The 10 Most Famous Burgers From TV And Film

We experience food not just through smell, taste, and texture, but through sight as well, so it's hardly surprising that food has played a central role in many movies and TV shows over the years. Aside from all the documentaries and reality shows about cooking and eating, countless films revolve around the topics, such as 1994's "Eat Drink Man Woman," 2014's "Chef," and 2023's "The Taste of Things." Over on television, there have been fewer high-profile fictional shows about food, but "The Bear" holds down the category all on its own.

You don't need an entire movie or show dedicated to cuisine to provide a memorable portrayal of food on screen, though. "Twin Peaks" doesn't revolve around the menu at the Double R Diner, but that cherry pie has become iconic in its own right. "When Harry Met Sally" has very little to do with food, but Meg Ryan's raunchy re-enactment in the delicatessen led to one of the most famous lines in cinema history.

Burgers have been an American institution since the 1920s, when White Castle opened its doors, and the rise of this iconic sandwich mirrored the rise of Hollywood as one of the country's most popular exports. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that many movies and television shows have featured prominent scenes that revolve around some of the absolute best burgers. It would be impossible to create an exhaustive list of hamburgers on the screen, but we've rounded up 10 of the most iconic.

Quentin Tarantino's 1994 hit "Pulp Fiction" is iconic for many reasons. There's Uma Thurman's performance as the elusive gangster's moll Mia Wallace, the twist contest at Jack Rabbit Slim's, Christopher Walken's mesmerizing tale about the journey of a gold watch, and the easy, chatty relationship between hitmen Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta). Tarantino's witty and meandering dialogue landed him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and launched him into mainstream fame.

One of the earliest moments when that carefully-crafted writing shines is in a scene involving the hitmen and a burger. In it, Jules and Vincent enter an apartment to confront three young associates about their boss's missing briefcase. One of them is in the middle of eating a burger from the fictional restaurant The Big Kahuna, and Jules uses it as a prop for asserting dominance. Joking that burgers are "the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast," he helps himself to a bite and says, "This is a tasty burger."

Tarantino likes to bring continuity to his films through fictional brands, including Red Apple Cigarettes and Teriyaki Donuts. Big Kahuna is one of his favorites. Not only is it the center point of one of "Pulp Fiction"'s most memorable scenes, but it also appears in "Reservoir Dogs," "From Dusk Till Dawn," and "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood." Tarantino's friend and occasional collaborator Robert Rodriguez has also included it in several of his projects over the years.

Even if you haven't seen the animated Fox sitcom "Bob's Burgers," you can probably guess that America's favorite fast food item is an integral part of the story. Created by Loren Bouchard, it follows the Belchers, a family of five that runs a struggling burger joint in New Jersey. With 15 seasons and counting, the show has covered plenty of misadventures outside of selling burgers, but it all comes back to the humble establishment of the title and several running gags. One of them is the Burger of the Day. In nearly every episode, the restaurant touts a new menu special, creating unique burger recipes that usually contain at least one pun. These have run the gamut from the wholesome Summer Thyme Burger to the deeply offensive Child Molester Burger.

While many of these menu items sound complex and require special ingredients, none are quite as daring as the Meatsiah, otherwise known as "the most difficult burger known to man." It appears in the 10th episode of the first season, in which Bob is trying to secure a lease renewal on the restaurant despite threats from his business rival, Jimmy Pesto. The Meatsiah is complicated, to say the least, consisting of beef tartare inside a burger, medium-well, inside a burger Wellington. It's the sort of thing that is better left to animators than actual chefs, though there are plenty of people on the internet who have tried their hand at the recipe, to varying degrees of success.

It's not every day that you get free product placement in the title of a feature film, but White Castle landed that distinction in 2004 with the buddy stoner comedy "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle." It stars John Cho and Kal Penn as the titular Harold and Kumar, two friends who see a television commercial for White Castle while smoking weed and decide they need to get the restaurant's famous sliders as soon as possible. Car accidents, arrests, Neil Patrick Harris, and an escaped cheetah are all on the agenda, and it seems as though their simple wish for fast food might never come to fruition.

When they finally do reach their destination, they order 60 sliders, 10 French fries, and eight Cokes. Sitting across from each other, they tear into their meal as if they haven't eaten in weeks. Given the cult status that the film has earned over the years, you might assume that White Castle had to beg to be a part of it, but it was the other way around. With an R rating for drug use and sexual references, it was never a guarantee that the nearly century-old establishment would go near it. With a few changes, however (including the removal of an animated dream sequence with a dog peeing on a can of Coca-Cola), White Castle agreed, paving the way for a truly iconic hour and a half of product placement.

The concept behind 1993's "Demolition Man" is ripe for food-related comedy. It stars Sylvester Stallone as John Spartan, a rogue police officer in Los Angeles who takes one risk too many and ends up sentenced to being cryogenically frozen for several decades. Waking up in 2032 LA, Spartan learns that things have radically changed. The country is now run by a dictatorial doctor, and Taco Bell has won the franchise wars,now the height of luxury. On the surface, the city is pristine but regimented. In the sewers beneath the city, Spartan meets the leaders of the Resistance and discovers that there is a growing movement to overthrow the current order.

In one scene, he and Sandra Bullock, who plays a police officer, venture underground and find a grimy, bustling city that Spartan is much more comfortable with. He even finds a street vendor selling burgers and buys a beer and a burger in exchange for his Rolex. He takes a huge bite and pronounces it to be fantastic. When he learns that the patty was made of rat meat rather than beef, he doesn't seem phased, quipping, "As a matter of fact, that's the best burger I've had in years." Interestingly enough, the filmmakers had asked Burger King to be the lone surviving chain in the franchise wars, but had been turned down. Presumably, they would have had some objections to the rat burger scene if they'd agreed.

AMC's hit television series "Mad Men" was one of the key players in the rise of the Peak TV era, focusing on the glamor, sexism, and consumerism of America in the 1960s. It stars Jon Hamm as Don Draper, an advertising executive with a complicated personal life who is one of the most sought-after ad men in the country. Throughout the seven-season show, the audience is shown multiple blockbuster advertising campaigns that Don supposedly created, as well as a few that his colleagues did. One of those colleagues is Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss), who starts as a secretary and rises through the ranks to become Don's protege and, at one point, his superior.

One of the campaigns that Peggy spearheads is for the real-life chain restaurant Burger Chef, and it becomes a central throughline in Season 7. For many viewers, the name wouldn't ring any bells, but at one point in the 1960s, Burger Chef, which was founded in 1958 as a highbrow fast food establishment, was second only to McDonald's in popularity. In "Mad Men," Peggy works tirelessly to come up with the perfect slogan, visiting customers around the country and foregoing sleep night after night to brainstorm. Ultimately, she nails the pitch, creating a theme, "Family Supper at Burger Chef," that highlights the unifying force of fast food in America.

If you were looking to fill the "Friends"-shaped hole in your life in the early 2000s, you could have done a lot worse than to tune in to CBS every week for "How I Met Your Mother." The sitcom, which ran from 2005 to 2014, starred Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan, Cobie Smulders, and Neil Patrick Harris as a group of friends in New York. The title of the show alludes to the framing device, in which Ted (Radnor) tells his children in 2030 about the eight years that led up to him meeting their mother.

Like "Seinfeld," "How I Met Your Mother" leans heavily into the mundanities of everyday life in New York City, which is why there is an entire episode in Season 4 about Marshall (Segel) searching in vain for the best burger in New York, which he stumbled upon eight years before when he moved to the city. After eating a subpar burger with the gang, he convinces them to go on a wild goose chase around town to look for it, picking up Regis Philbin on the way. Everywhere they go, Marshall dismisses the food, declaring it to be a mere shadow of the burger he remembers. By the end of the episode, they do find the place, and contrary to how things normally go in real life, they discover that the real thing is just as good as the memory.

Burgers are often featured in television shows and movies as shorthand for American culture, whether it's the broad, familial appeal of the Burger Chef ad campaign in "Mad Men" or the retro Americana of the Big Kahuna Burger in "Pulp Fiction." In the 1993 movie "Falling Down," burgers are a symbol of the false promises of capitalism. It might sound a bit heady, but they do a lot of heavy lifting.

The film stars Michael Douglas as William Foster, a suited commuter in Los Angeles who gets stuck in gridlock traffic and decides to ditch his car and walk instead. With every mundane interaction, he grows increasingly enraged and violent over the dawning realisation that his status in society as a middle-class white man is losing its potency. One of the most vivid and unsettling moments in the film takes place in the fictional fast food restaurant Whammy Burger.

In the scene, Foster orders breakfast but is informed that they stopped serving the breakfast menu less than five minutes before. He whips out a gun, terrifying the customers, and accidentally fires it at the ceiling. Rattled, he orders a Double Whammy Burger with cheese, but becomes furious when he sees the product, comparing the thin, limp burger to the thick, juicy one displayed on the menu. It's a terrifying and darkly comedic scene, but who among us hasn't felt mildly outraged at the discrepancy between fast food marketing and reality?

It's hard to quantify just how successful "The Simpsons"  is, but it has multiple superlatives that help get the point across. Having been on the air ever since 1989, it is the longest-running American sitcom and the longest-running American scripted primetime series of all time. It's also won two Peabody Awards and more than three dozen Emmys — not bad for an animated comedy for adults.

From the start, the show has satirised U.S. culture, from politics and pop culture to food. Not surprisingly, it features a fast food restaurant with an uncanny resemblance to McDonald's. Founded by Krusty the Clown (not to be confused with Ronald McDonald), Krusty Burger earned the distinction of being named the unhealthiest restaurant in the world, with its signature menu item, the Krusty Burger, being named the unhealthiest fast food item in the world.

In parodying American fast food, "The Simpsons" is merciless. The cuisine at Krusty Burger is famously terrible. Even Krusty the Clown can't stand it. In fact, he can't even handle taking one bite of the notorious burger when he's filming a commercial for the company. Hollywood being what it is, though, Krusty Burger now exists in real life. In 2013, Universal Studios opened a branch in Orlando and followed it up two years later with one in L.A. Menu items included the Mother Nature Burger, a vegetarian option which, in the show, was the bearer of food poisoning, and, of course, the Krusty Burger.

Like "The Office," NBC's sitcom "Parks and Recreation" produced some of the most delightful and bizarre workplace characters on television. There was Aubrey Plaza's April, an intern who turned sarcasm into an art form, Aziz Ansari's serial entrepreneur Tom, and Chris Pratt's chronically immature but lovable shoe shiner Andy. Of all the supporting characters who stole audiences' hearts, though, none is quite as iconic as Nick Offerman's Ron Swanson, the director of the Parks and Recreation department in the small town of Pawnee. Ron is a libertarian who believes in small government, self-sufficiency, and hunting. He has a mustache, is proficient in woodworking, and secretly plays saxophone.

One of the many hills that Ron is willing to die on, though, is hamburger-related. According to him, they must, by definition, be made of beef. When the health-obsessed city manager (played by Rob Lowe) asks him if he's ever had a turkey burger, Ron thinks he means a fried turkey leg inside a grilled hamburger (which he has, of course, eaten). Eventually, they resort to a burger cook-off, with department employees recruited as judges. Ron wins. In a later episode, he decides to confront his biggest fear (bananas) by placing one inside a burger. Meat-lovers would probably prefer his take on the turkey burger, and not surprisingly, the internet has multiple recreations and recipes for it.

There are a lot of movies released in recent years that shine a light on the high-pressure environments of haute cuisine, including "Boiling Point" and "La Cocina," but few have gone as off the rails as "The Menu," the 2022 horror satire from the executive producer of "Succession," Mark Mylod. It follows a group of wealthy foodies who are invited to an exclusive restaurant on a private island for a special evening of fine dining. What they find instead is that the renowned chef, Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), has planned violent revenge on them for robbing him of his passion for cooking.

By the end of the film, everyone is either dead or headed that direction when Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), an escort who was not on the original guest list, confronts Slowik to tell him that his food isn't good enough for her. Having seen a picture of him on the wall looking happy as a fast-food cook in his youth, she tells him that his food has no love in it and that she wants him to make her a cheeseburger. He meticulously prepares a sky-high burger with grease running down the sides, and she tears into it like she's in a McDonald's commercial. Rekindling Slowik's passion for food proves to be Margot's get-out-of-murder-free card, and she is the only one to escape the island. The moral of the story? Never doubt the power of a good, greasy burger.