Sunday, January 22, 2012

Media References Part IV: Christopher Nolan Movies

With such tremendous critical acclaim, it would be hard for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies not to find their way into popular culture. Cementing the popularity of the character and raising the bar for comic books movies, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight's mark made it to quite a few movies, series' and shows. The following list is by no means a full one of all the references and spoofs of the show as the list goes insanely long, but collects the most interesting and memorable ones from 2005 to date.

* Bart's story in Simpson's "Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Three Times" is a spoof of Batman Begins


* Robot Chicken also did their own spoof with Heimlich Begins


* In Community: Introduction to Statistics", Abed dresses up as an imitates Bale's voice


* In The Office's "Employee Transfer", Creed, Kevin and Dwight all dress up as Ledger's Joker


* On the 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania, Rey Mysterio Jr dressed up as the Joker


Wrestler Sting adopted Joker's persona in 2011


* In 2011 a dance group performed on America's Greatest Talent in Joker's makeup


* In The Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror" one of the kids is dressed up as Ledger's Joker 


* In Robot Chicken's "President Hu Forbids It", the Batpod ejection scene is spoofed. Here the batpod keeps breaking into smaller peaces


In another episode, "Rambling with Maurice", Two face makes an appearance. He is shown to constantly cause his own deformations


* SNL also spoofed TDK with its short story about Batman contacting Gordon wherever he went


* In the Brave and the Bold cartoon, Bale's version of the batsuit can be briefly seen


* South Park's The Coon is an obvious spoof of  Bale's Batman


* There's a reference to Ledger's Joker in the tv show IT Crowd, in an episode called Friendface. One of the female characters is likened to Joker and then resembles him afterwards



An instant classic lines like "Why So Serious" also made it to several TV shows.
Any interesting and worthy additions welcomed

10 comments:

  1. Websites doesn't Count as references (Barely Political, College Humor, etc.)

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  2. Gothamstreets have you seen that really funny SNL short with Steve Buscemi?

    http://thefw.com/batman-steve-buscemi-shower-saturday-night-live-video/

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  3. This is great, thanks. Added to the list

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  4. The SNL skit is out of this world funny. "The Penguin has a new credit card" haha

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  5. From the third season of the great sitcom The IT Crowd. I think it's definitely the The Dark Knight Joker they are referencing.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eb7HPlHaEw

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  6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hYP4dv8UJ4 - MTV 2005 Movie Awards Spoof video. Does this count?

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  7. Well, thats spoof from the awards show, spoofing current movies is virtually a given during those

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  8. I think 30 rock had some epsidode this past season where tina fey was sort of like the Joker, and Alec Baldwin being Batman.

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  9. Please don't fall victim to the same stupidity as the WWE. Rey Mysterio dressed up as Joker at Wrestlemania 25, not the 25th anniversary of WM. WWE doesn't know or care how anniversaries work, and promoted it as the 25th anniversary. But the 25th anniversary would be Wrestlemania 26 (as your first anniversary is year after your wedding).

    Sorry, that's a huge pet peeve of mine. Fantastic site, keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete