Even the IRS stays out of the kitchen.
I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago!
—The Protagonist before beating up Sator's men in the restaurant kitchen: TENET
Kitchens. Whether at home, in a canteen, or a restaurant, they all have two things in common: they can be used to prepare delicious meals... and they tend to be full of stuff that, if misused, can seriously hurt someone, or worse. Knives, frying pans, and rolling pins naturally come to mind, but the most painful choices are likely the fire from the stove, the scalding hot grease in the aforementioned frying pan, the equally scalding hot oil from a deep fryer, and boiling water. Even certain food products typically found in a kitchen can make for a weapon.
In short, a kitchen is an excellent place to find an Improvised Weapon. This is not just throwing a frying pan. This is about taking a bubbling pot of scalding oil or a pan filled with boiling water, and turning it into a weapon of opportunity. It is messy, brutal, and usually very personal. Whether it is an act of desperation, a flash of rage, or cold-blooded vengeance, the results are always hard to watch and even harder to forget.
Sometimes, it is just a quick splash from a skillet. Other times the attacker flips a whole fryer or sets up a trap that sends grease flying. No matter the setup, it is always painful and usually followed by screams, steam, and that awful sizzling sound.
Could be considered a particularly gruesome use of Deep-Fried Whatever. Compare and contrast Cooked to Death, where someone is not just scorched but well done. Super-Trope to Frying Pan of Doom and Rolling Pin of Doom. For when boiling oil is used as a weapon in siege warfare, see Dumping on the Besiegers.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Diamond is Unbreakable: When Josuke makes the assumption that Antonio is an enemy, he rushes into the kitchen and causes the latter to throw a knife at him. Subverted when it turns out Antonio did it because he was upset at Josuke for not washing his hands beforehand.
- Golden Wind: During Narancia's fight against Squalo and Tizzano, he manages to locate Clash in the restaurant's kitchen and wounds him. However, Squalo tricks him into a causing a gas leak from the nearby stove, which Mista ignites and triggers an explosion before Narancia could warn him.
- JoJolion: While in the kitchen, Mitsuba is attacked by calamities caused by Toru's Wonder Of U, causing her to receive sliced fingers by a knife and a pot of boiling water to nearly splash onto her body.
- Rei Todoroki in My Hero Academia threw boiling water at her young son Shoto after her husband pro hero Endeavor drove her to a psychotic break. Shoto still has the scar on his face.
Comic Books
- In 2000 AD, a one-off story concerned an update of the Dracula mythos, in which the Count's coffin is being ferried between planets in the hold of a space freighter. As in the novel, the Count roams by the equivalent of night to prey on the ship's crew. However, the vampire makes a fatal error in seeking to attack the ship's cook in his galley. He ends up with a full catering-sized tin of dried garlic being tipped over him by the Genre Savvy cook.
- The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror: In one issue, Cletus is shown pouring cooking grease on IRS agents to avoid paying taxes.
- In Watchmen, Rorschach uses a vat of hot fry oil to disable a man attempting to stab him in prison, while shouting his Badass Boast "I'm not locked up in here with you, you are locked in here with me!".
Films — Animated
- Beauty and the Beast (1991): During the fight between the castle staff and the Angry Mob, Mrs. Potts and her tea cups pour hot water on one of the attackers. He is heard yelling in pain. Later, when the attackers make the mistake of entering the castle's kitchen, they find themselves face-to-face with dozens of living knifes and a very angry living kitchen stove.
Films — Live-Action
- Drive-Thru: The Monster Clown uses hot oil in the kitchen of the Hella Burger restaurant to melt the face off of one victim.
- Gremlins (1984): In what is likely the movies Signature Scene, Billy's mother fights off and kills three Gremlins in her kitchen, using various appliances as weapons. In order, she gets the first one in a sneak attack by turning on the blender it's got its head in, kills another with a kitchen knife, and kills the third by shoving the creature into the microwave before turning it on, exploding the Gremlin.
- Ichi the Killer: The killer uses tempura oil from his stove as a torture implement on Mr. Suzuki.
- Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: Jason Voorhees shoves a restaurant employee's face into scalding oil of the restaurant kitchen.
- The Last House on the Left: The Final Battle of The Remake has Krug vs. the Papa Wolf wrecking half of the house and spreading to the house's kitchen. Kruger gets an even gorier kill than the original when he gets his head slammed into the microwave even and it is microwaved until it explodes.
- In Novocaine (2025), Nathan must inflict this to himself in order to grab a gun that has dropped into the oil during a fight.
- In The Sadness, one of the first infected we see throws cooking oil on a cafe worker before tearing his face off.
- Scotland, PA: A restaurant owner is killed by being tied up and having his head shoved in a deep fryer full of hot oil and held there.
- Sleepaway Camp: Artie the camp cook (and resident sexual predator) is attacked by the killer while standing over a large pot of boiling water. The pot falls on top of him, scalding his face and hands and leaving him covered in blisters. He's last seen being taken away by paramedics, suggesting the killer didn't finish the job despite Artie being by far the most deserving victim.
- Snakes on a Plane: The snakes are loose through the cabin. The male flight attendant stuffs a coral snake into the microwave (which amazingly, has a "Snake" setting), turns it on, and laughs while the snake cooks and then explodes:
"YEAH! HAHAHA! Who's your daddy NOW, bitch?!"
- Sudden Death: The famous fight scene between Darren and the assassin dressed as the Pittsburgh Penguins mascot takes place inside a kitchen in the Civic Center. The assassin uses a meat tenderizer mallet and almost dumbs Darren into a deep fryer. He then puts pepper in her beak/eyes before she gets choked to death by a large dish washer.
- The Toxic Avenger (1984): While fighting a group of thugs in the kitchen of a Mexican Restaurant, The Avenger shoves a villain's hands into the boiling oil. He also tortures one thug by first waterboarding him with milk, and then stuff the guys mouth with taco dough and finally, shoves a spinning mixer into the guys face.
- TENET: After the Protagonist meets Kat Barton at a restaurant to discuss her estranged husband, Andrei Sator, he's approached by Sator's men. They take him to the kitchen with the intent to beat him up to send a message, however, he turns the tables and uses the kitchen cookware, at one point taking a grater to one of them, and proceeds to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. When he emerges from the kitchen entrance with one of the beaten thugs, Kat's driver, another one of Sator's men, drives away quickly.
- Return to Sleepaway Camp: A man's entire head is shoved in the fryer.
- You're Next: Played with. One of the fights of the film takes place inside of the home's kitchen. The protagonist, a Crazy Survivalist, had boiled a pot of hot water early in the siege to use as an offensive weapon and tosses the water to the face of one of the killers. But the siege has been going on for the better part of an hour and the water has long since cooled down. The killer still slips in the water that pools by his feet and the protagonist beats the crap out of him with the pot.
Literature
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Downplayed. In the anarchy of the "Pig and Pepper" scene in the kitchen with the Duchess and the baby, the cook is shaking a pepper pot into the soup, and eventually takes the pan of soup off the fire, and throws it over everything in reach, for no apparent reason, then starts throwing kitchen implements at the Duchess and the baby.
- Belisarius Series: In the novel In the Heart of Darkness, Antonina forts up in the kitchen of a cookshop against a band of thugs sent to assassinate her. There she burns five of her attackers with boiling broth thickened with flour to make it stick, throws kitchen knifes at others, and uses the kitchen cleaver to chop up yet more.
- Everything That Makes You: The story is kicked off by an unintentional example caused by by Moriah McStay. A Split Timelines Plot following one timeline in which Fiona was burned in the face with oil in an accident aged 6, and one in which she wasn't. The scars left by the oil have a marked effect on her confidence, which sets the scarred Fiona down an entirely different path than the unscarred version. The accident isn't shown, but a line of dialogue in the other timeline implies it was caused by a popcorn vendor paying more attention to Fiona and her brother than his cart.
- Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72: Mafia leader Sam Giancana survives an assassination attempt (which killed him in real-life) by flinging the contents of a pan full of sausage and peppers that he had been cooking at his assassin. His assailant is later apprehended, suffering from severe scalding and burns on parts of his face and upper body.
- Out of the Dust: done accidentally; after her pregnant mother accidentally causes a fire in the kitchen with kerosine while mistaking it for water, she goes to get her husband for help. Trying to prevent the rest of the house from burning down, Billie Jo throws the bucket outside right when her mother comes back in, setting her ablaze. She's then taken to the doctor, but dies later due to her burns, taking her unborn child as well.
- Tales from Jabba's Palace: In "Of The Day's Annoyances", Bib Fortuna plans to have Jabba doused in hot grease and slid down the rancor chute when he launches his coup. It becomes a Brick Joke when as his plans fall apart and the palace monks come to remove his brain, Fortuna idly wonders what the monks will do with all the cooking grease he told the kitchen staff to save.
Live-Action TV
- CSI:
- In "Deep Fried & Minty Fresh", a fast food employee is killed by his manager whom he catches in a compromising position by having his face dunked in their deep fryer. He dies from inhaling hot oil.
- In "4x4", one of the four cases involves two thugs that tried to rob a taco stand, only for the owner to fend them off by throwing hot oil in the face of one thug and stabbing the other with a knife.
- Game of Thrones: In "The Watchers on the Wall", some of the wildlings attacking Castle Black make it inside the kitchen. The stewards working in inside hold them off with first a pot of boiling water, the pot itself, furniture, and then a large meat cleaver. Later, Gilly hears someone at the door, and not knowing the battle is over, prepares for battle with a piece of ham.
- Highlander: The Series: In the episode "Avenging Angel", Duncan and some friends are caught in an old chateau with armed mercenaries outside, and none of them have any weapons of their own. They have to improvise with what's in the chateau. One of the things they come up with is a skillet full of cooking oil, heated to a couple of hundred degrees on the stove. It proves very effective when thrown in the face of one of the attackers.
- Scream Queens (2015): In a prank gone wrong, Chanel accidentally murders her maid, Miss Bean, by pushing her face into a deep-fryer, which she didn't realize was on. The boiling oil burned her face off.
- Spooks: In Series 1 episode "Looking After Our Own", Tom and Helen went undercover at right-wing politician Robert Osbourne's inner circle. After they were both exposed, Osbourne tortured Helen by putting her hand in a deep fat fryer, then, when Tom still wouldn't give up the names of the other agents, shoved her head into it. He then shot her in the head, killing her. Particularly shocking in that it was only the second episode of the show, and Flynn had been presented as a main character up until then.
- Torchwood: Children of Earth: In "Day Three", Alice is in the kitchen when she hears a dog go silent in the distance - an indicator that trouble in the form of soldiers coming to take her and her son Steven is on its way. She grabs a kitchen knife and a chopping block, the latter of which she uses to hit a soldier in the face. Unfortunately, the weapons are no match for the soldiers' guns.
Video Games
- Mega Man (Classic):
- Mega Man 6: Flame Man's level contains Oil Fields, shallow pools of oil which normally pose no threat to Mega Man. However, there are multiple flame-shooting enemies who can light up the oil, turning it into a deadly blaze that can One-Hit Kill Mega Man on contact.
- Mega Man Powered Up: A strange, inverted example. Oil Man is a robot who creates Oil Slicks to attack, and partially looks like he's made of oil himself. His weakness is the Fire Storm weapon, which lights him ablaze for a second and causes massive damage to him.
- Shipwrecked 64: This was the fate of Gary Wilson, with the killer first slamming his face against a microwave oven, then finishing him off by holding his head down into the boiling deep frier. He barely had any face left when his body was found the next day.
- Spiral Knights: Oilers are an elemental variant of Lichens, composed of a living blob of oil that attacks the players. Should it be lit on fire however, it will continue to attack while burning inflicting Burn on the players. Also, they spawn in fire-themed levels and can be lit by players, other enemies and the environment.
- Super Smash Bros.: Mr. Game & Watch's down special, "Oil Panic", brings out a bucket that absorbs energy projectiles and stores them as oil. Once three have been absorbed, using the attack again will dump out the now-full bucket, with the spilling oil having the combined power of all three absorbed attacks at once.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus: In the episode "Fast Food Masquerade", Jax shoves Ragatha into a deep fryer to make her suffer as a prank.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: In the episode "Avatar Day", after Aang is found guilty by the Kangaroo Court, the punishment chosen for him is to be boiled alive in oil.
- Family Guy: In "Petarded", Peter accidentally does this when he tries to steal a deep fat fryer from a restaurant, only for the hot oil to be launched into Lois' face, disfiguring her.
Real Life
- The Chatannakiri/Chatannāchirī👁 Image
("Chatan Vegetable Cutter") is a 15th-century tantō blade from the Ryūkyū kingdom, registered as a national treasure of Japan. It allegedly started out as a mundane kitchen knife, hence the name; the woman owning the knife allegedly accidentally killed her baby simply by performing cutting motions without even touching the baby. The blade was reforged into a weapon thereafter.
