Prone to Vomiting

"Oh my oxygen, Rocky has some serious vomiting issues!"^note "Bulleh!"

"So bunny now sits on my shelf at home, next to my smelly toy telephone, and the dirty old bear with the stains and spots, 'cause my little brother throws up a lot."

— Peter Alsop, "My Brother Threw Up on My Stuffed Toy Bunny"

This trope is about the poor saps who vomit whenever there's even a slightly logical reason to. When they're disgusted, when they're in a vehicle, when they're on a roller coaster, you name it. Sometimes, if they're about six or younger or a dog, they might vomit for no reason at all.

This trope is usually played for laughs. You might say it puts the "gag" in Running Gag. It might also be a way to portray a character as gross (as in, "Eww, I have to sit on the bus next to the kid who barfs a lot!"). It's also inexplicably associated with nerds and with neurotic people (while nervousness can cause vomiting, many of these characters vomit for unrelated reasons and just happen to have a nervy personality). If a character Prone to Vomiting is a nerd and neurotic, you get a Sickly Neurotic Geek.

If the character is an animal or a baby, the trope is often played to portray them as annoying. It's also useful for the writers to have one of these characters around if they need to quickly have something disgusting happen or for a place to be off-limits (e.g. "Don't go in there, Alice threw up again!"). They'll also be the focus of any motion sickness joke whenever the characters go on a trip.

To qualify as this trope, it's not enough for the character to just have one thing that makes them vomit. For instance, if Alice is seasick, that's probably not this trope, but if she's seasick, airsick, and carsick, it probably is.

Compare Vomit Discretion Shot, Vomit Indiscretion Shot, Morning Sickness, Vomiting Cop, Character Tics, and Hairball Humor. Contrast Nausea Dissonance. Despite the name similarity, Prone to Tears isn't really related.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• D-Frag!: Shinsen, the Butt-Monkey of the previous Student Council, has an infamously weak stomach and will throw up at almost anything, such as watching her Childhood Friend twirl her hair around her head or being spun around inside a robot. For this reason, she has been nicknamed "Barfy". Even anti-nausea medication proves to be ineffective for her.
• Junta from DNA² vomits whenever he's sexually aroused.
• Fairy Tail: Dragon Slayers all suffer from acute motion sickness once they reach a certain level of power (as characters like Gajeel and Wendy, who never had motion sickness, eventually developed that sickness in life later). In Natsu's case, he even got sick while on a stationary raft. Even one of the series' two Big Bads, Acnologia, isn't immune to motion sickness.
• Haikyuu!!: Hinata. Fans made a compilation video of it, missing the iconic scene from episode 4 where he throws up on his teammate Tanaka's lap during the bus ride to their match against Seijoh.

Comic Books

• Titeuf: This is the defining trait of Hervé which is even reflected in his nickname, Vomito.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: This doesn't apply to Calvin now, but when he asks what he was like as a baby, Hobbes responds that he spent most of his time spitting up.
• Madam & Eve: On their first airplane flight, Eve gushes excitedly about flying while Madam spends the entire time throwing up into a paper bag.

Films — Animation

• Fifi from Open Season 2 invokes this trope by vomiting on purpose so his owner pulls over so Roberto can do his "business". Fifi hates doing it but Roberto says, "But you do it so well."

Films — Live-Action

• In Knives Out, Marta Cabrera's compulsion to vomit whenever she lies is made into a Running Gag.
• In La Cité de la peur, Simon Jérémi vomits every time he is happy. And he is often happy.
• Mr Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life vomits periodically. When he swallows a mint, he explodes and covers everyone in vomit (and guts).

Literature

• The Baby-Sitters Club: Mallory's little sister Margo is known for her weak stomach and tends to throw up easily.
• In the second Captain Underpants spinoff "Ook and Gluk", the baby dinosaur Lily vomits when she's the slightest bit dizzy. She uses it to her advantage in one instance where she spins around in order to vomit into J. P. Goppernopper's mouth.
• In Ramona Quimby, when Roberta was two months old, she periodically spat up.
• The Locked Tomb: Harrow the Ninth: The events of the previous book destroys Harrowhark's psyche to the point that she vomits all the time at the beginning of the story.
• In John Dies at the End, Amy's pain medication makes her vomit easily, which as a teenager earned her the nickname 'Cucumber' in reference to the way that certain species of sea cucumber will throw up when threatened.

Live-Action TV

• One episode of My Family and Other Animals miniseries involves Mrs. Durrell adopting a dog named Dodo who throws up a lot, but unlike one of the humans, doesn't get seasick.
• Recurring MADtv (1995) character Trina Moss, played by Mo Collins, almost always gets emotionally overwhelmed toward the end of her sketches—which prompts her to vomit. Her love interest, Michael McDonald's Jim Cockhurts, displays the same behavior. It's revealed at their wedding that they are brother and sister, and after the full realization hits, they vomit... and so does their dad.
• A couple of Kids in the Hall sketches involved this trope:
  • In one, a police officer vomits at the sight of a dead body, then vomits at the sight of an expired parking meter.
  • In another, a couple of coworkers would "darn near puke" at very mundane things, such as bus tokens, ringing phones, and the name Mel.
• On Mystery Science Theater 3000, when they watch the short The Story of Home Economics, the main character Kay, a female high school student, gets called to an assembly. The narrator says she picks out a seat in the gym right next to the aisle, causing Crow to mst, "In case she barfs. She has a tender tummy."

Music

• In the Peter Alsop song "My Brother Threw Up on My Stuffed Toy Bunny", the singer's younger brother apparently throws up a lot and has apparently thrown up on his toy telephone and his teddy bear as well as the bunny.

Video Games

• Bad Day L.A. has the aptly named The Sick Kid who vomits until he receives the cure for it at the end of the game.
• The Binding of Isaac has Hornfel, one of the new bosses introduced in Repentance. He seems to have a problem with motion sickness, which is odd seeing as he chooses to attack you from a minecart. In his solo fight he accidentally makes himself throw up from looping around the same section of track too many times. Then as part of The Horny Boys he throws up again when Loki shakes him about during his Bullet Hell attack, while Loki himself is completely unaffected.
• Little Misfortune has Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez, the young protagonist who vomits as a response to various player choices for her.

Web Animation

• Battle for Dream Island: Rocky's vomiting is his defining character trait. He rarely speaks and rarely contributes to challenges in any way that doesn't involve using vomit to his advantage.

Webcomics

• 8-Bit Theater: Black Mage tends to react to anything he finds disgusting by projectile vomiting. Then he discovers Matoya and Bahamut's Interspecies Romance, which causes him to puke so hard that he throws up things he hasn't even eaten yet. Note that Black Mage's mind is a very strange place, so while he nearly vomits from hearing about Fighter putting his dirty hands in the cereal, he's completely unfazed by brutally stabbing people to death and then mutilating their corpses.

Western Animation

• Futurama: Fry isn't this now, but he mentions in "The Series Has Landed" that he threw up a lot as a child.
• In Horrid Henry, Henry's one-year-old cousin Vera throws up so much he calls her "Vomiting Vera".
• The Loud House: Downplayed for Lincoln Loud who throws up when he eats something gross (as seen in "Brawl in the Family" with a dirty bagel and "Not a Loud" with worms) and when on the teacup ride (as seen in a Licensed Game) but is fine otherwise, even with seemingly more intense rides.
• Rocko's Modern Life: Implied in Filburt's case, as he is known to get nauseous at the drop of a hat. At one point, he gets nauseous in a submarine, leading Rocko and Heffer to guess that he's nauseous before he can even announce it. Filburt tells them that they're right and proceeds to vomit.
• Rugrats:
  • Dil, being three months old, sometimes randomly spits up on things.
  • Downplayed for Chuckie, who doesn't throw up as much as Dil, but he does when watching a swing move (as seen in "A Dose of Dil") and when on a roller coaster (mentioned in "Accidents Happen").
• The Simpsons has Wendell Borton, the sickly little pale kid at Springfield Elementary. In "Homer's Odyssey", Bart is afraid of sitting next to him on the bus because of his tendency to get car sick. (Otto driving like crazy certainly doesn't help.) When they make it without Wendell barfing, Bart gives him a congratulatory slap on the back... and that's when he throws up.
• South Park had Stan Marsh throw up every time Wendy Testaburger would talk to him back in season 1. This went away not long after.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender's version of Hunk gets space-sick very easily, resulting in many incidents of messed up cockpits in the early episodes.

Real Life

• Babies under four months often regurgitate the contents of their stomach, known as "spitting up", which is not forceful like regular vomiting.
• Some animals (like bees, cows, owls, and to a lesser extent cats) need to regurgitate their food (and other stuff they've swallowed) either as part of their digestive process or to get rid of indigestible things they've ingested. In particular, jellyfish have to do this because they only have one orifice and therefore can't get rid of waste products in any other way.
• Completely averted with horses, who have no ability to vomit, which can be life-threatening if they've ingested something they shouldn't have. Likewise, rabbits and most rodents are also incapable of vomiting.
• Cyclic vomiting syndrome is a chronic disorder characterized by bouts of extreme vomiting and nausea. People with this disorder vomit several times in an hour and episodes tend to last for days.
• CrossFit practitioners are infamous for exercising so strenuously that they end up throwing up from overexertion. Puking while working out is so common while doing CrossFit that practitioners tend to shrug it off as no big deal and keep working out as if nothing happened.

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