Dropped Ice Cream of Sadness - TV Tropes

Rocky road and toasted almond,
Butterscotch, vanilla dip,
Butter-brickle, apple ripple,
Coconut and mocha chip,
Brandy peach and lemon custard,
Each scoop lovely, smooth and round,
Tallest ice-cream cone in town,
Lying there (sniff) on the ground.

• The Dairy Farmers of Ontario have the slogan "If it's made with 100% Canadian milk, it's worth crying over." One of their advertisements shows a bus full of campers all eating ice cream before the bus hits a pothole, causing all of the ice cream to fly off the campers' cones and onto the ground, making all the campers cry as the bus enters the camp. Ironically, the camp itself is called "Camp Happy". In the director's cut, even the bus driver is tearing up.

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: In Chapter 47, a little girl trips and drops her ice cream cone, which lands right into a Belgian handkerchief that Mei had bought as a gift for Hahari. The girl breaks down in tears and tells Rentarou and Mei that they can kill her if they want. Mei doesn’t take up the request since the handkerchief hadn’t yet been claimed by Hahari.
• Chainsaw Man: Kobeni, a Butt-Monkey and Cute Clumsy Girl, tells the Violence Fiend a story of her childhood where her parents bought her ice cream for the first time, but she didn't get to eat it before tripping and dropping it on the ground.
• In the Turning Red spinoff 4★Town 4★Real, Aaron T. accidentally drops his ice cream on the ground and lets out a Big "NO!" followed by sobbing until his bodyguard buys him a new one.
• One Piece: Part of Smoker's first appearance involves him accidentally bumping into a little girl, knocking her ice cream off onto his pants. The girl starts to cry, and looks up to Smoker in fear... and then he apologizes and gives her money so she can buy more ice cream.
• Smile PreCure!: One aspect of Miyuki's bad luck in Episode 13 is that when she tries to eat her eagerly anticipated green tea ice cream, someone bumps her and she accidentally smashes her cone into her face.

• Invoked in Dog Man (Dav Pilkey). In Dog Man and Cat Kid, Petey buys Li'l Petey an ice cream cone. While the latter eats it, Petey pressures him into a Heel–Face Turn by reminding him that since he's a clone of an evil cat, he has to be evil, too. Li'l Petey drops his ice cream cone, both out of emotion and because Petey told him to drop it.

• The cover art of the fanfic Baby Pictures is an Embarrassing Old Photo of a 4-year-old Tokoyami angrily crying because he dropped his ice cream. At the bottom of the image is present-day Tokoyami, shouting, "Don't look! Ahhhhh! Nooooo!"

• Coraline: A picture in Coraline's living room shows a sad boy in blue whose ice cream has fallen off his cone. When Coraline first arrives in the Other World, she notices that the picture in this living room shows a happy boy in blue holding a cone that has the ice cream on it.
• Despicable Me: Near the beginning of the movie, Gru finds a boy sobbing over dropping his ice cream. He hands the kid a balloon animal, only to pop it with a pin.
• Inside Out: At the beginning of the movie, Joy can’t think of anything Sadness is good for, other than making Riley unhappy. This is followed by a short montage of a toddler Riley crying because of things like her teddy bear getting ripped, dropping her ice cream, not wanting to wear a seat belt, and getting dragged out of a supermarket by her mother. This is foreshadowing of Sadness’ true purpose: to let others know when you are hurt so they can help you. When Riley cries over her ice cream cone, Sadness alerts her parents to either comfort her or get her a new one.
• Lilo & Stitch: Averted. While running to her hula class, Lilo passes by (and takes a picture of) a fat, sunburned tourist who drops his ice cream and, aside from watching the stuff hit the ground, shows no visible reaction.

• Best of the Best: Tommy Lee's childhood flashback where he sees his brother killed in a kickboxing ring is intercut with young Tommy dropping his ice cream in shock and the cone shattering to pieces in slow-motion.
• By the Sea: A child drops her ice cream on the General's newspaper, as it lies open on the beach. The child looks disappointed but is nowhere near as angry as the General when he discovers the mess on his paper, which comes moments after several seagulls had pooped on his paper.
• In the live-action Disney Sing-Along Songs video "Disneyland Fun", a girl drops her ice cream during the song "Making Memories" and has an expression on her face indicating how disappointed she is.
• In Police Academy 6: City Under Siege, after blacking out the city, the three crooks are laughing and walking down a street with ice cream cones, when Ox drops one of his; he yells, "Oh, Crapola!", then grabs the edge of a car, and tips it over. Ace remarks, "He is such a baby..."

• Adrian Mole: In Growing Pains, Pandora dumps Adrian after he asks to see her nipple. That night, Adrian uses a whole toilet roll to mop up his tears, and writes that he hasn't cried so much since the wind blew his candy floss away at the seaside town of Cleethorpes.
• Andy Griffiths' Just Series: In one story in "Just Disgusting", Andy has an ice cream cone, but some people wheedle him into taking some of it, leaving him with only a little bit. To add insult to injury, he drops that little bit, making him sad, until he decides to lick it off the ground.
• Discussed in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. When Alexander is mad at Paul for calling him only his third-best friend, he says that he hopes Paul gets a double-decker strawberry ice cream cone and the ice cream part falls off the cone and lands in Australia.
• Darth Vader And Son: In one of the illustrations, Luke is crying after he dropped his ice cream. His dad Darth Vader gives him his own ice cream.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In Dog Days, a baby is seen crying over his dropped ice cream cone, so his mother goes to the snack bar to get him a new one.
• The children's book Ice Cream Face is all about a young ice-cream-loving boy who has to wait in a busy scoop shop for his cone, but when he finally gets it and walks out, he licks it too fast and gets brain freeze. Overcompensating, he licks too slowly, allowing the scoop to melt and fall on the sidewalk. By then, the store has closed. A picture of the wailing child is captioned, "This is my sad face." Fortunately, the other patrons of the shop share some of their ice cream with him.
• Junie B. Jones: In Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, Junie B. is losing all the carnival games and her parents buy her an ice cream cone and a balloon to cheer her up. But she accidentally lets go of the balloon and drops the ice cream. Her only comment is “Poop.”
• In the Ladybird book Talk About The Beach, one of the picture stories shows a boy standing on a promenade above the beach, dropping his ice cream onto a man relaxing on the beach below.
• Where the Sidewalk Ends: The poem “Eighteen Flavors” describes at length the lovely, exotic flavors of an eighteen-scoop-tall ice cream cone before the last sentence reveals it’s fallen out of the hands of whoever was holding it.

• The Vanity Plate of Bonnie Raskin Productions shows footage of nothing but a little girl's hand holding a mint-flavored ice cream, in which for some odd reason, the ice cream falls off the cone, much to her chagrin. One variant has her say this after the ice cream falls to the floor;

  Girl: ...not again!

• Corner Gas: In the episode "Contagious Fortune", Oscar gives a kid money to replace his dropped ice cream cone. When the kid tells Oscar that he had a double scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone, Oscar tells the kid to get lost.

  Ice Cream Kid: Aw!
  Oscar: Hey, don't be sad. There you go, get yourself a brand-new ice cream cone.
  Kid: This will only get me one scoop. That one had two.
  Oscar: Ha, ha, ha. No problem. You remind me of me when I was a kid.
  Kid: This isn't enough for a waffle cone!
  Oscar: Beat it, you little punk!

• Dawson's Creek: Played for Drama when the titular character's father drops his ice cream, tries to get it back, and as a result is killed by a truck.
• Doctor Who: In "Night and the Doctor", the Doctor reminds Amy of the saddest memory of her life, which was dropping an ice cream cone at a fair.

  Amy: Hang on. My saddest memory is dropping an ice cream cone?!
  The Doctor: Remembering ice cream is always sad.

• Frasier: After Niles is informed by Maris that she's going to sue him for every penny he's got for trying to divorce her, Martin decides to take up his old role as "Ice Cream Man" and treat both his sons to an ice cream. However, the tag shows Niles' bad luck continues, as his scoop falls out, sending him into another throe of misery while Martin tries to get Frasier to give his brother his ice cream.
• In How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast), the protagonist Moritz feels bad at one point in the story, so he chooses the "life sucks" playlist on Spotify, which invokes this trope by using dropped ice cream as its background picture.
• Mr. Bean: In "Tee Off, Mr. Bean", Mr. Bean's golf ball lands in a child's double ice-cream cone, displacing one of the balls of ice cream. Mr. Bean then hits the golf ball away, leaving the child holding a tiny stump of a cone, looking disappointed. Not seeing what had happened, the child's mother says sternly "No more".

• One of Bo Burnham's songs, "Sad," is a self-aware exploration of Black Comedy. Everything that should be sad can be funny instead, if you apply enough Comedic Sociopathy.
• One of Eddie Murphy's most famous stand-up routines from Delirious was about how he would dance around whenever he got an ice cream cone, and sing a mocking song to poorer kids who couldn't afford one... only for him to accidentally knock it out of his hand and onto the ground, which caused said kids to turn his song against him. Eddie looks down at his ice cream miserably... only to promptly pick it back up and kiss it; continuing his song like nothing happened.

  Eddie Murphy: Eat it! I could drop my ice cream in a pile of shit, and eat it. "I mean, it's just sprinkles, like sprinkles!"

• In PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sweet Tooth is spending a scene admiring the strawberry ice cream cone he'd just prepared, even going so far as to carve a smiley face into the "round ball of heaven." His rivalry battle begins after Kratos knocks the cone to the ground for no reason (incidentally turning the smiley face upside down).

  You know, I worked real hard on that ice cream cone. REAL hard. Dunno if you got any money in that skirt of yours... But one way or the other, you're paying for it.

• The mobile game Office Jerk features a soft serve ice cream cone as a throwable item. In two possible animations, he licks it, but gets sad when it falls over. In one, he cries while throwing away his cone, while in the other, a storm cloud forms over his head to express his sadness.
• Downplayed in Pizza Tower, where one of the Technical Difficulty screens (seen when falling into a pit) depicts Peppino having dropped his ice cream on the floor, looking more annoyed than upset.
• Pokémon Black and White: One of the minigames in the now-defunct Dream World is Ice Cream Scoop, where the player has to balance ice cream scoops on top of each other to make a tall stack. A Combee watches the player's progress, and will get sad if a scoop falls.
• Splatoon 3: During the Grand Festival, a group of 4 jellyfish can be found near the Seashell Stage with one of the smaller jellyfish crying in front of a dropped ice cream cone and the 2 larger jellyfish (presumably their parents) running around in circles in a panic. Someone buy that poor kid a new ice cream!

• Neopets:
  • The book "The Meerca's Bad Day" is a story about a Meerca who had an awful day. Its cover shows a green Meerca angry after having dropped their chocolate ice cream.
  • Subverted with the items Dropped Snowcone and Mint Kiko Ice Cream Cone. Their icons make them look like they've been dropped on the ground, but your pet can still eat them.

    Description of Mint Kiko Ice Cream Cone: Just scoop it back up and eat it with some extra flavour!

• Adventure Time: In "James Baxter The Horse", An unnamed candy girl became sad after dropping her ice cream. Cue Finn and Jake trying to cheer her up by going after her while making funny faces (Keyword: trying). Their attempt scared her away. Several scenes later, we see the same girl all teary-eyed after dropping another ice cream when the duo met her again to try again. They succeeded.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • In "The Kiss," Gumball is catatonic after being kissed on the lips by Granny Jojo, so Darwin takes him to his happy place. They both get strawberry ice creams, but Gumball imagines his ice cream turning into Granny Jojo's face and trying to kiss him, which makes him panic and drop it on the ground.
  • In "The Wicked," Mrs. Robinson does a bunch of terrible things For the Evulz, which include knocking Billy's ice cream onto the ground.
  • In "The Awareness," Gumball dries out in the sun while trying to do photosynthesis, and a new him crawls out of his withered body. Banana Joe sees it happen and has a traumatized expression on his face for the entire day, not even noticing when the ice cream cone in his hand melts.
• Arthur: In "Sue Ellen Chickens Out", two separate flashbacks are seen, both depicting the first times Arthur and DW ate ice cream at the Sugar Bowl. Both of them cried after dropping their cones, and Mr. Manino replaced them for free.
• Bluey: In "Ice Cream", the Heeler girls get ice cream cones, but when each tries to let the other lick hers, they argue over who should lick first. The argument lasts for so long that the ice creams both melt, leading to the girls doing a Howl of Sorrow.
• Classic Disney Shorts: In the Goofy short "Father's Weekend", Goofy takes his son to the beach and he starts crying because he's lost his balloon. Goofy gives Junior an ice cream cone to calm him down, but as soon as he tries to lick it, the scoop falls to the ground and he starts crying again.
• Disenchantment: One of the souls in Hell is a little kid being tortured with dropped ice cream for all of eternity. Just as he's about to lick it, it falls off the cone and he starts bawling. Then the ice cream jumps back onto the cone, and the cycle loops forever.
• Drawn Together: In "Little Orphan Hero" one joke shows Captain Hero with a balloon and ice cream cone; when someone bumps into him, the ice cream cone floats away skyward and the balloon splats into the ground in pieces, which makes him burst into tears.
• Futurama: A variant in "Crimes of the Hot". The global warming educational video begins with a little girl named Susie buying an ice cream cone, but it melts before she can even get a lick, causing her to cry. A man then approaches her to explain how global warming is the culprit.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Fred Fredburger is an idiotic demon with a childlike personality. In "Be A-Fred, Be Very A-Fred", he wins a contest and gets to spend an entire day with Grim, yet his only request is to be taken to a frozen yogurt shop. When Grim accidentally knocks Fred's yogurt pot to the ground, the latter has a hysterical breakdown, smearing his hands and face with the produce and yelling that Grim has "killed his yogurt".
• Invader Zim: "Battle of the Planets" shows a kid crying after he dropped his ice cream, before proceeding to pick it up off the ground, lick it, and cry again when it falls.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: The Ice Cream Man is a recurring extra with a running gag that his mint chocolate chip ice cream always falls on the ground before he can eat it, usually caused by Stitch's antics. His head drops in disappointment, as a result.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012): One figurine of Penny Ling has her wailing molded Ocular Gushers over dropping her ice cream.
• A very odd version happens in an episode of Lloyd in Space. Lloyd is talking to his friends about some of the bad dates his mom has had over the years, and one of them was an overly sensitive alien named Weepned who cries over a dropped ice cream cone that wasn't even his.

  Weepned: But it was somebody's!

• The Loud House: In "Any Given Sundae", Lily is about to have her very first ice cream sundae. Just as she is about to taste it, a pigeon swoops down and knocks the sundae out of Lily's hands. To make things worse, the family can't buy her another one because the ice cream shop closed early that day, which causes poor Lily to burst into tears. It does work out in the end, though, as the family heads to Flip's store and make up another sundae for Lily to enjoy.
• The Miraculous Ladybug episode "Glaciator" features a variation on the usual cause-and-effect, as Andre Glacier drops a scoop of ice cream on the ground after being saddened by his failure to convince Marinette to accept a cone from him.
• My Big, Big Friend: In "Holding It In", Nessa lists a bunch of things that can make you cry in song form, one of which being dropping your ice cream.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: In "Mr. Tux", Private reveals that he was a mini golf player, but resigned because while competing with The Amarillo Kid, he used a trick that accidentally destroyed a little girl's ice cream, which he considered a Moral Event Horizon (even in the face of the other penguins asking him why he didn't just buy her another ice cream).
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Played with in "Crazy, Mixed-Up Puffs". A little girl pushes Mojo, causing him to drop his ice cream cone. He's about to flip out until the melting ice cream helps him break his writer's block and come up with a new plan to fight the girls.
• Rugrats:
  • In the 1991 series epsiode "Jonathan Babysits", Jonathan wants to find something to blackmail Charlotte. He finds an Embarrassing Old Photo of her as a toddler wailing over her ice cream falling off the cone, but opts not to use this because he wants to find something even more humiliating.
  • In the 2021 series episode "The Favor", Josh becomes loyal to Susie after she pulls his stick out from a tree, so he tries to do something nice for her. Since he is very bad at being good, Susie tries to teach him how to be nice to other kids. At one point, a kid accidentally drops his ice cream onto the ground. Josh tries to cheer the kid up by scooping the ice cream back up. However, the kid is disgusted by this and throws his ice cream in the trash can.
• The Simpsons: In "Lisa on Ice", during the last minute of the big hockey game between Bart and Lisa that determines the winner, Bart and Lisa start to remember the good times they spent together when they were young. One flashback depicts Lisa and Bart having ice cream cones. Lisa's scoop falls off her cone and she starts to cry, but Bart sees this and gives her the top scoop of his ice cream to cheer her up.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • A brief scene in "Walking Small" during the "aggressively nice" montage has a little girl crying over her spilled ice cream, until SpongeBob uses his eyelashes to dust off the sand before placing the scoop back into her cone.
  • In the Patchy subplot of "Atlantis SquarePantis", the pirate apparently finds himself back in Encino after being stranded in the desert. His happiness montage comes to an end when his ice cream drops, which causes him to realize it was All Just a Dream.
• Thomas & Friends: An adult example in "Ryan and Daisy"; Ryan arrives at Harwick Station with a pair of passenger coaches with which to pick up the passengers there, much to the surprise of Sir Topham Hatt, who was expecting Daisy the Diesel Railcar. Sir Topham Hatt is seen eating an ice cream cone as he tells Ryan about how he is planning to extend Daisy's passenger runs down to Knapford, and as he sits down in a beach chair, he licks the top scoop, which falls onto the ground. Cue a Big "NO!" from Sir Topham Hatt.
• The Venture Bros.: In the episode "Twenty Years To Midnight", Dr. Impossible's goons knock Ned's ice cream to the ground, enraging him.
• We Bare Bears:
  • A Running Gag throughout the pilot episode is Panda trying and failing to get ice cream. The bears save an ice cream cake from a swarm of spiders, only to accidentally drop it on the ground due to stopping abruptly. Then at the very end, a random woman gives Panda her ice cream cone, only for Grizzly to bump into him by mistake and knock it to the ground.
  • In the Whole Episode Flashback "Lazer Royale", the bears win a laser tag competition and get an ice cream sundae as a reward, but their efforts are all for nothing when Panda knocks it to the floor by accident.