Give Me a Drink, Bartender

Submission 17,003

Part of a series on The Town With No Name. [View Related Entries]

About

Give Me a Drink, Bartender refers to a scene from 1992 video game The Town With No Name in which the main protagonist asks for a drink from a bartender, and, in case of failing a quick time event, fails to catch it. Starting in late 2018, the scene has been a subject of parodies, achieving viral spread in 2020.

Origin

In October 1992, video game The Town With No Name was released for Commodore CDTV.^[1] In one in-game location, the main protagonist can ask the local bartender to give him drink, upon which a quick time event starts. If the player fails the quick time event, the glass sent by the bartender will slide past him and crash behind the counter (successful and failed versions shown below).

Spread

In 2011, the The Town With No Name was rediscovered by YouTube audience following a full playthrough posted by World of Longplays^[2] and a humorous commentary on that playthrough made by YouTuber resuprae. ^[3]^[4] The rediscovery of the game resulted into several scenes from it, including Give Me A Drink, Bartender, attaining a meme status. On February 17th, 2012, YouTuber^[5] MonotoneTim uploaded a one-hour version of the scene. On December 4th, 2015, YouTube^[6] user Sage Maneja uploaded the footage of the failed quick time event, with the upload gaining over 3.6 million views as of August 12th, 2020, and over 8.5 million views as of October 15th, 2020.

On November 25th, 2017, Twitter^[7] user @PRGilland posted the earliest known meme based on the scene, Castlevania parody. The tweet received over 570 retweets and 1,200 likes in three years (shown below).

The parody format started gaining spread after on December 19th, 2018, YouTube^[8] user Sage Maneja uploaded the video of the successfully completed quick time event which received over 800,000 vies in two years. On December 24th, 2018, YouTube^[9] user ArgDoesStuff posted the earliest video parody of the original, a Mass Effect parody that received over 116,400 views in two years (shown below, left). On January 9th, 2019, YouTuber^[10] kmlkmljkl posted a 9 + 10 = 21 meme based on the scene that received over 157,100 views in two years . On March 2nd, 2019, YouTube^[11] user SalamanderAndSon uploaded a live-action parody of the scene which received over 3.7 million views (shown below, right).

The format regained popularity in parodies starting in late Spring 2020, with multiple viral versions being posted on YouTube and Twitter. For example, a Minecraft version posted by YouTube^[12] user Digital Novad on May 12th, 2020, received over 550,000 views in five months. A Half-Life edit posted by YouTube^[13] user Murtle on August 27th, 2020, received over 510,000 views in two months.