Gigantic Gulp

"45 gallons of bladder bustin' refreshment!" —Boog, Fanboy and Chum Chum

There's been a bad day at the office, an extra-festive party or so on—a character needs a freaking coffee or a drink. A popular visual gag is to have the character drink from a really big cup. The Gigantic Gulp is any drink that comes in a ridiculously large cup, barrel or bucket, usually with its size grossly exaggerated for comic effect. Often used in conjunction with the Potty Emergency and Potty Dance tropes (as seen in Animaniacs). Bonus points if the character feeds the liquid directly into his system with an IV tube.

Compare Giant Food. Also see Must Have Caffeine, I Need a Freaking Drink, and Cup Holders for related tropes.

Not to be confused with Loud Gulp, which is what bystanders seeing a Gigantic Gulp might emit...

Examples of Gigantic Gulp include:

Advertising

• GEICO loves this trope, as shown here (second ad) and here (different ad, but also coffee themed).

Comic Books

• A Running Gag in Warren Ellis' Nextwave is for Aaron "Machine Man" Stack to declare "My robot brain needs beer." Later in the series, he pulls out a man-sized barrel of something, and plug it directly into his head with a tube...
• Asterix: Obelix drinks wine straight from the barrel more than once, and has drunk a whole pot of the magic potion. Him and large containers of drink go way back.
• In one issue of The Simpsons, Bart, Lisa, Martin and Milhouse find giant squishee cups the size of children while exploring the Kwik-e-Mart; Squishzilla. Apu later explains that they weren't used because they were so heavy when filled that no one could carry them away.

Film

• Silent Movie. After director Mel Funn (Mel Brooks) discovers that the woman he's fallen in love with was ordered to seduce him, he starts drinking again. He ends up buying a giant bottle of wine almost as big as he is.
• All drink cups in the future of Idiocracy are super-sized mugs with bendy straws.
• The main characters in Bio-Dome are seen drinking Bladder Busters in a few scenes.

Live Action TV

• On NCIS, Perky Goth Abby's Trademark Favorite Food is a large serving of "Caf-Pow". It is usually presented to her in a styrofoam cup roughly the size of a Sonic Route 44. And said cups are available at the dispenser.
  • In one episode Abby is devastated that Gibbs has brought her a mere small, thinking it's a sign that she's screwed up somehow, so she goes into overdrive trying to redeem herself. Gibbs later points out he only brought a small because it was the only size of cup left.
• Cougar Town has Big Joe, Jules' favorite drinking glass (and his replacement Big Carl, after Joe meets his untimely demise).
  • While on vacation in Hawaii, Jules uses the large candleholders at the hotel as "Big Kimo".
  • Near the end of the third season, Big Carl is broken when Ellie's son Stan throws it. Enter Big Lou.

Newspaper Comics

• Dilbert: Dilbert begins carrying around a giant coffee cup on his back as a "will to live" substitute. He ends up experiencing Caffeine Bullet Time as a result.
• Played with occasionally in Garfield, as this strip demonstrates.
• FoxTrot: Peter Fox drinks thirty-two-ple espresso when he needs to cram. In another strip, Roger is shown with a gigantic mug that takes multiple pots of coffee to fill. His wife Andy argues that their kids got him that as a joke, only for him to reply "You can't stand to see me so happy."
  • In still another strip, Jason discovers that Fun-Fun Mountain sells 128-ounce Slurpees.
• In Zits, Jeremy buys two huge movie sodas for himself and his mother. When she exclaims about their "obscene" size, Jeremy calmly explains he got them for the free refills. Another scene shows Phoebe walking through the halls of the school with a latte nearly as large as she is on a dolly. When asked abut it, she replies 'Some days a venti just won't do.'

Video Games

• In Leisure Suit Larry 2, at one point Larry needs to get a 32-gallon Bladder Buster soda. It comes in a cup that's as tall as he is, and takes two minutes of real time to fill it up. It's so huge that Larry starts to wonder how he's going to carry it around...but then he remembers he's in an adventure game and stuffs it in his pocket.

Web Comics

• Margaret Browning from CRFH has a bucket-sized coffee cup known as "The Browning" and formerly known as "The Suicide".
• It's Walky!'s entire "X-treem mug!" storyline.
• Real Life Comics has the "Damn" coming in at 900 oz and fits in regular cup holders.
• Diesel Sweeties gives us that nefarious villain Soft Drink the Size of a Man's Head. Bladders everywhere, beware!
• Karate Bears Gulp Big.

Web Original

• When The Nostalgia Critic encounters the "rapping dog" song in Titanic: The Legend Goes On, he grabs for a "bigger" Jagermeister to help him cope with the awfulness... and pulls out a bottle that's roughly three feet tall.
  • And when he reviewed ANOTHER animated Titanic movie with mice, he scrapped that one and had a few helicopters airlift one roughly the size of a house.

Western Animation

• On Animaniacs, Wakko drinks from a huge cup of soda labelled Abyss Boy at the movie theater. No wonder he has to go to the bathroom so bad afterwards.
• This is Krystal's preferred style of drink in Squidbillies.
• On one episode of Family Guy:

Lois: Brian, you're really enjoying your wine lately. Brian: It's only my second glass. (picks up a Big Gulp cup and continues drinking)

• One episode of Chowder featured one of those - it wasn't particularly large in diameter, but high enough to go offscreen.
• One episode of The Simpsons (season 12's "The Great Money Caper") features the Simpsons at a restaurant featuring a magic show. Marge is given a Long Island Iced Tea (served in a tall glass). She decides to nurse the drink but ends up drunk.
  • In the episode "A Star is Burns," Barney wins a film contest and swears that he is giving up alcohol. The curtain behind him is then pulled away to reveal is prize: a lifetime supply of Duff beer (in a semi-trailer truck).

Barney: (tearing away his sleeve) PUMP IT INTO MY VEINS!!

• • And let's not forget Homer's alcoholic exploits in Australia:

Homer: Hey! Give me one of those famous giant beers I've heard so much about. (Bartender places a can of beer the size of a keg on the counter, Homer is visibly upset) Bartender: Something wrong, yank? Homer: No. It's pretty big...I guess.

• Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy ordered a giant cup of punch at a Renaissance fair; it later resulted in a Potty Emergency.
• In the notorious "Dickesode" episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Shake gets a soda from Wongburger that's literally the same size as him(he's a giant cup). He claims he needs that much soda on a daily basis.
• In the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: U.N.D.E.R.C.O.V.E.R." the villain is a guy in a cowboy hat named Cuppa Joe, who constantly drinks from a mug of coffee large enough to hold about two gallons of coffee.

Real Life

• An example that includes the Trope Namer: 7-11 Double Big Gulp Holds 200% More Than the Average Adult Human's Stomach
• Primat and Melchizedeck winebottles, they contain 27 and 30 litres—that is 36 to 40 times the amount of a normal bottle.
• For April Fool's 2010, Starbucks introduced the Plenta, a 128-ounce cup for really thirsty drinkers.
  • Then in January 2011, they introduced the Trenta, a 31-ounce cup that holds more than the average capacity of an adult's stomach.
• In contrast to Starbucks, Tim Hortons used to sell a real 64 oz travel mug. The item is no longer sold by the company, however, some can be found on eBay.
• Of course, what amounts to "gigantic gulp" depends on time period; 64 fluid ounces was once realistically an unthinkable amount of soda for a bottle, let alone a cup. Now the famous two-liter is being displaced by the three-liter.
  • Gatorade comes in a half-gallon size, but you've got to know where to look.
    • For the truly insane (or the really, really sweaty), Gatorade also comes in the gallon size. For our friends outside the U.S., that's about 3.79 liters.
• Go to any fast food restaurant. Not just gigantic gulps, but gigantic bites. No wonder there's an obesity problem.
• The Lambert's Cafe restaurants (where they throw rolls across the room to you if you ask for one) have very large cups that they put your drinks in.
• How large a large beverage is varies from country to country. To, say, a French person, the amount of soda a large cup holds in your average American fast food chain can venture into this territory.
• A Yard glass is a yard tall, and holds roughly two and a half pints of beer. Though it's not uncommon for someone to down more than two pints, yard glasses are typically reserved for drinking games rather than casual drinking.
• In parts of Canada you can buy 3000ml bottles of alcohol called a "Texas Mickey" ironically not available in Texas.
• The website Vat19 sells a glasse capable of holding a six-pack of beer. Also available is a glass that can hold an entire bottle of wine (5 glasses will empty a standard box of wine in one go).