Click on a picture to enlarge it

Amphibians in Movies   Friendship (2024)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a cringe comedy about Craig (Tim Robinson) a loser suburban dad who becomes infatuated with his charismatic new neighbor, a network weatherman. When everything goes wrong for Craig, he thinks that a drug trip might help give him some answers. He saw a magazine article about ayahuasca, so he asks a drug dealer named Tony (Jack Dylan Grazer) if he can buy some. Tony doesn't have any ayahuasca, but he tells Craig that he does have "toad" which is "...similar to ayahuasca but the trip is way faster." Tony opens a little plastic cage and takes out a toad that he calls a "Buffalo River toad" for $100 a lick. He tells Craig "You lick the psychedelic venom that it excretes off its rear glands." Craig agrees to try it and pays Tony. Tony brings the toad to him, telling him it's like ice cream on a hot summer day. He describes the trip to Craig: "Your mind is about to disintegrate. And then your consciousness is gonna expand to become all of infinity. You will feel a pain unlike anything you've ever felt before followed by a bliss, which... can't even be described. You will die and be reborn. " Then Craig licks the toad and lies down and waits. But his trip is disappointing. Tony asks if he got the answer he was looking for. Craig tells him that all he did on the trip was go into a Subway store and order a sandwich. He tells Tony that the frog ripped him off, and Tony just says "The toad is mysterious." This is playing around with the toad licking trope which has become a meme. It started with the practice of licking the skin of the Colorado River Toad (aka the Sonoran Desert Toad) to get high, which is actually very dangerous. Drying the venom then smoking it is how it is actually used. There is no such toad as the Buffalo River toad. The toad we see is not a Colorado River toad, but we don't get a good enough look at it to know exactly what species it is.