Must Have Caffeine

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Captain Janeway: Coffee. Black. Neelix: Uh, sorry Captain but we've lost two more replicators this morni-- Janeway: Listen to me carefully, Neelix, because I'm only going to say this once. Coffee. Black. —Star Trek: Voyager

Ah, caffeine! Truly one of the greatest gifts of God. It allows us humans to surpass the limits of our endurance when we need it most, and it has become a sort of lifestyle for a lot of us.

As a result of these special qualities, coffee and associated paraphernalia like coffeepots, coffee mugs and paper coffee cups with plastic covers have become an ubiquitous feature of every office setting. Oftentimes when points are being discussed, one or more of the participants will have a mug in hand. Important things happen around the office coffeepot, and the number of paper cups at an employee's desk is often used as a visual indicator of how much stress he or she is under. For some reason, other drinks are not considered to be as representative of our reliance on caffeine as good, strong coffee, even if some teas actually have more caffeine.

Outside of the office, people of all professions have also been depicted as being dependent on caffeine -- to the point where attempts to drop the habit are used as a dramatic device. In certain works, something other than coffee may be used (such as soda), including obvious stand-ins used where real caffeinated beverages would be out of place.

Sudden and unexpected deprivation of this essential substance, on the other hand, is sometimes depicted with comedic consequences, such as sleeping or lobotomized workers.

There are some theories that the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution only occurred because the Western world discovered coffee.

People who actually dislike coffee generally only turn up in fiction as a literal punchline to the old 'do you want to come in for coffee' joke.

Compare: Spot of Tea, G-Rated Drug, Caffeine Bullet Time, Klatchian Coffee. See also Gigantic Gulp and Everything's Better with Chocolate. Often the only means of subverting Not a Morning Person.

Examples of Must Have Caffeine include:

Advertising

• In recent ads for McDonalds Premium Roast Coffee we see a man who says to everyone who tries to interact with him, "not before I have my coffee." Including the person at the fast food restaurant he goes to, presumably to buy coffee.
• A 1970s ad for Jack in the Box showed a growling werewolf driving a car, who only turned back into a normal man when he'd gotten his morning cup of coffee from the Jack in the Box drive-through. ("Do you feel like a monster in the morning before you've had coffee?")

Anime & Manga

• As though Negi, an English tea drinker, didn't have enough reasons to hate his Arch Enemy Fate in Mahou Sensei Negima, Fate turned out to be an avid fan of coffee as well, drinking seven cups per day. The two almost came to blows having a serious debate about the quality of milk tea and coffee.
  • Which have its roots on rather tragic story, when Fate was rescued and cared for by Shiori's older sister. She gave him coffee during this time, and he liked it.
• In Aoi House, Elle Mathers is seen with a cup of coffee or a Frappucino in her hand.
• BJ from Soul Eater. The man drinks it 24/7, carries a brewing pot in his travel case, and made a deal with the (benevolent) God of Death in exchange for coffee-related paraphenalia.
  • Not to mention (he claims) his work suffered because his favorite coffee shop was no longer open.
• Andrew Waltfeld from Gundam Seed is legendary for his fondness for coffee, to the point that his XO once suggests ventilating his office.
• L from Death Note is very often seen with coffee or tea, perhaps even more than the trademark desserts. He also seems to have a dubious relationship with sleep.
  • Although his sugar obsession crosses over to his coffee and tea (6 cubes or more, every time without fail), he has been known to be so deep in thought that his cup has overflowed with sugar.
• Fanon always like to depict Conan Edogawa as one, who supposedly brews coffee so strong that only policemen and detectives can drink it... and he drinks it whenever he can. This is probably a Shout-Out to Sherlock Holmes' addictions.
• Professor Tomoe in Sailor Moon. Censored in the North American dub, which changed his favourite drink to cocoa.
  • Mamoru is also a coffee drinker and suffered the same fate.
• When not Dueling, Jack Atlas from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's is seen at a coffee shop often, especially after the Dark Signers arc. He usually drinks Blue eyes coffee, a shout out to Seto Kaiba's favorite card. And it's expensive as all hell.
  • Lampshaded and mocked to hell and back in Tag Force 5.

Jack: Do you know my favorite coffee, Blue Eyes Mountain, do you know how much it costs? Correct Answer: Three Thousand DP! Jack: Exactly! You know, that number somehow puts my mind at ease...

• Chaud/Enzan from Mega Man NT Warrior/Rockman.EXE is seen drinking coffee quite frequently throughout the series. As in, it's the only thing we actually see him consume on screen until the 2nd season, Axess, and even then that piece of cake was pushed on him by Lan/Netto's mom. We don't see him consume anything other than coffee of his own accord until the 5th season, Beast.
• Yoshimori Sumimura from Kekkaishi is a bit more G-rated -- since he's a Triple Shifter, he needs a lot of coffee milk to get him through the day.
• Since Tachibana of Gate 7 is Not a Morning Person, he's useless (and scary) at morning until he drinks at least one cup of tea.

Card Games

• Flavor text for the Netrunner card "Jack 'n' Joe":

There's too much blood in my caffeine system.

Comics

• Too Much Coffee Man is a superhero whose power is that he drinks too much coffee. The addictive side of this means it is a weakness, too.
• The Question's mentor, Aristotle "Tot" Rodor, had quite a thing for coffee in the O'Neil/Cowan series.
• A surprising amount of Tony Stark Fanon holds that, having put alcoholic addiction behind him, Tony has turned to coffee.
  • Truth in Television: This is actually very common among recovering alcoholics, exchanging an extremely harmful addiction for a harmless and socially acceptable one.
  • Given the fact that practically all he drinks in the movie is either alcoholic or coffee (except for that weird green concoction during the painting decision for the armor), this may be veering into canon in at least one medium.
    • He spends much of the second movie chugging various green concoctions, presumably to alleviate the paladium poisoning.
  • There's also a scene in a recent comic -- Iron Man #1 of the Extremis arc -- where Tony is woken by a call from one of his many secretaries, who is entirely unsympathetic to his grogginess. Defeated, he requests that she at least hook him up with "the gallon drum of coffee. And possibly some kind of intraveinous drip."
• Scott Adams is very fond of using playing with this trope in Dilbert, perhaps more so than in most series. He takes it to both logical ends by showing the workers suffering when the secretary replaces their regular supply with decaf, as well as his titular character gaining Psychic Powers when given an unlimited supply of coffee.
  • Wally is the most extreme example. When Catbert and the boss order him to cut down to 40 cups a day, Wally screams "Not Double Digits!".
  • The strip that best illustrates the Pointy-Haired Boss' evil? The one where he finishes the coffee without refilling the pot.
• Played straight in Adam@Home.
• Garfield strips, especially later ones, sometimes use coffee-addiction gags.
  • Another funny variation was a strip where Jon was sitting calmly while all of a sudden a clearly unhinged Garfield slammed a mug on the table and screamed "BEAN ME!"
  • And there's also a little flash "game" on the official site where you can feed Garfield coffee and watch him wake up and become more and more unhinged. It's aptly named Bean Me!
• A Running Gag in the FoxTrot comic involves the father of the Fox household being rather non-functional, sometimes to the point of Cloudcuckoolander-ness, without his morning coffee.
  • Another comic has Peter weaning himself off of coffee, remarking that he drank so much during finals, if he went cold turkey, he'd die. When asked if he was drinking half-decaf, half-regular, he remarked "quintuple espresso".
  • Another of Peter's stay awake at all costs brews is coffetea (tea brewed with coffee), which is apparently just this side of a controlled substance.
    • In one arc, Paige uses coffee-tea in quantities that shock even her brother, which is quite a feat.
  • Speaking of Roger, on one occasion he was so out of it that he tried to pour his coffee into an upside-down mug. When Paige helpfully pointed out his mistake, he flipped both mug and coffeepot.
  • Paige herself is rather inept at the concepts involved in the culinary arts, even to such a degree that she uses a cup of grounds to a teaspoon of water. I'll give it one thing, it wakes her folks up.
  • "The pot's over by the fridge... The fridge is over there... See that thing with the blinking red light?... Roger, that's the answering machine."
    • The last line said as we hear slurping sounds from off-panel.
  • In one strip, Peter comments that you know you've made coffee right when it's the fumes that wake you up.
    • At one point, Roger goes in for a physical. When the doctor asks how much coffee he drinks in the morning and he replies "a coupla things of coffee." The doctor says "Two cups of coffee is OK. What else?" "Pots, not Cups."
  • One of Peter's bright ideas to stay up long enough to finish a book report was to mix an entire jar of coffee crystals with hot water and drink it all at once.
• Subverted in one Bloom County strip, with vice-presidential candidate Opus stumbling around in a morning stupor, mumbling about needing coffee. Then he reads a newspaper. BOING! "Who needs coffee when you've got the latest poll results?"
• Phoebe from Zits, who list 'caffeine' as her religion when she applies for a job at Fourbucks Coffee.
  • And has an espresso machine in her locker.
• Practically all of the cast in Gotham Central runs on caffeine, being cops. The coffee machine holds a very important in the MCU's interaction life. Seriously, how hard is it to fill the coffee maker again when you finish the damn coffee?!
• In the new (2010-11) The Flash comic book, Iris Allen is seldom seen without a coffee cup in hand. Her IM icon is even a cup of coffee.

Fan Works

• Fanon likes to ascribe this trait to Nabiki in Ranma ½.
• ToyHammer Commissar Tomas Sturm takes a liking to Terran "recaff" (a.k.a. coffee).
• In a Naruto cracky fanfic Reload, a Groundhog Day Loop type fic that long ago reached the lets-goof-off stage, we have Sasuke (who is currently female, long story) get up and reach for the nearest cup of coffee. Naruto comments that it was boiling moments ago.
• In the Sword and Shield Verse, a Crime based Pokémon fanfic, we have Brenda Johnson, our main OC character who's partnered with Mewtwo aka Vahan Smith. Just Brenda, who prefers her coffee "liquid, preferably alive". On the other hand, Mewtwo has stoutly refused to resort to coffee. Brenda considers that a sign of insanity.
• In Project Tatterdemalion, a quirk of genetically engineered biology means that people with Psychic Powers- shinigami and Quincies- really do need caffeine as a basic nutrient, especially when they use their powers a lot. Shinigami in particular also like it because it makes their hearts beat faster- the process that makes them shinigami slows their heartbeats way down, and caffeine brings it back to normal.

Films -- Live-Action

• In Airplane! II: The Sequel, passengers and crew react rather mildly to the various crises encountered during the flight, but fly into all-out panic when it's revealed that there is no more coffee.
• One of the more famous moments in Men in Black is when Kay, after asking Jay if he wants some coffee, steps into the break room and has a brief argument with the "worm guys" (according to the books their species is Vermar), a group of coffee-and-cigarette-obsessed aliens.
• Coffee and Cigarettes is a series of vignettes with various comedians, actors, musicians and artists engaged in dialog over coffee and cigarettes, or about coffee and cigarettes. In one segment, clean and sober Wu Tang Clan advise Bill Murray, obviously attached to both coffee and cigarettes, to give them up for healthy "herbals".
• In the live-action George of the Jungle film, George sees a commercial for coffee on TV and runs through Ursula's San Francisco apartment looking for coffee. When he finds it, he starts eating the ground beans, saying "Javajavajavajavajavajavajavajava!"
• In Moscow on the Hudson Robin Williams's character goes a little bit insane at the supermarket -- he's grocery shopping on behalf of his host family and he's supposed to buy "coffee", but there's an entire aisle filled with nothing but coffee. Which one is he supposed to get?!
• There's a part in Repo! The Genetic Opera where Luigi threatens a guy who offers him decaf coffee and, moments later, stabbing some other sap because the likely caffeinated coffee seemed to not be to his likings.
• The Paper has journalists addicted to Coca-Cola (since real life reporters like coffee and cigarettes a lot), complete with a soda machine on the newspaper's building.

Martha: Why don't you just pour battery acid down your throat? Henry: No caffeine.

• Marge Gunderson's diet in Fargo is more or less normal--she might be willing to eat bigger meals, but not excessively so (averting Wacky Cravings). However, it seems that she simply cannot operate without coffee.
• I Remember Mama is about Norwegians, so of course it's full of references to coffee. One of the subplots is about deciding when you're old enough to drink it. Even tiny children get "coffee-sugar", a sugar cube dipped in the sacred brew.
• In PCU Jeremy Piven's character is introduced while sleeping off a hangover. When the main character wakes him up and tries to introduce himself, Piven will only respond with increasingly loud demands of "Coffee!" before finally screaming, "Coffee now!"
• Two words: Coleman. Francis.
  • Exacerbated by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• Naturally, coffee becomes a literal survival technique for teenagers in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, who need to stay awake or risk being murdered in their dreams. In the opening sequence of Dream Warriors, Kristen doesn't even bother to brew hers, but spoons instant coffee grounds directly into her mouth and washes them down with a slug of extra-caffeinated soda.

Folklore

• According to legend, when coffee arrived in Europe, the Moral Guardians took issue with drinking an Islamic drink. The issue came before the Pope, whereupon he took a whiff and baptized it because good Christians shouldn't be deprived of such an obviously heavenly drink.

Literature

• In a sort of recursive example, Diana Wynne Jones's short story Nad and Dan and Quaffy is about a science-fiction author with a coffee addiction who tends to write all her main characters as having an addiction to whatever the in-universe equivalent is.
  • And in her novel Deep Secret, the character Nick is completely incoherent and can't even open his eyes in the morning until he's had four cups. (This is apparently based on Neil Gaiman's real-life morning routine as witnessed at a convention.) In the sequel, The Merlin Conspiracy, Nick admits that he completely exaggerates his difficulties waking up, so that people won't bother him until he's feeling less grumpy.
  • In a somewhat milder example, in Dark Lord of Derkholm, Finn, one of the minor characters, mentions how he asked to be paid in coffee beans for serving as a wizard for one of the Pilgrim Parties that tears through his world on a regular basis, since the stuff normally only comes from Earth. Derk, who specializes in breeding all sorts of unique plants and animals, has managed to cultivate his own crop, which delights Finn to no end.
• In Monstrous Regiment, Maladict is a vampire who has replaced cravings for blood with cravings for coffee. When the coffee runs out, the vampire starts to go a little nuts, acting like a character from a Vietnam War movie ("Charlie's tracking us!" "Who's Charlie?").
  • Otto Chriek gives Polly dire warnings of what will happen if Maladict doesn't get coffee, and mentions that vampires have been known to hallucinate so vividly that other people experience them. Later in the book, the regiment hears helicopters overhead, which (unless Leonard of Quirm's drawings somehow count) don't exist on the Discworld.
• Dave Barry often mentions his need for coffee in his articles and his novels often have his heroes addicted to the drink as well.
• Elizabeth Vaughan's books use this trope in a mostly-rural fantasy setting. Kavage makes everything a little more bearable, and most characters wouldn't think of going a day without it.
• One of the first things the time-displaced Americans do in the 1632 series is arrange to import coffee. Then they start exporting coffee-houses.
  • In the first book, it's also noted that bothering the high school principal, Ed Piazza, before his first cup of coffee in the morning was a bad idea.
• When a joke book lists "Fun Things to Do at Work", it's likely to mention something along the lines of "Replace the coffee in the coffee machines with decaf. When everyone has gotten over their addictions, switch to espresso".
  • The smart version of this is not to switch suddenly to decaf, but blend it in gradually over a few months.
• Whether coffee is fresh and hot, cold and stale, or a horrible mix of both, Colt Regan will still drink it, because it's still coffee.
• In the Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet?, by ~John M. Ford~, it's quickly established over breakfast that "Bones McCoy was Not a Morning Person":

Bones: Plergb hrafizz umgemby, and coffee.

• • Despite the coffee he fails to notice his grits are bright blue - though everybody else at the table does.
  • Another novel had "coffee" that was dispensed in freeze-dried cubes, and apparently had all the taste qualities of transmission fluid. The freighter captain Kirk is hitching a ride with says she keeps her own stash of beans so she won't have to drink that swill.
• Lampshaded in the Nora Roberts book Tribute, in which the hero (a graphic novelist) leaves some coffee along with "before" and "after" pictures of her--before the caffeine bearing a strong resemblance to a drowned rat, and after the caffeine as the new Wonder Woman.
• In Clifford Simak's Hugo winner Way Station, the alien Ulysses loves coffee.
• Honor Harrington averts the trope, enjoying Cocoa instead. Naturally, everyone who drinks coffee is jokingly called a "barbarian coffee drinker."
  • Note that this includes almost every single character in the series except Honor herself
  • Honor's preference of cocoa instead of coffee comes off as an inversion of the series' general premise of Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE
• Horatio Hornblower is an avid coffee drinker, in contrast to the normal assumption that a British officer would be drinking tea. In at least one book, he is shown to settle for a Poor Man's Substitute for coffee made from burnt bread and a lot of sugar.
• Rather subtle in the Aubrey-Maturin series, but it's there: the titular characters are often seen sharing an entire pot of coffee. At several points, it's noted that neither is fully human without their morning coffee, and there's a minor crisis in Post Captain when upon moving to a new command Jack Aubrey discovers, much to his horror, that there is no coffee.
  • Or in The Mauritius Command, when, upon being informed that rats have eaten all of their coffee beans, Jack says to his steward "Killick, you may tell Mr Seymore, with my compliments, that you are to have a boat. And if you don't find at least a stone of beans among the squadron, you need not come back"
• Almost all of the protagonists in Peacebreakers are hopelessly addicted to coffee, which, according to Word of God, is a small jibe at the role of coffee in workplace melodrama.
• Harry Dresden's liquid diet consists almost entirely of Coca-Cola and homebrew beer, with water appearing only on rare occasions.
  • He's had coffee fairly frequently as well.
• According to Dragonsdawn, the first two things a group of humans will actively try and find on a new planet are: something that they can ferment into alcohol, and something they can turn into coffee. (Much to the dismay of the colonists, coffee bushes won't grow on Pern (or any other planet humans have colonized). The brave ones drink klah instead, but one colonist plots to steal a ship and leave, partly because they've run out of coffee.)
• In The Mote in Gods Eye, Horace Bury is a coffee connoisseur who at one point shows off his stash to the crew of a Russian-themed warship, who favored tea. The royal family has their own reserved farm for growing coffee beans that no one else is allowed to touch; Bury paid a ridiculous price to get his hands on some, wouldn't do it again but it was so good he doesn't regret it. The crew of Mac Arthur are less than enthusiastic about exterminating the vermin infesting their ship because, among other things, they vastly improved the operation of the ship's coffeemaker and the taste of its output.
• Most, if not all, of the characters in The Millennium Trilogy seem to subsist on a lot of coffee. Apparently, writer Stieg Larsson was like this in real life as well.
• Barbara Michaels' ripping good yarn Asta's Book (first published in the U.S. as Anna's Book) is about a Danish woman living in 1905 London. In her diary, she says Danish people need coffee more than food and talks about drinking three cups in the morning even when they're short on money and have to be careful. As an old lady living with her daughter, one of her catch phrases is "Do I smell the good coffee?"
• Garrison Keillor has some immortal words about Norwegians and coffee in Leaving Home. "He poured himself a cup of coffee, drank some, kissed his wife -- in that order, he is Norwegian." Later he says coffee has been known to revive Norwegians who have flatlined.
• In the In Death series Eve lives on coffee and Pepsi. In fact, the first present Roarke ever gives her is a bag of coffee.
• "Kragar, shut up and let me drink my klava. Then you can be funny. If you try to be funny before I've had my klava, I will probably have to kill you, and then I'll be sad." "Ah. Well, I wouldn't want you to be sad."
• In Ranger's Apprentice, the Rangers' main drink, and one you would not want to deprive them of, is coffee.
• Bertie suffers badly from this in Jeeves and Wooster, being literally unable to function when awakened before noon unless he's handed a cup of tea. Of course, he doesn't function too terribly well in general.

Live-Action TV

• Name any office drama. Any one.
  • Or any cop show. Seriously, cop shows gotta have crimes, guns, badges, and LOTS of coffee.
    • This seems to be a sort of shorthand to suggest that the characters never have time to sleep.
    • On that note, medical shows gotta have lousy coffee in the break room.
  • French canadian office comedy Camera Cafe is filmed from the perspective of a coffee machine.
• Rick Castle hates the NYPD coffee so much that he gives the homicide detectives an espresso machine.
  • In one episode, Beckett pulls an all-nighter at the precinct trying to solve a case. When Castle arrives the next morning, Ryan mentions that she's had "like, 9 double shots of espresso."

Castle, to Beckett: You know, the internet's talking about this great new thing called sleep. Supposed to be really good for you. Beckett: (ignores him)

• Homicide: Life On the Street: Frank Pembleton relies on coffee to get through the day even after he had a stroke and his doctor warned him off the stuff.
• Star Trek is geeky, and geeks need caffeine. Even in the era of The Next Generation, the people (if you can stomach calling such criminals people) who took the alcohol out of alcoholic beverages ("synthehol", agh) still have trouble with making a decaffeinated beverage that still tastes good (obviously because they refuse to cut off the caffeine train).
  • James Kirk seemed to have a mild coffee addiction, he often had it with his meals and in "The Trouble With Tribbles" He becomes especially agitated with the title creatures when he finds one in his coffee.
    • Picard drinks tea. Kirk drinks coffee. Any questions?
  • Deep Space Nine takes it Up to Eleven with Raktajino - Klingon Coffee! Many "morning rituals" revolved around the drink: such as Odo's security reports to Kira. The most noted raktajino drinker is Captain Benjamin Sisko, with the drink as much a part of his morning ritual as earth coffee is to many in real life. He even shows similar symptoms when he hasn't yet had his morning cup and later in the series decides to cut down on the raktajino. On one occasion when he decides to order Tarkalean tea at breakfast instead of raktajino (because of some machine screwing with probability on the station, apparently), Kira shows surprise bordering on concern. How the trade in Klingon Coffee is related to the thaw in relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire is something that's sadly never been explored.
    • Keiko notices that camera footage depicting the death of her husband Miles O'Brien must be fake because the timestamp shows him drinking coffee much later than usual and would interfere with his sleep. When he's reunited with her later and he asks for coffee, she finds out she was wrong and he'd drink coffee anytime of day, even just before sleep.
    • O'Brien likes his Jamaican Blend, double strong, double sweet.
  • Captain Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager has got to be addicted to caffeine, what with all the coffee she drinks. Her Memory Alpha entry has an entire section devoted to Janeway and Coffee. One early episode has Voyager running low on energy, preventing the crew from using the replicators -- and thereby forcing Janeway to abstain from coffee. Janeway decides to try to extract energy from a nebula, despite the concerns of her officers that it might be dangerous. Her reason? "There is coffee in that nebula!" So yeah, she's got an addiction, all right.
    • Neelix eventually went mad with power as the cook (really) and tried to control the coffee supply by forcing his own interesting alternatives on the crew, or cutting the half-Klingon chief engineer off during an all-nighter. His attempt to pull this on the captain gave us a page quote. Right after that, he tries to ask a question, which the Captain interrupts with "Coffee first." Janeway never interrupts her crew. But it's just that important.
    • Another episode has Neelix annoyed at being Janeway's coffee boy during one of her all-nighters and offer to set up a caffeine IV drip.
• On News Radio, to try to get Bill to give up smoking, Dave promises to give up coffee. Both end up taking it pretty hard.
• In the Noah's Arc movie, this is Alex's main issue (except the caffeine is pill form, not coffee).
• Hal from Malcolm in the Middle used to be a caffeine addict, until Dewey said he would stop smoking if Hal stopped drinking coffee.
  • Though all they did in the end was trade addictions.
• Stan the Coffee Man from Mad TV. He drinks coffee so much that he keeps a thermos flask on him, in case something happens to his coffee cup.
  • Though most of the sketches has him trying to kick the habit. It doesn't take long for him to fall of the wagon though.
  • Scientists studying Stan found that he actually pees coffee. And apparently it's delicious.

Man: You tasted it?!? Scientist: Not at first, no.

• Stephen Colbert's preferred drink is the five-shot Venti Caramel Mocha Latte. When Starbucks was temporarily closed for training, he reverted to a rabid, snarling beast, and had to be chained up. And later, when he finally gets his hands on some... three words: naked coffee shower.
• Both Lorelai and Rory from Gilmore Girls drank enormous amounts of coffee. Rory loved coffee so much that when she thinks she may be unable to continue visiting Yale's coffee shop, she breaks down in tears (okay, there was a bit more going on for her emotionally at the time, but mentioning the coffee is when she actually started crying). In fact, coffee was a pivotal characterization for both characters, though admittedly more Lorelai's, early on and till the very end, even including several story arcs (Lorelai seems only to date coffee enthusiasts or providers, excepting Rory's dad).
• Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS is very much addicted to coffee, and has made death threats on anyone trying to drink his cup. Hilarity Ensues the one time DiNozzo tricks McGee into drinking the boss's coffee.
  • Well, in the military, a senior NCO's coffee mug is his. You may not touch it without his permission, empty or not. Also, it can be used to fight sweating when it's a hot day and there's no air con.
    • Rule 23: Never touch a Marine's coffee if you want to live.
  • And it must be made the right way -- Gibbs doesn't like Tony's "three sugars and a hazelnut" coffee.
  • On field trips that include staying overnight, Gibbs brings his own blend.
  • Abby Sciuto is also addicted to caffeine, though she prefers "Caf-Pow" (caffeinated drink). She (unsuccessfully) tried to break the habit once, and it wasn't pretty. On occasion, she will switch to "No-Caf-Pow" if she's worried about the caffeine interfering with her sleep.
    • Then there was the time she drank even more Caf-Pow than usual so she could be extra alert for a particular case. She also upped her salt intake to fight the obvious side-effect. The salt didn't work.
  • Jenny Shepherd is also a caffeine addict, and the only other person allowed to drink Gibbs' coffee. She was unsuccessful in breaking the habit one episode, resulting in Gibbs leaving his cup for her after a briefing.
  • Let's just say a caffeine addiction is a job requirement at NCIS, and leave it at that.
• Twin Peaks: Agent Cooper enjoys a damn good cup of coffee.
  • What's funny is that his actor hates coffee (and cherry pie).
• One memorable skit on The State involves a family of caffeine addicts who drink ludicrous amounts of coffee, own about twenty percolators spread out through their kitchen and living room, pack their lunchboxes entirely with Thermoses of coffee, talk at the top of their lungs constantly, and find the word "sleep" hysterically funny. At the end of the sketch, their crazy Mad Scientist uncle enters from the garage and triumphantly declares that he's just invented the most highly concentrated form of caffeine known to man; the family patriarch drinks it, calmly pronounces it good, walks out of the house, and explodes.
• Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1 is rarely seen on Earth without a cup of coffee. Although the characters mention it occasionally, the fans have exaggerated his caffeine addiction to epic proportions.
  • Jonas Quinn, his replacement, was often seen standing around with a cup of coffee -- but it was because no one would give him anything to do.
• Nicholas Rush from Stargate Universe is similar, which is a problem since Destiny has no coffee. Combined with nicotine withdrawal and a severe lack of sleep, the man literally collapsed after a rant.
• During the first "Alaska Special", when Jamie and Adam were testing "Cabin Fever", Jamie claimed he was napping so much because there wasn't any coffee in the cabins. (About the 2:23 point on this video.)
• Nathan Ford gave up the booze in Season 2 of Leverage, but he swapped it out for coffee.
• Ivanova in Babylon 5 is presumably a caffeine addict, as she illicitly grows coffee plants in the station's hydroponics facility.
  • Those plants were originally Laurel Takishima's, but she left, and Ivanova apparently found them.
  • She gives in to Garibaldi purely because he threatens to destroy the coffee plants, describing him as a "vicious man". I think we can strike "presumably".
• In the Spin-Off to Babylon 5, Crusade, there was an episode ("Visitors from Down The Street") which had The Captain complaining about the quality of the coffee aboard the ship, and wondering if it's actually coffee at all.

Captain Gideon: I swear they put caffeine in it just to mess with me.

• Seattle's famed coffee addiction was prime fodder for several Almost Live! sketches. This section of their "Guide to Living in Seattle" is almost exclusively dedicated to the city's coffee obsession.
• On Seinfeld, George kicks himself when he realizes that when his date invited him upstairs for "coffee" at midnight, she didn't really mean coffee.

"Nah, I don't drink coffee. It keeps me up."

• In an episode of 30 Rock, Kenneth gets addicted to coffee, causing him to go back to Georgia. Of course, because Status Quo Is God, he ends up missing the midnight train to Georgia because he was misinformed about the time it left.
• An episode of Will and Grace features a B-plot in which Jack gets addicted to coffee due to a fling with a barista and then having to kick the stuff when said barista gets fired and can no longer supply free iced coffees every hour on the hour and occasionally on the half-hour. Karen helps out by kicking coffee too (so she just drinks her Bailey's straight in the morning) and the two of them end up at a wedding where only coffee drinks are being served, no alcohol.

Jack: Out of my way! I have a monkey on my back and his name is Juan Valdez!

• A running gag on The Kids in The Hall had Dave Foley appearing with a cup of coffee virtually anytime he played himself in a sketch.
  • Also this sketch about the perils of switching to decaf.
• Brent from Corner Gas drinks a great deal of coffee; when Emma suggests that he cut down to three cups a day, he scoffs, "Three cups? That's for preschoolers or something. And they get nap time." He tried to give up coffee in the episode "Dog River Vice" and spent a few days in a zombie-like state of caffeine withdrawal before resuming his habit.
• Both TV and Real Life: The guys from Deadliest Catch make no bones about the enormous amounts of caffeine they live on to get their jobs done, and in their down time between hauls, are rarely seen without a cup of coffee or an energy drink nearby for quick consumption. When the ship Rollo had to ration coffee in season two, the entire crew suffered badly.
• David Letterman often sips from his coffee mug while at his desk (sipping coffee...presumably) and has had numerous anti-decaf spoken by the show's announcer, such as "Decaffeinated coffee--oh boy, it sucks!"
• On Frasier, the main characters are often seen getting coffee in their favorite local coffee shop, Cafe Nervosa.
• On Young Blades, Queen Anne and the Musketeers go through caffeine withdrawal when the royal doctor convinces King Louis XIV to ban coffee.
• Mad Men made a Call Forward Running Gag of client Martinson Coffee's concern that young people wouldn't drink coffee in the future.
• Detective Yemana's coffee was memorably awful but the squad downed it in gallons.
• Set in 1890s Toronto, an episode of Murdoch Mysteries featured a store selling this brand new drink called "coffee." The lead character has a taste and wonders who would want to buy this.
• According to the Doctor Who episode "The Girl Who Waited", the number one destination in the galaxy is the Planet of the Coffee Shops.
• An episode of Just Shoot Me begins with Dennis coming in all grumpy and sarcastic. He drinks his coffee and suddenly becomes cheery and helpful.

Magazines

• The 50th aniversary cover of Private Eye showed two versions of their mascot Gnitty, surrounded by the essential paraphenallia of journalism in 1961 and 2011. Prominently displayed are a cup and saucer (1961) and a Starbucks paper cup (2011).

Music

• Devin Townsend's Album Ziltoid the Omniscient is basically a Rock Opera about about the title character destroying the Earth because he gets a bad cup of coffee.
• Older Than Radio: J. S. Bach, of all people. Coffee addiction was the moral panic du jour in 18th century Leipzig, so Bach wrote a cantata about it (in favor of the stuff, mind): Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht ("Be still, stop chattering") (BWV 211), better known as the "Coffee cantata." The story concerns a young woman who is in love with coffee. Her father attempts to bribe her out of the habit by promising to find her a husband if she gives it up, to which she agrees. She ends up getting her way after all, by secretly telling her suitors that she will only marry them if they allow her to drink coffee.
• The song "Stress" by Jim's Big Ego, as noted at the top of the page. The first half of the first verse he sings about (trying to) cope with his over consumption of caffeine. It doesn't seem to be working, however more alert and attentive it makes him to his work.
• A French example -- "Le Café" by Oldelaf. The music video really pulls it off, though.
• They Might Be Giants are so devoted to coffee that they actually devoted an entire segment to it in Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. Coffee is also mentioned in enough songs that the fan-made wiki chronicles all its mentions in songs. The inevitable result was the band writing and singing several songs promoting Dunkin' Donuts coffee.
• The song called "Caffeine" by Taxi is about exactly what you think, and notable for the singer, while graduating with each verse from Coca-Cola to coffee to caffeine pills instead of food, being reduced to unintelligible screaming and gibbering by the song's end.
• There's also "The Java Jive", originally by The Ink Spots, but covered by many others (including, oddly, Richard Thompson), since.
• Children's band Trout Fishing in America sang about this in the song "What I Want Is a Proper Cup of Coffee".
• Jars of Clay has "The Coffee Song (Good Coffee, Strong Coffee)", which they only play at live shows.
• "Caffeine" by metal parody band Psychostick. ENERGY DRINKS REPLACE WATER!
• The Dutch group VOF De Kunst has "Eén Kopje Koffie" ("One Cup of Coffee") which describes how our whole civilisation runs on coffee.
• Mitch Benn's Caffeine":

I got caffeine, caffeine, running through my veins. Got me going like the clappers, and it's driving me insane. I got caffeine, caffeine, am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? I have no need for your human sleep, I have caffeine.

Tabletop Games

• In Twilight 2000, the coffee production and distribution infrastructure was one of the first things to be repaired After the End.
• The only way to get through a game of Risk in one sitting.
  • Or not.

Theater

• The musical How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying includes the song "Coffee Break".

Video Games

• Prosecutor Godot (goh-doh) from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is obsessed with coffee, it being his "gimmick" of sorts. He often uses obscure coffee metaphors when describing his case, drinks up to seventeen cups in one trial day, does Spit Takes, and throws his coffee at Phoenix when things aren't looking so good. It's also worth noting that it was the aroma of coffee in his room what woke him up from his Convenient Coma.
  • It also ends up being an important symbol at the end of the game, as when he drinks his last cup Phoenix drinks one as well, indicating reconciliation.
• The old man near the start of the original Pokémon games is very grumpy until he's had his coffee, and wouldn't let you pass until he's had it.
  • In the original Japanese version, he was drunk.
• In one point in the story of Super Mario RPG, you befriend an innkeeper, who lets you stay the night at her inn. When you wake up, she asks Mario how he's feeling, and you have two ways you can respond:

1. "Like a new man!" 2. "Need coffee, keep away....

• In Day of the Tentacle, Dr. Fred's hands are jittering constantly since he's on a continuous caffeine high. In fact, he drinks coffee all the time to avoid falling asleep, nightmares and sleepwalking, and hasn't slept for ten years!
  • When you need him to fall asleep to solve a puzzle, all you have to do is slip him some decaf.
• Francis York Morgan in Deadly Premonition relies upon coffee not just for a quick pick-me-up, but to predict the future. Hence the meme, "F...K! In the coffee!"
  • Coffee and caffeinated soft drinks also refill York's sleep meter, so it's possible for him to go the entire game without ever going to sleep outside of a cutscene. Then again, there are consequences to staying up too late...
• In Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, the Wizard stays up until 2 AM, and is obsessed with stargazing. Not surprisingly, his favorite items are all coffee-related.
• Hawke in Advance Wars has black coffee on his 'likes' list. It's otherwise not mentioned in-game.
• An old DOS game Toxic Bunny featured a, well, bunny... obsessed with "weaponry and caffeine". Seriously, it's difficult to find a plot-related speech that doesn't mention coffee.
• Dr. Catherine Halsey's personal journal is peppered with amusing one-liners one would expect to hear from Kathryn Janeway, including "Need more DARK coffee. Why can't they grow decent coffee on this planet?!", "No work before coffee" (with all the notes preceding it scratched out), and "She will answer for making me drink decaf." The word "decaf" is underlined in an angry squiggle.
• This could be true for the Scout in Team Fortress 2. In an early trailer, his motto simply reads "Too. Much. Caffeine." Plus, two of his unlockable weapons are energy drinks.
  • Forget the Scout. The Meet the Sniper video shows him, as the hours go by, drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee. Where else do you think the Jarate comes from?
    • Averted. It's decaf. Observe the video at around one minute in. The coffee pot has an orange handle.
• Some casual flash games use coffee as their mode of energy-boost.
• The fan game Space Quest Incinerations opens with Roger Wilco stumbling out of a broom closet in search of coffee. It isn't until he's caffeinated himself that he notices half the kitchen is missing thanks to his ship being under attack.
• In the browser game Twilight Heroes, superheroes rely on sugar and caffeine to stay awake while adventuring at night.

Web Comics

• A lack of coffee drives Quantum Cop to police brutality.
• In Holiday Wars, Tegan, the comic's protagonist, is a coffee junkie and declares so in this episode.
• Subverted in PvP, where Brent Sienna is initially addicted to coffee but has to give it up for health reasons. Then when PVP magazine is in crisis, and Brent insists on coffee to "give him his edge", it turns out it was decaf in a classic example of "the magic was in you all along."
• Antihero for Hire normally has the action taking place at night. When the hero has to get up during the day, he needs his coffee. He ends up spending most of the arc looking for some.
• User Friendly uses this trope from time to time, particularly with the Crud Puppy.
  • Early strips of the comic have tech support member Greg harassed by a Kool-Aid Man-esque can of diet cola when he decides to try to cut back on caffeine.
  • "I just rewrote the Linux kernel!" "When did you learn to program?" "This morning!"
  • After attempting to make a truly Uninterruptible Power Supply powered by uranium, Pitr reveals that as of recently he's been making coffee with heavy water.
  • What's the first thing they restore power to after moving their operations into an abandoned nuclear silo? Nope, not lights... "Ahhh, truly dark roast."
• Vanamonde von Mekkhan from Girl Genius spends all his time in a coffee shop in Mechanicsburg, and certainly does enjoy his coffee. He has even written a textbook on coffee preparation (under a pseudonym): Bean There, Done That.
• This Questionable Content shows a justified example. Really surprising the trope doesn't crop up more often since QC centers around a coffee shop.
• From Order of the Stick, the prequel graphic novel Start of Darkness reveals that pre-lich Xykon had a... strange relationship with coffee, but a relationship nonetheless. One of the main reasons he becomes a Complete Monster in rapid succession with achieving Lichdom is that he's no longer able to taste coffee.
• Exterminatus Now: If you touch Inquisitor Eastwood's coffee, he will break your arm.
  • His addiction to caffeine even overcomes his phobia of spiders.
• This strip of El Goonish Shive.
• Dante, the Head Programmer in Angst Technology, can tell from nearly fifteen feet away if the coffee in the office machine has been replaced with decaf.
• Rooster Teeth Comics has a Running Gag about Matt having died from lack of caffeine.
• Margaret Browning from College Roomies from Hell is a textbook example, her bucket-sized coffee cup being known as "The Browning" and formerly known as "The Suicide".
• The Whiteboard is a great example. The main character "Doc" brews his own Mt Dew because the normal stuff is too weak.
  • One arc involves Doc drinking energy shots by the quart after he runs out of Dew and coffee, resulting in one of the more "realistic" portrayals of Caffeine Bullet Time.
• An early Ozy and Millie strip, from when the writer admits she was going for the newspaper comic audience.

Millie: I don't care if it does stunt my growth. I. Need. COFFEE.

• Lynette from Sharing a Universe quickly got hooked on the stuff and turned herself into "The Coffee Hunter" stalking the city after those precious beans when Alison decided to intervene and stop supplying her addiction.
• Freefall: Florence Ambrose tends to take exception to having her coffee taken away, as only a carnivore can. She also explicitly cited the availability of coffee as a benefit of restoring power to Sam's ship.
• The Last Days of Foxhound: Psycho Mantis.
• Ralph from Melonpool is an avid drinker of the stuff.
• Ruth in Altermeta has rarely been seen not holding a cup of coffee. In fact, everyone around him carries emergency caffeine sources, just in case.
• This strip from the blog of the french cartoonist Boulet.
• Monica of Wapsi Square gets like this sometimes.
• In General Protection Fault, part of the test to see if a geek is 'The One' is a test of caffeine addiction. Fooker passed it by enjoying coffee that has congealed to the consistency of tar. Sharon passed it by chewing coffee beans and washing them down with more coffee.
• In Sluggy Freelance when Torg and Riff briefly got regular 9-to-5 jobs they became coffee zombies in the morning.
  • Later, making everyone addicted to high-octane "coffee" (that is explosive in its undiluted state) is just one form of Government Drug Enforcement in 4U City. And cutting off the coffee pipeline sets off a massive revolution.
• In one contemporary arc strip of Arthur, King of Time and Space, Arthur, who is decidedly Not a Morning Person, is shown pouring coffee on his cereal. It's left ambiguous how intentional this is.
• Ada from Jackies Fridge likes her coffee very strong!
• White from Grey Is, especially in the mornings but it seems to be his drink of choice all the time. When he first gets back after two years away, the first thing he does after greeting Black is search the house for coffee
• Baby Blue holds it while demonstrating Not a Morning Person in Sinfest. Then, she is disgruntled for additional reasons.

Web Original

• In the web-published novel series Shadow of the Templar, team leader Simon is a large addict, to the point where he took to kissing a person who'd just taken a sip of coffee when post-surgery Simon was banned from the drink.
• In the Home Office video "Me, I'm Not (File 2/15)", Linc is grumpy due to a lack of coffee.
• Deliberately subverted in this podcast where the hosts open every show with "Morning Coffee". To date they have never once had coffee during this segment, with beverages sometimes deeply oddball to avoid it. Also some of the co-hosts do a segment dubbed "Evening Pint" where they drink nothing but coffee.
• Another flavor of "Morning Coffee" comes as a Firefox plugin for pulling up your daily internet dosage of addiction. It's an especially good tool for Web Comics folk, provided your comics all remember to update on time.
• Whateley Universe: In the devisor labs at Whateley Academy, the mad scientists gather every morning over a specially designed brewer to enjoy coffee so strong it's... well...

"Imagine a twenty-gallon stainless-steel vat of water, heated by a kind of micro-fusion reactor and made to work as a giant engine of percolation. Add to this the whole deal a filter that literally rips every useful bit of anti-nutrient and caffeine in the grounds and you have yourself some potent stuff. Our coffee is considered a deadly weapon in three states."

• • Jericho, one of said devisers, is so addicted to coffee that he has a coffee mug holder. On his power armor.
  • The devisers also have a regular coffee chant that's a blatant Shout-Out to the Mentats of Dune.
• A coffee mug sold by The Onion Store.
• In "The Kickassian War" (an extra on the Kickassia DVD), The Nostalgia Chick becomes animalistic when she's deprived of coffee for too long a couple of days.
• The Nostalgia Critic is desperate enough for coffee that he'll even have it before going to sleep.
• Used in this Lolcats page. A good example that having no coffee can be terrible for some people.

Western Animation

• In Men in Black The Animated Series, the "worm guys" entire function at MIB seems to involve making coffee (and getting into wacky shenanigans at the worst of times). It is revealed that on their home planet, only royalty can drink coffee, leading to their quick addiction to it once they reached Earth (Forbidden Fruit and all that). One episode has them saving their king's life and requesting the right to freely drink coffee as their reward.
• One episode of ~Dexter's Laboratory~ shows how Mom and Dad are in the morning before they have their coffee (yikes!), but once they have it they magically transform into their "normal" selves.
  • And the plot of the episode is, of course, that the kids have stolen their coffee overnight, Dexter being curious how coffee changes them.
• Tweek from South Park is absolutely addicted to coffee, and as a result is very twitchy. His parents (who give him the coffee) think his twitchiness is due to ADD.
  • It's probably because his dad owns a coffee house, though.
• Wyatt from ~6Teen~ always has coffee every day. One time he couldn't get coffee, which let him have very little energy.
• Futurama episode "Three Hundred Big Boys" involved Fry's attempt to use his 300 Tricky Dick Funbucks (read: "tax refund") on 100 cups of coffee. Despite getting unbelievably jittery, irascible, and otherwise @#$%ing wired, he arrives at this goal. Somehow. Apparently, when you hit #100, you attain temporary Super Speed.
  • There's a Trope for it, actually.
• In an episode of Justice League, Doctor Destiny is able to trap people (and the other league members) when they fall asleep. Batman's been up for three days straight, and he needs to stay up long enough to find and defeat DD. He winds up driving to a restaurant and demanding the most caffeine laden drink they have. NOW!
  • The punchline being his earlier statement to Martian Manhunter that he did not use stimulants of any kind.
    • Because he was anticipating having to deal with someone who could kill you in your dreams.
• The Simpsons Movie has an AA reunion going berserk after the coffee machine is broken.
  • An episode sees Bart slip into this phase when his parents are away and they're left with Grandpa Simpson to watch them...

Bart: Hey grandpa, top me off. Grandpa Simpson: Are you sure your parents let you kids have coffee? Bart: FOR THE LAST TIME, YES!

• In Jackie Chan Adventures, Uncle orders either Jackie or Torhu to "Get in kitchen and make coffee! Uncle need caffeine!"
  • He gets very irritable if he doesn't get it. "You forgot to make coffee this morning! Coffee is the only thing keeping Uncle's ancient heart beating! You want dead Uncle?! NO?! THEN YOU MAKE COFFEE!!"
• The Fairly Odd Parents: "Wow this coffee stuff is great!"
• This is a major plot point in the episode Caffeinated Coffee Tickets of Regular Show.
• On The Simpsons Barney, switches to coffee for a while before returning to beer.
• In The Powerpuff Girls episode "Power Lunch", Lil' Arturo drinks a cup of coffee followed by the whole pot.
• In Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Brak famously states "I don't like coffee. It makes me jittery. Here's an impression of me on coffee: DS;5w23LFKJP70IEU@Q)O($*#@05rsldkfjxxx. Hey, whaddayadoinwhaddayadoinwhaddayadoinwhaddayadoin? I don't know what I'm doin', cause I've had too much coffee! AAAAA! Don't drink too much coffee, kids."
• Bugs Bunny, of all people, in an episode of The Looney Tunes Show. He has at least five cups of coffee a morning, which makes him jittery, high-strung and paranoid, and when his doctor makes him go off caffeine he switches to an energy drink of questionable legality. In The Stinger for the episode, he reveals that the doctor told him one cup a day couldn't hurt...and is shown pouring coffee into a cup the size of a foot bath.

Real Life

• When Washington State was deciding on a design for their state quarter, they took in many suggestions from the public. One suggestion was a steaming mug of coffee.
• Scandinavian, and especially Swedish, culture is known for its "fika": short breaks from work in which everyone in the workplace drinks coffee, small talks and optionally have a cigarette if they are so inclined. This is usually a communal activity, and occurs several times a day.
• In Norway, the equivalent of tea time is called coffee. Just coffee. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, supper. Preferred black, no milk, no sugar, no cream, no taint upon the pureness of coffee -- though increasing multiculturalism is breaking that tradition little by little.
  • Likewise in Denmark.
  • Stoughton, Wisconsin -- a town made up primarily of descendants of Norwegian immigrants -- claims to be the birthplace of the coffee break.
• Finland has the highest consumption of coffee per capita.
  • In the Finnish Armed Forces, coffee is called "petroleum" for two reasons; first, the army brand coffee tastes like kerosene, and second, it keeps the armed forces running and act as fuel for the personnel.
• According to the UnDutchables, the Dutch are a living coffee cult. And no, not for the shops.
• Richard O'Brien had to go to rehab for caffeine overdose, reportedly.
• French author Voltaire claimed to drink 72 cups of coffee a day. Even though cups were generally smaller and coffee generally weaker than today, that is one man who loved his coffee.
  • Nikola Tesla called him a monster because of it.
  • When someone told him that coffee was "a slow poison", Voltaire responded, "It must be slow, for I have been drinking it for sixty-five years and am not dead yet."
• Surrealist film director David Lynch has his own brand of coffee and reportedly drinks 18 cups a day, whilst practicing transcendental meditation. This may explain a thing or two about his work...
• Historian Samuel Eliot Morison once said of the US Navy, "The Navy could probably win a war without coffee but it wouldn't like to try."
  • One theory for the origin of the term "cup of Joe" is that it was named for Secretary of the US Navy, Admiral Josephus Daniels, who abolished the officers' wine mess in 1914, after which coffee was the drink of choice on navy ships.
• During the American Civil War, if Union soldiers didn't have time to make coffee many of them would suck on the grounds just to get the taste. Soldiers of both sides who weren't that lucky (if shipments were disrupted) experimented with chicory, roasted dandelion roots, burned nutshells...
  • There were many cases where the armies of either side were camped close enough together that the outer pickets could talk with each other. When that happened, illicit trading often took place. One of the most common trades was tobacco (Grown in the South) for coffee (Shipped in by Northern trading companies).
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was a teatotaller, but he was said to drink at least a gallon of coffee on a slow day.
• Musician Frank Zappa's drugs of choice were caffeine and nicotine.
• Mike Patton of Faith No More wrote one song about sleep deprivation after subjecting himself to staying awake for three days in a row, aptly named "Caffeine".
• Dave Grohl, while in-studio with Them Crooked Vultures. FRESH POOOOOOOTS!
• Coffee was all the rage among Englishmen in the 1700's. There were different coffeehouses for politicians, merchants, sea captains, soldiers, poets, and anything else one can think of. For instance Lloyds was once a mariners and insurers coffeehouse. It was only later that tea became fashionable. In a way, The British Empire was conquered with coffee and ruled with Tea.
• In one of his commentaries for Dilbert, Scott Adams claims that he once accidentally drank decaf one morning and actually thought he was sick.
• Robert Downey, Jr. says that he has been known to wake up, do a triple shot of espresso, and then head back to bed.
• A link on the right side of the Hyperbole and a Half homepage is an enthusiastic plug for a coffee shop, which supposedly named a blend after the author. Also, this.
• Coffee is the second most common trade good in the world behind only oil.
• While any kind of college student can be partial to the bean (particularly around exam and paper due dates), coffee's status in architecture schools approaches sacramental.
  • Likewise lots of professional schools. Medical schools (and by extension the rest of the allied health professions), law schools and business schools are all notorious for housing prodigious numbers of coffee fiends, largely due to heavy workloads and irregular study/practical hours.
• Coffee was first discovered in what's today Ethiopia (allegedly by a goat farmer who witnessed his animals' strange behavior after they ate coffee berries) and made its way over to pre-Islamic Iraq, where it was used in religious rituals. The rituals involved staying up all night participating in some rites and festivals on certain holidays, and this coffee greatly helped. Eventually, it lost its "special occasion" status, and people started drinking it on a more regular basis.
  • The tale of how coffee lost "special occasion" status is also quite fascinating. Although it was known in Christian Iraq (Iraq had mostly converted to Christianity a few centuries before the Arabs rolled out of the south), it was in Islamic times that coffee really spread. Sufi Muslim mystics used it to help them meditate, which (as noted) was not a new thing. However, Sufis meditated more often than the Christian Ethiopians and Iraqis, and more importantly, Sufism tends to be very popular with ordinary Muslims, as it recognizes things like saints and shrines and so on, and encourages more direct spiritual connections than other forms of Islam (which, like Judaism, tend to be more legalistic). As a result, demand for coffee grew, and as it happened, Muslim Yemen proved to be an excellent place to grow the stuff. As Yemeni Sufis spread throughout the Muslim world, they brought their custom with them far and wide, which created even greater demand. Eventually, the habit grew roots in Egypt and Anatolia (modern Turkey), where Sufism has always been an integral part of the culture. Coffeehouses sprang up like mad, and from these two places spread to Europe: Italy got coffee peacefully (through the spice trade, whose center was Cairo), and Austria got it it...less peacefully (reportedly from bags of the stuff left behind by Turkish soldiers at the Siege of Vienna). On the other hand, for whatever reason, the coffee-bearing Sufis never managed to get past Iran. (They also didn't get past Libya, but that's another tale entirely.)
  • When coffee first became widespread in the Islamic world, religious scholars debated whether or not the caffeine buzz was prohibited under the Islamic ban on drunkenness. Older scholars were firmly against it while the younger generation (who had grown up with regular coffee drinking) were more progressive. Eventually, the older generation died and those in favor of coffee won.
• Caffeine is quite habit-forming, and the withdrawal symptoms can be unpleasant, about as bad as a cold or a weak flu: inability to concentrate, drowsiness, intense headaches, and irritability that last for about a week. The suggested way to get through it is 100 mg of caffeine (one cup of instant coffee) a day and aspirin.
• Italians adore strong coffee. Very strong. Comparatively, most of the world drinks hot water that's not strong enough to be called coffee.
• Some recent studies have found that regular doses of caffeine, about 1-2 cups per day, can lower a persons risk of developing some forms of mental degradation later in life, and have been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer's.
• Cambridge computer engineers invented the webcam...so they could see from their workstations whether or not the pot in the coffee room was full.
• Many coffee users, finding the process of filtering their beans with water too inefficient a delivery device for the precious, precious caffeine molecule, have started eating the beans directly. So much so that it is now easy to find chocolate-covered coffee beans for sale in coffee shops.