In Popular Culture
The American TV show Gilligan's Island had an episode where an explorer came to the island seeking a rare "pussycat swallowtail."
Swallowtails have appeared in various forms of Japanese entertainment, such as tokusatsu, manga and anime. In the 1996 Season of the popular Japanese tokusatsu Metal Hero Series B-Fighter Kabuto and the 1997 American show Beetleborgs Metallix, one of the B-fighters/Astral Borgs motifs was a swallowtail hence her Japanese designated name "B-Fighter Ageha". In the manga and anime Bleach, Shinigami use Hell Butterflies to send messages and travel between Soul Society and the Living World (Earth); the same butterflies also guide souls during soul burials. These swallowtails are entirely black except for a few red markings on the wings, making them resemble Papilio protenor. The butterfly-based entity Beautifly from the Pokémon anime series is pictured as a swallowtail. Swallowtail butterflies also appear in the manga xxxHolic. The antagonist Koushaku Chono (Papillon) in the manga/anime Busou Renkin features swallowtail-like imagery.
The band Rudolf Steiner, later known as Schwarz Stein, recorded a song entitled 黒揚羽 (lit. Black Swallowtail) on an early demotape. It is a track on the 2006 collaboration album Another Cell. The band Elvenking recorded a song titled "Swallowtail", which was released on their 2006 album, The Winter Wake. Paramore's 2009 release "Brand New Eyes" features a dissected swallowtail butterfly on its cover.
In the Japanese video game Bayonetta the main character Bayonetta is a witch who is in a pact with a demoness who takes on a Swallowtail form
Read more about this topic: Swallowtail Butterfly
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“The best of us would rather be popular than right.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)