Basic Trope: Someone fails to make it to the bathroom in time and has an accident.
- Straight: After searching desperately for a place to relieve herself and finding none, Alice wets her pants.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's accident is so huge that it completely soaks through her jeans and makes a huge puddle on the floor.
- Thanks to a spectacularly successful Laxative Prank all the cheerleaders have a gigantic simultaneous accident, ruining their costumes and completely flooding the locker room.
- Alice was locked out of the locker room naked by the other cheerleaders and tricked into coming onstage in front of the whole school. In panic, she urinates right onto the floor.
- Downplayed: After suffering a particularly severe Potty Emergency and reaching a toilet just in the nick of time, Alice examines her panties and is dismayed to find a small wet spot.
- Justified:
- Alice just finished drinking an entire Gigantic Gulp before getting trapped in an elevator. Naturally, her bladder can only accommodate so much liquid, and when it reaches that tipping point...
- Suffering from extreme Weight Woe, Alice resorts to taking a powerful diuretic shortly before getting captured by Doctor Torment and tied to a chair. Thanks to the water pill her bladder fills right up in no time, and before long she just can't hold it another second.
- Alice is a very young child of about 2-4. Accidents in her age group are normal.
- Alice was at a place which doesn’t have bathrooms or lavatories, as an example: a park.
- Alice is elderly and her weakened pelvic muscles have caused her to develop incontinence as a result.
- Over-relaxation of the pelvic muscles (and thus incontinence) is one of the side effects of the medication Alice has been prescribed.note
- Alice was particularly scared or surprised.
- Inverted:
- Alice sits down on the toilet to relieve herself, but due to a Shy Bladder or a bout of constipation, she can't seem to do so.
- Someone or something pees on Alice.
- Subverted:
- In the throes of an absolutely desperate Potty Emergency, Alice runs into the bathroom only to find the stall door locked, with an "out of order" sign on it, and she wets her pants, but it was All Just a Dream.
- Someone mistakes a foul smell for another person in the area peeing or pooping their pants, but it turns out to be something else.
- Double Subverted: But when she wakes up she has wet the bed.
- Parodied: Alice's Potty Failure ensues on stage in the middle of her college graduation speech. Afterwards she's given an honorary induction into the highly exclusive sorority Rho Epsilon Epsilon.
- Zig Zagged: Alice carelessly drinks an entire Gigantic Gulp shortly before she has to be a live model for the art class's 3-hour final exam. Belatedly realizing her mistake just when the exam is about to start and knowing that she's just sure to have a humiliating accident if she doesn't relieve herself first, she rushes to the nearest bathroom and steps into one of the two stalls. But before she can start to go, Betty and Claire rush in, both clearly in the middle of an absolutely desperate Potty Emergency. Betty takes the remaining stall, leaving Claire to wait. Between the sound of Betty loudly relieving herself and Claire pounding on the stall doors and telling them both to hurry up, Alice's Shy Bladder simply refuses to let go. Annoyed, she exits the stall and accidentally runs right into Claire, knocking both of them to the ground, and the shock causes Claire to lose control and pee all over the floor.
- Averted:
- Alice makes it to a bathroom in time.
- Nobody uses bathrooms in this setting.
- Enforced: The writers need a quick source of Toilet Humor, and Alice is the designated Chew Toy.
- Lampshaded:
- "Gotta go! Gotta go!... Oh, nevermind..."note
- "Did she just pee her pants?"
- Invoked:
- Alice has been chugging water all day long, planning to create a diversion for her teammates with a well-timed accident.
- Dave slips a pill into Alice's drink right before their big showdown, causing her to suddenly lose control and have a huge accident in the middle of the fight.
- Exploited:
- When Alice has an accident and ruins her cheerleading costume right before the Big Game, the other cheerleaders offer to sell her a spare costume at a huge markup.
- Emma uses this as an excuse to get Alice to take off her uniform so she could throw her out of the locker room naked.
- Emma takes a picture of Alice and her soiled pants and uses it to humiliate or blackmail her.
- Realising she is about to wet herself, Alice positions herself close to her Arch-Enemy Emma so she can “accidentally” pee on her.
- Alice tricks a guard into slipping on the urine puddle she made while she escapes.
- Defied:
- Knowing that she won't have access to a bathroom all day, Alice avoids a messy and humiliating accident by wearing a diaper.
- Brenda is at Alice's house helping her with homework and notices that she has to go to the bathroom. Alice insists she is fine, but when Brenda warns her that she might soil her pants if she doesn't stop for a break, she runs to the bathroom in her house.
- Alice realizes that she isn't going to be able to use the bathroom for a while, so before leaving her house, she decides to use the bathroom and avoid having too much to drink until she knows she's in a place where bathrooms are prevalent.
- Discussed: "Did you just have an accident right now? Don't worry, I'll clean you up!"
- Conversed: "I would hate to be Alice right now!"
- Implied:
- Alice is captured and tied to a chair by some villains. Later, after Bob defeats them and rescues her, somebody is seen cleaning a wet stain from the chair.
- Alice runs off in the midst of an extremely desperate Potty Emergency, and upon her return has inexplicably discarded her panties.
- Brenda is using the toilet when Alice dashes to bathroom door and tells her to hurry up. Brenda calls back that she's almost done, but after a few moments Alice just replies, "Um... you know what, never mind..."
- As Alice rushes past Bob, he cringes, pinches his nose and glares at her.
- Deconstructed: Alice is publicly humiliated, and will have to walk around in smelly wet clothes.
- Reconstructed:
- It is cold, warm waste in her pants makes her feel warmer.
- Alice finds a place where she can get cleaned up and get some clean clothes, and nobody mentions the incident.
- Played For Laughs: Toilet Humor
- Played For Drama: It causes lots of social embarrassment for Alice.
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