Suck Out the Poison

"I must extract the venom before it spreads through her veins! Like in the movies."

Now if a snake should bite you, don't you worry, fret or shout
Just call my name and I'll be there and I'll suck the poison out
"But what if I should sit on one and it gets me in the end?"
She said "That's when you'll find out, that I'm a real true friend."

— Benny Hill, "Rachel"

Alice and Bob trek through a desert. Bob unwittingly steps on a snake — and, unfortunately for him, it's venomous. Immediately, Alice starts sucking out the poison to buy him some time before they find real aid...

Do Not Try This at Home. This used to be taught up until recently-ish, but as it turns out, A) all the bacteria in your mouth could cause an infection in the wounded person; B) sucking out of a thin puncture will only make the area swell, and C) you're too late — the moment a person's heart beats after a bite, the venom is already circulating around their body anyway.

Note that this trope, like most snake-bite "cures", became popular because it seems to work. This is helped by the fact that people survive the vast majority of venomous snake bites even without treatment, and a large proportion of snakebites are 'dry', meaning the snake releases no venom anyway. So, someone gets bitten, someone else 'sucks out the venom' (even though there is no venom), and the person gets better (simply because most people do), and both parties become convinced that sucking out the venom works!

In reality, the currently advised First Aid for snakebites is to keep the victim calm, prevent them from moving, and arrange for them to be transported to the hospital. In Australia, a country packed with things that can and will bite or sting you at a moment's notice, pressure immobilisation bandages are also recommended.

May be used as a form of Intimate Healing. Similar to Kiss of Life, as both require pressing one's lips to an injured party's body, but since any part of the body can be poisoned, it's as likely to be gross or funny as sexy. A subtrope of Worst Aid. Compare Amputation Stops Spread.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Rowan Atkinson did a series of Barclaycard adverts in the 1990s where he played an incompetent spy (later used as the basis for his Johnny English character) whose assistant would call Barclaycard to get them out of sticky situations. In one ad, they are stranded in the jungle with a comrade who has been bitten by a snake. The assistant wants to call Barclaycard's international rescue service, but Atkinson ridicules this idea and suggests they suck out the poison - until he discovers the wound is in a rather sensitive place and agrees to call for help. Given the "buzzing flies" sound we hear, the wound might also have turned gangrenous.

Anime & Manga

• Bastard!! (1988) has Dark Schneider take a blow from a poisoned sword while protecting a love interest, and then tells her she'll have to suck out the poison.
• It is used in a story arc in Case Closed, and resident Teen Genius Conan used tea to take use of its astringent qualities.
• During the Angel Fall arc of A Certain Magical Index, Touma falls comatose from a wound inflicted by a poisonous blade wielded by the serial killer Jinsaku Hino. When he wakes up, he finds out that Misha sucked the poison out of the wound while he was asleep. This scene, along with the serial killer subplot entirely, was axed from the anime.
• Change 123: Played With in Chapter 29, with the location of the bite makes this covered by Rule of Funny. Kosukegawa is seemingly bitten in the crotch by a viper and passes out. Panicked, Tsukishima, Fujiko, and Hino strip off his shorts in order to suck the poison... but then they notice he doesn't have any bite marks and that the viper actually missed him since he's so small, it only managed to bite his shorts and he has only passed out due to shock. He wakes up moments later, pantless with all three girls staring at his crotch and commenting on his Teeny Weenie, prompting him to have a Naked Freak-Out.
• Done in Cross Ange by Tusk to save Ange's life from a venomous snake. Worth noting is that Ange was still running in the rain after she was bitten and was still quite a ways when she found Tusk, who's still tied to a tree thanks to her. Worse for Tusk, though, the snake bit Ange on the thigh near her crotch, damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
• Kyu does this to Megumi in Detective School Q when they're trapped in a sealed room and a Meiousei member releases a snake that bites her on the leg. Subverted because, even with that treatment done, Megu still needs to get an injection of the appropriate antivenom and treatment in the hospital before she fully recovers.
• The vampire-like Arystar Krory from D.Gray-Man can remove Akuma poison from another person by drinking their blood.

• Eiken has this in one chapter with Densuke and the resident ill girl going on a date in the woods and her getting bitten by a snake. Because it is unclear to them if the snake is venomous or not, she insists that he suck out the potential venom, which he is reluctant to do, since it bit her in the butt.
• Chiyo does this for Yuu in The Elder Sister-like One in order to suck out the mosquito saliva from his bug bites (she's an Outer God, so she can actually do that). It backfires when she gets to a bite that he already treated, causing her to get a mouthful of foul-tasting medicine.
• Done in the Fushigi Yuugi OAV, when Miaka sucks poison out of Tasuki's wound. She takes this one step further, in that she attempts to cure Tamahome of a monster possession by sucking the monster out of the bite wound used to make it enter his body.
• Gon tries this in an early Hunter × Hunter chapter. It doesn't work.
• Myoga the flea from Inuyasha do this a few times:
  • Early in the story, Myoga sucks the poison from Human!Inuyasha when he was poisoned by a youkai. Myoga grew to almost the size of Shippo and passed out. Although Inuyasha didn't need to fully recover. He just needed to last out the night until he regained his Healing Factor.
  • Later, Myoga did the same thing to the entire main cast (except Inuyasha, who didn't need it).
• Done by Kyosuke to Madoka, who was bitten by a snake, in Kimagure Orange Road.
• In Lord Marksman and Vanadis, Tigre has to suck out the poison from Limlisha when an assassin's snake bit her. Where did the snake bite her? Well...
• Monster Musume:
  • Used when Kimihito is forced to suck experimental fertilizer out of a rampaging dryad. Since she's a Plant Person that stores fluids in her breasts, this works.
  • In a later chapter Cerea is stung by an Asian giant hornet, Kimihito offers to suck out the poison (complete with a commentary box Lampshading that this doesn't actually work). Where was she stung? Her nipple, of course. In the next chapter, she admitted that she was never actually in any danger from the sting, she was just using it as an excuse to get intimate with him.
• Averted in the Zabuza Arc of Naruto. When Naruto takes a poisoned weapon to the back of the hand, Kakashi instructs him to open the wound and let out the poisoned blood from his system. This was pretty hardcore until he is then reminded to stop the bleeding before he bleeds to death. Admittedly, using a kunai to slice open your bloodstream carries a very significant risk of causing the wound to become septic. But they're ninjas, and he has a Healing Factor (though at the time neither he nor his teammates knew about that last bit).
• Pictured above: Ninja Scroll: Jubei attempts this after Kagero was bitten by a venomous snake, but she quickly stops him by kneeing him and explains she has her own toxin in her body that'll negate the poison...and would've killed Jubei if he had actually managed to start sucking.
• Subverted in One Piece.
  • During the Impel Down arc, various characters are afflicted by the cocktail of poisons produced by Warden Magellan's devil fruit powers. Most of the survivors simply received an antidote the prison keeps on hand. Luffy, on the other hand, was injected with hormones generated by Ivankov's fruit, intented to aid Luffy's immune system in fighting off the effects of the poison.
  • During the Whole Cake Island arc, Luffy eats the skin of a fish so poisonous it kills most people instantly. Due to his encounter with Magellan's poisons, Luffy's body is able to produce enough antibodies to keep him just barely alive. Reiju is able to suck out the poison, but this is because everyone in her family has some kind of genetic enhancement that grants supernatural powers. In Reiju's case, she is not only immune to poison, but able to injest it, allowing her to drain all of the poison from Luffy.
• San's introduction in Princess Mononoke shows her attempting this on Moro. It doesn't work because the iron bullet poisoning Moro is never removed.
• Attempted in awkward places by Kiyoshi and Mari in Ecchi manga Prison School, resulting in them ending up in what is referred to as the "Uroboros" stance. Used with a twist however in that the snakes were never actually venomous, having been put there by Big Bad Keito to invoke this trope for blackmail purposes.
• Subverted in Rurouni Kenshin. Yahiko was once poisoned, and when Kaoru was about to try this, Megumi (who is a doctor/pharmacist) stopped her and said that would just complicate the injury. She then makes an actual antidote.
• A bonus Slayers Yonkoma strip parodies this: after Lina is bitten by a venomous snake, Gourry volunteers to suck out the poison, much to her embarrassment. He swallows. He spends the next week bedridden.
• Some kind of essence of evil poison in the episode of Wedding Peach where Limone reveals his past with Yuri.
• Done by Hiraga to Roberto in Vatican Miracle Examiner when the two priests are visiting Africa, in a rather homoerotic way, which involved sucking noises and Roberto moaning Hiraga's name.
• Why the Hell Are You Here, Teacher!?:
  • Ichiro attempts this on Kana when she gets bitten while swimming at the beach, in the worst possible spot. She passes out, but not because she was poisoned, but because he hit the wrong spot.
  • This gets a Call-Back in Chapter 100, where Kurisu thinks Tadashi was bitten by a snake on his penis, and ends up giving him a blowjob before he can explain.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Atem does this in a flashback when Mahad gets bitten by a snake, and doesn't care about the social implications.

Comic Books

• In Rulah, Jungle Goddess #17, Rulah saves the life of a nubile young blonde woman who has been bitten by a coral snake by cutting her arm and sucking out the venom.

Fanfiction

• Heroes of the New World; Yamato steps on a stonefish shortly after arriving in the North Blue, but fortunately for her and Izuku Vinsmoke Reiju happened to be spying on them and steps out to suck the poison from Yamato's heel.
• In A.A. Pessimal's Discworld fic Nature Studies, a careless student Assassin gets overconfident with a cobra and learns the hard way about right and wrong methods of handling snakes. His teacher, who does know the right way, lambasts him for his over-confidence (the primal Assassin failing) and wishes a friendly Vampire was nearby to suck out the blood. ^note Vampires are welcome immigrants to places like rimwards Howondaland and Fourecks, where their blood-sucking abilities make them first line of defence against snakebites. Indeed, vampires are immune to the poison and consider venom gives blood a nice interesting new flavour. Instead, she opens the wound with a knife, gets Matron Igorina to apply an injected antidote, and packs him off to the Lady Sybil.
• In Revelations, at the end of chapter 11, Túrante sucks out the venom from Aragorn. Túrante the vampire is the only character who can do this. She sucks the neck, where the other vampire bit Aragorn. The story never explains how Túrante can suck out the blood and venom without injecting her own venom. Túrante does warn that she might take too much blood and kill Aragorn. The chapter ends in a Cliffhanger as Túrante begins to suck blood.

Films — Animated

• Played with in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Everybody has fallen down a cave shaft into the dark. People start to sound off that they're not dead. Cookie the Chef says that something bit him and someone's gonna have to suck the venom out. By the groans, we get the feeling that nobody's exactly jumping into a line. Given that Cookie's a curmudgeonly old man who serves inedible slop three times a day, and that his exact words were, "Dang lightnin' bugs done bit me on my sit-upon. Somebody's gonna have to suck out this poison."...
• Tarzan does this to teenaged Jane after she is bitten on the arm by a snake in Tarzan (2013).

Films — Live-Action

• Babylon (2022): During an ill-fated party shenanigan Nellie is bitten by a rattlesnake in the neck. The attendees spend multiple minutes running around and screaming before Lady Fay drops her cigarette, takes out a knife, coolly beheads the snake, sucks out the poison from Nellie's neck, and washes her mouth with alcohol. Everyone is just fine the day after.
• In Woody Allen's Bananas, a group of rebels is going over jungle survival, each repeating "Suck out the poison", until Allen says "I...I could never suck the leg of someone I wasn't engaged to.". Minutes later the rebel sexy girl runs past, shirtless, clutching her breast, shouting "I've been bitten by a snake!" Allen and all the other men rush after her.
• The Battle Wizard has a scene where the titular wizard, Prince Tuan, have to suck out the poison from his ally, the lady warrior Mu Wanqing, after Mu gets hit by The Dragon's poisoned claw. Above her breasts! It's mostly obscured however, and while there is a quick glimpse of nudity, due to camera angles nothing much could really be seen.

• Was subverted in City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold because it was just a thorn, not a rattlesnake bite.
• Parodied repeatedly with the "suck out the bullet" scenes in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.
• Subverted in Father Goose. When Catherine thinks she's been bitten by a snake, Eckland tries sucking out the poison before calling his superiors for information on whether venomous snakes are on the island. Before going to check, the CO tells Eckland not to try sucking the poison out until they know what they're dealing with.
  Cmdr. Houghton: Oh, and Walter - until we know what we're dealing with, don't try to be a movie hero and suck out the venom!
  • It doesn't have any apparent effect on him after a few mouthwashes, though. And then it's revealed the snake in question was actually a thorny stick, so he was just sucking regular blood.
• Played for laughs in God of Cookery. Stephen Chow wakes up to find a Shaolin monk about to perform the procedure on him. The monk informs him that he's sucked every part of his body dry of poison, except one.
• In Grimsby, Nobby is asked by his secret agent brother to suck out the poison from his shoulder, and he very reluctantly complies. Then he shows that the poisoned darts have also hit him in the balls... What's worse, when Nobby is performing the technique (complete with grunts and groans), some of his stupid friends come armed with smartphones and in a matter of minutes, the video is on YouTube for everyone to see.
• A Gunfight: Abe cuts his horse's leg and sucks the poison out after the horse is bitten by a rattlesnake. Ultimately it doesn't help and Abe is forced to put the horse down.
• Averted in Head. Teri Garr's character pleads with Micky Dolenz's character (in a character) to "suck out the poison before it reaches [her] heart." Dolenz (rebelling against the in-universe kayfabe) refuses, jibing her with "What heart?"
• In the Russian film Hearts Of Three, based on Jack London's novel of the same name, Francis Morgan meets his future Love Interest (and cousin) Leoncia. Minutes later, she is bitten by a snake. He sets her down and starts sucking poison out of the wound. A servant boy walks up, carrying the snake, and explains that the snake is not poisonous. Both feel a little awkward.
• Shows up in the Jet Li film High Risk. Also doubles as a Chekhov's Gun - because the hero made an incision before sucking out the poison, there was venom on his knife, which ensures that the Big Bad isn't able to run for long when he escapes after being stabbed with that knife.
• L'Invitation: After Helene is stung on the foot by a bee, her boyfriend Maurice acts like he's sucking out the poison, but it's really just foreplay.
• Subverted in Life Is Beautiful, in which Guido pretends that Dora has been bitten on the thigh by a wasp and that he needs to suck out the poison. Dora's reaction is about what you'd expect.
• Averted in Lightning Jack. Lightning Jack Kane felt a sharp pain before seeing a snake move away. He forces Ben at gunpoint to suck out the poison, only for Ben to pull out a splinter instead.
• Played with in Logan. After Taking the Bullet meant for Xavier, Laura sucks the bullet from her arm then spits it out like it was this trope. She has Healing Factor, so this really doesn't bother her.
• In Mean Girls Cady mentions in voice-over that when you are bitten by a snake you have to suck the poison out. It was a metaphor, but still not an acceptable mistake for the daughter of zoologists to make.
• In The Mighty Peking Man, the Nubile Savage Samantha gets bitten in the thigh by a poisonous snake and have to get the poison sucked out by Johnny. She ends up falling unconscious in the process, long enough for the explorers to transport her from the Himalayas to the big city.
• Nightfall (1988): After sex, Kin and Ana have fallen asleep in a cave, when a snake comes around and bites Kin on the leg. Immediately Ana sucks and spits the venom out to save him.
• Happens in Snakes on a Plane. A female passenger sucks poison out of a boy's arm and saves his life, using an ancient technique she learned as a child. To make it even sillier, this takes place a long time after the biting, and she gargles olive oil to protect her from getting poisoned. While that was fairly silly, she DID make another incision first, which is more than most examples can say.
• Strange Cargo: Kindly Cambreau does this for Telez after Telez's leg has gotten infected from a snakebite and is swelling up. Another prisoner points out that it won't actually do any good, to which Cambreau answers that he knows it won't, and the point was to show to Telez in his last moments that someone cared about him.
• Ticket to Paradise: Paul is bitten by a snake on Tanah Lot and nearly passes out. Georgia bites his ankle to suck out the poison and is seemingly no worse for wear besides briefly slurring words.
• The 2010 adaptation of True Grit contains a realistic example. There is no perceptible benefit to the victim after the wound was sucked on, and it probably caused an infection that was the reason Mattie's arm had to be amputated..
• Done in Who Am I? (1998) by Jackie Chan. A more outlandish, but more accurate treatment is when he then hydrates the victim with a coconut milk IV.
• The Woman Hunt: After Billie is bitten by a snake, Tony cuts her leg with a machete and attempts to suck the poison out.
• In Your Highness, Fabious gets bitten on the thigh by the giant five-headed snake. Courtney is forced to suck it. Courtney thinks it's disgusting. Fabious points out he would do it himself, but he can't reach his thigh with his mouth.

Jokes

• There is a Russian joke about What? Where? When? (a team trivia game), where the team is asked the following question: "If you are walking alone in the desert, and a blunt-nosed viper bites you in the penis, what are you supposed to do?" The team is thinking, and finally they give the answer "The man should try to get to the nearest village, and there, to ask someone to suck the venom out." Then the correct answer is revealed: A blunt-nosed viper never bites above the knee, and if your penis is that long, you can suck the venom out yourself.
• This trope is the subject of a very famous vulgar "Shaggy Dog" Story joke. In one version, The Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding along, the Lone Ranger had to take a leak, and a snake bit him on his, uh, "wee-wee". Tonto ran miles and miles to the nearest doctor, who told him "You have to suck the poison out, quickly!". Tonto ran miles and miles back to his friend. The Lone Ranger asked him "What did the doctor say?". Tonto replied, "He said... you going to die, kemosabe."

Literature

• A Poison Dark and Drowning: When Maria sees that Magnus was bitten by one of Nemneris' Familiars, she treats the wound by sucking the poison out with her mouth after easing Magnus onto his back.
• Occurs in one Bony mystery, where it is suggested to be a typical Aboriginal cure. However, the limb is also compressed and held still. The "medic" has started sucking within four seconds of the bite.
• In the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, there is Ivan, the Alcoholic Vampire. The rest of the bar patrons know him for what he is and are perfectly willing to let him feed off of them since he only takes enough to get a buzz.... and consequently Ivan removes enough alcohol from his "victims'" bloodstreams that they wake up the next morning without any hangovers.
• Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Thomas Covenant gets to do this once while suffering from a mouth wound. He ends up poisoned too but the little girl lives.
• City of Bones by Martha Wells: When Elen is bitten by a spider-mite, Khat bites the wound and sucks out the venom. Justified because Khat is immune to the venom, they don't have any clean surgical tools, the venom is concentrated in a pustule around the wound, and it's only meant to keep her alive long enough to get her to proper medical treatment back in town.
• Gods and Warriors: Pirra tries this on Hylas when he's stung by a scorpion in The Crocodile Tomb.
• In Hope Leslie, this is averted with Cradock, who is cured of his snakebite by other means.
• Subverted in Douglas Adams' Last Chance To See - the team visits the world's foremost expert on snake toxins and ask him precisely this. His response amounts to: "In my professional opinion: don't get bitten!" He also points out that a) you are unlikely to actually get much of the poison out, b) you will then have a mouth full of poison (although due to the high molecular weight of snake venom, it probably won't be absorbed by your mouth), and c) you will mostly likely infect the wound terribly in the process, and in that part of the world (Indonesia), that is a bad idea.
• Lolita. Humbert describes sucking the poison from a gnat bite on Dolores Haze in erotic terms, though by this stage in the book it comes across as Fan Disservice.
• John Steinbeck's The Pearl describes Juana using this on her baby Coyotito after he gets stung by a scorpion. However, it doesn't seem to be enough and she and her husband Kino try to find a pearl to pay for a doctor's visit. Soon after the two find the titular pearl, and the couple find to their great surprise that Coyotito's wound is healing.
• Wojciech Cejrowski's travelogue book Rio Anaconda (the factuality of which should be taken with a big grain of salt) has an episode where the narrator gets bitten, and his companion is forced to suck out the poison... the only problem is, the snakebite is in a very private place. Once the deed is done, the narrator declares that neither of them should ever speak of it again.
• In "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire", Sherlock Holmes investigated a strange case where a mother had been caught biting her baby boy, apparently displaying vampirism. In the end, he learned that the baby had been deliberately poisoned using a blowgun with a poison-tipped dart, by the child's jealous elder half-brother Jackie, and that the mother had actually been sucking the poison out to save the baby's life.
• Subverted somewhat in Stardust in that Septimus intends to do this, (the semi-right way, with an incision), but by the time he completes the thought, the poison has already paralyzed him and he dies. Very slowly.
• In Sun, Moon, and Talia, this woke Talia from her enchanted sleep, which was caused by a cursed splinter of flax stuck in her finger.
• In Betsy Byars' The TV Kid, the protagonist is hiding under a house when he gets bitten by a rattlesnake. Due to his watching a lot of TV, he knows that he has to cut Xs over the bite to get all the poison. He nearly dies anyway.
• The Twilight Saga, has a vampire sticking his mouth on an open wound to suck venom out of a human, from another vampire's bite. This seems...even more impractical than other examples because his saliva contains more of that venom.
• In Julia Quinn's The Viscount Who Loved Me, Anthony Bridgerton is utterly terrified of bees after his dad died of a bee sting. When Kate is stung by one, he freaks out and tries to suck out the poison from the sting...which was on her chest. They are then interrupted by his mother, her stepmother, and the biggest gossip in town. Shotgun Wedding ensues.
• Sal's grandmother in Walk Two Moons is bitten by a water moccasin at a remote lake and this method is attempted. They do cut the wound open first and rush her to a hospital, and while she survives it's not without injury.
• In The Yearling, Ezra does this to himself after a rattlesnake bite, then has his son kill a nearby deer and cut out the liver to leech out the poison with. It works, or at least it keeps him alive long enough for a doctor to get to him.

Live-Action TV

• In The Basil Brush Show, Basil and Stephen are exploring a tomb and Stephen ends up with loads of poisoned darts in his rear. Basil says that he would offer to suck the poison out, "but this is a family show".
• In an episode of The Benny Hill Show, a TV host gets an aborigine blowgun and a didgeridoo mixed up, puffing a dart into a comely lass' bottom. He tells her it's poisonous. She freaks out and says someone will have to suck out the poison. Suddenly every man in the studio, including the host, volunteers his services.
• The Brittas Empire: Colin gets bitten by a deadly tropical spider in 'That Creeping Feeling' and , due to the antidote being a considerable distance away, the only way to keep him alive long enough is to do this. Unfortunately, Colin had the misfortune of being bit in the trousers. Brittas volunteers to do so and wins back the respect of the staff, who had been refusing to speak to him at the time.
• Discussed in the Frasier episode "The Impossible Dream".
• It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. Sergeant Major Williams gets into a conflict with a nationalistic Indian journalist who threatens to write a nasty story about him, but changes his mind when the SM saves his life after he's bitten by a scorpion.
  SM: It was not worth the humiliation!
  Colonel: I wouldn't call it humiliating — brave, maybe. I wouldn't like to suck scorpion out of someone's foot.
  SM: He didn't step on that scorpion, sir. He sat on it!
• Happens in the Lexx episode "Twilight," with zombie venom being sucked out by a dead guy.
• Princess Silver: Rong Le sucks out the poison after Wu You gets hit by a poisoned arrow.
• In Robin Hood the midwife Matilda sucks out the bee-sting and its poison of a man who is allergic to them.
• Variation in the second season of True Blood, after getting silver lodged in his body, Eric tells Sookie she needs to suck it out of him. However, this turns out to be a ploy to get her to drink his blood.
• The Veil: In "Food on the Table", Captain Elwood sucks out the venom after his wife is bitten on the arm by a snake that was hiding in his luggage.

Manhua

• An Old Master Q strip uses this for a gag. Old Master Q is bitten on the shin by a viper, and Mr. Chiu rushes to help suck out the poison. While Q is thanking him, the viper returns and bites him again, this time on the butt. Cue Old Master Q begging for Chiu to help him again, and Chiu sheepishly fleeing the scene while holding his nose.

Music

• As seen in the page quote, this trope is referenced (for the sake of innuendo) in the Benny Hill song "Rachel".
• In the American folk song "Springfield Mountain," a young man out mowing a field is bitten by a venomous snake. In "serious" versions, he dies because no one comes to his aid. In others, his sweetheart tries to draw the poison but instead is killed herself when the venom enters a "rotten tooth."

Radio

• In The Space Gypsy Adventures episode 'The Christmas New Arrival', Damien mentions being taught this at school. When Gemma asks the inevitable question of what happens if a snake bites him on the backside, Damien responds by making reference to the Benny Hill example above.

Video Games

• In Dark Cloud, when Ungaga is stung by a scorpion, Mikara sucks the venom out after Nagita refuses to do it.
• Shows up in the Neverwinter Nights mod Sanctum of the Archmage after Robin is stung by a massive evil mutant spider-thing, but it doesn't cure the poison (merely giving you a few extra hours to come up with the antidote) and has a chance of poisoning your main character too.
• The Oregon Trail II, an Edutainment game, is guilty of demonstrating this. Doesn't always work. Justified considering when it is.^note Also shows up in 4th and 5th edition
  • The Oregon Trail (2021): If a party member gets bitten by a snake, sucking out the venom is once again an option that works. However, the person sucking out the venom will now themselves suffer a fever.
• Happens in one of the Prince Of Tennis dating games, more specifically Umibe no Secret. When Keigo Atobe is bitten by a snake in the hand, you can make the Plucky Girl Player Character (default name: Ayaka Tsujimoto) try sucking the poison out of his injury, much to Atobe's surprise. While it mostly works and Atobe is fine after some bed rest, he actually does call Ayaka out for being so reckless and putting herself at risk of ending poisoned herself.
• One of the random encounters in Red Dead Redemption II is a victim of a snake bite. You can either do this or offer some medicine if you have any.
  • Later in the game, during the epilogue, John Marston has to do this after his son Jack's dog is bitten by a snake.
• Subverted with an Audio Journal from Resistance 3. A girl bitten by a Leaper tried this with a virus after a friend told her "if you suck out the venom fast enough you won't get infected". It didn't work, as her cat discovered.
• In the game Rogue Galaxy, the hero, Jaster, comes across a young girl while searching for a legendary town in a desert. The girl has been bitten by a snake, and you have the option of sucking the poison out. It later turns out it was a test to see if he was worthy of entering the town, so it's entirely possible that there was no venom and that sucking the wound wouldn't have worked, but the attempt to help was enough to pass the test.
• In the old PC adventure/survival game Wilderness, this was the suggested method of treating a snakebite.

Visual Novels

• Happens to Takeru in Muv-Luv Unlimited during his squad's practical trial. Despite this, it still affects him pretty significantly. The snake wasn't venomous and Takeru just had a cold.
• Happens on Jin and Muneshige's paths in Yo-Jin-Bo when Sayori complains of a pain in her leg and Jin realizes she's been bitten by a snake. It's played purely for fanservice.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: In "Take a Hike", Toothy gets bitten in the arm by a snake; Lumpy tries to help him by sucking out the venom and spitting it out...right into Cuddles's eyes. Subverted, since Toothy's arm ends up falling off anyway.

Webcomics

• Jenn attempts to invoke this in Casey and Andy, in an attempt to get Quantum Cop to kiss her. He injects her lip with antivenom.
• CharCole: When "Charlie" is poisoned by a nidoran stinger, Brian instructs his Bulbasaur Bud to extract the poison with a leech seed, as Bud can't get poisoned himself.
• Much to his annoyance, nobody rushes to suck the poison out of Igor when he thinks he has been bitten by a snake in Dork Tower. At the end of their long list of reasons Matt and Ken give as to why they are not doing this is that Igor hasn't been bitten by a snake, but actually tripped over his own shoelaces.
• Oglaf had a comic where a guy got bitten on the dick and it swelled. So big that the healer insisted on getting down on it instead of sucking it. At least he died happy.
• 70-Seas uses leeches to this effect. In one case, an entire bathtub thereof.
• In Sluggy Freelance, Torg does a variation of this by sucking out the alcoholic drink that got into Gwynn's eye. Umm... yeah.

Web Original

• Played for laughs in an episode of Jake and Amir, in which the doctor (played by Ben Schwartz) tries to cure Amir's food poisoning by impaling him with a straw and sucking all the "bad stuff" out.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: Subverted. Gumball tries to suck the poison out of a wasp sting in his finger, but all he manages to do is make his mouth swell up instead.
• Archer: Both discussed and defied in "Once Bitten" when Archer is bitten by a snake in the dick. He tries to pressure Cyril and Ray to suck out the poison, but Cyril points out the ineffectiveness and the consequences those actions entail.
• As Told by Ginger: Ginger's mom, a nurse, warns her daughter that this trope only works in movies when dropping her off at summer camp.
• Corner Gas Animated: In "Dream Waiver", Hank sets up a bunch of fake emergencies to convince Karen and Davis that they need to retake their first aid training. In one scenario, Hank pretends that he's been bitten by a venomous snake sent to him in the mail by his "international enemies," and he fails Karen and Davis for thinking that sucking out the poison is the correct response.
• Dragons: Riders of Berk: In "Dragon Flower", the Grumpy Old Man Mildew gets bitten on the butt by a dragon whose venom they were out to collect anyways. They used a bellows to get it out though.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed may sometimes try this, as well as "CPR" which involves inflating and deflating the person involved. This is always played for laughs.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Parodied in an episode where Grim is stabbed repeatedly through the face by a giant monster scorpion, and then begs Dracula to suck out the poison (Dracula refuses since actual vampires scrape the skin and then lap up blood). Never mind that Grim is a skeleton who has no circulatory system for venom to move through or metabolism for it to affect. And then later we see that Dracula did remove the venom... by scraping and licking (never mind that Grim has no blood)... on Grim's arm.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: Skipper mentioned that Rico once had to suck cobra venom out of his ass.
  Skipper: Rico's never disobeyed an order before! (thoughtfully) Not even the time I forced him to suck the cobra venom out of my left buttock...
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "Mugato, Gumato": After Shaxs is stabbed by a mugato's venomous horn, Mariner has to open the wound with a knife and suck out the poison. Boimler and Rutherford, who came in at the very end of this sequence, think that she's become a cannibal and flee in panic.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Discussed by Mikey and Raph in "The Deadly Venom" when they find Casey succumbing to the effects of Karai's venom, which leads to this:
  Mikey: You're gonna have to suck the poison out, brah!
  Raph: I'm not sucking the poison out! I'm driving! You suck it!
• Total Drama:
  • Total Drama World Tour: "The Am-AH-Zon Race": After wasting his epipen, Cody gets bitten in his thumb by a red ant. To save him, Sierra sucks the allergen out and is successful enough that all Cody gets to suffer from is a swollen hand.
  • Total Drama: Pahkitew Island: "This Is the Pits!": After being bitten in his butt by a mechanical crocodile, Max demands that Scarlett sucks the poison out. Scarlett refuses and tries to tune his multiple levels of idiocy out, but at least informs him that crocodiles aren't venomous.

Real Life

• Robert Baden-Powell (of Boy Scouting fame) is often credited for promoting this technique for snakebite. He first heard of it observing Hindu Fakirs and snake charmers in India, who have used the "suck the poison out" method since time immemorial. Snake charmers today often use an even easier trick - they de-fang the cobras with a pair of pliers.
• According to the official biography of Genghis Khan, he was saved by his companion Jelme after being hit with a poisoned arrow. The description by people who knew such things was definitely neither clean nor pretty: the first thing weakened and dazed Temujin saw the next morning was ground around him all splattered with his blood which Jelme had to spit out in process of cleaning his wound.
• Likewise, a legend says that Eleanor of Castile saved the life of her husband, King Edward I of England, by sucking a wound on his arm made by a poisoned dagger wielded by assassin Edward had just killed after the assassin snuck into his bedchamber and tried to kill him in his sleep. Even if she did do this, it is unlikely this had any affect on his survival, as he was severely weakened for months after the attack. Still, he and Eleanor were known to have a Perfectly Arranged Marriage, so it is quite plausible that she tried.
• When J. R. R. Tolkien was a toddler in South Africa, he was bitten by a tarantula. He ran through the long grass to his nanny, who sucked the poison out.
• Many camping and hunting stores sell "Venom Extractors" or "Snake Bite Kits" next to the first aid kits. While these devices are undoubtedly safer for both the rescuer and victim, they don't actually extract any meaningful amount of venom from snake bite wounds. You're much better off following the advice of actual medical professionals.

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