About the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

About the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

This is the most comprehensive version of the Kevin Bacon game on the web. The object of the game is to start with any actor or actress who has been in a movie and connect them to Kevin Bacon in the smallest number of links possible. Two people are linked if they've been in a movie together. We do not consider links through television shows, made-for-tv movies, writers, producers, directors, etc. For example, you might wonder how Alfred Hitchcock can be connected to Kevin Bacon. One answer is that:

Alfred Hitchcock was in Show Business at War (1943) with Orson Welles, and
Orson Welles was in A Safe Place (1971) with Jack Nicholson, and
Jack Nicholson was in A Few Good Men (1992) with Kevin Bacon!

Then we can count how many links were necessary and assign the actor or actress a Bacon number. Bacon numbers higher than 4 are very rare and we occasionally run contests to see who can use the Oracle to find the people with highest Bacon numbers in the IMDb. In the example above, Alfred Hitchcock has a Bacon number of 3. The Oracle uses the data from the Internet Movie Database and can give you the shortest path from every actor and actress that can be connected to Kevin Bacon.