Intentional Mess Making

"You're a manservant! Look, [spits up] clean that!"

— Nayely Cross, New Father Chronicles, "Interview with a 3-Month-Old"

Some messes happen because of an outside force like a tornado or an explosion. Other messes happen because people are clumsy or don't know that they're making a mess or just through bad luck. These messes, on the other hand, happen on purpose.

They may be trying to bother someone—because they're mad at them, or due to Sibling Rivalry, or as a prank, or maybe they outright hate them. They may also be trying to frame someone. For instance, if Alice is mad at Bob, she may make a mess in a way that suggests that Bob did it so that Charles will punish Bob. They might also be making the other person have to clean up, often to demean them (this is very popular with those forced into slavery, to show how cruel their "masters" are).

If it's out of anger, it needs to be calculated. If it's random and uncalculated for the purpose of blowing off steam, that's Tantrum Throwing, Percussive Therapy or similar. Compare Filthy Fun for getting yourself mussed up on purpose, for kicks. Also compare Contrived Clumsiness. It could also be an example of not being Nice to the Waiter. Also compare Interrogation by Vandalism, Dung Fu, Foodfight!, and Excrement Statement. Peeve Goblins may do this as their job.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bungo Stray Dogs: Chuuya's powers enable him to manipulate the gravity of whatever he touches, which even applies to the ground at his feet, so he'll often shatter it to intimidate his opponents and easily create numerous projectiles to hurl at them. Chuuya will also take advantage of his mindless and wildly destructive state while using Corruption, intentionally activating it to take out extra tough enemies as long as Dazai is around to nullify it as soon as he's done.
• Joanna, Hatchin's foster mother in Michiko & Hatchin, does this as a Kick the Dog moment during the first episode. During the breakfast scene, in response to learning that Hatchin burned the underside of the omelette that she was trying to make for her, Joanna dumps the omelette and the rest of her plate right onto the floor, before then ordering the poor girl to not only cook her another omelette, but clean up the mess that Joanna has just made. And this is only a small part of the abuse and bullying that Hatchin has to deal with from her entire foster family.

Asian Animation

• Noonbory and the Super 7:
  • In "Ring Around the Dozegury", Dozegury defaces Cozybory's painting and draws a crude illustration of Totobory on the latter's basket to frame him for that (among other actions).
  • In "Opposites Attract", the Dotoris (who have temporarily turned evil thanks to a magic spell) throw Bakerbory's pies everywhere.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: In this strip, Calvin won't allow Hobbes in his kiddie pool, saying that Hobbes will get his fur in the water. Hobbes then deliberately starts shedding before getting in anyway. Calvin then implies that he peed in the pool, much to Hobbes's horror.

Fan Works

• The Joys and Sorrows of Young Charles Finster: In "Charles vs. the Potty", this is discussed when a younger Stu suggests that young Chas should crap in his room and hide it in his toybox to avoid his toilet-training. Chas says that he's already tried that and that his mother was mad at him for doing so.
• The Loud House:
  • Exaggerated in Anger Management. Lincoln wins in a physical fight with Lynn, making her insecure and want to start another fight so she can win. When Lincoln wants to clean the bathroom, she tries to provoke him by not only rubbing mud all over the bathroom, but deliberately giving herself food poisoning to clog the toilet.
  • In Whipped (covered in Episode 10 of Peeking Through the Fourth Wall), Lincoln's sisters deliberately clog the toilet to frame him for it.
  • In One Angry Person (also covered by Peeking Through the Fourth Wall, namely Episode 8), Lincoln is mad at his sisters (except for Lily and Lucy) and he spites them by doing various bad things. This includes wiping his face on Lori's phone, breaking Luna's guitar, and using Lola's dress to clean up Charles's pee.

Films — Animation

• Cinderella: Cinderella is downstairs washing the floors while her step-sisters practice their singing, leading to the song "Sing Sweet Nightingale". Unfortunately, the song ends when she notices Lucifer intentionally tracking more dirt around.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Sunset gets the human versions of Snips and Snails to wreck the gym so that she can take photos and edit them to make it look like Twilight did the deed.
• In Open Season 2, Fifi throws up on his owner's lap in the car (offscreen) so that they'll pull over and her other dog Roberto can go out and poop.
• Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension: Perry urinates on Doofenshmirtz's couch to distract Phineas and Ferb from helping Doofenshmirtz and to look like a normal platypus. It doesn't work, though.
• The Secret Life of Pets: Max is jealous of Duke, the new dog his owner brought home. After Duke accidentally knocks over a lamp, Max decides to make an ever bigger mess so that Duke would get blamed for it and get thrown out.
• Titanic: The Legend Goes On: In one scene, Angelica's stepfamily intentionally smash some china, for the sole purpose of forcing her to clean it up.
• Winnie the Pooh (2011): When Christopher Robin writes, "Back soon" as "Backson", Owl believes that the Backson is an evil creature who does things like scribble in other people's books and tangle up Christmas decorations.

Films — Live-Action

• The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl: When Linus reluctantly gives Max his dream journal back, Max finds that the former has scribbled all over it. This all leads up to some Ham-to-Ham Combat between the two boys and their teacher Mr. Electricidad.
• Mean Girls: Regina, the Alpha Bitch of the cliquish Plastics, takes the pages of their "Burn Book" of snide insults, and makes photocopies. These pages then are scattered liberally around the corridors of her high school. When the students examine this mess, they read the nasty vitriol written thereon, which creates crippling animosity among the student body.
• Rags: Played With. After a short discussion about his secret identity, Charlie tells Lloyd that he has no intention of revealing these things to Kadee. In a misguided attempt to force him to be honest, he starts smashing the glasses Charlie had to wash, claiming he'd only stop if Charlie agreed. Despite having good intentions, he also knew full well that Charlie'd get in trouble, and blamed the mess on him as soon as Arthur noticed it in an effort to protect himself.
• Teddy KGB from Rounders aims to unnerve his opponent by spilling his chips into the pot haphazardly. Mike asks Teddy not to "splash the pot," but Teddy persists in this messy betting, because he's an arrogant Jerkass.
• In Strays (2023) all the dogs intentionally poop while in the pound (and one has explosive diarrhea) so the worker will clean it up and they'll be able to escape. He ends up falling in it.
• The first Superman: The Movie from 1978 has Clark Kent help out at school as a coach's assistant. One Jerk Jock topples the bench where Clark has laid the folded uniforms for the football team, then drives away with his cronies. The jock remarks, "He'll be doing that all day." Clark uses his Super-Speed to reorganize everything in a flash.

Literature

• In The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the sapient rats deliberately mess up towns by chewing on things, urinating everywhere, etc., so that Maurice the cat can have the kid play Pied Piper and pretend to get rid of them, thereby making money.
• Angela Nicely: Subverted in “Supermodel!”, where Angela tries to trick Tiffany into getting her dress wet before posing for a photo, by goading her into paddling in the sea. However, Angela gets splashed by a wave and Tiffany stays dry.
• Bad Kitty:
  • The original picture book is about Kitty's mischief, during which she causes several messes (including, but not limited to flooding the bathroom, knocking dishes off the table, and tipping her litter box over).
  • In "Bad Kitty for President", the narrator tells Kitty that she can do a grassroots campaign, saying that it means "[they] dig hard to find the roots of what voters care about and then try to leave something of [themselves] behind for them to ponder". Kitty then digs a hole in a neighbor's yard and it's subsequently implied that she crapped in the hole.
• In "The Blue Cross" by G. K. Chesterton, Inspector Valentin thinks master thief Flambeau is breaking things and causing messes to taunt him, although it's Flambeau's companion and intended victim Father Brown, getting Valentin on their trail.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In "The Meltdown", the Pig is mad at the Heffleys for having excluded him from their vacation in the previous book. Greg mentions that he had been taking his anger out on the family by destroying things, like knocking over a potted plant.
  • In "The Last Straw", Frank unknowingly throws Manny's Security Blanket Tingy in the trash. Manny gets back at him by wrecking his Civil War battlefield diorama.
  • In "The Getaway" Manny intenionally wets his pants so Greg can't drop him off at a kids' play area that requires all kids to be potty trained.
• Fudge
  • In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Fudge's friend Jennie intentionally pees her pants (as a joke), much to the dismay of Peter and his mother.
  • In Superfudge, it's mentioned that Fudge had been intentionally wetting the bed (and his pants) to get attention when Tootsie is born.
• In Harry Potter, Dudley once throws up on purpose as part of a series of naughty things he does for attention.
• How to Train Your Dragon: In the first book, Toothless knocks food off the table with his tail after Hiccup yells at him.
• In H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy, Jack Holloway sees the office that his Fuzzies made a mess of after escaping from their cages in the Chartered Zarathustra Company building. Seeing the dumped wastebasket is final confirmation that the escape was real: Holloway had taught Little Fuzzy that it was not nice to dump wastebaskets and leave them dumped.
• Magic Kitten: In one of the books, all the bins are knocked over. It seems as though Darren did it, but really it was his older sister Allison, who was angry with him and wanted him to get the blame.
• In one of the Mary Poppins books, Michael deliberately knocks over the maid's tray. The maid calls him clumsy, and he replies, "I meant to!".
• Mr. Men:
  • In "Little Miss Naughty", the eponymous Little Miss Naughty stomps on Mr. Uppity's hat and breaks Mr. Clever's glasses. Later, she attempts to put red paint on Mr. Nosey's nose and throw a rock at Mr. Happy's window, only for the invisible Mr. Impossible to stop her by tweaking her nose.
  • In "Mr. Nosey", Mr. Brush intentionally brushes the titular Mr. Nosey's Gag Nose with red paint when the latter tries to spy on him.
  • In "Mr. Mischief", Mr. Mischief puts treacle in Mr. Funny's hat. Then Mr. Funny wears the hat and his head becomes covered in it, to his chagrin.
• Peek-a-Boo Poo is about a kid named Alfie who craps in random places in the house to rebel against his toilet-training. Its sequel, Peek-a-Boo Poo! Number 2!, involves a girl named Heidi who poops and hides it in receptacles when she's not happy about being toilet-trained (just like when her older brother Alfie was her age).
• In a Winnie the Pooh story, Tigger knocks over a chair on purpose after seeing Roo accidentally knock one over.
• The Worst Thing About My Sister:
  • Marty once pranks her Neat Freak sister Melissa by throwing her toys around their shared bedroom and writing, "I hate bossy big sisters with big fat bottoms" in lipstick on the wall.
  • Discussed when Marty is pretending to feel nauseous to get out of going to Alicia's birthday party. Marty's mother tells her not to "be deliberately sick" on her dress, but that wasn't Marty's plan.
• Wringer: Palmer spits on the classroom floor to stay after school so that Nipper won't find him with the hooligans.

Live-Action TV

• One chef in Chopped once intentionally left a napkin on someone else's plate to get the other chef in trouble.
• Drake & Josh: In "Peruvian Puff Pepper", Megan wants to join Drake and Josh in the Salsa-Making contest. When they refuse, she gets revenge on them by placing some explosives into their salsa-pot. Within a few minutes, the kitchen is covered in salsa, and Drake and Josh are not only blamed for the incident, but forced to clean it up as well.
• In the Friends: episode "The One With Joey's Big Break" Rachel needs to go to the eye doctor, but she's afraid of it so she tries to distract Monica so she doesn't have to go. Rachel knocks a box of cereal off the table then deliberately steps on it to make dust that'll be harder to clean up. "Look at this mess! I mean, we're probably gonna have to clean this up! Y'know, we're gonna have to reschedule!" She's trying to trigger Monica's OCD, but it doesn't work. See this here.
• In the Season One finale of The Good Place, Michael is revealed to be a Bad Place architect. After this bombshell is dropped, he vents some frustration by deliberately knocking a vase off a table for absolutely no reason than to be a dick.
• House of Anubis:
  • At one point in the third season, Sibuna needs to get themselves into detention to get papers from their teacher. To accomplish this, they proceed to start trashing the hallway.
  • The modus operandi of The Sinners is to spread as much chaos as possible, and one common tactic involves making a mess of things- ranging from sticking a cookie on the mirror, to writing on the walls, to outright destroying everything.
• A few games on Impractical Jokers involve making messes in supermarkets. One requires each Joker to convince a customer to join him in making a mess, while another has the Joker making a mess of a display while faking an injury and trying to get a customer to support his story to the "manager" (played by real-life former store manager John Szeluga).
• Downplayed in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: In "Guide To School Lunches", Lisa Zemo is shown to be a volunteer lunch-worker due to money struggles. Missy takes advantage of this by intentionally spilling stuff on her table to make her clean it up and embarrass her over it.
• In The Noddy Shop episode "Mixed-Up Magic'', upon hearing that Noah is planning to have a sale at the shop, Warlow is worried that he and the other toys are going to be sold off, so he decides to wreck the store.
• Sesame Street: One skit involves Oscar annoying everybody by dirtying the windows instead of cleaning them and putting trash into some soup that was cooking.
• Downplayed in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Dax apparently likes to prank the extreme neat freak Odo by moving things in his quarters a few centimetres out of place.
• In The X-Files episode "Bad Blood", Mulder diverts an attacking vampire by flinging a bag of sunflower seeds, scattering its contents all over the floor. This triggers the vampire's compulsion of picking small seeds up.

Music

• The song "In Suburbia" is sung from the perspective of an old man who used to be a suburban delinquent, talking about things he did just to stir the pot, which included breaking windows.

Myths & Religion

• One traditional way of defending against vampires is to drop thousands of grains of rice, sesame seeds, or something similar in their coffins. According to some legends, the vampires are compelled to spend all night counting the seeds and thus have no time to actually hunt prey, sometimes to the point of not being able to make it to their coffins before sunrise.

Theatre

• In The Odd Couple, at the height of tension between them, Oscar throws a plate of linguini at the wall and just leaves it there in order to upset neat freak Felix.

Video Games

• Bioshock 2: In the Audio Log "Destructive Learning", a teenage Eleanor Lamb, who was reprogrammed to no longer think like a Little Sister, records the following monologue, after she was locked up by her mother, Sofia:
  Eleanor: Hello, mother. As you've always said, I shouldn't be allowed to wander the city in my condition, but without going outside, it's harder to hear much about the world — so I'm learning at home! This, I think, is a ... porcelain tea service, in the style of Louis the 15th, isn't that right? (crash) Now that's a fascinating sound! (tapping on glass) And this is called a "stained glass window," hand-crafted by your adoring flock ... they've gone to a lot of trouble to capture your likeness, haven't they? (glass shatters)
• The aim of Cat Simulator is to knock as many things over as possible, seemingly just for the giggles.
• Danganronpa: This is a surprisingly rare tactic for killers, as most tend to clean up the crime scene to avoid leaving evidence behind.
  • In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc Celestia has Hifumi spray blood everywhere to fake his death before killing him for real not long after. This actually gives away what happened as after the class mistakenly pronounced him dead, he wiped off his glasses in order to navigate the hallways, so they were clean when his corpse was found.
  • In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Nagito does this in an extremely disturbing fashion. He ties himself up and stabs his limbs with a knife to make it appear as though he was tortured, and sets up several Monokuma cutouts by the doorway so when the other students rush in, the cutouts will fall over like dominoes and start a fire by knocking over an oil lighter. The end result is an extremely confusing and messy crime scene that obscures what actually went down.
  • In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, Korekiyo covers up his murder of Angie by taking her body from the spare room he killed her in and leaving it in her lab where he takes some swords and stabs her effigies which hang from the ceiling, obfuscating the fact that he spun one around to catch the sliding lock on the door when he exited, creating a locked-room mystery. When the students enter, the whole place looks like a horror show.

Web Animation

• An early episode of RWBY Chibi has Ruby deliberately leave muddy footprints everywhere right after Weiss finished cleaning as part of an ongoing fight the two were having.

Web Videos

• Alantutorial has one tutorial where Alan starts tearing apart planks of wood in a house his brother is implied to be building, angry that he's been forced to do tutorials against his will and lashing out in the only way he can.
• In a New Father Chronicles video taking place when Nayely was three months old, her baby gibberish is subtitled as, "You're a manservant, look— clean that!" as she spits up. Since then, calling La Guardia a manservant has been a common joke in the comments.

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • In "Bleep", Nadine smashes a vase on the ground to test D.W.'s theory that swearing makes people drop and break things.
  • In "D.W.'s Baby", an envious D.W. tries to get Kate in trouble by putting David's shoes in the dishwasher. Naturally, David doesn't believe it for one second when D.W. lies that it was Kate. It's also mentioned that D.W. hid baloney in the CD player for the same reason.
  • In "Paradise Lost", Kate throws food on purpose as part of an attempt to avoid growing up (and thereby losing her ability to speak in Baby Language) by milking her babyish qualities.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • "Broadcast Wagstaff School News":
    • The main plot is Tina trying to find out the identity of the Mad Pooper, who keeps defecating in the school. Tammy intentionally takes a dump in the library while dressed as Tina to make it seem like she is the Mad Pooper.
    • During the climax, Zeke reveals that he was the Mad Pooper. The first time he soiled himself was an accident, but he did it for fun in some of the following incidents, and he craps in the assembly to clear Tina's name.
  • In "Art Crawl", Bob draws "anuses" (read: black dots) on the paintings in Edith's store Reflections.
  • In "Glued, Where's My Bob?", Tina, Louise and Gene prank each other by putting sticky stuff in random places so that one of them will touch it by accident. This results in Bob getting glued to a toilet.
  • In "Topsy", Mr. Dinkler accidentally-on-purpose knocks Louise's papier-mâché volcano out of her hands and stomps all over it.
• Caillou: In the book version of "Big Brother Caillou", Caillou starts wetting the bed on purpose to get attention when he thinks his parents have been paying too much attention to Rosie.
• The Crumpets: In "Inside Li'l One's Brain", to protest against his toilet-training, Li'l One puts a sleeping T-Bone in his bed and whispers into his ear to make him wet the bed.
• In the The Fairly OddParents! episode, "Tiny Timmy", Vicky is left in charge of looking after both Timmy and a Priceless Ming Vase worth $50,000.00. When Timmy explores the inside of Vicky's body in the Shrink Suit that Cosmo and Wanda made for him, Vicky accidentally breaks the vase when she rushes to the bathroom after one of the germs inside her triggers her gag reflex. Upon seeing the broken vase, Vicky decides to blame Timmy, then invites her friends over for a party to trash Timmy's house even further. Timmy eventually makes his way into Vicky's brain, and finds out that Vicky's emotions are controlled by little people in chairs, one of which, Kindness, never showed up for work. Timmy turns on the machine himself, making Vicky a kind and caring person as a result, so she can clean the house before his parents get back. When Timmy notices the vase is still broken after the house is cleaned, he wishes it fixed just in time. When he accidentally breaks it, it is revealed that his parents only bought the vase for one dollar from the internet, and insured it for $50,000.
• Family Guy: In "Brian in Love", Stewie learns that Brian has been peeing on the floors and blaming him to cover himself, so he gets back at him by pulling the opposite: peeing all over the room and blaming Brian.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • One episode has Bloo doing everything he can to be sent to bed without supper. The first we see of him doing this is "decorating" a couch with ketchup and mustard. He fails; Herriman sends everyone but Bloo to bed without dinner as he believes everyone is spying on him and Bloo is exposing the culprits, and Bloo is made to eat the dinner he is trying to avoid as delayed punishment. All of it.
  • In "Everyone Knows It's Bendy", the eponymous Bendy smashes a vase, eats chips while leaving crumbs on the floor, covers Wilt's shoes in mud to get the floor muddy too, breaks a window with a baseball, and writes on the walls. He gets away with it by fake-crying and playing the victim card to blame the other imaginary friends.
  • "Room with a Feud" has two examples;
    • When a new room becomes available to anyone who wants it, Bloo, Wilt, Eduardo, and Coco all compete for ownership of it. After Eduardo puts Bloo in a trash can for trying to claim the new room, Bloo returns to the room in the trash can and spreads garbage all over the room to convince the imaginary friends that only he deserves to live in a room as messy as it. This backfires because Wilt says that he doesn't deserve to live in the new room if he can't keep it clean.
    • When a new imaginary friend named Peanut Butter moves into the new room, Mac and the imaginary friends trash the room by tearing up its basketball wallpaper, letting a cluster of spiders loose, and spreading garbage all over the floor to convince him to move out. These all backfire, as Peanut Butter hated the wallpaper, loves spiders, and the kid who imagined him was a real slob, so all the garbage reminded him of home.
• Futurama: In "A Big Piece of Garbage", a giant garbage asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, and after a first attempt to get rid of it by blowing it up fails, the Planet Express crew devises another option: create and launch a second garbage asteroid to deflect it out of the way. New New York has been exclusively recycling and garbage-free for 500 years, but with the help of Fry, the city manages to rally together to create enough landfill to make their second garbage ball in time.
  Fry: (to Leela) Don't finish that cruller, throw it away! (turns to Bender) Bender, drink that beer and drop the bottle on the ground! (Bender smashes it onto the ground) Very nice!
  Mayor Poopenmeyer: Get that robot some more beer! We've trashed this room but that's just the start. We've got to get Fry's message to the people!
• Gravity Falls: In one episode, Dipper and Mabel compete to be chosen to move into the spare room by doing chores and bribing Grunkle Stan. However, the two end up swapping bodies, which they take advantage of to sabotage each other's work by making messes, insulting Stan and causing havoc, trying to trick him into rewarding the wrong sibling.
• Grossology: In "Turd Wars", Abby is made hall monitor and forced to clean up the entire school after taking her milkshake drinking record too far and causing the milkshake dispenser to explode. She manages to clean up most of the school, but Paige decides to make the job worse by encouraging everyone to make a mess so Abby will be hall monitor for even longer and clean up her messes. Luckily, Ty has the idea to make the giant dung beetles Sloppy Joe and Insectiva created clean up all the mess in the school so Abby doesn't have to clean up any more. The principal congratulates Abby on a job well done and then makes Paige the new hall monitor for the rest of the month after witnessesing her knocking over a trash can and making a mess.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: In "Phantasmo", the titular Phantasmo breaks dishes, Jumba's experiment analyzer device, Lilo's record player, tapes, and Hound Dog single, which Stitch gets blamed for.
• The Loud House:
  • In "Pets Peeved", the Loud family gets a new dog. The original dog, Charles, plus Cliff the cat, Geo the hamster, and Walt the canary, are jealous of him, so they try to get him kicked out. First, they frame him for knocking over a vase, but Rita hated the vase so she praises him for it. Then, they spread mud all over the house and frame the new dog, but the family assumes it was an accident and simply clean up.
  • In "So Long, Sucker", Cliff deliberately coughs up a hairball as part of a Zany Scheme to get rid of an automated vacuum cleaner that he, Charles, Geo, and Walt hate.
  • What jump-starts the subplot of "Schooled!" is Lily soiling herself, which gets her kicked out of preschool. It's later revealed that she did it on purpose so that she wouldn't have to go to preschool.
• In a Martha Speaks episode "Martha Plays Favourites", Martha remembers a time when Skits was a puppy and she intentionally wet the rug to get attention because she was jealous of him.
• The Mighty B!: Among the other trouble Millie causes to ruin Bessie's reputation in "Stuffed Happens", she throws eggs at Penny's rubber chicken, crudely draws a picture of Bessie on Mr. Turtleton's shell, and breaks a Ferris wheel with vomit.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the episode "Owl's Well That Ends Well" involves Spike being jealous of Twilight's pet owl Owlowicious. He brings a toy mouse in and pretends it's a real, dead mouse, hoping Twilight will scold Owlowicious for bringing his kills into the house, but she doesn't.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • In the episode "Just Desserts", the Smiths get revenge on the Powerpuff Girls for getting Harold arrested (although mostly for ruining Marianne's dinner) by destroying the inside of their house. Much to Marianne's ire, however, that doesn't tear apart their familial bond.
  • In "Mommy Fearest", Professor Utonium falls in love with Ms. Ima Goodlady who is later revealed to be a disguised Sedusa. When Ms. Goodlady starts taking charge as the girls' mother figure, she tells the girls they can't fight crime until after they cleaned up the mess they made last night. The girls do so really fast, then Ms. Goodlady deliberately messes the house up and forces the girls to clean up the mess without using their superpowers.
• Rugrats:
  • In "Rebel Without a Teddy Bear", Angelica tells Tommy to be bad in order to get his toy lion back. Her idea of being bad involves spilling juice, knocking a bunch of furniture over, and dirtying the walls.
  • In "Baby Sale", the babies are put in the daycare section of a mall. Because their mothers were mentioning a "baby sale" (actually a sale on baby clothes), they think they're going to be sold. They decide that people would want to buy the best babies, so to avoid being sold, they must act like the worst babies. Among the things they do to act bad are throwing things and knocking things over.
  • In "Baby Maybe", Ben and Elaine babysit Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil. The babies mistakenly think Ben and Elaine want to take them home and keep them, so they start throwing food everywhere.
  • In "The Family Tree", Chuckie becomes envious of the attention that Tommy is getting from Chas and his grandparents. Angelica tells Chuckie that if he blames Tommy for his own actions, Chas will love Chuckie again. First, Chuckie throws all the food off of the table, and later, he tricks Tommy into holding the hose so he can turn it on and spray the whole room.
  • Discussed in "Chuckie Vs. the Potty", when Phil and Lil suggest that Chuckie should take a dump in his room and hide it in his toy box to find a way around his toilet-training.
• South Park:
  • In "Breast Cancer Show Ever", Cartman defecates on Mr. Garrison's desk to get detention so he can avoid getting into a fight with Wendy.
  • The plot of "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" is about an unidentified person taking a dump in the urinal in the men's room. It is revealed to have been Stan, who didn't want to miss recess when the stalls were full.
  • Happens twice in "My Future Self 'n' Me". First, Cartman and a Hispanic crew get revenge on Butters's parents on Butters's behalf by smearing feces on the walls of their living room. Later, the Stotches and Marshes hire Cartman to to do the same to Motivation Corp.'s walls.
  • In "Titties and Dragons", Cartman defecates on Thomson's yard to get even with him. Stan is blamed for it.
• Tom and Jerry:
  • The short "Mouse Cleaning" has Tom threatened with expulsion if he makes one more mess in the house, leading Jerry to attempt to create messes that Tom must clean up before the master gets back.
  • The cartoon "Slicked-Up Pup" from 1951 has father bulldog Spike bathe his son, Tyke. Then Tom Cat comes along, fervently pursuing Jerry Mouse, in the process, pushing Tyke into a mud puddle. Spike seizes the cat, and warns him, "My boy better be clean when I get back, or I'll ... pound you pieces!" Jerry Mouse proceeds to mess up the pup in increasingly messy ways, until Tom cannot hope to clean up the pup in time. Tom resorts to disguising the pup as a chicken, and pretends to keep it company.
• T.O.T.S.: In "Puppy Problems", Lucky (who is noted to be very naughty) tosses his food bowl, makes bags of animal food fall off of shelves, and knocks some toys off of shelves.

Real Life

• A common prank played by older siblings on younger siblings is to ask the younger sibling if they want to play "52 Pickup". After the younger sibling says yes, the older sibling throws a deck of cards on the floor and says "OK, pick up!"
• Downplayed for the superstition that involves throwing already-spilled salt over your shoulder to make demons go away.

---