Here's your medication. What? No, it's actually not a pill, it's what we call a "suppository." You see, instead of swallowing it, you wedge it in an orifice and let it dissolve there. Which orifice, you ask? Well, bend over...
Because they're easily confused for pills, and usually go in the butt, there's a fair bit of comedy stemming from suppositories. Often they'll be comically large, prompting someone who mistakes it for a pill to wonder how they'll swallow it.
Sub-Trope of Ass Shove and Joke of the Butt. Also compare Thermometer Gag for a similar joke about thermometers being inserted inside a lower orifice.
Examples
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Advertising
- In a commercial for Energizer batteries, a heavily injured man is in a hospital bed when a lady comes in. She sees the clock on the wall next to him and realizes that he's supposed to have his suppository taken at 3:00. The man reluctantly groans but allows this to happen anyway. 20 minutes later, a man comes in and sees the time on the clock hasn't changed (due to the clock being powered by a battery that isn't Energizer). Thinking it's still 3:00, he gives the man another suppository despite the man's objections. 35 more minutes later, another lady gives the man a third suppository after seeing the time on the clock is still 3:00.
Film - Live-Action
- In Operation: Dumbo Drop, the tranquilizers for airlifting an elephant are administered in suppository form. Once the G.I.s realize which end the forearm-sized capsules go in, they decide who has to "do the honors" via rock, paper, scissors.
- In Trainspotting, Renton needs a final dose of heroin before he kicks the habit, so he calls up Mikey the drug dealer for a hit, only to find that the only opiates in stock are opium suppositories. With no other options, he takes them as directed, grumpily joking that he might as well have stuck them up his arse for all the good they did. Unfortunately, disaster strikes when heroin-induced constipation wears off before the suppositories take effect, leaving Renton fishing the pills out of the worst toilet in Scotland so he can try again.
Literature
- In the Animorphs book "The Sickness", Tobias (a boy turned into a hawk) angrily says Cassie's veterinarian father is a quack because he tried to treat him by shoving a pill up his rear.
- In the Marcus Didius Falco book "Venus in Copper", one of the professional bride Severina Zotica's former husbands, an apothecary, supposedly died by choking on a jube he was sucking on for his cough. At the end of the book, one of the men investigating her cases manages to flip the script on her when he takes the remains of the half-sucked jube to a different apothecary for analysis, where the man identifies it as his own work, rather than the dead man's. He was very surprised to hear which end of the victim the jube had been extracted from, because it turned out the "jube" wasn't for a cough, but something the victim had acquired to treat his piles, which he'd been too embarrassed about to admit the truth about to his wife.
Falco: This will cause a sensation in court!
Live Action TV
- The Colbert Report: One "Cheating Death" segment (from September 6, 2011) has Stephen introduce Vaxamalgam, a pill that will either cure or cause any condition. Said pill is also the size of a remote control.
- In Malcolm in the Middle, Reese becomes a human guinea pig to earn some extra cash, and he mentions that of the medications that he has to test, the suppositories are the hardest to swallow.
- Scrubs:
- Inverted in S2E8 "My Fruit Cups" when Turk is showing a bottle of medication to a patient:
Turk: This is the reason why your headache didn't go away. That's actually pronounced "AH-nal-gesic", not "AY-nal-gesic". Sir, the pills go in your mouth.
- The same joke is reused verbatim in S5E22 "My Déjà Vu, My Déjà Vu".
- Inverted in S2E8 "My Fruit Cups" when Turk is showing a bottle of medication to a patient:
Web Comics
- In the Awkward Zombie strip "Rabbit Hole
", parodying the Red Pill, Blue Pill scene from The Matrix, Morpheus dissuades Neo from taking the blue pill by saying it's a suppository.
- Latchkey Kingdom: Rosaline identifies the antidote to change a hulked-out Zander back as a suppository. Answering the question of how they get him to take it.
- Schlock Mercenary: For a mission to a toxic planet, the grunts are issued hematic scrubbers that remove heavy metals from the bloodstream through the gastrointestinal lining, and discourage them from sitting down.
Web Original
- Several entries on Not Always Right involve suppositories. One pharmacy employee remarks that suppositories are the only context where they can tell a customer "Up yours!" and get away with it.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: The episode "Dungeons and Wagons" has Hayley and Jeff embarking on a quest to obtain a crystal to revive Steve's game character. The catch being that said crystal is a suppository, which Jeff makes Hayley be the one to insert it.
- Family Guy:
- In "Eight Simple Rules For Buying My Teenage Daughter", Peter asks Mort the pharmacist if the suppositories he sells are available in any other flavors. Mort asks if he's been eating them, to which Peter responds sarcastically "No, I'm shoving them up my butt, of course I'm eating them!"
- In "Once Bitten", Brian has a weak liver due to his alcoholism, so a doctor prescribes suppositories. Brian is less than enthused when Peter attempts to insert them and it culminates in him biting Peter on the arm, setting the episode's plot in motion. Also parodied in one Cutaway Gag where Lassie asks Timmy to give her a suppository, but it turns out she wasn't actually sick and just got sexual pleasure from it.
- Futurama:
- In "The Deep South", Professor Farnsworth gives Fry a "pressure pill" that will allow him to withstand the deep-sea pressure and looks like a large black egg.
Fry: I can't swallow that!
Farnsworth: Well, then good news! It's a suppository! - In "I Second That Emotion", one woman takes her dog, which has a head at either end, to the vet, who tells her that "Rover gets the pill and Pepper gets the suppository".
- In "The Deep South", Professor Farnsworth gives Fry a "pressure pill" that will allow him to withstand the deep-sea pressure and looks like a large black egg.
- In Johnny Test, the titular protagonist gets a suppository shot up him in "Johnny Testosterone" as a last-ditch solution to undo him being Hulk-like.
- A needle variation happens in a Robot Chicken skit where most of it involves a Fantasy Sequence of what would happen to the doctor if his patient jerked while the doctor tried giving him his injection.
Doctor: And that's what'll happen if you flinch. (The Boy raises his arm, grits his teeth, and looks away) Oh no Arthur. This shot doesn't go in your arm, it goes in the tip of your penis.
- Rocko's Modern Life: In "Flu-In-U-Enza", Rocko swallows a giant pill, only to find out too late that the label says that it is "not to be taken orally". Cue the Vomit Discretion Shot.
- The Venture Bros.: In "The Forecast Manufacturer", Dr. Venture uses a blizzard as an excuse to get Billy to test a suppository that regulates a person's temperature. Billy is grossed out at first, only to express delight at how easy it was to insert. That grosses out Dr. Venture and he says it's Too Much Information, but Billy counters that this is a test, so it's exactly the right amount of information and he really should be writing these results down.
