Why Venom Says “Like A Turd In The Wind”

“Like a turd in the wind” is one of the more infamous moments from Venom, but why on earth did the alien symbiote utter such a strange line? Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff Venom was a movie some 20 years in the making. The studio had been trying to get the film off the ground since 1997, going through a long line of potential directors and scriptwriters including David S. Goyer, Gary Ross and Josh Trank. The movie finally became a reality in 2018 with Tom Hardy taking the lead roles of journalist Eddie Brock and his alien parasite Venom, with Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer at the helm.

Being stuck in development hell for that long usually doesn’t bode well for a movie and the first hint all was not well with Venom came while Sony was marketing the film. From a teaser trailer that didn’t offer so much as a glimpse of Venom to another in which co-star Jenny Slate mispronounced the word “symbiote,” critics found fault with many things about the then-upcoming blockbuster. Another worrisome prospect was the cringeworthy dialogue uttered by Venom in Sony’s second official trailer.

In one scene, Venom grabs Carlton Drake’s (Riz Ahmed) right-hand man Roland Treece (Scott Haze) and, while eyeing him hungrily, says “Eyes, lungs, pancreas. So many snacks, so little time.” That line is ripped directly from the comics (The Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 1, #374, to be precise) but it was another, non-comics quote that got the Marvel fandom in a tizzy – the infamous “like a turd in the wind” line.

The scene from which the line is ripped sees Eddie visit his go-to convenience store where he witnesses a thug threatening the owner with a gun. Venom takes over Eddie’s body and threatens to eat various parts of the robber, colorfully describing the end result as “this armless, legless, faceless thing… Rolling down the street like a turd in the wind.” Given Venom’s bent for cringey dialogue when accosting his foes, the line kind of makes sense but as for why it made it into the movie is anyone’s guess.

Venom’s screenplay was penned by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel so one of them must be responsible for the alien symbiote’s infamous “like a turd in the wind” line but as yet no one has owned up and explained why. On the upside, the quote did inspire some pretty funny memes like YouTuber JB Entertainingness’ Venom/Kansas music video parody but fingers crossed the sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage gives the villain some lines that are more threatening than cringeworthy. Judging by the title, however, that doesn’t seem likely.