Wild Teen Party

It's not a party! It’s an intimate get-together!^note Skins Party! Skins Party!

Went to a party, I danced all night
I drank sixteen beers and I started up a fight
But now I'm jaded, you're out of luck
I'm rolling down the stairs, too drunk to fuck

— Dead Kennedys, "Too Drunk to Fuck"

Par-tay! Par-tay! Par-tay!

A mainstay of the classic teen comedy movie, but usually seen at least once in every sitcom that has a teenaged character, this is the inevitable result of mixing one or more teenagers with a house devoid of parental figures, who are usually away for the weekend. It almost always results in wall-to-wall teens, loud music, underage drinking, and property damage. (And, in R-rated movies, a lot of sex in the bedrooms and/or bathrooms.) Sometimes this is by design, and sometimes a small party for a couple of friends spirals completely out of control.

A popular variation of this is that the host only invited over two or three friends and the party just shows up out of nowhere. Someone they did invite brought one more person, and so did another. Then someone they never met shows up at the door. Fast forward ten minutes and a college football team shows up with a keg and there's somehow full disco lighting in the living room. The host will still get in trouble for this, and the show may still play it as an Aesop. Another variation is when two teens live in the same house, and one plans a party without consulting the other, who has to study for a test or do something else where peace and quiet is necessary. The second teen usually will not find out until they come home to see the party already underway.

The Wild Teen Party usually experiences at least one, and often more, of the following complications:

• They are treated as a fundamental experience of teenhood, and therefore Serious Business.
• There will be bumping and grinding (nothing like the High-School Dance).
• The parents call home in the middle of the party "to check on things". The teen hosts must then either quiet the crowd down for the duration of the call, or come up with a believable explanation for the noise in the background. Even if the teens succeed in pulling off a perfect deception, the parents may still become uneasy and cut short their time away from home.
• Party crashers of various stripes. If it's not the varsity football team and their entourage descending on a party to which they weren't invited, it'll be punks or bikers running wild, trashing the place and carrying off cheerleaders.
• Stupid — and potentially lethal — stunts fueled by the excessive consumption of beer and other alcoholic beverages.
• A fistfight, which sometimes escalates into a full brawl. If there's a picture window, someone will almost certainly go through it.
• A rare family keepsake like an urn, or better yet, one containing Grandma's ashes, will be stolen, destroyed, or used to mix cocktails.
• A fire, flood or other disaster.
• If the party is wild enough, the police will show up to shut it down — usually just minutes before the parents return. The guests have to find somewhere to hide, usually in wacky places like the bushes outside or the washing machine. Someone might get caught in bed wearing nothing but a Modesty Bedsheet.
• If the party is even wilder than that, a film crew will come to tape it for a TV special.
• A character gets incredibly drunk with bad results. Usually a character who doesn't normally drink, but is pressured into it/doesn't realize the drinks are spiked, to give the Aesop more impact.
• The most generic and repetitive "party/dance music" imaginable.
• Literally everybody dancing and having a blast. As anybody who's actually been to a real teen (or, for that matter, adult) party will tell you, this part is certainly not how real parties hold out. Usually, there are at least as many people calmly sitting around and talking (or standing alone and feeling left out) as there are people dancing and acting crazy. Also, the house could not possibly have enough room for everyone to dance and act crazy at once. Oh, wait...
• It devolves into A Party, Also Known as an Orgy.
• In particularly dark works, someone might be Date Raped, often (though not always) under the influence of alcohol and/or date-rape drugs. Bonus points if the victim is a virgin who never normally parties much (or at all)...or (conversely) a Hard-Drinking Party Girl in a setting where that's frowned upon.
• Characters may use drugs. This could be marijuana, LSD, cocaine, MDMA, or one of the new "designer" drugs, depending on where and when the story takes place. If the work is really dark, something bad happens (an overdose, the drug is contaminated, the above-mentioned Date Rape, etc.)
• Pictures or videos make their way onto the Internet, and cause lots of problems for the subjects.

The party then ends in either of two different ways:

• It peters out by the next morning, leaving the house (and sometimes the yard) looking like a war zone, populated by unconscious (and sometimes insufficiently-clothed) teens. The hosts must then somehow clean up and repair damages before the parentals return and have them all Grounded Forever. This may require finding one or more Replacement Goldfish, depending on the level of destruction.

Or

• The parents come home unexpectedly while the party is in full swing. After a Record Needle Scratch and a lot of yelling, speaking in Angrish and (in some cases) dropping of F-bombs, the crowd (mostly) disperses, leaving behind the unconscious, the belligerent, and the teen hosts, who then get reamed out by their parents and Grounded Forever. If there was sex involved, they will cry "Not under my roof!"

However it runs, with whatever complications and ending, the Wild Teen Party usually ends in An Aesop about responsibility, maturity, and — if the hosts were caught — telling the truth to one's parents.

A broader example that might encompass any of the above is if the wild party is also an Chekhov's Party, and it's going to come back in a big way closer to the end of the story for drama reasons.

See also Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb (which may occur at this), Teens Are Monsters, A Party, Also Known as an Orgy, and What Did I Do Last Night?. Take note that it doesn't necessarily have to deal with teenagers, but they are the most common occurrences of the trope. The subject of a "Walk on the Wild Side" Episode will sometimes throw one of these.

Truth in Television, of course (except for the aforementioned complications of literally everyone dancing and trashing) — as any news reporter who wants to take a pop at Facebook will tell you. Once upon a time, bullies would learn about a less-popular kid throwing a party and take advantage of it to have some fun. They wouldn't necessarily show up with chainsaws and molotovs, but they'd show up with booze and unpleasant intent. Moreover, "teen partying" is now listed as a reason for certain movies getting the ratings they have, since teen drinking and sex is less accepted than back in the day.

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Example subpages:

• Live-Action TV
• Western Animation

I bet I can list all the Examples RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!:

Advertising

• In a Canadian tire commercial, a teenager, cleaning up the mess after one of these, says, "It was a get-together!" The scene cuts to exterior shot of the house. Loud music, strobe lights playing on windows, couch sitting on lawn, dog barking in the background, kids yelling and laughing, sound of glass shattering, etc.
• This Expedia commercial has two parents deciding to bring their teenage son along on a family vacation out of fear that this trope will be invoked if they leave him home alone.
• A French commercial for the national electricity company showed parents receiving a letter from the company offering them to adapt their bill to their needs, interleaved with shots of the teenage children throwing wild parties in the house. The commercial ended with the parents asking their children if they did not stay too late at night with the lights on while they were away, with the (obviously hungover) children answering that they certainly did not.
• An implied instance of the trope occurred in the commercial for the first Mario Party game: Some cops stop by a house due to reports of disruptive behavior in the neighborhood. They then ask for Mario, who then reveals himself. It then cuts after showing some gameplay footage to the cops escorting Mario to their squadcar by the arms, with his legs flailing and his protesting "But it'sa me, Mario!" before the cops sarcastically dismiss his protests with, "Yeah, tell it to the judge," strongly implying that he was going to end up arrested for the disruptive party.
• A commercial for Sabra Hummus broadcast in late 2009 plays with this trope. A couple share some hummus on their patio while watching a sunset, and comment on how it's just like they're on a Mediterranean vacation. A moment later a bowling ball crashes through the French doors behind them, and they discover a Wild Teen Party has broken out because their son thought they were "on a Mediterranean vacation".
• There's a feline equivalent in this ad for Tidy Cats cat litter.
• This UK Yellow Pages commercial has teenagers cleaning up after a party before the parents return, and having to get a scratched table fixed.

Anime & Manga

• There are a few parties in Ah! My Goddess, but the only one that really fits this trope is one that the Motor Club spontaneously decides to have in Keiichi's house without his permission in order to get him to loosen up — when the reason he's a little stressed at the time is that he was trying to prepare for a major test that he had to take the following morning.
• In Infinite Ryvius, the crew decides to throw a party to relieve tension after a battle. It features a beauty contest and a competition to program the Humongous Mecha to dance. It ends rather poorly, though, being interrupted by a news report declaring the Ryvius to be a terrorist vessel. Also, two people get murdered while everyone's distracted.
• Subverted in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. Iino mistakes the Tsubame's Christmas party for an orgy when she's first invited, but it's shown to be a completely ordinary party with the only actual alcohol being whiskey flavored chocolates that are perfectly legal for minors to eat (for extra irony, the only one to get drunk is Iino herself when she ends up eating too many). And while Tsubame does try to have Pity Sex with Ishigami, it's only after the party is over and everyone else has left.
• In Super Robot Wars Original Generation: Divine Wars, the crew was celebrating after the defeat of the Big Bad. What was supposed to be a standard party was made a bit more entertaining with Excellen and Lefina in Playboy Bunny outfits and Daitestsu's stash.

Comic Books

• Anya's Ghost: Anya attends one with Sean and Elizabeth, but it's unpleasant for her. A boy, Preston, calls her boobs "spectacular" in her shirt which makes her uncomfortable, and she also learns that Sean cheats on Elizabeth with anyone — and Elizabeth stands guard for him because she says she loves him. Anya ends up leaving early.
• Cherry Comics: The "Beach Party" story, during which all the goldfish get eaten, someone takes a chainsaw to a wall, and the beach house catches fire.
• A mid-70s issue of Playboy had a The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers flashback story of a 1959 New Years party thrown at Phineas' parents' house, over his objections. Mom and Pop get home to find the place destroyed and their new car totaled.
• Robin (Tim Drake) has to help manage and clean up after two of these, one that Superboy (Kon-El) evidently held in the Fortress of Solitude (only fellow hero kids who were already in the know were invited, but they made a bit of a mess) and another that Kid Devil threw in Titan Tower, which Tim ended up interrupting in his boxers which did not at all prevent him from acting like his teammate's father:
  Robin: You're having a party?
  Kid Devil: W-what?! No! No, I just let a few, y'know, fans drop by and–
  Robin: First I get a call from Batman, and now the alarms are going off. You're almost an adult, and here I feel like I have to babysit you! I have a life of my own, you know. I mean, what were you thinking?
  Kid Devil: Sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt your life.
  Robin: That's not the point. You can't just invite complete strangers to the Tower and let them roam free!
  Kid Devil: Honestly, Robin, it's not like that at–
  Robin: Whose. PANTIES. Are those? And why are they on his head?!
• In the Tom Strong comic, Tesla Strong and Solomon the Gorilla try explaining to Tesla's parents that the devastated house (including a small jet aircraft in the living room) was actually the result of a super-villain turning the entire city upside-down. They don't buy it, so Tesla grudgingly admits to throwing a party.
• Ultimate Spider-Man
  • Parodied in an issue in which Gwen persuades a moping Peter (who has recently broken up with Mary Jane) to go to a party under the pretext that it'll turn into one of these and be fun. They end up sitting in a corner, bored and miserable, whilst everyone around them has a really good time. Then the party really does turn wild, but that's more because a teen mutant starts blowing up cars with his mind and the cops get called than any of the standard reasons.
  • And played straight the time Peter ran away from home and asked Kong to stay for the night. Kong's parents were out of town, so of course there was a party some hours later. Uncle Ben shows up, and although he does not stop the party (not his house, and Kong's not his kid) he forces Peter out of it, which was equally humilliating.

Fan Works

• The Cabin Fever fanfic Cabin Fever: Parting Shot lives off this trope. The parties might be smaller than some of the other examples on this page, but the five attendees all party hard, and don't skimp on the Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, sex, and shameless nudity.
• Conversational Troping in the Young Justice fanfic Drink, And Be Merry, in which British heroine the Squire, taken aback to learn that the drinking age in the US is 21, and that none of the Team have ever broken it asks, "I've seen the movies with those red cups, and the pool parties where someone's parents have gone out of town for the weekend. That's an actual thing, right?"
• The MLP Loops: In the first "Daughters" Loop (Twilight is the alicorn queen of Equestria, the expanded CMC ^note Along with the original three, Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara are now members are her daughters), Twilight withdraws to the heavens for a thousand years to do research. The CMC, left in charge of Equestria, decide to throw a millennium-long party/golden era of art and culture. They even take turns as the "designated ruler" who actually runs the country while the rest of them get drunk and party. The party ends with Twilight returning from the heavens to the horror and shock of her daughters. However, she's more amused than anything else, since Equestria did prosper under their rule.
• Played With in Scarlet Lady's take on "Party Crasher". While Kim convinces his male classmates that they should take advantage of Adrien's Control Freak father being away to visit the Agreste Manor and throw a party, and they play music loud enough to draw a noise complaint, the party doesn't really start getting out of control until Officer Roger arrives... and sees that the boys are playing foosball, insisting that he needs to show them the right way to play. From that point on, the house is increasingly flooded by adults who take the party into increasingly wilder territory, taking the series' tendency for adults to be totally useless to a whole new level.
  Mylène: (once the inevitable Akuma shows up) Do... do we call someone?
  Lila: Who do we call? The cops are at the party.
• In With Pearl and Ruby Glowing, Aldrin Pesky went to a high school party a couple of years prior, but things went awry when his football teammates got him drunk and penetrated him with a beer bottle, on top of his younger siblings Maggie and Pupert sneaking inside and Maggie accidentally taking LSD. It ended with Pupert calling emergency services to break the party up because Aldrin was tossed into a bed on his back and he choked when he threw up.

Films — Animation

• In Turning Red, Tyler's birthday party is a double subversion. When Mei, who promised to show up in panda form, gets stuck dealing with her visiting family, the party is lame, with some kids trying and failing to have fun. But when she gets a chance to sneak out, she bolts toward the party and gives it the life it was originally supposed to have.

Films — Live-Action

• 10 Things I Hate About You has Bogey Lowenstein's wine and cheese party crashed by the entire school. The house is wrecked, and the cops break it up. Also includes the famous picture window exit. And Julia Stiles table dancing to Notorious B.I.G.
• Perfect example in 21 Jump Street, complete with mom and dad coming home and everybody running out into the street.
• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, in a minor subversion, manages to do this with only six people at the party, one of whom isn't even really engaging in the festivities.
• Animal House centers on wild frat parties. While college-aged, some of the participants would still be teens and below legal drinking age.
• The fire department is called on the wild teen party in ATL.
• Another Round: The film opens with a massive teen Drinking Game involving teams running around a lake and drinking a case of beer, then going crazy in celebration all throughout the city.
• Brick subverts the wild teen party in that there is a party, there are teens, and there is underage smoking and drinking, but it's a classy cocktail party, complete with live jazz performance, in keeping with the 1940s noir theme.
• Almost the entire film of Can't Hardly Wait is set at a wild teen party, with only brief scenes set elsewhere.
• Clueless has one of these near the beginning of the movie.
• Cold Water: The two main characters attend one in possibly the most famous scene of this film. It's set in an abandoned house and at one point all the teens make a pyre where they throw in whatever furniture they can find and dance around it in a doped-up daze.
• The Covenant opens up with a bonfire rave. It's used to introduce the new girl (and audience) to the Sons of Ipswich, and it ultimately gets broken up by the cops, whom the Sons escape with the help of their magic.
• Initially subverted in Dazed and Confused, when Kevin Pickford's plans are upset by the keg delivery guy showing up prematurely. Kevin's attempts at explaining it away does not convince his parents, who decide not to go on their vacation after all. At the end of the movie, however, this is played straight: there is a Wild Teen Party; but it happens out in the woods, away from houses and parents.
• The film adaptation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules depicts Rodrick's party on-screen, instead of leaving it to the reader and Greg's imagination. The family film is forced to water the teen party down to loud music, stacks of Solo cups, and a guy who eats whipped cream from the can. They do make the impressive mess as they did in the book. Unlike in the book, where Greg is locked in the basement for the duration of the party, here he calls Rowley to bail him out, and the two crash the party and have a great time.
• The trope is actually subverted in Easy A. Melanie Bostic's party appears like a classic example, except narration by Olive reveals that they are a regular event thrown with the complete knowledge and support of Melanie's parents. All sex that is referred to involves the protagonist, Olive, and both instances are actually complete shams (In eighth grade Olive and Todd lied about kissing during "Seven Minutes in Heaven" and Olive and Brandon pretend to have sex in the movie-present). Beer is mentioned, but never seen, as all the party goers have generic plastic cups that could, theoretically, hold gatorade or soda. In the end, nothing illegal, amoral or unexpected is shown to have actually happened, despite what people talk about or think happened.
• The pool party turns out to be a G-rated version in Eighth Grade: a horde of kids are throwing balls at each other, splashing water around, turning their eyelids inside out ... It is almost too much to countenance for the mild-mannered protagonist, Kayla, as she stands watching the mayhem from inside the house with a look of horror on her face.
• The 2014 adaptation of Endless Love has Jade ask her parents if she can throw a graduation party as a gift for her, which they accept. At first, due to her Friendless Background and another party being thrown at the same night, no one actually shows up except for her parents' friends. However, David shows up and gets everyone to attend her party by calling the cops on the other one and inviting everyone to Jade's house. Presumably due to adult supervision, nothing actually explicit happens at the party other than David and Jade kissing in the closet during a power outage.
• The neglected 1980 film Foxes (the directorial debut of Adrian Lyne, who went on to do Flashdance, 9 1/2 Weeks and Fatal Attraction) has one. Madge, who is dating an older man played by Randy Quaid, invites her friends over for a small party in his apartment on a weekend when he's out of town. Eventually, more and more people hear about it and show up, a fight breaks out, and the apartment is completely trashed.
• Frostbite has the Lovable Jock John hold a party while his parents are out of town. At first it's pleasant enough, everybody seems to have a good time and the party is rather civilized. Then John turns into a vampire and the party becomes a vampire party and they wreck everything.
• Double subverted in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The meeting of Cindy Kim and her East Asian Club is initially presented as a boring geekfest by a bunch of straight-laced nerds, but the actual party is soon revealed to be an unrestrained frenzy of drugs and sex.
  Kumar: Dude, I'm thinking you really screwed up by not coming to this party.
  Harold: I screwed up?!
• The movie Mean Girls contains both a "skanky" Halloween party, complete with skimpy costumes, and an unintentional large party held in Cady's house, where one of Cady's parents' tribal fertility urns ends up in a cabinet. However, the parents never find out about the party.
• The opening of My Bloody Valentine 3D has a wild teen party being held at the Abandoned Mine. Which is in pretty poor taste since it is the anniversary of the explosion that killed six miners and closed the mine.
• A rare non-American example can be seen in Neuilly sa mere. Young Arab Sami has to live with his aunt, her French husband, and his French children, in Neuilly (President Sarkozy's place of birth). Near the end, Sami's cousin Charles organizes a party where there is a argument, trouble-makers arrive (and break everything), and then the parents return earlier than expected.
• Night of the Living Dorks: Philip hosts one of these at his house in celebration of trouncing Wolfe and his team at dodgeball, as well as in hopes of getting with Ushi. It doesn't go as planned.
• No Hard Feelings: Subverted. Much to Maddie's annoyance, the party Percy and Maddie end up in is actually kind of subdued, nobody is having sex in the rooms upstairs, and the parents of the kid throwing the party are in the house chaperoning it.
• Parodied in Not Another Teen Movie: they begin setting up the party as the parents are leaving.
  Preston's Mother: [Preston's parents are just heading out for the weekend] Now Preston, I left some money on the kitchen counter. Oh and the emergency numbers are by the phone.
  Preston's Father: And remember son, no parties.
  Keg Guy: [Two guys walk by carring a beer keg] Keg commin' through! Hey Preston.
  Preston: Whats up, man?
  Preston's Father: We're really trusting you here, Preston.
  Roadie: [Behind them two more guys roll in a huge set of speakers] Where to you want these speakers set up, Preston?
  Preston: Yeah, just move all the shit in the dining room.
  [to his parents]
  Preston: Well, you guys really should hit the road, huh? Because I'm about to take your antique Ferrari to the inner-city to buy some hookers.
  Preston's Mother: Well, alright, sweetie. We'll call you later to check in.
  Preston: Oh, mom. By that point I'll be so high I won't even know where the phone is.
  Preston's Mother: Haha! That's my boy.
• Since The Pacifier is an Action-Hero Babysitter movie, the party ends with Shane forcing the destructive guests to clean the house until it sparkles. With toothbrushes.
• Plan B (2021): Sunny throws one at her house when her mom's out of town where there's a lot of teens drinking (she loses her virginity during it).
• Project X (2012) is basically Wild Teen Party: The Movie; without getting into details, just know that the protagonist's entire house ends up completely destroyed beyond habitability by the end of the movie. It also gets bonus points for the fact that it basically turned into a real party on set, as the extras allegedly stayed dancing even when the camera wasn't rolling. It's pretty much become the modern day Trope Codifier for wild teen culture in the 2010s. However, it should be noted that things only really get out of control when the college kids (IE young adults) crash the party.
• Quadrophenia: Early on in the film, Jimmy and his friends and love interest attend a party thrown by a Mod girl. Highlights include dancing to records, youths having sex in bedrooms and the bathroom and Jimmy doing donuts on the front lawn just before the hostess’s parents come home.
• The movie Risky Business had a Wild Teen Party that was also the front for a (temporary) brothel. Joel gets away with it except for his mother scolding him over a tiny crack in her crystal egg. Furthermore, during the party a Princeton admissions officer drops by to interview Joel, and the prostitutes show him such a good time that he readily accepts Joel's application.
• Deconstructed in the Tina Fey & Amy Poehler movie Sisters, where two sisters (now in their 40s) invite their old high school friends for one last wild party before their parents (now retired) sell their old house. The end result isn't pretty, but at least the cops (who are younger than them) refuse to intervene since there's absolutely no underage drinking going on.
• Sixteen Candles, like nearly every other "brat pack" movie, has one of these.
• Sky High (2005) features such a party, with the twist that it's super powered teens trashing the place. In addition, when he is busted, the main character actually accepts punishment for it, even though he wasn't the one who started the party in the first place (his girlfriend invited everyone over under the guise of it being a Homecoming committee meeting as a distraction so she could steal a weapon from the secret lair underneath the house).
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2: While the Wachowskis are attending Rachel's wedding in Hawaii, Sonic takes the opportunity to throw a wild party in the house. He fills the living room with junk food, does skateboarding stunts in the house, drives a lawnmower, and has a pool party. Luckily, since he's the fastest thing alive, he can easily erase all evidence of his revelry at a moment's notice.
• In Summer Camp Nightmare, the teenagers of Camp North Pines host two of them for both themselves and the girls from Camp South Pines after they take over the two camps and lock up all the adult counselors. Liquor and sex become prevalent in both parties, as one of the boys spikes the Kool-Aid at the first party with some alcohol that was found stashed away in a camp counselor's locker. However, at the first party there was a murder, as Mr. Warren, who was temporarily brought out of lockup to be taunted by the teenagers, ended up being accidentally killed by Stanley Runk with his knife. At the second party, a rape occured with John Mason getting too aggressive with Debbie Stewart, resulting in his punishment and subsequent death at the hands of the other girls from Camp South Pines.
• Superbad: The climax of the film is set at one. Interestingly, the parents don't find out in either example. The whole plot revolves around three friends who are trying to get alcohol to the party. The plan (at least for one of the friends) is nicely thwarted when it's revealed that the host of the party doesn't drink.
• Teen Wolf: Scott Howard's first wolfing out happens at a wild party complete with jello shots and whipped cream shenanigans. It's also his wolf-side that becomes responsible for him getting the keg for the party.
• The beach party or orgy, at the end of Psycho Beach Party, a yearly event that Chicklet sneaks out to, even though there's a murderer around.
• Viral: Stacey and Emma unwisely go to one during the worm flu outbreak. There are lots of teens drinking, carousing, and wildly dancing to loud music before the party ends as an infected boy starts attacking partygoers.
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story: Parodied. A house party where people dance to polka is treated with the same seriousness as one with alcohol and drugs, complete with Al getting snuck out by friends and the teens bolting when cops arrive.
• The film Weird Science climaxes in what is perhaps the ultimate wild party, where pianos are catapulted up chimneys and the entire cast of Mad Max (save for Mel Gibson) crashes the event.
• In Wild Things 2, Brittney hosts one after she wins the beach volleyball final. It results in girls swimming topless, kids breaking into her stepfather's booze, and the portrait of her mother being defaced. Her stepfather arrives home and breaks it up by threatening to call the cops.
• Used in the 2005 remake of Yours, Mine, and Ours, as part of the kids' plot to break their parents up.
• The eponymous Uncle Buck goes to one to try and rescue his niece from her predatory boyfriend. He struggles his way across a crowded dance floor, gets his hat stolen, snatches his hat back, drills through the lock ... and discovers that the boyfriend is busy assaulting a different girl. Kidnapping and hilarity ensue.

Literature

By Author:

• In one of his books, Robert Fulghum tells the story of the kid who had a party when his parents were out of town, only to have somebody puke into the multigenerational family Bible. He had no recourse but to bury the thing in the backyard.

By Title:

• The plot of Asking For It by Louise O'Neill is kick-started when protagonist Emma goes to such a party and is gang-raped when she passes out after taking drugs.
• The Basic Eight: The narrator of Daniel Handler's first novel for grown-ups commits Murder By Croquet Mallet at a booze-fueled party on Halloween.
• Before I Fall: Samantha and Juliet's deaths are both accidentally caused by Kent's Wild Teen Party.
• Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World: Author Vicki Myron mentions the time her daughter Jodi threw one of these. Among incidents, a vanity door in the bathroom got ripped off, and the cops got called twice but did nothing because some of the guests included the local football team. At least they tried to clean up afterward.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In Rodrick Rules, Rodrick throws one of these when their parents leave. However, Greg is locked in the basement. When he wakes up and comes out the next morning, the house is in disarray. They end up even having to replace the bathroom door because someone drunkenly drew on it in permanent marker. Rodrick is found out a couple weeks later because someone accidentally took a picture with the family's camera.
  • Double Down: Mariana Mendoza is known for hosting annual Halloween parties, which are rowdy and wild. Her parents don't care, as long as the party stays in the basement. A year before the books' events, the party got so large, that it spread to outside the house and the police had to end the party. This year, Mendoza only invites the band (actually only the woodwind part), so Greg tries to join the band.
• Eleanor & Park: While Eleanor is running away from home, she is taken in by Tina and Steve, who are throwing one of these in Steve’s garage.
• In the book Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland, the main characters attend a "housewrecker" party.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: A sign that the Mandrakes (which are human-like plants) are maturing is when they throw a wild party in the greenhouse.
• The third The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel takes this to a whole new level. The teenagers aren't the only wild partiers — their parents are also partying, as are their parents, and their parents. And not just as a multi-generational wild party, either: the party has been going on non-stop for four generations.
• I Am J starts with one full of liquor, drug use, and sex, however J hates the party.
• In I Wish You All the Best, Ben's friends talk them into going to a party where the music is incredibly loud, every room is almost filled to capacity, and one boy has brought the contents of his father's wine cabinet. Ben has their Foul First Drink and then has a panic attack, partly because of the effects of the alcohol.
  Ben: This looks like the place where a group of teenagers gets murdered.
• Garrison Keillor describes one of these in a Lake Wobegon story in Leaving Home, given by Roger Hedlund's daughters. Roger, however, refuses to spoil the kids' fun by being a stereotypical angry father.
• The Kit Pearson novel Looking At The Moon has all the adults leaving the cottage to go to a wedding and leaving the older teenagers in charge. Bearing in mind that this is a children's novel set during WWII, no sex and no drinking are shown, though almost everybody over the age of sixteen seems to smoke. Unusually for this trope, everything goes according to plan and no one's caught, though the adults on their return do remark that the island is suspiciously clean and garbage-free.
• Mansfield Park: The young-adult Bertram siblings throw the Regency England equivalency of this by putting on a scandalous play with their friends (which involves extensive construction to the house, including their father's bedroom) while their father's away on a business trip. Edmund warning Tom that the changes to the house and expenses are going to get them in trouble, everyone's panic when Sir Thomas returns home completely unexpectedly, and the subsequent terror as he walks into the billiard room still unaware of the chaos he's about to see uncannily parallel the reactions of modern teenagers caught throwing a Wild Teen Party.
• In Mindblind, Nathaniel's normalcy-obsessed dad forces him to go to a loud, unsupervised teen party, complete with a disco ball. Nathaniel drinks punch that turns out to be spiked with vodka, which reacts badly with his medications, rendering him almost catatonic for several days. In a rare moment of responsible parenting, Nathaniel's dad presses charges against the owner of the house, who turns out to have knowingly supplied his teenage son with vodka.
• In Nickel Plated, rebellious teen Jeff Rogers turns out to have been getting in fistfights for the entertainment of guests at teen parties. Nickel arranges for him to take martial arts lessons so he can use his talents for something productive.
• An archetypal example in Paul Zindel's The Pigman ends in tragedy.
• The Ruby Red Trilogy: Usually, Cynthia Dale's parties are pretty boring. Then everybody decides to spike the punch. Her parents are actually there, but they're as drunk as everyone else.
• Agnes heads to one hosted by Bo and Colt Dickinson in Run, which leads to her trying her first beer and dancing with Colt.
• The Scream opens with one. It ends with a massacre. Fifteen people die and a young woman is taken hostage.
• Before the events of Speak, Melinda Sordino called the cops at one of these, which caused half the school to hate her. The reason she did it was because she was raped but was unable to tell the operator what happened.
• Letty in the Teenage Worrier series attended one when she was supposed to be taking care of her brother Benjy, resulting in a pregnancy scare and getting in major trouble for bringing in unsuitable friends to watch Benjy.

Music

• Aaron Carter's song/music video "Aaron's Party (Come and Get It)".
• Alessia Cara's "Here" is about a girl who goes to a mild one despite disliking such parties.
• Anti-Flag's 'Spaz's House Destruction Party'.
• In the video for Beastie Boys' "You Gotta Fight (for Your Right to Party)", a pair of nerds throw a (rather tame) party for themselves, which is then promptly crashed by a gang of punks.
  Nerd #1: Do you like parties?
  Nerd #2: Yeah.
  Nerd #1: We can invite all of our friends and have soda and pie!
  Nerd #2: Yeah!
  Nerd #1: I hope no bad people show up.
  (Cut to the Beasties yelling incoherently)
• The Bowling for Soup song Friends, Chicks, Guitars is an subversion. The song is about some guys who want to throw one of these, but their parties inevitably fizzle out because they failed to stock up enough booze (The title comes from the last line of the chorus, which goes "We've got friends, chicks, guitars, but no beer").
• The Dead Kennedys practically skewered this trope the only way they can with the above-quoted "Too Drunk to Fuck". That's merely the first verse and all the other lyrics qualify, including shooting out truck tires, clumsy oral sex and somebody "bawling like the baby from Eraserhead". For good measure, the song ends with what's been aptly called "probably the most realistic vomiting effect ever committed to vinyl".
• The song "Fire Island" by Fountains of Wayne is a tender and low-key song about kids planning a party when their parents go away.
  Driving on the lawn, sleeping on the roof
  Drinking all the alcohol
  All the kids from school will be naked in the pool
  When our parents are out on Fire Island
• The Israeli 1992 song "At Aunt's and Uncle's" by Danny Sanderson is about a person calling some friends to have a Wild Teen Party while his relatives are on a vacation in Greece. It was Covered Up by Noa Kirel in 2017. The clip had some serious Setting Update; Danny called the friends using a rotary phone and a phonebook, while Noa used a smartphone, and that's just the start. The song itself required no adjustment.
• Katy Perry's song Last Friday Night. The clip also had "The Best Party ever!" thrown by Rebecca Black and attended by Darren Criss, Kevin Mchale Hanson, and Kenny G. Don't know where the chicken came from though... Also, most of their parodies (such as LastSundayNight).
• McFly's 'Saturday Night' was all about this trope, complete with references to getting drunk, having sex, angering the neighbours and being "grounded for a while".
• The video for Metallica's cover of "Whiskey in the Jar" shows a few dozen Eighties heavy-metal girls trashing the ever-loving crap out of a San Francisco Victorian.
• "Townie" by Mitski is a more dramatic take on the trope. The song describes the narrator's conflicting feelings about losing her virginity at an alcohol-fueled party in which all the boys are trying to get laid.
• There was also such a wild party in the ten-year anniversary (1988) video for The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." The party in question is apparently crashed by a circus.
• Bart Simpson and his friends have a wild pre-teen party in the song "Deep, Deep Trouble" from The Simpsons Sing the Blues while the rest of the family is away at a boat show. It ends just as soon as the family gets home, and Bart realizes that he is again in "deep, deep trouble."
• Snoop Dogg's video for "Gin & Juice" entitled "Homeboy Alone".
• One of the interviewees in Talking Heads' music video anthology, Storytelling Giant, recalls trashing people's houses at these.
• Then, of course, there's Teenage Head's Teenage Beer Drinking Party.
• TISM's song "Schoolies Week" puts forward that the default state of hell is schoolies week, the Australian tradition of a week of partying after high school graduation.
  Devil don't need fire and brimstone
  His place is full of kids with mobile phones
  You still hear weeping and gnashing teeth
  But that's just bad E and too much lemon Ruski
• The video for "Can We Dance" by The Vamps revolves around the band trying to cleanup the house and fix any damage before the main singer's parents come home. However, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome when the parents find out about the party on YouTube, and he gets caught.

Newspaper Comics

• A Sunday strip in For Better or for Worse shows a teenage Elizabeth throwing one (sans alcohol). Despite her and her friends cleaning up, Elly and John still found out using one popcorn kernel.
• FoxTrot:
  • One series of strips featured an inversion of the trope: Similar to the bachelor party in "Mr. Monk Is the Best Man", Peter planned to have a Halloween Party to which his dad granted him permission (mostly because Roger apparently forgot Peter's actual age), so they were all set up, only for it to turn out that most if not all of the invited people were freshman (barring Denise and Steve), and Peter was having a terrible time. The closest it ever got to playing the trope straight was when some adults arrived at the party and attacked Peter, and they weren't even invited in the first place (apparently they wanted beer at their party). Paige has to step in and threaten to call the police in order to get them to leave.
  • Played straight in an earlier series of strips where Paige and Nichole were invited to an upperclassman's party, where Paige was harassed by the lecherous host three times. (She clocked him the third time) and the thrill pretty much died when someone told them to find him, saying "some girl threw up in his bedroom". Eventually, when it became clear to the two of them that "unless you want to get drunk or stoned there's nothing to do" at the supposedly "cool" party, they were revolted and left.
• Madam & Eve: Except for the "teen" part, Eve Sisulu plays this straight by throwing parties at the Anderson's home whenever they're out on holiday. Madam tries to catch her doing this, with varying degrees of success.◊
• An arc in Stone Soup featured one hosted by Andy, though it mostly turns out this way because he posted invites around the neighborhood. Eventually, Evie manages to clear them out by loudly threatening to start streaking in nothing but her "granny panties".
• Pierce throws one of these in one story arc in Zits. After things get out of hand, Walt clears 700 drunken teenagers out of the house by standing on a chair and announcing "I'm an orthodontist and I'm not afraid to prove it!". It's also implied in the ending that, although they cleaned up most of the house, they still had more than enough of a mess exposed for his parents to find when they get home (namely, the gutters are completely unhinged). Also, apparently he only had to tell Brittney about the party: the Telecom Tree did the rest.

Pinball

• Jinni Zeala is all about getting to the Flying Harem and joining the Wild Jinni Party there.
• Between the random appearances by football players and the hot girls wearing skin-tight pants, The Party Zone certainly lives up to its reputation as this.

Stand-Up Comedy

• John Mulaney's "The One Thing You Can't Replace" routine from New In Town is about how the son of their Sadist Teacher in high school held a party while his parents were out of town. Everyone was "drinking like it was the Civil War and a doctor was coming to saw our legs off." Someone body-slammed the pool table and broke it in half, and another person took a shit on the teacher's computer. Naturally, the police came to shut it down; however, when someone tried to warn everyone else about this, a drunk John got the crowd shouting "FUCK DA POLICE!", leaving the police officer, in John's words, almost impressed.

Theatre

• Be More Chill: The second act has a wild Halloween party that spirals out of control and culminates in Rich setting the house on fire.
• The song "Big Fun" in Heathers has Kurt and Ram hosting a giant teen party full of sex and underage drinking.

Video Games

• House Party (2017) starts off pretty quaint and low-key, but as you play, you can encourage the party-goers to get wilder. Also, they're technically college-aged.
• In one of Paz's diary tapes from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Paz explains that the Militaires Sans Frontieres often held birthday parties every month for soldiers born on that month, and she also implies that it was mainly an excuse to cut loose and drink alcohol. Basically the overall nature of the party is some guys heavily smoking, heavily drinking, eating meat, telling tasteless jokes and exchanging crude insults. It rarely ever gets serious, however. Once, Miller attempted to supervise Paz in order to shield her from the nature of the parties, but he became drunk himself, and ended up stating to the MSF "Hey, you should see the real Kazuhira Miller" before mooning them, with the soldiers apparently finding it funny.
• The "Generations" expansion pack of The Sims 3 allows a teen to throw one if their parents win a free vacation. For extra fun though, add in some mods for alcohol and increasing the guest invite limit and you can throw a truly epic rager.

Webcomics

• Eerie Cuties got the girls' slumber party. When two vampires, werewolf, melusine and succubus are brought together in a mood for shenanigans, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?? Then, of course, someone finds a bottle of liquor... Hilarity Ensues.
• El Goonish Shive had a transgender birthday party (Surely Nothing Bad Can Come from This?)... Subverted in that the Demonic Duck shows up at Grace's party, but when it becomes apparent that it isn't a drunk teen party he's extremely disappointed.
  • But not before referencing the trope. Mr. Verres then explains (with graphs) why he doesn't trust Ellen to keep things sane:
    Mr. Verres: The clincher was that crazed look you got on your face when I first suggested the party.
    Ellen: That crazed look could have meant any number of things!
    Mr. Verres: That doesn't help your case.
• The New Year's Eve party in Wild Life (the ancestor strip for Dork Tower). We only see the aftermath but the host is wondering how you get elk vomit stains out of upholstery.

Web Original

• Cobra Kai:
  • In "Different But Same", a milder variant occurs at the canyon where Yasmine was planning to have her birthday party, complete with lots of booze and the very type of crowd she loathes. Yup, Aisha decided to Strike First.
  • In the second season, Moon decides it would be a good idea to bring the Rival Dojos together under her roof for a little bonding session. The only thing keeping the Mob War from erupting there is the arrival of the cops.
• In "4 Things Movies Always Get Wrong About Parties", Cracked points out and lampshades some of the most common aspects of this trope, as well as describing how different they are from actual parties.
• The Gumdrops: An episode features the aftermath of a wild college party involving only two people! To the degree that there's a horse in the garden!
• The Nutters has a party sequence, although it's thrown with the permission of Jake's mother. As far as wildness goes, it only turns ugly when The Bully crashes and gets into a fight with Jake for making a pass at his cousin. In reality it was supposed to involve Eoin getting high on cocaine, but his actor Greg Young had to leave early. Behind the scenes it got even wilder — Liam Gaynor confesses that most of the extras brought their own drink, with the result that everyone was drunk by the end of the night.
• One Take: The series' first episode starts in one of these. There's drinking, music, making out, and someone gets pregnant by the end of the episode.
• In Thalia's Musings, Thalia [[thaliasmusingsnovels.wordpress.com answers a mortal's prayer for comic inspiration]] by ordering him to throw one of these on Mt. Parnassus, which will infuriate Apollo.
  Thalia: Call Pan and Dionysus to the Corycian Cave on the slopes of Mount Parnassus and host a feast.
  Eustachys: A feast, Lady Thalia?
  Thalia: Yes, a feast, a festival, a party. Not just any party, a party so awesome that Dionysus will wish it was his idea. Loud, crazy music; tons of wine; a huge bonfire; and, of course, the most uninhibited dancing imaginable. Oh, and do it tonight.
  Eustachys: But if I do this on Apollo's very doorstep -
  Thalia: You can't see why this is a good idea? Man, no wonder you can't write comedy.

Real Life

• This example: When a British teen decided to throw a party while her parents were away and invited her friends via MySpace, far more than just sixty of her mates (which would have been a lot anyway) showed up. Between 200-300 people showed up, and left about £20,000 ($40,566) worth of damage in their wake. The teen blames her friends for hacking her account.
• Ryan's Wreck: A three-day orgy of destruction that included everything from destroying furniture and using the remains to bash down walls to throwing a cat in the microwave. The cops arrested a few people, but no one was ever charged with anything.
• Corey Worthington had a party get really out of hand after advertising it online. In Narre Warren South, Australia, police cars and neighbours' property were damaged while Corey's parents holidayed in Queensland. Dozens of police officers, a helicopter and the dog squad had to be called in to restore the peace. A fabulously snarky TV interview (in which he refused to take off his sunglasses, "Because. They're famous") cemented his celebrity status, and he appeared on Aussie Big Brother. Has also made money as nightclubs offer people the chance to Party With Corey. The incident itself became the inspiration for the film Project X.
  • Link to the video here.
• One of the many glorified urban legends about 4chan claims that they use their Anonymous goons to regularly prowl MySpace and Facebook for parties, then raid them in real life with dozens of uninvited guests. In reality, this has probably happened once or twice.
• In January 2008, a couple dozen teens in a rural area went to a vacant house for a party. They wound up doing several thousand dollars' worth of damage to the place. Obviously, that sucks, it was incredibly irresponsible. Unfortunately for all of us, though, the house happened to be a historic site, the former home of poet Robert Frost. So what would have become a local problem and maybe some vandalism charges if the police ever figured out who was at the party turned into several days of Kent Brockman News when the New York Times and other national news outlets devoted multiple headlines and editorials to this Wild Teen Party.
• In October 2010, in Boca Raton, Florida, two teens at an elite private school decided to have their homecoming party at their parents' mansion, with their parents there but staying out of the way. Only about 150 people were expected to show up, but about 400 other teens crashed the party, bringing alcohol, and it went out of control. Several teens were arrested and the parents are being held responsible.
• Inspired by the Project X film example above is the "Project X Haren" party from September 21, 2012. A teenager from some town out there in the Netherlands called Haren sent out a Facebook invitation to her friends for her 16th birthday. Unfortunately, she forgot to set the invite to "private" and it was passed on to 30,000 people. 3,000+ people showed up to the small town and basically caused a riot: setting things on fire, smashing windows, skirmishes with the police, etc. ^note Interestingly, this one happened with some unintentional corroboration from media, city officials and the mayor. The media caught on to the Facebook mishap and plastered it all over the headlines, the city actually considered (publicly) to organize something for the guests, and the mayor went back and forth on whether there would be a party or not. By the time the city had decided there would be no party, many people had already committed themselves to going anyway, party or no.
• Labor Day Weekend 2013: 300 teens trash the second house of former New England Patriots offensive tackle Brian Holloway.
• A rather grisly example in Florida in 2011, when 17-year-old Tyler Hadley hosted a wild house party hours after brutally murdering both of his parents. Both of their bodies were still in the house, and several party guests noted the stench and even saw blood. He was found out after confessing to one of the partygoers, although not before planning another party for the next night.
• In 2008, an eighteen year old girl in Devon, England found 2,000 people gatecrashing her birthday party, when she expected about 300, causing £2,000 worth of damage to her parents' house, a Grade II listed building. While she blamed herself for putting up a poster at school inviting "everyone" (which was then passed on to neighbouring schools), her mother put the responsibilty onto a Radio 1 "shout out" (not sent in by Ms Ruscoe) which said "anyone who's listening can come along, apparently", although The BBC insisted they hadn't given the address.

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Oh no, man! Your parents are here!

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