DEATH BY TOILET:
TV AND MOVIE EDITION
A lot of famous people have died in the bathroom—most notably Elvis Presley in 1977. No one is immune to the deadly dangers of the john…not even fictional characters.
Character: Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero)
Movie: Jurassic Park (1993)
R.I.P.: Dinosaurs rip a lot of people to shreds in Steven Spielberg’s classic adaptation of Michael Crichton’s science-run-amok novel, but none more violently than Donald Gennaro, the park’s milquetoast lawyer. He tries to escape an angry (and hungry) Tyrannosaurus rex by hiding in an outhouse, but that thin wood isn’t enough to protect him. “Nature finds a way,” to quote Jurassic Park. The T. rex breaks right through the privy walls and tears the lawyer to bits.
Character: Vincent Vega (John Travolta)
Movie: Pulp Fiction (1994)
R.I.P.: After two decades of successful movie roles, Travolta received his second Oscar nomination for his work in Quentin Tarantino’s crime saga. Over the course of three intersecting stories, audiences get to know (and like) Vincent, who is a hit man and a heroin addict. He takes his boss’s wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), out to dinner and dancing at a 1950s-themed restaurant, then he goes back on duty and is ordered to kill a double-crossing boxer named Butch (Bruce Willis). While waiting for Butch at his apartment, Vincent answers the call of nature. Butch comes home, finds a gun he doesn’t recognize, and, after barging in on Vincent in the bathroom, fills him full of lead.
Character: Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance)
Television series: Game of Thrones (2014)
R.I.P.: Both in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and the popular HBO series based on those books, ruling patriarch Tywin Lannister gets what’s coming to him for his years of ruthless scheming and treating his adult children badly. After trying to pin a murder on his son Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), one night he gets up to use his primitive bathroom chambers. While he’s sitting there using the facilities, Tyrion shoots him with a crossbow.
Seven percent of Americans believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
R.I.P.: There are four Ghoulies movies and they’re all rip-offs of the more popular (and bigger-budgeted) Gremlins movies. Like Gremlins, they’re about nasty little green creatures that can kill. The poster for the first film depicts one jumping out of a toilet alongside the tagline “They’ll get you in the end!” (Get it?) The first Ghoulies movie didn’t actually feature a scene where a Ghoulie emerged from a commode, but producers liked the poster so much that they had filmmakers shoot a scene where that happened. In Ghoulies II, an evil businessman named Philip Hardin uses a public restroom, which is where the Ghoulies get him “in the end.”
Character: Georgia Lass (Ellen Muth)
Television series: Dead Like Me (2003)
R.I.P.: The cult Showtime dramedy was about a group of “reapers”—ghosts who wander about Seattle, tasked with killing people whose numbers are up. In the first episode, the show’s protagonist, 18-year-old Georgia, or “George” as she’s known, dies and becomes a reaper. She’s not in a bathroom when the moment comes. During her first day working as a temp at an office job, she’s sitting outside on her lunch break when a toilet seat falls all the way from the Mir space station, through the atmosphere, and bonks her right on the head, killing her. For months, her fellow reapers call her by the nickname “Toilet Seat Girl.”
THANKS, MARILYN
Before Marilyn Monroe was a movie star, she was an up-and-coming singer. One of her biggest influences: Ella Fitzgerald. Years later, in the mid-1950s, when Monroe was at the top of her fame, she heard that Fitzgerald wasn’t allowed to play a posh Hollywood club simply because she was black. So here’s what happened, as recounted years later by Fitzgerald: “I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt. She personally called the club owner and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him—and it was true, due to her superstar status—that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman—a little ahead of her time. And she didn’t know it.”
A pteronophobe is someone terrified of being tickled by feathers.