This is often used to showcase that a character is a klutz, an idiot, a Butt-Monkey, or is just plain bad at doing chores (perhaps they're a kid who's trying to help with the housework, or a man who can't keep house struggling to spend A Day in Her Apron).
Sub-trope of Slapstick and Domestic Appliance Disaster. Compare Impossible Leavening (for when it's dough or batter instead of soap); Fake Rabies for another gag about foam; Covered in Gunge, Man-Made House Flood, and Powder Gag for other messy gags; and Red Sock Ruins the Laundry and Shrunk in the Wash for other laundry mishaps.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: In Chapter 77, Rentarou and the girls run into trouble during an outing at an onsen opened by the Serious Group when the body soap suds expand so much that it disperses the harem throughout the place.
- Ash Ketchum has this problem in an episode of Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon when he tries to wash a shirt. He overfills the machine by adding all of Professor Kukui's lab coats, then dumps an entire box of detergent in. Naturally, this results in a laundry room full of foam and bubbles.
Comic Books
- One Donald Duck comic has Donald Cutting Corners while disposing of a new experimental laundry detergent for Scrooge. Result: the stuff gets caught in a rainstorm and floods all of Duckburg with bubbles, and Donald runs away to live in self-exile for months.
Film – Live-Action
- In Adventures in Babysitting (2016), Lola is distracted by the sight of a swimsuit while she was busy with launching a laundry session at the Anderson's, at the very beginning of the evening. She pours too much washing liquid in the washing machine and it release a pool of bubbles. Lola only notice hours after, while she finally get back to the home at the end of the movie. Fortunately Jenny and Katy manage to wipe it off completely (as the rest of the mess, done by the dog in the kitchen, is cleaned up by others characters) before the Andersons parents go back home.
- In the film Confessions of a Window Cleaner, Robin Askwith, playing window cleaner Timothy Lea, is seduced in her kitchen by a middle-aged housewife. Who neglects the fact she's overloaded the washing machine with too much detergent, so it overflows and floods the kitchen with soap suds and bubbles during the act. As befits an Awful British Sex Comedy, of course Hilarity Ensues.
- Freaky Friday (1976): Annabel undergoes a "Freaky Friday" Flip with her mother Ellen and struggles to do the household chores her mother usually handles. This includes clothes washing; she puts too much detergent in and ends up covering herself, the floor, and the family dog in suds.
- Hop: When Fred O'Hare comes home early in the film, E.B. has trashed the place with half-eaten carrots. E.B. comments that he hasn't seen the bathroom yet. The bathroom has been flooded with soap bubbles.
- In Just My Luck, poor Ashley has just caught extreme bad luck. As a result, Jake pities her and lets her go to his flat, so she can wash her wet clothes. She inevitably turns his laundry room into a pool of bubbles (being distracted by a shirtless Jake while putting powder and being unable to find the stop button after).
- Mrs. Doubtfire: In a deleted scene, Daniel tries to do the laundry while frantically switching between his real voice and his "Mrs. Doubtfire" voice during a chaotic phone call. He accidentally dumps far too much detergent into the washing machine, causing a massive wall of soap suds to erupt and flood the entire laundry room.
- A Princess for Christmas: Six-year-old Maddie just wanted to wash the shirt she just stained, without disturbing her nanny. Unfortunately she's too young to have been taught how to deal with the washing machine.
Literature
- Curious George: In "Curious George at the Laundromat", George pours an entire box of soap into a washing machine, which results in the laundromat getting flooded with soapsuds. Mrs. Goodman then complains that the clothes got soaked, so George makes up for his mistake by hanging the outfits out to dry in a tree.
- Freaky Friday: 13-year-old Annabel, stuck in her mother's body, has to do the laundry and has no idea on how to proceed. She ends up overloading the machine and using way too much soap, resulting in a wave of bubbles emerging from it.
- Little Critter: In "Just a Rainy Day", Little Sister is stuck at home due to the rain. Bored, she decides to help her mom by cleaning the bathroom. It's not shown how she tries to do this, but she then asks her mother why the toilet is making bubbles.
- Macdonald Hall: In Something Fishy at Macdonald Hall, one of the mysterious prankster's jokes is to put too much detergent in the industrial-size dishwasher in the dining hall while Bruno and Boots are on kitchen duty, causing it to overflow with suds.
- In Naughty Ninja Takes a Bath, a struggle to get Nathan, a Bratty Half-Pint and ninja wannabe who Hates Baths, to take a bath, results in a flood of soapy water that cleans the whole house.
- Strega Nona Takes A Vacation: Poor Big Anthony winds up flooding the whole town about five minutes after getting a gift of bubble-bath. The mayor can only snark that unlike the time this happened with pasta, at least this flood will leave the town cleaner.
Live-Action TV
- The Brady Bunch: In "Law and Disorder", Bobby makes a clandestine effort to launder his good suit (after he gets it covered in soot from entering a condemned house), but he pours about half a box of detergent into the washing machine, and almost drowns himself when the laundry room fills with suds. To add insult to injury, the ordeal all but ruins his dry-clean-only suit pants, as they are now, in his sister's words, "tighter than his skin".
- The Partridge Family: In "Maid in San Pueblo", the family, including Shirley's parents, divides by gender to see if women can get by without men and vice versa. At one point, Walter Renfrew tries to do the laundry. He uses three or four cups of detergent and gets covered in several feet of bubbles.
- The Sooty Show: In one episode, Soo gives the boys sweaters that are too big, so the three of them try to shrink them in the wash, but accidentally put in too much soap powder and fill the laundry room with suds.
- Under the Umbrella Tree: In "Laundry Day", Iggy and Jacob decide to do the laundry themselves while Holly and Gloria are out doing errands, despite the fact that Holly has told them not to use the washer or dryer when she isn't there. Iggy tells Jacob to put "the whole box" of laundry soap in the washer, and Jacob puts it in box and all. Then, when Iggy tells him "Take the soap out of the box before you put it in," Jacob pours in the entire boxful, then puts the box back in, prompting Iggy to tell him to take it out. The laundry room ends up flooded with soapsuds, and the clothes have shrunk because the water was too hot.
- Happens in the British reality show Young Dumb And Living Off Mum. This is the first time a group of twenty somethings have done anything for themselves and they have no idea how many common appliances work. One episode has the group attempt to do the laundry. The results end up with foam spilling out of the washing machine drawer.
Webcomics
- In Foxes in Love, at one point Green mishears Blue's instructions to "put in a fourth of a bottle" as "put in four bottles", and since he completely trusts Blue, he puts in sixteen times as much soap as intended.
Blue: Was that not an obviously insane amount?
Green: I would follow you blindfolded into Hell.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Although we don't see it happening, in "The Origins", Nicole tells a young Gumball to not put his room in the washing machine as an attempt to clean it. You can see some bubbles coming out the window at the start of the episode.
- Bobby's World: In "The Big Sweep", Derek tricks Bobby into doing the laundry for him so he can go to the movies. Bobby fills the washing machine with an entire bottle of detergent, resulting in the laundry room being flooded with soap bubbles.
- Lampshaded in an episode of The Cleveland Show when Cleveland has to take up Donna's duties. The washing machine overflows with bubbles as usual, and Cleveland is informed by a repairman that this is a common problem with his particular model of washing machine. When men are taking up household chores they normally don't and inevitably get comically overwhelmed, the machine overflows per Rule of Funny.
- In the Darkwing Duck episode "Toys Czar Us", Darkwing's efforts to fix dinner, do the laundry, and talk to Launchpad all at once results in the laundry overflowing with bubbles and dinner catching fire. Worse, Darkwing is completely oblivious to it.
- Dennis the Menace (1986):
- In "Laundry Business", Dennis gets the idea to start a laundry business in order to raise the money to pay for Mr. Wilson's windows, which he and his friends broke during a game of baseball. Due to Dennis' inexperience in washing everyone's clothes and his ignorance of their instructions, he ends up flooding the house with soap bubbles.
- In "Househusband Henry", Henry tries to take care of the house and Dennis when Alice leaves for the day. Dennis tries to help Henry with his housework, which includes the laundry. He puts too much soap in the washing machine, flooding the house with soap bubbles. Henry calls the fire department, who tells him to call a plumber next time he puts too much soap in his washer.
- In the Fancy Nancy episode "Mademoiselle Mom", Nancy causes the dishwasher to overflow bubbles when she does the dishes after taking over Mrs. Clancy's chores when she has a cold.
- In the Franklin episode "Franklin in Charge", Franklin tries to help his mother do the laundry. It doesn't go well, to say the least, and he ends up filling the basement with bubbles and on the ground stuck on his back/shell. He learns An Aesop about not having to take everything on his own shoulders and asking for help when necessary.
- Garfield and Friends: In the U.S. Acres segment "Quack to the Future", Orson accidentally puts too much soap in the washing machine, resulting in Roy's coop being flooded with soap bubbles. At the end of the episode, Wade decides to help Orson clear away the excess of soapy water after Roy, Lanolin, Booker and Sheldon all refuse, because Orson is his true friend, and true friends help each other. That, and his best socks are in the load.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You", the Cakes accidentally buy shampoo instead of stain remover, resulting in the bakery, Sugar Cube Corner, being filled with bubbles after Pinkie Pie tries to clean it.
- In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode "Find Her, Keep Her", Pooh and Piglet are attempting to give Kessie the baby bird a bath, when Kessie starts playing with the box of soap, causing it to fall into the sink and fill Rabbit's house with soap.
- The Simpsons: In "Behind the Laughter", the pilot that Homer Simpson produces has him trying to do the laundry in preparation for a dinner with his boss. He puts in too much detergent, filling the room with suds... just in time for his boss to arrive.
- In the Skillsville episode "Laundromat Manager", Scout over-pours detergent, filling the washing machine with a massive mountain of bubbles. To salvage the team's jerseys, Dev and Scout are forced to pivot to the "Laundry Toss Challenge," turning the clean-up into a basketball-style toss to wash them.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): In "A Thing About Rats", while the Turtles are over at April's apartment, Raphael reads the instructions for a bottle of bubble bath that April was planning to use. They say to add a capful of it to the water, which Raphael misinterprets as a baseball cap. Naturally, when April goes to check on him, the room gets flooded with bubbles.