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Spit Out a Shoe - TV Tropes

  • ️Thu May 14 2015

Spit Out a Shoe (trope)

After something, either a humanoid being or a ravenous creature, eats someone, it tends to either spit or burp out something that belonged to that person, often a piece of clothing like shoes, a hat, or jewelry that the victim had on or something he or she was carrying on his or her person. This is often Played for Laughs or is used as a way to show that the victim is down for good. A common variant has the spat-out item instead be a bone from the victim, commonly the skull. If the eaten creature was a bird, feathers are often burped out instead. In less comedic examples the item will usually be more tattered or bloodstained, or consist of a larger chunk of bones rather than a single improbably cleaned piece.

A sibling trope to Losing a Shoe in the Struggle and Smoldering Shoes. May overlap with Dead Hat Shot in some cases. In some ways this can be used to show that whoever was eaten is gone for good. Apparently a giant woman eating a guy doesn't have as much "he's gone for good" punch unless she finishes it by spitting out his destinctive looking shoes.

Compare Burp of Finality, which is similar to this trope, but lacks the clothing or item aspect. That said, as mentioned above, the two overlap a lot because it's very common for the last remnant of the victim to be expelled with a belch. Though just like with the aforementioned other trope, non fatal examples do exist.

Sometimes happens because the person being eaten engaged in Helpless Kicking as they were being eaten, causing their shoe to fall off in the mouth of whomever ate them. Is not related to Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth as that involves the thing that did the eating being forced to regurgitate the character because they were harmful to them. Here, it means that they enjoyed their meal.

As this can be a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Examples:

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Advertising 

Anime & Manga 

  • Rebuild of Evangelion: After the Tenth Angel Zeruel eats Unit-00 (with Rei inside it), it chews for a moment before spitting out Unit-00's head. Some fans find this to be Narm given the serious tone of the scene, but others find it to underscore the horror of the moment.

Comic Books 

  • Starfire (2015): When the Chida monster devours a sunbather on the beach, he spits out her bones and her bikini after he's done.
  • Dungeon: The Early Years: Hyacinthe arrives in Necroville riding a giant snail and is promptly pestered by local beggars until the snail eats one of them. A lawman shows up and accuses him of killing the beggar. Hyacinthe denies it, and the snail helpfully barfs up the beggar's skull. Fortunately, it turns out the lawyer Hyacinthe was coming to see is one of the most important people in the city so the lawman quickly guides him there.

Comic Strips 

  • Garfield: One comic has Garfield coming across a sign that says "Beware of Dog", but "dog" is crossed out and "bird" is written in its place with a tiny bird standing in front of it. Garfield scoffs at the idea until the bird spits out a dog collar.

Fan Works 

Films — Animation 

Films — Live-Action 

  • Adele Hasn't Had Her Dinner Yet is about a Man-Eating Plant named Adele who uses to spit out indigestible parts of her meals after she has swallowed them, e.g. a dog's collar or the clothes of a mook who fell prey to her.
  • Creepshow 2: At the climax of the animated framing story, a group of man-eating Venus flytraps chow down on Billy's bully and his cohorts. One of the plants spits out the bully's black motorhuckle boot after eating him.
  • Def By Temptation: After a character is sucked into his TV, it spits out blood, some bones, and a few globs of human meat.
  • The Force Awakens: One of the Rathtars◊ that Han Solo is transporting spits out a boot shortly after Han tosses a mook in its path.
  • The Host (2006): When the monster first seen, the protagonist throws a soda can at it, which it eats. After attacking tons of people, it returns to its den and spews out a stomach full of bones, skulls, shoes, more than one could possibly expect its body to hold... ending with the can from the beginning.
  • King Kong Lives: Toward the end, Kong unceremoniously eats alive the General Failure that has been pursuing him for the whole movie. Then he picks out his teeth to remove the cowboy hat stuck between two.
  • Kong: Skull Island: A soldier gets killed by a Skullcrawler, and later, while the team searches for him, the same creature coughs up his skull and dogtag.
  • Little Shop of Horrors: The Director's Cut has a variation in which Audrey II spits out Seymour's glasses after eating him.
  • Men in Black II: The villainess Serleena has just assumed a human form and immediately gets mugged by a human. When he takes her behind the bushes he gets devoured by her and she comes out with a Balloon Belly. She pauses, looking over the magazine that inspired her to take this form, and decides that the gut is a Glamour Failure, before walking back behind the same bushes to vomit. She then returns carrying the mugger's boots, pants and jacket, which she is shown wearing throughout the rest of the movie.
  • Nope: This is actually what kills OJ and Emerald's father. The alien regurgitates inedible objects when it eats them accidentally, and he happens to be underneath the creature as it's doing so. This also occurs much later in the film when it starts throwing up all the garbage it's eaten from before, including Ricky's alien merchandise and the horse statue it had mistakenly swallowed earlier.
  • Pacific Rim: A baby kaiju swallows the resident Triads and Tongs boss and burps out one of his fabulous golden shoes. In The Stinger, he cuts his way back out, seemingly unharmed, and demands his shoe back.
  • Peter Pan (1924): The defeated Captain Hook falls into the water after being forced to Walk the Plank by Peter Pan. In the very next scene, the crocodile that has been hunting Hook emerges onto the shore and spits out Hook's boot, confirming Hook's demise.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest has this happen in reverse. The Kraken spits out Captain Sparrow's hat; he puts it back on and then the Kraken eats him.
  • Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell: A Graboid gobbles up Aussie early in the movie, and as it tunnels back under, spits out one of her arms and part of her gear, alongside letting out a big burp after it's done.

Live-Action TV 

  • Red Dwarf: "Pete, Part I": After eating Birdman, Pete spits out both of his shoes.
  • Tremors: In one episode, a graboid swallows a woman and then spits out her expensive-looking necklace.
  • The Troop: In Episode 5: Roxanne gets possessed by a monster and gobbles up an unfortunate cat, pulling its collar out of her teeth after swallowing it.

Music Videos 

Other 

  • In halftime performances where the mascot eats one of the cheerleaders the mascot will sometimes follow this up with spitting out one of her pom-poms or shoes. In one instance Mackerel Jordan devoured a woman and spat out one of her shoes, then the other, followed by her skirt before walking away.

Puppet Shows 

  • Dinosaurs: In "Getting to Know You", Charlene signs up for a foreign exchange student program when she fears her family doesn't know her, and a French bird named François Jean Marie Poupon is sent in her place. However, François is a huge Jerkass to the entire Sinclair family, and when Baby reaches his breaking point he eats François and burps up several of his feathers shortly afterward.
  • Fraggle Rock: "Boober and the Glob": After eating Doozers, the Glob tends to spit out their helmets.
  • The Secret Life of Toys: Discussed in "The Cat Toy that Roared"; When Ditz wonders what would happen if he went into the Lion's Den, Rugby tells him that the Lion would gobble him up and spit out his hat and shoes. Ditz asks Rugby what's wrong with his hat and shoes, to which Rugby tells him that hats and shoes give lions indigestion.

Tabletop Games 

  • Arduin: Creatures eaten by Star Spiders, arachnids about ten to twelve feet wide and long, are sucked into their mouths and destroyed by heat and radiation. Afterwards, the spider spits out the victim's charred spinal column, rib cage and skull.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: This is often a justification for monsters having treasure: when they kill previous adventuring parties, they spit out anything they can't digest.

Video Games 

  • Battle Chess:
    • The rook's finishing move on the opposing queen is to grab her by her butt, shove her into its mouth, swallow her, and spit out her tiara. Her tiara then gets stomped on.
    • Chinese Chess has the same thing happen to a knight who is taken by a rook, albeit with a dragon instead of a rock monster.
  • Brain Dead 13: After gobbling Lance up in the hedge maze, the large frog will belch up his hat for good measure.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
    • When the Man-Eating Plant mooks eat Crash, they will spit out his shoes.
    • Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped: In underwater levels, the shark mob will eat Crash and spit out his oxygen tank, while the eel mob will do the same and spit out his pink boxers. Similarly, the shark mobs in Coco's jetski stages will spit out her jetski if they eat her.
    • Crash Team Racing: The same Man-Eating Plants will spit out the karts' wheels after they eat one.
  • Eternal Champions (the Genesis/Megadrive version) contains a Stage Fatality where the opponent is devoured by a T. rex, who upon chewing up and swallowing the opponent will roar while simultaneously spitting out a signature item belonging to the devoured character.
  • Heart of Darkness: Quite a few of The Many Deaths of You involve the protagonist Andy being Swallowed Whole by the various Living Shadow monsters that inhabit the world. Often his distinctive red sneakers would get spit out afterwards (or, less commonly, his equipment). Not Played for Comedy, as the protagonist is an eleven-year-old boy and this game is loaded with many Family Unfriendly Deaths.
  • Man-Eating Plant (Android): The titular monster swallows intruders and passing wildlife and then spits out sacks of coins, gold and jewels after each meal, and some skulls and bones for good measure. Regurgitated treasure can be automatically added to your current tally and used for purchasing upgrades after completing each level.
  • Hotel Mario: When Larry Koopa catches Mario, he spits out Mario's hat.
  • Pac-Man: A non fatal example — when the title character eats the ghosts, he spits out their eyes. Which then go to the middle of the screen to regenerate.
  • Super Mario World: Yoshi spits out Koopa Troopa's shells after eating them. Subverted if either Yoshi or the Koopa Troopa is red; in that case, Yoshi spits out large fireballs instead.
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: There is a challenge where you have to protect a village of cavemen from being eaten by dinosaurs. If one of them catches a caveman, he eats him whole and spits out a single bone.
  • Total War: Warhammer: One of the Arachnarok Spider's kill animations has it eat an enemy and then spit out their weapons.

Web Comics 

  • Girl Genius: Carson von Mekkhan explains that he strives to bring prospective claimants to the Castle directly, as "that takes care of things neatly". Cue picture of the castle spitting out a skull.
  • Harpy Gee: After a guard gets Eaten Alive by a dragon, the beast spits out his now-flaming skull.
  • Kevin & Kell: A running gag involves baby Coney eating a mouse or other small animal and then belching up a single bone. In one strip where Kevin's mother-in-law is criticizing his homeschooling skills she belches up an elk hoof.
  • Schlock Mercenary: Sergeant Schlock is once scolded for eating an ambusher before he could be interrogated. He responds by spitting out a shoe.

    Schlock: Talk to the shoe. It's taking a while to digest.

Web Videos 

  • The Unexpectables: Tarusk the guard drake eats pretty much everything, and spits out things he can't digest. Usually Played for Laughs, as he'll spit up anything from feathers to clothing to sea urchins.

Western Animation 

  • Anytime Tales: When the Prime Minister hears about Jezebel, he sends her a special medal for being good. One day, Jezebel's so busy telling the other kids not to run that she walks right into the jaws of a crocodile that's escaped from the zoo. When the zookeeper berates the crocodile for eating the best girl in the world, the crocodile replies that it's tasted better and spits out the medal.
  • The Angry Beavers: Finger Lickin' Goofs: At the end, a scene shows a semi-realistic bear sitting near a boulder before it coughed up the toupee of Bill Licking, implying that he was eaten. What makes this scene more eerie is the laugh track at the end.
  • The Critic: In one episode, Jay ends up rescuing a puppy that he names Tiny. The dog ends up growing up to be huge. When Marty spots a ski mask and grappling hook in Tiny's food dish, he asks if the dog managed to eat a burglar. Jay just shrugs and says, "Best I can figure." Tiny then coughs up a flashlight.
  • Futurama: Team Pet Nibbler eats a duck billed turtle and spits out the shell and beak, as shown in a Flashback.
  • Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child: The Big Bad Wolf burps up grandma's glasses in a gas bubble after eating her.
  • Looney Tunes
    • "Puss'n Booty": A woman calls the pet store to order a new canary, while nearby her cat burps out a couple of feathers. At the end of the short, the canary burps out the cat's bow.
    • Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird. When Sylvester eats Tweety, he often burps up some of Tweety's feathers afterward.
  • Sonic Boom: "Buster": Tails gets eaten by an octopus, which then spits out his goggles. Then Tails reaches out of its mouth and tries to pull himself out.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: "FarmerBob": A hog worm eats SpongeBob and spits out his clothes. SpongeBob then reaches out from inside the hog worm and asks if someone could hand him his clothes.
  • Steven Universe: "Say Uncle": Amethyst eats Pizza Steve, spits out his sunglasses and puts them on.
  • Total Drama: Pahkitew Island: "Sky Fall": The mechanical crocodiles prioritize hunting a tasty mountain goat over hunting the contestants. Chris berates them for this, which one crocodile responds to by belching up the goat's bell collar.
  • Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production: "Ponce de Calzone": The mountain lion spits out Ponce de Calzone's helmet after it swallows him whole.