
When you've got to go, you've got to go.
The convenience. The smallest room. The privy. The head. The jakes. The cloakroom. The khazi. The water closet. The john. The loo. The dunny. The necessary room. The ladies' or gentlemens' room. The restroom. The little girls' or boys' room. The can. The pot. The jacks. The crapper. The bog. The shithouse. The meeting room for the brown masses. And last but not least- the thunderbox.
It has many names. And while fiction might seem to spend most of its time pretending they don't exist, there are still plenty of tropes relating to bodily functions and the rooms we set aside for them.
Subcategory:
- All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: Someone puts out a fire by peeing on it.
- Bathhouse Blitz: Attacking, kidnapping, or killing someone in a public bathhouse or sauna.
- Baths Are Fun: Taking a bath is enjoyable.
- Bathroom Brawl: A fight that happens in a bathroom.
- Bathroom Breakout: Someone uses a bathroom break to cover an escape attempt.
- Bathroom Control: Denial of bathroom access as punishment.
- Bathroom Search Excuse: Using "looking for the bathroom" as an excuse to snoop around an area.
- Bathroom Stall Graffiti: Notes people leave on bathroom stalls.
- Bathroom Stall of Angst: Characters crying alone in a bathroom stall.
- Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: A character overhears other characters insulting them from a lavatory stall.
- Bladder of Steel: Video game feats or achievements that require all but supernatural bladder control.
- Bottomless Bladder: A video game character never goes to the bathroom even though you've been in complete control of them for 72 straight hours.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Wetting or soiling oneself out of fear.
- Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: A character cannot resist announcing their need to use the restroom.
- Camping a Crapper: Someone wanting to kill someone waits for his or her target to go to the bathroom before making their move.
- The Can Kicked Him: Some poor soul is attacked or even killed with a toilet.
- The Diaper Change: The inevitable moment in any comedy involving a baby where someone gets more than they bargained for and has to change the baby's diaper.
- Disgusting Public Toilet: A public bathroom, usually at a gas station or on a bus, that is so foul that a dog wouldn't even crap on the floor.
- Dogs Love Fire Hydrants: Dogs pee on fire hydrants, which are stereotypically red.
- The Dreaded Toilet Duty: Cleaning bathrooms is the worst.
- Dropped in the Toilet: Personal possessions accidentally getting dropped in a toilet.
- Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Wetting your bed.
- Excrement Statement: A character relieves themself on someone or something as insult.
- Fancy Toilet Awe: A character is in awe (or confused) by a fancy or hi-tech toilet/bathroom.
- First Period Panic: A preteen/teen girl panics over menarche. In extreme cases she doesn't know blood appearing on her underwear is normal.
- Flush the Evidence: Flushing things (such as drugs) down the toilet as a last resort.
- Flushing-Edge Interactivity: Toilets in video games that can be flushed, but not used or cleaned.
- Flushing Toilet, Screaming Shower: If you flush the toilet or turn the tap on, someone in the shower will scream.
- Forced Bath: Someone is forced by several people to take a bath.
- Foul Ball Pit: Ball pits contain urine, feces, and vomit.
- Fun with Flushing: Flushing something down the toilet that isn't meant to be flushed.
- Giant's Droplet, Human's Shower: When a giant pees, someone's bound to get wet.
- Goodies in the Toilets: Toilets are the new crates and barrels.
- Go to the Euphemism: Saying indirectly that one has to use the toilet.
- Hates Baths: A character hates taking a bath.
- Jar Potty: Using a portable container as an improvised toilet.
- Laxative Prank: One character drugs another secretly with laxatives. In a wacky comedy, hijinks ensue. In a deconstructive drama, severe dehydration and criminal charges ensue.
- Locked in the Bathroom: A character locks themselves in the bathroom when they're upset/evading a persuer.
- Male Restroom Etiquette: The strict unwritten code of conduct of the men's room.
- Nature Tinkling: Using the outside world as a toilet.
- Next Stall Shenanigans: Weird shit's happening in the next stall while you're trying to do your business.
- Nighttime Bathroom Phobia: A character fears using the bathroom at night.
- No Periods, Period: A female character's period doesn't impact the story, even when it probably should.
- Nobody Poops: A work flat out ignores that living creatures excrete waste in any way.
- Only Useful as Toilet Paper: When literary writing is seen as such poor quality that it's only fit to be used as toilet paper (or similar undignified uses).
- Overturned Outhouse: Outhouses or port-a-potties getting tipped over or destroyed, usually while someone is using it.
- Plumber's Crack: What you might see as your bathroom fixtures are being repaired. When the upper part of somebody's buttcrack protrudes above the top of their lower clothing as they bend over, stereotypically associated with plumbers.
- Pooping Where You Shouldn't: A character starts defecating in a place where they shouldn't.
- Potty Dance: When a character (especially a young child) needs to go very badly, they will jump around a little bit.
- Potty Emergency: A character needs the toilet now.
- Potty Failure: The inevitable result of a Potty Emergency that goes unresolved for too long.
- Putting the Pee in Pool: Did this water just get warmer? If it did, maybe someone peed in it.
- Rip Van Tinkle: After prolonged inactivity, someone needs a bathroom right now!
- Searching the Stalls: Hunting for someone hiding in a bathroom stall.
- Shy Bladder: A character just can't use the restroom because someone might be watching or overhearing them
- Swirlie: A character sticks another character's head into the toilet. Flushing is optional. Also known as bog washing.
- Tinkle in the Eye: When a human baby pees on somebody.
- Toilet-Drinking Dog Gag: Jokes about dogs drinking from toilets.
- Toilet Horror: Bathrooms as a setting for horror.
- Toilet Humour: Disgusting bodily functions played for comedy.
- Toilet Training Plot: A plot that focuses on someone being toilet trained.
- Toilet Paper Substitute: No paper? How about $100 bills?
- Toilet Paper Trail: Somebody leaves the bathroom and a sheet of toilet paper is stuck to their foot.
- Toilet Teleportation: Flushing yourself down the toilet to escape to somewhere.
- Urine Trouble: A character/object is urinated on by an animal, usually for comedic purposes.
- Warm Water Whiz: Sticking a sleeping person's hand in warm water makes them wet their pants.
- "Which Restroom?" Dilemma: A character can't tell the men's and ladies' rooms apart.
- Wondrous Ladies Room: In fiction, the ladies' room takes on a kind of mystique.
- Wrong Bathroom Incident: A character (intentionally or not) finds himself in the opposite gender's restroom or dressing room.
- Yellow Snow: The result of urine combined with snow.