A Subtrope of Big Eater and Extreme Omnivore in which a character (sometimes more) eats a massive portion of food, sometimes much bigger than they are, really fast. Some cartoons even give the act a sound effect like that of a power saw or woodchipper.
In animated works, termites/beavers and piranhas are almost always depicted as buzzing their way through any amount of (respectively) wood or large prey in a matter of seconds. Reducing them to piles of sawdust or tiny bits of flesh.
Often used by the Horde of Alien Locusts, if smaller than human size, to horrifying effect, leaving only bones in their wake. This trope may be justified by Too Hungry to Be Polite. Compare Typewriter Eating. Sub-Trope of Metaphoric Metamorphosis.
Examples:
Fan Works
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: In the 55th episode, Gohan chews through an entire leg of meat with the motion and sound effect of an orbital sander.
Films — Animation
- Cats Don't Dance: Darla Dimple does this to a hot dog from her gift basket of food near the end of the film.
- Ice Age: Continental Drift: Granny does this to a kiwi at the end of the film after receiving piranha teeth dentures.
- Coneheads: The titular Conheads all make use of this trope when "consuming mass quantities". The daughter, for example, impresses a would-be boyfriend by eating an entire foot-long Subway sandwich in about three seconds.
Literature
- Animorphs: The Taxxon have literal Buzzsaw Jaws. Their mouths are gaping holes with rows of teeth. Each row can be twisted back and forth at high speed to create the impression of a buzzsaw.
- The Langoliers: The titular Clock Roaches have huge mouths that can tear through everything in as much time as it takes to read this sentence. The Film of the Book takes this one step further by giving them three rows of alternately rotating metallic teeth, making them look like a cross between Pac-Man and an excavation drill.
Live-Action TV
- Parker Lewis Can't Lose: Happened at least once with Larry Kubiac.
- Family Ties: This became a running gag when Meredith Baxter had to take time off for pregnancy. Her character, also pregnant, was kept offscreen, frequently demanding and buzzsawing food. They once claimed she ate a whole watermelon in a handful of seconds.
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat:
- Mileena uses this to eat an opponent's head (or entire body) as a fatality attack.
- Reptile does so too, in one game snagging a victim's head with his long tongue and swallowing it, and in another, devouring most of the victim's body in three parts the same way.
Western Animation
- Billy Boy (by Tex Avery): The goat chews its way into pretty much any material, cloth included, at absurd speeds.
- Donkey Kong Country: Klaptrap.
- The Fairly Oddparents: In "The Big Superhero Wish!", Chester's superhero persona, Matter Muncher Lad, can turn his braces into buzzsaws and drillers capable of making short work of hard materials —like soil, concrete, and even metal— at high speeds. This is useful for creating tunnels for sneaking into the villains' bases.
- Futurama: Nibbler, as well as all other Nibblonians.
- The Get Along Gang: A number of cartoon beavers, like Bingo "Bet-It-All" Beaver .
- Looney Tunes: Both Tasmanian Devil and his Tiny Toons Captain Ersatz counterpart, Dizzy Devil.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Parasprites.
- Road Rovers: Blitz once devoures a mook's assault rifle with his ludicrously sharp teeth. Justified in that it's actually one of his superpowers.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: In "That's Snow Ghost", when Velma is chained to a log and placed on a sawmill conveyor belt by the titular ghost, Scooby rapidly bites the log she is chained to in two after she tells him to "make like a beaver" seconds before the blade could dismember her.
- Shaun the Sheep: One episode features an Extreme Omnigoat with this level of eating ability.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: The titular sponge once did this to sharpen a pencil.
- Tom and Jerry:
- In two of Chuck Jones' shorts, Jerry befriended a tiny dog that does this often to Tom before hammering the hapless cat into the ground.
- In the MGM era, Tom turns the tables by taking advantage of this dog ability. Spike is being held back by a leash, so Tom uses his fruitlessly gnashing jaws to carve a log into a bat.
- Wacky Races: Sawtooth, Rufus Ruffcut's pet beaver.
Real Life
- Just about any depiction of piranha you can think of follows this trope to a tee. This is based on the very much real fact that piranhas are voracious predators who feed by frenzy. This means that when presented with prey so big that it overwhelms them, they enter some sort of The Berserker state when the only thing that matters is to eat as much and as quickly as possible. These frenzies are feared for a reason.
