Satiating Sandwich

A Large Ham needs a large ham sandvich!

"The mark of a successful sandwich is not being able to hold it with one hand."

— Tomodachi Life, description for the Sandwich food item

Tastes great, better filling! Sandwiches of one kind or another have been the Trademark Favorite Foods of many characters.

Occasionally characters may comment on its simplicity, use wacky ingredients, or overstuff their sandwiches, but it's all the same basic food item.

With the aid of a handy logical fallacy, one can prove that a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness: nothing is better than eternal happiness, and a ham sandwich is better than nothing.

Also see Dagwood Sandwich, the go-to gag sandwich for the Big Eater. See also Inherently Funny Words, Wasteful Wishing, as a common part of that trope is the character wishing for a sandwich. When provided as a health item or powerup in video games, see Hyperactive Metabolism and Power-Up Food.

And, last but not least, see They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich if they weren't able to finish the sandwich, or any other food, for whatever reason.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• Who on Earth could resist a Ritz Bits sandwich when the commercial makes them this cute?

Anime & Manga

• Ami from Sailor Moon likes sandwiches because she can eat them while reading or using a computer.
• Kimagure Orange Road has the Legendary Cutlet Sandwich.
• In Sword Art Online, Asuna's sandwiches are this for Kirito. In episode 25, he begs Asuna for a sandwich after she teases him with one. Just look at them!
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • One most-desired items among students in the Duel Academy cafeteria was the Golden Eggwich; only one could be prepared each day, seeing as a specially bred hen laid the egg necessary for it, only once per day. It was placed among various other identically wrapped sandwiches so that students could pick at random, and test their luck, something very essential to dueling. (Judai managed to "draw" it ten days in a row until the survivalist former student Taira Taizan started breaking in and getting them, leading to a confrontation between the two.
  • In the dub version (only) Chumley's Trademark Favorite Food is grilled cheese sandwiches.
• An episode of Case Closed (813) has a mysterious man practically stalking Amuro at the cafe where he works. He and Conan wonder if it's connected to the plot, but in the end it turns out that he owns a bakery and he just wanted to know what the secret is to Amuro's amazing ham sandwiches. He proceeds to show everyone how he makes them, using scientific hacks typical of the series, like using hot water on the lettuce, and brushing olive oil on the ham.

Comedy

• Mike Wilmot had this bit at the Just for Laughs festival:
  I think a fair way to judge any race of people is to try their sandwich. If you have a problem with the Lebanese, go get a chicken shawarma. Only sweet people make a good sandwich. If you have a problem with Jews, go down to Schwartz's Deli, get a smoked meat sandwich. The only problem you'll have with Jews after that is that you don't know enough of 'em. Now, the Chinese... no sandwiches. That's all I'm sayin'.

Comic Books

• Alan Ford: sandwiches, ranging from hamburgers to hotdogs to humble "Pane e Salame" ^note  a simple sandwich with salami, no more and no less are often consumed by the T.N.T. members, who're usually too poor to afford anything fancier (and not just as street food, but as everyday food). Recurring minor villain Doktor Kreuzer fits the wacky ingredients parts, as he often has sandwiches packed with ingredients such as caviar, butter, anchovies paste and lettuce.
• Bone: Smiley Bone thinks the most beautiful sound in the world is a sandwich being born.
• In the Spider-Man story where Carnage first appeared, he was hiding out in a former victim's apartment, planning his next move, and decided to make a sandwich first; he was upset that the refrigerator had no Grey Poupon mustard.
• Superman had a preference for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during the early 80's, when DC licensed the use of the character for a brand of peanut butter in real life.
• The Walking Dead: Rick Grimes eats one after the two-year Time Skip, showing that the survivors in Washington have rebuilt society to the point where they can once again produce the ingredients needed to make bread. After years of living off scavenged canned food and wild game, a sandwich is all the more satisfying.

Comic Strips

• The Trademark Favorite Food of Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes is tuna sandwiches (Watterson established that fact in the very first daily strip of the comic).
  • Calvin enjoys peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches, and they're a common feature in his school lunches, but being a Picky Eater, a few strips show him making ridiculously specific demands on how the sandwiches should be assembled. He's very annoyed when Mom just ignores them.
  • In one strip, Calvin asks Hobbes what he'd wish for if he could have anything in the world. Hobbes says, "A sandwich." Calvin accuses him of being unimaginative: he'd wish for "a trillion billion dollars, my own space shuttle, and a private continent!" Hobbes may not be all that creative, but at least he gets his wish.
  • When Calvin and Hobbes attempt to emigrate to Alaska, the only food Calvin packs is two sandwiches. He puts chocolate syrup on one, and marshmallows in the other, cramming as much sugar in the sandwiches as possible to get as much energy they can.
• Blondie (1930) has the tall, multi-layered Dagwood sandwiches.
• Popeye: Wimpy will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
• Peanuts:
  • Charlie Brown always has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch while at school, but the fact that he tends to think about his troubles during lunch break tend to keep him from enjoying it. In one strip, when he sits alone while watching the Little Red Haired Girl, he says "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter like unrequited love!"
  • In one week-long series of strips, Charlie Brown ran out of dog food, so he made Snoopy a really big hoagie that took him the whole week to eat (which he finished on the strip that ran on Christmas Day, where he left the crumbs for the birds, using them to spell out "Merry Christmas"). In one of the six strips, he goaded the mean cat next door, saying that if he came near him again, "I'll hit you with my sandwich!" And in another one, he was dozing, and then heard footsteps, and then saw Woodstock when he opened his eyes. "I knew I heard someone walking on my sandwich!" he mused.
• Garfield makes a "dessertwitch" in this strip.

Fan Works

• Subverted in Thirty Hs. Harry doesn't like the "cabbagewich", which might explain why it was the last piece of food on Surf Ninja Moon X.
• With This Ring: When Dr. Sivana finally manages to get back to his own time after spending a year trapped in the far future of The Sheeda (a Bad Future Death World ruled by humanity's Humanoid Abomination descendants), surviving only on what he could recycle or scavenge while also avoiding the Sheeda searching for him, the first thing he asks for is something to eat.
  Venus: I was planning a cold lunch at 2, but under the circumstances, I don't think a sandwich would be a problem.

Films — Animation

• In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs the first thing Flint has the FLDSMDFR make is a cheeseburger, which ends up being a shower of cheeseburgers that kicks off the plot. Later, when the mayor asks him to "do lunch," he makes it rain sandwiches, and during the Perfect Food Storm, the Eiffel Tower becomes a toothpick for a giant BLT.

Films — Live-Action

• In Star Trek (2009), Scotty's first response to meeting Spock Prime is "You're from the future? That's brilliant. Do they have sandwiches there?" (Already established is the lack of sandwiches in Scotty's vicinity, since he works on an ice moon in the middle of nowhere and nobody's bothered to send food in some time.)
• In Troll 2, Joshua eats a double-decker bologna sandwich and so becomes powerful enough to defeat Creedence and the goblins.
• Subverted in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (The Movie), when Harry asks Ron on the train if he'd like anything from the trolley. His expression and tone of voice when he pulls out his squashed corned beef sandwich and says "I'm set" is priceless.
• Smokey and the Bandit featured a restaurant that sold the diablo sandwich. While there is no definitive source for the composition of it, the program Reel Eats made one resembling a sloppy joe-with seasoned ground beef, corn and sour cream, while the Hickory House restaurant in Georgia has their version, a pulled pork and hot sauce sandwich on a hamburger roll.
• In Zathura when the stranded astronaut arrives in Danny and Walter's house, one of the first things he does is make himself a sandwich. Understandable, since he's been living off survival rations for years.
• The gamer kid in Gamer is introduced spreading green stuff onto bread and making a sandwich out of it before kicking ass in his video game. Later he recommends the "pistachio butter sandwiches" to some police.
• In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark is using a kid's garage to repair his damaged suit and bunk down. He gives the kid a Long List of supplies he needs, ending with a tuna fish sandwich.
• In The Princess Bride, Miracle Max thinks an MLT, a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, is better than true love.
• In Bad Santa, The Kid is obsessed with making people sandwiches. Carried over into the sequel where he now works at a sandwich shop.
• Back to School: Rodney Dangerfield, not satisfied with the hors d'oeuvres at his wife's function, grabs a loaf of bread, hollows it out, and empties each tray into an impromptu sandwich, containing among other things, deviled eggs, meatballs and spinach puffs.
• Egg sandwiches are Serious Business for Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey (2020). Don't murder Harley's sandwich, if you value your safety!
• In Mirror Mirror (1990), Nikki's boyfriend Ron considers himself a mastery of the 'culinary arts', devoted to making sandwiches. He even narrates making his sandwiches like a sports commentator.

Literature

• Subverted in Through the Looking Glass. When the White King feels faint, he asks his messenger for a ham sandwich. It doesn't help much, and when he asks for a second one, the messenger only has hay left, so the King settles for that. The hay seems to make him feel a lot better.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  • In Mostly Harmless, Arthur has an existential crisis where, among other things, he faces the depressing fact that about the only thing he's any good at is making sandwiches. After Arthur's ship crash-lands on Lamuella, stranding him there among the bronze-age inhabitants, he ends up becoming a tribe's Sandwich Maker. The book spends three solid pages of a ten-page chapter describing how this is an exalted position, and Arthur's unparalleled skill at making sandwiches is regarded as literally divine, and he actually gets more respect than the village chief.
  • Subverted, though, in another Hitchhiker book, when Douglas Adams takes up a good chunk of narration explaining that the English eat sandwiches (specifically, the sort of sandwiches you get in pubs and British Rail buffet cars) to atone for their collective sins.
  • Probably in reference to the above, elsewhere in Mostly Harmless we're told that scientists who programmed a robot to like herring sandwiches were able to use this to discover the purposes of boredom, irritability, and depression. When they stopped using herring sandwiches, they discovered such emotions as relief, appetite and happiness.
• After Harry Potter saves the world and has closure with Dumbledore, he just wants to go up to his bed and wonders if Kreacher will bring him a sandwich there.
• In A Wrinkle in Time, one of the first things Mrs. W does when she visits Meg's home is to ask for a tuna salad sandwich. Though Meg isn't exactly thrilled that a complete stranger just arrived uninvited, she nonetheless makes the sandwich and even adds some diced sweet pickle.
• In Discworld, Vimes likes bacon sandwiches, with lots of extra-crisp bacon and as little lettuce and tomato as he can get away with. (A wizard in Unseen Academicals also liked bacon sandwiches enough to ask the Cabinet of Curiosity for one. This was a really bad idea.)
• Roland, of The Dark Tower series, is a big fan of "tooter fish" (tuna fish) sandwiches and soda after starving in the desert for a few days. Hot dogs are still only tolerable.
• The Amy Virus: The first meal Cyan has after she runs away from her Abusive Parents is a Subway sandwich with pretty much everything on it.
• Invoked in Sir Apropos of Nothing when the protagonists are forced to act as servants at a warlord's banquet: since they're only allowed bread and water, they hide as many meats and other more filling ingredients between slices of bread as possible, thereby inventing the sandwich in their world. Sir Apropos still thinks that It Will Never Catch On.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks: In "The Cafeteria Strike" (a Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of "Cafeteria Boycott"), Mr. Conklin hides a chicken sandwich in his office safe. He can't stand to go to lunch and eat the "putrid" food cooked by the incompetent school chef Edgar Turnbull (who just happens to be Mr. Conklin's brother-in-law)
• The Andy Griffith Show: A very young boy named Leon was always silently offering a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich to whoever was around. Invariably, the response would be: "No thanks, Leon."
• The Electric Company:
  • The sandwich featured in the "And Sandwich" skit starts out like a delicious, mouth-watering delicacy. But, as the waiter (Jim Boyd) exchanges glances with the cook (Luis Avalos) and names the ingredients – "ham and cheese and tomato and bacon and lettuce and baloney and cream cheese and celery and chopped meat and soy sauce and coleslaw and meat loaf and pot roast and olives and tuna fish and turkey and shrimp and corned beef and peanut butter and liverwurst" – it soon becomes clear this sandwich is an inedible, nauseating mishmash of randomly thrown-together ingredients. In the end, the customer (Rita Moreno) — who is eager to have it — declares she doesn't want the oversized sandwich: The restaurant doesn't have salami ... causing Boyd to collapse in frustration.
  • Paul the Gorilla plays a king called King Howard the Hungry, who cannot decide which to have on the royal sandwich: peanut butter or jelly. June Angela brings in the word "and", suggesting that he have peanut butter and jelly. King Howard is so pleased that he invites June to have lunch and dinner with him. For both meals, they have peanut butter and jelly.
• Although Joey from Friends was always a Big Eater, the episode with the trivia contest confirmed that his favorite food is "sandwiches". Other episodes have people distracting him with specifically a meatball sandwich.
  • In "TOW The Ride Along", when the boys think they hear a gunshot, Joey covers Ross instinctively, which bothers Chandler. At the end of the episode, Joey reassures him that he wasn't protecting Ross over Chandler: he was protecting the sub sandwich he bought in an earlier scene.
  • In "TOW Ross' Sandwich" the titular sandwich is made up of Thanksgiving leftovers. Ross, who's already in a pretty bad place thanks to his acrimonious divorce from Emily, hits his Rage Breaking Point when a co-worker steals it and then tells Ross he had to throw most of it away because it was too big to finish.
• Wilder from The Latest Buzz was obsessed with creating the perfect sandwich.
• Horne Brothers in Twin Peaks!
• In one Monty Python's Flying Circus linking animation, a bacon, lettuce, Michelangelo's Adam and tomato sandwich is constructed.
• Nothing would make El Chavo happier than a torta de jamón (ham sandwich).
• In Supernatural, Dean loves a good sandwich, with a fondness for cheeseburgers, but in the episode "What Is And What Should Never Be" (S02, Ep20) Dean declares a sandwich made by his mother "the best sandwich, ever!"
• Home Improvement,
  • Tim plugs Big Mike's Tavern on his show, which has a sandwich called a Stinky, which includes Limburger cheese, sauerkraut, Bermuda onion and hot mustard. (Apparently it's better than it's name suggests, although Tim declines to order one the second time he goes there, claiming he's still digesting the first.)
  • Tim finds Al's sandwiches rather satisfying in one episode, even though they're "only" ham and cheese. (Of course, in the episode in question, they had been working on the hot rod a long time, and were pretty hungry.)
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In the 1st season episode "The Hub" before Fitz goes off on his first field assignment, Simmons makes his favorite sandwich for him; prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella with a hint of homemade pesto aioli. Regrettably he never gets a chance to eat the thing, as Ward throws it out to because the smell might attract tracker dogs, but he assures Simmons later that it was delicious.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: While Raymond Holt has no preference for flavor, preferring his food to be utilitarian, he makes an exception for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a Monte Cristo sandwich. With the former, it's because he enjoys it's practicality since the ingredients have a long shelf life and they're so simple a child can make them. With the latter, it's because he and his husband Kevin shared one on a rainy day in Paris, which is one of his most treasured memories.
  • While a Big Eater in general, the only reason Scully is the precincts union representative despite his total incompetence is because there is always a party submarine sandwich at the union meetings.
• Gordon sends an egg salad sandwich three months into the future in an episode of The Orville. It turns up in the season finale, and his mood drastically improves after he eats it with relish.

Music

• Per Bob King:
  Sandwiches are beautiful,
  Sandwiches are fine.
  I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time;
  I eat them for my supper and I eat them for my lunch;
  If I had a hundred sandwiches, I'd eat them all at once.
  • Fred Penner and the crowd at the The Pit Pub would agree.
• Sandwich, sandwich, I'm in love with you...
• Hobo's love for sandwiches comes up in a lot of Hobo Johnson's songs. They even came out with official band sweatshirts with pictures of sandwiches on them.

Roleplay

• In Dino Attack RPG, in keeping with his Team Fortress 2 inspiration, Ivan "Heavy" Tzenovich's favorite food is sandwiches. Atton Rand tends to flanderize this to the point where Ivan will refuse to eat anything else.^note Unless he is told that it is a sandwich.
• We Are All Pokémon Trainers has Carol, whose favorite food is cheese-and-tomato sandwiches.

Video Games

• The Sandvich in Team Fortress 2 is an unlockable edible device for the Heavy. He must forsake having a secondary weapon to carry it, and must stand still and vulnerable for four seconds as he eats it with a hearty OM NOM NOM, regenerating all his 300 hit points while at it. He can also throw it to allies, whereupon it works as a medium health pack, and if he's killed while holding it, anyone else can pick it up for 50 HP, except for the Scout, who gets 75 HP for the sake of an in-universe gag. The Sandvich is memetic enough to be referenced in the domination lines of multiple classes, and it even has its own "Meet the Team" video.
• Bungo to Alchemist: On Saturday in winter, the dining hall serves pork katsu sandwiches as a special meal. It's said to be a popular dish among writers as it can be eaten in one hand (freeing the other for writing), and Masaoka Shiki raves about it.
• The NES game Dragon Power, an old Macekre of the very first Dragon Ball home game, replaced Master Roshi's demand for underwear with one for sandwiches.
• Earthworm Jim 2 has the sandwich item, which bumps Jim's HP up to 200%. Not just any sandwich, either: it's a chip butty; a British sandwich made with chips (fries) and butter/mayo.
• Ever17. All food the characters can find is chicken sandwiches. Moar chicken sandwiches, nothing but chicken sandwiches!^note And some hot-dogs.Subverted when the Kid finally gets sick of eating nothing but sandwiches.
• Subverted in MapleStory While the game has dozens of different kinds of Power-Up Food, the Sandwich (only available from the vendor in FriendStory isn't very remarkable, only restoring 800 MP. The Hamburger and Cheese Sandwich aren't much better, the first only recovering 400 HP, and the second (available only in New Leaf City) recovering 500 HP and MP and giving you a slight boost in Attack Power for ten minutes; in all three cases, the vendors who sells these has better stuff.
• Commander Keen: Aliens Ate My Babysitter! has a titanic floral obstacle with snapjaws and the biting of the people of the OH FLAYVEN, and Blaskowitz has to find him a similar sized, being titanic, sandwich in order to feed him and get the past of the plant creature you know of the being.
  • An interesting side note, Commander Keen calls it "the second biggest sandwich he's ever seen" once he picks it up. Just where did he see a bigger one?
• Castle Crashers has sandwiches as a powerup item, which don't restore any health, but instead make you beefier for a short time.
• Village Bridge from Pokémon Black and White has a mini-game where the player character receives orders from customers and delivers berry sandwiches to them for a local baker.
• Kingdom of Loathing:
  • The game has a number of sandwich-based food items available, from the humble Spam Witch sammich (dropped by Spam Witches in the Vallyey of Rof'lm'fao) to the sandwich of the gods (available as a reward from Fernswarthy's Basement).
  • Players under the Avatar of Boris path can learn the skill "Demand Sandwich", because apparently, Boris could demand sandwiches, "and somebody would do it, if somebody knew what was good for somebody". Should you become in tune with Boris enough (by learning all of his skills), you can permanently learn the skill "Request Sandwich" on completing the run, which doesn't have as high a success rate (because you aren't quite as... persuasive as Boris was), but can be used in almost any run.
  • Players under the Avatar of Jarlsberg path, with access to the Supreme Chef skills of the original Chef-Magus of the Kingdom of Loathing, can learn to prepare a variety of foods including no less than four sandwiches (immaculate grilled cheese, immaculate egg salad sandwich, the perfect sandwich, and the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich).
  • At the end of the Zombie Slayer path, during which the player must subsist entirely on brains, the player, doubting that they'll ever be human again, is cured, and subsequently offered a ham sandwich by their nurse.
  You've never tasted anything as delicious as that ham sandwich.
• Inverted in Final Fight 3. A sandwich pickup fills less of the health bar than even a bottle of cola and is unquestionably the worst health pickup in the game.
• The Sims 2: Using the Aspiration Changer item might accidentally give your Sim the "Grilled Cheese" aspiration, where they become obsessed with making and consuming grilled cheese sandwiches.
• Bik: It's telling when this phrase is part of the tagline: "Eat some sandwiches and save the galaxy!" Indeed, the first-ever task Ammut has is to find ingredients for a bologna sandwich and eat it, at which point we're treated to this◊. Only then can he address the issue of a fire aboard his ship. The game ends with Bik, Ammut, and Tatenen sitting down to eat more sandwiches before continuing their galactic adventures.
• The Flash game 625 Sandwich Stacker is all about Experiment 625/Reuben's love of sandwiches, and you get to help him make as many of them as you can.
• Deep Rock Galactic: The Dwarves' favourite food seems to be sandwiches. They occasionally mention them when depositing collected minerals, clearly looking forward to having them when they return from a mission, and the space used by expanded ammo capacity was previously for storing sandwiches.
  When we get back... it's sandwich time!

Web Comics

• Men in Hats: "Do sandwiches fit in somewhere?" (Yes, they do.)
• Whenever the possibility of snacks is mentioned, Unity will insist on having "SAMMYCHES!!!"
• xkcd: "Analogies are like sandwiches in that I'm making one now."
• Lackadaisy: For whatever reason, sandwiches seem to be associated with bonding and emotional catharsis.
• It's a running gag in Sketch Comedy that Harold the Wizard really just wants Jackson (the author) to draw him a sandwich, and Jackson won't do it.
• Girl Genius: Gil convinces an enemy mook to switch sides by making him ham sandwiches.
• Sam & Fuzzy: In one early strip, Sam is happily enjoying a sandwich, which Fuzzy claims is an obsolete form of food, and states that the "modern consumer" prefers their meals to come in convenient sprays and pastes, such as Spam for meat, Cheeze-Whiz for dairy and pre-made cookie dough for bread!
  Sam: *grossed out* Maybe it's not necessary to have everything come in "sludge" form!
  Fuzzy: It is when you're making Omni-Goo!

Web Original

• The Onion has reported on sandwich innovations such as Pfizer's Hoagizine, a turkey-bacon-guacamole-lettuce-tomato sandwich so delicious you need a doctor's prescription to consume it, and Arby's Beef 'N' Bacon sandwich, which disappointed the fast-food chain being "merely 'good.'"
• In the ninth season of Tech Infantry, William Bishop eats quite a few sandwiches, to the point that it became a Running Gag.
• Thanks to awkward phrasing in its source fic, the Protectors of the Plot Continuum Video Game Division once had to hunt down a walking zombie-killing sandwich.

Western Animation

• Lilo & Stitch franchise:
  • Experiment 625 is obsessed with sandwiches, and is even named after one: Reuben.
  • In the original movie, Lilo gives Pudge the fish a peanut butter sandwich because she thinks he controls the weather.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • When Timmy makes a sandwich in colonial times, he's hailed as a genius. He also once wished for a triple-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his lunch.
  • According Norm the Genie, every person who finds a genie's lamp wastes their first wish, without fail, on the exact same thing; a giant sandwich. When Chester gets his lamp, he just outright gives him a giant sandwich to prevent him from wasting the first wish and screw up his plan to manipulate Chester into helping him get revenge on Timmy.
• In the Mickey Mouse Works cartoon "Mickey Tries to Cook," Mickey is a One-Note Cook who only makes sandwiches with ham, tomato and cheese in any assortment. At the end of the cartoon, Jose Carioca has brought the exact same thing, but described it to Minnie in Portuguese.
• Shaggy and Scooby from Scooby-Doo often sneak away to the kitchen to create truly epic sandwiches.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Krabby Patties.
  • When a customer got one with jellyfish jelly added, it caused him to break into song.
• A Jimmy Two-Shoes short involved Beezy making a sandwich and bonding with it, deciding that he can't eat it. He purees it instead.
  • In "My So-Called Loaf", Jimmy creates a sandwich so perfect he can't bring himself to eat it. Unfortunately, it ends up attracting a sentient, violent sandwich named Cowboy Stackhouse who wants to marry it
• Time Squad: In one episode, Time Squad assists John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich himself, as he's having some trouble putting the finishing touches on his new invention (he got the bread, meat, veggie and cheese parts right, but hadn't thought of adding a condiment), and ended up trying a bunch of ridiculous ideas like freezing it or zapping it with electricity. Unfortunately, actually inventing the sandwich was only half the mission, as the Earl insisted on naming his creation "Stinky Pile O' Poo" (in honor of his mothers maiden name), and refuses to even consider changing it, despite the uniformly negative response from potential customers.
• The VeggieTales story Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen has King Xerxes banish his queen at the beginning for refusing to make him a sandwich. Immediately afterward, he demands the same of his treacherous adviser Haman.
  • Another episode has the "Silly Songs With Larry" segment hijacked by Mr. Lunt, who sings an obnoxiously catchy love song about Jimmy Gourd's desire for a cheeseburger.
• Futurama:
  • Doctor Zoidberg sells his shares in Planet Express for a sandwich.
  "Ha! You got fleeced! I would have settled for a hard roll with ketchup inside."
  • One episode features a running gag of Hermes repeatedly screaming "My Manwich!" every time said sandwich fell on the ground.
• Adventure Time:
  • Even though there were other factors, the straw that broke the camel's back for Marceline to break up with her Jerkass boyfriend was over a turkey sandwich. A bit of a Running Gag considering that she is estranged from her father over, among other things, some fries.
  • In "Five Short Graybles," Princess Bubblegum uses various absurdly complex scientific and pseudo-magical procedures to create the greatest sandwich that has ever existed and will ever exist. Even better, one assumes, than the one Prizmo makes Jake in "Jake the Dog."
  • Jake is really into making sandwiches - the one he got into "the zone" and made in "Time Sandwich" does look pretty great.
• The ever joyous and optimistic Mr. Simmons on Hey Arnold! is pushed over the edge when Harold eats his sandwich. Up until that point nothing else truly bothered him while all the kids caused him a hard time. However, Harold makes him a new sandwich as a way of saying he's sorry, and all is forgiven.
• In one U.S. Acres segment of Garfield and Friends, Orson starts a diner and offers free food for a month if he can't make an order. Roy naturally takes him up on it, ordering several strange items, including an extremely specific sandwich that turns out to be a special of the diner. They finally get tripped up by an elephant foot sandwich with mustard because they're out of mustard. (Or so Orson claimed. He'd gone to some lengths to obtain the elephant, and it was still alive. It's possible he made up the mustard story so he'd have an excuse not to kill it.)
• Broseph in Stōked!. The B-plot of "The Reefinator" is about Broseph attempting to give up sandwiches after he gets food poisoning from one (that he was keeping in his shorts!).
• Regular Show:
  • One episode has Mordecai and Rigby trying to get a hold of The Best Burger In The World, an insane concoction parodying elaborate food truck cuisine. Benson was holding their burgers hostage until they completed the work they had been assigned.
  • Another episode had the two buying a Death Sandwich Of Death, the most delicious sandwich in the world created in an ancient dojo. And it will slowly kill you if you eat it without wearing cut-off jean shorts and a mullet (the iconic uniform of Death-Kwan-Do), and the only cure for its effects is the Sandwich of Life. Benson eats the Death Sandwich, forcing the duo to team up with the Death-Kwan-Do sensei to obtain the Sandwich of Life to cure him.
• On the Linus the Lion-Hearted show, a segment with ostensibly Chinese folk tales told of a genie who offered wishes to a simple fisherman, who only wished for a jelly sandwich. The frustrated genie tried giving him various riches, all of which came with associated headaches. The fisherman kept his sandwich and was happy.
• In Teen Titans Go!, not only is Robin an expert sandwich maker, but the episode "Legendary Sandwich" has Raven send the Titans on a quest for the ultimate sandwich so she can have some alone time.
• Both The Tick and Arthur like BLTs.
• Elmer Fudd really likes his grilled cheese sandwich.
• Fangbone!: In "The Forehead of Despair", the Toe attempts to lure Bill to the dark side by plying him with evil sandwiches.
• The Simpsons: One of the most iconic examples is the party sub Homer brought home from a company picnic, which he refused to stop eating even as it slowly began to spoil since it took so long to finish, and ended up giving him food poisoning. Even then, Marge had to force him to throw it away.
  • In the first segment of Treehouse of Horror II, Homer buys an enchanted monkey paw that grants wishes. After the kids’ wishes all go horribly wrong, Homer uses the last wish for something he believes can’t possibly backfire: a turkey sandwich. He even demonstrates some genre savviness by explicitly specifying that the sandwich not be made from zombie turkeys, that he not be turned into a turkey himself, or any other weird surprises. Subverted, however, when Homer evaluates the conjured sandwich...
  Homer: [eating] Not bad. Nice, hot mustard. Good bread. The turkey's a little dry. [gasps] The turkey’s a little dry?!? OH FOUL ACCURSED THING!!! WHAT DEMON FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL CREATED THEE???
• Brickleberry: Woody is absolutely focused to join the exclusive Brickleberry Country Club, not because of it's opulence or luxury, but because of their special club sandwich which is served only once a year and is so good that just tasting some of it's leftovers was enough to return him to sanity when he was a Shell-Shocked Veteran living off dumpster scraps. The sandwich actually contains human flesh from a black man, traditionally made from a member lured into the club under false pretenses and murdered for their annual barbecue. Denzel just barely escapes this fate, and they end up using one of their regular members for the meat, even though he's white, making the sandwich much drier.
• Molly of Denali: In the episode "Forget-You-Not," while doing a video call with her mom, Trini is eating her (and Joy's) favorite sandwich — a peanut butter and fireweed honey sandwich. She wants to send fireweed honey in the care package.

Real Life

• In situations where one has to pack a lunch for later (i.e. when going to work or especially when making a school lunch for a child), sandwiches have become the go-to main course for such meals: they're easy to make, can incorporate many different food groups, and are typically served without heating them. Because of this, sandwiches have become synonymous with lunch for many people, hence why they show up so much in fiction.
• The name "sandwich" apparently originated as a reference to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who would have his servants bring him meat tucked between slices of bread so that he could eat without interrupting (according to different versions of the story) his work or his card-playing. A good rule of thumb for determining "Is This a Sandwich?" is, therefore, "Would you be fired for serving it to the Earl?"

---

VATS DAT, SANDVICH? KILL ZEM ALL? GOOD IDEA!

---