Conrad Stargard series. The time-traveling protagonist gets drunk with an innkeeper, buys his inn and lays plans for the first Playboy Club in medieval Poland. On sobering up and pondering My God, What Have I Done? (as he's supposed to be Giving Radio to the Romans to fight an impending genocidal Mongol invasion) he tries to sneak out but is intercepted by the innkeeper, who reveals that he's already started hiring.
  • Discworld:
    • In Feet of Clay, Nobby gets more and more into the idea that he's the Earl de Nobbes the drunker he gets, and completely fails to notice that the other working class patrons of the Mended Drum don't share his enthusiasm.
      Nobby: You could — you could have my head up over the door!
      Bartender: (looking at crowd) Could be.
    • This is how Rincewind accidentally invents Vegemite in The Last Continent. Drinking beer and trying to figure out how to make soup without water, it occurs to him that the beer is practically made out of the same stuff as bread, so boiling it up with dried vegetables and salt in it would probably be better than using water. Then he passes out, and wakes to find a weird yeasty brown stuff in the bottom of the tin.
      Exactly the sort of idea that sounds really good around one o'clock in the morning when you've had too much to drink.
  • In A Dollar To Die For, Tuco wakes up with a hangover to find the Apaches raiding the town of Tyopa, and forgetting that he buried the gold and thinking that the Apaches are going after the gold, he charges them with a stolen sword rather than sneaking away like he normally would.
  • Dragon Queen: the old man acts crazier when he's drunk.
  • The Drawing of the Dark, a novel that is, at least in part, about a 16th century bouncer at a bar in Vienna, contains numerous examples, including Duffy, the bouncer in question, starting a drunken barfight to prevent a drunken barfight.
  • This trope is more or less the entire plot summary of the Stephen King short story Drunken Fireworks. When two families of wealthy career alcoholics kindle a rivalry over that year's Fourth of July sparklers, hilarity ensues.
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl: Turns out that the reason Bea posted the pic of her cheating on Carl (which indirectly led to Carl surviving the Collapse) was because she was drunk, and her boytoy convinced her it was a good idea. She was so broken up over losing Carl that she left her vacation early, came back to Seattle, and survived the Collapse.
  • Family Tree Series:
    • Zander stumbles about, giggles, and acts a general fool when he's been drinking. Abby pleads with him to at least not drink in front of the children, but he calls her a nag for it. This includes chasing his hat when it blows off his head while he's on a ferry. He falls overboard and drowns in the river because of this.
    • Richard, who's been drinking himself, gets in the car with his Drunk Driver friend Seth behind the wheel. He's the only survivor of the two-car accident that kills Seth, his other friend, and Georgie's music teacher who was in the car they hit.
  • Many, many scenes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas occur, and could only have occurred, while the protagonists are 'horribly twisted' from massive amounts of alcohol and other mind altering substances. Who would ask for someone to throw a plugged-in tape recorder into the bathtub with him while sober?
  • After Cardan, in The Folk of the Air, manages to avoid being assassinated by getting black out drunk and missing the party, he then very nearly squanders this stroke of fortune by stumbling around drunk in the aftermath, aware that he very narrowly missed a beheading but not aware enough of his situation to think to lay low, nor to question when the daughter of a general who is out for his blood takes him by the arm and starts dragging him around.
  • In Gene Stratton-Porter's Freckles, Freckles is certain that Wessner will not have the courage to return, unless he's half-drunk.
  • Gotrek & Felix: The dwarf Slayer Gotrek saves Felix's life by pulling him away from a cavalry charge sent to suppress a political protest turned riot Felix had participated in, followed by the two going to a tavern. When Felix sobers up, he learns that he agreed to become Gotrek's rememberer, that is, to follow Gotrek around the world as Gotrek seeks to find a foe capable of finishing him off and write down the Slayer's final moments. Problem is Gotrek is just too good a fighter to die (to his chagrin), so he and Gotrek have been at it for more than two decades.
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid was tricked into revealing the secret to getting past the three-headed dog guarding the Philosopher's Stone by "Quirrelmort". This was helped along by Quirrelmort ingratiating himself with Hagrid by offering to sell him a dragon egg (Hagrid had always dreamed of raising a dragon) and buying him drink after drink.
  • Used a lot in Jeeves and Wooster:
    • Apparently, it's a bad idea to try to steal a policeman's helmet when there's a policeman inside it.
    • The ultimate example against which all others in the canon must be compared is probably Gussie Fink-Nottle's inebriated speech at the Market Snodsbury Grammar School prize-giving in Right Ho, Jeeves.
  • In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Childermass' research indicates that Clegg was a very capable and clever servant while sober, but would occasionally go on wild destructive drinking binges. His master, ignorant of this tendency, eventually entrusted him to deliver a priceless book of magic, but on the way he got into a drinking contest and after two days and two nights straight of carousing accepted a dare to eat the book. Upon sobering up he realized the depth of his mistake and fled, eventually being caught and becoming the last person in England to be hanged for book murder, the crime of destroying a book of magic, while the son he sired in the meantime was born with the book inscribed on his skin.
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with the protagonist, Michael Henchard, getting drunk at a fair and, sick of quarrelling with his wife, auctioning her and their infant daughter off to the highest bidder (something he has threatened to do before). When he sobers up the next morning, he is horrified by the realisation of what he has done, but as their buyer, Richard Newson, was a sailor not local to the area, he has no idea where his wife and daughter have gone, and swears off alcohol for twenty-one years as penance.
  • One Nation, Under Jupiter: Getting drunk on the Bacchanalia inspires Diagoras to pull out his gun at the Temple of Bacchus.
  • The Red Dwarf series of novels elaborate on Dave Lister's circumstances of joining the Jupiter Mining Corps ship the franchise is named for; to celebrate his 24th birthday Lister and his friends went on a monopoly themed pub crawl, during which he forgot where to go, so he stepped out to buy a monopoly board, saw an ad in the cab about demi-lightspeed zippers to Mars, and woke-up in women's underwear with a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstein, on Mimas a moon of Saturn.
    • The third arc of the first book was also added by heavy alcohol. With it looking like the crew can make it back to Earth, they throw a farewell party and get drunk. This results in Cat wandering off and finding a stash of Better Than Life game sets to try out. Lister and Rimmer follow him in under the tipsy belief they could talk him out, only to get addicted as well.
  • The Relativity story "5:24 AM" takes place before the start of the series, when Ravenswood was an alcoholic. At one point, he is given a vital clue (a photograph) while he's drunk, and in the morning he can't find it. Thanks to his drinking, he can't remember anything that happened after receiving the photo. He assumes his drunk self must have thrown it away for some reason, but he really has no idea.
  • The Saga of the Jomsvikings: Sigvaldi and the other Jomsvikings get wasted at a feast prepared for them by King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark. The king then suggests for them all to make vows about heroic achievements they are going to accomplish; Sigvaldi takes the bait and vows that he will conquer Norway, and the other Jomsvikings vow they will support him in that. The next morning, a sobered-up Sigvaldi realizes they have publicly committed themselves to a goal that may be too big for them. Context implies this was all in the intent of King Svein, who saw to that the strongest beer would be served to the Jomsvikings.
  • Seven Brothers: After the brothers have begun farming, and making their own spirits from the grain (and drinking it), Simeoni and Eero are sent to the city to sell rye and spirits and buy high-quality food and drink so that the brothers can properly celebrate Michaelmas. They return over a week later, empty-handed, with all the money wasted on more liquor and pastries in the city, and with their horse suffering from lack of food.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire has a few spectacular examples. Generally attached to the premise that great quantities of alcohol are best kept away from lots of power, responsibility and/or socially precarious positions.
    • Getting drunk and insulting not only your sister's husband, but his entire people quite publicly? And then threatening to cut your sister's unborn child out? Not clever, Viserys Targaryen. Not clever at all.
    • Before the series proper even began, Prince Aerion "Brightflame" demonstrated that, after a long drinking session, it's not, perhaps, the wisest move to try turning into a dragon by finishing up with the local equivalent of Greek Fire crossed with napalm by way of white phosphorous as a chaser.
    • Cersei and Tyrion Lannister can certainly drink themselves into deep trouble if you let them — but, at least he can talk himself back out of it more often than not (if in a somewhat mangled condition). When given enough chance to, that is. While Cersei manages to run the kingdom into the ground over only a few months via a host of extremely dumb moves, all of them fueled by blinkered pride, denial and a tanker-load of booze.
    • Or, how about Robert Baratheon — you can spot his IQ dropping with the number of goblets or wineskins he's killed off: and, yes — it gets him killed by Hunting "Accident". Extra note: years of hiding in goblets didn't leave the Kingdom in either a good financial or political state, both of which contributed to your death, Mr. King. A lot of plot got kicked off by depressed avoidance...
  • Half the plot of Star Island is pop star Cherry Pye doing a variety of stupid things while drunk and/or on various drugs. The other half is a mix of paparazzi trying to catch those antics on camera and people trying to cover up those antics so that Cherry's career doesn't self-destruct... until after they've cashed in on her latest album.
  • Star Wars Expanded Universe
  • In The Pistoleer, a poker player, Frank, drunkenly accuses another of cheating. The "cheater" asks how he could be cheating, when Frank's doing all the winning. Frank stares at his pile for a second, before saying "Hell, maybe I'm the one's cheating." An observer has no idea how the accused cheater, a decent fellow, got into a poker game with a bunch of violent cattlemen, except that he was drinking more than usual, "which is sufficient explanation for almost any stupidity a man might do."
  • A plot point in the Robert E. Howard story The Shadow of the Vulture — a bunch of drunk and riled-up soldiers recklessly charging out the nearest gate of besieged Vienna to get at the surprised Turkish army just so happens to be the one thing that stops the Turks in turn from exploiting the breach in a wall caused by a mine that coincidentally happened to blow up just then. While it helps save the city, many of the soldiers involved themselves are less lucky once the Turks get over their initial surprise...
  • A moment of this is what really dooms the surveyor expedition the narrator is working for at the time in the first Winnetou novel. The Apaches were already not happy to find out about the plans to run a railway through their lands without anyone asking their permission, but it's when a drunk scout still smarting over Winnetou's refusal to take a drink with him actually tries to shoot him and hits and kills his old teacher instead that the last chance for an even halfway peaceful resolution goes out of the window.
  • Wulfrik: At the victory feast of the Battle of the Thousand Skulls where he personally killed the enemy king Torgal of the Aeslings, Wulfrik manages to polish off eight barrels of mead (a feat that impresses the ogre mercenaries). Unfortunately, it also gets him to start boasting of his exploits, by the end of which he's personally punched three emperors, killed two of every horrible thing in the Chaos Wastes, and declared himself the equal of any warrior or beast in the world. The Chaos Gods decided to hold him to that by sending him visions of enemies he must kill all around the world, and he spends the book trying to get rid of the curse as it prevents him from becoming king of his tribe. By the end, he realizes it's not a curse but a blessing, and readily serves the gods as the High Executioner of Chaos.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Alias: This is what leads to Daniel Hecht's death in the series premiere. After finding out Sydney Bristow is a spy and having a falling out with her, he gets drunk, calls her while she's away on a mission, and leaves a rambling voicemail begging her to come home and reconciling with her in spite of her job. Unfortunately, he lets slip that he knows about Sydney's occupation, and it just so happens SD-6 was monitoring the call. Cue Sydney returning home and finding Danny's body in the bathtub.
  • Aranyélet: Janka's drunken speech at the Beatrix festival in season 3 (where she calls out the hypocrisy and pettiness of the villages plus the neo-nazi leanings of her main supporter and her son, among other things) is a prime example, even if all she said is true.
  • The plot of Ash vs. Evil Dead kicks off when Ash and some unnamed chick he picked up for a one night stand recite some random passages from the Necronomicon while stoned.
  • Auf Wiedersehen, Pet has Neville experience the "wake up with an Embarrassing Tattoo" version.
  • In Better Call Saul, Howard is quite drunk when he comes to confront Jimmy and Kim at their apartment about how they've gone on a campaign to ruin his life. It then plays a factor in why he doesn't immediately leave when Lalo unexpectedly arrives, despite Jimmy and Kim having a terrified reaction to his presence, with the latter out and out urging Howard frantically to go. It ends with Lalo shooting Howard in the head, with Howard realizing he's in danger far too late.
  • Played for Drama in Breaking Bad, Walter White drinks a bit too much wine, and ends up telling Hank that Gale Boetticher may not be the real Heisenberg, right when he was about to give up the investigation. This ends up causing a ton of trouble, as Hank's continued hunt for Heisenberg eventually puts his own life and Walt's in danger, as Gus starts to get angry at Hank repeatedly getting way too close to finding his criminal empire and Walt not doing enough to stop him.
  • Lampshaded on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Beer Bad" with its Devolution Device plot that turns the college kids and Buffy into neanderthals. Played straight in "Life Serial" when Buffy goes out drinking with Spike, throws a punch at a Big Red Devil, and falls flat on her face.
  • Cheers:
    • In "Bar Bet", recovering alcoholic Sam suffers a relapse and drunkenly bets a man that if he hasn't married Jacqueline Bisset in one year, he'll let him have the bar. 364 days later, after Sam has long since sobered up and gone back on the wagon, the man shows up at the bar to collect on the bet.
    • In another episode, the guys play a game of poker where Cliff becomes increasingly belligerent as the game goes on due to the beer they've been drinking. This culminates in him trying to claim victory with a hand of unmatched cards and knocking the table over. Ironically, he hasn't actually been drinking alcohol. Earlier, Rebecca switched out the beer for near-beer when she discovered the bar's liquor license had expired.
  • Cobra Kai: Whenever a West Valley High student (or anyone else, for that matter) decides to pound a few, it would be easier to list the times when something bad doesn't happen. Given the youth and/or immaturity of many of the characters, the number of at least somewhat competent martial artists among them (as to be expected from a Sequel Series to The Karate Kid), and the ruthless attitudes encouraged by the Cobra Kai philosophy, adding alcohol to the mix leads to a number of mind-blowingly stupid decisions.
    • One of the best examples, late in the first season, is a drunk Miguel accidentally clobbering Samantha while trying to attack Robby.
    • In season 2, Samantha engages in a drinking contest with Tory, which she wins... but gets inebriated enough to kiss Miguel where Tory can see and be in no condition to return home, causing Robby to take her to crash at Johnny's place when the police arrive to break up the party. The latter act reignites Johnny and Daniel's feud due to the misunderstanding in the morning, and the former kicks off a massive school brawl that results in numerous injuries, including Sam getting her arm sliced open, and Miguel's near death.
  • The musical series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has the alcoholic Greg sing a happy Irish drinking song about how he's quitting drinking because of all the horrible stupid things he's done drunk (peeing his pants, trying to have sex with a bush, etc.).
  • Subverted in Downton Abbey. This trope seems to be the reason Tom goes on very rude political rant during dinner. Then, it turns out that one of the guests slipped something in his drink because he thought it'd be funny to see the Irish former-chauffeur in-law acting foolish. The rest of the family does not agree and are not amused.
  • Simon relates a story in Firefly about the tradition at the Medacad of celebrating graduation by getting drunk, climbing up a statue on the grounds, and singing the national anthem.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Viserys stumbles drunkenly into a Dothraki feast and proceeds to insult everyone and threaten them with a sword, breaking a major Dothraki taboo. Stupid as he may have been, it seems from his drunken behaviour that even Viserys needed some liquid courage to blunder forward.
    • Robert's demise comes at the tusks of a monstrous boar when he insists on delivering the final blow despite being so drunk he can barely stand. Though he may have had something more than wine as young Lancel Lannister was in charge of his wineskin and was suspiciously knighted soon afterwards.
    • Joffrey's tour of the Great Sept includes a stop at the tomb of Aerion Brightflame (Maester Aemon's Big Brother Bully), who died drunkenly believing drinking a cup of wildfire (a substance that is the universe's counterpart to Greek Fire and/or napalm) would turn him into a dragon.
    • In defiance of all warnings, Tyrion — who has been Drowning My Sorrows all the way from King's Landing — makes no attempt to hide his identity in a Volantene brothel, even talking openly about his former wealth and position.
  • In Happy Endings, the characters spend, by their own admission "half their lives" in Rosalita's, their favorite bar. But they usually don't get too drunk. Notable exceptions include the episode "Bo Fight", in which Dave, still reeling from Alex pulling a Runaway Bride on him, gets really drunk with Max and they go looking for Bo, the guy she (sort of) ran off with.
  • Happens often in Hardy Bucks, as the main cast is almost entirely composed of The Alcoholic. The most obvious case is when Eddie Durkan makes plans to meet with his Ex-Girlfriend for brunch to try and patch things up. The night before, he drunkenly invites everyone he knows to come over. Cue every other person dropping by one by one, ruining the make-up date, ending the relationship and sending Eddie into panic that lands him in the psychiatric hospital.
  • The Hexer:
    • Just like in the original short story, a few drunks decide to pester Geralt in an inn. He calmly announces that he's a witcher to them, but they have none of it and decide to go physical on a "fucking vagrant".
    • After a few rounds of alcohol-fortified interrogations, Geralt and Dandelion have to escape their current predicament in Nilfgaardian captivity. They decide to set the shed they are locked in on fire. Then they realise they still hadn't found the secret passage leading out of the Torture Cellar beneath it.
  • Homicide: Life on the Street: After Bolander and Felton's actors left the series, they were written out with the explanation that they had gotten drunk while at a policeman's conference and stripped naked in public, and had been suspended as punishment.
  • How I Met Your Mother has this all over the place. Ted's apartment is above a bar and they spend a lot of their free time there drinking. From time to time, one or more of them gets really drunk and does something really stupid. Played for Laughs.
    • The "Home Wreckers" episode had a game where the friends had to guess whether Marshal was drunk or a kid when he did something stupid like putting fireworks in the microwave (Drunk) or when he tried to ride his bike down an extension ladder from the roof of a two story house (Kid).
  • A common occurrence on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Justified since the main characters are alcoholic idiots who run a bar.
  • The Monk episode "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas" inverts it: Stottlemeyer figures out that casino mogul Daniel Thorn murdered his wife because consuming booze actually makes him more intellegent. He just can't remember how he solved it, and most of his subplot is him trying to figure out what the incriminating clue was and anything else he did on his bender, while fighting a hangover the next morning.
  • On My Name Is Earl, many of the misdeeds that Earl is trying to correct involved alcohol.
  • On the second season premiere of Shameless (US), the family patriarch is clearly soused when he decides that making a $10,000 bet (when he can barely afford his current booze bottle) is a good idea.
  • Any time the MythBusters have to get drunk on camera for a myth, hilarity of some kind is sure to ensue. The hangover myth (beer vs. beer and liquor) is a prime example; it includes Tory jumping into bed by climbing the wall outside the bedroom (rather than, you know, using the door to get in).
  • NickRewind: Face begins drunkenly trumpeting and injuring himself during the "Party Like It's the '90s" New Year's special after drinking a comically large amount of celebratory champagne.note 
  • Somewhere in the region of every third death on 1000 Ways to Die begins with the corpse-in-progress drinking.
  • SCTV: In a "Fishin' Musician" segment, we see the usually laid-back, jolly Gil Fisher (John Candy) on film stopping at a roadhouse with his guests. Already in a bad state from driving four days straight living on coffee and cigarettes, he rapidly downs a few boilermakers and tequila and grabs a waitress, antagonizes some Gestapo officers, and picks a fight with a little guy who flattens him. He gets to see it all caught on film on his show.
  • Single Drunk Female: Sam, when she's drunk, starts doing very stupid things like trying to drive. She ends up backing into a dumpster and then hits a nearby vehicle.
  • Inverted in Son of the Beach. Resident Dumb Blonde, B.J., actually becomes smarter whenever she's been drinking.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In Captain Sisko's backstory, he once got drunk and challenged a sober Vulcan to a wrestling match. Vulcans are three times stronger than humans, and much faster. Looking back, Sisko admits that he deserved the broken bones and bruised ego.
    • In one episode where Jake was trying to get a rare baseball card as a present for his father, he at one point accused a high-ranking ambassador of assassinating the man who had the card after the latter disappeared. Rather than admit what was really going on to Captain Sisko, he claimed he was drunk when it happened. Given that Jake was a minor, Captian Sisko was understandably furious at him.
  • And it happens on Reality Television, too. Anyone for Survivor?
  • Whether on the part of the client or the artist, this is a recurring issue on Tattoo Nightmares.
  • 21 Jump Street: Fear and Loathing with Russel Buckins: Normally responsible Tom Hanson gets drunk and next morning doesn't have any clear recognition of the night, but talking to his friend Russel finds out not only did he literally fight a bear in a bar, but he got a tattoo on his arm Fun fact. He freaks out when he sees it.
    Hanson: I can't believe you let me get a tattoo, how could you let me get a tattoo!
    Russel: Look, will you forget about the tattoo...
    Hanson: That's the thing, you can't forget about a tattoo!
  • In The Flash (2014), for Barry's bachelor party, Cisco prepares a special alcohol like the one he synthetized back in Season One so that he can enjoy a drink with the others. It gets Barry so drunk that he begins blurting out loud "I'M THE FLASH!" all over the bar. Luckily, he's so drunk nobody believes him.
  • This happens frequently in Workaholics, with the main characters often either at work, or drunk somewhere (usually on the roof of their house) — or both. In the episode "Real Time" they get drunk and leave their boss insulting voice-mails, and then try to race to the office ahead of her to delete them the next day. Only they're still drunk, and they keep drinking to avoid being hungover-which means they have to do everything from taking the bus, to stealing kids' bikes, to skitching to get to the office. When they could have just called a cab.
  • The Young Ones had a brilliant one in the second episode.
    Rick: It's nice to have a front door.
    Vyvyan: We had a front door in the last house.
    Rick: Yes, Vyvyan, but it was nailed to the ceiling in the living room.
    Vyvyan: So? I had to. I was drunk.

    Music 
  • The Dead Kennedys: "Too Drunk to Fuck"
  • In "My Name Is", by Eminem:
    I just drank a fifth of vodka. Dare me to drive?
  • hide's "Drink Or Die!!!" (English translation from Nopperabou.net)
    My fingers are shaking and my speech is slurred
    But I'm a 180% proof human firebomb
    From town to town, from bar to bar
    I'm an eternal alcohol gypsy
    Nihonshu, bourbon, beer with absinthe
    Shochu, doburoku, tequila
    I'm ready for anything, bring on the alcohol
    No use dreading the hospital now, will you drink?
    If you get hurt, why not party in Obstetrics and Gynecology?
  • Implied in Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville":
    Don't know the reason I stayed here all season
    With nothing to show but this brand-new tattoo,
    But it's a real beauty, a Mexican cutie—
    How it got here, I haven't a clue.
  • The young protagonist of Johnny Cash's "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" gets himself killed when his first-ever shot of strong liquor erases his caution. He breaks his promise to never draw his guns without provocation and is gunned down before he can fire once.
  • The Katy Perry song "Last Friday Night" has the singer piece together the various bits of Alcohol Induced Idiocy she had done during the previous night's bender - which included trashing the house, streaking in the park and having a threesome. Then she decided that she wanted to get just as drunk next weekend.
  • Mark Morton wrote "Redneck" as a self-deprecating song for Randy (who had to sing it), and specifically insulted his longstanding drinking problem and innumerable asinine drunken antics (particularly while onstage, as evidenced by the line "the laughingstock of your own fucking stage").
  • Little Big's "I'm ok" is pretty much about this, with the music video showing a bar full of people growing progressively drunker and more bumbling. Ilya challenges a man about twice his height and size while Sonya faceplants on the floor after climbing on top of the bar counter (though doesn't seem worse for wear). Through it all, the lyrics insist that they are ok and that they're not alcoholics.
  • "Bad Decisions" by RedHook:
    So why did I get drunk again,
    And get it on with all my friends?
    Did it with my best friend, and his roommate too
    And his roomate's girlfriend — hey, what's wrong with you?
  • Tom Waits' "Heartattack and Vine":
    Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk
  • From "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Tacky", a List Song about the many tacky habits and fashion choices of the narrator.
    I get drunk at the bank, and take off my shirt at least

    Myths & Religion 
  • Occurs in Aztec Mythology with the fall of the Wide-Eyed Idealist priest-king Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (a semi-divine king sometimes considered an incarnation of the god he's named for). Another god, Tezcatlipoca, hated his guts and had been trying to take him down for years. One day Tezcatlipoca had the idea of taking a mortal guise (something he was kinda known for, honestly), and talked his way into the palace to 'gift' Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl pulque (an alcoholic drink made from the maguey tree). As the priest-king was beloved by his people, and led a sheltered life as a priest, he'd never had booze or much reason to worry about ill intentions... Even ignoring that Tezcatlipoca had called the drink 'flesh' when asked. The king got fantastically drunk, and what happened next varies by story: the consistent bits are that the priest king coupled with a family member and the morning after took the news so badly that he felt the only way to regain his honor was by suicide. Though he did promise to return some day from his funeral pyre.
  • In The Bible, after the Ark safely weathers The Deluge, Noah plants a vineyard and proceeds to get drunk from the wine it produces. He winds up lying passed out and naked in his tent; one of his sons, Ham, sees him and goes and tattles to his brothers (which, in the morality of that society, is a major act of filial disrespect). Ham's brothers Shem and Japheth carefully cover their father with some clothing (even walking backwards so they don't accidentally see his nakedness). This act of drunken carelessness by Noah (previously described as "a just man and perfect in his generations" who "found grace in the eyes of the LORD") and the subsequent disrespect of Noah's son Ham for his father was believed to have far-reaching consequences, with Ham's son Canaan and his descendants divinely cursed to be servants to the descendants of Noah's other two sons, especially the Semites. The result was the fall of Canaan to the Israelites many centuries later.
  • In some versions of the story about the sinking of Ys from Celtic Mythology and French folklore, the Princess Dahut-Ahès gets drunk and opens the dike gate that protects the city from flooding at high tide during a storm.
  • Classical Mythology: This occurs in one of the myths of Hercules, in which the hero is being shown Sacred Hospitality by a friendly centaur who initially refuses to serve wine on the grounds that if Hercules had some the other centaurs would want some too, and drunk centaurs are not pleasant. Hercules insists so much on getting wine that the centaur finally gives in and, sure enough, everything goes as he expects. The ensuing brawl ends with Hercules using his arrows on the centaurs, which were poisoned by the Hydra's blood and thus bring instant death. It's made a perfect Downer Ending with the nice centaur and Chiron, a centaur who was a great thinker and tutor and who was only there to calm the others down, being hit with arrows. The nice centaur dies instantly, while the immortal Chiron is left in agony until Zeus takes pity and makes him a constellation.

    Radio 
  • BBC presenter Sarah Kennedy was frequently accused of Drinking on Duty. This was frequently alleged but never conclusively proven: medication issues and cumulative lack of sleep from several years of very early starts in the morning may have been the cause of the slurring and poor judgement calls. Shortly after leaving the BBC, however, Sarah lost her driving licence in a proven drunk-driving case.

    Video Games 
  • AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative Andes Komeji had the brilliant idea to steal a corpse from a serial killer to blackmail them. It went about as poorly as it could've gone.
  • In the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, Shepard has to bail out Grunt with C-Sec after he decided to celebrate his birthday with a wild night out on the Citadel, causing a lot of property damage in the process.
  • Deep Rock Galactic has the Abyss Bar, where you can play this trope straight. Drinking enough beers will have your dwarf start seeing double and stumble around while spouting stereotypical drunk one liners. However, the Smart Stout beer inverts this, which has your dwarf instead dispense either random rock and mineral trivia, getting some genuenly good ideas, or realizing something important.
  • Disco Elysium:
    • The game starts with the Player Character waking up after a three day bender with no memory of What Did I Do Last Night?... Or any other night for that matter. Playing through the first few days, you begin to piece together just some of the many idiotic things you did while blind drunk, including trashing your hotel room, breaking the sink in your hotel bathroom (which you share with your partner) and doing something in there which makes it smell indescribable, losing your badge, losing your gun, flushing your police paperwork down the toilet and blocking it for everyone, having a party on one of the rooftops, publicly threatening people with your police gun, publicly threatening to commit suicide with your police gun, selling your police gun to prevent yourself from actually killing yourself with it, using the proceeds to buy more booze, harassing a young female bartender so much that she quit a job she liked just so she'd never have to look at you again, driving your police car over a building into the sea (destroying an advertising billboard in the process, blocking all transport to the other side of town), reimagining yourself as an apocalyptic figure called "Tequila Sunset" and going drinking with a band of hobos before playing loud disco music on repeat in your room, followed by playing sad music and 'shouting along to it', followed by an attempt at either suicide or a suicidally irresponsible masturbation session. During the final conversation in the game you learn this behaviour is endemic and Harry has been repeating this same pattern for the last half decade.
    • The game's mechanics encourage this. Recreational drugs increase a specific primary stat, which boosts all the skills under that stat; the higher the skills go, the more likely they are to turn into an obsession, pushing your player character into doing and saying weird and stupid things. Alcohol is associated with the FYZ stat, which is something of a Token Evil Teammate stat; unlike INT, PSY and MOT, which can get pompous, delusional and fixated respectively but are largely benign, every skill under the umbrella of FYZ (apart from Shivers) has a stupid, aggressive, macho personality and encourages your player character towards paranoid violence, masochistic addiction-chasing and egomania. This simulates the lowered inhibitions, resistance to pain and emotional numbness caused by drinking. If you choose to embrace Fascism as a political ideology, you will get double the stat bonus from drinking alcohol, allowing you to discover new ways of destroying yourself, hurting others, and engaging in stupidity.
  • One quest in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim seems to be a Shout-Out to The Hangover. A guy in a tavern challenges you to a drinking contest. After four drinks, you black out... and wake up in the Temple of Dibella in Markarth. You then spend the next little while learning what you did last night due to Alcohol-Induced Stupidity, and trying to fix things. In the end, it turns out you were the victim of an elaborate prank by Sanguine, the Daedric Prince of Debauchery.
    • This is also the reason a particular bow & arrow shop is known as The Drunken Huntsman. One of the owners, Elrindir, explains that they got the name from an incident where he and this brother Anoriath went hunting after consuming too much alcohol. Long story short, Anoriath thought his brother was a deer and he was Shot in the Ass with an arrow.
  • Most of the Fallout series games have alcoholic drinks as consumables the player can use. Doing so temporarily lowers the player character's Intelligence and carries a chance of addiction, but also temporarily increases their charisma and/or strength due to Liquid Courage.
  • In Final Fantasy X, as the party prepares to cross the Moonflow, Auron recalls his previous trip to the Moonflow with the late Braska and Jecht, which ended in the alcoholic and drunk Jecht attacking a shoopuf, forcing Braska to pay for damages out of his own pocket. After that incident, Jecht never drank again.
  • In Firewatch, the very first task Henry is given is to hike to Jonesy lake to confront campers who are illegally setting off fireworks that could start a forest fire. It turns out to be a pair of a obnoxious teenagers who are very drunk that are responsible.
  • God of War (PS4): When Mimir recounts the story of how he got bifrost crystals for eyes, he states that he got so drunk to dull the pain that he tried convincing the Jotnar to put the crystals in his nipples instead. Apparently, he nearly talked them into actually doing it too.
  • One of the starter quest options for Norn characters in Guild Wars 2 basically has your character and a Charr drinking buddy reenacting Dude, Where's My Car? with a Charr war machine you lost at the last moot.
    Mangonel Gearstrip: Hey, Slayer? Any luck remembering where we took it? I remember driving through snow, trying to spell "JORMAG EATS DUNG!" That was your idea.
    Player Character: I'm still drawing a blank. I vaguely remember doing swan dives off the cannon into the lake.
  • In Kingdom of Loathing, getting too drunk results in normal adventures being overridden by Drunken Stupors, which occasionally result in very stupid actions.
  • Many Red Dead Redemption 2 players remember the early story mission "A Quiet Time". It entails Arthur Morgan and his friend Lenny heading to a saloon to relax. What started as a plan on having only "one drink" culminates in them drinking much, much more than one. Bar brawls, line dances, slap fights, attempts to evade arrest, and a monstrous hangover ensue. The mission also gave us the sight of an outlaw drunk off his ass shouting "LENNY!" every six seconds, something that would become one of Roger Clark'snote  most requested lines.
    Deputy: You... stop right now, you drunken fool! I said stop!
    Arthur: I'M AN AMERICAAAN!
  • Rise of the Third Power: While he isn't exactly bright when sober, Rowan tends to have loose lips when drunk, which Sparrow takes advantage of to get intel on the Resistance. When this gets the rest of the Resistance killed, Rowan gives up on alcohol for the rest of the game.
  • Jake Hama of The Secret World is frequently guilty of this - especially given that he's such a drunkard that you can track him down just by following the empty bottles he's left in his wake.
    • To begin with, he thought it was a good idea to accept an extremely dangerous job from Masao Tanaka, a man he was blackmailing. Quite apart from the fact that Jake had just woke up hungover on a park bench just prior to receiving this mission, he didn't seem to realize that Tanaka might have pulled a Uriah Gambit on him - and still doesn't.
    • Likewise, Jake went on to follow the directions Tanaka had given him and entered the Tokyo Exclusion Zone with no way of defending himself, no way of escaping, and no way of calling for help. True, given the Masquerade, he didn't know the place was a Filth-infected hellhole populated by rampaging infectees, The Legions of Hell, murderous ghosts, hacked Orochi mechs and the Black Signal... but it's still pretty stupid given that official news reports had mentioned that the military had quarantined the area to prevent the spread of "an unknown pathogen" - and that they were prepared to enforce the quarantine by gunning down anyone trying to escape.
    • Also, in his attempts to find Tanaka's missing daughter, Jake has decided to capture the Rabbit Killer, the assassin hunting said daughter down. To put things in perspective, the Rabbit Killer a highly-experienced Professional Killer at peak physical fitness with the power of Super-Speed and Blood Magic at her fingertips, and is also armed with swords, a number of firearms and two additional bodies; Jake is an overweight alcoholic armed only with a few bottles of sake.
    • Last but not least, Jake decided the best way to get the Rabbit Killer's attention was to dress up in a rabbit costume taken from the Dream Palace's furry room and stand around getting shitfaced until she came looking for him. Once again, Jake is too drunk to realize that the assassin clearly considers him Beneath Notice.
  • Strange Flesh: Should he get drunk, The Bartender loses his unflappable nature and displays a Silly Walk. Attempting to run also increases the risk of him losing balance and falling over.
  • Captain Bartholomew from Wild ARMs is introduced as someone who frequently gets into trouble because he can't keep off the booze. When your party first meet him, he laments the fact he drunkenly bragged to his rival that he was getting married but has neither the flower needed for the ceremony nor a bride. After you get the flower, his rival turns up and, drunk again, he ropes Cecilia into a fake wedding. Your party only goes along with it because they need to protect the statue on his ship. (And Jack finds the whole thing pretty amusing.)
  • In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt it is possible for Geralt to get hammered with his witcher buddies, until one of them gets the bright idea to "summon bitches" with Geralt's girlfriend's magical megascope. Fortunately they don't end up contacting anything dangerous in the process, just making asses of themselves.
  • Invoked in World of Warcraft, where consuming alcohol causes your character to underestimate the levels of enemy targets (the more you consume, the lower the targets' level looks). If you forgot you were drunk, you might see an enemy two levels above you and try and take it on, only to get stomped by a mob that's actually seven levels higher than you.

    Visual Novels 
  • C14 Dating: Accepting Deandre's invitation to the party on the first week, but not avoiding alcohol, can result in Melissa returning to Shoji's tent instead of her own. It can be extended to getting angry at Shoji for waking her up when he returns.
  • In Halloween Otome Mr. Bandages near the end of his route, when saying hurtful things to Emma. This includes, but is not limited to: Talking about how he's interested in a hookup, but not a relationship, and then making moves on Emma. Acting cocky and as though Emma is lucky to have the opportunity to be with him. Treating Emma like a "floozie" that can be bought.

    Web Animation 
  • DEATH BATTLE!'s rare fights that are completely hand-animated generally have a good reason for it, i.e. "Smokey the Bear vs. McGruff the Crime Dog" having no other sources, or the "Mario vs. Sonic" revisit being the 100th episode. The exception is "Samurai Jack vs. Afro Samurai", which was done hand-animated because Luis made the request while tipsy.
  • To a truly ridiculous extend in Dingo Doodles. The Wild Magic sorcerer Sips got drunk one time and killed it at karaoke. When he tried to cast the dancing lights spell to give his performance a bit of an extra flare, he got a wild magic surge, and created a 700 foot radius (about 213 meters) area of Dead Magic. And he was in a very magic-heavy town. AND there was a Tarrasque magically imprisoned underneath the town. He accidentally released the apocalypse while drunk.
  • The standard formula of Hard Drinkin' Lincoln is that just about every episode has Abraham Lincoln engage in bone-headed antics after having a few.
  • In the Helluva Boss episode, "Spring Broken", Moxxie is shoved into a beer keg by some drunk spring breakers after they mistake him for a possum. After Millie sets him free, it's clear he is pretty much too drunk to function, with a shining moment being after he's eaten by a giant fish monster. Millie, who has just forced open the fish's mouth, holds out her hand for her husband to grab. Moxxie instead gives her a high five. Mille's nonverbal reaction screams You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!.

    Webcomics 
  • Allen the Alien: Allen drinks too much and manages to land himself in an Alien Abduction.
  • Ask Drunk Chara, of course. Chara's drunkenness even manages to affect an alternate version of himself- when Ask Frisk and Company's ghostly version of Chara possessed them, that Chara got their inebriated state along with their body. Hilarity ensues as AFAC!Chara wonders when Frisk moved the house to the ocean and falls for askers telling them that Flowey had become the Absolute God of Hyper-White-Chocolate and needing to be defeated by hugs (It Makes Sense in Context- white chocolate is AFAC!Chara's Berserk Button and a group of askers led by ClimaxStriker were trying to get Chara and Flowey in physical contact in order to draw out Asriel's soul, which Chara held).
  • The plot of the Cyanide and Happiness short "Drunk". The protagonist's brain is normally smarter than his body. Many, many drinks later, this is no longer the case. His body and his poop both realize that driving while drunk is a bad idea and try to dissuade the brain from doing so. They fail.
  • In Little Robot, Big Scary World after BIP gets drunk on oil, he finds matches and promptly runs around setting things on fire.
  • Nobody Scores!: Puckish Mr. Jack, obviating the need for plot mechanics since 1957.
  • Yeagar from Nodwick isn't the cleverest person even when sober, but some of his best (read: most disastrous) ideas usually come to him when drunk. One comic features this exchange when Artax is explaining why he has returned from a scouting trip without Yeagar:
    Artax: And then Yeagar said those six words that strike terror into my soul...
    Nodwick & Piffany: "Hold my ale and watch this."
  • The Oatmeal drew a handy flowchart for anyone having trouble deducing whether they're about to engage in alcohol-induced idiocy. Hot tip: If you're drinking vodka and mutter "fuck it", you're making a bad decision.
  • Questionable Content: Marten + taser + alcohol = forgetting basic taser safety knowledge.
  • In the 'book-only' Start of Darkness, the second prequel to The Order of the Stick (and labeled as Book #-1), it's explained that this is how Eugene Greenhilt made his Blood Oath of Vengence against Xykon. While searching for information on the sorcerer, many of Eugene's leads were in the seedier parts of Cliffport and he had to buy the lowlifes a round of drinks. He apparently had a few too many himself and ended up wandering into a tattoo parlor that also did rituals.
  • In Wizard School, drunken Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist Graham gets a tattoo to "seal the deal" with an attractive woman — and promptly wakes up in a room with two children and a talking goat who inform him that he's The Chosen One.

    Web Original 
  • It's mentioned in A Conspiracy of Serpents that Susanoo was able to defeat Yamada in the past by getting him drunk on several gallons of saki. Somehow.
  • The Darwin Awards have an explicit subclause in the rules about this trope. Specifically, while normally not being in one's right mind is a disqualifier, being not in one's right mind because of drug usage is generally an exception because the Darwin candidate usually chose to impair their faculties with said drug of their own free will.
  • Many of the sporkers of Das Sporking drink heavily to deal with the terrible works they're mocking. This frequently leads to drunken ramblings and other shenanigans. In one instance, Mervin and Sands have a drinking game using mugs as shotglasses(!) and decide to bring it to an abrupt end when Sands pisses himself. Mervin, upon forcibly restoring sobriety to the both of them, realizes her bra is on backwards and she has no idea why.
  • This is pretty much the point of Drunk Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is Nintendo Hard enough when you're experienced and stone-cold sober, so how badly can a succession of drunks make a fortress fail?
  • In this story on Not Always Legal, a drunk man (angry that a convenience store clerk won't sell him beer after hours) takes a camping hatchet to the store's electrical box in retaliation. Somehow, he winds up with only minor burns, a concussion, and a destroyed shoe instead of getting a High-Voltage Death.

    Web Videos 
  • The Call of Warr: Glintz-Terry and the Prince both start Drinking on Duty, which leads to them being absolute assholes to Durkin, Mabel and Ashes. They get so obnoxious and abusive that Durkin leaves, culminating in his getting kidnapped by Vid.
  • Chubbyemu: Inverted with two cases of lack-of-alcohol-induced-idiocy. One man undergoing alcohol withdrawal drinks the contents of a lava lamp, and another a homemade snowglobe. It's excusable since they were undergoing delirium tremens, a particularly nasty symptom of withdrawal that results in a delirious mental state and and an uncontrollable sensation of insects crawling under the skin, but still...
  • Despite what you may think, this happens very little in A Couple Of Cunts In The Countryside. Some embarrassing stories do get told in the alcohol episode, though.
  • The Dwarf Fortress succession game Drunk Fortress, where the players are all completely drunk while playing the infamously complex and difficult game. Needless to say, Played for Laughs.
  • Markiplier, before he had to quit drinking due to ALDH2 deficiency:
    • The whole premise of the series Drunk Minecraft. The only conclusion where you get a group of drunk adults playing Minecraft with an admin that's happy to give them whatever they want, provided they don't piss the admin off, which of course they do.
    • Somewhat inverted by Mark during his playthrough of the Five Nights at Fuckboy's series, where he downs a shot of cinnamon whiskey (or two, in some cases) at the beginning of each episode. While he does eventually get drunk, he is still coherent and able to pay attention to the game, for the most part. During his playthrough of the first game, he actually takes time during some of the episodes to talk to the viewers, updating them on what he's been up to and thanking them for their support and patronage over the years.
  • Episode 82 of The Music Video Show is essentially this since the host is drinking shots of Jack Daniels throughout the episode. This goes up to eleven in the commentary when she called two of her friends, drunk. One of them after a funeral.
  • Rats SMP: Played for Drama, at least in part. When Apo is captured by the Janitor early on Day 29, the rats find the Wine Cellar cellar to the Mansion while locating the key to free them. The group eventually splits off, and Bek, El, Jimmy, Krow, Oli, Oliver, and Will proceed to intentionally sabotage the Boiler Room so that the pressure in the machinery builds up, causing it to explode. El attributes the severe lack in judgement to this trope, on top of wanting the Janitor to be driven out of the Mansion, though Will is later confirmed to not be in on the alcoholism while coming up with or executing the plan. The Janitor is not happy about it, considering his response is to capture a random rat in a cage and start screaming at them, accusing them of causing the explosion… and the rat he captures isn't even in on the Boiler Room plot.
  • Rooster Teeth and its division Achievement Hunter both fall into this, and cases of this make up many of the funny stories on the podcast. In one particular case, Gavin Free ended up drunk during an episode of Let's Play Minecraft and almost derailed their efforts to complete a difficult achievement, stealing their gold and making a "Tower of Pimps", and assaulting them in-game. He admitted that in hindsight, it was painful to watch.
  • SMPLive: In the video "Drinking and Killing CaptainSparklez", Cooper is absolutely wasted and attempts to build a skyscraper, chases down and kills Sparklez, sues Gold for "pedophilia", and other assorted nonsense.
  • According to Nash, many of the stories that end up on What the Fuck Is Wrong with You? probably began with four words: "Here, hold my beer."
  • While the Yogscast are generally okay, they do have their moments as well, mostly during their Christmas livestreams:
    • Sparkles* stumbled into a livestream that he wasn't supposed to be in during the 2012 Honey Drive, blatantly refusing to leave when Duncan Jones (himself something of an offender) told him to and singing the wrong lyrics to songs. When Duncan finally managed to convince him to leave and he gave Simon Lane a goodbye hug, he nearly fell over twice. Then Lewis and Simon got drunk, playing "Jingle Cats" over the speakers repeatedly, talking about utter nonsense and nearly calling up Sips at one in the morning. It got so bad that Hannah Rutherford had to try and intervene to get them to stop... only for them to try and mute her.
    • Lewis Brindley, when drunk, proves that he's Not So Above It All, blatantly cheating and going on an unprovoked rant. He also inadvertently derailed a Civilization V livestream by drinking too much gin and having to go home early, and while food poisoning was allegedly to blame as well Lewis would go on to admit that he was embarrassed.
    • Duncan has earned the nickname "Drunkan" from both fans and the other Yogs, due to his drinking on livestreams and the ensuing chaos that results.
    • There is a story about Turpster getting very drunk during a pub quiz at i49, in which he and some friends ended up in an overflow room since there were so many people there. After another team from the overflow room emerged victorious, Turps decided that this meant everyone in the overflow room had won and tried going up with the winning team.
    • Hat Films have more than a few stories about getting drunk and behaving stupidly, some relating to them and others featuring in their "funny news" story. Their Musical Jam livestream for the 2015 Jingle Jam started off relatively normally and got progressively weirder as they drank more.
    • Now-former member Ridgedog infamously got too drunk within an hour of a charity livestream, then randomly left, fell asleep and left his colleague Bebop to try and host the stream. Due to Bebop's inexperience and disappointment in Ridge from fans, on top of numerous technical difficulties, the stream was by far the least successful, raising only $3,000 (for perspective, the livestream with Zoey Proasheck that followed raised $55,000).

    Western Animation 
  • Archer - Sterling Archer is very, very frequently drunk, claiming that if he were to ever quit drinking cold turkey, the resulting hangover would literally kill him. Everything he does, from shooting a reinforced door and hitting Brett, to performing complex intelligence operations while keeping up a running banter with Lana, he does drunk.
    • In the Ask Archer AMA special, Sterling reveals a disturbing story of how he lost his virginity.
      Sterling: Well, I wouldn't really say "lost," kind of a negative connotation there; I gave my virginity- no, no, wait- bestowed it upon the person in question, who was my seventeen year old Brazilian au pair. And before you start crying "Statutory rape," you gotta remember she probably didn't know what the laws were here- although she probably did know I was like, twelve... Oh. And also I was shitfaced.
  • Crumley Cogwheel, in the Paramount cartoon of the same name and employee of Michigan Nuts & Bolts, is so timid that he's never asked for a raise in the thirty years he's been there. His boss gives him a week to ask for a raise or he'll be fired. After all else fails (psychiatric help, self- determination), Cogwheel resorts to going to a bar instead of his usual tea salon and getting drunk on his lunch break. He storms into the boss' office with alcohol-fueled bravado, chases off the board of directors and demands a raise. His boss gives him his raise...of $1.
  • Family Guy:
    • Brian Griffin tends to be the voice of reason in the Griffin family, but whenever he gets drunk he will often do something incredibly stupid. Odds are, Peter will be right along with him.
    • In "Underage Peter", when alcohol is banned for every under the age of 50, it is revealed that Opie is not mentally disabled, just constantly drunk. Funnily enough, this trope is why Mayor West raised the drinking age.
  • Home Movies - Coach McGuirk is prone to this - while drunk he'd bought an expensive sword collection and a shrimp farm. When he talks milquetoast teacher Mr. Lynch into taking a trip to Mexico with him (to get a group discount) it's Lynch who turns into an incoherent drunk idiot, to McGuirk's dismay.
  • King of the Hill - in flashback, the guys celebrate Bill joining the Army with a night on the town. Hank Hill, the picture of level-headedness, gets stupid drunk and starts a fight at a club, then goes to get an Embarrassing Tattoo - Boomhauer intervenes to at least get it put where it couldn't be seen (justified as they're all young and inexperienced with beer).
    • And another time, Bill went and stole a tank from the Army base where he works as a barber, after Dale uncovered documents which proved the Army was using him as a guinea pig back in the 80s for a group of half-walrus Arctic super-soldiers (as a contingency in case the Commies ever used the North Pole as an invasion route). He was drinking, and remembered that when he signed up, he wanted to be a tank driver. He drives it back to Rainey Street, and Hank, Dale and Boomhauer have to drive it back to the base; they accidentally drive it onto a target range for wargames, and Bill manages to evacuate everyone from the tank before it's hit.
  • The Warner Bros. cartoons had the stork with the blue cap. A Delivery Stork that regularly got so drunk on the job after celebrating with new parents and their families, he'd inevitably deliver the wrong babies who sometimes weren't even the same species as their parents. His biggest blunder being delivering a baby mouse to a couple of cats.
  • Futurama: "The Route of All Evil":
    Dwight Conrad: I heard alcohol makes you stupid.
    Fry: No I'm... doesn't!
  • The Simpsons: happens frequently and is often displayed by Homer and sometimes his barfly buddy Barney Gumble.
    • Homer Simpson
      Homer: Oh, Lisa, you and your stories: Bart's a vampire, beer kills brain cells. Now let's go back to that... building... thingie... where our beds and TV... is.
      • In "The Great Louse Detective", after hearing a list of Homer's enemies (which includes several celebrities, a company, and a state), Sideshow Bob asks how one normal man could have so many enemies. Homer's response:
      Homer: I'm a people person, who drinks.
    • Barney Gumble
      • In an example involving Barney, the "Mr. Plow" episode features a flashback scene where we see a teenage Barney studying for the SAT when Homer sneaks in with a six pack of beer. After Homer pressures him, Barney reluctantly agrees to take a drink and, with one sip, we actually see his IQ drop sharply.
      • Parodied in "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood", where Bart and Milhouse go on a squishee bender. The next day, Bart discovers he's joined the Junior Campers, and Milhouse has a dirty word shaved into the back of his head. Barney, who drank some of the Squishee, wound up joining the Navy, and apparently not for the first time.
      • In "Deep Space Homer", Barney, when selected by NASA to be an astronaut, swears off alcohol and successfully completes his training program with flying colors. Unfortunately, when he takes a sip of a congratulatory glass of champagne, his face immediately reverts back into its permanently soused expression as he proclaims, "It begins". He then steals a jet pack and careens drunkenly through the sky until it runs out of fuel, causing him to crash onto a pillow factory roof and bounce onto the street below where he's run over by a marshmallow truck. The fact that it was non-alcoholic champagne says something about Barney's alcoholism.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Alcohol Induced Stupidity

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Edna Krabappel

In an attempt to lighten Mrs. Krabappel's mood up, her students spike her coffee with alcohol, which, indeed, causes her behaviour to be completely different.

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