Those devious pigs from the hit mobile game, Angry Birds, were inspired by the Swine Flu Epidemic of 2009. In an interview with Rovio Mobile’s Ville Heijari:

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In early 2009, when toying around with numerous game concepts, the Angry Birds characters popped up from one of them. The original idea game from Senior Game Designer Jaakko Iisalo.

Everybody loved the characters, even though there was no clear idea what the game was going to look like. As the concept evolved and the Birds needed some opponents, the pigs were born.

This was around the time the swine flu pandemic scare had reached its highest level, so the sickly green pigs were born out of that!

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Source: PocketGamer