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Overly Long Tongue

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Overly Long Tongue (trope)
Odie can give you a real lickin'.
"Oh my God! It's like a tape measure!"

A character with a tongue of surprising, implausible, or downright impossible length.

A Justified Trope in certain cases — say, a mutation or non-human anatomy — but in other cases this is left completely unexplained (and usually Played for Laughs). The lucky person in possession of this tongue frequently has a surprising amount of control over it, and may even use it as a weapon.

Characters without this feature may suddenly develop one, often in tandem with a Jaw Drop, when startled, screaming, or confronted with a Head-Turning Beauty.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • In the Orangina commercial, one of the species dancing is a chameleon (in Chippendale clothing even!), and he extends his tongue around a plant girl.
  • In this Yoplait yogurt commercial from Israel, apparently the yogurt is so good that it gives you an extra long tongue just so you can lick the bottom of the cup. Or something.
  • Ever since its inception, the commercials for Indian electric mosquito-repellent brand All Out had its liquid electric version depicted with frog legs and a mouth with a long tongue to catch and eat mosquitoes to illustrate its effectiveness. These ads became so iconic that even after SC Johnson bought out its parent company Karamchand Appliances from the Arya brothers to replace Raid, some newer All Out commercials use the frog-legged liquid repellent mascot as a homage.

    Animation 
  • Wangury and his goons from Noonbory and the Super 7 have extremely long, tape measurer-like tongues.
  • Simple Samosa:
    • "Cricket Match": Samosa's jaw drops when he first sees that Jalebi is participating in the cricket game, complete with an overly long tongue rolling out of his mouth.
    • "Spa Wars": The first instance of an overly long tongue is when Dhokla stares in awe at the futuristic technology in Appa Spa; the second is when Samosa looks on in surprise at Iddiyappam Appa confessing his love for Iddiyappam Amma, and the latter returning the former's feelings. Both times, another character comments that they should put their tongue back in their mouth.
  • Happens in xiaolin chronicles by the character shadow. She often fights using her green reptilian tongue. In two instances she uses it to capture and eat a fly and a beetle.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Anpanman: Baikinman's tongue is bright blue and perfect for slurping up the contents of the Donburiman Trio in one go.
  • Basilisk: Jimushi Juubei has this and a weapon concealed in his throat to use with it.
  • Black Butler II: Claude as shown in episode 5 when he used it to lick cream from the middle of his nose.
  • Bleach: Nnoitra Jiruga gets a freakishly long tongue in his released form.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Tambourine, one of King Piccolo's children showed he had this ability which he used to attempt to constrict Goku to death.
    • Buyon also has one which he mostly uses to scoop things up to eat.
  • Junji Ito's one-shot manga "The Licking Woman" centers around a creepy woman with an enormous poison-coated tongue who roams the streets licking and killing people with it. It's subverted, though, in that the tongue isn't actually a tongue at all, but a parasitic monster that lives in people's mouths.
  • All vampires in Hellsing have long tongues to lick up blood.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion, Yasuho Hirose has a tongue long enough to lick her elbow with.
  • The Liminal Zone 2: Exaggerated in Demon King of Dust by Nihei, who not only has a tongue that's nearly a foot long, when she starts consuming the dust cloud from the corpses she's hidden in the attic of Yuichi's house, Yuichi can see through the dust that she's extending almost a dozen such tongues, giving her a disturbingly Cthulhumanoid appearance.
  • Miia, a lamia from Monster Musume has a ridiculously long tongue to go with her long snake body. Interestingly, it's a human tongue, not a reptilian one.
  • Tsuyu Asui from My Hero Academia has a 20 meter long tongue with super strength as part of her "Frog" Quirk.
  • Naruto:
    • Orochimaru — with and without two-edged sword for extra amusement.
    • The toad summons, of course.
  • The Negi golem drawn by Haruna, with a 23.5cm tongue. It's implied it could've been even worse...
  • Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary: Nobuko Shitara's puberty change is a tongue that can stretch over three meters, which she's rather self-conscious about. One chapter shows her using it to tie a cherry stem into a knot.
  • Omamori Himari: Shizuku has this as a snake-girl.
  • One Piece:
    • Wild Takes often have characters' tongues shoot far out of their faces, along with an Eye Pop, for comical effect.
    • Charlotte Perospero has a tongue so enormous he cannot fit in his mouth, and so hangs out constantly. Fittingly, his Devil Fruit lets him create and control hard candy, which he'll often lick. Both he and his fruit are named for "peropero", the Japanese onomatopoeia for licking.
    • Dr. Vegapunk's tongue is also hanging down and constantly sticking out of his mouth, as a reference to the famous picture of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out.
  • Ranma ½: Picolet Chardin II is capable of stretching his mouth and tongue to eat food at superhuman speeds. For instance, he places a gâteau on top of his head and quickly grabs it with his tongue, without using his hands.
  • In the Sgt. Frog manga, Sumomo's Pokopenian form has one of these. It's long enough to wrap around Fuyuki's body several times (she apparently doesn't quite "get" the concept of a French kiss).
  • Suite Pretty Cure ♪: In a one-off gag, Hibiki can cover her entire nose with her tongue to lick cream off her face.
  • Toriko:
    • Midora's fighting style plays this trope to downright insane levels.
    • The Salamander Sphinx also has a long tongue.
  • Trigun: The mentally unstable Legato Bluesummers has a page dedicated to his tongue.

    Comic Books 
  • The Batman Who Laughs, first introduced in Dark Nights: Metal is, Depending on the Artist, depicted with a long tongue.
  • "Horror in the Graveyard": "The one with the drooling forked tongue" has an exaggerated red forked tongue that permanently protrudes from his mouth.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: Ze Tongue is a frog-like villain.
  • Venom: Venom's insanely long tongue (and the toothy mouth surrounding it) is the main distinction between him and black-suit-Spidey. Well, that and the muscle mass... This goes for all symbiotes in their "monster" forms.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): In his final form the White Magician's tongue is well over a foot long and the tip is split like a snake's.
  • X-Men: The villains Toad and Sugar Man.
  • Empowered: The villain Mother Tongue has an insanely long "pseudotongue" for her superpower. It's reach is somewhere in the realms of several dozen feet (while she only has a normal human body- or at least apparently did while she was still alive) and presumably she can control its length at will.

    Comic Strips 
  • Bloom County: Bill the Cat, at least when he leads the metal band Deathtöngue (later Billy and the Boingers).
  • Garfield: Odie.
  • Red and Rover: In the 2018/11/28 strip, Rover impresses and disgusts Red with his long tongue.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • Coco: Dante has one, and it's most noticeable in the short, "Dante's Lunch — A Short Tail".
  • Rio 2: Charlie the anteater's tongue is used for all kinds of things, from boat propeller to slingshot elastic.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Pairing this trope with In One Ear, Out The Other by having someone sexy seductively stick their tongue into someone else's ear is practically a minor stock trope in of itself in spoof movies, appearing as it does in such films as Mafia, Wrongfully Accused and Dance Flick.
  • Alien: Resurrection: The Newborn exhibits such a tongue when it acknowledges Ripley 8 as its mother.
  • In Art of the Dead, the satyr-like embodiment of Lust has an obscenely long tongue that he forces down Kim's throat when she is being raped.
  • Terl's girlfriend in Battlefield Earth. Played by John Travolta's wife, who presumably doesn't have that tongue in reality, though it would explain how their marriage holds up if she did.
  • In Big Tits Zombie, after becoming a zombie, Darna sprouts an overly long tongue which she uses to attack Rena, who fends her off by pouring wasabi sauce on the tongue.
  • Lilith from Bordello of Blood, and it's strong enough to burst a man's heart out of his chest.
  • The Tree Demon from A Chinese Ghost Story has a tongue that chases and attacks the heroes from quite a distance.
  • Cicak-Man, a Malaysian superhero parody, have its titular protagonist being granted the powers of a lizard, including having an extremely long and flexible tongue which he uses to grab and swing between buildings while patrolling the streets of Kuala Lumpur.
  • The Company of Wolves: Rosaleen's love interest in the end is a werewolf and has a long, canine like creepy tongue.
  • Deadpool & Wolverine: The mutant Toad is still using his as a weapon. However, trying this against Blade only gets him dragged by it, stabbed, and then strangled by his own tongue.
  • In Earth Girls Are Easy, Jim Carrey as Wiploc proves he has a long tongue by using it to retrieve ice from the bottom of a tall glass. Valerie's friend exclaims "I want his baby" on seeing this.
  • In The Hazing, Professor Kapps causes Roy's to grow to gigantic proportions while he is orally pleasuring Delia. Roy winds up biting his tongue off and the tongue continues to strangle Delia.
  • Sammael from the first Hellboy film has a tongue that is freakishly long. It is also split at the end, prehensile, and can be used to lay eggs.
  • Hellraiser: Inferno. When the Wire Twins Cenobites make out with Joseph, they lick him with unnaturally long tongues.
  • The Rome sequence in History of the World Part I. While pretending to be a eunuch, Josephus (Gregory Hines) is tested by having a woman perform an erotic dance in front of him. He gives himself away by having his very long tongue plop out of his mouth as seen here.
  • The Velociraptors in the stop-motion animation storyboard version of Jurassic Park, before they were informed that the raptors didn't have tongues like that.
  • Krampus has one, seen disturbingly unfurling from his Santa mask to lick Max when he is grabbed in the snow.
  • In The Mask, when Stanley Ipkiss (under Loki's influence) first sees Tina performing at the Coco Bongo. His jaw quite literally drops to the table, and his tongue rolls out like a red carpet.
  • In the Happy Science film The Real Exorcist, the demon Melephis sports a long, snakelike tongue upon being exorcized from Kyoka's body.
  • The frog monsters in Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster have prehensile tongues.
  • The hybrids in the Species series, culminating in a gory example of In One Ear, Out The Other in The Awakening.
  • Star Wars: Jar Jar Binks, as seen here.
  • The demon in Violent Shit.
  • The aliens from Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman has them where their noses should be.
  • X-Men Film Series:

    Folklore 
  • There is a type of Yōkai called an Akaname (whose name can be translated as "scum-licker" or "filth licker") that hangs around bathrooms and bathhouses to feed off the accumulated scum and filth there. It's usually depicted as having a very long tongue to lick the stuff up.

    Literature 
  • Between Worlds: Shil'vati females have a rather long and rough tongue, as the human POV character discovers the first time he's french-kissed by one of them. She explains this as a trait they evolved because their ancestors ate a crustacean whose meat was difficult to get at even after you cracked open the shell.
  • Crowley in Good Omens; apparently he can do "interesting things" with it. It's just one of many vaguely snake-like attributes he held on to after Eden.
  • Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter. Of course, that was a temporary prank...
  • In Rubber Girl, Katie Elaz becomes the titular Rubber Man who could stretch any part of her body including her tongue. She stretched her tongue to swallow an apple as she rushed to catch the bus to school.
  • In The Stormlight Archive, it turns out that the "red streamers" that are how anticipationspren appear in the Physical Realm are actually the long tongues of weird frog/lizard things that exist mostly in the Cognitive Realm and visually manifest only part of themselves in the Physical Realm when feeding on emotions there.
  • The vampires in The Strain subvert this. The things coming out of their mouths aren't tongues, but venom stingers that grow in their throats.
  • In Twig, Helen, who is notable for looking human only to lure in prey and practice her acting skills, occasionally demonstrates the ability to extend her tongue well beyond what's possible for humans so she can lick things. When Sylvester catches her tongue after she tries to lick him, she demonstrates that it's also prehensile.
  • In Witches Abroad, when confronting the Prince, he reveals he kept some frog characteristics from his Forced Transformation. Nanny Ogg, being the Disc's premier Dirty Old Woman, naturally immediately wonders if this applies to his tongue as well.

    Live-Action TV 

    Music 
  • Rammstein front-man Till Lindemann occasionally sports variants of these during music videos. In Ich Tu Dir Weh, there is a brief snippet of him licking his lips with a long, forked tongue and in Mann Gegen Mann, he abruptly sprouts a long, black snake-like tongue.
  • Gorillaz has both bassist Murdoc Niccals (who was loosely based on a real life case, Gene Simmons of KISS) and singer 2D (whose tongue is long enough to stick up his nose).

    Music Videos 
  • Best Friend (2014): The Supermodel is seen sporting one while she's eating a fellow model. She uses it to lick the poor woman's bare legs as they thrash and kick in the air while she's gradually swallowed whole.
  • In black hole sun, the sun bathing woman flicks out a forked reptilian tongue to capture and eat a passing butterfly.

    Pinballs 
  • One of the aliens in Bally's Space Invaders pinball game has a tongue three times longer than its head.
  • Gene Simmons in Bally's 1976 KISS, of course.
    • Stern's 2015 KISS sequel ups the ante with a model of Gene's "Demon" on the playfield, complete with tongue. "Demon Multiball" begins with Gene spitting pinballs towards the player.
  • Sparky in Metallica, whose tongue goes from his mouth down to his left wrist.

    Professional Wrestling 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Mohrgs are a type of skeletal undead whose slimy, purple, cartilaginous, clawed tongue is so long that it not only extends from a mohrg's mouth, but it can also been seen coiled in its ribcage and pelvis, and even extends tendrils down the monster's arms.
  • In Nomine: Characters can learn a suite of Songs called Numinous Corpus, which allow the performer to augment his or her body in various ways. One of these Songs is Numinous Corpus: Tongue. Three guesses what it does.
  • RuneQuest: Krarshtkids have exceptionally long tongues coated in acid, which they use like whips in combat.
  • Warhammer:
    • A very common trait associated with the daemons and worshipers of Slaanesh, the Chaos god of excess, is a long, slender, pointed tongue that extend a very long way out of the mouth, as part of Slaanesh's emphasis on sensory obsessions. Some of his more bestial daemons, the Steeds of Slaanesh, can use their tongues to smell the desires of mortals.
    • Warhammer 40,000: Genestealers have long tongues that are almost always shown hanging out of their mouths. This is because this tongue is also an ovipositor used to deliver a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong to its victims.

    Theatre 

    Video Games 
  • Busuzima in the Bloody Roar games has an extra-long tongue... in human form.
  • Bound by Blades: Mittux is a monster resembling a gigantic mouth with bat-like wings, and a massive tongue that can cover all corners of the boss battle arena. The tongue's tip also happens to be where the monster's sole eye is located.
  • Chameleon Twist and its sequel, naturally. Davy and his friends use their tongues to swallow enemies for spitting, polevault, latch onto and drag themselves to objects, and wrap around poles for travel.
  • The Elder Scrolls: Hungers are a form of lesser Daedra which are very similar in appearance to the "alien-style" Chupacabra, complete with claws, spikes, and a "sucker" mouth. They have extremely long, weaponized tongues.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Kaimetsu Kameleon uses his long tongue for attacks.
  • Ghosts 'n Goblins: Level 3 of Ghouls'n Ghosts has extensible monster tongues that are used as platforms.
  • Gigantic has Wu, a frog-like Warrior Monk who uses his long tongue in tandem with his martial art skills. His Togue Lash ability can be used to pull enemies towards him from far away.
  • Your goat in Goat Simulator. One mutator ("Italian Dinosaur Goat") even allows it to mimic Yoshi by producing "watermelon bombs" from almost anything it licks.
  • Left 4 Dead:
    • The Smoker. Justified in that it's his intestines, if Word of God is to be believed.
    • In Left 4 Dead 2, the Smoker is more grotesquely mutated, having six tongues coming out of several places on his head, neck, and shoulders. He still only uses the one coming out of his mouth to attack with though.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: It freaks Link out when Ghirahim lashes his long tongue out while leaning his head on Link's shoulder.
  • Man-Eating Plant (Android) grants an extendable tongue for the titular plant. It can extend it to snatch airborne targets.
  • Mega Man X's Sting Chameleon uses his tongue to hang from the ceiling and as a nasty fast whip.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: The Fear has a longer tongue than a human, though it's not used for the usual grabbing of objects. He merely sticks it all the way out to be creepy. This could have been a way to take Vamp's long tongue up a notch.
  • Monster Hunter has Volvidon and Baruragaru. The former uses its long tongue to knock back preys and hunters as if it was a whip, while the latter uses its tongue to suck blood.
  • Mortal Kombat: Reptile can shoot out his tongue just like a chameleon. This is most notably used for his signature Fatality, where he uses his tongue to yank your head off and eat it.
  • Persona 5: Asmodeus, boss of the first Palace, is a giant version of Mr. Kamoshida with extra arms and a gigantic, creepy tongue that he uses in some attacks.
  • Pokémon:
    • Lickitung and its evolution Lickilicky are known for their long sticky tongues.
    • And Kecleon and Politoed, as they are a chameleon and frog.
    • Greninja, also based on a frog, uses its tongue as a scarf.
  • Rapid Reload has a difficult boss fight against a Chameleon mecha, who will periodically use its tongue to lash out at the player like a whip, or using it like a Grappling-Hook Pistol to swing all over the area, making him hard to hit without the homing lightning gun.
  • The Licker enemy in Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 5 and various other Resident Evil games. Its signature attack is using an absurdly long tongue to whip anything it wants to attack, driving it with enough force to impale a prey item with it. They are heavily mutated T-Virus infected humans.
  • SAR: Search and Rescue: Your enemies include a Xenomorph Xerox with a five-meter tongue, used to lash out and chew at you from a distance.
  • Skylanders: Trigger Happy and even more so Wrecking Ball, who lashes his tongue out to attack.
  • Super Cyborg has the final form of the Flying Jarmai, who continues attacking you after you destroyed all of its body, leaving only a severed head. The head will release a tongue that goes on and on trying to hit you until you blow it up.
  • Super Mario Bros.:

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Charlie the Unicorn: Charlie's "friends" have long, prehensile tongues... Squick!
  • Dreamscape: CHEN has one. He is a chameleon after all. He can even use it like a Grapple Move or a fist!
  • DSBT InsaniT: Pangle the pangolin has a tongue long enough for Fire Guy to use as a platform.
  • Sniffles, a remarkably clever anteater in Happy Tree Friends, has a seemingly infinitely-stretching tongue. However, it is often attacked by the Ant Family in horrifyingly sadistic ways.
  • Sock Series: Ceriazibus has tongues so long that it can wrap them around on of its head (it has three of them) multiple times and so sharp that it can decapitate itself.

    Webcomics 

    Real Life 
  • Gene Simmons. Anyone who's watched more than one episode of Gene Simmons Family Jewels knows Nick Simmons has inherited it; if Sophie has, she's not showing it off on television.
  • Internet sensation Marnie the Dog is almost never seen without her tongue hanging out. Her caretaker has confirmed that yes, her tongue really is that long.
  • Chameleon tongues, which they use to capture prey, can be over twice as long as their bodies.
  • Frogs and toads, despite what fiction may tell you, actually avert this — their tongues are shorter than their own heads, and they rely on pouncing upon their prey; the common conception of what a frog's tongue looks like is based more on chameleons than anything, and on frog tongues being attached to the front of the jaw, rather than the back, and so being able to "flip" forward and look longer than they are. Some frogs even lack tongues altogether, and simply grab insects with their "hands" and stuff them into their mouths. In fact, the only amphibians with the kind of tongue seen in every fictional frog ever are salamanders of the genus Hydromantes, which can stretch up to 80% of their body length in a hundredth of a second — the fastest motion of a tongue in the animal kingdom.
  • Butterflies don't have tongues, but they do have curling proboscises in the spirit of this trope, evolved to reach into flowers to get at the nectar inside.
  • Woodpeckers, some species of which have a tongue so long that it actually loops up around their brain.
  • Giraffes and their lesser-known relatives, Okapis. In fact, an okapi's tongue is so long it uses it to wash its eyelids and clean out its ears (both inside and out) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhc67wopg40
  • Anteaters, aardvarks, echidnas and pangolins have all convergently evolved long, sticky tongues, which they use to collect ants and termites for food.
  • Nectar bats, of which at least one species of which has a tongue longer than its entire body.
  • Hummingbirds have extra-long tongues in their extra-long beaks. Particularly true of the swordbill, a hummer with a beak and tongue longer than its body.
  • Kinkajous and sun bears have long tongues used to reach for insects and honey.
  • Certain bears, including Sun Bears, whose tongues can reach 30 cm.
  • Someone with a missing or cut lingual frenulum can extend the tongue slightly farther than otherwise. This apparently happened to Gwendoline Christie, which she demonstrated in an interview with Craig Ferguson.
  • The forked tongues of snakes and monitor lizards are usually quite long, the better to extend well past their snouts and lick up scent-molecules for analysis via vomeronasal olfactory receptors.

 
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Video Example(s):

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Charlie The Anteater

Charlie the anteater is shown to have a very long tongue even for an anteater. His tongue is also used for all kinds of things, such as a rope and a slingshot.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (6 votes)

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