Dave Rudabaugh - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Dave Rudabaugh was played by Christian Slater in the movie Young Guns II. In the film the character is known as "Arkansas Dave" though the historical Rudabaugh never used this name.
• Rudabaugh is a character in the 1951 film The Texas Rangers. The fictional tale has him and real-life outlaws Sam Bass, John Wesley Hardin, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid forming a gang, then squaring off against two convicts recruited by John B. Jones to bring them to justice.
• Rudabaugh is a character in the 1959 film The Gunfight at Dodge City. In this mostly fictional tale, Rudabaugh is portrayed as the assassin of Bat Masterson's brother Ed Masterson, and additionally is killed in a gunfight after assaulting Lily, the saloon owner of the Lady Gay. Both of these events are fictional.
• Wyatt Earp first meets Doc Holliday while Wyatt is hunting Rudabaugh, in the movie Wyatt Earp.
• A song called the "Ballad of Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh", is on Pat Green's 1997 album George's Bar. The events in the song bear no similarity to the actual events of Rudabaugh's life.
• A song called "Arkansas Dave", on George Strait's 2009 album Twang (album). The song is part fiction, but depicts Dave's documented death. The song was written by George's son Bubba Strait.
• Dave Rudabaugh appears as a character in the weird western novel Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (by Edward M. Erdelac, 2010, ISBN 978-1-61572-190-0). He robs the titular character of his signature Volcanic pistol during a train holdup.
• Dave Rudabaugh is the name of a character in the video game GUN.