"I'm singin' in the rain, just singin' in the rain! What a glorious feelin'— (acid rain burns through umbrella) Aaah! It burns like a Glasgow bikini wax! Gaaah!"
— Groundskeeper Willie, The Simpsons, "Brawl in the Family"
A Stock Parody in the Musical and Comedy genre. Whenever it starts raining you may rest assured that someone will begin to sing and dance around, often in the vicinity of a street and a lantern post, on which he will swing himself around. Musical lightpost spins (even without rain) are a common allusion that make their way into all sorts of media.
Always a Shout-Out to Gene Kelly in his iconic song and dance number in Singin' in the Rain (1952), even though the song itself is much older and was used in other Hollywood musicals before, though not quite as memorable.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A 2005 Volkswagen commercial featured a recreation of the scene, except it was Gene Kelly breakdancing to a remix of the song.
- A Nestle Quik commercial from the eighties
showed a kid gleefully puddle-jumping and twirling his umbrella to an instrumental version of the song. (The idea being that on cold, wet mornings, hot Nestle Quik hit the spot.)
- A GE commercial featured an elephant in the jungle tap-dancing to the song.
Anime & Manga
- Princess Jellyfish: This is one of several Hollywood movies spoofed during the opening theme for the anime.
- Not quite a parody but decidedly an homage: "Moses" is an anime short about a ghost girl and a pair of ghost tap-shoes. The music in the background is "Moses Supposes" from the movie, as sung by Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. The background is filled with references to the movie, including the street and lamppost where Kelly danced during his iconic title number, posters for the movie, the wind-machine that figured in "You Were Meant For Me" and the cloth dummy that O'Connor tossed about in "Make 'Em Laugh", among others.
Comic Books
- Asterix: In Asterix and the Magic Carpet Cacofonix makes the sky rain by singing this song.
- Emilka Sza: In one scene when Emily is overpower with joy she start swining around lantern, miming Kelly in the movie.
- The Simpsons: One issue starts with Krusty the Clown doing a parody of the famous scene of Singing in the Rain but,, thanks to his illiteracy, instead of getting a ton of ping pong balls harmlessly dumped on him, he gets a ton of bowling balls down on his head knocking him into a coma and kickstarting the plot.
Comic Strips
- MAD: A Don Martin gag has a character waiting for the bus when it suddenly starts raining. When he begins to sing and dance "I'm Singing in the Rain", it's not actually rain, but a bunch of people on a roof holding their annual spitting contest. One guy informs us: "I haven't got the heart to tell him."
- A Roz Chast cartoon shows a guy doing the routine, while folks in the foreground cluck their tongues and remark that he'll catch cold with his careless behavior.
Fan Works
- In RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse, rain is the one thing that quenches Raindrops's Hair-Trigger Temper, and so she often celebrates the temporary relief by singing and dancing in the rain.
Film — Animated
- Lucky Luke: Ballad of the Daltons: During the Daltons' Mushroom Samba Hollywood spectacle dream sequence, they sing and dance "Singin' in the Rain" during a rainfall (and dress like Gene Kelly too).
- Robots: After seeing his date home, Fender starts singing about "Slippin' on the Oil".
Film — Live Action
- A Clockwork Orange: Perhaps the most infamous and horrific example of this song-and-dance number; Alex sings and dances the song while beating up an author and raping his wife. This isn't present in the original novel, and was ad-libbed by Malcolm McDowell — reportedly no royalties were paid for it either. Gene Kelly was angry about this usage and once refused to shake hands with McDowell as a result.
- The Pink Panther Strikes Again: Singin' in the Rain is one of the movies the Pink Panther imitates during the animated opening credits.
- Shanghai Knights: While Jackie Chan is beating up villains with an umbrella, the musical arrangement quotes "Singin' in the Rain".
- Austin does the routine in the opening titles of Austin Powers in Goldmember.
- In the original Fame, one student does a soft-shoe in a puddle while singing the song.
Literature
- In the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, there's a scene where movie mogul CMOT Dibbler is gripped by the Magic of Holy Wood and starts singing and dancing in the rain, swinging off lampposts and bemusing a passing policeman just like Gene Kelly. Notably, because the Magic of Holy Wood can do only so much, he's not celebrating being in love but the imminent debut of his biggest box office success yet.
"Must be off 'is nut, if you ask me," said Nobby. "Singing in the rain like that."
Live-Action TV
- Friends: In "The One With Phoebe's Husband", Ross performs the dance while the song plays.
Old lady: Somebody got some tonight.
Ross: Twice! - Done in a Morecambe and Wise sketch, with Ernie as Gene Kelly and Eric as the policeman. The joke is that it's clearly not raining. And that, despite this, Eric keeps getting soaked.
- Being a Jukebox Musical show in which showtunes are extremely prominent, it's not surprising that even Glee did its own take on the iconic tune, combining it with "Umbrella" to represent Will and New Directions (represented by Special Guest Gwyneth Paltrow as Holly Holiday) coming together at the end of "The Substitute".
- In the same episode, as part of Will's fever dream, he and Mike Chang do a close imitation of "Make 'Em Laugh."
- When Seann William Scott hosted Saturday Night Live, he tried in his monologue to say "there's more to me than just getting peed on. Yeah yeah, or drinking a beer that has some guy's sperm in it." referring to infamous moments of the first two American Pie. So there's three of his ancestors in the film business facing similar beer situations, including a Singin' in the Rain spoof with him singing "There's semen in the beer..."
- One time when Joseph Gordon-Levitt hosted SNL, he actually re-enacted "Make 'Em Laugh", complete with getting knocked over by boards and doing backflips off of walls.
- Kenan & Kel had Kel Kimbel in Drinkin' Orange Rain.
- The Goodies do this in the episode "Saturday Night Grease" during the final chase scene, as everyone (even the police who are chasing them) stops to sing and dance in the rain like Gene Kelly, complete with an instrumental version of the tune.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street: One sketch had Grover perform "Singin' in the Rain" in front of a film crew directed by Prairie Dawn, but each time he starts, the type of weather is wrong.
- The Muppet Show: When Gene Kelly was a guest on the show in 1981, the Muppets wanted him to perform "Singin' in the Rain", but before the show starts, Kelly informs them that he won't do it, since the people are "sick of that song by now", causing a mass panic among the Muppets. Eventually he gave in and sang it backstage.
- When Rich Little was a guest in 1978, he performed the song—in raincoats—along with Fozzie Bear.
- The film is referenced a lot in Jim Henson's work. It comes as no surprise that Kermit named it his favorite movie during a 1991 CNN interview.
Western Animation
- In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Nothing to Fear", Doofus sings a song titled "Eatin' in the Rain", based on "Singin' in the Rain".
- The Simpsons:
- In Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One, Mr. Burns climbs a lamp post in the same way Gene Kelly did.
- In "Brawl in the Family", Groundskeeper Willie sings and dances around in acid rain.
- While a somewhat different melody, the song "Slippin' On the Ice" in an episode of Animaniacs is clearly meant to parody this song.
- In the Doug episode "Doug's Dog's Date", Porkchop performs the dance in the rain on his way home after his date.
- Paddington (1975) does this in the 1980 special Paddington Goes to the Movies. (In a step-by-step recreation of Gene Kelly's choreography...with Kelly's blessing!)
- This is done with Jimmy Five, among several other stock movie parodies, in the opening sequence to the Monica's Gang movie Cinegibi. The joke is that the following scene shows Jimmy with a cold.
- In The Critic, Jay does this in his student film. He promptly gets struck by lightning.
- In We Bare Bears, this is one of many famous movie scenes parodied during Grizzly's Rousing Speech about movie-going in the episode "Shush Ninjas".
- In The Jungle Show, Fred Flamingo's episode is a send-up of this, with Fred tap-dancing in a rainstorm. At one point, he even spins around on a lamppost.
- The Phineas and Ferb episode "Rollercoaster: The Musical" has a shot during its first song ("Hey Ferb") that spoofs the film, among other famous musicals.
- The music video for the Bob the Builder version of Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" features characters from the show mimicking the scene during the second chorus.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "On Your Marks", Tender Taps jumps onto a lamp post while dancing, and then strikes Gene Kelly's iconic pose.
