Playground Song / Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer

Perhaps the most common Playground Song that appears in media is "99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall", or a variation of it. Starting with 99 (or another arbitrarily high number) bottles of beer on the wall, in each successive stanza one is taken down and passed around, counting down until we have no bottles remaining.

If that's not enough beer, there's an optional last stanza:

"No more bottles of beer on the wall,
No more bottles of beer.
Go to the store and buy some more,
99 bottles of beer on the wall..."

Cheers!

Usually, one can expect a joke about the song being annoying due to its long length, or one about people using its length as a measure of time. Occasionally, the bottles of beer will be Bowdlerized to bottles of milk or another non-alcoholic beverage, adults being more squeamish than kids.

An example of Counting Song. May be sung by an Annoyingly Repetitive Child. See also Ode to Intoxication and Drunken Song for other songs involving too much beer.

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Examples:

Advertising

• M&M's: Yellows sings his own version of the song in this ad. Replace bottles with cans and beer with milk chocolate.
• A magazine ad for then-upcoming video game Steel Reign has a lone tank out in the desert singing "99 Bullet-Riddled Bodies on the Wall".

Comics

• One Calvin and Hobbes strip has Calvin starting this song (at ten million bottles of beer, no less!) during a road trip in order to annoy his dad into stopping for hamburgers.
• In one FoxTrot strip, Jason sings his version of this, replacing the bottles of beer with (several thousand) minutes until school starts.
• The Mighty Thor: One issue has Asgardian children singing "99 Bottles of Grog on the Wall."
• Sometimes appears in Peanuts, usually at summer camp or Snoopy's scout troop. In one storyline set at a very religious summer camp, when Peppermint Patty complains that she doesn't know any of the campfire songs, Marcie advises against suggesting it.

Fan Works

• In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Socrates attempts to sing "563,000,002 Bottles of Beer".

Films — Live-Action

• In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, the overly squeaky-clean Jefferson family sings "99 Bottles of Milk on the Wall" while driving to their beach cottage with Greg.
• National Lampoon's Vacation: Clark, while lost in the desert and trying to find help, starts the song at 1000, passing out when he's in the single digits.
• Referenced in The Smurfs 2: when one of the Smurfs wonder what the things Gargamel has in his lair that are used to clone the Smurfs, Papa says "99 bottles of Smurf on the wall..."

Literature

• The bus scene in the camp super special of The Babysitters Club has David Michael starting up a rendition of "a million bottles of beer on the wall" to take up the time. Thinking they're kidding about the number, the sitters allow the kids to continue, only to find out that they are literally counting down from one million.

  "When we arrived at camp, they were still in the nine hundred ninety-nine thousands."

• Mentioned in Bruce Coville's Camp Haunted Hills #3 (The Dinosaur That Followed Me Home) as being sung during the bus ride to the titular camp, until one camper overhears a nickname for one of the new kids and switches to a song based on that instead.
• Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. references this in his narration, after having to explain to one person after another after another what he's investigating. He wonders if he'll run out of bottles of beer on the wall before the mystery finally starts making sense.
• Imperial Radch: Breq toes the line between The Stoic and The Comically Serious when she starts singing the Radchaai version of this song en route to a highly dangerous confrontation, to Sphene's infinite distaste. It starts at 1000.
  Breq: Nine hundred ninety-nine eggs all nice and warm...
  Sphene: We are no longer family.
• The Mummy, The Will and The Crypt (as "98 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"): the Boy Scouts on their way to Camp Chocorua sing it all the way through before the trip is out. Narration describes it afterward as "the song that is calculated to drive bus drivers out of their minds".
• My Weird School: In "Mrs. Kormel is Not Normal", the kids sing this song while on the bus ride to school. They sing 'pop' instead of beer because kids can't drink beer. AJ remarks that one time he had a sip of his dad's beer and it was gross.

Live-Action TV

• Barney Miller endures a rousing chorus of this by a group of homeless men in the two-part episode "Missing." Det. Harris, having traveled undercover with them, tells Barney "I don't even hear it any more. They started at three thousand."
• The Golden Girls: Rose sings the song, but quits and goes to bed after the second-last verse.
  Dorothy: Two bottles of beer?! Rose, you get all the way to two bottles of beer and you quit?!
  Rose: [grinning] Just drives you nuts, doesn't it, Dorothy?
• Kenan & Kel "2 Heads are Better than One". Kel sings 1,000,000 bottles of Orange Soda on the wall during a boring road trip with the rockmores.
• Left behind on the Lexx for an episode, 790 sings his way up to "790 kisses from Kai on the head."

  "That's one more kiss from the man who is dead..."

• In Married... with Children, the original song is sung three times ("Route 666 (Part 1)", "The Gas Station Show", and "T-R-A-Something-Something Spells Tramp"), but in "Spring Break Part 2", Bud and his friends sing a variation called "98 Luscious Hooters on the Wall".
  Bud: 98 luscious hooters on the wall...
  Hummer: 98 luscious hooters...
  Achmed: If a pair of those hooters should happen to fall,
  Bud, Hummer, Achmed, & Barney: 96 luscious hooters on the wall!
• One episode of the 1970s Match Game featured “99 _______” in the Super Match, with “Bottles Of Beer On The Wall” as the $500 answer. As an aside, host Gene Rayburn had absolutely no clue what that was, so the panelists started singing, and the audience joined in and clapped along.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: In "The Mutiny Part 3", Rita Repulsa sings "99 Bottles of Slime on the Wall" as she floats through space in a dumpster. The Rangers and Zordon watch through their viewing globe and laugh.
• On an episode of Today's Special, Jodie, Jeff and Muffy are stuck in an elevator and sing "99 Bottles of Pop on the Wall" while waiting for help. They have to wait until they get to 34 bottles.

Music

• Aesop Rock mentions this in "Happy Pillz", a non-album song made with Murs:
  Ninety-nine bottles of happy pills on the wall,
  Take 'em down, pass 'em round before me and Murs eat 'em all!
• "Weird Al" Yankovic mentions the song in "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota":
  Well, we crossed the state line about 6:39
  And we saw the sign that said, "Twine Ball exit, fifty miles"
  Oh, the kids were so happy they started singing
  "99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall" for the twenty-seventh time that day

Video Games

• In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush can entreat one of the two friendly pirates on the starting island to sing a song. After a couple semi-bawdy numbers about Elaine, he resorts to this song. You can choose to interject with a random number and he'll jump to it; and if you're patient enough to let him get down to one, the other pirate will say a different number and he'll start there again, meaning he'll keep singing indefinitely if you let him.
• In the PC Adaptation of Muppet Treasure Island, Rizzo sings "99 Pieces of Cheese on the wall" on his way to Bristol.
• In Zork: Grand Inquisitor, when you enter the Hall of Inquisition, you hear a Totemized Lucy Flathead singing "9999 Bottles of Mead on the Wall", though she may have started at a much higher number.

Webcomics

• In As seen in this strip, A Modest Destiny's Hechter apparently sang this for a good part of five years when buried in the desert.
• In Sinfest sung by God (with an open bottle of "Nectar of the Gods" in hand). Of course, since He starts with "infinity bottles of beer on the wall", the song doesn't change.

Web Original

• The Annoying Orange sings "Infinite bottles of pop on the wall".
• Critical Role: While walking through the seemingly endless burrows in Episode 50 of the second campaign, Jester tries to help pass the time by starting up a round of this. By the time they reach twenty-one bottles, even Jester is thoroughly sick of the song, voice strained to the point of exhaustion.
• Nostalgia Critic: Used as a joke in his review of Judge Dredd for three moments. When somebody forgets their iPod, they start singing this.
• StacheBros: In "Episode 2-4 - The Creature From The Egg" of "Mario & Luigi! Stache Bros", when Waluigi goes to Peach's Castle to kidnap Toadsworth, he walks in on him singing "Negative Nine Thousand Two Bottles of Beer on the Wall".

Western Animation

• In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Parking", Richard and the kids sing "99 Bottles of Age-Appropriate Beverage" while looking for a parking space.
• In one episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Meatwad and his clones sing "3 Million Bottles of Beer on the Wall", which takes them 27 years to finish.
• In one episode of Beetlejuice, while Lydia and her parents are going on vacation with Beetlejuice, they pass the time by singing "One Million Bottles of Slime on the Wall". The father, however, is getting a little bit... frustrated.
• In the Bluey episode "Sleepytime", a tired Bandit sings "99 Bottles of Thing" to Bluey.
  • In another episode, "Baby Race", he also sings it to an infant Bluey while cradling her.
• At the end of The Cuphead Show! episode "Release the Demons!", while the Devil returns to the Underworld with Stickler after being defeated by his month-long laziness for Cuphead's soul, the elevator suddenly gets stuck, and Stickler has to pass the time by singing "999 Million Souls in the Vault", much to the Devil's frustration.
• On an early episode of Daria, Kevin Thompson quickly earns the annoyance of his classmates by constantly singing "99 Bottles of Beer". He even hums it while making out with Brittany!
• Dexter's Laboratory: a TV Puppet Pals sketch has Puppet Pal Mitch sing "99 bottles of Bonk on the wall" while bonking Puppet Pal Clem on the head. By the time Mitch gets to 11 bottles, Clem is so delirious that he slurs his speech.
• The Garfield and Friends episode "Speed Trap" had this variation: "99 kettles of soup on the heat, 99 kettles of soup/If one of those kettles I happen to eat/98 kettles of soup on the heat!".
• One episode of George Shrinks has the Shrinks family singing a parody called "99 Butterflies Fly in the Sky" while traveling with a researcher to follow migrating monarch butterflies.
• The Rosa Parks segment on Histeria! had Loud Kiddington singing this, and annoying Charity, who yells at him because she can't stand it, causing Kiddington to lose where he was and start over.
• Kim Possible: Downhill to Mount Middleton during a bus trip.
• Molly of Denali: In "Berry Itchy Day", the Mabray family sings "99 Jars of Jam" because they're going berry-picking.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode Sleepless In Ponyville, Sweetie Belle sings a ponified version called "99 Buckets of Oats".
• In one episode of Ninjago some of the protagonists sing a version replacing the bottles of beer with bottles of tea while on a long mission.
• In one episode of Olivia, the family sings "99 Buckets of Slime" while on a road trip.
• At the beginning of the Peanuts special, "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown", Rerun sings this while Mrs. Van Pelt takes him on a bike ride.
• The Real Ghostbusters take to chanting mantras in trying to rid Ray's aunt's apartment of a ghost. Egon chants a mathematical formula, Winston chants an African native spell, and Ray and Peter do "99 Bottles of Beer On the Wall."
• Rocko's Modern Life: In "Future Schlock", at the end, when the house is rocketed into space, Heffer sings, "Nine hundred bazillion bottles of root beer on the wall..."
• In the Rugrats (1991) episode "Where's Grandpa?", Tommy and Chuckie shout to try to get the adults to see that they left Grandpa Lou behind at a gas station; Didi believes that they want to sing this song, and she and Stu proceed to sing the "milk" version of the song.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart Gets Famous", Principal Skinner and Martin Prince sing "99 Boxes of Bottles of Beer on the Wall" on their way to the Box Factory.
  • In "Das Bus", this song plays on Otto's cassette tape titled "Songs to Enrage Bus Drivers!".
  • In "Thank God It's Doomsday", while on the way to the Springfield Mesa, the entire bus of Springfieldians, including Homer and his family, sing a version of the tune that goes like this:
    99 minutes until we're all saved,
    99 minutes to go—
    Unless it turns out
    That we're not devout,
    Then you're gonna be left down below.
  • In "The Old Man and the C Student", following the failure of an almost-successful venture, Homer is left with a thousand coiled springs and tasked with getting rid of them. He sings "1000 Springs to Flush Down" as he flushes every single one of them down the toilet, accidentally saving a sinking yacht when it keeps bouncing off the springs at the bottom of the marina.
  • In "The Sweetest Apu", when Homer is trying to avoid a difficult conversation, the only delaying tactic he can think of is Waxing Lyrical:
    Homer: So, anyway, if you take that bottle down and pass it around...
    Apu: I know, I know, there will be 47 bottles of beer on the wall!
• The "How I Spent My Vacation" special episode of Tiny Toon Adventures finds Hamton and his parents singing "99 Bottles of Non-Alcoholic Beverage on the Wall". When Plucky, who's traveling with them, asks "Isn't it 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall?" Hamton's mom replies, "We don't drink in our family, Plucky."
• A version about hugs is sung in the Trolls: The Beat Goes On! episode "Branch Bum", but Branch stops the song before they get to 98 hugs because he doesn't want to be distracted while driving.

Real Life

• This song is a popular computer programming challenge.

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