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Everything's Better With Penguins
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alt title(s): Everythings Better With Penguins; Everything Is Better With Penguins 
The second dumbest bird in the world. Can only fly underwater.
Maybe it's because they're birds that, oxymoronically, can't fly. Perhaps it's that they waddle around on two feet and remind people of themselves. It could be that they have no natural fear of humans, and are relatively easy to work with. Or, simply enough, it may just be because they're cute and their name sounds funny. But whatever the reason, penguins are big, and adding them to a movie or show is almost guaranteed to up the ratings and the intake at the box office.
Recently, penguins have experienced a popularity surge due to movies such as March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, Surfs Up, and Madagascar. Opinion is divided as to why, but general consensus is that penguins are big money. Penguins are, in fact, the new monkeys.
See also Everythings Better With Monkeys for the simian equivalent, Nobody Here But Us Chickens for the poultry version and Turtle Power for the chelonian alternative.
Wark!
Examples:
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Alternate Reality Games
- Perplex City had a card about calculating a penguin population.
Anime and Manga
- Pen-Pen in Neon Genesis Evangelion is officially an experiment from Misato's old job, which she rescued from the labs to keep him as a pet and as a sort-of cure for her loneliness, but he's really just there to lighten the mood. When he's Put On A Bus, you know things are headed south (metaphorically speaking). Pen-Pen's absence in the Downer Ending of The Movie is quite telling, compared to his brief appearance during the original, relatively upbeat Gainax Ending.
- As a penguin that apparently likes hot springs, Pen-Pen qualifies as the single least screwed-up character in the entire series. And even he has a tragic backstory. What does that tell you?
- Then there's one of the most famous images: just before Second Impact, an army of penguins gather around a mysterious symbol in the ice. The Penguin Army has found its banner. We're so screwed.
- Azumanga Daioh has Sakaki's famous Dream Sequence, featuring Chiyo's "helper", a clumsy, spacey, and honestly rather unsettling penguin. This scene has been used in many an Animated Music Video with different background audio, including one with the "Ironside" segment from Kill Bill.
- Let's not forget Chiyo herself donning a penguin suit during the Culture Festival in episode 16. So, so cute!
- Penguin suit + Chiyo-chan = Awwww! So, so cute! Which is the approximate response of many when they see that suit.
- That same costume appeared in Kaorin's New Year's dream, which, in the anime, came before that Culture Festival. (In the manga, we didn't see her dream.) Whereas Sakaki, in the black bar below the part of the screen where she and Kaorin are riding away on a horse, knocked down the delinquent versions of Yomi, Osaka, and Tomo, Chiyo was simply put into a penguin suit. One wonders if the show is trying to suggest an origin for that idea.
- The manga Tuxedo Gin has the lead reincarnated as a penguin and having to win back the girl with whom he'd fallen in love right before his death.
- Sanami Matoh, of FAKE fame draws herself as a person in a penguin costume◊. Needless to say, she's a bit of a weirdo.
- So does Yellow Tanabe (of Kekkaishi) in the manga outtakes.
- There's a whole penguin motif running through Idolmaster Xenoglossia, and Yayoi wears a giant penguin suit on more than one occasion.
- Penguins were thrown into an episode of Code Geass for no reason other than to show that one of the ruins related to Ragnarok is in Antarctica.
- Let's not forget Milly Ashford in that penguin outfit just a few episodes earlier!
- One of the villains in the Virtual World arc in Yu-Gi-Oh uses a deck based around penguins (and ice). As his original body is gone, he's even taken the form of a giant tuxedo-wearing penguin. His Back Story explains this; he grew up in a less-than-admirable home, and on learning how penguins are excellent parents, he became obsessed with them.
- A... thing that looks like the offspring of a penguin's head and a yin-yang symbol occasionally pops up in the background, and once as the head for a background character, in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and is even given its own credit as "Emperor Penguin" in the opening sequence.
- The manga/anime series Penguin Musume, for obvious reasons. Then again, the series as a whole has a polar animals thing going on with the naming.
- In the Pokemon anime, one of the main characters, Dawn, chose a Piplup, a Pokémon based on a penguin, as her starter. It's also apparently her favourite Pokémon and best battler. Interestingly, the fire starter of that generation is a monkey pokémon, and the grass type is a turtle.
- Oh, and not just her. Her rival Kenny has a Prinplup, the evolved form of her Piplup, and the recurring character Barry has the final evolved form, Empoleon, which appears to be
an emperor crossed with an emperor penguin a PENGUIN MADE OF KNIVES.
- Let's not forget Break, from Transformers: Beast Wars Neo. Yes, a Transformer who turns into a penguin.
- Not very well, though. His toy is the very definition of both "kibble" and "shellformer"...
- After her adoption by fans at large with the disappearance into history of the air conditioner she was created to advertise, Watanabe Yoshimoto's character Ecoko apparently acquired from somewhere a pair of penguin companions. Of course, she herself wears penguin themed clothing.
- There's an episode in Slayers Try where Lina is repeatedly attacked by an army of penguins with guns.
- D.Gray-man has the Millennium Earl... sorry, wrong Penguin.
- And of course, there's Sanrio's own Badtz-Maru.
- The Digimon metaseries has several penguin Mons, although none feature heavily in any of the animes.
- The one that came closest is Daipenmon, who based on the card game, could have appeared in Digimon Frontier. Daipenmon is the fusion of a snowlem and a yeti, and wields two giant popsicles as swords. Its special attacks are "Strawberry death" and "Blue Hawaiian Death".
- In Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple some of the characters are associated with animals. Miu and Shou Kanou are associated with birds due to their fighting styles, Kisara is such an avid cat lover that she adopts cat like moves in her Tae Kwon Do (aka the "Nya Kwon Do"), Ma Renka acts as free spirited and self centered as a cat, and Tirawat Koukin's association with elephants indicates how hard he hits. When Boris first fought Kenichi, he was surprised that the animal that Kenichi resembled was... a little penguin. This was completely at odds with Kenichi's ability to kick ass in the fight.
- During a later rematch, Boris comments that Kenichi has grown, and his growth is metaphorically compared to a Pokemon-style evolution from a small, round penguin into a fierce, plumed Macaroni Penguin.
- An early episode of the Urusei Yatsura anime unleashed a horde of penguins to terrorize the populace in adorably hilarious ways, and ended with a single giant penguin building a nest in Tokyo Tower.
- Princess Tutu has a pianist penguin - although the show's full of anthropomorphized animals, so maybe it doesn't count.
- Princess Tutu Abridged plays with this by turning the aforementioned penguin into a superhero, dubbed 'Piano Penguin Man'. He saves the day in Episode 4.
- Penguin Memories. It's a story about the horrors of the Vietnam War and trying to return to a civilian life while trying to deal with the day-to-day memories of the horrors. And it's starring Mike The Penguin, the 1980's mascot for Suntory Beer. It has to be seen to be believed.
- Penguin Revolution begins each chapter with a drawing of one of the characters and a real breed of penguin. The first of these, featuring Yukari, has her dressed in a penguin costume.
- In Ichigo Mashimaro, one episode has the girls talking about their "dweams". Matsuri's briefly features a penguin (who sort of looks like a penguin from Paper Mario) delivering a letter.
- Nodoka's adorably plump penguin plushie in Saki. It actually turns out to be pretty important
- The penguins love Zoro.
- The Ice Hunter filler arc also has the Doom Penguins, demonic red-eyed penguins with teeth who follow the orders of the Achino family.
Comics
- Justice League Antarctica fought genetically altered killer penguins in their only case ever.
- Batman's villain the Penguin is one of the first that started the whole Penguin-palooza. He is also probably the most popular of all the ridiculous supervillains with ridiculous gimmicks that do not look threatening at all. On Comedy Central, he is the perfect theme to mock politicians like Dick Cheney or even Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
- Tim Burton surrounded the Penguin with penguins. ... Carrying rockets.
- Its also worth to note that, while The Penguin was originally a normal human with a tuxedo, Tim Burton redesigned him to be more avian looking, with a long long and three fingered hands...which places penguins at a creepy level. Afterwards, the creepy penguin-like human design prevailed
- Let's not forget DC antihero Lobo, who often had a crazed, and often oddly cute, squad of murderous penguins following him around.
- Aw, yeah! Tiny Titans features penguins taking over Robin's place as a running gag.
- And Sparky the Penguin in Tom Tomorrow's strip, This Modern World.
- Mind you, rumours claim that Sparky is actually an awk. And, really, who'd possibly believe an awk?
- Noted political cartoonist Pat Oliphant usually has a small penguin named Punk pop up in his works.
- Gary Larson loved to do strips about Penguins in The Far Side
- Opus, the bow-tied, neurotic penguin from Bloom County, Outland, and then a self-titled comic. Of course, there are those rumors that he's really an auk...
- Binkley pointed out that Opus actually looked more like a puffin than a penguin, using a graph to illustrate. Opus responded with a graph that showed how Binkley's head looks like a carrot (it does).
- The Simpsons comic parody of Death Note features Ned Flanders getting pecked to death by penguins.
Commercials
Fan Fiction
- In the Stargate Atlantis fandom, particularly the Slash Fic areas around McKay and/or Sheppard, there was a spat of fiction involving penguins, the characters turning into penguins mostly. Seems to have died down but still brings a smile to many a fen within that part of the fandom.
Film
- One of the earliest examples can be seen in Mary Poppins during the "penguin waiter" segment, when Bert dances with them.
- An earlier (and very funny) example is in the Bette Davis movie The Man Who Came to Dinner, based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
- The recent penguin popularity can be traced back to the release of March of the Penguins in 2005, which was something of an Ensemble Darkhorse in the documentary world, moving from only a few screens to spreading around the country and eventually snagging the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
- There was an article about the 2005 summer blockbuster take, and how it was generally disappointing, except for March of the Penguins (it beat out Revenge of the Sith for pure staying power). Commentary in the article suggested that perhaps Hollywood should learn lessons about what movies they should make, perhaps going away from the standard effects-laden summer fare. However, the article then goes on to say that the lesson to be learned for most studio executives would be "We need more penguin movies."
- Don't forget the parody of the March of the Penguins film, Farce of the Penguins, which even has Samuel L Jackson among the voice cast.
- There was a French-made parody in which, instead of Emperor Penguins, thousands of Emperors Napoleon struggled through the snows of Antarctica, gave each other pebbles, and finally had (off-screen) sex. Glorious.
- It was an ad for Canal+. In full, there was a guy explaining the movie (which he had seen on Canal+) to a girl next to him in line at a cafeteria or something. The joke (yes, I know, Dont Explain The Joke, but this is an exception) is that the word for an Emperor Penguin in French is simply "empereur" (emperor), and the scenes with Napoleon were the girl's mental image.
- Happy Feet used this both in the box office, by combining penguins with dancing and pop music, and in the world of the movie, where the sight of hundreds of penguins dancing in unison inspired people to begin protecting them. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
- Surfs Up rode the same wave (ha ha) with a Mockumentary about surfing penguins, albeit to lesser box-office success than the previous two. It did get an Oscar nomination however.
- Let's not forget Madagascar, where the penguins stole the show to such an extent they later got their own short film.
- And a series, seen below under W Estern Animation. It's what the Kim Possible producers were assigned to after they were headhunted.
- Black and white Ensemble Darkhorses, those penguins. Hell, the movie would have been a lot better if it'd been "The Penguins...With Occasional Scenes Featuring That Idiot Zebra".
- In Australia, Madagascar 2 was promoted with the slogan "37% More Penguins".
- The Simpsons Movie featured Grand Theft Walrus, a game in which a walrus shoots a dancing penguin. The DVD Commentary reveals that this was a specific Take That against the penguin fad.
- Chilly Willy from The Fifties was one of the earliest incarnations of this trope.
- In Batman Returns, the classic supervillain The Penguin (a human) was given a Re Tool of actually having been raised by them, complete with an army of penguins with laser eye sights and back mounted rockets.
- Toy Story 2 features Wheezy, a squeeze toy penguin. He even makes a cameo at the beginning of the Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command movie.
- The first segment of The Three Caballeros, The Cold-Blooded Penguin, is about a penguin named Pablo who wants to move to the Galapagos Islands. A detailed tour of South America's Pacific coast makes up for the fact that Penguins and Antartica aren't the most Latin American things ever.
- Fight Club. See Literature example below.
- The Pebble And The Penguin about a penguin who tries to give his penguin soul-mate an emerald and then gets mixed up in adventures.
- Scamper the Penguin is starts of as an animated version of March Of The Penguins with Adelie penguins and lots more cuteness. Then it becomes a Lighter And Softer version of The Pebble And The Penguin, with same amount of cuteness.
Literature
- Ha-hem. Fight Club. "Slide!"
- H.P. Lovecraft. Giant albino mutant penguins. The horror of which is somewhat mitigated by the fact that he earlier, in the same story, refers to plain old regular penguins as "grotesque".
- This is Lovecraft. Everything is grotesque.
- In The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams, Kate dreams that she's in an attic full of trunks. About one in every ten are full of her memories; the rest contain penguins.
- In the first novel of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Ford turns into a penguin as a result of the Infinite Improbability Drive. He is told to stop it.
- An infinite number of penguins.
- Classic children's literature: Mr. Popper's Penguins
- In John C Wright's The Golden Age, an AI controlling a mansion takes on the form of a penguin in order to fly through the air with the son of the house, and keeps it despite the objection that penguins can't really fly.
- They can if they're wearing jetpacks.
- Patina, a goddess of wisdom on the Discworld (and blatantly ersatz counterpart of Pallas Athena) carries a penguin with her — a side effect of an influential statue of her carved by an incompetent sculptor.
- In Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, this was subverted when Spider kept teleporting around the world to avoid the minions of a bird goddess. When he tried Antarctica, he saw the disturbing sight of thousands of penguins waddling straight at him...
- Tacky The Penguin
- L'Île des Pingouins by Anatole France is a satire of French history, as lived by penguins on a faraway island.
- Andrey Kurkov's satirical novel Death and the Penguin, about a morose Ukrainian journalist and his equally morose pet penguin, which he acquired when the cash-strapped zoo was giving animals away to anyone who could look after them.
- Halliday and Resnick's "Fundamentals of Physics" textbook seems to have an odd preoccupation with penguins in the practice problems.
- So much so that this troper's AP Physics teacher has a penguin in orbit around his ceiling mural of Earth.
Live Action TV
- Frobisher was the talking, shape-shifting companion of the Sixth Doctor in DWM's Doctor Who comic strip for some time. His favorite form was that of a 4-foot-tall penguin. He's also appeared (for want of a better term) in a couple of Big Finish audio dramas.
- Monty Python had a few penguin-related sketches, perhaps most famously the "Penguin on the Television" routine.
- And we cannot forget the giant penguin with electric tentacles from the "Scott of the Sahara" sketch.
- Then, of course, there are Don and Herb from Beakmans World.
- Surprisingly, Power Rangers took until Jungle Fury to give us a Penguin Zord. A Penguin Zord on a hoverboard. Its Super Sentai counterpart, Gekiranger, featured character Michelle Peng, a humanoid penguin associated with the previously-mentioned mecha. She skateboards.
- On April Fools Day 2008 the BBC aired a trailer for their iPlayer service, presented as an actual piece of wildlife documentary footage... displaying flying penguins which emigrated to the rain forest during winter!
- Mr. Flibble has not been mentioned yet. This makes Mr. Flibble very cross.
- During a number on The Muppet Show with scenery intended to evoke Hawaii, some penguins came along and started singing. Let's just say that the singing moai in the background is possibly not the strangest bit.
- And there's an amusing little short in which Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker prove that Penguins love to do the Bunny Hop (with fuzzy pink bunny ears no less!), and the Mambo.
- There's also the theme park attraction Muppetvision 3D, which features the penguin as the orchestra, and they even pull out a cannon near the end.
- In Sesame Street and every Muppet Production adopted the Random Penguins as a homage to Jim Henson, who simple loved throw random penguin everytime.
- 5,Rue Sesame, the French Version of Sesame Street, has a penguin character named Georges
- In one episode of Friends, where Chandler is in bed with Janice who likes to cuddle, he thinks to himself: "Look at all this room on her side of the bed. You could fit a giant penguin in there." And then goes on to add a mental remark: "That would be weird, though."
- Don't forget Huggsy, Joey's bedtime penguin pal, which appeared in a few episodes.
- Tux the Penguin in the TV Movie Re Animated later turned into the show you love to loathe Out of Jimmys Head
- The "Penguin Costume" skit from the MST3K episode "Screaming Skull"
- Blackadder the third had King George, the Prince Regent's father. He sums it up nicely -
King George III: Some people say I'm mad, and say the word "penguin" after each sentence. But I believe that we two can make Britain great, with you as the Prince Regent, and I as King Penguin.
Music
- Satan's Penguins, a black metal band. Covers also show penguins.
- Relient K's first Christmas album, Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand, features a penguin on the cover.◊ The penguin shows up again, randomly, on the cover of a book the band wrote.◊
- Luxemborg's entry in the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest featured backup singers in penguin suits.
- Lyle Lovett has a song entitled "I Go For Penguins", in which he states that he prefers penguins over fancy cars, diamond rings and such because "Penguins are so sensitive/To my needs."
- A music project centered around the animated little penguin Pigloo had several Top 20 dance hits in France, complete with music videos.
- The video clip for Jean Michel Jarre's 1988 Destination Docklands version of Oxygčne 4 shows nothing but penguins waddling on the Antarctic ice.
- GWAR has a song called "Penguin Attack", about penguins 'made of atomic steel' that are attacking Earth.
- Soul singer Rufus Thomas had a minor hit with "Do The Funky Penguin".
- Brad Paisley's Christmas album features "Penguin, James Penguin", who helps Santa Claus find out who's been naughty and nice.
New Media
- The popularity of the Poke the Penguin Flash game can be partly attributed to this.
- And don't forget "Yeti Sports"!
- Club Penguin is Disney's MMORPG for children.
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Runescape had some penguins for years, had a KGB-parody penguin quest ("cold war") when the penguin fad started, and now has a weekly penguin spy spotting minigame and at least one in the circus weekly minigame. Do the "cold war" quest to know which treacherous human helped penguins build the oversized doomsday mechanical penguin of DOOM!!
- Disgaea: Prinnies, dood! They're ridiculously cute exploding murderers (and all other kinds of sinners, really). They're the souls of the damned, working off their sins as combustible stuffed penguin Butt Monkeys. They're even getting their own game, dood!
- World Of Warcraft has mages able to turn people into penguins (Before it was only sheeps, turtles or pigs). That may have something to do with the arctic theme of the second expansion, though.
- Worth noting is that this is done by equipting a minor glyph (depending on level, a character can have up to 3 minor glyphs) that usually give you a small but useful ability. The penguin glyph has no impact on actual combat, and yet is still one of the most sought after glyphs.
- Also, there are two new penguin vanity pets (little critters that follow you around and do nothing but look cute).
- Also worth noting is the (rare) giant penguin known as King Ping.
- Scorpion from Mortal Kombat can transform into a penguin as an animality form. Yes, it makes no sense to us either.
- He was supposedly turning into a scorpion, but since in the game he transforms into penguin there's already another person who can turn into a scorpion (Sheeva)... well yeah. There's no explaining why he became a penguin instead. With explosive eggs for that matter!
- In The Sims 2: Seasons expansion pack, there's an NPC penguin that will occasionally walk by your house during the winter season. If you have a snowman built on your lawn/yard, it will stop by to talk to it. If you pet it it will pee.
- Middle Eastern penguins in Final Fantasy XI, though they also share characteristics of certain cormorants.
- In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, the Little King is followed around by a penguin who often is more snarky than helpful. Still, he's cute.
- In Mega Man Battle Network 6, a penguin from the aquarium escapes and latches on to Mick (who eventually gives in to its cuteness), prompting the visit to that area. One of the sidequests has you find and capture five penguins who escape from the aquarium (and the cry of "Penguin Get" certainly suggests merit in the Inherently Funny Words theory).
- In Super Mario Galaxy, if the galaxy you go to has a water theme, chances are good that it will have penguins lounging in the sun, swimming under water, or surfing the waves using manta rays.
- Its predecessor Super Mario 64 had penguins, of noticeably similar design, in the snow-themed levels.
- And therefore in Sherbet Land in Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, and Shiver City in Paper Mario.
- Heck, in the PC version of Mario Is Missing, if you bother to read the newspaper articles, you will find that they like to run stories on penguins ending up in Michigan or somewhere due to Bowser melting the south pole. It's true.
- New Super Mario Bros Wii introduces the Penguin suit, which allows you to freeze enemies, walk on ice without slipping, slide down slopes and shatter blocks, and swim more efficiently underwater. Given that the other powers only give you one power, and the penguin HAS all the power of the ice flower, it is definite proof that Mario is better when a penguin.
- Age Of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic had the Dire Penguin summon as a joke. These guys have red eyes, a life-stealing attack and their death animation implies they were possesed by a demon. The campaign also has an enemy going insane and ranting about these creatures, among other things.
- Notably, if you find some obscure object (I think it was a magic box?) on that map, it spawns a massive ammount of Dire Penguins all over the place. One or two of these aren't to bad, but they are nasty in large enough groups.
- The first Age of Wonders featured the Dire Penguins as the first-tier special unit for the Frostlings, giving the Frostlings a unique (unless the Lizardmen were around) advantage of having an amphibious unit from the get-go. No life-stealing attack, but the same red eyes and funny sound effects, and the immense strategic and metagame advantage a horde of Dire Penguins could lend on maps with lots of water. Fan outrage at the absence of the penguins from Age of Wonders 2 (which was crap anyhow) was sufficient for the above cameo in Ao W 2: Shadow Magic.
- King Dedede from the Kirby series appears to be a penguin, although is never explicitly stated to be one.
- In War Craft III: The Frozen Throne a hidden section of one mission reveals the King Penguin, an invulnerable creature that gives you a ring of protection +4.
- There is a secret squeaky penguin item that can be obtained in the Orc Campaign.
- In the Bloody Roar franchise, Chronos is supposed to turn into a phoenix, but sometimes turns into a penguin. Incidentally, the penguin is a lot harder to beat.
- There are penguins waddling about the Japanese scenery in Katamari Damacy. (Sure, it doesn't make any sense, but then neither does the rest of the game.)
- Both Little Big Adventure games have clockwork toy penguins used as weapons. In the first game, they simply distract enemies, making it easier to kill / avoid them; in the second game, they explode after a few seconds.
- The boss of Sherbet Land in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 was a penguin. With a spiked hat.
- Animal Crossing has a few penguins at potential residents, but then, you're the only human, so it's not a big shock.
- Feathers McGraw makes his return in Wallace And Gromit in Project Zoo.
- In Terranigma, the far north of restored Earth is inhabited by a colony of apparently sapient, igloo building penguins. "Would you like to buy a flower? Make a girl or a penguin talk!"
- The World Ends With You features penguin-type Noise. They're all named after pop music genres.
- The online game Kingdom Of Loathing has the Penguin Mafia.
- And as of the 2008 Crimbo event, the Penguin Mafia is now in control of Crimbo, thanks to a one-sided deal between Uncle Crimbo and Don Pygoscelis. Oops, I meant Uncle Hobo and Don Crimbo.
- Arcana Heart 2 introduces us with Zenia Valov, whose ice-controlling default Arcana is in form of a giant ***ing penguin.
- The first game by Yuji Naka's Prope can be played by penguins. Allegedly.
- One of the early and notable examples in the history of videogaming is Konami's Antarctic Adventure, which had penguin as protagonist:
- Famicom/NES version (released after Colecovision and MSX versions) was one of the first third-party releases for platform (along with Yie Ar Kung-Fu, also from Konami).
- The game got MSX-only sequel called Penguin Adventure, which is also known for being supposedly the first game Hideo Kojima worked on Konami.
- Also, Konami released Yume Penguin Monogatari for Famicom in 1991, which also featured suspiciously familiar penguin.
- The penguin became eventually sort of mascot for Konami, making various appearances in other games (most notably in Parodius series). The latest appearance is in New International Track & Field for DS.
- Tales of Symphonia has the Penguinist and Penguiner "monsters" which appear to be people in Penguin suits.
- Deus Ex: Invisible War features a level set in JC Denton's Antarctic refuge complete with cute little penguins waddling about. In the final level, on Liberty Island, which has frozen over due to The Collapse one can activate a portal to an extradimensional nightclub, complete with penguins on fire!
- The tactical game Vantage Master 2, where you play a spirit summoner fighting other summoners for artifacts that let you summon new spirits, one particular spirit is Zamilpen, an ancient demon who apparently was trapped in a never-melting shard of ice. He takes the form of a man-sized penguin. With the ability to incapacitate foes by freezing them. Despite his high cost and reduced land speed (as Zamilpen is a water-element spirit, and has half movement on land) usually outweighing his combat value, he is quite popular.
- Magical Battle Arena knows the value of penguins. Why else would it have Card Captor Sakura's main character use The Create to drop mass Penguin Slides on top of her opponents as one of her Supers?
- Zoo Tycoon featured emperor penguins for one of your attractions. Oh, and place an Emperor Penguin in the same pen as a T. Rex, and guess who eats who.
- One of the bosses in Bonesaw: The Game is a giant penguin. That fires sub-zero blasts. And summons snowstorms with occasional hail. And flies.
- Drawn To Life has penguin mooks among its enemies.
- As well as the abovementioned Piplup and its evolutions, Pokemon earlier introduced Delibird, essentially a cross between a penguin and Santa Claus.
- Dawn's, the default protagonist, "default" Pokemon seems to be Piplup.
- And Piplup's highest evolved form is Empoleon, a friggin' emperor penguin with wing blades as sharp as a Scyther's.
- Pengo.
- Attack Of The Mutant Penguins was an awesome game.
- o/~ Pippen, pippen ooooh! o/~
- Endless Ocean features Adelies, Emperors, Gentoos, Rockhoppers, African penguins and Little penguins to be discovered. A few penguins even show up on the deck of the boat and hang out with the protagonist when the hidden credits sequence is triggered.
- Spore has a penguin-like creature called Knot the Grawx.
Web Comics
- Ted the Penguin in Ctrl Alt Del is the pet of Scott, who (not at all coincidentally) is the resident Linux guru.
- Pokey The Penguin follows one, though in the comic the penguin is probably the least bizarre thing.
- ''Comedity',' a comic mostly about the personalities inside the author's head, has a penguin personality.
- Yosh! features Pen-Pen (no relation to the one from Neon Genesis Evangelion - we think), a talking, sociopathic penguin with a Jell-O addiction. He may also be well actually, he is some kind of demon. In a world populated by mages, monsters, ninjae and robot girls, people tend to do a double-take on Pen-Pen, sometimes going so far as to exclaim "A talking penguin? That's impossible!"
- The Peons, being set in Antarctica, is based off of this.
- Osborne in Wally and Osborne (formerly On the Rocks), which lampshades the whole Polar Bears And Penguins trope by teaming him up with a displaced polar bear named Wally.
- Blackbeak, a pirate penguin resistance member in The Wotch.
- Detective Richek in Jack.
- The Day it Snowed features truly adorable sentient penguins, and a penguin GOD.
- They've crossed over to the artist's new comic, Jack Of All Blades — where they've gotten upgraded to ninja penguins.
- Minions At Work: a penguin minion and again!
- Pip the Penguin in Sequential Art
- Nukees: Linus, a small Adelie who helps Gav escape after Teri the Terapet launched him to Antarctica inside the Giant Robot Ant. Shortly after Gav returns to Berzerkeley, Linus shows up riding the Ant, and since then has saved Gav from virtual-Velociraptor induced death more than once. Fittingly, Danny Hu teaches him kernel programming.
- Not in the strip itself, but one of the little notes R.K. Milholland signs off Something Positive with suggested that if one is ever depressed, just Google image search "baby penguins." It works.
- Flaky Pastry mentions a thief who was driven insane by a magical trap such that he now only steals penguins. He briefly appears in a later strip, surrounded by penguins he's stolen, and suggesting to Prism that they go to the zoo together.
- Pengcognito: an entire alternate universe of penguins
Web Original
Western Animation
- Parodied on Frisky Dingo when Killface is running for president and carries around Baby Lamont, a penguin that he saved, for pure publicity's sake
- An episode of The Simpsons had Lisa see a group of penguins flying, until they saw her and landed while looking shifty.
- On another episode, Homer accidentally hijacks a nuclear submarine. When he surfaces, he is held at gunpoint by the navies of several nations, including the "S.S. Antarctica" a battleship crewed by penguins.
- The Futurama episode "The Bird-Bot of Ice-Catraz" had Bender join a penguin colony after whacking his head and being reset on penguin mode. The penguins were actually a major part of the episode's plot, but Bender's antics were purely for comic relief. Leela even describes the penguins as what would happen if "puppies and kittens had babies" and swoons over them. Then at the end of the episode we find out Bender spent a good deal of his time turning them militant and man-eating, with the closing shot showing them discovering guns.
- As the page quote suggests, The Muppet Show was fond of using penguins.
- Wallace And Gromit: The Wrong Trousers actually had a penguin as the villain.
- And the penguin made cameos in several early episodes of ReBoot.
- Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang and Katara go penguin-sledding after they first meet in the premiere. Or rather, otter-penguin sledding: the penguins have mouths and whiskers rather than beaks, as well as four flippers. They're still pretty cute.
- All Grown Up: The final word Susie gets in a Language Bee is "penguin." She gets it right and wins for her team, but not before wondering aloud, "Why would I ever need to say 'penguin' in [the foreign language]?"
- The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy: Grim and Billy seek a Druid's help to battle a Kite-And-Other-Debris-Eating Tree, and he helps them get in touch with nature so they can do it. During the training, the druid helps them acquire a spirit animal. But rather than get something cool and predatory like a grizzly bear, Grim's spirit animal turns out to be a penguin. Well, it matches his round, white head and beady black (lack of) eyes, doesn't it? (And it's also very likely a reference to "Fight Club".)
- There's also the episode where they see the movie Exploding Penguins Three, which, as the title suggests, is "an action-packed documentary about how penguins exploded"!
- Walter Lantz's Chilly Willy.
- Tennessee Tuxedo And His Tales.
- The first Veggie Tales Christmas episode introduced a horde of mute penguins. They weren't seen again, except for a very brief cameo in the song "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" (dressed as a parrot).
- Although different from these penguins stylistically, the creators of Veggie Tales went on to produce another series by the name of 3-2-1 Penguins! And yes, it did have penguins. In Space!
- Two Looney Tunes shorts feature Bugs Bunny and a small penguin. In "Eight-Ball Bunny", Bugs tries to get the penguin to Antarctica where he thinks he belongs. Turns out he's a performing penguin who was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. In the second cartoon, Bugs ends up protecting the penguin from an ill-tempered Eskimo hunter. The same penguin also featured in an episode of Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries.
- King Arthur's Disasters, dancing penguins who protect spell books (which King Arthur needs to reverse a body swap).
- Pablo from The Backyardigans. Heck, he's even the first one to introduce himself at the opening. I know it's spanish, but you get the point.
- In The Critic, Jay sends his parents on a vacation, but due to cheap tickets and protesters at the airport, they end up flying Air Antarctica. Their pilot is a penguin. All goes well until Franklin realizes, to his horror, the "Wait a minute! Penguins can't fly!", whereupon the plane promptly crashes. It probably didn't help that the penguin had been drinking.
- He truly was a horrible pilot, no matter how many stewardesses he bagged...
- The Title Theme Tune for Phineas And Ferb features Phineas conducting Ferb and some musical penguins to play in an orchestra. Even though such has not happened in the show itself.
- In "Bowl-O-Rama Drama", Dr. Doofensmirtz's evil plot involved giant robot penguins equipped with freeze rays.
- As far back as 1929 there is a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Wild Waves, which features penguins dancing on the beach. Does this make the setting South Africa?
- Elvis, from Rocky And The Dodos is a penguin/blue-footed booby hybrid.
- This far into the page and not one person remembers Pingu...
- Pingu, for those of you who are heathens, was a Swiss claymation animated series about the eponymous penguin and his family. The characters spoke in an untranslated honking penguin language, which children picked up on and went on to annoy their parents with.
- In the episode "A Chorus Crime", Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers went Happy Feet long before Happy Feet was even produced.
- The Penguins Of Madagascar, which features the penguins of the Madagascar film series. And an otter. And a platypus.
Real Life
- Penguins exist in Real Life. The world is a better place for it.
- In a newspaper article at around the time of March of the Penguins release the columnist put forth the opinion that penguins were proof of the existence of God, since only a divine being with a sense of humour could create such a wonderful animal. (See also: the platypus.)
- The popular PengWIN video of a very lucky penguin outsmarting a killer whale.
- All hail Sir Nils Olav, Colonel-In-Chief of the Norwegian King's Guard!
- In certain parts of South Africa, penguins will cheerfully go into restaurants... and people's cars.
- In fact, wild penguins live as far north as the Galapagos Islands, which are on the equator.
- Penguins can wander on beaches on the Falkland Islands that humans cannot because of land mines.
- Tux, the mascot of Linux.
- Meet TOFU.
- Apparently, milk is too; because male Emperor Penguins lactate! It is stored in a sack by the esophagus.
- Penguins is a nickname for highschool students in Chile due to their uniform's colors. A protest which was 1 month long and nearly every student in Chile was a part of was called ''The March of the Penguins"
- Sad aversion: recently, lots of penguins have been found dead in the beaches of south Chile... ;-;
- Festo has recently made robotic penguins, some even capable of flight.
- The National Hockey League team, the Pittsburgh Penguins.
- Ecoco, a former Japanese power company mascot, was a young girl in a moe penguin costume. She was pulled from use due to rampant Rule 34
- There is a Japanese megastore company called Don Quijote. Think "Wal Mart as done by the Japanese". It's every milligram as insane as you might expect (there are now branches in Honolulu, Hawaii. They had to tone it down a LOT for their American customers and staff) So you're a Japanese company imitating an American megamart and giving it a Spanish name based on a fictional adventurer. Therefore, it is Japandatory that your mascot is gonna be a blue penguin with the first letter of his company's name (katakana "DO") emblazoned on his belly...and his pink girlfriend with a giant heart on hers.
- Japan stikes again. Five penguins at a zoo in Shimane Prefecture are wishing visitors a flappy Christmas.
- Penguin Books
- Penguin biscuits
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