Bathrooms: We all use ‘em, but it took a curiously long time for Hollywood to challenge the Production Code’s ban on showing them on screen. Once that changed, however (we have Sir Alfred Hitchcock to thank for that, by the way), bathrooms have gotten their close-up.
And why not? It’s where we’re most private and vulnerable. They are pressure chambers where anything can happen once the door closes. Here are my 10 picks for the most memorable bathroom scenes in movie history.
10. Lethal Weapon 2 (1989, dir: Richard Donner)
In the formulaic but fun sequel to 1987’s Lethal Weapon, mismatched Los Angeles police detectives Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) get involved in a case involving a corrupt South African consulate operating as a criminal enterprise. They’re so villainous, in fact, they won’t let Murtaugh use the upstairs bathroom in his own home. He is on the toilet, thumbing contentedly through a fishing magazine, when he notices that the toilet has been rigged to a bomb set to detonate the moment he rises from the toilet seat. The bomb squad fails, leaving it up to the partners to handle the ticking time bomb on which Murtaugh is sitting.
9. Pulp Fiction( 1994, dir: Quentin Tarantino)
While Quentin Tarantino revived John Travolta’s career in the groundbreaking Pulp Fiction, he also gives the actor one of the more notably ignominious death scenes. As hit man Vincent Vega, Travolta is staking out the home of Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), a boxer who double-crossed Vincent’s crime-boss employer (Ving Rhames). While Vincent is there, he uses the john. What Vince doesn’t know is that Butch has arrived home and, spying Vincent’s MAC-10 submachine gun on the kitchen counter, gets the jump on his would-be assassin. Vincent flushes and leaves the bathroom, only to be blasted back into it by his own weapon. It is not the first time Vincent has ducked into a bathroom in the film—and it will not be the last time trouble follows. Because Pulp Fiction unfolds in ingeniously nonlinear fashion, Vincent’s death isn’t the end of Travolta’s screen time.
8. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018, dir: Christopher McQuarrie)
Mission: Impossible – Fallout set a dazzling high bar for the blockbuster franchise. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the MI series’ sixth installment is near nonstop action, including a spectacular chase along rooftops, a jaw-dropping helicopter sequence and the impossibly ageless stardom of Tom Cruise as MI agent Ethan Hunt. Arguably the film’s marquee action scene, however, happens when Ethan and CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) confront a hired assassin, played by Liang Yang, in the bathroom of a Paris nightclub. What follows is—complete with Cavill’s now-immortal arm-cocking “reload” gesture—a brilliantly choreographed and expertly edited fight scene. While one of the best adrenaline-pumping slugfests in 21st-century cinema, it’s surely the best to take place near a row of urinals.
7. There’s Something About Mary (1998, dir: Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly)
The Farrelly brothers have a special fondness for bathroom humiliations. Their lowbrow comic magnum opus, There’s Something About Mary, begins on a howlingly hysterical note. We are introduced to Teddy Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) at age 16, his mouth full of braces, as he arrives at the home of his mad crush, Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz), to escort her to prom. After some teasing from Mary’s parents, Teddy excuses himself to the guest bathroom. He urinates, zips up—and promptly gets his scrotum caught in the zipper. Mary’s stepfather (Keith David) tries to diagnose the severity of the situation, asking, “Is it the frank or the beans?” The boy meekly says it’s a little of both. Police and fire arrive. A police officer tells Teddy to steel himself before yanking down on the errant zipper. Cut to a paramedic: “We got a bleeder!” And scene.
6. The Shining (1980, dir: Stanley Kubrick)
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) makes several stops on his way to madness. Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel conjures some indelibly haunting scenes that reflect Jack’s inability––and maybe that of the audience, too––to distinguish reality from illusion in the Overlook Hotel. After son Danny (Danny Lloyd) says he was attacked by someone in Room 237, Jack inspects it for himself. Seeing a light on in the bathroom, Jack goes in and is pleasantly surprised to discover a beautiful, nude woman in the tub. Slowly, the woman rises and approaches seductively. As they embrace, the young woman is revealed to be a cackling old crone with rotting flesh and evidently an odd sense of humor. In Kubrick’s symmetrical framing and merciless use of mirrors, Jack is not just embracing a phantom—he is embracing his own decay. It is one of the creepiest scenes in The Shining, though perhaps unfair to the number 237. King’s novel designates the spooky site as Room 217.
5 Bridesmaids (2011, dir: Paul Feig)
The unquestionable crescendo of this raucous comedy comes after the women in Lillian’s bridal party eat lunch at a Brazilian steakhouse chosen by maid-of-honor Annie (Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the script with Annie Mumolo). Shortly thereafter, the group is with Lillian at a high-end bridal boutique when food poisoning hits with a tsunami’s force. As Megan, Melissa McCarthy rushes into a bathroom, but sees that Rita (Wendi McClendon-Covey) is already puking at the toilet. Desperate, Megan bunches up her dress and hops up on the sink. “Look away!” she shrieks with the kind of self-hating horror usually reserved in movies for people transforming into giant insects. “It’s coming out of me like lava!” Another of the wedding party (Ellie Kemper) barrels in and throws up on Rita, who is still kneeling at the toilet. Maya Rudolph’s Lillian is more unfortunate, but let’s just leave it at that.
4. The Godfather (1972, dir: Francis Ford Coppola)
In the wake of an assassination attempt on Mafia boss Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), youngest son Michael (Al Pacino) resolves to kill Virgil Sollozzo (Al Lettieri), who is responsible for the failed hit, as well as the crooked police captain (Sterling Hayden) providing Sollozzo protection. The plan: Michael will meet the pair at a restaurant, excuse himself to the bathroom, retrieve a gun hidden beforehand, and kill them both. But first the firearm must be concealed. Corleone capo Tessio (Abe Vigoda) is pleased the meeting will take place at Louie’s in the Bronx. “They got an old fashioned toilet, you know, the box and the chain thing,” Tessio says. “We might be able to tape the gun behind it (the toilet tank).” They do. And in one of the key scenes in The Godfather––and, thus, pop culture––a nervous Michael Corleone goes to the bathroom. When he emerges, he is also crossing the Rubicon. Michael blasts away at Sollozzo and the captain—the trajectory of his life forever changed.
3. Dumb and Dumber (1994, dir: Peter Farrelly)
Chances are, at some point in your life, the mere thought of diarrhea has sent you into fits of laughter. Well, as Peter and Bobby Farrelly demonstrate in Dumb and Dumber, they never outgrew that period. The picture, in which Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels respectively portray imbecile chums Lloyd and Harry, features a scene with Harry letting loose on a toilet after he inadvertently drinks laxative-laced tea. Did we mention the impromptu cleansing is at the home of a potential love interest played by Lauren Holly? Following the explosion, she cautions him through the bathroom door not to use the toilet. It doesn’t flush. In 2025, Daniels told Entertainment Weekly that he had confided to Carrey some anxiety about doing the scene. “I said: ‘Just cold feet. This is either the beginning of my career or the end of it,’” Daniels recalled. “He said: ‘You’ve gotta go all in, man. Go all the way!’ … Me on that toilet will be the image on my tombstone.”
2. Trainspotting (1996, dir: Danny Boyle)
Trainspotting burrows deeply into the hopeless desperation of life as a junkie. No scene in this searing comedy-drama from director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge better illustrates the depraved lengths an addict will go to than when Ewan McGregor’s Renton, weathering the effects of heroin withdrawal, must rush to the closest bathroom stall. Not just any stall, mind you, but––as a handwritten sign on the door indicates–– “the worst toilet in Scotland.” Without a seat, the toilet is overflowing with what appears to be months of unflushed shit. An undeterred Renton plops himself down and plops out his contribution to the retch-inducing sight, realizing too late he has accidentally evacuated opium-filled suppositories. And so he drops to his knees to fish for the lost contraband, his head eventually submerging into the toilet before the rest of his body follows suit. Fortunately for McGregor, varieties of chocolate served as the brown sludge. Boyle reminisced years later that the set smelled of chocolate, “kind of like a confectionery.”
1. Psycho (1960, dir: Alfred Hitchcock)
Arguably the most famous bathroom scene in movie history, Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) knife attack on Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in a motel shower took Alfred Hitchcock more than a week to shoot and consisted of 78 shots. The result is 45 seconds of terror that absolutely freaked out movie audiences. It is a masterclass of cinematic sleight-of-hand, of course. Despite what moviegoers think they saw, the knife never makes contact with Marion, nor do we see any nudity. The director was customarily painstaking in determining the right sound for a knife penetrating flesh. In Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Stephen Rebello notes how the director listened intently with closed eyes as a propman stabbed various types of melons. “When the demonstration table was littered with shredded fruit, Hitchcock opened his eyes, and intoned simply: ‘Casaba,’” writes Rebello. Chocolate syrup serves as Marion’s blood winding down the drain. Curiously, the sudden violence wasn’t the only thing that troubled censors, who were none too thrilled that Marion flushes a toilet to dispose of some incriminating papers. The Production Code frowned on showing toilets.
Honorable mention: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, dir: Jay Roach), Diaboulique (1955, dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot), Dressed to Kill (1979, dir: Brian De Palma), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir: Amy Heckerling), High Anxiety (1977, dir: Mel Brooks), Jurassic Park (1993, dir: Steven Spielberg), Marty Supreme (2025, dir: Josh Safdie), Perfect Days (2023, dir: Wim Wenders), RoboCop (1987, dir: Paul Verhoeven), Slither (2006, dir: James Gunn)
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 