A dream, daydream or otherwise of every child, immature character, or Big Eater: a giant pile of their favorite food.
This doesn't necessarily have to be a literal "mountain", but it should always be at least more than the average person would reasonably want to consume. Especially not in the quantities normally shown.
This trope mostly appears in animated media, so that the food can look as good as possible and characters can more realistically eat it without either getting sick or gaining weight.
If this trope does appear in Live Action media, expect it to cut away before anyone makes a dent in their meal (usually because the food likely isn't even real, as such high quantities of real food would start to look bad over the course of recording, so prop food, or at least food so covered in materials to prevent spoilage that it's literally poison, is used instead.). In this case, it'll later cut back to the same scene with the plate empty and the character cleaning their face, usually with the implication they ate it incredibly quickly. This variant especially holds true in Live-Action Cartoon styled series or KidComs.
See also Giant Food and Level Ate, where the food is unusually enormous for its size. Contrast with Micro Dieting.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Kokoro Connect: Episode 9 of the anime when Yui accidentally buys a feast of junk food. An impulse-fueled binge ensues.
Asian Animation
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons: In episode 43, Paddi shows Weslie and Sparky a Secret Snack Stash he keeps in a cave. The stash is a huge pile (Paddi is Obsessed with Food, so you can't really blame him) and has foods like potato chips, fries, and sandwiches in it.
Comic Books
- Archie: In one comic strip, Jughead has a dream where he's rushing toward a mountain of burgers — only to be stopped in his tracks by a stern-looking Archie. Jug wakes up, visibly angry, and when the real Archie greets him in a friendly manner, he coldly brushes him off.
Comic Strips
- FoxTrot: In an arc in which Jason is Scrooge and Peter the Spirit of Christmas Present, Peter explains the conspicuous lack of a mountain of food as having had a light lunch.
Films — Animation
- Charlotte's Web (1973): Templeton attempts to build a large pile of discarded food, only for it to topple over. He catches the falling food with his mouth and crashes into a watermelon.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: A huge pile of leftover food is made after a month of food weather, affectionately called "Mt. Leftovers".
- Aladdin: The Genie takes the "choose one from Column A and 1 from Column B" menu convention literally and briefly creates two towers of food during the "Never Had a Friend Like Me" song.
Films — Live-Action
- A Christmas Carol: A lot of film versions portray the Ghost of Christmas Present as sitting atop a giant mountain of food.
Literature
- A unique example found in the book Pornucopia depicts a huge ice cream mountain that, while making for a popular ski resort, is quite nauseating for the people who have to work there and experience it's sickening sweetness for hours every day.
Live-Action TV
- The Aquabats! Super Show!: A variant appears in "ManAnt!": after the team beats ManAnt, a super-sized Crash discovers that stolen burgers have been stockpiled in a nearby giant anthill. Cue "Burger Rain".
- Man v. Food: Adam Richman's insane eating challenges often take the form of at least a foothill of food if not a full-blown mountain. Even the standard size portions can look to non-Americans like a substantial hillock. Adam tends to hit The Wall a lot when his body begins to physically reject the idea of ingesting any more.
- Our Miss Brooks: Teenaged Walter Denton gets a large breakfast at Mrs. Davis' house, whenever he arrives to take Miss Brooks to school. This is usually after he has eaten breakfast at home.
Music
- The Beatles: In the Magical Mystery Tour movie and album booklet, Auntie Jessie nods off and has a dream about mountains of spaghetti.
Video Games
- Kirby Star Allies: King Dedede sends his people to steal food for him while under control of an extraterrestrial threat. When Kirby encounters him, he can be seen munching on a large pile of fruits, which he then uses as a projectile during his Boss Battle.
Web Animation
- The Grossery Gang: A literal version is seen in the "Mount Yuck" arc, where, after failing to hit the slushie machine with food, a gigantic mountain of food is created. As the Grosseries are living food themselves, it is only the scale of the convenience store in height, but that's still plenty tall enough for them. The arc is spent climbing it, purely because "it's there".
Webcomics
- Brawl in the Family: The Ghost of Christmas Present's pile of food in A Christmas Carol is parodied in the Christmas special where the character is played by Kirby, who delays his segment by quite a bit because he's busy snacking on his giant pile of holiday foods.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: Played literally with the Rock Candy Mountains in the Candy Kingdom.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Stop, Look and Ed", Sarah and Jimmy make a big mountain of ice cream (and proceed to slide down it with their mouths open).
- I Am Weasel: In "Dessert Island", Weasel and Baboon land on a dessert island.
- PB Bear And Friends: In one episode, a genie is asked for a giant mountain of candy. Near the end of the episode, he also creates a mountain of bananas for a monkey.
- Rugrats, "Ice Cream Mountain": The eponymous mountain is actually a decoration in a miniature golf course, but babies don't know that and Hilarity Ensues.
- The Simpsons: In "Treehouse of Horror IV", Homer Simpson's Ironic Hell punishment is being forcefed "all the donuts in the world" and being surrounded by piles and piles of them. He successfully eats them all and is disappointed that there aren't any more.
Real Life
- Some restaurants may invoke this trope as part of a Mega Meal Challenge, where a customer is given a mountain of food (sometimes with sides and drinks included that must also be finished) that must all be eaten in a certain time limit, usually without a break. If a customer finishes it in time, they receive trophies, usually in the form of a Fun T-Shirt, their face on a wall of fame, and sometimes their bill wavered if they had anything else to eat.
- Some restaurants may allow a group to take one of these challenges, and thus make the mountain of food even bigger to keep it a challenge.