Drive-In Theater

An iconic image from the drive-in's heyday. The movie is The Ten Commandments (1956).

"If you're going to leave before seeing the next movie, you're stupid!"

— D. Edward Vogel (owner of Baltimore's Bengie's Drive-In, over PA system between films)

The drive-in theater has been a fixture of American culture since The '30s. Every spring and summer night (and all year round in warmer climates), millions of viewers pay the admission fee for themselves and their friends (at least the ones who aren't hiding in the trunk), get some snacks at the concession stand, and watch two (or more) movies projected on an outdoor screen from the privacy and comfort of their cars. Although drive-ins are most popular in the United States, they exist around the world. The drive-in is an enduring symbol of Americana whose continued existence defies some heavy odds.

History

The Beginning

The drive-in theater was created in 1933 by chemical company magnate Richard M. Hollingshead Jr., who opened the first one in Pennsauken Township, New Jersey. It was popular enough that similar theaters began to open around the country. The drive-in became known as a place where a family could enjoy watching movies from the privacy of their car.

The Rise

Drive-ins really took off after World War II; by their peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins all across America. While they continued to show mainstream Hollywood fare for families, they also became popular with teenagers, who would come to see the latest B Movies (which usually dealt with Science Fiction monsters, juvenile delinquents, and early rock & roll). Of course, teens also took advantage of the privacy factor, which made drive-ins notorious as "passion pits" (equivalent to "Netflix and chill" in The New '10s). In the popular imagination, drive-ins are still associated with these tropes derived from the 1950s. However, this heyday couldn't last...

The Fall

Drive-ins gradually declined for a number of reasons. The real estate they sat on became too valuable to "waste" on a business that could operate for only a few hours a day, a few months of the year, and even then was subject to bad weather. The 1970s energy crisis drove up the cost of gas, making outings to drive-ins more expensive, while the subsequent adoption of daylight saving time meant that movies started later in the summer months. Meanwhile, audiences began turning to cable TV and home video for their movie fix, or hitting up the then-new concept of the multiplex theater. Some drive-ins responded by changing their emphasis from family fare to the increasingly violent and sexually explicit exploitation and horror films that were, ironically, the successors to the 1950s B Movies.

A few drive-ins even showed outright pornography. This was often the only choice some of these theatres had to be able to survive, as it was often difficult to get regular "first run" movies from the major studios, often requiring them to wait 4-5 months after a film's initial release. However, this practice of showing soft-core and even hard-core porn where it is publicly visible angered people who lived in the residences near the theatre property, who might not want to have an X-Rated film showing where they - or their kids - could see explicit sex acts being performed (on a 50-foot high screen no less!) A number of drive-in operators were put on trial over the content of the films they showed, and some communities tried to ban showing porn flicks at drive-ins. Until one owner fought back. In the case of Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, the United States Supreme Court struck down an ordinance that tried to ban such films at drive-ins, finding the ban violates the first Amendment as excessively broad.

Another common tactic was for drive-ins to add multiple screens. Some rented their land during the day to other businesses, such as flea markets — or managed such businesses themselves. Especially in urban areas, the vast expanses of land necessary for a drive-in became too expensive to maintain, and the land was sold for redevelopment because it just wasn't financially feasible to keep it open. Therefore, many drive-ins were forced to close between The '70s and the Turn of the Millennium. In many cases, the land was even turned over to build a shiny new multiplex theater. It seemed that the drive-in was headed for extinction — or was it?

The Resurgence

Beginning in The '90s, and continuing thru the Turn of the Millennium and still going strong in The New '10s, drive-ins have enjoyed a revival; a few new theaters have even opened in the last few years. Some of this is due to Baby Boomer nostalgia, although many current drive-in visitors are too young to remember the medium's heyday. Also, a "guerrilla drive-in" movement has developed to show films in parks, parking lots and other open urban spaces. Although it's unlikely that drive-ins will ever again be as numerous as they were during The '50s, it seems that they're here to stay — at least for the foreseeable future.

At the beginning of The New '20s, drive-ins saw a return to popularity for an unexpected reason: as the COVID-19 Pandemic made its way around the world, people realized that drive-ins were a good way to see movies in public while still maintaining physical distancing. As Rick Cohen, owner of the Transit Drive-In Theatre in Lockport, New York, told Variety: “Drive-ins aren’t having a resurgence. Drive-ins have been doing well. It’s a resurgence of the media remembering that drive-ins still exist.” Also, during the 2020 Presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Joe Biden, his running mate Kamala Harris, and Biden's former boss Barack Obama began appearing at drive-ins to have safe political rallies, with the audience staying in their cars and honking their horns instead of applauding.

Business model

During intermissions, drive-ins traditionally show advertisements for the snack bar, as well as public service announcements, ads for local merchants, safety messages and reminders of when the next movie is going to start ("10 minutes to showtime!"). These peppy, often animated ads have a following of their own; many are available on DVD compilations and in the Internet Archive's Moving Image Archive.

Many drive-ins have playgrounds for child patrons to use before the show. Some also have miniature golf courses. The substantial pre-paved space also allows the drive-in lot itself to temporarily double as the local flea market during the day, providing additional revenue.

They've also changed as technology improved. Originally, Drive-ins had physical speakers, attached by wire to a post, which you removed from the post, rolled down your window, placed the speaker inside, then rolled up the window. This often caused people to forget they had the speaker attached, causing them to drive off, usually ripping the speaker off the post and possibly breaking the window.^note Most drive-ins ran a spot before, after, and between the features reminding you that your car was currently attached to a metal pole by a wire and telling you that if you did accidentally rip the speaker loose to bring it by the concession stand, usually in a humorous way trying very hard to imply "Hey, these things happen, we're not gonna be mad." Really, of course, the drive-in just wanted the speaker back ... reattaching it to the post is a lot cheaper than buying a new one. (Some very small ones just had a single, large speaker.) Today, drive ins have low-power broadcast transmitters, that send the audio to your car radio. Some drive-ins even have digital sound (usually the DTS format, since they are the only company that does installations for digital sound in drive-ins). This also means, if the car has good stereo, that the sound can be as good as that in a high-quality walk-in theater. Some drive-ins run AM as well as FM signals for the few people who don't have FM radio. More recently, some locations have begun using apps to stream audio over wi-fi to viewers' smartphones.

Movie-Theater Episode is a related trope.

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Examples

Advertising

• The commercial for Soul Calibur that was part of the Sega Dreamcast's "It's Thinking" ad campaign depicted video game characters at a drive-in, watching trailers for upcoming games. There was also a fan-made commercial for the cancelled Dreamcast port of Half-Life that was merely this same commercial but with Half-Life gameplay and box art sloppily pasted in. View the original ad here, and the Half-Life version here.

Anime & Manga

• In Chapter 156 of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, Rentarou manages to find a drive in theater in Japan for his date with Naddy, a reverse Occidental Otaku who loves American culture.
• In Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Jet and his cop friend, Bob, discuss about the antagonist (Vincent) in a futuristic version of a drive in. Only in this case, the patrons are in their personal mini space ships.

Comedy

• George Carlin, as DJ Weird Willy West, does a plug for the Make-out Drive-In Theater ("No lines, no waiting, there's no movie either, kids!") and the feature running there, Sex Bed Teen Bikini Virgin Surf Beach Ball Bash.
• A Cheech & Chong skit, "Pedro and Man at the Drive-In", has the titular characters sneak a couple of their friends into a drive in theater. Hilarious antics ensue when Man accidentally breaks the key in the trunk's lock and has to go find a crowbar to get them out. And totally forgets.

Comic Books

• An issue of Hsu and Chan had the characters head off to a drive-in and getting caught up in a money making scheme of an old movie anniversary.
• The cover of a 1969 Bugs Bunny comic shows him watching recently introduced Looney Tunes characters Bunny and Claude at a drive-in — not from a car, but from a burrow.
• Night of the Living Dead: Hunger has zombies attacking unsuspecting moviegoers at a rundown drive-in theater.
• Tales Of The Starlight Drive In, an award-winning graphic novel written by Michael Sangiacomo, is an anthology of stories set at a single drive-in over 53 years.
• The Transformers (Marvel): In the first issue, the Autobots go to a drive-in theater during their first night on Earth, thinking that cars and trucks are sentient and that the drive-in is a church of some sort. It takes them a while to realize it's the little fleshy things inside the cars that are the ones watching the movie.

Comic Strips

• Variation: In this Phoebe and Her Unicorn strip, Marigold mentions seeing movies at a "trot-in theater".

Fan Works

• The Midnightverse story Last Date has Dale and Foxglove seeing Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at a drive-in — years before that film was actually released.

Films — Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters has a parody of snack bar advertisements in which friendly, anthropomorphic snack food mascots are replaced by the metal band Mastodon.
• Cars: The characters are watching parodies of other Pixar films at the end of the movie; since they're all vehicles of some sort, of course it's a drive-in theatre.
• Casper's Haunted Christmas begins with the Ghostly Trio wreaking havoc at a drive-in.
• Jetsons: The Movie had Judy and Apollo Blue on a date in a jet-car drive-in theater.

Films — Live-Action

• One of the scenes in Air Buddies has the puppies go to a drive-in theatre and interrupt the showing of 101 Dalmatians. A biker gang is there watching the movie, and when the puppies pass by them... they literally Pet the Dog.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp ends with Scott, Hope, and Cassie apparently at a drive-in, until a wide shot reveals they're shrunk down and sitting in one of Hank's Micro Machines watching Them! on Scott's phone.
• In Back to the Future Part III, Doc Brown has Marty run the DeLorean Time Machine through the grounds of a drive-in to get it up to 88 MPH in order to go back in time, because in the 1880s that area was just sagebrush and empty grassland; when Marty rematerializes he won't end up crashing into a tree or a mountain.
• Blood Rage begins at a drive-in, where the killer (then a young boy) claims his first victim by hacking up a random patron up with an axe that was lying around... for some reason.
• In D.C. Cab, kidnapped Albert gets a message to the other cabbies about where he's being held prisoner: a farmhouse where he can hear airplanes and see a windmill and Bruce Lee. After some false leads, they find him near a drive-in theater that's playing Bruce Lee movies, its big screen being visible from Albert's position.
• In the 1986 Ozploitation Dead End Drive-In, the government decides to handle its delinquent youth problem by locking them in a drive-in theatre where they're pacified with a steady diet of junk food, rock and pop music, and movies.
• The 1976 comedy film Drive-In, about teens having a wild night at a drive-in in Texas.
• There's another DTV slasher film simply called Drive-In, and it's surprisingly decent.
• There's an especially bad slasher film called Drive-In Massacre.
• Explorers has a memorable scene where the home-built spaceship flies slowly across the screen of a drive-in movie theater in the middle of a campy 1950's sci-fi schlockfest. A patron in one of the cars complains that the special effects look fake, thinking it's part of the movie, and claims to be able to see the string. Then the ship turns and zooms right over his head, and he spills his popcorn in shock.
• The 1978 film French Quarter ends by Breaking the Fourth Wall and telling viewers, "Hang up your speakers and drive home safely!"
• In the Mihmiverse, The Giant Spider has a scene at the Phantom Lake Drive-In, with Christopher R. Mihm doing a Creator Cameo as its owner.
• Grease had a couple of scenes at one, including the musical number "Sandy".
• In Heat, Neil McCauley arranges to meet with Roger Van Zant's drop man in an abandoned drive-in. However, an assassin is hiding in the drop man's pickup truck. Chris Shiherlis covers Neil from the roof of the projection building. The two of them take down the assassin (which Neil has difficulty hitting because he's driving over the humps used to angle the cars to the screen). The pickup truck driver tries to flee, but just as he is about to exit, Michael Cheritto shoots him with a shotgun.
• I Am Cuba has a scene in which a drive-in showing pro-Batista propaganda is bombed by anti-Batista radicals.
• The first present-day sequence in Jurassic World Dominion sees Rexy the Tyrannosaurus being pursued into one and causing mayhem.
• Stanley Kubrick's Film of the Book of Lolita has Humbert sitting between Lolita and Mrs. Haze at a drive-in showing the Hammer Film The Curse of Frankenstein. At a shocking moment hands grab other hands, with awkward consequences.
• Midnight Cowboy opens with a shot of the Big Tex Drive-In. It's daytime, so the the place is empty save for a boy riding a plastic horse in the playground area underneath the screen.
• In The Monster Squad, Sean and his dad sit on their roof with a radio and binoculars so they can watch movies showing at a nearby drive-in without having to pay for tickets.
• The killer gets chased to a drive-in by angry bikers in New Year's Evil. He escapes by knifing one of them and hijacking a car.
• In Night of the Lepus, a police officer interrupts the movie at a drive-in to announce: "There is a herd of giant killer bunnies coming this way, and we need your help!" Amazingly, the audience actually takes him seriously.
• Northville Cemetery Massacre includes a scene where a bunch of motorcycles pull up to a drive-in theater (specifically, the now-demolished Jolly Roger Drive-In in the Detroit suburb of Taylor).
• In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Cliff Booth lives in a trailer behind the Van Nuys Drive-In Theater.
• In One Crazy Summer, Hoops and Cookie go to a drive-in that apparently serves popcorn in bags large enough to fill up a fourth of a car (which Cookie easily finishes long before the movie ends). Later several characters smuggle in a projector and use it to advertise Cassandra's music in the corner of the screen during a movie.
• In the 1966 movie Our Man Flint, Galaxy's Island Base has a 'Reward Room' where its minions can have sex with Pleasure Units. One of the fantasy make-out areas is designed to look like a drive-in theater.
• In Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Dotty insists early in the movie that Pee-wee take her to the drive-in on a date. It's not until the end that he actually does it, and also runs into almost every other character he's met so far, all present in different vehicles and eating different classic movie snacks.
• In Red Dawn (1984), the Dirty Communists turn this icon of American culture into a prison/reeducation camp.
• Spies Like Us: A Star Wars-style anti-missile system is hidden underneath an old run-down drive-in theater.
• The Sugarland Express: The Outlaw Couple watch a Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoon on the drive-in screen across from their motel room.
• Targets ends with a sniper taking potshots at patrons at a drive-in theater. He is eventually faced down by Boris Karloff's character.
• The original That Darn Cat! features a Chase Scene at a drive-in.
• In Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, some of the participants in a just completed vault robbery hide in the (huge) trunk of a 1950s Chevy, which goes over to the nearby drive-in as a vehicle with a couple of regular customers. Unfortunately, the clothes of the men hiding are exposed hanging out of the trunk, which causes the manager to call the police.
• In the "Julie" segment of the Made-for-TV Anthology Film Trilogy of Terror, a student who has an unhealthy obsession with his teacher takes her on a date to a drive-in, knocks her out with a spiked drink, then takes compromising photos of her while she's unconscious.
• A tornado attacks one during Twister, complete with Shout-Out to The Shining, matching the "Here's Johnny!" scene to the tornado crashing into said theater.
• White Heat has a scene where Cody Jarrett and his gang elude the police by driving into one of these.

Literature

• Bill Bryson was thrilled to discover a drive-in theater still operating in 1990s New Hampshire and brought his family out to experience it. Not only was the endeavour a disaster, but Bryson reasoned that this had actually always been the case.
• The Cider House Rules contains a fictional example of a drive-in theater being used as a Make-Out Point.
• Ian Fleming's Diamonds Are Forever has a scene in Las Vegas where James Bond is in a cab being pursued by a pair of gunmen, and the driver attempts (unsuccessfully) to shake them by going to a drive-in where a movie is playing.
• According to Word of God, going to drive-in theaters is how Harry Dresden (hero of The Dresden Files novels) manages to make tons of pop culture references despite being a Walking Techbane.
• Joe Lansdale's "The Drive-In" takes place in one of these theaters.
• A character is Forced to Watch the deaths of his friends at a decayed drive-in during the Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams story "Asleep at the Wheel".
• The second Snarkout Boys novel by Daniel Pinkwater deals with the secret history of the drive-in as a major plot point. The book claims that the original "drive-in" was a stage show in Romania in the 1800s, which the peasants hated so much that they burned it down and drove the purveyor out of the country. The climax of the book is at the world's largest drive-in theater, founded by a descendant of the original inventor. A Romanian pyromaniac shows up and sets the entire lot on fire.

Live-Action TV

• One of these appeared in an episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete where older Pete and Ellen go on a date.
• Angel takes Connor to a drive-in in an attempt at father-son bonding.
• The Brady Bunch had two episodes where Greg took his date to a drive-in with hilarious results. In one, he was forced to take Bobby along with him after losing a bet. In the other, Bobby and Peter accidentally leave their pet frogs in the car.
• In one episode of Call of the Wildman, a Rascally Raccoon has taken up residence in the local drive-in's snack bar and is helping itself to popcorn and chips. Turtleman chases it into the projection booth and catches it, then he and Neal watch the movie being shown that night from the Turtlemobile.
• One of the last episodes of Cheers, "The Last Picture Show", has Woody, Norm, Cliff, and Frasier going to a local drive-in to watch its closing-down event, a marathon of Godzilla movies. They conclude that drive-ins are overrated — tinny speakers, people blocking your view — and that they're really nostalgic for their youth. They go home early.
• The bad guys on Chuck had their base in an old drive-in.
• One of the last episodes of Cold Case began with a guy getting sniped in a drive-in.
• The Facts of Life had an episode that took place at the closing night of a drive-in.
• An episode of Family Matters took place at a drive-in and focused on the dates of Laura, Steve, and Waldo. The latter of which didn't even come in a car, rather Maxine and he just walk in with folding chairs and coolers.
• In Green Acres, Oliver and Lisa go to a drive-in, while in the pick-up truck next to them, a couple are busy making out with extreme passion. Oliver tries to pull the speaker off of the post, but it's too short, it flies back, smashing the driver's side window of that same vehicle. The couple is so busy with heavy necking that they never even notice.
• The Hart to Hart episode "'Tis the Season to Be Murdered" begins with Jonathan and Jennifer talking with a Private Detective whom Jonathan has hired to investigate a security leak at the toy company he owns. The private eye insists on meeting at a drive-in during the day because he thinks it's a secure location. He gets murdered anyway.
• In "Last Whiff of Summer", the two-part fourth-season premiere of The Middle, the Hecks go to a drive-in.
• The Mission: Impossible episode "The Psychic" begins with Briggs receiving his assignment at a drive-in.
• In the My Mother the Car episode "And Leave the Drive-In to Us", Dave and his family brave a cold day in order to take Mother to a drive-in, where a movie co-starring Mother's favorite actor Sonny Tufts is playing. When the picture is finally over, there are two cars left in the lot, and the other car is driven by Sonny Tufts himself.
• Psych: The climax of the third season finale takes place at a drive-in theater, the group having been directed there by Serial Killer Mr. Yang's riddles. Shawn's mother Madeleine, having been kidnapped by Yang earlier, is found in her rental car strapped to a bomb. Yang's identity is uncovered and she is arrested following a conversation with Shawn in her car.
• In Riverdale, Jughead protests the upcoming closing of the town's drive-in as it's an important piece of the town's history. The end of the episode reveals it's actually because he's homeless after a falling-out with his father and has been squatting there.
• The VHS releases for Shining Time Station had an additional Framing Device^note The series itself was a Framing Device designed to introduce Thomas & Friends to American audiences. The episodes were being played at the Shining Time Drive-in, and before the main feature began, there'd be, amongst other things, a Kitschy Local Commercial for Schemer's Arcade. After the episodes, there'd be a short film from "Schemer Presents", a series of instructional videos made and presented by Schemer, which the voiceover notes, "We had nothing to do with it".
• In an early episode of That '70s Show Eric, Donna, Kelso and Jackie go to the local drive-in to watch The Omen (1976) — well, actually to make out.

Music

• Post-Punk band At the Drive-In, who take their name from a lyric in Poison's "Talk Dirty To Me."
• "Drive-In" by The Beach Boys.
• "Drive-In Saturday" by David Bowie.
• A verse from Nat King Cole's "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer":
  Don't hafta tell a girl and fella about a drive-in
  Or some romantic moon it seems
  Right from the moment that those lovers start arrivin'
  You'll see more kissin' (Wolf Whistle) in the cars than on the screen
• "There's an Elvis movie on the marquee sign" is the opening line to Hal Ketchum's "Small Town Saturday Night".
• In "Everything's Changed" by Lonestar, the narrator laments all of the things that have changed in his hometown — but the one thing that stays the same is how much he still loves her. One of the things that's changed is "That old drive-in is a new Walmart".
• "Moonlight Drive-In" by Turner Nichols recalls a former lover and how they would make out at the drive-in.
• From Roxy Music's "Virginia Plain":
  Last picture shows down the drive-in
  You're so sheer, you're so chic
  Teenage rebel of the week
• In "Night Moves", Bob Seger remembers a time when he and his girlfriend were "Tryin' to make some front page drive-in news".
• In 1958, Gary Shelton (later known as Teen Idol Troy Shondell) released a single called "Kissin' at the Drive-In".
• The first verse of the Sylvers' hit "Boogie Fever":
  I took my baby to the drive-in show
  She turned the speaker down
  and then she turned on the radio
  I watched a silent movie, diggin' funky sound
• In an example of What Could Have Been, Talking Heads considered promoting their album True Stories (and/or the David Byrne film it was more or less based on) by doing a tour of drive-in theaters.
• The Velvet Monkeys' song "Drive-In".

Music Video

• Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" video features him painting the screen at a drive-in theater during the second verse. He falls asleep on the job and is still up there when the movie starts.
• The video for Jon Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" from the Young Guns II soundtrack has him performing the song at a decrepit drive-in atop a cliff in the American southwest. Scenes from the movie play on the screen (until the screen catches fire, reflecting a blaze in the film scenes being shown).
• The video for Lana Del Rey's cover of "Doin' Time" takes place in a drive-in showing a movie about a Giant Woman, played by Del Rey. When a woman in the drive in is cheated on, the giantess steps out of the screen to exact revenge.
• The Hooters' "And We Danced" has the band performing at a drive-in theater.
• When Rascal Flatts covered "Life Is A Highway" for Cars, the music video took place at a drive-in with the movie playing on the screen and real-life counterparts to the main characters in the lot.
• Bob Seger's "Night Moves", which also features Matt LeBlanc as one of the moviegoers. The song was recorded in 1976, but the video was filmed in 1994 to help promote his Greatest Hits CD.
  • Blake Shelton did something similar when he covered the title track for the Footloose remake.

Pinball

• Bally's Creature from the Black Lagoon takes place in one of these. The player and his date are settling down for a viewing of the titular movie, but must deal with obstructing cars, the snack bar, peeping toms, and other moviegoing nuisances.
• The end of ball animation in The Munsters shows the Dragula pulling into one of these and inadvertently causing chaos when every other car attempts to flee in response.

Professional Wrestling

• WWE's Greaser Delinquents Tag Team Deuce 'n Domino's theme song "I'm All About Cool" referenced "in the backseat on Saturday night" and fighting "outside the picture show."

Tabletop Games

• In Crimestrikers, the episode seed "10 Minutes to Showtime" takes place at a drive-in where the heroes must find a hidden bomb that's set to go off when intermission ends. Evacuating the drive-in isn't an option because the villain has trapped everyone inside with Some Kind of Force Field.

Theater

• The theatrical show Grease was based on had a song "Alone at a Drive-In" that directly reference a lot of the subtropes, including the (usually extremely cheesy) intermission advertisements and the fact that a lot of teenagers weren't really there to watch the movie, If You Know What I Mean. The song didn't make it to the film version, though you can hear a snippet of the music sans lyrics.

Theme Parks

• At Disney's Hollywood Studios, there's a restaurant called Sci-Fi Drive-In, which features car-themed tables that face a Drive-In screen that plays trailers of old science fiction films.
• The setting of the main show of the former Twister...Ride it Out attraction was a Drive-In Theater which is destroyed by a tornado in a recreation of the movie scene.

Video Games

• The third location Alan Wake visits in American Nightmare is an old drive-in theater out in the Arizona desert. He uses the film projector there to finally destroy Mr. Scratch.
• One of the fields in Backyard Baseball is Starlite Orchards Drive-In.
• The multiplayer map "Drive-In" from Call of Duty: Black Ops is set in an abandoned drive-in. Besides having an arcade with Call of Duty: World at War games, the old movie screen has a chunk torn out of it to make an effective sniping post.
• One of the stages in the first Destroy All Humans! has a drive-in theater. It even plays a full-length movie during one mission.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3 has a drive-in theater. One of the cars has two skeletons embracing on the hood.
  • There are a few more Drive-Ins dotted about the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout: New Vegas.
  • One of the settlements the player can establish in Fallout 4 is a drive-in.
• In It Came from the Desert (1992), one of the places that can be attacked by the giant ants is the local drive-in.
• In the first level of Mystic Warriors, the protagonists have to fight their way through a drive in lot, whee the screen is showing the opening sequence from Sunset Riders.
• One of the fighting levels in Rival Schools is a drive-in lot.
• Saints Row:
  • An abandoned drive-in is present in the Stilwater of Saints Row 2, just north of Stilwater University, and used as part of one of the Hitman Activities. Complete with boarded up building, old speakers on poles, rusted up cars, and homeless bums!
  • An intact drive-in also appears in virtual Steelport during a mission near the beginning and end of the fourth game. Unfortunately, once these missions in 50s Steelport are over the player can't return there and none of the objectives or side content use it for anything, its just there for effect.
  • The DLC "How The Saints Save Christmas" however, revisits the town and actually makes the drive-in into a mission objective. Namely, to play Christmas movies to "restore the Holiday spirit".
  • The Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell expansion also has the remains of a drive-in theater in Hell's entertainment district.
• One of the 3x3-tile commercial buildings in SimCity 2000 is a drive-in theater, and one of the low-value commercial buildings in SimCity 3000 is a flea market that looks like a run-down drive-in theater.
  • The spinoff game SimCopter features the SimCity 2000 counterpart with a bunch of short, tiny, pixelated movies playing (referencing other EA-published games), and as a bonus the player could even insert their own custom clips provided with the right tools.
• One of the levels in Twisted Metal: Black is a drive-in theatre. A well placed missile can destroy the screen.
• Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense had a level set in a desert which featured one of these; driving through the screen would get you a power-up and (depending on the character) is necessary to complete the level.

Western Animation

• The 2 Stupid Dogs episode "At the Drive-In". Watching the movie, Little Dog comments on how bad the movie is and wonders why people would go there. Cue the bouncing and rocking cars. When they first tried to get in, Little Dog tried to buy one ticket but the woman at the booth noticed they were in two. Little Dog said Big Dog was his dog and she told him pets weren't welcome. Little Dog then drove away, hid Big Dog inside the trunk, returned and bought a ticket. Big Dog entered for free. Little Dog also wanted to enter for free so they exited and Big Dog drove back in, buying a ticket. Little Dog was happy he entered for free.
• Finn and Marceline crash one of these in at end of the the Adventure Time episode "Go With Me".
• One episode of American Dad! has Roger gaining some old 80's movies and a pack of cars mistakenly sent to the Smith house. Steve, in another attempt to get a girl, has Roger play the movies on the side of the neighboring house while Steve, his friends, and the current girl of his attention and her friends watch from the cars as a makeshift drive-in.
• The Animaniacs episode "Drive Insane" features the Warners crashing Dr. Scratchansniff's date at a drive-in theater. There's a joke featuring them bouncing around in the car that will go over the heads of kids but will mean plenty to adults.
• Beavis And Butthead:
  • In "At the Movies", the two go to a drive-in, but since they naturally don't have a car, they wander around. They flush an M-80 down a restroom toilet, steal the snack bar's candy in the ensuing commotion, and are confronted by a security guard who shoots himself in the foot before he can apprehend them.
  • Subverted in the 2011 revival episode "Tech Support": the boys go to the site of an shuttered drive-in ("Abandoned drive-ins kick ass!"), only to find an office building in its place.
• The Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Good Times, Bat Times" begins at a drive-in theater.
• The syndicated opening and closing credits of The Flintstones feature the "modern stone age family" visiting a drive-in theater.
• The Hair Bear Bunch sneak off to a drive-in movie in "The Bear Who Came to Dinner" (about Square Bear faking an injury). Botch secretly tags along and calls Peevly to squeal on them.
• Synergy, the supercomputer of Jerrica "Jem" Benton and her family, was found at the Starlight Drive-In.
• The credits of Johnny Bravo were "projected" onto a drive-in screen.
• Looney Tunes Cartoons: Played with in "Hog Wash"; Porky takes his dirty car, with a sleeping Daffy inside, to the car wash. When Porky gets locked out of his car, Daffy awakens and thinks that Porky took him to the drive-in theater. He mistakes Porky getting attacked by the car wash's appliances for trailers for upcoming movies.
• The Magic School Bus episode "Spins a Web" shows the students seen into a Movie Within a Show on a drive-in screen in which they soon find themselves. As with most shows to feature a drive-in that isn't a period piece, a B-Movie is being shown.
• The Jersey Drive-In is the battleground for the penultimate episode of Megas XLR in "Universal Remote". It's mentioned that Coop destroyed all the other drive-ins in Jersey. They also sneak Goat in the trunk of Megas because sneaking people into the drive-through is a "time-honored tradition".
• The My Life as a Teenage Robot episode "Future Scope" features a drive-in movie theater, one of many Retro Universe aspects of the series.
• Part of the Pac-Man episode "Pacula" took place at a drive-in theater.
• Phineas and Ferb
  • In "Candace Gets Busted", Doofenshmirtz used to watch drive-in movies from one of his windows (despite being unable to hear the stories) until a new condo was built between the drive-in theater and the headquarters of Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated. He could have solved the trouble by moving his chair and the lamp to another window but he instead tried to move the building away.
  • Many years before the show, Doofenshmirtz dated Linda Flynn, taking her to a drive-in. He smuggled her in in the trunk of his car to save on the ticket price.
• Was the focus of an episode of The Replacements when Riley starts working there but finds the manager too strict and has him replaced with a film director who promptly gets the place closed down due to horrible management.
• At the beginning of the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Popcorn Pandemonium", Rocko and Heffer treat Mr. Bighead's big-screen TV like a drive-in, as there isn't a drive-in theater in O-Town. After Heffer and Mr. Bighead inadvertently destroy the TV with a channel-changing war (the former wants to watch a sci-fi movie, while the latter is trying to watch a football game), Rocko and Heffer go to the Googa Plex cinema, getting the main plot underway. At the end of the episode, a disaster with Filburt's glasses and the popcorn storage room results in the theater being destroyed, making its remains look like a drive-in.
• The one-hour Rugrats (1991) special "Runaway Reptar", begins with the babies at a multi-screen drive-in theater to see a Reptar movie.
• A drive-in also appears in Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf.
• The Simpsons:
  • In an episode, Marge and Homer double-date with Grandpa and his girlfriend, Zelda, to a drive-in to see Dude, Where's My Virginity?. Grandpa and Zelda start making out in the front seat.
  • Another episode has actor Troy McClure trying to resurrect his fading career by marrying Marge's sister Selma; he proposes to her at a drive-in where they're watching one of his old movies, The Muppets Go Medieval.
  • In another episode, Apu reveals that he sometimes gets up on the roof of the Kwik-E-Mart so he can watch movies at the drive in across the street for free.
  • In yet another, Homer recalls having fun at the local drive-in as a lad. Flashback to the car shaking and squeaking rhythmically. Cut to interior to see...Homer surrounded by his favorite treats, reaching back and forth to grab food and shove it in his mouth — that's what causes the shaking.
  • The episode, "Little Big Girl", has Bart and Darcy starting off their relationship with The Big Damn Kiss at a drive-in theater while the film's gory plot twist unfolds in the background, the story's teenage protagonist is violently chainsawed by his psychologist.
  • In another, several Springfield Elementary students sneak into one after a sunset curfew is placed on all children in Springfield, and see a 1950s horror film entitled The Bloodening, where a group of children are able to read the minds of adults. During the film, the police catch them and force them to clean a giant animatronic billboard set up earlier in the episode, giving them a motivation for revenge, which results in the creation of a radio program titled We Know All Your Secrets, where they reveal secrets of Springfield's adults in a style similar to the film.
  • At the epilogue of another one, Homer and Marge entered one with the kids inside the trunk. To Homer's dismay, Marge did pay for their tickets.
  • In one episode the reason Cletus is so happy to get his driver's license back is because it means he can drive his own vehicle there so he no longer has to sit in the dirt at the drive-in.
• In the Ruby-Spears Superman episode "Bonechill", the titular supernatural villain makes the monsters from a B-Movie shown at a drive-in come to life.
• In Transformers: Prime, Knockout has admitted he's watched human horror films at drive-ins.

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