Hyperventilation Bag

Poor kid's addicted to huffing sandwich fumes.

Allison: Are you hyperventilating?
Lisa: No, I just like to smell my lunch.

— The Simpsons, "Lisa's Rival"

Often on TV, a character who is panicking will be shown inhaling and exhaling into a paper bag to calm down. In milder examples, it can be used to cure hiccups. Actually Truth in Television, as breathing into a paper bag is a good way to reduce the symptoms of hyperventilation,^note Hyperventilating causes you to lose carbon dioxide too quickly, causing dizziness and fainting. The bag helps you retain it. according to The Other Wiki. However, one should never use a plastic bag for this, because suffocation will ensue.^note Being porous and not as likely to cling around the mouth, a paper bag allows some oxygen to come in, which a plastic bag cannot do. While there are other ways to cure hyperventilation, the paper bag is the most iconic, providing an easy visual shorthand (and comical prop) for viewers.

Compare Cathartic Exhalation.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji has a panic attack, and Kaworu, not being able to find a paper bag, kisses him.

Comic Books

• In Young Justice, the Justice League is considering disbanding their group unless they can prove themselves on a mission. Arrowette calls them out on wanting their apprentices to fail instead of hoping for them to succeed before she storms off. Wonder Girl follows her, and when she finds her she's breathing heavily into a bag. Hey, give the girl a break. She just talked back to the Justice League.

Comic Strips

• Liz's parents in Garfield end up doing this after finding out Liz was dating a cartoonist.

Fan Works

• In It Sounds Better Than "Pity Date", Flash Sentry hands Sci-Twi a paper bag for her to breathe into after Sci-Twi panics, realizing she got carried away with the "simulation date" she and Flash were on and actually tried to kiss him, knowing he likes Princess Twilight. Flash claims he brought the bag because "you never know what you might need."
• Shinji is reduced to this in Nobody Dies after being told for the first time to drive the Eva and fight an Angel.
• In the 29th episode of The Silverscale Arena, Alphonse uses the first break the contestants get to breathe into a paper bag as he tries to process what he went through in the first game.
• In This Bites!, when Jeremiah Cross finally gets his first wanted poster, he has to breathe into a paper bag to calm down after seeing the astronomical bounty the World Government has put on him (1,500,000,000 Berries).

Films — Animation

• Runt of the Litter from Chicken Little. He hyperventilates so hard he accidentally swallows the bag, then is seen breathing on two bags at once.

• Referenced in Monsters vs. Aliens when Ginormica first sees the giant robot they have to fight.
  Ginormica: I can't fight that thing! I've never... I'm hyperventilating! Does anybody have a giant paper bag?
• RJ in Over the Hedge does this as he becomes less sure about going through with his lie to the other animals. The brand of chips on the bag is named "OH-NO's".

Films — Live-Action

• In Queens Logic, after Carla has left Al for showing up late for their anniversary, and taken his and his friends' clothes when they've gone to a local swimming pool, she goes over to Patty's house with a lot of pent-up rage and frustration. Patty gives her a paper bag and encourages her to breathe into it. Carla does, starts crying, and lets out all of her feelings.

Literature

• She Is The One: One is used to help Jack come down from a panic attack at the police station after Coach Walburn's suicide.

Live-Action TV

• One episode of The Big Bang Theory has Sheldon breathing into a paper bag when he tells Leonard that his World of Warcraft account had been hacked.

• Ilana uses one in the Broad City episode "Destination: Wedding" to cope with the revelation that Abbi made out with another woman before they met when Ilana wanted Abbi's first same-sex experience to be with her.
• The Cosby Show: Elvin uses a paper bag (and is told to do so by Heathcliff) while he's hyperventilating while Sandra is giving birth.
• On one episode of Diff'rent Strokes, Adelaide the housekeeper uses a paper bag to ward off an epileptic seizure.
• Appears a number of times during the 6-season run of Emergency!, which should not surprise anybody.
• Rachel is show breathing into a paper bag during the Friends pilot. And later Janice does this when Chandler reveals he saw her kissing her (supposedly soon-to-be) ex-husband. She also gags on the receipt from the large box of condoms Chandler had just purchased that was in the bag, just to be more ironic.
• In one of the many flashbacks on Lost, Hurley is seen breathing into a Mr. Clucks bag in a parking lot.
• MythBusters: The final test for "Killer Brace Position"^note (the claim that airlines tell you to use the brace position to make sure you die in the plane crash — Busted, for the record) put Kari, Adam, and Tory on their crash rig. A nervous Kari is seen breathing into a paper bag ... until Adam slapped the bag in an attempt to pop it.
• Main character Nina, who suffers from anxiety, does this a lot in the Australian series Offspring

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: In the TV episode "Wishy Washy", Petunia uses this method to cope with her germophobia. The paper bag eventually explodes towards the middle of the episode, so she frantically goes for a rubber glove instead (which of course gets stuck in her throat).

Webcomics

• Sydney of Grrl Power uses this when her mouth gets her into trouble and when she learns that everything she thought she knew is wrong.
• In Nip and Tuck, Zelda uses this before interviewing her semi-celebrity crush, Nip.

Web Original

• The P-P-P-POWERBOOK! prank, a tale about one goon trying to sell a week-old Powerbook that he no longer needs on eBay, only to be approached by an obvious escrow scammer, which then turns into a fit of scamming the scammer, runs a snag when it meets a "Regulatory Agency Clearance Delay". The original seller tells the others that he might soon be needing CRP, and posts an image of himself breathing into a paper bag.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In "The Real You", Finn starts hyperventilating when Princess Bubblegum asks him to give a science talk. Jake turns into a paper bag and tells Finn to just breathe into him.
• Animal Behaviour: Dr. Clement gives a tiny bag to one of his patients, Lorraine the leech, for her to breathe into when she has a panic attack.
• As Told by Ginger: Macie does this as times. In the episode "The Right Stuff", she's so nervous about starting an advanced high-school-level class that she hyperventilates into the bag containing her lunch, causing the bag to burst and spill its contents.
• Centaurworld has an entire musical number surrounding this, entitled "Breathe In a Bag".
• While not for hyperventilation, Edd of Ed, Edd n Eddy breathes into one to cure his hiccups, which Eddy pops with one of his hairs.
• Lampooned in the Family Guy episode, "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire": Cleveland Brown begins to hyperventilate as he vows to kill Glenn Quagmire for sleeping with his wife. Peter grabs a plastic bag instead of a paper one, placing it over Cleveland's head and causing the latter to lose breath and pass out.
• In some early Goof Troop episodes, Pete was seen using a paper bag for stress related freakouts. They were caused by Goofy's destructive blundering.
• Whenever Clyde McBride from The Loud House freaks out, he breathes into a paper bag. "Purrfect Gig" demonstrates that Howard McBride, one of his fathers, also does this whenever he's having a panic attack.

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Spike does this on "A Dog And Pony Show" after Rarity has been kidnapped.
  • Discord also does it in "Discordant Harmony" when he starts to panic about what kind of tea party Fluttershy might like. Being Discord, he inflates and deflates as he uses it rather than the bag.
  • Twilight Sparkle does it in "The Beginning of the End" several times when she learns that Princess Celestia and Luna are abdicating their rule to her and her friends.
• Ready Jet Go!: In "Jet Cooks Dinner", the kids are running out of time to cook a meal for Jet's parents before they return home. This causes Sean to have a panic attack, and he briefly breathes into a brown paper bag.
• Robot Chicken: In a sketch parodying the Fandango commercials with paper bag puppets, one puppet uses another to hyperventilate into after watching scary movies. He breathes so hard, he pops his friend.

• Chaz on Rugrats does this when he hears that one of his blind dates is a contortionist.
• On The Simpsons, in the episode "Lisa's Rival", when Lisa does this after meeting a girl who appears to be smarter than she is.
• Total Drama:
  • Heather uses a hyperventilation bag in "Trial by Tri-Armed Triathlon" to calm down after being locked in the outhouse with Owen when he had to go number two.
  • Sierra uses a hyperventilation bag in "Niagara Brawls" to calm down from the news that the next challenge will be wedding-themed and that there's a chance she'll get Cody as her partner. Then she faints anyway.
• Total DramaRama:
  • In "Know It All", Courtney is not allowed to correct anyone on what they're doing wrong and the other students go out of her way to push her to her limit. Noah's contribution is to color outside of the lines. Unable to deal with the sight, Courtney grabs a bag and breathes into it as she runs out of the room.
  • To protect their cookie business in "A Licking Time Bomb", Owen has to keep it a secret that what makes the cookies delicious is his spit. He doesn't like it one bit and comes close to spilling the beans numerous times. When an investor comes by to help them set up a factory, the secret gets to Owen really bad and he needs a bag for breathing to keep himself steady.

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