Couldn't Find a Tissue

Uh... you know you're going to be wearing that, right?

Atchoo — hurry down to the circus
And ask if they'll lend you the tent.
You say they said yes?
Here it comes — Lord be blessed —
Here it is — Ah-kachoooo — there it went.

— "Bad Cold", Shel Silverstein

Oh, what an emotional moment! You can't help but cry and cry, your face becoming wet with tears and snot! Well, now, you've got a mess to clean up, so you reach for a... uh... shoot, there's no tissues nearby! Oh well, guess you'll just have to turn to a good runner-up choice.

Which happens to be... something absolutely not meant to wipe your tears and/or blow your runny nose on, be it a piece of clothing, or an important sheet of paper, or a hat, etc.

Could instead happen as a result of a Sick Episode or Plot Allergy. Can be a source of Mood Whiplash, and it more commonly occurs with more immature characters with a lower sense of shame (especially if the fabric is actually already being worn on another person).

The crying variation is especially common for a Plucky Comic Relief sidekick to do while shedding Tears of Joy as the lead characters share a heartwarming moment.

Compare Toilet Paper Substitute. Sub-trope of Nose Nuggets. Overlaps with Only Useful as Toilet Paper when it's done as a deliberate insult. Also compare Pooping Where You Shouldn't for when someone defecates in the wrong place. May cross over with an Ill-Timed Sneeze.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• One Piece has a variant in which, after waking up from suddenly falling asleep with his head on his meal, Ace uses the dress of a nearby woman who asked if he was ok to wipe his face clean.
• Onegai My Melody: Kuromi's very first "Kuromi Note" was spawned from when My Melody used a page from her diary to wipe Piano's nose.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: One strip has Calvin just about to sneeze with no tissues at hand. He pulls his shirt up and sneezes into that, then comments, "Of my limited options, this was probably the worst."
• Candorville: One strip has Clyde, who has become Nouveau Riche, blowing his nose on a bunch of dollar bills (or possibly hundred-dollar bills).
• Peanuts:
  • In one story, Charlie Brown checks himself into the hospital for what is implied to be heatstroke. Back at home, a distraught Lucy ends up wiping her teary face all over Schroeder's toy piano, much to his chagrin.
  • In another story, during lunch, Peppermint Patty learns that an essay she wrote won an all-city competition. She wipes away her Tears of Joy with her french fries.

Fan Works

• Death Battle Arena: One of Discord's Fatalities consists of him getting an Animal Stampede led by Angel Bunny to run over the opponent until they end up Squashed Flat. Discord then picks up the flattened opponent and blows his nose on them, before throwing them away. To make this worse? Being squashed flat doesn't kill the opponent, so they're still alive and feeling Discord blowing his nose on their body! Discord then Crosses the Line Twice by Breaking the Fourth Wall to reassure the player that he'll wash his hands before the next match.
• Learning to Breathe Underwater: Steven's family manage to get into Rose's Room after seeing him disappear into it with Jasper. They start crying Tears of Joy that he's alright, with Greg blowing his nose on Pearl's waist sash. She gives him a mortally offended look, tries to wash it off, then gives up and forms a new one out of Hard Light.

Film — Animated

• In Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Genie is crying Tears of Joy at Aladdin and Jasmine's wedding, and blows his nose into the Magic Carpet. Subsequently the wedding is interrupted, but at the end of the movie, Aladdin and Jasmine finally get married for real: as they do, the tearful Genie once again prepares to blow his nose into Carpet, but Carpet hands him a handkerchief just in time.
• In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, when Wallace is crying over not wanting to be a were-rabbit, he blows his nose on his rabbit ears.
• Gulliver's Travels: At the end, as all the little people wave goodbye to Gulliver as he sails away, the spy Snitch wipes his eyes with his robe, causing several deadly weapons to fall from his person.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: When Peaches is born, Eddie cries Tears of Joy and then blows his nose into Crash's tail. Crash pulls his tail away in exasperation.
• The Lion King (1994): During "I Just Can't Wait to Be King," after Zazu gets dunked in a mud puddle, he cleans himself off and blows his nose on an elephant's ear. The annoyed elephant swats him with its trunk.
• The Little Mermaid (1989): As Prince Eric and his bride-to-be march up the aisle, they pass Carmella and Grimsby. Carmella starts weeping with Ocular Gushers, so she grabs the closest cloth, which happens to be Grimsby's ascot. Grimsby is aghast as Carmella buries her face in it, but cannot escape her clutches, since the many wedding guests leave little wiggle room.
• In The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, when Sebastian tearfully breaks the news to Ariel that her daughter Melody ran out to the sea, he blows his nose on the hem of her dress.
• Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted: When the Zoosters are celebrating Alex's birthday during the beginning of the movie, Alex has a flashback of life at the zoo and starts sobbing, then blows his nose into his own paws. He quickly realizes just what he did and is kinda grossed out with himself.
• In The Magic Voyage, when Marilyn revives from her Disney Death, Bob the Beaver is overcome with Tears of Joy and blows his nose into Columbus's nightcap.
• The Princess and the Frog: When Tiana and Naveen transform from frogs into humans after a True Love's Kiss, Louis is so overcome with emotion that he blows his nose on his tail.
• Return To Never Land: When the Lost Boys are saying goodbye to Jane, Cubby blows his nose into the ear of Nibs' rabbit costume.
• Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving: After hearing the story of Kessie, a very moved Tigger blows his nose into his Santa hat.

Film — Live-Action

• In The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, when Elmo's runaway blanket comes floating down to him, Oscar unknowingly sneezes right into it. Then he just tosses it right into his trashcan—which happens to be a portal to the eponymous Grouchland.
• Ghostbusters (1984): Discussed when there's Ectoplasm on a bookshelf in a library, and Peter Venkman jokes that someone blew their nose on it.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:
  • Bilbo Baggins has just set off on the quest to Erebor, when he finds himself having an allergic reaction to his pony's hair. Upon realizing that he doesn't have a pocket handkerchief, he desperately tries stopping the journey to go back to the Shire and get one. Bofur, being a more practically-minded Dwarf, tears off a piece of his coat and throws it to Bilbo, telling him to use that instead.
  • Later on, when Bilbo is trying to rescue the ponies from a trio of hungry Trolls, one of the Trolls, Tom, accidentally sneezes right into his friends' stew, much to the disgust of Team Chef Bert, who violently pinches his nose to prevent him from sneezing even more. Whilst Tom initially does have a handkerchief to blow his nose on, he then finds himself needing to sneeze again, so he reaches behind himself, grabs the closest thing to hand, and blows his nose on that instead. In this case, the closest thing to hand is Bilbo himself, who was trying to steal a curved Elven sword from Tom's waist and cut the ponies free with it. Which means poor Bilbo now has Troll bogies covering his clothes.
• In the third Scary Movie, Tom is comforted by the sheriff while he reflects on his deceased wife. She places her hand on his shoulder... and he promptly grabs it and blows his nose into it.
• In the 1999 film version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, throughout the song "One More Angel in Heaven," Joseph's brothers and their wives weep Crocodile Tears over Joseph's "death", and several of them wipe their eyes on their robes, cloaks, or head veils. As the brothers are entering at the beginning of the scene, Gad blows his nose on the back of Reuben's cloak.
• A somewhat Played for Drama example in West Side Story (1961): when Baby John is crying Tender Tears after the Rumble, A-Rab tells him to blow his nose, but when Baby John asks him if he has a handkerchief he can use, A-Rab retorts "What's wrong with your sleeve?"

Literature

• Angela Nicely: In one book, Miss Skinner the headmistress tells Bertie to wipe his nose. She then adds, "Not on Darren!".
• Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo: Due to suffering from a cold or the flu and having no tissues, Felicity wipes her nose on her hands. She then pets the animals, making them catch what she has.
• The Moomins: In Moominsummer Madness, Snufkin finds himself taking care of a bunch of orphans. When the kids find a leaflet announcing the play being staged by the family, they naturally want to see it. Since the play is a tragedy (or at least, it was supposed to be), Snufkin asks the kids if they have hankies before they leave, then says they'll have to wipe their noses on their clothes.
• In Lulu And The Flying Babies, when Lulu is crying because she wanted to play in the snow but her parents took her to the museum instead and her father left her behind on a chair due to his frustration at her sulking, she wipes her nose on her sleeve despite having a hanky. A flying baby notices this and calls her out for it.
• Origami Yoda: In The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee, during a school assembly, Tommy is still recovering from a cold that his kid cousins gave him, and he has nothing to wipe his runny nose on. He then notices that Harvey is making an origami Snow Trooper and asks to see it, only to use that to wipe his nose. Harvey then starts screaming at him, resulting in them (and Kellen, who only laughed at what happened) being sent to detention.
• Peek-a-Boo Poo: In the second book, during the scene establishing Heidi as The Pig-Pen, she's seen wiping her nose on her sleeve.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: In "The Reptile Room", Olaf blows his nose on his curtains, much to Violet's disgust when she discovers them covered in dried snot.
• The Shel Silverstein poem "Bad Cold" is about someone who has such a bad cold that he has to resort to using items like bath towels, clothes, bedsheets, and a flag to blow his nose with. The cold only goes away when he's able to blow his nose on a circus tent.
• In the kids' book The Tale of Mucky Mable, one of the many impolite things Mabel does at the table is blow her nose on the serviette.
• In Wayside School is Falling Down, school cook Miss Mush cries Tears of Joy when a student (Ron) finally orders her Mushroom Surprise, and blows her nose on her apron.

Live-Action TV

• Mr. Bean: In the pilot episode, during the boring church service, Mr. Bean sneezes, only to find he doesn't have a handkerchief on him, and ends up discreetly wiping his nose on the inside of his jacket pocket. Shortly afterwards, he absent-mindedly puts an unwrapped sweet in the same pocket, and cringes in horror when he realises what he's done.

Music

• Songdrops: In "The Sneeze Song", the singer doesn't have a tissue, but he gets cold stares from everyone if he just sneezes into the air, so he sneezes into his shirt, which he finds gross.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock:
  • In "The Challenge," Junior has a cold and sneezes into his shirt.
  • In "Scared Silly," when Wembley thinks he scared Boober so much that Boober exploded, he picks up a piece of laundry and cries Tears of Remorse into it.
• Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock: In "Deep Dive," Mokey comforts a crying Red, who blows her nose into a corner of Mokey's dress.
• Sesame Street: In one cartoon sketch, five anthropomorphic dogs are sneezing for different reasons — three of them have colds, one's allergic to some flowers he was picking, and the fifth sneezed because of some pepper. They all sneeze into different things — the allergic dog uses his foot, one of the cold-ridden dogs uses a (non-anthropomorphic) cat and another uses his hands, and the pepper dog uses a cheese souffle.

Theatre

• An unscripted example occurs in some productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the Show Within a Show of "Pyramus and Thisbe", Bottom-as-Pyramus finds Thisbe's bloodstained cloak on the ground and wrongly assumes she was killed by a lion. In some performances, as part of his Bad "Bad Acting", he uses the cloak as a handkerchief while pretending to cry.
• In Act I of My Fair Lady, Eliza wipes her nose with her sleeve when she cries. When Higgins offers her a handkerchief, she has no idea what it is.
  Higgins: Remember: that's your handkerchief; and that's your sleeve. Don't mistake the one for the other if you wish to become a lady in a shop.

Video Games

• One of the idle animations on the Duolingo map has Falstaff the bear sneeze into his own scarf, then awkwardly tuck it back.

Visual Novels

• In Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, after Kay's father is killed, the crying girl walks over to Edgeworth for comfort... and blows her nose right into his cravat.

Web Animation

• Battle for Dream Island: In BFB 10, Leafy is chosen by the viewers to come back to the game. She unwittingly wipes her tears of joy with Bracelety's note for Ice Cube. After she just promised she would deliver the note for Bracelety...
• GoAnimate: Discussed in Dora Misbehaves at Her Great Grandma's Funeral, when Dora claims that one of the reasons she hated her great-grandmother was that she always used her hair as a tissue.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: In "Carpe Museum," while chaperoning a field trip, Bob has to hold a tissue for Andy to blow his nose into. Ollie, on the other hand, just blows his nose right on Bob's shirt.
• The Captain and the Kids: At the end of the MGM short Blue Monday, the Captain is sobbing hysterically after failing to keep house in Mama's stead (and having no buttons on his pants), so the Inspector dries his eyes with his long beard. But when the Captain tries to blow his nose into it, he quickly pulls it away.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: At the end of the episode "The Quilt Club", Eustace runs out of tissues and ends up blowing his nose on a quilt pattern in which the Stitch Sisters have been trapped.
• In the Darkwing Duck episode "The Secret Origins Of Darkwing Duck", in the future, a janitor in a museum tells two kids the story of Darkwing Duck, and when one of the kids starts sneezing, gives him a rag to blow his nose. Once he leaves, a curator comes and explains that 1) There've been no living janitors in the museum for decades and 2) The rag is Darkwing Duck's mask, which has been missing for centuries.
• Family Guy: In "New Kidney in Town", Stewie kidnaps Brian and takes him to their "summer home" at the playground so he won't have to give his kidney to Peter, which will kill him if he does. As Brian tries to explain the seriousness of the situation, Stewie breaks down crying and gets all snotty, eventually hugging Brian and getting snot all over him while the disgusted dog begs him to wipe his face in the sandbox.
• Futurama: In "Parasites Regained," Fry offers his jacket to a crying Leela so she can blow her nose.
• Little Princess: In "I Don't Want a Cold", the Princess, due to suffering from the eponymous cold, has a runny nose. The King and Queen tell her to blow her nose, but she has no tissues or hankies, so she blows it on her sleeve.
• The Loud House: In "Potty Mouth", Lily sneezes right into Lincoln's shirt. This pisses him off and he almost says "dammit" before he swaps it out with a verse from "Jingle Bells".
• The Mask: In "Little Big Mask", after playing babysitter to the uncontrollably regressing Stanley, Peggy wakes up in the hospital to find that he's vanished and left only his diaper behind. Convinced that Stanley's suffered a Death by De-aging, she's left sobbing into his vacant diaper. For added fun, she doesn't realize what she's crying into up until one of the doctors reveals that Stanley was just taken away for a quick checkup, prompting her to throw the diaper away in disgust.
• In the Popeye cartoon "Marry-Go-Round", Popeye is Squashed Flat by a laundry press. His friend Shorty, thinking Popeye is dead, starts sobbing and blows his nose on Popeye's flattened body.
• In the Rugrats (1991) episode "All's Well That Pretends Well", Angelica has a cold and is looking for the nearest thing to sneeze into. She chooses her cousin's dog Spike.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: In "Roomies", Marlene the Otter has to share a habitat with Rhonda, a walrus who is a Fat Slob with many disgusting habits. Marlene is disgusted by her behavior but tries to be nice to her. However, she reaches her breaking point when Rhonda sneezes on her instead of the towel she offers, and orders the Penguins to send her away.
  Marlene: I want you guys to get rid of her tonight! RIGHT NOW!!
  Private: But I thought you're like sisters.
  Marlene: I don't care if we're identical twins! I want her gone, FOREVER!
  Skipper: Now, I know you're all worked up. Maybe you should calm down, and think things through before you...
  Marlene: She used me as a tissue!
  (Kowalski, Rico, and Private all cringe with disgust)
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Texas", when Sandy sings about how much she misses Texas, one fish wipes his tears with a Krabby Patty and offers it to his friend so he can blow his nose.
• Steven Universe: In "Stuck Together", after being moved by the conversation that Lars and Steven has, the Topaz fusion suddenly begins to cry as she marvels how sweet that was, and uses Steven's jeans (which he had taken off in an attempt to try and escape from her) to blow her nose.
• Steven Universe: Future:
  • In "I Am My Monster", after Steven turns into a giant Kaiju monster, Spinel cries over the regret of the pain that she had caused him, and ends up blowing her nose right into her own pigtails.
  • In "The Future", when Peridot breaks down into tears over the news of Steven moving away, Steven offers her one of his old shirts as a parting gift. When he walks away, she begins bawling once again, and winds up blowing her nose right into said shirt.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Prom-ise Her Anything", Elmyra becomes heartbroken after Montana Max tells her he doesn't like her. After Monty becomes heartbroken by Mitzi, Dizzy's prom date in a similar way, he decides to apologize to Elmyra, giving her a dollar to blow her nose on when he finds her crying.
• Totally Spies!: In "Iceman Cometh", when Clover comes down with a cold after being Exposed to the Elements, she blows her nose right into the fabric with the baddie's sigil that Sam just found on the ground.

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