The Art of the Steal Movie Lines What Are You a Pirate Bathroom Bathtub

"If there's one thing I know about radios and dryers, y'all never use them around baths or showers!"

Someone drops a mundane electrical appliance (classically a toaster) into a bathtub or other puddle of water lying around. A archetype way to attempt murder or suicide in the movies.

Fictional depictions are much flashier than the real affair, with arcs of electricity and vivid flashes many seconds long and the consummate shorting-out of electrical service to the entire building. In Real Life, though, the resulting electrical current is momentary and about invisible and likely would just trip the nearest circuit breaker or fuse — just grabbing the electric device while in the bathtub would be simply every bit lethal in real life every bit the trope is in fiction. This is also a victim to Technology Marches On. It was much more common in the past when most bathtubs had copper piping; however, as more and more homes have PVC plastic plumbing, well-nigh tubs aren't grounded and electrocution is less likely (not to mention that newer edifice codes generally require GFCI outlets for bathroom use, which sense when this is happening and cutting off power before any serious damage occurs to either yous or the appliance).

This, and other forms of electrocution, is more than probable to exist fatal where the mains voltage is 220V — the power output for a given impedance, e.one thousand., that of a human being body, goes as the voltage squared, meaning four times the power at that voltage as at North America's 110V.

Just one of the many ways that a graphic symbol can die in a bathroom.

This is a Subtrope to High-Voltage Death.

NOTE: Since this trope can pb to a grapheme getting killed, wait spoilers below.

---

Examples:

    open up/close all folders

    Anime & Manga

• Electricity and h2o is used equally a weapon of murder in Case Closed; the law were nigh going to write it off as an accident until Conan noticed that something was off. Or rather, something didn't quite... plug in... right.
• The second Elf Princess Rane episode shows Mr. Yumenokata getting shocked from using an electric shaver while taking a bathroom.
• In Future Diary, Fifth almost killed Yuno this mode and was only prevented from doing so by Yuki cutting the electricity to the unabridged house.
• The offset episode of Lupin III: Part 1, ("Is Lupin Called-for... ?!") has Lupin creating a large-scale version of this to have out the leaders of the Scorpion Clan, and rescue Fujiko.
• In That Fourth dimension I Got Reincarnated equally a Slime, afterward Satoru's death, Tamura honours his Last Request by dropping his PC into a bathtub.
• A non-lethal version happens in one of the Mini-Specials of Yous're Under Arrest!. A thief enters Miyuki and Natsumi'due south apartment to steal their underwear, but they come back and find him thanks to Miyuki's security system. When he tries to hibernate in the bathroom, Natsumi throws him into the bathtub, and Miyuki then uses a couple of electrical tasers to punish him farther.

    Lath Games

• Soviet Arrangement has a card allowing its drawer to climb a rank thanks to "his skills in bathroom electricity."

    Comic Books

• In the graphic novel Black Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell, the ghost of a gang leader is possessing the bodies of the gang members who betrayed her and forcing them to commit suicide. One of her victims takes a plunge into a swimming pool along with a number of electrical devices.
• In Fido Dido, a character has an idea while taking a bath, causing an Thought Bulb to appear over her head. Just and so a smaller version of her appears, and says, "Hey, that's dangerous!" then the bulb disappears, and is replaced with a flashlight. "That's better."
• Hack/Slash: In Girls Gone Dead, Father Wrath tries to kill a group of 'sinners' by tossing a television receiver into their hot tub. Vlad manages to slow him down long enough for about of them to get out.
• DC acquired an almighty backlash subsequently staging a competition to find a new artist by getting contestants to draw Harley Quinn about to commit suicide this way. The actual context of the panel made it a fleck better since information technology was meant to be a fourth-wall breaking Imagine Spot where the writers had misunderstood what Suicide Squad meant, simply it was nevertheless a example of Dude, Not Funny! and the panel was ultimately cutting from the terminal comic.
• In Wanted, a Training Montage of Wesley killing assorted victims includes a panel of him tossing an electric heater into a woman's bathtub.
• In Young Justice, it's revealed that Secret was originally killed past this method.

    Comic Strips

• The Far Side in one case had a guy who kept his pet electric eel in the bathroom, where it could easily fall into the bathtub if knocked over.

    Fan Works

• In Neither a Bird nor a Aeroplane, it'southward Deku!, Denki Kaminari discovered his electricity-based Metahuman power while in the bathtub, nearly killing him. Jirou laughs at him for this, which he protests for obvious reasons until he admits that it's Actually Pretty Funny.

  Kaminari: Hey, I could have died!
  Jirou: Yeah, simply you didn't, and that's why it'due south funny.
  Kaminari: I... Aye, you got me in that location.

    Films — Blitheness

• The title character of The Brave Little Toaster has a nightmare of falling into a bathtub full of water.

    Films — Live-Action

• This was how Debbie Jellinsky attempts to kill Fester in Addams Family Values. Fester being Fester (the TV series had him lighting a bulb in his mouth, a gag actually used here), it doesn't work. Leads to Fridge Logic when she later tries to kill him with an electric chair. (Specially since Fester would in the TV series strap himself in one to "recharge".)
• In The Astronaut's Wife (Rosemary's Infant with aliens), the wife of 1 of the astronauts commits suicide this way subsequently her husband dies of a stroke. When the main character confronts her alien-possessed husband, she's standing with her feet in water dripping down from the sink, preparing to commit suicide the same mode... and after confirming that he'due south been possessed, water pours downwardly from above, as she's left the tub and sink on the other flooring on, causing him to exist electrocuted instead... It Makes Sense in Context. But too bad this frees up the conflicting to possess her instead.
• Early on in The Bodyguard From Beijing, the female person lead is nearly killed while taking her bathroom, unaware that she's marked for decease and her tub is booby-trapped by a hidden battery. But her cat jumps in before her.

• Referenced in The Butterfly Consequence. In i Alternate Timeline where his friends all seem better off without him, Evan Treborn fills up a bathtub with water and sets about trying to drown himself in it; his friend Tommy comes in and saves him, remarking that Evan forgot to put a toaster on the ledge.
• Kid's Play
  • Chucky does it to his girlfriend in Helpmate of Chucky.
  • In an earlier draft of the original Child'south Play this was how the babysitter was supposed to die.
• Madame Aurora in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's and Marc Caro's Delicatessen has a penchant for Rube Goldberg Device suicide attempts. One would drop a tabular array lamp into her bathtub when the doorbell is pressed. Narrowly averted when her neighbour's hammering jolts the lamp'southward plug from the socket, viewable hither: [1].
• Diary of the Expressionless. The nerdy character experiences this as a zombie tackles him and pushes him into the tub while he'south using a blow drier to dry his hair. Strangely, the electricity doesn't disturb the security camera that's watching him the whole time. Also, information technology wasn't like the shock could hurt him anymore since he was in the middle of existence mawed by a zombie anyway.
• In Eating Raoul this technique is used on a hot tub filled with swingers.
• Featured in the teaser to Goldfinger, including Sean Connery giving the expected Bond Ane-Liner. "Shocking..." (long beat) "Positively shocking."
• Bill Murray attempts suicide past tub and toaster in Groundhog Mean solar day. Similar with all his other suicide attempts, he gets improve.
• Subverted in House of ix, Francis attempts to kill Lea past ripping a low-cal fixation while Lea washes her hands and drop it into the sink. Lea is shocked and knocked out merely awakens later.
• The ditzy female serial killer in Neighbour ties a girl up, puts her in a bathtub, and throws a hairdryer in, only it fails to kill the victim. When adjacent shown, the bath is at present full of random appliances and electronics (including an unabridged television) and the victim nonetheless isn't dead. The killer decides to just drown her.
• At the end of It Follows, the protagonists effort to do this with an entire pond pool in society to kill "It", the implacable Eldritch Abomination that's been stalking and trying to impale Jay for the entire motion picture. They surround the pool with electric appliances from lamps to blow dryers to typewriters, employ Jay to lure "It" into the puddle, and then throw all the appliances in. Unfortunately for them, "It" doesn't fall for such an obvious trap, and instead turns the tables by throwing the appliances at Jay while she's nevertheless in the pool. The only reason she's not electrocuted is that the programme was securely flawed to begin with: the amount of charge needed to electrify an Olympic-sized swimming pool is far greater than what the electric grid could have earlier it simply shorted out.
• In Judas Kiss, Rickles knocks a radio into a kitchen sink total of water. He then jams Dyson's easily into the sink. This doesn't impale Dyson but does badly stun and burn him.
• Paganini Horror opens with a girl killing her mother past dropping a accident dryer into her bath. The devil in the music fabricated her do information technology.
• The Australian horror motion-picture show Patrick (1978) opens with the championship character murdering his mother and her lover as they're in the bathtub together, by tossing in a hot radiator lamp that they fumble from one to the other, while screaming in desperation, until they're able to toss it onto the flooring. Patrick but picks it upward and throws information technology back into the water.
• In the German picture show The Princess And The Warrior (2000), the trope is played straight in a flashback when a mental ward patient throws a hairdryer into a bathtub used past Sissi's mother. Afterwards, a avoiding hiding from the law in the aforementioned mental institution is relaxing afterward a botched heist in the same bathtub, and the same patient (believing Sissi has fallen for him) throws a toaster at him. He instinctively catches it, and both stare in shock at each other for a moment before the fugitive leaps up with murder in his eyes.
• Render to Cabin past the Lake: In the climax, Allison tries to kill Stanley by knocking him into a bathtub and so throwing in a blowdryer. She ultimately relents because she doesn't want to go a killer like him and alerts the police who but arrived on the scene, but this but gives Stanley a take chances to escape and disappear forever.
• Done in The Ring.
  • Particularly noteworthy, since rather than simply drop an agile, mundane electronic device into a bathtub, he sets upwardly a rather complicated metal harness connected to numerous devices, steps into the bathtub, and then switches it on. The result is as well more realistic, every bit it causes the lighting to intermittently short out, and much convulsion and a lot of blood.
• In The Royal Tenenbaums, Etheline is concerned most her girl, Margot, watching TV in the bath. Margot does at least have the Television receiver tied up so it doesn't autumn in.

• This almost happens to Eurydice in Shredder Orpheus when she accidentally knocks some equipment into a tub she'south using to soak her anxiety; the near-miss causes her and Orpheus to take the plunge and get married correct away.
• The And so Bad, It's Good horror movie Shriek Of The Mutilated has an incredibly contrived version. Later on a man has a psychotic intermission and murders a woman via Slashed Throat, he goes to wash off the blood and calm down in the bathtub... only for information technology to be revealed that the woman is Non Quite Expressionless, equally she slooooowly crawls across the living room pushing a toaster in front of her, reaches the bathroom, plugs it in, and with her concluding strength lifts it into the bathtub, killing him.
• 1 girl in Slumber Party Massacre 3 takes a bath later having sexual practice, and is electrocuted when a buzzing dildo is thrown into the h2o.
• A baroque variation occurs in Snake Eater three : Soldier (Lorenzo Lamas) electrifies a biker perp's toilet bowl, killing the biker as he relieves his bladder. Ouch!
• In Stay Tuned, while the main characters are stuck every bit drawing mice and being chased after a robotic cat, they lead information technology into a bathtub and throw a hair drier into it.
• The Suicide Squad: During the Team'due south rampage in the Resistance camp, Bloodsport kills a man by shooting at an electric fan that falls his bathtub.
• In Superdome, the killer electrifies a whirlpool tub to kill McCauley before the Super Bowl, thus ensuring his squad will lose. Mike foils the attempt by running into the locker room and knocking McCauley aside before he can get in.
• In This Is Your Death, the first person to kill themselves on the show does and then by dropping a stereo into her bathtub after confessing to the murder of her married man.
• According to Word of God, this later happens to the homo who spends the whole of The Truman Show watching TV in the bath.
• In the horror film Valentine, Paige is killed when the killer throws her into her ain hot tub, throws the lid closed to trap her, terrorizes her by punching through the lid with a power drill, and so, equally an encore, throws the ability drill inside to assassinate her.
• In Vlog, the killer murders Brandon by rigging a low-cal plumbing fixtures to fall into his bath when he reaches for his rubber duck.
• During the prison riot scene in Watchmen, Rorschach kills one of the inmates by breaking a toilet on him and then letting the water reach an exposed wire near the wet guy.
• Mel Gibson's character in What Women Want is almost killed by this, merely instead ends up with the ability to read the minds of women.
• The same principle is used in Wristcutters: A Dearest Story, except instead of throwing an apparatus into liquid, Eugene throws liquid (a beer) onto an apparatus (his guitar) for a rock 'northward' roll suicide. Works only besides, apparently.

    Literature

• William F. Buckley Jr., at one time when he needed a murder method for his Blackford Oakes series, discussed methods with an electrical skillful. I believe the letters did speculate the actual use of a bathtub. Nevertheless in the end, in Stained Drinking glass it was an electric booby-trap inside a cathedral that was undergoing a massive restoration (and thus had plenty of devious wiring to blame) that did the deed. It's been a long time since I read the letter I am referring to then I am not certain I am authentic.
• This method is used in a futile endeavour to stop the noocyte spread in Claret Music. It just succeeds in killing Vergil... for a while.
• The Dresden Files: In Blood Rites, an actress is well-nigh killed when a huge industrial light falls into the puddle created after a burst of scalding water causes her to autumn through and break a glass shower door. Yes, someone was trying to kill her.
• The hazard-to-musicians variant described in the "Real Life" section appears in fictional class in Espedair Street by Iain Banks. The band Frozen Gold are performing behind an elaborate special effect rig that involves multiple streams of h2o circulated by a pump. This thing malfunctions and dumps a drench of water over atomic number 82 guitarist Davey, causing him to be electrocuted.
• In Fright and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dr. Gonzo asks Raoul Duke to practice this during the high signal of Jefferson Airplane'south "White Rabbit", believing that it will get him the ultimate high. Raoul flings a grapefruit instead (though he doesn't bounce it off his head like in the movie), unplugs the radio (leaving information technology to run on its harmless batteries), then gets the hell out before Dr. Gonzo can realize what happened. When he gets up the nerve to cheque, Gonzo'southward started to come up down from his trip.
• Used as a murder attempt in Christopher Pike's The Graduation.
• The title graphic symbol in Harlan Ellison's Jeffty Is Five. The protagonist doesn't realize until it's too belatedly that Jeffty'south mother deliberately propped the radio by the tub precariously enough that it would tip into the tub as shortly equally Jeffty changed the channel.
• Stephen King:
  • The protagonist in the short story "A Very Tight Place" (published in Just After Sunset) uses this trope when he confronts his would-be murderer, tossing an electric hair-dryer into the man'south lap while he's sitting in his jacuzzi. Information technology turns out to be merely a psychological attack, equally the dryer'south not plugged in.
  • A genuine bathtub electrocution takes place in King's "The Monkey".
• This is the cause of decease/murder method in Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale mystery The Reader is Warned . Sir Henry, while delivering The Summation, points out that the London County Council had banned electric fittings in bathrooms for that reason.

    Live-Activeness TV

• In Adam-12, a woman kills her husband this mode. He was mentally disabled and on the level of nigh a 2-year-old, and she got tired of taking care of him. She almost got away with information technology, but the officers noticed at that place was no water on the floor exterior the tub as there would take been if the man had gotten out himself to grab the hairdryer.
• In The Adventures of Superman (the 1950's TV show with George Reeves), a gullible rich person is told by a phony psychic (hired by the rich guy's heirs) that he would hunt away the evil spirits effectually him if he stepped into a bathtub while holding a live electric cable. Superman saved him (of grade).
• The cliff-hanger of one story on Batman (1966) had the Penguin and his mooks electrify a pond puddle and were going to throw Chief O'Hara (who'due south locked in a body) in.
• Subverted in Blackness Books. Manny is making toast in the bath (while using a hairdryer at the same time). When he'south applying the jam (which is in a soap dispenser) to the toast and attaching it to a Rube Goldberg-esque device designed to deliver it to Bernard, he accidentally knocks the hairdryer into the tub. He proceeds to take information technology out, comment, "That was lucky" and continue using it. There may exist a radio past the bath too.
• The Blacklist: Two suspects impale themselves by pulling a laptop into a bath.
• The Brittas Empire: A concussed Colin once took Brittas' sarcastic statement of asking him to attach one end of a piece of rope to a lightning conductor and the other to a trouser aught and jumping off seriously and needed to be stopped equally a upshot. In the resulting kerfluffle, the electrified bathtub he was carrying to achieve the chore winds up existence thrown into the pool and electrocuting a group of Pentecostalists who were existence baptized. Luckily, no-one died, although they were briefly stunned.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • In "I Robot, You Jane", Buffy is set up to shut off the water in a locker room shower just every bit the puddle reaches a live wire. She sees the trap and jumps out just in time, with only static-frazzled pilus to show for information technology (which concerns her quite a flake).
  • In "The I in Team", Buffy is given a malfunctioning Initiative taser in The Uriah Gambit ready upward by Professor Walsh, who then unleashes some demons on her. Buffy throws the taster into a pool of water in which a demon is standing.
• Used in an episode of the 1994 revival of Burke'due south Constabulary, entitled "Who Killed the Starlet?" A woman is in the bath while listening to some music, when a killer sneaks in and drops her boombox into the bathtub, killing her. It turns out that the killer and lady are merely actors on a movie set, and they're filming a murder scene. Then it turns out the boombox had been plugged into a live outlet by an unknown political party, and the actress in the bathtub actually is dead. The special effects human being is the first suspect, and protests that the voltage was kept too low to injure anyone, equally a matter of safety, which is standard procedure for filming this sort of affair in existent life. It turns out that the water was poisoned with nicotine. The special furnishings man did so assertive that the non-lethal voltage would clear him of suspicion.
• In the Columbo episode "Double Shock", the killer uses an electric mixer. He slices the insulation off the power cord showtime.
• In Coronation Street, a variation of this expiry befalls Lesley Kershaw. In a haze she tries making cheese on toast (past dropping the cheese into the toaster), then decides that it was a messy matter to do, grabs the toaster (without turning it off) and promptly dumps it into a sink full of water, electrocuting herself to decease.
• In the first intro to Crank Yankers, Special Ed does this to himself when he dunks his business firm phone in his tub while taking a bath.
• Happened once in CSI, with the suicide variant. Or so it appears at first glance...
  • And in CSI: Miami, as a murder. Justified in that the excursion billow didn't work as the victim put herb table salt(?) in the bathwater.
  • And in CSI: NY, where...*Glasses Pull* information technology's complicated. There was a murder that took place, but the bathtub electrocution wasn't the main incident.
    • YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
• Danger 5. When Tucker undergoes a Grooming Montage to turn him into a ninja, ane of the exercises involves him sitting in an inflatable puddle while the trainer throws toasters and other electrical appliances that Tucker has to fend off.
• Death in Paradise:
  • An electrified swimming puddle occurs in "Swimming in Murder". The killer arranges for a alive set of studio lights to fall into the pool as the Victim of the Calendar week is taking his daily swim.
  • In "Switcharoo", the Victim of the Week is drugged then the killer places her in a full bathtub and drops in a hairdryer to get in wait like a suicide.
• Doctor Who: In "Dalek", the title character kills a large number of security guards by first getting the fire sprinklers to actuate, and then, once a sufficient amount of h2o had built up on the floor, shooting the water.
• The Glades: The Victim of the Calendar week in "Second Chance" is murdered when the killer pushes a vacuum cleaner into the puddle where he is swimming.
• Harrow: In "Ab Initio" ("From the Beginning"), the Victim of the Week is found electrocuted in his bath. It looks like the radio barbarous off a shelf into the tub, but Harrow notices the grit marks on the shelf indicate it had sat for for months, perhaps years, and wonders why information technology should of a sudden have fallen now.
• Constabulary & Guild: Criminal Intent: In a flashback in "Identity Crisis", a young boy seemingly kills his calumniating, schizophrenic mother by pushing an electric heater into her bathroom. It was actually an accident, but he took responsibility for it.
• Double subverted on Life: When facing a hitmanwoman (sic) who kills using household materials, Charlie thinks that a bathtub was rigged to exist electrified every bit a fill-in plan to murder the victim in instance the murderer's Plan A failed. Bobby says that it'due south a myth because the circuit breaker would prevent the electrocution from taking place. Charlie then tests this claim by throwing a Television receiver into the bathtub. The Television set explodes after hitting the water, and the ability for the unabridged edifice goes out. They and so realize that the killer had circumvented the circuit breaker also.
• Luke Muzzle. In "Take It Personal", Luke Cage flatlines and at that place's no defibrillator to revive him, so Claire Temple throws a portable electric burner into the bathtub he'due south in to cause a short circuit. Fifty-fifty the Mad Scientist with her is shocked, though the Near-Invulnerable Cage survives.
• In the MacGyver (1985) episode "A Lesson in Evil", the Hannibal Lecter-esque Dr. Zito sets a trap for Mac by restraining a hapless victim (his own therapist, who he had succeeded in disarming he was "cured") in a bathtub, attaching an electrical heater on top and leaving the water running.
• In the Mann & Car episode "The Dating Game," all iii murder victims were electrocuted in the bathtub. During the climax, the villain tries to push Eve into an electrified swimming puddle.
• The Mentalist: In "Scarlet Ribbons", a security baby-sit is institute dead in his bathtub with a hairdryer dropped into it.
• Monk:
  • In "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Kathy Willowby kills her husband Martin by dropping a radio into the tub while he'south bathing, then freezes the body and puts information technology out in the boat the adjacent nighttime and so that information technology looks like Martin got struck past lightning while line-fishing on the lake.
  • And in "Mr. Monk and the Big Game", Julie's basketball coach Lynn Hayden is killed in an electrified shower.
• Murder, She Wrote: Used as a murder method in three episodes; "Sticks and Stones", "Unauthorized Obituary" and "The Phantom Killer".
• Tested past MythBusters, who confirmed it. However, they likewise showed that a working Ground Fault Interrupter will cutting the ability to an apparatus in time. Appliances without GFIs, on the other hand, will impale, which is an issue because the overwhelming majority of small appliances don't have GFIs. They didn't test GFIs congenital into ability outlets (required for new bath construction by several building codes), simply presumably they'd piece of work the aforementioned way - just a murderer could simply plug the appliance into an outlet in another room using a cheap extension cord.
• Oz. Prison house guard Claire Howell murders inmate Nikolai Stanislofsky this way, subsequently first giving him some hand relief. And a rubber duckie, in an obvious Shout-Out to Hitman.

• The Professionals. In "Hijack", Bodie and Doyle investigate a flat and find an Arab woman dead in the bathtub with an electric heater that fell off the wall. They don't know if shoddy British workmanship or a Libyan hit team was responsible, and nothing more is said about the incident so the audition doesn't find out either.
• The Psych episode "Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast" uses this, equally indicated by the title.

• Rizzoli & Isles: In "Partners in Offense", the killer pushes a boombox into the hot tub of the offset Torso of the Week. This does not impale her only stuns her so the killer can concur her caput underwater till she drowns.
• A woman died in the teaser of the Six Feet Under episode "An Open Book" when her cat knocked her electric hot rollers into the tub.
• Tales from the Catacomb: In "The Homo Who Was Decease", Niles Talbot, a prison executioner, is laid off from his job when the local authorities abolishes the death sentence. He becomes a Vigilante Homo, administering his own style of justice to acquitted murder suspects. He murders one pair of acquitted murders by wiring their hot tub and and then electrifying it while they are in information technology.
• In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the heroes shock Cameron into reset style (after her brief Face–Heel Turn in the 2d-flavour opener) with a clock radio hidden in a baptismal font.
• Smallville: The Villain of the Week in "Red" kills a college student by dropping a radio into his hot-tub while the student is still in it.

• Taggart. A husband rigs the wall heater in the bathroom so it will detach from the wall and fall into the tub when his wife pulls on the cord to switch it on. However, her pull is too weak and it doesn't detach until the married man tries it later on coming habitation and finding his wife still live. So he has to resort to other methods.

    Music

• In the video for A Ha'due south song Velvet, Morten Harket gets "killed" like this when his in-story girlfriend tosses her still-connected blowdryer in his bathtub. And he keeps singing the vocal, even when he'south dead.
• The Alkaline Trio song Radio recounts an ex-girlfriend with the chorus "I wish yous would take my radio to breast-stroke with you, plugged in and ready to fall"
• Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley, in the video for "Where's the Dress" (a Boy George parody), one scene has Bandy bathing with a radio precariously sitting on the tub's lip ... and y'all can guess what happens side by side.
• blink-182'due south "Adam's Song" starts with this.

  "I traced the string dorsum to the wall. No wonder, it was never plugged in at all."

• The culmination of the tryst depicted in 'Digital Bathroom' past Deftones.
• Metric's "Likewise Piddling Too Belatedly" references this trope in i poetry, forth with other Lyrical Dissonance.
• No Doubt'south video for "It's My Life": Gwen Stefani, in the guise of a Jazz Age murderess, dispatches drummer Ade Young this way.
• Streetlight Manifesto references this in "A Better Identify, A Better Fourth dimension", which is about Talking Down the Suicidal.

  "I'll draw your bath and I'll load your gun,

  Just I hope so bad that you'll bathe and hunt"

    Radio

• Some of the afterwards Radio Gradittis on True Backer Radio had Ghost wishing this on the Tub Guy. He specifically said that Tub Guy should utilize a toaster, no less.

    Theme Parks

• "The Manager" ofttimes uses this method of killing people at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights; a notable case of him doing this would exist in the commercial for the event in 2003.

    Video Games

• In Alone in the Dark (2008), there are some points where you accept to pull electric cables out of the water so you can traverse through the area without getting zapped.
• In BioShock, whatsoever Splicer in the same water will instantly die if you hit them with an electric shock. Killing a Splicer in this mode unlocks an accomplishment called "Toaster in the Tub".
• In Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, the Paralyze truth bullet electrifies enemies. If the enemy is standing in water, it will hit anybody else in the water (including Komaru herself if you lot're not conscientious).
• Fallout 3 has a few skeletons institute in the bathtub, equally they were likely killed upon the bombs falling, this means many of them died in the tub. However, a rare few plainly died afterwards. A few can exist institute with a toaster in the bathtub with them. Although really, if you're going to choose between semi-instant frying past toaster assisted suicide or waiting for your flesh to fall off from radiation, fry my problems abroad.
  • Electrified toilets are a mutual booby trap.
• Played with in the Old Earth Blues expansion for Fallout: New Vegas, where the ending explains that the toaster himself was killed by beingness dropped in a bath by the other inhabitants of The Sink.
• Non a bathtub, but one of the bosses in Gamer ii is fought in a flooded factory. Hailey has to shoot him until he crashes into the water, whereupon she must actuate a lever to electrify him.
• A few puzzles in Half-Life involve a big puddle of water in contact with live wires. Gordon must shut off the power source or else suffer severe harm should he find himself swimming.
• One of the installments of Hitman series even had this move on advert posters. And indeed, in one mission this is the possible, and indeed advisable for a "true", never-seen never-recognized, killer, way to assassinate i of your targets.
  • Taking into account how hard it would be to kill yourself this way, however, doing this won't be counted equally an "accident".
• The Interactive Fiction game In The Stop two has this as one of its methods for attempting suicide. Equally is the theme of the game, information technology doesn't work; if you're not in the bath, electrifying it produces a spectacular lightshow, but if you're in the bathroom all you become is a muffled popular and a puff of smoke from the wall socket.
• Using the Beam or Plasma ability while over a trunk of water in Kirby Star Allies will send a surge of electricity across the water's surface. Void Soul as well has an attack where it raises the water level in the stage so fires a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation into information technology, electrifying information technology.
• One of the characters in Lucius dies when Lucius drops a hairdryer into her bathtub.
• The water segment of Shock Homo's stage in Mega Homo Rock Force has a Corridor Cubbyhole Run department that features this. The electrical rods in the groundwork will descend and will harm Mega Human being if he'south inside as soon every bit they touch the water.
• Rum Rogers Sr. in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge dies in a bathtub thanks to his addiction of bathing while eating toast. In The Curse of Monkey Island, LeChuck reveals that he killed him there, and made it wait like an accident.
• The Disney game Nightmare Ned has a whole song almost this. The level it appears on requires y'all to spring from bathtub to bathtub and avoid getting shocked in the procedure.
• Using a Lightning Gun in the water in Quake discharges all of your ammo into the surrounding area. Damage scales exponentially; 1 cell (out of a maximum possible of 100) will exist a small hit. 10 cells will viciously maim you. Twenty or more cells will gib the player and annihilation nearby.
• In The REmake of Resident Evil, this is how you permanently kill Neptune - while the shark has been eliminated as a threat due to the h2o in its surface area being drained, yous tin finish it off past throwing a fuse-box into the pool it is impotently flopping in and throwing a switch. Don't worry about killing yourself doing this — the box is completely fried and expends all of its charge during Neptune's death cutscene.
• In Scribblenauts, yous can employ this to kill hostile creatures in bodies of water, or Maxwell if you don't make sure he'southward safe.
• 1 puzzle in Silent Colina iii has you drib a hairdryer in a sewer main to impale a monster guarding a span.
• Utilized by the player in The Simpsons Game during the commencement Treehouse of Horror-themed level based on "Night of the Dolphin". To defeat King Snorky at the body of water park, Lisa must utilise her Buddhist powers to put an electrical eel in the dunk tank under him, assuasive Bart to use his slingshot to knock Snorky in and kill him.
• In Soldier of Fortune II, you kill Domingo Sanchez by bravado a fuse box while he's standing in a pool of water.
• Played for laughs in Tales of Vesperia. Raven is perfectly enlightened that he'll get electrocuted if he goes in a hot jump because of his blastia heart. When Yuri brings it up to him, he just says that it's Worth It.
• In Urban Chaos: Riot Response, during one of the earnest situations, a burner volition use a reporter as a human shield. When you successfully shoot him, he volition fall backward into a conveniently filled bathtub, and said reporter will then drop a television on top of the guy ("Fry, yous bastard!") as payback.

    Web Animation

• The AstroLOLogy short "The Doll" has a killer doll attempting to practise this to an unsuspecting Pisces while she's taking a bath, merely Capricorn stops him and wrestles the toaster away. Capricorn then falls over into a puddle and gets electrocuted himself, resulting in Ten-Ray Sparks.

    Web Comics

• Invoked in Amazing Super Powers, though it's unclear whether they did it or poor Wade later died of something else. See also Alt Text and the hidden comic.
• Penny Arcade had a strip parodying the comic tie-ins for Freedom Force. Gabe gets an electrical shock from an arcade automobile when lightning strikes and later on talks about how "he got these powers for a reason". Tycho so points out that he didn't get whatsoever superpowers; he merely stood in a puddle of Pepsi and got a stupor from one of the arcade games.

  Gabe: Yes, only for a reason though!

• An unusually bloody example shows up at the showtime of Hell(p)'s second affiliate. Serves every bit a Framing Device to show how people enter Hell in this universe.

    Web Videos

• The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of The Final Ninja ends with Ernie from Sesame Street getting mad at the Nerd for beating his high score, mostly because the Nerd entered ASSSSSS as his proper name, which Ernie interprets as the Nerd proverb he is below donkey, i.e. less than shit. Ernie attacks the Nerd and the two fight briefly, with the Nerd coming out on tiptop. The Nerd then takes Ernie to the bathtub and drops the Nintoaster ^annotation The Nerd's custom NES, fabricated past putting the innards of an NES within the outer shell of a toaster. in with him. A rather ironic death since Ernie is known to love baths.

  Ernie: Y'all're one sick fuck, Nerd!

• The Joker Blogs: Joker murders the all-time human at Harleen's wedding (who is also the groom's brother) this mode, using the (even so-filming!) camera as the murder weapon. He also writes a false suicide notation to go out at the scene. In Comic Sans.
• The Nostalgia Critic:
  • Critic drops a toaster into the bathtub when he's Driven to Suicide during his review of The Pebble and the Penguin.
  • He makes another reference to the act in his "You're a Rotten Dingy Bounder" special.

    Nostalgia Critic: Is this a pep talk? Considering pep talks are supposed to brand you feel peppy, not brand yous want to have a shower with a FUCKING TOASTER!

• In the SuperMarioLogan episode, "Bowser Junior'southward Sleepover", at the end of the first episode of Doofy the Dragon, Doofy kills himself past putting his hairdryer in his bathtub. Then a disclaimer shows upward, warning the viewers non to attempt what Doofy did.

    Western Blitheness

• In the American Dad! episode "Da Flippity Flop", Klaus attempts to impale himself by dropping a hand vacuum in his fishbowl, but nil happens, causing him to lament that the vacuum is never charged.
• In Ben 10 (2016), Frightwig attempts to kill a puddle full of people by dropping a laptop into it before Ben as Fourarms grabs it.
• Happens to Donald Duck in the Classic Disney Brusque How to Have an Accident in the Home. In this example, though, the h2o and toaster are two separate accidents. For the bathtub, he'south both using an electric razor and tuning into a radio near the tub at the same time, promptly getting zapped. As for the toaster, he's foolishly ramming a knife within hoping that it'll fix it.
• Family Guy:
  • On the flavour ane episode "A Hero Sits Next Door," (it'south the episode that introduces the Swansons, for those who haven't seen Family unit Guy's get-go season) when Peter mentioned how much he hated new neighbors because they ever borrow his stuff and never return it, the scene cuts to a man about to commit suicide in a bath with a toaster (implied to be one of the many things he lent to his neighbor and hasn't seen since) because his married woman divorced him and wanted full custody of their children. During the adjacent scene, the lights in the Griffin household flicker.
  • In "Mom's the Discussion", 1 of Stewie's suicide attempts involves the toaster-in-the-bathtub routine, just information technology backfires when he becomes a toast-themed superhero as a result.
  • One cutaway gag revolves around Peter'southward bad job babysitting a neighbor's child, where he left the child unattended in a total tub and left a ton of unsafe things lying around the bath, amid them a plugged-in hairdryer. He then shut off the lights and went home.
• Hilariously attempted by Dale in Rex of the Colina to Hank when he heard he had an Erotic Dream about his wife. Dale ran in with a toaster in hand, simply forget it was still plugged, and then he just tripped and fell before he could make it.
  • It gets better, he so asks Hank if he can Infringe HIS EXTENSION String!
• Armless waterbender Ming-hua from The Legend of Korra meets her demise when Mako zaps the pool they're fighting in with lightning.
• Although it only causes him to temporarily turn into a pile of ashes, Volectro from Mixels, being an Electroid, suffers through this when he takes a shower in the episode "A Quest for the Lost Mixamajig".
• In i episode of The PJs, after being placed under house abort for a parole violation, Thurgood tries to expose Walter as corrupt. They end up wrestling in a puddle near the adjourn and are both electrocuted by Thurgood'south tracking brace. Their spirits ascend, Walter is allowed into Sky and vouches for Thurgood to join him instead of being sent to Hell, merely they're revived at the last minute.
• Discussed in The Powerpuff Girls episode, "Too Pooped to Puff". Later being annoyed to do every single menial work for others, the girls try to explicate to the very impaired citizens of Townsville that spraying water on a monster caught in telephone lines volition electrocute information technology, then they use the trope as an example.
• Robot Chicken:
  • As part of the Running Gag of the Bloopers host committing suicide at the cease of his sketches, the fourth ane had him killing himself this style.
  • Some other sketch has a man committing a Murder-Suicide past dropping The Brave Fiddling Toaster into his bathtub.
• Done in Rocko's Modern Life episode "Fatal Contraption" when the new jealous appliance destroys the toaster past throwing it a piece of bread to chase in which said piece of breadstuff falls into the sink then that the toaster follows information technology.
• Sealab 2021:
  • In the episode "Waking Quinn". Stormy drops a high powered hair dryer into a puddle which electrocutes Quinn, causing him to experience lots of odd hallucinations. He did it not out of malice, but out of stupidity. After, when Quinn wakes up, Stormy tries to revive him with a defibrillator (past putting information technology direct in the water, away from Quinn himself), and so shows him his "bitchin'" bootleg Tesla gyre. The concluding one was implied to have been malicious, every bit Quinn asked if Stormy was that stupid before Stormy dropped it in.
  • In a later episode, Sparks kills Irish potato by dropping the same Tesla coil into the jacuzzi Murphy is sitting in. However, because of the ho-hum speed of the aforementioned visible arcs of electricity, Murphy lives long enough to have Sparks down with him.
• In the blithe short The Matter What Lurked in the Tub, Lugmeyer accidentally kills the titular monster by knocking his radio into the bathtub the brute is hiding in.

    Real Life

• Averting this trope is the reason that most building codes crave that all electrical outlets in bathrooms be GFCI outlets. Unfortunately, this normally merely applies to new construction, pregnant that electrocution via bathtub is withal a danger for older homes. It's besides possible for this trope to happen if the device has a long enough cord, is plugged into an outlet exterior the bathroom, and is carried in - the outlets in the hall may not be GCFI.
  • Also averting this trope is the fact that near counter/table-top household appliances have shorter cords, then i wouldn't be able to end their lives with a toaster, radio, etc.
• Interestingly, water in its pure form won't readily act every bit a usher. In fact, water is a pretty good insulator. Unfortunately, water is also a slap-up solvent...this means that there's almost e'er some minerals and/or other salts dissolved within. It'southward these salts that readily conduct electricity. Even if you took a bath in pure H2O, the moment y'all dipped your toe in the tub, the salts and other contaminants on your pare have doomed your fate!
  • This also explains why most electrical appliances are toast (pun very much intended) when they land in water unless you become them out of there fast and immediately expose their innards to a drying agent - as many devil-may-care people have found out from using their mobile phone, tablet or even a laptop computer next to or in the bathroom, all information technology takes is a slip from the hand and a few ounces of salty, soapy water to a critical component to spell serious impairment or fifty-fifty outright bricking.
• This is why whatever outdoor swimming pool or beach will close immediately in the event of a thunderstorm, as a lightning strike either in the h2o itself or to the ground nearby (where the pipes, wiring, and gas lines can comport the charge to the water) can do this on a g scale to a big group of people. The rule of thumb for lifeguards is the 30-30 rule: if lightning is followed less than thirty seconds later by thunder (indicating that the lightning bolt was less than six miles abroad), and then the pool is closed until thirty minutes afterwards the concluding thunder or lightning.
• Thomas Merton died this mode. Conspiracy theories abound.
• The aforementioned can be said of French singer Claude François, the most famous French victim of this. In that location's a skillful hazard he will exist referenced whenever the trope is used in French fiction. He too won a Darwin award for it.
• Flavia Boricea, a teenage daughter from Romania died from using Twitter on a laptop while in the bathtub.
  • Some other teen died from dropping a hairdryer in the tub.
• 1 method of execution by the Nazis involved lowering a group of prisoners on a metal plate into a vat of water, then running electric current through it. Then the appliance was raised out of the h2o and electrified again to fire the corpses.
• This murder endeavour. Fortunately for the woman, she tossed out the radio in time and survived.
• This is actually a common take a chance for alive performing musicians, specially when the set/venue/etcetera involves a pool or fountain or other big body of water and/or information technology's raining. Since vocalists (and, to a lesser degree, guitarists) might not exactly remember they are property a highly charged electrical object when they determine to jump into the pool/run out from under the canopy/etcetera, people have almost died doing this - the only affair saving them being someone grabbing their mic or guitar or kicking it loose from power before they hit the water.
  • Preventing this is why more avant-garde setups for video or festival or venue performance will set up redundancy to knock out power - the cables and cords themselves visible so a roadie or some other ring member can reply if he or she sees this nearly to happen or happening, and the soundboard/lighting tech beingness able to cut the breakers from his/her position - ruining the prove, but saving the life of a forgetful vocaliser or guitarist if he or she sees it happening from their vantage bespeak.
• Also a take a chance for photographers: batteries on modern photographic camera gear can hands charge it up enough to evangelize a fatal shock if the lensman falls into water. In at least i incident caught on video, a photographer at a wedding aiming for a better shot forgot to look behind him and fell into a fountain - the only thing making information technology not fatal was that someone grabbed his camera gear from him using a strap of his haversack.
• In that location was a instance in Austria in the late 1980s where a wife tried to kill her husband by throwing a running hairdryer into the bathtub he was sitting in. The residual current circuit breaker did its chore and saved the human being'due south life. The manufacturer of the excursion breaker quoted the incident in their advertising to prove the loftier quality of their product, which just goes to show that the ability to make quality electric parts is non e'er paired with skilful gustatory modality.
• According to both Hunter S. Thompson and other friends of Oscar Zeta Acosta, the bathtub scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was loosely based on an actual result, though it didn't take place during either of their trips to Las Vegas.
• In 2005, Kyle Lake, pastor of University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, died from electrocution while performing a baptism, due to grabbing an ungrounded microphone while standing in the water. This was the basis for the thousand Ways to Die segment "Cruci-Fried".

---

fergusonstife1957.blogspot.com

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectrifiedBathtub

Share this post