Daffy: This stuff's delicious!
Waitress: Here's some more pork ribs!
Porky: You know, I find that highly offensive.
Waitress: Here's some more pork ribs!
Porky: You know, I find that highly offensive.
In a world with Anthropomorphic Food, or one where predator and prey animals co-exist, this trope is when a character eats a food item that is derived from another character, usually in front of them. For example, cooking and eating bacon in front of a pig.
The person eating the meat isn't normally an eldritch monstrosity or a flesh-hungry Serial Killer. He's just a regular guy who wants to sit back and drink a bottle of Coke. Unfortunately, their best friend and roommate is a literal bottle of Coke. This may lead to some kind of conflict, as the "meat" would not appreciate the eater eating their kind in front of them. Alternatively, the eater themselves may realize that they are being Innocently Insensitive, and feel uncomfortable resuming their meal.
This is usually Black Comedy, but can be Played for Horror in the case of man-eating villains.
Compare Carnivore Confusion and Sapient Eat Sapient, as a setting where predator and prey animals co-exist may cause this situation to arise. May overlap with I Am a Humanitarian when the meat in question is "long pig". Examples of this may also overlap with Black Comedy Predation when Played for Laughs. Also compare Let's Meet the Meat, which often involves the meat advertising themselves or others from their species as food. Less comedic cases can overlap with Forced to Watch.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A commercial
for Chocolate Peanut Butter Pops involves a kid eating the aforementioned cereal in front of a giant peanut and chocolate bunny, with the peanut telling the oblivious kid not to eat it in front of them.
- Cuphead: An ad for the Mac port features the brothers eating apples in front of a horrified NPC who has an apple for a head ("coincidentally" also named Mac).
- In the Google Hangouts commercial "A Video Call with Aardman Friends", Wallace & Gromit celebrate Christmas with several characters from Aardman Animations' other works, who attend via video call. The first to connect is Ginger, a talking chicken who spent her film trying to rescue her flock from a farm. Shortly after she joins, Gromit walks into the live feed holding a roasted chicken plate for Christmas dinner, at which point he sees Ginger is present, quickly glances between her and the roast as he realizes the latter is the last thing Ginger should be seeing, then hides the meal behind his back and discreetly tries to shuffle away off-camera before Ginger can notice.
- A commercial for Lay's Potato Chips has Mr. Potato Head come home from work to find his wife eating the titular potato chip. He then exclaims "But you're a potato!" He soon joins his wife in eating them, telling her "Our little secret, okay?"
- M&M's:
- Defied in one commercial; Orange goes to a diner, where he rants about how he's tired of being tracked down like a wild animal just because he's a Crispy M&M. He then says that nobody knows what it's like to be hunted down for food, getting the attention of a turkey sitting next to him. Upon seeing said turkey, Orange tells the chef to hold the turkey burger he ordered.
- Played straight in a commercial where Diedrich Bader eats Crispy M&M's in front of Orange, who then tells him to imagine if it was the other way around. Cue an Imagine Spot of a giant Orange eating mini Bader's, which the real Bader finds amusing before continuing to eat M&M's in front of Orange.
- Defied in one commercial
Anime & Manga
- Fairy Tail: When Natsu is eating at the Celestial Spirit World party, Aries and Cancer tell him what the food is. It just so happens that it's lamb (Aries in the zodiac) and crab (Cancer). Natsu spits it out and shouts that he's sorry (even though the zodiac spirits apparently served it intentionally). At the end, Gray says that he loved the food. He is then berated by Natsu for actually eating it.
- Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: "A Blockbuster Battle": Defied when King Dedede orders snails at Chef Kawasaki's restaurant. His snail lackey Escargoon nervously discourages him from doing so.
- Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure: Downplayed. The Tropical Club makes boxed lunches where the food is decoratively organized to look like Kururun. Most of the girls feel uncomfortable eating it with the real Kururun watching, although Manatsu happily eats the part meant to represent Kururun's eyes.
Comic Books
- Asterix: An unintentional inversion in Asterix and the Great Crossing, where Obelix has an I Ate WHAT?! moment on learning he's been eating something that translates to "dog heated up", which Dogmatix has no problem eating.
- Blood and Thunder: Colonel Castillian is mistaken for a particularly tall gretchin by the orks (and kept as a pet and good luck charm by one), who eat human meat in front of him (and even try to get him to try some).
- Joker: When two-bit criminal Johnny Frost tries to throw his weight around Killer Croc, Croc responds by hanging Johnny on a meat hook while he finishes eating, letting Johnny see the human skulls in the cooking pot.
- Sin City: Marv wakes up in the cannibal Kevin's basement, with his parole officer Lucille huddled in a corner. She shares a harrowing account of being abducted by Kevin, who cut her hand off and forced her to watch while he ate it.
- Tytus, Romek i A'tomek: In Volume XXXI, Tytus' neighbor suggests to him that looking at a fish tank will calm him. Unfortunately he gets bored and starts eating canned fish, which scares the fish and makes it die from fear.
A'Tomek: Where is your mind? You've eaten fish in front of a fish?
Romek: She got a heart attack from the sight of her family in cans.
Film — Animated
- Moana: In one scene, Moana eats from a bowl of pork in front of her pet piglet, Pua. When he looks very sad, she awkwardly makes an excuse to leave.
- Rio: Nigel the cockatoo regularly eats chicken... despite being a bird. One of the Mooks calls him out on this, although the next scene implies that he does it partly to intimidate the many birds his smuggling master has stolen to sell. It's downplayed, though, in that the birds he eats it in front of aren't chickens themselves.
Mook: [disgusted] Ugh. Cannibal.
- The Secret of NIMH: In a close variant, desperate to save her ill son, Mrs. Brisby rides on Jeremy the crow to consult the Great Owl. "Owls eat mice," Brisby points out, to which Jeremy replies, "Only after dark." Arriving atop the Owl's tree, Brisby tremulously ventures inside. She soon discovers bones, lots of bones, lots and lots of little mouse bones. The sight almost makes her chicken out and flee, but not quite. Mercifully, Jeremy was correct that Brisby wouldn't be eaten. Rather, the Owl gives her the wise advice to plead her cause to the rats in the rosebush.
Film — Live-Action
- The Last Jedi: A throwaway gag at the Jedi temple ruins on Atch-to has Chewbacca cooking a couple of porgs on a spit for dinner, leading to a mournful reaction from other porgs looking on. Chewie just gives them an annoyed roar in reply.
- Never Cry Wolf: Tyler notices that the wolves he's been observing are living off of mice, and experiments to see if a human can do so as well. While he's eating a bunch of mice that he's caught, he notices several other mice looking at him, so he starts laughing and eating loudly; the mice all run away from him.
Literature
- Beware of Chicken: Jin eats the first egg from his new flock of chickens as part of a fried rice — with the rooster sitting on his shoulder. This later becomes a more important issue when the rooster gathers enough qi to awaken as a spirit beast, with human-level intelligence. However, although Bi De is initially taken aback by Jin eating roast chicken or chicken soup, upon reflection the rooster decides that one species eating another is natural, so it's okay to eat the ones who haven't awakened.
"Maybe it was a little morbid, to eat eggs right near your pet chicken, but he didn't seem to mind."
Live-Action TV
- Game of Thrones: "Mhysa": Parodied. Theon Greyjoy, having been freshly castrated by Ramsay Bolton, wakes up one morning to Ramsay making his life hell as usual. This day in particular, he's enjoying a hearty meal complete with a rather phallic piece of meat, which Theon is led to believe is actually his freshly-removed genitals. Ramsay plays it up for all it's worth, but then casually reveals it's just a pork sausage.
- Hannibal: Exaggerated and Played for Horror: not only does Hannibal Lecter eat Abel Gideon's severed leg in front of him, he feeds him some of it.
- The Mr. Potato Head Show: Whenever Mr. Potato Head has to meet with his "fabulous TV bosses", the two of them are always eating French fries, which seems to be part of the reason why Potato Head is so willing to give in to their ridiculous demands.
Video Games
- Ancient Domains of Mystery: Monsters become enraged if you eat a corpse of one of their own species in front of them.
- Andy's Apple Farm: When Andy, an apple man, meets up with his friends at the start of the game, they casually tell him that they're eating apples. He retains his big smile, but says nothing.
- Dominions: Justified. Middle Age C'tis has the Sobek, an ancient race of large, crocodile-like lizardmen that recently awoke from their slumber. While the herbivorous majority of C'tis fears them due to their strength and their taste for smaller lizards and eggs, the elite Sobek Sacred Guard are given the duty of executing criminals and devouring their flesh in a ritual to remind onlookers of their final judgement in the afterlife.
- Yo-kai Watch Blasters: Demuncher is a Yo-kai who eats Oni. Your Mission Control, Sgt. Burly, is also an Oni, and yells at Demuncher in horror to keep his hands off him if the giant Yo-kai eats an Oni to heal during the mission.
Web Animation
- In Animator vs. Animation, there are two shorts where this trope comes into play.
- Blue is cooking a hamburger, but a Minecraft cow walks up to him. Blue feels uncomfortable eating beef in front of the cow, so he sets it down. Then the cow proceeds to eat the hamburger.
- Blue is preparing bacon rashers, while Red looks at him disapprovingly as he embraces his pet pig. At one point, he even ties Green over an open fire, roasting him till Blue decides not to eat the bacon.
- Battle for Dream Island:
- One of the characters is a sentient cake. During one of the "Cake at Stake" sessions, he is disturbed by the fact that cake is being served up to the safe contestants.
- Another contestant is a sentient Gelatin, and another episode sees Bubble serve him a plate of yellow Jell-O. Gelatin obliviously eats it, but suddenly becomes wary - not because of the cannibalism (as Bubble suspects), but because he's suspicious that Bubble is trying to get something from him.
- Sonic Shorts: In "A Sonic X Dinner", Chris serves Sonic and his friends dinner at his mansion, saying that he and his family looked up each of their species' dietary recommendations. Tails, an anthropomorphic fox, is served a dead rabbit, much to the horror of Cream, an anthropomorphic rabbit who is sitting right next to him.
- SuperThings:
- The episode "The Secret Machine" has the supposed secret item just being the instructions for a pizza maker, which the heroes and defeated villains eat. Cheese Champ, a living pizza slice, is offered some, but he uncomfortably declines.
- The episode "The Race Of The Century" has villains Frenetic Fries and Dogfurt, a carton of fries and a hot dog, respectively, eating the opposite non-sentient versions of foods right next to each other, though neither seems to react to the case at hand.
Webcomics
- RPG World: Fan Revival: In one filler strip, we see Tuna, a fish-person, sitting down to breakfast. Reika is also sitting down to a meal of fish sticks, to Tuna's horror.
- Toonhole: In a plant-based variation, "Happy Meal" depicts a kid eating French fries in front of a Mr. Potato Head, who gives him a dark look.
Web Video
- The Nostalgia Critic: Parodied in his review of Rock-A-Doodle, when the Critic is confused that the city is populated with Funny Animals and wonders how Edmond's family would interact with them when they travel from their farm to buy supplies.
Critic: Well, thank you, Mr. Pig. This fryin' pan will really help us out when we're cookin' up some bac-ooooooooon... that note, how about them Bears? [Beat] The team, not the people that own the hardware store down the street.
- Limited Life SMP: On Day 1, Grian decides to eat chicken while herding a flock of chickens into a secluded pen, then turns to them and tells them that they saw nothing.
Western Animation
- 6teen: "Fish and Make Up": Jude's new pet fish, Fish, screams in horror when he sees Wyatt eating sushi. Jude covers Fish's eyes and scolds Wyatt for his insensitivity.
Jude: Dude, what do you think you're doing? Sushi?
Wyatt: Could you be any more insensitive? Uh, sorry.
Jude: Not to me, man, to Fish. - The Amazing World of Gumball:
- "The Game": One of the "daars" that Richard has to complete in the eponymous game of "Dodj or Daar" is to date a sheep. On said date at a restaurant, Richard tries to order lamb, causing the sheep he's dating to bleat in offense. He then attempts to order chicken, only for it to be revealed his waiter's a rooster. At this point, Richard gives up and asks for the check.
- "The Potato": Darwin chows down on various potato-based foods, including going into extreme detail about the creation of a product of potato chips in from of Idaho—one of Darwin's classmates who is a living potato. Gumball thinks that Idaho is upset over the idea of Darwin eating potatoes and tries to get Darwin to stop cold turkey. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that Idaho really doesn't care, because even he realizes that potatoes made for consumption are not the same as his kind. He was actually mad at Gumball always calling him "brotato".
- BoJack Horseman: In a World of Funny Animals who live alongside human beings, a cow waitress is not impressed when a human customer orders steak.
- Classic Disney Shorts: At the beginning of Chef Donald, Donald Duck is pasting recipes into a cookbook and spots one for roast duck, which he angrily tears out.
- The Looney Tunes Show: "Sunday Night Slice": When the usual Girardi's Pizza restaurant is closed, Bugs, Daffy, and Porky have to make a last-minute change to The Pig Pit. Daffy (and Bugs, but less cheerfully) is seen eating a bunch of pork ribs and a pulled pork sandwich, completely disgusting Porky. Daffy is quick to point out that Porky has no problem with eating pepperoni pizza, though it turns out Porky thought it was made of peppers and is horrified when he finds out the truth near the end of the episode. Still, he has a hard time ordering a plain cheese pizza afterwards.
- The Loud House:
- "The Loudest Thanksgiving": Sergio the talking parrot sees Lynn Sr. serving up a "turgoosen" (a pigeon stuffed inside a goose, stuffed inside a turkey) for Thanksgiving dinner as a "triple homicide" (even though birds aren't a single species).
- "A Grave Mistake": Lincoln is berated for eating chicken at the funeral of a rooster.
- The Patrick Star Show: "Sitcom Stars": Cecil's bosses, one being a sentient banana and the other being a gorilla, come over for dinner. When Mr. Nana is introduced to the family, Patrick is eating a banana, and GrandPat slaps it out of his hand. Later, the food items meant for each boss are mixed up, meaning Mr. Nana is served the banana dish, to his horror.
- South Park: "Fun With Veal": The boys (with the exception of Stan) eat fried chicken and beef jerky in front of the almost two dozen calves that they're saving from slaughter. Kyle expresses disgust over Cartman offering beef jerky to one of the calves, calling it Sick and Wrong.