… okay, am I the only one who is a little confused and concerned at the number of people who have vomited in not one or two but a LOT of public toilets?
Well, what’s one of the main reasons for puking? Getting drunk. What’s a favorite place for this pastime? A bar/pub with public toilets. No great mystery.
ETA: I remember visiting pubs with a special sink/bowl for vomiting in the restroom. Haven’t seen them for a long time, but they exist.
Just wanted to add that I didn’t want to suggest that all here who confessed to having puked a lot in public restrooms have been drunk at the time. Another explanation for this could be the simple fact that many people get sick when traveling.
I threw up in the men’s room at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas (not a story I want to tell right now, maybe another time). The last thing I was worried about was my pants touching the floor or my hands touching the bowl. I’m not sure I could have stood or squatted if I’d tried anyway; the heaving was so intense that all muscle control was pretty much involuntary at that point.
Anyway, as to the OP, how often does this even happen in movies? I saw *Das Boot *many many years ago and don’t really recall the scene in question, and never saw Trainspotting. I’m racking my brain and failing to come up with any more examples on my own.
Bob Geldof gets up close and cozy with a public toilet in Pink Floyd: The Wall. He doesn’t barf though.
Here it is, re-enacted with Legos. (video, possibly NSFW)
ETA: WIth your username, I’d figure you have a mental database of scenes like this. 
How could your employer possibly be, that this might be considered NSFW? I suppose the Amish have rules against using 20th century technology like a TV screen, but the content is nothing.
Nice! 
Agree. Been there, done that. Given that I was splattered with my own foul smelling vomit (in a suit and tie, no less) I couldn’t care less where I was. Hell, I was glad to be in front of a toilet. It all started mid-flight and was loads better than the plastic bags they kept bringing us on the plane. The bathrooms were occupied with other sick persons. It’s up there in the top 5 worst nights of my life.
And for the curious, it wasn’t alcohol related. It started on an airplane and given the issues with other passengers from a the previous flight who were with us it was highly likely to be food poisoning of some sort. My sincere apologies to the non-sick on the plane for having to watch, listen, and smell.
If it were a B movie, it sounds like it would be Night of a Thousand Vomiters.
Those were popular during the Roman Empire. How long since you’ve seen them? 
I am not grabbing a public toilet bowl or getting my pants coated in the urine of the last 30 guys with terrible aim. Why anybody would do that when they have an alternative is beyond me. I can understand if you’re just crawling drunk or have the flu and are feeling too weak to stand but otherwise just lean and puke, wipe up if there’s a mess.
Well, now we know who fouled the bidet.
By the way, don’t watch the DVD extras of Super Troopers:
It includes a scene of one of the actors facing a toilet and inducing himself to vomit, clearly out of dedication to his craft. He induces and hurls at least five or six times in one take, with the “best” reversal used in the film.
I pray to the god I don’t believe in that it’s not an exclusive German thing, but I’m talking about this.
I’m with **Sparky **and Terraplane.
I was just watching a scene where a character did the hug-the-toilet bowl thing, and for the umpteenth time I wondered whether people really do this in real life or if it’s a TV/movie trope, since my personal taboo against touching (or even getting my face near) the toilet remains intact even when I’m drunk or sick. (Part of it might be that I’ve tended since college to live in homes where the toilet was not cleaned super frequently; if where you live it always looks like the toilets on TV or the ones in a hotel that have the paper band around the lid, that could be a different story.)
A general Google search was not helpful in answering my question, so I made my way back to SDMB, where I always find it amusing to see how long it’s been since the last of my very occasional visits (this time, 15 months), and y’all did not disappoint.
So I now know that:
–this is apparently not after all an unrealistic portrayal of what most people do, unless the respondents on this thread are extremely atypical;
–OTOH I’m not alone in finding this act shocking and revolting, as the OP and the aforementioned Terraplane also do (one wonders if there might be others as well who became reluctant to throw in their two cents due to the aggressive mocking the OP received in early replies; this is always a factor in threads like this although it might have been mitigated at least partially if there had been an anonymous poll).
More broadly, this makes me wonder what other things people do in the bathroom that I would find weird (and vice versa). The interesting part about this one is that it’s something that we wouldn’t normally see our friends or especially acquaintances or strangers do; but it’s just non-taboo enough that we do see it in movies. Most of the other stuff is not in that grey area (in fact, it’s stuff we don’t even let our spouses see), so it’s not that likely we’ll ever know how normal or abnormal we are. Once you get taught as a kid and then sort of show you are fully “potty trainedd”, you kind of go into your own very private sphere unless you’re a sick freak. 
It seems like all people in movies use the same way of hugging the toilet and seating on a filthy floor when vomiting.
I’ve never understood why they do it this way, I will never touch a toilet floor with anything else than my feet or shoes. and i will never touch the toilet seat with my clothes or arms, or put my head so close to it.
What’s so hard to vomit when you stand bending and throw up from above?
Who ever thought about this position? Using a sink for that is also a possible way.
The times I’ve thrown up in public were, as many Dopers have noted, the result of excess drugs and alcohol.
When that happens, nothing much matters beyond “THIS IS HAPPENING, FIND A PLACE TO PUT IT.”
Generally (although not so generally, don’t get the wrong idea), I only look at the surroundings after I’ve purged. It was me sitting somewhere, and then all of a sudden getting that Oh God I need to go to the bathroom*. You do that then you may notice yourself laying on tiles, maybe you’re hugging the toilet praying to God it stops, or maybe you’re thinking if I could just clean the sick off of my collar that girl will still go for it. Germs are an absolutely minor minor concern for a truly wasted person. You just don’t think of that.
For the true drunk, restroom floor tiles can sometimes feel like the cool breath of Heaven.
*All the while - mind racing. Did I eat enough today? How much did I drink? Why am I so fucked up? Do I really need to throw up?
I find this whole thread to be odd. Is it really possible that so many Dopers are unaware of all the studies, many of which have gotten significant news coverage, showing that (A) fecal matter is more or less everywhere, and (B) phones, keyboards, and kitchen counters are VASTLY germier than toilets?
Zombies don’t need to worry about germs.