Basic Trope: Food so bad that not even vermin want it.
- Straight: Lily, the resident Lethal Chef, makes a pie for Alice and Bob. They drop the leftovers (read: the whole pie) on the floor so the rats can have them. However, the rats run away from them after smelling them.
- Exaggerated:
- Not a single organism is willing to touch Lily's pie.
- The rats will happily eat rat poison if the other option is Lily's cooking.
- Downplayed: Alice's dog Tropey doesn't want to eat the pie.
- Justified:
- Lily makes a Screwball Serum. The rats won't touch it because they saw what happened to Alice and Bob when they consumed it.
- Or it's why No-Fur has… no fur
- Inverted:
- Lily's cooking is so good that the rats, who are used to garbage, won't touch it.
- Lily's cooking is so good even the pickiest eaters in the animal kingdom go nuts for it.
- Lily's cooking is very bad, meaning that rats absolutely love it.
- Subverted:
- The rats are reluctant to try Lily's pie, but decide to do so after smelling it.
- Rats refuse to eat Lily's food, leading Bob to think it must be bad. But then Lily convinces Bob to try it and he likes it. Lily questions what rats know, anyway.
- Double Subverted:
- Then they throw up. Someone notes that they shouldn't even technically be able to do that, making this kind of impressive.
- Bob was just being polite, he really hated it and he laments that he should have listened to the rats.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: The rats eat the pie leftovers.
- Enforced: The writers had to include An Aesop about junk food, so they added a scene to show that even rats won't touch the stuff.
- Lampshaded: "Wow... and those are animals that eat garbage..."
- Invoked: Lily plans to make Bob fall in love with her Through His Stomach, so Alice arranges her "cooking lessons" that will make her an incredibly terrible chef.
- Exploited: Alice and Bob use Lily's cooking to keep rats away.
- Defied: Alice mocks Lily for having cooking so bad rats don't like it, leading her to figure out how to cook food that rats will love out of sheer spite.
- Discussed:Bob: (whispering to Alice) I bet that even starving rats wouldn't eat this.
- Conversed:
- Played for Drama: Alice and Bob eat most of Lily's pie, and drop the rest on the floor so the rats can have it. The rats smell it, but refuse to eat it. Then Carl mentions that rats are good at smelling a specific poison...
- Played for Horror: The only food available is a Screwball Serum that even the rats won't touch, but Alice and Bob have to consume it and endure the horrifying effects if they want to avoid starving to death...
- Implied: Alice and Bob have no idea what to do with Lily's leftovers, even though leaving it for the rats would seemingly be an obvious solution.
The main article is here somewhere, but Even the Rats Won't Touch It.
