Ambiguous Name: Eat The Dog

Note: This thread was proposed by StarSword.

Another Bad Snowclone of Kick the Dog. According to the page, it's supposed to mean an animal that is intentionally kept around by the cast as an emergency food supply, but it is routinely misused for literally eating dogs or other pets, whether out of desperation or as a result of the stereotype of East Asians.

Eat The Dog Wick Check results:

• 15% correct use, several of which are a result of a Running Gag in Excel♡Saga
• 11% use for intelligent creatures kept as emergency food supply, several of which are due to a Running Gag from Genshin Impact
• 40% use for literally eating dogs minus "emergency food" context
• 30% use for eating other things minus "emergency food" context
• 1% sinkhole
• 1% ZCE

Proposal

• A Pig Named "Porkchop": In Excel♡Saga, Excel names a stray dog she designates for emergency rations “Menchi”, a.k.a. mince meat.
• Blank White Eyes: In Excel♡Saga, the emergency food supply Menchi often expresses Blank White Eyes (sometimes in combination to Blue with Shock) whenever Excel or another character jokes about eating her.
• Head Pet: Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee has a pet monster named Steak who is often seen on Niche's head. Has also been used as bait and (almost cooked) as emergency food.
• Characters.God Eater 2 (Cappy): Eat The Dog: Defied, as animals are extremely rare, so the morale boost from keeping it alive outweighs the value of whatever meat it could give.
  "Although there are rumors that it is being kept on hand as emergency provisions, animals are valuable and treasured creatures, and its consumption is strictly prohibited."
• Characters.The Seven Deadly Sins Main Characters (Hawk): Eat The Dog: Being a pig, it's a Running Gag that he's often seen as food supplies much to his dismay.
• The Sun's Burial: Eat The Dog: Discussed Trope. One of the people in the slums has a dog. A second expresses admiration for it, in what seems like the only moment in the movie that might not be grim and horrifying. Then the first answers back, "They're great when roasted."
• Aztec: Eat The Dog: A literal example. The Mexica brought chihuahuas on their war campaigns, as a self-transporting food source that also kept snakes and pests away from the camp site.
• Maid-Sama!: Eat The Dog: The three idiots (as Momotaro's monkey, pheasant, and dog partners) are always being told that if worse comes to worse, they will be used as food.
• lonelygirl15 S01 "Motel Life": Eat The Dog: Parodied in "Man In The Suit":

  Bree: Are you mad that P. Monkey, Owen, and Thor came with us?

  Daniel: No. If we run out of food, we'll eat them.

  Bree: He's telling the truth.

• Characters.Dragon Ball Z Abridged Movies (Icarus): Eat The Dog: In Lord Slug Abridged, the enforced winter forces Gohan's family to kill and eat him. In Revenge of Cooler Abdriged, Goku calls Icarus his "emergency food". He makes good on that.
  Goku: [in singsong voice] Dragon meat is yummy, and I really want it in my tummy.
• FanNickname.Genshin Impact: Paimon: "Piemon" - In line with the "Emergency Food" memes, Paimon's name is sometimes deliberately spelled in this manner.
• Funny.Genshin Impact: Some dialogue choices can be hilarious or quirky, with the earliest examples allowing you to describe Paimon as an "emergency food". Later, when you meet Xiangling, she asks if Paimon is an edible exotic creature, and your second dialog option is "Dig in."
  Paimon: No! For the last time, Paimon is NOT EMERGENCY FOOD!
• Funny.One Piece Super Rookies Era: Sanji thought Chopper was emergency rations. When Chopper hears that, he spins around to give the audience a completely-understandable Eye Take.
• Funny.Zero Punctuation 3 (Star Fox Zero): He considers Falco, Peppy and Slippy to not so much be expert wingmen as emergency rations for Fox when he gets hungry midflight. To illustrate this, the accompanying graphic features Fox gnawing on Peppy while Falco holds his own severed leg saying "I blew me leg off again."
• YMMV.Genshin Impact: Older Than They Think: The "Paimon is Emergency Food" joke quickly became a widespread meme as soon as this game launched on September 2020. However, anime fans pointed out that Genshin Impact isn’t the first to use the "Emergency Food" joke; Excel♡Saga had this with Mince, One Piece had this with Chopper, and Dragon Ball Z Abridged had Goku refer to Icarus and Oolong as his two emergency food.

• Licked by the Dog: Cowboy Bebop (2021). When Faye Valentine first lays eyes on Welsh corgi Ein, her response is shock (dogs are so rare she's only seen them in a zoo), greed (they're worth between 20-30 million woolongs), and hunger (they're reputed to be good eating). Her trying to dog-nap Ein shortly afterwards doesn't help matters. After she nearly gets killed saving millions of lives from a terrorist missile, she's woken up after being recovered from her crashed spacecraft by Ein licking her face (to her disgust). It's at this point that Spike is willing to accept her on the BeBop (having expressed an urge to shoot Faye several times during the episode).
• Post-Apocalyptic Dog:
  • (description) Whatever the situation, the Post-Apocalyptic Dog is often a major touchstone of morality after the apocalypse, for the dogs and for ourselves. For example, let's just hope that their straitened circumstances never force our heroes to contemplate eating their trusty hound...
  • Pump Six and Other Stories: In "The People of Sand and Slag", posthuman cyborgs who mutilate themselves for fun inhabit a ravaged wasteland of a world where no normal organic creatures can survive. One day they miraculously discover a sickly old-style dog and keep it as a pet for a short time — up until they get tired of its constant injuries and paying for its food. They decide to eat it just to find out what it tastes like.
• Children Who Chase Lost Voices:
  • Call-Back: Earlier on in the film, Morisaki makes an Eat The Dog joke about Mimi. Later on, after Mimi's death, Manna offers the corpse to a Quetzal Coatl, which eats it.
  • Eat The Dog: When Asuna comments that Mimi and Morisaki seem to be getting along better, he comments that they could use Mimi as food and quickly makes a "Just Joking" Justification afterwards.
• Characters.Fate Grand Order Berserkers G To M (Lu Bu Fengxian): Eat The Dog: His Valentine's Day scene has him wanting to eat Fou, which naturally scares the little critter. Although he refrains from doing so because of how little nutrition the small animal would provide for him.
• Characters.Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia Mac: Eat The Dog: Literally. After spending a month going insane from living in the suburbs and feeling like Dennis is neglecting his feelings, Mac spitefully allows their dog Dennis Jr. to starve to death and secretly feeds it to Dennis. When Mac reveals the truth, Dennis is appalled while Mac belts out an Evil Laugh far more terrifying than anything we've seen from him before.
• Characters.Red Vs Blue Red Team (Simmons): Eat The Dog: In Recreation, he mentions he was once stranded on an ice planet with no supplies thanks to Command's orders, which led to him eating his dog to survive.
• Rudi: Eat The Dog: After being badly bitten by a dog, Rudi buys a Korean cookbook and invites the owner and his dog for "dinner", while preparing everything.
• Defiance: Eat The Dog: They also eat one of the Germans' dogs that they killed as it was attacking them.
• Monster! (1999): Eat The Dog: Lloyd states that whilst the Monster may kill larger animals, such as cows, it has a strict diet of people and small pets. A dog is snatched up as one of the Monster's first victims, with its bloody collar being one of the early clues that Travis finds to make him think Lloyd has a point. The Monster's lair in the storm drains is later shown to be carpeted in cat and dog bones.
• Nothing to Envy: Eat The Dog: Kim Hyuck admits to killing and eating dogs during the famine. Jun-sang's mother raises dogs and is heartbroken after one puppy is stolen and likely killed for food.
• The Death of Russia: Eat The Dog: In a village he comes across during his return to Russia, Alexander Lebed comes across a weeping old man, begging him to save Russia and end the madness, who was forced to eat his pet dog, with the write-up saying that said pet dog was his only true companion.
• Cowboy Bebop Session 2 "Stray Dog Strut": Eat The Dog: Both the pet shop owner and Spike suggest doing this to Ein.
• Red Vs Blue S 7 E 16 Retention Deficit: Eat The Dog: Simmons brings up a Noodle Incident where he had eat a dog because of a food shortage at another base, and leaves it at that.
• Tintin: King Ottokar's Sceptre: I Ate WHAT?!: Tintin's reaction when he's told the Syldavian meal he's eaten includes dog, and Snowy is missing. Snowy comes out of the restaurant's kitchen moments later.
• Cowboy Bebop (2021): Adaptational Nice Guy: Spike famously hates dogs in the anime, even suggesting that they eat Ein and only accepting him on the ship with great reluctance. In this adaptation, he goes into full-blown Cuteness Proximity over how great dogs are the first time he sees Ein and is thrilled to keep him. He's also noticeably more empathetic to other people, especially some of the bounties that he goes after.
• The Golden Girls: Eat The Dog: Sophia claims their Chinese-American neighbors do this. Dorothy contradicts her, but she claims that is why their lawn is the only one on the block that dogs don't pee on.
• Top Gear (UK): National Stereotypes: The Koreans eat dogs and build cheap and nasty cars. Ditto Malaysia.
• Curious Expedition: Eat The Dog: The natives will be eager to organise a feast using whatever animal from the expedition they will choose, which might include the dog or hyena. And after Sanity is depleted, it's a very common event to either have one of the companions propose to eat one of the animals or outright butcher it without asking for permission.
• Mortal Kombat: Deception: Eat The Dog: You meet up with a woman in the starting town who is looking for her lost dog. You are directed to a butcher shop where the butcher has already killed the dog. He says something along the lines of "Oh no! I didn't know he was anybody's pet! I thought he was a stray!" He gives you the dog's butchered remains anyway. When you meet back up with the woman, her lines are...
  "Oh no! Niko! I shouldn't have let him out of my sight!... oh well, would you like some Niko stew?"

• Awesome.Robot Chicken: The Star Trek sketch where the Enterprise crew finds that the ship's life support is about to fail and they can only send five members down to a planet below. Their first action is to eat the Red Shirt they brought, who reveals that he was the only one who brought a phaser that he uses to kill and eat them instead.
• Characters.Brat Halla (Thor's Goats): Eat The Dog: When the goats are killed during the Pantheon Games, Frig decides to go ahead and cook them rather than let the meat go to waste. Decidedly not played for laughs, as Thor is greatly distraught by the realization he's eating his pets. They get better once Thor recovers Mjölnir.
• Characters.Magic Knight Rayearth (Umi Ryuuzaki, description): Seems a bit obsessed on eating Mokona, who annoys her greatly.
• Characters.Paradise PD Recurring Characters (Mr. Meowgi): Eat The Dog: Mr. Meowgi started eating cats in "Big Ball Energy".
• Rudi: Eat The Dog: And during the war, Rudi's grandma and her family ate the cat when nothing else was left.
• Defiance: Eat The Dog: As the refugees are starving in the depths of winter, Tuvia makes the difficult decision to shoot his horse (a gift from the Red Army) so they'll have something to eat.
• Fridge.Dynasty Warriors: Fridge Horror: In 8’s Jin story, in the Xiahou Ba’s Escape stage, he can be seen on his horse when the camera pans to him after an obstacle is placed. At the end of the stage, should the player have been fast enough, he’s seen arriving on foot. If one knows about the account of his real life counterpart eating his horse to fend off starvation, this can feel a bit awkward for a game that’s normally a more light hearted take on the events and legends.
• IThoughtThatWas.F To K: Is the Order a Rabbit? is not about asking for a rabbit to eat it.
• Naruto.Anime And Others: Eat The Dog: With all the supplies contaminated by poisonous mushrooms, Naruto resorts to trying to eat Gamatatsu. This fails hilariously, but then he remembers that he can also use summoning to get fresh supplies from Mt. Myoboku.
• PlayingWith.Adopt The Food: Played for Drama: Alice is eventually forced to eat the pig she came to view as a pet.
• PokemonCrossingFlyMeToTheMoon.Tropes Lto O: No Party Like a Donner Party: What happened in the Mirage Tower. Decades ago, a group of explorers got lost finding Regirock. Regirock killed half the party, and the other half were lost for a while. First they ate their Pokèmon, THEN drew straws on who to eat. And sure enough, Sunny drew the short straw and was heavily cannibalized.
• Terranigma: Eat The Dog: Ark gets offended when a mountain goat suggests eating her dead husband, when she and Ark end up being snowed into a cave and need to survive.
• WMG.The Road: The family eventually ate their horse
• Chop to the Top OCT: Eat The Dog - The fate Bagwis and Bill both are trying to stop for their respective species.
• Twisted Tropes: Eat The Dog: The Thundercats team is starving, so they cook Snarf for whining.
• The Illusionist (2010): Eat The Dog: Tatischeff thinks Alice has cooked his rabbit.

• Sour Supporter: (commented out as ZCE) Inchiki, from the first Menchi-Centric episode of Excel♡Saga, appears to be this. We later learn that he is actually The Mole.

• Characters.Survivor Borneo (Greg Buis): Eat The Dog: Talked about in the final episode.