Spin the Bottle

Spin the Bottle is a popular Party Game amongst older kids. It's essentially a Parlor Game that requires a bottle.

Get all your friends in a circle, place a bottle on its side in the center of the circle, and go round-robin in spinning the bottle (a la Wheel of Fortune). In the game's most basic version, you must smooch on the lips whoever the bottle points to when it comes to rest. Individual House Rules can determine who you can and cannot kiss (e.g. whether and which same-sex kisses are required, whether one has to kiss one's brother, sister, or other relation, etc., etc.), what the penalty is for not kissing a spun person, and other actions you can take.

Naturally, because of the comedic or dramatic potential that this game entices, it crops up in fiction every now and then, especially if said fiction has teenagers or other young people. It normally shows up as a source of anxiety for a teenage protagonist, faced with the prospect of kissing others.

Not to be confused with the production company that made Pop Up Video.

Examples of Spin the Bottle include:

Literature

• Played a couple of rounds at a party in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The kids agree from the start that it's corny and abandon it to play "two minutes in the closet".
• Played in the book Arthur's Birthday. In the Animated Adaptation, the bottle lands on Arthur's dog...
• Also mentioned in The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Birthday. Leads to Brother-Sister Incest Brother and Sister kissing.

Live Action TV

• The Freaks and Geeks episode "Smooching and Mooching" has Bill sent to the laundry room for "seven minutes in heaven" with head cheerleader Vicki Appleby after she "loses" at Spin the Bottle. Vicki, previously depicted as the Alpha Bitch, actually ends up bonding with Bill and even gives him his First Kiss before all is said and done.
• In Friends, Rachel proposes a game of "spin the bottle", so she could kiss her love interest, Joshua. When she's about to succeed, Phoebe's baby kicks for the first time, taking away the attention.
• In Full House, DJ's 13th birthday party features a spin the bottle game orchestrated by Kimmy Gibbler to bring together DJ with her crush. As they are about to kiss, of course that's when Danny, Jesse and Joey burst in to ruin the moment, having overheard what was going on downstairs.
• The Monkees played this game in the episode “One Man Shy” to convince a heartbroken Peter that he still has a fair chance to win girls. However, this experiment fails when the bottle points to…nay, magnetizes to Chick Magnet Davy on every single spin…literally.
• When Carrie on Sex and the City dates a 20-something bisexual guy, she goes to a party at his friends place that features this game. Her spin lands on a woman played by Alanis Morrisette, and after kissing her realizes that she's just not cut out for these wacky young people and their wacky bisexuality, and promptly leaves without even explaining why to her guy.
• The Mighty Boosh: Vince organises a game of Spin the Bottle with some girls from the party they're holding and invites Howard to join in. For some reason, his spins always stopped on the creepy old guy.
• All That took it to the next level that one had to kiss anything the bottle landed on. So Kel had to kiss a cactus. Ouch.
• Everybody Hates Chris has Chris playing this game in the hopes of getting his first kiss from Tasha. He gets his first kiss from another girl named Crystal. Crystal's boyfriend is jealous and so is Tasha. Hilarity Ensues.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Where the Wild Things Are" has a game in the possessed frat house. Along with all the weird occurrences, the bottle ends up spinning on it's own and exploding into everyone's faces.
• One Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide episode involves a party with this game being played, among other things. One of the main plots involved Ned attempting to rig the bottle (via magnets) to land on him when Moze spun it, to get her to kiss him.
• Happens in an episode of Glee when Puck talks Rachel into having a party at her house while her dads are out of town. Rachel ends up kissing Blaine, Kurt's love interest, who begins to question his sexuality as a result.
• Occurs in Peep Show with hilarious effects. The bottle lands on Mark and Jez, who kiss to impress their significant others.
• Saturday Night Live did a Digital Short centered on this game, with episode host Daniel Radcliffe kissing homeless guys who randomly appear at the party.

Music

• Juliana Hatfield had a hit song called "Spin the Bottle".

Newspaper Comics

• Yaz Pistachio gets invited to a Spin the Bottle party in Bloom County, where she promptly gets stuck with Weird Harold on her first spin. Later in the same arc, she narrowly avoids playing a game with Opus and Portnoy.
• In an early 1960s Peanuts strip, baby Sally sets her empty milk bottle on the floor and spins it. The nipple points at Snoopy, who tries to kiss her.

Web Comics

• Averted in El Goonish Shive according to the filename of this strip^[1] (twister is suggested instead) but played straight in a filler strip.
• In this Wapsi Square strip, Dietzel is shown playing spin the bottle in Darren's bar.

Western Animation

• Bobby in King of the Hill gets invited to a Spin the Bottle shindig at his buddy Joseph's house. Naturally, this causes Bobby some anxiety, until he finds Luanne's plastic beauty school head to practice on. Hilarity Ensues.
• In one episode of Pepper Ann, the title character gets the jitters about a possible Spin the Bottle game at an upcoming (unsupervised) birthday party, because any such kiss would become her first. The game does indeed take place, but the popular kids decide that the game is uncool before Pepper Ann spins or can be spun.
• The Simpsons: The beginning of "The Way We Weren't" has Bart, Milhouse, Terri and Sherri (along with their cousin who has a crush on Bart) play this game in Bart's Treehouse. Milhouse spins the bottle and stops at Terri/Sherri's cousin. When Milhouse attempts to kiss her, he accidentally kisses Homer instead when he climbed Bart's Treehouse.
  • In "Colonel Homer", after being locked in the room with Lurleen Lumpkin and being kissed by her, flashbacks of Homer's kissing attempts is seen, when in his childhood, he is seen playing this game only to get slapped by the girl who the bottle is stopped at.
• The Herman and Henry Noveltoon "Sudden Fried Chicken" has Henry the rooster playing this game with four sexy hens when celebrating his victory after winning a boxing match against Hogan thanks to Herman's help by knocking him out with a mallet. However, his wife intervenes when Henry kisses her thinking it's the sexy hen.

1. ↑ see the filename here