The TemByte Absurdity Index™
The only time you’ll ever see Cast Away, Giorgio Armani, and Microsoft Paint in the same sentence
There’s a moment in HBO Max’s The Pitt—a high-stakes hospital drama—when the camera pans to a central command screen in the ER.
What does it show?
A Google Sheet.
Not a fake Epic interface. Not a stylized medical dashboard. Just… a spreadsheet.
I had to pause the episode. Then rewind it. Then stare at it. Then whisper “no f***ing way” like I’d just discovered an editing error in Titanic.
Then, obviously, I texted my brother-in-law—who is an actual doctor—to make sure I wasn’t losing it.
He confirmed what I suspected: no, hospitals do not run on Google Sheets.
What we were supposed to see was likely Epic’s ER Track Board, the real software used to manage patients in emergency departments.
Zoey 101 had PearBooks. Even iCarly faked its tech.
HBO, you couldn’t ask ChatGPT to whip up a fake Epic dashboard?
In fact, I did just that.
This wasn’t just bad design. It was a gateway to a larger question:
How often do we see product placements—intentional or not—that are so jarring, so tone-breaking, so weird, they pull us completely out of the story?
How I Built the Dataset
This started, like most of my projects, with insomnia and a vague sense of mission.
I wanted to track every notable instance of product placement in TV and film from 1980 onward—especially the ones that felt off. Like, “why is this cola brand emotionally anchoring a funeral scene?” kind of off.
I started with ChatGPT’s Deep Research tools and got a decent starter list. Then I ran the same prompt through Gemini (yes, I still had a free trial), and it returned 3x more entries in half the time. Respect.
After some merging, deduping, and manual curation, I ended up with around 270 placements across decades, genres, and mediums.
Each entry included:
Show or movie title
Year
Product featured
Placement context (visual, verbal, or plot-critical)
Whether it was intentional
A short scene description
Is it perfect? Definitely not.
It’s missing Seinfeld. It’s missing that weird scene in American Pie where Vaseline randomly appears in a drawer and then vanishes like a continuity ghost. But it’s fun.
Could I have spent another two weeks beefing up the list? Of course. But I decided to let this study live as an artifact of the AI-first timeline—a world where Seinfeld apparently doesn’t count unless the rye bread is brand-name, and eight straight seasons of Pepsi placement get overlooked because Newman never said the word “refreshing.”
Let the record show: I tried.
Before We Score Anything… Let’s Talk Highlights
Before diving into the rankings and the full-on data nerd spiral, a few early trends jumped out just from scanning the raw list. Some brands simply refuse to stay off screen. And one moment was so strange, it deserved recognition regardless of score.
Most Frequently Featured Products
The usual suspects showed up. Repeatedly. Across genres. Across decades. Coca-Cola in particular is the Meryl Streep of product placement—always nominated, always present, occasionally holding the plot together.
Most Random Placement
Pepsi in World War Z
Mid-zombie apocalypse, Brad Pitt pauses to sip a Pepsi. Not just any Pepsi—a weird, limited-run can design that probably lasted six weeks in 2011. It’s not product placement.
It’s a thirst trap.
Literally. Brad Pitt, zombie apocalypse, and a crisp Pepsi: the internet never stood a chance.
Scoring the Absurdity: The TemByte Index™
Once the dataset was built, I needed a system that could separate the Pepsi cameos from the Krispy Kreme core plot devices. So I built one.
The TemByte Absurdity Index™ scores each placement across six categories:
Naturally, I tried to get ChatGPT to do the scoring for me. I pasted in the spreadsheet. I asked nicely. I tried Gemini too. But after a few failed attempts—where neither model would score more than a few rows without breaking into a cold sweat—I did the responsible thing:
I had ChatGPT write a Python script. I ran it in Google Colab.
I barely understood what was happening. But it worked beautifully.
Each row of the dataset was fed to OpenAI’s o4-mini model with a structured prompt asking it to score the scene across all six components, and return a spreadsheet with the results. It even explained its decisions like a polite media studies TA.
The whole thing ran in about 1 hour and 44 minutes, cost me $3.91 in tokens, and gave me something dangerously close to… closure.
I also made one key change along the way: “Unintentionality” became binary rather than 0-10 like the other categories.
This is the Absurdity Index, after all. Chaos gets a curve.
The Most Absurd Product Placements (Ranked)
10. Coming to America – McDowell’s (Fake McDonald’s)
Product: McDowell’s (McDonald’s parody)
Scene: Prince Akeem takes a job at McDowell’s, a fake fast food joint with branding that’s extremely not legally distinct from McDonald’s.
Absurdity Score: 5.55
This is where my bias kicks in.
Yes, it’s fictional.
But it’s so clearly McDonald’s that the characters literally explain how it’s not McDonald’s—in a McDonald’s-looking restaurant, wearing McDonald’s-adjacent uniforms, under arches that are definitely not golden but spiritually very golden.
The inside screams 1980s McDonald’s.
The outside screams “please don’t sue us.”
And I love it.
Maybe it’s sacrilegious to put a parody entry on this list. Maybe I’m just trying to make peace with the fact that the AI refused to count the banana-in-the-tailpipe gag from Beverly Hills Cop because there wasn’t a visible Dole sticker.
Either way: Eddie Murphy deserves this win. Long live McDowell’s.
9. The Shining – Jack Daniel’s
Product: Jack Daniel’s
Scene: Jack hallucinates a scene with Lloyd the bartender and orders Jack Daniel’s, multiple times, by name.
Absurdity Score: 5.75
Jack says he wants bourbon. Lloyd pours him Jack Daniel’s. Which—small thing—is not bourbon.
It’s Tennessee whiskey. Literally says so on the label. The ghosts aren’t the problem. The bar service is.
8. Pulp Fiction – McDonald’s “Royale with Cheese”
Product: McDonald’s
Scene: Vincent explains to Jules that in France, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a “Royale with Cheese.”
Absurdity Score: 5.90
I love Pulp Fiction. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time.
“Misirlou” was the only song I ever learned on bass despite three years of lessons and parents who believed in me way more than they should’ve.
And I’m glad this is the first Pulp Fiction reference on TemBytes. Not because I’m dying to mention the gimp suit. But because every time I’m hungover, all I want is a Royale with Cheese.
This scene is iconic, memeable, and somehow still underrated. It’s a throwaway conversation that became film canon. Tarantino basically turned a McDonald’s regional naming convention into cinema.
Intentional? Totally.
Absurd conversation? Also yes.
7. Mac and Me – McDonald’s + Coca-Cola
Product: McDonald’s and Coca-Cola
Scene: The entire film plays like a feature-length McDonald’s ad disguised as an E.T. knockoff, complete with in-store dance number.
Absurdity Score: 6.00
I had never seen or heard of Mac and Me.
But when it popped into the dataset and I saw the words “dance party inside a McDonald’s,” I had no choice but to investigate.
What I found was somehow worse than I imagined.
This movie appears to be a bootleg E.T. that swaps Spielberg’s charm for a corporate sponsorship and lets Ronald McDonald be the emotional center of a scene. There are aliens—I think? I didn’t get that far. But I can confirm there is a child in a wheelchair doing a synchronized dance number next to fries.
It’s not product placement. It’s propaganda. And honestly, I respect the hustle.
6. Men in Black – Marlboro Cigarettes
Product: Marlboro
Scene: An alien escaping Earth casually carries cartons of Marlboro, because apparently galactic smugglers prefer name brands.
Absurdity Score: 6.10
Honestly, this one felt like a frontrunner from the jump.
It’s so bizarre. So inexplicable. And somehow even weirder when you realize it came out in 1997—well past the era where cigarettes were considered cool.
And yet… there it is. An alien fugitive casually rolling cartons of Marlboro Reds through intergalactic customs like he just hit the duty-free at JFK.
It makes no narrative sense. But I kind of love it.
Watching a bug-shaped space criminal stock up on smokes before blowing up a few humans?
It’s dumb. It’s oddly charming.
5. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle – White Castle
Product: White Castle
Scene: The entire plot revolves around two stoners trying to get sliders. It’s a buddy comedy. It’s a road trip. It’s a branded fever dream.
Absurdity Score: 6.55
This movie fueled years of my desire to try White Castle. I only knew the frozen ones—the kind you microwave at 1am and instantly regret but still weirdly crave. So when I finally had the real thing in NYC in the mid-2010s, it felt like a cinematic pilgrimage.
I was devastated.
Not only was it worse than the frozen version—it was significantly worse.
Greasy, mushy, confusing. A betrayal in bun form.
For the record: other than Bruegger’s Bagels in the early 2000s, nothing circular tastes better square.
What makes this even wilder is that the Absurdity Index heavily favors unintentional placements—and this one is so intentional, it’s literally in the title. It’s not just a product placement. It’s a mission statement.
And somehow… it still cracked the top five.
That’s legacy. That’s branding. That’s sliders, baby.
4. The Pitt – Google Sheets
Product: Google Sheets
Scene: A real, raw, default-font Google Sheet stands in for a hospital’s ER tracking system. In a prestige drama. On purpose.
Absurdity Score: 6.75
The one that started it all.
The Pitt’s Google Sheet isn’t a one-off background prop—it’s in nearly every episode. And of all the ethically murky, medically questionable, and lawsuit-bait plot lines this show presents, the thing that stuck with me most… is the damn Google Sheet.
It’s barely even styled. No borders. No fake UI. Just a hospital full of prestige drama and literal row labels.
HBO Max, if you’re reading this: I am formally offering my services—for free—to help you build fake software interfaces for all your shows.
Until then, this moment will live on—not just as a design fail, but as the spreadsheet that launched an index.
3. American Gigolo – Giorgio Armani Suits
Product: Armani
Scene: Richard Gere wears Armani so much that the movie basically doubles as a runway. The brand partnership helped define an era.
Absurdity Score: 6.80
Every drawer in his apartment looks like a part of Bloomingdale’s I pray my mom doesn’t see when I’m trying to quickly shut down her desire to buy me “something nice” because she has a coupon.
The internet—and ChatGPT, which at this point counts as a fashion historian—seems to agree that this movie was pivotal in launching Armani’s U.S. dominance.
Apparently, it’s one of the most influential brand partnerships in film history.
As someone who:
Was not alive in the ’80s
Has never worn anything remotely Giorgio Armani
Would rather die than dry clean
…I had no idea Armani was even in this movie.
I’m a jeans-and-t-shirt guy. If it’s tailored, I’m out. But even I can admit: this man makes suits look like a superpower.
2. Cast Away – Wilson (Volleyball)
Product: Wilson Sporting Goods Volleyball
Scene: Tom Hanks anthropomorphizes a volleyball to the point of emotional devastation. It’s not product placement. It’s friendship.
Absurdity Score: 7.50
Wilson is iconic.
You could argue it’s the most recognizable product placement of all time.
I’d bet 100x more people have made a “WILSOOOOON” joke—either about being alone, or at an actual volleyball—than have ever seen Cast Away. It’s part of the collective bitstream of society now. Like the Macarena, or forgetting your password.
One day I’ll rank Tom Hanks movies. (Spoiler: this one probably wouldn’t crack my top five.) But its place in culture is undeniable. Wilson transcended prop status and became a meme before memes.
That said, this isn’t the Cultural Importance Index.
This is the The TemByte Absurdity Index™.
And when you really step back and realize a major studio released a film where a man grieves a volleyball with more emotional range than most Marvel arcs?
Yeah. That’s absurd.
1. Resident Evil (Netflix) – Microsoft Paint
Product: Microsoft Paint
Scene: Characters initiate a futuristic video call using… MS Paint. Not Teams. Not Skype. Paint.
Absurdity Score: 8.30
Of all the high-tech software tools available in the Microsoft ecosystem, the one that made it into this post-apocalyptic biotech drama… was Paint.
Not a stylized UI. Not even Microsoft Teams. Just MS Paint. The same app I used in 2003 to draw flames on a picture of a dirt bike.
The scene shows a full-on video call being conducted inside a Paint window—which already feels like the most low-effort prop decision ever made—but it gets better: the computer doesn’t even appear to be connected to the internet.
There are no Wi-Fi icons. No cables. No interfaces. Just a standalone machine… opening Paint… and chatting with someone through what I assume is either dark magic or the world’s most cursed custom plugin.
It’s not just absurd. It’s majestic.
It’s dystopia as rendered by a bored 6th grader in the library computer lab.
If this isn’t #1, then what are we even doing here?
Closing Thoughts
This all started because HBO Max used a Google Sheet where a hospital dashboard should have been.
And somehow, that led to a dataset, a scoring system, a Python script, and a list of the most unhinged product placements in cinematic history.
No, it’s not comprehensive. Yes, it’s ridiculous. But that’s the point.
Product placement isn’t just about brands—it’s about what breaks the story. What pulls you out of the moment. What makes you pause and say, “Wait… are they video calling through Microsoft Paint?”
Absurdity doesn’t follow the rules. So neither did the scoring.
— Charlie, Global Chair of the Department of Overthinking Media Ephemera
Appendix
Here is the complete final dataset with scoring.
Python Code
This is the script I ran in Google Colab to score the dataset. It had a step before it where I input my Open AI API Key. If you’re interested in how to do that, reach out and I’d be happy to help you adapt this for other use cases. I later replaced the Unintentionality scoring with binary scoring based on another column that categorized things as Intentional or Unintentional.
# 1) Install dependencies
!pip install openai==0.28 pandas --quiet
# 2) Upload your cleaned CSV
from google.colab import files
uploaded = files.upload() # choose Product_Placement_Cleaned.csv
# 3) Load API key from env
import os
assert "OPENAI_API_KEY" in os.environ, "Run the API‑Key form cell first!"
import openai
openai.api_key = os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
# 4) Read the CSV
import pandas as pd
filename = next(iter(uploaded.keys()))
df = pd.read_csv(filename)
# 5) Ensure scoring columns exist
for col in [
'A_Unintentionality','B_Anachronism','C_Plot_Centrality',
'D_Tone_Genre_Clash','E_Overtness','F_Buzz_Factor','Justification'
]:
if col not in df.columns:
df[col] = None
# 6) Define scoring function with escaped braces
import json, time
def score_row(row):
prompt = f"""
You are an expert media analyst. For the following product placement, assign each component an integer score from 0–10, using this guidance:
Score ranges:
0–3 = minimal (e.g., clearly intentional/subtle/period‑accurate)
4–6 = moderate (some accidental feel/mild anachronism/partial plot relevance)
7–8 = strong (mostly accidental/very jarring anachronism/central to scene)
9–10 = extreme (completely accidental surprise/wild genre whiplash/iconic viral moment)
Examples:
E.T. the Extra‑Terrestrial (1982) – Reese’s Pieces
```json
{{
"A": 9,
"B": 1,
"C": 8,
"D": 2,
"E": 10,
"F": 10,
"Justification": "Reese’s Pieces placement was largely accidental, drove the plot, and became a viral pop‑culture phenomenon."
}}
```
The Shining (1980) – Heinz Ketchup cans
```json
{{
"A": 10,
"B": 0,
"C": 0,
"D": 1,
"E": 2,
"F": 1,
"Justification": "Heinz cans appear unintentionally as a background prop with minimal plot or buzz impact."
}}
```
Now score this:
Show/Movie: {row['Show/Movie']} ({row['Year']})
Product: {row['Product']}
Scene/Context: {row['Scene/Context']}
Return only valid JSON with keys "A","B","C","D","E","F","Justification".
"""
resp = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
model="o4-mini",
messages=[{"role":"user","content":prompt}],
temperature=1
)
content = resp.choices[0].message.content.strip()
try:
return json.loads(content)
except json.JSONDecodeError:
start, end = content.find('{'), content.rfind('}')
return json.loads(content[start:end+1])
# 7) Sample vs full run
sample_size = None # ← test
# sample_size = None # ← then set to None to score all
# 8) Pick rows
to_score = df if sample_size is None else df.head(sample_size)
# 9) Score
for idx, row in to_score.iterrows():
scores = score_row(row)
df.at[idx, 'A_Unintentionality'] = scores["A"]
df.at[idx, 'B_Anachronism'] = scores["B"]
df.at[idx, 'C_Plot_Centrality'] = scores["C"]
df.at[idx, 'D_Tone_Genre_Clash'] = scores["D"]
df.at[idx, 'E_Overtness'] = scores["E"]
df.at[idx, 'F_Buzz_Factor'] = scores["F"]
df.at[idx, 'Justification'] = scores["Justification"]
time.sleep(1)
# 10) Show sample
print(f"Showing first {sample_size or len(df)} scored rows:")
display(df.head(sample_size or 10))
# 11) If full run, save & download
if sample_size is None:
out = "Product_Placement_Scored_10pt.csv"
df.to_csv(out, index=False)
files.download(out)
else:
print("✔ Sample complete. Now set sample_size=None and re‑run to score all rows.")
Loved this one!! I knew that Pitt doc really irked you!!:))