History Main / MessageinaBottle

* One episode of {{Haven}} included a clever adaptation of this trope; the main character was trapped on a boat heading out to sea and had already gone out of range of the cell towers. Instead she sent a text message, and her phone naturally began repeatedly trying to send it. She then dropped it into a bottle and shoved it out the porthole where it drifted with the tide back to shore until getting back into coverage range, when the message was sent.

* In ''TheLegendOfZelda: Ocarina of Time'', Link gains access to Jabu Jabu by presenting a MessageInABottle written by Princess Ruto to the King, asking for rescue as she is trapped inside Jabu Jabu's belly. Interestingly, the message turns out to be several months old and Ruto has long since figured out how to leave Jabu Jabu- it turns out that her recent absence was for a completely different reason.

* A message in a bottle is discovered at the end of ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'' by AgathaChristie. The author of the message claims to have gotten the idea from adventure stories.

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* One episode of the Swedish ''PippiLongstocking'' television show had the titular character asserting that her father had been captured by pirates because he sent her messages with bottles- something which most of the townspeople understandably regard as being utterly preposterous. But this being a children's show, this is naturally exactly what has happened.

* The premise of the ''PlanetOfTheApes'' novel is that a couple on an intergalactic cruise ship finds the whole story written and put inside a bottle that's out at space, combining this trope with the LiteraryAgentHypothesis and SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale.

Despite the obvious problems with this trope, it still retains a fair amount of popularity, due to some advantages that it confers. First, the MessageInABottle is such a desperate ploy for help that a character really has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to even try it. It reeks of desperation. Second, usually the people who receive the message are completely unknown to whoever sent it, so their decision to help this random note from the middle of nowhere helps establish that they are, without a doubt, the good guys. Third, it's a workable FramingDevice, both in the sense that the message spurs all the action of the story but also that the message can ''relate'' all of the action of the story, if the note turns out to be detailed.

* ''{{Film/The Thing}}'' (1982). [=MacReady=] is shown dictating an ApocalypticLog into a tape recorder, which he states he intends to hide in the hope that it would be found by a search party if they're all killed. Or worse.

* ''TheThing'' (1982). [=MacReady=] is shown dictating an ApocalypticLog into a tape recorder, which he states he intends to hide in the hope that it would be found by a search party if they're all killed. Or worse.

* In the 1954 Disney film version of 20000LeaguesUnderTheSea, Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* In the 1954 Disney film version of ''20000LeaguesUnderTheSea'', Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* In the 1954 Disney film version of ''[[20000 Leagues Under the Sea]]'', Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* Parodied in ''{{Freefall}}'' - Florence needs to relay a message, but no one will help her and email is unavailable. When she unsuccessfully tries putting a message in a bottle down the drain of a sink, she muses, "either I need a bigger sink, or a smaller bottle."

* In the 1954 Disney film version of ''[[20,000 Leagues Under the Sea]]'', Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* In the 1954 Disney film version of ''{{20,000 Leagues Under the Sea}}'', Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* In the 1954 Disney film version of ''20000LeaguesUnderTheSea'', Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* In the 1954 Disney film version of ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'', Ned Land uses multiple messages in bottles to notify the authorities of the location of Captain Nemo's island so they can attack it.

* The framing device of ''Yosl Rakover talks to God'' is that the novella is a crossover prayer/diary written by {{Holocaust}} victim Yosl Rakover, hidden in a basement in the ghetto of Warsaw, and found after the war. In reality, it was written in Argentina in the late forties by Zvi Kolitz, and Yosl Rakover is a fictional character. This important fact was dropped in some [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes inofficial reprints]], leading people to believe that the framing story was true, something the author never intended. When faced with the existance of an author, many chose to denounce the story as a fraud, rather than laud it as a marvelously insightful piece of fiction. A meta case of MisaimedFandom?

* One episode of the Swedish ''PippiLongstocking'' television show had the titular character asserting that her father had been captured by pirates because he sent her messages with bottles- something which most of the townspeople understandably regard as being utterly preposterous. But this being a childrens' show, this is naturally exactly what has happened.

* ''Survivorman'' is a Canadian reality show in which the star, Les Stroud, is dropped into various enviroments to survive for 7 days with no equipment. One episode was based around him being in a life raft in the middle of the ocean, followed by being beached on an island. Les then invokes the trope and actually throws a message in a bottle into the sea, with him even highlighting the last ditch, utter desperation of such an act. Possibly subverted though, because at the end of the episode, a message states that while he put his cell phone number on the message, nobody has ever phoned in.

* In the original ''[=~The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy~=]'' radio series, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are stranded on prehistoric Earth, and attempt to attract the attention of a passing spaceship by waving a towel at it. A volcano then erupts, covering the towel with lava. When the Earth is blown up six million years later, the now-fossilized towel gets launched into space and found by Zaphod Beeblebrox in the spaceship Heart Of Gold, who travels back in time and rescues them. (Things like this tend to happen whenever you use the Heart Of Gold's "Infinite Improbability" drive.)

* In the adventure game ''KingsQuest 4'', Rosella gets swallowed by a whale and inside its throat finds a bottle with a message in it containing advertisements for some of {{Sierra}}'s earlier games.

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* In ''ShoulderACoffinKuro'', Kuro once communicate with a girl with this, but the bottle somehow disappear and appear on its own, and it happens on land, not sea. [[spoiler:It got delivered by a motorbike guy (this troper forgot his name)]].

-> '''Daphne''': What does it say?
-> '''Shaggy''': No deposit - no return.
-> '''Velma''': Big help.

* [[StarWars "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!"]] Not all bottles are made of glass.