This Billboard Needs Some Salt

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The 50 Foot Whatever is rampaging across town, bringing death and destruction. Suddenly, it sees a billboard, or an advertisement, or a plastic decoration that depicts some kind of food. Without second thought, the monster picks it up and proceeds to eat it, thinking it is actual food. For an added bonus, the sign will effectively be actual food. Too many cartoons to mention have had coffee shops with a giant mug and donut on the top, only to have a nearby giant dunk the donut in the mug with a brown splash.

A shop that is Shaped Like What It Sells is liable to fall victim to this trope.

While this might be a Not Hyperbole case of Chewing the Scenery, it has nothing to do with that Trope. Necessarily.

Examples of This Billboard Needs Some Salt include:

Comic Books

  • A Fantastic Four/ Iron Man crossover comic Big in Japan had a 50 Foot Whatever make Iron Man a sandwich, thinking he was actually an ally from way back when. The sandwich he made? It was two walls, a tanker truck, and a radio tower's antenna.
  • In The Simpsons/ Futurama crossover, a giant version of Homer is rampaging around New New York City. The heroes manage to distract it with an image of Marge holding a steak broadcasted on that giant TV screen.

Lisa: That screen sure is realistic.
Fry: So much that Leela crashes through it once a week!

Film

  • In Shrek 2, the giant gingerbread man stops to drink coffee from the cup at the top of a Farbucks coffee shop. The customers inside the shop run away screaming in terror... across the street, into another Farbucks.
    • But, to Mongo's irritation, the part where it actually has coffee in it is subverted.
  • In Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, they attempt to distract Adam with an ice cream truck topped with a huge prop. Guess what happens when the kid catches up? Later, he yanks the guitar off the Hard Rock Cafe and tries to play it.
  • The Muppet Movie had a gag with a custard pie billboard containing an actual giant pie.

Live-Action TV

Newspaper Comics

  • Garfield:
    • In this strip, he leaps at a sign on a fish stand that was shaped like a fish, and somehow reduces it to a large fishbone.
    • In another, he mistakes a hot dog truck for a giant hot dog. He feels rather silly when it proves inedible but then decides to have "dessert" by doing the same thing to an ice cream truck.

Western Animation

  • Parodied in the Johnny Bravo episode "Jumbo Johnny", where the giant-sized Johnny comes across a billboard depicting a hot, sexy lady and proceeds to flirt with it.
  • In an episode of Futurama where Zoidberg's people invade and conquer Earth, the invaders end up building a gigantic walking crab-shaped robot/palace. To demonstrate its power, the robot first goes and destroys the hat-shaped billboard for Acme Collapsible Hats, by collapsing it. Then it destroys the Acme Accordion sign by squeezing it together. Then it tries to break the Acme Unbreakable Comb billboard. It tries again. It tries a third time. Then it finally just pushes the sign over and moves on.
    • Also played with in the first "Anthology of Interest" episode. When Bender is rampaging through the city, he finds a Kentucky Slims factory, yanking one of the large smokestacks off and smoking it as if it were an actual giant cigarette.
  • Just how many times has that giant donut outside the Lard Lad been used for this?
  • In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sleepy Time", Plankton, dreaming he's a rampaging giant, picks up the Krusty Krab sign and licks it like a lollipop.
  • The Veggie Tales short featuring Larry-Boy versus the Fib from Outer Space has a couple instances of the giant-sized Fib playing with resteraunt signs, including an odd one that featuring a cow on a hampster wheel that goes rolling down the street.
  • In a Garfield and Friends episode where Garfield gets giant, he eats a hot-dog shaped hot dog stand.
  • The giant in the Classic Disney Short "Brave Little Tailor" pulls an entire well out of the ground and drinks from it, then rolls up a haystack and smokes it like a cigarette, lighting it with a stove.
  • While it didn't involve a 50-foot Whatever, the ALF animated episode "Phantom Pilot" did feature a giant donut sign that was mechanically dunked into a giant coffee cup - Gordon tricked Larson Petty into flying his ship into it and getting stuck in the hole. And yes, the cup that the donut (and ship with Petty in it) was dunked into was full of coffee.
  • A Jimmy Two-Shoes episode had several missles being fired. One of them hit a billboard with a pig, turning it into a ham.
  • In the Kim Possible episode "Partners", Dr. Drakken and DNAmy have teamed up to create a giant lizard that attacks Middleton. In short order, the lizard chomps down on the giant taco sign at Bueno Nacho, knocks a donut store's oversized donut into the giant coffee cup at a coffee shop, and bites on a giant neon pizza slice. Drakken and Amy are soon caged by a gigantic box of french fries from a burger stand.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/This_Billboard_Needs_Some_Salt?oldid=2027786"