Today (Feb. 9) is the greatest American holiday of all: National Pizza Day. At a particularly divisive and hostile moment in US history, National Pizza Day allows people of all creeds, backgrounds, and religions to come together to share their love for the conceptually perfect food.
While you’re pondering which special pizza deals to consider today, know that it took many hours of popular culture glorifying pizza to get us to where we are today. The Italian-American dish has a long and storied history on both big screens and small, from Back to the Future to Breaking Bad. We’d venture to guess that no single food has ever been featured on screen as much as pizza has.
So in honor of this wondrous occasion, here are 15 of the greatest pizza scenes in TV and film history:
Breaking Bad
: The Great Pizza Toss
Fun fact: The owners of the Albuquerque, New Mexico home where the scene was filmed say people have come onto their property and tossed pizzas onto their roof.
Home Alone
: “Keep the change you filthy animal”
Fun fact: “Little Nero’s Pizza” is a parody of the popular American pizza chain, Little Caesar’s.
Seinfeld
: Kramer’s Make Your Own Pizza
Fun fact: The “Is it a pizza?” debate was meant to be a thinly veiled analogy for the abortion debate—a theme that ran throughout the episode (season six, episode five, “The Couch”).
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
: Spicoli orders a pizza to class
Fun fact: The delivery guy says the pizza has sausage, but it sure doesn’t look like the pizza actually has any sausage on it.
The Sopranos
: Crime scene pizza evidence
Fun fact: The episode is titled “The Telltale Moozadell”—moozadell being a rough estimate of how some Italian-Americans might pronounce “mozzarella.”
Do the Right Thing
: Boycott Sal’s Pizza
Fun fact: “Sal’s Famous Pizza” isn’t a real pizzeria, though the film was shot entirely on location in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Saturday Night Live
: Pizza business plan
Fun fact: Melissa McCarthy is a comedic genius.
Back to the Future Part II
: Pizza Hydrator
Fun fact: This is basically how astronauts eat their food.
Mad Men
: “Pizza House!”
Fun fact: You can buy “Peggy’s Pizza House” apparel online.
Wayne’s World
: Product placement
Fun fact: The filmmakers originally wanted actor Dana Carvey to wear Nike shoes, but, like many disappointed kids in the 1990s, they had to settle for Reeboks.
Eat Pray Love
: “I’m in a relationship with my pizza”
Fun fact: The scene was filmed at L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele in Naples, Italy, considered one of the best pizzerias in the world.
Saturday Night Fever
: Double decker slice
Fun fact: The young woman who serves John Travolta his pizza slices is the actor’s real-life sister, Ann Travolta.
Mystic Pizza
: “Superb”
Fun fact: The owner of the real Mystic Pizza was sentenced to prison for tax evasion in 2015.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II
: Ninja pizza
Fun fact: Pizza Hut brought an actual working pizza thrower to San Diego Comic-Con in 2014.
DodgeBall
: “My private reflection period”
Fun fact: The scene was originally much more explicit before being heavily revised.