Cattle in popular culture
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Cattle are thought by many to be inherently funny, and appear often in popular culture. Most of the time, the cattle in question is a Holstein cow, since this breed's black on white markings best represent a stereotypical 'cow'. This is largely because of the essentially stationary and unreactive nature of the domestic cow, which makes them appear wry, as well as their propensity for flatulence, and defecation leaving a "cowpie" anywhere it might stand. The discordant sound made by a cow in distress is also held to be very funny.
[edit] Examples
- Gary Larson's famous comic strip The Far Side frequently included cows in humorous situations.
- The lilac-colored "Milka Cow" is a well-known symbol of the Milka brand of chocolate.
- Since 1995, advertisements for Chick-fil-A restaurants have featured cows encouraging people to "Eat Mor Chikin."
- The sound a cow makes is often used to create comedic effect. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the French shoot cows out of catapults. In the movie Twister, cows are flung about, mooing, by tornadoes.
- In the games Fallout and Fallout 2, cattle have mutated into two-headed animals called brahmin. They are important to the culture in the Fallout world, and the conjecture of brahmin having only had one head in the past is considered false. These cows will sometimes say "Moo, I say!"
- In the Earthworm Jim game series, the player can launch cows on see-saws for points. Earthworm Jim 2 has a stage called "Udderly Abducted". - Here, Jim must avoid mutant superpowered penguins as he carries cows back to their barns in order to save them from being abducted by alien "udder ships". Additionally, many episodes of the Earthworm Jim cartoon series ended with a cow falling on a character.
- In a Grape-Nuts television commercial and in the movie Kingpin with Woody Harrelson, in which he pretends to be Amish, there are scenes of men "milking" a bull, thinking it is a cow.
- In the computer game Diablo II there is an area called the "Secret Cow Level" in which players fight an army of bipedal, polearm-wielding cows. They were apparently the precursor for the Tauren, a race of cow-like humanoids who are found in the Blizzard game Warcraft III and are a playable race in World of Warcraft.
- In Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, a famous scene parodying The Matrix bullet time scene involves a 3D animated cow being fought by the hero.
- A Texas Longhorn with burnt orange coloring named Bevo is the mascot of the sports teams at the University of Texas at Austin.
- The popular nursery rhyme 'Hey, diddle-diddle' features a cow jumping over the moon.
- In the movie Bubble Boy an Indian ice cream man is threatened by the Indian god Shiva because he accidentally ran over a cow. Later the cow is mangled and run over several times by a semi truck and some bikers while the man begs for Shiva's forgivness.
- The Drawn Together episode "A Tale of Two Cows" features a character called Live Action Cow. The cow is a photograph that the animators manipulate in such a way as to suggest that the cow is performing all kinds of unusual feats when obviously, it is just a photograph being moved around.
- In the animated television series South Park, the cow is the mascot for the local elementary school, and a highly celebrated symbol for the town. The episode "Cow Days" features a rodeo and carnival that celebrates the cow.
- On the Pink Floyd album Atom Heart Mother, a lone cow standing in the middle of a field is depicted as the LP's cover artwork.
- Cow and Chicken, a show on the Cartoon Network, featured a semi-anthropomorphic dim-witted cow that usually foiled her partner chicken's plans.
- Bully for Bugs, one of the most popular Warner Bros. Cartoons, features a duel between Bugs Bunny and a wily bull. A similar cartoon in Tom and Jerry called Texas Tom featured Tom trying to impress a female cat only to be chased by a bull.
- In the computer game series Worms, a "mad cow" herd that explodes after running around is one of the special weapons available in the game. It is a reference to the mad cow epidemic.
- In Nickelodeon's Rocko's Modern Life one of the main characters and companion to Rocko is a steer named Heifer.
- The Frank Zappa album Läther (pronounced "leather") features a Holstein cow with his trademark moustache and soul patch as well as an outline of Italy in its dark patches.
- In the comedy game Destroy All Humans, there is a mini-game where the player gains points by vaporizing cows.
- The band Arrogant Worms has an anthem paying homage to cows entitled "I am Cow".
- In the UK Coco Pops Straws advert, a boy receives a Friesian cow from his mother to try getting some more milk inside him, portraying it as a dog. The cow in general is often thought to be slow and lazy, as demonstrated in the advert.
- In the video game Rampage: Total Destruction, there is a bull character named Rojo
- The video game Rayman Raving Rabbids features a minigame where the player must swing the Wiimote in a lasso-esque fashion to swing a cow named Daisy around in a circle. Pressing A releases the cow, and if the cow is thrown far enough, the minigame is won. The cow appears in other minigames, too.
