Jabba Table Manners

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Spoon, darling. Use the damn spoon. It's right there. Use it."

We all know he William Howard Taft kept a bowl of live frogs by his resting slab in the Oval Office that he would occasionally snack on during meetings. We all know the Oval Office was originally round. The bloggers of the day would never let him forget it.

—More Information Than You Require, "Humanizing Detail on William Howard Taft"

It is an unspoken agreement in polite society that the proverb "You are what you eat" not only applies literally to what you are eating, but also how you actually consume the food. What better way, then, to show that a powerful (usually fat) and important person is a corrupt villain by having him wastefully wolf down food with loud slurps-burps-slobbering, in a manner more befitting of a pig than a gentleman of his status?

Bonus points of villainy if the food is meant to be "fine" gourmet food that would cost the month's wage of a poor person to buy. It takes an epically repulsive villain to make the very consumption of fine foods a disgusting act to behold.

This is an Anvilicious trope criticizing wastefulness of the rich and corrupt. It is as old as cinema itself, starting back in the Two-Fisted Tales days. Also commonly found amongst The Mafia and the occasional Nazi of four colored comic books.

Also see Adipose Rex. Can be a subtrope of Villainous Glutton.

Examples of Jabba Table Manners include:

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Anime and Manga

  • While feeling more sadistic than usual, Souther in Fist of the North Star sets up a banquet of a dozen courses just to watch the attending slave children shake in hunger at the sight of it. After eating less than half a plate, he smashes the entire table, ordering all the scraps to be thrown into the trash, just so he can take joy in watching a child being beaten by his men for trying to eat a single drumstick.
  • Guild Mistress Delphin of Last Exile is repulsively wasteful enough to make Jabba himself look like a gentleman in comparison. Guild connoisseurs take pride at how a tiny morsel of succulent meat took the lives of dozens of men to acquire and how a slice of fish is washed with enough water to slake a family's thirst. After all, so they reason, the sacrifice makes the food all the more tasty.
  • In Dragon Ball Z, evil genie Majin-Buu slurps and gobbles down the candy he turns his victims into. That they are still alive and conscious makes his eating scenes all the more nightmarishly evil.
  • One Piece.
    • Wapol. His Baku-Baku Fruit's ability lets him eat anything and stretch his jaws, as well as taking the phrase "you are what you eat" literally.
    • Luffy himself qualifies too. Although, to be Frank, none of the Straw Hats have the best table manners, being the life on any party they show up at. The only exception is Sanji, most of the time, but even he tends to get rowdy on occasion.
    • The Straw Hats' occasional ally Jewelry Bonney is even worse in than they are, shoving food down her throat while screaming and kicking for more mid-chow, even while at a restaurant that seems high-class. She tends to talk with her mouth full, even when shouting orders to her crew. Capone Bege, being a Man of Wealth and Taste, is disgusted by her lack of manners.
  • Bob Poundmax in Gungrave, who barely chews the fried chicken that he practically inhales by the bucketful. It's eventually revealed being turned into a nonhuman was the only thing that saved him from a heart attack.

Harry: Ugh! Bob, how many times have we told you to stop eating like that?!
Bob: (with food still in his mouth) I'm sorry Harry, I promise I won't do it again! (while crumbs are spilling everywhere)

  • Though not shown directly onscreen, the wasteful manner in which the noblemen of Pumpkin Scissors treat food that should be used to feed the refugees definitely qualifies them for this trope. Although there was one instance where it is shown, with that noble in episode 2 who hunts his citizens with his tank for sport. He throws a tantrum because his steak was prepared differently from his usual and throws it to the floor. Then he hears his maids' stomachs growling (rather audibly), so he tosses the rest of the onto the floor while remarking that he should feed his dogs. Yeah, he's an asshole.
  • Chihiro's parents are seriously greedy pigs in Spirited Away, even before they are turned into actual pigs for touching the food of gods. At one point, her dad seems to stuff a fried chicken down his throat! It's implied to be an effect of eating the enchanted food: once you start, you can't stop scarfing it down until you become a pig.

Comic Books

  • All-Father D'Aronique in Preacher. He then pukes on himself. And one character goes, "Oh I forgot to tell you, he's bulimic."
  • One of our big clues that Rorschach is more than a bit socially maladjusted in Watchmen is the way he wolfs down cold baked beans straight from the can. The sound effects don't help matters. In his case it's almost a subversion, because rather than being wasteful/greedy it shows him as a loner who doesn't know (or, more likely, simply doesn't care) about the kinds of things normal people care about, such as table manners. It also helps convey that he's a pretty spartan kind of guy: The beans are just as nutritious cold. It's faster. It's easier. Why bother heating them up?
  • Larfleeze, the Orange Lantern, was known to be constantly stuffing his face with repulsive food made from jungle insects and decaying meat. One of the side effects of being the possessor of the orange light of avarice is constant hunger.
  • In 52 Doc Magnus follows Rorschach's example by wolfing down can after can of cold baked beans when his medication is taken from him on Oolong Island. The way he chows down the beans and the pile of messy tin cans disgusts the other mad scientists so they leave him alone, All According to Plan.
  • In Asterix in Switzerland, Varius Flavus and his orgies set the standard for this.

"Hey! Slave! This dish is clean! It's disgraceful!"
"That's right! Why not fingerbowls, while you're about it?"

Film

  • The animal characters of Fantastic Mr. Fox like to think of themselves as urbane and sophisticated, but they go wild at mealtimes.
  • Beauty and the Beast At breakfast together, Belle is visibly disturbed to see Beast snarfing at his porridge like an animal. Chip helpfully nudges him his spoon... which leads to Beast dripping the porridge into his waiting jaws. Belle offers a compromise by lifting her bowl up, and they both drink.
  • In Aladdin, Jafar takes a huge bite of an apple, eats it while talking and spits part of it onto Jasmine's face.
  • In The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, while discussing plans with the admiral, Queen Victoria is talking with her mouth full.
  • Jabba the Hutt of Star Wars, who shovels in gourmet food by the handful, is the Trope Namer. A fair amount of it is alive when he eats it. He can even swallow humans whole.
  • In Spaceballs, Pizza the Hut is a parody of Jabba. He's hilarious. And delicious. Unfortunately for him, as he ends up eating himself to death.
  • Lips Manlis, loudly slurping oysters in the Dick Tracy films.
  • In the "Death Proof" segment of Grindhouse, a stuntman's loud and messy introduction with a plate of cheese-soaked nachos is enough to tell you that he is a creep.
  • The Sha-Her Triad of Jet Li's Wuxia film Once Upon a Time in China guzzle down pork and wine after forming a alliance of with the American sex-slave traders who invaded China.
  • In Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings, the Steward of Gondor does this as we see shots of his son being sent (by him) on what's likely to be a pointless suicidal mission. (This is film-only — Denethor of the books was practically ascetic.)
  • Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life "Part VI The Autumn Years". On YouTube starting at 0:50. Then again, he also vomits everything right back up.
  • John "Bluto" Blutarsky from Animal House uses his disgusting eating habits to piss off the Deltas and provoke a food fight.
  • John Belushi did it again in The Blues Brothers, when Jake and Elwood deliberately invoke this trope to drag Mr. Fabulous away from his ritzy maître d' job and back into their band. Though his insistence to buy the young daughter of the family in the next table probably has even greater effect.
  • The King of the Moon from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; he eats with his hands and talks with his mouth full, getting more food on his robes than in his actual mouth, plus wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
  • The overweight Assistant Warden and the Warden of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky wolf down banquets while their prisoners starve. Even their dogs get steak for dinner!!
  • The Bandit in Dynamite Warrior is a deranged cannibal who gains super strength when he's hungry. He probably wouldn't be so hungry all the time if he didn't eat like Cookie Monster and, you know, actually swallowed his food.
  • 30 Days of Night: Given that there's only a certain amount of blood in a human body, and only a certain number of human bodies left in Barrow, should the vamps have been dribbling so much down the fronts of their shirts? In some scenes, they actually look like they have blood beards, of the ZZ Top variety.
  • A porn industry farce, Live Virgin features a more subtle version of the trope when a porn executive mentions how much he used to hate caviar before spooning it into his mouth from a bowl while lounging on a couch. It wasn't all that terrible but the film gives plenty of other examples of his general piggery.
  • In Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure, Genghis Khan first appears being served a plate of meat by a beautiful woman. He promptly spits out a mouthful of meat, knocks the tray to the ground, and starts ravishing her (although he's quickly interrupted by the Wyld Stallyns' time-traveling phone booth and lured away with a Twinkie).
  • The title character of Jennifer's Body indulges in some of this shortly after her Demonic Possession. She's so hungry, she sneaks into Needy's house, pulls a refrigerated roast chicken apart with her bare hands and starts messily shoveling it into her mouth. Her newly-possessed body rejects it. Later, when she learns she has to eat people, her feeding methods are no less messy.
  • Invoked for laughs in A Christmas Story, when Ralphie's mother, in an effort to get fussy younger brother Randy to stop complaining about his food, takes the novel approach of encouraging him to eat like a pig, sticking his face right into his "trough" and making audible oinking noises. While it does work like a charm, Ralphie is weirded out by it all, and his dad simply rolls his eyes and resumes reading the newspaper.

Literature

  • Jabba's father Zorba from the Jedi Prince series of novels is just as disgusting as his son. His hosts at a feast are squicked out by his eating habits and are aghast when he ruins their super expensive carpet. Oddly enough, Zorba gorging himself in that situation is somewhat understandable since he had been wandering Tatooine for days with hardly anything to eat.
  • Discworld
    • In the book Going Postal, Lord Vetinari recounts with horror watching merchant banker Crispin Horsefry eat a dish where "the sauce went everywhere". Reacher Gilt later winces to see fine brandy drunk the way Horsefry drinks it.
    • And then there was Lord Winder. He wasn't exactly a messy eater, but his intense paranoia ensured that the artistically crafted cake was completely ruined, as he feared that an assassin might hide inside it and had guards poke swords through it. It got downright pitiful when he declared out loud which piece he would take, but in the last minute snatched the piece of another guest, fearing that his might be poisoned.
    • Early versions of Lord Vetinari, before he settled into a consistent characterization (or even got a name; until he became the urbane, politically-savvy ascetic we know today, he was just "The Patrician"), had him down as rather pudgy and he had snacks close at hand (the implication being that he was putting them to use constantly). He wasn't outright evil, but he was rather more in the vein of Lord Snapcase than would be believable if you started with the later books.
  • Izak Grottle, a particularly fat and obnoxious skaven warlord from the Gotrek and Felix novels, likes to gulp down live rats.
  • In the 5th Deltora Quest book, Gellick the Great Toad devours flies by the massive bowlful. His slaves have to keep special rooms full of maggots and rotting food to ensure a sufficient supply of flies. He even kills a slave with his poisonous saliva for having to tell him that the supplies are lower than normal due to him slowly eating larger quantities each meal.
  • Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Magic. A boy with positively dreadful table manners is taught how to eat properly by a very intelligent pig.
  • Inverted in Star Trek: Titan. Several of the carnivores on the Titan crew, including Dr. Ree, tear into their raw meat in a highly inelegant manner, usually spurting blood all over the table. This isn't because they're villainous or ill-mannered (in fact Dr. Ree's culture is incredibly polite), but because their species' instincts and metabolisms require them to "play" with their food.

Live-Action TV

  • Star Trek:
    • Klingons universally gulp down food like slobs. In their case, though, it is to show how tough and free of pretentious "good manners" their straightforward and honest society is, rather than showing how "evil" they supposedly are. Also, it's hard to be dainty when the food is constantly trying to escape off the plate.
    • A specific example, lack of table manners is one of many unpleasant traits possessed by Royal Brat Elaan from the original series episode "Elaan of Troyius". She eats with her hands without bothering with silverware, napkins, or even plates.
  • Invoked on News Radio. Jimmy James actively cultivated this as an intimidation tactic ("you have no idea how many millions I've made eating baked beans with my hands") and has to shake himself from it when invited to eat dinner with the President.
  • From Stargate SG-1, the Goa'uld underlord Nerus. General Landry comments that he'd never seen any human being eat in such a disgusting way. To which Nerus responds that he isn't human.
  • In one episode of Stargate Atlantis, the nobles that Sheppard associates with eat like this. Made all the more disgusting in that the group's first contact on that world are the farmers the nobles get their food from, who are all but starving.
  • When the Master returns in the Doctor Who story The End of Time, he spends the majority of the first part howling "I am SOOO HUNGRY" and eating anything in sight, very quickly and with single-minded intensity. Including people.
  • One episode of Yeralash is about a king who orders his first minister to make his daughter laugh. No clowns can do it... until a trope fitting boy is invited.

Puppet Shows

  • Sesame Street: Although Cookie Monster definitely eats this way, he's harmless. His eating habits are intended as mildly objectionable in and of themselves and seem to be connected to the fact he's generally uncivilized, though. And in one early appearance, he attempted to eat Kermit.
  • The Skeksis banquet scene in The Dark Crystal. Fun moments: A Skeksi ripping the fat off a steak and chewing it loudly, a Skeksi gargling his beak in the middle of a bowl of water, and the entire group smashing the table trying to catch a live "rolly" rolling across it before the fattest Skeksi catches and eats it.

Tabletop Games

  • The Macellarius bloodline in Vampire: The Requiem are vampiric gluttons. Their "feasting parties" generally consist of several dozen different varieties of blood, which they drink so sloppily it tends to ruin their (often fine) clothing. They'll even eat normal food at these things—which, being vampires, they then vomit up, not that they care. And then there's the special Discipline of the clan, which lets them turn raw flesh into Vitae (and thus keep it down). In the sourcebook depicting them, there's a memo from a vampire who had to negotiate with a group of Macellarius, noting that dinner with them took seven hours and got downright horrific when the human leg was brought in... Needless to say, the memo's subject line was "You So Owe Me".
  • From the original Vampire: The Masquerade we have the Nagaraja, though it fairness it's hard to eat daintily when your biology requires you to eat living or recently living human flesh...

Video Games

  • Melvin Underbelly from Overlord, the hero who fell to Gluttony. His eating habits disgust even your minions, and they're pretty crude themselves.
  • Governor Phatt in Monkey Island 2 Le Chucks Revenge, a bloated whale of a man confined to his bed, eats through tubes that hang over his bed and deliver liquified food-like substances every 30 seconds or so. A bell rings to signal when it's about to come out. He's apparently learned how to respond to this prompt in his sleep.
  • In Team Fortress 2, the Heavy is a very noisy chewer, which, combined with how long he has to stand still to eat the Sandvich - or Buffalo Steak Sandvich, or Dalokohs Bar - he can be a very easy target.
  • Soda Popinski from the Wii version of Punch Out. He drinks soda like it were going out of style, but he's a sloppy drinker, getting far more of it on the mat and on himself than in his mouth.

Visual Novels

  • Tsukihime
    • Nero Chaos' idea of fine dining is unleashing a horde of ravenous beasts inside a crowded hotel. All that's left the next morning are bloodstains that are everywhere and the occasional shark bite mark on the walls for when he apparently got a little too excited.
    • Arcueid inverts this, with Shiki describing her eating a hamburger as "elegant". Arc's a good guy, so maybe not.

Web Animation

Web Comics

Tarquin: We've decided it's best if the Empress avoids eating in front of guests from now on.
Too much clean up, both from her meal and from guests losing theirs.

  • Brawl in the Family has it parodied in this comic.
  • Eerie Cuties had an incident during Chloe's little power trip - when dining with Layla and Dio, she began to eat sloppily and with gusto, and could not stop. It was the result of a hypnotic suggestion, however.
  • Girl Genius has infamous Jäger table manners (and taste fer "bogz"). Which humans joining the Heterodyne army occasionally pick up.

Web Original

  • BigMastadon's self-imposed challenge to eat 40 pizza rolls. Retsupurae's MST and reaction here
  • The Nostalgia Chick stuffs food in her gob instead of eating it normally, and has even sung with her mouth full of Subway once.

Western Animation

  • Mandragora slurping down oysters from the Justice League Unlimited episode "Double Date". Bonus points for leering at Black Canary as he says, "I like my oysters nice and juicy." Ew. And then you remember that oysters are supposedly an aphrodisiac.
  • In Batman the Animated Series episode "The Forgotten", almost every line from villain Boss Biggis is grumbled through a mouthful of half-chewed food.
  • The Tamaraneans from Teen Titans have meals that involves fighting for food. It didn't help the Earthling Titans that you can't tell if the food is meat or not.

Robin: So... I'm guessing you picked up your table manners on Earth?
Starfire: HURRY OR YOU WILL NOT GET ANY!

Frank Grimes: He eats like a pig!
Lenny: Nah, Pigs tend to chew. I'd say he eats more like a duck.
*Cut to Homer eating like a duck*
Frank Grimes: Well, some kind of barnyard animal, anyway.

  • Dungeons and Dragons In the episode "In Search of Dungeon Master", the heroes - sans Erik and Sheila - are caught by a group of orcs and taken to the Slave Mines of Theramore. Shela shows up to rescue them, entering through the orcs’ commissary, and is quickly grossed out by their complete lack of manners, eating with their hands and throwing bones on the floor. Two of them even get into a fight over a leg of mutton, one of them getting it after using it on the other like a club.
  • In DC Super Hero Girls, there is... Wonder Woman, of all people. Clearly etiquette is not regarded as important in Themyscria, as when Diana takes a liking to food, she eschews both manners or utensils, sometimes planting her face into it the way a ravenous dog would.
  • This short from Animaniacs:

Good Idea: Whistling while you work.
Bad Idea: Whistling while you eat.

  • Slimer on The Real Ghostbusters is a Big Eater who clearly never heard of things like napkins or utensils, scarfing down anything edible as fast as possible. Other ghosts can be even worse than he is.
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