"Lightning fired his fiercest bolt straight at Shrek's head. Shrek just gobbled it, belched some smoke, and grinned."
"If it looks good, eat it. And it all looks good to me."
— Andrew, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern
The Extreme Omnivore will eat just about anything out of hunger or curiosity, so long as it looks like food. And sometimes even when it clearly doesn't. They don't fear the Lethal Chef, and you will never hear them say I Ate WHAT?!
There are two versions of this trope:
- Unpicky Eater: The milder of the two and can apply to ordinary unpowered individuals. This character is willing to eat things that may be perfectly nutritious, but are either considered unhygienic (e.g., it fell on the floor, it's roadkill, another character has been eating it, or it's expired and/or spoiled), or taboo (e.g., insects, horseflesh) in that character's society. They may be indifferent to, or ignorant of, the social conventions that keep most people from eating those things, or they might be from another culture or species where such things are accepted. Perhaps they may just be so desperate for food that they don't care, in which case that would overlap with Too Desperate to Be Picky. Often they have a Bizarre Taste in Food. This version can exist in real life. They may also be the only one who likes food produced by the Cordon Bleugh Chef or the Lethal Chef.
- Can Eat Anything: For super powered individuals there may be overlap with type one via Personality Powers. They can and will eat anything, even things that would make a person gravely sick if they consumed them in real life. Rocks, sticks, dirt, metal... heck they may even eat their plate too, and digest it with few ill effects. They can digest completely inedible items and may either have strong enough teeth to bite through said material or stomach acid that can digest it as a Required Secondary Power. Their stomach may also be able to hold an excessive amount of food. If a video game character, they are likely to be able to consume their foes whether living or not.
Both versions may also be open to the idea of cannibalism when the opportunity presents itself.
Please note that instances of someone being forced to eat something disgusting or inappropriate isn't Extreme Omnivorosity. Likewise for unintentional ingestion. A true Extreme Omnivore has a long-term pattern of eating everything knowingly, willingly, and usually cheerfully.
Compare Paste Eater and Predation Is Natural. Horde of Alien Locusts can be an entire species of this. Extreme Omni-Goat is a Sub-Trope where this applies to goats, and Snack-Stealing Seagulls is one where this applies to gulls. A character like this is likely to be a Big Eater, though a Big Eater generally restricts themselves to things ordinarily considered food. Compare Extreme Omnisexual. Contrast Picky Eater and Unconventional Food Usage. Compare Fantastic Diet Requirement; while the Extreme Omnivore can eat almost anything, but doesn't typically require any one specific intake, someone with a Fantastic Diet Requirement needs to eat something unusual, usually a single specific thing, either exclusively or as part of their diet.
Don't Try This at Home, seriously. People have died trying to eat things not meant for human consumption. At best, you'll feel sick to your stomach. At worst, you'll die because of it.
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Advertising
- A 1992 UK advert for Carling Black Label lager features a man in a posh restaurant ordering the "number 86", which turns out to be a double decker bus! The man eats parts of the bus as they are taken off it as it explodes in the restaurant's kitchen. He is then served a can of the lager being advertised, but he eats the top of the can. Two cooks (played by Stephen Frost and Mark Arden) say the famous slogan "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label" as they watch on in horror. This advert was only aired after 9pm.
- At the end of the infamous Nickelodeon Egg and Spoon Vanity Plate, the egg monster turns to the viewer and eats the camera like it's nothing more than pie.
- For a few McDonald's commercials, Ronald McDonald and the McDonaldland gang knew a diminutive monster named Bernice who tended to eat anything. For one ongoing series of commercials, she ate a movie script that Ronald needed, and Ronald had to use things like an X-ray and a flashlight on her to find out what the script said. (In the second case, she ate the flashlight.)
- Mercatoni Pravettoni:
- Discussed. Pravettoni's words reveal that he thinks that people can eat everything. How to dispose of plastic? Have immigrants eat it! His food products also often contains things like tar, styrofoam and uranium, things he considers natural flavourings.
- Pravettoni himself also counts, as both in the end of episode "Bitumella" and "Polpettine Pravettoni" he feels sick, implying he ate his own products (respectively a snack containing tar and beefless beef meatballs containing styrofoam, chemical dyes, and the ever present tar).
- In this Mountain Dew commercial
a whale has developed a taste for Mountain Dew and goes to extreme lengths to get it. When a young man who is out kayaking decides to take a break to drink some Mountain Dew, the whale seizes its opportunity: it swallows the man, his kayak, and the Mountain Dew all in one gulp! Once the man is nestled inside the whale's stomach he discovers that he's not the only water sports enthusiast who made the mistake of bringing along some Mountain Dew!
- Played with in a Canadian commercial for Tim Horton's. A group of Big Eater types are talking about their gastronomical adventures. One subverts the game by telling the group about a nice bowl of chicken stew he ate..."And then I ate the bowl!" The ad is for Timmie's stew in a bowl made of bread.
- A brand of cracker snacks named "TUC" has a series of commercials featuring an insatiably hungry woman who swallows any nearby object she finds whole, before being given a pack of TUC crackers to satisfy her hunger.
Asian Animation
- In the King Shakir episode "Clone Shakir", Shakir's clones have no problem eating things throughout the city, including inedible things such as street lights.
- Motu Patlu (2012): The baby dinosaur in "Baby Dinosaur" quickly consumes a chair, a table with a radio on it, a cabinet, and a bed in Motu and Patlu's house, and eventually, everything else in the house.
- Rocket Boy & Toro:
- Toro, Rocket Boy's guard sheep, will eat everything from food to cages and walls. In the case of the latter two, he's been known to do it specifically to makes his escape from the cage/room.
- One episode features a pair of Space Whales who feast on asteroids and planets.
Comic Strips
- Garfield: Garfield will eat anything that's edible, including things like chocolate that would kill a real cat. However, even he has his limits — he hates raisins, and Jon's cooking at times. He also refuses to eat mice, much to Jon's disappointment. He's eaten a few inedible objects too, although in most cases it's by accident because he's shoveling down his food so fast he doesn't realize until it's too late. Deliberate examples include swallowing the TV remote to keep Jon from getting it, and eating Jon's wallet because it was made from cowhide. On another occasion, he starts eating the fridge after finding it empty, and says that he's "had worse". If the June 27, 2021 strip is anything to go by, Garfield is willing to take a bite out of the moon should he be hungry enough.
- Get Fuzzy: Satchel is one; he has eaten seat cushions, candles, and (on February 01, 2020) the remote for the TV.
Fan Works
- Bandit's Belt:
- Socks apparently ate her own poop the previous year.
- Bingo starts to enjoy the taste of blood due to being in shock after Chilli dies.
- When Trixie loses it from cancer, she eats a cat.
- The Bolt Chronicles:
- In "The Supermarket," Bolt is portrayed as being willing to eat almost anything, no matter how disgusting it is. He even admits to this later when he says, "Pig innards aren't even the nastiest thing I've eaten today."
Mittens: Coming from a critter who'll eat almost anything organic no matter how gross it is, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
- In "The Insomniac," Mittens describes Bolt as being willing to eat anything, saying it's typical of him since he's a dog — but that it may prove fatal if he's unlucky.
Mittens: Geez, anything could happen, you know? Bolt could get hit by a car or eat food loaded with poison by mistake and kick the bucket, just like that. And darn him, he'll chow down on almost anything. He's such a dog that way.
- In "The Supermarket," Bolt is portrayed as being willing to eat almost anything, no matter how disgusting it is. He even admits to this later when he says, "Pig innards aren't even the nastiest thing I've eaten today."
- The Boy Who Cried Idiot: Downplayed and discussed when Clyde mentions a video in which a little girl attempts to eat rocks.
- Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has DreamFuture!Calvin and Hobbes forced to eat tires while deserted. Later in the same episode (after the dream ends), Calvin remarks that gum ointment is somewhat tasty and contemplates eating a tire.
- Casey Steele: As part of a joke:
She giggled briefly before looking around in confusion, "What did you do with your wet bathing suit?"
"I ate it," I said with grin, "I was hungry."
"Seriously?" she asked as her eyes opened widely.
"No, not really, I just sent it away..." - Cheesy Potaters: Sniper is perfectly willing to eat a container of three-week-old mac and cheese with a thick layer of mold on it (after scraping the mold off, of course), commenting that he'd eaten far worse as a tracker in the Outback. He doesn't actually get to eat it because Spy (whose standards for food are much higher) snatches it at the last minute and throws it in the trash.
- The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Ashenspawn can eat wood, metal, or raw meat and come out both unharmed and unhungry.
- Demon Rearing: As part of her demonic puberty, Rumi gains cravings for all kinds of non-edible objects, first revealed when Celine walks in on her drinking soap. Other materials Rumi is known to have eaten include tide-pods, stationary, a door knob, gravel, and candles. At one point, Mira catches her eating the wrapper her protein bar came in.
- Eater: Izuku has a Quirk called Real Eater that lets him eat anything including being an Abstract Eater, being able to eat things that have no substance like laughter, Quirks, and his injuries (not his flesh, the fact he was injured at all).
- Enter the Dragon: After transforming into a dragon, Harry Potter eats pretty much anything and everything, with a particular fondness for petrol and steel. The only material Harry is shown to dislike the taste of is wood. When he gets a cave to use as a lair, Harry expands it by eating the stone until he decides his lair is big enough.
- Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons: Blackjack starts out as just an unpicky eater, nomming down happily on a Lethal Chef's cooking and Foreign Queasine with gusto, but when she's augumented, it really takes off. Bonus points go to when she's hit with an assassination attempt and, instead, eats the knife. The most extreme case occured when she ate her friend's heart while disguised as a raider; Granted, she had to to avoid blowing her cover, but it says something that she compared the feeling to biting into an especially thick tomato.
- Gensokyo 20XX: An age-regressed Reimu from the later parts of the series. Slightly justified because she was mentally conditioned to not have a sense of danger or question anything that doesn't seem right (her own reasonings, especially), so, besides Sniff Sniff Nom or putting things in her mouth in general, she'll eat anything the other kids might find disgusting or get bored of.
Reimu:"I like ratburgers."
Sakuya: "Reimu, you eat anything in which it is you pick up[...]" - Hard Being Pure: Noa cannot properly eat like a normal person, and instead gains sustenance from the matter she disintegrates through her telekinetic power. She can use her power to digest just about anything.
- Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay: A good chunk of humor is dragon!Harry being able to eat virtually anything. He's eaten everything from plastic packaging, hedge trimmings, metal cutlery and glitter to potion ingredients and Howlers. Once the House Elves get wind of this, they start serving specially marked Harry-only dishes made with otherwise inedible ingredients, like metal and hemlock. The hemlock was actually a poisoning attempt, but Harry didn't notice.
- In Intergalactic Illness, Lala eats the plates and silverware along with her food.
- Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami: At one point, the narration casually mentions L eating a TV remote.
- Natural Histories: Salamanders feed on anything organic — fresh plants, eggs, animals too injured, weak or stupid to avoid them, carrion, rotting leaves, and anything else they stumble across; it's all fuel to them.
- The Nightmare House: Baby Lily Loud doesn't know what a mortgage is, so she dreams it's a ravenous beast named Mor-Gaj, who eats money, Rita's purse, and tries to eat her.
- Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): The Ghoul soul allows Soma to eat anything as long as it was edible at some point in the past:
The Ghoul soul made everything taste like it was at its freshest, something Soma was greatly thankful for. A superpower that just suppressed the gag reflex and stopped food poisoning was useful but not pleasant.
- The Parselmouth of Gryffindor: All food gets magically vanished — turned into magical energy — the moment it enters his body, anyway, so Maximilian pulls no stops and does things like eating the wrapping along with the candy.
- Queen of All Oni: After Jade becomes a Shadowkan girl once more, her appetite and metabolism go way up, and in one chapter, she eats a rib, BONE AND ALL!
- The Secret Return of Alex Mack: The Downingtown Blob appears to be able to consume any organic matter and grow larger; even upholstery is fair game. It can be injured by fire or electricity, but will immediately consume the damaged cells and thus minimise its losses.
- Selaginella Lepidophylla: Amethyst discusses marinating something in soap as part of her meal.
- A Shadow of the Titans: Jade once bit the tongs off her spoon, and only noticed when she tried to pick up another bite. She lampshades it multiple times, and Jinx makes a Running Gag out of asking Jade if she's part goat or something.
- Taylor Varga: The Varga can eat and digest essentially any physical substance, including things like titanium alloys or enriched uranium, and frequently suggests eating things or people as a solution for its problems. The "cousin" Family members are limited to eating organic materials, but they can still digest things like wood or paper without difficulty.
- Teen Titans Tokyo: Nabiki first discovered she had been cursed into being a Were Dragon when she woke up and found she'd devoured her entire collection of 1-yen coins in her sleep. She still feels a compulsion to eat yen coins when she handles them.
- Their Hero Academia: Rise of the New Generation: This is Kenta Sato's Quirk, the result of his father's canon Quirk of empowering himself by eating sugars combining with his mother's Quirk of being able to absorb solid matter to grow and empower herself. He can explicitly consume and process any solid or semisolid material.
- To the New World:
- If it's food, Eira will eat it, no matter how it looks or tastes. When a curious Lin asks what kind of things she's eaten, she rattles off runebear liver, pickled turtle neck, fowl's foot, and land octopus.
- When Lin is having trouble eating in the new Age of Dark, Dunstan sets out to find food for him by sticking everything he finds in his mouth, if his comment on the spiciness of leaves is anything to go by.
- Twila The Girl Who Waz In Luv With A Vampyre: The protagonists eat Bella's bed after they kill her "so there would be no evidenze (lol geddit like evinezenze.)"
- Tyrant Kings: Humans and dinosaurs are noted as being the only sapient species that can safely consume both dextro and levo amino-based foods, whereas every other race will at best gain no nutrition from one and at worst have a fatal allergic reaction.
- With This Ring:
- The orange light is the light of avarice, so as his skills progress, the protagonist is able to use it to "consume" anything, even intangibles like magic. Nearby metals are corroded, spells are drained, and even Maltusians are well advised to back away and shield themselves.
Paul: FEED ME!
- He also keeps a swarm of Praexis Demons that have been turned into orange constructs, but have lost none of their insatiable appetite in the process. Not only will they eat anything he lets them catch, they can also feed on ambient heat, Energy Weapon fire, and even the spiritual energies of a crime scene.
- The orange light is the light of avarice, so as his skills progress, the protagonist is able to use it to "consume" anything, even intangibles like magic. Nearby metals are corroded, spells are drained, and even Maltusians are well advised to back away and shield themselves.
- Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Miriam can safely digest normally inedible organic matter like bone, shell and hoof, and even has a tendency to gnaw on things made of wood or metal when she's distracted or bored, to her chagrin. She blames it on being a tiger shark-aspect Fishman hybrid, as tiger sharks are notorious for eating anything they can swallow, even compared to other sharks.
Jokes
- A soldier from a particularly remote area gets assigned embassy duty in Germany, and he regularly goes to a local bar where beer is served on a cardboard coaster. Every time the server goes to clear the soldier's table, he notices the coaster is missing, and one day serves the beer without one. The soldier then asks "No cookie today?"
Podcasts
- Ghouls from Less is Morgue will eat pretty much anything - examples in the show so far include both living things and corpses, as well as glue, soap, straight mayonnaise, a car tire, bugs, and rodents. It's pretty gross.
- Tellie from Sequinox is able to consume anything inorganic because it's not part of the Earth. Technically this means it's supposed to eat trash, but in the end it eats basically anything put in front of it except for food. And Tootsie Rolls.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- The Spikit. It has been known to tear parts off people's cars and eat them.
- The Kinloka Rat. It can and will eat anything and everything.
Visual Novels
- Amnesia: Memories' fandisc Amnesia LATER: Ukyo gets a pasta dish, loaded with extra spicy habanero sauce he knows nothing about, adds tabasco on top and eats it. The guys that put the habanero sauce on there as a prank are amazed that Ukyo ate it without flinching or even commenting on the taste.
- Magical Warrior Diamond Heart: Amber is by no means picky about exactly what she puts in her mouth. She'll even eat garbage and rotten food.
- Monster Con has April First, a clown monster influencer/idol. She's a Big Eater despite her skinny, thin build, and cannibalistic tendencies aside, she has also been shown to eat things like living sewer rats (partly to intimidate them and literally bite back), and a corn dog that she was convinced to abandon in a bush for three hours before the stupidity of a "Hunger Strike" stream got to her.
- In Tavern Talk, the Innkeep's pet baby dragon Andu can gulp down any potion they make without any ill effects, so if the player makes a mistake in brewing, they can just feed it to him.