Whether you call it soda, pop, soda pop, or merely a soft drink, these beverages have a reputation for being strange and silly. This article delves into the world of soda, exploring its ingredients, nutritional aspects, and its often bizarre portrayal in fiction.
Nutritional Aspects of Soda
It's no secret that soda isn't exactly a health food. Many brands do or used to contain bizarre ingredients, such as drugs. The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. It's important to note that some foods may not be suitable for some people, and seeking the advice of a physician before beginning any weight loss effort or diet regimen is recommended. While nutritional information is presented in good faith, accuracy cannot be guaranteed, and all information, including nutritional values, is used at your own risk.
Fictional Sodas: A World of Whimsy and Absurdity
Fiction often exaggerates the characteristics of soda, presenting drinks that are far removed from reality. These fictional sodas often feature:
- Weird or gross flavors: The chosen flavor may be something normally enjoyable but revolting in the form of a drink, such as pizza or bacon. It could also be based on a food that's already considered gross, which is especially the case if the soda is meant to be "healthy". In extreme cases, the flavor can be something inedible, such as motor oil or sludge.
- Extreme carbonation: While any soda can explode if given enough of a shake, these sodas are already highly energized, sometimes to the point of being more like explosives than beverages.
- Gross or inedible ingredients: Fiction will take this and run with it by presenting drinks that are made with some absolutely awful things, to the point where they're either inedible or extremely unhealthy to consume.
- Brightly colored, crazy branding: While many soda companies in real life actually use dark colors and aren't too over-the-top with their packaging, soda brands in fiction may lean into the absurdity of their product and present themselves to match. Expect the sodas to be unnaturally vibrant or given an odd color, like blue or green.
- A touch of whimsy and fantasy: At the end of the day, sodas are seen as a fun and playful beverage, so some examples simply make the sodas silly or fantastical in some way. Oftentimes, the drinks are presented as something weird in-universe, though they may still have a few fans…likely people who are, themselves, weird. Other times, they're just seen as "normal" sodas and the humor comes from seeing characters willingly drink things that fans would likely find inedible.
These drinks may be paired alongside average sodas that someone would actually see in real life, making a silly contrast or setting up one particular drink or brand to be the oddball. In video games, these strange sodas can have a Status Buff effect, often justified by the fact that the sodas contain literal drugs or other dangerous but effective substances, like toxic waste.
Examples of Fictional Sodas
Here are some examples of fictional sodas from various media:
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- 'Splode: A Mountain Dew-like drink with an excessive amount of carbonization.
- Super Derodoro Drink: An energy drink that contains "5000 kCalories'' per can.
- Hellfire Cola: An Endeavor-themed soda.
- Frobscottle: A soft drink whose bubbles sink to the bottom and cause flatulence powerful enough to fly.
- Strange Juices: Experimental soft drinks peddled to students.
- Fizzy Lifting Drinks: A Wonka product that fill you with gas and cause you to float upward when drunk.
- Dentist's Dream, Whammy Yammy, Jammy Jammy, Squash Surprise, Spring Cleaning, Cluckeroo: Sodas with odd and non-traditional flavors.
- Celery soda: A soda with celery flavor.
- Parsley soda: A trendy new beverage.
- Swamp water: A mixture of cola, ginger ale, root beer, orange soda, and chocolate milk.
- Slamm'd: A soda that works like a G-Rated Drug.
- Slug-o Cola: A Ferengi favorite, described as bubbly, cloying, and happy.
- Bouncy Bubble Beverage: A soda that explodes if shaken too much.
- Arc Draught: A multi-colored soda that looks like a rainbow mixed with colorful water.
- Cocaine Cola: A soda made with cocaine.
- Perk-a-Colas: Sodas made with element 115, with varying tastes and effects.
- Virility: A soda loaded with mind control chemicals.
- Nuka-Cola: A popular soft drink that came in many flavors, including Nuka-Cola Quantum, which contained a radioactive isotope.
- Mung Bean Soda: A carbonated take on Chinese mung bean juice.
- Witchbrew: A drink found in a broken vending machine.
- Nattonote-flavored cola: A cola flavored with natto.
- Ketchup, mustard, mayo, veggie broth, oysters casino, factory rust sodas: Sodas with unusual flavors.
- Dr. Salt: A parody of Dr. Pepper.
- Aperture Cola: A vending machine offering flavors like "Repulsion Soda", "Caffinated De-Caff", and "Citrainum Soda".
- Kaos Klan sodas: Sodas with flavors like sand, mud, and radioactive suction eel.
- Bonk! Atomic Punch!: A drink that grants Super-Reflexes due to its excessive sugar and caffeine content.
- Dr. Zack & Wiki sodas: Sodas made from animals, such as Purple Shock (centipede), Yellow Water (bat), Green Honey (snake), and Orange Orange (mammal).
- Supervillain Blitzkrieg: A soda that "Assaults Your Taste Buds With Felonious Intent".
- Neocola and Achyfi: Competing cola brands with flavors like "Dehydrated H20", "Mountain Poo", bacon, broccoli, celery, chocolate and asparagus, and dirt.
- Lime Liftoff and Sarsaparilla Cream: Mutagenic sodas that give people the ability to fly or survive without breathing.
- Powerthirst: A drink that promises to give you "GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY" and comes in flavors like Shockolatenote, Rawberrynote, Manana, Fizzbitch, GUN, Juice Springsteen, Women, Doves, and Godberrynote.
- Flamin' Hot Banana soda: A soda with a chance of containing $100 in dirty quarters.
- Slurm: A soda made from a material secreted through the anus of a giant alien slug.
- Soylent Cola: A soda made from people.
- Pitt Cola: A reoccurring soft drink brand.
- Cashola: A potato-flavored soda.
- Shrimpola Cola: A soda made of green-colored cola and sun-dried shrimp.
- Guacola: An avocado soda.
Soda Combinations and "Suicide Drinks"
Soda is also the type of drink people like to mix into excessive, bizarre, sometimes downright gross combinations, often by using every soda at the machine; such drinks are known by different terms, such as "pop bombs", "swamp water", "Witch's Brew" (often served like punch at Halloween parties) or the "suicide drink". Fiction can take these combinations and make them even more extreme, or just play up the comedy of having people combine sodas into one single "super" soda.
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