"Well, this is inconvenient."
"Attention, SABER crew. Stop running, and let the Flerkittens eat you. You will be fine."
— PA System Announcement, The Marvels (2023)
In real life, stomachs are designed solely to break down food. They are hot, churning sacks full of acids and digestive enzymes and short on breathable atmosphere. Most creatures unfortunate enough to be Eaten Alive only survive inside it for a few minutes at best. Not to mention that most predators tend to chew on, rip apart or grind up their prey into digestible chunks of meat before it even gets that far, and even most predators who do swallow prey whole still kill it first. However, in fiction, stomachs are often just fleshy bags of holding or prisons for those who wind up inside them. So being Eaten Alive is not nearly as perilous as one might assume. Once whatever or whoever ate a character spits them out or gets destroyed, said character will be able to go about their life as if nothing happened.
Sometimes this is justified by the person only being inside their predator's stomach for a brief period before being released, actually having the requisite level of Super-Toughness and/or Healing Factor to avoid harm (at least for far longer than your average non-superpowered human would), or whatever ate them having a slow metabolism, but often times most of these Hand Waves aren't even mentioned.
At this point, one of two things might happen. Either the monster is slashed open from the inside or the outside, and the hero escapes unharmed (and usually quite clean), or else they do something to cause the monster indigestion, and get vomited back out. For bonus humor, they may not even be aware they were inside the monster's gut until they provoke this dyspepsia.
This trope is the reason why Eat Me works as a combat tactic, since the person will live long enough to kill it from the inside. If the thing that ate the character is a monster or creature and we get an internal shot, it is often a Ribcage Stomach.
A subtrope of Swallowed Whole. In a lot of ways, especially if it's played for Drama, it can be a form of Disney Death.
There are a number of ways that this can be played with:
- Protection — Through the use of a magic spell, protective outfit, or an enhanced anti-acid pill, the one who was swallowed will be safe, either through their own means, or that of the one who swallowed them.
- Time Limit — It is perfectly safe to be within a predator's stomach, providing that you don't stay too long. In a Safe Scenario, this could be explored as something like a sexual fetish act, wherein both predator and prey can have their pleasures with the prey being let out unharmed, while in Dark Scenarios, the time limit could be used to add to the horror for the prey and portray the predator as a sadist, or if the Prey is committing suicide by being a Predator's meal, as a means to allow the Prey to think about if they really want to go through with it, or change their mind. Death tends to come about after the Prey passes out due to a lack of oxygen, which results in asphyxiation, or drowning in the stomach acids.
- Storage/Protective Pouch — This stomach is more of a holding chamber for a future meal, or to protect offspring/small friends from other predators who might tear them to pieces. The chamber just past it however, that's where digestion occurs.
Whales are commonly invoked by writers for this trope across various media, simply because the huge sea mammals were poorly understood for most of human history. Many cultures, even those that have hunted them, hold the cetaceans in awe and feature them in their mythologies. Stories of whales destroying ships and swallowing humans are often heard in many folklores' tales, even though nowadays we know whales are generally shy and easily spooked by people. Not to mention that, despite their immensity, it's mostly impossible for one to devour large prey such as us. Despite all this, whales are still used, since they continue to captivate the imagination. Oceans are not required. Sharks and other large fish are a common alternate option.
This may result in explosive indigestion. When the hero himself simply proves to be inedible, it's Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth.
This is an extremely old trope and features very often in children's books, though it also shows up in other settings.
Examples:
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Advertising
- in 2013, Discovery Channel ran an advertisement
for their annual Shark Week block masquerading as a news report. The advertisement showed the heartwarming release of Snuffy the Seal back into the wild derailed as the seal was suddenly devoured by a shark in front of hundreds of onlookers. One year later in 2014, a followup revealed that Snuffy had come out no worse for wear after said shark was caught and beached.
Anime & Manga
- A variant in Delicious in Dungeon, Falin gets eaten by the Red Dragon at the start of the series, which does kill her, but the rest of her party figure out that this particular type of dragon digests food very slowly and so, if they're quick, they may be able to recover her body while there's still enough left for a resurrection. Unfortunately the Red Dragon's been far more active than normal, with a correspondingly higher metabolism, and when they arrive they find Falin already just a skeleton in the dragon's gizzard. They still manage to resurrect her.
- Justified example in Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas, when Doraemon and the main villain, Cash, gets Swallowed Whole by the Leviathan. Cash realize he's going to be dissolved soon, but Doraemon, being a robot cat from the future made with 22nd-Century tech, could survive it and later excreted out. Cue Cash revealing his nature as a Dirty Coward as he begs for Doraemon to save him.
- In Dragon Ball Z, Androids 17 and 18 are swallowed (or "absorbed") by the villain of the arc, Cell. Android 18 escapes unscathed when Cell regurgitates her during his fight against Gohan. Android 17 is not so lucky as he dies when Cell blows himself up.
- Fairy Tail: Natsu is swallowed whole by the owl-man Fukuro, who then absorbs and utilizes his fire magic. This trop is nearly averted as Fukuro states that Natsu will be digested in a matter of minutes. However, Gray arrives just in time and defeats Fukuro, releasing Natsu from his stomach unharmed.
- Toriko: When the Four Beast attacks Human World, it manages to swallow many people. After its defeat, those people turn out to still be alive and relatively unharmed. This is eventually justified: the Four Beast was originally created to capture live humans for its creators, the Blue Nitro.
- The Stop Motion short My Little Goat, which is a darker take on the Brothers Grimm story The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids (where the trope is played straight), averts this in a horrifying and realistic way. While Mother Goat managed to rescue most of her children from the Big Bad Wolf's stomach, they've all been physically and emotionally scarred by the experience, having missing horns and hooves and their wool being burned off. The eldest of the kids, Toruku, was the first to be eaten and was already digested before Mother Goat could save him.
- In the eighth episode of Dororo (2019) a woman is Swallowed Whole by a giant flying centipede. Despite being in there for more than a day, she still comes out fine when it's destroyed. Hyakkimaru also gets swallowed, but he doesn't stay in there for long.
- At the end of the animated short Wolf Daddy, the title character gets a job as a school bus. No, not a school bus driver. A school bus. He swallows the children at their respective bus stops, then belly-flops and opens his mouth at the school so they can all come out.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has the anime-only Forest Wolf card, a three star monster with the disproportionately high attack of 1800, with the effect "If this card destroys a monster by battle, equip that monster to this card. When this card is destroyed, Special Summon all monsters equipped to this card by this effect to their owners' sides of the field." It's an obvious pastiche of The Big Bad Wolf, as when it attacks it instead swallows its target whole, and defeating it frees the devoured monster and allows them to continue fighting.
Animation
Comic Books
- Hilda: The Black Hound eats 3 people, but when he barfs them up again they are no worse for the wear.
- Bizarrogirl: When a giant insect-like alien swallows Bizarro-Luthor whole, Supergirl thinks she can cut him out of the monster's belly unharmed.
- Strange Academy: In issue 8, while on a class trip into space, Iric gets eaten and later regurgitated by a scribbit. While the experience is humiliating for him, there are no ill effects thanks to his Asgardian physiology.
Fairy Tales
- In some versions of "Little Red Riding Hood", the wolf is killed and the grandmother, sometimes Red as well, emerges from its stomach, fine.
- In the Brothers Grimm story "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids", six of the kids are eaten by The Big Bad Wolf, but when the seventh kid and their mother cuts the wolf's belly open, the kids emerge unharmed.
- In "Little Otik", the titular monster swallows six persons whole in a row. When an old woman farmer rips Otik's belly open, all its victims emerge out of its stomach, alive.
Fan Works
- Zig-zagged in Eldritchrune. Susie absolutely eats Kris with intent to kill, but the acids inside her are too weak to digest them, and they remain unharmed for their duration inside... eventually being killed instead by thirst, before respawning outside.
- All the time during Soviet Pokémon and its sequels. The main Pokemon character is a very large pelipper named Tera. His main preys are Ray and Dory, two humans he adopts in Chapter 1, but pretty much everyone goes into his belly sooner or later and come back out no worse than they went in.
- In Chapter 2, it is revealed that all of the other Pokemon can do it too. Ray is also swallowed, and kept alive, by a pyroar and a purugly. It is stated that this was learned by all of them through hypnosis after it was learned via mind reading from someone Henry met while exploring the Distortion World.
- In Chapter 6, Tera swallows Ariel, a minion of the big bad. In one of its sequels, the same person refers to Tera as her sensei, climbs into his beak all on her own and goads him to swallow her whole just to show off how he can do it.
- In another sequel, Tera befriends a charizard, who prefers to sleep inside his belly at night to get out of the cold.
- Stars Above: Kagami is swallowed whole by the Third Demon Ciacco, a giant, emaciated dog, but the only real danger involved inside is his Spawnnote , a horde of maggots that eat everything he eats, depriving him of actual nourishment.
Films — Animation
- In The Addams Family (2019) Puglsey dives down their pet lion Kitty Kat's throat to retrieve food they stole from him and swallowed. Afterwards, he continues sitting inside Kitty Kat with his head poking out of their jaws for the rest of the meal, ocassionally getting licked.
- Finding Nemo: Marlin and Dory are ingested by a blue whale, and spend a while swimming and breathing in its mouth, though it turns out the whale had no intention of actually eating them; it was taking them to Sydney.
- In Hercules the Hydra swallows Hercules whole. It's clear he's still alive because A) he cuts off its head from inside and B) the film's only about halfway through.
- In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Manny and Diego are ingested by a carnivorous plant, whose "stomach" (formed from its folded leaves) becomes filled with digestive fluids. While Buck the weasel hints that the plant is capable of rapid digestion, he saves them by diving headfirst into the digestive juices to break the plants hold, even keeping his eyes open inside. All three escape unharmed, while still drenched in digestive juice. Johnny the aardvark and a dodo were also eaten by a baby T. rex, and are fine on being coughed up, despite seemingly being in there for hours.
- In Ice Age: Continental Drift Sid and his grandmother are voluntarily swallowed by Granny's "pet" whale Precious. Entering the whale's stomach, they land in a pool of partially digested fruit and gastric juices, but are not harmed.
- Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie: Jonah spends several days inside a whale, living atop a swallowed shipwreck floating in its stomach juices. Jonah emerges fine, aside from being bleached and smelling terrible. Some dialogue between Jonah and Khaleel the caterpillar implies the duo would not have survived the digestive process had they lingered much longer.
- During a fight in NIMONA (2023), the titular character briefly turns into a whale and chomps down on several guards, then shooting them out the blowhole once she's on the ground. Despite the force of having most of a whale's innards land on them and being pushed through its digestive tract, the guards appear completely unharmed.
- In Peter Pan, the Crocodile swallows Captain Hook whole, before he re-emerges intact. During a tense moment, Hook tries to prevent being eaten by standing at the edge of the creature's mouth, holding it open with all his might. Hook is definitely a menace to Peter Pan, but in this instance he almost gets consumed by an oversized crocodile.
- This happens in Pinocchio when Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket (following Geppetto) are swallowed by Monstro the whale but are all perfectly fine and later manage to escape. Any discussion or depiction of digestion is nowhere to be found, likely because of the subject's stronger cultural taboo in the 1940s.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario and Donkey Kong are at one point swallowed by a Maw-Ray and make it out by using one of the rockets on DK's kart without getting harmed.
Films — Live-Action
- The Brothers Grimm has one of the Grimm's horses be taken over by spiders fed to it by The Huntsman, which abducts a girl from the village by swallowing her whole to carry her back to The Mirror Queen.
- In Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Lyle accidentally swallows Josh's pet cat, only to harmlessly barf it up later in the same scene. Josh seems aware of this somehow, chasing after him with demands to 'give her back'.
- In Men in Black, Kay purposely lets himself be ingested by the Edgar Bug in order to get his gun back. Once he blasts the bug in two from the inside, he's physically no worse for wear, save for the truly massive mess he made. Psychologically, though? He'd just as soon forget it ever happened.
- In Men in Black II:
- Serleena accidentally flies her ship into the giant worm Jeff's mouth. She not only gets swallowed, but is chewed up by a whole gullet's worth of teeth, yet she survives and manages to infect Jeff and kill him from the inside. Granted she's a plant alien who previously regenerated from a single bud.
- Averted at the start of the film when Serleena swallows a mugger alive. She regurgitates him shortly after, but it's made clear that he didn't survive.
- Sharknado: Nova gets swallowed by a shark. Fin dives down that shark's throat chainsaw-first. Not only does Nova not get digested, but the chainsaw misses her. (Oh, and Fin isn't digested or bitten either.)
- Downplayed in Tremors 3: Back to Perfection. Burt Gummer survives being eaten by a Graboid, but he was in an oil barrel at the time protecting him from being crushed or digested, and he was rescued quickly enough that he didn't suffocate. This is the only time in the series someone survives the experience.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: When fighting an enormous tentacled creature with nigh-impervious skin, Drax leaps down its throat to try to cut it open from the inside. This fails completely because its skin is just as thick from the inside, but after it's killed, Drax emerges from it unharmed. Justifiable because Drax is that badass.
- In Dude, Where's My Car?, Tommy is swallowed by the Super Hot Giant Alien. When she is blown up by the Continuum Transfunctioner, Tommy is left behind, covered in slime but otherwise fine.
- The Marvels (2023): The Marvels, Fury and the Khans get all of the scientists out of the SABER base by having all of the flerken kitties eat them and then regurgitate them once they're back on earth. Justified, as the Flerkens are aliens and, well, whose to say how their biology works, exactly?
- In Pacific Rim, Hannibal Chau gets swallowed alive by an infant Kaiju. During The Stinger he is shown alive and well, cutting his way out of the dead monster's belly with a switchblade and complaining about his lost shoe.
Literature
- In the children's book A Hippopotamus Ate The Teacher, the titular teacher, Ms. Jones, survives inside a hippo's stomach for presumably a week, and even teaches the class from inside it. At the end, the students are available to get her out, and she's perfectly fine.
- Bark, George: When George tries to bark, he keeps making the wrong sound; first he meows, then he quacks, then he oinks, then he moos. His mother takes him to the vet, who pulls a cat, a duck, a pig, and a cow out of the puppy's gullet, completely intact and still breathing.
- The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen:
- First time Munchausen's swallowed whole by a giant fish while swimming in the Mediterranean. While inside its stomach, he starts to move around and create a commotion, which results in the fish swimming frantically onto the surface and getting harpooned by the fishermen. The Baron emerges from the creature’s sliced stomach without a scratch.
- Next time, Munchausen and his ship are Swallowed Whole by an enormous sea monster, only to discover a village of swallowed ships inside, along with their still-alive crew members. Baron and other prisoners escape by putting a large mast between the monster’s jaws and sailing out.
- Just So Stories: In How the Whale Got His Throat a whale becomes curious to see what man tastes like and swallows a sailor whole. The sailor then spends a considerable amount of time in the whale's stomach, but when he escapes at the end he's none the worse for wear.
- In the Known Space short story "Safe at Any Speed", the protagonist in his Flying Car gets swallowed by a giant pterodactyl and comes out months later perfectly unhurt. This is justified in-universe by the car being very tough, and the character being from a race who have evolved to be extraordinarily lucky.
- In Micro by Michael Crichton one of the characters, Karen, is eaten alive by a bird but manages (just barely) to not be killed. Unlike most examples of this trope, it's justified by the fact that she was stuck in the bird's crop rather than its stomach; there was just enough air to sustain her for a couple of minutes and the crop doesn't digest food. Considering she'd been eaten by an insect eater, however? Their stomachs are designed to grind apart chitin armor. If she'd been passed to the gizzard she pretty much would have been killed almost instantly.
- In Summer And Bird, Summer is no worse for wear despite being in the stomach of a giant snake for several days.
- In Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue, Pierre is eaten by a lion, but a doctor shakes the lion upside-down until he falls out, whereupon he appears to be none the worse for the experience.
- In The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong, Zhuzhi-Lang kidnaps Shen Qingqiu by swallowing him while in the form of an enormous snake as part of his ongoing efforts to help him. Shen Qingqiu is less than pleased but not notably harmed.
- The kurdels in Wizja Lokalna are huge, possibly genetically engineered, and used as mobile houses by the inhabitants of Kurdlandia, whose entire way of living revolves around that.
Live-Action TV
- Aliens in the Family: After Heather's boyfriend gets eaten alive by the family pet, Doug and Spit pull him out and he's fine.
- Happens a few times in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
- In the episode "Power Ranger Punks", four of the Rangers are swallowed whole by the ''Monster of the Week" The Terror Toad, but emerge unharmed once the monster spits them back out.
- In the episode "Welcome to Venus Island", the ''Monster of the Week", The Invenusable Flytrap, swallows four of the Rangers. The swallowed Rangers find the monster's insides to actually be quite spacious and they eventually fight their way out, forcing the Flytrap to release them.
- In the episode "Green No More, Part 2", Tommy allows himself to be eaten by the "Monster of the Week" Turban Shell so he can attack it from the inside. After doing significant damage to the monster, Tommy is spit out, unharmed.
Music
- It's hard to make out the lyrics of "Excreted Alive" by Carcass, but the title definitely implies that being eaten is at least survivable.
- The song "The Tale of the Oyster" by Cole Porter tells of an oyster who gets to experience high society after being harvested and served at a posh restaurant. The oyster gets eaten, but that's not the end of the tale: as the woman who ate him travels home in her yacht, she gets seasick and empties her stomach over the side, and the oyster ends up back on the sea floor where he started, none the worse for the experience.
- In Peter and the Wolf, the duck survives being swallowed by the wolf. When the wolf is later captured and committed to a zoo, the duck is not liberated; instead, it remains imprisoned within the wolf, with the implication that it will survive there indefinitely. According to the story, the duck can still be heard quacking inside the wolf's belly.
Myths & Religion
- Older Than Feudalism with the Book of Jonah in The Bible. With God's intervention, Jonah lives for three days and three nights inside a "great fish". Justified given God was watching over Jonah.
- In Classical Mythology five of the original Olympians, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon, were eaten by their father, the Titan Kronos, as soon as they were born. Years later, the sixth and youngest Olympian, Zeus, who had been raised in secret and so avoided sharing their fate, slipped Kronos an ipecac that resulted in the latter vomiting up Zeus' older siblings, who were of course no worse for wear. Justified since they were gods and completely immortal, so the stomach was essentially a prison.
- Irish Mythology:
- Princess Deichtine becomes pregnant with the hero Cu Chulainn after she swallows a miniaturized Lugh while he was swimming in her drinking cup (in some versions, Lugh deliberately jumps into her mouth). Considering that Lugh later appears to an adult Cu Chulainn to reveal the latter's Divine Parentage, he was clearly fine afterwards. Though how he got out of her stomach is never explained, possibly for the best.
- One story tells of how Conan Mac Morna, one of Fionn Mac Cumhaill's Fianna warriors, was in battle with a dragon and jumped down its throat. Rather than getting killed, he cuts his way out of the beast's stomach, then decapitates it. Slightly averted with his hair, which got burned off by the stomach acid, leading Conan to forever be known as "Conan the Bald."
- Native American Mythology: In one Mamaceqtaw and Ojibwe story, Nanabozho is swallowed, canoe and all, by a gigantic fish-monster. He kills the fish from inside and then survives long enough to escape after seagulls eat holes in the carcass. This story was adapted in The Song of Hiawatha, comprising canto VIII.
Puppet Shows
- In works featuring The Muppets, it generally seems to be the case that characters swallowed whole by the larger monsters (usually Timmy or Big Mean Carl) will emerge eventually none the worse for it.
Radio
- In The BBC Radio 4 serial The New Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the Baron is swallowed by a humpback whale (he acknowledges that this is not normally possible, but says that the listener obviously hasn't grasped just how big this whale was). Not only does he survive happily for some days in a space between the whale's throat and stomach, but he's not the first person to do so, and the previous occupant was there long enough to furnish it!
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder: Being eaten by a ketesthius is harmless per se — creatures trapped in one's gut still have to deal with thin, dank air, a lack of food and the beast's digestive juices — but a ketesthius' stomach spares its inmates the usual acid and bludgeoning damage normally dealt when a creature is Swallowed Whole, and its inmates can survive more or less indefinitely in there as long as they find a way not to die of thirst or hunger. The gingerbread witch archetype also does not do damage with its swallow whole attack, but it's such an unpleasant experience that the victim is nauseated while they're swallowed.
Urban Legends
- There's an apocryphal story about a scuba diver (a man in some versions, a woman in others) who had to have an octopus surgically removed from their stomach, which supposedly grew from an egg they swallowed while diving. This was tested and found to be demonstrably false on MythBusters, not only due to the octopus's inability to survive in a simulated stomach, but also due to the fact that they do not lay free-floating eggs.
Video Games
- Banjo-Tooie: Merry Maggie Malpass was eaten by a giant mechanical fish, but it turns out she's unharmed when Banjo and Kazooie enter the fish's body.
- In Super Mario RPG, Belome will occasionally eat Mallow whole during your first fight with him. However, this only deprives him of a few turns until he eventually pops out unharmed. It's implied it would eventually be fatal though, since if Mario is K.O.ed while Mallow is in Belome's stomach it results in a Game Over. In the second fight, Belome uses eating just as a means to get an Evil Knockoff of the character.
- LEGO Jurassic World has several characters getting eaten only to be vomited back up or shown inside the stomach, alive and well.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Various games have the various species of Like Likes, blobby tube-like creatures that inhale Link, do God only knows what to him while he's in there, and spit him out missing a shield, tunic, or some money. Usually it's harmless though in some games Link takes a bit of damage in the process.
- The third dungeon of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time takes place inside Lord Jabu-Jabu's belly. The only reason it's dangerous is because of the corrupting influence of Barinade, as Princess Ruto claims she's been going inside Jabu-Jabu's belly since she was little but only now is it dangerous because of the monsters and "strange holes everywhere." Even when Jabu-Jabu swallows Link against his will, Link is left completely unharmed and can even leave and return whenever he wants.
- Zigzagged with Moldworms in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. When they swallow Link he just passes through and is shot out their rear end, ahem, "all dirty" but alive and well, but it also does a ton of damage. Perhaps Link is just too resilient to be completely digested before being passed.
- Justified in Mega Man X with Gulpfers, large robotic fish that attempt to swallow X whole. Being machines they literally are just mechanical inert sacks that attempt to trap X, and he can easily blast his way out from within.
- In Miitopia, most of the Mii Trap and Burger enemies are able to swallow a party member for a few turns. Although the trapped Mii can say lines such as "I'm melting!" this does not actually do anything other than preventing the Mii from acting until the enemy is either defeated or some turns pass.
- Koop's father in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door apparently managed to survive ten years in Hooktail's stomach by using his shell to resist the stomach acids.
- Mischief Makers: Migen Jr. eats Prof. Theo, complete with chewing, just before the boss fight. Theo pops out just fine afterward.
- On Final Fantasy XIV players inflicted with Mini can be eaten by Cerberus in the World of Darkness. (Getting eaten without Mini will just get you mauled to death) This allows players to attack the inside of its stomach to temporarily cripple it through pain. Getting eaten isn't harmful and being in the stomach only inflicts a weak Damage Over Time effect (named Digestion) on you until you can escape. The strange creatures in there (Hecteyes called "Unknown") are far more dangerous than the stomach itself.
- In Dark Souls, the Primordial Serpents transport people via eating and swallowing them (the way their throats move indicate gulping) and spitting them back out at the new location. The one transported this way is none the worse for wear.
Kaathe: Entrust thine flesh to me.
- Engulfing monsters in Nethack. Vortices and blobs deal elemental damage (but "being eaten" might be a bit of a stretch for these monsters), which is survivable if you can kill or escape the monster before your HP runs out. Other monsters that literally eat you, such as the purple worm, begin digesting you. Instead of taking HP damage, you have a certain amount of time until you die. The exact time depends on the monster, your armor class, and some random factor.
- The Boss Battles in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island normally start once Kamek massively increases the size of a regular Mook via magic. However, at one point Kamek does not do this. Instead he shrinks Yoshi with Baby Mario and both are immediately eaten in one piece by a frog. The entire boss battle takes place inside the stomach of the frog and the only immediate danger for the duo are some drops of stomach acid. Yoshi has to defeat the frog by attacking his uvula.
- The nachzehrers in Battle Brothers grow stronger by eating the bodies of the dead, whether they be your brothers or their former allies. Full-sized ones, which have eaten at least two bodies, can go on to consume the flesh of the living, swallowing your brothers whole. These bros can be rescued by killing the nachzehrer, leaving them slimy but no worse for wear, but if the nachzehrer - or the adventuring party - flees the battle, they're lost in the belly of the beast for good.
- Gunman Chronicles has this as it's villains' Start of Darkness; him and his team were Swallowed Whole by a giant alien worm, but being Silicon-Based Life meant it couldn't digest them. Unfortunately, the experience didn't do much for his sanity.
- In Super Smash Bros., both Yoshi and Kirby have this as their Signature Moves. In their original games, their eating moves were fatal and would see them turned into an inert egg or fully absorbed to steal their power. In this game they simply pop out of the egg or as a star in a moment, only having taken a small amount of damage from it.
Web Animation
- Hanazuki: Full of Treasures: Yellow Hemka does just fine spending a long time in the Chicken Plant's stomach in "What is a Chicken Plant, Anyway?" Lime Green Hemka, Blue Hemka, and Hanazuki also get eaten, but aren't in the stomach long before being egged out.
- Homestar Runner:
- In "Doomy Tales of the Macabre", the "doomy fate" of The Cheat and Strong Mad is for the latter to accidentally swallow the former whole while gorging on Halloween candy. Strong Bad protests that isn't "macab-er", because Strong Mad eats The Cheat all the time with no ill effect: "How do you think we give him baths?"
- In the sbemail "winter pool," Strong Bad (and presumably Homestar and the Poopsmith) are rescued from drowning in a swimming pool of jello when the King of Town sucks up the entire pool and everyone in it. While describing the experience as "unspeakable," Strong Bad is also pretty much in one piece afterward.
Webcomics
- Bronze Skin Inc.: Subverted in chapter 5. After Charlotte eats him, we see Messy Miles at the end of the chapter inside her stomach, still very much alive. However, right as he starts talking about what his next prank could be, she starts to digest him.
- Often justified in Schlock Mercenary by either Bizarre Alien Biology or pressurized Powered Armor.
- Sergeant Schlock, the resident Blob Monster, has voluntary control over his biochemistry and can choose to digest someone he's eaten in minutes or just hold them. On the other hand, once he gets eaten by a carnivorous plant and neutralizes its digestive juices until it regurgitates him.
- After landing on an unexplored beach some of the grunts start to think they're on shore leave, while Captain Tagon is berating them for taking their armor off he gets chomped by an alien sea creature but blasts his way out. Conveniently illustrating his point.
- During Schlocktoberfest 2005 one of the grunts was eaten by a cloned Megalodon while out of uniform, he didn't make it. And later, the same shark ate Lt. Der Trihs, who was armored at the time.
- Sergeant Schlock, the resident Blob Monster, has voluntary control over his biochemistry and can choose
- VHV: Rose often eats her business partner Yamri when she gets annoying, and Yamri has been known to use Rose's stomach as a living sleeping bag when it's cold. Justified by Rose's Bizarre Alien Biology.
- Bob in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! once got swallowed by an alien creature. He survives, guessing that the alien's biology wasn't designed to digest humans, and pummels its guts until it threw him up.
- Justified in The Order of the Stick, when Vaarsuvius casts a number of protective spells before being Swallowed Whole by a dragon.
Western Animation
- In All Hail King Julien, lemurs eaten by the giant snake are quite fine after being spat out much later. This is quite strange considering that death by being swallowed whole by a predator is an extremely common and accepted danger. Similarly, Sage and Clover get out of a crocodile just fine.
- Animaniacs: At the end of Moby or Not Moby Captain Ahab is Swallowed Whole by Moby-Dick. Ahab is then shown inside Moby's belly which is depicted as a massive Ribcage Stomach filled with shipwrecks. No digestion is taking place and Ahab does not seem to be in any danger. Dialogue from the Warners strongly implies that rather than be digested he's just going to reside inside Moby's stomach from now on.
Wakko: So long, Captain Ahab!
Dot: Enjoy your new home!
Yakko: Don't play around Moby's blowhole! - In Camp Lazlo, the Lardadoodle in "The Big Weigh In" of course lets out Lazlo and Lumpus in a large egg.
- Hercules: The Animated Series: There are several instances of monsters trying to eat someone alive. In the case of Hercules, the hero-in-training is eaten and somehow escapes. Phantasos ate Hercules as a three-headed Hydra and Typhon, though they were in dreams.
- In Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh, Tip tries to get a funny picture of herself holding open the mouth of a large 3-eyed hippo-like animal, but it swallows her before Oh can take the picture...and then farts as her head pops out its rear end just fine, disgusting her. She gets fully out offscreen.
- Trollhunters: Jim, Toby, Blink and Arrrgh get into the innards of a giant troll. Even after introducing an extra spicy burrito to his belly only makes for a wild ride. But they emerge unscathed. More than once.
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In the Jaws Whole-Plot Reference episode Captain Betty, the Quint analog, is eaten by the giant turtle part way through the episode. However after Carl manages to shrink it down we see Captain Betty treading water, alive and well. He explains that the turtle spat him out at the last second as it was shrinking. This served not only to make the end happier, but kept Carl from possibly looking like he committed manslaughter by shrinking the turtle with the Captain still inside it.
- Justified in The Tick with the Indigestible Man, who is sent to enter inside Dinosaur Neil and stop him from transforming back to normal.
- Samurai Jack:
- In "The Farting Dragon" Jack climbs down a dragon's throat to try and solve its' gas problem that is suffocating the nearby village. After a long and winding trip through the beast's bizarre anatomy he finds a partially hatched egg breathing fire on her guts and breaks it loose.
- in the final season, episode "XCV", Jack and the last remaining daughter of Aku are eaten by a giant beast. Its insides are a whole ecosystem, and Jack has to try multiple ways to reach the blowhole to escape...with his would-be assassin fighting him the whole way and cursing his name with every breath. Jack mentions multiple previous times he's been eaten alive only to leave unharmed when the daughter expresses doubt of their survival. The beast itself has an odd anatomy, for though they're swallowed it's a long walk to an acid lake one would surmise is the stomach, which is also under some sort of blowhole.
- Eddie Bull from Crashbox routinely gets eaten alive by animals of all sizes but never ends up harmed.
- Dinotrux: Garby has eaten several reptools and all have been processed through him extremely frazzled, but alive.
- Disenchantment: The character Tess swallowed Turbish's horse off screen. When she finally coughed the horse up, he's no worse for wear. Though justified in that he was never actually in her stomach, just stuck in her throat.
- Dragon Tales: One episode has Max, Emmy, Ord, Zak and Wheezy get swallowed by a Dragonoceros, and of course, they're in no danger.
- Duck Man: In "All About Elliot", Duckman tortures Fluffy and Uranus by swallowing them whole. They pass through his entire system to the other end and completely recover physically, but not emotionally.
- DuckTales (2017):
- In the episode "Jaw$!", almost the entire cast gets eaten, one by one, by a magical money shark created by Magica De Spell. When the shark is finally destroyed, all of them get out without as much as a scratch on them. Justified, as the monster consisted entirely of coins, thus lacked any gastric fluids.
- In "New Gods on the Block!", Zeus summons the titan Crownus from the Underworld, who proceeds to swallow the bulk of the adult cast. They end up in the creature's stomach that has semi-transparent, amber-like windows, and once the titan is defeated, they emerge unharmed, covered a in sap-like fluid. It's a reference to the myth of Kronos swallowing his children (see Mythology & Religion for more detail).
- In the The Penguins of Madagascar episode "The Big Squeeze", a snake goes around eating animals in the zoo, and of course all of them come out fine.
Maurice: Tell me we came out of the mouth.
- In the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Pet Feud", the girls' genetically engineered pet, BEEBO, grows incredibly large and starts to devour everyone in Townsville, including The Mayor, Miss Bellum, and finally the girls themselves. After eating too much though, BEEBO explodes, releasing everyone he has devoured, unharmed.
- Hilda: After the Black Hound turns out to be less menacing than he seemed Tontu asks about the missing people, at which point he vomits up three wet and scared but unharmed people.
- Spliced: A number of episodes have gags where one mutant gets eaten by another and later emerges unharmed.
- Super Mario World (1991): In "Mama Luigi", Mario is eaten by Yoshi, but the most that happens to him is that he's thrown up and covered with Yoshi spit.
- One episode of Xiaolin Showdown sees our heroes (plus Jack Spicer and Wuya) swallowed by Dojo in his giant dragon form. The place they end up resembles less a stomach and more a fleshy tunnel with various devoured items strewn about, and they're coughed up a little later, grossed out but otherwise fine.
- Seven Little Monsters:
- In "Good Morning", Five eats a boy who offers him a lick of his ice cream cone. His siblings make him spit out the child, who is unharmed and humorously wants Five to eat him again due to finding the experience fun.
- In "Runaway Mom", Four mentions that Five once ate some ducklings. He mentions that the ducks didn't mind, implying that they weren't digested and subsequently got out of Five unharmed.
- Tuca & Bertie: 'The One Where Bertie Gets Eaten By A Snake' features Exactly What It Says on the Tin. When Bertie, and eventually Tuca, get swallowed, it only hinders them as much as being wrapped in a full body latex suit would. The snakes let them go about their day, and after a while harmlessly pass them and leave.
Real Life
- Two species of the Rheobatrachus genus of frogs hadnote the unique trait of incubating larval offspring within the mother's stomach (as in, the mother actually swallows the eggs or newly hatched larva), which is made possible by the eggs being coated in a special substance that induces the stomach to turn off the production of hydrochloric acid, and the larva themselves producing the same substance after hatching from said eggs. During this period, the frog cannot eat and as the young grow, the stomach becomes extremely bloated and presses on the other organs, including the lungs, making it difficult for the mother to breathe. Research is currently ongoing to revive this frog by cloning it so it can be researched as a possible source of a cure for stomach ulcers.
- In another species of frog known as Darwin's frog, the father takes the tadpoles into his mouth and holds them in his vocal sac (the organ under the throat that inflates when a frog croaks) until they turn into little froglets, at which point he spits them out. Unlike the gastric-brooding frog, he can still eat food while brooding since the tadpoles are not actually in his digestive system.
- A number of fish species engage in mouth-brooding behavior, in which the male, female, or occasionally both parents will incubate eggs inside the mouth. Most species expel the young after hatching, but a few (cichlids, arowana) allow their young to retreat to the safety of a parent's mouth when danger approaches. This behaviour is widespread enough that some species of fish are "mouth-brooding parasites" which hide their own young in the mouths of other fish.
- Some types of snails can actually survive being swallowed by birds or fish, which disperse them far and wide, and then once pooped out, they just start back doing snail things like nothing happened.
- This is a lot more common for plants than for animals, and for many plants, having their fruits' fleshy outer tissue digested by an animal is the only way for their seeds to germinate from said animal's feces. Not only does this ensure that the seeds will be spread far and wide from the parent plant, they'll also get the benefit of a nice pile of fertilizer, too.
- Similarly, many parasitic organisms need to be eaten alive in their larval or egg forms, in order to invade a host's body, and then live most of their lives, or their whole lives, inside the host.
- The highly poisonous rough-skinned newt is capable of being swallowed alive by a predator like a bullfrog, at which point the toxins in the newt's skin will rapidly paralyze and kill it. A short time later, the newt will crawl mostly unharmed from the frog's mouth and go about its business.
- A 2020 study found that a type of small water beetle is able to survive being swallowed by frogs, as they'll usually just wriggle out the back end within four hours of being ingested (sometimes in as little time as six minutes). In this case, it was noted that actively crawling through the digestive tract relatively quickly saved them from being digested.
- In 2021, lobster diver Michael Packard got in the way of a feeding humpback whale, which unwittingly swallowed him whole. Realizing what had happened, Packard thrashed around in the whale's mouth for about 30-40 seconds until it realized its mistake and spat him back out. Packard survived with no worse than some bad bruises.
- Some specialized animal immune cells called phagocytes ("eater cells") engage in a behaviour called phagocytosis (cell eating), in which they essentially 'swallow' foreign material like bacteria, trap it in a small fat-bubble called a phagosome, and then fuse that vesicle with a bag of digestive enzymes, acids and peroxides called a lysosome, "digesting" the contents. Certain pathogenic bacteria have evolved to escape or hinder this process, and at least one (Listeria monocytogens) needs to be phagocyted in order to infect the cell and complete the life-cycle. The tuberculosis bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) outright No Sells phagocytosis when fully grown; its cell wall is too dense and the lysosome's contents simply bounce off it.
- The bacteria Helicobacter pylori has evolved to survive inside the human stomach, and will happily survive being swallowed by a human. In fact, it prefers colonizing the stomach lining, as it has plenty of food and almost no natural competitors for space and resources; its only problem is the immune system fighting it from the outside of the stomach lining. Helicobacter infections cause stomach ulcers, and is suspected to be a long-term cause of stomach cancers.
