Notable Usage in Popular Culture
The drinking bird has been used in many fictional contexts to automatically press buttons. In The Simpsons episode "King-Size Homer", Homer used one to repeatedly press a key on a computer keyboard. Two of them were used in the 1990 film Darkman to set off explosions. Drinking birds have appeared as part of a Rube Goldberg machine in the film Pee-wee's Big Adventure and the Family Guy episode "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter".
Drinking birds have been featured as plot elements in the 1951 Merrie Melodies cartoon Putty Tat Trouble and the 1968 science fiction thriller The Power. They have also had minor appearances in several movies and TV shows, including the Woody Allen movie Sleeper, the 1979 science fiction film "Alien", the 2008 film "Max Payne", the 2010 film "Megamind", and episodes of the American TV shows The Simpsons and Mad Men.
Among video games, the drinking bird appeared as the "dunkin' dragon" in the Sierra game Quest for Glory (1989), in the Gremlin Interactive game Normality (1996), and as a "water bird" furniture item in the Animal Crossing games (1999). Porygon2, a Pokémon introduced in generation II (Pokémon Gold & Silver) resembles a drinking bird, and in 3D Pokémon games it moves its head in a "dipping" motion. More recently in the game Quantum Conundrum (2012), one of the main gameplay mechanics is a drinking bird that is used as a timer to press buttons.
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