Heartbreak and Ice Cream

"Am enjoying a relationship with two men simultaneously. The first is called Ben, the other, Jerry. Number of current boyfriends: zero."

— Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004 movie)

In fiction, a heartbroken, upset, or depressed character will often be seen eating a large quantity of ice cream, almost always straight out of the container rather than putting it in a bowl or cone first. The general rule appears to be that the size of the container is directly proportional to how sad the character is.

It may also be a sign that the character has "let themself go" if this behavior continues for several days or even weeks. If so, it will often be accompanied by other behaviors such as wearing pajamas during the day and refusing to leave the house (see Mess of Woe).

This sort of behavior also tends to happen with single women around Valentine's Day, even if they haven't experienced any recent rejections. Occasionally, ice cream is replaced with chocolate or some other sweet.

Also seen as a less dangerous alternative to heavy drinking.

A Sub-Trope of Comfort Food. A Sister Trope to Drowning My Sorrows. Compare Eating Solves Everything, where eating actually helps solve or get rid of a problem, and Post-Stress Overeating, where general stress leads to general overeating. Contrast Too Unhappy to Be Hungry, where the heartbreak would not cause the character to be reaching for the pint of ice cream in the freezer... or anything else.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Comcast/Xfinity commercial from 2013 depicted a woman who was heartbroken over being "mistreated" by a satellite company she switched to and calls an acquaintance from Comcast to tell her about it, all the while sitting in bed and eating ice cream.

Anime & Manga

• In Case Closed, the end of the Desperate Revival story arc has Shinichi, who thought he'd turned back into an adult for good, reverting back to Conan while he and Ran were on a dinner date. All he can do is tell Ran that "Shinichi" gave him a credit card to pay for their meal and that he had to go solve another case. Ran, at her breaking point, screams that she doesn't want to hear his excuses anymore, then pulls herself together and offers to get dessert for herself and Conan. After cutting away briefly to the antics of other characters, Ran is shown ranting about how angry she is about Shinichi's behavior, while Conan mentally notes that she's on her fourth dessert.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: It's not just ice cream, but Kyoko is shown desperately stuffing her face with junk food after Sayaka's death: despite always being seen chewing on some form of snack, she eats more in this one scene than she does in the entire rest of the series.
• In Random Walk, Yuka goes on a snacking binge after being dumped by her boyfriend, Hikaru. While she's broken up twice before, the third one hits her harder than the previous ones because of how abrupt it was and how ridiculous his excuse is (he wants to go back to a girl he briefly dated, and despite liking Yuka more than this other girl, he feels guilty because she got a Heroic BSoD after he left her and decides to stay with her from then on).
• In the Black Moon Arc of Sailor Moon, Usagi stuffs her face with food and sweets after Mamoru breaks up with her.

Comedy

• David Cross talks about "Patty from accounting" on his album It's Not Funny, whose perfect night includes "lighting candles and taking a bath, curling up with a Grisham and a pint of Chunky Monkey....and softly crying myself to sleep."

Comic Books

• In Astro City, when teen hero Hummingbird is crying over being rejected by her boyfriend, Cleopatra suggests a "sacred ritual" to help her get over it. Smash Cut to Quarrel, Beautie, Cleopatra, and Hummingbird gleefully sharing relationship stories over pints of ice cream.
• One issue of She-Hulk has Pug bringing Jen a pint of her favorite ice cream and a copy of Pretty in Pink to help her get over a rough patch with her then-boyfriend.
• In the Superman story arc The Death of Clark Kent, when Lois Lane finds Superman at last and he tells her he's not going back to his secret identity, Lois tells him that she's "looking for Clark Kent and still hasn't found him." Then she storms off, thinking that the nearby town had better have a good flavor of ice cream.

Comic Strips

• The newspaper comic strip Cathy thrives on this trope.
• At a pool party in PreTeena, Tess Keene comforts daughter Jeri when Jeri sees the new girl in town looks far better in a swimming costume than she does — and is getting on very well with Jeri's would-be boyfriend. Tess cheerfully tells her daughter this is one of those things and we all have to face it sometime. Then she looks round and sees the new girl's mother looks good in a bikini. The scene cuts to Tess and Jeri sitting miserably at the poolside, wrapped in blankets and miserably sharing a very large tub of ice cream.

Fan Works

• Advice from Pinkie Pie: Pinkie comforts Rarity with ice cream after her first time with her coltfriend doesn't go so well.
• Natsuki mentions in Ambitious Love that after the second time Reina left her, Kumiko spent a week eating nothing but ice cream and sleeping pills.
• Used platonically in Anachronism. Hop ate a tub of ice cream after his brother missed their meet-up.
• In The Arranged Marriage Rabastan eats a tub of Ben and Jerry's every time he has a bad day.
• In the Ask Princess Molestia blog, the titular Memetic Molester uses tubs of ice cream to ride out her brief fits of depression/frustration. Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before one of those fits was caused by a heartbreak.
• While not exactly heartbreak, it is mentioned in Bad Influence that Kimber and Stormer discussed tough topics over ice cream.
• In the WWE story Better Off Alone, Molly Holly gets dumped by her boyfriend, Christian. That night, she eats a pint of ice cream in half an hour. Trish Stratus then shows up to keep her company and brings more ice cream.
• In A Charmed Life after Light disappears, L eats an entire carton of mint chocolate ice cream in one sitting.
• Cheating Death: Those That Lived: Right before the 44th Hunger Games, the girl directly ahead of Platinum in the District 1 ratings goes into a coma after a truly massive ice cream binge when her boyfriend dumps her.
• Child of the Storm has Steve comfort Carol his great-granddaughter with a 'Thor-sized' tub of Rocky Road ice cream in chapter 45 of the sequel after she's upset and angry (enraged, in fact, to the point where she breaks a punching bag and busts her wrist trying to work it out) because of what Yelena Belova did to Harry.
• Dangan Ronpa: Assassinating Friendship: Monosuke finds his father Monokuma in the middle of this during the Kuma & Kubs Theatre 0 segment. The bear's been having a bad time of it, having gone through a series of embarrassing events in the mutual killing game, along with making a Squicky discovery involving two of his monokubs.
• Displaced (TheMountainJew): After Batgirl and Nightwing break up -once again-, Supergirl drops by Babs' place to give her friend a shoulder to cry on while they eat ice cream and put Dick Grayson down:
  "Because you and Dick broke up. Again," she added as she hovered over her, placing her elbows on the headrest as if she needed to. Barbara's smile fell a fraction at that, but Kara continued before she could offer up a defense. "And you haven't been able to cry into my shoulder yet as we eat unnecessary amounts of ice cream," she pressed forward, worry clear in her tone to Barbara even though Kara tried to keep it hidden.
• Earth and Sky: We only hear about it second hand, but apparently Apple Bloom's response to Pipsqueak breaking up with her is to wolf down five gallons of ice cream. There's then a bit of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome here, as it's suggested that she was left very sick afterwards.
• In The Green Vial Draco and his friends' "traditional heartbreak dinner" is Fortescue's ice cream and red wine.
• In The Avengers fanfic House Arrest, Thor, Tony and Steve are all reduced to eating ice cream in the cellar, hiding from Loki, after the trickster messes with them one too many times and rejects Thor's attempts at brotherly affection.
• Leave for Mendeleiev: After the Stormy Weather incident, Marinette takes Aurore back to the bakery to binge on cookies and watch movies together up in her room.
• In Lincoln is Done, all the Loud girls from The Loud House are miserable because Lincoln ran away. Lori cries and eats many tubs of ice cream.
• The Penguins of Madagascar fic Princess (Laburnum Steelfang) shows Julien doing this when the other zoo-dwellers misunderstand and repeatedly offend him over him being transgender.
• Junko Enoshima in The Ultimate Hope is reduced to this after her every attempt at causing despair fails in increasingly hope-bringing ways.
• In the Steven Universe fanfic Pearl's Pearl, the Pearl inside of Pearl's gemstone tearfully eats a tub of ice cream (and a lot of snacks) after suddenly realizing that she's all alone.
  Just because her host didn't like eating her feelings away, didn't mean that SHE couldn't!
• An inverted variant happens in this parody comic of Steven Universe; Yellow Diamond tearfully eats a tub of ice cream while watching Ruby and Sapphire's wedding.
• This human AU of Steven Universe has White Diamond, with a blanket draped on her body, tearfully eating a big tub of ice cream while watching a romance movie. Hilarity Ensues when one of her daughters, Yellow, walks in on her.
  Yellow: (panicked, to Blue) Don't go in there, I think Aunt Flo is in town.
• In Dragons, Butterflies, And Who Knows What Else?, Mirabel's parents apparently keep a stash of ice cream specifically for when Mirabel suffers from heartbreak of some kind. In this case, it's over their fight.
• TMDDF: What If?: After a date with a girl named Paige, Tucker eats ice cream to feel better.

Films — Animation

• DC League of Super-Pets has once Clark leaves for a date and leaves Krypto alone to watch Mega Chef, the dog is seen eating tubs of ice cream clearly meant for this trope, as the brand is Cryer's.
• Incredibles 2: Violet takes a gallon of ice cream and starts eating it after Tony stands her up on a date due to having gotten Laser-Guided Amnesia from Agent Dicker. Funnily, she's doing it while invisible (but wearing normal clothes).
  Dash: Is she having adolescence?
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part discusses this in the song "Everything's Not Awesome", after Batman's wedding to Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi gets crashed, shattering the bride:
  Batman: Love's not real, I just wanna eat carbs, pass the ice cream.
  Ice Cream Cone: I am not a thing you can just use to fill emotional voids with.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Much like her pony counterpart, Rarity gorges on ice cream with tears running down her face after she thinks she's failed her friends, in the "Dance Magic" segment of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Magical Movie Night.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Played for Laughs in combination with Drunk on Milk, when SpongeBob goes out and eats Goofy Goober Sundaes with Patrick until eight in the morning, after not getting an expected promotion.

Films — Live-Action

• In Angel, Angel, Down We Go (a.k.a. Cult of the Damned), an overweight and insecure heiress (played by Holly Near) wolfs down a table-full of eclairs when she is confronted by a sexy rock singer and her own sexual frustrations.
• In Aquamarine, Aquamarine eats ice cream in the bath when it looks like it's not going to work out with her Love Interest Raymond. It also doubles as Freeze-Frame Bonus because the flavor is “Phish Food” by Ben & Jerry’s.
• In Bewitched, Isabel eats ice cream with Cool Whip after she has a huge fight with Jack and quits the show.
• At the beginning of Birds of Prey (2020), this is part of the montage of Harley's blues following her breakup with the Joker. That, and Easy Cheese straight from the can.
• Bride Wars: After Anne Hathaway's character calls her friend to tell her that she just got engaged. Her friend hangs up and is so distraught that takes three containers of ice cream out of the fridge and devours them all.
• Helen Sharp (played by Goldie Hawn) in Death Becomes Her overeats sweet stuff after seeing her fiancé Ernest Menville marrying Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep). She also tortures herself by constantly replaying a scene in a movie where Madeline's character is strangled to death.
• Dog Days (2018): After Liz and Jimmy break up, Liz sits on the couch eating Nutella from the jar while she watches Jimmy on TV.
• Dr. Dolittle 2, Archie the bear breaks into a house and binges on ice cream after he gets rejected by Ava. This, unfortunately, causes him to need to use the bathroom while John is trapped in the room with him.
• The Doomed Protagonist from Drag Me to Hell tearfully eats whole cartons of ice cream when near the Despair Event Horizon when she fails to find solutions to prevent her from being taken by the Lamia and dragged into Hell for all eternity.
• A thoroughly justified and very subtle, blackly comic version turns up in The Fly (1986) — when Veronica returns to Seth's loft/laboratory after four weeks in which she tried and failed to contact him, the Mess of Woe it's become noticeably includes a lot of empty food packages and bottles, all for sugary products. This is because Seth's Slow Transformation into a Half-Human Hybrid of man and insect has accelerated his metabolism so he has to constantly consume sweets anyway (he puts on nary a pound doing so), and given he's spent four weeks becoming a living Body Horror in complete solitude, sweets are probably the closest thing to comfort he has.
• In Hitch, after Hitch and Sara break up, she's shown lying on the sofa, crying and squirting whipped cream directly into her mouth as she cries. There's also when Alert is dumped by Allegra (who realized he got help in wooing her from Hitch) and he proceeds to binge on doughnuts ("Maybe my heart won't hurt so much if it stops").
• While Shelly Long's character in the Emancipated Child comedy Irreconcilable Differences goes through a period of adjustment after the failure of her marriage, her pantries are stocked top-to-bottom with nothing but cake frosting.
• Jurassic Park (1993): John Hammond is shown to be quietly eating ice cream by himself after he finds out that Jurassic Park has failed and his grandchildren are lost and in danger. Dr. Sattler snaps him out of it. This is an inversion of a scene from the original novel (in which Hammond is far nastier than the movie) which is used to highlight his childishness and Lack of Empathy since he's unconcernedly eating ice cream while hell breaks loose and everyone else is in life-threatening danger. The movie version also has him justify his eating of the ice cream by saying that the freezers aren't working, a result of Denis Nedry hijacking the Park's electrical and security systems.
• In Legally Blonde, Elle confines herself to her room to eat chocolate and watch soap operas after Warner dumps her.
• Miss Congeniality: Sandra Bullock orders a pint in a bar, which turns out to be a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
• Sherman Klump in the remake of The Nutty Professor is seen eating ice cream and M&M's and crying, but his trouble is not a break-up; it's over his massive weight making him a target of mockery.
• Scary Movie 3 parodied this trope with two women discussing their relationship woes by spooning chocolate ice cream out of a container that's about the size of a washing machine◊.
• Snatched (2017): After Emily's boyfriend dumps her, she eats ice cream from a bowl while she tries to find a friend who will join her on the non-refundable trip to Ecuador she was supposed to share with her boyfriend.
• In Thor: The Dark World, Darcy implies that Jane has been doing this ever since Thor left her to return to Asgard.
• In Seltzer and Friedberg's Twilight spoof Vampires Suck, Edward Sullen is shown after he's left Becca, watching TV and binging on a barrel-sized container of Ben & Jerry's "Feeling Sorry For Yourself Strawberry Swirl".

Literature

• When Mark isn't allowed to see Kareen anymore in A Civil Campaign, he retreats to his bedroom with multiple tubs of bug butter and a spoon.
• Referenced in The Dresden Files. When Michael Carpenter is injured and unable to carry on his duties as a Knight of the Cross, his daughter Molly worries he won't be able to "show up" for her anymore. Harry reminds her that even though her dad is out of the evil-smiting business, he will always show up for her in all the ways that truly count, such as coming over with ice cream if she has a bad breakup.
• Obliquely referenced in the Harry Potter books via the Dementors, who are The Heartless / a personification of depression. A good way to recover from their presence is to eat chocolate.
• In the Juniper Sawfeather novel Whisper of the Woods, June temporarily breaks up with Carter on the same night Haley breaks up with Ted. June goes over to Haley's house so they can eat chocolate brownie fudge ice cream together.
• In the Light Novel L: change the WorLd, it's implied that L's love of all kinds of sweets (and most of his other eccentricities) is really a reaction to the stress of his job.
• The Mermaid Chronicles: After Cordelia temporarily breaks up with Wade in the first book, her dad serves her peanut butter cup ice cream with chocolate sauce and sprinkles.
• The Mr. Men For Grown Ups book "Little Miss Shy Goes Online Dating" has Little Miss Shy binge on a tub of ice cream for eight when she thinks that she won't find her Mr. Right.
• The State of Grace: The night Grace's dad, who is Married to the Job as a wildlife cameraman, went to Greenland for another months-long shoot, her mum bought huge amounts of junk food, which she keeps in the garage.
• The Stranger Times: Stanley Roker gorges himself on sweets after his wife leaves him. Eventually the proprietor of the dessert bar he frequents decides he's gone too far and kicks him out.
• In What to Say Next, Kit and her mother both deal with the death of Kit's father by eating, especially ice cream and bacon.

Live-Action TV

• A familial version on All My Children after Edmund Grey was killed. His widow Maria and their two children are seen quietly sitting in the living room eating ice cream.
• Discussed on The Big Bang Theory, when Penny and Leonard have an argument and Sheldon tries to patch it up.
  Sheldon: This is for you. I've been familiarizing myself with female emotional crises by studying the comic strip Cathy. When she's upset, she says "Ack!" and eats ice cream.
  Penny: Um... Ack.
  Sheldon: If you were a cat, I would have brought you a lasagna.
• Boys Before Flowers: In episode 18, Ha Jae Kyung eats a gallon of strawberry ice cream upon discovering that his fiancé, Jun Pyo, only has eyes for Jan Di.
• Holt briefly turns to ice cream when in the middle of a Heroic BSoD in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, although he eats it from a small cup rather than the usual tub. He refers to it as "the saddest food known to mankind".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Referenced after Angel breaks up with Buffy in "The Prom", Giles responds with "I understand that situations of this sort require ice cream of some kind".
  • Angel: When Angel and Buffy have their unseen meeting after Buffy comes Back from the Dead for the second time. It's implied things didn't go well. Buffy's comfort food is chicken wings while Angel decides he wants ice cream.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has an episode titled "Why Is Josh's Ex Eating Carbs?" Apparently, after the breakup, she buried her pain in doughnuts, which, considering how proud she is of her looks, is a big deal.
• Doctor Who. At the end of "The Power of the Doctor", the Thirteenth Doctor is regenerating and Yaz knows she will never see the woman she loves again. The Doctor suggests they have ice cream and one last trip, and they're next shown sitting on top of the TARDIS in orbit above the Earth, eating their ice creams.
• Hinted at in one episode of Frasier. In an episode that has seen everyone at each other's throats and rather miserable about various things culminates in a city-wide blackout, Daphne and Roz discover some large tubs of ice cream in Frasier's freezer and they reason they might as well eat them before they melt. Frasier points out that it's nighttime, hardly that warm, and the ambient temperature of the freezer should preserve the ice cream sufficiently for as long as it takes for the power to come back on. Frasier is promptly told to shut up, and the ice cream consumed.
• Played for laughs on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart during an interview with Robert Pattinson. Pattinson had a very public breakup with his then girlfriend and Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart and had been out of the spotlight for the previous month. Jon Stewart pulled out two pints of ice cream and said "Tell me all about it, kiddo."
• This practice is known on Friends:
  • Monica dates a guy whom the entire gang loves and becomes friends with. Monica isn't feeling the relationship and breaks up with him. The gang is saddened by this and Monica finds them eating ice cream together.
  • When the girls act as "relationship tutors" for Chandler when he tries a serious relationship with Janice. They also add another piece of advice:
    Chandler: This ice cream tastes like crap by the way.
    Rachel: Yeah, well that's that low-cal, non-dairy, soy milk junk. We sort of... we save the real stuff for the truly terminal cases.
    Monica: You know, when you start getting screwed over all the time, you gotta switch to low-fat.
  • When Joey has a female roommate and becomes concerned that living with her is causing him to turn more and more effeminate. When he confronts her about this fact, she notices that he is upset and immediately offers to get "a pint of ice cream and two spoons."
  • Joey describes the different 'phases' of getting over breakups, 'Phase One' being sweatpants, food, and watching TV. 'Phase Two' is getting drunk and going to a strip club with your friends. 'Phase Three' is "picturing yourself with other women". When Chandler reaches 'Phase Two' neither Joey nor Ross are available so the girls take him to the strip club instead.
• Double Subverted in Gilmore Girls. Lorelei tries to get Rory to invoke this trope after Dean dumped her, but Rory refuses as she seems to have taken the breakup very well. However, at the end of the episode, Lorelei finds her at home crying with a bucket of Ben & Jerry's on her lap.
  Rory: (softly) I'm ready to wallow now.
• Girls: When Hannah's boyfriend breaks up with her, she goes to her apartment and hits the fridge, taking out a pack of ice cream.
• The Golden Girls would have the main cast eat cheesecake whenever they had a bad date or just a bad day in general.
• Good Luck Charlie: Teddy starts acting like a slob after her breakup with Spencer, not changing out of her pyjamas and watching sad movies. Ivy then brings Skyler (the other girl Spencer had been dating behind Teddy's back), who is also dirty in her pajamas. The three eat ice cream while talking about their relationship with Spencer.
• In an episode of Happy Endings Penny, depressed and thinking she would end up a lonely spinster, is shown in her pajamas and eating ice cream during a lavish roaring '20s party at her apartment. Jane takes it away from her and she falls onto the couch and pulls out another. Jane takes the "couch ice cream" and Penny immediately picks up a tub of "floor ice cream."
• Has happened several times on How I Met Your Mother:
  • Robin dated a guy with a small son and had to break up with them. When she was explaining it to the kid, she realized she got "dumped" by a six-year-old. She devours ice cream and tells Lily that he was a stupid-head anyway.
  • According to Ted, Marshall breaks out the Ben and Jerry's whenever he has a fight with his wife Lily.
  • Lily does this after Barney and Robin announce they're not a couple (therefore ruining Lily's plans for couple activities between the three of them and Marshall).
    • When Barney and Robin start dating officially, they go on a double date with Marshall and Lily and hate it. Later, they "break up" with them, causing Marshall and Lily to break out the ice cream and warm blankets in their apartment.
      Marshall: Can't believe they broke up with us.
      Lily: But we're so lovable!
      Marshall: No we're not, we're ugly and gross.
    • Later, Lily and Marshall bond with another couple, causing Robin and Barney to become jealous. A comedic Lost Love Montage shows the two sadly eating ice cream in bed.
  • After her breakup with Don, Robin is seen wearing a dirty sweatshirt and eating dirty. However, after Barney makes fun of her for it, she immediately recovers and flirts with a random guy at McLaren's.
  • We also see some offscreen clips of Robin crying and drinking in various places after her breakup with Barney (as opposed to Barney taking the breakup pretty well).
  • In Season 8, The ice cream parlor named "Splitsville" is the place where couples end their relationships once a banana split is ordered. It's there where Robin and Nick break up after Barney confesses his love for her, and then Nick goes home with two recently-dumped girls, and where Ted's basketball team kicks him out.
• In a case that's less heartbreak than sympathy pain, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had John state before a segment on prisoner re-entry that in case one does an Archive Binge on the four prison-related segments on that season, "you frankly earn the right to eat your feelings out with a Peanut Buster Parfait!"
• In Lois & Clark we see that Lois keeps a quart of ice cream with the lid off and a spoon already in it for just such occasions.
  Clark: But tell me, honestly. You weren't the slightest bit jealous of me and Toni Taylor?
  Lois: You'd like that, wouldn't you? Me, home alone, in a schlumpy robe, crying into a tub of Rocky Road. In your dreams, Kent. In. Your. Dreams.
• Lost Girl. Kenzi offers Bo "ice cream for breakfast" after she gets depressed over Dyson dumping her (she's a hot succubus, so this has never happened before in her entire life). Bo is less than enthusiastic at the idea, especially when Kenzi gets Bo out of bed by poking the chocolate ice cream stick in her ear.
• One episode of Lucifer sees Lucifer and Chloe investigate the murder of a young woman. One of the suspects in the Yandere ex-girlfriend of the young man who slept with the woman before her death, but she insists that she spent that night crying into her frozen yogurt. They find a video confirming this.
• Mike & Molly: Both title characters overeat on Valentine's Day as a result of having a fight with each other.
• On Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Jerry has frequently said that the cure for a broken heart is frozen yogurt with Gummi bears.
• In Perfect Strangers, when Larry explained to Balky that this is how people in America deal with heartbreak after Balky was dumped by his first love interest (who was just using him).
• Pretty Little Liars: In "There's No Place Like Homecoming", when Aria is planning on not going to homecoming, her friends ask her what she will do instead. Her plans involve reading gossip magazines and eating copious amounts of Chunky Monkey.
• In the Smallville episode "Crimson", Lois temporarily falls in love with Clark due to red kryptonite lipstick. When Clark is exposed to the same, he decides to run off with Lana instead. Cut to a sad Lois surrounded by empty plates. Not specified to be ice cream, but certainly something with chocolate.
• Played with in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Déjà Q". Q, Brought Down to Normal and feeling hungry for the first time in his life, asks Data in Ten Forward what people typically eat.
  Data: I have observed that many food selections are influenced by the mood of the person ordering.
  Q: I'm in a dreadful mood. Get me something appropriate.
  Data: When Counselor Troi is in an unhappy mood, she often has something chocolate.
  Q: Chocolate...
  Data: For example, a hot fudge sundae. I cannot speak from personal experience, but I have seen it often has a profound psychological impact.
  [a waiter comes over]
  Q: I'll have ten chocolate sundaes.
  Data: I've never seen anyone eat ten chocolate sundaes...
  Q: I'm in a really bad mood, and since I've never eaten before, I should be very hungry.
• On The Suite Life on Deck, London and Ms. Tutwiler help Bailey get over her breakup with Cody by doing various "heartbroken" activities in Ms. Tutwiler's cabin (such as eating ice cream, cutting out pictures, etc.)
• In The Vicar of Dibley, this happens when Simon dumps Geraldine, complete with the daylight pajama loafing. By the time Alice visits she has cleaned out the whole supermarket-style freezer unit of ice cream she just had installed, leaving only the tiny half-pint that Simon had picked before she told him to get out.
• In What I Like About You, Val is depressed when Rick expresses second thoughts about getting married to her after a Pregnancy Scare turned out to be a false alarm. When Val returns home, she immediately turns to the tub of ice cream and practically begs her sister, Holly, to join her, which she does.

Music

• In Lily Allen's music video to "Smile", she's seen munching on chocolate. The song is about a woman who was cheated on. She gets better and takes revenge on him. His suffering makes her smile.
• "Somebody to Love" by Suzy Bogguss:
  Your mascara's runnin' and your hair is a mess
  And what have you spilled on your party dress
  Sittin in the kitchen all broken hearted
  Lookin' for comfort in an ice cream carton
• Reba McEntire's "Strange":
  I lay there feeling sorry for myself on a bed of Kleenex
  Stuffin' chocolates in my mouth, on the phone with my best friend cussin' my ex

Video Games

• In Adventure Chef Lady Tiffany asks Izy to make a sandwich to help her win the Duchess' heart. On completing the quest she remarks that if it doesn't work out, she may need Izy to make her some ice cream.
• Crush Crush: Gamer Chick Mio is so devastated by losing her high score to the Player Character that she first appears crying and stuffing her face with ice cream.
• Love & Pies: On the day of the café fire, Eve stayed at home crying and eating ice cream because she was robbed by The Purple Fox.
• In Puzzle Adventure when Lupe thinks Viktor is dead, she becomes severely depressed.
  Lupe: I can't handle feeling like this anymore. No amount of ice cream or rewatching Bridget Jones is helping.

Visual Novels

• LongStory:
  • Jane got over her breakup with her boyfriend by eating ice cream.
  • Nora brings over ice cream to cheer up Sasse after their break up with Marcel.

Web Animation

• In Camp Camp, after David is dumped by Bonquisha and gets depressed, Gwen decides to introduce him to two guys who would help, "Ben and Jerry".
• It's implied at the end of Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Bardock: The Father Of Goku that Nappa was planning on taking Vegeta to have some ice cream as a way of helping him get over Planet Vegeta's destruction.
  Nappa: Well, I've got good news... and bad news. The bad news is... reports say our entire planet has been destroyed by a gigantic meteorite along with all its inhabitants.
  Vegeta: Aah... But, what about—
  Nappa: Aaand your father.
  Vegeta: My whole family...! My race!
  Nappa: But the good news is, we're going to Dairy Queen!
  Vegeta: My entire race is go—
  Nappa: DAIRY QUEEN!
  Vegeta: Just take me to the damn queen, Nappa.
• On one episode of Happy Tree Friends, Giggles is seen dejectedly scarfing down tons of ice cream after being stood up by The Mole, who had both gone on a date with Lumpy by accident — and subsequently horribly killed him, also by accident.

Web Comics

• During a flashback in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, after breaking up with Hortense, Doc says "I think... I think ice cream would be best. Yes."
• Early on in El Goonish Shive, there's an unfortunate incident at Greg's "Anime Style Martial Arts" dojo, where Elliot shows Sarah that he's currently dating Nanase - prompting her to run from the dojo in tears. After Nanase pushes him to follow her, he takes a quick inventory of the surroundings, and reasons out that she must be in the neighboring ice-cream shop (as opposed to the strip club, the cigarette store, the adult book store, or the abortion clinic).
  • According to legend, this trope is also the dojo's origin - after his girlfriend broke up with him, Greg ate ice cream and watched anime for 168 hours straight, ultimately causing Greg to discover how to use the outlandish fighting techniques from the anime in question.
• Knights of Buena Vista:
  • Adriana says her Player Character is "gonna find a carton of Haagen-Dazs and sprinkle it with my tears".
  • After Adriana is dumped by her boyfriend, Walter offers her some of the Ben & Jerry's from his freezer.
• This is referenced by Miho in MegaTokyo when she explains to Piro how Ping's changes in body dimensions is her body's equivalent to eating ice cream as a way to handle rejection.
• Mulberry gorges on chocolate ice cream while struggling to cope with the death of her next-door neighbor, Brittany Murphy.
• Narbonic: After Helen Narbon breaks up with Dave, she announces that she's going to go eat five pints of ice cream and then blow up Ecuador.
• In the first arc of Quantum Vibe Nicole is shown eating ice cream directly from the bucket after her boyfriend ditches her while ignoring a call from her boss about how he has to fire her for not showing up for days. Later in the series, she still tends to deal with stress with chocolate, though primarily in the form of flavored whiskey.
• Questionable Content:
  • Coffee of Doom keeps a pint of "emergency Ben & Jerry's" for such occasions. Faye has a habit of swiping it, so she makes Ellen a hot cocoa instead.
    Faye: Nothing soothes heartbreak like chocolate.
  • Cosette is introduced asking Marten out when he's still seeing Dora. She takes the rejection a little hard, having been crushing on him for a while, and in the next strip orders a large vanilla latte with extra whipped cream, and two brownies.
• Sandra and Woo features a "Break-Up Emergency Pack" of premium ice cream.
• Scandinavia and the World:
  • Estonia drowns her sorrows in ice cream and chocolates in a strip where Scotland is accepted among the Nordic Countries and she, in spite of her best efforts, remains forever alone.
  • Sweden, England, and Finland are also seen weeping and sharing a carton of ice cream in this strip, although in the latter's case, it was only to get free ice cream.
• Something*Positive has an example when Monette's show undergoes Executive Meddling. At one point, she's also seen chowing down on a tube of cookie dough after discovering her girlfriend cheated on her.
• In Umlaut House, Volair eats a tub of Haagen-Dazs after his ex Jake starts sleeping with Rick, his occasional nemesis.

Web Original

• When Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall does a Let's Play of Star Trek: Elite Force, his date with Telsia is abruptly cut short, and Ensign Munroe spends several minutes drunkenly staggering around Voyager, wailing to himself and trying to get Häagen-Dazs out of the replicators.
• Emma Approved: When Emma's mean-spirited actions toward Maddy Bates cause her coworkers/friends Jane and Alex to walk out on her in disgust, the next episode shows her crying and pigging out on ice cream.
• In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Charlotte Lu brings cheesy movies and ice cream to Lizzie who is a bit depressed because she thinks William stopped caring for her. They weren't dating, but he liked her, and now he hasn't called back after she left him a voice message.
• The drug of choice of Tess Masazza, creator of the Italian Web Series Insopportabilmente Donna, to cope with the pain of romantic disappointments is chocolate. However, she loves chocolate to the point that one cannot help but wonder if she is using her love issues as an excuse to just eat as much of the stuff as she wants.
• Not Always Romantic: After this woman finds out her boyfriend is in a serious relationship with another woman, one of her friends shows up with a carton of her favorite ice cream.
• In the Smosh video Anthony is Mexican, Ian is shown eating chocolate ice cream and crying in a montage when Anthony leaves him to stick to his supposedly Mexican roots.
• Welcome to Sanditon: When Ed doesn't protest too much and accepts to escort Ms. Griffiths to the 4th July festival (it was his pushy boss Mayor Parker's idea), Gigi is worried about Clara because Ed and Clara were hanging out a lot and headed towards a relationship. Gigi suggests they watch bad movies and eat ice cream together. Clara being an ice-shop owner, they settle just on the bad girly movie night.
• Becomes a bit of a Running Gag with Dimension20 Fantasy High's Gilear Faeth, who takes to eating a lot of yoghurt in order to cope with his recent divorce and reveal that Fig is not his biological daughter.
  GM: The flash across his head is him saying "Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I tried to jerk off but was too sad to, and stayed up all night eating yogurt."

Western Animation

• All Grown Up!'s "Lucky 13": Angelica does this with a tub of ice cream after finding out that no one will attend her 13th birthday party because they would all rather attend Savannah's party, who had purposely scheduled it on the same day as Angelica's.
• Arthur: In the episode "Arthur's Family Feud", Arthur's father, David, gets depressed after his souffle is ruined and eats a tub of ice cream while watching cooking shows.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Freda", Shake gets a girlfriend who turns out to be a robot built by Frylock. When she finds Shake intolerable and leaves him, Shake is next shown overweight and drowning his sorrows in fudge marble ice cream.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation: Z.E.R.O. has Father binge on ice cream after being rejected by his father, Grandfather, doing nothing to stop his father's world conquest in the process. It's implicitly stated that part of it is due to the terrible childhood he had and how Grandfather reminds him of it, rendering him a complete lack of self-confidence. The other part is due to having a cruddy day in general.
  Father: I hate everyone.
• El Tigre: Manny tries everything to help him grow a mustache so he can pass as an adult and get cool perks. When nothing works, he tries to numb his disappointment with several milkshakes.
• The Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Affair Weather Friends" has a scene where Mac, feeling down in the dumps due to Bloo spending more time with someone else, consumes large amounts of ice cream and starts acting out an imagined conversation between him and Bloo where Bloo tells him that he doesn't need Mac anymore.
• The Fairly OddParents!
  • In "Chin Up!", when the Crimson Chin enters a Heroic BSoD after learning he is not real but a fictional character, he sits on the couch and eats ice cream. The Crimson Chin does this again in "Chindred Spirits" five seasons later due to him not having a love interest.
  • In the episode where Timmy is found guilty for making the worse wishes in history, all of his wishes, including Poof gets erased and sent to the Hocus Pocanos. Jorgen Von Strangle felt guilt for letting the whole thing slide and confines himself to a couch while eating buckets of ice cream.
• An episode of Family Guy has Stewie go back in time to prevent Kurt Cobain from committing suicide by presenting him with Haagen-Dazs as an alternative. When Stewie returns to the present, he finds an album cover with a morbidly obese Kurt riding a Rascal scooter.
• In Feast, when James, a former junk food junkie breaks up with his girlfriend, he goes straight for the junk food, including, yes, ice cream in addition to other Comfort Food.
• In the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket", the Planet Express ship does this (somehow) with Leela when the former's dumped by Bender. Then Leela's attempt to comfort her makes her decide to drive herself (and the crew, including Bender) into a Negative Space Wedgie.
• Downplayed in Jem. When Kimber and Stormer get into an argument with their bands they both retreat to a bar that apparently specializes in ice cream shakes.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Beezy is shown consuming large amounts of ice cream after losing his collection of chewed gum.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Mao Mao falls headfirst into this trope when Adorabat is taken away by her biological father Eugene. It doesn't take long for him to start eating pints of the stuff while sobbing like a little girl. Even if the monster alarm is going off or while on the aerocycle, helmet be damned!
  Badgerclops: Dude, you can't spend your whole life eating ice cream just because Adorabat's gone forever!
  Mao Mao: (sadly, with mouth full) Five more minutes?
  Badgerclops: Do you think those monsters attacking the city are gonna wait— Does that have peanut butter in it?
  Mao Mao: (Pathetic confirmation whimper)
  Mao Mao AND Badgerclops: (crying and eating ice cream)
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation". Rarity makes a puppet theater for Ponyville's Fall Foal and Filly Festival, but the harsh rejection she receives when her design proves unsuitable drives her to pig out on chocolates and vanilla-oat swirl ice cream, complete with "om nom nom" sounds.
  • Discussed in "School Daze - Part 2", when the Mane six find Twilight Sparkle in deep despair after her school is shut down.
    Pinkie Pie: You didn't tell me this was a pity party! I would've brought ice cream!
• Muscle Man from Regular Show eats spoonfuls of protein supplement following being dumped by Starla in "Muscle Woman".
• The Owl House: In the episode "Keeping Up A-Fear-Ances", Lilith gorges herself on "eyes cream" when her mother visits and neglects her in favor of Eda as she usually does. King joins her after Lilith reminds him of his own parental abandonment issues.
• In the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode "Gates of Gloom", Scooby is distraught when a coma-stricken Nova gets abducted, so Shaggy offers him some "triple fudge cookie dough caramel chip" ice cream to calm himself. However, in real-life, giving that particular to Scooby (who's a dog) would make him really sick—while there is ice cream that's made especially for dogs and it can be okay to give dogs regular ice cream, it should never have chocolate in it, because chocolate is really bad for dogs.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Mermista falls into a Heroic BSoD after her kingdom gets invaded by The Horde, and is reduced to lying in a bathtub eating tubs of ice cream.
• The Simpsons: "Now let's forget all our problems and eat a big bowl of strawberry ice cream."
• South Park: In "Cripple Fight", Big Gay Al is seen lying on the couch binge eating ice cream after losing his job with the Boy Scouts.
• Steven Universe: Future: In "Growing Pains", depressed from the events of his failed proposal to Connie, Steven indulges on a tub of ice cream among other snacks.
• In an episode of Teen Titans Go!, Robin turns to several tubs of ice cream after his staff is broken.
• Total Drama:
  • After learning that Cody tried to vote her off, Sierra starts "Can't Help Falling in Louvre" by eating ice cream and crying while huddled in a Troubled Fetal Position that no one can get her out of until the plane crashes.
  • Scott starts "The Obsta-Kill Kourse" by eating dirt, which he claims he always does when he is sad. The reason he's sad is that he thinks Courtney was unfaithful, prompting him to tell the dirt he knows it will never cheat on him.
• The VeggieTales episode "Silly Singalong 2: The End of Silliness?" opens with Larry, distraught over the cancellation of "Silly Songs with Larry", drowning his sorrows in ice cream. Then he gets a nasty ice cream headache.
• In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Date", when Lord Hater gets stood up by a princess, he decides that he's going to curl up with some ice cream before blowing up the planet that he's on in anger.
  • Hater likewise does this in "The Funk" while simply having an off day.

Real Life

• Ben & Jerry's must be aware of their part in this trope, as they have an ice cream flavor literally named "Chocolate Therapy". (For the curious, it's chocolate pudding ice cream with chocolate cookie chunks.) Ben & Jerry's is often used simply because it's the names of two guys, which sounds like the woman in question is actually dating the ice cream.
• The Canadian restaurant Milestones offers a dessert called "Break Up Tub" which is, you guessed it, primarily composed of ice cream. It is also known as the "I don't even think about you" ice cream tub.
  An individual-sized tub of cookie dough ice cream, chunks of double chocolate cookie, and house-made caramel ribbon. For here or to go!

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