Pie in the Face

A classic gag, tossing a pie into another person's face. Usually, this is a cream pie to get the proper Covered in Gunge effect. For extra comedy value, the victim might take a taste of the pie and note it's not bad.

This Practical Joke was a staple of silent movie comedies, which came up with most of the variants. Often, a missed throw would result in an Escalating War pie fight. The all-out pie fight is pretty much a Forgotten Trope in movies, but still shows up elsewhere.

Real Life celebrities and politicians sometime have this happen to them as a protest. For example, Anita Bryant and Bill Gates have been pied in public. It should be noted that if the victim doesn't consent, it can be considered assault, especially if it's a fierce hit that injures the victim (i.e. breaking the victim's nose).

On TV, the pie is often just whipped cream or shaving cream sprayed into a pie pan, which gives a similar effect while being much cheaper than baking up a whole pie just to throw it. Shaving cream tends to be used more often, since whipped cream melts under studio lights; also, if "real" pies are used, the cream can spoil if not cleaned up quickly, as the cast and crew of The Great Race learned the hard way.

See Also: Edible Ammunition

Examples of Pie in the Face include:

Anime and Manga

• There was an entire episode of the Kirby anime dedicated to this after Dedede was seen getting pied on live television. Hilarity Ensues.
• Happens to Julie, one of the main villains of the Time Bokan series Yattodetaman, at the end of the opening sequence.
  

Comic Books

• Suicide Squad had a Running Gag subplot about a mysterious attacker pieing their personnel. It was Captain Boomerang, who'd earlier arranged to attack himself with a boomerang pie to divert suspicion.
• British comics such as Beano and Dandy thrive on this trope, custard pies being the usual ammunition of choice. They can be thrown by hand or with a suitably elaborate Bamboo Technology device designed for the express purpose of leaving the target Covered in Gunge.
• In Scott McCloud's Zot, he conducted a poll for which character the reader most wanted to get a pie in the face. Unfortunately, it was won by 9-Jack-9, an electronic being previously established as not actually HAVING a face. At the New Year's party featuring the pie, it passed through 9-Jack-9 to hit the runner up, Zot, in the face.
• There's a running gag of Prankster pieing Superman. Granted, on at least one occasion, the pie delivered an electric shock or other nasty surprise.
• The Joker, as befitting his chaotic nature, once concocted an elaborate scheme the sole purpose of which was to hit Batman in the face with a pie.
• In Teen Titans, it is revealed that during the one-year-later arc Miss Martian joined and left the team. The reason she left? She saw a Three Stooges short and decided to throw a pie in Rose Wilson's (ravager) face. Rose apparently yelled at her enough to leave her crying.
• X-Men #8. Gambit: "A plasma rifle 'gainst a boysenberry pie? Can you see the crazed psychopath in this picture?" Naturally, Rogue gets the pie in the face.
• In Welcome Back Frank, Castle finally manages to stun The Russian by throwing hot pizza in his face.

Comic Strips

• A Running Gag in Garfield was the "Splut" pies, which came out of nowhere and made the Written Sound Effect "SPLUT!" when they came in contact with Garfield's face. This gag carried over to Garfield and Friends.

Garfield: Yup... it's Splut Week.

• Hagar the Horrible has this, as shown with the page image.
• It also happened to Snoopy's brother Spike in one Peanuts comic strip.
• Pie-ing is the signature prank of Kokopelli in the cartoons in Muse magazine. His pie of choice is banana cream, and his victim of choice is Urania.

Films — Live-Action

• One of the earliest recorded pie scenes was a Mack Sennett short in which Mabel Normand is pied, but she does carefully remove her glasses first.
• The Three Stooges did this numerous times, most notably in the short The Sweet Pie and Pie.
• The "lost scene" from Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a massive pie fight in the Pentagon's War Room. Cut for not quite fitting the darkness of the rest of the movie (depending who you ask; some say the assassination of JFK had something to do with it as well). It's exclusion did leave out epilogues and explanations of earlier film scenes however.
• The Great Race has one of, if not the, largest pie fights ever. Including one that's so big, it can't be thrown; it's a huge multi-layer cake, and two different people get knocked into it at two different times. Perhaps the funniest part is Tony Curtis staying squeaky clean while his castmates get covered in cream from head to toe... until Natalie Wood, unable to see because of the cream in her eyes, gets him by accident.
• The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead features a group of vicious bikers storming the mall, looting stores, firing at the heroes and... throwing pies at zombies. We'd call it a Narm moment, but George Romero might have been going for laughs here.
• Bugsy Malone is a parody gangster movie with child actors (including a young Jodie Foster) and used pies instead of handguns. It also had "splurge guns", based on the Thompson submachine gun, with drum magazines that allows rapid pie firing.
• Laurel and Hardy made money by selling pies to throw in their short film Battle of the Century, which codified this trope.
• The Shaggy D.A., notable for a cigar punching right through the pie.
• Going Ape.
• Blazing Saddles, during the "Great Pie Fight" scene in the studio commissary near the end. Everyone gets pied except Hedley Lamarr, who goes into a bathroom and smears {shaving?) cream on his face to make it look like he'd been pied.
• Addams Family Values.
• Heartburn.
• The climactic scene of Nanny McPhee has this with wedding cake.
• Singin in The Rain. Lampshaded as a movie tradition, and possibly subverted: Don Lockwood dodges and the pie hits Lina Lamont.
• During the brawl at the climax of The Pirate Movie, a cart of pies is wheeled out and a character predicts a pie fight — turns out it's pizzas being thrown around instead.
• In The Monkees' feature film Head, Peter winds up with a pie thrown in his face (while riding a cow, of all things) towards the end of the movie.
• During the carnival at the end of Grease.
• Pies being flung from home-made catapults are part of the Lost Boy's arsenal in Hook.
• Fatty Arbuckle did this early and often — his short A Noise from the Deep is the earliest known instance of the joke, and it was repeated many times in his later films.
• The Tony Hancock film The Punch and Judy Man features a climactic pie fight, but it escalates too quickly to generate the right comic effect.
• In the Mega Race of Spy Kids 3: Game Over, one of the racers has a giant pie-throwing arm as a weapon.

Juni: Easy as pie.

• The trailer for Monty Python and The Holy Grail puts one in the iconic Chess with Death scene.

Literature

• Discworld
  • Cream pies to the face are an occupational hazard of coming too close to the Fool's Guild.
  • In Making Money, they're also portrayed as the greatest threat to Lord Vetinari's tenure as Patrician.
  • They're also a staple of Ankh-Morpork theatre — the Librarian is a frequent visitor, and has simple, defined tastes in entertainment and a really good throwing arm for displaying his displeasure with a play.
• The Star Trek Expanded Universe novel How Much for Just the Planet?, by John M. Ford, ends with a pie fight between tuxedoed Enterprise officers and tuxedoed Klingons.

"Blueberry," Kirk thought instead of ducking. Splat. Blueberry it was.

• In Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (Literature), Roger reports having been pied by someone who was apparently trying to kill him. When Eddie Valiant asks why he believes it was anything besides a normal pieing, Roger explains in great detail the fine points of face-pieing.
• Vorkosigan Saga: For a high-tech version of the traditional pie fight, see the butterbug butter battle near the end of Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign.
• One novel in The Baby-Sitters' Club series has the girls watching an old movie on TV featuring a pie fight, and Kristy remarking how she'd like to get a pie in the face. It doesn't happen, at least not in the book.
  

Live-Action TV

• Tiswas has the Phantom Flan Flinger, a recurring character who pied people. Including a number of celebrities, mainly recording artists such as the Pretenders, Adam Ant, Phil Collins, and Annie Lennox (while still with The Tourists, pre-Eurythmics). One of the most memorable moments in the show's run had Sheena Easton covered from head to toe in shaving foam and multi-coloured slime — perhaps she should have titled her hit song "For Your Pies Only"?
• Threes Company, the "bake-off" episode.
• The Brady Bunch, in the first Cousin Oliver episode, "Welcome Aboard". Robert Reed hated slapstick comedy and did not participate in that scene, but he did get hit with the wedding cake in the very first episode.
• Both Donny and Marie Osmond fell victim to this on their variety series. Once Marie announced they were going to "hit a pie with a person," which consisted of Donny's brothers tossing him face-first into a giant pie.
• The Nickelodeon semi-game show What Would You Do? featured pieing as a penalty in nearly every episode; in fact the show came up with a number of pieing devices involving multiple or giant pies or jets of whipped cream (the Pie Wash in season two). Sometimes, though, pieing was a prize or privilege. Most of the people who went down the Pie Slide did so willingly or because they wanted to. Also there were two episodes in the first season called "Pie-a-Thons" which pitted Kids vs. Adults, and being pied was a way to add "points" for your "team".
• Not surprisingly, pies were also heavily featured in The Family Channel's later Family Challenge, which was from the same producer (Woody Fraser).
• Wild Animal Games sent the parent of the contestant that lost their quiz to the Pie Guillotine. The show was yet another Woody Fraser production.
• A decade after What Would You Do?, there was Nickelodeon's SlimeTime Live, in which getting pied - or slimed - was a prize, not a humiliation or a penalty. The hosts (especially Dave Aizer) got messy on a regular basis, as did audience members and musical guests.
• And two decades before SlimeTime, there was You Can't Do That on Television. While best known for introducing Nickelodeon's green slime, it also featured pies in several episodes, with either host Christine McGlade or multi-character actor Les Lye being the usual victims. Most striking was the episode "Drugs", in which the stupidity of taking drugs was likened to the insanity of pieing oneself. And yes, Alanis Morissette was also the victim of a pie in one of her five episodes.
  • Early on, the show switched from using "real" pies to shaving-cream 'pies', since whipped cream can melt or even spoil under hot studio lights. One kid on the show lampshaded this by grousing, "It's not even real pie," after he got hit with one. Another kid forgot to keep her mouth closed when she was hit, and ended up going home sick after swallowing a mouthful of shaving cream.
• Dave Coulier suffered this on Full House as well as the early Nickelodeon show Out of Control.
• Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters has a misfired Practical Joke.
• Cher pied herself on her own solo variety series in 1975.
• Maude, where most of the cast — including Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan — gets into a big pie fight at the end of the episode "Musical '78." In another episode, Walter accidentally knocks a pie into Maude's face (also seen in the Season 4 opening); in yet another, Maude decides she doesn't want her slice of pie for dessert and hits Walter with it instead.
  • Bea got pied again (alongside Lucille Ball) on a CBS 50th-anniversary later in 1978.
  • Bea (as Dorothy Zbornak) wasn't pied on The Golden Girls, but an annoying restaurant clown who was harassing her in the birthday-themed episode "A Piece of Cake" got nailed with an ice-cream sundae by a kid, who then said, "Happy birthday, Dorothy."
• That Girl in a Show Within a Show sequence.
• The newer version of The Mickey Mouse Club had a sketch in which 13-year-old Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling both get a pie to the face, as does future 'N Sync-er JC Chasez.
• Moonlighting
• The Soupy Sales Show has this as a trademark. Guest stars, including such notables as Frank Sinatra, Frankie Valli, and Alice Cooper, weren't exempt.
  • This was extended to Soupy's appearances on TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes.
• I Love Lucy has a couple of pie episodes, including "The Diner."
• Love, American Style, the episode with Susan Howard.
• Many Talk Show hosts and guests have been pied. Sometimes by themselves.
• Happy Days in the episode where Chachi tries to join the Leopards.
• The Monkees endured this when they appeared on Show Within a Show Captain Crocodile.
• Captain and Tennille Show, during Masterjoke Theater sketches, primarily. Once this led to a big pie fight with all of the main cast, including the Captain and Tennille themselves, creamed.
• Route 66, during an episode with Guest Star Soupy Sales.
• Bewitched, during one of the Serena episodes, which included Elizabeth Montgomery pied twice - once as Samantha and once as Serena (the latter thrown by Samantha herself from across the room!). Dick York and Agnes Moorehead got plastered as well.
• The Dick Van Dyke Show, due to one of Rob's many pratfalls.
• Family Matters:
  • "Stop in the Name of Love," with Laura and Murtaugh as the victims.
  • "Love Triangle" features a massive cake fight between Laura and Maxine as they feud over Curtis. Steve gets roped in as well.
• The Baby Sitters Club, with a school carnival. Mary Anne is set to throw a pie at Mallory (who's in the "pie in the face" booth), but after she's taunted by mean girl Marci, Mary Anne throws the pie at Marci instead, scoring a direct hit.
• Saturday Night Live's "Heavy-Wit Championship of the World" sketch.
• Growing Pains, the "20th Anniversary" episode. Kirk Cameron also got it during a Bob Hope special on NBC, when Lucille Ball (who knew this trope very well indeed) needed a stand-in to take two pies and Cameron was the unlucky victim.
• Cybill, wedding episode.
• 3rd Rock from the Sun, "Dick Learns About Comedy."
• The Bob Newhart Show, as part of a practical joke Bob plans to play on Peeper.
• Gilligans Island, episode "X Marks the Spot."
• Diffrent Strokes, when the cast visits Universal Studios.
• Even an episode of Wheel of Fortune, with Pat and Vanna pieing each other!
• The Jackie Gleason Show at least twice.
• The Patty Duke Show, during a modeling photo shoot where Patty not only goes pied, but drenched with a bucket of water, squirted with seltzer and tricked into sitting in a broken lawn chair. She later finds out it was a set up for a magazine ad encouraging kids to stay in school.
• Head of the Class, "Make Fun of the Teacher" episode. Tony O'Dell (as Alan) was the victim.
• During an election episode in Salute Your Shorts, culminating in a big pie fight between Dina and Telly.
• A Thanksgiving Day episode of Cheers.
• Paul Johansson in the Beverly Hills, 90210 episode "Take Back the Night," courtesy of Luke Perry himself.
• Webster, but only during a Dream Sequence.
• Wild and Crazy Kids
  • Once featuring the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Jessica got pied, and so did the department's captain.
  • In an earlier episode (and season), a "organized" pie fight between camp kids and their counselors quickly spiraled into a free-for-all.
  • Two episodes featured variants of Red Light/Green Light where the winners got to pie their partner. If they were caught moving, they'd get the pie instead.
  • WACK also debuted the Pie-o-Matic, which would be renamed the Pie Roulette and used on What Would You Do?
• In one gag of the Spanish sketch show ¡Vaya semanita!, they are asked to do more intelligent humor, so they decide to pie Stephen Hawking in the face.
• Unfabulous, where a classroom presentation on the American Revolution turned into a Boston Cream Pie fight.
• Moe Howard, of The Three Stooges, once demonstrated proper pie-throwing technique to Mike Douglas and Ted Knight during a 1973 episode of Douglas' daytime talk show.
• Johnny Carson would often get hit with pies in a recurring The Tonight Show sketch theme.
• Treasure Hunt US, several times.
• On a late episode of the original version of Let's Make a Deal, one of the Zonks was an old pie wagon; after the reveal, Carol Merrill hit Jay Stewart with one of the pies.
• An episode of the current series of Let's Make a Deal featured a large pie as a Zonk; when it was revealed, Wayne Brady went down to the pie and pulled a real one out from behind it, with which he hit Jonathan Mangum. At the end of the show, Mangum got his revenge, at which point a curtain opened revealing an entire rack of pies, resulting in a pie fight among the entire cast.
• During one of the Showcases of Drew Carey's The Price Is Right, the models hit each other with pies. Near the end of the narration, Rich Fields is hit with a pie, and at the end of the show, Drew himself is hit with a few by the models as well. Here's a clip. And here is Rich Fields making sure the showcase winner isn't left out on the fun.
• Power Rangers
  • Bulk and Skull on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers frequently received these (Well, typically it was cakes, but the principle is the same).
  • And in Power Rangers Zeo, the Rangers once defeated a group of Cogs by pieing them.
• A staple of Brazilian game show Passa ou Repassa (at a certain point, a sound effect was added, making it even funnier). Two contestants put against each other answering a question. Get right, pie the other one. Get wrong, pie in your face. Then come the next two of the team. And due to rotativity, eventually the first two return, allowing for either revenge or getting the opponent even dirtier. (The same Speed Round was later used on Megamatch in Venezuela (rerun through out Latin America) and College Mad House in the USA.
• On Boy Meets World, Eric hits Jack with one at the end of a food fight.
• Bob Denver and Dwayne Hickman both ended up victims of this in a Dobie Gillis episode which featured a pie-throwing booth.
• A recurring theme on Dick and Dom's shows, from Dick and Dom in da Bungalow (hosts splatting contestants, contestants splatting hosts, or giant free-for-all) to Splatalot (with "Splat" written on the bottom of the pie plate).
• A Season 14 Detour on The Amazing Race had teams pelt each other in the face with pies until they found one with a cherry filling.
• Subverted on All That when the cast get a bunch of pies from the bakery. Kevin expects they will throw the pies at him, but is told they are not going to do that. The baker also made a cake for such a purpose.
• Several different games on 80's game show Fun House used this trope
  • Pie-athlon had contestants take turn putting their face in pies to find the winning pies.
  • In Pie or Prize, the contestants take turns choosing boxes. They want to open ones containing jewelry. Choosing a wrong one means a pie in the face.
  • In Innocent Pie-Stander, one member from each team is seated with two people taken from the audience. Their teammate is blindfolded and smash as many pies as possible on their head as possible.

Music

• Jonathan Coulton's song "Bozo's Lament" is about a clown who's grown weary of his job. Naturally, this trope is referred to in the course of the song.
• The Beastie Boys in the video for "(You've Got to) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)".
• Bette Midler's video of "Beast of Burden" (both her and Mick Jagger).
• Alanis Morissette (and future Foo Fighter Taylor Hawkins) in the video of "You Learn."
• Cobra Starship in the video of "The City is at War".
• Elton John's frequent duet partner Kiki Dee, in his music video for "Wrap Her Up" (1985).
• Katy Perry, in her music video for "Smile."

Pro Wrestling

• A pie in the face is something any aspiring WWE Diva can expect at some point in her career, especially around Thanksgiving. Past victims include Mickie James, Michelle McCool, Sunny, Kelly Kelly, Layla El, the Bella Twins, Ashley Massaro, Rosa Mendes, Joy Giovanni, Vickie Guerrero, and Stephanie McMahon. The men also sometimes get it in diva-related segments, as has happened to The Big Show and Santino Marella.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street had this on a number of occasions.
  • During the song "Surprise," with even a brick wall getting pied.
  • Bert pied Ernie in a Season One skit, for confusing the number "4" with a cream pie.
  • Linda was a victim of this on two occasions, being hit with a pie after signing the word.
  • "Three Whipped Cream Pies on the Wall" (a live-action segment): Maria pies Bob, David and Luis, then gets pelted herself (though she gets off easy as all the pies miss her face).
  • Oscar the Grouch tries to teach Fluffy about pie throwing, but Fluffy's pie misses Oscar and hits Maria instead. Much to Oscar's chagrin, Maria thinks it's Actually Pretty Funny.
  • Bert is pied twice in Bert and Ernie's Word Play. He and Ernie also get two more pies thrown at them, but they duck and the pies hit Prairie Dawn instead.
• Fozzie and Kermit were the usual victims of pies on The Muppet Show, but guest stars weren't immune as Sandy Duncan learned in her episode.
• In the Fraggle Rock episode "Fraggle Wars," this helps avert a war between the Rock and Cave Fraggles, as it gets both Fraggle tribes laughing at the same thing at the same time. In the live-action segments, Doc is also the victim of this a few times.
  • Wembley pies Boober by accident in the Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock episode "Deep Dive," which makes the Merggles laugh, curing their hiccups.
• A regular happenstance in Les Guignols De L Info for French philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, following a pair of such incidents in Real Life. There was even a parody of the movie JFK, with BHL being pied in the face treated like JFK's assassination.

Tabletop Games

• In the RPG Toon, this is a surefire way to Boggle a character.

Theater

• Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. The sketch in question was originally written by Cleese and Chapman for a 1968 sketch show, We Have Ways of Making you Laugh. (It was of course only one of several recycled sketches the Pythons used on stage, most of the others being from At Last the 1948 Show.)

Theme Parks

• Fozzie accidentally pies himself with a remote controlled one in Disney Theme Parks' Muppet*Vision 3D.

Video Games

• Nethack has a cream pie item, which causes blindness. On the one hand, stealing from shops will result in Keystone Kops showing up to pie you and beat you with rubber hoses until you die. On the other hand, pieing something does not count as an attack, and the pie takes up the weapon slot, which makes it very useful for characters attempting the pacifist conduct.
• Makai Kingdom has these as weapons, though their basic purpose is to heal their targets.
• The Pie Throw is a whole series of Weapons (Gags) in the MMORPG Toontown Online.
• Johnathan from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin can throw cream pies at enemies. When leveled up it's also arguably the most powerful Dark-element weapon in the game making it the perfect tool to take out Bonus Boss Richter Belmont.
• The only way to defeat the terrifying, monstrous, bloodthirsty Yeti in King's Quest V Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder is to throw a cream pie in its face. This was not one of its best puzzles.
• Yu-Gi-Oh Tag Force Games:
  • In the ones with the GX cast at least, you can play a Dodgeball-esque minigame. One of the things you can throw is a Pie. It disables whoever is hit by it for a couple of turns.
  • Also in the Third Tag Force Game there's a sandwich throwing minigame. One of the things that needs to be avoided is Pie.
• In Dead Rising there's a few places with pies, which you can eat for one hit point or throw at zombies. Score a direct hit to their face and the pie will stick, leaving them unable to see you. If you attack them and knock off the pie, you can pick it up and throw it again.
• Kingdom of Loathing "This is a cream pie, which has been expertly balanced for throwing." Other players can be targeted giving them the 'Hilarious!' effect of 'Pie in the Face'.
• Peacock from Skullgirls has a pie in the face as one of her attacks, which fits into her repertoire of slapstick moves and cartoon references.
• The secret ending of Bart vs The World has the player controlling Bart Simpson throwing pies in the face of Smithers and Mr. Burns until they turn off the console.
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 includes a pie and cake item fighters could wear while fighting and the item could be shoved into the face of the opponent. With proper setup the victim of the pie or cake can even do their win pose with said item still on their face.

Web Comics

• It took more than a few tries for him to get it right, but Girl Genius has a minor Spark who's developed a special pie that calms people down when he tosses it in their face.

"Yes! Extra butter! Less nutmeg! I'm a genius! Ha! Take that, Brillat-Savarin!"

• Cheer brilliantly played with the cream pie to the face in this strip.
• So did Sluggy Freelance in this strip.
• UltraCar in Shortpacked
• In The Order of the Stick, Xykon is brought to pay attention to a strategic discussion with Redcloak by the prospect of seeing one hobgoblin throw a pie in another one's face.
• Schlock Mercenary opined that "a spontaneous celebration is really only one short hop away from being a riot." Then the chef made some pie.
• Freefall blatantly foreshadows one starting this strip.
• Doc receives one in this strip in The Whiteboard, from Bandit.
• In Scary Go Round Hugo gets hit in the face with an apple pie. It's so hot (one molecule away from magma!) that it grievously injures him, forcing him to drop out of the election.
• The humorous comic Epic Battle makes pie fights Serious Business.
• At the end of Ozy and Millie, Millie's father starts a pie fight during the wedding of Ozy's father and Millie's mother. Strangely, this is a sign that he approves of the match (Food fights are a traditional part of dragon weddings. This is why they had so many pies lying around in the first place).

Western Animation

• The Simpsons
  • In "Simple Simpson", Homer becomes the Pieman, a costumed vigilante whose shtick is throwing pies at annoying people.
  • This is also the reason Sideshow Bob was selected as Krusty's assistant over his brother Cecil, as Bob's dignity made the take all the funnier.

Bob: (after being hit by the pie) ...Oh, dear.

• • In "Krusty Gets Busted", a behind-the-scenes footage reel shows Sideshow Bob doing this to Krusty. In response, Krusty punches Bob in the face.
• The "Balmy Swami" episode of Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines includes an airborne pie fight among the Vulture Squadron members.
• Tom and Jerry
  • In the short Quiet Please!, Tom catches Jerry on the kitchen counter. Jerry asks for a moment to draw up a last will and testament, in which he leaves a custard pie "to Tom, my favorite cat". Reading this, Tom eagerly tells Jerry to "Lemme have it!"
  • In Solid Serenade, Jerry hits Tom with two pies... the former of which has a steam iron hidden inside it.
  • Tom pelts Jerry with a pie at the end of Jerry's Diary.
• Many instances in Looney Tunes:
  • Bugs Bunny repeatedly hits Elmer Fudd with these during a scene in Slick Hare. "Your pie, sir!" Unfortunately for Elmer, he tries to retaliate and hits Humphrey Bogart. "Why did you hit me in the face with a coconut custard pie with whipped cream?" Bogie asks menacingly.
  • Vaudevillians Bugs and Elmer take turns with this in What's Up, Doc?
  • In Shishkabugs, Bugs releases a spring-loaded pie into the face of the king, causing royal cook Yosemite Sam to be led away to the dungeon.
  • In A Hare Grows in Brooklyn, Bugs pies a dog in the face, then wipes it out while apologizing profusely:

Bugs: My goodness, I don't know what came over me! You wanted cherry pie! *splut*

• • In Leghorn Swoggled, Foghorn Leghorn rigs a toy train with a pie and sends it to the front door of the Barnyard Dawg's house, causing the latter to get pelted when he sticks his head out to see what's going on.
  • Daffy Dilly has Daffy Duck trying to cure a dying millionaire by getting him to laugh. After he achieves this accidentally, by landing in a cake, Daffy is hired as a sort of household jester and ends the cartoon getting repeatedly pelted with cakes and pies. ("It's a living!")
  • Tree-Cornered Tweety has Tweety seeking refuge from Sylvester in one of the food boxes at an automat. Sylvester inserts a coin to get Tweety out, but is instead hit with a pie when the box opens.
  • A Ham in a Role opens with a dog getting a pie in the face — he turns out to be an Animated Actor who's sick of doing funny cartoons and goes off to study the Bard. At cartoon's end, he is given a choice part where he begins Hamlet's soliloquy... and gets a pie in the face.
  • From Hare to Heir has Yosemite Sam enduring a looping Humiliation Conga at the end, consisting of being pied, kicked in the rear end, and then hit on the head with a rolling pin, over and over in that order.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures also has Babs Bunny pieing herself during the show's opening (after making like she was about to hit Buster with the pie).
• In the opening of American Dragon Jake Long, Annoying Younger Sibling Haley is hit in the face with a pie by her mother as Jake passes them on the way to school.
• Phineas and Ferb
  • The first of many indignities Candace receives in "Comet Kermillian" when she goes on a picnic with her crush's Enfant Terrible sister Suzy is a blueberry pie in the face. The others include being locked in an ice cream cart and getting squirrels in her pants.
  • Candace also gets pelted with pies aplenty in "Let's Take a Quiz".
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, practicing airbending aim with pie-throwing at meditating monks was shown in flashbacks to have been one of Monk Gyatso's training methods for a young Aang.
• In the Gargoyles episode "Vendettas", an Ascended Extra, who turned out to be a mook in several past episodes, follows Goliath and Hudson around all night with a BFG, after his revenge. Eventually, he gets his chance... and shoots Goliath with a pie. Satisfied, the guy walks away, humming the Theme Tune. They have no idea who he is.

Hudson: Hmm, banana cream!

• Happened several times in one episode of Clone High. Although with a rather dark twist in that they were actual hot pies fresh from an oven, and that it horribly burned and scalded the face of the screaming victim. Which is played for laughs, of course.
• A running gag in the Darkwing Duck episode "Comic Book Capers".
• Just as in the comics (see above section), in the Batman the Animated Series episode "Christmas with the Joker", the Joker threatens hundreds of lives, on Christmas, no less, just to pie Batman in the face.
• An episode of Bonkers features a Running Gag about which flavors of pie were appropriate for this gag.
• In The Powerpuff Girls episode "Supper Villain", the next-door neighbor decides to become a villain, but he is not allowed to follow through with his evil scheme until after dinner is over. When dessert is served, Blossom throws a pie at him. This leads to a big pie fight, ruining dinner and leading to a Face Heel Turn for his wife.
• On Jimmy Two Shoes, Heloise tries hitting one of the Things That Go Bump in the Night with one, who dodges it. She hits him with a trashbag instead.
• During a Quailman sequence on the Nickelodeon series of Doug, the Wacky Weatherman tries to make Quailman and Silver Skeeter laugh by launching a pie into his own face. Our heroes, determined to make Wacky Weatherman see how unfunny he is, do not laugh.
• The plot of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Dying for Pie" involves Squidward giving SpongeBob a pie which, unbeknownst to him, is actually a highly volatile explosive. Over the course of the episode a guilt-ridden Squidward attempts to give Spongebob an enjoyable final day, thinking that he has eaten the pie, only to find out that he hasn't. SpongeBob then trips and accidentally throws the pie in Squidward's face, and the episode ends with a mushroom cloud presumably where they stand.
• In one Yogi Bear cartoon, a visitor to Jellystone Park is standing under a tree when a blueberry pie falls from the tree onto his head.
• The Disney-parody musical number "It's a Wonderful Day for Pie" in the Family Guy episode "Road to the Multiverse" concludes with Herbert (in the guise of the Wicked Queen from Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs) pelted with pies by the rest of the cast (except Brian and Stewie). With a song about pie, one could smell a pie-in-the-face gag coming up from a mile away.
  • An early episode had a cutaway gag with a bored Peter demanding someone throw a pie during a serious and emotional Russian play.
  • When Peter gets a job on a children's TV show, he parodies Lois as the nagging, annoying puppet "Saggy Naggy" and pies the puppet. Thereafter, a gang of kids recognizing Lois as "Saggy Naggy" attacks her in the supermarket, with one of the kids starting it by throwing a pie at her.
• Jokey Smurf in The Smurfs masquerades as the episode's eponymous Masked Pie Smurfer to attack his fellow Smurfs with pies, resulting in an Escalating War.
• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic
  • In the episode "A Bird in the Hoof", an overexcited Pinkie Pie does this to herself at a party in honor of a visiting Princess Celestia.
  • Earlier in "Over a Barrel", the settler ponies fight the buffalo with pies.
  • In "The Best Night Ever", poor Rarity ends up getting hit with a flying layer cake which Prince Blueblood was using her to shield himself from.
• And in My Little Pony: The Movie, inept neophyte witches Reeka and Draggle end up pelted with pies when they crash into a table while trying to ruin the Little Ponies' spring festival.
• A Running Gag on Garfield and Friends. (In the original comic strip too.)
• The Garfield Show has a Game-Show-Within-a-Show called "Say a Type of Tree and Get Hit in the Face With a Pie".

Real Life

• The University of Victoria's Engineering Students' Society has an annual fundraiser on March 14, Pi Day (3.14 - get it?) One person makes a donation to have an individual of their choice pied; the victim can dodge the pastry by matching the donation. Some good-natured individuals allow themselves to be pied but donate as well.
• Same with University of Calgary's own ESS. Oh Crap. This would be a Berserk Button had it happened outside of Engineering or if an informal restraining order was never made.
• The Biotic Baking Brigade, a San Francisco-based left-wing activist group, specializes in throwing pies in the faces of those it regards as its political foes.
  • Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was once pied by a member of this group.
  • As mentioned at the top of this page, Bill Gates suffered a similar fate on a trip to Belgium.
• Indeed The Other Wiki has a page devoted to people who have been "pied" at some point.
• And then there are the organizations that are dedicated to pieing people. Like these people.
• In recent years, it's become common for a professional baseball player who gets a game-winning hit to be rewarded with a shaving-cream pie to the face from his teammates.
• Skippys List references one particular incident where pies, to be thrown at the unit CO, would be auctioned off for a charity fundraiser. The pies, however, would be "voluntarily" bought by individual soldiers. So Skippy, being The Loonie that he is, decides that a traditional cream pie would be too blasé, and goes with something a little nontraditional...
• In the 70s, science fiction critic Charles Platt pied magazine editor Ted White in the face at a convention. Sadly, White didn't see the funny side.
• Since 2010, the Furry Fandom convention Rainfurrest has featured the tradition of pieing staff members in the face if their charitable donation goals are reached.
• The first time Fred Rogers ever turned on a television, he saw footage of people throwing pies in each other's faces. The violence disgusted him enough that he decided to devote his life to gentler television programming. Pies in the face are directly responsible for Mister Rogers Neighborhood.
• A variant of this has been carried out in New Zealand with lamington cakes — twice.