Spraying Drink from Nose

"Needless to say I had to mop up the milk I had been drinking, 'cause it was on the other side of the room! Which is pretty good distance through your nose!"

— Jeff Foxworthy, The Blue Collar Comedy Tour

Your nose and mouth are linked, in fact they're even linked (via your sinuses) to your eyes. So when Bob is taking a big swig of his nice nutritional milk and Alice makes Bob laugh there are only a few places that milk can go. You either choke, spit it out or, through the magic of pressure, force the milk out of your nose. None of these are a good look (and are in fact rather painful if you've ever actually had it happen to you), but if you can manage to get it out your eyes then you may get on TV so it's not all bad.

Usually a comedy trope. More common with younger children because, well they're generally happy anyway, and not restricted to milk; fizzy drinks, coffee, tea....vomit all can be yours to smell for the rest of the day.

Compare Spit Take, where it comes out your mouth instead and usually is caused by surprise rather than laughter, and Vomit Indiscretion Shot, where in cases of particularly explosive or voluminous vomiting, the liquid is also shot out through the nose.

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Examples:

Comedy

• Jeff Foxworthy has a story about when the women in his family were trying on skinny jeans and his mother-in-law joined in. His daughter went, "Gramma, you shouldn't draw on your legs with a blue magic marker!" which made Jeff spray a glass of milk out his nose.

Comic Books

• In Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk comic, the Ranger squirts tea out of his nose when the Priestess announces that she and the Barbarian have "consummated their love".

Comic Strips

• Garfield:
  • Garfield once made Jon squirt soda out of his nose. Given a Call-Back in a later strip: his description of this puts Garfield off his food, which is quite an achievement, as Garfield lampshades.
  • When Jon is about to tell what he's going to do to impress his date, Garfield makes a point to finish his soda first so it won't squirt out of his nose.
• Calvin and Hobbes
  • In one strip, Calvin attempts to explain why something that happened at school was so funny, before ultimately admitting it was because it caused milk to shoot out of a kid's nose.
  • In another strip, Calvin tries a scientific experiment:
    Calvin: Curiosity is the essence of the scientific mind. For example, you know how milk comes out your nose if you laugh while drinking? Well, I'm going to see what happens when I inhale milk into my nose and laugh!
    Susie: Idiocy is the essence of the male mind.
    Calvin: I'm guessing it will shoot out of my ears. Don't you want to see?
• Zits: One strip saw Walt snort an entire jelly donut out of his nose upon overhearing his son's plans for the future (opening a chain of "used lingerie" stores to recycle all the panties and bras thrown on stage during his tenure as a rock star). We don't see the act, just the resultant stain and Hector's commentary on the incident.

Fan Works

• Cat Tales: In "Armchair Detective", while at the Lyon family's summer home, Selina ends up investigating the murder of Noel Lyon and learns that during the last year and a half or so of her first marriage, Noel had an affair with the man who'd become her second husband. While looking into possible candidates for Noel's new lover (if she has one, since her doing so could be a motive for her murder), Selina's first thought is that she was with the rent-a-waiter William... but that gets dashed when she learns William had actually spent the night with the flamboyantly gay Richard Flay (who subsequently confirms that while William is actually bi, he doesn't think Noel would have been interested in him). Later, while explaining all of this to Bruce over the phone, his guest — Clark Kent — hears it and ends up doing a spit-take through his nose, narrowly avoiding spraying the phone in the process.
• A Changed World: Eleya tells a dirty joke about Captain James Kirk's sexual reputation to the effect that Leonard McCoy had to make him a cure for banta fever, which makes Gaarra spray a mouthful of cola out his nose.
  Bartender Nalak Lang: Thanks, Commander!
• A Moon and World Apart: Referenced by the narration in chapter 18, when it says that "Had Luna been drinking, she probably would have snorted it out through her nose." after Celestia reminds her of one of the alternate universes they'd observed where two of Celestia herself were a couple.

Films — Animation

• In Inside Out, this is used to demonstrate how differently Joy and Sadness see things. Joy remembers Riley laughing and squirting milk out of her nose positively; Sadness remembers how much the sensation hurt.
• Incredibles 2: Violet squirts water out of her nose upon seeing Tony Rydinger working as a waiter at the restaurant Bob is taking her to (his family owns the place).

Films — Live-Action

• Hudson Hawk. In the scene where Eddie and Tommy are paralyzed by curare, they make a number of funny statements while one of their captors (named Butterfinger) is drinking something. He starts laughing and tells them "You made it come out of my nose."

Literature

• In Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthday, Junie B. and Lucille see chocolate milk come out of Paulie Allen Puffer's nose while he's laughing. Junie B. says she thinks it's called nose milk. Lucille is too disgusted to finish her cake, so Junie B. offers to take it to the trash and then eats it.
• Universal Monsters: In book 2, while he, Captain Bob and Nina are having lunch early on, Joe accidentally laughs his milkshake up his nose at one of Nina's snarky remarks (aimed at Captain Bob), triggering a case of Brain Freeze.

Puppet Shows

• Discussed in the Bear in the Big Blue House episode, "Go to Sleep"; Bear, Doc Hogg, and Jeremiah Tortoise are playing a game of Go Fish one night, when Tutter awakens and asks Bear why milks squirts out your nose when you drink it and laugh hard. Bear suspects that Tutter is asking this question because he is too excited about the card game to fall asleep.

Web Animation

• In the Strong Bad Email "autobiography", one of Strong Bad's anecdotes on "Words I Probably Said" includes the Cheat telling him about a Zany Scheme Strong Bad found so brilliant, he laughed until "milk and cookies shot out of [his] nose".

Webcomics

• One Cyanide and Happiness strip has a woman commenting to a man that his joke was so funny, it made milk shoot out her nose, only for him to point out that she wasn't drinking milk. She then looks down and realizes that her breasts have been sucked in.

Web Original

• A Not Always Right entry involving one of these en masse, courtesy of a female restaurant diner overheard saying:
  "But I can't testify! I don't have testiculars!"

Western Animation

• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Jimmy successfully attempts by accidental Banana Peel to make Cindy and Libby laugh until the smoothie come out of their noses as an experiment for his time-powered remote control when previous attempts by Sheen and Carl fail to do so. When Jimmy's dad gets hold of the remote control, he continues to unintentionally time-torture Cindy and Libby until they get a brain freeze.
• Bluey: In the episode 'Favourite Thing,' Bandit is caught off-guard by Bingo making a funny Malaproper that this happens to him.
• Edward: In one episode, Edward's son sprays milk out of his nose, laughing at his dad's question about calling milk "bovine juice".
• Family Guy: Peter Griffin once sprays milk out his nose and hits Brian and a blonde visitor with it.
• Happens to Gerald in Hey Arnold!, all you need to do is say booger.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: In "Yesterday's Funny Monkey", Jake's comedy routine makes students in the cafeteria laugh until they squirt milk from their noses with poor Adam always getting splashed.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • In the episode, "Hiccups", this happens to Tommy when he tries to drink his milk while suffering from a case of the hiccups.
  • Discussed in "Chuckie's New Shirt"; Chuckie has an identity crisis when he has to wear a new shirt, feeling more like "Ralph". When the babies try to play with him in his new persona, Lil brings up the time when Chuckie drew a picture of Angelica with no hair, then laughed so hard, grape juice squirted out his nose.
  • The spin-off, All Grown Up! has it discussed in the episode, "All Broke Up Again":
  Tommy: So what have I missed?
  Lil: Well Phil was drinking some chocolate milk and it spat out of his nose.
• In a flashback episode of The Simpsons Bart finds his niche as Class Clown when he makes Milhouse squirt milk out of his nose from laughing.
• The South Park episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons" had a Running Gag where Cartman squirts milk out of his nose whenever he's laughing, except he wasn't actually drinking anything at the time. At the end of the episode, the "Everybody Laughs" Ending is interrupted when milk squirts out of Kyle's nose. Cartman has the last laugh, saying Kyle got the crappy kidney from him.
• The cartoon, "Milk, It Makes a Body Spout" from the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Here's Hamton" involves Buster and Plucky competing to see who can make Hamton laugh so hard, milk squirts out his nose first.
• Total Drama: In "I See London...", Noah's impersonation of Sierra makes Owen laugh so much he sprays milk from his nose. The second time Noah does that, Owen snorts a whole hot pepper.

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