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That's not what "your dental records are on file" means!
"Oh, please don't worry. I'm not going into that cavity. That nerve's already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive. So I'll just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp...unless, of course, you can tell me that it's safe."
Dr. Christian Szell, Marathon Man

Just like with eyes, fingers, throats, toes, genitals and tongues, teeth are an extremely sensitive part of us that we can't bear to see get damaged, whether our own or other people's. Just like with fingers and toes, we have so many of them, giving us so many ways to feel the pain (even worse if a Depraved Dentist is involved). However, someone may pull a tooth for a good reason, such as to relieve pain. Though, this usually isn't a very good idea.

This overlaps with Attack the Mouth if it is done deliberately.

A Sister Trope to Teeth Flying (when teeth are knocked out in a fight) and DIY Dentistry (when one pulls out their own aching tooth out of their own devices). See also The Dentist Episode, where a character has to see the dentist to have this issue treated.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • It's telling that the slogan for 1-800-DENTIST is "Seriously, it's time."
  • The Cliche Family (a parody ad made as an in-house demonstration) shows a little boy brushing his teeth all day, day after day, until they're almost completely worn away.
  • Skittles: "French the Rainbow" features a boy with skittles for teeth and a girl who eats them out of his face under the guise of kissing him.
  • One anti-smoking commercial features a young man yanking out one of his own teeth with pliers to point out how smoking can damage your gums and teeth.

    Anime & Manga 
  • An episode of Doki Doki Pretty Cure has Makoto visiting the dentist to fix a cavity.
  • In Dragon Ball, during the Namek Saga, Recoome's Eraser Gun backfiring when his Combat Pragmatist opponent Krillin suddenly slams his jaw shut just as he is going to fire it off, only leads to him vaporizing most of his own teeth.
  • Holy Corpse Rising: While starving, Nikola asks an old man for food. The man hands him a rock, and Nikola immediately bites it without thinking and hurts his teeth. The old man says you are supposed to suck on it to relieve hunger pains, but admits he sometimes bites his own rock and reveals his teeth have pretty much been destroyed.
  • One episode of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! centers around King Dedede and Bun/Tuff getting cavities due to not properly brushing their teeth, and both of them are too scared to go to the local doctor. Dedede eventually orders a properly-skilled dentist Demon Beast to fix his tooth for him, though hearing that it doesn't use anesthetic scares him off again. This was, incidentally, not dubbed into English for quite some time, most likely because many children are scared of the dentist to begin with...
  • In episode 6 of Jewelpet Twinkle☆, the gang is stranded on a boat in the middle of the ocean and being pursued by a shark. The boat is turned into a stronger metallic one via a magic spell by Sara and Sapphie right as the shark bites it, breaking all its teeth and making it swim away in pain.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Early in Part 2, Straizo takes a young woman hostage, breaking two of her molars as a warning to Joseph. Once Joseph defeats him, the woman slaps him for having said some rather nasty things about her... and then starts screaming. The reason he was so insulting (aside from distracting Straizo) was to keep her mind off the pain of having two teeth snapped off at the gumline.
    • In Part 3, the gang are trapped in the massive maw of The High Priestess stand. Jotaro is trapped between the teeth and the rest are in the mouth. Jotaro gets them all out by using Star Platinum break his way out and frees his friends by shattering the teeth. When Polnareff checks on the stand user after they escape, he finds that all of her teeth are gone too.
  • In Made in Abyss, Riko finds out the hard way that the Fifth Layer's curse of losing sensation is a lot more dangerous than you'd think — after climbing some stairs, she goes unconscious and wakes up to realize her jaw clenched so hard a couple of her baby teeth snapped in half.
  • Oruchuban Ebichu has two notable examples, including when Ebichu gets a cavity from drinking too much syrup and then again with O.L. during "Cavities and Hearts Both Throb".
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Brock hurts his teeth when he mistakes a plastic cake for a real one and bites into it.
    • "Pokemon Shipwreck" has Meowth breaking his canines trying to eat James's Magikarp. Misty informs the group that the Pokemon is mostly scales and bones, so it wouldn't make a good meal. He gets another moment of this in "Path to the Pokemon League", chomping into the armadillo-like Sandshrew when it's curled up.
  • Mushibakinman from Sorieke! Anpanman. His main motivation is give people cavities and toothaches, which he does with his spear.
  • Speed Grapher's Depraved Dentist is shown working on one of his patients. The dentist actually has a tooth fetish, working on teeth is erotic for him. And then he starts drilling her teeth. All of them. And he keeps on drilling. He keeps on going until the patient is dead and the entire room is caked in blood.
  • Tiger Mask has Freddie Blassie specialize in biting his opponents on the forehead. One opponent is prepared for this, hiding a metal plate under his mask. When Blassie goes for the bite, he ends up in serious pain.
  • Tokyo Ghoul: Furuta gets a tooth knocked out during a fight with Kaneki. He rolls around screaming before simply putting it back in.
  • In The Voynich Hotel, the Cold-Blooded Torture session that Elena's Understanding Boyfriend Taizou was subjected to included forcibly pulling out some teeth. Among other things.

    Asian Animation 
  • In the 90th episode Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons, titled "Candy House Fantasy", the end result of Wolffy and Wolnie eating Paddi's candy house is that, when they go to actually eat Paddi, their teeth crack from the cavities the candy gave them. Needless to say, neither of them is amused.

    Comedy 

    Comic Books 
  • In Detective Comics #832, a villain named "Shark" pulls out his own teeth with pliers to plant them as fake evidence of his supposed death by sharks. He mentions that it was very painful, but he's got lots of teeth (three rows!).
  • Judge Dredd
    • In the story "Dark Justice", Judge Dredd smashes up Judge Death's teeth during a fight. However, since he's a zombie he can't feel pain, so all it does is annoy him.
    • Dredd himself gets his teeth smashed by President Booth's New Mutant Army Mooks in "Origins". After he's rescued, one of his fellow judges notes that they like his teeth, to which he snarks that he had a good dentist. Luckily for him, Mega City One's medical technology is good enough to fix them off panel when he returns to the city.
  • There's a Marvel Knights special by Garth Ennis where The Punisher ambushes a mobster at the dentist's office and proceeds to pull out his teeth one by one for information. The whole story is drawn from the perspective inside the mobster's mouth.
  • Superman once fought the villain Barrage, who uses Powered Armor that lets him take Superman on. Once Supes notices Barrage's face is unprotected, he shoots him in the teeth with his heat vision, melting his fillings and letting Supes get close enough to punch him out.
  • Near the beginning of a Superman and Alien crossover, a Xenomorph breaks its fangs when it tries to bite Superman. Due to lack of sunlight, Superman's powers start to wane as the story goes on and he can't rely on this tactic anymore.
  • In Time and Time Again, the Superman story arc from 1991, Superman gives an attacking dinosaur some dental trauma when he comes to the rescue of the time-trapped villain Chronos and the dinosaur tries to devour Superman with its teeth.
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man, Doctor Octopus pulls out one of Peter's teeth with his tentacle over four panels.
    • Ultimate FF: Back in the Zombieverse, zombie Luke Cage tried to bite Van Damme, whose skin is pure steel. He broke all his teeth by trying that.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): In Etta Candy and Her Holliday Girls: "The Toothache" Etta has a toothache making her whole jaw sore, then gets in a fight when she goes to the wrong door while looking for a dentist and the woman who opens the door socks her in the jaw. She understandably loses her temper.

    Fan Works 
  • At the start of Bloom Fully on the Tall Wall, Homura loses a few teeth on concrete. It doesn't matter much because she regenerates soon afterwards.
  • The Turning Red fic Den Tae Phobia is about Tae having terrible toothaches but he's too scared of going to the dentist to fixing, making the problem worse. His pain worsens a lot when he tries to eat popcorn in spite of trying to be careful.
  • Fates Collide: Penthesilea tries to bite Neo, who quickly replaces herself with a glass clone. Penthesilea falls over in pain from biting glass.
  • Malcolm Reynolds gets a tooth yanked out while being tortured in Firefly "San-Diego-Serenade" and ends up with a big, sore swelling on one side of his face.
  • Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: Samhain's final curse on Gaz involves making several cavities suddenly appear in her mouth just as she gets home and bites into her candy, which makes her father throw all her candy in the trash and take her down to the basement for some dental surgery.
  • Particularly Squick-riddled variation in the Hivefled-verse, involving a file and application of alcohol.
  • Let the World Smile: As a young child, Princess Zelda once grabbed her father's tunic while he was walking by. He didn't notice her and accidentally caused her to fall down, leading to two lost teeth and a lesson that it's best if Zelda keeps her distance from her father.
  • Lincoln's Memories: Downplayed in "Nothing But the Tooth", where Lincoln Loud chips his tooth, but it doesn't hurt.
  • A Moth to a Flame: Sasha knocks out two of Marcy's molars after repeatedly bashing her in the face with the Calamity Box; Marcy just quips she knows a good dentist after she spits them out. She regrows new ones after her stay in the Healing Vat following her accidental stabbing by Andrias.
  • In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Iris' Axew is defeated by Red's Clefairy, who proceeds to try and rip out one of his tusks, forcing Iris to jump into the field and throw the fight.
  • In Silver Rings and Golden Hearts, Taiyang chipped a tooth coming down the stairs.
  • In the Sherlock Holmes fanfic A Study In Situations, Watson awakens in the hospital as Holmes and Mary come in and notices that Holmes has lost a tooth. The detective insists the story behind it is "nothing of consequence", but Mary tells her husband that it happened thanks to Holmes punching a man who was "rather rude" to her.

    Films — Animated 
  • Finding Nemo: When Nigel the pelican flies into the dentist's window, the noise startles the dentist so much that he accidentally forcefully pulls out his patient's bad tooth, putting the poor man in a lot of pain.
    Dentist: What the—?
    Patient: AAAAAHHH!
    Dentist: Well, uh...that's one way to pull a tooth. (chuckles) Well, good thing I pulled the right one, eh, Prime Minister? (chuckles)

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Wade Whitehouse, the main character from the 1997 film Affliction, suffers from a bad toothache throughout the story. He eventually reaches the point where he pulls out the tooth with pliers.
  • In American History X, the Trope Namer for Curb-Stomp Battle, this is what "curb-stomping" involves: forcing a man to bite down on the edge of a hard concrete curb, then stomping on the back of his head, shattering his teeth with a Sickening "Crunch!". Even before the stomp happens, the mere sound of the man's teeth grinding on the curb is nausea-inducing.
  • In a Noodle Incident just prior to The Avengers (2012), Natasha gets caught by a Russian black market weapons dealer who gloats that the person she thought was the head of the organization was, in fact, just a bag-man. The general says her to tell the guy that he is out; then picks up a pair of industrial pliers and says, "You might have to write it down." Unfortunately for him, Agent Coulson calls looking for her and she promptly beats the general and four other mooks when she hears her good friend, Clint Barton, is in trouble.
  • Billy Club (2013): When Billy consigns himself to death by baseballs to the face, we see one of his teeth hanging out of his mouth after a baseball hits him.
  • In Blade (1998), Deacon Frost rips a vampire elder's fangs out of his mouth with pliers before executing him.
  • Blood Red Sky. A flashback scene shows Nadja hiding the signs of her increasing vampirism by yanking out her fangs with pliers.
  • Bloodthirsty: One of Grey's teeth comes loose, which she pulls out, as a result of the changes she's now experiencing.
  • In Boss Level, Roy Pulver pulls out several molars with pliers (and the assistance of some strong alcohol) in order to find which one has a tracker in it.
  • The most disturbing scene of Bug (done with pliers, no anesthesia at all, and lots of blood).
  • In Cast Away, Chuck is having a problem with his tooth at the beginning of the film, which gets worse once he becomes stranded on an island. Eventually, he knocks it out with an ice skate found in one of the packages washed ashore, but passes out from the immense pain.
  • In Chronicle, Andrew, slipping into despair-induced madness, uses his telekinetic powers to yank three teeth out of a bully's mouth. For added horror, he later shows off the teeth to his camera, absent-mindedly noting that he was able to get the first one out cleanly, but ended up actually breaking the other two.
  • Cold Pursuit: While he is interrogating Limbo, Coxman smashes the drug dealer in the mouth with his sawn-off rifle, knocking out several of his teeth in the process.
  • This happens a lot in the horror film The Dentist, which is to be expected for a horror flick about a Depraved Dentist in general. Toothpulling and grinding for everyone!
  • Desolation (2017): At one point, the killer has Abby at his mercy. During this part, the killer takes a large pair of pliers and uses them to yank one of her teeth out.
  • In District 9, Wikus loses two molars about 40 hours after being exposed to the alien fluid that turns him into a prawn. One he loses when chewing food, the other he pulls out himself.
  • In Doctor at Sea, Corble has a pain in his tooth, so Dr. Sparrow has to use pliers to extricate the molar. The only issue is the tooth is so hard to remove that attempting to do so sends Corble, Dr. Sparrow, and Easter all crashing to the floor. Trail, who also has a toothache, witnesses this and leaves as soon as possible.
  • Featured constantly in the climax of the martial arts movie, The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. The Hero, using a staff as his weapon, would shove his weapon into the mouths of opponents, twist them, and pull them out, ripping off the teeth of several faceless mooks in shockingly graphic detail. Ewww...
  • The film Europa Europa is about a Jewish boy who survives the Holocaust by joining the Hitler Youth. Yes, it's a true story, by the way. In one scene, Solly learns that he'll have to be fully naked for a physical, which will reveal his circumcised penis and thus expose his Jewish heritage. He immediately fakes a toothache to be taken away and has it pulled; the dentist even notes that the tooth appears quite healthy.
  • The Funhouse Massacre: At one point, Bradford "Dr. Suave" Young is seen yanking out a man's teeth. He's interrupted by Claire attacking them.
  • Gemini Man. A mook holds Dani at gunpoint and informs her that she can either tell him where Henry Brogan is right now or in five minutes minus her teeth. Dani beats him up, holds him at gunpoint, and informs him that he can either tell her who sent him right now or in five minutes minus his teeth. Cut to the next scene, and she presents Henry with a handful of extracted teeth when he wonders how she knows the mook was telling the truth.
  • In Goodnight Mommy, The children remove one of the mother's teeth with dental floss in an effort to convince her to tell them where she did the real mother.
  • The Hangover: Stu wakes up and realizes he's missing a tooth but cannot remember how he lost it. Turns out that while drunk, his friends bet him that he wasn't a good enough dentist to remove his own tooth. So he yanked it out with a pair of pliers. Doubles as a Casting Gag since Ed Helms, Stu's actor, is actually missing the same tooth in real life but covers the hole with an implant.
  • In Hoboken Hollow, Weldon extracts Archie's gold tooth using a pair of multi-grips.
  • I Spit on Your Grave also features a torture scene using this.
  • In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Ken Wheatley often rips a tooth out of the mouth of a tranquilized and/or tied up dinosaur to add the tooth to his necklace. He meets his end when he tries pulling this on the Indoraptor. The creature was only pretending to be tranquilized, and kills him when he gets too close.
  • In Keep an Eye Out! someone eats an oyster in a very literal manner, chewing on the shell. Downplayed as he manages to do that, his mouth only hurting a little.
  • Kimi: Angela is suffering from a toothache at the start, but being an agoraphobe won't see a dentist. Rivas tortures her later by pushing on her tooth.
  • In The Kunoichi: Ninja Girl, the sadistic Higetsu plans to pull all the teeth out of his prisoner's mouth—even though he admits it is not his job—because he likes the sound it makes. After Kisaragi's beating leaves him paralysed, his prisoner turns the tables and pulls out his teeth.
  • The Laurel and Hardy silent Leave 'Em Laughing involves Stanley getting a toothache.
  • In Left for Dead, Mobius tortures Goldie by using her own dental pliers to pull out her teeth.
  • The martial arts flick Magnificent Wanderers have an example overlapping with Money Mauling with the protagonist, Master Chu's intro: flinging two pieces of silver into the mouths of two punks that tried threatening him. Both punks spit out the silver, together with some teeth.
  • In Marathon Man, Szell drills into one of Levy's teeth every time he gets an answer he doesn't like. And being Improperly Paranoid, there's many he doesn't.
  • In Moon, Sam starts losing his teeth (and vomiting blood) as his short-lived clone body breaks down.
  • Oculus is filled with a number of horrible things happening to people's mouths. After going insane, the mother destroys her own teeth by chewing pottery shards. When she escapes, she comes after the kids as a slack-lipped, blood-drooling, feral monstrosity. Later, the mirror Mind Screws Kaylie into biting into a lightbulb instead of an apple. She pulls several long shards of glass out of her mouth before the mirror drops the illusion. It was an apple after all.
  • In Oldboy (2003), the protagonist tortures one of his tormentors by performing dental surgery with a claw hammer. Another antagonist does the same to intimidate him, but only gets one tooth.
  • Palm Springs: Tala slips and falls running over to the pool when Sarah is yelling at Nyles, breaking three of her front teeth. Her dad finds a dentist to glue them before the wedding (of course, this all resets the next loop).
  • In Pawn Shop Chronicles, Johnny gets his incisors smashed with a claw-hammer.
  • In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the Big Bad (former Chief Inspector Dreyfus) gets a bad toothache and sends for a dentist. Clouseau pretends to be the dentist and performs dental malpractice on Dreyfus.
    Dreyfus: He has pulled the wrong tooth! There's only one man who would pull the wrong tooth. It's Clouseau! Kill him! Kill him!
Naturally, because Clouseau botched administering nitrous oxide, both of them are laughing hysterically all through this.
  • In The Revengers, Benedict extracts information about Tarp's whereabouts from Tarp's chief henchman by smashing his teeth in with a pistol.
  • Saw
    • In Saw 3D, a character learns that the combination to get through a door has been etched on two of his teeth. He must extract them with a pair of locking pliers in order to proceed.
    • In an early draft of Saw III, some of the chains holding Troy in place for his trap were hooked through his teeth, requiring him to pull them out if he wanted to free himself. One of the movie's posters displayed three uprooted teeth dangling from wires as the Roman number III.
  • One of the many unsettling sex scenes in A Serbian Film involves a woman who has her teeth removed.
  • Also used in a The Three Stooges short when Curly gets a toothache.
    • A number of Stooge shorts involve teeth being pulled or smashed out, often painfully. It's often the wrong tooth that is yanked, or even the wrong person getting yanked.
  • Triple 9: In Irina's Establishing Character Moment, one of her mooks summons her outside where he opens the boot of a car. Inside are a bloodied and battered man and woman, Bound and Gagged. The mook then hands Irina a plastic bag containing their teeth. It is never revealed what this pair did to displease Irina.
  • Truth or Dare (2017) includes a dare where two teeth have to be pulled, and of course, there's no available anaesthetic.
  • One of the (offscreen) torture methods used by H in the movie Unthinkable is to drill into Yusuf's teeth until his mouth is a bloody mess.
  • The extended version of Watchmen has a scene where Nite Owl attacks a Knot-Top after hearing of Hollis Mason's death. During the beatdown, you can see a number of the gang member's teeth loose in their mouth.
  • In Wild Things, Suzie Toller yanks out one of her own teeth with a pair of pliers in order to fake her death. A scene of her doing this is one of the scenes shown over the closing credits (which fill in the details not shown in the movie).
  • World War Z. A CIA agent reveals that North Korea had a Godzilla Threshold method of stopping the Zombie Apocalypse. The entire population had their teeth removed. Can't bite someone with no teeth, right?
  • In X-Men: First Class, Erik Lehnsherr uses his powers of magnetism to forcibly extract a Nazi sympathist Swiss banker's metal fillings as an interrogation method.

    Literature 
  • In Nineteen Eighty-Four, O'Brien rips out one of Winston's teeth with his hand, to show him that he's "rotting away" and "falling to pieces".
  • In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom has a toothache and his Aunt Polly decides the tooth has to come out. She ties one end of a string to the tooth and the other end to a bedpost, then frightens Tom with a hot coal. When Tom jerks away, the string yanks out the tooth.
  • In Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code, Artemis managed to escape an ambush with a well-placed sonic grenade, which had the side effect of blowing out the teeth of everyone who had their mouths closed when the grenade went off. The next time we see the big bad, he is griping about the increase to his company's dental insurance premiums. His henchman, one of the now-toothless, comes back with a specially-made set of dentures that basicaly turn him into Jaws (the Bond guy, not the fish).
  • In Annie Proulx's novel Barkskins, indentured servant Charles Duquet suffers a toothache and his employer Trepagny pulls the tooth. When Duquet gets a second toothache, Trepagny takes it upon himself to remove all Duquet's teeth. Duquet runs away and becomes a trader, but he remains entirely toothless until he can get molds done in China.
  • Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Berenice" is about a young man with a tendency to go into trance states where he can't remember his actions afterward and a growing obsession with the teeth of his cousin/fiancée Berenice. Eventually he wakes up from one such state, surrounded by bloody dental implements and holding a box full of Berenice's teeth.
  • One story by Wilhelm Busch uses this trope. Hilarity Ensues (well, for the reader). You can read it online here (in German).
  • Clue:
    • Book #4, chapter 4 ("The Deadly Toothbrush"), has one of the guests stealing a ruby-encrusted toothbrush from Miss Scarlet. The solution notes that although the thief got away with their crime, they never actually used the stolen toothbrush for its intended purpose. As a consequence, they had six cavities at their next checkup.
    • Book #7, chapter 5 ("Mrs. Peacock Bites the Bullet"), has Mrs. Peacock losing her gold tooth after she accidentally bites a bullet that had fallen into the cream puff she was eating.
    • Book #11, chapter 3 ("Creature Features") has the guests eating popcorn and watching monster movies. Mr. Boddy's gold pocket watch falls into one of the bowls, and after getting switched around a few times, ends up in the bowl of a guest who doesn't notice its presence and, consequently, bites into it. As a result, Mr. Green has to buy Boddy a new watch and himself a bridge of false teeth.
  • In The Courtship of Princess Leia, Han has been captured by the Nightsister Gethzerion, who starts torturing him by using the Force the break every bone in his body. Desperately trying to stall for time for a rescue to arrive, he asks if she intends to do that to his teeth. Gethzerion likes the idea and promptly causes two of his molars to explode.
    • Shortly after the aforementioned rescue, Leia gives Han a kiss because she's happy he's still alive. Given the teeth situation, Han's not as happy about this as he would normally be.
  • Stanisław Lem's short story "Highest Possible Level of Development" in The Cyberiad had a drug, Altruzine, that caused tele-empathy. A man with a toothache has the painful tooth ripped out by nearby people who don't want to feel his pain. It takes a few tries before they get the right one.
  • In one of the Don Camillo short stories, Communist mayor Peppone has a blinding toothache and goes to the nearest city to have it pulled out, only to hear that now (the late 1940s/early 1950s) dentists can actually cure teeth and avoid pulling them out. Unfortunately for Peppone, the dentist turns out to be a former Fascist whom Peppone had kicked out of the village during WW2, and while he (apparently) does a good job, the scene is pure Nightmare Fuel for Peppone, trapped in his seat with the drill in his mouth.
  • Miranda, in Dr. Franklin's Island, loses all of her teeth transforming into a bird. The roots are reabsorbed and they just come out without blood - the painful aspects of her transformation don't involve this. She tries to seem cool about it to avoid upsetting her friend.
  • In Dune, one character forcibly removes a tooth from another character and installs a fake tooth. It's not done for torture purposes, but it's obviously excruciating.
  • One of the Earth's Children books demonstrates a little Stone Age dentistry: one of the hunters has a large cavity in his tooth, so first the healer jams a red-hot stick into the cavity, presumably to deaden the gerves, but when that doesn't work she pulls the tooth using a length of cord.
  • Enchanted Forest Chronicles: During the climax of Dealing With Dragons, Woraug loses his temper, snatches up the stone prince, shoves him into his mouth and bites down... which proves to be a big mistake, as a moment later, "he howled in pain and spat out the prince and four teeth".
  • Firstborn: Blue Boy loses one of his incisors near the end of the book. He was caught by humans and rammed himself against his cage doors hard enough to lose a tooth. Losing a tooth can be dangerous for a wolf but luckily the wolves in the book know some things about medicine. Blue Boy is left out of commission for a few days and must eat pre-chewed meat, but he ultimately recovers.
  • In The First Law, Glokta had many of his teeth pulled out by torturers, and often pulls teeth himself, or threatens to.
  • In Hogfather, Teatime punches Banjo Lilywhite in the face so hard that Banjo loses a tooth. This is all part of Teatime's plot to sneak into the realm of the Tooth Fairy and use sympathetic magic to make children stop believing in the Hogfather.
  • The Christopher Anvil short story "In the Light of Further data," features a Cloning Body Parts invention that is primarily used by dentists to make new teeth. It's only years later (after twenty-five million people have gotten the procedure) that scientists discover that the procedure eventually causes a second cloned limb or tooth to grow. This forces the dentists to pull out both sets of teeth grown by the procedure, but because the teeth are still perfectly healthy and firmly embedded in the mouth, pulling them is far more difficult and painful than a regular tooth extraction. The hydraulic extraction devices necessary to pull out the healthy teeth are compared to medieval torture devices and often yank out a piece of the jaw along with the tooth. Eventually, it becomes preferable (although not by much) to induce artificial abscesses to multiple teeth at a time to loosen them for the procedure. By the end of the story, dentists are the most hated profession in the world.
  • At the climax of the horror novel Jago, one of the protagonists deliberately drives a metal pin into his own damaged tooth because intense pain is the only thing they've found that can block the villain's mind control.
  • Laughing Jack: In both the first story and the prequel, Laughing Jack damages his victims' teeth. In the former, James' teeth are missing when his mother finds his mutilated body. In the origins prequel, he shatters Isaac's teeth with a hammer.
  • In Les Misérables, Fantine rips out her own teeth with pliers and sells them to raise money the Thénardiers demanded for Cosette.
  • In The Mouse and His Child, Manny loses all of his teeth to a choice clockwork donkey kick, forcing him to depend on others since he can no longer defend himself, or even chew his own food.
  • In her book My Most Secret Desire, Julie Doucet recounts a dream in which her teeth were falling out.
  • Doctor Benway in Naked Lunch goes on about a device he created called the "Switchboard", in which a victim has drills attached to his teeth. The drills turn on whenever the victim makes a mistake in responding to a pattern of colored lights and bells. He remarks that half an hour is usually all the time a victim lasts before breaking down.
  • In the second Phoenix Force novel Guerilla Games, a hostage spits in the face of a terrorist leader. He has her strapped to a table and starts removing every second tooth with pliers, alternating so the top and bottom rows don't match up.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Pia's teeth are bashed in by Gregor Clegane for speaking out of turn, ruining her pretty face. Even more deliberately, Theon's teeth are destroyed to the point where chewing is nigh impossible because his tormentor didn't like his grin.
  • This plays a part in the Dick King-Smith children's book The Stray since the main character has a fear of dentists but starts developing tooth pains partway through the book.
  • Taste Of Marrow by Sarah Gailey. After a gang kidnaps her baby, Adelia Reyes wakes up one of the men they left behind by slapping him so hard she knocks out a tooth, then proceeds to yank out several more by hand until he reveals where the others took her child. Surprisingly she lets him live but puts one of his teeth in her pocket and warns that if he was lying, she'll be back for its mate on the other side of his jaw.
  • The Toymaker's Apprentice: At the ceremony to try and cure Princess Pirlipat, the first candidate, Johan, presents a walnut. He puts it in his mouth and bites down on it in an attempt to crack it. He cracks one of his teeth instead, as evident when he spits out the walnut, along with a chunk of his tooth, into his hand.
  • In the book Wildwood Boys by James Carlos Blake, one dentist did something for three hours with Quantrill. And Quantrill is really drunk and quite afraid to go to that dentist again. Quantrill, who literally never afraid of anything or anyone.
  • In The Witcher Saga, Bonhart finally breaks Ciri by showing her a full collection of tools for dentistry and threatening to use them all on her.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In The Adventures of Superboy, Superboy is attacked by a vampire (since Kryptonians are vulnerable to magic, vampires can harm him). When the vampire tries to bite his neck, he holds up a metal pipe and the vampire bites it instead, screaming in agony.
  • One of the methods of the Sadistic Dentist of Asian Persuasion from Alias.
  • Altered Carbon: In "Shadow of a Doubt", Colonel Carrera tortures a Quellist sympathizer by yanking out her teeth.
  • In the third season of The Americans, Elizabeth hurts a tooth while in a fight, and when the pain becomes too much to bear, Phillip ends up pulling it out (they can't go to a regular dentist for fear of capture).
  • Ana (2020): LatinTuber, a popular influencer, is chasing after Ana and ends up running face-first into a glass door. She ends up with a broken nose and one of her front teeth is missing. Ana tells her to go to the hospital but LT is more worried about her dog Motita, who ran off.
  • Channel Zero:
    • Children who are affected by Candle Cove tend to lose teeth which seem to be absorbed by the Tooth Child. It's later revealed that they remove the teeth themselves as a "toll" for "entering Candle Cove".
    • In Episode 5, Mike starts growing an extra tooth out of his gums, which was the only way to tell him and his dead twin Eddie apart, as a prelude to Eddie's spirit pulling Grand Theft Me on him. To try and stop this, he rips it out with pliers.
  • In Chuck, as part of a If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten! proof of Chuck being a cold-blooded torturer, he is forced to torture Casey. He extracts a tooth to extract information. As it turns out, Casey needed that tooth pulled anyway and thanked Chuck for saving him a trip to the dentist.
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show: In "The Sam Pomerantz Scandals", Rob accidentally smashes a tennis ball into comedian Danny Brewster's mouth the afternoon before opening night. He has to leave to find a dentist, and Rob has to pick up the slack.
  • Season 4 of Gotham features a couple of appearances by a Torture Technician called "the Dentist" for his specialty of drilling into people's teeth to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Mac and Charlie plan to fake their own deaths in a car crash and leave some of their own teeth behind, believing it will be enough to identify their "remains." Mac takes a pair of pliers to Charlie's mouth, but Charlie's oral hygiene is so bad that the tooth comes with no resistance. Charlie casually starts pulling out more teeth — with his fingers — while Mac pleads with him to stop.
    Mac: Damn, dude! You should really brush your teeth more because that is not normal. [Charlie pulls out another tooth and shows it off] Charlie, stop pulling your teeth out! It's really freaking me out!
  • In Jessica Jones (2015) episode 5, Jessica punches Kilgrave in the face while he's knocked out by the anesthetic. When Kilgrave wakes up, he feels around the bruise, then pulls out a broken tooth. With his bare hands. Then he smiles.
  • Justified: In "Long in the Tooth", a former mob accountant turned dentist snaps when confronted by a rude client and yanks out two of his teeth without anesthetic.
  • In Malcolm in the Middle, Hal hurts his tooth while eating some snacks during a poker game, and one of his friends who works as a dentist treats it. However, after getting a huge bill (when he assumed it would be free because the friend said something along the lines of, "I'll take care of it"), Hal eventually rips out his tooth as protest but passes out. He spends the rest of the episode swallowing his food whole.
  • Married... with Children: Al Bundy's teeth are so disgusting and yellowed that even a dentist is appalled at the look of them.
  • A M*A*S*H episode has Charles Winchester suffering from this.
  • In My Name Is Earl, it's mentioned that at the time of his Accidental Marriage to Joy, Earl was three weeks into a relationship with a woman named Jessie. Since he felt guilty, he avoided Jessie for days, and during this time, Joy found the Metallica tickets that Jessie had gotten for her and Earl's three-week anniversary, assuming that Earl had purchased them for his and Joy's honeymoon. Since Earl figured that what was done was done, he went to the concert with Joy and met up with Jessie again at the Crab Shack afterwards. Jessie wondered what was going on, and Joy showed her their wedding rings. Jessie angrily questions, "You married this... whore?" and Joy punches out her two front teeth. Six years later, Joy gets a bounty on her head for failing to appear in traffic court following a Noodle Incident wherein her car got stuck in reverse. Jessie becomes a bounty hunter in order to exact revenge on Joy for a) stealing her boyfriend and b) knocking out her two front teeth. During their Cat Fight, it's shown that while Jessie learned to fight, she didn't learn to fight dirty the way Joy did, and Joy knocks out Jessie's gold fake teeth, which she then tells Earl to melt down for her bail money.
  • In the NCIS episode "The Admiral's Daughter", the Victim of the Week is said to have "suffered extreme periodontal trauma reminiscent of the movie Marathon Man". Near the end, the team rescues a man who has blood coming out of his mouth and on the area surrounding it, implying that he got the same treatment.
  • At the end of the season four finale of NCIS: Los Angeles is probably the most horrifying torture scene in the history of Live-Action TV. Deeks is tortured via dentist drill while Sam, who just endured Electric Torture to the point that he can barely speak, can only look on as he screams in agony.
  • The Noddy Shop: In "The Tooth Fairy", one of Johnny Crawfish's lines is "Tell me, are cavities allowed?", hinting that he could have a few.
  • In Parks and Recreation, certified Manly Man Ron Swanson nonchalantly yanks out a sore tooth with pliers in the middle of a meeting, prompting horrified screams from onlookers.
    Ron: [Aside Comment] The dentist pulled the tooth out yesterday, but it's always a good idea to demonstrate to your coworkers that you are capable of withstanding a tremendous amount of pain. Plus, it's always fun to see Tom faint. [Giggles]
  • Person of Interest: CIA hitman John Reese is sent to kill a supposed traitor but finds out he's only being killed because He Knows Too Much. Reese gives him a ticket to Canada and says he will fake his death, then takes out some pliers.
    Reese: One more thing. Boss is gonna need proof of death. Couple of molars should do it. Care to do the honors?
  • In Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the title character was confronted by a security guard while going to a rock concert with a few of her friends, when the guard couldn't let them in, Sabrina casts a spell that causes his teeth to fall out, the guard notices it and runs off, he is never mentioned again, which also makes him a Victimized Bystander.
  • Sanford and Son: Fred Sanford once went to great pains to avoid the dentist when troubled with a bad tooth, even specifically requesting a black dentist to treat it.
  • Happened to Adam Carter of Spooks during a mission in the former Yugoslavia before the start of the series. He was captured by a Serbian paramilitary and tortured with a dental drill.
  • Strangers From Hell: Moon-jo usually tears out his victims' teeth without anaesthetic before killing them.
  • In the Supernatural episode "Malleus Maleficarum", a witch uses magic to make a woman's teeth fall out. An episode earlier, Dean narrowly escaped having a tooth pulled out as part of a pagan ritual. Another episode had the shapeshifter shed his skin and lose teeth in the process while new ones grew in.
  • One of the regular sketches on Turkey TV was "Dental Nightmares", featuring a Depraved Dentist willing to pull all of a patient's teeth out in response to the smallest dental problem. Some of these he even causes.
  • An episode of Ultraman Taro titled "The Monster's Cavity Hurts!" dealt with a Sea Monster named Sheltar going on a rampage from an agonizing toothache caused by ZAT firing a missile that gets stuck in its teeth. ZAT, being ZAT, make things worse when they try to remove the problem tooth, only to pull out the wrong one.

    Music & Music Videos 
  • The video of Green Day's "Geek Stink Breath" has scenes of a very gruesome dental surgery.
  • The subject of "The Interfaith Dental Clinic" story Townes Van Zandt tells on the album Together at the Bluebird Cafe. The one saving grace is that everyone involved would have been too drunk to feel any pain. Until they sobered up.
  • "The Ones" by Aesthetic Perfection is about a man haunted by teeth-stealing monsters.

    Myth and Legend 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • In a ladder match between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho, Jericho promised to win, Michaels promised to permanently disfigure Jericho. Jericho did win but Michaels broke one of Jericho's teeth, so they both fulfilled their promises.
  • Attempted by Oedo~tai in World Wonder Ring STARDOM as Hana Kimura restrained Christi Jaynes in the ring ropes and forced a scarf in her mouth. Kimura then held Jaynes's jaw shut while Kris Wolf pulled on the scarf, but tooth proved tougher than cloth and the scarf broke.
  • Cesaro took a slingshot spot from Dean Ambrose in No Mercy 2017, but accidentally (and legitimately) smashed his face onto the ring post teeth first. Good news: Cesaro didn't lose his teeth from the hit. Bad news: his two front teeth instead went up and into his gums, and after completing the match (with "The Show Must Go On" taking precedent over the insane pain Cesaro was going through), they had to be surgically extracted from the inside of his own mouth. Mercifully, they were recovered, and after a few years with braces, his teeth have returned to normal.

    Radio 
  • Our Miss Brooks: In "Mr. Conklin is Honored", Conklin loses several teeth when repeatedly hit on the head. The hits on the head weren't maliciously intended but meant to cure a case of Easy Amnesia he had foolishly faked earlier in the episode.

    Religion 
  • In the Book of Proverbs from The Bible, it says that unfaithfulness in a friend in a time of need is like a broken tooth and a foot out of joint.
  • According to Christian tradition, Saint Apollonia was a virgin martyr who was tortured by having all her teeth forcibly pulled out or shattered. For this reason, she is regarded as the patroness of dentistry.

    Tabletop Games 

    Toys 
  • The Play-Doh Dr. Drill and Fill playset lets the kids fill, drill or extract their plastic patient's teeth.

    Video Games 
  • This is alluded to in Afterlife (1996), where one of the punishment buildings for generic sin is called "Tooth or Dare".
    Description: Dentists, dentists, dentists!
  • Discover My Body: Between the two documented phases, the subject asks that his wallet is inserted into his mouth to bite down on. After the transformation, he calmly notes that he bit down so hard that quite a few of his teeth had to be spit out.
  • In Fallen London, during Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name you can choose to have your own teeth pulled out by a dentist. You then eat them. Your utterly deranged character takes delight in this, likening it to having a maw in their maw so they can eat and eat and eat and eat and eat...
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake: Da-chao beans are a delicacy in Wutai, but they are really hard and can hurt your teeth if you don't bite them the right way. In the "Intermission DLC", Billy Bob, Polk, Nayo, and Sonon all fall victim to this.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: One mission has Trevor engaged in Cold-Blooded Torture of a suspected terrorist, one of the possible implements the player can choose is a set of pliers. The tooth gets ripped out by waggling the analog stick. In fact, the mission parameter for selecting and using the pliers in this way as part of the mission is given the same name as this trope.
  • In Inscryption, each point of damage dealt to you or your opponent is represented by a tooth placed on a set of scales. One item you receive is a pair of pliers which you can use to tear out one of your own teeth to add a point of damage, accompanied by a flash of red and ringing noise.
  • In Marco & the Galaxy Dragon, Arco develops a cavity after she and Marco save the Earth from a Nudo, forcing them to seek out a dentist. To Arco’s dismay, the only dentist who can do the job is Pandagraph.
  • In the Atari 2600 game Plaque Attack, you're a tube of toothpaste trying to shoot down various foodstuffs before they reach your teeth, which, if they do, will rot them into oblivion if not shot down fast enough.
  • Peacock's backstory in Skullgirls involves, among other gruesome things, her having all her teeth pulled by slave traders. She has a replacement set of chompers in the form of a mini-bear trap now, though.
  • The Octomaw from the first Splatoon has to have its teeth shot out, both to keep the player from being splatted and to open it up to assault.
  • Surgeon Simulator 2013: The tooth replacement surgery consists of the player drilling or smashing out the patient's teeth, then awkwardly jamming in new ones at incorrect angles. Among possible tools are a bone saw and a hammer.
  • The Soldier is on the receiving end of this in the Team Fortress 2 comics, where holes are drilled into his teeth by the Team Fortress Classic Pyro, for no other reason than simple sadism. After he's freed, his hand gets broken, and he cheerfully remarks:
    The Soldier: Normally that is excruciating. Luckily all my body's pain receptors are busy in my mouth right now.
  • Until Dawn has Matt suffer from this in one of his potential death scenes. Specifically, if he attempts to save Emily from the fire tower. He fails and is forced to jump to safety at the last second, which leads to him being dragged off by a Wendigo and impaled on a hook which knocks out one of his teeth.
  • If a Heat move is performed with the pliers in some of the Yakuza games, the player character will yank out the poor Mook's tooth with it. But only if the Mook isn't trying to attack the player character. If they are, they have a fingernail yanked out instead.
  • WarioWare: Touched!: Wario's story has him visit the dentist after getting a cavity from gorging on chocolate bars. After his teeth are healed the dentist tells him to not eat sweets for the time being but then he comes across a bakery and decides to eat pie even going as far as to dismiss what he was told and gets another cavity.

    Webcomics 
  • In Girl Genius Andronicus Valois ripped out Jenka's "luffly fangs." She's still pissed about it hundreds of years later.
  • Homestuck has this happen a few times. One of the more notable examples is where Sollux get most of his fangs knocked out when he and Karkat fall down some stairs (while Sollux is unconscious and Karkat is dragging him to flee from a murderous juggalo). Surprisingly, Sollux revels in the change when he wakes up, because it means he doesn't have to lisp anymore.
  • The witch Ivory Stalker from The Sword Interval uses teeth to power her (tooth-themed) spells. Specifically, her own teeth. That she rips out of her mouth using pliers. Usually in the middle of fights. Fortunately for her (but not for the readers), she has plenty to spare.
  • During a flashback in Chapter 17 of Unsounded we get to see how younger Sette got her fangs. Turns out she had normal teeth that then dropped out. All at once.

    Web Original 
  • The Creepypasta "I Answered That Craigslist Ad" is about a guy hired to pull all of a guy's teeth. Part two has him replace all the teeth he pulled last time with metal spikes, and cut off Buddy's nose and ears too. Apparently, his client wants to be a human gecko lizard.
  • Happy Tree Friends examples:
    • In "Nuttin' but the Tooth", Nutty goes to a rather inexperienced dentist to get rid of his rotten tooth. Said dentist tries the old-fashioned method of tying one end of a string to the tooth and the other to a doorknob. This procedure ends with Nutty's whole lower jaw being ripped off, with the rotten one being one of the few teeth not to fall out. The dentist? Toothy.
    • In "Snow Place To Go", Toothy chips one of his buckteeth trying to open a can of beans. Later on, he's so hungry he tries eating snow, with predictable results.
    • They made an entire episode dedicated to this called "An Inconvenient Tooth". Three guesses who's the one starring in this episode.
  • In his review for A Simple Wish, The Nostalgia Critic was nice enough to show his Eternally Pearly-White Teeth being shattered at Mara Wilson's cutesy child acting.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-811 has an incomplete digestive system that forces her to vomit up all of her waste instead of disposing of it normally. As such, her teeth quickly decayed, and she requested help with the resulting chronic tooth pain. The Foundation agreed, removed all of her teeth, and supplied her with acid-resistant dentures.
    • SCP-4910 is a cognitohazardous Animalistic Abomination that causes rapid, painful, uncontrollable teeth growth in any humans that witness it. It's capable of spreading its cognitohazardous effect to people, and those who witness a vector suffer ever worse as the dental growth will spread to their lower body, causing pain management to become impossible. The only way to cure this is to forcibly remove all the teeth within 1-2 hours before it spreads.

    Western Animation 
  • Many MGM and Warner Bros. cartoons show a hungry predator unwittingly biting down on something hard they think is food or prey and smashing out all their teeth.
  • In the "Sonic Says" segment at the end of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "Sonic is Running", Tails gets a cavity as a result of not brushing his teeth. Sonic advises the viewers to brush and floss their teeth after every meal and visit the dentist regularly.
  • American Dad!: In "All About Steve", Stan grinds his teeth whenever he's stressed. He eventually breaks his teeth when he grinds too hard, and he is forced to wear braces.
  • King Pig gets a rotten tooth in the Angry Birds Toons episode "Tooth Royal", forcing the Minion Pigs to try all the means of yanking it out. When those don't work, they force him to get beat up by the Birds, who do indeed knock it out... along with the rest of his teeth.
  • The Betty Boop cartoon, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" has Koko get a massive toothache and Betty takes it upon herself to pull out the bad tooth.
  • Big City Greens: A Running Gag for Chip Whistler is that whenever his plans inevitably blow up in his face, he chips his teeth and winds up making a whistling sound whenever he talks. This even happens right before he launches himself out of Big City as salt in the wound for trying to stuff the Greens into a Helicopter Blender.
  • On Bob's Burgers, Louise is discovered to have a cavity that causes her tremendous pain, forcing her to run away to her aunt Gail's house due to her crippling fear of the dentist.
  • Older Than Television example: In Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid Bosko's dog Bruno ate too many brownies. The visual metaphor didn't help matters.
  • The Bump in the Night episode "Nothing but the Tooth" had Mr. Bumpy suffer a toothache and end up having all of his teeth come out and go on a feeding frenzy when he and Squishington attempted to remove the painful tooth. In the end, Bumpy used toothpaste and a toothbrush to tame his chompers and get them back in his mouth.
  • The Dan Vs. episode "Dan Vs. The Telemarketer" has Dan being tormented by the man who stole his identity in "Dan Vs. Dan" (a friendlier, Bizarro version of Dan), eventually leading to him transmitting messages in his head through a special dental filling. Elise eventually has to yank it out, commenting that Dan's teeth are in such bad shape that they're like eggshells.
  • In Dexter's Laboratory, one episode of the Justice Friends has them trying to avoid the dentist from fear of this. It's subverted: Krunk, the Hulk Captain Ersatz, only got a tortilla chip in his tooth — which just needed a simple, painless extraction — compared to all the idiotic stuff Major Glory, who has a pathological fear of dentists, tries to do to his tooth. The Aesop: Go to the dentist, or it'll hurt MORE (which is actually a pretty good Aesop).
    Valhallen: Right, Major Glory?
    Major Glory: (getting his teeth cleaned with a scrapper) RI-I-I-G-H-I-I-I-TTT!!
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy:
    • In "Floss Your Ed", Ed tries to eat a coconut only to scream that his tooth hurts. Eddy spends most of the episode trying to extract it for tooth fairy money.
    • In "Every Which Way But Ed", it's revealed that Jimmy destroyed his teeth by biting into a bowling pin thanks to one of the Ed's scams.
    • "The "Good, the Bad and the Ed" ends with Eddy losing all of his teeth from the many injuries he sustained.
    • In Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show when Ed breaks a peanut open using himself as a nutcracker which contains Eddy’s brother’s car key, he cracks several of his teeth in the process.
  • Family Guy
    • In "Go Stewie Go", Meg rips out her own tooth and throws it at Lois.
    • In "Brian the Closer", Peter's attempts to get Brian to stop chewing on a rope end with Brian being sent flying into a fire hydrant and breaking his teeth. He ends up getting a dental operation for a new set of teeth... and he gets those teeth knocked out by Quagmire at the end.
      Brian: MY TEETH!!!
      Peter (Cringing after seeing Brian's "flaccid" face): Oh, man! I'm really sorry about your mouth, Brian!
      Brian: Damn it, Peter! Why are you thinking? It has to be the stupidest thing you've ever done!
    • Peter and Homer simultaneously punch each other while their teeth fly in "The Simpsons Guy"
  • In The Flintstones, Barney has a severe aching tooth that needs to be extracted. Fred wants to extract the tooth himself to save money. When that fails, he takes Barney to a veterinarian for less charge. It goes wrong when Barney inhaled too much gas causing him to float.
  • The Gravity Falls episode "Dreamscaperers" has Bill Cipher, the pyramid guy summoned by Gideon, tear out the teeth of a deer and hand them to him. He later puts them back. Thankfully, the deer didn't feel a thing since he froze time.
  • Harriet the Spy had an episode where Harriet had to have her last baby tooth removed (since it was being wedged out by her other teeth); however, she could not part with her tooth, as it was an imaginary friend of hers, General Mouth Washington (she also didn't want to let go of the past and grow up). Soon after, the pain from the unremoved tooth became too much for her to bear, and after some encouragement from her friends and family, she finally has her tooth removed.
  • The Huckleberry Hound Show episode "Pet Vet" had Huck as a veterinarian attempting to cure a lion of a toothache. Needless to say, it didn't go so well.
  • Kaeloo: Stumpy spends the entirety of Episode 131 with a toothache. At the end, Serguei punches him, sending him flying, and he crashes into a tree, making his front teeth fall out.
  • King: In "Monsteritis", monster Loopy bites down on Vernon, and just shatters his own teeth.
  • Kissyfur: Gus has a toothache one day and needs to remove a tooth to stop the pain.
  • The Loud House:
    • The Loud House:
      • In "Selfie Improvement", Bobby has his wisdom teeth taken out, and while Lori is obsessed with one-upping Carol Pingrey at more likes for selfies, it has caused her to neglect what's really important, and it was comforting her boyfriend during his surgery.
      • In "Sister Act", where Lana and Lola switch places to get out of things one twin dislikes but the other enjoys, they try dressing up as each other once more so the former can avoid a dentist appointment and the latter can avoid a doctor's appointment. It backfires on both of them the next day, with Lana getting an abscessed tooth, preventing her from eating a massive sundae she won in a recycling contest, and Lola coming down with a nasty case of the flu, preventing her from competing in a pageant. Had the twins gone to their respective appointments as themselves in the first place, their respective medical professionals would've caught and immediately treated the early warning signs of these ailments before they got any worse. The twins are forced to fess up to their parents of what they did so their doctor and dentist don't lose their medical licenses for negligence and get a big scolding for their irresponsibility, and then have to attend the appointments they avoided so they can get healthy again, with Lana stating she can't go back to Auntie Pam's until they see her dental x-rays.
    • The Casagrandes:
  • Molly of Denali: In "Tooth or Consequences," Molly is suffering from a cavity, but still avoids the dentist until the end of the episode, when she gets a filling.
  • In the Muppet Babies (1984) episode, "Dental Hijinks", Fozzie's tooth pain got him sent to the dentist. The rest of the gang shared his fear and felt for him.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "The Cutie Pox", Apple Bloom trips over a root and chips a tooth. Fortunately, Zecora has the skill to prepare a dentistry potion.
    • In "Mare in the Moon", Nightmare Moon did not have fangs. In an animatic clip showing a flashback to when she first became Nightmare Moon, she does.
    • In "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone", Pinkie Pie breaks her teeth trying to eat Gilda's poorly made scones. Since Pinkie runs on Toon Physics, she's fine in the next scene.
    • In "A Royal Problem", Luna suffers from the classic "teeth falling out" nightmare, brought on by her failure to smile properly for the camera at a school fundraiser earlier that same day.
  • Oh Yeah! Cartoons used this trope in the Jamal the Funny Frog short "Dentist", where Jamal got a toothache from eating candy and cake for breakfast. He initially dreads going to the dentist, but the dentist is able to extract his decayed tooth harmlessly and subsequently repair the tooth and put it back into Jamal's mouth when he can't bear to part with it.
  • In the PAW Patrol episode "Pups Save a Toof", Chase injures one of his teeth, and he spends the episode afraid of having to go to the dentist to get it fixed.
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Bubble Boys", during Dr. Doofenshmirtz's attempt at country-western singing:
    Audience Member: This stinks so bad I wanna break somethin'!
    (He grinds his teeth together and they shatter with the sound of glass breaking.)
    Audience Member: ... Yeah, that really wasn't worth it.
  • The Powerpuff Girls has two instances that end up being Dentist Episodes:
  • An extra gruesome episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show showed why it pays to brush teeth.
    • During Stimpy's transformation in "I Was a Teenage Stimpy", his baby teeth fall out, and ugly "adult" teeth grow out of the tooth holes.
  • In Rocko's Modern Life's episode "Jet Scream", Rocko goes through a metal detector at a local airport and it buzzes every time he walks through no matter what he took out of his pockets. When he finally strips down to his underwear to set aside his shirt and shoes, the metal detector still buzzes and Rocko walks up to the security guard, letting him know he has nothing else to set aside. The security guard then pulls out pliers, and Rocko wears a nervous expression on his face. Cue discretion shot and the sound of Rocko screaming in pain as a tooth is heard being yanked out.
  • This plays a part in a Rugrats episode, where Angelica is trying to pull out one of Chuckie's teeth for tooth fairy money.
  • In The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Moor's Baby", one of Lord Balthazar's goons has a tooth that's hurting. Also Baby Smurf and the titular moor's baby are both going through teething pains as they are about to have their first tooth.
  • In the Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Crystal Clear", Star hurts her teeth when she tries to eat a crystallized donut.
  • In Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, Chumley got rather destructive in his pain-induced rage. Yet even after encouragement from the ever-informative Mr. Whoopie, he was hardly willing to see a dentist.

    Real Life 
  • Pulling a tooth before it's completely loose hurts, as hundreds of screaming children attest.
    • Nowadays, injecting the anesthetic is the hurty part. Then half your jaw feels "jammed" and you almost don't feel the teeth being pulled. But if your roots are thick, or if your teeth are lodged in there pretty good, and especially if they're not oriented straight up-and-down, it can hurt even if your jaw is pumped full of anesthetic.
    • This is the main reason many people opt to be put under during the actual surgery. However, even afterwards there is pain in the area (usually, pain pills are prescribed), sometimes accompanied by bruised cheeks, sores around the corners of the mouth, or a particularly nasty condition called dry-socket.note 
  • Dry socket. It's exactly what it sounds like. Basically, after a tooth extraction, a blood clot forms over the empty socket that begins the healing process. However, depending on how well the patient followed their dentist's instructions, the clot can actually become dislodged, exposing the empty socket and the jaw bone underneath. It is a painful, long-lasting experience that delays the healing process by quite a bit. The pain is so severe that it can be felt across the sufferer's face, and can be immobilizing. Thankfully, most tooth extractions have only a 5 percent chance of leading to this. The only exceptions are the lower wisdom teeth, in which dry socket happens 30 percent of the time. Note for those worried, if you think you may have a dry socket, you most likely don't. You will know the second it happens.
  • Tooth cavities, or worse, tooth abscesses.
  • Chipping a tooth, if you lose enough it'll expose the nerve causing all kinds of pain.
  • Considerably less severe than the other cases presented, but newly-applied braces can leave one with the entire mouth feeling sore until the teeth get used to the unrelenting tension.
    • Not to mention bleeding and possible inability to eat solid food till the soreness goes away.
    • And in many cases, the soreness will come back every time you get the braces tightened until you've had them on long enough and had them adjusted enough times that your mouth becomes used to the routine.
    • There's also the problem with cuts or sores in your mouth, as braces can be unexpectedly sharp. You can get a type of wax to put on the sharp ends and tracks until they smooth off.
  • Sudden heat or cold can be painful, especially if your teeth are more sensitive.
  • And it only gets worse in the history books! Imagine being the last guy to get a tooth pulled before the invention of novocaine.
  • Pulling the pin from a grenade with your teeth is never a good idea in real life. It's a great way to break or even yank a tooth out.
  • A famous hoax that made it into the news consisted of a jilted dentist pulling all her ex-boyfriend's teeth as revenge.
  • A German dentist, in an effort to save time, gave his patient fourteen root canals in one appointment. She later sued because of the excruciating pain she suffered afterward since he used cognac rather than Novocain or laughing gas.
  • Dying nerves. Imagine all the pain of an agitated tooth and then multiply it by triple, and then having it last all day until you manage to get to a dentist so it gets cleaned out... or down enough Advil to kill a horse.
  • Actually averted now with root canals: modern medicine has made it so it's more tedious than anything else. Of course, your jaw probably will be sore after holding it open for so long, however.
  • Among a hundred other brutal but life-saving treatments, Dominique Larrey once had to break the front teeth of a grenadier whose jaw was locked by tetanus in order to feed him with a rubber tube.
  • A common French expression for Blatant Lies dates from the heroic age of dentistry: "mentir comme un arracheur de dents" (lie like a tooth-ripper).
  • Happened to Denise Nickerson, who played the gum-chewer Violet in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Because sugar-free gum in the 1970s was unsuitable for blowing bubbles, she had to chew the regular version in every scene. After filming had completed, she wound up with 13 cavities.
  • About long as people throughout history have been recording accounts of their dreams, it has been noted that people who are experiencing a period of time where they are feeling intense stress or anxiety (usually when faced with some radical change or a new phase in their life) has a much higher tendency to dream of their teeth decaying or falling out.
  • Jim Carrey lost a chunk of his front tooth in a childhood biking accident. He usually wears a cap over it, but he takes it off for his role as Lloyd Christmas because it fit the character so perfectly.
  • A frequent injury in boxing, for obvious reasons. Also in hockey, where just about every NHL player has a few teeth missing.
  • Many masochists meals aren't dubious because of taste or origin, but because they are so damnably hard, trying to chew (or worse, bite) them will only end in suffering. Hardtack was known for costing sailors their teeth, and in one example that's lasted into the modern age Chicharrones are what keeps dentists in South America (especially Colombia) rich.
  • The documentary Class Action Park recalls that during testing of said park's most infamous ride, a looping water slide, at a certain point every subject started appearing with lacerations. They went to the loop, and discovered that the cause was dislodged teeth of previous riders that got stuck to the floor!

 
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Milo's Jawbreaker

Just when the tooth fairy ventures lawyer is about to eat Milo's Frankenstein's Eye jawbreaker, he decided to bite it with his teeth, causing them to break, even if he wasn't supposed to bite it in the first place. He then thanks Milo for the jawbreaker since now he can finally meet the tooth fairy as that was his dream for his entire life, so he decided to put his broken teeth into his suitcase so he can put it under his pillow. This also happened to Milo at the end where after he received his free jawbreaker after breaking the record on eating the jawbreaker for 24 hours, he decided to bite it as well, which causes his teeth to also break.

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