Drinking Contest

"I shall win. You haven't the liver or the stomach of a first-rate winebibber!"

— Duke of Clarence, Tower of London (1939 version)

A competition to see who can hold his liquor better. In its simplest form, participants drink equal amounts simultaneously and whoever quits, vomits or passes out first, loses. Variants may involve periodic tests of skill, often with the loser obliged to perform some humiliating forfeit.

Distinct from Drinking Game, in two ways. One, many Drinking Games are like closet dramas, never meant to be performed; a Drinking Contest exists only in performance. Two, a Drinking Game has as its object getting drunk, and is noncompetitive or only nominally competitive; a Drinking Contest has as its object not getting (as) drunk (as the other guy) and always has a winner and a loser.

A Drinking Contest is typically dreaded by a character who Can't Hold His Liquor, and may be subject to exploitation by one who Never Gets Drunk. Compare Eating Contest.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Ah! My Goddess, Belldandy ends up in one with either Chihiro (in the manga) or Sayoko (in the Flights Of Fancy TV series), and doesn't so much as burp (which could be somewhat justified — she's based on a goddess from the mythology of the ancient Norsemen, who were infamous for their drink). It's not until after, when Keiichi gives her a can of cola to wash away the taste, does Intoxication Ensue.
• Black Lagoon: In the very first episode, Revy taunts Rock about his choice of drink, which leads to a drink-off between the two as Rock reveals that he's had to drink a lot at company get-togethers.
• Classi9: This is apparently a recurring occurrence in Class S-, Mozart tries to outdrink Tchaiko, but it never works. Haydn also wants to compete against Tchaikovsky when he is old enough.
• Drifting Dragons: Vannie challenges a man at a tavern who won't take no for an answer to a drinking contest, with the loser to buy everyone present drinks. She wins.
• Girls und Panzer das Finale has an underaged variation. Instead of alcohol, two high-school aged students trade shots of habanero hot sauce until one can't take the heat any more.
• Haruka Nogizaka's Secret: The male protagonist's elder sister and his homeroom teacher are fond of these.
• In Maison Ikkoku, Mrs. Ichinose intentionally threw a drinking contest in her youth to get her husband to marry her.
• One Piece:
  • In Whiskey Peak, Zoro and Nami give up after consecutively beating 13, or 15, respectively, opponents. And even then they're faking.
  • Nami is a self-proclaimed expert at this tactic, using it on pirates she intends to rob.
• The reader's first sight of Sakyon in Ōoku: The Inner Chambers is him winning a drinking contest with some luckless woman with a crush on him. It seems he makes a fair bit of money doing this.
• Done fairly early on in Saiyuki, when a tavern keeper trying to avoid a brawl gets the protagonists to do this instead. Among other things, it turns out that Sanzo's even more homicidal when he's drunk and that Hakkai does not get drunk, period.
• In his first appearance on Tekkaman Blade O'Toole goads D-Boy into a drinking contest, with the loser having to follow the winner's orders. The Irishman wins since D-Boy seems never to have drunk before and quickly passes out.
• In one Tenchi Muyo! manga story, Ryoko is set up to participate in one of these, but Tsunami takes away her alien resistance to this because of her glutinous love for sake is breaking the family finances. Ryoko’s able to win, Tsunami restores her resistance… and Ryoko learned nothing.

Audio Plays

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventure Doctor Who and the Pirates, the Sixth Doctor gets into a drinking contest with Red Jasper's first mate Mr Merryweather before tricking him into walking the plank.

Comic Books

• The Incredible Hercules:
  • In Hercules: Fall of an Avenger, during Hercules' funeral/wake, Thor relates a tale about how Hercules, to prevent the Frost Giants from assaulting the Olympians, challenged Thor's usual foes to a drinking match. Thor joined in, the two heroes won, and the images (both of the flashback and Thor's very pleased look in the retelling) strongly implied that Herc and Thor both parlayed their success in drinking with some pleasurable time with large, shapely Frost Giant females.
  • Hercules actually challenged Galactus, devourer of worlds, to a drinking contest. Neither budges, but Galactus is amused enough to spare Hercules.
• Suske en Wiske: In Suske en Wiske - De stoute steenezel, Lambik wins one against the alcohol devil, by having Jerom getting him a vat of alcohol-free beer and the strongest beer he could find for the devil.
• Wolverine: Wolverine often takes advantage of his healing factor to coax money out of suckers this way.

Comic Strips

• The Far Side parodies this with a coffee drinking contest in the Old West.
• A week of Dilbert comics focused on Alice meeting with an outside vendor to discuss his company's product, which (the Pointy-Haired Boss actually called it) apparently has this between "professional" and "dating".
  Alice: This is strictly business, right? We're going to talk about your company's product.
  Vendor: I'll bet I can chug more Chardonnay than you can.
  [Third panel, Alice is cross-eyed and the vendor's combover has sprung loose.]
  Alice: You're a hanshum man and so ish your twin bruver.

Fan Works

• One of these happened offscreen in chapter three of Bait and Switch (STO). A Klingon lieutenant from the USS Bajor was called a traitor by his counterpart from a KDF warship docked at Deep Space 9, and they decided to settle it with a drinking contest instead of bat'leths. They both passed out after four shots of Romulan ale and had to be dragged home.
• Fate of the Clans: Cú Chulainn and Iskandar engaged in one to establish the winner of their scuffle the other night. Iskandar passed out and Cú Chulainn was rendered super drunk. The amount of alcohol both Servants were able to down surprised Mikoto. Izumo was surprised in a different way when he saw Cú Chulainn's bill from the bar...
• In Opening Dangerous Gates, Rangiku has a friendly one with Cana and Bacchus. While she gets drunk, the other two pass out.
• In Bringer of Death a group of fratboys provokes Android 17 and hits on 18 at a club. Instead of killing them, 17 challenges them to this... As in he'd drink as much beer as all of them put together until he or all of them passed out, the loser paying for everyone, fully knowing that Doctor Gero had made him immune to the effects of alcohol. Considering it was the Androids, they still got away easily.
• The Mountain and the Wolf:
  • The Wolf has a great feast given on the eve of leaving Dragonstone for King's Landing, serving booze looted from all over the Warhammer world. At the end of it, the only people left standing are the Wolf (a Chaos champion even bigger than the Mountain)... and Tyrion. This so impresses the Wolf (alongside Tyrion's other feats like unchaining dragons and killing a man with a shield) that the Wolf gives him the rest of the barrels of wine, and from that point on has nothing but respect for him.
  • The Norscans have their own drinking contest later on, and because they're Norscans they of course add Macho Masochism to it. Every man gets a cup of a concoction so horrible it has to be diluted three times before it stops dissolving the containers, and the goal is less to drink a lot of it than keeping it down (considering that it melted one man's jaw...). The Wolf reveals it contains apples (well, mainly apples) and troll bile.
• In Torque (Jak and Daxter), at some point Keira tried to out drink Sig with the expected results. She wants a rematch.

Film — Live-Action

• In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marian's introduction comes as she is winning a drinking contest. Later, she attempts to use this skill to get her captor, Belloq, drunk, and escape. Unfortunately, Belloq was much better at holding his liquor than she was prepared for, apparently having grown up on a vineyard.
• Tower of London interprets Clarence's legendary drowning (in a pipe of wine) as being inflicted on him during a drinking contest he had, indeed, been winning.
• The Frat contest in Revenge of the Nerds had one event that was a tricycle race, but participants had to drink a beer every lap (the race was 20 laps).
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Legolas and Gimli have a last-man-standing-wins drinking contest. By the end of the night, Gimli passes out on the floor while Leglolas is left perfectly sober except for a "slight tingling" in his fingers. However, if one looks closely it appears that Gimli has drunk quite a bit more than Legolas, making it an uneven contest.
  • Note that according to Tolkien, elves are supposed to be completely unaffected by alcohol. So Legolas having any symptoms at all is actually a pretty big deal.
  • Odd, given that in The Hobbit, the good guys manage to escape from Thranduil's halls when the elves that were supposed to be watching the cellar get drunk and pass out. The wines of Dorwinion are strong, indeed. The fact that they were drinking wines that were supposed to be drunk in small bowls, and diluted with water, by the flagon probably contributed.
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert has a drinking contest between a Drag Queen played by Terence Stamp, and a local Broken Hill woman. Stamp wins.
• The western My Name Is Nobody featured an unusual drinking contest. A participant had to drink four progressively smaller glasses of whiskey. After he finishes each drink, he has to toss the glass over his shoulder, draw, turn and shoot the glass before it hits the ground.
• Thor and Selvig go at it not so subtly. It begins with the two of them drinking their boilermaker before eyeing each other and each really chugs down their beer. Naturally Thor wins, though Selvig "makes his ancestors proud".
• In Don Camillo in Moscow mayor Peppone engages in one of those with a Soviet official to stall for time so don Camillo can get back to the hotel before the Russians discover that he is missing. When don Camillo finally gets back he is shocked to find out that Peppone is stone cold drunk but actually won the contest against a Russian.
• Winning a beer-drinking contest is the main plot point of Beerfest.
• In Leprechaun 2, Morty challenges the evil leprechaun to a drinking contest and beats him by cheating: while he served the leprechaun beer, he was drinking soda.
• Rasputin the Mad Monk: How Rasputin and Boris meet, when Rasputin drinks Boris under the table and then carries him back to Boris's apartment. It's not altruistic, as Rasputin proceeds to take the apartment over.
• The Wedding Year: Because they can't afford to travel to fifteen weddings in one year, Mara and Jake get into a drinking contest for each wedding that only one of them wants to attend, passing out at least once in the process. They ultimately narrow it down to seven weddings.

Literature

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy features the "periodic test of skill" variant, with the skill being psychokinesis. The rules: Use your Psychokinetic powers to tip the bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit into your opponent's glass, which they then have to drink. The trick is that Ol' Janx Spirit suppresses telekinetic powers, so once you start losing, you tend to keep losing. The other trick is that the loser's forfeit is implied to be sexual in nature. The combo of alcohol and sex is why Ford Prefect always plays to lose.
• The light novel spin-off material of Devil May Cry has a vodka drinking contest between Dante and Gilver, which Dante wins. The Bobby's Cellar bar also has a rule which involves the loser (the one who passes out first) paying the drinks.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Greatjon Umber takes on three of the Freys at Edmure Tully's wedding. He drinks all three under the table. It's a ruse to get him too drunk to fight as Robb Stark's party is ambushed and slaughtered. Even handicapped, he still proves to be a One-Man Army.
• In The Stormlight Archive, we learn that the traditional form of dueling among Horneaters, referred to as an alil'tiki'i duel, is to see who can still sing coherently after drinking the most mugs of beer. The hope is that everybody gets so drunk they forget what they were fighting about.
• Redwall features one in Lord Brocktree, where a young haremaid goes up against the Scottish-accented mountain hare King Bucko Bigbones twice her size. She wins by virtue of taking a dainty sip for every three huge gulps he takes of strong cider, leaving her the winner by default (Bucko was used to large, brawny opponents who also thought the winner was determined by volume).
• Egil's Saga: When Egil and his companions lodge at Armod's farm, the drinking turns into a drinking contest, fueled by Armod's and Egil's passive-aggressive hostility towards each other.
  The drinking soon became on man one horn, the horn to be drained at each toast. [...] At every cup that Armod drained he said, "I drink to you, Egil," and the men of the house drank to Egil's companions, using the same formula.
• The third Gotrek & Felix novel has Gotrek enter one with a fellow Slayer. They both order ten pints of beer, and compete to see who can drink them all in the shortest amount of time. The loser has to pick up the tab.

Live-Action TV

• In the 30 Rock episode, "Sandwich Day", the cast takes on the Teamsters in a drinking contest, but for various reasons, each character has a reason not to participate, such as Tracy's alcohol monitor and Kenneth's religious beliefs, leaving Jena as the only one taking them on, shot-for-shot. Just when thinks look bleak, one by one the other characters' reasons for not drinking fade away.
  Kenneth: Alcohol? This smells just like Hill People Milk. I've been drinking this since I was a baby!
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "By Any Other Name". Scotty has a Drinking Contest with one of the alien Kelvans who have taken over the Enterprise (though the Kelvan doesn't realize what's going on). When the Kelvan passes out Scotty gets his device and tries to take it to Captain Kirk, but passes out himself before he can do so.
• In Heroes Nathan and Claire were trapped in Mexico. Nathan tried to use a Drinking Contest to win some cash with which to get home, but lost. Claire stepped up and won however, due to her Healing Factor making it impossible for her to get drunk.
• Another example of a rigged drinking contest was in Earth: Final Conflict. Boone used one of these to challenge a local into revealing some information. When Lili started arguing with him about it later, he revealed his alien implant made it impossible for him to get drunk.
• In Blackadder II, the episode "Beer" features Edmund Blackadder trying to simultaneously have a quiet dinner with his fanatically religious relatives in one room, and have a bawdy drinking contest with some friends in the next room down the hall. Edmund is notorious for being a complete lightweight when it comes to drinking which leads to him doing everything he can to avoid actually taking a sip lest his relatives find out what's going on.
• Red Dwarf: Lister has a drinking contest with his alternate universe female self, which leads to them sleeping together and him getting pregnant.
• Arrested Development: Lucille Bluth plays a drinking contest against Kitty to win George Sr. back. She begins the drinking contest by grabbing a drink from a passing waiter, downing it in one go, and saying "That one didn't count." The entire time, she's sipping a glass of wine between turns, and she still manages to drink Kitty under the table. She gets a standing ovation for her one-liner at the end:
  Waiter: Can I get you anything else, ma'am?
  Lucille: No, thanks. I have to get back to rehab.
• Will Smith challenged another guy to a drinking contest in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He lost badly.
• On Parks and Recreation, when Leslie needs to get rid of Tammy One, Ron's evil, controlling ex-wife, she enlists Tammy Zero, Ron's mother. Tammy Zero challenges Tammy One to an old-fashioned prairie drink-off, the drink being a jug of moonshine whose only legal use is stripping paint off of speedboats. Leslie joins the drink-off too, but can't keep up. April tries to tag in for her, but takes one sip and spits it across the table before collapsing in a heap, shivering. All seems lost until Ron steps up and drinks half the jug in one gulp.
• In WKRP in Cincinnati, as a public service segment against drunk driving, the station had Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap take 1 drink every 15 minutes, on the air, as a police officer measured their reflexes. Venus reacted as expected. His reflexes became slower and his behaviour more intoxicated. Johnny, on the other hand, got faster reflexes as he drank more.
• Smallville: Lois Lane was expelled from Metropolis University for entering one of those.
• Supernatural: In one episode, Ellen and Castiel engage in a drinking contest the night before they are to confront Lucifer. Castiel is at an advantage since as an angel he has an exceptionally high tolerance.
• Monk and Sharona entered a drinking contest against two frat boys and won. Monk didn't drink at all.
• In X-Play, a series of skits centering around "Johnny Extreme" trying to make a game called "Johnny's Extreme Adventure" (tagline: "It'll punch your balls off!"), the P.R. people seem not to like it and propose some alternatives he doesn't like. Johnny Extreme suggests they settle this with a contest and takes out a bottle. The man at hand relaxes, smooths out his shirt and assures Johnny Extreme he was a recognized face in drinking contests in his college days. Johnny Extreme takes the bottle and smashes it against his own groin. First round... they decide to go with his plan, same as he suggested.

Music

• "Banned from Argo": The ship's engineer and navigator take part in such a contest during shore leave. The engineer manages to drink Space Marines and construction laborers under the table; the navigator puts up a good show, but ultimately winds up in a drunken bender that ends with the ship's shuttle parked on top of the city hall.
  ''Our Engineer would yield to none at putting down the brew;
  He outdrank seven Space Marines and a demolition crew.
  The Navigator didn't win, but he outdrank almost all,
  And now they've got a shuttlecraft on the roof of City Hall!

Pinball

• Lexy Lightspeed - Escape from Earth: One mode has Lexy compete with Little Larry to see who can drink the most mugs of beer. Successfully downing enough drinks enables "Seeing Double", which doubles all Secret Agent bonuses.

Print Media

• Modern Drunkard Magazine had a series in which prominent historical drunks were pitted against each other in an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny drinking tournament. (It can be read starting here.)

Puppet Shows

• The Funday Pawpet Show celebrated its 21st episode with a contest based on a WKRP episode...each cast member took a shot of Rumplemintz every half hour of the four hour program. It should be noted that all surrendered their keys and spent the night in the studio afterward.
• In Avenue Q, the Bad Idea Bears suggest Kate and Princeton play a drinking game called "I Bet I Can Drink Faster Than You!"

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • When the God-Emperor of Mankind came to Fenris to collect the lost primarch Leman Russ to lead the Space Wolves, Russ refused to pay homage until this stranger had bested him in a series of trials. First there was an eating contest, and then a drinking contest, both of which Russ won (This is pretty much the only time that Imperial dogma will admit to the Emperor losing at anything). But the Emperor rebuked him by calling the primarch nothing but a glutton and a drunkard, which led to the third contest: physical strength. One blow from a Power Fist later and Leman Russ was out cold, and the next day he laughingly agreed to follow the Emperor's command, all the while claiming that his headache was due to his hangover.
  • The Space Wolves are often known to participate in these as a result of that meeting. Of course, given the accelerated metabolism of the average Space Marine, the victory criteria is reversed: The winner is the person who can drink enough alcohol fast enough to get drunk. The quantities involved are usually sufficient to kill groups of standard humans outright (assuming the ingredients, rumored to contain jet fuel, among others, don't).
• One mechanic in Red Dragon Inn is a drinking contest between the players. Each player draws a card from the "Drink" pile, and the person with the highest alcohol content (without passing out) wins.
• The Dark Eye has the basic skill Boozing, which determines the ability of a character to consume large amounts of alcohol or drugs without negative side effects. Its most common use is competitive rolls in drinking contests.

Video Games

• In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, one of the things Guybrush has to do is to win one of these, and he does it by switching grog for near-grog, which doesn't have any alcohol.
• Usually in any fantasy RPG Game featuring Dwarves.
  • Baldurs Gate 3: In Act 2 there's a bar you can go into where the bartender, a horrifically obese undead tiefling, challenges you to a drinking contest. Unlike many examples of this trope, it's not necessary to actually out-drink him, as the player character is free to use trickery to dispose of their drink instead of actually drinking it if they can make the appropriate skill check. Succeed enough times and your opponent will drink himself to the point that his belly splits open, killing him and letting you avoid having to actually fight him.
  • The Witcher has these frequently. The twist is, each opponent has a set number of drinks he can handle, whereas Geralt is affected by the drinks' potency. Thus, it's wise to stock up on beer, the weakest drink in the game, before trying your luck (and to have a dose of Wives' Tears potion handy to clear your head afterwards).
  • In Icewind Dale 2 you can have a drinking game with a human barbarian during act 1 to win his wolf's head totem, but he won't compete with a dwarf so you have to use a non-dwarven player character to duel him.
• Chrono Trigger has two of these, censored to soda and soup respectively in the original SNES release. One is a side game in the Millennial Fair, where Crono simply has to drink as much as he can in an effort to win some Silver Points, while the other is plot-related, when he has to out-drink Ayla to win the Dreamstone. For the latter the game will take pity on you if you fail enough times; Ayla gets so hammered that she passes out, and gives you the Dreamstone because, hey, you drank as much as she did and you stayed conscious.
• In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, one of the missions in the Outback involves a lemonade-drinking contest^note Actual drinking contest competitors will note that this is a much greater challenge than alcohol between Sly, Murray and Bentley and the miners they're battling, After you win, it leads to a bar fight because "that turtle spilled more than he drank!"
• Temple of Elemental Evil has one in the Homlet Tavern, winning allows you to loot the KOed losers for some starting equipment. Any party member (even if they aren't the Paladin) participating when a Paladin is in the party makes them fall.
• One of the adventures in Kingdom of Loathing is a drinking game. You can win by out-drinking your contestants, cheating, or teleporting your drinks into your opponents' stomachs.
• The New Years Festival in Harvest Moon 64 is a drinking competition featuring most of the adult NPCs in the game. You get affection boosts when you out-drink each character. Most characters only drink once, but Kai and Karen (both of who live on the local vineyard) drink over four toasts each. Kai and Karen get large affection boosts if you beat them.
• Coffee Crisis ends each stage with the players, Nick and Ashley, going on a coffee drinking contest after spending the previous stage beating up hordes and hordes of aliens.
• You have to win one against the Abbott in Conquests of the Longbow, and you can only out-drink him with the aid of magic. Those are some hard-drinking monks.
• Sunset Over Imdahl deconstructs this. Even if the Kid Hero wins the contest, his light body weight causes him to pass out just outside the inn, and his winnings are stolen.
• In Gothic II, a character holds a drinking contest in a wilderness tavern. It is rigged; but nothing prevents you from rigging it another way!
• A variant with a Masochist's Meal is in Jade Empire. The Lethal Chef asks your character if s/he can stand up to three of their most revolting dishes. The reward (a boost to your persuasion skills) is pretty nice.
• One minigame in Ephemeral Fantasia is a drinking contest. The key to winning is to mix the drinks the player drinks to be as low-proof as possible, while mixing the opponent's drinks to be as powerful as possible.
• Recruiting Cass in Fallout: New Vegas normally requires a Speech check to convince her to sell her caravan, but if your Barter skill is high enough you can settle the matter with a dozen bottles of whiskey. This actually boasts the most dialogue options and voice acting for a single conversation in the entire game, given that Cass' reactions and your responses depend on your Endurance score.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • In the Citadel DLC, your shore leave meeting with Ashley Williams involves a drinking contest with her. Sadly, very little about the situation changes if you're in a romance with her.
  • Another one comes the morning after the party, where some of the crew want to take the (badly hungover) Joker to a shooting range so he can practice marksmanship. Joker agrees only if someone can beat him in a drinking contest involving his own homemade concoction, which he describes as "three parts horse choker, one part mouthwash". Cortez only manages two swallows before giving up and poetically compares it to a goat's ass.
• In Quest for Infamy, Roehm must win one of these to able to start on the Brigand quest-line.
• The start of a quest in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim involves you taking on a stranger in a drinking contest. You end up passing out and doing some crazy stuff offscreen, setting up the rest of the plot. The "stranger" is actually Sanguine, Daedric Lord of debauchery; completing the quest impresses him enough to award you his artifact.
• Octopath Traveler has one between the four male heroes as part of the party banter. Olberic is described as a "bottomless barrel" and mentions having only lost a drinking contest once before in his life, to his rival/old friend Erhardt. Alfyn mentions being the drinking contest champion of the town he lived in. Eventually, the match ends in a tie between the two of them as they get kicked out of the tavern.
• In the intermission chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, a girl's night out drinking competition results in an alcoholic showdown between a Lady of War, a Ninja Maid, a vampire sorceress, a diplomat, a nurse, two professional adventurers... and the former head of the school gardening club. When the contest is ended due to the bar running out of liquor, the last three ladies standing are Aurelia (the Lady of War), Sharon (the Ninja Maid), and Edel (the gardener).
• Return to Zork has you compete in an informal one with Boos Myller. Your character is enough of a lightweight that one glass of rye will knock them out, so you have to dump the glass into a plant before you "drink" it. Do this four times, and Boos will pass out, allowing you to loot his shack.
  "Want some rye? 'Course you do!"

Webcomics

• In this Girls with Slingshots strip, "...just one drink..." turns into an impromptu drinking contest and the prize.... a free beer.
• In Swords and Sausages, this is how the important matter of who gets to buy an axe is settled.
• In Kill Six Billion Demons, the devil Vladok offers to take Allison where she wants to go if she can win a drinking contest. It's also a Musical Episode featuring a devilish drinking song, as devils apparently start singing whenever they engage in a competition, and their magic compels anyone participating to sing as well. Cio gives Allison a magic doll to help her cheat, but she wins without it. Never try to outdrink a career sorority girl with low self-esteem.
• In the QuestDen quest Salikai, Sisirri finds herself in an impromptu high-stakes contest when Fleshweaver Voidsong attempts to mind-control her. Since the mental connection requires compatible states of mind, Sisirri consumes mind-altering substances in an attempt to sever the connection. However Voidsong also drugs herself to keep up, until Sisirri drinks Voidsong under the table.

Western Animation

• Family Guy:
  • It's how Peter convinces his real Irish father that he's his son.
  • Ulysses S. Griffin won the The American Civil War by beating Robert E. Lee in a drinking contest.
• Futurama^note Early in the series, Bender notes that robots run on alcohol — so for them, it would also be an eating contest.:
  • It is mentioned that Bender and the ship's auto pilot engaged in a martini drinking contest.
  • Bender claims that the (probably) fictional robot holiday of "Robanzaa" takes the form of a drinking contest.
• An episode of Codename: Kids Next Door has Numbah Five challenging Stickybeard to a sugar drinking contest in exchange for information ("Unless you're...sugar-free!" "Oooooh!"). They compete to see who can drink theirs fastest, but Numbah Five finishes hers in the time it takes him to blink. Later, she challenges Black John Licorice to a contest to see who can drink the most, but John outmatches her easily. However, the contest was only a stalling tactic to wait until the sun came up, causing John's curse to take effect and turn him into black licorice.
• The Camp Lazlo episode, "Hold It Lazlo" begins with Lazlo and Edward in a lemonade-drinking contest. Lazlo wins the contest, much to the annoyance of Edward, whose four older brothers won the contests from years past. To get revenge on him, Edward attempts to sabotage every chance for Lazlo to use the bathroom, since Lazlo now desperately needs to use it after drinking so much lemonade.
• Hailey's On It!: In “Kristine-ceañera” Scott challenges Kristine’s father to a hot sauce-drinking contest in order to prove he’s worthy of dating Kristine. An annoyed Kristine interrupts the contest by downing her father’s hottest sauce, thus making it clear that who she dates is her choice, not anyone else’s.
• In The Simpsons, organized sports tend to have at least an element of this.
  Umpire: Let's go over the ground rules: You can't leave first until you chug a beer. Any man scoring has to chug a beer. Chug a beer at the top of all odd-numbered innings, and the fourth inning is the beer inning.
  Chief Wiggum: Hey! We know how to play softball.
  • Discussed in "Bart Gets an Elephant," when Homer can't join Lisa at a jazz festival because he's participating in a beer drinking contest.
  Bart: Think you'll win?
  Homer: Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get.
  • Implied in "Make Room for Lisa." The morning after ditching work to attend a radio promotion at a bar, Homer is woken up by Marge. The camera pulls out reveal that Homer had apparently passed out while getting out of his car; which is parked in the street in front of the Simpson house blocking both lanes of traffic. He becomes slightly indignant when Marge points out the situation he's found himself in:
  Marge: Wake up, Homer! Come on, move your butt, you're blocking traffic!
  Homer: [holding up a trophy] That's no way to address "Sir Drinks-a-Lot."

Real Life

• At one time a Russian agent was ordered to challenge a Turkish official to a drinking contest in order to get information out of him when drunk. Despite the fact that the Russian knew his employers were unforgiving, it was the Turk that won and got information out of him. This was kind of an alcoholic Duel to the Death. Drinking the enemy to honesty was a favorite Soviet spy technique, but Turks, growing up with legendary Gargle Blaster Raki, nicknamed Lion's Milk, had the Russian babbling like an idiot in no time.
• Studentenverbindungen practice beer, wine or schnapps duels, which are highly ritualistic versions of this trope. Being intended to settle minor matters of honour, they have more in common with Ten Paces and Turn than the average Drinking Game. The goal is generally to finish one's drink first and do so cleanly and completely. Depending on the Comment (read: duel code), both sides can employ the services of an arbiter and seconds. The quality of each others' drinking performance can additionally be reviewed via a traditional Nagelprobe (literally 'fingernail test'') to ensure that no cheating or sloppiness transpired. Naturally, the whole thing is Serious Business.

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