There are Greek drawings extant representing a game almost identical with battledore and shuttlecock, and it has been popular in India, China, Japan, and Siam for at least 2,000 years.
The idea of the game is similar to traditional Asian games of kicking the shuttlecock, known as Jianzi and Chapteh.
Hanetsuki (羽根突き, 羽子突き) is a Japanese traditional game, similar to badminton, played by girls at the New Year with a rectangular wooden paddle called a hagoita and a brightly colored shuttlecock.
An early design for SpaceShipOne called for a shuttlecock-like shape that would have made it incapable of landing independently, necessitating mid-air retrieval.