Fun with Flushing

Water go down the Hole!

"Our oldest child has discovered the little silver handle on the back of the toilet. She's making more stuff disappear than David Copperfield! My wife's lost three combs, I lost my good sunglasses. We're pretty sure she's flushed the remote control, 'cause every time we go to the bathroom, the TV comes on!"

— Jeff Foxworthy

Babies are naturally curious about a lot of things, and at some point or another, they'll want to know about the toilet. However, they won't really know what it does — at least not at first. They find more enjoyment in flushing stuff down the toilet, no doubt losing some of your precious possessions if it's within reach of the baby — or perhaps clogging it up and overflow... or both! This is Truth in Television for anyone taking care of a small child or baby.

However, several other scenarios can also happen from this as well, say, for example, a character decides to pull a plug in the earth, draining the ocean and turning it into a whirlpool. Other times, it may lead to strange worlds after getting sucked in.

Drug dealers will sometimes do this in the form of Flush the Evidence. Commonly found in a Toilet Training Plot. If flushing items (or yourself) down a toilet really does send them to another location, see Toilet Teleportation.

For an extreme version, compare Mega Maelstrom.

Do not confuse with Down the Drain, as it covers underwater sewer levels in Video Games, though accessing such levels might require this trope.

For another way to have fun while flushing, see Flushing Toilet, Screaming Shower.

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Examples:

Advertising

• An old Pepsi commercial had two kids with a pet goldfish who would play dead, where it was given a drop of Pepsi that the fish would jump out of. When the father thinks the fish is dead, he flushes it down the toilet by accident.
• Several commercials for cleansers, plumbing services, or household repair have depicted toddlers flushing their toys down the toilet. The resulting blockage and/or flood are generally implied by blocked-plumbing sounds, not shown.
• One Kohler commercial shows a guy noticing an attractive female plumber, and flushing things down the toilet to jam it and create an excuse to ask her in. Alas for him, the featured toilet handles everything he drops into it.

Anime and Manga

• Early in Dragon Ball, Master Roshi got accidentally flushed down the toilet while using a shrinking gadget to peep on Bulma.
• The first episode of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt involved a ghost who flushes people down toilets whenever they're used. This happens to Panty midway through the episode, though she breaks free. In a later episode, they travel underground by getting flushed down a toilet to discover a ghost machine they need to destroy.
• In Heaven's Lost Property, Tomoki is chased by a bunch of angry girls who want to beat him up for being a pervert. When they corner him in the bathroom, he escapes by flushing himself down the toilet.

Comic Books

• When Górsky & Butch do The Matrix parody, the party is cornered by police in a disused toilet. They escape down the drain, all except Morphinius (Gorsky) who has to stay behind to flush them.
• In a side story from Atari Force, the Hukka gets so annoyed with his robotic play friend Bob that he attempts to flush him down the toilet. However, he ends up unleashing Bob's evil side.
• Red Dwarf Magazine: The plot of "A Day in the Life of a Bogbot" begins when Kryten accidentally flushes Lister's pet robotic goldfish (Lennon and McCartney) down the toilet, which becomes troublesome when it turns out that they have a defense mode for unfamiliar locations.

Fan Works

• Anger Management: Discussed when Lynn pretends like she's going to flush Bun-Bun.

Films — Animation

• Finding Nemo: Nemo's escape plan is to play dead and get flushed, because "all drains lead to the ocean". Many have pointed out that in reality, a fish would not survive the trip as it would be ground up during the sewage treatment process, leading some to joke that the title should have been "Grinding Nemo".
• This happens to Roddy in Flushed Away.
• In Monsters, Inc., Sulley gets some of Boo's toys tangled up on him when he reenters the monster world. He tries to get rid of them by flushing them down the toilet, but the items just block the toilet and make it overflow, forcing him to take them out instead. He then has to dump them in someone's locker, where they reappear later as a Brick Joke.
• In The Thief and the Cobbler, the titular thief's first attempt to break into King Nod's palace bring him in the royal toilet. While trying to get out he accidentally pulls the rope and is flushed back into the castle moat.

Films — Live-Action

• This happens to the title character in Who Framed Roger Rabbit as he is breaking into the Acme Factory. After a failed attempt to sneak through an outside window into the factory Roger sighs “wouldn’t you know?.. locked” as he leans against the glass. The window un-jams and Roger falls through tumbling head first into a Disgusting Public Toilet. He accidentally flushes the toilet as he falls in swirling him round and around until it sucked him down. Because toons live by the Rule of Funny Roger was forced to fall in and be flushed down a toilet as that was the funniest way for him to get inside the factory. And judging by his reaction (Rogers’s disgusted expression was obvious given he had his tongue stuck out the whole time as he was swirling around, and he clearly tried to stay out of the water for as long as possible stretching his neck out as he was being sucked down) it also forced Roger to endure some nasty Nausea Fuel as he is used to doing these types of gags on a cartoon set and not in real life.
• Little Alvin and the Mini-Munks has Theodore overflowing the toilet.
• Clumsy Smurf in The Smurfs almost gets flushed down the toilet, but is saved by being stuck inside a wad of wet toilet paper.
• Weaponized in the Polish comedy Kingsajz, set in a Mouse World, where the Big Bad gets flushed down the drain.
• Hot Fuzz. Not the film itself, but the DVD extra features, which includes a mini-doc of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright on tour in the USA premiering the film. At one point, Frost has a birthday, and a fan gifts him a cake. Since he can't easily take it with him on a flight, he flushes it down the toilet in his hotel room.

Literature

• Love You Forever: A baby boy flushes his mom's watch down the toilet.
• In Carl Hiaasen's Flush, Noah and his sister flush dyes down a polluting ship's toilets in attempt to expose them.
• In Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake Junie B. is practicing one of her favorite games in the school carnival, the one where you throw sponges at the principal, by throwing sponges into the toilet at home. When her parents catch her she tries to hide it by flushing the toilet, and the sponges clog the toilet and it overflows.
• In All-American Girl (Meg Cabot), Sam mentions having flushed her father's credit card(s) down the toilet when she was 8 while her family was living in Morocco due to having been upset about having to move there.

Live-Action TV

• All That: In a Have a Nice Day With Leroy and Fuzz sketch about bathtime, when Fuzz tells Leroy that he loves taking baths, Leroy decides to give him a bath in his special puppet bathtub, which is revealed to be a toilet. Leroy then stuffs Fuzz in the toilet and flushes him down it.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy: In the episode on digestion, every time Bill says "all the way" a toilet flushes off-screen.
• Dinosaurs had a Very Special Episode where Baby learned to use the toilet which had some of this.
• Full House: In the prologue to "Leap of Faith", Uncle Jesse and Aunt Becky have an argument, so Nicky and Alex decide to flush something down the toilet to get their mind off of it. When the argument ends, the twins tell their parents "Guess what we flushed?". Cue Uncle Jesse unrolling his sleeve to unclog the toilet.
• In the Good Luck Charlie episode, "Let's Potty", as Bob teaches Charlie about the toilet, Charlie flushes her toys down it, clogging it up. When Bob tries to fix the clog himself, he hits a water pipe that sprays the fusebox, causing a blackout.
• The Secret World of Alex Mack had the title character travel through plumbing pipes in puddle form.
• This was a Running Gag on All in the Family; the Bunkers' upstairs toilet had a really loud flush that could be heard anywhere in the house. The first one heard in the premiere was the very first to be heard on network TV ever.

Music

• Keith Moon of the band The Who had a documented habit of flushing firecrackers down the toilets of hotel bathrooms.
• The Auntie Poo and the Porta-Potties song "Flush The Magic Dragon" is about what can and can't be flushed down the toilet.

Newspaper Comics

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • Calvin has an elaborate strip where he flushes a toy boat down the toilet (his dad is not amused after it clogs, with a hefty bill from a plumber to fix this).
  • In another one, he and Hobbes dip the dangling paper from the roll into the toilet and flush it.
  • At one point, Calvin himself gets into the toilet bowl, flushes himself around in circles, and then informs his mother that he'd finished his "bath."
  • There was also the time he threatened to flush Rosalyn's school notes. He didn't actually do it, but he did psych her out by flushing and pretending he did.
• In For Better or for Worse, April flushed something, probably a toy boat, down the toilet when she was a toddler. It was the punchline of a strip where they define the word "goomby" or something similar (that's what April says upon flushing it; rhymes with "good-bye"). The following strip shows the father with a plunger, and eventually picking the commode up off the base, saying "Whoever called that thing a convenience never had small children!"

Stand-Up Comedy

• Bill Cosby had a bit where he describes pretending to be a submarine captain as a child and flushing the toilet as if he were firing torpedoes. He could get two shots off before needing to wait for the tank to refill.
• Jeff Foxworthy mentions this in the skit "I Love Being a Parent" on Games Rednecks Play:
  "Our oldest child has discovered the little silver handle on the back of the toilet. She's making more stuff disappear than David Copperfield! My wife's lost three combs, I lost my good sunglasses. We're pretty sure she's flushed the remote control, 'cause every time we go to the bathroom, the TV comes on!"

Theme Parks

• A scene in The Cat in the Hat ride at Universal's Islands of Adventure has the Fish getting flushed down a toilet, though he later returns without explanation.

Video Games

• 77p egg: Eggwife allows you to flush your teddy right in the first area. After peeing on it, no less.
• Toilet Kids: In this Japanese only Shoot 'Em Up, for the TurboGrafx-16, a boy gets sucked into the toilet to battle all sorts of poo related enemies.
• The Adventures of Willy Beamish: Weaponized in the finale. Willy gets rid of the two antagonists by flushing them down a giant toilet full of sludge.
• MadWorld: One of the ways your enemies can be defeated is by stuffing or throwing them in the toilet. They get flushed seconds later.
• A stage in Clay Fighter 63 1/3 took place above a toilet where it was possible to knock your opponent into.
• Not so fun, but Hypercharge Unboxed sees you playing as an anthropomorphic toy action figure. In the toilet level, missing a jump from the sink might lead to you landing into the toilet bowl.
• The NES Tom and Jerry Licensed Game had a stage where Jerry had to navigate a drain pipe maze to get to the kitchen sink while dodging flows of water.
• Boogerman: This platformer had the title character flush himself down toilets to enter a sewer loaded with powerups and enemies. It's also how the Big Bad is defeated - Boogerman burps him into the toilet and he's flushed away.
• In Banjo-Kazooie, after turning the pair into a pumpkin, you can go into a haunted house through a window and then flush yourself down the toilet to reach a secret room where you'll find a Jiggy. This manages to disgust even Grunty, who has many gross habits and hobbies.
  Grunty: I can't believe you went in there, now wash your hands, filthy bear!
• One official tie-in browser game based on The Ferals was titled "Rattus Down the Dunny" and featured Rattus having to navigate a pipe maze after getting accidentally flushed down the toilet.

Web Animation

• The Strong Bad Email "unnatural" has Bubs turn into a large Godzilla-like monster after accidentally flushing himself down the toilet while shaving. In one of the Easter Eggs at the end, Strong Bad tries to flush himself (with The Cheat's help) in the hopes that he'll grow giant too.
• A Pucca episode has Pucca pull a drain under the lake after saving Garu from a shark. They get stuck in the pipes and Dada inadvertently saves them while unclogging one of the toilets, freeing them both.

Web Comics

• In Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal (2022), the Pet Avengers defeat Doomfish by flushing him down a toilet.
  Doomfish: You DARE treat Doomfish in such a manner?
  Throg: We dare. Verily. [FLUSH!]

Web Original

• The Wiiviewer tries in vain to flush Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz down the toilet to avoid reviewing the game, which he ends up doing after it continues to pop up all over the house.
• SuperMarioLogan:
  • In "Bowser Junior Gets Potty Trained!", as Toad teaches Junior how to use the toilet through a rap song, he puts the diaper Bowser forced Junior to wear in the toilet, and at the end of the episode, he and Junior flush the diaper down the toilet.
  • In "Bowser Junior's Annoying Toy!", Bowser Junior annoys everyone by playing with a ball popper toy. Fed up with this, Black Yoshi takes the balls out of Junior's ball popper and forces Junior to flush them down the toilet.
  • In "Bowser Junior's Broccoli Problem!", Junior gets rid of the broccoli Chef Pee Pee makes him eat by flushing it down the toilet. It only worsens the problem, as the broccoli lands in the mouth of a crocodile who lives in the sewers, who infiltrates Junior's house in search of more food.
  • In "Bowser's Goldfish!", Junior plays with Bowser's pet goldfish, Charleyyy Jr., in the bathtub, until Toad arrives and tells Junior that they could take CJ on a water slide. Toad's idea on water slides for fishes, however, is flushing them down the toilet. Junior is against this, but Toad tells him that all toilets have a mechanism in them that keeps fish from getting flushed down. When Junior can't bring himself to flush the toilet, Toad does so, flushing CJ down it. When CJ doesn't come back out, Toad blames Junior for not having a toilet with a fish-catching mechanism. At the end of the episode, CJ comes back up the toilet, having grown massively in size, wanting revenge on Junior for flushing him.
  • In "Jeffy's Stupid Home Video!", Jeffy thinks he's trapped inside Mario's camera after Mario shows him a video he filmed of him swinging from the ceiling fan. In an attempt to get himself out of the camera, he flushes it down the toilet, destroying the camera as a result.
  • In "Cody The Magician!", when Bowser Junior and Joseph repeatedly misunderstand Cody's card trick, a frustrated Cody tells them to do anything other than show him or tell him what it is. Junior takes the 6 of Clubs card and flushes it down the toilet, but it gets stuck in the hole. When Junior gets back to Cody, Cody somehow has the 6 of Clubs card with him.
  • At the beginning of "Bowser Junior's Curse!", Junior tells Joseph and Cody that Bowser bought a toilet that can flush 18 golf balls. Cut to Junior doing just that.
• At the end of The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of the The Karate Kid, the Nerd flushes his copy of the game down the toilet.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • This happens to Gumball at the beginning of "The Curse" when he slips on a bar of soap while taking a shower.
  • Penny's pet tarantula, Mr. Cuddles was accidentally flushed down the toilet by her father in "The Date". However, it's subverted as he hid under the toilet seat, and Gumball finds it and returns it to Penny, but not before getting bitten mutliple times in the process.
  • Darwin and Gumball flush themselves down a toilet in "The Secret" to escape from the boys bathroom in school when they're locked in. They return home through a pipe leading to their toilet at the end of the episode.
  • In "The Downer", Gumball flushes a LEGO man down the toilet after he steps on it.
• In the Arthur episode, "Staycation", when Arthur and D.W. change Kate's diaper, D.W. disposes of the dirty diaper by flushing it down the toilet. This clogs the toilet up and creates a flood that leaks onto the bathroom floor.
• Baby Looney Tunes: The main characters wonder about the toilet in the bathroom and form their own theories about how dangerous it is, while Petunia assures them nothing is wrong. In the process, they panic when Petunia accidentally flushes it, and puts toilet paper to "Feed the monster," clogging it up. They accidentally leave her in and she comes out wet with toilet paper on her. When Granny shows her what the toilet is really for, and Petunia tells them, they don't believe her.
• Curious George: In "Country in the City", George flushes some leaves down the toilet, clogging it up and causing it to overflow and flood the apartment.
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • The Justice Friends short "Ratman" begins with Valhallen and Krunk flushing a bunch of stuff down the toilet for fun, including objects too large to fit such as a refrigerator, a couch, and a television. This results in their pipes being clogged up.
  • In "Filet of Soul", spirits from the dead hold Dee Dee hostage unless the dead goldfish is flushed down the toilet.
• Family Guy: A cutaway gag features Charles and Anne Lindbergh potty training their son, who accidentally flushes himself down the toilet. Charles comes up with a plan to fake his son's kidnapping, but Anne points out Amelia Earhart saw everything...
• In Fish Hooks, swimming in a flushing toilet is an extreme sport.
• Futurama: Bender finally got fed up with (or more accurately, jealous of) Nibbler and flushed him down the toilet. This prompted them to install a chip that forced him to feel Leela's emotions, causing him to flush himself (in pieces) so he could rescue it.
  • And El Chupanibre was defeated by being flushed down a giant toilet into the sub-sewer.
• In the The Incredible Dennis the Menace episode, "Wish You Weren't Here", Joey flushes Gina's baseball mitt down the toilet in Mr. Wilson's camper van when the Mitchells go on vacation with the Wilsons. As a result, the toilet is clogged up and Mr. Wilson has to pay to get it unclogged.
• The Loud House:
  • In the episode, "Sleuth or Consequences", Lincoln is revealed to have flushed many items down the toilet, such as his liverwurst-loaf dinner, an embarrassing sweater his Mom made him for Christmas, and his Dad's CD collection for karaoke night. When a Princess Pony book clogs up the toilet, he is automatically blamed for it, so he tries to find out who the real culprit is to clear his name. Towards the end of the episode, it is revealed that Lucy is a fan of Princess Pony, and doesn't want anybody to know, given her goth reputation. She hid the book in the toilet, but Lincoln flushed it down, not knowing it was there.
  • Implied in "Breaking Dad". While Lynn Sr. is waiting for one of his friends to pick him up for a music festival and has to drop off Lily at the daycare center on the way there, he receives a text message that the daycare center is closed for the day due to one of the toddlers flooding the place by clogging the toilet with a whole diaper. Rita cannot watch Lily due to her being busy all day at the dentist office.
• The Magic School Bus: Happens twice in two episodes, one where they go through the water cycle and travels through drain pipes to reach the girls bathroom where the water overflows, and in another episode, they cross over an open toilet bowl which has an alligator swimming in it.
• ¡Mucha Lucha! had Ricochet, Buena Girl and the Flea fight a masked toilet twice in the series. Also, The Flea swam in it at one point.
• In one episode of Muppet Babies (1984), an Imagine Spot ends when Animal pulls the plug out of the bathtub (which the kids have imagined is the ocean), resulting in everyone except Animal getting sucked down the drain. Animal, thinking it actually happened, waved bye-bye down the drain, only for Gonzo to tell him that they were outside the tub getting dried off.
• In the My Goldfish is Evil episode "Sewer Adventure" Admiral Bubbles flushes one of Beanie's "Sewer Avengers" action figures down the toilet, causing a plumbing issue. Beanie's mom, not believing Bubbles flushed it, plugs up all the drains so nothing else gets flushed.
• Phineas and Ferb had Perry go to his lair by flushing himself down a toilet in one episode.
• On The Powerpuff Girls (1998), the class hamster gets flushed down by Mitch, the schoolyard bully. In the sewer, the hamster gets exposed to chemical waste and comes back a mutated monster out for revenge.
• Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko's pet goldfish is accidentally flushed down the toilet, and gets stuck in the drain pipe for few years, clogging it up. Of course, Heffer stuffing the toilet with a whole punch of items to try and stop it from flooding the bathroom didn't help matters either.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • The pilot episode had Tommy inspecting the toilet to find out what it does. He accidentally ends up flushing some toilet paper and making a mess in the bathroom, causing the toilet to overflow.
  • In "Ruthless Tommy", he also flushes jewels down a toilet while he was kidnapped by robbers.
  • "Chuckie vs. the Potty" had a nightmare-sequence example, wherein Chuckie is a prisoner sent to "The Chair", which is revealed to be a giant toilet. Angelica flushes him down it, and as an added bonus, the viewers even to see him go through the pipes, screaming the entire time.
  • "Down the Drain" had Angelica scaring Tommy and Chuckie by saying they'll get sucked down the drain (After an incident where Tommy accidentally loses one of his toys this way) whenever they take a bath, and throughout the episode they try to find ways to get out of it, which includes flushing anything bathtime related down the toilet. Ironically, she accidentally flushes her own doll, Cynthia, down the toilet. The plumber recovers it, but the doll is ruined.
  • In "The Big Flush", the parents take the kids to the pool, which they assume is a giant toilet. The whole episode revolved around them trying to find the flusher, and trying things such as the high dive and the sauna thermostat (when they do the latter, they accidentally lock the moms inside).
  • In "Day of the Potty", Chuckie puts his broken toy airplane down the toilet only to break the toilet by repeatedly flushing it until it overflows.
• The Simpsons:
  • A Flash Back episode had baby Bart flush Homer's wallet, then his keys down the toilet - but he knew exactly what he was doing.
  • "The Crepes of Wrath" had Bart flushing a cherry bomb down a toilet, which blows Principal Skinner's mother off of her seat while she's using it and prompts Skinner to make Bart a foreign exchange student just to get him out of his hair for a while.
    • In the MythBusters Simpsons Special, the team tried to replicate the fountains of water that act was shown to cause. Result? Busted. While water may spray feet into the air, so do ballistic shards of porcelain.
  • "Deep Space Homer" featured a literal toilet joke and a jab at Married... with Children rolled into one.
  • Following the failure of an almost-successful venture in the B-plot of "The Old Man and the C Student", Homer is left with ten thousand coiled springs and tasked with getting rid of them. He proceeds to flush every single one of them down the toilet, accidentally saving a sinking yacht when it keeps bouncing off the springs at the bottom of the marina.
  • In the B-plot of "Chief of Hearts", Bart takes up collecting Battle Balls. When Marge takes a liking to them, Bart finds them uncool now and tries to get rid of them by flushing them down the toilet. He ends up clogging the toilet as a result.
    Bart: Oh, come on, toilet! If you can handle Dad, you can handle this!
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • "The Main Drain" has SpongeBob and Patrick hearing a story about a drain that two kids pulled long ago and that flushed away all of Bikini Bottom. They become obsessed with finding "The Main Drain" and making sure no one pulls it again. They do pull it, of course, but then it turns out to have been All Just a Dream.
  • In "Sewers of Bikini Bottom", SpongeBob decides to see what can flush down the Krusty Krab toilet at Squidward's request. After flushing down the safe holding the Krabby Patty formula, SpongeBob and Squidward have to flush themselves down into Bikini Bottom's Absurdly Spacious Sewer to find it.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Royal Pain", Star claims that the bathroom is the most magical place in Diaz household to her father. When he finds the toilet, King Butterfly decides to stuff as many things as he can into it to try the flush action. Unsurprisingly, they cause the drain to back up, soaking Marco's socks.
• Tiny Toon Adventures
  • In the short, "The Potty Years" (part of "Henny Youngman Day"), a baby version of Plucky Duck is learning how to use the toilet for the first time. He gets a lot of enjoyment flushing various items down it, such as toilet paper, Furrball, his toys, even his own diaper! He even climbed into it himself and tried to flush himself down the hole! The toilet gets clogged up as a result.
  • This gag was repeated in two more episodes, which consisted of a trip to the mall where he plays with the elevator controls, and a miniature golf course with Plucky struggling to knock the ball in, going as far as to cheat (He gets better at it, though). It was also done in several Animaniacs episodes whenever he made a cameo.
  • "The Undersea World Of Fifi" had Elmyra searching for sea monkeys, and it ends with her draining it and having her say the exact same line as baby Plucky did.
  Elmyra: Ocean go down da hoooooole.... Planet go down da hooooooooooole... Universe go down da hooooooooole... But I still got my monkey-wonkey.
  • The "Kon Ducki" episode had Plucky flushing a boat down the toilet as part of the "special effects" during the behind the scenes portion of the episode.
• In Tuca & Bertie's episode "The Open House," Tuca flushes a purse down a toilet to prove the realtor's claim that the pipes are big. She then flushes the realtor's real purse down.
  • Later, Tuca flushes a cookie omelet down Bertie's toilet, clogging the toilet and flooding the apartment.

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I wanna flush it agaaaaaiiiiiiiin...