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The line between disgust and comedy is wafer-thin.

"We all know William Howard Taft kept a bowl of live frogs by his resting slab in the Oval Office that he would occasionally snack on during meetings. We all know the Oval Office was originally round. The bloggers of the day would never let him forget it."
More Information Than You Require, "Humanizing Detail on William Howard Taft"

It is an unspoken agreement in polite society that the proverb "You are what you eat" not only applies literally to what you are eating, but also how you actually consume the food. What better way, then, to show that a powerful (usually fat) and important person is a corrupt villain by having him greedily wolf down food in a manner more befitting of a pig than a gentleman of his status? Eating loudly, using their bare hands, spilling food on themselves and not bothering to clean it up, consuming plates, silverware, tablecloths, and other tablewares, taking the food of other patrons, and belching often, or at least letting off one singular, loud burp; there are an endless number of ways to portray disgusting table manners.

Bonus points of villainy if the food is meant to be "fine" gourmet food that would cost the month's wage of a poor person to buy. It takes a villain of epic repulsiveness to make the very consumption of fine foods a disgusting act to behold.

This is an Anvilicious trope criticizing wastefulness of the rich and corrupt. It is as old as cinema itself, starting back in the Two-Fisted Tales days. Also commonly found amongst The Mafia and the occasional Nazi of four-colored comic books.

Subtrope of the Sin of Gluttony.

Also see Adipose Rex. Can overlap with Villainous Glutton. Compare Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness, where general lack of hygiene correlates with villainy. Contrast Too Hungry to Be Polite, when hunger rather than villainy causes someone to forget their table manners.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • In a 2019 commercial for Comcast Xfinity, NBA player and well-known gamer Gordon Hayward starts slurping loudly on cereal over his headset, squicking a fellow gamer.
    Other Gamer: Dude...
    Gordon Hayward: Ya gotta stay hungry, buddy.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Dragon Ball: Giran gets a huge plate of chicken, but only takes one bite from each piece before throwing it to the floor. Nam scolds him for wasting food, but Giran ignores him. When Goku tries to pick up the chicken on the floor to eat it, Giran yells at him for stealing.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • The manner in which Majin-Buu, the evil genie, slurps and gobbles down the candy into which he turns his victims. The fact that they are still alive and conscious makes his eating scenes all the more nightmarishly evil.
    • Practically all members of the Saiyan race will try to eat as much as they can as quickly as they can, manners and decency be damned. This applies even to Saiyan royalty like Vegeta, who we see at one point double-fisting turkey legs. This also extends to Goku, whose voracious appetite and lack of manners never fail to leave those watching him stunned.
  • From Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest, leader of Diabolos Guild of Dragon Eaters Georg Ryzen is a savage-looking brute of a man who not only is a Villainous Glutton (he genuinely likes to eat Dragons for their flavour rather than power) but is shown "eating" a steak by holding it in his hand and crushing it into paste, squeezing all the juice in his open mouth. Even his underlings are disgusted.
  • While feeling more sadistic than usual, Souther in Fist of the North Star sets up a banquet of a dozen courses just to watch the attending slave children shake in hunger at the sight of it. This in a setting taking place after a global thermonuclear war, where food and everything else that matters is scarce as hell. After eating less than half a plate, he smashes the entire table, ordering all the scraps to be thrown into the trash, just so he can take joy in watching a child being beaten by his men for trying to eat a single drumstick.
  • Used in Gamaran to underline the Red Oni, Blue Oni status between Shinnojo Sakura and Zenmaru Ichinose when they're first invited in Naoyoshi's home. The former is calmly sipping tea, Zenmaru is gorging himself on rice with his cheecks bloated, has a fishbone jutting from his mouth and another fish impaled on his chopsticks (which is very rude for japanese food policy), praising the food.
  • Bob Poundmax in Gungrave, who barely chews the fried chicken that he practically inhales by the bucketful. It's eventually revealed being turned into a nonhuman was the only thing that saved him from a heart attack.
    Harry: Ugh! Bob, how many times have we told you to stop eating like that?!
    Bob: [with food still in his mouth] I'm sorry Harry, I promise I won't do it again! [while crumbs are spilling everywhere]
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
    • Stardust Crusaders: What tips Jotaro off to the fact that Kakyoin has been replaced by the shapeshifter Rubber Soul is when he starts licking a cherry with his mouth open in a drawn-out fashion (and he stole the cherry from Jotaro to boot). Later, however, the real Kakyoin starts doing it.
    • Golden Wind: Polpo, a Capo/Lieutenant in the Mafia branch Passione, acts like this all the time while still trying to come off as more cultured than the common man. It's to the point that he received a pizza almost as big as he was, then waited for the visiting Giorno to enter his cell, all while he was using it like a blanket to hide his massive form, before eating it. And not just in bites, he actually takes two bites and then slurps the entire pizza up like it were pasta. Giorno eventually turns this against him by using his Stand, Gold Experience's life-energy-manipulation ability to turn one of Polpo's guns into a banana that he then accidentally cocks when peeling and pulls the trigger when he already has the barrel in his mouth, resulting in Polpo having Ate His Gun, in both sense of the phrase.
  • Guild Mistress Delphin of Last Exile is repulsively wasteful enough to make Jabba himself look like a gentleman in comparison. Guild connoisseurs take pride at how a tiny morsel of succulent meat took the lives of dozens of men to acquire and how a slice of fish is washed with enough water to slake a family's thirst. After all, so they reason, the sacrifice makes the food all the more tasty.
  • One Piece:
    • Generally, none of the male Straw Hats (save for Brook, who's a Man of Wealth and Taste) have great table manners. For them, eating and partying tend to go hand-in-hand, and table manners are out the window at that point. Luffy, naturally, is the worst with his voracious appetite. Sanji has the best table manners, but even then they can still be lackluster at times. A perfect example is the celebratory dinner held in their honor after they saved Alabasta from Crocodile. Nami, Vivi, Robin, and the aforementioned Brook generally are much more sophisticated at the table when it's not a party situation, but even they are not immune to letting loose to a point, although not to the extent of the others.
    • Wapol's super ability of the Baku-Baku Fruit gives him the ability to eat anything and stretch his jaws, as well as taking the phrase "you are what you eat" literally.
    • Jewelry Bonney is even worse in this regard, shoving food down her throat while screaming and kicking for more mid-chow. Capone Bege, being a Man of Wealth and Taste, is disgusted by her lack of manners.
    • Vice-Admiral Vergo is implied to have these. His first scene shows a leftover hamburger hanging off his cheek, and a one-panel flashback shows fries on his face.
  • Though usually not shown directly onscreen, the wasteful manner in which the noblemen of Pumpkin Scissors treat food that should be used to feed the refugees definitely qualifies them for this trope. There is one instance when it is shown, with the noble in episode 2 who hunts his citizens with his tank for sport. He throws a tantrum because his steak is prepared differently from his usual and throws it to the floor. Then he hears his maids' stomachs growling (rather audibly), so he tosses the rest of the onto the floor while remarking that he should feed his dogs.
  • In Speed Grapher, Prime Minister Kamiya eats like this. It is likely related to his abilities as a Euphoric, which seems to allow him to stretch his mouth to eat anything. Due to the nature of how Euphorics' powers are assigned, it can be inferred that Kamiya takes more pleasure devouring recklessly than anything else.
  • Spirited Away: Chihiro's parents are seriously greedy pigs, even before they are turned into actual pigs for touching the food of gods. At one point her dad seems to stuff a fried chicken down his throat! Though it's implied that's an effect of eating the enchanted food: once you start you can't stop scarfing it down until you become a pig.
  • Toriko: The title character doesn't fit this — he is a pretty fast and big eater, but he always appreciates what he eats and never wastes a crumb. The Bishokukai on the other hand have truly disgusting eating habits and occasionally go out of their way to kill animals without eating them. The closest thing the group has to a Noble Demon is also the only one who seems to appreciate good food as much as Toriko.

    Comic Books 
  • In 52 Doc Magnus follows Rorschach's example by wolfing down can after can of cold baked beans when his medication is taken from him on Oolong Island. The way he chows down the beans and the pile of messy tin cans disgusts the other mad scientists so they leave him alone Just as Planned.
  • In Asterix in Switzerland, Varius Flavus and his orgies set the standard for this.
    "Hey! Slave! This dish is clean! It's disgraceful!"
    "That's right! Why not fingerbowls, while you're about it?"
  • In Get Kraven, the villainous Rothstein brothers are constantly seen stuffing their faces full of food.
  • Green Lantern: Larfleeze, the Orange Lantern, was known to be constantly stuffing his face with repulsive food made from jungle insects and decaying meat. One of the side effects of being the possessor of the orange light of avarice is constant hunger.
  • All-Father D'Aronique in Preacher. He then pukes on himself. And one character goes, "Oh I forgot to tell you, he's bulimic."
  • In one issue of Ultimate Iron Man, Zebediah Stane and Loni Stark's greed is demonstrated by the way they wolf down their food during one of their meetings.
  • In the Villains United special, the Secret Six go out to eat at a restaurant, where Catman, who's spent several years living among a pride of lions, tears into an order of ribs in a bestial manner, disgusting his teammates.
  • In Watchmen, one of our big clues that Rorschach is more than a bit socially maladjusted is the way he wolfs down cold baked beans straight from the can. The sound effects don't help matters. In his case it's almost a subversion, because rather than being wasteful/greedy it shows him as a loner who doesn't know (or, more likely, simply doesn't care) about the kinds of things normal people care about, such as table manners. It also helps convey that he's a pretty spartan kind of guy: The beans are just as nutritious cold. It's faster. It's easier. Why bother heating them up?

    Fan Works 
  • In FREAKIN GENSOKYO, Shikome tends to devour her prey like this.
  • Goku the Gamer (Rewrite): Both Goku and Akane eat this way, the former because he's a saiyan and the latter because she's suffering from a severe malnourishment debuff, though Bulma is quick to realize the game is preventing Akane from suffering the consequences of over-eating after a period of starvation.
  • Subverted in The Lard House. Despite how much and how quickly they eat given the impression their all gluttonous slobs, the Lard family don't make 'any' mess while eating.
  • Opalescent: Otto, being a Big Eater, has absolutely no tact when it comes to eating on dates, as demonstrated when he goes out with Opal for the first time.
    Opal: Do...you always eat this much? I mean— every meal, do you...always eat so much food? [thinking] Oh gosh, that sounded so rude out loud...
    Otto: Only when I'm super hungry. Which is usually all the time.
    Opal: I see.
  • It's quite common in Harry Potter fics to depict Ron this way.

    Film — Animation 
  • Aladdin: Jafar takes a huge bite of an apple, eats it while talking and spits part of it onto Jasmine's face.
  • The Amazing Maurice: Boss Man's ravenous devouring of his food, and the disgusting noises that accompany it, are enough to repulse his two rat catchers. This is because he is actually a being whose body is composed of hundreds of rats.
  • Batman: Assault on Arkham: The Penguin is seen scarfing down a pile of fish when meeting with Task Force X.
  • Beauty and the Beast: At breakfast together, Belle is visibly disturbed to see Beast snarfing at his porridge like an animal. Chip helpfully nudges him his spoon... which leads to Beast dripping the porridge into his waiting jaws. Belle offers a compromise by lifting her bowl up, and they both sip.
  • The Book of Life: Xibalba gave out a loud belch and ate an entire bunch of grapes in one gulp.
  • Cinderella III: A Twist in Time: Drizella Tremaine samples the food being prepared for her sister's wedding by shoving handfuls of it into her face.
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Mayor Shelbourne is constantly shown shoving all sorts of junk food in his mouth from the sky, at one point swallowing a 6-foot-long hot dog whole while he is still talking.
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox: The animal characters like to think of themselves as urbane and sophisticated, but they go wild at mealtimes.
  • In Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure Scamp and Angel are about to help themselves to the same plate of spaghetti Scamp's parents enjoyed in the original movie. We think they're going to re-enact the famous Spaghetti Kiss scene...but because they're puppies they just end up messily devouring the spaghetti.
  • The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: While discussing plans with the admiral, Queen Victoria is talking with her mouth full.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Foreman Spike is seen scarfing down a slice of pizza without chewing. Perhaps unsurprising; given that he's rude towards the Mario brothers, it's fitting that he's rude when eating.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • 30 Days of Night: Given that there's only a certain amount of blood in a human body, and only a certain number of human bodies left in Barrow, should the vamps have been dribbling so much down the fronts of their shirts? In some scenes, they actually look like they have blood beards, of the ZZ Top variety.
  • In Angel (1984), The Killer consumes a raw egg in the most disgusting manner possible: piercing the top of the shell with the same knife he uses to murder prostitutes, sucking out the contents, and then crushing up the shell and stuffing it into his mouth.
  • John "Bluto" Blutarsky from Animal House uses his disgusting eating habits to piss off the Omegas and provoke a food fight.
  • Fat Bastard from Austin Powers fits this trope to a tee.
  • In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Genghis Khan first appears being served a plate of meat by a beautiful woman. He promptly spits out a mouthful of meat, knocks the tray to the ground, and starts ravishing her (although he's quickly interrupted by the Wyld Stallyns' time-traveling phone booth and lured away with a Twinkie).
  • John Belushi did it again in The Blues Brothers, when Jake and Elwood deliberately invoke this trope to drag Mr. Fabulous away from his ritzy maître d' job and back into their band. Though his insistence to buy the young daughter of the family in the next table probably has even greater effect.
  • The Bride: When Frankenstein and Mrs. Baumann are attempting to teach Eva civilised manners, they allow her to eat after she correctly says she is about to eat chicken. However, when the plate is placed in front of her, she starts to eat by lowering her face directly onto the plate.
  • At the end of Cannibal Girls, the titular women are seen consuming their victims' remains in a very messy manner.
  • Invoked for laughs in A Christmas Story, when Ralphie's mother, in an effort to get fussy younger brother Randy to stop complaining about his food, takes the novel approach of encouraging him to eat like a pig, sticking his face right into his "trough" and making audible oinking noises. While it does work like a charm, Ralphie is weirded out by it all, and his dad simply rolls his eyes and resumes reading the newspaper.
  • In Cry Wilderness, Will, Jim and Paul enter Will's home to find Morgan sitting at the table devouring an entire roast chicken with his bare hands. And ketchup.
  • The Skeksis banquet scene in The Dark Crystal. Fun moments: A Skeksis ripping the fat off a steak and chewing it loudly, a Skeksis gargling his beak in the middle of a bowl of water, and the entire group smashing the table trying to catch a live "crawly" rolling across it before the fattest Skeksis catches and eats it.
  • Lips Manlis, loudly slurping oysters in the Dick Tracy films.
  • Dinner In America: Simon eats six dinners (in America) over the course of the film. He's always hunched over his plate with his elbows on the table, shoveling food into his mouth and loudly sucking on his fingers. In the end, when he eats the only dinner he actually enjoys, he grabs the steak with his hands, rips it in half, tosses one half to a bystander, and bites a hunk off of his own.
  • Doctor in Distress (1963): One of the men in Mum's Diner stuffs food into his mouth with reckless abandon, much to the disgust of Dr. Sparrow.
  • Pang from Dog Bite Dog gobbles through every bite, especially in his first scene where after killing a mobster in a Chinese restaurant, he then grabs around 12 dumplings in one hand and shoves all of them into his mouth at one go. Justified that Pang is a cage fighter who is "raised like a dog".
  • Dates at least as far back as 1906 and Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, in which a man makes an absolute pig of himself eating Welsh rarebit (cheese on toast with sauce), smearing his face with cheese, drinking sauce straight from a chafing dish with a ladle, spitting his drink across the room. He staggers home and has a bizarre Acid Reflux Nightmare.
  • Dune (2021) has Baron Vladimir Harkonnen noisily pigging out on food to celebrate his victory on Arrakis. On the opposite end of the table? The naked, barely-conscious body of his archrival Leto Atreides.
    "You have a wonderful kitchen, cousin."
  • The Bandit in Dynamite Warrior is a deranged cannibal who gains super strength when he's hungry. He probably wouldn't be so hungry all the time if he didn't eat like Cookie Monster and, you know, actually swallowed his food.
  • In the "Death Proof" segment of Grindhouse, a stuntman's loud and messy introduction with a plate of cheese-soaked nachos is enough to tell you that he is a creep.
  • The title character of Jennifer's Body indulges in some of this shortly after her Demonic Possession. She's so hungry, she sneaks into Needy's house, pulls a refrigerated roast chicken apart with her bare hands and starts messily shovelling it into her mouth. Her newly-possessed body rejects it. Later, when she learns she has to eat people, her feeding methods are no less messy.
  • In The King's Man, Grigori Rasputin tears a whole Bakewell tart in half and then shoves it messily in his face with most of it ending up in the floor. He might be actively invoking this trope as a mockery to his dinner guest, an English lord, with him making a quip about how "English" it is, but he's also messy and crude overall. Also the tart is poisoned and Rasputin figured it out from the almonds on top, so even with his Acquired Poison Immunity he's got an incentive to waste as much of it as possible.
  • A porn industry farce, Live Virgin features a more subtle version of the trope when a porn executive mentions how much he used to hate caviar before spooning it into his mouth from a bowl while lounging on a couch. It wasn't all that terrible, but the film gives plenty of other examples of his general piggery.
  • Laura aka X-23 from Logan. The kid does not know how to eat with polite company. When dining with the Munsons, she stuffs fistfuls of mashed potatoes in her mouth until Logan corrects her, then scoops big helpings of corn from the bowl as it's passed around the table.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: (Peter Jackson version) Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, eats chicken, greens, and most infamously cherry tomatoes with his hands, munches audibly and has grease dripping down his chin. This is intercut with shots of his son being (sent by him) on what's likely to be a pointless suicide mission. The scene really shows the Sanity Slippage he's undergoing.
  • In Matilda, Sadist Teacher principal Agatha Trunchbull punishes a boy named Bruce Bogtrotter for stealing a cake slice from the school kitchen by forcing him to eat a chocolate cake (without any napkins) in front of the entire school. His face is shown in Gross-Up Close-Up while he eats the cake and licks his fingers.
  • Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, "Part VI The Autumn Years" provides our page image, repeatedly vomiting on the table and staff while demanding more food. The head waiter endeavors to kill him through over eating and he explodes once he finishes dessert.
  • Mystery Road: While having a 'feed' with Jay, Johnno gobbles down his Chinese food, slurps his tea, and hacks something up into a napkin. Johnno is definitely a man on the edge by this point.
  • The Sha-Her Triad of Jet Li's Wuxia film Once Upon a Time in China guzzle down pork and wine after forming an alliance of with the American sex-slave traders who invaded China.
  • One of the highlights of The Private Life of Henry VIII is the banquet scene in which Henry chugs wine by the flagon, while also attacking a chicken, tearing it apart, flinging the bones and the innards all over the room, splattering everyone unfortunate enough to be sitting near him.
  • The overweight Assistant Warden and the Warden of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky wolf down banquets while their prisoners starve. Even their dogs get steak for dinner!!
  • The Sterners in Serial Mom, as seen through Beverly's eyes: ripping chicken apart with their hands, sucking flesh off the bones, juices dribbling down their chins and being wiped off with the backs of their hands...
  • The roast goat scene in Sheitan. The food makes Yasmine sick so she doesn't eat, and Eve—while tucking into the meal with gusto—is at least using cutlery and eating relatively demurely. The men, however, are ripping at the flesh with their fingers and stuffing it into their mouths, chewing with mouths open, speaking with their mouths full, and generally behaving like pigs. The dinner table discussion is also pretty disgusting. This marks the point where the film transitions from being blackly humorous to downright horrific.
  • In Spaceballs, Pizza the Hut is a parody of Jabba. He's hilarious. And delicious. Unfortunately for him, as he ends up eating himself to death.
  • Jabba the Hutt of Star Wars, who shovels in gourmet food by the handful, is the Trope Namer. A fair amount of it is alive when he eats it. He can even swallow humans whole.
  • The Theatre Bizarre: The food fetishist banquet in "Sweets" is full of guests stuffing their faces in the most disgusting ways imaginable even before it enters I'm a Humanitarian territory.
  • In When Evil Calls, the fat kid is shown eating three burgers in the canteen; stuffing them into his mouth and picking his nose between bites.

    Literature 
  • Amelia's Notebook: If Amelia is to be believed, her sister Cleo.
  • In Another Note, an entire paragraph is devoted to Rue Beyond Birthday eating strawberry jam out of the jar (at a crime scene, no less!) with his hands, and both Naomi and Mello commenting on how gross it is.
  • A heroic version with Ciaphas Cain's aide Jurgen, as an extension of his awful hygiene in general. He sprays everywhere when eating, and the more gruesome sights in 40K like cracking open Tyranid carapaces are unfavorably compared to the experience of Jurgen going through a plate of shellfish.
  • In the 5th Deltora Quest book, Gellick the Great Toad devours flies by the massive bowlful. His slaves have to keep special rooms full of maggots and rotting food to ensure a sufficient supply of flies. He even kills a slave with his poisonous saliva for having to tell him that the supplies are lower than normal due to him slowly eating larger quantities each meal.
  • Discworld:
    • In the book Going Postal, Lord Vetinari recounts with horror watching merchant banker Crispin Horsefry eat a dish where "the sauce went everywhere". Reacher Gilt later winces to see fine brandy drunk the way Horsefry drinks it.
    • Lord Winder wasn't exactly a messy eater, but his intense (self-justifying) paranoia ensured that the artistically crafted cake was completely ruined, as he feared that an assassin might hide inside it and had guards poke swords through it. It got downright pitiful when he declared out loud which piece he would take, but in the last minute snatched the piece of another guest, fearing that his might be poisoned.
    • Early versions of Lord Vetinari, before he settled into a consistent characterization (or even got a name; until he became the urbane, politically-savvy ascetic we know today, he was just "The Patrician"), had him down as rather pudgy and he had snacks close at hand (the implication being that he was putting them to use constantly). He wasn't outright evil, but he was rather more in the vein of Lord Snapcase than would be believable if you started with the later books.
  • The Executioner's Song: Brenda is irritated by how poor Gary's table manners are. Gary, who has spent most of his life in prison, explains that in jail you had to wolf your food down in fifteen minutes, and he can't get used to sitting down and having a nice leisurely meal.
  • The Fire Rose: Jason isn't as bad as many of the other examples here, but he does wolf down raw meat. (Justified because his transformation left him half-wolf; how else would he eat?) Rosalind eventually gets him to use a knife and fork.
  • Izak Grottle, a particularly fat and obnoxious skaven warlord from the Gotrek & Felix novels, likes to gulp down live rats.
  • The Hunger Games: Katniss deliberately starts eating with her fingers and wiping them on the tablecloth after Effie makes an insensitive comment about the previous tributes' table manners.
  • Invoked in The Well of Ascension, the second book of Mistborn: The Original Trilogy. Tyrannical nobleman Lord Cett deliberately serves messy food and eats it with a noticeable lack of decorum during a dinner with his political rival Elend Venture, to the point that he starts eating even before Elend shows up. Vin (Elend's lover, the trilogy's heroine, and an assassin and former thief) quickly pegs Cett's poor manners as entirely deliberate, designed to keep Elend off-balance and uncomfortable throughout the entire meal. It's also something of a running theme with Cett that since he's paralyzed from the waist down and therefore has a hard time intimidating people physically, he makes up for it with his deliberately bombastic and over-the-top personality.
  • In Monday Begins on Saturday this is defining trait of second Vybegallo's cadavers. While looking like Prof. Vybegallo (being homunculus made from his tissues) it has no qualms from running on all four and plunging head-first into pile of fish heads. Justified by the fact that it was a model of "stomachically unsatisfied human".
  • Moon Base Alpha: In the first book, Roddy wolfs down fresh hamburgers from the supply shuttle in an animalistic way, despite being reprimanded by his mother. He nearly chokes from taking too big of bites.
  • Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Magic. A boy with positively dreadful table manners is taught how to eat properly by a very intelligent pig.
  • Not Now, Bernard: The monster is shown to be quite a messy eater, as shown when it is given Bernard’s dinner and just dumps the entire plate into its mouth.
  • Happens sometimes with the vermin in Redwall, notably when Blaggut and Slipp's behavior is compared to pigs at a trough.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Dr. Ivo Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog in Castle Robotnik eats like this. To make it worse he only eats raw eggs, often forgetting he's holding his food as he slaps his hands together then licking off the innards dribbling down his fingers. Even his own robots, programmed to be completely loyal, are disturbed by it and are confused over if when he gets mad it's just him foaming at the mouth or just egg whites running down the corners of his mouth.
    • Sonic and Tails don't get away with it either, their demolition of food isn't pretty but it's described much worse in the prequel Sonic the Hedgehog in Robotnik's Laboratory.
  • Mudge the otter in Spellsinger eats like this. While not outright evil, he is a greedy, lazy, and lustful individual. He once tries to justify his sloppy eating as being due to having a longer muzzle than Jon-Tom, but the latter isn't fooled.
  • Star Trek: Titan. Several of the carnivores on the Titan crew, including Dr. Ree, tear into their raw meat in a highly inelegant manner, usually spurting blood all over the table. This isn't because they're villainous or ill-mannered (in fact Dr. Ree's culture is incredibly polite), but because their species' instincts and metabolisms require them to "play" with their food.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Jabba's father Zorba from the Jedi Prince series of novels is just as disgusting as his son. His hosts at a feast are squicked out by his eating habits and are aghast when he ruins their super expensive carpet. Oddly enough, Zorba gorging himself in that situation is somewhat understandable since he had been wandering Tatooine for days with hardly anything to eat.
    • During Galaxy of Fear there's a character named Karkas who's introduced blowing smoke into Tash's face. Later he doesn't smoke while talking to Jabba the Hutt, but he does swallow a live eel with a contented sigh. Because he's in Tash's body. The writer still wanted to reinforce his grossness, but while a man eating live animals and murdering people in the body of a 13-year-old girl is okay, smoking is not.
  • The titular character in The Tale of Mucky Mabel Who Had No Manners At the Table. Not only does she make a huge mess when she eats but flicks peas everywhere and throws tantrums when her parents try to correct her manners. It's rather telling at the end when they would rather have a well-mannered piglet eat at their table while their daughter is taken away by the local farmer.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, one of the revealing clues that a person has been replaced by a Cat Jyuto is their propensity to devour meat, cooked or not, unsung only their fingers and with a lot of chewing involved.
  • Doctor Who:
  • Frontier Circus: In "The Courtship", Casey deliberately puts these on in an attempt to dissuade a woman who is attempting to trap him into marriage.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Joffrey shows the most unkingly manners imaginable at his wedding.
    • The starved Arya and Sandor look nothing like a highborn girl and a Kingsguard when they guest with a farmer in the Riverlands, shoveling and gulping down the food as fast as they can.
    • Arya again demonstrates her lack of table manners when she eats at Hot Pie's inn while on her way to King's Landing. To her credit, though, she and Hot Pie have a pleasant conversation (during which she learns that Jon Snow has retaken Winterfell) and she offers to pay for her food and ale, although Hot Pie refuses, saying, "Friends don't pay."
  • What's the best method of getting away with eating off of people's plates without explaining anything? Impractical Jokers' Q opts for diving in face-first.
  • After the title character inThe Mandalorian nearly gets killed bringing them a Mudhorn egg, the Jawas chop it open with a knife, greedily scoop out the yolk and smear it across their faces.
  • Princess Elena from Merlin, on account of her being possessed by a Sidhe from birth. Though the Sidhe were certainly villainous, Elena herself is a very sweet girl.
  • Invoked on NewsRadio. Jimmy James actively cultivated this as an intimidation tactic ("you have no idea how many millions I've made eating baked beans with my hands") and has to shake himself from it when invited to eat dinner with the President.
  • Odd Squad:
    • At the end of "My Better Half" Otto, with his body fully restored, eats the soup he was eating before when his body was split in half and when Oprah remarked that it was disgusting to watch. How he eats the soup is something more fitting for a toddler than a 10-year-old kid, as he spreads it all over his face. This manages to gross out not just Oprah ("It's even weirder with his whole face") but also manages to gross out Olive.
    • In "Disorder in the Court", Oscar explains that since Olive was in a rush, the two of them had bite-size pizzas from Delivery Debbie's. Odd Todd presents one of the pizzas for Oscar to eat in order to see how long it takes him to eat one, and he obliges before shoving the entire thing in his mouth in just a couple seconds.
    • In "Into the Odd Woods", Omar gets a Pie in the Face in order to cure him of his Clown-itosis. The antidote in the pie ends up working and he turns back, only to begin laughing because he got "pied". He then asks Orla if she wants some of the pie, and when she responds with a blunt "no", he thrusts his entire face into the pie and begins chowing down, much to Orla's disgust.
  • Oobi: There have been at least two instances of Kako eating noisily, whether it be eating pretzels or carrots.
  • Sesame Street: Although Cookie Monster definitely eats this way, he's harmless. His eating habits are intended as mildly objectionable in and of themselves and seem to be connected to the fact he's generally uncivilized, though. And in one early appearance, he attempted to eat Kermit.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): Count Olaf's eating habits are just as disgusting as his living space — he picks up popcorn with his tongue, eats lamb with his fingers, and at one point shoves an entire plate of pot stickers into his mouth.
  • So Awkward: In "Ms Perfect", Lily is complaining Rob is too 'boy' — she finds his boisterousness and burping gross and decides to give him a dose of his own medicine. It backfires — she eats disgustingly in his presence intending to shock him, but he doesn't even notice.
  • Stargate:
    • From Stargate SG-1, the Goa'uld underlord Nerus. General Landry comments that he'd never seen any human being eat in such a disgusting way. To which Nerus responds that he isn't human.
    • In one episode of Stargate Atlantis, the nobles that Sheppard associates with eat like this. Made all the more disgusting in that the group's first contact on that world are the farmers the nobles get their food from, who are all but starving.
  • Star Trek:
    • The Klingons universally gulp down food like slobs. In their case, though, it is to show how tough and free of pretentious "good manners" their straightforward and honest society is, rather than showing how "evil" they supposedly are. Also, it's hard to be dainty when the food is constantly trying to escape off the plate.
    • A specific example, lack of table manners is one of many unpleasant traits possessed by Royal Brat Elaan from the original series episode "Elaan of Troyius". She eats with her hands without bothering with silverware, napkins, or even plates.
  • Tales from the Crypt: In "Dead Right", Charlie's eating habits are disgusting.
  • The Umbrella Academy (2019): Klaus complains that he has "brothers who eat like barn animals"; cut to Diego and Luther hunched over their takeout boxes with noodles falling out of their mouths.
  • One episode of Yeralash is about a king who orders his first minister to make his daughter laugh. No clowns can do it... until a trope fitting boy is invited.

    Manhua 
  • Used as a recurring gag in the Old Master Q comics. For instance, one 4-panel strip have the titular character in a restaurant eating in such a messy, disgusting manner, the restaurant staff have to cover him up so as not to disgust other patrons!

    Music 
  • Jonathan Richman's "I Eat With Gusto, Damn! You Bet" off of Jonathan Richman (1989) is a spoken-word piece about how the narrator revels in such sloppy eating that the sight of it makes people throw up. He even gets arrested for it in France.
  • Kids Praise: One of the catchiest songs in the whole series is a non-praise, plot-related song bordering on a Villain Song where Psalty's daughter Harmony makes an absolute pig of herself at a potluck to the tune of Tarantella Napoletana.

    Podcasts 
  • Dice Funk: Anne challenges a child to a "slop off," which is exactly what it sounds like.

    Pro Wrestling 

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Macellarius bloodline in Vampire: The Requiem are vampiric gluttons. Their "feasting parties" generally consist of several dozen different varieties of blood, which they drink so sloppily it tends to ruin their (often fine) clothing. They'll even eat normal food at these things — which, being vampires, they then vomit up, not that they care. And then there's the special Discipline of the clan, which lets them turn raw flesh into Vitae (and thus keep it down). In the sourcebook depicting them, there's a memo from a vampire who had to negotiate with a group of Macellarius, noting that dinner with them took seven hours and got downright horrific when the human leg was brought in... Needless to say, the memo's subject line was "You So Owe Me".
  • From the original Vampire: The Masquerade we have the Nagaraja, though in fairness it's hard to eat daintily when your biology requires you to eat living or recently living human flesh.
  • The ogres in Warhammer are legendary for both the quantity of food they consume and the complete lack of any sense of manners they display while doing so. In fact, cleanly eating is considered to be borderline heretical in ogre culture and any ogre who doesn't display the expected level of sloppiness while eating can face punishment from their tribe as a result.

    Video Games 
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, Rinkah is an heroic example, as she has the habit of sending food and juices everywhere while eating with her bare hands. This annoys the local Team Mom Oboro to the point that she takes it upon herself to teach Rinkah how to eat with utensils.
  • In Grandia II, the businessman infected with Valmar's Tongue turns into a huge fat guy who spends nearly every waking moment eating—while his employees lose their sense of taste, and then slowly starve and waste away. He's also eating their souls.
  • The Meat King from Hitman: Contracts gnaws on whatever meal is in front of him. If 47 hands him a whole chicken, he'll bite the entire thing down whole using his bare hands without bothering to cut it up.
  • Luigi's Mansion has Mr. Luggs. This enormous ghost quite literally ate himself to death, and he never stopped.
  • Minecraft Legends: Like the other Piglins in the game, The Devourer invades the Overworld through a Hellgate. His villainy is emphasized in cutscenes, where he's depicted eating quickly with his mouth open and letting food fall out of his mouth.
  • Governor Phatt in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, a bloated whale of a man confined to his bed, eats through tubes that hang over his bed and deliver liquified food-like substances every 30 seconds or so. A bell rings to signal when it's about to come out. He's apparently learned how to respond to this prompt in his sleep.
  • Melvin Underbelly from Overlord, the hero who fell to Gluttony. His eating habits disgust even your minions, and they're pretty crude themselves.
  • Potion Permit: According to Mercy, her children eat like "ravenous beasts" at the dinner table.

    Visual Novels 
  • Tsukihime
    • Nero Chaos' idea of fine dining is unleashing a horde of ravenous beasts inside a crowded hotel. All that's left the next morning are bloodstains that are everywhere and the occasional shark bite mark on the walls for when he apparently got a little too excited.
    • Arcueid inverts this, with Shiki describing her eating a hamburger as "elegant". Arc's a good guy, so maybe not.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • Parodied in one comic of Brawl in the Family where Kirby and Jigglypuff attempt to learn civilized table manners, fail to get any food in their mouths that way, and revert to using their hand-stubs to shovel food into their mouths.
  • According to one Drive strip, watching a Veetan eat is an exercise in "abject terror".
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Thog, a half-orc barbarian, when eating ice cream.
    • The Empress of Blood, a gluttonous dragon.
      Tarquin: We've decided it's best if the Empress avoids eating in front of guests from now on.
      Too much clean up, both from her meal and from guests losing theirs.

    Web Videos 
  • This has happened more than a few times on Game Grumps:
    • One particularly infamous episode of the Ten Minute Power Hour has Arin trying to eat snacks using a mouthguard, shouting "MORE" as he awkwardly masticates.
    • Dan tries singing while eating a peanut butter sandwich.
    • Dan remarks that apples are the least conspicuous foods a person can eat.
  • The Nostalgia Chick stuffs food in her gob instead of eating it normally, and has even sung with her mouth full of Subway once.
  • In React's "Kids vs. ???" video, the Fine Bros have the kids eat a cake for the channel's one year anniversary. Since the channel is turning one, they invoke this trope by telling the kids they have to eat it like a one-year-old. Only one kid complains about this.
  • BigMastadon's self-imposed challenge to eat 40 pizza rolls. Retsupurae's MST and reaction here.

    Western Animation 
  • In Amphibia, the Core in Marcy's body eagerly smashes a cupcake into their mouth, getting frosting all over their new face. They remark how delighted they are to have a body again since spending centuries as minds uploaded to a computer deprived them of mortal comforts like eating.
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • In "The Forgotten", almost every line from villain Boss Biggis is grumbled through a mouthful of half-chewed food.
    • "Birds of a Feather" shows Penguin eating at a fancy restaurant, gobbling up sardines like his birds do.
  • Beavis And Butthead: Both Beavis and Butt-Head have dumped food into their mouths and chewed with their mouths open, mostly candy, fast food, and nachos.
  • Clue Club: Seeing Mr. Glut from "The Missing Pig Caper" eat is enough to make Sheriff Bagley lose his appetite.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy:
    • Downplayed with Ed. While a Nice Guy, he is nonetheless a sloppy eater, notably with gravy.
    • Sarah voraciously eats ice cream in "Stop, Look and Ed" and chugs gravy in "All Eds Are Off". Presumably she picked it up from her brother.
    • The Kankers. In the Halloween Special, they are shown eating marshmallows with ketchup.
  • Green Lantern: The Animated Series has a subversion. Kilowog, who's very explicitly not greedy or villainous nevertheless eats like this — he shoves his face directly into his plate and doesn't bother using his hands at all, much to Razor's disgust. And he can eat almost anything, even a videotape.
  • Hey Arnold!: Helga is occasionally shown to be a messy eater, as seen in "Helga's Masquerade" and "Big Bob's Crisis", where she has chocolate syrup (in the former) and barbecue sauce (in the latter) all over her face.
  • Hunger is a Deranged Animation short about a gluttonous Big Eater of a man who shovels in truckloads of food — and that isn't a metaphor, by the end his head has literally turned into a clamshell bucket and he is hoovering in truckloads of food.
  • Mandragora slurping down oysters from the Justice League Unlimited episode "Double Date". Bonus points for leering at Black Canary as he says, "I like my oysters nice and juicy." Ew. And then you remember that oysters are supposedly an aphrodisiac. Unsurprisingly, Black Canary gives his repulsive face a good smack, not that it does any good since Mandragora has Charles Atlas Superpower and is actually a huge slab of muscle rather than fat.
  • Looney Tunes: The Tasmanian Devil, when he even bothers with a table. And if he does, then the table gets eaten too.
    Bugs Bunny: [as the Devil devours a skewer of three dynamite sticks] Yeesh, what atrocious table manners!
  • The Loud House: Lana Loud, being The Pig-Pen, is quite the sloppy eater. One example is with her father's casserole.
  • Downplayed with Vendetta from Making Fiends. While her eating manners aren't outright messy, she always eats in fast, noisy munchs with her bare hands, even when the food she's eating would logically go better with cutlery.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
    • Pinkie Pie's manners consist of diving into food face first. It fits her CloudcuckooLander personality.
    • Invoked by Rainbow Dash in the episode "Read it and Weep" to gross out her visiting friends (one of whom is Pinkie Pie, incidentally) so they'll go away and she can resume reading her book.
    • In "Ponyville Confidential", one of the tabloid stories the CMC write runs alongside a picture of Princess Celestia messily devouring a slice of cake. She completely ignores her telekinetic magic, eating it from her hoof, and her face is heavily smeared.
    • In "Twilight Time", Twilight at one point wipes ketchup from a burger off her face with a second burger that she eats immediately after.
  • Zerk from Ready Jet Go! is a downplayed example in that he's not a villain, just a jerk before Character Development settled in. In "Back to Bortron 7", he asked the group if they wanted to see how many Figinnuznote  he could fit into his mouth until his mom stopped him.
  • Regular Show: Muscle Man. Almost everyone finds his eating repulsive, especially with chicken wings. In "Fancy Restaurant", he has to learn how to eat in an appropriate manner.
    Muscle Man: (stuffing himself with chicken wings) Are you sure you guys don't want anything?
    Mordecai: (grossed out) Uh, no thanks. Water's good.
  • In Rick and Morty episode "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", Rick takes Jerry to a resort covered in a immortality field where visitors are revived upon death. One resident is seen consuming stacks of meals brought to his table, after hijinks resulted in the field being destroyed, it's likely he died of a heart attack.
  • The Simpsons: The whole Simpsons family can be like this, though Homer is by far the worst offender. They're shown several times as just wolfing down their food like starved animals.
    Frank Grimes: [Homer] eats like a pig!
    Lenny: Nah, pigs tend to chew. I'd say he eats more like a duck.
    *Cut to Homer tipping his head back to gulp down a whole slice of pie*
    Frank Grimes: Well, some kind of farm animal, anyway.
  • Raspberry Torte in the 2003 Strawberry Shortcake series, at least until her friends teach her otherwise.
    Raspberry: I'll reach across the table / Won't even try to share / I'll eat with just my fingers / I’ll stand up in my chair / And if that makes 'em angry / That’s how it's gonna be / 'Cause the only one I care about / Is me, myself, and me.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
    • In the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series episode "The Shredder Strikes Back Part 1" Mikey makes everyone scrambled eggs for breakfast... He and Raph promptly start to devour their breakfast, leading to this exchange between April and Splinter.
      April: So one would think table manners would be part of their training?
      Splinter: One would think.
    • The Dark Turtles from the Fast Forward season eat like this; justified since their creator treats them like animals and they've learnt to eat fast or not eat at all.
  • The Tamaraneans from Teen Titans have meals that involve fighting for food. It didn't help the Earthling Titans that you can't tell if the food is meat or not.
    Robin: So... I'm guessing you picked up your table manners on Earth?
    Starfire: (shoving food into her mouth with her bare hands) HURRY OR YOU WILL NOT GET ANY!
  • Time Squad has Buck Tuddrussel, who is a complete slob to the point of parody. He eats with his hands, smears half of what he eats all over his face, and shoves food into his mouth like he hasnt eaten in days. Otto is a lesser example, he usually eats like a normal person, but in "Day Of the Larries", both he and Tuddrussel are playing an extremely violent version of tag, and when they take a 5 minute food break, both of them eat like this.
  • Wander over Yonder: Lord Hater eats like this on his “date” with a disguised Sylvia, grossly slobbering down their gourmet meal. Then once he’s done, he has the gall to stick HER with the bill!

 
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Usagi & Emerald Eat Like Pigs

Usagi and Emerald embarrass themselves at a public cake buffet by eating in a messy manner, with the other Sailors even trying to hold back Usagi.

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