Prisoner's Last Meal

Impending death can work up a hell of an appetite.

"Nancy refused to make me eggs Benedict for breakfast again. It's not fair. I'm a good husband. The ones who kill their wives and go to death row get to eat whatever they want!"

— Dale Gribble, King of the Hill

In penal systems that allow for the death penalty, the Prisoner's Last Meal is a customary ritual preceding an inmate's execution, where a meal is traditionally ordered at the request of the condemned individual (within reason). This is typically the last human comfort that such a person will get to experience, barring a Last-Minute Reprieve.

In fiction, this is a subject that is commonly explored in prison settings, especially ones involving inmates on Death Row and/or anyone working kitchen detail, and can be utilized in a narrative in any number of ways. For instance, the ritual can help characterize the prisoner who is about to face death, such as by showing the individual is unrepentant for their behavior (i.e. Requesting a large and/or expensive meal and then refusing to eat it) or by showing the condemned person to have heart and compassion (i.e. Requesting a last meal be shared with other prisoners or given to the homeless/impoverished).

Often, when Played for Laughs, a prisoner's last meal can be seen as an Exaggerated large feast or banquet for a Big Eater or otherwise involve ludicrous requests (i.e., A cannibal requesting human flesh, or somebody ordering impossible or hard-to-find foods as a tactic to delay the looming execution).

A character may even be seen ordering something they are allergic to in order to die and get out of the execution.

When Conversed, especially between characters who are not on death row themselves, the prisoner's last meal is often brought up in hypothetical scenarios where a character would use their requested meal as a means of delaying their execution and/or plotting an escape from captivity.

Sub-Trope of Last Request. Contrast: Denied Food as Punishment.

May overlap with Jail Bake if the meal actually helps the prisoner to escape. A prisoner's choice of a last meal may be a type of Comfort Food. If a prisoner's last meal is turned down, one might be Too Unhappy to Be Hungry.

See Also: Any Last Words? and One Last Smoke.

For more information on this practice and the Real Life last meals of executed criminals, The Other Wiki maintains its own article, here.

As this can be a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A 1970s commercial was premised around a man about to be executed by a firing squad out in a field. His last request was a Bit-O-Honey candy bar. As the announcer explains, Bit-O-Honey lasts a long time as you chew, and chew, and chew... Consequently, all the soldiers fall asleep (Including one reading Tolstoy's War and Peace), allowing the man to get away.
• An Australian Public Service Announcement initially presenting itself as being about an innocent prisoner on death row who is brought his last meal is revealed to specifically be part of a campaign from a group called Doggie Rescue seeking to raise awareness about the thousands of dogs that are euthanized every month and to encourage pet adoption.
• Classic commercials for Tombstone Pizza in the early 1990s depicted characters who are about to be executed requesting a last meal. The most well-known featured a Lovable Rogue standing at a bullet-riddled wall and obviously facing a firing squad. After the man turns down a blindfold and a cigarette, the colonel hisses at the man, "What do you want on your tombstone?" The condemned man replies, "Pepperoni and cheese," and the colonel orders that the man be brought his pizza.

Anime & Manga

• Chainsaw Man: In the ninth episode of the anime, there is a scene with a truck transporting 30 convicts serving a life sentence or worse as per Makima's request, who are all eating various packaged foods, such as chips and sandwiches. When their transport reaches its destination, they are blindfolded and taken to Makima, who uses them all as Human Sacrifices to use her devil contract.
• Lupin III: Part II: In the episode "The Last Meal Is Cup Ramen" (Translated from the original Japanese), Lupin turns himself in to the authorities, who sentence him to death within a week. On the morning of his execution, Lupin requests cup ramen for his last meal. In a twist, the meal comes from a delivery truck run by Fujiko and Silver, and the "ramen" is revealed to actually be a rope that Lupin uses to aid his escape, with some assistance from Jigen.

Comedy

• Played for Laughs by Bill Bailey, who sometimes jokes that his death row meal of choice would be a stale baguette and a pineapple. Rather than eat them, he'd craft them into a crude medieval mace to give himself a chance at fighting off the prison guards.

Comic Books

• All-Star Superman: Lex Luthor is sentenced to death for his crimes against humanity. His last meal before being sent to the electric chair is what he calls the "last perfect cocktail", which he is allowed to mix himself. The drink turns out to be his way out of prison, as it contained a mutagen that granted him superpowers.
• In a League of Legends: Lux comic, Sylas captures Prince Jarvan IV, then later taunts him by offering him a "last meal" before his execution—a platter of live rats, in reference to what Sylas was forced to eat in prison before he had escaped.
• Sin City: Marv's last meal before he's put in the electric chair is "a pretty decent steak and a brew."

Comic Strips

• The Wizard of Id: Often Played for Laughs. For example, in one Sunday strip, Turnkey asks a condemned prisoner what he wants to eat before he's hanged; "a helium sandwich", says the guy. In another strip, Turnkey tells spook that a hoagie about twenty feet long is for "Dirty Dirk", who hangs tomorrow, although the sandwich will clearly take a week to eat.

Fan Works

• A Certain Droll Hivemind: A member of said Hive Mind thinking of the scheduled deaths of some of its members:
  I had not even had a proper lunch today. They always gave us satisfactory meals on the days we died before.

Film — Live-Action

• BASEketball: Coop and Doug visit a sick kid in a hospital on behalf of the "Dream-Come-True Foundation," and Coop suggests that the kid's opportunity to have a personal request granted to him is better than the meal that people on death row get.
• Dead Man Walking: Matthew Poncelet has shrimp, prior to his execution by lethal injection. He jokes that he's never had shrimp before, and finds it to be "pretty good," considering it is the last thing he's ever going to eat.
• The Green Mile: As in the original book, John Coffey is treated to a last meal before his execution by electric chair, including meatloaf, mashed potatoes with gravy, okra and some of Mrs. Edgecomb's cornbread (the peach cobbler is omitted in the film).
• Kind Hearts and Coronets: The jailers are morbidly excited by the prospect of hanging Louis, a duke, and ask him if he has any special meal requests. Louis sanguinely requests coffee, toast, and grapes, since his "appointment" will be too early in the morning for a proper breakfast.
• The Life of David Gale: When David Gale is asked what he would want for his last meal while on death row, he chooses pancakes with strawberries, whipped cream, and chocolate shavings, after he recalls an occasion when his son had wanted the same meal.
• Look Who's Talking Now: After Rocks gets caught by a dog catcher and placed in a kennel, he's fed liver, which the all other dogs realize is a bad sign, meaning he was given his last meal before he would be put down. Fortunately, James and Mikey arrive just in time and pick him out for adoption.
• Monster's Ball: Hank brings Lawrence his last meal—fried chicken, mac & cheese, collard greens, a glass of lemonade, and an ice cream sundae—before he is sent to the electric chair. However, the meal goes untouched, and the ice cream melts, while Lawrence spends his last moments drawing a sketch of Hank and smoking a cigarette.
• Invoked in Time Bandits. After Evil imprisons the dwarves in a cage that's suspended over a dark void, Vermin starts eating a rat before offering the others a bite, this being a possible "last meal" as his justification.
  Vermin: Rat, anybody? Might be the last meal you get.
  Randall: Oi, leave off!

Jokes

• "If you're ever on death row, ask for a Shamrock Shake and a McRib as your last meal, because they're never available at the same time and you'll get to live."

Literature

• Classic Singapore Horror Stories: In the short story "The Hangman", the executed victim, Tan, was given a lavish final meal which he ignores, preferring to spend the last minutes of his life smoking, instead.
• In Renegades of Gor, Tarl makes a condemned girl who is sharing his prison cell give him her last meal. She is resigned to her fate, but he rescues her and hundreds of other people, too. He attributes it to his excellent breakfast.
• The Green Mile:
  • John Coffey's last meal before his execution by electric chair is meatloaf, mashed potatoes with gravy, okra, peach cobbler, and of course, some of Mrs. Edgecomb's cornbread.
  • Eduard Delacroix ordered chili for his last meal with special instructions for the kitchen to "lay on dat hot-sauce," adding that he won't mind the toilet issues the following day because he'd be dead.
• In Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang, Jacob is sentenced to a children's prison overseen by the Hooded Fang. At one point, the Hooded Fang vows to personally bring Jacob his last meal (Although it's not stated what it is) before feeding him to two hungry sharks.
• The short story Saved by Jaroslav Hašek is a darkly comical subversion of this trope: Patyal, a man on death row, on the night before his execution receives a gorgeously described dinner consisting of lamb steak, liver sausages, rabbit stew, numerous types of Austrian, German and French cheese, Mediterranean sardines, finished by Viennese cakes and exotic fruits for the dessert, all accompanied by the finest wine, beer and coffee available. Just after having finished this Gargantuan meal, Patyal collapses with a terrible abdominal pain and vomiting, the signs of an acute food poisoning. Because Austro-Hungarian laws at the time forbade to execute seriously ill people, prison doctors spend several days of grueling labor curing his poisoning and nursing him back to good health. Shortly afterwards, Patyal gets hanged without any dinner on the evening before the execution, the butcher that produced the rotten sausages that were the cause of the poisoning is sent to jail himself, and the prison's newbie surgeon who was in charge of Patyal's treatment is given state honours for his dedication and work ethic he showed by saving the life of the man who had been sentenced to death.
• In Star Wars: Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy, Zare Leonis is sentenced to death by the Empire and offered a last meal by an officer who had been his mentor as a cadet. He chooses two jogan fruits, brought to him by a friend whose family owned a jogan fruit orchard that was destroyed by the Empire and who had been brainwashed by them. He uses the smell of the jogan fruits to break the Empire's brainwashing, then they both hatch an escape plan.

Live Action TV

• The A-Team: The show's fifth season begins with a three-part Story Arc where Hannibal, Face, and B.A. are captured, court-martialed, and put on death row to be executed by firing squad. They're offered a last meal before the execution, but B.A. refuses it, prompting Face to point out that the last meal he ate will thereby be his last meal. Through some clever manipulating on the parts of Murdock, Frankie, and Gen. Stockwell, the three men are let go on the condition that they join Stockwell's agency and perform high-risk Suicide Missions in exchange for a presidential pardon.
• Blackadder: In the episode "Head" from the second series, Blackadder is appointed as the Lord High Executioner. When he meets his staff, Mrs. Ploppy introduces herself as the last-meal cook for the prisoners, adding that she only has sausages.
• Criminal Minds: The episode "Ride the Lightning" has the team interviewing a married pair of serial killers the day of their execution. The wife's last meal was a kid's meal with a toy from a local fast food chain. Turns out she's innocent of the crime she was convicted for—killing her young son after her husband's crimes were discovered so he wouldn't slow them down on the run—and has gone along with the sentence and execution so that her son's adopted identity wouldn't become public and ruin his life due to his association with his father.
• An episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation opens with an unrepentant murderer eating a steak dinner as his last meal before getting a stay of execution, thanks to his own machinations. At the end of the episode (after giving the team the runaround, and going back on death row), he, instead, orders a peanut and jelly sandwich for his last meal. Turns out he'd been hiding a deadly allergy to peanuts, allowing him to die on his own terms as one last act of defiance.
• Curb Your Enthusiasm: Conversed in the season eight episode "Vow of Silence," where Susie wants Larry and Jeff to get her dog's favorite food—coconut frozen yogurt from Pinkberry—as a last meal before he's euthanized. Larry starts a Seinfeldian Conversation at one point where he wonders aloud whether Pinkberry frozen yogurt could catch on as a last meal request in prisons, which sparks an argument between Larry and Jeff over whether or not there are any Pinkberry locations close to prisons that can allow their frozen yogurt to get to a death row inmate before it melts.
• The Day Today: The first of multiple unorthodox executions of death row inmate Chapman Baxter incorporates Baxter's last meal with the method of execution. Since Baxter wants to "die like Elvis Presley did," he is going to gorge on cheeseburgers and drugs until he weighs as much as "The King," thereby triggering an electric toilet seat that he would sit on, thus killing him. Moreover, the skit's general premise that an American Serial Killer gets to choose his own method of execution is itself a surreal parody based on the practice behind death row prisoners choosing their last meals.
• Game of Thrones: Referenced in the fifth season episode "The Dance of Dragons". Following Jaime Lannister's arrest on his way to Dorne, Jaime is escorted by guards to speak with Prince Doran. When Doran brings Jaime a tray of food, Jaime quips if this is his last meal before he's beheaded, but Doran assures him he won't kill him, as he does not want to start a war.
• House: The Cold Open of the Season Two premiere episode, "Acceptance", starts in a prison where a condemned man on death row tells the warden what he would like for his last meal—deep-fried shrimp, lobster (both boiled and grilled), a strawberry malt, and "those chocolate donuts that come in a box." The man never had lobster before. The warden assures the prison will "do their best to accommodate" and gives him the rundown on the rest of the schedule for his day of execution.
• Kavanagh QC: In the episode "In God We Trust", a steak is shown being cooked then brought to a death row prisoner with a side of fries and ketchup and a can of Dr. Pepper. After that, he's sent to the electric chair.
• Land of the Giants: In the episode "Six Hours to Live", a giant who has been framed for a murder he didn't commit awaits execution for the crime. While professing his innocence, the prison warden asks him if he can bring him anything to eat. Although not feeling hungry, he orders scrambled eggs with hashbrowns. When the last meal is first brought to the warden for inspection, Steve and Dan manage to sneak onto one of the giant plates before they are brought to the prisoner's cell, where Steve and Dan help the giant to escape. In the end, the giant is able to clear his name and ensure the truly guilty party is arrested for the crime.
• Miami Vice: In the episode "Forgive Us Our Debts", a prison guard brings Hackman his last meal in a holding cell before he's prepped for the electric chair. Hackman offers the guard his gold watch. By the end of the episode, Crockett, who had helped put Hackman on death row in the first place for the murder of his former partner, gets him exonerated and released from prison... Only Crocket realizes shortly thereafter that Hackman really was guilty all along.
• Modern Family: In the season seven episode "The More You Ignore Me", when Mitchell shows skepticism over how "famous" Cam's "Tucker's Famous Barbecue Sauce" really is, Cam insists it's known Missouri-wide, on account that a death row inmate requested it for his last meal.
• Monk: The episode "Mr. Monk Goes to Jail" begins with condemned prisoner Ray Kaspo being delivered his requested last meal—ribs and chili. However, it's discovered too late that someone had poisoned the food, and the prisoner dies in his cell before his scheduled execution. Monk is then brought in to investigate the crime scene and go undercover at the prison to find who would want to murder somebody who was about to be executed.
• Orange Is the New Black: In "Minority Deport", prison inmates Daya and Taystee talk about what they would want for their last meals. Daya suggests a never-ending pasta bowl from Olive Garden and a Crave Case from White Castle. Taystee says she'd rather have a Storky's supreme meal.
• Prison Break: In Season One, Lincoln Burrows is seen eating blueberry pancakes for his last meal, before being strapped into an electric chair and being issued a stay of execution at the last moment.
• Raising Hope: Hope’s felon mother Lucy requests a McRib and a Shamrock Shake, delaying her execution by several months because “they’re almost never available at the same time.”
• Riverdale: Metaphorically referenced in the Musical Episode "Chapter 51: Big Fun." During Toni's song "Dead Girl Walking", she sings about wanting to spend her last 30 hours to live "getting freaky" with a love interest whom she compares to her "last meal on death row."
• Saturday Night Live:
  • Invoked in the sketch "Parole Board" where a prisoner based on "Red" from The Shawshank Redemption is revealed to be a remorseless cannibal who is facing the death penalty. When told that the only thing he should be thinking about is what he wants for his last meal, the prisoner ultimately settles for Shake Shack, after his initial requests to eat another man or two boys or just one boy were curtly refused.
  • Referenced in a 1982 sketch where Eddie Murphy plays a prisoner on Death Row trying to come up with every excuse imaginable to stall for more time. In one failed attempt, the prisoner insists he get a last meal, and the guard reminds him he already had his last meal.
• Stranger Things: In Season Four's "Chapter Six: The Dive", Hopper, Enzo, and six other prisoners in the Russian gulag are treated to a bountiful meal. At first, most of them happily dig in, believing it will strengthen them against the Demogorgon. Their joy turns to despair when Hopper informs them that their upcoming "battle" is actually going to be a massacre. The only reason they are being fed is to fortify themselves to nourish the Demogorgon.
• Tales from the Crypt: In the episode "Dead Right", the grossly overweight Charlie is arrested, convicted, and executed for Cathy's murder. It's reported on the news that his last meal was the largest any death row inmate has ever had.
• Discussed on Two and a Half Men.
  Jake: You know what I've been thinking about?
  Alan: What?
  Jake: The death penalty.
  Alan: Really? That's a— That's a very complex issue. So...so, what are your thoughts?
  Jake: If you're going to the chair they give you what you want for your last meal.
  Alan: I guess.
  Jake: I'm gonna order cereal.
  Alan: Why?
  Jake: Because if you keep adding milk you can make it last forever. And they just gotta wait.
• The X-Files: In "Beyond the Sea", Serial Killer Luther Lee Boggs sees the souls of his dead family, who he murdered, upon being delivered his last meal before being sent to the gas chamber.
  Boggs: My family, who I killed after their last meal, was right there to watch me over mine. And their fear and their horror that I made them feel when I killed them was injected into me, and their collective fear alone was this long taste of Hell.

Music

• The band Asleep at the Wheel recorded a song titled "Last Meal" that's narrated from the perspective of a death row inmate. The prison warden comes to say that it's his time to choose his last meal and that they won't execute him until he gets it. Therefore, the prisoner requests impossible-to-find foods, including dinosaur eggs, a saber-toothed tiger steak, a whole hippopotamus, purple watermelon, and a female banana, among other absurd items.
• The condemned prisoner in the Johnny Cash song "25 Minutes to Go" is given a last meal of beans, but is not asked how he feels.
• Snoop Dogg's fifth album is titled Tha Last Meal, as a reference to it being his last album partially owned by his former record label, Death Row Records. The album artwork depicts the dog-faced caricature from the cover of Snoop's first album, Doggystyle, behind bars while a priest delivers the last rites and a prison guard brings him a tray of dog food.

Video Games

• Played With in Final Fantasy XIV as the Inn at Journey's Head isn't a prison, but more like a makeshift hospital. It is a place where those corrupted by too much light aether are sent as they slowly transform into sin eaters. The innkeepers look after their patients and tend to their needs, trying to make their last days as comfortable as possible. When a patient is nearing the full transformation, they will be given their Trademark Favorite Food laced with poison to Mercy Kill them before they can suffer a Fate Worse than Death.

Webcomics

• Cyanide and Happiness: A prisoner about to be executed requests a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as his last meal. As he eats, the officer presiding calls him a monster and says he's going to enjoy pulling the lever that kills him. The prisoner says that's not going to happen, yells, "PEANUT ALLERGY, BITCHES!" and dies, much to the officer's outrage.
• Ozzie the Vampire: Referenced in a Seinfeldian Conversation in "Episode 4: This Immortal Coil."
  Austin: Yeah, imagine if your last meal was back at the Gorilla Bar Lounge.
  Kimmy: Oh man that reminds me: have you guys ever looked up what dudes on death row order for their last meals?
  Austin: No, because I'm not a sociopath.
  Ozzie: It's nuts! They let you order anything! Pasta as far as the eye can see!!
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: In one comic, a murderer is told he gets one last meal. What does he request? The executioner.

Web Videos

• The short film The Bronx Dahmer, directed by Mike West, involves pizza proprietors waxing derisive, while their delivery boy fulfills a death row inmate's last meal request—sausage and peppers. They wonder what kind of reputation this delivery order would give their establishment, and by the end of the short, when word gets out about the execution, someone throws a rock through their window.
• The CollegeHumor video "I Can't Decide What My Last Meal Should Be" is about an annoying young woman on death row who can't make up her mind on what to have for her last meal. In the end, she attacks the guard asking her for her last meal request and takes a bite out of his neck.
• The short film Last Meal, directed by Carolina Castilho, is about an inmate who must help prepare the last meal of a prisoner on death row in order to get enough community service time to leave. However, he refuses, as he doesn't think the prisoner is deserving of a last meal, prompting his supervisor to try and teach him a valuable lesson.
• The short film Last Meal, directed by Lula Fotis, is premised around a celebrity chef preparing the last meal for a condemned Serial Killer who wants to die with a "work of art" inside himself.
• The short film Last Meal, directed by Austin Simmons, is told from the perspective of the prison cook who prepares last meals for death row inmates. He finds himself the target of protesters who don't want their tax dollars paying for prisoners' last meals and dreams of escaping his environment to become a celebrity chef. However, his audition for a television cooking show is not successful. When he returns to the prison from the failed audition to prepare another death row inmate's last meal, the cook discovers new purpose in this position when the prisoner who is to be executed is the only one who compliments his cooking.
• The short film Last Requests, directed by Courtenay Johnson, is told from the perspective of a cook working in a Texas prison as she prepares a home-cooked chicken dinner with all the fixings for a mass murderer. She goes through enormous effort, time, and care to prepare the meal, while one of her coworkers remains skeptical of her efforts for a man who opened fire in a schoolyard and killed many young children, but the cook justifies it as an act of comfort for a man about to die and takes pride in her skill and work ethic. In a twist, however, the last meal that she goes through all this trouble to make is refused by the prisoner. This was loosely inspired by the State of Texas' reasoning behind abolishing special meal requests for death row inmates in 2011, after a prisoner requested a large and expensive meal, but did not touch it.
• The short film A Meal Like No Other, directed by Alexander Kinnunen, portrays a black man in a White Void Room eating a three-course meal comprised of his favorite foods—chicken soup, a cheeseburger with fries, ketchup, and a diet Coke, and a chocolate dessert. The man grows progressively sadder as he eats, and tears well up in his eyes by the time he gets to the dessert course. After he finishes, another man approaches our central figure and he puts back on an orange prison jumpsuit and is escorted away in shackles, inferring that he is being led to his execution.
• The short film One Last Meal, directed by Jill Gevargizian, is premised around a death row inmate requesting human flesh for his last meal before his execution. They initially try to pass off animal meat to him, but the prisoner catches on and spits it back in the face of the Captain of the Guards. Ultimately, the prison Warden goes about fulfilling the prisoner's request for human flesh by flaying skin off the Captain of the Guards' arm. While eating his last meal, the prisoner reveals his motivations behind the request for human flesh come from a legend he heard stating that when one eats the meat of another person, the consumer absorbs that person's power and strength, but he only tastes "weakness and fear," which prompts the Warden to strangle the prisoner to death before his pre-arranged Public Execution, to which he quips that they're now running "ahead of schedule."
• In the Smosh video "Every Burger King Ever", The Burger King himself is on death row, and upon being asked for his last meal, he requests a Big Mac, much to the surprise of the prison guard, who thought he would want a Whopper instead. The King says that he wants to enjoy his last meal. He also asks for some Jack-In-the-Box tacos.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: In the episode "Lobsterfest", the Belcher kids imagine what their first time eating lobster would be like. For Louise, who imagines herself as a death row prisoner, lobster would be her last meal before being executed. She would then use the claws to attack the guards and escape.
• The Cleveland Show: Referenced in "Brown History Month". When Kendra's "peepaw" was on death row, his last meal was 77 mozzarella sticks. Consequently, he died from a massive coronary before they could get him to the electric chair. Rallo mentions that, if he were on death row, he would choose popcorn shrimp as his last meal, before it dawns on him that popcorn shrimp is becoming so hard to find that he'd kill somebody to get it, meaning he'd have to end up on death row in order to get that meal, anyway.
• Disenchantment: In "Faster Princess Kill Kill", Bean takes up an apprenticeship with the kingdom's torturer and executioner. She is given instructions to torture one prisoner and "get him to his last meal." She'd rather not torture the prisoner and, instead, skips straight to asking him what he wants for a last meal. Ironically, Bean's hemming and hawing over the prisoner's requests for a last meal (as if she had to eat the same meal, as well) becomes torturous for the prisoner, who cries out in agony, earning her boss's praise.
• Family Guy: A Cutaway Gag in the episode "Save the Clam" is premised around a prison guard asking a Serial Killer what he wants for his last meal. The serial killer, hesitantly, only asks for a salad with the dressing on the side because he "had a big last lunch."
• King of the Hill: Referenced in "Reborn to be Wild" where Bill, Dale, Boomhauer, and Khan are inspired by stories of death row prisoners' last meals and plan a dinner party featuring their own choices of what they would want for their last meal. When the dinner party does happen, everyone, except Bill, bails out for fear that the dinner would indeed be their last meal.
• Ninety-Five Senses: The cartoon eventually reveals that Coy is a prisoner on death row and is looking at his, one that runs the gamut from lobster to a "McDonald's-style" filet-o-fish. He ruefully notes that he committed the cardinal last meal error: ordering a feast days in advance, then finding on the day of that he didn't have an appetite.
• In an episode of Sandokan – The Tiger of Malaysia, Sandokan and crew have been arrested by a local noble who sentences them to death, but nonetheless has his personal cook prepare a sumptuous last meal for them, including a huge cake. Sandokan's still-free ally visits the cook, and once the latter's back is turned, discreetly inserts a pair of files and a message in the cake.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "The Springfield Connection", Homer, while in jail for harassing Marge after she had become a Springfield police officer, eats Hans Moleman's last meal—lobster tail and raspberry tort—as Reverend Lovejoy delivered to Hans the last rites.
    Rev. Lovejoy: Alright, Hans, time to go.
    Moleman: But he ate my last meal!
    Rev. Lovejoy: Well, if that's the worst thing that happens to you today, consider yourself lucky!
    Moleman: Are you really allowed to execute people in a local jail?
    Rev. Lovejoy: From this point on, no talking.
  • In "A Milhouse Divided", after finishing his meal at the Simpsons' dinner party, Dr. Hibbert makes reference to this when he "compliments" Marge's cooking in a way that does not entirely sound like a compliment.
    Dr. Hibbert: Marge, if that were my last meal, I'd tell the warden, "Bring on the lethal injection!" [Signature Laugh]
  • In "The Frying Game", Homer is sentenced to the chair, and his last meal consists of an overabundant variety of junk food like burgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, a pizza, a box of donuts, a pie, and a keg of beer.
    Marge: How can you have such an appetite at a time like this?
    Homer: Let's just say I'm planning a little surprise for the execution. [Patting his belly] This cannon is gonna be full when I go off—KaBOOM!
• Thunder Cats 2011: A tribe of birds sentence Addicus to death. He is offered a last meal, but when he says, essentially, that he wants to eat the birds, they skip straight to the execution—plummeting him from a cliff. However, Addicus survives when he lands on Slithe's flying ship, which rises above the cliff. Addicus says, "I believe I am owed a last meal," at which point we cut away to the distant sounds of many birds screaming in terror.
• The Venture Bros.: In the episode "Past Tense," Mike Sorayama kidnaps Venture, Brock, White, and Ünderbheit and, while he holds them captive, he brings them their "last meals" that he "brought in special from the State University dining hall," before revealing his plans to exact revenge and kill them for what they did to him back in college.

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