Nose Shove

Regardless if it's your nose or your friend's, don't pick it with a knife.

"You delicately insert the lockpick into your left nostril. Unfortunately, you push it in too far, causing yourself a cerebral hemorrhage. Guess you should have been practicing on less difficult locks."

— Quest for Glory I, upon being commanded to "pick your nose".

Children and those operating on a childlike mental level will often push objects into their own noses and ears, often resulting in a hospital trip. The favored item seems to be crayons, though anything small enough to enter the openings in question can be used. Alternately, shoving items into other people's facial orifices in anger or for experimental purposes also occurs commonly, and is often used as a child-friendly variation on the Ass Shove. Also related to Nose Nuggets, and Orifice Invasion.

It goes without saying, but this should not be done in real life. Inserting an object into your nose can cause a nosebleed, or worse, a rupture of the delicate nasal membrane. Seriously, don't shove anything into your nose.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Space Patrol Luluco: In Episode 10, when Luluco isn't waking up, Over Justice suggests that Midori try stuffing tissues up their nose.
• One vengeance target in the third season of Hell Girl gets turned into a living power strip with all of a house's electronics plugged into him before being sent to Hell proper. At one point, the plug for a hairdryer is shoved up his nose.
• During the Egypt arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Hol Horse shoves his fingers up Polnareff's nose as part of an assassination plot against him and the other Crusaders per Boingo's orders via his Stand, Thoth.^note  Thoth is a book that can show events of the future via comic strips, but the comic strips are vague at best, leaving them wide open to interpretation.

Comics

• Happens several times in Garfield. The first time was when Jon had a camera shoved up his nose by Garfield and Odie, the second was when he had a rubber mouse shoved up his nose, and the third was when he got a miniature uniform shoved up his nose. Jon also mentions that in high school, he had a mad crush on the head cheerleader, which didn't end well: "Ever had a pom-pom shoved up your nose?"
• Two variations in Strangers in Paradise. The first is when Katchoo is harassed by a Dirty Cop, and puts him in what another character describes as a "bodacious nose lock", where she has him face-first on the ground, sitting on his back while pulling his nostrils back as hard as she can. The second is when we see David's past, and he deals with a Yakuza wannabe who is insulting him by jamming his fingers, palm-down, into the guy's nostrils and practically lifting him off his feet.
• Army of Darkness Shop Till You Drop Dead: Ash gets his artificial hand from the film replaced with a highly-advanced cybernetic hand when he accidentally time travels into the future. Each of the fingers has a different futuristic weapon, except for the thumb, which has "Atomic nose-hair trimmers." When his other fingers are destroyed in the climax, he kills the Big Bad by sticking his thumb up his opponent's nostril and activating the nose-hair trimmers, which are somehow powerful enough to destroy the deadite's head.
• A particularly grisly example occurs early in Preacher, courtesy of Jesse Custer. He starts a fight by shoving his fingers into a guy's nose, then ripping them up and out through the sides. The poor bastard's nose is practically destroyed.

Fan Works

• The Homestuck fanfic Hivefled includes Terezi trying to teach Dave to smell colours by sticking crayons up his nostrils.
• This kid AU of Steven Universe has Blue Pearl putting a green crayon up her nose, much to Pearl's disgust.
• In Harry Potter How Bong Bong got his name Angelina, disgusted at having half-chewed food spat on her, hexes Ron's mouth off. In an attempt to continue eating, he shoves a chicken leg up both nostrils.

Films — Animation

• In the climax of Megamind, Megamind defeats Titan by shoving the infuser gun up his nose before defusing his powers, which he did since the original projectile that gave him powers had gone up his nose.
• In Toy Story 3, a toddler is shown sticking Mr. Potato Head's eyes up his nose.
• In an earlier version of Turning Red, Mei would have had a fly go up her nose causing her to transform in panic.

Films — Live-Action

• In Pacific Rim, Hannibal Chau shoves a knifeblade up Newton Geiszler's nose.
• The same thing happens to Jake Gittes in Chinatown, only then Roman Polański slashes the nostril open.
• In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), after a large inmate threatens Peter, Rocket has Groot do this with his finger branches. Then they keep growing.
• A character has a spike shoved up his nose in Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings.
• A douche is rammed up a prostitute's nose in Hanger.
• In Total Recall (1990), Douglas Quaid has to shove the business end of a self-guiding pincer up his nose to extract the ball-shaped tracking bug that has been implanted in it. Particularly squicky, since the golf ball-sized implant has to come out of his nostril too.
• In When Evil Calls, an overachieving student—Driven to Suicide by the prospect of The B Grade—kills himself by inserting sharpened pencils up his nostrils and then slamming his face into his desk: driving the pencils into his brain.
• In the blooper reel for The Little Rascals (1994), Courtland Mead, the actor who portrayed Uh-huh, is seen putting a pencil in his nose.

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • During the fight with the troll in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry accidentally but usefully sticks his wand up the troll's nose.
  • When Lupin finds Peeves the poltergeist stuffing a broom closet's keyhole with chewing gum Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he casts a spell that makes the chewing gum fly up Peeves' nose.
  • When Harry and the Weasley family go to St. Mungo's on Christmas Day to visit Arthur, who's still recovering from his snakebites, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry witnesses a witch with a walnut jammed up her nostril at the lobby.
    St. Mungo receptionist: Family argument, eh? You're the third I've seen today. Spell damage, fourth floor.
• In Going Postal the dim-witted Smug Snake Crispin Horsefry doesn't know much about the game of Thud except that he got a piece stuck up his nose once when he was a kid.
• In The Talisman, the judge who sent Jack and Wolf to Sunlight Gardner's Orphanage of Fear commits suicide by stabbing himself in the brain through his nose.
• In Big Nate, Nate writes down that Chester offered a trade for this kid's sandwich. The kid declined, so Chester stuffed a hot dog up his nose.
  Nate Wright: Did I mention that Chester's kind of a psycho?
• In the Franny K. Stein book The Fran That Time Forgot, Franny breaks free from the grasp of one of the elephant monsters created by her evil future teenage self by ordering her voice-activated cheese cannon to shoot some cheddar and then shoving the cheese up the elephant monster's trunk.
• Journey to the West: Sun Wukong defeats the Old Elephant Monster/Yellow-Tusked White Elephant by showing his staff up the monster's nostrils when the latter tries to grab him with his trunk and pulling him around. After this treatment, the monster speaks with a pronounced nasal lisp.
• Vorkosigan Saga: Gregor, Miles’ childhood playmate and emperor of three planets, threatens to shove a pastry up his nose during the denouement of The Vor Game.
• A background character in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi is fleshed out a bit in Star Wars Legends. Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina establishes him as an Anzati, a kind of vampire which uses a pair of probosci on either side of his nose to shove up into the nostrils of prey and consume what he calls their "soup". What "soup" is is never clearly established but it's not blood or brains, and he thinks the soup that's been "on the shelf" for longer tastes better than... fresh soup. A story in Tales from Jabba's Palace completely undercuts the menace in his two POV stories, though, as a guard thinks of him as a "snot vampire" and covers his own nose with his hand while near him.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon Cooper recalls having a Mexican peso shoved up his nose by a schoolyard bully. To the best of his knowledge, it's still there.
• An episode of 30 Rock revolves around Tracy Jordan recovering his sense of smell after a ring he shoved into his nose as a child is finally removed. When he becomes emotionally overwhelmed by a scent that reminds him of his absentee father, though, he returns to the doctor and has a troll-head pencil topper shoved into his nostril in order to remove his sense of smell again.
• A pair of characters portrayed by Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest on Saturday Night Live would compare painful experiences incurred while jamming unthinkable objects into body orifices.
• The pilot episode of The X-Files has small, unidentifiable capsules recovered from the nasal cavities of apparent alien abduction victims.
• In the House episode "Mob Rules", a man repeatedly brings a toddler to the clinic because he keeps shoving stuff up to his nose. House eventually realizes that the toys (policeman, fireman, and fire truck) have something in common. He gets a strong magnet and gets out the first toy, a small metal cat. The kid was "sending in teams to save the cat".
• An episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete showed little Pete shoving the miniature heads of US Presidents in his nostril, with one (Martin Van Buren) getting stuck.
• An episode of The Bill took place entirely in a police van full of bored uniformed officers, acting as backup for a protest march in case of a riot. One of the officers falls asleep and a female colleague pushes two pipe cleaners up his nose. Becomes a Brick Joke when a call goes out to the van; as everyone gears up for action, the officer concerned can be seen awake and glaring at the pipe cleaners.
• And now for something completely different! ^note  I Always Wanted to Say That A man with a tape recorder up his nose!
  • And a man with a tape recorder up his brother's nose!
• In the "Alien Abductions" episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, the two show a silver-painted dildo to an "abductee," who states that the aliens inserted a similar device into her sinus cavity.
• Similarly, an episode of The Colbert Report has an abductee stating that the aliens probed his nose (Colbert was desperately trying to get him to shut up until he said it, too).
  • It makes way more sense than probing the other end, since the nose is a lot closer to the brain than, well, you know...
• Some of the idiots featured on World's Dumbest... have filmed themselves shoving various objects up their noses, sometimes to set some kind of record. And then Danny Bonaduce has to try it for himself.
• Played with in an episode of Are You Being Served?. Mrs Slocombe is annoyed by Captain Peacock's wagging his finger at her. She complains to Mr Rumbold that "Captain Peacock's wiggling finger got right up my nose!" As usual, Mr Rumbold takes things literally and admonishes Captain Peacock not to put his finger in Mrs Slocombe's nose.
• In one episode of Fringe, Peter is tortured via electrodes shoved up his nose^note The wires were really put up Joshua Jackson's nose and one accidentally nicked a blood vessel badly enough that he needed to be rushed to the hospital to get the injury cauterized.
• In the first episode of Squid Game, Gi-hun's creditors torture him in this way with an icepick.
• Call the Midwife holds a child pulling this with a Lego brick instead of the traditional dried pea to be a sign of the changing times.

Music

• In the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "I'll Sue Ya," the singer files a Frivolous Lawsuit against Duracell after shoving one of their batteries up his nose.
  • In "My Own Eyes", one of the disturbing sights that the narrator wishes he could unsee is a pair of drag queens shoving crackers up each other's noses.
• In "Fish Fight Song" by Da Yoopers, the female lead threatens to shove the husband's fishing worms up his nose if he shrugs off his duties as a father in favor of fishing again. She then implies an Ass Shove with the spoken line "Somewhere else, too".
• Heather Dale's song "Don't Put It In Your Nose" is all about the importance of not shoving things up your nose.

Stand-Up Comedy

• The Cheech & Chong comedy sketch "Up His Nose" from the album Los Cochinos has a father bring his son named Jaime to the doctor because he's been shoving lots of things up his nose — including bullets. The doctor tries to extract them with a pair of pliers, but ultimately decides on just using a hammer, and the bullets explode, supposedly also taking the boy's face with it. All the father could do at that point is rejoice and tell the doctor to "keep the change".

Theatre

• "Never Say No" from The Fantasticks:
  Why did the kids put beans in their ears?
  No one can hear with beans in their ears.
  After a while the reason appears.
  They did it cause we said no.

Video Games

• According to the Team Fortress 2 blog, somebody on the development team shoved an M&M up their nose. (The picture that went with the blog was an angry Medic using a pointer to indicate said M&M on a head x-ray.)
• As seen by the quote, in Quest for Glory I you can die when attempting to pick your nose if your lockpicking skill is too low.

Webcomics

• Kevin & Kell: Rudy gets Lindesfarne's electronic diary shoved up his nose as punishment when she catches him trying to read it.
  Fiona (by phone): Please tell me it's at least one of the new small ones.
  Lindesfarne: It's not.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: SCP-108 is a woman with a portal to a disused Nazi bunker in her nose.
• Binder of Shame: For reasons he never adequately explains, Blobert Smith once plays a character who "deals with his post-traumatic stress syndrome by putting porridge up his nose on moonlit nights".
• Jeffy from SuperMarioLogan has a pencil shoved up his nose. The reason why he shoved it in there was because he thought it was what his nostrils were for. In "Smart Jeffy", the pencil gets lodged in his brain, suddenly making him smart.
• RWBY Chibi once adapted a Dumb_RWBY comic where Ruby asks Weiss "want to see me eat a cookie through my nose?"

Western Animation

• The Simpsons
  • One episode had Homer's stupidity be the result of a crayon having become lodged in his brain after he shoved it up his nose as a kid. In fact he shoved sixteen crayons up his nose, and then sneezed out fifteen of them. Removing it makes him smarter and allows him to get along much better with Lisa, but alienates him from society since it turns out that even a man with average intelligence is still too smart to fit into today's world. He asks Moe to shove another crayon up his nose and into his brain to make him stupid again.
    Moe: No problem. The ol' "Crayola Oblongata".
  • In another episode, Bart whacks Ralph on the head, causing coins and milk to fall from his nose. "My milk money!... And my milk!" Ralph has also played the flute by sticking it up his nose.
• The Gravity Falls short "Mailbox" involves a videotape of Mabel shoving gummy worms up her nose.
• Home Movies - when baby Josie sticks marbles up her nose, Brendon makes a video warning about putting marbles up your nose, but it backfires in a Do Not Do This Cool Thing way.
• Chris from Family Guy once shoved a toy up his nose. It poked his brain and he claimed that he forgot math as a result.
• During one episode of King of the Hill, Bobby goes in to have plastic beans removed from his nose. A flashback shows he'd been stuffing them in there as a means of cheating at Don't Spill the Beans.
• The Bakshi Mighty Mouse episode "Don't Touch That Dial" has an air traffic controller eating krinkle cut French fries, when he passes one through his nose when the Cow (in a rare Heel–Face Turn moment) flies by.

Real Life

• Truth in Television in the case of young children.
• Sideshow geeks sometimes hammer a nail into their nose, with little to no adverse effects because there's a sinus back there the average person doesn't know about. Sylvester McCoy used it routinely prior to becoming the seventh Doctor.
  • Speaking of Doctor Who actors, here's McCoy's successor Paul McGann with the sonic screwdriver up his nose.◊
• This is the second most common method of securing an open airway on a patient being transported by EMTs to the hospital, called a nasopharyngeal airway or NPA, after an oropharyngeal airway or OPA where it instead goes through the mouth. An NPA is generally only used when a patient cannot or will not let you use an OPA, and while the experience is pretty unpleasant it doesn't trigger the gag reflex the way an OPA is likely to and also, you know, is intended to help save your life. The device is also sometimes called a "trumpet" due to it having a flared end to prevent it from getting lost in someone's nose, though almost every EMT has a story about it happening anyway despite this.

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