Foul Medicine

"Though it tastes like sweaty old socks, this should do the trick. Two spoonfuls, eight times a day."

— Doctor, Little Princess, "I Don't Want to Kiss Great-Aunty"

Sometimes, especially during a Sick Episode, a character will have to take medicine (whether in the form of a liquid or a pill). Now this medicine might be good at curing whatever ails the character, but it might not smell or taste very good — in fact, it might smell or taste outright bad.

The character might go out of their way to avoid taking the medicine, pretend they've recovered to get out of taking it, or even pretend to take it, but usually they'll be made to take it one way or the other. Once it's swallowed, expect them to gag and maybe make a joke about how it's worse than the disease and/or Tastes Like Feet. If a character is Playing Sick, expect them to give up whenever someone whips out the Foul Medicine, and if a character tries Getting Sick Deliberately, this could serve as Laser-Guided Karma. The trope could also be subverted by having the character change their mind or downplayed by having a single character enjoy it or establishing that the character who hates it is just a Picky Eater.

Usually Played for Laughs. The character dishing out the medicine may be The Medic, the Team Mom, the Nurse with Good Intentions, or (especially if the patient doesn't really need it) a My Beloved Smother archetype, Babysitter from Hell, or at worst a Dr. Jerk or a Mad Doctor. The company behind this trope could possibly be a Predatory Big Pharma. Compare Stock "Yuck!"; If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You; Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious; Disgusting Vegetarian Food; A Tankard of Moose Urine, and Bad to the Last Drop for other bad-tasting foods and drinks, and Afraid of Needles for another trope about characters dreading a medical treatment.

Truth in Television — many medications do taste rather bitter (in some cases because the medicine can be toxic if taken in excess), and cod-liver oil (which was used for many conditions in the past) is notorious for smelling bad.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Buckley's cough syrup lampshades this with its long-running slogan, "It tastes awful. And it works." Many of the ads show people tasting it and contorting in disgust.

Anime & Manga

• Delicious in Dungeon: Played for Laughs when the orcs help Marcille and Laios recuperate from a bad fight. The orcs' medicine is a glorp mashed up from strange fruit, strange bugs, a monster leg, and some slime, administered by Mouth To Mouth Force Feeding. It works, though Marcille might have preferred death.
• Inuyasha: When Kagome gets sick, Inu Yasha grabs a bunch of ingredients and starts cooking them in a pot. The resulting concoction smells foul, something that Miroku, Sango, and Shippo all agree on. However, it does manage to cure Kagome's illness. Inu Yasha then states that the concoction is something his mother used to make for him when he was sick as a small child, which is why he had so much faith in it.
• Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon: In "Currying Favor and Flavor!", Ash and Mallow give herbs to tend to Totem Lurantis and Castform's injuries. Litten nibbles one and looks shocked at how bitter it is before cringing. Castform also winces and sticks its tongue out, but Totem Lurantis doesn't seem to mind the taste of it.
• Pokémon the Series: XY: In "A Rush of Ninja Wisdom!", Sanpei gives Froakie a pill made from an Energy Root when Froakie is injured. Froakie eats it and gets Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises from the realization of how awful it tastes before jumping up and yelling.
  Sanpei: When the medicine is bitter, you can be quite sure that it's going to work. [chuckles]
• Squid Girl: In episode 5, Mini Squid Girl has a Balloon Belly from eating a lot of shrimp and this puts her in some pain, so Eiko attempts to hand her a pill. Mini Squid Girl refuses to open her mouth until Eiko tickles her ribs and makes her laugh. Subverted, however, as Mini Squid Girl doesn't appear to mind the taste once Eiko tosses it into her mouth.
• In Tsuyokute New Saga, Kail has Urza repeatedly use her Gnome spell to clear away the wreckage of a burnt-down manor. When she complains that she doesn't have enough magical energy to do so, he hands her an entire crate of mana potions, remarking that these are high-quality items that are as effective as they are absolutely disgusting. Urza cringes and gets to work, managing to find the underground passage they're looking for after the fourth bottle.

Asian Animation

• Noonbory and the Super 7: Discussed in "Singeritis". Wangury claims that Doctorbory gives bad-tasting medicine to anyone with Singeritis, much to Lukybory's dismay, as he had just caught it earlier. As it turns out, however, Doctorbory only gives popsicles to soothe the victims' sore throats.
• Pucca: In "A Leg Up", Garu has broken his leg and is in the hospital. Pucca offers him a spoonful of medicine, which he turns down. Pucca becomes frustrated and slaps him on his bad leg to make him yelp, and she stuffs it into his mouth. He groans in disgust after the fact.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: In one strip, Calvin catches a cold on purpose by leaving the window open. His mother overhears him coughing and goes to get medicine for him, but he tries to claim that Hobbes is the one who coughed to get out of having to take the medicine. His mother doesn't buy it and stuffs a spoonful of it into his mouth while he's protesting, and he gags in disgust before lying to Hobbes that he liked it.
• Garfield:
  • In one strip, Jon is chasing Garfield, who is doing everything he can to get away from him. At the end, Jon yells at him to take a pill, indicating that Garfield hates the taste of them.
  • In another strip, Jon informs Garfield that he’s going to start giving him vitamins. Garfield refuses, stating his body’s a temple, but then Jon reveals he hid them in some lasagna.
    Garfield: Even a temple needs its vitamin C.

Fan Works

• Subverted in A Green Christmas, Buttercup expects the Tylenol to taste awful, until she tries it and realizes it tastes like grape.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Downplayed. When Goku is in danger from the heart virus that Trunks warned kills him in his timeline, he reveals that he stopped taking the medicine that was supposed to prevent it because it was grape flavored.
• A Load of Bulk: Discussed when Lana drinks the strength potion and notes that it tastes bad but "medicine isn't supposed to taste good".
• The Kedabory Verse:
  • Reflections in a Cloudy Sky: In the fifth chapter, Camilo is given bitter-tasting medicine, which he hates.
  • Shining and Sweet: In "Cough Up", Aran has a cold and stubbornly refuses to take cough medicine that Disco Kid claims is "a little sour", so Brigit distracts him by saying there's a moose outside and Disco Kid shoves a spoonful of it into his mouth. Aran admits it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.
  • That Catch in Your Throat: Chapter 3 is themed around this. The actual medicine from Julieta tastes of rancid meat, and the home remedies from Mirabel only make the problem worse.
• In Harry's New Home, when Harry is sore all over from his first Quidditch practice, Snape gives him a potion to heal his body that tastes pretty bad.
  Harry: Ugh! That tastes worse than dirty socks.
  Snape: As you might expect, considering they are the main ingredient.
  Harry: Really?
  Snape: Idiot. Of course not.

Films — Animated

• Peter Pan: Early in the movie, when Wendy sees Nana approach the bedroom with a tonic the kids apparently have to take before bedtime, she complains about how nasty it is. This is proven to be true (at least for dogs) when Nana, while filling three spoons, spills some of the tonic on her paw and licks it up, causing her to cringe in disgust.
• Piglet's Big Movie: During a flashback, Kanga pretends to think Piglet is Roo and makes him swallow "fishy oil" medicine to make him bounce. He cringes and gags before he literally bounces off the walls.
• The Year Without a Santa Claus: Near the beginning, the sick Santa is given a spoonful of cold medicine by his gruff, rude doctor, and he cringes and sticks out his tongue at the taste.

Films — Live-Action

• In Babe, the frail old sheep Maa refuses to take her medicine at first because it's "horrible stuff," but after Babe persuades her that it's for the best, she calmly takes it.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: After Lockhart accidentally removes all the bones from Harry's arm, Madam Pomfrey gives him a bottle of Skele-Gro to make them grow back. Harry takes a swig and instantly spits it out, prompting Pomfrey to snap, "Well, what did you expect? Pumpkin juice!?"
• Mary Poppins: Discussed in the song "Spoonful of Sugar", in which the saying "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" is used as a metaphor for finding fun in a necessary inconvenience.
  • A requirement that Michael and Jane include in their advertisement for a new nanny is that she won't give them castor oil.
  • Subverted later in the film, when Mary Poppins makes the children take medicine after being out in the rain. They protest, thinking this trope will be in play, but they are pleasantly surprised to find the medicine magically changes to suit their tastes: Jane's spoonful tastes like lime cordial, Michael's like strawberry, and Mary Poppins declares her rum punch-flavored medicine "quite satisfactory."
• Nanny McPhee: When the Brown children end up getting the measles, the measles medicine that Nanny McPhee is to administer once an hour, every hour, is a thick, black, bubbling liquid that's implied to taste terrible, judging by the expressions Simon makes when he takes it. Eric believes that it is made of boiled-down toads.

  Eric: The situation is very simple, Evangeline. The nanny, who I believe is a witch, made us ill, and fed us boiled-down toads all day.

• Pinocchio (2002): Pinocchio refuses to take bitter medicine that the Fairy is providing him and claims he would rather die than have any of it. To frighten him into taking it, the Fairy calls over some rabbits with coffins who say they're ready to bury him, so Pinocchio finishes it up in a hurry.

Idioms

• In the Dutch language, there's actually a saying that lampshades this trope: "Bitter in den mond maakt 't hart gezond", literally "a bitter taste in the mouth will make the hearth healthy", reflecting how medicine might taste bad but is ultimately good for you.
  • Chinese has a similar saying (or chengyu) that literally translates to “bitter (taste in) mouth, good medicine."
  • A similar saying (tục ngữ) in Vietnamese: Thuốc đắng dã tật (, sự thật mất lòng), which translates to "bitter medicine cures the disease (, truth hurts)."

Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Ferdinand's homebrewed medicinal potions tend to sacrifice taste for efficiency to the point that they often become the gold standard for "bad-tasting" for anyone else who consumes them at least once. At some point, he makes a better-tasting version. At a later point, Charlotte is horrified by her first time tasting one of Ferdinand's potions, to the point that she later mentions she mistook it for an act of antagonism from Ferdinand. Then a chapter from someone else's point of view clarifies that the potion Charlotte drank was the one with the taste upgrade. At another later point, Rosemyne drinks one of the original bad tasting ones and almost passes out. A bystander who was asking for her hand in marriage mistakenly thinks that she chose to poison herself than marry him, much to his horror. It doesn't help that the smell is also as bad as the taste.
• Invoked in the Aubrey-Maturin series, where Dr. Maturin will add chemicals to his medicines to make them taste worse, as sailors believe that If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You.
• The Belgariad:
  • Polgara invokes this with her herbal medicines, claiming that the terrible flavour motivates people to recover faster. Whatever the reason, they're very effective.
  • Sadi says that the worst part of cultivating his Acquired Poison Immunity was the daily regimen of foul-tasting antidotes — some of the poisons were quite tasty.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt, an injured Ingrey receives two spoonfuls of an utterly vile-tasting syrup made of "willow bark and poppy, wine spirits, and a few other useful things" He almost spits it out, but he soon is feeling no pain at all.
• In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin must take a draught of medicine for his 'monthly condition' (lycanthropy). He drinks some in front of Harry and observes that it tastes disgusting, adding, "Pity sugar makes it useless."
• Heralds of Valdemar:
  • Averted in Storm Rising, when young Karsite priest Karal collapses from stress and is dangerously close to developing a stomach ulcer. The healing drinks and drugs he's given taste wonderful. The Healer explains that they're deliberately made that way — after all, she has to trust him to take them as directed, and if they tasted bad, nobody would want to take them.
  • Played straight with the standard medicine for overstrain of one's psychic powers, which tastes horrid. Healers often provide a "chaser" as well, which has no medicinal properties but will get the taste of the medicine out of your mouth. On one occasion, a Herald who needed the medicine because he'd been a complete idiot got the medicine but not the chaser.
  • Also played straight at one point in the Collegium Chronicles. Mags and Bear had a nasty argument, then a few chapters later Mags is severely injured. Bear tells Mags that Mags had some very good points in the argument, it was probably better for Bear to hear those things from Mags instead of someone else ... and as payback, Bear had picked the worst-tasting options he could find when he prepared Mags' medicines.
• Judy Moody: A variation of this trope happens when Judy gets sick and her mom gives her a pill to swallow. She refuses, not because it tastes bad, but because it's too big ("the size of Nebraska"). Her mom ends up having to crush the thing into bits so she can drink it.
• In The Lord of the Rings, the Uruk-Hai who took Merry and Pippin prisoner give Merry a foul-tasting but revitalizing Orcish syrup to keep him alive in order to bring him before their master. Orcs being derived from Elves initially, it's most likely a corrupted form of Elvish medicine.
• Mog: In "Mog and the V-E-T", Mog hates the pill she was made to take so much that she scratches the vet for making her take it.
• Patrick McManus, a humor writer and novelist, wrote about how once when he and his sister got sick, their mother gave them several spoonfuls of castor oil. It tasted so bad that neither he nor his sister ever got sick again.
• Peter Pan: Both Michael and his father Mr. Darling have to take regular doses of medicine, which they both despise. Mr. Darling urges Michael to "be a man" and take his medicine without complaining, but when Wendy brings him his own medicine to take as an example, he tries to put it off as much as Michael does, and then Michael finally takes his medicine, but Mr. Darling doesn't. Then, in an attempt at humor to deflect his children's disappointment in him, he plays a practical joke on Nana the dog by pouring his medicine (which is white) into her bowl, making her think it's milk. When Nana tastes the medicine, she retreats miserably into her kennel, and the children feel sorry for her and are more ashamed of their father's behavior than ever. This is what drives Mr. Darling to tie Nana up outside... which is what allows the children to fly away with Peter Pan that night.
• Pinocchio: While Pinocchio was sick in bed, the blue fairy tries to give him some medicine. Pinocchio really doesn't like the taste of the medicine and decided not to drink it. The blue fairy summons some rabbits carrying a coffin to put him in if he doesn't take his medicine. This seems to work on him.
• The Red Dwarf Survival Manual: A section on natural remedies states that tree bark, boiled for twelve hours or more, can be a cure for dysentery - but the entry also notes that the resulting substance will be black, gooey, and smell awful.
• Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: The Professor, proudly telling the kids about his role as Imperial Court Physician, shows them a batch of medicine he's prepared for the servants, and invites Bruno to taste it. Bruno does and wrinkles up his face in disgust.
  Bruno: It's welly extremely nasty!
  The Professor: Nasty? Why, of course it is! What would Medicine be, if it wasn't nasty?
  Bruno: Nice.
• Tortall Universe:
  • In the first book of The Immortals, Daine's given a tonic to help with her sunburn and muscle strain after she's been up on a wall firing arrows for hours. It's tomato juice "laden with salt and other things". Whatever those other things are, she chokes and exclaims at the taste and has to brace herself to gulp it down.
  • In The Numair Chronicles Arram is given a Magic Antidote so that he can help in a cholera outbreak without fear of contracting the disease himself. It tastes so terrible that he gets lightheaded and nearly passes out, to the point where he worries about looking weak. The attendant assures him that it takes everyone that way.
• In Warrior Cats, the main characters are known to complain about the taste of Healing Herbs. Perhaps this is because they're cats, who are carnivores.
• Winnie the Pooh: In The House at Pooh Corner, Roo is often given malt extract as "strengthening medicine", and he's said to think it tastes awful. Tigger, on the other hand, turns out to love it, and he eats it for him.

Live-Action TV

• El Chavo del ocho had it in a few episodes, and the characters going to great lengths to avoid taking them:
  • One episode had Quico sick, and asking El Chavo and La Chilindrina to throw away his medicines so his mom would believe he already took them. It devolves into a pillow fight that results in Quico knocked out the window, and when el Chavo starts to throw away the medicines through the window, Quico ends up swallowing them all.
  • Another had la Chilindrina getting sick from eating a whole cake by herself, and Don Ramón tries to force her to take a medicine. He tries to pretend it's actually tasty and taking a few spoons himself, but La Chilindrina obviously doesn't buy it.
• I Love Lucy: In "Lucy Does a TV Commercial", Lucy is promoting the Vitameatavegamin tonic, and when she tastes a spoonful of it, she cringes and shudders before saying it tastes like candy.
• In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Miracle," while Leland is suffering from debilitating back pain, his aunt sends him a carton of some "hippie concoction from Hell" to drink for it.
  Leland: [after choking some down] It tastes like chalk.
  Natalie: What's in it?
  Monk: [reading the label] "Chalk extract."
• Sesame Street: In "Elmo Visits the Doctor", during the song "You Have to Be Patient to Be a Patient", the young, flu-afflicted girl is shown gagging when she takes her medicine.

Music

• In the children's song "Sick", one reason the singer is Afraid of Doctors is that he's afraid of the idea of taking medicine. He even tries to claim to the doctor that medicine doesn't work on him.

Puppet Shows

• Lamb Chop's Play-Along: In the episode "Too Sick to Go to the Circus," Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy pretend to be sick. Shari pretends to buy it, and announces that she's going to give them something to make them feel better. The boys excitedly think she's going to give them sucking candy to soothe their throats. But instead she gives them a green tonic, and Charlie Horse reacts to the taste with disgust. Hush Puppy likes it, though.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Eye of Newt for a Hag Witch healing spell is a handful of raw fish guts; the spell only takes effect if the patient eats them and passes a Will Power test to keep them down.

Theatre

• Mary Poppins: Miss Andrew's main shtick is feeding the children she nannies "brimstone and treacle"; a medicine that gives off smoke, smells terrible, and apparently tastes even worse.

Video Games

• Animal Crossing: When giving a sick villager medicine, they will often comment on how foul-tasting or icky it is, but still take it anyway and be thankful for the player's help.
• Played for Laughs in Dragon Age: Inquisition, if the player takes the time to enjoy the scene with the Iron Bull and his Chargers. The group's medic, Stitches, makes something which can help with most any injury, but as Bull says, it tastes absolutely terrible. Stitches then points out that "It's a poultice, ser, you're not supposed to drink it." (It's a Creator In-Joke about the fact that in Dragon Age: Origins, all medical items were consumed by the characters even if they were identified as poultices.)
• The End Times: Vermintide and Vermintide II: Healing draughts do their job well, but the taste leaves much to be desired, according to the Ubersreik Five. Even Bardin, who sometimes comments that it tastes good, can recoil in disgust when he drinks one.
  Kerillian: This mulch burns my throat.
  Bardin: Gah! Tastes like krut!
  Saltzpyre: I don't drink this out of thirst.
  Kruber: I wish you were an ale!
  Sienna: What an odd taste.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Most alchemical concoctions, especially the ones used as medicine, are said to taste awful. In one quest, the Warrior is asked to deliver some energizing medicine to some guards, who all recoil at the horrendously bitter taste. The doctors then have the Warrior drink some themselves, keeping the Warrior in the room to make sure they down it all because of how much they've been overworking themselves.
• Harvest Moon More Friends Of Mineral Town: The Doctor's Black and Purple heart events involve the Doctor offering the farmer to try some new medicines that supposedly restore strength and alleviate fatigue at the same time. In the first test, the farmer finds the medicine's taste disgusting, but reluctantly admits that it is effective. The second one is so bad that it causes the farmer to pass out. After this, the Doctor agrees to stop asking the farmer to be a guinea pig for his incomplete medicines.
• Neopets: The Elephante Unguent is a Battledome healing item that restores 50% of an Elephante's maximum hit points, but is said to taste like drinking bilge water.
• Pokémon: Herbs are a form of medicine which helps heal Pokemon, such as curing them of status conditions and reviving them. However, they're also extremely bitter and usually decrease a Pokemon's friendship stats for this reason.

Western Animation

• The Alvin Show: Theodore sneaks a dog into the house and gives him some food. When he notices Dave is getting suspicious about the missing food, he grabs a half-eaten chicken leg and comes up with it, telling Dave he doesn't feel so good. Dave just admonishes him for eating himself sick and tells him now he has to take something bitter. He then grabs some medicine and shoves a spoonful into Theodore's mouth. The grimace on Theodore's face says it all.
• Ben 10: In "Side Effects", Ben catches a cold from getting inside an ice cream truck, which also affects the powers of his aliens. Grandpa Max buys him medicine that both tastes and smells terribly.
• Captain Flamingo: In "Snot Funny", in order for Milo to go outside to help a kid in trouble due to him getting a bad cold, his mom feeds him some cough syrup which can relieve the cold for only 2 hours, which causes him to cringe from the bad taste.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "Bug Off", Linka has caught a cold, but insists on going on the mission anyway, using one of Ma-Ti's herbal remedies to cope. She doesn't like how it tastes, though.
  Ma-Ti: Speaking of herbs, it is time for your medicine, Linka.
  Linka: Oh... I was hoping you had forgotten...
• Chop Socky Chooks: Averted. In the episode "Kobura Strikes", The main characters were poisoned by the villain Kobura and needed to get the antidote from him. When they finally got their hands on the antidote, they drink it and find that it tastes terrible. Chick P even mentioned that it tasted like cough syrup.
• George of the Jungle (2007): In "Cone Head", when George gets a nasty skin inflammation that Dr. Towel Scott identifies as "Itchy Swellitis", the good Dr. tells George that he needs to drink a pink medicine to cure it. However, George refuses to do so because the medicine is so foul it makes him to a bunch of disgust wild takes. Dr. Scott tries to convince him otherwise by stating that the medicine is now bubble-gum-flavoured, but it still makes whoever drinks it do those wild takes, it just also makes them blow a bubble afterwards.
• Jelly Jamm: In "Musical Aurora", Goomo has the jelly measles, so Bello claims that he'll have to take medicine that is so terrible that it caused a monster to faint. Goomo reluctantly takes it, and after making a bunch of melodramatic gestures, he immediately brightens and claims it wasn't that bad.
• Kid vs. Kat: In "Flu The Coop" Burt gives Coop a foul medicine that tastes like Old Lady Munson which he hates it especially consider that she's grouchy and hateful with him and all Burtonburgers (minus Millie) and a Scapegoat as well.
• Little Princess: Exploited in "I Don't Want to Kiss Great-Aunty" when the Princess pretends to have a made-up Polka-Dot Disease called "warble dots" to get out of kissing her great-aunt. The doctor tricks her into admitting she's not sick by producing a bottle of medicine and claiming it tastes of sweaty socks.
• Looney Tunes: Played for Laughs in "Hare Brush". Bugs Bunny misinterprets a prescription to "Take one teaspoon with water". Bugs takes this literally and swallows the actual teaspoon, with a suitably disgusted reaction to the taste.
  Bugs: Ewww! Nasty medicine teaspoons.
• The Magic School Bus: In "Inside Ralphie", Ralphie's mother gives him some medicine, which he claims "smells like grape shoe polish" and which causes him to cringe from the taste. Since his class is depending on him to come up with an idea for broadcast day, Ralphie claims he's feeling better already, but she just tells him to go back to bed.
• Madeline's Christmas: When all the girls except Madeline come down with a cold and Madeline has to take care of them, she's shown giving Nona a pill. Nona cringes when she takes it, though whether because of the pill's bad taste or because her throat hurts when she swallows isn't made clear.
• Milly, Molly: Downplayed for Maude's cure for a sore throat seen in "Class Concert". Its ingredients are honey, lemon juice, ground ginger, hot water, and garlic, and Milly says, "Urgh!" at the idea of it, prompting Maude to say, "It's not supposed to be tasty!". Molly doesn't seem to have any problem with it though.
• The Owl House: In "Keeping Up A-fear-ances", Eda's gross-out noise when drinking the elixir which checks her Owl Beast curse in the morning reveals that the stuff tastes awful.
• Peppa Pig: In "Pedro's Cough", several people come down with a vaguely-defined disease, of which a cough is seemingly the only symptom. To treat them, Dr. Brown Bear feeds them a liquid which is said to taste of "custard and old socks".
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Ghost World", Egon catches a cold, and his mother tries to cure him by feeding him an old remedy from her husband's side of the family. The remedy is a blend of chicken soup, orange juice, tea, prune juice, and garlic. When Egon drinks it, he jokes that he's lucky to have survived it, and when Peter, Ray, Winston, and Slimer catch his cold, she tries to make more of it for them.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Nurse Stimpy", Stimpy feeds a giant spoonful of medicine to Ren, who complains about the "icky-tasting stuff". When asked what kind of medicine it is, Stimpy looks at the label and sees it's "All Purpose Icky-Tasting Medicine".
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Downplayed in "Mid-Life Crustacean", where Mr. Krabs hates taking his pill, not because it smells or tastes bad, but because it's very big and it makes him feel old.
• Tom and Jerry: Near the end of "Baby Puss", Nancy is trying to give Tom some castor oil. He refuses to open his mouth until Jerry pinches his tail and causes him to yelp. The girl stuffs the spoonful into Tom's mouth, and he hates the taste so much that he pukes out the window. Jerry laughs at him, but the tipped-over bottle of oil drips into his mouth and he also rushes to the window to vomit.
• The Wise Little Hen: Donald Duck and Peter Pig lie that they have stomachaches to avoid helping the Hen with her corn. At the end, the Hen gives them a bottle of castor oil, and Peter cringes in disgust (though he doesn't actually drink any of it).

Real Life

• James Herriot describes in one of his stories how owners attempted to treat a dog suffering from paralysis (most likely from a slipped disc) with asafoetida, and remarks that its popularity as a quack medicine must be due to people believing something so stinky must be magical.
• This is the reason root beer is very unpopular in Japan; medicine in Japan is often given root beer flavoring as often as medicine in the West is given grape flavoring, so actual root beer is associated with the taste of medicine.

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