"In China it's considered perfectly good manners to talk with your mouth full and to burp after your meal. Farting seems to vary according to the situation and your current company, so ask ahead of time. Lighting the fart is frowned upon in almost all provinces."
Flatulence is set aflame.
This does work in Real Life, though not always, and not very impressively. Despite the fact that it is Truth in Television, Don't Try This at Home (for reasons that should be obvious).
Science fact: farts are, essentially, just the body expelling methane. Methane also flees quickly. Timing is required. Rather than the huge flame you see in certain cartoons, it'll be a tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it flame. Don't ask us how we know. note
Compare Fartillery. Nothing whatever to do with Gaslighting. Can be a Revolting Rescue if it's used to save someone. Could overlap with Gassy Gastronomy if people fart while eating beans over a campfire.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A Budweiser commercial set during the winter has a young man picking up his girlfriend on a horse-drawn sleigh; he gives her a lit candle and then bends back down to get the two Buds. The horse takes that moment to let out a fart that turning into blow-torch proportions, singing the date's hair. As he looks up, you can see her hair and face covered in "soot."
Anime & Manga
- In an anime episode of Kochikame at near the end, officer Terai demonstrate farting fire. Ryotsu, not being concerned that the whole police box is stashed with heating oil, dynamite, tanker trucks, military weapons, and along with a locker full of matches, lets him do so resulting the neighborhood being destroyed.
- Toramaru from Sakigake!! Otokojuku signature move is the "Daihouhi Kaenhousha" aka the "Big Fart Flamethrower"
- Mugen, a little dragon from Battle Spirits Saikyo Ginga Ultimate Zero can produce explosive farts and can even fart fire at will. There is even a card base on it call "Mugen flame"
- In the first chapter of the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid spin-off Kanna's Daily Life, Kanna tries to cheer up Saikawa, who is embarrassed about passing gas while she's with her, by letting out a fart herself. Given how Kanna's a dragon, her fart ends up being a giant blaze, with the following panel explaining how the fire that some dragons store in their stomach for fire breathing could also end up going out the "wrong hole".
Asian Animation
- The title card for Season 8 episode 5 of Happy Heroes shows Huo Haha giving Little M. lessons on how to light wood on fire with magic. After failing to set his wood on fire properly, Little M. farts into the little fire he did create, causing it to singe Huo.
Comedy
- British stand-up comic Jasper Carrott was one of the first people to popularize the idea on his album The
UnRecorded Jasper Carrott. A long routine culminates in his anxiously delivering a friend stricken by the effects of blowback to a hospital casualty ward. The terrible Matron takes one look and demands "Has he been lighting his farts?" - George Carlin mentions about this in a sketch called "Cute Little Farts". Also found in album Carlin On Campus.
Comic Books
- Smeggie from The Bad Eggs lights one of his farts in order to impress a group of alien judges.
- There's a scene in Hate where a whole bunch of people at a night-time party stand in a line and light their farts.
- In Górsky & Butch Aliens parody, two marines use this to blow a flock of man-eating sheep (It Makes Sense in Context) in a Taking You with Me attack.
- Lobo used a can of baked beans to nuke his Nigh Invulnerable daughter.
- British anti-comic Viz has a regular character, Johnny Fartpants, who on several occasions took terrible revenge by, for instance, eating a strong vindaloo curry, placidly waiting a while, then dropping his trousers in front of his foes and lighting a match... on one occasion, just to make sure, he was seen to drink petrol as a prelude to Flamethrower Madness.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side parodied this by showing the fantastic variation of young dragons lighting their sneezes.
- A cartoon book called The Bunny Suicides has a bunny using several cans of beans, strategic ductwork, and a match. The book itself is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
Films — Animation
- Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. It causes a mushroom cloud.
- Shrek:
- The beginning of the first movie has Shrek lighting a belch to light the fireplace.
- The ending of Shrek the Third. A dronkey baby burps out fire, then an ogre baby farts at it, causing the fire to change directions and light the fireplace.
- In Shrek 4D (the 3-D Movie that used to play at Universal Studios), when Shrek is about to get fireball'd by a stone dragon, his flatulence ends up sending the fire right back at the dragon.
- In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, it was played in Terrence and Phillip's Movie Within a Movie Asses of Fire, and Kenny dies while attempting the stunt. This is one of the series of incidents that leads to Sheila Broflovski's crusade against Canada.
Films — Live-Action
- Six Shooter: The young man tells a silly but supposedly true story of a cow swelling up from trapped flatulence, and how a bystander stabbed the cow with a screwdriver to vent the methane. That worked, but when the bystander made the major mistake of lighting the methane venting from the cow, the cow blows up. The young man calls it "the greatest moment of me life."
- Dumb and Dumber during Lloyd's dream sequence.
- Wet Hot American Summer does this at the talent show.
- Shown in Werner Herzog's Stroszek.
- The Tank Battalion (1991). The Political Officer asks the Czech conscripts what they do in their spare time. While the soldier asked is lying about their fervent study of political works, a flashback shows them lying naked on their bunks, holding in their farts until as someone runs from one man to the other with a lighted match, producing long streams of blue flame.
- Freaked (1993). One of the freaks is called "The Human Flame" for this reason.
- Happens to Sherman in his Nightmare Sequence in The Nutty Professor where he grows into an extremely fat giant, lets out a massive fart in the city, and then explodes into a mushroom cloud when a homeless man lights a match.
- Papa Klump farts on a candlestick and sets a restaurant on fire in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.
- Kids in Return To Sleep Away Camp have some fun with this.
- Tremors 3: Back to Perfection takes this trope to the extreme. The Assblasters are capable of propelling themselves to flight at high altitudes by igniting their own farts. One even used this technique to try and burn through Burt's bomb shelter.
- In the 1993 Live-Action film of Dennis the Menace, when Dennis is (unknowingly) held captive by a burglar, and he is accidentally handcuffed by Dennis, Dennis accidentally drops the release keys into a cooking pot of beans, since "Food is not wasted" Dennis force-feeds him the entire pot making him to fart near the fire causing a big flame.
- In Critters 3, when the title creatures (who are Extreme Omnivores) invade the protagonist's department one of them eats a can of beans and does this with the flame of the stove.
- In the comedy Caveman, one of the rival cavemen gets his butt lit on fire, he runs around farting and emitting jets of flame.
- In Black Sheep (2007), the fact that their fart contains large amounts of methanol is used to blow up the flesh-eating sheep.
- In the World War II drama Hart's War, one scene briefly shows the Allied prisoners amusing themselves in their barracks by doing this.
- In Superhero Movie, Rick's sleeping aunt farts next to a candle, resulting in a huge, flamethrower-sized jet of flame shooting between Rick and his girlfriend.
- In Joy of Sex the Blue Flamers at the drive-in.
- In Weekend Warriors they settle a bet with this.
- Home Alone 3 had one of the spies getting shocked when he lit one.
- in Jane Austen's Mafia! Sophia (Anthony's mom) killed a woman named Pepper by lighting her fart. The result was catastrophic. This montage also has an Inuit impaling a guy in a Barney costume then dancing to "We are Family".
- In Jack, during the sleepover, Robin Williams farts into a coffee can then one of his friends drops a lit match in it.
- The 2002 comedy Thunderpants. A boy with a severe flatulence problems teams up with a Child Prodigy who invents the titular Thunderpants to turn our farting hero into a living rocket INTO SPACE!
- Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th: A cabin blows up when the hillbilly resident lets one rip in front of the fireplace.
Literature
- Dave Barry's column "Apocalypse Cow" tells of a university professor who set fire to methane emitted by cows for classroom demonstration purposes.
- Not played for laughs: In Stephen King's novel It, Beverly catches the bullies standing around with their pants down, lighting their farts on fire.
- Happens in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game, where the main character, dubbed the camp idiot for a (rigged) accident with a piece of major equipment, is relieved when the title is taken over by a couple of new recruits who set their tent on fire lighting "fart flares".
- Recounted in Spike Milligan's memoir, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.
- One of James Herriott's autobiographic novels features a story (well, urban legend, actually; see Real Life below) about gastric surgery on a bovine and a demonstration of the flammability of stomach gas. Hilarity Ensues as the resulting burst of flame is quite a lot bigger than anticipated...
- Elmer the Fire Farter in a Stephanie Plum spinoff, Plum Spooky.
- The Discworld novel Guards! Guards! features Sybil Ramkin, a woman obsessed with breeding the small woebegone creatures known as Swamp Dragons. Errol is a "complete whittle" who she puts up with as she is too soft to put him down. She discovers later in the book that he is built that way for a reason. As alone among dragons, Errol flames from, err, the opposite end. note
- Kobato Hasegawa from Haganai is mentioned to have done this as a hobby at one point.
Live-Action TV
- A fantasy-version of Rygel the 16th as the Black Knight uses this as a weapon in Farscape.
- The MythBusters tried it (in a segment they could not air in the USA but did overseas...and the US execs finally relented for the anniversary "Top 25" special). Although the flatulence was flammable, the flame itself was fairly unimpressive and it didn't remove the smell at all.
- In The Young Ones episode "Cash", Vyvyan thinks he's pregnant, backed up by his rapidly expanding gut. Turns out it was just gas. Right after it's released, Mike (who had left because he didn't want to watch) comes back into the room, appears not to smell anything, lights a cigar to congratulate Vyv — and blows up the house.
- Stephen Colbert attempted this to demonstrate how to fix the oil spill in the gulf. It didn't go so well and we instead got some Relax-o-Vision as the stagehands put him out. On the bright side, he doesn't need to worry about that waxing appointment anymore.
- A segment of a bizarre German game show featured a sort of "word of the day." The clue was as follows: A woman in lingerie bends over, and the camera does a close-up of her butt. A flame is brought near it, and the result is something like a Bunsen burner. (The word of the day was "gas.")
- Happens in the Halloween episode of Bottom. Richie makes "Sprouts Mexicane", a special Halloween snack containing year-old sprouts and other rather nasty and spicy ingredients (including a full jar of curry powder, three whole bottles of Tabasco sauce, and gunpowder). The guys all pass out and when they wake up, flatulence ensues.
- In the I'm in the Band episode "Don't Date the Principal's Daughter", Burger does this on Derek after Ash, who pulls his finger in order to make him burp fire (because he accidentally discovered earlier that pulling the wrong finger will result in a burp when it's Burger), but fails hilariously
- Happens at least twice in 1000 Ways to Die with fatal consequences.
- Happens in House, when the team is operating on a hikikomori with an intestinal blockage. A doctor goes to cauterize a bleed... "Hey, wait! The gas..." *FOOSH!*
- In Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death, the Doctor relates the tragic tale of the Tersurians, a race that communicated solely through flatulence. Sadly, the entire race was killed when one of them discovered fire.
- Charley Boorman does this for real in the second episode of the motorbike travel show Long Way Down.
- United States of Tara: One of Tara's video diaries in Season 2 shows Buck doing this.
- Bargearse ends with our hero committing suicide by farting in his car and then lighting a cigarette.
Music
- "Let's Make the Water Turn Black" by Frank Zappa is a parody of the Psychedelic Rock style, which was popular back then. While this genre usually had narco-mystical and "make love, not war" themed lyrics, this song has lyrics about two kids burning eachothers' farts (and some other disgusting stuff)
Whizzing and pasting and pooting through the day...
Ronnie helping Kenny helping burn his poots away - Ass Burners. They got it depicted on one of their albums' covers. It's a grindcore/black metal project.
- The Genesis song "Supper's Ready" has the lyric "Oooh, can't you feel our souls ignite...". This has inevitably led to the mishearing "can't you feel arseholes ignite".
- HammerFall's "Hearts on Fire" is commonly mutated into this very trope title. "Burning, burning with desire," indeed.
- One of the many problems Victoria Wood has with the subject of "Things Would Never Have Worked."
I wanted poems, but you wouldn't write them,
My earlobes nibbled, but you wouldn't bite them,
You'd only fart, and then you'd try to light them.
Things would never have worked. - "Yob" by TISM:
If it's a party, fight!
If it's winnings, skite!
If it's politics, right!
If it's flatulence, light!
Pinballs
- The playfield for WhizBang Pinball's Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons has a bucking horse that gets its flatulence lit by a match; the ensuing fireball is used as a score light.
- In Stern Pinball's Family Guy, Peter shoots flames out of his rear during "Fart Multiball".
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat: Deception: Bo Rai Cho's Fartality.
- The Binding of Isaac:
- The Lighter trinket makes all farts explode and leave a small fire on the ground. Trying to use this offensively can (and usually will) hurt Isaac, but it also causes enemies who fart to self-destruct.
- The Ashpit boss Singe can pull out a match and ignite his farts once his health runs low. It's a lot deadlier than it sounds.
- 'Splosion Man seems to 'splode like this from time to time.
- Chimchar from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl has a flame coming out of its buttocks whenever it's awake. The flame is fueled by, to quote the Pokédex, "gas made in its belly."
- Also, Reshiram actually has the ability to shoot flames out of its tail.
- Stunky and Skuntank can learn Flamethrower and Fire Blast. Later games try to cover it up by having them shoot fire from the mouth, but given that they're based on skunks...
- In Dragon Age: Origins, if you try to tell Oghren's ex-girlfriend Felsi that he's more fun than other men she probably knows, she'll say "If by 'more fun' you mean 'more likely to light farts on fire.'" And this isn't even the dumbest of his antics that she recalls...
- In the intro from the Enhanced Version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings the jesters pull this off, to the uproarious amusement of King Demavend and causing the royal advisor to Face Palm.
- The main gimmick behind Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion is to use flatulence as a weapon. The best way to do so is to pass gas around a giant fire, which is essentially as effective as using a grenade.
- Tattoo Assassins had this as a shared fatality for all characters. This is about as tasteful as it sounds.
- In Mario Strikers, should Wario's Gas Mask special happen to come into contact with Bowser's Flame Storm special, it'll detonate in a huge explosion that'll knock out anyone who happens to be in the vicinity.
- Boogerman can do this as an attack and to fly, after eating a chili pepper.
- Team Fortress 2: The Gas Blast kill taunt, available when the Pyro has the Thermal Thruster equipped, is implied to be this: the Pyro using a match and the jetpack on his back to light his farts on fire.
- Monster Hunter: The Congalala, introduced in Monster Hunter 2 (dos), changes what kind of..."munitions" it uses depending on if it's eaten a Nitroshroom, Mopeshroom, or Parashroom. When it eats a Nitroshroom, the mushroom's volatility sets its farts and its belches on fire.
- One scene in Live A Live's Prehistoric chapter has Gori fart next to a fire, which ends up exploding in everyone's faces. Pogo and Beru aren't pleased when that happens.
Web Animation
- From the BIONICLE web animations for the Toa Mata arc: A group of Ta-Matoran are on a patrol for Rahkshi, with their captain on watch while the rest of the patrol has breakfast around a fire. The captain is hunkered down behind cover and staring intently into the woods when all of a sudden there's a farting sound. He stands up and turns around to see one of his underlings facing away from the fire with a smoking rear.
- Camp Camp: The Grotesque Jermy Fartz does this in his debut episode, not on purpose, but as a consequence of standing to close to a the flame of a bunsen burner.
- The Lazer Collection 5 introduces this with great pomp as "The moment you've been rubbing your rhubarb for." One guy is filming another attempting to fart onto a candle, but the other guy decides it was "a false alarm." As they express their disappointment, the second guy suddenly farts a gigantic lazer that rockets him into the sky and disintegrates him.
- In Super Mario Bros. Z, Waluigi uses a Fire Flower to light one of Wario's farts to a nuclear degree.
Webcomics
- Turkmenistan tries this out once in the Polandball comic "Farts◊" to impress Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia (who are incidentally, countries with many natural gas reserves). However, this has the unfortunate side effect of turning his butt into a fairly popular tourist attraction.
- This happens all because of the teacher's Trademark Favorite Food being Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce Indian Curry.
Web Original
- In chapter 7 of T.O.T., Maximus suffers from a bad case of flatulence, and Toby decides to use said opportunity to light some of his farts.
Web Videos
- Because it's possible to light a fart, there are hundreds of videos on YouTube that demonstrate the act.
- In the short video Gus, fire is discovered when a spectacularly flatulent caveman baby encounters a smoldering lightning-struck tree.
Western Animation
- In the Adventure Time episode "Ignition Point", Finn and Jake fart and belch into carrier bags, then tie them up and throw them into the air as explosive targets for Flame Princess to shoot at with her elemental fire powers.
- One episode of Beavis and Butt-Head consists nearly entirely of Beavis in a hospital emergency room, face-down on a gurney, whimpering in agony, with his pants burnt off around his blackened butt. At one point, flames shoot out of his butt, propelling the gurney some twenty feet, with Beavis screaming in pain. It's never adequately explained what led up to this, leaving it to the viewer's imagination.
- A Camp Lazlo short exaggerated this for a hilariously disastrous fuel-air bomb when Lazlo was invited to a ceremony right after a bean-eating contest. The beans caused gas to build up and overload Lazlo's tummy. The moment the ceremonial torch was lit, he let it all go.
- The Canterbury Tales: In this Animated Adaptation, the famous fart that Nicholas lets fly into Absolon's face bursts into flame when it hits the hot poker Absolon is wielding, leaving Absolon with Ash Face.
- Accidentally used in Duckman to fuel a campfire. Also used in the episode "Cellar Beware" as a "party trick" by Grandma-ma.
- Family Guy:
- The second segment of "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1" had the Griffins develop superpowers from toxic waste; when Chris discovers he's pyrokinetic, Peter gets the idea to do this, resulting in a long trail of flame.
- In the first segment of "Untitled Griffin Family History", the universe is a result of God lighting one.
- This is actually one of the many superpowers Johnny Test gained as Johnny X as a result of one of his sisters' giving him mutant powers.
Johnny X: Power poots, go!
- Despite her usual demure manner, Kaeloo, in her Bad Kaeloo form, lights one of her farts with a match to burn a pile of skin mags and comic books.
- In Kung Fu Kenobi's Big Adventure, several cans of beans are used by the titular character to blow up Jabba the Hutt, and his palace with him. And that's the least bizarre part of that particular short.
- Often when Meg farts in Mega Babies she tends to do so rather explosively (literally).
- South Park: The flaming flatulence was featured in the very first episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe". "Dude, you're farting fire!"
- Total Drama Island (2023): In "Jurassic Fart", Damien defeats the red raptor by Force Feeding it a pot of beans while it's near the lit gas stove, causing it to blow itself up.
Real Life
- There is a very good reason why this shouldn't be done in Real Life. Namely, the possibility of burns on the anus and genitals, clothing or skin catching fire, and outright permanent scarring and psychological damage.
- In Real Life, pig farms have to be routinely ventilated, or else they risk exploding.
- The ammonia would kill them before the risk of explosion would. At high enough concentrations, ammonia can blind a person and make them suffer severe respiratory consequences.
- This was given in The Book of Heroic Failures, listing an episode in which a vet attending a cow in a barn stuck a tube into "that end which is not capable of facial expression" and struck a light. The resulting jet of flame set fire to the barn.
- Which is probably a reference to a James Herriot story above. Or both referencing the same Urban Legend.
- There is at least one Darwin Awards story with this. It backfired into the guy's rectum. Ouch.
- Cow Bomb is a 2000 Darwin Award given to a total idiot who successfully lit farts of a cow — the cow then exploded as the flame entered the cow's rectum and killed the aforementioned idiot by means of flying cow femur bone shrapnel.
- Cow Bomb
- A confirmed case of this happened in Germany. Long story short, too many cows, not enough ventilation, and a static buildup. Thankfully, no person or cow was injured.
