Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental disorders worldwide and represent a crucial area of psychopharmacological research. Reliable and standardized animal models can significantly aid researchers in exploring the underlying mechanisms of anxiety disorders and in screening and developing new anxiolytic drugs. The empty bottle stimulation model, which utilizes the uncertainty of empty bottled water stimulation as a stressor to induce anxiety-like states in animals, is one of the widely used models for anxiety disorders. Due to the variability in modeling conditions and evaluation methods during research, this paper reviews the establishment conditions, evaluation methods, and mechanisms of the empty bottle stimulation model in recent years, aiming to provide a reference for future research on this model.