Laxative Prank

Richard: Northwestern, I am the shit.
Gwen: You certainly will be.

— Van Wilder

Sometimes people want revenge on someone or to cheat in a contest. One thing they do is put laxatives in their drink or food. Why laxatives? Because ideally one of two things will happen:

1. They will suffer a Potty Emergency and forfeit the contest/run away to use the bathroom.
2. They will soil themselves and completely embarrass themselves. Even better if it's in a stadium, especially with something like the Jumbotron.

In fiction this is normally Played for Comedy, but occasionally it is Deconstructed to emphasize the dangerous dehydration element of it.

A frequent variation is using something that induces vomiting rather than defecation. Or maybe both, so that it comes out *both* ends!

Do Not Try This at Home. Seriously, don't. This is illegal and incredibly risky in real life; even over-the-counter laxatives are by definition a type of medicine, and misapplication of medicine can have severe consequences (and a "prank" is absolutely misapplication). The victim could end up seriously ill, hospitalized or even worse... the victim could die! Dehydration is also not the only risk: the person could be allergic to the laxative or its inert ingredients (particularly soy, an extremely common allergen that is often used as a binder) or could even suffer a ruptured appendix or internal bleeding. The induced vomiting variant can cause internal bleeding, and is actually far more likely to do so than a laxative. Consequently, administering even such a seemingly-trivial pharmaceutical drug to someone without their knowledge is classified as a serious criminal offense in many jurisdictions—the perpetrator of the prank could face serious criminal charges—and in most jurisdictions this act would also constitute civil battery, or at least gross negligence (or the local equivalent), opening up the possibility that the victim could sue for damages (including, in many places, punitive damages). This could also fall under laws that criminalize adulterating or tampering with food.

There is also a variation involving over the counter eyedrops that ostensibly have the same effect. This is even more dangerous as ingestion of the active ingredient in the drops can cause a range of dangerous symptoms up to and including sending the victim into a coma, with diarrhea being the least likely symptom.

A subtrope of Tampering with Food and Drink. Compare Slipping a Mickey, which is basically this trope but with drugs, and Medication Tampering, which is basically this trope but switching drugs with other drugs, and Revenge Is a Dish Best Served, which is putting other gross stuff in food.

Not to be confused with a Prank Gone Too Far (which despite its name, doesn't involve laxatives).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In episode 9 of Area no Kishi, Seven (Nana Mishima) tricks Araki, who she's putting on a diet more or less against his will, into drinking from a bottle of apple juice that she laced with a laxative.
• Assassination Classroom: After Maehara was humiliated by his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend in chapter 23, the rest of Class E decides to avenge him with this trope in the next chapter. Okuda prepares an extremely powerful laxative (Which she dubs "Victoria Falls" with a rather worrying face), and has the class's snipers shoot it into the couple's coffee cups. A disguised Nagisa and Kayano deliberately occupy the café's only toilets, forcing the couple to run to a nearby convenience store, with more students cutting branches right above them, causing them to fall onto the boy and girl; leaving them drenched and disheveled from the rain, and bickering to each other the rest of the way. It was a resounding success, leaving them humiliated and none the wiser about Class E's involvement.
• In the Black Butler manga, Ciel has Sebastian slip laxatives into a meat pie and feed it to the opposing team before a cricket match.
• This is how a murder was done in Case Closed: the killer put laxatives in the victim's coffee, ensuring that the latter touched a poisoned toilet paper roll before eating.
• Cross Ange: One of Rosalie's attempts to humiliate Ange in episode 4 involves putting a laxative in her water while she's training. It backfires when Ange discovers the laxative and gives Rosalie a Forceful Kiss, causing her to swallow it and sending her to the toilet instead.
• In Dragon Ball, Bulma does this to Oolong when he refuses to cooperate with her in helping find the Ox-king. She gives him a candy that he thinks is delicious, but really it's a laxative, and every time she whistles (or yells "piggy", in the English dub), he will have an emergency. Goku takes advantage of it to manipulate Oolong, too.
  • In a filler episode, Goku is given laced food so he would lose in a tournament, the laxative takes effect in the middle of the fight but Goku manages to defeat his opponent before running away desperately.
• Attempted by the King and Rosario in Dragon Half to get Mink out of the tournament, in the form of an "energy drink." Lampshaded by Mink's friends, but ignored by Mink... who then proceeds to give it to Dick Saucer, who is thus unwittingly victim to this (and who blames Mink for it, naturally).
• Futaba-kun Change! — In a beauty contest, The Rival puts laxatives in a tea given to the heroine to calm her. Unfortunately for the rival, some of the other contestants drink it to annoy her. Hilarity Ensues, and you can guess happens after they drink it.
  • Earlier in the series, an extremely underhanded character uses a batch of spiked drinks to clear the field in the completely ludicrous Martial Arts and Crafts tournament held to determine what club the heroine would join.
• Gamble Fish has the character Tsukiyono getting a cow laxative put in her drink, so the main character has no help in the tournament.
• In the Cotton Drifting arc of Higurashi: When They Cry, some punks harass Shmion during the Angel Mort dessert fest. Satoko spikes their food with laxatives and the restroom is made unavailable, forcing the customers to leave the restaurant and end their service. For some reason literally poisoning customers was considered less damaging to the restaurants reputation than kicking them out for abusing the staff.
• In Hunter × Hunter, Tonpa tries to get several characters to forfeit the Hunter's Exam by offering them laxative-spiked juice. It utterly fails, as Killua has Acquired Poison Immunity, Gon immediately spits the juice out when he notices that it tastes weird (despite the drug being odorless and tasteless), and everyone else either refuses the drink outright or gets rid of it once they see Gon's reaction.
• In Trigun, it's implied that Kaite does this to Vash in episode 7 "B.D.N."

Comic Books

• The Beano: In a Bash Street Kids short, Teacher confiscates what he thinks is a chocolate bar from Danny and eats it in front of him to teach him a lesson. At that point Fatty shows up to class half an hour late and protests it wasn't his fault as Danny had tricked him into eating a chocolate laxative. The penny drops for Teacher.

Fanfiction

• The 75: During the First Quarter Quell, District 1's junior victors try to slip the senior victors (Brilliance and Essence) laxative laced drinks at breakfast in revenge for being forced to do all the work (plus a lot of other abuse they've had to put up with over the years). One of the tributes accidentally takes Brilliance's cup, but "seeing his tribute shit himself versus a tiny orphan from Six was a small price to pay for seeing Essence practically locked in the restroom the entire day."
• In Benefits of Old Laws Cormac slips a dangerously-large amount of laxative into Harry's morning pumpkin juice. Harry eventually ends up in the hospital wing with severe dehydration and poisoning symptoms.
• In Faith Harry, who's been resorted into Slytherin due to an ultimatum by the majority of Gryffindor, gets revenge on his ex-House for subsequent ill-treatment by having Dobby put laxatives in the pumpkin juice at the Gryffindor table and a sleeping pill in the kippers.
• In Hero Academia D×D, when Riser visits Rias as part of his attempt to force her to marry him, Momo slips into his cup of tea enough laxatives to last him for two days. They begin to take effect just before he leaves.
• Holidays with Holmes: Watson mentions that at one past April Fool's Day, he had retaliated against one of Holmes' pranks by hiding an enema in his lunch, leading to a mutual agreement to leave edibles alone.
• In A Life Twice Lived Harry put laxative into his cousin Dudley's dessert for three days as retaliation for accusing Harry of doing better at school by cheating, earning him a beating from his uncle.
• The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H.: Maggie does this to Simon to get him out of the way so he won't snitch on her when she beats up Anastasia at recess that day. Sure enough, Simon's Potty Emergency causes him to miss recess, but Maggie makes the mistake of bragging about what she did to Anastasia as Simon is stuck on the toilet. After the fight, Anastasia tells Simon what Maggie did, and Simon tells his father Principal Skinner. Needless to say, Skinner is not happy about Maggie doing such a thing to his son, and gives her two weeks' detention.
• The Victors Project: Both Cecelia and Jade get revenge on someone they get sold to by slipping them laxatives to ruin the evening (Jade also did the same with the punch at her victory banquet earlier that evening). And during her time at The Institute. Dido put laxatives in Tiberius's tea right before a speech he gave.

Film — Animated

• In The Amazing Maurice, Maurice, Keith and Malicia get the rat catchers to spill their guts by convincing them that they have just consumed poisoned sugar. After getting the information they require, they tell the rat catchers that the antidote is in the cellar. After the rat catchers have scrambled into the cellar to find it, it is revealed that Maurice had actually spiked the the sugar with a laxative. And the 'antidote? More laxative.
• In The Iron Giant, Hogarth tricks Kent Mansley into eating a chocolate-flavored laxative-laced sundae to get away from him.
  Hogarth Hughes: First, you take a chocolate bar. Any bar'll do. Do you mind if I...?
  Kent Mansley: No, knock yourself out, skipper.
  Hogarth Hughes: [crumbles up coca-lax] You crumble up the chocolate into little pieces. [stirs the ice cream] Then you kind of just stir it into the ice cream. See?
  Kent Mansley: Yes, I see. What do you call this again?
  Hogarth Hughes: Landslide. It's new. Very new. [drops the coca-lax wrapper in the garbage]
  Kent Mansley: Mmmm. Landslide. Topnotch. Mmmm. [while Hogarth makes himself a Landslide with a chocolate bar] You know, Hogarth, we live in a strange and wondrous time: the Atomic Age. But there's a dark side to progress, Hogarth. Ever hear of Sputnik?
  Hogarth Hughes: Yeah, first satellite in space.
  Kent Mansley: Foreign satellite, Hogarth, and all that implies. Even now it orbits overhead - Boop! Boop! - watching us. We can't see it but it's there, much like that giant thing in the woods. We don't know what it is or what it can do. I don't feel safe, Hogarth. Do you?
  Hogarth Hughes: What are you talking about?
  Kent Mansley: What am I talking about? (loses patience) WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?! I'm talking about your goddarned security, Hogarth! While you're snoozing in your widdle jammies, back in Washington we're wide awake and worried! Why? Because everyone wants what we have, Hogarth! EVERYONE! You think this metal man is fun, but who built it? The Russians? The Chinese? Martians? Canadians? I DON'T CARE! All I know is we didn't build it, and that's reason enough to assume the worst and blow it to kingdom come! Now, you are going to tell me about this thing, you are going to lead me to it, and we are going to destroy it before it destroys us! (his stomach gurgles)...Hold that thought and stay right there!
  (Kent rushes to the restroom...; as soon as he leaves, Hogarth rushes out the door)
  

Film — Live-Action

• This is one of the ways the 3 Ninjas defend themselves against a trio of bumbling kidnappers. Not exactly what you expect from "ninjas," but this is an early 90s kids' movie, so there we are. Then again, ninjas were historically known for Combat Pragmatism.
• In The 51st State or if you live in the US, Formula 51. In a choice between blue pills and red pills, a gang of skinheads are tricked into eating the red pills (Elmo claims that the red pill is the stronger version), which is a powerful laxative. You can guess what happens next when the drug takes effect.
• American Pie has this cruel prank played on Finch.
• In Bad Kids Go to Hell, Veronica spikes Dr. Day's coffee with eye drops. While this is supposed to give him diarrhea, it actually makes him puke his guts out.
• Mr. Bean did this to a security guard in Bean, along with mixing up the key to the bathroom with a bunch of other keys, giving Mr. Bean a chance to fix the painting of Whistler's Mother that he accidentally screwed up. The same guard is later seen at the hospital, still stuck to the toilet.
• Misfired in Bringing Down the House. When Mrs. Arness comes over for dinner, Charlene, who was convinced to act like the maid, puts milk of magnesia on her dinner, but Peter takes it and eats it. Luckily he was able to reach the bathroom as it took effect.
• Lloyd Christmas did it to Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber as revenge since he supposedly stole Mary Swanson from him. To Harry's worsening luck, the toilet he then chose to relieve himself in (in Mary's home) was not working.
• Escape to Athena. La Résistance slip laxative into the Germans' food as one of several We Need a Distraction ploys to take the POW camp.
• In Hurricane Bianca, Richard's students give him a welcome gift of chocolates that turn out to be full of laxatives as a mean prank for their substitute. When he comes back in disguise as Bianca, he's wise to their tricks and forces the girl who offered them to share the chocolates with the class.
• In Major Payne, the recruits try to do this with Payne's cupcake. It backfires. Literally.
• Done in The Movie of Man About the House. When the property developer is wining and dining Chrissie in an effort to get her to sign over her lease to him, Robin, Larry and the chef doctor his food with syrup of figs, castor oil and Epsom salts.
• In A Million Ways to Die in the West, the day before a duel with Albert over Louise, Albert's ex-girlfriend, Anna spikes Foy's drink with laxative and then bets that he can't finish his drink faster than she can finish hers. He suffers a sudden potty emergency later that night while in bed with Louise. The next day, Foy is late to the duel and staggering as if he's about to faint. He defecates into his own hat and then into another man's hat that he swiped immediately after. Albert quits the duel before it even begins anyway when he realizes that a relationship should be a two-way street and that Louise is a nice girl, but a gold-digger nonetheless.
• Used in the first Mission: Impossible movie as part of a distraction to infiltrate Langley, albeit with an emetic, rather than a laxative. This one is a bit more justified, as you'd expect highly trained agents (even disavowed ones) to know how to get ahold of drugs that are specifically designed to cause these reactions, as well as rough dosing amounts.
• In Van Wilder, one character does this to her Jerkass soon-to-be-ex boyfriend by pouring what appeared to be half of a large bottle of "Colon Blow" into a special shake. This goes careening into Comedic Sociopathy when you see him race through his med school test (utterly failing) and when he gets stopped by his professor and introduces him to his future bosses, he's forced to drop trou and defecate in his professor's wastebasket.
  Richard Bagg: "I'm bleeding!"
• John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) does it to Sack Lodge in Wedding Crashers.
• In Blood Drips Heavily on Newsies Square, Don Knotts kills Trey this way with Ex-Lax in his lemonade.

Literature

• In The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Malicia puts laxative powder in the Rat Catchers' tea, then tells them they've been poisoned and holds the antidote hostage until they do as she says. The "antidote" is laxative powder too.
• The Bloody Road To Death by Sven Hassel. Black marketeer Joseph Porta thinks it's his lucky day when a British parachute drop of Darjeeling Tea falls from the sky, so he sells it to the German General Staff. Unfortunately the nefarious British have put a strong laxative in the tea. Hilarity Ensues.
• Casteel Series:
  • In Dark Angel (1986), Heaven's Rich Bitch classmates spike her punch with a laxative, then ask every boy present at the party to dance with her—ensuring that she can't get away—then locking all bathroom doors. She's able to relieve herself in a garbage can, then dumps the waste bag down a laundry chute, and managers to entice the clueless Alpha Bitch leader into going down the chute (daring her to prove that she's brave enough to do it), thus doling out some severe Laser-Guided Karma.
  • There's a darker example in Gates Of Paradise, where Heaven's daughter Annie has been paralyzed. Her sadistic nurse spikes her food with a laxative, then refuses to help her when she soils herself (angry because Annie refused to eat the food she prepared and asked for something else).
• A number of Don Camillo short stories reference the Fascist signature practice of forcing their political enemies to drink castor oil. One story features Dario Camoni, who back in the days had forced both young communist Peppone and young cleric Don Camillo to drink a glass of castor oil each; then, when Dario Camoni makes a reappearance after the way, Peppone tries to get his own back... In another story, when two Maoists bad-mouth Peppone, his son Michele becomes incensed that he forces them to drink a glass of ... cod-liver oil each. Peppone is almost relieved: "God be praised, at least they can't say I raised a fascist son!"
• The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: Not played for laughs when it's discussed in book 7. Cassandra Brownley, head of the library's collection development and acquisitions department, is identified as having done this to one of her fellow employees who went over her head to get some materials for the library that he felt were needed and she didn't; in retaliation, she tricked him into eating a large quantity of laxatives, which resulted in his needing to go to the hospital. He left the college soon after as a result.
• Weaponized in Fengshen Yanyi: the heroes are confronted by the wicked Ma Yuan, an evil taoist who can grow a giant arm from his back and is fond of devouring the hearts of his enemies. He seemingly does this to Yang Jian... but thanks to his skill in the 72 transformations, not only he regrows a new heart, but he also turned the heart eaten by Ma Yuan in a powerful laxative medicine, which takes him out of the war for three days and severly reduces his weight and power.
• In Jean Shepherd's short story "A Fistful of Fig Newtons", originally published in Playboy, a scrawny college student challenges a Big Eater football player and several fellow college students to a laxative-off. They each took one piece of Brand X Ex-Lax stand-in Boomo-Lax every 5 minutes, and whoever has a Potty Emergency first loses. The Big Eater figured he'd have no problem, but he ended up heaving half his insides out while the little guy wins, having built up a tolerance in the past.
• In his short story "The Fly", humorist Patrick McManus tells of being a night janitor in college, and the steps that the department secretaries took to keep the janitors from pilfering their desk goodies:
  "A secretary over in Sociology loaded a massive charge of chocolate-flavored laxative into a choice morsel and almost wiped out Charlie Fisk."
  "That's terrible," I said.
  "Yeah. And poor Charlie wasn't even the one who ate it. He was just an innocent bystander."
• Played straight in Charles Stross' Glasshouse: Reeve spikes Fiore's coffee to give herself time to take an impression of his key to the special room in the library.
• Inverted in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when Fred and George come up with U-No-Poo: "The constipation sensation that's gripping the nation."
• In Erma Bombeck's "Just Wait Till You Have Children Of Your Own," a mom slips her husband a chocolate laxative square, passing it off as ordinary chocolate candy at first. Her tween son thinks that's an awesome practical joke and wants to try his hand at playing it on someone.
• Done on an epic scale in the original Mistborn trilogy; Breeze puts laxatives in an entire army's water supply to delay them (which Tagalong Kid Spook finds amusing, as expected). Later deconstructed when the same army does it right back to some of the wells in Luthadel, resulting in fatalities.
• A laxative prank is the main thrust of the story in the aptly named YA Novel Josie Eccles' The prom, the date and a whole lot of laxatives!. The plot revolves around a bullied student finally getting back at her bully by secretly administering laxatives. This results in Kitty Vickers experiencing a Potty Emergency, followed quickly by a very public and messy Potty Failure. One of students who had previously been bullied by Kitty gleefully notes that the incident happened on a day that Kitty choose to wear her shortest skirt.
  • This results in an Embarrassing Nickname trope when Kitty's former friends realise that the name "Kitty Vickers" rhymes perfectly with "Shitty Knickers".
• The Russian book The Poisoning has a pharmacist do this to save the life of their friend. To explain, a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers were planning to commit suicide together, and the girl was trying to buy sleeping pills pretending they were to sleep better. The suspicious pharmacist replaced them with laxatives instead, and the suicide went... unexpectedly. Both survived, though in agony.
• An apparently rare serious use of this in The Regulators, by Stephen King (under the Richard Bachman pen name). Seems Tak doesn't like being in a host body while that body is defecating, so Seth gets Audrey to put Ex-Lax in his chocolate milk to get Tak out of him long enough to carry out his plan to permanently solve that problem.
• Done seriously in A Song of Ice and Fire - Tyrion is too busy trying to save the city to struggle with Cersei's schemes so he uses a mild poison to get her out of his hair for one day.
• Done seriously in the children's novel Sparrow Hawk Red. The child protagonist is trying to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel's compound in order to steal a plane that's being used to smuggle drugs into the US. He finds out that they always pay a local kid to bring them food at the same time every day, so he by spike the food with juice from a local plant that has a powerful laxative effect and sneaks through the gate while they're all in the bathroom.

Live-Action TV

• 1000 Ways to Die, in the segment "S**t Canned," where one person tries to do this to the bride in a wedding. As karma would have it, he takes the spiked drink instead. A Karmic Death as usual in this show ensues.
• Abot-Kamay na Pangarap: Prior to a masquerade ball, Moira spikes Lyneth's coffee with a laxative as an attempt to sabotage Lyneth's performance. Little did Moira know, Lyneth was aware of this, and interrupted a worker to swap the contents of the drinks. Later on, Lyneth offers Moira's (now-spiked) cup of coffee to Moira as a "peace offering". She then drinks it at the masquerade ball before her performance, causing her to soil herself in the bathroom.
• In one episode of Amazing Stories, a pair of troublemaking kids do this to one of their babysitters, disguising it as hot chocolate. She leaves the house on an ambulance stretcher, but it's still played (mostly) for laughs.
• In American Horror Story: Murder House, Constance bakes Violet cupcakes tainted with syrup of ipecac. Luckily, it's eaten by an invading Jack the Ripoff.
• In season 2 of American Vandal, the plot revolves around someone spiking the lemonade for school lunches at St. Bernadine's, and anyone who drank it had diarrhea, with some having to crap in their pants, in trash cans, in urinals, or on the floor because so many students needed the toilet. The incident was dubbed "The Brownout".
• In BeingErica, Jenny offers Fiona a piece of chocolate as a piece offering. Fiona eats it, not knowing it's actually a laxative. During soccer try outs, the laxative kicks in and Fiona is forced to run off the field to a bathroom but not before a growing brown stain appears on the back of her white shorts and the other players laugh uncontrollably.
• Used by Eli's son Willie on an obnoxious bully of a college classmate in Boardwalk Empire. The trope is subjected to a vicious deconstruction when said classmate is shown as having died graphically as a result, (perhaps as a result of a bowel rupture) and in the next episode Willie is in danger of going to jail and facing criminal charges.
• The Brittas Empire: In "We All Fall Down", Helen, in revenge for her twins not getting picked for a nappies advertisement, decides to put laxatives in a supply of blackcurrent juice (which are owned by the same company) to sully their reputation. When she is told that said action would sully the reputation of the shop she purchased the juice from, however, she proceeds to purchase it all in a bid to not have it used by anyone. This turns out to be pointless, however, when a line of children are electrocuted and Brittas, unaware of her actions, take the juices over to intensive care for them.
• In the pilot episode of the 2011 version of Charlie's Angels, Abby does it to a pair of Rich Bitches.
• Played realistically in Coronation Street when Lloyd's pint is spiked. Instead of suffering a potty emergency, he ends up needing an ambulance and a trip to hospital.
• CSI:
  • Investigating a death during a high-stakes poker game, the heroes of CSI discover that the waitress put eyedrops in the victim's drink as payback for him being a lousy tipper. She'd meant to give him diarrhea and force him to leave the game early, but he died before they kicked in; the chemical in the drops reacted with the absurd amounts of lead in his system courtesy of eating several pounds of African chocolate a day for years and an old bullet that had never been removed.
  • In "A La Cart", the Victim of the Week is stabbed to death while dining in a blacked-out restaurant. Another table consisted of four brothers who keep playing pranks on each others. One of them aggravates Brass by continually having to dash off to the toilet. While he is out of the room, the other three brothers reveal they spiked his beer with a laxative while the restaurant was dark. This has no bearing on the case, but does mark all four brothers as being tremendous Jerkasses.
• An episode of CSI: Miami features the vomit-variant. Someone put ipecac on the victim's mouthguard so that she'd get sick and either perform poorly or drop out of her roller derby game. It didn't directly kill her, but it did lead to her death, by causing her to be alone in the locker room when the killer came in, and grumpy enough to callously insult her, prompting the killer to beat her to death in rage.
• Death in Paradise: In "She Was Murdered Twice", the PA of the Victim of the Week was planning to do this to her boss. She sneaked into her boss's bedroom to swap one of her energy drinks for a powerful laxative, only to discover her boss had been murdered. She panicked and fled, knowing that there was no good way she could explain what she was doing in the room.
• Endeavour: A laxative prank turns fatal in "Canticle". The Rev. Golightly eats a box of chocolates laced with laxatives, but his liver is shot and the laxatives trigger a fatal heart attack.
• In the finale of Everybody Hates Chris, when Chris is thinking up ways to get revenge on Caruso, Greg suggests putting Ex-Lax in his hot chocolate, which Chris dismisses as "too typical".
• Father Brown: In "The Time Machine", a girl spikes her sister's water bottle in an attempt to cause her to lose a race. Unfortunately, this act coincides with her sister keeling over from a dose of strychnine.
• One episode of the MTV show, High School Stories: Scandals, Pranks, and Controversies has a group of students hand out doughnuts laced with laxatives as a prank. It worked out perfectly...until one of the teachers became gravely ill from eating one. Turns out the laxatives were suppositories and weren't supposed to be ingested at all. The perpetrators ended in big trouble and just barely escaped being arrested for poisoning.
• In Hollyoaks, India eats a pizza that Hayley has spiked with laxatives. She wins a contest for a car where the last person to leave the car wins after she soils herself and everyone else runs out because they can't stand the smell.
• House: In one of the petty battles between Cuddy and House, Cuddy replaces House's Vicodin with laxatives. Being House, he finds a way to amp up the stakes:
  House: I know when my Vicodin isn't Vicodin. Do you know when your birth control pills aren't birth control pills?
• Often done by the crew on Hustle to temporarily incapacitate someone for the purpose of a con.
• Downplayed in Kamen Rider Geats. In episode 18, Keita offers the other Riders in the DGP some of his cooking for the day. However, since they believe he's the Desire Star, they quickly turn him down, much to his dismay.
• The Middle: Axl does this to Sue in "Foreign Exchange", just before the family takes a long car trip.
• Mr & Mrs Murder: This was done to a body builder in the episode "Atlas Drugged".
• Mr. Belvedere's vengeful brother does this to him—-while he's laid up with a broken leg. The next morning, Wesley mentions having heard him "stumble to the bathroom a million times". This is played for laughs, of course, but considering Belvedere's already injured state, it's actually pretty cruel.
• On My Name Is Earl, Joy does this to Catalina (swapping out the rat poison in the infamous poison cookie recipe that she once attempted to use on Earl to get his lotto money) to get revenge on Catalina for taking an embarrassing photo of Joy dealing with a Potty Emergency. Catalina gets onstage after enjoying some of the cookies, only to have to quickly leave the stage.
• Once subverted in MythBusters, when Kari gave Tory and Grant a placebo to see how it would affect their driving.
• Done in The Nanny, although this wasn't done as a prank. Fran was taking care of C.C.'s dog Chester, when they were both kidnapped and held for ransom. Fran gives both the kidnappers some chocolate laxatives she had been given by Yetta earlier so she could escape while they ran across the street and wrestled construction workers out of a nearby Port-A-Potty.
• Subverted in the The Office (US) two-part episode "Fun Run": Michael has Dwight slip Toby laxatives so he will soil himself while running. Dwight accidentally slips him anti-laxatives instead. Toby ends up making great time in the 5k run, because he doesn't have to take a bathroom break.
• On Orange Is the New Black, Daya becomes pregnant as a result of a Secret Relationship with one of the corrections officers. She knows this isn't going to go well, and that the officer in question could get in huge trouble if this were to come out, so she asks Gloria to make up an abortifacient tea for her. Gloria does indeed make an herbal tea for Daya, but it's not an abortifacient, it's a laxative. It turns out that Daya's heretofore estranged mother (who is in the same prison) spoke to Gloria first, and asked her not to help Daya abort, because she wanted grandchildren.
• An episode of The Pretender had Jarod as a school teacher. To help a student who was being bullied, they prepared a laxative brownie, knowing the bully would take it from the kid and eat it. They also locked all of the porta-johns on the playground except one, so the bully would have to use that one - which they had rigged so the door would fall off while he was in there.
• Done in '80s Aussie Prison-Soap Prisoner: Cell Block H with a massive bar of chocolate-laxative, only it goes a bit wrong and the wrong person gets it. A Potty Emergency is a serious thing when you're locked in a cell with no toilet facilities, a hose is required for a start.
• In the last scene of the Reba episode "The Blonde Leading The Blind" Reba bakes cookies for Van to show him that she forgives him for telling Barbra Jean to check up on her after her laser eye surgery left her temporarily blind, despite her making it very clear that she wanted to be left alone. Little Jake walks through the front door and a suspicious Van insists that he have a cookie, which he does, convincing Van that they're safe. Jake arrives in the kitchen where he tells Reba that he took the cookie she told him to. Van is then shown holding his stomach and walking quickly out of the living room.
• This is one of the many pranks that the Janitor plays on J.D. in Scrubs. The Janitor attempts to give J.D. some pie that he refuses to eat, though The Todd does. Todd experiences what J.D. says is "what can only be described as 'epic diarrhea'". Later, the Janitor convinces J.D. to eat the pie anyway by eating it himself. They both experience the effects of the laxative.
  J.D.: Who would do this to themselves?
  Janitor: Totally worth it.
• In Spellbinder, Paul does this to Ashka as a means of distracting everyone while he goes off to save Riana.
• Invoked and Subverted in an episode of Stacked. The prank is mentioned, and an elderly professor (played by Christopher Lloyd) who frequents the eponymous bookstore says he put laxatives in Albert Einstein's ice cream once. When asked why, he responds that Einstein asked him too.
• When the crew of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is pulling off a heist in a holosuite program, they use a martini spiked with ipecac to get rid of one of the safe's guardians.
• In the World War II episode of The Supersizers Eat, Giles bakes a cake with paraffin instead of lard as a prank on the American guests. Unfortunately, Sue eats the cake and is miserably ill thereafter.
• In the episode "Dine and Dash" from That '70s Show, the rest of the gang split out of a meal early and leave Donna and Eric with the check. To "show that they're good sports", Donna and Eric make a batch of special brownies. Afterwards, they reveal that the special ingredient wasn't marijuana but Chocolate Super Lax.
• In Weeds, Celia gives Isabelle laxatives, making her publicly soil herself, but she does it to make her lose weight, not as a prank. Isabelle retaliates by given Celia anti-laxatives.
• Xena: Warrior Princess: In "Takes One to Know One", Gabrielle attempted to do this to the bounty hunter Ravenica by lacing her water bottle with gravy made to Lethal Chef Joxor's recipe in order to give her the runs. However, Raveinca was smart enough not to drink it.
• Zorro (1990): In "Dead Men Tell No Tales", Don Diego is visiting Victoria who has been imprisoned by the Alcade. Knowing that Mendoza will sample all the food he is bringing to her, he doctors the custard to send Mendoza running for the privy so he and Victoria can speak in private.

Music

• The video for "Smile" by Lily Allen has this.
• The video for "High School Never Ends" by Bowling for Soup has this as well.
• In TWICE's "BDZ" video, the man with the red tie eats a pizza implied to have been laced with a laxative, which makes him run for the toilet. The girls then use a chair to temporarily lock him in.
• In "Weird Al" Yankovic's "I Remember Larry", this was one of the eponymous Larry's pranks which involved brownies with laxatives baked inside.

Newspaper Comics

• The September 30, 2001 Garfield strip had Jon mention feeding Mrs. Feeny's dog laxative-laced bran muffins as one of the mean things that Garfield does. After yelling furiously at Garfield about this, Garfield consoles Jon and offers him a bran muffin...

Professional Wrestling

• TNA: Jay Lethal, Alex Shelley, and Chris Sabin slipped laxatives into Petey Williams' water bottle.
• WWE: Eddie Guerrero did this to The Big Show using a bagful of spiked burritos. For good measure, Eddie also stole all of the toilet paper in the bathroom.

Stand-Up Comedy

• In one of the "I Believe..." skits that cap off the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Jeff Foxworthy said that he believes that, if a 16-year-old shows up at your door trick-or-treating without a costume, it should be perfectly acceptable to give them Ex-Lax. Larry the Cable Guy then pipes up that he's been on both sides of that particular prank.
  • Not exactly a prank, but Jeff also had a bit that mentioned how, when he turned 50, he had to have his first colonoscopy, and how the prep for the procedure is to take a sizable amount of laxatives in order to clean out your system for the camera. Since he was goofing off during the consultation, he didn't hear the doctor say you're supposed to take them over a period of four hours, and instead took all of them in less than ten minutes. He said his gut started to sound like the house in The Amityville Horror.

Video Games

• The early Airline Tycoon games use this trope, as you can use "bacteria in the coffee" to incapacitate one of the three AI players.
• The Discworld point and click game features a variation. A Fisherman has a golden item that you need which happens to be his belt buckle.So you'll have to lure him to the toilets by putting prunes in the caviar he's eating.

• In one level of Hitman: Contracts you can poison some soup with laxative to help lure your target to the toilets. That or to get rid of his bodyguard, who he makes tastes his food.
• In Monster Basement 2, the player must slip laxatives into a guy's glass of water, so that he'll leave the kitchen and allow the player to obtain several necessary items. After the guy is done using the outhouse, the player must use a magnet to sift through the...end results and get the magnetic bones from a monster the guy had been eating. Erm...yeah.
• PAYDAY 2: Part of the stealth route for Golden Grin Casino requires spiking a random gambler's drink with laxatives, causing him to run to the bathrooms or outside and letting you take him out and get his keycard.
• PAYDAY 3: In Touch The Sky, a bottle of vomiting agent can be found in one of the penthouse bathrooms. During stealth, this can be used to poison a whiskey delivery for Mason Laurent, causing him to rush to the bathroom and leaving him alone and allowing the crew to take him hostage and use his retinal scan to open a panic room in the office.
• Potion Permit: In Russo's first Friendship Event, he requests the Chemist to brew a purgative potion for his guardian, Sister Socellia, claiming that she has stomach problems. The following day after they give the potion to him, the Chemist visits the church to check on Socellia, only to find Mayor Myer complaining that Russo slipped the potion into his tea, making him constantly answer "business calls".
• Marshall Law from Tekken 6 would be the master of this trope. In his ending, he spikes his special pizza with laxatives for both Paul and Steve to try. Unfortunately for the both, their faces turn blue and rushed to the bathroom. Another version in the same game is when Marshall spiked Ganryu with laxatives in Paul Phoenix's ending.
• In the second game of the Trapped Series, you need to feed a dog rotten lettuce mixed in with meat to force it to crap out a key it ate.

Visual Novels

• In the second chapter of Liar! Office Deception, someone puts laxative in the MC's drink in an attempt to sabotage her.

Webcomics

• Sgt. Coffman of Air Force Blues does this to Capt. Dahl's coffee on a daily basis. Lt. Willows develops a taste for it after losing several pounds when she accidentally drank a cup.
  • Coffman also denies using eye drops for this, saying they cost too much to waste on a prank ($30 for a very small bottle). Ex-lax, on the other hand....
• The College Roomies from Hell!!! / Joe Average / Life at Bayside crossover.
• Both Played for Laughs and deconstructed in Penny and Aggie. The title characters and their friends agree to spare The Sociopath Cyndi's reputation if she helps them humiliate the bully ringleader Karen by spiking the alcohol popsicles at her party with toothpaste, to make them taste bad. Instead, Cyndi spikes them with laxative. While most of the party guests undergo minor, though embarrassing and uncomfortable, potty emergencies, Samantha consumes enough spiked popsicles to necessitate a trip to the emergency room.
• A Shortpacked! strip has Mike handing out candy to people in return for them irritating Ethan by repeatedly telling him about Star Wars Transformers (which had already been out for some time). The "candy" comes from a box marked "Lax-O".

Web Original

• Coach Random has this, along with some Prozac.
• In the Medimoji web animation series by ZDoggMD, the pharmacist (a Funny Octopus by the name of "Phil") admits to having done this to someone he could tell was seeking opioids they didn't really need. He gave them a laxative, telling them it was the drug they wanted, and urging them to take it when they got home, then laughing about it later at home with his partner.
• This is Shay Van Buren's favorite tactic to enemies in The Most Popular Girls in School, though she only gets to inflict it once.
• In the Smosh short "Going to the Mountains", Anthony gets tricked into eating broccoli laced with laxatives.
• Whateley Universe:
  • Cheese uses the diuretic version of this in the story "The Bad Seeds". The risk of dehydration get a passing mention.
  • Laxatives are just one the several ways in which The Imp gets her own revenge on the Imp Revenge Squad after they attack her. To be fair, they were trying to kill her, and she thoughtfully (if reluctantly) called the authorities to come pick them up, so presumably the cops would think to get them medical attention (if only to remove the superglued bedsheets).

Western Animation

• In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Wicked", Mrs. Robinson causes some squirrels to go on a rampage in the park by giving them nuts coated in coffee. When she blames it on Gumball and Darwin and they're sentenced to community service, Darwin adds that the nuts were also soaked in prune juice, which he considered overkill.
• In Beavis and Butt-Head, after apparently dying Beavis is sent to St. Peter who reads through a book of his life. He mentions that Beavis once passed out chocolate laxatives to his kindergarten class.
  Beavis: Yeah, that was really cool.
  St. Peter: No, Beavis, that also sucked.
  Beavis: What do you know, asswipe?
  St. Peter: I know everything, buttmunch.
• In one episode of The Fairly OddParents! Timmy complains that he's tried every ingredient, but he still can't figure out how to make a lemonade good enough to compete with his evil babysitter Vicky. The ever-clueless Cosmo says "So... that would be a no on the chocolate laxatives?"
• In the Freakazoid! episode "The Freakazoid", the montage of the Lobe freely committing crimes after tricking Freakazoid into believing that he has to leave the Lobe alone at one point shows him dumping triple-strength laxatives into the water supply.
• In one episode of Hey Arnold!, Arnold's grandpa puts laxatives in his visiting sister's yams but she slips these yams onto his own plate when he's not looking and Grandpa ends up being the one repeatedly flushing the toilet for a while afterwards.
• In King of the Hill, Hank was suffering from constipation. So his wife tried to help by secretly giving Hank an ice cream sundae with chocolate laxative syrup. However, Bobby lets it slip causing Hank to get angry and not eat it. Doesn't stop Bobby from helping himself.
• The Simpsons: Dr. Nick Rivera has an Infomercial about a suntan lotion that's also a laxative. Troy McClure demonstrates it by putting it on a moment before Dr. Nick mentions that it's a laxative.
  • One episode had Homer sabotaging a youth group's candy sales by adding laxative to the candy. The youth group still managed to sell the most candy, by selling it to the constipated residents of the old folks home.
• South Park: "Bass To Mouth" has Cartman give Jenny Simons a laxative-laced cupcake, to distract the school from Peter Melman's recent Potty Failure, as they do not want him to commit suicide, as Cory Duran did when this happened to him. Cartman's plan backfires when the obvious ensues, and Jenny ends up attempting suicide. Cartman's way of fixing everything? So nobody gets singled out, the staff and Cartman attempt to give the students laced Pizza Hut pizza, so everyone will crap themselves.
  • At the end of the episode, Cartman gets thrown in front of a school bus by the school staff and was declared that he committed suicide. Cartman gets back at the staff with certain cupcakes...
• During the Strike Episode of Stōked, Bummer has Wipeout offer the strikers laxative dosed doughnuts.
• Total Drama:
  • Heather does this in "The Very Last Episode, Really!" of Total Drama Island. She offers Gwen a laxative-spiked cupcake. Unfortunately, Owen eats the cupcake instead, losing some time in the progress during the race.
  • In "One Flu Over the Cuckoos" for Total Drama Action, the pizza almost everyone ate with the exception of Leshawna is laced with itching powder and laxatives.
  Leshawna: I love pizza, but me and dairy do not agree.

Real Life

• For the record, laxatives usually don't work this way in real life anyway, because there are of course many types of laxative. Most laxatives don't actually make you have to go; they loosen the stool and/or the bowel muscles, usually by adding water or other matter to the stool or by causing a chemical reaction of some sort, all with intent to make the stool easier to pass. Stimulant laxatives, the kind that would actually induce the sort of reaction Hollywood depicts, are of course dangerous to use as described above.
• Before the Fascists came to power in Italy, their paramilitary wing, the Squadristi or Blackshirts, liked to force their political enemies to drink castor oil, sometimes in doses that turned out to be lethal.
• Alfred Hitchcock did this to one of his cameramen in Real Life. Originally, the thing started as a bet over a week's salary with the cameraman over whether he could spend a night in the studio handcuffed to his camera. On the night of the bet, before he left, Hitchcock gave the cameraman a bottle of brandy, claiming that it would help him get through the night. What Hitchcock didn't tell the poor man was that he had laced the brandy with strong laxatives. The cameraman was found by the studio personnel the very next day, standing in a puddle of his own diarrhea and suffering from severe dehydration.
• The vomiting variant of this (as well as its use in the eating disorder bulimia) is why syrup of ipecac is no longer produced or sold at least in the US. Originally intended as a poisoning antidote, ipecac turned out to be almost worse than useless for that, and unfortunately very useful to bulimics and pranksters. The only problems were that ipecac itself was cardiotoxic, and the vomiting it induced was often so violent it frequently produced Mallory-Weiss tears with severe internal bleeding as the result. Some corrosive poisons can also do more damage coming back up. Ipecac got removed from the market around 2009, none too soon.
• This is actually what got the Marquis de Sade sent to prison. He was trying to get prostitutes to fart on him, messed up the dose, and poisoned the women.
• This happened to John Barrowman back when he was doing musical theater in Nashville. His understudy spiked his drinking water before he went out on stage. Where he had to sing and dance. In white polyester.
• An urban legend implies that it is a classic prank for a student give a teacher brownies or cupcakes with containing laxatives or by spiking their morning coffee with eyedrops. This is usually stated to be revenge against a particularly nasty teacher or as a way to get out of an assignment. Numerous students have been arrested and charged for deciding to live out this urban legend. The moral of this story is no, for real, seriously, Do Not Do This Cool Thing.
  • In 2018, a woman confessed to murdering her husband by adding eye drops to his water for several days. She was initially arrested after the autopsy found high levels of tetrahydrozoline (the active ingredient in several brands of OTC eyedrops) in his body.
• A certain brand of sugar-free gummy bears was noted to give people diarrhea, due to the sugar substitute being notable for its laxative effects. As such, reviews for the candy suggest using it for revenge pranks, and some have discussed supposed actual pranks committed with said candy.
• An episode of MTV’s High School Stories dealt with this; it was a recounting of an incident where three boys pulled the laxative prank on a few students with donuts, but somehow a teacher got a donut and got very sick. What was worse, was that the teacher ingested a suppository. Thankfully, the teacher recovered but the boys ended up in serious trouble and were expelled, which was the very least of what could’ve happened to them according to the officer interviewed.
• A story told of Charles II's mistress Nell Gwynn is that she spiked the cakes eaten by Moll Davis, a rival for the King's affections, with laxatives, thus ensuring she was the one who spent the evening with Charles.
• During the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II, the Norwegian's sardine catch was seized in order to supply the U-Boat fleet. The Norwegian resistance, incensed that their food had been taken from them, proceeded to use croton oil, secretly sourced from the United Kingdom, instead of vegetable oil during the canning process. Croton oil just happens to be a powerful laxative.
• In an unintentional version of this scenario, a woman woke up in the middle of the night due to a splitting headache and popped in some headache pills... only to rush to the bathroom not long after, as in the darkness of her unlit room she accidentally ingested laxatives instead of her headache pills.

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