Baffled by Own Biology

A character experiences something they've never had before, but which is a totally normal biological function. They, however, don't know that, and become confused, shocked, or scared.

It could be because...:

• Their body has recently changed drastically, such as turning into a different species, inhabiting the body of another character, turning into the opposite sex, having Become a Real Boy, being Transgender and medically transitioning, or even simply hitting puberty.
• They have a lack of knowledge due to young age, stupidity, forgetfulness, being raised by someone who doesn't know how their body works (for instance, in Interspecies Adoption), or having really been born yesterday. In extreme cases, they might have even been lied to about their biology.
• It's an unfamiliar state to them, and somewhat unusual, such as being drunk, high, pregnant, or having a particular disease.
• It's in their personality somehow — for instance, a Hypochondriac might mistake normal things for a disease, and a Drama Queen or Sense Freak may overreact to normal biological things.

The reaction could vary from just a sense of confusion, to a sudden sense of fear, to even thinking they're dying until someone sets them straight. If they're a Cloudcuckoolander, they might just make up some bizarre notion about it. Could happen during a Loose Tooth Episode or Sick Episode (or any of its subtropes).

Sub-tropes:

• First Injury Reaction: A character is shocked at their first injury.
• First Period Panic: A girl becomes fearful when she gets her first period.
• Gassy Scare: A person mistakes gas, or a need to use the bathroom (most often in the form of constipation), for a serious illness.
• Hands Looking Wrong: A character who's changing form looks at their hands in confusion.
• My Eyes Are Leaking: A character is confused by crying.

Compare Is This What Anger Feels Like?, What Is This Feeling? (and any of its subtropes), and Unknowingly in Love for when a character is baffled by their own psychology. Also compare How Do I Shot Web?, Stumbling in the New Form, Maternally Challenged, You Have Researched Breathing, Limb-Sensation Fascination, and Remembered I Could Fly. Could overlap with Voice Change Surprise if it's a boy's voice breaking or a case of laryngitis, Comically Missing the Point, Plot Allergy, or Dramatically Missing the Point. Contrast I Thought Everyone Could Do That. Subtrope of First Time Feeling.

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Examples:

Animation

• Noonbory and the Super 7: In "What's Up, Beavyuck?", a beavyuck chick attempts to jump off a tree branch, not knowing that her species of bird can't fly (as she is a platypus-like being).
• Pororo the Little Penguin: In "Hiccup Cure", Crong gets hiccups and wonders if he'll die from it. He even has an Imagine Spot about it.

Anime & Manga

• Kemono Jihen: In Yui's backstory, his twin brother Akira confessed he'd wet the bed the night before — except, as it turns out, it was his first Nocturnal Emission.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: There's an episode in which Nanami finds an egg in her bed, doesn't know if she laid it, and is too embarrassed to ask.
• Squid Girl: The eponymous character is mystified by the concept of "ticklishness", which Eiko then helpfully demonstrates by telling Squid Girl to lift her arms, and then proceeding to tickle her. Squid Girl is perplexed as to why she was laughing when she didn't find it at all funny. She's also perplexed at the inability to cause the sensation in herself when she tries to do what Eiko did.

Comic Books

• The Outsiders: In the first issue of Outsiders (2003), Metamorpho appears at the team's new headquarters prematurely because of an "emergency", which he clarifies is because he has to pee.
  Nightwing: I wasn't aware you could do that.
  Metamorpho: Me either, hence the emergency.
• Runaways: Karolina is a Majesdanian, an alien who absorbs sunlight. Being the only member of her kind left on Earth (her parents died just after she discovered what she is), she has only a rudimentary understanding of how her powers actually work. This becomes a problem for her in the revival series when a light-absorbing villain drains all of the solar energy her body had been storing up for years. As neither she nor any of her friends know how to cure her, she's forced to call up her former enemies the Light Brigade for help, because they're the only people she knows who might know how to restore her powers.
• Secret Wars II: The Beyonder, a godlike entity, had no idea what the strange fullness he felt was. Spider-Man deduced that he had to, for the first time ever, use the bathroom, and then had to tell the Beyonder how to do it.
• Tintin: In "The Secret of the Unicorn", Snowy develops Single Malt Vision after drinking some whisky and thinks there really are two glasses.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • In one arc, Calvin gets a stomach flu and worries that he's dying. Hobbes is less than sympathetic about it.
  • Calvin gets chicken pox and wonders where the itching is coming from. When he discovers his red spots, he finds them cool.
  • In one strip, Calvin sneezes into a tissue and thinks he's "leaking brain lubricant".

Fan Works

• Alien/Species Crossover: Return to LV-426:
  • Like in the source material, hybrid Lise has no idea what's happening to her when she enters her cocoon. Boone tries to comfort her, but Lise is terrified and in pain as her body moves forward with its life cycle. Later, Lise's daughter Ilse has a much easier time, as Lise is able to guide her and explain that it's a natural part of their biology and nothing to be afraid of.
  • Most of Pike's issues are related to What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?, but several of the biological underpinnings of attraction and fatherhood catch him completely off-guard, as an AW raised entirely with military discipline and no sense of self or awareness of his own psychological or biological urges.
• As Fate Would Have It: Yancy, having had a rather sheltered upbringing, gets rather surprised when Rosa tells her that masturbation is a perfectly normal thing for people of their age to do. The night prior to this, she was baffled and scared at having touched herself out of frustration from remembering Their First Time with Nate, having feared that she might end up consumed by her own lust.
• The Broken Wing: The punchline at the end of the first and only chapter, is that pegasi wings grow back, and the only one in the audience who knows, even though it's a pretty important part of being one of the three dominant races in the nation, is Fluttershy, who's of the same race.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami:
  • Ami liked body swapping with a demon due to the endless energy, but said demon was unused to the energy needs of a human body, so it kept damaging her original body enough that she switched back to prevent further damage.
  • Fairies can get drunk on magic if there's enough in the air, but not everyone knows it so they can be warned, so a group of fairies who were visiting a location had to ask a local about the ambient magic density before the fairies figured out why they felt "tipsy".
• Ghostbusters (1984) fanfics:
  • In Under the Weather, Egon (of all characters) and later Janine (or, as the fic calls her, "Jeanie") initially have no idea why they feel so hot, before realising they have colds. Janine/Jeanie is also perplexed by her streaming eyes, stuffy nose, and itchy throat.
  • In Love Sick, Egon has appendicitis but initially doesn't know why his stomach hurts, wondering if he pulled a muscle, or if he's just nervous.
• In Happy Daze, when Fonzie turns into a woman named Francie, she's confused when she gets physically aroused for the first time in a female body and says, "My body's going crazy!".
• In Hermione's Embarrassing Surprise (based on Harry Potter), Hermione is baffled that she has a headache and a stomach ache until the nurse tells her that she's probably ovulating for the first time.
• The Infinite Loops: Due to them repeatedly swapping species, many loopers will get shocked by the various things their bodies can now do, even once they've returned to normal.
• In the Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure fanfic Intergalactic Illness by Gullfriend31, Lala experiences her first cold, which is rather different for her since because an alien. Since she isn't used to human illnesses, she is confused and worried about all her symptoms such as her runny nose and red nasal bridge. She even wonders if it's dangerous until her friends tell her that it's just temporary.
• Inter Nos: Natsuki and Shizuru have had a Relationship Upgrade and are about to engage in Their First Time. But no one has ever explained intercourse to Natsuki before, and so when Shizuru tries to caution her that the initial act might hurt a bit, Natsuki is both concerned and confused.
  She does not know, she thought, before answering herself: Of course she does not know! She did not even know how to kiss, and their culture is clearly different in treatment of this matter.
• The Joys and Sorrows of Young Charles Finster: Just like his son would in the future, a toddler version of Chas confesses in the first chapter that being toilet-trained isn't easy since it's hard to tell when he has to pee or doesn't.
• In Kitten Companions (based on Rugrats), Chas thinks he's allergic to cats, when actually he has hay fever.
• Lost Latte: At the start of the story, Asumi (a humanoid spirit who Really Was Born Yesterday) sweats for the first time and asks if she's melting. Chiyu tells her that it's normal to sweat when you're exercising.
• Lucy's Secret: When Lucy starts wetting the bed, she initially worries that it's a bladder infection. It turns out to instead be a genetic birth defect.
• A Lump in My Throat: Bubbles wakes up with a very sore throat and thinks it might be because of a cold, but it turns out to be tonsillitis.
• In Medicated, Anne, Sasha, and Marcy were transformed into and raised as a frog, toad, and newt respectively, and started turning back into humans as teenagers. Since they have no idea what they are, they have to figure things out by trial and error. For example:
  • Anne's adoptive parents decided to get transformation potions because as a baby, she "developed a taste for frog flesh." Turns out she was just teething.
  • Polly sticks her hands into Anne's mouth, and Anne reflectively spits her slime coat out. Some of the spit gets on Polly and makes her feel numb, so they assume it's poisonous, but it turns out that human saliva contains a painkiller.
  • A flood of saltwater sweeps through Wartwood, giving amphibians it touches burn-like injuries. Everyone panics when Anne falls in, but she's fine.
• No Guts, No Glory: Buttercup has a stomachache, which she initially thinks is from eating too much pizza, but by the next day, she's wondering why the pain has spread to her right side. It turns out to be from a Ruptured Appendix.
• Oversaturated World:
  • Group Precipitation: "Launch Error": A member of a normally-flight-capable species gets answers to her question of why she can't.
  • "Clashing": Rainbow Dash apparently received magically granted instincts on how to take care of her new wings, and the instincts work fine, it's that she never knew she received them until she started following them that confused her:
    Dash shook her head. "I was just keeping them neat, is all. It's hygiene, Rarity. You're all about that stuff." She blinked. "I'm not sure why I know that, though."
• Past Sins: Glimpses 2: Last chapter: A predictive spell forecast previously unknown issues with Nyx's magic-related biology. The spell was being used by Nyx's mother, who was only confused by the symptoms for a few seconds before she connected the dots and made plans to solve the health issue.
• Pokémpanions: In Early Evolution, Machop evolves into Machoke overnight. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he's so startled at the sight of his new form that he spits out his toothpaste. He asks his mother Machamp if this means he'll have to stay home from school, but she says there's nothing too unnatural about evolving early. It's all one big metaphor for puberty.
• Pound and Pumpkin Cake's Adventures (and Misadventures) in Potty Training: When Pound Cake, a two-year-old Pegasus boy, catches the "feather flu" (a Pegasus disease) for the first time, he's confused and wonders if there's something wrong with his feathers, then wonders how his nose can be clogged if it isn't a toilet.
• Prerugrats: When Stu and Didi get severe cramps, neither of them know why, at one point wondering if the tacos they ate were bad. As it turns out, Didi was in labour (and she even knew she was pregnant), and Stu had appendicitis.
• Pride in Her Chest: When Lynn's pectoral muscles grow, she initially thinks she's growing breasts, and then when she realises she isn't, she worries the pecs will somehow inhibit her breasts' growth.
• In Sick Days (based on Happy Days; now defunct), Howard and Marion think they've caught the cold that's been going around when actually, they were just sneezing from their bodies adjusting to the cold weather.
• In Tommy Pickles: The Terrible Twos, when Tommy first becomes physically aware of needing to pee, he doesn't know what he's experiencing beyond a strange feeling "kind of below [his] tummy".
• Total Eclipse of the Bark: In chapter 2, prior to Akane's werewolf transformation, she begins to experience weird behavioral changes. At one point, she scratches her ear with her foot, which confuses her, especially since it typically can't reach there.

Films — Animated

• In The Adventures of Tintin, Captain Haddock has been drunk for so long, that when he sobers up, he doesn't even know what it feels like being sober and thinks he's sick.
• Bolt: When Bolt is separated from his owner Penny, his stomach gurgles. Because he's used to being well-fed, he's terrified and believes Mittens has poisoned him.
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2: When Brent wears extremely tight sandals, he wonders why his feet are turning purple.
• Fantastic Mr. Fox: When Mrs. Fox gets Morning Sickness, she initially thinks she's sick. She goes to the doctor, and initially pretends that she's actually sick to put off telling Mr. Fox she's pregnant, but when they get caught in a trap, she tells the truth.
• Home (2015): When Oh hears catchy music by Rihanna on the radio, he starts to dance uncontrollably. He's freaked out by the sensation of this movement, thinking it's the result of some kind of mind control.
• Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole: When Eglantine, an owlet, coughs up her first pellet, she's shocked and disgusted. She feels even worse when Mrs. P tells her it's her first.
  Eglantine: "First?! You mean there'll be more!?"
• In Madagascar, Melman is so neurotic that he thinks having a brown spot on his shoulder means he's sick, despite being a giraffe.
• The Princess and the Frog: When Tiana turns into a frog, she's shocked at the slime she's secreting, which Naveen explains is mucus.
• Spies in Disguise is about a human being turned into a pigeon, and how he must now adapt to being a bird. When he first transforms, Lance has quite a bit of difficulty seeing since his eyes are now on the side of his head and his vision is much broader than it was before. Lance also has a hard time using the restroom, since he now has a cloaca instead of how humans use the restroom, not realizing that birds' poop and pee are together, and that toilets don't really work for him anymore. Lance does get better, though it takes a while.
• Toy Story 3: When Buzz Lightyear dances to the Spanish version of "You've Got a Friend in Me", he doesn't know why he's doing it.

Films — Live-Action

• Barbie: The movie hinges on Stereotypical Barbie going through an existential crisis, and one of the first signs her life isn't all it's cracked up to be is when her heels touch the ground for the first time. She's shocked that she's not standing on her tiptoes (as it's a trait for all the dolls), and all the other Barbies freak out at the sight of this.
• Elf: Buddy gets pricked on his finger for a DNA test to see if he's actually Walter's son. He then wonders why his finger is pulsating.
  Buddy: My finger has a heartbeat.
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: While Bethany is in the game avatar of Dr. Sheldon Oberon, she doesn't even realize she's having a... situation... around Alex until Fridge points it out to her.
  Bethany: [looks down] Oh my god, these things are crazy!
• The Secret Garden: Due to his father having a crooked back, and the servants all thinking he's terminally ill when actually he's just suffering from a lack of sun and weak muscles due to lack of exercise, Collin freaks out when he feels a "lump on [his] back", thinking he'll get a lump somewhere else on him and then die. Actually, it's his bones sticking out.
• Species: Played for horror. Sil is a hybrid created by mixing human genes with alien DNA sent to Earth via radio transmission. She's biologically about 11 years old, chronologically three months, when she escapes from the lab that created her. Aboard a train, she steals huge amounts of food and eats ravenously. Late that night, she sees something moving under her skin before tentacles burst out, enveloping her. She's entering a cocoon to rapidly age to approximately twenty biological human years old, but with no understanding of what she is or how her hybrid body is meant to function, the experience is painful and terrifying for her.
• Subtle instance in Superman II. After Superman loses his superpowers in the molecule chamber, he and Lois drive to a diner. Just as they park, Clark Kent can be heard saying he feels something strange in his back. Then the first thing he does upon entering the diner is ask where the men's room is. Thus, it is implied that Superman never had to use the facilities before.
• Zig Zag (2002): ZigZag thinks he's wet the bed, but it's actually his first Nocturnal Emission.

Jokes

• A man dies and gets reincarnated as a hen. He (now she) feels strange and asks another hen what's going on, so she tells her that she's ovulating. She starts laying eggs, only to wake up and have his wife tell him that he's pooping.
• In the Garden of Eden, Adam wakes up in the morning to find Eve staring at his groin in horrified fascination. He looks down and says "What the—Get back, I don't know how long it'll keep getting bigger!"
• Three preteen boys watch a woman undressing on their way home from school every day, with the exception of one, who always runs home instead. The other two ask him, "What are you, gay?", and he replies, "No, but my mother told me if I think lustful thoughts, I'd turn into stone, and I feel something getting hard."

Literature

• The teenager Adrian Mole experiences his voice breaking dramatically when he is fifteen years old, wobbling between very high-pitched and much deeper for a few days. He also notes in horror "My nipples have swollen! I am turning into a girl!!!!!!", about which his doctor is highly unsympathetic.
• Andy Griffiths' Just Series:
  • In the story "Two Brown Blobs" from "Just Disgusting", a three-year-old Andy poops in the bath. He was just as stupid then as he is now, so he doesn't realise it and thinks there are Blob Monsters attacking him.
  • In the story "Playing Dead" from "Just Tricking", Andy, who is Faking the Dead, thinks he can will his heart to stop beating, and doesn't seem to realise that this would kill him if he could actually do it.
• The Berenstain Bears: In "Go to the Doctor", Papa Bear is sick (presumably with a cold, since his symptoms point to a respiratory disease but he isn't very lethargic). He doesn't realise he's sick, at first thinking his sneezing was from sawdust or bright light.
• In The Crimson Petal and the White, Anges has no understanding of her periods, believing herself to hemorrhage every month.
• Dear Dumb Diary: In "Never Underestimate Your Dumbness", Jamie wonders if she's getting a zit on her chin, but it turns out to be a bruise from falling down the stairs.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In the first book, Greg makes a comic about Creighton the Cretin. Creighton asks a doctor to get him a new butt because his old one has a crack in it. The exasperated doctor informs him that everyone's butt has a crack in it.
  • In "The Third Wheel", Rowley sees a pimple when Greg has him look in the mirror, and freaks out, thinking it's chicken pox. Greg can't correct him, since he also thinks it's chicken pox, which is why he had him look in the mirror.
• Dreamcatcher: An alien fungus hijacks one of the protagonists. He finds basic human biology either completely disgusting — him going to the bathroom is treated as akin to undergoing and subsequently trying to forget a horrible medical procedure, and something as simple as basic mayonnaise on toast has him on a delighted high like he's chugging down the world's best alcohol, as he's never experienced flavor.
• Elephant & Piggie:
  • In "Pigs Make Me Sneeze", Gerald doesn't know why he's sneezing a lot and wonders if he's allergic to first pigs, then cats (as he was near a pig, then a cat). He actually has a cold.
  • In "Today I Will Fly", Piggie thinks she can learn to fly, apparently not realising that pigs famously can't.
• Emily Windsnap: When Emily submerges herself in water and swims for the first time during class, she feels what she thinks is her legs numbing and seizing up before she's pulled out of the water, her teacher telling her it's probably a cramp. When she tests herself later, however, she finds this feeling was actually her mermaid tail forming, discovering she's a semi mer. She's also stunned to learn she has a pocket in her tail when her mermaid friend shows her.
• In How to Catch a Cold, the protagonist, a little boy, catches his first cold and is wondering why he called his mother "Bom" instead of "Mom", why his nose is running, and why he feels so weak and sleepy. In its sequel, How to Fight a Cold, his mother tells him he must fight the cold, and he fears he will have to physically fight a monster called a "cold".
• In I Need a New Butt, the protagonist doesn't realise that everyone's butt has a crack in it, so he thinks he broke his.
• Junie B. Jones:
  • In "Toothless Wonder", Junie B. loses her front tooth and utterly panics even though it's just a baby tooth (as a friend of hers told her that his uncle has lost all his teeth).
  • In "One Man Band", Junie B. wakes up with a black toenail and freaks out, not knowing it's just a bruise from having stubbed her toe on a watering can.
• Kokoro Connect: When Taichi finds himself in Nagase's body for the first time, he freaks out confusedly as he squishes the breasts on her body and hears her voice coming from his mouth. The others also express various concerns about this and have their own freakouts during the various body swaps that follow.
• Little Princess: In "I Want My Tooth!", when the Princess gets her first loose tooth, she yells, "AAAHHHH!!! One WOBBLES!".
• Miffy: In one book, Miffy doesn't know why she feels weak and has a sore throat. She eventually ends up having to go to the hospital.
• In the Paul Jennings story Nails, the protagonist Lehman has what appears to be nails growing all over his body, and his father tries to find a cure. As it turns out, Lehman's biological mother was actually a mermaid, making him a human-mermaid hybrid, and the "nails" were actually scales. He was slowly transforming into a merman all along.
• Nightmares & Dreamscapes: In "Umney's Last Case", Umney the Refugee from TV Land ends up soiling himself, much to his surprise and confusion, as the Nobody Poops rule typically applies to the world he came from.
• Parts is about the nameless young protagonist being befuddled by various biological behaviors such as having a runny nose, peeling toes, and a loose tooth, and he fears he's falling apart until his parents explain that it's not a big deal.
• In Poo! Is That You?, Lenny (a lemur) smells his own pheromones and doesn't realise that he's making the smell, which he hates, so he starts blaming the other animals for the smell.^note Male lemurs do produce pheromones from their wrists, but this is done around females as a courtship ritual and the pheromones smell like fruit.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the book Where is Chicken Pox?, the girls wake up with chicken pox. They don't know where their red bumps came from, and they hear the Professor saying that chickenpox got them, so they think that Chicken Pox is a villain that made them sick. They go around town asking if anyone's seen this supposed villain until the Professor explains what it really is.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: In Banquets and Other Social Disasters, someone's biology has recently changed and when preparing for said banquet, they learn that they've gained an allergy to a common substance, metal.
• The Puppy Sister: Throughout the book, Aleasha the puppy slowly begins to turn into a human. She finds herself confused by human sensations, such as when she sees in color for the first time. She's surprised and thrilled now that everything looks different (as she only saw everything in black and white before).
• Ramona Quimby: In "Ramona Quimby, Age 8", Ramona gets stomach flu for the first time and is at first confused as to why things feel so "heavy" to her.
• In Room, Jack is surprised when he experiences catching a cold for the first time in his life, soon after he and Ma escape from Room.
• Roys Bedoys:
  • In "Stay at Home, Roys Bedoys!", Roys is congested and out of breath and thinks he must have COVID-19. As it turns out, there was no particular reason why he had boogers in his nose, and was only out of breath because he'd been running.
  • In one story, Roys thinks he's sick when he's actually dehydrated.
  • In "Christmas is the Season of Loving, Roys Bedoys", Roys doesn't understand why his back's sore. It turns out that he's turned into an old man overnight (though this later turns out to be All Just a Dream).
• Rugrats: In the book Tommy Catches a Cold, Tommy catches a cold for the first time. He wonders why he can no longer smell anything. When he overhears Grandpa Lou saying he must've caught a bug, he thinks an actual insect made him feel this way.
• Sesame Street: In the book Grover's Bad Dream, Grover has a nightmare about Big Bird losing his feathers and wakes up in tears. He fears that it'll happen in real life until his mother tells him that things don't occur just because of a dream.
• In The Thorn Birds, Megan Cleary is the second youngest child and only girl in a passel of boys. Because her mother is neglectful of her and never bothers to explain anything about puberty to her, when she gets her first period she's convinced she has some horrible, embarrassing kind of cancer of her "bottom" and that she's going to die.
• One of the later books in Turtledove's Worldwar series covers a young woman who was raised by the alien invaders and therefore has no idea how human sex works.
• The Vampire Chronicles: In The Tale of the Body Thief, the vampire Lestat swaps bodies with a human. His fascination with the sensations of a living body flips to disgust when he has to go to the bathroom for the first time in 200 years, "very inexactly".
• Who Wet My Pants: Ruben wets his pants due to taking a nap with his hand in a tropical fish tank. He doesn't even notice he's wet his pants until later, and then thinks that someone else did it, or his pants have "sprung a leak".

Live-Action TV

• This is the main premise of 3rd Rock from the Sun. Four aliens land on Earth and assume human bodies and have no idea how anything works. In the pilot, they don't even know what all the openings in their heads are for.
  Harry: Guys! I can't see through my eyelids!
  Tommy: You have to open them.
  Harry: Oh! They're manual.
• Babylon 5: In "Soul Mates", Delenn, having become a Half-Human Hybrid, has to seek advice from Commander Ivanova on how to deal with a self-inflicted bad hair day: Minbari don't have hair so she has no idea how to care for it. Which becomes a Brick Joke at the end of the episode when Delenn starts having strange cramps. Apparently Minbari don't menstruate, either.
• In an episode of Bumble, Peek gets his first stomach bug and initially mistakes it for hunger, then when he throws up, he fears his stomach exploded.
• Doctor Who:
  • Downplayed in "The Eleventh Hour". The Doctor is confronting an alien shapeshifter who has taken on his form. Not having seen his current face in a mirror, yet, all The Doctor says is "Well, that's rubbish. Who's that supposed to be?" The Multiform itself constantly takes the appearance of multiple individuals, but can never seem to remember whose mouth it should be using, such as when it turns into a man and his dog, then starts barking ferociously through the man's mouth. On another occasion, it turns into a mother and her two daughters, and starts using an adult woman's voice from the youngest daughter's mouth.
  • In one episode, the Doctor sees that his hair has grown longer when he reincarnates into the Eleventh. He thinks he's turned into a woman, until he feels his throat and crotch and determines he's still a man.
  • In "The Giggle", the show's viewers, everyone present on the roof of UNIT HQ, but most notably, the Doctor themselves, were all confused when the Doctor bi-generated, happening as a literal split personality with both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctor existing at the exact same time with no complications.
• Doom Patrol:
  • "Dad Patrol" has Dorothy Spinner (depicted as a centenarian who was physically 11 for most of her life in contrast to her comic counterpart being a young teenager) experience her first period in the bathroom of a convenience store after being forced to start aging in order to confront the forthcoming threat of the Candlemaker. While Dorothy's first period in the comics subjected her to mockery from the other children and Mrs. Spinner, retroactively revealed later to be her adoptive mother, telling her to her face that she should've been aborted, this continuity instead has Dorothy accompanied by the store's clerk guiding her through her first menstruation and assuring her that what she's going through is normal and a sign that she's growing up.
  • In "Hope Patrol", Jane wakes up to discover that she's suddenly aged twenty years as a result of losing her longevity. As she complains to Cliff about the sudden pain in her chest, Cliff suggests that her usual diet of junk food and weed has probably given her a bad case of acid reflux.
• Get Well Soon: In one episode, Kiwa gets her first blocked nose and wonders why she suddenly can't pronounce her "T"s.
• Happy Days: In "The Fonz is Allergic to Girls", Fonzie puts on a new kind of aftershave, which causes a chemical reaction when combined with his girlfriends' perfume and makes smoke, which makes Fonzie sneeze. He doesn't realise that it's the smoke that's making him sneeze and thinks he's somehow become allergic to women, then when he kisses two women from out-of-town who aren't wearing perfume, he thinks he's specifically allergic to Milwaukee women.
• Justified: When Raylan meets with consummate Stupid Crook Dewey Crowe while Dewey is incarcerated in county jail, he has Dewey brought to him on the pretext of him having tuberculosis. Dewey actually buys that he has it for a while despite not knowing what it is and complains to Raylan about it.
  Raylan: You don't even know what TB is.
  Dewey: Sure I do! It's a monkey disease, like in that movie.
• Laverne & Shirley: In "Look Before You Leap", Laverne wakes up nauseous, and worries that she might be pregnant because she can't even remember if she had sex the previous night or not. As it turns out, she was just hungover (which also explains why she couldn't remember -- she was drunk).
• The Librarians: Having been since immortal since the days of King Arthur, Jenkins/Galahad finds himself suddenly mortal again in the early part of Season 4. This leaves him very baffled about many of the problems that come from having the body of a man in his sixties or seventies physically, such as arthritis, the symptoms of a cold, deteriorating eyesight necessitating glasses, and, this particular gem:
  Jenkins: And what's the deal with poop?!
• Mork & Mindy: In "Mork Gets Mindy-itis", Mork thinks he's allergic to Mindy due to sneezing when she gets near, but it turns out that the sneezing was a weird nervous tic due to his One-Episode Fear of people getting too near him.
• Orange Is the New Black: "A Whole Other Hole" reveals that many of the inmates are unaware that the "pee hole" and the "main coochie hole" are two separate orifices. Even Black Cindy, who has given birth, was surprised to learn this. By the end of the episode, former firefighter Sophia offers some basic sex education to her fellow inmates.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Deja Q", Q is turned from an omnipotent alien to a human. He's weirded out by "losing consciousness" (falling asleep) and later feeling pain for the first time, and when he becomes hungry for the first time, he initially worries there's something wrong with his stomach.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: When Odo turns from a changeling to a human, he thinks it's weird when he feels hungry for the first time, then when he gets a backache for the first time he fears it's a weird disease.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • In one episode, the EMH turns from a hologram to a human. When he gets a headache, he says to himself, "Pain?! I'm not programmed to feel pain!" Then, he also feels weirded out when he gets hungry.
    • In another episode, Seven of Nine gets drunk for the first time (on one glass of artificial champagne, no less). She initially thinks there's something wrong with her eyepiece and her implant that controls her motor skills.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise:
    • In one episode, aliens possess a sick Trip and Hoshi. They're shocked and confused by how these bodies feel so weird and frail and immediately leave them.
    • In "The Crossing", a noncorporeal alien possesses Malcolm Reed and is intrigued by the phenomenon of having sexual organs.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: Played for Drama regarding Kelpiens. They believe the vahar'ai (a biological process which starts with cold-like symptoms that escalate into full-body pains, then their ganglia fall out) will kill them or send them mad, but actually that was a lie spread by the Ba'ul. In reality, the vahar'ai just makes them more powerful. Saru also thought he had a cold when his vahar'ai first came on.

Puppet Shows

• Dinosaurs: In "Dirty Dancing", Robbie wakes up from a dream of doing the Mating Dance with his crush Caroline, only to realize that his legs are still moving involuntarily, much to his surprise and confusion. He asks his friend Spike about it at school, and the latter explains that it's something that happens to all male dinosaurs when they go through puberty^note It's a metaphor for all kinds of sexual things; in this case, erections.
• Fraggle Rock:
  • In "The Day the Music Died", the Ditzies, the source of light in Fraggle Rock, begin to die when everyone in the Rock stops singing. Not even the Ditzies themselves understand why they're dying... until Gobo happens to play his guitar and sing. This revives them, and Gobo realizes they live on music.
    The Ditzies: The glow of our bodies lights your caves. Now we are dying. We do not know why. We must save our strength. Help us... help us...! [They fade away.]
  • In "Pebble Pox Blues", Wembley comes down with the eponymous pebble pox and fears that he's dying (especially since Boober had dramatized it earlier) even though it's not dangerous, just annoying.
• Sesame Street:
  • When Big Bird gets Birdy Pox^note A fictional disease that infects only birds of his age and species for the first time, he's surprised to find spots all over his legs.
  • In one cartoon skit, an old man catches the flu (and it's only a 24-hour flu to boot), and he doesn't know why he feels so tired and his throat feels so sore and dry, and even wonders if he's dying until the doctor tells him it's the flu.

Theatre

• Matilda: When Mrs. Wormwood is in labour, she had no clue she was even pregnant, so she thinks something is wrong with her or that she just has very bad gas cramps. When the doctor points out that she has a baby bump, she just thinks he's calling her fat. Making it even funnier is the fact that this is her second child – she's been pregnant and given birth before, yet she's still baffled by it!

Video Games

• In a Baby Hazel game, three-year-old Hazel thinks she has a stomach ache, but she actually just needs to pee.
• Diablo III has Tyrael renounce his angelic nature and become mortal, which results in a conversation where he says his stomach hurts, and after some prompting he said he attempted to take in all of his daily nutrition at once. After being informed that he's supposed to space out his meals he complains that being a mortal is complicated.
• Genshin Impact: Played for Drama. Fontainians are all Oceanids in incomplete human bodies, and thus Primordial Seawater reverts them back to their true forms. In present day, their origins have been forgotten, causing fear and confusion when people are seen dissolving after coming into contact with the Primordial Sea.
• HuniePop: When Momo gets drunk, she experiences Single Malt Vision, but doesn't know why she's seeing things.
  Momo: Master, how come there's two of you?
• Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls: If the optional levels are done in chronological order, a cyclops girl in Windy Way rips out her eye, then at Halloween, she notes how surprised she was that it has grown back.
• The Sims 3: In the Generations expansion, the special life state added were Imaginary Friends, who initially start as dolls, before coming to life as Invisible to Normals doll-like Sims, before being able to Become a Real Boy with a potion. As dolls, they don't have many biological functions, and as such, after becoming real, eating, sleeping, and using the toilet for the first time get special reactions. Unusually for the trope, their reactions are positive, the ability to do these things others take for granted filling them with awe.

Web Animation

• The Most Popular Girls in School: In "Brittany's First Day", a younger Than gets a Raging Stiffie and comments, "Why is my pee-pee hard?"

Webcomics

• Pebble and Wren: In one strip, Pebble gets his/their^note Whether Pebble is referred to as "he" or "they" depends on the strip first caffeine rush from eating raw coffee, wondering why it makes him/them feel so happy despite "tasting angry".
• Penny Arcade: Played for Laughs — Gabe exercises so little that he doesn't recognize his own sweat.
  Gabe: What is this? What's happening? It's like my body is crying. Am I about to die?

Websites

• A memetic question that was posted on Yahoo! Answers (on the Men's Health category) inquired, "why do my thing go up? why me"

Web Videos

• Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Cell is surprised by the extent of his own regenerative powers several times since he inherited them from Piccolo and doesn't know how superior they are to the original version.
• In the Buzzfeed video "Weird Things New Parents Worry About", a baby girl is afraid of her own farts due to not knowing how they work. Her parents have a fear-induced Fantasy Sequence of her continuing to be afraid and confused by her own farts even as a teenager.
• SuperMarioLogan: In "Bowser Junior Gets Potty Trained!", Bowser Junior wakes up to find that he's wet the bed. He gets excited, thinking he's become a mermaid.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In "Checkmate", Marceline loses her vampire essence, and when she feels hungry for the first time since becoming a vampire, she wonders why she feels this way. She thinks it might be what love feels like. Jake then takes out a picnic, and Marceline eats it quite ravenously. She loves the taste of other foods since she's never been able to consume anything that wasn't red since becoming a vampire.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • In "The Kids", Gumball and Darwin start undergoing puberty when their voices start cracking — which results in them going so deep that the world around them shakes from the bass and uncontrollable volume. This leads to further confusion and hijinks. When asked what is happening to them, the doctor can't help but giggle at the situation because they don't know what it means that their voices are breaking.
  • Inverted by Principal Brown in "The Lie", who tries to hibernate to skip the January doldrums only to be surprised his species (which he doesn't even know) cannot do that.
  • In "The Matchmaker,", Darwin mentions that he has a cloaca and doesn't know what it is.
  • Teri the hypochondriac tells Nurse Joan that she's experiencing a weird feeling in her stomach and weakness. The exasperated Joan tells her that she's just hungry.
  • In "The Allergy", Darwin gets a feather trapped in his gills and sneezes a lot, which he mistakes for an Abnormal Allergy to stupidity.
• Roger of American Dad! has so many weird abilities that not even he knows all of them. It wasn't until Stan set him ablaze as a distraction that he learned he was fireproof (as in not harmed, he still caught aflame).
• The Angry Beavers: In "Act Your Age", the beavers turn into babies, and their stomach gurgle loudly. Dag mistakenly thinks there's a monster in his own belly.
• Arthur:
  • In "Paradise Lost", Kate starts wondering why she occasionally has trouble speaking in Animal Talk. Amigo says that's normal for a one-year-old, and that all babies lose the ability to speak to animals.
  • In "Binky Goes Nuts", Binky gets a rash on his arm and wonders where it came from. He wonders if he's allergic to butterflies, but it turns out to be an allergic reaction to nuts.
  • In "Arthur's Chicken Pox", Arthur looks in the bathroom mirror, only to find that he's covered in red dots; cue the Scream Discretion Shot. He nervously asks his parents why he looks like this and David tells him it's just chicken pox.
• Baymax!: In Mbita's debut episode, Mbita's surprised and befuddled when his hand swells up while he's cooking. When Baymax explains to him that he must have suddenly gained an allergy to fish, Mbita's in denial because he wants to uphold his father's legacy and tries to reassure himself that it'll go away on its own.
• The Casagrandes: In "Bun-stoppable", three bandits get a brain freeze, but don't know what it is. They think the Chang sisters somehow attacked them with the sundaes they got it from.
• Clifford the Big Red Dog: In "Tummy Trouble", Clifford, T-Bone, and Cleo have no idea why their bellies hurt after they eat too many treats.
• Dexter's Laboratory: In "Chicken Scratch", Dexter wakes up with chicken pox for the first time. Being an Innocent Prodigy, he wonders what these "strange protrusions" are until Dee Dee explains what chicken pox is (albeit in her own unique way).
• Gravity Falls: In "Sock Opera", when Bill Cipher takes over Dipper's body, while he at first is Reveling in the New Form (and in all the ways he can hurt it), he is finally caught off guard when Mabel takes advantage of Dipper's ticklish spot, confused by the "body spasms". Mabel also takes advantage of the fact that Dipper hasn't been sleeping much recently, essentially tiring Bipper out until his body shuts down, forcing Bill out.
  Bipper: What is this feeling? My body is burning! I can't move these stupid noodle legs. Curse you, useless flesh sticks!
• Family Guy:
  • Played for laughs in the first episode "Death has a Shadow", where Peter Griffin lies that he didn't have gas for the first time until he was 30. This cues a Cutaway Gag of a younger Peter sitting in a beanbag chair and reading a newspaper before he hears himself fart, remarking "What the hell was that?"
  • In the episode "There's Something About Paulie", Peter mentions that he went to Dr. Hartman to check out a growth on his body. When the scene cuts to his office though?
  Dr. Hartman: Mr. Griffin, that isn't a growth. That's your penis.
  Peter: Oh. Well, What about the—
  Dr. Hartman: Testicles.
  Peter: Huh.
• Futurama: In "Cold Warriors", the Planet Express crew (except Bender, being a robot, and Fry, being from the past so he's used to colds) catch a cold for the first time since colds were eradicated in the thirty-first century. It confuses them — Amy wonders why there's goo clogging up her nose, Hermes is taken aback by his hankerings for medicine, and Zoidberg is shocked and confused at his neck glands swelling.
• Hanas Helpline: One episode focuses on Ellen, an ostrich chick who wants to learn to fly, not realising that ostriches, much less juvenile ones, cannot do so.
• Housebroken: Chico winds up being baffled when he inexplicably gives birth to a litter of kittens. It turns out he's biologically female, although he continues identifying as male.
• Kate & Mim-Mim: In "Tail Tale", Mim-Mim's stomach growls and he thinks something's wrong with him, but Kate explains he's just hungry.
• The Koala Brothers:
  • In "Archie's Loose Tooth", Archie gets a loose tooth and thinks his head is wobbly until the Koala brothers explain that it's not his head that's unsteady, but his tooth.
  • In "Ned Catches a Cold", Ned gets a cold. He's a bit confused when the brothers explain to him that he's been sneezing because of his illness, as he claims to have never had one before.
• Lalaloopsy: In "Belly Laugh", Forest Evergreen eats a purple nut and wonders why his stomach is laughing. It turns out to be the side effect of the nut itself.
• Little Bear: In "Winter Moon", Duck wakes up from an Irritation Nightmare about other, annoying ducks. She doesn't seem to realise that dreams aren't real and asks, "Are they gone?".
• Little Princess:
  • In "I Want My Tooth", the Princess screams when she gets her first loose tooth, not realising it's normal.
  • In "I Want Baked Beans", when the Princess gets nauseated from too many baked beans, she fears she's turning into a baked bean (because the Chef joked about her turning into one earlier). Later, she mistakes her own fart for the sound of a monster, though that was because she was asleep and thus didn't hear it properly, thinking it sounded "growly".
• Littlest Pet Shop: In "Hedgehog in the Plastic Bubble", Blythe gets red bumps on her forehead. She looks up what this means and the internet claims that it's a fatal disease called Geri-Beri, much to her horror. As it turns out, though, it was just acne and everything else was psychosomatic.
• The Loud House: Played for Drama in "Space Jammed", in which Lisa has no clue why she's making so many mistakes and why she feels so foggy (at one point, wondering if Leni is rubbing off on her). As it turns out, she skipped her nap (she's only five) and turned down some food Leni offered her, leading to a combination of Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy and hunger-induced idiocy that leads to her being stranded in space.
• MAD: In one skit titled "Pinocchio 2: Boy, Oh Boy, Real Life is Hard", Pinocchio learns that another downside to becoming human is using the bathroom.
  Pinocchio: Blech! How often do I have to do that?
  Jiminy: A couple of times a day.
  Pinocchio: For what, a month?!
• Martha Speaks: In "Martha Changes Her Luck", T.D. mentions that he once got tonsillitis and it went away when he got ice cream after the surgery. He thinks the ice cream is what cured it, instead of the actual surgery.
• Muppet Babies (2018): In "Animal Gets the Sneezies", Animal is sneezing and thinks he has a disease called "the Sneezies" (first suggested to him by Kermit, who's apparently had that disease before). It turns out that it's just hay fever.
• My Friends Tigger & Pooh:
  • In "No Rumbly in Pooh's Tummy", Pooh is confused as to why his stomach isn't grumbling and searches for his "rumbly". He doesn't realise that he's just not hungry.
  • In one episode, Pooh doesn't realise that his type of bear doesn't hibernate.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Molt Down", Spike (a young dragon) is confused when his voice keeps changing pitch, he smells bad, and he gets inflamed scales all over. However, another dragon, Smolder, lets him know that this is just "the molt" (a puberty-like process dragons go through before growing their wings).
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In "Sham Pooh", when Pooh isn't hungry for once, he doesn't know why he's instinctively avoiding eating the honey, thinking his paw has "forgotten the way" to his mouth.
• Peg + Cat: In "The Allergy Problem", Peg thinks she's allergic to cats. She's actually allergic to the Four-Leaf Clover she was carrying in her hat.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?", the boys' latest invention cause Candace and Perry to switch bodies. Candace has trouble adjusting to her new platypus body, like when she finds herself lactating through her pores. Perry also seems to have trouble adjusting to combat without his large platypus tail.
  Candace: Am I sweating milk? Being a platypus is so gross!
• The Powerpuff Girls: In "Sun Scream", the Powerpuff Girls' skin peels after they're given some aloe for their sunburns. Their skin starts peeling, much to their horror, and Bubbles even think that they're falling apart.
• Ready Jet Go!: In "Endless Summer", Carrot catches a cold. As an alien who isn't used to human illnesses, he wonders why he keeps having "face explosions" (read: sneezing strongly enough to send himself flying). He also finds it strange that it's called a cold since he's feeling hot.
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Slimer, is That You?", Egon and Slimer swap bodies. While Slimer takes being in a human body in stride, Egon is perplexed by the hankerings he has, wonders why everything Tastes Like Chicken, and is annoyed by the ectoplasm all over himself.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Son of Stimpy", Stimpy farts for what is apparently the first time and asks Ren why his butt made a sound and smelled weird. Ren is unimpressed and brushes him off, assuming he should know how this works by now. Stimpy then names it Stinky and goes out to search for it. True to the surreal nature of the show, however, Stinky turns out to be alive.
• Robotomy: "The Trials of Robocles": Robot puberty is a rapid, sudden, and bizarre process that requires extensive reading of an operating manual to follow. As a result, the robots spend the first chunk of the episode being repeatedly and unpleasantly surprised by rapid growth spurts, vocal fluctuations, ravenous hunger, and zits that produce tiny kamikaze fighters.
• R.O.B. the Robot: In "You Can't Handle the Tooth", Ema loses a tooth and thinks it can be reattached until she learns that she'll grow a new one later.
• Rugrats:
  • Zigzagged in "Chicken Pops". When Chuckie gets chicken pox, he just takes it in stride (albeit being annoyed by the itch), until Angelica lies that it will turn him into a chicken. When she catches it off him, however, she screams and thinks that she actually will turn into one, though it was mainly just because an egg landed near her and she thought she'd laid it.
  • Invoked in "Rhinoceritis", when Angelica makes up the eponymous disease, and the babies get their revenge on her by tricking her into thinking it's real and she has it by pointing out her skin is getting thicker on her knees (actually scabs).
  • In "No More Cookies", Angelica gets a stomachache from eating too much, but doesn't know why she's in pain, noting, "It's the strangest thing: I keep having these weird tummy aches!".
  • In "The Smell of Success", Chuckie's congestion gets even worse, to the point where he can't even smell anymore. So when he gets it treated, he's confused by the fact that he can smell things, having forgotten what it was even like.
  • In "Chuckie's a Lefty", Chuckie is at first confused as to why he's been favouring his left hand (since he's recently become left-handed; handedness often doesn't develop until toddlerhood and he's two). When he hears Didi mention his "right" hand, he fears he's using his "wrong" one.
  • In "Chuckie vs. the Potty", Chuckie (who's being toilet trained) admits he finds the need to pee confusing when Phil asks him what it's like, as he sometimes doesn't think he has to, when he actually does or vice versa.
  • In "A Very McNulty Birthday", Phil mentions that he once got sick, and the doctor gave him medicine and then a lollipop. He thinks it's the lollipop that cured him instead of the medicine.
  • In "The Inside Story", Chuckie remembers throwing up in the car when his father sang "Old Macdonald" to him. He thinks it was the song that made him throw up when it was probably motion sickness since they were in the car.
  • In "Accidents Happen", Chuckie wets the bed, and is worried that this means he's aging backwards, or that (because he and the other babies were playing the day before the accident) that doing something fun makes him wet the bed.
  • In "The Family Tree", Didi initially mistakes her Morning Sickness for seasickness, since she's on a boat (which indeed may have been making her morning sickness worse).
  • In "The Big Sneeze", Chuckie thinks he's allergic to Kimi because he sneezes whenever she's near. What he's actually allergic to is the dandelions she was carrying around with her in her diaper.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "The Scorpion's Tale", Ralph is sweating so much that there are noticeable stains on his shirt, and he says he thinks he peed through his armpits.
  • In "The Milhouse of Sand and Fog", Ralph tries to catch Maggie's chicken pox at a "pox party" and thinks this will turn him into a chicken. He thinks he's laid an egg in his pants, but this obviously can't happen; most likely he soiled himself if anything happened at all.
• The Smurfs: In "Sassette's Tooth", Sassette brags about being able to wiggle her tooth to the boys, admitting she doesn't know how she does it. When the tooth falls out a moment later, she and the Smurflings are astounded. Sassette's a bit rattled by it until Papa Smurf tells her the Tooth Fairy will get her something soon.
• South Park:
  • In "Erection Day", Jimmy wonders why he has been getting stiff at random times. Butters tells him the only way to satisfy it is to have sex, so he spends the rest of the episode trying to find someone to make love to.
  • In "Are You There, God? It's Me, Jesus", Kenny's anus bleeds due to a colon infection and he thinks he's having his period, so he sticks a tampon in his ass. This later kills him.
  • In "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society", Bebe mentions she initially mistook her newly-developing breasts for mosquito bites.
  • In "Sarcastaball", Butters has been having wet dreams and wonders why he keeps secreting "creamy goo". His parents do not have the guts to tell him what it is, so he sells it as a sports drink, much to the horror of everyone who drank it. At the end of the episode, he gets a Raging Stiffie for the first time and asks his father Stephen what this means. Stephen once again lies to him, stating that it's a "friendly compass".
• Teen Titans: In "Transformation", Tamaranean Starfire undergoes multiple strange mutations and fears she is turning into a monster. When she flees to outer space for fear she will be rejected by her friends, she learns that she's going through a type of Tamaranean Transformation (their equivalent of puberty), with hers being one of the few culminating in forming a chrysalis around herself. Unfortunately, the being she learns this from specifically eats Tamaranean chrysalises! Downplayed, because while Starfire knew of the Transformation, she didn't realize it could manifest the way hers did — her sister Blackfire just turned purple for a couple of days.

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