Hangover Sensitivity

"Is it just me, or is that cockroach shuffling too loudly?"

— Kryten, Red Dwarf, "The Last Day"

What do you get when you spend a night of endless drinking and carousing with friends? A hangover, of course! And when a character's got a hangover, chances are he's also got Hangover Sensitivity.

Doubtlessly a case of Truth in Television, as many of us know, a ridiculous amount of irritability and sensitivity is the best way to show someone paying the price for their drunken adventures the night before. The most common ways to show a character's hangover are:

1. Enormous sensitivity to light.
2. Enormous sensitivity to sound.

So when the hungover character has got a friend who comes in and opens the blinds? "Aaaahhh! Close the blinds!" Or when their friend is trying to tell them something in a moderately audible voice? "Sssshhh! Not so loud!'"

While all this is going on, it's very likely that the character's friend is fixing a Hideous Hangover Cure, and perhaps even pepping them up to return to a state of normality and ambition. And it doesn't usually work—but without another character to trigger them off, we might never see their sensitivity.

This is something we see everywhere, sometimes in real life, but it's also a convenient tool for writers to use, reminding us that no drinking fest is going to be without consequence. The consequences for fictional characters are just as rough as they are for us, as media will constantly remind you. On a more mundane level it can be used to show that the characters have been drinking heavily in the first place if The Law of Conservation of Detail prevents the author from showing the actual festivities.

Compare/contrast Super-Senses, which are less likely to be portrayed as debilitating or disorienting unless the trope is being Deconstructed.

See Hideous Hangover Cure and Must Have Caffeine. In extreme cases, it may overlap with What Did I Do Last Night?

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, after getting really drunk, a hungover England covers his head with a blanket and weakly groans "Why won't the lights just shut up? I swear, I'm never going to drink again. Someone, please kill me."
• Rin from Mnemosyne starts every episode but five waking up with a hangover-induced headache, and a little "Russian Water" to fix it.
• In Cowboy Bebop, Spike starts the episode Heavy Metal Queen in a diner with a vicious hangover, making himself a Prairie Oyster. When some punks start a fight that results in his Prairie Oyster getting spilled before he can drink it, he delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in retaliation instead of his typical combat habit of dancing around and making his opponents look like fools.
• The titular character of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid gets hungover regularly since she likes to drink but is a relative lightweight. The day after she moves into her new apartment, she's woken by a massive amount of noise, leading to the discovery that one of her neighbors is a woodworker who uses a power drill, one is a heavy metal guitarist, and one cooks really really loudly.

Comic Books

• Asterix:
  • Obelix suffers from this. An example among others is when he's imprisoned in the Tower of London in Asterix in Britain.
  • In the same album, the Roman legionaries suffer from this, too. Which is a shame, for them, considering the loud yelling of their centurion...
  • Asterix in Switzerland: In Helvetia, the guards get out of their little drinking session to be confronted by their boss, holding their heads and saying "Yes, yes, but stop yelling, please!"
  • Asterix and the Laurel Wreath: Metatarsus constantly suffers from this, until Asterix and Obelix manage to cook up a Hideous Hangover Cure.
• In Górsky & Butch a badly hung over captain complains about the seagulls walking around too loudly. He is a spaceship captain.
• Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: Hive Mind bounty hunter Psmith drinks and passes out in Asteroid Al's bar, with every other member of the hive-mind being similarly affected (to the point where they think the original one is dead because they're no longer receiving signals from him — until they get close, which causes them to act drunk and eventually pass out themselves); when the original is finally isolated in a psionic-proof chamber, they all wake up with roaring hangovers (even the light "ssssshhhh" of a hover-tray being sent into the room with a hangover-cure causes groans of pain) and villain Grispfat's annoying attempt to Chessmaster them at that point results in him being disintegrated. When the heroes bring in an actual hangover cure, they drink it in the hopes that it's poison.
• Underground Comics artist Leslie Sternbergh made an autobiographical comic where this happened to her.
  Leslie: Turn off the light!!
  Roommate: That's the sun!
• This trope shows up in X-Men from time to time. Typically after someone makes the mistake of going out for drinks with Wolverine.

Comic Strips

• In one Nemi comic, Nemi is so hungover that the sound of birds' feathers brushing together leaves her in agony.
• Hägar the Horrible:
  • Combined in one comic with Breaking the Fourth Wall: The narrator wonders where the noise comes from and concludes that someone must've turned the last page too loudly.
  • In one strip we see Hägar in the first panel covering his ears as large "BAM BAM BAM" sounds appear around him, and he painedly asks if it can't be done a bit more quietly. The next panel then zooms out to reveal his wife, Helga, knocking open a soft-boiled egg with a teaspoon, creating tiny little "tok tok tok" noises, and replying frostily, "Seems like you had a really good time last night..."
• A Garfield strip has Garfield on the morning after New Year's Eve, all we see of him is a crumpled party hat and an arm sweeping around the table, looking for coffee. Jon conversationally says "Good morning", to which Garfield replies "Not so louuuuuuuud....."
• A New Year's Day Rick O'Shay strip◊ depicts a hungover Hipshot complaining that his cat is stomping around too loudly.
• The titular character from the Swedish comic Hälge is prone to this whenever he has gorged himself on one too many fermented apples or berries.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Wedding Reception," Mittens wakes up with a killer hangover after a drinking bout, crawling under the covers to escape the light and noise. Inverted with Rhino, who is surprisingly immune to hangovers despite also imbibing, because of his fast metabolism.
• In The Changeling of the Guard, it's a traditional practice for newly-minted guards to do the "High and Low", traversing the city's bars and carousing to absolute excess. Then, when they wake up, they're forced to attend their graduation ceremony... at first light of dawn, facing the rising sun. The lesson generally sticks.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "For Science", someone has a hangover, and has sensitivity to noise, along with "bloodshot eyes" and a headache:
  Hungover Person: It's too hot, the flies are making too much noise, and my head hurts!
• Fate of the Clans: When hung over from drinking way too much (Servants have a higher alcohol tolerance than humans, which can result in them drinking enough to normally cause liver failure), Cú Chulainn says that Mikoto talking at a normal volume is too loud.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic "A Night (to Try) to Remember", Applejack's hangover makes her sensitive to sound; when Fluttershy first speaks to her, Applejack thinks she's screaming, and when Fluttershy's decibel level plunges to inaudible for Big Macintosh, Applejack can still hear her. Big Macintosh, for his part, uses this sensitivity to tease her. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash are sensitive to light, though Pinkie's sensitivity seems to last far longer.
• No stars in sight: After spending the entire day drinking away her stress and confusion, Formora wakes up "full of morning regrets" with a splitting headache and an increased sensitivity to light in her eyes. The hangover she gets is especially nasty since this was her first time tasting alcohol after decades of abstinence.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: The first story has Trixie experiencing this after her first night in Ponyville, and an encounter with Monsieur Bourbon. Not helping matters at all is it's the middle of winter, and her house is freezing cold.
• The Saga of the Last Two Saiyans: Vegeta wakes up with a serious hangover the morning after drinking very strong alcohol given to him by Whis. He feels nauseous when Goku talks about food and mentions never feeling this bad when hungover in the past.
• Stars Fade: Commander Shepard gets completely hammered on the very worst of the Hanged Man's booze one night and wakes up with a particularly nauseating hangover. Bad enough on its own, but then the Arishok demands an audience with her, forcing Shepard to descend a long flight of stairs to the Qunari compound while shading her eyes, trying not to throw up, and reciting everything she'd rather be doing.

Films — Animation

• The Road to El Dorado. Tulio and Miguel wake up after a night of partying with killer hangovers, complete with sensitivity to light.
• Asterix in Britain: After a Roman garrison gets completely sloshed trying to identify the one barrel of magic potion among countless wine barrels, the Large Ham general gives them a good chewing out, complete with echo.
  General Motus: LEGIONARIES! YOU ARE THE DISGRACE OF THE ROMAN ARMY! YOU'VE BEHAVED LIKE BARBARIANS! YOU DESERVE TO BE FED TO THE LIONS!
  Legionary: Feed me to the lions, but please, make him stop shouting...

Films — Live-Action

• In Vegas Vacation, Audrey arrives at breakfast wearing large sunglasses and desperate for coffee.
• In the 1958 romantic comedy Teacher's Pet, Dr. Pine undergoes this effect after a long night. As chimes in his house begin to go off, he takes special care to cease each of their individual motions.
• In The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn, there is one morning where several principal characters are hung over. There are a few gags concerning their massive ear sensitivity while exchanging dialogue, as well as Katharine Hepburn shielding her eyes from the morning sun.
• In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye wakes up hung over, and is quite frustrated when his wife claps for joy on numerous occasions.
• In Pillow Talk, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day, Rock Hudson wakes up to what he considers a particularly strong hangover. As his co-star Tony Randall dials a telephone, he protests 'Not so loud!'
• Futtock's End (written by, and starring, Ronnie Barker) is a film with no dialogue, only sound effects. The morning after a drunken dinner, the characters are seen at breakfast, and we hear what they hear. The lids on serving dishes sound like cymbals crashing, cereal being poured sounds like a cement mixer, and so on.
• In the original version of The Nutty Professor, after a night drinking as his alter-ego, the titular professor has to teach a class with a hangover. Several shots from his point of view feature very amplified sound effects.
• In My Man Godfrey, Mrs. Bullock usually has one in the morning. She sees "pixies".
• Sherlock in Sherlock Holmes (2009) reacts to Watson opening up those windows after a long time without a case.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Nemesis: At the Riker-Troi wedding, Worf spends the whole time nursing a hangover.
    Worf: Romulan ale should be illegal...
    Geordi: It is.
  • In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, after the disastrous state dinner with the Klingon dignitaries involving the previously mentioned Romulan Ale (which is indeed illegal at the time), all the senior staff are nursing hangovers. McCoy seeks solace in a pot of black coffee, Kirk goes straight to bed, poor Chekhov has bridge duty, and Spock seems completely unfazed. And then an anomalous sensor reading piques Spock's interest...
    Kirk: Chekhov, do you know anything about a neutron radiation surge?
    Chekhov: [leaning his head into his hand] Only the size of my head...
• In Charlie Chaplin's The Cure (1917), Charlie's an alcoholic drying out at a health spa. His substantial cache of liquor is dumped out — right into the communal mineral water well. Everyone at the spa wakes up the next morning with a hangover, following the wild party.
• In Designing Woman, Mike is pained by every sound that's made after a crazy night of drinking. Every sound is heightened to comedic effect.
• Seen in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), where Jane gingerly removes her sunglasses indoors the morning after drowning her sorrows over discovering her husband is (also) an assassin.
• The Hunger Games: When Katniss and Peeta meet Haymitch for the first time, he's more interested in continuing his drinking than giving advice, to the point of going back to his room.
• Heavyweights: Despite the lack of booze, the morning after the kids' wild food-for-all is treated like this, with the counselor using a megaphone to wake the kids up (and hammer in the consequences of overindulgence).
• In Varsity Blues, the main cast go out partying at a strip club the night before a game, and their night of revelry lasts into the morning, as the rising sun slaps them in the face when they walk out the door. This makes the resulting hangover last through the game itself, and their performance suffers predictably and they get utterly curbstomped by what should have been an inferior team. See for yourself here.
• In Batman Begins, Alfred wakes up a hungover Bruce Wayne by opening the curtains and letting the light flood in. Upon waking, Bruce winces and avoids opening his eyes.
• In Doctor in Clover, both Sir Lancelot and Dr. Grimsdyke feel the effects of their drinking the day after the nurses' party, but Sir Lancelot is worse off thanks to the shot of Dextranome 90 Dr. Grimsdyke accidentally gave him:
  Sir Lancelot: I feel as if my head's been trepanned with a boathook.
  Dr. Grimsdyke: You're lucky. I haven't even got a head.
• Please Turn Over: When Gladys complains that the sound of Edward and Janet's row is making her head feel as if it was splitting, Edward assumes she's been drinking too much and without water.
• Raising the Wind:
  • The day after Mervyn gets drunk and sells a tune to Sid and Harry, he has a splitting headache. Just the sound of Jill's voice makes him wince in pain.
  • After Alex and Malcolm go out drinking with Mervyn and Jill, the sound of Malcolm's trumpet is too much for Alex to handle.
• Up Pompeii: After Ludicrus Sextus' orgy, he is left with a hangover that makes even a fly's buzzing too loud for him.

Literature

• Ciaphas Cain once describes an ork warboss restoring order among his troops "with all the tact and subtlety of a Khornate berserker with a hangover", i.e. less than none.
• Robert A. Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil. The morning after Joan/Johann and her guests get drunk, she tells her butler to have the staff be quiet around them:
  Joan: ...my ears might fall off. You'll find evidence of the debacle in my lounge — a case lot of empty magnums. Remove them — quietly — for Heaven's sake don't bang one against another; I can hear an ant stomp this morning.
• This condition also pops up in David Eddings' stories quite often, particularly The Belgariad and Malloreon, since most of the main characters are Alorns - a people who are justly famous for their hard-drinking lifestyle. Inevitably, the women around them react with barely-hidden schadenfreude, though Polgara the Sorceress has been known to prepare an effective remedy for the condition. (Sadly, it tastes so vile that most of the characters prefer to just suffer in silence.)
• Mentioned in Night World, Ash comments that he reads so much because he parties so much. All he can do the morning after is stay in bed in his dark room.
• In A Civil Campaign, the day after THE dinner party, Ekaterin has to shush her 10-year old son as he bounces into the room. Aunt Vorthys has to reign him in and guide him away, explaining that his mother has a hangover. There is much widening of eyes as the boy makes the never-before-imagined-possible connection between a "hangover" and his mother.
• Evoked in one Judge Dee story, after Ma Jong spends the night in a bar with a poet he's keeping under surveillance.
• The Master and Margarita: The scene where Stepa Likhodeyev meets Woland may be the best description of hangover and its effects in the literature.
• In the Jeeves and Wooster canon, when the duo meets for the first time, Bertie is suffering from this, and Jeeves cures him with his miraculous version of the standard Hideous Hangover Cure; this prompts Bertie to hire him on the spot.
• After the Quarter Quell announcement in Catching Fire, Katniss has a minor Heroic BSoD, drinks white liquor with Haymitch, and feels terrible the next morning.
• Discworld:
  • In Lords and Ladies, the Lemony Narrator comments that this sort of description often owes more to "hangover machismo" than actually conveying that hangovers are horrible, and scumble hangovers are worse than language can convey anyway.
  • The Oh God of Hangovers in Hogfather naturally feels like this all the time, although he stops feeling like a malevolent imp is hitting his skull with a sledgehammer after Susan chases the malevolent imp with the sledgehammer away.
• Brazilian author Luis Fernando Verissimo wrote an extensive comedic piece about binge drinking and hangovers, including a part about the results of each drink. Gin is noted as the worst because "The next morning, you couldn't open both eyes at once. Open one, the other closes. Your ears become so sensitive that you hear the bells of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome."

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Interestingly enough, this usually happens to whoever is drinking with a Klingon, as Chief O'Brien found out. Apparently, The Worf Effect doesn't just apply to hostile aliens.
• Star Trek: Voyager
  • In "Someone to Watch Over Me", an alien from a strict religious order uses the freedom offered by traveling on Voyager to get extremely drunk, leaving him barely able to stand while complaining about all the light and noise.
  • A variation in "Scientific Method" when the door chimes when Captain Janeway has a Headache of Doom, and she gripes, "Remind me to lower the volume on that door."
• Criminal Minds:
  • Season four's "Memoriam" of had the team Waking Up Elsewhere after solving a case. Morgan and Rossi are sitting in the hotel lobby. Morgan is playing a really loud slot machine. Prentiss comes in, looking like she has the hangover from hell, and tells everyone to quiet down. JJ comes in, and notices that Morgan's slot machine still has credit on it and almost pressed the button but Prentiss death glares her. Crowning Moment of Funny for Rossi's pantomime response to JJ's "what's wrong with Prentiss?" question. Can be seen here.
  • There's the season 7 episode "A Family Affair" where at the end of the episode on the plane ride back home, JJ complains about forgetting to book a babysitter for her son so she can go with Prentiss and Garcia to "ladies night out." So Reid offers to babysit. Cue the Oh, Crap! look from Prentiss and JJ. Prentiss says "he can do a couple of hours." Reid adds, "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" Smash Cut to Hotch's race with the team in crowd. The girls are wearing sunglasses and look like hell.
    Reid: [cheering as loud as possible] A couple of hours. A couple of hours! You guys didn't come home until sunrise!
    [cue Death Glare from the girls]
    JJ: [deadpan] Why are you yelling?
    Prentiss: [deadpan] Make him stop.
    Morgan: What did you guys drink last night?
    Garcia: The Green Fairy. You're in the FBI, could you get the entire crowd to stop cheering?
    [cue amused look from Morgan]
• There's at least one episode of Rumpole of the Bailey wherein Rumpole, after a night of "carousing" with the chambers clerk Henry, has to come into court shading his eyes. It doesn't help that his drink of choice is a cheap claret.
• An episode of Smallville has Lois react this way when Clark opens the curtains after a party the night before.
• Once on Just Shoot Me!, Maya wakes up from a fashion party with a hangover and arrives to work wearing dark sunglasses and shushing anyone speaking louder than a whisper. Enter Nina (for whom hangovers are a natural state of being) in identical glasses, and the two start shushing each other.
• Charlie from Two and a Half Men, being the self-professed womanizing boozehound that he is, often wakes up hungover, which provides lots of fun for others, particularly his Servile Snarker housemaid Bertha.
• Ashes to Ashes (2008): Alex Drake drinks a lot, bordering on Lady Drunk, but her "oh God, who turned on the sun?" reaction in 1.03 (after mixing champagne with red wine and sleeping with a Thatcherite Wanker with braces) is hysterical.
• The West Wing: Josh turns up severely hungover the morning after a party, having already been warned by his secretary that he should know by now that he can't hold a drink.
  Donna: Are you gonna listen to me from now on?
  Josh: [under his breath] Not even listening to you now.
  Donna: I SAID ARE YOU GONNA LISTEN TO ME FROM NOW ON?
  Josh: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. [collapses onto his desk]
• Mad Men: Betty and Don wake up after a night out. Betty says she's going to get the Alka-Seltzer. Don tells her to do it in the other room so he doesn't have to hear the bubbles.
• One of the less used games on Whose Line Is It Anyway? mimics this with Ryan providing sound effects on a mic with reverb added.
• Mark Antony often suffers from this in Rome, most notably during the creation of the Triumvirate.
• In The Nanny episode "Oy Vey, You're Gay", Maxwell is hung over after a night of partying. At breakfast, he winces from the sounds of his children, which sounded dubbed over with much louder similar versions: Brighton pouring milk on his Rice Krispies (which sounded like firecrackers,) Maggie buttering their toast (sounding like loudly ripping Velcro or a shovel scraped against a sidewalk), and Gracie stirring her chocolate milk (a cowbell.) But when he sees Fran (the camera zooming in at her mouth), he covers his ears, and lets out a big "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
• In Community episode "Communication Studies", Britta, Jeff, and Abed all show sensitivity to lights and sounds after drinking.
• Hawkeye and the other doctors were frequently shown in this state in the earlier, wackier seasons of M*A*S*H. One particularly good example is the opening of the Season 2 episode "The Incubator". After a slow camera pan throughout The Swamp, which is in even worse shape than usual, this dialogue ensues:
  Hawkeye: [sleepy tone of voice] Trapper? Trapper?
  Trapper: I'm not gonna talk until you stop screaming.
  Hawkeye: I'm sorry. I'll be better after I shave my tongue.
• The Glee episode Blame it on the alcohol, in which the whole club (except, of course, Finn, who was the designated driver) shows up to school in sunglasses after The Rachel Berry House Party Trainwreck Extravaganza.
  Tina: I need to close my locker and it's gonna sound like a gunshot.
  Mercedes: I have had the worst hangover since Saturday, and it's Monday.
  Santana: I've been dry heaving all weekend. When my mother asked what the sound was, I said I was practicing bird calls.
  Mike: Hey guys. I can't stop barfing.
  Tina: Please don't say barf.
  Santana: I caught a whiff of hairspray and went full Linda Blair in the girls' bathroom.
  Mike: I told my mom I had the flu, and she made me a traditional tea made out of panda hair.
  Tina: Can we talk about anything else?
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Robin finds out that Ted's college class, and Ted himself, have been playing a Drinking Game based on her morning news show. She gets revenge by deliberately repeating the trigger phrase over and over, and then dropping in on the miserable class the next day with a megaphone.
  • In "The Scorpion and the Toad", after Lily, Ted, and Robin get hammered trying to cheer Lily up, Ted and Lily are crippled by this the next morning, but Robin's still drunk. And very boisterously so.
  • Future Ted wistfully lampshades this trope in "Murtaugh" by comparing the gang's reactions to a night of hard partying when they were twenty-four to when they were thirty. This trope hits them much harder in the latter example.
  • In "Rally", Barney has some fun with this while preparing his patented Hideous Hangover Cure for a hungover Ted. He explains how his ancestor Barney Stinsonheimer invented it and how the first two batches exploded, shouting "Boom!" into Ted's ear each time.
• In BBC's Merlin, the third episode of season 3 has Gaius (who at this time is a Goblin) do this.
  Gaius: Shhh! Too much talking! I have a head like the inside of a drum and a mouth like a badger`s armpit!
• Sharona experienced it on an episode of Monk. It was Spring Break in Mexico, 'nuff said.
• In an episode of Cybill, Cybil's friend Maryann attempts to get information out of a man by trying to outdrink him. (Maryann was a Lady Drunk, but the man was twice her size. She won.) The next morning, she screams in pain when Cybil unzips her purse, and when Cybil and Zoe are arguing very loudly, they could occasionally cut back to Maryann holding her head in pain and shouting things like "Searing pain! Nerve Damage!" "Temporary Blindness!" and "The Taste of Burnt Pennies!"
• MythBusters once tested various hangover cures. Kari, who got out of it because she was pregnant, had far too much fun tormenting Tory and Grant.
• The infamous Globelink Christmas Party in Drop the Dead Donkey was like this for George, Henry, and Dave. It was worsened by the antics of a totally sober and vindictive Damien Day (who came armed with bacon sandwiches and bellowed greetings).
• New Girl: Jess saunters into the teacher's lounge wearing large sunglasses. She is still hungover after a big night at the bar.
• Parks and Recreation: Everyone gets wasted on Tom's new concoction "Snake Juice" at the club, and are all horrifically hungover at work the next day (except Ron, who much to everyone's chagrin was pretty loud about it, and whose idea of helping was bringing everyone burgers and fries).
• Done in an episode of Scrubs when Julie, Elliot, Carla, and Jordan come to work after a drunken night out and range in demeanor from "perky" to "catatonic", reflecting their increasing age-brackets.
• Red Dwarf, Kryten, after his first night of actual partying, which included a "mechanoid homebrew", offers up the page quote above.
• Game of Thrones. Tyrion Lannister on several occasions. Played for Laughs the morning after his wedding when his secret mistress Shae (who is also his newly-wed wife's Sansa's maid) barges into their room and slams down a breakfast tray, then yanks a cloak out from under Tyrion's head and wraps it around Sansa.
• Murdoch Mysteries:
  • Detective Murdoch rarely drinks. In "Green Muse", he drank a bottle of Absinthe with Dr. Ogden to find out how it affects people and if the victim could be disoriented. The next day is hard for him.
  • After a night of drinking (with Annie Oakley), Inspector Brackenreid ends up hungover. Murdoch seems to be subtly disapproving, the way he's talking a bit louder than usual or slamming the door, to Brackenreid's pain. But as Murdoch earlier got the blame from Mrs. Brackenreid for Brackenreid's drinking (he left his scotch in Murdoch's drawer because his wife knew his hiding places), it's justified payback.
• 'Allo 'Allo!: Colonel von Strohm is once heavily hungover. Pity his Sexy Secretary Helga has No Indoor Voice when she announces visitors.
• The hard-drinking students/doctors in the Doctor in the House franchise inevitably run up against hangover sensitivity in a few episodes, and get no sympathy from their colleagues who abstained or drank in moderation the previous night. For example, in "The Epidemic" from Doctor in Charge, Dr. Waring arrives one morning in a cheerful mood to find Drs. Stuart-Clark and Collier badly hungover and proceeds to make as much noise as he can purely to aggravate their conditions. As he leaves the room, he throws a metal kidney dish onto the floor, to which the other two react as though a thunderclap has just gone off inside their own heads.
• A frequent gag in Black Books, given the amount of red wine the characters are always chugging, and the reason that the perpetually grouchy Bernard is even worse first thing in the morning. However, special mention goes to "The Entertainer", where the characters' dark glasses are part of a Coincidental Accidental Disguise that leads some charity fundraisers to think they're all blind.
• Babylon 5: Dealt with on occasion with Londo and Garibaldi. Londo has a good comment when he finds his attache Vir suffering from one:
  Your first hangover, enjoy it! I remember my first hangover... well, actually that's not true; if I remembered it, then it wouldn't be a real hangover.
• Farscape. In "Scratch N Sniff", Crichton and D'Argo wake up after a night's partying to find they're been robbed and their fellow crewmembers are missing. They start Perp Sweating a female criminal to find out what happened but stop in terror when she threatens to scream.
• In the Quincy, M.E. episode "Tissue of Truth", after solving the case Sam and Quincy stagger into work the next morning incredibly hungover. Quincy gloats that at least Dr. Asten, their boss, will be worse because he kept topping up Asten's glass every time he wasn't looking. Then Asten walks in all bright and cheery and not hungover in the slightest, much to Quincy's dismay.
• Blake's 7. Vila is carousing in a Vice City instead of manning the flight deck, ready to teleport the others. As a result, several of the crew get captured and nearly killed. Blake doesn't bother keeping his voice down when giving a What the Hell, Hero? roasting to a hungover Vila afterwards.
• Schitt's Creek has Johnny Rose suffering after a rare instance of Drowning My Sorrows, and his adult children gleefully order fish, hollandaise sauce and ask for the lights to be turned up at the cafe.
• Cheers: Most of the cast after having one of Carla's drinks, "I Know My Redeemer Liveth". It's Norm who is the most hungover, nearly falling over when Sam and Rebecca do the usual "NORM" gag.
• Is It Legal?: The employees after the Office Party in the titular episode. Alison and Stella in particular both come in wearing sunglasses and wincing at the sunlight.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Solo Peanut, a Social Butterfly and the Truth", Connie is hung over from the previous night when Mandy confronts her in the laundromat. Mandy slams a washing machine door as she leaves to spite her.
• SAS: Rogue Heroes. David Stirling is bothered by the squeaky fans (which doesn't work well anyway), a barking drill sergeant and the other ranks constantly saluting him when he comes in to Layforce Headquarters after a bender at a brothel.
• In the Sherlock episode The Sign of Three, when Sherlock and John get unintentionally smashed for John's bachelor party (John having thrown off Sherlock's perfectly plotted alcohol schedule with extra shots), they get pulled out the drunk tank by Lestrade the following morning, who delights in abusing their aching heads.
  John: You think you could talk quieter?
  Lestrade: NOT REALLY!!!
• It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling...: After a wild party, Samantha, Clover, and Bobby spend the start of "A New Lease" in pain with terrible headaches:
  Pudding: How do ya feel?
  Samantha: My tongue tastes of rancid moss, my skull's being split to pieces with an axe, but apart from that, I'm alright.

Music

• The song "Twelve Pains of Christmas" has one singer who has a hangover, who, towards the end of the song, snaps, "Shut up, you!"
• In the ZZ Top song "Cheap Sunglasses", this is the reason the narrator is wearing the title sunglasses.
• Billy Connolly's "As Usual" is essentially this trope set to music:
  I woke up with an achin' head,
  as usual
  I can't remember goin' to bed,
  as usual
  My stomach's feelin' very queer
  I've got a thunderstorm in my left ear
  It must have been McEwan's beer,
  as usual
• The Offspring's "Worst Hangover Ever", which right in the first verse notes "the morning sun came and kicked my ass".
• Chris Young: Subverted in "Sober Saturday Night," which opens with what seems like this trope ("I feel terrible, sunlight's hurting my eyes/So I pull the shades and I make my place as black as night"), but the chorus makes it clear he's not hungover—he's depressed over a break-up ("No, I'm not out there getting high underneath some neon lights/Ain't no whiskey strong enough to make things right/I'm just getting over another sober Saturday night").

Podcasts

• In episode 5 of Black Jack Justice, Jack manages to hear the elevator at the far end of the hall from his office as it opens.
  Trixie: Elevator? Down the hall? You can hear that?
  Jack: Today, I can.
  Jack: [voiceover] There was no time to explain the extrasensory qualities of a truly eye-popping hangover.''

Puppet Shows

• In an episode of The Muppets (2015), after a long night out with Miss Piggy and Ed Helms, the Muppets come in to work the next day very late and very hungover. An angry Kermit retaliates by slamming a book on the table.

Radio

• Earthsearch. Our heroes are captured and brought before the First Captain of Holocaust City who—having spent the previous night in a long party at the Chief Executive's house—is not happy whenever his enthusiastic underling barks orders at his prisoners.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS has Hideous Hangovers as a mild negative trait that gives penalties to the character the morning after they get drunk. For extra hilarity, it can be combined with Low Alcohol Tolerance to ensure that the character will get drunk almost instantly.

Video Games

• Mass Effect
  • Doctor Chakwas asks the player how they're feeling after waking up from taking a Prothean Beacon's message (and exploding shortly thereafter) in the face, one of the options to respond is "Like the morning after shore leave."
  • Likewise, the third game has a scene where Shepard finds Ashley on the floor with a hangover. They can joke about now being the perfect time for a fire drill. And threaten to make Joker sing over the intercom, no less.
  • The third game's final DLC, "Citadel", ends with a party that leaves several characters hungover the next morning (depending on how much Shepard amps it up). Tali is curled up in a ball convinced she's going to die and in full What Did I Do Last Night? mode. Javik thinks everything that's happened since he got out of stasis was a dream. Ash^note if the Virmire Survivor is still vertical, but in need of coffee. Kaidan^note if the Virmire Survivor has already had coffee. Joker has his head on the bar top and considers it a great accomplishment that he hasn't thrown up; he'd also like everyone to not talk so loud, or close the cupboards so loud... or walk so loud, "Just think quiet thoughts". Wrex can converse, but comments that once you reach over 700 you pay for a night like that the following morning, and will then only groan. Jack manages to avert this, citing her overclocked biotic amp making her effectively hangover-proof. Miranda is also perfectly fine, possibly for similar reasons. If the second phase of the party is Loud, then Wrex cites this state as being the best time to train with guns when declaring a "man emergency" over Joker letting his small arms training get rusty, as it makes you "angry at every little sound".
  • In Andromeda, after finding the turian Ark, Ryder can talk with Tiran Kandros, head of Nexus security. He mentions the turian members of the Initiative threw a party to celebrate, and when Ryder asks how it went, he asks they keep it down.
• Conker has some equilibrium, energy, and sound sensitivity issues when hung over in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
• The Curse of Monkey Island: A bartender will do nothing but complain that everything is too loud until you get him a cure for his hangover.
• Referenced in Tropico 4.
  Sunny: Dear listeners, please join me in a moment of silence, as I have a terrible hangover after a girls' night out at the new Cocktail Bar. In related news, Penultimo has been hospitalized with a concussion, caused by blinking too loudly near me.
• Alan Wake: A flashback to Alan and Alice's life in New York begins with Alan waking up with a bad hangover, represented by brighter lighting and tinnitus sounds. The player must fetch some aspirin and sunglasses to relieve Alan's pain.

Webcomics

• In S.S.D.D. Norman thinks a bird is singing too loud, so he fires a shotgun at it... And then realizes the blast is even worse. The next page has Anne claim that the bathroom light is too bright for her to use the mirror.
• Happens to most characters in Dubious Company, except Walter. Hell, he met Tiren by her puking on his shoes during a hangover.
  Sal: Why do you keep doing this? Why do I keep doing this?
  Leeroy: Am I indoctrinated yet? *Bleeh*
• Shows up in an early Nodwick story as the "ultra-hangover plugin" for Piffany's sobriety spell.
• Skin Horse seems to take it to a new level: Another person's blinking is too loud.
• In Concession Matt's first hangover is made particularly unpleasant by his boyfriend's mother yelling at him.
• Parodied in Mac Hall, where Ian looks like death warmed over after last nights Halloween party, despite not being a drinker... because he had to stay up all night comforting Matt, who was in the middle of alcohol-fueled depression. Matt on the other hand, who actually did drink a ton, wakes up bright eyed and bushy-tailed, ignorant to Ian looking ready to kill him.
  J.M.: Before you kill him, remember he's the only one who's willing to proofread your English papers.

Web Original

• One demotivational poster addresses this with a quote "some mornings, even a cat standing still is too loud."

Western Animation

• Shows up all over on Archer.
  • Pam's often seen drinking a 40 after a night of partying, and Lana wears dark glasses into work after nights of heavy boozing. The only one who's not seen with hangovers is Archer... likely because he's perpetually drinking.
    Archer: I'm afraid if I stop drinking all at once, the collective hangover would literally kill me.
  • He did end up with a really bad one at the beginning of "Crossing Over", sitting nauseous and exhausted on his balcony in bathrobe and sunglasses, which is even lampshaded by Woodhouse, who's surprised to see Archer hungover. Flashbacks reveal that it's after a night of heavy drinking even for him (one shot shows him chugging from a beer tap) which got him drunk enough that he slept with Pam!
  Archer: Bloody Mary, full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now, and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Cosmo, Wanda, and Jorgen suffer hangover sensitivity the next morning after a wild party celebrating friendship.
  Wanda: You know what they say, you can't have too many friends!
  Timmy: Well I don't have any!
  Jorgen: Agh, maybe it's because you're too loud! (pulls covers over his head)
• Futurama: After they all go out partying to help Amy relax for her doctorate presentation, Kif throws up from a hangover, where he literally becomes a puddle on the floor.
  • After tiny versions of Bender turn the world's water supply into alcohol, the crew gets horrible hangovers afterwards, with Fry saying his head feels like it's full of dig dugs.
• Kaeloo: It's a Running Gag on the show to have Mr. Cat have a hangover during an episode, and as a result have a headache and overly sensitive hearing.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Bugs Bunny is implied to be hung over at the start of "Hare-Way to the Stars", complaining "What a night! I'll never mix radish juice and carrot juice again." It would explain why he didn't notice his hole was longer than normal until the Retro Rocket he'd accidentally climbed into was in Earth orbit.
  • In "The Mouse on 57th Street", a mouse suffers a nasty hangover after overindulging in "150 proof" rum cake. The fact they were doing roadwork and using jackhammers just outside his mousehole didn't help matters.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Every Little Thing She Does", Twilight's friends experience hangover-like symptoms after being cured of a mind-control spell. Rarity in particular wears glasses and a sun hat, and is sensitive to loud noises to the point that even Fluttershy's normal speaking voice makes her wince.
  Rarity: If everypony could speak in a whisper for the next few days, that would be delightful...
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Crack That Whip", Dr. Doofenshmirtz suffers from extreme sensitivity to noise, including his own evil laughter, when he has "a headache" after staying out late at an evil mixer.
• The Simpsons:
  • In one episode, Bart's teacher Ms. Krabappel tells her class "Okay class, today we'll be sitting quietly with the lights off because teacher has a hangover."
  • Parodied in "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses": Marge's hangover appears to be magnifying Homer's footsteps to the point that they're obnoxiously loud, but it turns out they are that loud because he's breaking in a pair of ski boots.
  • In the opening scene of "Donnie Fatso", on New Year's Day Marge, despite not getting drunk, (she had kissed Homer while he was drunk) ends up with a bad hangover and demands Bart, Lisa, and Maggie to be quiet while blowing their party horns and rattling their noisemakers.

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