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Stomach of Holding

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Does that make them junk food?
"If only I hadn't left my binoculars in my belt...is what I'd say if I were a dum-dum! (hacks up a pair of binoculars)"

Some people and creatures can use their stomach to keep stuff within, sometimes more than what would realistically be able fit in there, up to and including single items larger than their entire body. Usually they can also bring the items back up on command, and can somehow choose the exact item they want to bring up despite carrying around fifty things. Either that, or they can't choose, and are subject to an Overly Long Gag where they have to keep coughing up increasingly strange items until finally getting the right one by luck. Whatever is funnier for the current situation.

Handy and unlikely to be found by frisking, if quite disgusting. The acidic action of digestive juices rarely come into play.

See also Swallow the Key. Compare Caged Inside a Monster, Getting Eaten Is Harmless and Treasure Chest Cavity. For objects stored in the other end of the digestive tract, see Ass Shove.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Koumori, the first of the Maniwa Ninja from Katanagatari, seemed to specialize in this.
  • In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Honky Tonk Woman", Spike swallows a cigarette when told there's no smoking in that area, then burps it up later. He repeats the process with a poker chip, not knowing it was the episode's MacGuffin.
  • Bleach: Dondochakka Birstanne holds the team pet Bawabawa in his stomach, as well as his own, kanabo-shaped Zanpakuto.
  • Doraemon: Nobita and the Tin Labyrinth has a new character, the andromorphic alien bunny rabbit Tap (no larger than regular earth rabbits) whose stomach can hold an entire storeroom's worth of food. Which he could easily retrieve anytime when needed.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, Kimblee stored a Philosopher's stone either in his stomach or his mouth when he was in prison (though probably not at all times).
    • It's implied he's kept two at once in his stomach on occasion.
    • Gluttony has an entire dimension in there. However, it isn't filled with digestive juices - it's filled with an ocean of human blood.
  • Naruto has several examples:
    • Orochimaru stores his sword, Kusanagi, inside his throat in reference to the Kusanagi of Japanese Mythology which came from Orochi's body.
    • When giving a report on the enemy, Kisame coughed up a scroll with the information on it before giving it to a summon shark.
    • Kinkaku is shown to store a special sword and fan inside of his stomach.
    • Possibly Gerotora entering the seal for the 9-tails by having Naruto swallow him whole (with some assistance) and/or Itachi having him swallow a crow containing Shisui's other eye.
    • Jiraiya can travel incognito inside a toad using this. The toad need not be giant enough to fit him in.
  • The main character from Blade of the Immortal hid a scalpel in his throat and used it later to escape from a prison.
  • In Dragon Ball, King Piccolo swallows the Dragon Balls to prevent them from being stolen. His reincarnation Piccolo Junior does the same for the small jar he traps Kami in.
  • The messenger spirit in Omamori Himari keeps whatever she's delivering in her stomach, including a massive assortment of weaponry. Retrieving the items she carries is implied to be rather messy.
  • In YuYu Hakusho, when Yukina gives him a very valuable Orphan's Plot Trinket, Hiei asks her how she kept the jewel dealer who imprisoned her in her debut from stealing it. She answers that she hid it in stomach, quickly reassuring him that she's cleaned it since then. Hiei concludes that someone is hiding his matching trinket the same way when he wonders why he can't find it with his Jagan eye, and it turns out Mukuro is.
  • Tsuyu of My Hero Academia has this as part of her frog powers, though unlike most examples she is limited by how much could realistically fit inside, and bringing the items back up is both an unpleasant experience for her, and an unpleasant sight to anyone watching. She's personally slightly embarrassed by it and admits "it's pretty gross" for her too.
  • Rimuru Tempest of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime has this as part of his Predator skill, where he can store items he devours and keep indefinitely, if he doesn't want to reconstruct them.
  • In Soul Eater, two characters show this trait- the minor antagonist Ragnarok and the major antagonist Asura. Asura's most prominent special move is half coughing up a spear and stabbing people with it.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 
  • In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, Paul is unable to carry or wear anything that isn't unbreakable because he's so strong that he'll invariably break it. So, when he has to somehow carry a jump gem with him after he makes his getaway from the Flying Island of Tipaan (It Makes Sense in Context), he plans to swallow it. He's quite aware that this might not work, though—who knows what goes on in his invulnerable stomach—and is prepared to hang out near the jump gate until retrieved by one of the others. However, since the original plan falls to pieces and he ends up crushing his jump gem in his hand, he never does find out whether this would work.
  • Snek is a Good Boy and he has a "not-eat place" in his throat, where he stashes objects or people he's bringing back to his Master.
  • A robotic variant in Vow of Nudity; Forger, the warforged from the prequel story, keeps his inventory items in a self-described ‘storage compartment’ due to not wearing clothes.

    Film — Animated 
  • The Bad Guys (2022): Mr. Snake carries stuff in his stomach since he, you know, doesn't have hands. In the opening he regurgitates an alarm clock to check the time.
  • Valiant: After the titular carrier pigeon loses his harness he swallows the message about invading Normandy and vomits it back up when he makes it back to command.

    Film — Live Action 
  • In The Incredible Hulk (2008), Bruce swallows a USB drive just before one of General Ross's attacks makes him Hulk Out. Later, after he's reverted to normal, we hear him in the bathroom of the motel "retrieving" the device, shall we say.
  • In The Hot Rock, during the gang's attempt to rob the diamond for their client Dr. Amusa, member Greenberg swallows it before he's caught by the guards. During a brief stint in a city jail, it passes through his system and he stows it in the cell, now out of their reach.
    Dr. Amusa: Couldn't you have just...kept swallowing it?
    Greenberg: [queasily]...no.
  • Captain Marvel (2019): The adorable kitty Goose is actually a Flerken, an alien species not too far removed from an Eldritch Abomination when they open their mouth. She's also sturdy enough to cat-handle the Tesseract without any ill effects, so when the need arises to carry it safely, she just eats it. And then coughs it back up like a particularly shiny hairball.
    • The Marvels (2023): When the S.A.B.E.R. scientists have to evacuate their crumbling space station that only has ten escape pods, our heroes get the idea to have Goose and her new litter of kittens eat them all so they can escape in one pod. The workers aren't too keen on this, as they respond to this idea by trying to run for their lives. Nevertheless, the entire population of the station is successfully swallowed and carried to their destination on Earth.

    Literature 
  • A thief in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" feeds a stolen gemstone to a goose so he can smuggle it home, intending to carve up the bird for dinner and retrieve the gem from its crop.
  • In Sourcery, Rincewind meets a thief who stole some jewels taken by the leader of the Thieves' Guild. The interesting part? The leader had swallowed the jewels at the time. So, the leader knew full well who stole them, since only that thief was THAT good.
  • In the Known Space novel Destroyer of Worlds, when a Pak is taken prisoner, it hides one of its devices from a search by swallowing the device. When it retrieves the device later, the device's surface is pitted and slightly damaged from the stomach acids. However, the device functions. Nonetheless, the Pak believes it will not survive another trip through its stomach.
  • In Too Many Curses, a ferret who was originally a human thief mentions that her father used to do this with the proceeds of his jewel heists. It made claiming her inheritance after his death a bit gruesome.
  • In the Imperial Radch trilogy, this turns out to be one of the many alien skills of Translator Zeiat, who absentmindedly stores away board game pieces and other oddments that catch her interest this way. At one point, she unhinges her jaw to swallow a whole, unshucked oyster out of mere curiosity, and at another point she ingests a live fish and then vomits it up days later, apparently unharmed, during a stress-induced Rummage Fail.
  • Bark, George: George keeps making the wrong sound when he tries to bark. At the vet's office, it turns out that he somehow managed to swallow a cat, a duck, a pig, and a cow.
  • In Wereling (2009), Trey uses a magic ring to get into a demon-lord's castle. He needs it to get back out, but it won't fit on his finger when he's in werewolf form, and he has no clothes, so swallowing it is his only option.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Farscape Rygel once swallowed a control crystal that Moya needed. And in the miniseries he retrieved the crystallized pieces of Crichton and Aeryn from the sea floor by swallowing them and regurgitating them on the surface, unfortunately their unborn child reformed inside him and had to stay there for a while.
  • An episode of Murdoch Mysteries had a circus freak demonstrate this ability. Unfortunately for him, he later used it to smuggle a switchblade, and was accidentally killed by a "lucky" punch causing it to flick open inside his stomach.
  • In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Space Mutiny", while Pearl, Brain Guy, and Bobo are in a Roman prison, Bobo tries to regurgitate a key so they can escape. Pearl is initially pleased with his ingenuity, thinking he has stolen a guard's key and swallowed it, until Bobo admits that he's swallowed so many things over the years, there's bound to be a key in there somewhere, and proceeds to cough up a variety of random items, much to Pearl's disgust.
  • One Piece (2023): When he's about to be captured by the Buggy Pirates in the second episode, Luffy swallows the map to the Grand Line (rigid metal case and all) so they won't find it.
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Who Mourns for Morn?", it is revealed that Morn took part in a bank robbery several years ago. He extracted the liquid latinum from the gold casings and stored it in one of his redundant stomachs. Quark assumes this is why his hair fell out.

    Oral Tradition 
  • In the French folktale Drakestail, the titular duck swallows the friends he meets en route to the king so they can accompany him in his gizzard. Later, when the king tries to kill him in various ways, Drakestail summons his friends from inside him so they can help out. It is worth mentioning, however, that those friends "make themselves quite small" before getting swallowed.
    • In the Hungarian variant "The Little Rooster and the Turkish Sultan", the rooster has a magic stomach like this, which he uses to great effect. Without them being shrinked beforehand, he can swallow and regurgitate everything from a well's entire water supply to a swarm of hornets. And since this is a children's tale, he does the latter without killing the insects; instead, he uses them as a Groin Attack Breath Weapon against the Sultan.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Second Edition Dark Nagas can swallow objects to spit out later, using a bag-like internal organ to carry things. The organ has thick, rubbery walls that protect the naga against pointed and sharp objects, protect the cargo against digestive juices and prevent magic items in the cargo from being detected.
    • Inverted by the Bag of Devouring, an item that looks like a Bag of Holding but is actually a feeding orifice of an extradimensional monster. It's listed with cursed items in the Dungeon Master's Guide, but can't be created because it's considered part of a living creature.
    • The 3.5 Edition supplement Dragon Magic includes a sorcerer/wizard spell called "Hoard Gullet" which allows this.
  • This is one of many possible powers for a chaos familiar which an evil wizard in Warhammer can obtain.
  • The World of Darkness: Inferno has this as a Gluttony Vestment for the Possessed, as a side use of a Swallowed Whole power. It explicitly states that the Possessed surpresses their stomach acids while using the power (and it's really uncomfortable). There's another power that allows them to regurgitate the item completely undamaged; said power's main use is acid vomit.
    • There's also a Bone Gnawer gift in at least the original version of Werewolf: The Apocalypse which allows this (here, the "stomach" it sends swallowed items to technically exists in the Umbra). Thematically appropriate to the Gnawers' role as the "scavenger" tribe among the Garou.
  • In Hc Svnt Dracones characters who have the "Iron Stomach" genetic reclamation or overcome the "consumption" compulsion can store small objects in their stomachs.
  • There is a courier frogman in The Dark Eye, who offers this mode of transportation commercially for sealed letters and small packages, that need to be kept extra safe and secret.
  • Pathfinder has a temporary version in the form of the 'Bottomless Stomach' spell

    Toys 
  • A line of plushies called "Tummy Stuffers" totally revolves around this trope.

    Video Games 
  • A literal example of the stomach as a Bag of Holding is found throughout The Legend of Zelda series, where Bomb Bags are made from the stomachs of Dodongos. Funny enough, a lot of your bombs are probably going to end up in the stomachs of other Dodongos after you take them out of the bag, due to their well-known weakness to Feed It a Bomb.
  • Kirby has this in Squeak Squad, allowing him to store various powers or recovery items, among others.
    • Other Kirby games have a lesser version of this trope; after sucking up an enemy, he can carry them around before spitting them out or swallowing them.
  • Final Fantasy: The Fat Chocobo first does this in III and does it again in IV. In the original release, players could only carry a limited number of different item types. Remakes on platforms with greater capacity eliminated the need for Fat Chocobo, but he can still be used to get around the limit on only holding 99 of any one thing.
  • This was where Tomba's inventory was located; he even was able to keep live animals in there.
  • Klaymen of The Neverhood stores items in a cabinet-like space in his torso, complete with a door.
  • In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake smuggles a pack of cigarettes to use on his mission. When asked about how he managed to do that (considering he's been thoroughly searched prior to his departure), he replies: "In my stomach." Justified in that he explains he could only do this because he was given a shot that suppressed his stomach acid.
  • In Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Globox and his children store useful items for Rayman inside their body.
  • The "Spike" enemies from the Super Mario Bros. series regurgitate spiked balls into their hands and then toss them at you.
  • Chester from Don't Starve is a walking pumpkin-like thing that follows you around. You can put stuff in his mouth and take it out when you need it, which can be a big help when you have too many items in your inventory.
  • Dusty Revenge have toad-people enemies whose stomach can hold unlimited amount of bombs. They'll attack by regurgitating exploding projectiles on you throughout.
  • Machinarium: Josef, as well as other robots, keep their inventory items within their torsos, putting them inside and removing them through their mouths.
  • Benedict the hawk man from Battleborn has a stomach of holding. Best shown in his "Regurgirocket" taunt wherein he regurgitates a rocket. He stores some of his rockets in his gut only to puke them back out later when he needs a reload, kinda like the manner of how real life birds would store food in their guts only to puke it all out later to feed their young. Other than this, he typically stores his rocket reserves in his attire's pockets as best shown by his reload animation.
  • In Heroes of the Storm, one of the heroes, Stitches, can eat an enemy and regurgitate him after a few seconds, allowing his group to focus the target down. He actually does this through the huge maw he has in his belly.
  • Bunji the Frog from The Gigglebone Gang series of edutainment games can hold just about anything imaginable in his belly. The player clicks him to expel items one after the other until he deflates and turns pale in color, and puts the items back by dragging them back to Bunji- resulting in him gobbling the items right back up.
  • Crash in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy has a habit of spitting up gems he has acquired after completing a level.
  • Tahm Kench from League of Legends is a walking, talking metaphor for greed who swallows objects and people whole. One of his abilities allows him to temporarily hold someone in his stomach, digesting them slightly if they're an enemy, before spitting them out as a projectile. At one point, another gave him a teleport where other champions on his team could come along by being swallowed.
  • Rain World has the playable slugcats. Though slugcats can eat like any other creature, they can swallow small indigestible items, mainly pearls, to hold them as sort of a 'third hand' while they are busy climbing, carrying spears, etc.

    Web Animation 

    Web Comics 
  • Ace Dick, from Problem Sleuth, can use his stomach as an additional inventory slot (and even has a "stomach capacity" statistic that rises as he levels up).
  • Schlock Mercenary: Sergeant Schlock tends to store his plasgun in there, along with other implements of destruction for both himself and others. As an amorph, he's able to control his biology enough to prevent digestive juices from damaging anything contained in his stomach.
  • As early as Chapter 1 of Legend of Legendary Mighty Knight, the knight has used their slug-cat to store not only a fishing rod, but also their sword. The slug-cat had also been traveling extensively before the knight pulled their sword out of the slug-cat's mouth. How it managed to not get hurt eating a sword is not shown.
  • One-Punch Man has hero Pig God whose main power is his ability to eat and digest anything that will fit in his mouth. He can also hold civilians inside him for protection and gently regurgitate them unharmed.
  • Unsounded:
    • Uaid was constructed out of a mountain ogre, he still has instincts from that time which cause him to toss things down his gullet but it just harmlessly puts them in the rooms built in place of his torso.
    • Shaensigin can open her rib cage like a set of doors and let followers inside to carry them around. This same compartment is where things she eats end up when she swallows them.

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation
    • One SCP is a strain of the flu that allows you to regurgitate anything useful at the moment. The items take mass from your body and there are mutations that result in either harmful substances or different exit points.
    • SCP-2094, nicknamed Motormouth, is a man with the ability to stretch his mouth up to two meters wide, swallow just about anything, and regurgitate it without any apparent harm to him nor the item he consumes. He used to be a clown in Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting.
    • A more realistic example is SCP-347, an Invisible Streaker who can't swallow anything too big for a normal human to swallow, but has trained herself in the ability to regurgitate any swallowed item without puking her guts out. What made her decide to develop this bizarre skill? Well, because anything inside of her also becomes invisible... and she's a kleptomaniac.

    Western Animation 
  • Centaurworld: Glendale the gerenuk-taur can store things in her belly with her "Tummy Portal" spell, even really big ones like people or furniture. It comes in handy, given what a kleptomaniac she is.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed's apparently works like a storage facility or refrigerator sometimes. He once ate a whole recording camera without issue.
  • Chowder often stores things in his stomach. Even things that could not possibly fit there.
  • Rico from The Penguins of Madagascar. As well as 'small' things like lit dynamite, bombs, bowling pins, and a running chainsaw, it is also revealed that he has an elevator and a spiral staircase for getting to the bottom.
    • He has swallowed both Mort and Kowalski, then choked them up again (although after choking up Kowalski he passed out).
    • The largest thing he has ever choked up was an Air-To-Ground missile.
    • In "Roger Dodger", Roger the Alligator switches minds with Rico. Roger keeps coughing up dynamite and flamethrowers, showing that it's an ability of Rico's body, not of his mind, but only Rico can control what comes up.
  • The title character of Bounty Hamster has Cheekpouches of Holding.
  • Family Guy: Mayor Adam West keeps everything he needs in case he is ever held hostage in his stomach, such as an inflatable raft for escape purposes and a magazine for him to read in case his escape fails. He also has Stratego in case anyone wants to play.
  • In an episode of South Park, the boys are trapped in a cave after a cave-in. Cartman finds a huge stash of buried treasure, and over the course of a few days, swallows it all in order to smuggle it out without the other boys knowing. He ends up a grossly misshapen human sack of treasure until he can't hold it in anymore and craps it all out at the end of the episode, after which the cave was revealed to have been an old tourist attraction, with the treasure being fake and made out of plastic.
  • In an episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes, Jimmy coughs up a surfboard almost as big as he is.
  • In an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, Junior of The Amoeba Boys produced paper clips, a flashlight, and a basketball from his stomach.
  • On a few occasions in Animaniacs Yakko and Dot have retrieved things from Wakko's stomach.
  • Dora the Explorer: Dora's Backpack, hence her catchphrase, "Yum, Yum, Yum, Yum, Yum! Delicioso!".
  • In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Plastic Man is able to do this, presumably because his body is plastic and thus not as damaged by swallowing a bunch of gold coins. And it's usually gold coins he's swallowing.
  • The Donald Duck cartoon "Trick or Treat" has Donald swallowing a key leading to his treats. Unfortunately for him, the person he vexed was a witch. Naturaly, she uses magic to force his body to kick it out. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Mao Mao is able to store all kinds of equipment in his stomach, much to the disgust of his friends when he has to produce them.
  • Middlemost Post: Russell can store all sorts of objects inside her belly.
  • Played for Laughs, and Squick, in Mission Hill when Ron who is in jail for tax fraud agrees to sign Andy's employment benefits form in exchange for Kevin temporarily taking ownership of his car so the IRS can't take it from him. He tells Kevin to wait while he goes and gets the keys, heads into the bathroom and you hear a toilet flush, and then he comes back with it saying "I'll have to mail you the trunk key. It'll show up in a day or two".

    Real Life 
  • Harry Houdini is said to have trained himself to be able to regurgitate at will, and kept a spare key for the restraints in his belly during his more dangerous escape tricks.
  • Hadji Ali (1892-1937) was a vaudeville performer whose act consisted of swallowing things and then regurgitating them at the request of audience members. He would perform tricks like swallowing six different colored handkerchiefs and then regurgitating whichever color was requested.

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