There are certain things that once you experience, you can never quite forget. The memory of it lingers, not just in your mind, but somehow in your body. A certain word or image can trigger the memory, fresh and vivid, and you can almost feel it all over again, your body seemingly experiencing it all anew. And when those feelings (of disgust, guilt, and trauma in particular), become too overwhelming, sometimes the only thing one can do is to try to physically wash the sensation away. Vigorously. Obsessively. Past the point of any good sense or reason.

This trope covers such instances. Often, characters who are burdened with the guilt of having killed someone (justified or not), will develop a habit of obsessively washing their hands, as if the blood they spilled is permanently staining their hands. For these guilty characters, this compulsion to scrub, like with Terrible Ticking, may be just the start of a Sanity Slippage, accompanied later by visions or hallucinations of blood on their hands.

Frequently, a character will encounter something so vile and so disgusting that the mere thought of it sends them rushing to a sink or shower. In these cases, this trope is most similar to Brain Bleach. A Neat Freak, germophobe, or hypochondriac, those most likely to already be paranoid about cleanliness, may have this reaction at even the most mundane of things, yet this trope is not just for them. A character who encounters a person's creepy and disturbing Porn Stash may be shown running to the bathroom to wash their hands, despite their hands not actually being dirty.

Then there's the Truth in Television depiction of those who've experienced something that violated their person, like sexual assault: such characters will often be shown in a Shower of Angst scrubbing themself raw, trying to combat the feeling of possibly being Defiled Forever. Tropes Are Flexible, so while a character actually washing themself is the standard, a character vigorously or compulsively scrubbing themself clean via other means (hand sanitizer, sandpaper, acid, etc.) or washing the clothes on their person instead of their actual body would also count, so long as it's triggered by guilt, disgust, or trauma.

May be used to show how Murder Makes You Crazy. Frequently overlaps with a Villainous Breakdown, Heroic BSoD, or a general Freak Out. Macbeth is the likely Trope Codifier for the variation on guilt specifically, for which you can compare Being Evil Sucks, Bleed 'Em and Weep, Guilt-Induced Nightmare, and Haunting the Guilty. Related to Purification Bathing.

As with all Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes, No Real Life Examples, Please!

Examples: