Tampering with Food and Drink in Live-Action TV series.
- In The A-Team episode "Double Heat", it's subverted as a part of the scheme. Hannibal, posing as a waiter, takes a bite of the sandwiches Mr. Olsen ordered up to his room and fakes choking, causing the Federal agents to hustle Mr. Olsen to safety, fearing a security breach. Hannibal, of course, is just fine and simply wanted Olsen out of harm's way.
- Alien Nation: In the television movie "The Udara Legacy" Susan recalls having poured a substance on some food meant for the Overseers, and that the Overseer who consumed the food she poisoned died a few minutes later.
- One of Charlie's girls slips several tabs of LSD into Hodiak's drink in Aquarius. While Hodiak is a fictional character, this is Truth in Television, as the plan for the Manson girls to get rid of one witness was to try to feed her a hamburger laced with LSD
- In Babylon 5, Londo makes a request of Lord Refa to break the association with the Shadows, and explains why he believes Refa will cooperate:Londo: Because I have asked you, because your sense of duty to our people should override any personal ambition, and because I have poisoned your drink.
- In the second episode of The Borgias, there's some poisoned wine at a banquet; it's intended for Pope Alexander, but Cesare brought a monkey to test it and when the monkey dies, Cesare and his father avoid the wine and storm out.
- Breaking Bad:
- Walter attempts to kill Tuco by slipping ricin into his burrito while Tuco's back is turned, but he's foiled by Hector, whom he thought was senile, who notices Walt adding something to Tuco's lunch. Although Hector can't talk, he uses his bell to convince Tuco to switch lunches with him and then knocks the burrito onto the floor, clueing Tuco in that Walter and Jesse are up to no good.
- Walter poisons Brock with poison from a Lily-o-the-Valley from his garden to make Jesse think Brock is in danger from Gus.
- A non-fatal version occurs in "Fly", as Jesse is noticing that Walt has gotten incredibly obsessive over trying to kill a housefly that's gotten into the lab, even spending a whole night up trying to catch it. He attempts to force Walt to go to sleep by slipping sleeping pills into his coffee. They start taking effect at the worst possible moment however, as Walt is steadying a precarious ladder so Jesse can reach the fly while struggling to even keep his eyes open.
- This is part of Walter's endgame plan in the Grand Finale. Knowing she's a Creature of Habit, he takes out Lydia by spiking the Stevia at the table she always sits at with ricin, dooming her to a slow death.
- Gus Fring takes out Don Eladio, his clan and the remaining member of the Salamanca family (aside from Hector) with a poisoned bottle of Zafiro Añejo. Gus Fring drinks the tequila as well to avoid suspicion, he took a pill to minimize its effect and vomits it up a few minutes later, but still has to be hospitalized for its lingering effects.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: When Joyce starts dating Ted he wins her and Buffy's friends over with batches of fresh cookies. Buffy, who refused to eat the cookies, sees how controlling Ted really is and is frustrated when nobody believes that he threatened to hit her. Willow eventually runs some tests on the cookies and discovers Ted was lacing them with an ecstasy-like drug to keep everyone who ate them compliant.
- Burn Notice has Michael slip peanuts into the dinner of a mercenary with an allergy. He then steals the man's EpiPen and interrogates him before he falls into anaphylactic shock.
- Castle:
- In "The Late Shaft", the Victim of the Week is killed when the murderer spikes his cranberry juice with balsamic vinegar, which has a fatal interaction with his medication.
- In "The Squab and the Quail", the Victim of the Week is killed by poison sprayed upon an appetizer in an exclusive restaurant.
- Used as an important plot point in Chelmsford 123 when Grasientus attempts to poison an entourage from the local British tribe.
- The Coroner: In "That's the Way to Do It", the Victim of the Week has their food spiked with shellfish to trigger a fatal allergic reaction. However, someone else murders them before the allergic reaction can take effect.
- CSI has a case where one juror wants to induce an allergic reaction in another but decides not to go through with it at the last minute, and consumes the laced food themselves, subverting the trope.
- CSI: NY:
- In "YoungBlood," a guy dies of anaphylactic shock when two others prank him by sneaking lobster broth into his soup even though they know he's allergic to shellfish.
- In "City of the Dolls," a young woman's neighbor is poisoned to death from arsenic-laced teabags a neighbor brought her hoping she'd die & they could purchase her apartment and expand their own because they were expecting and didn't have room for a nursery.
- In "Blood Actually," a woman murders her diabetic husband by giving him a 2 lb box of chocolates with a sugar-free label on it. Actually, they are normal chocolates. She also replaces his insulin with a sugar syrup, so when he injects himself, he just shoots up more sugar.
- A variation occurs in "Creatures of the Night." An exterminator laces scrambled eggs with poison to attract and kill a hoard of rats because one of them ate a bullet the investigators need to retrieve in order to identify a dead man's shooter.
- Daredevil (2015): In season 1, Madame Gao and Leland Owlsley make an attempt to kill Wilson Fisk's girlfriend Vanessa Mariana by spiking her champagne and the champagne of some other guests at a gala that Fisk is hosting. It fails, as Fisk rushes Vanessa to the emergency room in time for the doctors to pump her stomach.
- Death in Paradise:
- In "Damned If You Do...", the killer poisons the stew being eaten by everyone in an attempt to make the murder look like food poisoning.
- In "A Murder in Portrait", Renowned artist Donna Harman (Louise Brealey) is found poisoned in her studio, having seemingly ingested an energy drink laced with cyanide. Aside from the victim, nobody else had access to either the drink or the studio prior to her death. The killer actually used chloroform to knock her out and then made sure they the first to reach her 'body'. While examining her, they administered a fatal dose of cyanide, then added a few drops to the can of drink, making it appear to be the source of the poison.
- Dead Man's Gun: In "Black Widow", Lillian Posey poisons her husband by using a hypodermic to inject poison into a sealed bottle of wine through the cork.
- In The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "The Impractical Joke", Rob brings Buddy some jelly donuts, which Buddy refuses to touch, believing they're somehow related to the payback he expects. Rob and Sally have to bite into all three of them to prove nothing's wrong, which of course leaves them useless for Buddy anyway.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Moonbase", the Cyberman contaminate the base's sugar supply as a means of spreading their virus.
- In "The Unicorn and the Wasp", the Tenth Doctor drinks "sparkling cyanide". He survives it in a true Funny Moment.
- In "The Pandorica Opens", River Song purchases a Vortex Manipulator, offering to exchange it for a Callisto Pulse, a device that can disarm micro-explosives.Dealer: What kind of micro-explosives?
River: The kind I just put in your wine.
- Endeavour: In "Arcadia", an extortionist who is targeting a supermarket has planted tainted products on their shelves, putting arsenic in the bloater paste and crushed glass in the baby food.
- Fargo: Happens in the third season, where V.M. Varga has Sy Feltz drink tea filled with an unknown chemical. This causes Sy Feltz to fall into a months-long coma.
- Father Brown: In "The Blood of the Anarchists", Titan—who is allergic to nuts—is murdered by someone spiking his hip flask with crushed almonds.
- 'FBI: Most Wanted'':
- In "Patent Pending", McCann and Cooley drug the water bottles of Magnus and his board members at his crucial presentation.
- In "Double Fault", the Revolutionary Guard spikes Lula's water bottle. When she collapses from the poison, their fake EMTs swoop in and pick her up.
- In the Frontier Circus episode "The Shaggy Kings", a renegade Indian poisons the circus's meat supply in order to force them to divert to Adobe Walls.
- In The Glades episode "Marriage Is Murder", the Victim of the Week is an Amoral Attorney who had his drink spiked with antifreeze. However, someone else stabbed him before the poison could take effect.
- In The Haunting of Hill House (2018), Olivia attempts to kill Luke, Nelly and Abigail. She fills a teapot with rat poison and takes them all to the Red Room for a tea party. Abigail, who is the daughter of the property groundskeepers, drinks the tea and starts to choke. Hugh rushes in before Luke and Nelly drink their tea and smacks them out of their hands. Abigail dies and Olivia realises the weight of her actions.
- House: One Patient of the Week in the episode "Clueless" turned out to have been poisoned by his wife, using gold-based arthritis medicine after House and his team had ruled out everything else. She did get arrested for it, although they never found out why she was doing it.
- House spikes Wilson's coffee with amphetamines to see if he's secretly on anti-depressants. It turns out, that for weeks now, Wilson had also been dosing House with anti-depressants in the coffee he bought him. Wilson is even Wrong Genre Savvy enough to suspect House when he offers him coffee, not taking the one offered but the one House kept on his desk, which House had foreseen and was offering him the clean cup.
- In Justified, Mags Bennett kills one of her henchmen by sharing moonshine with him before revealing that the glass he was drinking out of was already poisoned, due to a combination of growing marijuana without her permission, calling the Marshals on another of her henchmen (admittedly a sex offender, but the principle stands), and due to Mags being a bit of a Mama Bear to his teenage daughter whom he had been neglecting due to being stuck in mourning over his wife's death. At the end of the season, she and Raylan share that same moonshine... and she gives herself the poisoned glass.
- Played with in the comedy series Limmy's Show:
- In a scene parodying Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, two dubious characters (perhaps spies), stand by a fireplace and make a toast 'to life.' They have a drink, retaining eye contact. One of the spies (played by Limmy) then pulls out a vial of green liquid (the antidote to the poison he just drank). The spy who drank the poison pulls out a vial of his own (also an antidote). They then awkwardly swap the vials and drink them. The first spy pulls out another vial, as does the second spy. They take their own antidotes and grab their drinks again, but hesitate to consume them.
- After a couple breaks up, they have one last drink before the boyfriend leaves. Out of his view, the girlfriend squeezes a drop of strychnine into one of the glasses and gives it to him. His hand slips and he accidentally drops it. Rather than having a new drink, he leaves. Following this, he is driving his car when he slowly grasps his face as if overcome by illness. Eerie music accompanies the scene. He then sneezes. He arrives home, then suddenly clutches his chest. His eye twitches and the music cues again, but really, he was searching his pockets for his wallet. Next, he lies in bed with his eyes wide open. His hand slowly falls to the ground, only to grab hold of his iPod. He puts earphones in his ears, and finally, looks at the camera to say:
"Why are you still here? You know she didn't get me, you saw the glass drop on the ground, are ye' daft?" - In the 1989 Italian/Australian mini-series The Magistrate, the wife of the title character has her shopping bag stolen, only for it to be returned by a bystander who chases the thief. She doesn't know it's a set-up to switch her tin of coffee, which has a bomb inside. The Mafia knows the investigating magistrate they're trying to kill always makes his own coffee; unfortunately, his wife decides to make some herself and gets killed.
- Major Crimes: The Victim of the Week in "Cheaters Never Prosper" is an out-of-town cop who is killed when his drink is spiked with antifreeze.
- Merlin has an attempt on Arthur's life via a poisoned chalice.
- Midsomer Murders
- The second Victim of the Week in "Wild Harvest" is killed when the killer swaps the wild celery for the soup they are preparing with highly toxic hemlock water dropwort.
- The first crime in "A Vintage Murder" involves the wine being served at a wine tasting at a winery being poisoned.
- In "A Climate of Death", the killer douses the first chili Rooster is supposed to eat at the Chili Competition with enough capsaicin to induce a fatal heart attack. However, Aldo snatches the chili off Rooster and eats it, resulting in a Murder by Mistake.
- Occurs for a few of the murders on Murder, She Wrote. In one case, the tampering just created a case of attempted murder, because another person actually killed the victim before he got to his poisoned brandy.
- Murdoch Mysteries: In "Victor, Victorian", Victor is murdered by the killer smearing crushed peanuts inside the skull cup he has to drink from as part of the Masonic initiation, which triggers a fatal allergic reaction.
- In MythQuest, Seth poisons Osiris's dates and feeds them to him at a ceremony, in order to kill him and gain his kingdom.
- My Life Is Murder: In "Lividity in Lycra", the killer swaps the Victim of the Week's water bottle with an identical one spiked with monkshood. However, they miscalculate the dose and it is not enough to kill their target, and they are forced to finish the job by hitting him on the head with a rock.
- Oz:
- Nino Schibetta ate grounded glass that Ryan and Adebisi secretly put into his food for months until he dies from internal hemorrhaging, suddenly realizing one day that he's bleeding from the ears, nose, mouth...
- Also done to Supreme Allah in a more organic fashion. Once it's discovered that he's fatally allergic to eggs and must have his food cooked separately... Yeah, no more Supreme Allah.
- Both played straight and faked in Persons Unknown.
- Erika gets Joe to confess this way.
- Later Joe helps Janet fake her death by pretending to do this to a liquor bottle.
- Planet Earth: Dynasties: The lions inadvertently eat poisoned meat after coming across cows illegally grazing on lion territory. Most of the pride survives it.
- The Professionals. In "Not A Very Civil Civil Servant", an accountant who keeps a bottle of whiskey stashed in the greenhouse has it spiked with weedkiller. The bottle is then replaced with an untampered whiskey bottle to make it look like he committed suicide by drinking the weedkiller.
- This trope is used several times over the course of Resurrection: Ertuğrul, with such examples as:
- When Aytolun attempts to murder her husband Korkut in season 2 by poisoning water intended for both herself and the Bey, while making sure she gets less of the poison in order for her to survive the symptoms. She succeeds at both.
- Sadettin Kopek attempts this twice, both times targeting the Sultan. While the first one gets undone by Ibn Arabi, he is triumphant the second time around.
- In Season 5, Dragos manages to add toxic substances to Teokles's water, eventually killing him during his stay at the Kayi tribe.
- A non-fatal example occurs in Season 5 when Sirma tosses an excessive amount of salt into Hafsa Hatun's soup, intent on making Selcan direct her displeasure toward Hafsa and thereby driving a wedge between them.
- Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators:
- In "The Rascal Cook", a restaurant is sabotaged when the soup is spiked with syrup of ipecac. Later, the chef is murdered by being served a poisoned cup of coffee.
- ** In "Some Cupid Kills", the Victim of the Week dies after drinking red wine spiked with ethylene glycol.
- Sister Boniface Mysteries:
- The killer in "Love and Other Puzzles" is a Serial Killer who poisons the wine of the women from the lonely hearts column he is romancing.
- In "Queen of the Kitchen", the killer [plants poisonous belladonna berries atop a cake intending the poison the judge of a cooking competition.
- Star Trek:
- In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King", someone tries to murder Kevin Riley by putting tetralubisol (a shipboard lubricant) in his milk. Tetralubisol is a milky white substance, so Make It Look Like an Accident also applies.
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Reunion", the Klingon Chancellor K'mpec tells Picard that someone has been adding a poison to his bloodwine for months. The amount of poison itself was very small, but over time it built up to a point where it would be fatal.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- "Babel" has a terrorist device that spikes the food and drink replicators with an aphasia virus being attached to the replicator systems during the station's construction. It winds up not being dispersed at the time because the virologist who planted it got captured. After Starfleet takes control of the station, O'Brien accidentally trips the device while making repairs to the replicators, and it eventually becomes aerosolized.
- "Ties of Blood and Water" features a bottle of poisoned kanar. Weyoun gleefully downs a shot of the kanar just to demonstrate that his people are immune to poison.
- The main reason Louie hired Rev. Jim Ignatowski as a cab driver in Taxi was because Jim slipped something in his coffee. When asked what it is, Jim just shrugged and said it could have either been a tranquilizer or a giblet. When Louie began tripping, Alex just said, "I guess we can rule out giblet."
- Happens by accident on Untold Stories of the E.R., when some student nurses practice injecting insulin into oranges, only for one such orange to be left in the break room. One of the students mistakes it for hers, eats it, and nearly dies of hypoglycemia.
- The Veil: In "Food on the Table", Captain John Elwood takes his wife with him on a long voyage under the pretext of patching up their marriage and uses the opportunity to slowly poison her.
- Vera: In "Young Gods", the killer spikes the Victim of the Week's drink with atropine. They try the same thing on a second victim, and it nearly does in him and Vera, who was sharing a drink with him. They survive because Joe is with them and calls for an ambulance.
- The Kingdom in The Walking Dead have their swine eat walkers before they're shipped off to the Saviors as tribute.
- In the Warehouse 13 episode "The Ones You Love", Tracy tries to kill her sister Myka under the influence of an artifact by giving her coffee spiked with a drain cleaner. Instead, it ends up spilled on the floor, where it burns right through the carpet.
- Poisoning was one of the more common methods of murder used in Whodunnit? (UK), probably because it allows for the broadest possible suspect pool.
