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It has become a popular culture cliché for the audience of almost any concert to shout "Free Bird" as a request to hear the song, regardless of the performer or style of music. There are equivalents for "Free Bird" in some countries; in Brazil, it could be translated to "Toca Raul!" (Play Raul!), in a reference to Raul Seixas.In Australia, the audience may shout "Play Khe Sanh!" referring to the Cold Chisel classic. In Finland, the audience is often heard shouting "Soittakaa Paranoid!" ("Play Paranoid!") referring to the song Paranoid by Black Sabbath. In Argentina, heavy metal fans use to request for "Destrucción" originally composed by V8 in a similar way.This phenomenon began earlier in the 1970s with The Allman Brothers Band's epic "Whipping Post", but then took off to a much greater extent with "Free Bird". This can be traced back to Skynyrd's first live album, 1976's One More From The Road. Skynyrd did not play the song during the main portion of the concert, or even in the encore performance. Instead they saved it for their second encore. After leaving the stage following the first encore of the concert, the crowd was riled by the apparent omission of Skynyrd's signature song. The crowd then began chanting "Free Bird, Free Bird ...". No one left the auditorium. The band then returned to the stage for a second encore and upon taking the microphone Van Zant asked the crowd, "What song is it that you wanna hear?", which was immediately followed by several more shouts of "Free Bird". This interaction is recorded as an intro to the song on the album, and the band responded with a 14-minute version of the song. More recently, they play the song on the first encore.In the 1980s, Chicago Radio DJ Kevin Matthews urged his listeners to shout "Free Bird!" at a Florence Henderson concert as a sort of joke towards the musician and actress. Credited with starting the tradition of yelling "Free Bird!", he stated that "It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert -- it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame. If you're going to yell 'Free Bird,' yell 'Free Bird' at a Jim Nabors concert."[3]A performance by the avant-garde Blue Man Group has referenced the song. After they play riffs from Devo's "Whip It" and other rock songs on their PVC instruments, a planted audience member shouts out "Free Bird." Blue Man's back up band starts to play the song, the Blue Men sway to the rhythm, and one of them whips out a cigarette lighter to wave. Another Blue Man douses him with a fire extinguisher.The genre-bending improvisational rock band Phish performed the complete Free Bird in concert some 25 times between 1993 and 2000. However, Phish put a new spin on the old classic: the 4 members of the band performed the song acapella, barbershop style complete with all of the guitar parts being sung by the members in turn.A harsh reaction to "Free Bird" came from comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in 1989. On a bootleg recording of the show, I'm Sorry, Folks, Mr. Hicks at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever - it's stupid." The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the "Free Birds" keep coming, eliciting the now infamous outburst: "Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever; kill everyone, Adolf, kill them all!" "Free Bird," he finally says wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was the Word - 'Free Bird.' And 'Free Bird' would be yelled throughout the centuries. 'Free Bird,' the mantra of the moron."On Modest Mouse' bootleg album "Baron von Bullshit Rides Again," an audience member heckles them with a request to play "Free Bird." Singer and guitarist Isaac Brock responds with one of the longest and most in depth reasons for not playing "Free Bird" ever given. “I know I've said this before; the odds of us actually playing Free Bird are...there ARE no odds. It is not going to happen. I'll start with the first reason: we have NO idea how to play Free Bird. The second reason is: in the lovebug's natural habitat, hearing that would just fucking kill them, wouldn't it? You wouldn't want that, right? He's adorable. He is cute. Thirdly: Even if some, like, pick your deity, whoever, came down from the heavens or the hills or wherever your deity lives, and just blessed us with this vast knowledge of Free Bird and things, and we could play it backwards, sing backwards, we could do all that crazy shit, we still just wouldn't do it. If this were the Make a Wish foundation and you were gonna die in 20 minutes, just long enough to play Free Bird, we still wouldn't play it. And here's the end reason, the end reason is that life is just too fucking short to play or hear Free Bird.”The conductor of the Charleston (SC) Symphony Orchestra, David Stahl, irritated by outbursts of "Free Bird!" at concerts, had the orchestra learn to perform the song so that they could go directly into it from whatever piece they were performing at the moment.In a loading screen in the game Guitar Hero, one loading screen tells you that "They [the audience] don't really want you to play "Freebird", they're just heckling you"The song is featured as the final encore track in Guitar Hero II, though it had the guitar outro abridged, reducing the song length to 9 minutes and 20 seconds. Normally, when the player completes a set and is offered an encore, the crowd simply applauds and cheers; however, upon completing the final set and offered the choice to play the "Free Bird" encore, the crowd can be heard chanting "Free Bird", and when the player starts the song, the crowd will be holding lit cigarette lighters and swaying to the music. Also, the game begs you several times not to play it. After unlocking the song and playing it once or twice, you may be greeted with a screen saying "Wow, you must really like Free Bird"During the encore of Porcupine Tree's concert at the Park West in Chicago, 11th October 2006, captured on the DVD release "Arriving Somewhere", lead singer and guitarist Steven Wilson responded to a call of 'Free Bird' with "Not Free Bird. That's tomorrow, okay? Full seventeen minute blowout version." Although they did play a second show at the same venue the following night, they did not make good on their threat of playing 'Free Bird'.Atlanta, GA classic rock station 96 Rock posted a billboard of a portrait of Richard Jewell and the word "Freebird" after he had been cleared of suspicion in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.Professional wrestling stable The Fabulous Freebirds used the song as their entrance theme and the inspiration for their name.Comedian David Cross, whilst doing a mock folk singer routine, called an audience member up the stage and officially pronounced him the "1,000,000th Asshole to yell Free Bird."Free Bird was also featured in the 1994 smash film Forrest Gump in where Jenny is standing on the edge of the roof later on in the film.In The Simpsons, series 3, episode 22 ("The Otto Show"), Bart gets an electric guitar which he gives to Otto on the school bus. Otto begins to play Free Bird. The scene cuts back 10 minutes later and Otto is still playing the end solo, and they are all late for school.In the movie Cars, an unnamed "rusty car" at the Rust-Eze tent (after the Piston Cup) shouts "Free Bird!" during a dead moment in Lightning McQueen's lackluster promotional pitch.The song was also featured on the movie Elizabethtown.The song was played in the climax of The Devil's Rejects in which the film's three outlaw protagonists (Captain Spaulding, Baby and Otis) go out in a final blaze of glory in a shootout with the police.