Ate the Plate - TV Tropes (2024)

Image Courtesy from Stoutlyn

Averell: What do you call this delicious crust around the frijoles?
Emilio Espuelas: It's called a terracotta bowl, amigo...

• Played with in an early-1970s McDonaldland commercial. Two anthropomorphic wastebaskets sing a jingle about how they enjoy eating the cups, napkins, etc. from McDonald's meals.

• Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: In the first episode, the town holds a welcoming dinner for Kirby, but it ends with Kirby using his Vacuum Mouth to eat the entire table's worth of food, plates, utensils, drink glasses, tablecloth, and all, in seconds, much to the bewilderment of the townsfolk. He does at least have the courtesy to spit out the inedible stuff afterwards, though.
• One Piece: After Luffy wakes from his gruelling battle with Crocodile at the tail-end of the Alabasta Arc, he is offered a large cart of fruit to stave off his insane hunger. Not only does Luffy swallow every single crumb in about three animation frames, but he ends up inadvertently eating the boxes that some of the fruit came in.

• Lucky Luke: In "Tortillas for the Daltons", the Daltons get their first taste of Mexican cuisine:

  Averell: What do you call this delicious crust around the frijoles?
  Emilio Espuelas: It's called a terracotta bowl, amigo...

• One Gnasher and Gnipper strip in The Beano involves the two dogs eating their bowls of dog food, including the bowls. Later, they try to hide after getting in trouble for it, but they get pulled out of their hiding place by their owner Dennis's parents using a magnet. The bowls were metal, and are magnetic.
• Garfield:
  • In one strip, Garfield gets so hungry while being forced on a diet that he eats the mug his coffee was poured in.
  • Implied to be the case in another strip, when Jon asks Garfield about a missing lasagna, and then asks where the pan it was in went.
• Herman: One strip has a woman asking her husband if he's really sure that the pizza he ate is what gave him indigestion. She is shown looking at a triangular slice missing not just from the pizza, but also the pizza box and the table as well.

• In Chapter 6 of The Great Alicorn Hunt, Discord ate seven hors d'oeuvre trays. Not the hors d'oeuvres, the trays. He complains the sterling silver wasn't filling.
• Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK: Harry routinely eats and enjoys packaging and occasionally even dishes along with the food, which contributed to him not minding cooking for the Dursleys; it was easier that way for him to eat everything without being noticed. Dean Thomas is astounded that he could stomach a snack from a train catering carriage; Harry doesn't mention that he also ate the wrapper, and "It had been a toss-up as to which had tasted better." Once they're at Hogwarts, Dean continues to stare as Harry eats a chicken leg including the bone, then a pot pie in a china dish.
• Intergalactic Illness: When Lala catches a cold, due to her Bizarre Alien Biology, her appetite increases. When she has breakfast at the start of the story, she devours a bowl of rice, dish and all.
• If Wishes Were Ponies: When Discord introduces himself to the Weasley family, Harry tries to calm things down by offering him a strawberry jam sandwich. Discord eats the sandwich and the plate. While this is normal behavior for him, it was made more horrifying for the Weaselys because Discord had disguised himself as a human.
• Thieves Can Be Heroes!: Downplayed by Ann Takamaki. Her Quirk gives her teeth superhuman strength and cutting power. She's never swallowed any dishes or utensils, but she's accidentally bitten through countless sets of chopsticks and at least four forks in her life.
• This Bites!: Luffy has unintentionally eaten so many plates in his life that he can tell the difference between porcelain and china based on taste. He insists the former tastes better.

• Despicable Me 2: In a flashback, El Macho orders a drink and after he fills it with snake venom, he throws the glass in his mouth and chews it up.

• :
  • Downplayed, when Willy Wonka picks a cup and saucer from a bush in the Chocolate Room, drinks the contents, then takes a bite out of the cup, emphasising that everything in the room is edible.
  • Discussed in the lyrics to "The Candy Man":

    The candy man makes everything he bakes
    Satisfying and delicious.
    Talk about your childhood wishes.
    You can even eat the dishes!

• Adrian Mole: In Growing Pains, Adrian runs away with the dog, and buys the dog a Creme egg. The dog is so hungry that it eats the silver paper as well. Adrian hopes that the dog will not need to see the vet.
• The Aeneid: The Harpy Celaeno curses Aeneas and his crew to not reach their destination until they get so hungry they eat their tables (dishes were not common in old Troy), apparently hinting at this trope. It is subject to a Prophecy Twist when the crew reaches Italy and are served toppings on a flatbread, a form of proto-pizza, with the edible flatbread counting as a table for the purpose of the curse.
• Animorphs: When the Animorphs take Ax to see a movie, he eats the popcorn they give him — and then the cardboard box too.
• Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: The Cute Slime Mook Sui is intelligent but an Extreme Omnivore, so when it joins the protagonist, he has to teach it not to eat the dishes along with the food. However, it's happy to eat disposable packaging.
• Mr. Men: Mr Silly, being Mr Silly, eats not only eggs but the shells as well.
• In Monday Begins on Saturday, the model of a perpetually hungry man eats the container once it's done with the food.
• Return of the Runebound Professor: Lee can and does eat just about anything, and somehow isn't harmed by it at all, even when she swipes Jalen's (glass) bottle of orange juice and eats the whole thing including the cork. Presumably it's a feature of being a gluttony demon.

  Lee: I like orange juice. It's crunchy.

• The Very Fat Cat: The titular cat eats all the gruel that an old woman prepares, and the pot too. When the woman asks what has happened to the gruel, the cat tells her. He then proceeds to eat the old woman too, and everyone he meets, who asks him why he is so fat.
• Two lines in the second verse of Lewis Carroll's poem 'Tis the Voice of the Lobster describe an owl eating the dish after a panther has eaten the pie that was on it:

  The Panther took pie-crust, & gravy, & meat,
  While the Owl got the dish as his share of the treat.

• Horrible Histories: In a "Historical Masterchef" sketch, a Tudor chef shows the judges the Tudor tradition of making plates out of sugar, meaning the dishes are literally edible. Gregg eats several of the sugar plates before he accidentally attempts to eat a normal ceramic plate.
• Judge John Deed: When John's therapist asks him about his earliest memory, he describes giving a toffee to a chimpanzee at the zoo, who unwrapped the toffee, ate the paper, and threw the toffee away.
• Subverted in Mythbusters. When testing a myth that the cereal box is healthier than the cereal Adam and Jamie fed both to different groups of mice. The box mice resorted to cannibalism to avoid starvation.
• The Orville: In "Old Wounds", the crew finds out that Moclans are Extreme Omnivores with incredibly resilient digestive systems. This inevitably devolves into the crew daring Bortus to eat increasingly inedible objects, including a napkin and a drinking glass.
• Play School: One song about food has the line "I like the skins of them, even the tins of them."
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cost of Living" several scenes are set in Holodeck recreations of the mud baths of the Parallax Colony, where characters are seen drinking alien beverages and then eating the cups that hold them.

• In a Old Master Q strip, the titular character is very hungry after a long day, and orders a bowl of noodle soup for dinner. After gorging himself, Old Master Q pays and leaves, and the waiter sees a half-circle eaten off one corner of the bowl.

• Evillious Chronicles: Banica Conchita is a noblewoman who makes a deal with the Demon of Gluttony and develops a taste for the most disgusting, toxic, and inedible meals known to man. Her Image Song "Evil Food Eater Conchita" describes her devouring heaping plates of masoch*sts Meals. When her appetite is still not satisfied, she eats the dinnerware...and her personal chef...and her servants...and finally herself. Somehow.

  Eat until there's nothing but bones
  If that's not enough, chew on the dishes
  The happiness that dances on the tip of the tongue
  Tonight's dinner is far from over!

• In the Prose Edda, at the palace of Utgard-Loki, Loki has an eating contest with a giant named Logi, who wins by eating both the food and the serving dishes before Loki has finished. This is justified by revealing Logi to be an Anthropomorphic Personification of fire.

• Sesame Street:
  • Cookie Monster, being an Extreme Omnivore, not only eats cookies but also often eats the boxes they came in or the dishes they're served on. Cookie Monster's habit of eating plates is parodied in Episode 2921; when Telly's lunch date with Cookie at Hooper's Store gets cancelled due to Cookie attending a cookie convention in Cucamonga, Sally Field stands in for Cookie. Sally eats a bunch of cookies the way Cookie does, but Telly tells Gina that Sally didn't eat the plate. As if on cue, Sally does just that.
  • In a musical animation for the letter "O", a goat is found eating a bowl of "bones, potatoes, and soap". He consumes the bowl as well.

• In The Goon Show, Eccles, being a Paste Eater, has been known to do this:

  Bloodnok: Quick! Get behind this X-Ray screen.
  [Buzzing]
  Eccles: Ooh!
  Bloodnok: Just as I thought — he's had a plate of porridge for breakfast.
  Seagoon: Feed line: How do you know?
  Bloodnok: I can see the plate!

• Banjo-Tooie: At the start of Klungo's fights, Klungo will drink a potion and then eat the beaker it came in.
• NetHack: If you are currently polymorphed into a creature that can eat metal, you will eat tinned food by biting right through the tin.
• Pokémon Sleep: Every time Snorlax and the helpers are fed a meal, they eat the dish it came in and even the lace doily beneath it.
• Pumkin Land: The Hungry Pumkin may order soda, salt and pepper, and glasses of water. When you give them to him, he will eat the container they come in.
• In the trippy, psychedelic FPS game 77p egg: Eggwife you eat everything you can get your hands on to regain health. Ranging from eggs in the local supermarket — shells and carton included — to food with wrappers included and bottles of drinks.
• River City Ransom has your character cheerfully wolf down any food they order in a single gulp, with includes whatever dish, bowl, glass, or ramekin it was served in.
• Stardew Valley: The player character's eating animation has them throwing the food up in the air and catching it in their mouth whole, which includes the plates, bowls, and glasses for the recipes that have them.
• Tales of Symphonia: When the party needs access to the Earth Temple, the Gnomelette guarding the temple asks for a bottle of potion. Upon giving the Gnomelette the potion, the Gnomelettle proceeds to eat the potion, along with the bottle itself.

• Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two: In "The Great Goikian Bake-off", the challenge is to make dinner for Two. Snowball gets the idea to steal one of Four and X's hotel meals and eventually succeeds. When Snowball presents the meal to Two, they swallow the whole thing including the bag it came in.

  Snowball: Uhh, the food was inside the bag.
  Two: I loved the whole thing! Though the bag might've actually been my favorite part!

• Pebble and Wren: In one strip, Pebble cuts a pizza in half... and eats the box, while Wren eats the whole pizza.

• In the Tasting History with Max Miller video about Pompeiian pizza, he notes that the "crust" was likely a Mensa, a flatbread that, much like a medieval trencher, was probably intended to carry food like a plate. He also notes that Mensae are mentioned in The Aeneid where Aeneas is given a prophecy that he will establish a great city after his army faces a great famine and are forced to eat their tables in desperation. Later, when he and his forces are in Italy and their provisions are so limited that they have to eat the Mensae they use to hold fruit ("Mensa" translates literally to "table") leading Aeneas to have a "Eureka!" Moment and realize they have found the site where they were destined to found the great city later known as Rome.

  Aeneas: Look! We are eating even our tables! This is our home!
  Max Miller: So, in a way, Italy was founded through the eating of pizza.

• American Dad!:
  • Invoked; when Stan opens his own restaurant, he makes pancake plates. At one point, Roger tries to discredit his restaurant by claiming to have found a fly in his salad, but Stan proves that his dish didn't come from his restaurant by forcing Roger to eat his plate, which is very much not edible.
  • In “Virtual In-Sanity” after realizing that he has missed every milestone in Steve's life, Stan makes a desperate attempt to bond with his son by creating a busty blonde bombshell alias, Phyllis. As the two were watching a baseball game, Steve offered Phyllis a chili dog, and she would munch it down completely.

    Steve: [concerned] Oh, there was a paper doily under that, but I’m sure you’ll figure that out later…

• DuckTales (2017): In "The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!", Mark Beaks drinks a Super Serum that turns him huge and muscular. During their battle, Gizmoduck flings a number of cream pies at him, two of which Beaks simply catches in his mouth and swallows whole, baking pans and all.

  Mark Beaks: Wait, did I just eat the pie tins?

• Gravity Falls: Attempted in "Blendin's Game'', when Mabel gets so excited to eat her free candy she decides to eat them with the wrappers still on. It goes about as well as you would expect for a 12-year-old girl.

  Mabel: Forget taking off the wrappers! I'm eating these now! [...] [coughing with the wrapped candy still in her mouth] THAT WAS A MISTAKE! [falls to the ground]

• Muppet Babies (1984): In "The Great Cookie Robbery", Nanny tasks Gonzo with giving each of the other babies one cookie from a box of cookies to help tide them over while she makes lunch. However, Gonzo keeps the box for himself and eats every last cookie from it. This comes back to bite him at the end of the episode, as he becomes too stuffed to even look at, let alone eat the peanut butter and banana sandwich that Nanny made for him. Animal makes sure that the sandwich doesn't go to waste by eating it himself, and he eats the plate along with it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Discord conjures up a glass of chocolate milk, drinks the glass, and throws the milk away.
• Rugrats (1991): In "Hold the Pickles", Taffy takes the babies to Boingo Burger for lunch, where she gives each of them a Wacky Meal (the equivalent of a Happy Meal from McDonald's). Phil gets a cheeseburger and as he eats it, he eats its wrapper as well. Lil tells him she doesn't think he's supposed to eat the wrapper, but that doesn't stop him from continuing to eat it.
• Shaun the Sheep: As the sheep eat their pizzas in the episode "Take Away", resident Extreme Omnivore Shirley eats hers like a giant cookie, box and all.
• The Simpsons: In "E Pluribus Wiggum", Homer eats a ton of unhealthy food right before starting his diet. This includes a cheese pizza with fries and a whole lobster on it, which he eats with the cardboard box it came in.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Necro-Nom-Nom-Nom-I-Con", a fish eating bacon and eggs for breakfast is also seen directly biting into the plate.
  • In "Have You Seen This Snail?", Patrick gets up in the morning to meet SpongeBob with a cup of coffee. He first swigs all the coffee in one go, followed by him tossing the entire mug itself into his mouth and munching on it.
  • In "The Goofy Newbie", Patrick swallows all the ice cream in the Goofy Goobers, along with the bowls.
• Steven Universe: In the extended music video for "We Are the Crystal Gems," Amethyst eats a sandwich and part of the plate it was on as well.

• Henry VIII used to eat sculptures made of sugar. He would then eat the plate (which was also made of sugar).
• The Sorbos Straws, are the very first edible, flavored, and 100% sustainable straw in the market. The material is marketed as a new way to consume beverages and to protect the world from pollution. Such straws come in chocolate, strawberry, lemon, lime, and multi-flavor.
• Bakeys, a bakery in India, created edible spoons and other cutlery made of biscuits as a way to reduce plastic disposable cutlery.

I ate the whole plate!