Frequently seen in cartoons (static or animated), this is when a character spits a stream of small objects (often watermelon seeds) in such a way that the result looks like machine gun fire.
May tie in to Green Thumb since this is, of course, a plant based power.
A common form of Super Spit.
Compare and contrast Flechette Storm for a different spray of small projectiles.
Metaphorical Bullet Examples
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Anime & Manga
- One Piece: Chu/Chew uses this with bursts of water. Unique in that it's actually played realistically: Chu/Chew is an Archerfish Fishman, so if he does this to you, you will actually die.
- Ranma ½:
- In an anime-only episode, Ranma and Genma get into a duel over watermelon slices where they start bouncing all over the place and strafing each other with torrents of spat watermelon seeds. They don't actually hurt each other with them, though, it's more of a contest to them.
- And in the manga, the family is given a small plant meant to punish Oni by detecting their angry faces. At first, it spits out a small spray of seeds hard enough to sting. As it gets frustrated with the Saotomes and the Tendos, it moves on to destructive barrages of armor-piercing spitting.
- Slayers: Some Monsters can continuously spray lots of weak glowing bolts that resemble tracers from a bundle of machine guns.
- Tamagotchi: Episode 40a takes place on a fruit-themed island that Mametchi, Memetchi, Kuchipatchi, and Princess Tamako are visiting. The island holds a contest which involves eating a watermelon and spitting the seeds out. Mametchi and Memetchi can barely do it and Kuchipatchi consumes his watermelon completely, including the seeds, but Princess Tamako demonstrates some pretty impressive seed-spitting skills, being able to not only spit them right into the sky, but create pictures with them (including in a cloud).
Asian Animation
- Happy Heroes: The pumpkin monster in Season 4 episode 12 spits pumpkin seeds at Happy S. during their battle.
- Kodama: Multiple Kodamas shoot seeds as an attack.
- Lamput: In "Witch", as the docs ride the flying broomstick, Fat Doc scoops up some grapes from a bowl, eats them, and spits their seeds at Lamput.
Comic Strips
Film — Animated
- An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island: Fievel fires off some seeds through a straw at some corrupt cops and Scuttlebutt while he and the others defend the Native American mice.
- Charlotte's Web: During the Gluttony Montage, Templeton crashed into a watermelon, see Impact Silhouette, he spits out the seeds before he eats it from the inside.
- Dumbo: When Dumbo has his flying down, he strafes the elephants who've mistreated him, spraying them with peanuts.
- George of the Jungle: For a given value of "seed"... Shep the elephant shoots coconuts out of his trunk.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): Hugo the gargoyle does this with rock shards — and makes sparks when doing so!
- A version of trope appears in a recent trailer for Migration
- Ratatouille: Émile does this with grapes.
- The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water: Sandy (in her superhero mode) spits peanuts out at Burger Beard.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - Moon Castle: The Space Adventure features the Gourd King and his minions as antagonists. One of the minions is a watermelon boy who can spit watermelon seeds as an attack.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder:
- Lotus leshys can spit a jet of up to six seeds at a ranged action, either all at one target or subdivided between different enemies.
- Sunflower leshys can spray dense bursts of their seeds in a wide cone from their heads.
- Strontium Dog: In the Mongoose Publishing RPG, the mutant power Missiles allows a mutant to fill his mouth with objects and spit them at opponents to do damage. If the mutant uses seeds or gravel, a minor amount of damage is done.
Video Games
- Banjo-Kazooie: Kazooie can do this with a variety of eggs, as well as "lay" them to the rear and, in Banjo-Tooie, use a crosshairs and enter an FPS-style mode in select areas.
- Barnyard Blast: The graveyard level concludes with a Man-Eating Plant Advancing Boss of Doom who will occasionally spit seeds at Robert as a ranged attack.
- Board Game Online: Eating a watermelon gives you the Seed Salvoes that knocks any living player within close proximity (ten spaces) back one or two spaces.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Deku Shrubs attack by shooting out Deku Nuts from their nozzle-like mouths.
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: Giant Eye Plants attack by shooting large spiked seeds at the S.S. Linebeck.
- Hyrule Warriors: One of Manhandla's attacks is spitting rapid-fire seeds from all four of its heads which can stun-lock you if you get caught in it.
- Monster Rancher: The Plant species has "Seed Gatling/Machine Gun" (depending on the version of the game) and actually predates the Pokémon move a few years prior to the release of the Generation III era. However, it does not deal successive damage so it must be repeated manually by the trainer's command.
- Pilot Kids has another Man-Eating Plant boss in the garden stage, who can occasionally spit seeds from its mouth. The seeds can explode into another cluster of bullets if they missed.
- Plants vs. Zombies: The Peashooter family, the Guacodile, and the A.K.E.E. all operate by spitting their seeds as ranged attacks, with various modifications — for instance, the basic Peashooter with its single shot can be upgraded into a Repeater that shoots twice in succession and then a Gatling Pea with four-shot bursts.
- Pokémon: The Bullet Seed move; its original name in Japanese was even "Seed Machine Gun". It's a multi-strike move that can hit between two and five times, allowing it to bypass abilities like Sturdy that allow their owners to endure otherwise one-hit KOs with a single hit point, although its power per hit is rather low prior to Generation 5, when it got a significant buff.
- Puyo Puyo: Donguri Gaeru is shown attacking by shooting acorns (oak tree seeds) out of his mouth in a variant on the trope.
- Yoshi's Island: Yoshi can spit seeds repeatedly after eating a regular watermelon; enemy monkeys with watermelons can also do this to Yoshi. An intact melon gives Yoshi 30 seeds to fire, while melons partialy eaten by monkeys contain 10; the S-watermelon inventory item allows Yoshi to spit 60 seeds.
Web Animation
- The Annoying Orange: Orange is able to spit seeds, which he often uses to either bully people or defend himself. On several occasions, he is also shown to be able to rapid fire seeds from his mouth.
Western Animation
- Any time a cartoon character eats a watermelon, expect this trope to play out. This was a recurring gag in 1930's and 1940's cartoons, done in a manner and with an intention that makes them very uncomfortable viewing today. This sight gag played on the association of watermelons with black Americans.
- The Angry Beavers: When Norbert and Daggett are given the ability to rebuild the world in any way they desire, they get into an argument about desserts, resulting in Daggett turning himself into a giant cherry and starts rapid fire spitting cherry pits at Norbert.
Daggett: Sometimes being a big fat cherry can be.. the pits!
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Momo spits out the seeds of a fruit he eats in rapid sequence.
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold: In "Terror on Dinosaur Island!", Plastic Man does this with pieces of Grodd's loot when the need arises, which he hoped to keep for himself.
- Bounty Hamster: Casey is unimpressed when Marion fires a stream of cucumbers at her attacker.
- Chip 'n' Dale: Park Life: With Donald Duck threatening the tree the titular duo live in, from on top of a tree branch Chip stuffs a huge amount of acorns into his cheeks and starts firing them at Donald; as Donald is bracing himself, the nuts just bounce off of him slowly and harmlessly.
- Futurama: In "I Dated a Robot", an army of Lucy Liu robots spits out popcorn kernels at Fry and company in this manner.
- Hero: 108: The Air Force eats a mouthful of grapes each time they want to be able to spit the seeds out like a machine gun as a weapon for dogfighting.
- KaBlam!: Henry and June use this with watermelon seeds in the pilot episode.
- Looney Tunes: In the Daffy Duck short "Muscle Tussle" Daffy faces a rival for his gal's affections. At one point his rival bites a chain, chews, and spits out a bunch of nails. Not to be outdone Daffy bites a chain, chews, and spits out his teeth.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: One shot of Tucker shows him alternately eating/choking on a slice of watermelon and tears a flower to bits by spitting seeds at it.
- The Penguins of Madagascar:
- "Popcorn Panic": Rico does this with popcorn kernels to (literally) shoot out the lights.
- He also does this in the Christmas short that went with the movie, using peppermints.
- Popeye: One of Popeye's favorite techniques, usually involving nails, tacks, rivets, or other small metal objects.
- Rugrats: In one episode, Phil gains the ability to do this with spit, as "Spitball Boy".
- Sahara: Saladin's miscreant friends gladly pelt Ajar and Pitt with watermelon seeds at Saladin's command.
- Steven Universe: "Watermelon Steven" starts with Steven and his dad having a contest on who can spit watermelon seeds out in the coolest way. Steven wins with a move like this.
- Teen Titans (2003): A child metahuman Extreme Omnivore named Teether can chew up and spit even metal with gunlike force.
- Thunder Cats 2011: The Petalars, Lilliputian Plant People, employ bullet pollen due to their diminutive size, aiding their friends the ThunderCats against Scarily Competent Tracker pursuers.
- Tom and Jerry: "The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit" involves as its first gag a watermelon. While Jerry uses it to spit out seeds in the regular machine-gun fashion to annoy Tom, Tom answers by eating the remains of the watermelon, transforming his head into a cannon, and chasing after Jerry while spitting out shotgun blasts.
Real Life
- There's a plant called the Squirting Cucumber
(or Exploding Cucumber) that disperses its seeds this way via expelling them rapidly with a fluid.
Real Bullet Examples
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Film — Live Action
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks: In the climactic battle, an animated suit of armor responds to being shot by a German soldier by spitting the bullets back at him out of its helmet.
- The Mask villain Dorian Tyrell uses this to return the favor when he's shot repeatedly, killing his boss, Niko. To elaborate, Niko shoots at him while he's wearing the mask. His body soaks up the bullets, then he spits them back (as if they went out of a machine gun) at Niko and kills him.
- UHF: In an action-movie-parody section, "Weird Al" Yankovic catches a bullet (including cartridge) in his teeth, chews it up, and spits it out a la this.
Tabletop Games
- Strontium Dog: In the Mongoose Publishing RPG, the mutant power Missiles allows a mutant to fill his mouth with objects and spit them at opponents to do damage. If the mutant uses bullets, a serious amount of damage is done.
Webcomics
- Huckleberry: One of Mechaworm's weapons is an apple-shaped gun which fires seeds filled with cyanide.
Western Animation
- Animaniacs: Wakko once ate a pilgrim's powder musket and gained the ability to spit out bullets.
- Looney Tunes:
- In two shorts, Daffy Duck accidentally swallows some gun powder and buckshot, turning him into a living machine gun for desperate Porky Pig to use.
- "Bully for Bugs" has a scene where the bull accidentally swallows a rifle, only to learn he can fire bullets from his horns by smacking the rear of his now-rifle-shaped tail against the ground.
- Popeye: In "Pop-Along Popeye", after eating his spinach, Popeye takes the ranch foreman's ammo belt, and runs it like a belt-fed machine gun as he shoots the bullets from his pipe. As the bullets shave bits of wood from a fence post, the shavings fly into a bottle to make a ship.
