It could be a glitch, it could be intentional, but the whiskey bottle has a secret function.
As we know, a helmet is required to go back over the mountain road with the falling rocks, and when we use it, we get the message "good thing you wore protective head gear" and we're free to pass. A few times playing this, I got this message going over the road the first time with no helmet instead of getting the expected message "you barely avoid getting hit by a rock". The game would act like I was wearing a helmet when I had none in my inventory, and I was free to double back as much as I wanted to instead of getting the message "You decide those rocks are no match for your head." I could never track down why this was happening until just a few months ago.
What's happening here turns out to be good old liquid courage. If you "use" the whiskey bottle, it acts just like a helmet, and this "glitch" is in both versions of the game. Considering TLoT's cheesy humor, it would be... serendipitous if this was just a fluke and wasn't at least a little deliberate. Intentional or not, it's a wonderful Easter egg.
Has anyone else noticed this? All the walk-throughs and strategy guides I've read online say the whiskey bottle serves no purpose.
I'll check with the author to see if this was intentional or just a lucky happenstance.