Sub-Trope of Trick Bomb, the Stink Bomb is a common item used by pranksters in school settings. In other settings, it's used as a distraction or a deterrent.
The most common variety are simply vials of either ammonium sulfide (which breaks down into several smelly gases on contact with air) or thiols (a range of hydrocarbon derivatives which smell unpleasant and evaporate quickly) which are released by rupturing them.
Depending on how potent the smell is, a Stink Bomb can work as Knockout Gas or an actual bomb of stank.
See also The Other Wiki's article on this.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Accel World: Sterilizer's standard attack is spraying iodine from his palms to disorient enemies.
- Usopp in One Piece used to use them. Now, that his skills with exotic plants allow him to combine Green Thumb and Elemental Baggage, he uses a seed pellet that grows on impact, blooming into a fully grown rafflesia right into the opponent's face.
- The Dodurian Bomb in Toriko. Its stench is so horrible that getting a full blast of it will send a person into shock. The only way to remove the stench is to eat the Dodurian Bomb itself. Fortunately, the fruit is as delicious as it is stinky.
Asian Animation
- Happy Heroes: In the first episode of Season 6, a time bomb that Big M. has Little M. place inside the spaceship taking the Supermen to Planet Guling turns out to be nothing more than a stink bomb, releasing a foul odor on Professor Limen once it does explode.
Comic Books
- In The Smurfs story "The Great Smurfette", Jokey accidentally creates one when he tests out a smoke bomb he created for Hefty's plan to rescue Papa Smurf from Gargamel.
- Robin (1993): Tim Drake takes to using stink bombs he terms "pukers" which smell so bad they usually make the mooks he targets them with vomit.
- One of the weapons carried on Flaming Carrot's Utility Belt.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): In Issue #13, Rough uses a back-mounted weapon called the Vapor Condenser which fires stink bombs.
- Ziggy Pig - Silly Seal Comics: Ziggy Pig attempts to get Silly Seal in trouble by sending a rotten stinking fish to Doctor Doom in Silly's name.
Fan Works
- Getting Back on Your Hooves has Spike ask Twilight if he can throw one Rainbow Dash gave him into Prince Blueblood's room during their visit to Canterlot as revenge for his treatment of Rarity at the Gala. Twilight tells him no, because she doesn't feel like getting arrested...again. He does it anyway when Twilight wasn't looking, causing her to have to go to Canterlot and clean up his room.
Film — Animation
- Referenced in the title of a segment of Memories — "Stink Bomb" is the story of a man who accidentally becomes a living stench weapon.
Gamebooks
- In the Give Yourself Goosebumps book Into the Jaws of Doom, a DIY stink grenade is a compulsory pickup for players, being used to scare off a snake later in the adventure. The book actually offers an option of three bombs to create — stink, smoke and noise — and the other two are useless.
Literature
- Harry Potter: Fred and George uses these often, as does Harry sometimes.
- Pretty Little Liars: Jenna was hit by one of these. The Liars were aiming for someone else.
- In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Tobit's son Tobias creates one for the demon Asmodeus by burning fish guts in Sarah's room, causing the demon to flee.
- In The Truth, Intrepid Reporter William de Worde constructs a truly epic one to stop the Watch's werewolf from following him when he's doing something of questionable legality. One of the components has to be kept in a sealed bottle, suspended in a bottle of water, inside a box, just so the smell doesn't get out before you want it to.
- Ankh-Mopork's criminal elements, in later books, start using stink bombs to make a scene so smelly that picking out the scent of the perp becomes impossible over the stench (since anyone hit by the bomb starts smelling, it also means multiple tracks leading away from the site). The favoured type appears to be concentrate of peppermint, which is overpowering to a werewolf without being physically harmful.
Live-Action TV
- In the Doctor Who story "The Ice Warriors", the Doctor attempts to use a vial of ammonium sulphide to disable the Martians. Victoria identifies it as a stink bomb, and the Doctor snarks that she's had "a classical education".
- In one episode of Parks and Recreation, Councilman Jamm attempts to ruin Leslie's wedding by setting off a couple of these (he got them from Amazon). Ron puts a stop to it by punching Jamm in the nose.
Tabletop Games
- Spells that create stink bomb effects:
- ShadowRun: Stink makes it more difficult for anyone in the area of effect to succeed in their actions.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Stinking Cloud causes those inside of it to be helpless with nausea for as long as they're in it and up to 5 minutes after they leave it.
Theatre
- Early in West Side Story, A-Rab, the second youngest of the Jets, mentions that he recently stink-bombed Bernardo's father's store.
Video Games
- A chemical beaker full of this is one of your weapons in Bully.
- In Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Mis-Edventures, Eddy can throw stink bombs to stun or distract enemies.
- Saints Row: The Third has the Fart in a Jar, a weapons-grade stink bomb that makes victims gag and vomit uncontrollably. It wasn't intended to show up in the final game, but when fans caught wind of its existence, they begged for the weapon to be included.
- Fortnite has gas grenades that are the typical grenade top on a translucent canister filled with something ominously yellow-brown, creating area-of-effect damage over time. The killfeed sums it up:
X dealt it and Y smelt it
- River City Girls: The corrupt police lob gas grenades that stun the player somehow. Probably with stench, considering that Green Is Gross and the gas could be a Visible Odor.
Web Videos
- Critical Role: Campaign Two: Jester gets her hands on some ready-made ones called oops-stones, unassuming little things that can empty a room on impact.
Yasha: That smells like a massive shit.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: In "Marcy at the Gates", Marcy's plan to get rid of the barbari-ants is to fill their hive with "stink-shrooms", which will create a smell bad enough that they will leave and never return.
- Animaniacs (1993): In the "Mindy and the Brain" segment of the episode "Animaniacs Stew", the Brain's latest Take Over the World scheme is to construct a powerful stink bomb out of manure and other things from the garden, then build a rocket from the lawnmower's engine and blast the stink bomb through the world's capitals, driving the political leaders out into the streets so Brain can seize power. Of course it doesn't work: Mindy accidentally knocks Brain into the smelly formula, then causes the lawnmower to crash, so only Brain himself ends up stinking.
Mindy: Ugh! Brain smell like poo-poo!
- Bob's Burgers: In "V For Valentine-Detta", Tina and Nat plan to use one on Jimmy Jr., but then decides not to because Becky doesn't deserve to have her date ruined. When Jimmy Jr. breaks up with Becky, they go ahead with the plan and bomb him.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: The El Mongo Stinkbomb, which Eddy claimed to have learned from his older brother.
- The Simpsons: In an episode spoofing 24, Bart (in the Jack Bauer role) has to stop Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney from detonating a powerful stink bomb on the school's bake sale.
- In an episode of The Venture Brothers, Brock and Shore Leave have to stop an evil scientist from making. . . a stink bomb. Brock is skeptical of its importance at first until Shore Leave explains the significance of olfactory science.
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hakoda invented tanglemines which would gum up the propeller of a ship and cause a terrible smell to force an evacuation.
Hakoda: I call it the Stink-n-Sink.
- The Smurfs (1981): Gargamel's stink bomb in the episode "Born Rotten" is a purple smelly hatchling imported from the steppes of central Asia which hatches in the Smurf Village, forcing the Smurfs to wear masks over their faces. The main problem, however, was that Gargamel intended to use the hatchling's smell to help him find the village.
- Mr. Stenchy (Experiment 254) from Lilo & Stitch: The Series is made by Jumba to be a living one, and a really cute one at that. He's designed to unleash a powerful odor on enemies by having them take him in after being charmed by his cuteness, then release his smell 42 hours after activation, with said stench capable of rendering a 40-square-mile area uninhabitable to everyone except for Pleakley and his species, since they're the only ones who find the smell pleasant for decades.
- Kim Possible: Kim has one in her arsenal disguised as a vial of lip gloss, proving powerful enough to knock out an entire room of goons. Wade makes them by borrowing his dad's old socks.
Real Life
- CS Gas, commonly known as teargas, used to disorient and discomfort people. It's often used in hostage situations by SWAT officers and the like.
- Triple-dog-dare you to go intimidate a skunk. The smell made by skunks isn't actually like the cartoon-y green gas that makes your nose curl up (that's just a visual indicator). Depending on where you were sprayed and how hard, it ranges from vomit-inducing stench to eye-watering, nose burning, "Someone please kill me now!" type pain. It can also cause temporary blindness in certain cases.
- The London Northeastern Railway (LNER) decided to equip their express engines with stink bombs as a warning system in case their connecting rods were overheating. If the crank axle overheated, it would set off the stink bomb, which released a sharp scent of violet or aniseed. Given that drivers could not see the inner workings too well, or hear very much on the footplate of a noisy engine, a smell would be the best thing they could notice.
- Scent-based alarms have also been considered as alternative to standard fire alarms for deaf people. To be effective it would have to be strong enough to quickly wake up a sleeping person.
- A number of weaponised stink agents exist, the most recent one the Israeli "Skunk".
- The Halitosis Bomb was one of two Trick Bombs tinkered with by the United States as non-lethal psychochemical weapons (The other was a Gay Bomb. No, really). The Halitosis Bomb took it up a step by actually making its victims themselves terribly smelly, rather than just releasing a horrid stench: the idea was to demoralize the enemy and make it possible to literally sniff them out of hiding.
- The smelliest chemical known to man is thioacetone. The smell of it is so powerful that spilling just a few drops of it can cause people half a mile away to become sick almost immediately.
