Referenced By / Barney & Friends

For works featuring costumed children's show hosts in the style of Barney, see Kids' Show Mascot Parody.

Comic Strips

• Adam@home
  • Adam watches the show with Nick, telling Nick there's an actual person inside Barney. Nick imagines Barney with a person hanging out of his mouth and is horrified.
  • Adam is reading the tabloids to Nick and he doesn't seem interested. So he changes it to the tabloids being about Barney and the Teletubbies.
• In Dilbert, the Pointy-Haired Boss is noted for being a Barney fan:
  • The PHB proposes using "Barney" as their mascot.
  • Dilbert claims to be the actor in the "Barney" suit in an effort to impress him.
• FoxTrot:
  • In a 1993 strip, Jason writes a letter to PBS: "After seeing Jurassic Park, I'm more convinced than ever Barney should be eating those kids."
  • In a week-long arc, Andy buys Jason a load of Barney merchandise for school, thinking that he'll like it because he's into dinosaurs. Of course, he does not like it.
  • In one strip Katie learns a curse word after Paige watches a Jerry Springer parody while babysitting. Paige says on the phone to Peter "What was I supposed to do, watch Barney the entire time I'm babysitting?" Katie says the curse word along with Barney.
• Frank and Ernest: Near-Great Movies: Barney and Clyde.
• Off the Mark:
  • Howard Stern apparently performs Barney◊.
  • "Gee... it's so nice of all you parents to invite me along on this sight-seeing tour!"◊
  • Barney, before his morning coffee◊.
  • In this strip, a family of mummies goes shopping. One of the kids wants Barney bandages.
  • This strip features, among others, an alternate ending to the Rock With Barney VHS tape, wherein Barney is devoured by a T-rex.
  • This strip depicting a toddler's brain has a section for Barney's theme song.
• Sherman's Lagoon references the character sometimes.
  • This strip, for example, shows Sherman watching a Barney video.
  • One storyline has Sherman introduce Hawthorne to Barney, which Herman loves (as does Sherman, apparently because the songs are addictive). Hawthorne then decides to create a character called "Barnacle the Purple Anthropod" to star in a series of children's videos, the first of which focuses on Barnacle learning that he should always tell the truth (which apparently features a federal prosecutor who Sherman suggests should be played by John Malkovich). He winds up getting sued by Barney.
  • Another storyline has Megan suggest that Sherman fill in for children's show host Mr. Flounders, describing him as "a Barney that can swallow children whole."
  Sherman: Is that marketable?
• In one Stone Soup comic, Max is seen dancing to MTV. Joan says that Barney bums him out.
• In For Better or for Worse Barney was mentioned as one of the things April and Becky used to be into (they were currently obsessed with the Spice Girls)

Fan Works

• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. A psych-war officer selects Barney the Purple Dinosaur to intimidate a spaceship of alien invaders, predicting they'll soon be begging for mercy.
• A headline in the Star Trek: Enterprise Parody Fic "Farce Contact" is:
  Suliban detainees tortured with theme song from 'Barney the Purple Gorn'.

Films — Live-Action

• Jurassic Park III: At the climax of the film on the river, Grant is trying to contact Ellie so she can send a rescue party while the Spinosaurus rips their boat apart. He reaches Ellie's home and her son answers. Grant tells him to bring his phone to her, but the boy quickly gets distracted by Barney's Musical Castle playing on the TV screen.
  • What’s even funnier is that Bob West, who voices Barney in that video, did production graphics for Jurassic Park III. Trevor Morgan, who stars in the movie, also played Cody in Barney's Great Adventure.
• In Big Daddy, Sonny mentions taking Julian to Barney's (the clothing store) and Julian briefly gets excited thinking he's talking about the dinosaur.

Literature

• Harmonic Feedback: When Drea was in first grade, most of the class convinced her as a joke that the teacher was secretly Barney the purple dinosaur.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg mentions his elementary school days where he would listen to the "clean-up" song, but without doing any actual cleaning.
• Anthony from Love Anthony remained obsessed with Barney long after most children outgrow him, with Barney-themed birthday parties year after year.
• TJ from Miracle Creek loves Barney and will have panic attacks if he isn't allowed to watch Barney videos in the HBOT chamber. Minutes before the oxygen tank explodes, he's watching "Let's Go to the Zoo". Matt still hears "What'll we see at the zoo-zee-zoo?" in his nightmares.
• In Wicked Good, Darcy wears a hospital top with pictures of Barney on it. Archer remembers that when Rory was a little boy, he would laugh at the shirt, sing the theme song, and add a line about Mommy being a dinosaur. He still has a Barney clock his grandma gave him when he was three.
• In Mindblind, the band is brainstorming ideas for music to play at Jade Rose's sweet sixteen party. Cooper launches into a hard rock cover of "I Love You," which Jessa calls punk preschool.
• Unimaa (published in 2022 but mostly set in 1999) makes two allusions to Barney, both as a Take That!:
  • The first, which is less obvious: the text mentions that the song the members of Frida's Friends Club sing praising Frida is set to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy", which is the exact same melody that Barney's opening theme is set to.
  • The second, which is more obvious: after Lumi compares Unimaa to "one of those sappy shows that Mika watches", Sami's response is "The difference is, here, the overly cheerful princess or dinosaur or whatever they think appeals to young children is probably actually a deranged lunatic."

Live-Action TV

• America's Funniest Home Videos:
  • One episode from 1993 (Season 4) features a parody entitled ''NYPD Purple'', a cross between Barney and NYPD Blue. A costumed purple rabbit named Bunny joins the police force and, with his cast of kids, helps teach criminals to the tune of traditional kid's songs:
  (Sung to "Row, Row, Row Your Boat")
  Don't cheat, steal, or lie
  Always try to share
  Don't be a crook or you could fry
  In the electric chair
  • During one Tom Bergeron era episode, he introduces a clip by describing Barney (without mentioning him by name, in fear of legal action) and him being annoyed by the character when his kids were young. Said clip involves Mr. Blobby getting beaten up, rather than Barney.
• Beakman's World: The Season 2 episode "Money, Beakmania, and Water Power" begins with Lester the Rat showing Liza a newspaper article about the purple dinosaur ^note Mark Ritts, Lester's actor, would later direct the TV special ''Barney's First Adventures'':
  Lester: Barney the Dinosaur is telling old friends that he is "purple and green with envy" over Lester the Rat's growing popularity.
• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: In a 2013 episode, when discussing racial profiling allegations against retailer Barneys New York, Jon decries the behavior of "a store owned by such a lovable, tolerant dinosaur of color" before being corrected on the matter.
• The Good Night Show: In the episode about dinosaurs, Nina teaches her Sproutlet friends a flying stretch themed around Barney.
• Married... with Children: In "Torch Song Duet", after Griff becomes a star for winning a radio contest that Al provided the answers for, he views him on Barney with the dinosaur singing "We love Griff, Griff loves us...", to which a jealous Al bemoans, "That should be me hugging that big, purple idiot!"
• The premiere of Saturday Night Live's 22nd season featured host Charles Barkley challenging Barney ^note an unofficial Barney costume to a basketball match where the former kicks the purple guy's ass and beats him senseless.
• In the Ted (2024) episode "Subways, Bicycles, and Automobiles" a kid is dressed as Barney for Halloween.

Music

• "Weird Al" Yankovic: The song "Jurassic Park" has the line "I'm afraid those things'll harm me/Cuz they sure don't act like Barney" The music video accompanies this with Barney getting head getting bitten off by a real T-rex. When shown at his concerts, the crowd regularly responds with thunderous applause.
• "Mr. Mom" by Lonestar has the reprise of the song say, "Rewind Barney for the fifteenth/sixteenth/eighteenth time" at one point. Barney appears in the Animated Music Video for the song during the sixteenth and eighteenth variations of the line.
• In 2020, Kingy Montage released a SFW rap song titled "Barney & Friends". However, he later stopped selling and streaming it, presumably to move past the kid-friendly image he created for himself. The official YouTube upload was here, and an Internet Archive reupload is here.
• Susan McRae made an album called Barney's Song Book where she covers songs from the show. Most of the songs on this album are from Rock with Barney.

Puppet Shows

• Dinosaurs
  • Blarney, a reddish-purple dinosaur hand puppet who appears on TV in "Terrible Twos" and "Into the Woods." In the latter, Blarney advertises "The Blarney Home Video Library," which not only parodies the real Barney's many videotapes (and a similar ad from Time-Life that ran around this period), but other mail-order videotapes ranging from fitness and health titles, to spoofs of other common self-help tapes of the time. Such gems include Blarney Just Sits There, Blarney and Omar Sharif Teach You Contact Bridge, Blarney Helps You Stop Stop Smoking, Blarney's Juice Your Way to Better Health, Blarney Helps you Organize Your Blarney Video Tapes, Blarney's Cure for Baldness and Blarney Teaches You Microsoft Windows.
  • Georgie the Hippo, the titular character from "Georgie Must Die" is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who hides his plans for total media conquest underneath a Friend to All Children persona. After Georgie arrests him for copyright infringement, Earl, with some help from Roy, becomes committed to stopping him by impersonating Georgie, and managing to convince everyone to stop buying the Hippo's products.
• The Mr. Potato Head Show: In "Royal Pain", Mr. Potato Head and Baloney test out their preschool show's format on Dr. Fruitcake's ham monster, Hammy, who has the brain of a two-year-old child. When Baloney asks Mr. Potato Head what would entertain Hammy, Mr. Potato Head's response is "A giant ham monster with the brain of a big purple dinosaur?".
• Sesame Street: In Episode 3856, Slimey tries on a T. rex finger puppet as a "Wormy Gras" costume. A worm dressed as Barney walks in humming "I Love You" and is immediately scared away. Said worm later appears in the parade with Baby Bear and Oscar not knowing what he's dressed as.

Video Games

• Early in Dino Crisis, Regina informs teammate Rick that their leader Gail has gone missing and she was attacked by a dinosaur. Rick sarcastically asks if it was Barney.
• Generic Man: Barney is the master of evil and is most likely a potshot at the source material. The purple friendly dinosaur is a world conquering villain and the Final Boss.
• Among the many pop culture references Working Designs inserted into their RPG localizations, Lunar: Eternal Blue has a book titled Killing Barney Made Easy in one of the setting's libraries.
• In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, the Yoob bears a loose resemblance to Barney. As a matter of fact, a Nintendo Power issue predating the release of Partners in Time mentioned the similarities in a pre-release screenshot of the game.
• Defied in Xenophage Alien Bloodsport. The developers worked in an especially unsubtle parody of Barney (or rather, "Blarney") as a hidden Joke Character, but faced with legal repercussions, he ended up Dummied Out.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd
  • In his review of McKids, The Nerd notes that Grimace's house looks like "Barney the Dinosaur's testicle".
  • In some openings, Barney's Hide and Seek Game can be seen in a Model 3 Genesis.
  • In the second part of his Action 52 review, The Nerd mentions Barney when discussing Dyno Tennis on the Genesis Action 52 cart.
• The Nostalgia Critic
  • In his review of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, the Critic compares Mr. Conductor asking the audience for their help in the movie to Barney doing the same thing.
  Barney (singing): I love you, you love me,
  Critic (as Barney): Some shit's goin' down, be ready for it!
  Barney (continues singing): We're a happy family!
  • The Nostalgia Critic has reviewed the film Barney's Great Adventure.
  • In his review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, during the scene where Greg signs up for school safety patrol, the Critic asks if something changed since he was in middle school, and if everyone thinks the kids from Barney are now badass rebels.
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-1357 is a theme park inhabited by park employees wearing costumes, they kidnap kids and turn them into more employees. The costumes are based on fictional characters from various media, one of them being Barney.
  • SCP-6690 is a phenomenon that increases the risk of death for any actor that played Barney. It was orchestrated by the cast of Sesame Street.
• Sonic Stopmotion Adventures: Yoshi dresses up as Barney in Halloween Special.
• SuperMarioLogan:
  • In "Evil Bowser", after suffering Villain Decay, Bowser decides to summon the Devil to help him get his evil back. He does so by singing the "Evil Devil Chant", which is actually the "I Love You" song.
  • At the beginning of "Bowser Junior's Clown Car!", Bowser goes through his box of items from his senior year of high school (1985), one of which is a Barney doll. When Junior questions him, Bowser claims that Barney was cool back then, but maybe not now.^note This is actually an an anachoronism, as Barney didn't exist at that time, and the first video featuring him didn't come out until August 1988.
  • In "Black Yoshi's Kool-Aid Problem!", when Kool-Aid becomes illegal, Black Yoshi tries to buy some Kool-Aid from The Loan Dolphin, referring to it as "Cremated Barney" and "Barney Dust".
• Referenced in the 2019 HD video "Channel Surfing," although the songs played ("That Magic E" and "Short Vowels") are both from Edu Tunes with Miss Jenny, and the title card says "Back to Barny!"

Western Animation

• Animaniacs
  • Baloney the Dinosaur, the big orange star of the "Baloney and Kids" show. He's also one of the few characters Yakko, Wakko and Dot actually fear, but they manage to make the best of him by dropping anvils on his head, even though Baloney enjoys it. They take advantage of this when forming the "Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation", using him as the ultimate punishment against the obsessive nerds.
• Arthur
  • In "Sue Ellen and the Brainasaurous", Sue Ellen tries to sculpt a dinosaur head out of clay for school. She ends up building Barney's skull before squishing it back together.
  • Mary Moo Cow, the lead character of D.W. Read's favorite TV show, is a parody of Barney, and her show is very similar to Barney and Friends, but taking place at a barn instead of a school.
  • Rapty, Bud Compson's imaginary friend, is a stuffed dinosaur who comes to life through his imagination, very much like Barney.
  • In "The Last Of Mary Moo Cow" during a fantasy sequence, D.W. and Mary Moo Cow sing "I Love You."
• Beavis and Butt-Head:
  • In "Tornado", Beavis and Butt-Head watch an episode of Barney where the titular dinosaur (who is colored green and orange instead of purple and green) bakes a cake. When he tries to take the cake out of the oven, he sets himself on fire and he (the guy in the highly flammable Barney suit) screams "Ow, ow! I'm burning! Kids, help! This sucks!" behind the caption. ^note The Edited for Syndication version immediately cuts to the technical difficulties card featuring a blue Big Bird rather than show Barney's hands catching fire and shortened his line to "Kids, help! This sucks!".
  • In "Pregnant Pause", Beavis asks Butt-Head what it's like to have babies, having met a guy who asked the same question. Butt-Head tells Beavis that one of the disadvantages of having a baby is having to watch Barney videos for years instead of the cool TV shows you want to watch.
  • In "T.V. Violence", Mrs. Stevenson makes Beavis and Butt-Head watch Barney (this time depicted in his purple and green palette) when they look after Stewart, saying it's her job to eliminate bad influences from Stewart's life.
• The Critic:
  • In "A Pig Boy and His Dog", Jay reviews Barney the Dinosaur: The Motion Picture, starring Marlon Brando as Barney.
• Daria:
  • In "Fair Enough", Mack plays a dragon at Lawndale High's medieval fundraiser. One of the kids attacking him asks if he's Barney.
• Dead End: Paranormal Park: According to Word of God, Barney, who is a trans male, named himself after this show, as it was his favorite when he was a kid.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Mind Over Murder," Mindy offers Stewie a Barney pen when his pencil breaks.
  • In "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High," Stewie dances the robot and quips:
    Stewie: Let's see the kid with the hearing aid from Barney ^note Jason do this!
• In the first episode of Flying Rhino Junior High, Billy needs a diversion to prevent the dinosaurs from following them. Ruby then yells to them "Oh look, it's Barney!".
• In Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023) episode "The Borough Bully", Lunella calls Devil "Barney" at one point.
• Robot Chicken:
  • Three sketches from "Easter Basket" feature Barney singing "I Love You". First, to a girl who says she's not in love with him, then to a prostitute who charges him $50.00, and finally to a prison inmate.
  • A sketch from "May Cause Weebles to Fall Down" has a girl named Kayla ask Barney if all dinosaurs were as nice as him. A flashback reveals that Barney's friends all looked and acted just like him, but got killed by a comet. When Barney tells Kayla that scientists brought him back to life through scientific engineering and he got to work forging a license to run a daycare, Kayla is more interested in playing hopscotch.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer is watching it with Maggie in "Rosebud".
    Barney (singing): "Two plus two is four, two plus two is four, two plus two is four..."
    Homer: "(chuckles) Heh, heh, heh, I can see why this is so popular."
  • In "The Joy of Sect," the Movementarians use Barney to brainwash the toddlers:
    Barney (singing): We love him, he loves we/We're the leader's family
  • In "The Book Job", children are terrified by realistic animatronic dinosaurs in a stage show, with Milhouse crying that dinosaurs are supposed to sing. He then throws his Barney doll at one of the dinosaurs, who eats it.
  • In the end of "Treehouse of Horror XXVI," Maggie turns Homerzilla into a giant Barney.