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Sneeze of Doom

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Gesundheit.
"Mom, I sneezed and blew my head off!"
Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

The Sneeze of Doom rarely comes without warning — usually the unlucky sneezer will be shown inhaling air a few seconds before it happens. If it happens, a character has the kind of sneezes that should come with their own hurricane warnings. The aftermath damages objects at best and gets someone hurt at worst, whether it's the one sneezing, a third party, or both.

Sometimes the sneeze is dangerous either because the sneezer was subject to Involuntary Shapeshifting, Plot Allergy, or Malfunction Malady, or because the sneeze itself was badly-timed.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Ayakashi Triangle: When Matsuri tries to use some ayakashi repellant on a sleeping nurikabe, it's only reaction is to sneeze, destroying the outer layer of Matsuri's clothes, before going to sleep. Next chapter, Matsuri says "It felt like I got caught in the explosion of a huge tire."
  • Every time Lala from Devil Man sneezes it messes up her face, she then fixes it with her matters conversion powers.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • In the manga, one sneeze is enough to transform sweet, innocent and black-haired Lunch into her blonde, violent and gun-wielding alter-ego. Fortunately, this is reversed with another sneeze. This one is played for laughs, as Master Roshi and his students are scared as hell of "Kushami" and take cover when Lunch looks like she's about to sneeze. This is subverted at one point when what looks to be a coming sneeze turns out to be a yawn. It's also invoked deliberately on occasion by other characters, whenever they require help against terrorists or need someone to clear a path to the tournament front seats.
    • In Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', Beerus sneezes after waking up, and accidentally releases an energy blast that annihilates a nearby planet in an instant. Whis then chuckles and says that this isn't nearly as bad as the time Beerus did the same thing to the Sun. Whis had to rewind time to fix that one.
  • Played with in Kamichu!. When the Mikos attempt a ritual to figure out Yurie's power, she sneezes strongly enough to knock them over.
  • Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest: After failing to be intimidated by his would-be kidnappers from Gagarock, before Natsu can actually get around to cracking skulls he ends up having to sneeze. Said sneeze creates an explosion that can be seen across the mining town of Filan, obliterates the block he was standing in, and completely wipes out his "opponents". Natsu doesn't think much of it and only later realizes this was a coordinated kidnapping attempt when his several of other friends don't show up at their meeting place.
  • In My Neighbor Totoro, Mei climbs on the eponymous troll's stomach while he's sleeping. When she rubs his nose affectionately, it triggers a sneeze powerful enough to throw her to the wall near his feet.
  • Being a specialist in wind-magic, Negi Springfield's sneezes in Negima! Magister Negi Magi have a lot of punch... and exquisite taste. Anytime he sneezes, it will, at the very least, blow up several skirts — and at most, shred clothes, underwear or both. Word of God says that if he were to sneeze after going through all of the training he's been through so far and learning Dark Magic, he'd "destroy half of the world's women's clothing". Turns out, he doesn't... but he goes Raiten Taisou. Yes, with a sneeze. In UQ Holder! his sneeze vaporizes the clothes of tens of thousands of people within his vicinity.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • In the Orange Islands episode "Misty Meets her Match," Team Rocket's submarine is teetering dangerously on top of a pillar and in order to keep it from falling, they have to try and keep it still. Unfortunately for them, the curly part of Jessie's hair tickles the exact area where Meowth's nose would be, and he sneezes and knocks the submarine into the water... and into a whirlpool. Cue them crying a variant of their "Team Rocket's blasting off again!" as they're eliminated for the rest of the episode.
    • Pokémon the Series: Black & White: Iris's Axew does this a lot while trying to use Dragon Rage, knocking out everyone within 10 feet.
    • This is a Running Gag in Pokémon: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel. Volcanion is allergic to the flowers that Magearna creates and his sneezes cause him to produce steam explosions. At the end of the movie Magearna uses this to wake up Volcanion when he seems to be dead.
  • Ranma ½:
    • The evening that Akane and Ranma are watching the house together alone is the evening when Ranma is cursed to hug anyone who sneezes, and Akane comes down with a cold. And wouldn't you know it, it's also the day she is given her first Hyperspace Mallet.
    • When Ranma himself comes down with a fever, he catches it so badly he can instantly boil any water that comes in contact with his skin. Later on, the fever mutates into a head cold, and his sneezes freeze the humidity in the air into solid ice chunks.
  • To Love Ru has Ren/Run, who changes into a girl whenever he sneezes.

    Comic Books 
  • Superman: Superboy's sneezes were so powerful that he had to travel to a dead universe to actually let them loose, or they'd demolish galaxies. Keep in mind, the current Superboy in The DCU is an insane version of this one who isn't affected by kryptonite.
  • Tintin:

    Comic Strips 
  • A recurring gag in Garfield. His sneezes range from somewhat forceful (blowing his dish of cat food at Jon) moderately forceful (blowing a stack of pancakes all over Jon), to wicked (blowing himself, Jon, and the chair they're sitting in through the wall, out of the house). Jon's reaction each time is simply "Bless You".
  • An early example was Little Sammy Sneeze from the very early 1900s. Poor Sammy's sneezes could destroy anything from a supermarket aisle to the comic panels themselves.
  • This U.S. Acres strip has what Peter Paldrige called "the biggest sneeze to ever take place in comic history," as Roy is launched into the air so hard by Orson's sneeze that his impact leaves a Roy-shaped hole in the ground.
  • Calvin and Hobbes:
    • In one comic, Calvin lets out a sneeze so strong that it blows him off the planet and sets him into orbit, but he luckily lets out another sneeze that sends him back to Earth.
      Mom: God bless you!
      Calvin: Oh, he does, Mom. He does!
    • In another comic, Calvin sneezes and blows his head off. He tried to fool his mom with it, but she was not convinced.

    Fan Works 
  • A Green Christmas: Blossom sneezes fire, but it's useful since she can turn on the fireplace that way.
  • In The Detective and the Diplomat, the plot is kicked off when Ponder Stibbons sneezes on the last syllable of a magical incantation.
  • In the story Follow the Melody, Lyle helps the Cutie Mark Crusaders with their plan to harvest the Zap Apples before Family Appreciation Day. Knowing how this turned out in the show, Lyle avoids the puddle that Sweetie Belle slipped in. But then a bee lands on his nose and refuses to budge, and he sneezes, causing him to let go of Sweetie's tail, catapulting the three Crusaders into the pigsty.
  • In the story Higher Flier, Dainty Dish starts propelling herself around the room with involuntary wing pumps during an allergy attack. The library ends up a complete mess in less than thirty seconds.
  • When Lala sneezes glitter in Intergalactic Illness, Prunce is covered in it, though it comes in handy when she sneezes in Kappard's eyes.
  • In Let Me Warm Your Heart, Narcis is a very ugly sneezer, which he finds highly embarrassing. Near the end of the story, one of these sneezes nearly knocks Heike off the bed.
  • There is a fanfic of X-Men, Magneto's Cold, where Magneto has a cold and goes to a corner store. The results call the X-Men in... and a sneeze promptly wrecks their jet, too.
  • In a sidestory to Mare of Steel (a Fusion Fic between My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Superman), Rainbow Dash's super-breath causes her to freeze a butterfly that had refused to shift from her nose, and then Fluttershy after she takes the butterfly to her. Both are unharmed by the end. The first sneeze also strips several apple trees of apples and leaves.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic story Study Break, Twilight begins sneezing periodically after eating an apple from a tree in the Canterlot Palace Gardens. Each sneeze triggers random effects such as shrinking, invisibility, glowing, floating and "making me look like a badly used paintbrush." And that's just within a few hours - Twilight expects the effects to continue for two or three days.
  • In this fancomic for Turning Red, Jesse is prevented from sneeze due to claims from the other 4*Town boys that he's developing a "dad sneeze", which Aaron Z. claims will blow the wheels of their tour bus. Jesse initially denies this, until a cat that Tae Young had brought on board prior crawls into his bed late at night. Smash Cut to the back of the bus being completely blown out.

    Films — Animation 
  • Alice in Wonderland: While Alice is a giant and stuck in the White Rabbit's house, Dodo sends Bill down the chimney to get her out. Of course, this causes a ton of ashes to come out of the fireplace resulting in Alice sneezing, which ejects Bill out of the house.
    Dodo: Well... there goes Bill.
    Alice: Poor Bill.
  • In Balto, Butt-Monkey Star sneezing at the worst possible moment nearly buries the sled team in an avalanche.
  • Dumbo: The title character's large ears are folded discreetly behind his head when the stork first brings him to his mother, but his first sneeze shakes them loose, revealing them to everyone and starting a long period of Woobie-dom for him.
  • Frozen Fever ends with a sick Elsa sneezing while trying to blow a huge Bugle horn, launching a giant snowball all the way to the Southern Isles (where, yes, it lands on Hans, who is reduced to menial labor as punishment for his actions). Her other sneezes also create tiny snowmen, or "snowgies," who proceed to make mischief.
  • Fun and Fancy Free:
    • During the "Bongo" segment, Bongo sneezes while on his unicycle. The sneeze causes him to fly backwards to the edge of a cliff, and he almost falls to his doom.
    • Twice in "Mickey and the Beanstalk". When Mickey, Donald and Goofy hide from Willie the Giant, Mickey hides in Willie's sandwich. Unfortunately, Willie sprinkles too much pepper on the sandwich causing Mickey to give a big sneeze. ("Gesundheit. Heh.") The second time, Mickey attempts to steal the key from Willie's pocket, but the key is in the same pocket as his box of snuff, causing Mickey to sneeze once again, but the snuff ends up getting into Willie's face who gives a big buildup to a sneeze. (Fun fact: Willie was voiced by Billy Gilbert who also voiced Sneezy in Snow White, and was known for his comedic sneezes.)
  • Played for Laughs in Monsters, Inc. when a monster reading a newspaper sneezes fire on it, destroying it before he could finish reading. He grumbles "Aw, nuts!"
  • In the 1973 Russian animated version of The Nutcracker, this is the evil mice's Weaksauce Weakness: if they sneeze, they explode. In the Nutcracker Prince's backstory, his father the king kills the Mouse Queen this way by dousing her with pepper (unfortunately, not before she casts the spell that turns the Prince into a nutcracker), and later, after her Overlord Jr. son the Mouse King explodes when his Soul Jar crown is shattered, his soldiers also explode when they all inhale his vaporous remains and sneeze.
  • Pinocchio: Invoked and exploited in the famous scene of Pinocchio and Geppetto building a smoky fire inside Monstro the whale to make him sneeze them out. It works.
    Jiminy Cricket: Gesundheit.
  • Return To Never Land: The scene where Tinkerbell covers Jane in fairy dust. The resulting sneeze is enough to propel Tink several meters, with her ricocheting off everything.
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: This trope is personified in the dwarf Sneezy, whose sneezes could produce gale-force winds, strong enough to send several dwarves flying across a room. His voice actor, Billy Gilbert, was known in comedy movies for his exaggerated sneezes.
  • The Sword in the Stone: Merlin turns himself into a virus and enters the dragon body of Mad Madame Mim, making her sick with the made-up disease malignalitaloptereosis. When Merlin mentions the final symptom, sneezing, she emits fire from a monstrous sneeze that forces Arthur and Archimedes to duck and cover.
  • Tangled Ever After is about Maximus and Pascal trying to get back Flynn and Rapunzel's Lost Wedding Rings; they lost the rings at the beginning because Maximus sneezed in reaction to flowers.
  • Yellow Submarine: While the Beatles and Jeremy are in the Foothills of the Headlands, they come across a strange dust which Jeremy deduces as pepper. It makes John and George let out a big sneeze. This causes all the Heads in response to sneeze, which blows everyone into the Sea of Holes.
  • Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree: Rabbit tries to cover up Pooh's rear end while he's stuck in his front door by first trying to make it into a hunting trophy, but he messed up the smile due to Pooh's giggling since the paintbrush was tickling him. Rabbit then tried to cover up the sloppy smile by placing a shelf on Pooh's legs and putting a lot of decorative items on it. However, just as he finished, Pooh was smelling some flowers that Roo gave him, which caused him to sneeze causing all of Rabbit's hard work to get destroyed.
    Rabbit: Why did I ever invite that bear to lunch? Why, oh why, oh why?

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Annie Hall, Alvy and Annie are offered cocaine by friends of theirs. Alvy is reluctant to do so, and as the guy is explaining that the stuff is $2000 an ounce, Alvy lets out a big sneeze that sends the stuff flying everywhere. Reportedly a Throw It In!.
  • In the 1966 Batman: The Movie, Commodore Schmidlapp sneezes, causing the dust of the dehydrated people to get mixed up, delaying Batman and Robin from rehydrating them.
  • Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo: When Svetlana Revenko, one of Deuce's client with a long nose, sneezes, her mucus flies wildly and smears on some people in the restaurant.
  • In Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest's sleigh driving has led to them floating in space above Earth. Right after Ernest says, "Nobody moves, nobody dies," one of the elves sneezes, sending the sleigh falling back to Earth. (They survive.)
  • Averted in Face/Off. Upon being given Castor Troy's face, Sean Archer is warned by Dr. Walsh to be careful with the voice modification chip in his larynx that scrambles frequencies and transforms Archer's voice into Castor's voice, as even a sneeze could dislodge it, but it never happens.
  • In Hancock, the superheroine explains the big hole in the wall of her house as one sneeze from Hancock.
  • CIA operative Bradley Fine in Spy is holding the Big Bad at gunpoint trying to figure out where he hid the stolen nuclear warhead, with his finger on the trigger, then suddenly sneezes with predictable results.
  • In Star Trek Beyond, Scotty's assistant engineer Keenser is ill and sneezes out green acid. Exploited when the Enterprise crew is captured and imprisoned, as he sneezes on the locks so Uhura and Sulu can sneak out and gather some intelligence.

    Literature 
  • Older Than Feudalism: In Anabasis, just after the Ten Thousand's original leaders are captured and killed by the Persians, they decide to hold a meeting to decide what to do. After some panicking, somebody sneezes. Everyone immediately drops to the ground in supplication (as the Greeks considered a sneeze to be a sign from the gods). They then got up, elected new officers, and decided to march back to Greece. Because of a sneeze.
  • In Chu's Day and sequels by Neil Gaiman, Chu has sneezes that devestate the surrounding area. The joke is that Chu is an adorable baby panda, who you'd expect to have a cute sneeze.
  • In The Emerald City of Oz the Shaggy Man sneezes in the land of Miss Cuttenclip and her paper dolls, causing mass havoc.
  • Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories: Horton sneezes after the Kwuggerbug shoves the beezlenut shells into his trunk, blowing said Kwuggerbug so far away he never manages to get back to the Beezlenut tree.
  • This is the whole premise of A Malady Of Magicks. The wizard Ebenezum becomes violently allergic to magic in all its forms, and being a great wizard produces great wizardly sneezes.
  • The children's book "Stand Back," Said the Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze," is all about an elephant who riles up the local wildlife around him and makes them fearful of him. When he's about to sneeze, a mouse pops up and stops him from sneezing. Instead, the elephant laughs, which causes the same amount of havoc upon the wildlife as his sneeze would have done.
  • Used once in Morris Gleitzman's Teachers Pet 2003, (surprising, as the main character is allergic to cats). Ginger climbs a tree to escape from what she thinks is a savage dog (it isn't) but ends up with her nose too close to a fig flower. The resulting sneeze causes her to fall off the branch landing flat on her back.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Adventures in Wonderland: There is one episode where the Mad Hatter can not stop sneezing. At first, he thinks he's allergic to Hare, but he still keeps sneezing. Eventually, it's discovered that he's actually allergic to a bouquet of undiscovered flowers that the Queen has, and he finally stops sneezing after letting out a monster sneeze, which blows the flowers up into the sky.
  • Batwoman (2019): Batwoman is sneaking around Magpie's hideout, which is a temperature-controlled room that will explode if it detects her body heat or she even breathes. Batwoman has the batsuit lower her temperature and holds her breath...until she opens a drawer and releases a bunch of feathers that make her sneeze, whereupon she has to do a Super Window Jump to avoid getting blown up.
  • Bottom: Eddie Hitler's sneeze during the Halloween episode is so strong it demolishes the conservatory and sets little Dave Hedgehog on fire.
  • The Benny Hill Show: Benny takes one pinch of snuff and spends the rest of the sketch sneezing women's clothes off, sneezing down fences, etc. Oh, and it was an end sketch, and we know what that means...
  • Charmed: In one late episode, Paige begins to orb every time she sneezes after catching a cold.
  • Lampshaded in an episode of Chuck, as Chuck and Sarah are hiding in a dusty room:
    Sarah: If you get us caught because you sneeze, we are officially the worst spies in the world!
  • H₂O: Just Add Water:
    • Mermaids sneezing tends to result in Power Incontinence. Bella once had an allergic reaction that caused her to sneeze, which triggered her power to turn water into jelly in the middle of the café, affecting all the customer's drinks.
    • Later on in Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure, Evie caught a cold and sneezed fire and ice everywhere, forcing her to reveal her secret to Carly.
  • I Love Lucy:
    • In one episode, Lucy sneezes while she and the other main three were in a cabin. They think that the sneeze will cause an avalanche, but it doesn't. Lucy goes outside to check: when she comes back inside she slams the door, which does cause an avalanche.
    • In another episode, Ricky almost sneezes, which would have ended up disorganizing papers that Lucy was putting together; his sneeze is stopped, but then Lucy ends up sneezing.
  • Used on Mystery Science Theater 3000: when Frank was having difficulty sneezing into his "Nothing to sneeze at" tissue, Dr. F gives him fresh pepper. The resulting sneezing fit is "in SenSurround," causing the screen to shake and debris to fall from the ceiling.
  • Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin has some whoppers. The T.V. version of the sneezes had powerful fans blow stuff all over the set, i.e. "Here is Your Past" and "The Magic Tree."
  • In the old TV series Rentaghost, one of the ghosts for hire had the power to teleport when she wrinkled her nose. Consequently, there was a Running Gag was that she vanished elsewhere any time she sneezed...
  • In Smallville, Clark catches a cold and discovers his super-breath power, when he sneezes the barn door down the road.
  • When the lads are all ill on The Young Ones, Neil's gale-force sneezes knock over furniture and other characters, accompanied by disgusting sticky blasts of green snot.

    Music 
  • The Inciting Incident of On Top of Spaghetti is somebody's sneeze dislodging a meatball from a plate of spaghetti with enough force to send it rolling out the door and into the garden.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Bear in the Big Blue House: In "Need a Little Help Today", Bear is sick with a cold. When he tries to explain this to Tutter, he ends up sneezing him off the table.
  • Magellan of Eureeka's Castle has been known to cause the whole castle to shake whenever he sneezes. Justified, seeing that he's a dragon and much larger than most of the other characters. Luckily for everyone, he doesn't appear to be of the fire-breathing variety.
  • In the Leo Sayer episode of The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy attempts to do a dramatic recitation of "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth. However, the flowers make her sneeze so strongly that she blows Rowlf and his grand piano off the stage.
  • Sesame Street:
    • Snuffy's sneezes tend to blow things around due to his size and the length of his nose. This actually had an advantage in the 1998 "Slimey to the Moon" arc: a sneeze from Snuffy gave the worms' space shuttle just the boost it needed to launch into space.
    • In one classic Ernie and Bert sketch from 1969, Bert sneezes his nose off. Ernie proceeds to stick it back on in various wrong places.
  • In one episode of Under the Umbrella Tree, Holly and her friends are working on a project, which is making a totem pole based on themselves. During the process, Gloria holds Iggy on her shoulders while Holly sketched them. Unfortunately, Gloria sneezes, causing the two of them to fall.

    Theatre 
  • Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, a stage adaptation of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and its source book, plays up the fact that Augustus Gloop has a cold on the day of the factory tour. While drinking the melted chocolate in the Chocolate Room, he sneezes, propelling himself into the chocolate river, which leads to him being sucked up the pipe (or, in the Junior version of the show, into the "Chocolate Smelter," which encases him in a solid shell of chocolate).

    Video Games 
  • In American McGee's Alice the Duchess sneezes until her head explodes.
  • In Bug Fables, when Team Snakemouth returns Kali her stolen silk, she rewards them and then sprays them with her healing pheromones. Unfortunately, this causes the allergic reaction from Vi, and she sneezes, flying across the room right into her vase, shattering it into pieces. This angers Kali and prompts her to spray the team with another set of pheromones to take control of Kabbu and force him to beat Vi and Leif to death. Cue Boss Battle.
  • The ending of Cave Story shows Sue and Itoh returned to their human form. Unfortunately, their ill-timed sneezes turn them back into Mimiga shapes.
  • Dante's sneeze in the Mission 2 cinematic of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening brings down the entire front of his shop. Whether it was a gale force sneeze or a normal one that was just too much for the fragilized structure to take is anyone's guess.
  • At one point in the Tsuta Ruins in Ōkami, Issun sneezes, causing the walkway you're currently on to start crumbling away.
  • In Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, when you first arrive at the Arctic Land, Putt-Putt tries to advance, but reaches a large hill of snow. He warns Pep to be quiet, or they might cause an avalanche. Not long after this, Pep starts to sneeze, but Putt-Putt uses the equivalent of an Anti-Sneeze Finger to stop it, which works. "That was a close one!" But then Putt-Putt sneezes, causing said avalanche.
  • Viki from Suikoden is a powerful teleportess (a very rare skill in the Suikoden world) but an extremely clumsy one. She has successfully teleported herself across time and space by the simple act of sneezing. On one memorable occasion she managed to teleport in another version of herself from the past (or future, we're not really sure). People who know her tend to run the moment her nose twitches.
  • Inverted in Death Road to Canada. One random event dictates that a survivor feels a big sneeze coming, but if you simply let it, the sneeze goes away. The "of Doom" part is that the lost sneeze is annoying enough for the survivor to lose a point of moralenote , which can indeed doom the party with a Despair Event if morale is low; to prevent the morale loss, the sneeze has to be forced somehow.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • In RWBY, when Ruby and Weiss first meet, Ruby has a massive Dust-empowered sneeze that covers Weiss in ash. Weiss is unamused.
  • Happy Tree Friends:
    • Giggles sniffs a bouquet of roses before realizing that she's allergic to pollen, and eventually sneezes so hard her brain flies out of the back of her head.
    • In "Get Whale Soon", Lumpy and Russell are trapped inside of a whale, so they try building a fire. Russell struggles to light the last match they can find, but when he finally does so, Lumpy accidentally sneezes and blows it out. Judging by his reaction, Russell isn't amused.
    • The first segment of the final TV episode, "Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow", begins with Lumpy and Cuddles playing telephone, but not in a way you'd expect. Since the last two methods they tried using backfire, Lumpy gives Cuddles a pepper grinder, speaks into a barrel connected to said grinder, and causes pepper to get up Cuddles' nose. Cuddles then lets out a really loud sneeze that causes Lumpy to lose his hearing, setting off the plot for the episode.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • In the Glove and Boots episode "Ten Reasons Why Time Travel is No Good", #5 is "You'll Kill Everybody, or They'll Kill You". Fafa explain that time travelers can catch diseases from the future they're not immune to (demonstrated by a future version of Fafa sneezing on Mario and causing him to keel over and die), or spread diseases people in the past aren't immune to (demonstrated by Mario sneezing on a past version of Fafa with similar results).

    Western Animation 
  • 101 Dalmatians: The Series:
    • In the episode "Home Is Where the Bark Is", Lucky, Cadpig, and Rolly make many attempts to escape from their old house (which they are trapped inside). In one of these attempts, they form a Human Ladder to get out through the chimney. However, the second after their tower is formed, Lucky (at the top) loosens some soot, which gets into Rolly's nose, and his sneeze causes the totem to collapse.
    • In "He Followed Me Home", a baby elephant the pups are trying to take care of ends up letting out a monster sneeze that sends the pups and Spot flying and crashing against the side of a farm silo.
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: The "Over the Hill Hero" episode begins with Scratch and Grounder dropping Sneeze Bombs on a town. And once they explode, they cause everybody around them to sneeze. When Sonic himself gets one of the Sneeze Bombs, Captain Rescue arrives (albeit rather clumsily) and tries to save Sonic from the Bomb. But all he does is put a bell over Sonic while he's still holding the Bomb, allowing the bomb to explode anyway. After inhaling deeply three times, Sonic lets out a huge sneeze with enough force to blow the bell up into the air like a rocket. He then proceeds to have a sneezing fit. During Sonic's inhales before his first sneeze, Tails realizes that Sonic is going to sneeze and runs away while Captain Rescue doesn't move a muscle and gets blown out of the way when the sneeze is released.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: Darwin has what is initially thought to be an increasing allergic reaction to stupidity. It starts off with sneezes that sound, as Gumball puts it, "Like the world's angriest baby." but ends up with ones powerful enough to push the entire planet hundreds of feet. (He sneezes downward and the ground disappears for a moment, all the loose objects remaining in place, and then they fall.) It turns out he had a feather tickling his gills, which is what was causing the violent sneeze attacks.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang has been shown (involuntarily?) airbending when he sneezes.
    Sokka: You just sneezed... and flew ten feet in the air.
    Aang: Really? It felt higher than that.
  • Sneezly of Breezly and Sneezly is personified in this trope. He suffers from a cold, and frequently lets out sneezes with devastating power.
  • Bugs Bunny:
    • In the cartoon "Frigid Hare", Bugs and an Eskimo are stuck in an ice ledge that breaks with every noise they make. At one point the Eskimo starts to sneeze, and Bugs stifles it just in time... but then sneezes himself, sending the ledge completely vertical and on the brink of plummeting.
    • In another cartoon, "Knighty Knight Bugs", the Black Knight — played by Yosemite Sam — has a dragon that has a habit of sneezing fire (it caught cold for letting its fire get low), often inadvertently scorching Sam in the process. Near the end, Bugs traps them inside a tower full of explosives:
      [dragon starts to sneeze]
      Sam: [trying to stop dragon from sneezing] No, no! Don't sneeze, ya stupid dragon! Or you'll blow us to the moon!!
      [dragon sneezes anyway and the tower, with Sam and the dragon in it, shoots into the sky like a rocket]
      Sam: Dragons is so stupid...
    • Bugs takes a whiff of Napoleon Bonapart's snuff which a sneeze strong enough to upset Napoleon's battle plans as well as Napoleon himself ("Napoleon Bunny-part").
  • In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, the sneezes of Mr. Socrates, a computer who was allergic to dogs, were powerful enough to blow the team out of the lair.
  • The Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines episode "Stop That Pigeon" (which was the show's original working name) climaxes with a missile Klunk makes that tracks down and explodes upon anyone who sneezes. The Squadron fires a pepper shell at Yankee Doodle Pigeon who sneezes but outwits the missile by hiding in his satchel. Muttley fires another pepper shell but it hits Dastardly. Klunk holds Dastardly's nose, Zilly holds Klunk's nose, and Muttley holds Zilly's nose, but there's nobody to hold Muttley's nose. He sneezes and the Squadron is on the receiving end of the exploding missile.
  • In the animated TV version of Dilbert, Loud Howard's sneezes are capable of stripping all the flesh from a person's body. The rest of the team use this to get rid of people in marketing.
  • Doug: This kicks off the plot of "Doug on the Trail." When the Bluff Scouts are heading out on their camping trip, Doug carries both the navigational computer and a pepper mill, but the pepper makes him sneeze and he drops and breaks the computer. This forces Mr. Dink to leave the camp to go get the spare computer, leaving Roger in charge.
  • Here Comes the Grump: This is the signature trait of the Grump's dragon. Guess who gets the Ash Face when it happens?
  • Inspector Gadget: Both the Inspector and his kid Gadget Boy's gadgets have a tendency to pop out and cause mischief when they sneeze. Not that their gadgets don't normally act up anyway.
  • Kaeloo: In the episode "Let's Play Doctors and Nurses", Stumpy sneezes powerfully after catching a cold.
  • Kidd Video has the fairy character Glitter gain Super-Strength whenever she sneezes. Unfortunately, she genuinely has to sneeze to activate it, meaning she and her friends have to look for something to use as an irritant (like pepper, pollen, or flour) if it's needed. It wears off after a short while.
  • In Monster Buster Club, Cathy is an alien with Rubber Man powers. The one time she catches an Earth cold, it causes her head to occasionally become huge, and then sneeze with enough strength to send everybody tumbling in a good radius. At first it's an inconvenience threatening to ruin her cover, but then she weaponizes it against an hostile alien.
  • In Monster by Mistake!, Warren Patterson is accidentally cursed to transform into a monster and back whenever he sneezes. Naturally, he has really bad allergies.
  • In The Mr. Men Show, Mr. Stubborn has very powerful sneezing when he gets sick (even though he denies being sick).
  • Muppet Babies (1984):
    • In one episode, while the gang is using their imagination, Gonzo magically makes a rainbow bridge across a ravine and claims it to be "his nose". Unfortunately, as the other babies are walking across it, Gonzo lets out a sneeze, and the sneeze causes the whole bridge to disappear and everyone to fall down the ravine.
    • In another episode's "Piggy in Wonderland" sequence, there's a parody of Humpty Dumpty featuring Rowlf sitting on a giant piano, which goes like this:
    Rowlfy Wowlfy sat on the keys
    Rowlfy Wowlfy made a great sneeze
    (he sneezes so hard that he propels himself end-over-end across the keyboard, smashing it to pieces)
    All the king's Muppets and all the king's men
    Couldn't put the piano together again
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Owl's Well That Ends Well": At the beginning, Spike dusts off a book Twilight Sparkle sent for him to get. The dust caused him to sneeze out fire, which ends up burning and disintegrating the pages.
    • In "It's About Time", Spike subjects Twilight Sparkle to Tickle Torture with her quill while she's trying to stand still for the next several days in the hopes that she won't cause the disaster her future self tried to warn her about. After he tickles her nose, she sneezes, with the result that her horn lights up and her telekinesis activates and slams him into a wall. Spike in turn accidentally blows fire in her direction, giving her a mane-cut that resembles Future Twilight Sparkle.
    • In "Princess Spike", a series of events caused by Spike making careless decisions in Twilight's name leads to a meeting hall being flooded. Just as Spike observes that a priceless statue survived the damage to the hall, the blossoms from a dragon-sneeze tree cause him to sneeze violently, knocking the statue over ("Ah, bless me"). At the end of the episode, someone hands Spike a whole bouquet of dragon-sneeze blossoms, and the episode ends just as Spike is about to sneeze the statue over again.
    • In "The Crystalling", Baby Flurry Heart creates large, destructive beams of energy from her horn whenever she sneezes. At least, until Sunburst provides a Power Limiter spell that curbs her magic surges.
    • In "Triple Threat", Ember's sneezes trigger uncontrolled fire-breathing, which can be somewhat destructive. It doesn't help that she claims to have an allergy to feelings. At the end of the episode, such a sneeze melts the celebratory ice statues. She comments they should make more things out of rocks.
    • In "A Matter of Principals", the dragon-sneeze tree makes a return. Smolder has the same allergic reaction to it that Spike did, sneezing uncontrollably and blasting dragon fire everywhere.
    • In the short "Ail-icorn", the sick Twilight's sneezes cause blasts of Power Incontinence from her horn, putting wheels on Rarity's hoof, encasing Fluttershy in ice, making Applejack float and making Rainbow Dash speak in sound effects.
  • PAW Patrol:
    • In "Pups and the Pirate Treasure", Skye sticks her head in a knothole only to discover it's full of dust. This causes her to sneeze, which makes her fly backwards.
    • At the beginning of "Pups Get Growing", Mr. Porter is working with Ryder and some of the pups on making the world's largest pizza. When Skye opens a sack of flour, it causes her to let out a big sneeze blowing flour all over everyone. Mr. Porter then has everyone sneeze all at once, and this blows the flour off everyone.
  • Pound Puppies (2010): The episode "Pound Preemies" opens with Rebound at the vet letting out sneezes so powerful that they cause earthquakes.
  • Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In “Building To A Bang”, Billie (who was sick that episode) unleashes a sneeze so forceful it sends Ella flying through a wall.
  • In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Endless Summer", Carrot gets sick, and his sneezes are practically deadly.
  • Animated segments on Sesame Street:
    • "One, Two, Three Dogs", which shows three dogs trying to do impressive stunts on unicycles. In one of the stunts, the three dogs are shown piled up on each other's shoulders while on one unicycle. They end up collapsing when the female dog in the middle sneezes.
    • Another features a man in "The Sneezing Song". Throughout the whole song, whenever he sneezes it causes a building to collapse until he covers his nose. After he comes back home, his pet dog sneezes and his house collapses.
  • Shezow's sneezes are powerful enough to blow them into outer-space.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • The episode "Suds" has SpongeBob catch the Suds (a cold), and then Patrick plugs his holes up with corks in an attempt to cure him (he didn't want to go to the doctor thanks to a story Patrick told him). But SpongeBob then begins stifling sneezes until he ends up becoming a giant ball and rolls toward the Krusty Krab. He manages to stop before he can crash into it and screams in agony, and then he sneezes so strongly that the Krusty Krab explodes.
    • In "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic", Kevin C. Cucumber secretly tries to trick SpongeBob into getting stung by the jellyfish by smearing jelly on his face so the jellyfish can lick it off; however, they tickle his nose instead, causing SpongeBob to sneeze the jellyfish right off his face and into Kevin's eyes, stinging them.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: In the Jack and the Beanstalk parody episode, Princess Toadstool reveals that she's allergic to garbanzo bean seeds when Mario shows them to her. Her sneeze blows them right out of his hand and into the yard, where they grow into the beanstalk.
  • Taz-Mania: A Running Gag in "Feed a Cold" where the force of Taz's sneezes is enough to lift the roof off the Platypus Brothers' house.
  • Teen Titans: Subverted in the episode "Apprentice: Part 1". Cyborg is trying to delicately defuse a bomb when Starfire starts to sneeze, then Raven makes a force field around Starfire's head... just leaving Starfire herself to have frizzled hair as a result of her sneeze being entrapped and forced back at her. Starfire's sneezes tend to be explosive. Starfire happens to be allergic to a rare mineral the bomb is made out of, so her allergy is used to find its location.
  • Thomas & Friends: In the second half of "Whistles and Sneezes", the windows of Henry's coaches are destroyed by three boys who toss stones at them. As retribution, Henry builds up ashes in his smokebox, and when he and the boys next meet, Henry sneezes at them, covering them from head to toe in soot.
  • Sneezer in Tiny Toon Adventures; a cute little toddler mouse whose sneezes produce hurricane-force winds. "Ah-TOOOO!"
  • Wacky Races: In "Wacky Race to Ripsaw", Peter Perfect's car falls apart because of his sneeze. Then again, his car falls apart Once per Episode.
  • In Xiaolin Showdown, Dojo the dragon's Shen Gong Wu senses sometimes manifest themselves as physical afflictions. In "Shen Yi Bu", he gets a nasty allergy, and when he finally lets a sneeze loose, it also dislodges a fireball. The recipient of this sneeze? Jack Spicer.
    Jack: Bless you.
  • Yin Yang Yo! has the Sick Episode "Woo Foo Flu," where Yin catches said flu and bends reality every time she sneezes. At first, Yang has to take care of her and not let her sneeze by order of Master Yo, but then Carl captures her and exploits her sneezing in an attempt to Take Over the World. The episode climaxes with Yang infecting himself with Yin's Woo Foo Flu, and his as well as Yin's sneezes send him, Yin and Carl into multiple realities until everything is back to normal. At the end, it's revealed that even though Master Yo has to take care of both Yin and Yang, he at least cured their magical sneezing... but then he sneezes. "Aw, pellets..."

    Real Life 
  • Cartoonist Scott Shaw found himself letting out a big sneeze in a library. At that exact moment, the building was cast into total darkness by a blackout and Shaw momentarily panicked, thinking that he destroyed his vision with that sneeze. Fortunately, the power was restored, and Shaw was whooping and jumping for joy that his vision was perfectly fine after all, while everyone around him was wondering what he was so excited about.

 
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Getting Out of Monstro

When Geppetto tells him there's no way to get out of Monstro since he only opens his mouth while eating, Pinocchio realizes the only way to escape is to make the whale sneeze.

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