History Main / EEqualsMCHammer

* The title sequences for ''WebOriginal/GameTheory'' features a simple physics equation describing Mario's jump and a moving Koopa shell.

* In Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951, Klaatu visits a leading scientist, but the man is not home. Klaatu makes an addition to a blackboard-covering equation, then leaves his contact information with the scientist's housekeeper. The addition to the equation was apparently intended to convince the scientist not to write off his unknown caller as a joke.

* In ''Film/SchoolOfRock'', Jack Black's character writes E=mc[--[[superscript:2]]--] on the board while pretending to teach the children something. Played with slightly in that he is totally clueless about teaching and this was presumably the only vaguely mathematical formula he could remember, and the school principal doesn't bat an eyelid when she walks into the room, even though the children are preteens.
** When he's actually teaching the class the only subject he knows (rock, of course) he fills the board with a complicated diagram of rock bands.

** Could be justified by the fact that Miss Trunchbull is from England (which is where the original book takes place), and English schoolchildren start their formal education at an earlier age than American children do.

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* In ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', tends to appear around [[AwesomenessByAnalysis Bastion Misawa:]] first in his dorm room [[AwesomenessByAnalysis (and on his baseball bat)]], and later when he [[TechnicianVersusPerformer tries to work out]] how to defeat [[TheHero Jaden]] [[ShowyInvincibleHero Yuki's]] deck. The presence of such scrawlings on a card also [[spoiler:proves he is its owner when it's tossed into the ocean in a [[CrazyPrepared failed]] attempt to sabotage him]].

* ''Creator/DaveBarry's Money Secrets'' predicts tbat a major surge in bacon demand could follow more people ordering BLT sandwiches by invoking the formula B = [=LT=]
.

* ''Manga/AssassinationClassroom'' surprisingly subverts this. Whenever the students have to ''fight a monster'' during their exams, they solve it in the correct way, including the language exams in Japanese and English. Considering that the exams get insanely difficult during the end, it almost borders on a GeniusBonus to even even ''know'' that all answers are correct.

* The "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_captain Age of the Captain]]" joke, originated by Creator/GustaveFlaubert in a letter to his sister, involves providing a lot of information about a ship (number of passengers, direction of the wind, positions of crew members, etc) and asking for the age of the captain. It is sometimes used as a trick question to teach children to be critical toward problems they are given (and not to answer that the Captain is 42 because the ship carries 28 sheep and 14 goats), and also occasionally to make fun of insolvable maths problems.

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* ''A Serious Man'' has a DreamSequence featuring an implausibly large blackboard covered with enough of the stuff to fill a book.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', instead of random gibberish, the animators clearly [[ShownTheirWork went out of their way]] to ensure Mei's grade 8 math class is portrayed accurately with the walls full of posters featuring legitimate grade appropriate statistical and geometric concepts. The teacher correctly writes the quadratic formula on the board and goes on to actually teach it in the background while the camera is pointed at Mei. Also, one of the props Mei and her friends use to disguise their panda hustle operation as a mathletes meet up is a parabola drawn on a portable blackboard with everything properly labeled.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed''. Instead of random gibberish, the animators clearly [[ShownTheirWork went out of their way]] to ensure Mei's grade 8 math class is portrayed accurately with the walls full of posters featuring legitimate grade appropriate statistical and geometric concepts. The teacher correctly writes the quadratic formula on the board and goes on to actually teach it in the background while the camera is pointed at Mei. Also, one of the props Mei and her friends use to disguise their panda hustle operation as a mathletes meet up is a parabola drawn on a portable blackboard with everything properly labeled.
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[[caption-width-right:300:So you see, [[BlatantLies it's perfectly simple]]. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wFDWP5JwSM Any questions, class?]]]]

* Some of the math questions that appear on the board in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' for an eighth grade math class are taken from, among other places, the entrance exam for UsefulNotes/TokyoUniversity. More information [[http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Mathematics_of_Madoka_Magica here]].

* In ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', tends to appear around [[AwesomenessByAnalysis Bastion Misawa:]] first in his dorm room [[AwesomenessByAnalysis (and on his baseball bat)]], and later when he [[TechnicianVersusPerformer tries to work out]] how to defeat [[TheHero Jaden]] [[ShowyInvincibleHero Yuki's]] deck. The presence of such scrawlings on a card also [[spoiler: proves he is its owner when it's tossed into the ocean in a [[CrazyPrepared failed]] attempt to sabotage him]].

* In an ImagineSpot, ''Series/EverybodyHatesChris'' has a SadistTeacher demand to know, giving no context whatsoever, "What is a[--[[superscript:2]]--] plus b[--[[superscript:2]]--]?!?". The correct answer is apparently "c[--[[superscript:2]]--]". In other words, the protagonist has internalized the most common expression of the Pythagorean theorem, but with no clue of what it actually ''means''.
* The TropeNamer is a pastiche of E=mc[--[[superscript:2]]--] that appeared in a scene of ''Series/{{Farscape}}: The Peacekeeper Wars'' where Harvey (who was named after the NotSoImaginaryFriend of the movie ''Film/{{Harvey}}'') writes "E = MC Hammer" on a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srHJBueSx40 blackboard of other nonsense]]. Especially funny in that Crichton, as a physicist and an astronaut, would know exactly what E=mc[--[[superscript:2]]--] actually means, and Harvey is likely just dicking around.

* Big Audio Dynamite included a song called E=MC[--[[superscript:2]]--] on their first album.[[note]]It's a NonAppearingTitle and a GeniusBonus. The song is about the films of Creator/NicolasRoeg and the title references the appearance of Einstein as a character in ''Film/{{Insignificance}}''[[/note]]

* [[http://www.mchawking.com/ MC Hawking]], the little-known [[AffectionateParody gangsta-rap career]] of the famous physicist.

* The "E=MC Hammer" example was also used in the video to the Texas song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si-vj6NdxVg "Sleep"]], appearing on a chalkboard during a scene where Texas frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri and [[PeterKay Peter Kay]] parody the video to Lionel Richie's "Hello."

* Played for laughs in the Alcatraz Elementary level of ''VideoGame/NightmareNed'', where one segment involves Ned navigating a giant chalkboard littered with nonsensical equations and diagrams, some of which come to life, and set entirely to a math teacher [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0q-xfXdP8k singing a musical number in the background]].

* A more elaborate variant appears in [[http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/03/31/tomo/ this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow]]. Instead of meaningless numerical symbols, it's an [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalid_proof#Proof_that_2_.3D_1 invalid proof]] that involves dividing by zero, perhaps to complement the scientist's fallacious reasoning.

* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', Diane reveals that her father is Raven, after which others in the group share other information related to him, Immortals and his mother Pandora, like the fact that he fought a bad guy. Ashley, the newest member of the main cast, who has not met Raven yet or knows anything about him, assembles all these separate details into a hilarious mental image of a raven-themed superhero and then goes on in a [[https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-250 Sherlock-style mental math sequence that features multiple hilariously unrelated math equations]], including the additional amount of pizza you get from ordering a 14 inch instead of 12 inch pizza and the KonamiCode. Her tentative conclusion after all that is simply that Diane's father, Raven, is the son of an Immortal known as Pandora - which is correct, but not that hard to figure out.

* [[http://www.mchawking.com/ E equals MC Hawking.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' episode "Guided Mouse-ille" the final act involves Tom making a homemade explosive with equations that end up in "KABOOM!". [[spoiler: After Jerry drops his own bomb into the concoction, it explodes and somehow throw the two into the Stone Age.]]

** Variation, in the episode in which the Simpsons discover the third dimension, "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem P=NP]]" can be read in the 3d-CGI world.

* There is a "joke proof" that has [[TheOldestOnesInTheBook been around for decades]] that attempts to use simple algebra to prove "[[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/math/how-to-prove-that-1-2 if a=b then 1=2]]". The problem with the proof is that, at one point, both sides of the equation are divided by (a-b); since this is zero, this can be used as an example proof of why you can't DivideByZero. Website/TheOtherWiki has a page full of similar [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_fallacy spurious proofs]].

** Another strip has Jason presenting Paige with an alphanumeric cipher with a twist: the key is comprised of 26 ''math problems'', one for each letter of the alphabet. One of the clues involves integral calculus (but of course it's for Q, which doesn't get used much). [[spoiler: The answer is "PAIGE FOX IS BAD AT MATH".]]

** When Bender first meets Flexo, they find it greatly amusing that both of them have serial numbers expressible as a sum of two cubes, an allusion to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number) Hardy-Ramanujan number]].

* ''Franchise/SailorMoon'': Ami does this in one of her first appearances, foreshadowing her role as [[TheSmartGuy the genius]] among the Sailors.

[[quoteright:300:[[VideoGame/{{Touhou}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cirno_laser_small_2.jpg]]]]

* In ''LightNovel/IsThisAZombie'', the protagonist makes the mistake of asking the resident "genius" to explain a math problem from the beginning. A few hours later: "...Spiral galaxies spin like this, kind of like a top. You need a string to spin it, and that's where string theory comes from. Oh, right. I want to touch on super string theory too..." Later on, after asking how soup could be used to destroy monsters (it makes sense in context), they are given a lengthy off-screen explanation concluding with "I can't answer any of your questions though. I don't understand the super string theory stuff either."

* The opening credits of ''[[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' feature a number of diagrams and equations, including the obligatory E=mc[--[[superscript:2]]--], the Drake Equation and Shannon's source entropy formula, appropriately enough (as well as plenty [[ViewersAreGeniuses most people have never heard of]]). In "Snow Mountain Syndrome" of the later novels, though, solving an instance of [[spoiler:Euler's planar graph]] formula becomes a matter of great importance, so this is to be expected. That and the guy that writes the Light Novel [[AuthorAppeal likes math]].

---> '''Mr. Crocker:''' A fairy could make two plus two equal... [[LargeHam FIIIIISH]]!
---> '''Cosmo:''' [[CassandraTruth You know, he's right]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' in an episode where Rocko keeps being late for work. While he gets berated for it by his boss, there's a flipchart in the background that contains, amongst other things, a clipart of a clock followed by a plus-minus sign and a square root containing "MC" and a clipart of a hammer.

** In "Benderama", Bender replicates himself into grey goo, the Professor puts up an equation for the total mass of the Benders as the successive generations replicate, and all the employees (except Fry, of course) understand it and gasp because it doesn't converge. Being Futurama, this equation actually IS a mathematical representation of the infinite series at hand, which grows indefinitely rather than converges.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' has a number of blackboards adorned with Newton's equation for gravity. In ''Black Mesa'', a top secret military research facility. That's like Ernest Hemingway trying to come to grips with "Hop on Pop".
** This is lampshaded and blasted to bits in ''WebVideo/FreemansMind''.

* In ''VideoGame/Portal2'', there are posters around that list paradoxes in the event of a [[AIIsACrapshoot rogue AI.]] One of the listed paradoxes is "Does a set of all sets contain itself?" [[note]]This is clearly based on Russell's Paradox: "Does a set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself?" The way it's written, though, it's a nonstarter. The "set" of Russell's Paradox is a subset of this "set", and thus, the "set" described isn't a set.[[/note]][[note]]Although it does actually function as a version of the Liar Paradox. The ObviousRulePatch for Russell's Paradox is that a set cannot contain itself. Thus the set of all sets does not contain itself, and is not the set of all sets.[[/note]]
** Knowing the dev team's sense of humor, it might be deliberate.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' usually has Sandy show [=SpongeBob=] some equations. One instance of this has Sandy showing [=SpongeBob=] an equation that is a bizarre hybrid of a function and an infinite limit.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePatrickStarShow'': In "[[Recap/ThePatrickStarShowS1E3LostInCouchPatAThon Pat-a-thon]]", we see a math teacher standing next to a chalkboard with a group of weird math symbols, such as a triangle with angle measures and a parabola. Patrick quickly writes "x = 0"; the math teacher gives him a thumbs up.

* [[https://youtu.be/DVrAIDP_oZc?t=4m31s One segment]][[note]]It's at 43:28 in the ''AMV Hell 4''[[/note]] for WebVideo/AMVHell focused on a slow crawl across a blackboard covered with math equations in ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion''. Halfway through the piece, we hear the Kevin Spacey in ''Film/SupermanReturns'' "WRONG!", and as the music is swapped out for Music/KingMissile's "Equivalencies", all the errors on the board are pointed out with red marker. Humorously, the segment also points out that although one solution does several things wrong, it ends up at the right answer anyway.

* In ''Revolt in the Stars'', an unpublished screenplay by Creator/LRonHubbard, a spherical device is locked with a mathematical puzzle told with alien symbols in the prologue. One of the president's leading scientists, when decoding it, identifies a symbol as representing "'pi', the radius of a circle".

* In ''Revolt in the Stars'', an unpublished screenplay by Creator/LRonHubbard, the sphere is locked with a mathematical puzzle told with alien symbols. One of the president's leading scientists identifies a symbol as representing "'pi', the radius of a circle".