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Toilet Teleportation

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"See you later, Sewer Gators!"
"If you're trying to flush yourself down the toilet, it won't work. Trust me, I've tried."
Amethyst to Peridot, Steven Universe

There are plenty of ways to get from point A to point B. But what do you do when the doors are all locked or guarded, the windows are barred, and you need a quick and easy way in or out? Just use the toilet, the john, the commode, the can, the head, or even the crapper. Toilet Teleportation is when a character needs to escape or sneak in and flushes himself down a toilet, to reappear in another part of the plumbing network. It's (almost) always Played for Laughs. If it doesn't work, expect someone to ask why anyone would think it would.

See also Bathroom Break-Out. A subtrope of Fun with Flushing.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Kyo Kara Maoh! starts with the main character getting a swirlie and winding up teleported to another world.
  • Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: The episode "Les Diaboliques" reveals that there's a ghost factory hidden beneath the school, and is only accessible through the school's toilets and urinals.

    Asian Animation 
  • Momo (2022): In the first episode "All Roads To School", Momo gets accidentally flushed in a toilet by a janitor and ends up in the sewer. Her father observes the flush with distraught, although he flushes himself reluctantly to catch up.

    Comic Books 
  • Górsky & Butch: Done as part of The Matrix parody — Gorsky has to stay behind to flush the group and gets captured by agents.
  • InvestiGators: Mango and Brash use their toilet-based travel techniques to get around town easily or to S.U.I.T. Headquarters.
  • In an issue of Secret Six Ragdoll sneaks into a H.I.V.E. facility by crawling UP a toilet.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Facing the Future Series, thanks receiving swirlies as many times as he had been shoved into his locker, Sidney Poindexter is able to crossover into Casper High using the toilet in the restroom as a portal.

    Films — Animation 
  • A variation in DC Showcase – Constantine: The House of Mystery. Contantine tries to use a pool of water for a Pensieve Flashback, but is killed and brought back to life before seeing anything. So the next time he pretends to be going to take a leak, locks himself in the toilet and sticks his head in the toilet bowl.
  • Finding Nemo: One of Gill's many escape plans involves being flushed down the toilet by playing dead. When Nemo tries this it doesn't work (the dentist was going to throw him in the trash), but he does get flushed down the drain of a different appliance in the dentist's office. In this case, it is a carefully developed plan and not Played for Laughs.
  • Flushed Away: An inadvertent one is how the plot starts.
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - Mission Incredible: Adventures on the Dragon's Trail, when the dragons holding up the plants in the goats' world realize that their location is unsafe, they all escape from their underground cave. One of them happens to be using the toilet and escapes by jumping into it.
  • This is done by Judy and Nick in Zootopia to escape from Cliffside Asylum once they get accidentally locked in a cell. This case is justified by the fact that the cell they were in was intended for large mammals, which with Judy being a bunny and Nick being a fox meant they could easily escape through the plumbing.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): Chip and Dale escape from Sweet Pete by going down the toilet in his private bathroom. Chip finds the idea disgusting, but realizes he doesn't have much choice.
    Dale: It's our only chance! Live a little!
    Chip: Live a little? You seem excited about this!
  • Critters: Subverted when one of the Crites attempts to escape from the bounty hunters via the toilet bowl. It's a bit too fat to fit, and can't squeeze down the hole before one of the hunters blows it (and the toilet itself) away.
  • Ghoulies II: A Ghoulie sneaks into a bathroom this way.
  • Men in Black II: Parodied when Jay and Kay have to be "flushed" from headquarters. They're not flushed out through an actual toilet... just something that looks like one.
  • The Tooth Fairy: Derek Thompson uses shrinking paste to shrink himself down and then flushes himself down the toilet in order to escape mockery from his teammates while in the locker room.
    Tracey: Why are you all wet?
    Derek: Shut up!
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Roger Rabbit (accidentally) uses this trick while breaking into the Acme factory to rescue Jessica and Eddie.

    Literature 
  • Bras and Broomsticks: In one of the sequels, several of the characters begin using a teleportation spell that causes them to arrive in a public bathroom at their destination, presumably so they don't attract attention by simply appearing out of thin air.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg assumes the stewards are not afraid of having to leave because they have their own emergency exits. We then get an image of one leaving by flushing himself down the toilet.
  • Harry Potter: The employee entrance to Ministry of Magic is accessed by flushing oneself down a disgusting public pay toilet. Visitors take a decrepit phone booth.
  • Life, the Universe and Everything: The teleportation cubicles in the starship Bistromath are in the bathroom. Given that the rest of the ship is designed to look like a restaurant, this is one of the more normal things about it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In one episode of ALF, upon being trapped in the bathroom by a giant alien cockroach, ALF momentarily contemplated doing this before ultimately deciding against it.
  • Chappelle's Show: Tyrone Biggums uses this to escape from a drug intervention.
  • TV Funhouse: Hojo, the turtle member of the "Anipals" segments on "TV Funhouse" would regularly opt to travel by being flushed down the pipes rather than walking with the rest of the gang. Sometimes this was to escape something, but usually just a means of transportation.
  • BBC's Robin Hood series has Robin and his gang escaping from Nottingham Castle via latrine pipes frequently.
  • The Carol Burnett Show: Inverted in a spoof of Jaws. The shark is in a toilet. The Quint character fishes for it through the toilet hole, and gets pulled in to his death.
  • The pilot episode of Max Headroom has a bizarre bit of Hollywood Hacking where Theora gets to a security camera she shouldn't have access to by hacking the toilet in the men's room and following the pipe to the Executive Washroom.
  • The Animated Credits Opening for the 1989-1991 UK kids puppet show Round The Bend which was about the misadventures of a abusive boss sewer dwelling crocodile "Doc Croc" and his rat employees (actually slaves as they were never paid) starts with the camera/viewer being beckoned down the toilet by Doc Croc's arm and then the perspective following them down the toilet and around the sewers till you reach the set of the show as it switches to live action/puppets.

    Video Games 
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the player must use a toilet like a Warp Pipe to escape the locker room they're trapped in near the end of Chapter 3. Goombella and Flurrie do not enjoy the experience.
  • In Boogerman, the eponymous hero travels extensively by toilet, including in the opening cutscene. In-game, toilets provide access to secret levels.
  • In Abobo's Big Adventure, Abobo eventually gets trapped in a cell without doors, and wind up escaping through the toilet. Which, predictably, leads him into the water-level based mostly on Super Mario Bros....
  • Day of the Tentacle has three characters (Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne) who end up in different time periods, and send items back and forth via a set of porta-potties to solve problems and save the world from a giant tentacle. It's that kind of game.
  • In DUSK, flushing yourself down the toilet in E3M4 unlocks a bonus level.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, after being arrested, Captain Qwark flushed himself down the prison toilet to escape from his Personal Hygienator scam trial.
  • The Game Boy Color version of Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers includes a literal teleporter built into a toilet, called the "TELEPOT". When Daphne flushes it, she ends up zapped into the garage, where Dr. Jekyll takes her prisoner in his nearby lab.
  • In the artbook for Splatoon, there's a piece of concept art showing an Inkling traveling via an... inked-up urinal.
  • Manhunter features an unusually cartoonish scene where the player sits in a Disgusting Public Toilet and jiggles the handle a few times... only to get bodily sucked down the commode and ending up in the game's maze-like sewer level.

    Webcomics 
  • Magellan: Vostok does this. It backfires when, due to the pounding the island is taking, the sewage treatment center is basically pulverized and he almost dies.
  • Achewood: At one point, this is how the characters get out of hell.
  • Schlock Mercenary: The titular Schlock travels by sewer on several occasions - mostly against his will, but on at least one occasion, he deliberately dives down a toilet in order to reach his destination stealthily. Justified in his case since he's basically a Blob Monster, and thus quite capable of fitting himself through the pipes.
    Web Video 

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Amphibia: In ''Trip To The Archives'' Sprig ultimately escapes from the archives by swimming through a pipe and crawling out the toilet in the ladies restroom of Felicia's Tea Shoppe.
  • Futurama:
    • After Bender gets rid of Nibbler by flushing him down the toilet, he tries to get him back by flushing himself piece by piece.
    • In "Leela's Homeworld", when Leela's sewer-dwelling parents are quietly watching out for her as she grows up, they pass her a tin of cookies through the toilet.
  • Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: This is generally how the characters make their escapes.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar: When the penguins need to break Julien out of the vet office, and Julien suggets his personal escape route, pointing at the toilet. The penguins reluctantly get in the bowl, and that's when Julien shows them the real secret exit, a hidden door over the tank. "But, who am I to keep a penguin from water?", and flushes down the penguins before they get a chance to object.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: The episode "Operation: F.L.U.S.H." features the Toilenator both arriving through the toilet, and being disposed of by the heroes in this fashion during the credits. Though, whether because of his new toilet bowl armor or the particular golden toilet he used at his hideout, it's revealed that the Toilenator can get stuck halfway if the toilet gets clogged up, resulting in him having to plunge himself down.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Subverted when Spongebob and Patrick pretend to be ghosts and haunt Mr. Krabs. They clogged all the toilets so he couldn't try to escape that way.
  • My Life as a Teenage Robot: In "A Pain in my Sidekick" Tuck does this to escape the opera house blowing up.
    I flushed myself down the toilet, like anyone would.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Perry the Platypus used a secret toilet entrance to get to mission control HQ. Subverted in the closing credits gag on "The Lake Nose Monster (parts 1 and 2)": Doofenshmirtz tries to escape the same way Perry the Platypus did. He vanishes behind a door. The viewer hears a toilet flush sound and sees water coming from under the door. Doof moans "Oh, oh, oh, that didn't work at all. Now I really need to do the laundry."
  • Bonkers: One of the final shots of the opening sequence shows Bonkers D. Bobcat getting flushed down a toilet, essentially "exiting" the intro.
  • Kid vs. Kat: Kat flushes himself down the toilet in search of his latest invention in "Down The Drains".
  • This is Invader Zim's main method of transportation.
  • Steven Universe: Peridot gets cornered in Steven's bathroom in "Catch and Release" and tries to flush herself down the toilet, which was probably put in because Peridot is an Expy of Invader Zim mentioned above (and Rebecca Sugar is a proclaimed fan of IZ herself). But it doesn't work, and Amethyst tells her that it didn't work when she tried it either.
  • In the Angry Birds Toons episode "Hamshank Redemption", the pig the episode focuses on flushes himself down a toilet in his cell in an attempt to escape the prison compound. He ends up in the cell of another prisoner. The first prisoner flushes himself back down, only to emerge in one of the guards' toilets. The guards throw him back into his cell, with his toilet removed. Towards the end of the episode, the second prisoner blasts out of the ground where the first prisoner's toilet was.
  • In the Soviet short French-Styled Robberynote  this mode of transportation is used twice in an elaborate bank robbery plan. First Bridgitte Bardot expy flushes her father's pet mouse down a kitchen sink. Then the fartherexpy of  enters the bank toilet posing as a plumber.expy of  Then mouse jumps out of the tap (yes, water pipe, not the sewer) and roars, the scared guardexpy of  jumps into the toilet bowl. Then the false plumber and his accompliceexpy of  (hiding in the plumber's toolbox) flush the guard, fill the toolbox with money and leave.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: In "Liar, Liar, You For Hire?", Flapjack escapes from Captain Johnny's ship by flushing himself down the toilet (which, for some reason, is connected to Stormalong's sewer system).
  • Averted for laughs in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Rabbot Redux" where Master Shake convinces Meatwad that the toilet is a portal. Meatwad crawls in and tries to activate the portal only to find himself "trapped between two dimensions". All they wind up doing is flooding the bathroom of their new house.
  • Looney Tunes: In Kitty Kornered, Porky tries to evict a foursome of freeloading cats by tricking them into thinking there's a dog in the house. One of the cats can't find a way out and resorts to going down the kitchen sink.
    "Geronimo-o-o-o-o!"
  • In Total Drama, the elimination exit in All-Stars is an enormous toilet called "The Flush of Shame". Contestants are flushed to locations previously visited in World Tour, such as Lindsay ending up in New York, or Heather in the Yukon.
  • Oh Yeah! Cartoons: The Hobart shorts both involve the title character being flushed down the toilet and winding up in a new world where he has to bring someone back with him, the first short "The Weedkeeper" having him wind up in a garden world tended to by a gnome who tries to take the dog he got for his girlfriend Okra and the second short "Deep Sea Diva" having him find himself underwater and having to rescue Okra from a merman named Ethel.
  • We Baby Bears episode "Bears and the Beanstalk" Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear flush themselves down a giant toilet to escape.
  • Earthworm Jim had an entrance to his base hidden in a bathroom. We see him go into a stall and hear him flush a toilet offscreen. Peter Puppy reminds him that the entrance is in a different cubicle.

    Real Life 
  • There's a slide in a Las Vegas water park called the Royal Flush. Guess what it does. (You slide down a steep, pitch black tube and then swirl around in a large, enclosed "bowl" before you fall out a hole in the center into a pool.)
  • Snakes are notoriously known for being able to slither up toilets. Other creatures known to travel through the pipes into houses via this route include rats, frogs, and even monitor lizards!

 
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Bad Day

Gumball accidentally slips on a bar of soap in the shower and ends up flushing himself down the toilet.

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Main / FunWithFlushing

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