Having waited two entire months for a new Marvel movie to hit theaters, people don’t want to miss a single second of Avengers: Endgame’s 181 minutes. The only problem is that, while immersed in a fantastical world filled with super-powered heroes, audiences’ all-too-human bodies have been known to betray them with pesky demands like, y’know, having to get up and take a whizz.
To this end, Twitter has been filled with tips and commentary on how, within the space of three hours supposedly meant as leisure time, someone can allow themselves the luxury of peeing—or bypass that pesky bodily function entirely.
Even Richard Roeper, presumably an expert on holding it during movies, took to social media to chastise those with weaker bladders than himself.
Still, knowing that general audiences are more fallible than iron-loined film critics, many outlets have tried to help their readers with hard-won information on when to go to the bathroom during the movie. (Hilariously, CBS News notes “mild spoilers” at the top of their pee guide.) This includes none other than Popular Science, whose John Kennedy wrote an article all about the subject weighing heavily on the world’s mind (and distended, nearly-bursting pelvis) this weekend.
Kennedy outlines several methods to defeat nature itself, including old standbys like going just before the movie starts and limiting fluid intake. This is all well and good, but things get a bit weirder when the piece delves into real biohacker stuff like altering your Endgame-day diet to avoid “caffeine, carbonation, alcohol, and acidity” alongside salt, which increases thirst (a sensation scientifically known as “the piss catalyst”). Kennedy also highlights an app called RunPee that provides information on when to go to the bathroom during a movie because, goddamn it, if they won’t stick an intermission in these things, someone out there codes a solution.
Who knows? Maybe all of this body-manipulating, time-checking bathroom strategizing is futile. After all, even Chris “Thor” Hemsworth couldn’t use his mighty powers to sit through the entire movie he stars in, which, though it hasn’t been said, is probably ‘cause he had to pee.
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