Use as a metaphor[edit source]

The name of the game has become a common metaphor for any sort of competitive zero-sum game or social activity in which a single winner is chosen from among multiple competitors, and a hierarchy is devised by the heights the competitors achieve on the hill (what Howard Bloom called "the pecking order" in his The Lucifer Principle), and where winning can only be achieved at the cost of displacing the previous winner.[1] The game also lent its name to King of the Hill, an American animated series.