Ludicrously Unwashed Object - TV Tropes

Lana Loud: Hey, it's my booger from my third birthday!

• From Up on Poppy Hill has the Quartier Latin, a building that had been occupied by high school boys for their school clubs for at least two generations, and had never been cleaned by any of them. It wasn't until the building was threatened with getting torn down that the current generation decided to start cleaning it up, which required extensive help from the girls of the high school.

• Dilbert: In one strip, Wally "logically" concludes that it's pointless to wash bath towels, because "When I emerge from the shower, I'm the cleanest object in the universe. My towels get cleaner every time they touch me." But at the end, he accidentally gives away the results of following his own advice, when he wonders, "Speaking of which, are towels supposed to bend?"

• A deleted scene for Heredity includes Amy opening up the refrigerator from her childhood home, untouched for something like ten years. Even though she's immune to disease, she still wears a hazmat suit, if only to save her clothing from the filthy black water and the chunks floating in it. As soon as she touches one of the green hairs poking out and senses the biology of what's inside, however, she's entranced.

  This... It was a whole ecosystem. A true circle of life. Organisms had actually evolved to better suit the environment of this refrigerator.

  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever touched.

• In Vergil's Motivational Life, a Yonkoma Devil May Cry comic series by Gzei, one comic, EX-Color, shows Dante wearing his old outfit from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening. Vergil reveals that the new black coat he wears in Devil May Cry 5 is actually the same bright blue one he wore all the way back in 3 by shaking off the dirt that has accumulated on it. Nero calls it disgusting.

• Finding Nemo: Invoked when the fish in the aquarium, in an attempt to escape, break the tank's filter so that the dentist will have to clean the tank. This results in the tank being riddled with algae.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: When Snow White is shocked at how untidy the dwarfs' house is, one of the things she notices is an extremely dusty broom, which suggests they've never swept the floor.

• Adrian Mole: In Secret Diary, Adrian and Pandora carry out a deep clean of the elderly Bert Baxter's house: they lift the carpets, and discover that he has been walking on all kinds of debris, including decomposed mice for years. They beat the carpets all afternoon, and get excited when a pattern emerges a few hours later; only to find that it is a squashed fairy cake. The following day, a carpet cleaning product finally reveals the original colours of the carpets.
• The Devious Book for Cats Features a Crazy Cat Lady whose 99 cats’ litter box smells horrible because they only have one to share between one another.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • When Manny was a baby, his mother Susan knit him a blanket for his first birthday, which he carried around everywhere. He wouldn't even let her take it away from him so he could wash it. It started falling apart, and by the time Manny was two, it had been reduced to a couple of pieces of dirty yarn held together by raisins and boogers. That was when he started calling it "Tingy."
  • In one version of the Do-It Yourself Book, Creighton dresses as a dinosaur, and several kids request a song. He sings, "You should smell this costume's feets, I ain't washed it in six weeks!” They are appropriately squicked out by this.
• In Don't Put Your Pants on Your Head, Fred, Fred's mother tells him not to wear a certain pair of boxers again as "they're crawling around on their own".
• Gangsta Granny: At one point, Ben mentions that the freezer at Raj's news store probably hasn't been defrosted in years, and so it's caked with ice.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: When the trio are staying in the aptly named Grimmauld Place, the house is extremely filthy because house-elf Kreacher has not cleaned there for years. The trio joins in with cleaning it up; Ron mutters that it's like being a house-elf, and Hermione suggests that they have a sponsored scrub of the Gryffindor common room.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Harry sees Aberforth Dumbledore wiping down one of the glasses in his inn — but the cloth he's using is so dirty that Harry notices it seems to be making the glass worse.
• In the The Legend of Drizzt Thibbledorf Pwent is a Dwarven Battlerager who not only Hates Baths (and manages to go several decades between them) but also refuses to clean his very pointy armor. This leads to his armor smelling especially repellent as his fighting style^note  leads to him being covered in blood and viscera quite frequently.
• Lucy's Lovey concerns a girl named Lucy whose doll is stinky and dirty due to excessive playing, but she prefers it that way.
• The Midnight Gang: Dilly the cleaning lady sometimes mops the floor, but in addition to leaving ash everywhere from smoking, her mop is so dirty that it leaves the floor even dirtier than it already was.
• Owen: Owen has owned a yellow security blanket ever since he was a baby, and calls it Fuzzy. He carries Fuzzy everywhere and "feeds" it a bit of whatever he eats at every meal, which leads to the item becoming very dirty. His parents want him to give up Fuzzy, but he doesn't want to.

  "Fuzzy's dirty," said Owen's mother.

  "Fuzzy's torn and ratty," said Owen's father.

  "No," said Owen. "Fuzzy is perfect."

  And Fuzzy was.

• Smelly Feat, from the "Unbearable!" collection by Paul Jennings, involves a boy who deliberately wears the same socks continuously for three months, in order to weaponise his foot odour and prevent his nemesis from hurting a nesting turtle. Unfortunately, he has to wade through some of the ocean to reach the nesting site, which washes away most of the effect — until he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his socks, promptly knocking the bully out with their stench.
• In The Ten PM Question, George tells his son Frankie that when he was a child, the local pool was never cleaned so the water was green and the bottom was never visible. He claims they only started cleaning the pool when a body was found on the bottom. This story is probably untrue, but it makes Frankie nervous.

• Black Books: It's eventually revealed that Bernard actually wears a white suit. He's just such an apathetic pig pen that he's never had it cleaned, and by the time of the series, it's so grimy that it looks black.
• In “The Fugitive” episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Amy attempts to burn a towel Jake has been using for years. She can’t get it to light, at which point Jake crows that it can’t be burned because it never fully dries.
• Married... with Children: In one episode the Bundys go to the car wash, and Al spends most of the episode looking for his beloved Dodge which went missing after coming out. At the very end, the manager of the car wash tells Al they finally found it, and it turns out that it was so dirty, that it was brown, from all dirt caked on, when it went in but came out as a squeaky clean red car.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The invention exchange in King Dinosaur had Joel offer up a pair of his sweat socks that hadn't been washed in so long, they could stand up straight, and the odor knocked out Tom and Crow.
• Red Dwarf: Dave Lister is a total slob who hardly ever washes his clothes. He extends the wear time of his underwear by turning them inside-out (and doesn't believe they're his after Kryten washes them by noting that they can bend), and his best shirt has two curry stains on it. His socks are so vile that they register on scanners as a completely new life form, and his idea of straightening them up before wearing them is to hit them several times with a toffee hammer.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In one episode, Dax is repairing the drink replicator at Quark's bar. She notes that it needs to be cleaned more often as it's covered in goo.
• The Young Ones: In "Bambi", Vyvyan states that he's never washed any of his clothes and that the stubborn understains are the only things keeping his underwear together.

• Warhammer: Invoked by corruption from the Chaos god Nurgle. Inorganic objects such as weapons, armor, and vehicles will significantly corrode and accumulate tons of dirt, grime, and filth, far faster than they normally would if simply left to the elements. Also, the only way to clean them is through psychic purification, so usually anything with such corruption is destroyed to keep the taint from spreading.

• According to an urban legend, ancient old masters of martial arts would give a white belt to students and instructed students to never wash the belt. Through years of training, the belt would be covered with sweat, dirt, and blood, and eventually turn black through years of training. In reality, the belt color system was a modern introduction.

• In general, cleaning simulators like PowerWash Simulator feature these as objects and locations, often to provide a clear visual distinction between dirty and clean areas. This trope works to these games' benefits, as it makes cleaning them all the more satisfying.
• ANNO: Mutationem: At Noctis City, an underground bunker room belonging to Silly-Swine has a fridge noted to have a foul smell, including this tidbit when examined.

  There is a strange odor coming from the fridge, best described as radio activity and... baked beans?

• Disco Elysium: Filthy Jacket, as the name suggests, is so dirty and covered in bird poop, that only after washing it you can recognize that it's a FALN jacket.
• House Flipper: The houses you buy are almost invariably so filthy they would pose a health risk. To quote a certain brit, it looks like all their previous owners were "Meth-dealing cockroach farmers".
• Ōkami: Issun notes that a lot of statues in Shinsu Field are dirty and accumulated years of dust. He takes it as a sign that they have been watching over the world for a long time.
• In Spider-Man (PS4), you can find and collect Peter's old stashed-out backpacks with various items inside of them. One of them just happens to have a gym shirt that Peter meant to put in the washer. Six years ago. Peter is even heard gagging when he takes it out.
• Twisted-Wonderland: The player character and Grim, upon finding themselves in a boarding school they can't be admitted into, is given the permission to live in the Ramshackle Dorm, an abandoned, uninhabited building that's very run-down and dirty when they first arrive.

• Arthur: In one episode, it's revealed that D.W.'s blanket hasn't been washed in such a long time that it's now brown and black instead of white and red.
• Back at the Barnyard: In "Home Sweet Hole", Pip moves into Pig's stall after Otis accidentally destroys his mouse hole and Pip keeps Otis up all night with his wild parties, since Pig can sleep through anything. To thank Pig for being such a wonderful host, Pip decides to clean his stall. When Pig sees how clean his stall is, he is horrified, as it took him years to get it dirty. He is especially horrified when he finds out that his favorite crusty blanket is now soft and clean, and he kicks Pip out.
• The Loud House:
  • In "Bye-Bye, Birthday", Lucy complains that her birthday parties always suck. One Flashback reveals that every time a Loud sibling has a birthday, they have to wear a sash that hasn't been washed ever and thus looks absolutely filthy.
  • In "Insta-Gran", Myrtle cleans the lucky jersey of one of her boyfriend Albert's granddaughters, Lynn. She gets angry since the jersey was kept deliberately unwashed for months as a good luck charm.
• The Simpsons: In "See Homer Run", Homer adopts the persona of the Safety Salamander and wears the mascot suit practically nonstop. Upon smelling the suit and seeing Homer vomiting into it, Marge decides to give it a wash. This causes the suit to shrink and rip when Homer puts it on, costing him his mayoral campaign since everyone preferred the Salamander and not the man inside.

  Marge: Have you cleaned that suit once since you got it?

  Homer: No, but I swam in it.

• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Squidward in Clarinetland", Squidward reminds Mr. Krabs that it's the law for him to give his employees a place to put their belongings at work, so he has him and SpongeBob use his old locker from his Navy days. Said locker has a thick coat of rust and is filled with spiders and a skeleton, but SpongeBob soon gives it a long-overdue cleaning.

  SpongeBob: Who's that, Mr. Krabs?

• Thomas & Friends: S.C. Ruffey from "Toad Stands By" is a privately owned truck who looks scruffier than all the other trucks in the yard. When he tries to play a trick on Oliver by getting the other trucks in his train to hold back, his rotten wood and rusty framework can't take the strain of Oliver's pulling and he is ripped to pieces:

  The Fat Controller: As I thought. Rotten wood, rusty frames. Maybe if we put you back together, you'll earn yourself a better name.

• In Z-O-M-B-I-E-S: The Re-Animated Series, Willa refuses to wash, or even de-odorize her boots, as they are a reminder of every hunt and fight that she's won. Eventually, Bucky gets tired of the stench, steals them, and destroys them. He does buy her a new pair of identical boots as compensation.