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Comic Books
- In 1983, "Prog #310" of 2000 AD featured a time-travelling parody of Dragnet in the story "Chrono Cops", written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. In five pages, "Joe Saturday" and "Ed Thursday" encounter several time-travel "tropes", including a character attempting to kill his own great-grandfather.
Films — Live-Action
- Die Hard 2. An airport clerk helps John McClane with a fax machine and then invites him out for dinner. John shows her his wedding ring and quips, "Just the fax, ma'am."
- The Little Shop of Horrors features a parody of the traditional Dragnet dry, hard-boiled voiceover narration throughout, and in the second half of the film, an onscreen parody of Dragnet and Joe Friday's robotic stoicism, a police detective named Joe Fink who says in voiceover “My name is Fink. Joe Fink... I’m a fink”.
- In one of the Police Academy movies, Lt. Proctor demands that Mahoney see Da Chief at once, causing everyone to mockingly say, "BUM-BA-DUM-BUM!"
- The 1955, The Three Stooges short "Blunder Boys" parodies Dragnet. In place of the familiar "Dragnet" theme, the first four notes of "The Song of the Volga Boatmen", which is in the public domain, is used. At the end of the film, Moe stamps Larry's head with a hammer; Larry's forehead then reads, "VII 1/2 The End".
Literature
- Craig Lancaster's novel Hours of Edward features a title character with Asperger's syndrome who watches Dragnet religiously every day and relates much of his life back to it. Dragnet is also mentioned in the sequel Edward Adrift.
- In L.A. Confidential, Jack Vincennes is the LAPD's advisor on the show "Badge Of Honour", which is clearly a Dragnet Expy - one of the cast uses "Just the facts", with the implication that it's a recurring phrase in the show.
- In There's More Than One Way Home, Office Armstrong does Jack Webb from Dragnet while trying to persuade Nora to let him interrogate her son Cesar.
Live-Action TV
- Officer Joe Webber was a recurring character on The Bob Newhart Show.
- In an episode of The Honeymooners Ed Norton says "Dum da Dum Dum".
- An episode of It Takes a Thief (1968) titled "The Scorpio Drop" in which star Robert Wagner starts the Cold Open with "This is the city, Washington, D.C.. My name is Mundy...I'm a thief." Oddly enough on May 5, 2012 this episode aired on Digital station Antenna TV directly after an actual episode of Dragnet, without even a commercial between the Universal logo and the start of the parody.
- In the Married... with Children episode, "Sleepless in Chicago," Al says he prefers to live in the present, only to then excitedly say, "Ooh, Dragnet's on!" This is also Hilarious in Hindsight as O'Neil would be cast as Joe Friday on the short-lived 2003 remake.
- An episode of The Monkees features Peter say, "Hey, its time for Dragnet! Anyone got a tv?" This shot was used in a May 2012 Antenna TV ad, which showed both programs in their line-up.
- Radio Enfer: When Jocelyne is threatening Laplante over his refusal to help Jean-Lou for an upcoming inventor contest, both Maria and Camille hum the Dragnet theme in a threatening manner.
- Seinfeld featured a character called Mr. Bookman, a library official who behaved like Joe Friday. Another episode had Kramer channel a Joe Fridayish Inspector in order to get a stolen statue back from a cleaning man.
- The final segment of each episode of PBS' Square One TV was titled "Mathnet" and opened with the Dragnet theme and an arrangement of the lines "The story you're about to see is a fib—but it's short. The names are made up, but the problems are real." Each story arc of the show's five-season run lasted five daily episodes (one week) and featured detectives Kate Monday (seasons 1–3) or Pat Tuesday (seasons 4–5) and George Ernest Frankly (all five seasons), of the LAPD in the first two of the show's five seasons and the New York Police Department in the last three seasons, using mathematics to solve crimes.
- In 1968, Jack Webb appeared in the "Copper Clapper Caper" sketch on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He played the poker-faced Joe Friday interviewing the equally deadpan victim of a robbery (played by Carson). The details of the crime started with the alliterative "k" or "kl" consonant sound, such as "Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland."
Music
- The Beastie Boys'' song "3-Minute Window" has the lyrics "I stay up all night, I go to sleep watching Dragnet"
Puppet Shows
- The Stinger of the Dinosaurs episode, "License to Parent" is done in the style of Dragnet. In it, we see Officer Bettleheim, Robbie, and Baby lined up as if they're posing for mug shots as the narrator explains their crimes and punishments.
- An early episode of Sesame Street featured a segment with Sergeant Thursday
and his partner Ben (a parody of Ben Romero) questioning a letter W, which turns upside down and gives them the slip, claiming to be an M.
Radio
- St. George and the Dragonet, a 1953 short audio satire by Stan Freberg, was a smash hit reaching number one on both the Billboard and the Cash Box record charts. In this satire, Freberg used the line "Just the facts, ma'am", which entered popular lexicography as an actual catchphrase from Dragnet, despite the line never being used on the show, except for Season Two, Episode Eight ("Big Lease"). Freberg followed St. George... with Little Blue Riding Hood and Christmas Dragnet.
Video Games
- In City of Heroes, one of your mission-giving police contacts is "Detective Freitag" (German for Friday)
- L.A. Noire: The player character, Cole Phelps, is an Expy of Friday.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons:
- "Marge on the Lam": while the episode is predominantly a Whole-Plot Reference to Thelma & Louise, the final scene is a take-off on "the results of that trial" epilogues. George Fenneman (who was one of the Dragnet narrators) describes what happened to Ruth Powers, Lionel Hutz, Marge, and Homer (the only one, incidentally, who was trying to figure out where the voice was coming from). The end credits then did a riff on the Dragnet theme, complete with a Springfield police badge background.
- "Homer the Vigilante": The scene of Homer and Principal Skinner talking in front of the museum is a reference to the series, even featuring the music.
- "Mother Simpson": Friday and Gannon investigate the return of Homer's long lost Mother, forced underground after a sixties protest incident. Harry Morgan voices Gannon.
- A Looney Tunes cartoon titled Rocket Squad and starring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig is a straight-up parody, set IN SPACE! , where Daffy plays "Sergeant Joe Monday". The twist is that the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue shows him and his partner being arrested for wrongful arrest.
- Doug: In "Doug's Dog Date", Doug wonders where a lovesick Porkchop has gone and has an Imagine Spot that he's a detective investigating in a show called Dognet.
- Rocky and Bullwinkle:
- One story arc features Rocky being questioned by expies of Friday and Gannon.
- "Bullwinkle's Corner" featured Bullwinkle Moose in a poetry reading of "Tom, Tom the Piper's Son," parodied Dragnet, as Bullwinkle is apprehended in the act of stealing a pig by two detectives who interrogate Bullwinkle using a terse, clipped monotone similar in style to Joe Friday and Frank Smith ("You got a name?" "I'm Tom, Tom the Piper's Son." "All right, Piperson, what were you going to do with the pig?").
- The Woody Woodpecker short Under the Counter Spy is a parody of the show, complete with a parody of the Mark VII logo at the end. At the beginning, a narrator says, "The story you are about to see is a big fat lie. No names have been changed to protect anybody!" At the end, a hammer and stamp make the words "THE END", and the hammerer hits his thumb.
- A 1957 Disneyland show "Donald's Award" has Jiminy Cricket's interview of Daisy Duck depicted as a Dragnet-style interrogation.
- In the Rugrats (1991) episode, "Mommy's Little Assets", Merge Corp's company memo is "Just the Fax". When Jonathan explains to Famous Ethel and Abe that it's a play on Joe Friday's catchphrase, "Just the facts", Ethel tells him that she and Abe think television is evil.
- The beginning and ending of the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "Gang Busters" is a parody of Dragnet. Above the WB shield in the beginning is "Dum Dee Dum Dum", which is a vocalization of the Dragnet fanfare. Buster and Babs also both impersonate the Dragnet protagonist, Joe Friday.
- A 1956 Looney Tunes short, "Rocket Squad", starred Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as Sgt. Joe Monday and Det. Schmoe Tuesday, respectively. Daffy narrated, giving a running timeline in the manner of Sgt. Friday. This police adventure ends with both officers convicted and imprisoned for false arrest. The opening title reads: "Ladies and Gentlemen, The story you are about to see is true. The drawings have been changed to protect the Innocent". Another short, "Tree Cornered Tweety", featured Tweety imitating the narrator of Dragnet as he is being pursued by Sylvester again.
- In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode "Sorry, Wrong Slusher", Winnie-the-Pooh performs a closing narration as a mug shot of Christopher Robin is shown on screen.
- In the TaleSpin episode "Vowel Play", Detective Thursday is a parody of Joe Friday.
- Garfield and Friends: In the U.S. Acres segment, "How Now, Stolen Cow?", when Orson finds out that Bossy the Cow has gone missing, he becomes a Joe Friday-like detective to solve the mystery of who took her.
Other
- MAD once featured Dragged Net! (the radio/original TV version) and Dumbnet - A What IV Production (the 60s/70s version).
