History Main / MessageinaBottle

* This [[http://www.tvspots.tv/video/10399/sony--message-in-a-bottle Sony Handycam commercial]] from 1998.

* In ''[[Disney/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day]]'', Piglet writes a help message during the flood and throws the bottle into the rising water. The note is later found by Christopher Robin, who sends out Owl to rescue him.
* This is the impetus for all of the action in ''Disney/TheRescuers''. Penny sends the message, which is found by the Rescue Aid Society.

* In ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'' episode "A Saucer of Loneliness," Shelley Duvall's character is scanned by a small flying saucer in view of several people. Afterwards, she keeps getting bombarded by government agents and false friends trying to find out what information she was given. She later reveals that the saucer was no more than a high tech ''MessageInABottle'' and its message was private and only for her, though she eventually shares it with her love interest.

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 the sender of 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.

It also shows up fairly often for completely different reasons, as the MessageInABottle itself is a well-known staple of fiction. It's nearly a DiscreditedTrope, for that matter, but not quite yet. This appears to be somewhat related to ApocalypticLog.

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

* Used in OVA 2, episode 3 ''Manga/ShinryakuIkaMusume''. Squid Girl and Takeru send out these messages, but hers keeps returning for some reason. Eventually Cindy and her three stooges help out by building a rocket, but the rockets either hilariously fail, or in one case, works a [[GoneHorriblyRight little too well]] and sends the message into space. In the end, Eiko asks her why she doesn't just use her tentacles, and Squid Girl does that. [[spoiler:At the end, a giant shrimp is drawn on the beach by an alien, who received the message that was sent into space.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' has an episode of trope's name. Apparently the Doctor is the message and the bottle is...well, the trope's common enough that we can figure it out from the title.

* One episode of ''Anime/{{Tamagotchi}}'' is about Mametchi and the gang finding a message in a bottle washes up on shore. The message contained in the bottle catches a lot of people's attention for being a very, ''very'' well-written love letter, to such an extent that it gets made into a novel called ''Time Love'' [[TheFilmOfTheBook which later gets a movie adaptation]].

* In and episode of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', a girl sends a message in a bottle asking if someone can help her brother find the Crystal Onyx. Ash and his friends find the bottle. Though they have never heard of a Crystal Onyx, they help find it.

* In a circa 1964 story, Hanna-Barbera's ''Lippy the Lion & Hardy Har Har'' are beachcombing when they happen upon a message in bottle. It is a call for help from someone being held against his/her will. The pair trace it to a millionaire's little boy who just likes to stir up trouble. The millionaire hires Lippy and Hardy to retrieve the bottles as they propagate along the shore. (It's quite lucrative for them as well--they collect the deposit on them.)

* In the opening of his segment on ''[[WesternAnimation/TheAlvinShow]]'', Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo are on a sailboat. Clyde writes "the two most beautiful words in the English language" on a sheet of paper, inserts it into a bottle and hurls it starboard. It hits a shark on the head; the shark opens the bottle and observes the message. It is perplexed that written on the paper is Clyde Crashcup's name.

* WesternAnimation/MightyMouse discovers a message in a bottle in "Swiss Cheese Family Robinson, thrown by the titular family at the start of the cartoon, while vacationing in Miami Beach.

-->'''Bullwinkle:'' Fan mail from some flounder?