Bowling for Ratings

How do they bowl without hands?

"Niko, it's Roman! Let's go bowling!"

— Roman Bellic, Grand Theft Auto IV

Ah, bowling! The sport of the common man. Generally when TV shows portray someone as an everyday Working-Class Hero, the writers make him a member of a bowling team. Could result in just references to a team, a singular bowling episode or a chance for a character to be Bested at Bowling. Trope name is a parody of Bowling for Dollars, a syndicated American Game Show format of The '70s.

Bowling reached its peak popularity in the 1950s, when professional bowlers earned salaries rivalling those of football or baseball players. Bowling alleys often have a snack bar and a liquor license, which helps boost the social aspects of league play. Often produce drama via a 300 scoring 'perfect game'. Other forms include lawn bowling, called Bocce in Italy.

Sometimes, a Canadian series will have that country's distinctive five pin variant: five pins with rubber rings around the wide bottom and smaller balls with no finger holes. But neither Canada nor the United States will ever show any other type of bowling (sorry, candlepin and duckpin lovers).

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Examples:

Advertising

• One McDonaldland commercial, entitled "Bowling For Burgers" features Ronald, Grimace, and Birdie at the bowling alley, trying to knock down all the pins. When Birdie goes for a strike, the pins, dressed in baseball attire, dodge the ball and say "You're out!". Grimace then tries to make a spare by tossing a tire, but the pins dodge it, too. Ronald then knocks down the pins by having his sentient bowling ball scare them.

Anime & Manga

• Mega Man NT Warrior Axess: Episode 6 involves Higsby winning tickets for a bowling game and decides to use the opportunity to impress Ms. Mari until Bowl Man starts sabotaging the equipment to attack everyone.
• Pretty Cure:
  • In Episode 15 of Fresh Pretty Cure!, Love takes her friends to a bowling alley, during which Setsuna tries to make her suspicious of her.
  • In Episode 29 of Smile PreCure!, one of the challenges is bowling against Akaoni, which Cure Peace takes on gleefully. However, the Akanbe pins make it very difficult for her, leading to her using Peace Thunder to score a strike.
  • In Doki Doki! PreCure, one of the events presented is bowling. The pins all turn into Jikochuus.

Comic Strips

• Dennis the Menace (US):
  • In one strip, after knocking down all but one of the pins, Dennis attempts to knock down the last one with his slingshot, which Henry scolds him for.
  • In another strip, when Joey bowls, Dennis tells him not to knock down all the pins, as if he does, he doesn't get to roll another ball.
• Peanuts:
  • One strip, set when Sally was a baby, has Charlie Brown bowl using Sally's empty baby bottles as bowling pins.
  • In another strip, Lucy sets up some bowling pins, then takes Linus' Security Blanket from him, causing him to spin into the pins and knock them down, except for the tenth one, much to Lucy's dismay.

Films — Animated

• The Incredibles: Bob and Lucius's alibi for going out as Mr. Incredible and Frozone is telling their wives that they're on a bowling team. Lucius is happy as a retired superhero and would prefer that they actually go bowling for once.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien 2: On Earth: Before embarking on their ill-fated caving expedition, Thelma, her husband Roy, and their friends meet at a bowling alley for a short game. It is at this same bowling alley that the finale takes place.
• The Dude in The Big Lebowski spends all of his free time^note i.e. time not spent engaging in plot development at the lanes bowling with his buddies.
  • Bowling seems to feature prominently in many classic Film Noirs, reaching Dead Horse Trope status with the original 1962 version of Cape Fear. Of course the Coen brothers would include bowling in their loving homage to the genre.
• Strikes and Spares, one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "Pete Smith Specialties" short films, features professional bowler Andy Varipapa showing off his tremendous skills with trick shots.
• One of the shows on U-62 in UHF is Bowling for Burgers with Chef Bernie. We only get a brief glimpse so how exactly the show works isn't explained.

Live-Action TV

• 2point4 Children: Bill and Ben go bowling in the second half of "Dirty Bowling". Bill proves to be a better bowler than expected and she and Ben make The Bet over which can bowl better, a bet which Bill manages to win.
• 21 Jump Street: Hanson is an avid bowler and a member of a bowling league.
• 7th Heaven: Eric delays telling the family that he needs an open-heart surgery, so he decides the family should go bowling.
• The Big Bang Theory: "The Wheaton Recurrence" has the gang in a bowling match against Stuart's team, which includes Sheldon's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Wil Wheaton.
• Bones: “The Change in the Game” has Booth and Brennan undercover as Buck and Wanda after a mangled body turns up in the pin setter. Brennan’s dad is in the league but he wasn’t the killer this time.
• Cheers: The Cheers gang takes on Gary's in a bowling match.
• Cowboy Bebop (2021). In "Sad Clown A-Go-Go", Jet tries to introduce his friends Spike and Faye to the joys of bowling but they're less than impressed, especially as the game doesn't appear to make Jet very relaxed.
• CSI: In "Lover's Lanes", a decapitated head comes up the ball return during a bowling tournament. At the end of the episode, the entire team goes out bowling.
• Dead Like Me: George joins Happy Time Temp Agency's bowling team in one episode. There's also the Plague Division of reapers from the extended pilot, which spends its time lawn bowling and intently watching rodents for signs of another epidemic.
• Dexter: Dexter joins a bowling team in Season 2. His biological father also became an avid bowler after turning his criminal life around.
• Eureka: An episode had the show's bowling league playing against that of Area51.
• Family Matters: In "Bowl Me Over", Carl loses to Harriette in a bowling match, then gloats when he wins the rematch, only for Harriette to reveal that she let him win it. This results in the Winslow family (and Urkel) having a battle-of-the-sexes bowling match. Both teams have some dirty tricks up their sleeves. During Carl's final frame, a thunderstorm causes the power to go out at the bowling alley, leaving Carl's final results unclear.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: In the episode "I, Bowl Buster", Carlton decides to join a professional bowling team instead of going to Princeton. Will challenges him to a game in order to get him to change his mind.
• In the Good Luck Charlie episode, "Alley Oops", the Duncan family get into a bowling competition with the Gogan family, determined to win after having lost to them for five years. When Teddy tells the family that she's unable to participate with them this year, she gets Gabe to take her place. While Gabe is a better bowler than Teddy, he becomes obsessed with trying to win a mystery box from the claw machine in the arcade. When Gabe gets his arm stuck in the claw machine after running out of tokens, it's up to Charlie to make the winning roll, and she succeeds.
• In the Home Improvement episode, "Up Your Alley", Tim takes his family to the bowling alley. Tim's pride is dashed when Jill beats him in a bowling game. Meanwhile, Randy runs into a bully at the alley's arcade.
• Hunter. At the end of one episode Dee Dee McCall has ended up in the hospital and her partner turns up with a gift. A bowling ball.
  Hunter: Welcome to the world of bowling.
  McCall: You are very strange.
• The King of Queens: Doug and Carrie and their friends Deacon and Kelly are on a bowling team.
• Knuckles: The B-plot of the miniseries has Wade teaching Knuckles bowling and participating in a bowling tournament in Reno against Wade's British relative, "Pistol" Pete.
  • Knuckles is even flabbergasted by the concept during his first visit to a bowling alley with Wade.
    Knuckles: What devilry is this?
• Malcolm in the Middle had one of the best examples of this, with an episode showing two different timelines: what would happen if Lois took the boys bowling, or if Hal took them instead.
• M*A*S*H: The 4077th takes on a group of Marines in a bowling match.
• Married... with Children: Al is an avid bowler.
  • "Alley of the Dolls": Peg challenges an old rival of hers to a family-vs-family bowling match, where the loser has to dress up as a bowling trophy for everyone else to pose with. The Bundys (with Steve as a ringer) end up losing.
  • "Peggy Turns 300": Al goes bowling in an attempt to beat the alley record of 256. He succeeds by bowling a 257, but is then upstaged by Peg bowling a perfect game.
  • "Shoeless Al": After claiming he was traumatized into never wearing shoes again by being locked up in a room full of shoes all night, Al is disallowed to bowl barefoot on the week of the Bowling League Finals. He ultimately decides to put on bowling shoes (thus costing him the lawsuit settlement) to help his team win the championship.
• The Office (US): Where Ryan is working when Michael recruits him for The Michael Scott Paper Company.
• Parks and Recreation has the episode "Bowling for Votes", where Leslie hosts an appearance at the bowling alley as part of her campaign for city council (and to show up someone who criticized her in a focus group). The B-Plot has Ron being embarrassed watching Tom's childish double-handed split leg throw style, but at the end, he gives the style a try and actually bowls a perfect 300 game, but he refuses any honors.
  Owner: Hey, perfect game! What's your name? I'll put it up on the wall!
  Ron: I was never here, and you will never speak of this again.
• The Professionals. The episode "Stakeout" has Bodie and Doyle staking out a bowling alley for anything suspicious. In a variation, neither of them are familiar with bowling and have to work out the rules themselves.
• Roseanne : Two episodes took place in bowling alleys, Season 2's "Lovers' Lane" where Roseanne tries to spy on Becky's date, and "The Bowling Show," where Dan and Arnie compete for second last place in the annual tournament.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Has an episode where the employees of the Tipton have a bowling team, and find out that Zack has Hidden Depths and is really good at bowling.
• Veronica Mars: Season three features a painful-if-you've-been-in-this-situation "not a date" bowling episode.
• Will & Grace: "Alley Cats" sees the titular duo go bowling with their friends Rob and Ellen, who recently complained that Grace is too much of a Competition Freak who never lets them win on Game Night. Grace deliberately bowls as badly as possible to force Will to admit he enjoys winning against Rob and Ellen as much as she does.

Music

• The music video for "Keep on Moving" by Starstylers takes place at a bowling alley concert. There are cheerleaders singing and dancing as people bowl.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street:
  • In a "Super Grover 2.0" sketch, an octopus named Larry and shrimp named Linda have a hard time bowling underwater when their pins keep floating away. Super Grover 2.0, clad in scuba gear, tries to help them out by finding something heavy enough so that Larry and Linda will be able to bowl.
  • In Episode 5131, Elmo, Rudy, and Charlie decide to make their own bowling lane on Sesame Street because a real bowling alley is too far away from them. They use pool noodles as lanes, a foam ball as a bowling ball, and empty bottles as bowling pins. The three come across a bowling team called the T-Rexes and decide to bowl against them. The Count keeps score between the two teams, and an octopus helps to reset the pins. Rudy isn't particularly good at bowling at first because he keeps letting go of the ball at the wrong times, but Elmo and Charlie help him focus, and in the end, he makes the winning roll.

Video Games

• In Fallout 4, you can visit a bowling alley that's been maintained by robots for the two centuries since World War III, who will ask for $5000 of pre-war money if you want to play — and it's possible to do so if you have a Junk Jet and some bowling balls in your inventory. In the Far Habor DLC, you can visit another ruined bowling alley and read some computer terminals about how the place's employees tried to facilitate a returning soldier's favorite hobby. Since the guy had been paralyzed in combat and was confined to a wheelchair, they modified a Fat Man mini-nuke launcher to instead fire bowling balls (and blew a hole in a wall during the first test-firing because they forgot to reduce the tension springs), resulting in a legendary weapon you can take for your own use.
• Quite a rarity, but in The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, the Rabbit Bowl counts as one, in that the protagonist has to put the missing shoes back in their shoe slots for donuts, match the cardboard cutouts of characters (and the basketball shoe) with their sports hobbies, bowl for a lucky strike, and have her head act as a bowling ball in order to progress if she plays the cards right. Oh, and get two Wham Lines along the way.
• Sideswiped has the aptly named Bowling minigame in the Arena, which has you doing this with cars. The game is played by launching your vehicle of choice with a set of sedans arranged as the pins. Getting a strike awards you with a point bonus and causes all the sedans to explode violently.
• Early in SPY Fox 3: Operation Ozone, the entrance to Mobile Command Center is a rocket shaped like a giant bowling pin at the bowling alley, and to use it the first time, SPY Fox must enter the correct song number at the nearby jukebox, given to him by the Chief. Shortly afterwards, SPY Fox discovers Plato Pushpin being held captive in a bowling lane by Poodles Galore, and in order to rescue him, he must disguise himself as the fourth member of her bowling team and use the spy bowling ball to scoop him up.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Mario Party:
    • One 1-vs.-3 mini-game that debuts in the first game is "Bowl Over". One player is armed with a Koopa shell, and the other three players are turned into sentient bowling pins. The goal of the player with the Koopa shell is to knock down the three players-turned-bowling pins, while the goal of the three players-turned-bowling pins is to avoid being knocked down.
    • Mario Party 2: The minigame Bowl Over returns from the first game, once again featuring one player sliding a Koopa shell down a lane trying to hit the other three, who are turned into bowling pins. This version is a bit different, as instead of getting one chance to hit as many of the pins as possible, this version gives the bowler two chances, and they must knock down all three of their opponents in order to win.
    • Mario Party 9 features a minigame called Goomba Bowling that plays similar to other bowling video games, with players able to both move and aim left and right before throwing a Koopa shell. Instead of aiming at ten pins, however, the targets are twenty Goombas that waddle back and forth throughout the lane in a straight line. The idea is to angle and time your throw so the shell hits one Goomba after another as it travels throughout the lane.
  • Game & Wario: After the cast of characters at the end of the game, the main characters decide to go bowling, setting the stage for the next minigame, "Bowling". The minigame itself challenges the player to knock down bowling pins shaped like many of the main characters by holding the Gamepad vertically and using the touchscreen to roll balls at them. As the ball rolls down the lane, the player can tilt the Gamepad left and right to steer the ball.

Web Video

• SMG4's Mario Bloopers: In "Mario Goes Bowling", this episode centers around SMG4, Mario and Meggy going bowling, leading to conflict between the latter two.
• SuperMarioLogan:
  • In "Bowser Junior Goes Bowling!", Junior, Joseph, Cody, and Toad get Chef Pee Pee to take them to the Wacky DeLuna Bowling Lane after seeing a commercial for it on television. Cody turns out to be an expert at bowling despite never having played it before (and scores a perfect game by the end of the video), while Joseph quits after one turn. Chef Pee Pee struggles to get a strike, and has to make a deal with Craig the Devil just to get one.
  • In "Jeffy Goes Bowling!", Mario plans to take Rosalina to the bowling alley for a tournament to win $5,000.00 after seeing a commercial for it on TV. When Jeffy breaks Rosalina's arm, Mario takes Jeffy to the bowling alley, where they compete against Brooklyn T. Guy and his wife, Karen. Mario discovers that Jeffy can make perfect strikes blindfolded, while Brooklyn tries to cheat by hiring a guy behind the pins to knock them over with a broom whenever Karen bowls. The game ends in a tie, meaning that neither team wins the money.

Western Animation

• One occurs in the Batman Cold Open for an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The Sportsmaster crashes it to mock the organisers for thinking that bowling is a sport… before deciding to try and win the cash according to the rules. Nought he adds the caveat that the organisers and competitions are the skittles, and the ball he uses is a bomb.
• In the Camp Lazlo episode, "Bowling For Dinosaurs", Scoutmaster Lumpus tricks the campers of Camp Kidney into building him a bowling alley by having them dig for dinosaur bones. While the other campers soon realize they've been hoodwinked, Lazlo, Raj, and Clam continue to dig for dinosaur bones, interfering with Lumpus' bowling game in the process. They eventually manage to find a real (living) dinosaur skeleton under Lumpus' office.
• In the Captain Flamingo episode "Ten Pin Peril", Ruth-Ann is trapped in bowling machinery at the bowling alley after she mistakenly wears bowling shoes that are not the size of her feet. Milo and Lizbeth must save her while trying to expose Wendell as a cheater at bowling.
• In the Codename: Kids Next Door episode, "Operation MISSION", Wallabee (Numbuh 4) releases Mr. Boss, Count Spankulot, Soccer Mom, and Stickybeard and tricks them (along with the Toiletnator) into poisoning them with sodas. Then Wallabee thinks that the only way to Find the Cure! for the villains is to compete against his dad's bowling team the Aussie Alley Masters and win the bowling tournament being held at Pinhead Lanes Bowling Alley. Why? He is bored of polishing all the trophies his dad won several years ago.
• A Wing Dings blackout on Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines had Dastardly protesting at full volume "It's so quiet you can hear a pin drop!" Muttley rolls a bowling ball which strikes a pin which then strikes Dastardly, knocking him out cold.
  Zilly: That's one pin he didn't hear!
• In the Dennis the Menace (1986) episode, "Bowling For Dennis", Dennis goes to the bowling alley with his dad and Mr. Wilson, who get into a competition with a rival bowling team. The rival team tries to sabotage Henry and Mr. Wilson's chances of winning by putting bubble gum on the bottom of their bowling pins, giving them a remote-control bowling ball, and later a magnetic bowling ball, but Dennis inadvertently foils their plan.
• Family Guy:
  • In the B-plot of "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", Stewie hangs out with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. At one point, he takes them to the bowling alley. While there, Jonathan Frakes and Patrick Stewart don't have their bowling shoes, and Stewie has to explain to them that they can't wear their own shoes on the bowling lane, to which Patrick believes that the people at the bowling alley just want another $1.50 from him. When Stewie enters their names, Brent Spiner wants his name to be "Rock Kickass" and Michael Dorn wants his name to be "Dirk Diggler", much to Stewie's ire. Patrick also suggests that the White actors be put on one team and the Black actors be put on the other.
  • In the episode "Blind Ambition," Mort Goldman bowls a perfect game.
  • In the episode "Total Recall," part of the B-Plot is Lois taking Peter's place on his bowling team after Peter gets badly sick.
  • "Fertilized Megg" begins with the Griffin children at the bowling alley. To Meg's surprise, she finds Peter and his friends bowling in one lane. During his game, Peter insists that he cannot bowl without mimicking Fred Flinstone's twinkle toes move.
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman: In "Ruff's Bowling is Going Downhill". Willie and Bridget's challenge is to build a bowling machine. Then, they compete against Throbot.
• The Flintstones has bowling as the standard diversion for Fred and Barney. Their prowess is usually quite good while sometimes it can be disastrous.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has "The Big Lablooski". In this episode, Mac and the imaginary friends join Madame Foster's bowling team to help her beat her rival, Jerkins. Mac ends up getting kicked off the team and learning from a bowling expert, while the rival team promises Bloo a paddle ball if he joins them and helps them win.
• Futurama: 1000 years in the future, bowling seems unchanged.
• Heckle and Jeckle: "Ten Pin Terrors" had the boys' sleep disrupted by the bowling going on in a bowling alley. It certainly doesn't help that their digs are in the cellar below the bowling alley.
• Hey Arnold!: Arnold and Gerald form a bowling team for a competitive league in "Coach Wittenburg".
• House of Mouse: One "Donald's Dynamite" short has Donald at the bowling alley. He first tries to bowl with a regular bowling ball, but when it seems like he's going to get a strike, the ball stops right in front of the first pin and rolls into the gutter. Donald then tries to get a spare, but accidentally picks up a bomb instead of a bowling ball, which he tries desperately to get off his hand when it gets stuck. When he does manage to get rid of the bomb, it rolls into the pins and explodes, giving Donald a spare or so it would seem, as the seventh and tenth pins land perfectly upright, giving him a split.
• The Huckleberry Hound Show: The cartoon "Ten Pin Alley" has Huck in a championship tournament against the popular (albeit villainous) Powerful Pierre. Huck wins after Pierre gets hoist on his own petard.
• Jellystone!: In "My Doggie Dave", Yogi, Boo Boo, and Captain Caveman invite Doggie Daddy to go to an adults-only night at the bowling alley. However, Doggie Daddy is reluctant to leave Augie at home with a babysitter, so he brings her to the bowling alley disguised as a man named Dave. When Augie ends up becoming the most popular member of the group, she gets invited out for numerous other functions, leaving Doggie Daddy completely alone. Doggie Daddy challenges Augie to a game of Hock Mar, which involves bowling through an extreme obstacle course. If he wins, then Augie has to give up her new identity. Doggie Daddy has a big lead, but when his friends call him out for hurting his daughter's new identity, he throws the game so Augie can win.
• KaBlam!:
  • One Prometheus and Bob short is titled "Bowling", where Prometheus tries to teach Bob how to bowl, with the monkey setting the pins up. First, Bob walks across the lane and hits the pins with the ball while still holding it. Then, the monkey won't get off the lane, so Bob tosses the ball into the air. Then, when Bob tries to roll the ball, the monkey gets it to roll off of a ribcage bone. Finally, Bob gets his tongue caught in one of the ball's finger holes and Prometheus has to get it unstuck.
  • In the Life with Loopy short, "Mother Nature Bowl Off", Loopy is awakened by a thunderstorm, and when her mom tells her that thunder is caused by Mother Nature bowling, Loopy takes on Mother Nature in a bowling game. If Loopy wins, then Mother Nature has to lay off bowling for the rest of the summer, and if Mother Nature wins, Loopy has to paint all the leaves brown in Fall. Loopy wins the game when she manages to make a spare from the 7/10 split, but Mother Nature does not take her loss well, and cries so hard that it rains for the rest of the summer.
  • In Fuzzball, the titular character accidentally breaks her father's trophy and goes to the bowling alley in an attempt to win a new one. She is inexperienced and ends up causing a lot of damage to the alley in her attempts to bowl. Eventually, the manager of the bowling alley gives her a trophy just to get her to leave. Unfortunately for Fuzzball, the trophy had a lady on it instead of a man.
• King of the Hill: In one episode Peggy is afraid to go bowling since her embarrassing shoe size would be displayed on the heel.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Looney Tunes Cartoons: In "Unlucky Strikes", Porky takes his nephew, Cicero, to the bowling alley, to teach him how to bowl, even though Cicero would much rather play his video game. When Porky gets flung into the ball return and comes out looking like a bowling ball, Cicero uses him to bowl and begins to enjoy it, getting continuous strikes and eventually winning a trophy for getting the perfect score.
  • The Looney Tunes Show: In "To Bowl or Not to Bowl", Daffy has a bowling team consisting with his old gang of high school losers Porky (who was the school jock and Daffy's bully), Marvin the Martian, and Pete Puma to spite a rival team. When Porky gets horribly injured, Bugs takes his place on the team.
• Monsters at Work: In "The Big Wazowskis", Tylor tries to get on Mike's good side by singing himself and the rest of MIFT up for the Bowl-Off-a-Thon against Gary Gibbs and his team, since Mike is stuck with approving paperwork. To Tylor's dismay, MIFT stinks at bowling, but they still manage to score victories against the other teams due to the other teams getting disqualified. Mike makes a bet with Gary, with the loser having to do the winner's paperwork and be the winner's butler for a month. To ensure their success, Tylor and Duncan plot to replace MIFT with ringers, but the ringers quit, refusing to play for a captain who betrays his friends, leaving Tylor with MIFT. The game ends in a tie, meaning that while Mike doesn't have to do Gary's paperwork or be his butler, he does have to have dinner for two at Harryhausen's with Gary instead of Celia.
• The Mr. Men Show: The episode "Games" had a segment where Mr. Grumpy and Mr. Stubborn went bowling.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Cutie Mark Crusaders attempt to get bowling cutie marks at the start of "The Cutie Pox". Their success ranges from gutterballs to everyone ducking for cover with ricocheting balls flying about. Walter, The Dude, and Jesus Quintana have cameos as background ponies.
• The New Woody Woodpecker Show: In "Pinheads", Woody's car breaks down near a used car dealership that's right next door to a bowling alley. Woody needs $500.00 to buy a new car, and when he finds out that the grand prize for beating the bowling champion, Buzz Buzzard, is $500.00, he enters the contest, using his old car as the entry fee. Buzz manages to win the bowling game through many dirty tricks, but when Woody finds out that Buzz is a wanted criminal, he reports him to the police. Buzz gets arrested for parking in a red zone (as Woody left his old car there), and Woody uses the reward money to buy a new car.
• Popeye: "Strikes, Spares 'N' Spinach" (1960) had Brutus trying to sabotage Popeye and Olive's bowling date.
• Regular Show: "Skips Strikes". In typical fashion, the game's stakes are taken ridiculously high thanks to Rigby betting the team's souls in a bowling match against Death and his accomplices. All for a soul-filled bowling ball to rub in people's faces. Everyone gets a chance to beat on him for it.
• Rocko's Modern Life has the episode "Gutter Balls", in which Ed Bighead invites Rocko and his pals to a bowling tournament in order to win the trophy he missed his chance of earning after an unfortunate incident in his last tournament long ago.
• The Roman Holidays had an episode where Gus was torn between bowling in a tournament and attending his daughter Precocia's recital.
• In the Rugrats (1991) episode, "King Ten Pin", Grandpa Lou enters a bowling championship and competes against Billy "Strike" Maxwell, who beat him in a game fifteen years before the episode's events. When the babies wander off to look for a "Champion Chip", which they believe is a giant chocolate chip cookie, they inadvertently expose Maxwell as a cheater.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Life on the Fast Lane", Homer gets Marge a bowling ball with his name engraved in it for her birthday. Marge decides to take up bowling lessons out of spite, and encounters Jacques, a French bowler who tries to seduce her.
  • Show Within a Show example; In "Brother From the Same Planet", the episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show that Homer and Pepi watch, entitled "Kitty-Kitty Bang-Bang" involves Itchy and Scratchy at the bowling alley. Itchy jams Scratchy's tongue in the ball return, then lights a bomb and bowls with it, making a strike. Scratchy tries desperately to saw off his tongue before the bomb can get to him, but the bomb makes it to him and explodes, leaving only his internal organs, which Itchy sells to hungry dogs at the snack bar.
  • In a flashback scene in "And Maggie Makes Three", Homer finally makes enough money to pay off his bills, so he quits his job at the Nuclear Power Plant to pursue his dream job at Barney's Bowlarama. When Marge becomes pregnant with Maggie, Homer is forced to give up his dream job and get his old job back to support Maggie.
  • In "Team Homer", Homer gets an anesthetized Mr. Burns to sign a $500.00 check so he can register a bowling team with Apu, Moe, and Otto, called the "Pin Pals". When Burns recovers from his stupor and discovers the check he wrote to Homer, he replaces Otto in the team as revenge, but since Burns is a horrible bowler, the team is convinced they will lose the championship.
  • At the beginning of "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder", Lenny and Carl invite Homer to go bowling with them. Homer bowls a 300 game, and briefly becomes a celebrity, letting the fame go to his head. At the end of the episode, Homer treats Maggie to a game of bowling, and she nearly scored a 300 game if she hadn't stepped over the line.
  • In "He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs" (the first episode after the movie), a life coach played by Stephen Colbert notes that Homer is more confident while he's bowling than he is doing anything else, and advises him to wear his bowling shoes everywhere he goes. This results in Homer getting plenty of job offers, including one where he can fly in a company plane, which is Homer's passion of the week.
  • In "Singin' in the Lane", Homer reunites his old bowling team, the Pin Pals, in an attempt to cheer up a depressed Moe, only to end up in a fierce competition with a team of arrogant millionaires.
• In the Sonic Boom episode, "Lightning Bowler Society", after 80 consecutive defeats from Team Sonic, the Lightning Bolt Society takes up bowling, and competes against Team Sonic, who become the "Pin Dashers". After beating the Pin Dashers in a game, the Lightning Bolt Society become instant celebrities.
• Taz-Mania: In "Yet Another Road to Taz-Mania", Taz is stuck on a road trip with Hugh and Uncle Drew. This time, they are going bowling, and the spies are after their new bowling ball.
• Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales: Tennessee and Jerboa Jump compete against each other in a bowling match. Jerboa's tricks include making Tennessee think he needs glasses (leading to Mr. Whoopee explaining how the eye functions) and giving Tennessee a lopsided football-shaped ball. Neither ploy works, leading to a rare victory for Tennessee.
• Tom and Jerry had two bowling episodes. "Bowling Alley Cat" (1942 theatrical cartoon) was a standard T&J confrontation in a bowling alley, while "Super Bowler" (1975 made for TV episode) had the two competing against each other in a tournament (some of Tom's bowling movements were rotoscoped from "Bowling Alley Cat").
• The X's: "Pinheads" involves the X's going bowling, and later competing in a match against S.N.A.F.U.

Real Life

• According to legend, Sir Francis Drake was bowling when word arrived that the Spanish Armada had been sighted in the Channel. He chose to finish the game before going out to sea (interpreted as either a Stiff Upper Lip or his knowing that the tides would prevent him from leaving anyway) and soundly defeating the Spanish.

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