Discover how Belatra Games’ PingWin Fly crash release drew its name from a hilarious meme about Benedict Cumberbatch’s inability to say ‘penguin’ correctly.
With the advent of social media, celebrities have to deal with every move, word, and even wardrobe malfunction becoming headline news.
Worst of all, for them anyway, when one of these off-guard moments captures the childlike imaginations of the online collective, they evolve from funny clips into memes. And unlike a clip, a meme can follow them around for years, perhaps even decades.
But what about when the meme in question was not the product of a momentary slip, but rather a series of repeated mistakes that not only go unnoticed by the celeb but seemingly by dozens of editors, natural history experts, control groups, and other checkpoints?
While we tend to think of memes as a modern internet creation, a new name for what we once just called jokes, that could not be further from the truth.
The term meme was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He had this idea that culture transmits its catchphrases, melodies, catchy tunes, and even views on fashion from “brain to brain”, saying:
"Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation."
He began with the Greek word ‘mimema’, which means to “imitate”, and slimmed it down to “meme” so that it would sound like the word gene (as it lay at the core of his transmission hypothesis).
Meme culture exploded in recent years with several cryptocurrencies using funny characters like the Shiba Inu dog and Pepe the Frog as the theme for DOGE and PEPE memecoins (with many crypto casinos now accepting them for deposits and withdrawals).
The disastrous Morbius film was memed hard with slogans like “It's Morbing Time” being used for anything considered a bad idea or unlikely to happen. Despite the attention being mostly negative, the swell of social mentions led to Sony Pictures re-releasing the film for a limited run in the hopes of boosting ticket sales by riding the social awareness wave.
PingWin Fly is a penguin-themed crash game that offers medium to high variance gameplay, with built-in free games and a chance to win up to 1000x your bet.
With colourful cartoonish graphics, smooth gameplay and immersive features, it would easily pass for just a top-quality Belatra Games release.
Or it would be were we not terminally online, and keenly aware of Benedict Cumberbatch’s hilarious verbal faux pas while narrating the 2009 BBC nature documentary series South Pacific (also known as Wild Pacific).
During the first episode, the actor we know for playing Doctor Strange begins strong, at first referring to penguins correctly; however, every other mention from then on was either pengwing, pingwin, or penglings.
A funny but ultimately harmless mistake that led to the show being widely and affectionately known online as "the 'Pingwin' (or 'Pengwing') series.
Responding to good-natured ribbing by UK comedian and show host Graham Norton, Cumberbatch admitted to being terrified of the word, and shell-shocked that no one picked up his blunder during post-production.
With such a clever story behind its name, the real question is: does the crash game live up to the hype? For our money, that's a resounding yes.
The gameplay draws a lot of inspiration from the classic early 2000s Flash games like Yeti Sports. In PingWin Fly, a penguin jumps out of an ice fishing hole only to be batted away by a baseball bat-wielding yeti in ski glasses.
Unlike traditional crash games, you don’t get to decide when you exit the round; rather, the poor pingwin needs to land in a net, stopping bouncing between obstacles for you to collect the current win multiplier.
If they bounce all the way to the end of the track, you will then be awarded the game's top payout of 1000x your bet.
As you progress, you unlock higher-quality bats. Playing with these new bats will increase the power of your strike, your bet size, and the maximum bet per game. It is worth noting that the more powerful your bat, the higher the chance of a swing and a miss happening.
To take your turn at bat, join a trusted site like 1xBet Casino or any of our top Belatra Games-powered casinos to play PingWin Fly today!
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