"Chili Today... Dead Tomorrow", Way to Die #233, is the fourth death showcased in the season 4 episode "Crying Over Spilled Blood", which aired on July 15, 2012.
Plot
Mary and Larry are on a two-week bus tour through the desert Southwest, and they had stopped by the trading post of a Native American named Chief Proudfoot, in hopes of buying a few souvenirs from him. However, Proudfoot asks very high prices for them (For example, $650 for a medicine man mask). Larry then notices a basket full of ghost chili peppers, which he foolishly assumed were just regular chili peppers (Mary also remarks that Larry won a pepper eating contest back home at one point).
Despite Proudfoot's warnings not to consume any of them, the ignorant Larry ate one anyway, which burned his mouth badly enough to leave sores in it. That is because ghost peppers measure up to at least 1.5 million heat units on the Scoville scale; 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce!
His mouth felt like the inside of a pizza oven, as he then raced to the fridge for a drink to cool and douse down the flames on his mouth. It is the worst thing he could've done, as what he drank happens to be rattlesnake venom. The venom entered Larry's bloodstream through the open wounds in his mouth, poisoning and eventually killing him, as Mary began crying hysterically over his death.
"Larry was a dummy who bit off more than he could chew. He washed it down with some fatal snake venom, and gave up the ghost... pepper."
Trivia
- Also called "Snake Chug" on the Spike TV website.
- This death slightly contradicts Way to Die #92: Fang Banged, where Thom Beers said "You could actually drink a vial of Snake Venom and feel no ill effects. It should be noted, however, that it killed Larry because it entered his bloodstream through the sores in his mouth. Usually, rattlesnake venom is harmless to drink so long as there's no passageway into the bloodstream."
- The infamous ghost pepper (also known as the Naga Jolokia, Red Naga chili, Bih Jolokia, etc.) measures between 330,000 and 1.5 million SHU.
- As of current, the Carolina Reaper (whose SHU rating can peak to over 2.2 million) is the hottest pepper in the world, beating out the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (whose SHU rating peaked to at least 2 million). However, it is only a matter of time before an even hotter pepper comes along!
Foreign names
- El Fantasma del Pimiento (The Pepper's Ghost) - Latin American dub.
- Peor el remedio... que la enfermedad (Worse the remedy... than the disease) - Spanish dub.
- Heute chilli- morgen tot (Today, chili - Tomorrow, dead) - German dub.