I vaguely remember Dragon asking us to let them know if we came across references to D&D in pop culture (it may have been and editorial comment made a few years ago). The human character in the daily comic strip "Get Fuzzy" by Darby Conley appears to play D&D. A couple times a month he'll make a reference to D&D. This week it was how hard it was to trip a Bugbear and two weeks ago he got his D&D characters guild t-shirt in the mail.
I remember in the movie SLC Punk, the characters were 14, and playing D&D and listening to Rush, (the rock group not the conservative talk radio guy), and one of them decided they had to give that up and get into punk rock music.
Fun film.
And back in 1981 in the movie TAPS Tom Cruise was a cadet captain trying to set up a D&D session a few days before he went gorilla balls crazy and shot at the national guard. Needless to say they returned fire, rendering him posterboy Swiss cheese.
Ah those lighthearted D&D lovin' 80's...
Then there was the desultory X-files episode where the guy says something to the effect of "you don't play 15 years of Dungeons and Dragons without learning how to deal with dangerous situations."
I remember my father watching that with me, and ragging on me mercilessly for that...
I feel for you. That said, I'll bet you're actually pretty level headed in dangerous situations, aren't you? Interesting, isn't it? How you can put together a plan under stress or duress? How there is always a solution to be realized?
When I mention my interest in D&D the worst I've ever received was a sort of knowing smirk which fades rather quickly. Then they just stay silent and emote nothing else as they let me go on. People tell me I'm intimidating (what's that mean? Ready to snap?) and perhaps this alone is the reason I've been spared the bullseye on my forehead over things like D&D and vegetarianism. If so, so be it. Let 'em fear. There's a reason why no one tells the running back his fly is open, y'know?
"I say gamers need to punch more fools in da eye." -- Mr. T
And whether it's the 80's caveats or the modern humor, let 'em keep talking about us in any and all of our facets. It's the constant repetition of their name that will legitimize scientology before this century is out. Seriously, what would be the tax perks of starting a real world church to Pelor? I get to be the Abbot of Costello!
I guess it's like Gene Simmons says: "any publicity is good publicity."
Actually, I have kinda hair trigger reflexes, that result in either astounding feats of agility or embarrassing faux pas, depending on how the situation ends up. I guess my totem animal should be some kind of spastic ferret.
Oh, MAN, do I hear ya!
Three things happen when something falls nearby, like say, a can or two of beans or a drinking glass.
1) I deftly catch them with such speed it's as if I'd been practicing for the very moment. Eat your heart out Spiderman.
2) I watch helplessly as they fall to the ground and tell myself that my inaction was due to the dangerous edges of the object and that my brain knew not to risk my precious precious hands. Inside I know a spark in my brain just failed to fire.
3) In a bungled rescue attempt I move with stunning quickness and, failing to properly place my fingers, bat the falling objects across the room with enough force to equal a thirty foot fall.
Weird Al Yankovic makes a brief reference to D&D in his new song "White & Nerdy". The video has two guys tossing polyhedral dice in a back alley.
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Good: I catch a 235 pound fella who blacks out on the treadmill. Absolutely no damage done.
Bad: we're in Costa Rica, on one of those repelling in the tree things. We're on a platform 150 feet above the ground, and I accidently bump this lady. I immediately grab her in a bearhug before she falls off the edge of the platform, then remember that we are both restrained to the tree with safety harnesses. I spend the next two hours utterly convinced that she believes I'm a pervo who got to cop a cheap feel.
I spend the next two hours utterly convinced that she believes I'm a pervo who got to cop a cheap feel.
CLASSIC!
Okay, I've watched WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY too many cartoons lately, and one of them was catching an episode of "totally spies" (I really despise this show), where they go back in time and the blonde one says something like "this is a dungeons & dragons nightmare!" I really hate that show.
grumble
/d
Hmmm....I'll share something similar. It's off-topic but related to what Heathanson and the Jade talked about.
Good: I'm pointing my Glock at a knife wielding wife beater who is yelling at me to "shoot him." He drops the knife but charges me like a drunk dire rhino with the improved bull rush feat. I deftly reholster my Glock and in the same move deflect his charge with my weak hand and he goes head first into his refrigerator and knocks himself out cold. SAFE!!
Bad: I roll up on a 3 car accident on the freeway, with about 150 witnesses standing by, watching me. No EMS, no Fire Dept...just me and 150 civilians and 5 f...ed up people in mangled sheet metal. I climb the dividing barrier between the opposing freeway lanes and promptly fall flat on my face. It's hard to work an accident scene while pinching your nose shut to stop the bleeding while being laughed at by half the commuters in town.
It's stuff like that that makes me realize that someone is rolling d20's all the time to make us dance.
D&D in pop culture? I avoid pop culture as much as I can, so I haven't encountered it much. I watch almost no television other than college football, listen to very little radio and am hopelessly out of touch with most everything. When people talk about shows like "Lost" and "Survivor" and such, I just smile and shrug. Never seen one episode. I watch an occasional movie on DVD or via "movies-on-demand" but there's very little out there that I even haven an iota of interest in. I occasionally troll for new music on Napster and I read books, but most everything in pop culture annoys the crap out of me. I get exposed to enough of it just watching my wife and stepdaughter lobotomize themselves with "American Idol" and other idiotic drivel, so I catch some references by association, but I never actively seek it out.
So, yes, since I'm a huge Rush fan and play D&D and don't know the difference between Paris Hilton and Las Vegas Hilton, I'm a pop culture target to be made fun of....the gun-wielding nerdy, clumsy, glasses wearing cop who pretends to be a sorceror/cleric of Cyric every 2 weeks. Sounds like a bad pilot episode. Long live stereotypes, otherwise the thumb-sucking masses would actually have to think.
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Lost is pretty good. Survivor? Not missing anything.
American Idol? Never seen it. Don't care to.
About all I keep up with is Florida Gators football and Southpark. I think Southpark keeps me pretty well appraised about pop culture.
Oh. I saw some comedy show where the comedian said, "Fantasy Football is ironic, because it's Dungeons and Dragons for the jocks who used to rag on me in high school because I played Dungeons and Dragons."
I'm sorry you busted at that accident scene. I feel your pain.
Sorry to hear about the busted honker F2K. That's gotta stink, but at least you couldn't smell it.
Smooth move of that rhinoman, though.
As for keeping up with pop culture, I never watched The Bachelor. Does that impact my life these days in any way? I guess I don't know... maybe if I'd stood around in a store going on about that show a mysterious benefactor would have hired me to be his pop culture eyes and ears.
Doubting it, though.
I don't look down on people who like pop culture aspects. I'm sure there is lots of good stuff out there, intelligent TV shows, etc....I just don't bother to look for them. Probably my loss, but so it goes.
Do your thing your way, brother.
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I think my exposure to Pop Culture of late is primarily driven by my kids. I know a lot about Thomas the Tank Engine, Elmo, Barney, Bob the Builder, and Pingu the penguin; not quite so much about American Idol. And my wife watches that CSI show and House; I'm 'meh' on a lot of it, but House sure is funny when he gets to ragging on people.
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On the TV show GRAY'S ANATOMY, the character George O'Malley sheepishly confesses that he was president of his high school Dungeons and Dragons Club.
There was a GE appliance commercial that came out about a year ago with the slogan, "the perfect combination of beautiful looks and intelligent design" that features a geek-guyt dating a supermodel. One scene shows her opening a gift box from him containing a 3E Player's Handbook. I laughed my ass off at that one.
BTW...I, too, am a huge Rush fan. Are they the preferred band of gamers over 30, or what? It sure seems like it sometimes...
BTW...I, too, am a huge Rush fan. Are they the preferred band of gamers over 30, or what? It sure seems like it sometimes...
I heard 2112 when I was 16 and was embroiled in their music for a few years.
Simpsons episode where Homer is sent to college for updated nuclear training and dorms with 3 geeks, that let him play D&D as an elf "who shot an orc with an arrow.."...
Dieselboy (music artist, techno stuff) has an album called "DungeonMaster's Guide." Good stuff. :P
And of course Reno 911 has let comedian Patton Oswalt portray the out-of-his mind gamer and rennie faire enthusiast from time to time. He is masterful in his mockery. Wish I had the links.
E.T. - The guys are playing D&D when Eliot finds ET in the shed.
X-Files - One of the characters was being interviewed and mentioned something about "I know the meaning of the word 'fear'. I play D&D."
So...Rob-o plays D&D? I'm sure Bucky Katt will use that as ammo for something....
I guess I'll have to watch E.T. now....
I remember that reference from E.T. There were also several TV shows during the eighties that would show the various diarama models for D&D in kids room, without really explaining what they were.
Also, I beleive Peter Parker has a D&D poster up in his room in the first Spiderman movie.
And as to the Rush thing . . . I guess its not automatic. The only Rush music I listened to on a regular basis was the Rush version of the "Great White North" theme.
My friends and I were much more into Van Halen, Zepplin, and Aerosmith.
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fantastic Family Guy reference. In an episode where Lois tells Peter she is pregnant, she says "I think it was that time we were roleplaying" and it cuts to her in her in a schoolgirl outfit saying "I've been a very naughty girl" and so on, to which Peter replies "I'm a paladin with an 18 charisma and a helm of disintegration"... Hilarity ensues.
The group Wheezer mentions it in one of its songs on the first album: "I've got my dungeon master's guide / and a twelve sided die"
I believe, and my mind is failing now, that either Third Eye Blind or Counting Crows have a reference to it as well.
The TV series Buffy has a few references to it (basically picking on the "nerds" who play it--self deprication from the writers/procducers), there is even an episode towards the end of the series where they are playing a quasi-D&D game waiting for the final battle--I think there is also a place where Xander is "researching" from the DMG. The show Angel also has a few (more) explicit references to it as well.
I think E.T. was already mentioned. The other group might not have been TEB or CC, it may be Dishwalla.
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy reference D&D and such often.
Grim's trunk is full of all sorts of D&D stuff that has randomly been thrown in. Billy pulls out a scroll of Magic Missile in the same episode that he finds a phone on which he can call Cthulhu. (Get it? ;) )
Freaks and Geeks may not be pop culture, but I only recently saw it (yeah for DVD). At one point they are comparing the breasts of different goddesses in the Deities and Demigods, and later they are actually playing the game. I had seen a couple of others recently, but am at a blank now that you asked.
Freaks and Geeks: one of the best shows evar.
And Judd Apatow's next project Undeclared... definitely worth picking up the reasonably priced box set.
Then there was the desultory X-files episode where the guy says something to the effect of "you don't play 15 years of Dungeons and Dragons without learning how to deal with dangerous situations."
X-Files - One of the characters was being interviewed and mentioned something about "I know the meaning of the word 'fear'. I play D&D."
I can't help but correct the both of you since this was my favorite episode of the X-Files ever. Fourth season, I believe, an episode entitled "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'", and the character says, "I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage." WotC recently used that line in a Player's Handbook advertisement.
I can't help but correct the both of you since this was my favorite episode of the X-Files ever. Fourth season, I believe, an episode entitled "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'"
Third season, and one of my favorit episodes as well (I am not really that anal, but I only have the first three seasons of X-Files on DVD and that is on them).
Buffy indeed mentions it couple of times. In sixth season when they are researching for a monster that eats diamonds and freezes people, Xander finds it in the D&D manual...and in the end of the series folks are indeed spending the time before the final battle playing quasi-D&D DM'd by Andrew (who also otherwise is full of pop culture references).
Season One of the Venture Brothers in the episode "Past Tense" Dr. Venture goes into a flashback to his college days where he played D&D with two other regular characters on the show and the guy whose funeral he was attending until the guy's coffin froze all of them when they were carrying it and flew them away to a dungeon.
In the flashback, the Dungeon Master works his obsession with a girl at school into the game.
"My barbarian swings his +3 battle axe!"
"No. The Leslie Golem's skin is hard like rock."
"What the hell is a Leslie Golem?!"
"It's a magical creature that looks just like Leslie Cohen."
"Looks like Leslie Cohen, eh? Well my wizard seduces her!"
"What?! No! C'mon, it's Leslie!"
"I have, like, 25 Charisma points! I'm going to seduce her!"
Back in the dungeon where they're all chained up:
Dr. Venture,"Oh, c'mon! You're going to kill me because I had fake sex on graph paper with a girl that barely spoke to you in real life?!"
There's also a reference to Heavy Metal magazine in the same episode.
"Aren't my robots beautiful? Notice anything...familiar about them?"
"Yeah, I had that issue of Heavy Metal, too, Mike. You want to tell us what's going on?"
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I just was reminded by my friend that there is two references in Futurama as well. Gary Gygax is in a "what if" episode and at the end the universe is destroyed.
Gary- "Anyone want to play Dungeons and Dragons for the next quadrillion years."
Michelle Nichols, Steven Hawkings, and Fry- "Okay"
Al Gore- "I'm a 10th lvl Vice President."
The other reference was when the go to the Central Beauracracy Building to get Bender's memory back and they pass by a sleeping Beholder.
The movie Airheads references D&D. When the main character, played by Brendan Fraser, is "outed" as a geek, his army of supporters comes to defense by admitting their own geekiness. One character, IIRC, admits to having played D&D in high school (perhaps Fraser's character even).
Then there was the desultory X-files episode where the guy says something to the effect of "you don't play 15 years of Dungeons and Dragons without learning how to deal with dangerous situations."
I remember my father watching that with me, and ragging on me mercilessly for that...
Much better is the episode starring the Lone Gunmen. They are playing D&D in a poker-style, betting real money on the outcome of the game. I'm trying to remember the quotable line from the scene, something about one character's "kung-fu" or "ninja skills" being inferior to another's. ;)
VENTURE BROTHERS friggin rocks.
Truer words have seldom been said. The new season is fantastic.
"SOMEBODY LEFT A BABY!!"
I just was reminded by my friend that there is two references in Futurama as well. Gary Gygax is in a "what if" episode and at the end the universe is destroyed.
Gary- "Anyone want to play Dungeons and Dragons for the next quadrillion years."
Michelle Nichols, Steven Hawkings, and Fry- "Okay"
Al Gore- "I'm a 10th lvl Vice President."The other reference was when the go to the Central Beauracracy Building to get Bender's memory back and they pass by a sleeping Beholder.
Make that three references - in an episode where they take Nibbler to the vet, there's a heavily-rusted robot with a rust monster pet.
Okay you guys got my best ones already, but here's another:
Conan O'Brian has frequently referred to the crowd being either "football fans" or "D&D fans" who are lumped in as the same guys who are the "Star Trek fans" or the "Chess fans"--basically the nerdy guys who clap like walruses and push up their glasses, and talk like a 1980's voice synthesiser.
Interestingly there was a guy on--some guy from a comedy news show, who was REALLY into D&D and spend a good chunk of his interview bragging up his 20th level paladin character--leaving Conan baffled with absolutely no idea what the guy was talking about. It was great.
Interestingly there was a guy on--some guy from a comedy news show, who was REALLY into D&D and spend a good chunk of his interview bragging up his 20th level paladin character--leaving Conan baffled with absolutely no idea what the guy was talking about. It was great.
Steven Colbert. Dig around on YouTube and you'll find it. It's hilarious.
Oh, I forgot to mention: the D&D reference in E.T. is directly responsible for getting me into the hobby. I don't remember ever seeing that scene in the film, but for some reason we had the novelisation in my house when I was growing up and I remembered the scene from that book - so when I saw a copy of the third edition Basic Set "Red Box" (actually, it was a U.K. edition in a single A5-sized paperback book) at a book sale, I persuaded my mother to buy it for me.
And now you know the rest of the story.
kingdom of loathing. if you dont know what it is, i suggest you check it out. if you do, there are plenty of d&d references in it, both general and specific (evards black tentacles, for one). pop culture takes its hits, too...
tog