JULY 22, 2015 -- Big oil spills, those of the magnitude which happen only once every few decades, often leave a legacy of sorts.

In the case of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which dumped roughly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, that legacy took many forms.

Legislative, ecological, and even cultural—yes, that extends to pop culture too.

In short order, the Exxon Valdez oil spill prompted monumental changes in the laws governing maritime shipping and oil spill response. In 1990, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act, empowering NOAA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to better respond to and plan for spills and setting up a trust fund (paid for by an oil tax) to help with cleanup operations.

Furthermore, this important legislation mandated that oil tankers with single hulls (like the easily punctured Exxon Valdez) would no longer be permitted to operate in U.S. waters, instead requiring double-hull vessels to carry oil. (However, the full phaseout of single-hull tankers would take decades.)

More than 25 years later, researchers are still uncovering this spill's ecological legacy, its stamp on the natural world, and learning what happens when oil interacts with that world. The spill affected some two dozen species and habitats, some of which have not yet recovered.

Of course, the Exxon Valdez oil spill also left a complicated cultural legacy, imparting health, social, psychological, and economic impacts on the people living and working in the area, particularly those whose livelihoods are closely tied to the ocean. Commercial fishers, the recreation and tourism industry, and more than a dozen predominantly Alaskan Native communities relying on fish, waterfowl, and other natural resources for subsistence were dramatically affected by the oil spill.

Yet the cultural echoes of this environmental disaster spread beyond Alaska. It inspired a second grader to write an impassioned letter about the plight of otters threatened by the spill to the Alaska director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. After working at this spill, it inspired one NOAA marine biologist to begin collecting some of the strange pieces of memorabilia related to the incident, from a piece of the ill-fated tanker to an Exxon safety calendar featuring the ship in the very month it would run aground.

These echoes even managed to permeate the ranks of pop culture. Take a look at these five ways that the Exxon Valdez oil spill has shown up in places most oil spills just don't go:

The game "On the Rocks: The Great Alaska Oil Spill" challenges players to clean all 200 miles of shoreline oiled by the Exxon Valdez -- and do so with limits on time and money. (Credit: Alaska Resources Library and Information Services, ARLIS)

1. A board game. Local bartender Richard Lynn of Valdez, Alaska, created the game "On the Rocks: The Great Alaska Oil Spill" after working part-time to clean up the spill. Each player navigates through the game using an authentic bit of rock from Prince William Sound. The goal was to be the first player to scrub all 200 miles of oily shore. The catch was that you only had about 6 months and $250 million in play money to accomplish this. You could pick up your own copy of the game for $16.69, which was the hourly rate Exxon's contracted workers earned while cleaning up the spill.
2. A movie. Dead Ahead: the Exxon Valdez Disaster was the 1992 made-for-TV movie that dramatized the events of the oil spill and ensuing cleanup. This film even featured some well-known actors, including John Heard as Alaska inspector Dan Lawn and Christopher Lloyd as Exxon Shipping Company President Frank Iarossi.
3. A cookbook. Fortunately, the recipes in The Two Billion Dollar Cookbook don't feature dishes like "oiled herring" or "otter on the rocks." Instead, this 300 page cookbook compiled by Exxon Valdez cleanup workers and their friends and families highlights meals more along the lines of barbeque sandwich mix and steak tartare, in addition to being peppered with personal stories from its contributors. Proceeds from the sale of this cookbook benefit a homeless shelter and food bank based in Anchorage, Alaska. Why two billion dollars? That was how much Exxon had shelled out for responding to the spill when the cookbook hit the presses.
4. A play. Two plays, in fact. Dick Reichman, resident of Valdez, Alaska, during the momentous spill, has twice written and directed plays that examined this disaster—and the high emotions that came with it—through the theatrical lens. His first play, written in 1992 and dubbed “The official Valdez oil spill melodrama,” was Tanker on the Rocks: or the Great Alaskan Bad Friday Fish-Spill of '89. His second, The Big One: a Chronicle of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, was received with some acclaim during its 2009 run in Anchorage. You can watch a short video of the actors and director preparing for the 2009 performance (warning: some explicit language).
5. Children's books, novels, and poetry. From a children's book about a young girl rescuing an oiled baby seal to a novel written by the tugboat captain who towed the Exxon Valdez out of Prince William Sound, there exists a bounty of literature exploring the many human and environmental themes of this oil spill. As you peruse them, keep in mind this NOAA scientist's recommendations for evaluating what you're reading about oil spills, especially when doing so with kids.

Have you seen other examples of the Exxon Valdez or perhaps, more recently, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill showing up in pop culture?

A special thanks to the Alaska Resources Library and Information Services (ARLIS) for compiling an excellent list of Exxon Valdez related information [PDF] and for helping procure an image of the rare “On the Rocks” board game.