History Main / LaughingGas

* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'''s iconic villain [[MonsterClown the Joker]] has laughing gas or "Joker Venom" as a part of his varied arsenal. If anyone inhales or is afflicted by it, they suffer a debilitating laughing fit. {{Depending|OnTheWriter}} on the type of story (either kid-friendly or mature), how badly it affects people varies. In a LighterAndSofter story, it can just be a harmless distraction that allows the Joker to do whatever he wants while everyone is laughing their butts off. In {{darker|AndEdgier}} stories, the victims of Joker gas laugh so uncontrollably that [[DieLaughing they are no longer able to breathe, leaving corpses with pained smiles faces.]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'''s iconic villain [[MonsterClown the Joker]] has laughing gas or "Joker Venom" as a part of his varied arsenal. If anyone inhales or is afflicted by it, they are hit by an debilitating laughing fit. {{Depending|OnTheWriter}} on the type of story (either kid-friendly or mature), how badly it affects people varies. In a LighterAndSofter story, it can just be a harmless distraction that immobilizes opponents or victims, allowing the Joker to do what he wants while everyone is laughing their butts off. In {{darker|AndEdgier}} stories, the victims of Joker gas are left laughing so uncontrollably that [[DieLaughing they are no longer able to breathe, leaving corpses with faces contorted into pained smiles]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'''s iconic villain [[MonsterClown the Joker]] has laughing gas or venom as a part of his varied arsenal. If anyone inhales or is afflicted by it, they are left in a state of laughing madly and helplessness. {{Depending|OnTheWriter}} on the type of story (either kid-friendly or mature), how badly it affects people varies. In one story it can just be a harmless distraction that distracts opponents or victims, allowing the Joker to do what he wants while everyone is laughing their butts off. But in {{darker|AndEdgier}} stories, the victims of his Joker gas are left laughing so uncontrollably that [[DieLaughing it can end up with them no longer being able to breathe, leaving corpses with their faces contorted into horrifying and pained smiles]].

* A ''WesternAnimation/ChillyWilly'' short has "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Clive throws a laughing gas bomb in Max's direction, but the polar bear (who isn't so dumb) returns the bomb to the hunter's hands. Chilly kicks Clive, forcing him to swallow the gas bomb. The hunter feels the gas bomb's effect, and he begins to laugh like Woody. [[TheCameo Said woodpecker]] then shows up, irked that the hunter's [[HeyThatsMyLine doing his laugh]], and pecks the ice around him so he'll fall through it.

* A ''WesternAnimation/ChillyWilly'' short has "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Clive throws a laughing gas bomb in Max's direction, but the polar bear (who isn't so dumb) returns the bomb to the hunter's hands. Chilly kicks Clive, forcing him to swallow the gas bomb. The hunter feels the gas bomb's effect, and he begins to laugh.

Despite often being referred to as "laughing gas", nitrous oxide will not make you burst into a fit of giggles. It will not even make you chuckle. In RealLife, while it does cause relaxation it has no effect on your sense of humor, does not render you unaware of your surroundings, is only effective while being administered, and is pretty useless outside of a dentist's office, using dental equipment or a music festival, using balloons.[[note]]Recreational user of nitrous oxide often fill balloons or plastic bags with the gas. The drug is used in this way at music festivals, typically using food grade nitrous oxide sold as a whipping agent for whipped cream.[[/note]] This is not to say there isn't some truth to the name -- nitrous oxide ''does'' have a euphoric effect and a dreamy reverie when inhaled, and a large dose may even lead to trippy psychedelic experiences.[[note]]Psychedelic effects of a subanesthetic concentration of nitrous oxide. Ghoneim MM , Kumar V , and Pathak D. In ''Anesthesia Progress'', 01 Nov 1990, 37(6):271-276[[/note]] It just isn't a great idea for incapacitating or knocking

* In the WesternAnimation/BettyBoop cartoon "WesternAnimation/HaHaHa" opens with supposedly Max Fleischer's hand drawing Betty Boop on a sheet of paper. When Max leaves the studio, Koko comes out of the inkwell for the very last time, and starts eating the candy bar Max had left on the table. Almost immediately he develops a toothache, so Betty draws a dentist room to operate on him, herself acting as the (most sexy) dentist. She first tries to pull Koko's tooth, but when that doesn't work, she tries laughing gas. The laughing gas soon pervades everything, causing not only Koko and herself to laugh, but even the clock, the typewriter, and outside in the real world, the mailbox, the cars and real people. Even a bridge and some graves join in.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

'''Tony:''' Gee. She must think I'm a real [[{{Pun}} gas.]]

* ''Anime/{{Naruto}}'': In episode 186 of the anime, "Laughing Shino (aka, the Funeral Proxy Mission)", Naruto and Shino are hired to go to Motoyoshi Village to stand in for Futa Kagetsu at his father's funeral. The apparent reason being that his father's will stated that, it Futa laughed at all during the funeral, he'd lose his inheritance to his sister, Tsukiko. When the three sit down to dinner, Shino volunteers to eat first since the beetles he house in his clothes will neutralize any poison that the food's been laced with. As soon has he starts, Shino snickers, which soon erupts into uproarious laughter that he spends the rest of the episode dealing with, as his beetles were apparently unable to neutralize the laughing formula in the food.

* In one of Creator/DaveBarry's columns, he talks about the safety systems aboard airplanes. When he brings up those breathing masks that drop from the ceiling panels if air pressure gets too low within the plane, he wishes that they'd dispense nitrous oxide rather than pure oxygen. Because in any situation where he needs that breathing mask (i.e. an airplane accident), he doesn't want to be fully awake and cognizant--he'd rather be laughing at the pretty flames on the cabin walls.

* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'''s iconic nemesis [[MonsterClown The Joker]], has laughing gas or venom as a part of his varied arsenal. If anyone inhales or is afflicted by it, they are left in a state of laughing madly and helplessness. {{Depending|OnTheWriter}} on the type of story (either kid-friendly or mature), how badly it affects people varies. In one story it can just be a harmless distraction that distracts opponents or victims, allowing the Joker to do what he wants while everyone is laughing their butts off. But in {{darker|AndEdgier}} stories, the victims of his Joker gas are left laughing so uncontrollably that [[DieLaughing it can end up with them no longer being able to breathe, leaving corpses with their faces contorted into horrifying and pained smiles]].

* ''Film/LethalWeapon4'' has a scene where the guys ambush one of the Triad bosses at his dentist appointment and interrogate him using nitrous as a makeshift TruthSerum. Pretty soon everyone's high on the stuff, giggling like idiots and getting a little too chatty with each other.

* ''Weaponized'' in ''Film/SixUnderground'', when the heroes use Nitrous Oxide smoke grenades to incapacitate enemy guards.

* "Impy's island" or "Urmel from the ice", a novel of the German author Max Kruse and its adaptation by Creator/AugsburgerPuppenkiste features a cave with a natural source of laughing gas. This proves to be dangerous, as it not only results in uncontrollable laughter, but also causes Pumponell to accidentally fire a shot on a giant, but otherwise peaceful crab as he mistakes it for the eponymous animal he wants to hunt. This has the consequence of the cave entrance collapsing.

* Downplayed in an episode of ''Series/{{iCarly}}'' that has Sam acting loopy after being given nitrous at the dentist. She's not laughing, though -- just smiling.
* ''Series/LoisAndClark'': In "The Prankster", [[VillainOfTheWeek Kyle]] pumps nitrous oxide through the vents after luring Lois into his trap, causing her and everyone in the building to laugh uncontrollably. He and his partner Victor then take her away.

* In one ColdOpen of ''Series/ShakespeareAndHathawayPrivateInvestigators'' that flashed back to Frank's time as a cop, he lets himself be taken hostage in an ambulance by an armed robber, and when his captor's head is turned, he discreetly opens a tank of nitrous oxide, flooding the ambulance enough that it gives Frank an opening to grab the robber's gun. He and the robber then exit the ambulance, both doubling over in laughter.
* In ''Series/SisterSister'': Lisa Landry was [[LaughingMad breaking out into a fit of laughter during a funeral]] as just beforehand, she went to the dentist, and was exposed to a large, almost lethal dose of laughing gas due to the dentist ranting about the person the funeral was for.

* ''VideogGame/{{Oddworld}}: Abe's Exoddus'': Laughing gas shows up as a hazard in several areas. It doesn't affect Abe, but any of his followers who breathe it in will begin running around and giggling uncontrollably, refuse to follow Abe's instructions and potentially draw the attention of [[{{Mooks}} Sligs]] or other enemies. Abe must [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan slap them in the face]] to get them back to normal.

* ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'': In two episodes, Joker venom is used by two combatants- the Joker himself and Harley Quinn, in that order- against their opponents, [[VideoGame/TwistedMetal Needles Kane]] and [[VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends Jinx]], respectively. Both Needles and Jinx are reduced to helpless deranged laughter upon exposure to the gas, but whereas Needles suffocates in front of the Clown Prince of Crime, Jinx's upbringing in the toxic undercity of Zaun means that she can NoSell the venom, instead entering an UnstoppableRage and wiping the floor with Harley.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': The Joker has a laughing gas that can cause people to laugh uncontrollably to the point of pain or even death (the latter often thwarted by Batman's antidote injection). It shows up in several episodes, from Joker floating a barge filled with garbage laced with the stuff to poison anyone in range, to a mention in "The Man Who Killed Batman" when he uses it to distract the police after he realizes Batman isn't showing up to the scene of his latest robbery. It can also be split into two gas components, allowing Joker to specifically target one victim to die laughing while leaving the rest unharmed as seen in "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE34TheLaughingFish The Laughing Fish]]", [[MythologyGag similar to the Batman movie]], as mentioned above.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/BettyBoop'' episode "WesternAnimation/HaHaHa" opens with supposedly Max Fleischer's hand drawing Betty Boop on a sheet of paper. When Max leaves the studio, Koko comes out of the inkwell for the very last time, and starts eating the candy bar Max had left on the table. Almost immediately he develops a toothache, so Betty draws a dentist room to operate on him, herself acting as the (most sexy) dentist. She first tries to pull Koko's tooth, but when that doesn't work, she tries laughing gas. The laughing gas soon pervades everything, causing not only Koko and herself to laugh, but even the clock, the typewriter, and outside in the real world, the mailbox, the cars and real people. Even a bridge and some graves join in.

* ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'': In ''Laughing Fit'', Mrs. Hertz introduces nitrous oxide to the class, also calling it by this trope's name, which forces anyone who inhales it to laugh uncontrollably unless they neutralize it with water quickly. XANA takes control of the gas in an attempt to kill the heroes by making them DieLaughing, which becomes problematic when Ulrich and Yumi are at school without water to help them, Jeremie is forced to run in the sewers on foot because he can't risk staying in the freezing sewer water for too long, and Odd gets a whiff of the gas just before he's virtualized into Lyoko, which severely weakens him and leaves him disoriented throughout the crisis.

-->'''Cop''': Ha ha ha! He's stealin' all our money!

* ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddParents'':
** [[DepravedDentist Doctor Bender]] uses this to keep kids docile while he operates on them. Timmy steals a cannister of the gas in the ItsAWonderfulPlot episode and later uses it to incapacitate Jorgen when the latter attempts to stop Timmy from altering reality further. Later [[SubvertedTrope subverted]], when Jorgen reveals he was fake laughing out of pity, and is [[NoSell completely immune]] to laughing gas of any kind.
** In "Fool's Day Out", [[AprilFoolsPlot Timmy seeks the help of the April Fool to prank his family and friends on April Fool's Day]]. At first, Timmy enjoys the Fool's pranks, but when the Fool starts performing {{Deadly Prank}}s (such as having Timmy's parents parachute into the Broken Glass and Pointy Objects Factory with [[WrongParachuteGag pigs for parachutes]]), Timmy tells the Fool off. As retribution, the Fool tries to [[TheNightThatNeverEnds block out the sun]] and cause a new ice age, but Cosmo laughing at him before he can finish his jokes causes him to get comedy backup. If enough comedy backup builds up, the Fool will blow himself all the way back to Fairy World, so Timmy ensures that happens by wishing that all the air on Earth was filled with laughing gas. Sure enough, the laughing gas causes everyone in the world to laugh and sends the Fool back to Fairy World, foiling his plan.
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': In "Hot Crossed Bunny", a doctor chases after WesternAnimation/BugsBunny and douses him with laughing gas from a CartoonBugSprayer. It causes Bugs to go on a laughing fit as the doctor carries him back to the operating table. Bugs briefly stops laughing when he sees some sharp surgical instruments... only to then laugh even harder.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS20E20FourGreatWomenAndAManicure Four Great Women and A Manicure]]", In the ''Macbeth'' segment, Homer uses laughing gas on Dr. Hibbett. He dies of laughter after he can't open a window and failed to call for help.

[[/folder]]