Trick Shot - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Various trick shot competitions (sometimes with footage dating back years) remain among the most dominant of ESPN's pool-related programming, and the World Snooker Trickshot Championship has enjoyed notable popularity in the UK. The British TV game show Big Break, which ran from 1991 to 2002, featured a round each week called "Virgo's Trick Shot". John Virgo would demonstrate a snooker trick shot which the contestant would then attempt to copy. The show also aired eight trick shot specials between 1995 and 1999.

Trick shots appear frequently in films and television. Perhaps the most outlandish case would be in BBC Two's science fiction comedy TV series Red Dwarf, episode "White Hole", in which the character Dave Lister uses his pool-playing skills to play a trick shot at an astronomical level in order to save the ship, using a thermonuclear device as a "cue" and planetary bodies as "balls". Most pool-themed films, such as Poolhall Junkies with a scene involving a high-stakes wager on a time shot, include difficult shots that some might classify as trick shots. Another example might be the character Vince pocketing the nine-ball "on the snap" when asked to, in the film version of The Color of Money.