Groundhog Day Punxsutawney Phil and the town of Punxsutawney were portrayed in the 1993 philosophical comedy film Groundhog Day. The actual town in the film is Woodstock, Illinois.
In 1995, Phil flew to Chicago for a guest appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired on Groundhog Day, February 2, 1995. Phil was the main attraction in "Groundhog Day", the April 10, 2005 episode of the MTV series Viva La Bam. In the episode, street skater Bam Margera holds a race in honor of Punxsutawney Phil.
In March 2013, a Butler County, Ohio prosecutor named Michael Gmoser made international headlines after issuing an indictment against the groundhog by e-mail calling for the death penalty for "misrepresentation of early spring, an Unclassified Felony, and against the peace and dignity of the State Of Ohio." On that day, temperatures within the region approached a record low for the high temperature of the day, with snow having fallen, and temperatures predicted to remain below seasonal averages for at least the next several days. No such indictment was made against Ohio prediction groundhog Buckeye Chuck, who also failed to see his shadow. The prosecutor later stated that he would consider a pardon because Phil's handler (Bill Deeley, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Inner Circle ) was taking the blame for the mistake, "because he failed to correctly interpret Phil's 'groundhog-ese'." Deeley noted that the indictment had "generated more publicity than a $10,000 ad campaign."
On February 11th 2016, the Merrimack Police Department in New Hampshire issued an arrest warrant for Punxsutawney Phil for having failed to disclose the extreme amounts of snow that would ensue after Groundhog Day.