"Hello, boys! I'm baaaaaaaaaaack!"
As an iconic '90s blockbuster with many quickly recognized quotes and scenes, this bit of pop culture gets brought up frequently in other works.Examples:
Anime
- In the second episode of Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV (the final season), the villains attack an American aircraft carrier. Following the tradition of naming American carriers after presidents, her name is USS Thomas Whitmore.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Cassie's best friend Georgia complains when she's asked to try to hack into an Apokoliptian Supercomputer with her Mac laptop, saying that despite it working in Independence Day that's not how things work. To her annoyance it works anyway, since the motherboard starts converting her laptop as soon as she finds a way to connect them.
Fan Works
- Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Dr. Zarkendorf riffs on the President's Rousing Speech."Perhaps it is fate that today is the Fourth of July. This time we fight not against tyranny, oppression, or a three percent tea tax—but annihilation! Let the world declare in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a good sound bite!"
- Code Prime evokes the White House destruction scene when the Decepticon warship Nemesis hovers over the Royal Palace in the Britannian Empire and blasts a downward beam under it, completely destroying it from the inside.
Films — Animated
- Tangled has Flynn quoting Will Smith's character:Oh, mama, I have got to get me one of these!
Films — Live-Action
- In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, a time-travelling Dr. Evil, who went from 1999 to 1969, plays the scene of the White House being destroyed to scare the President.
- In The Babysitter (2017): Bee includes Steve and David among other pop culture characters when she lists off what her dream team would do to stop alien invaders.
- In Ballistic Kiss Donnie Yen's character keeps a scale-sized replica of an alien Harvester action figure in his bedroom. Becomes a plot point when the toy's head contains a hidden compartment for him to keep an important disk.
- Captain Marvel (2019) gives the film multiple nods including Carol walking through the desert and dragging an alien behind her, similar to Will Smith's character doing the same here. There's also an Aerial Canyon Chase in the climax between Maria Rambeau and Minn-erva, which contains multiple visual similarities to Will Smith and the lone Harvester fighter. This makes sense given that the film is set in The '90s.
- Pacific Rim: The Rousing Speech given to the drift pilots takes some very obvious and unabashed cues from the speech the president gives the pilots before the final battle in Independence Day.
Literature
- Bone Chillers: One of the books, "Scare Bear", features a nerdy kid named Timmy who collects plenty of sci-fi action figures, and is seen building an Independence Day alien model at the start of one chapter. The book even name-drops the movie.
Live-Action Television
- Doctor Who: In "Victory of the Daleks" a lone human aircraft takes on a huge saucer-shaped alien flagship.
- VH1's I Love the '90s devoted a segment to this film in the 1996 episode.
- The Late Late Show with James Corden has referenced this twice during Jeff Goldblum guest appearances.
- In the music video parody "thank u, jeff", James notes in the first verse "Then he won independence/From an alien mess" as he anxiously watches the movie on a laptop (specifically the scene where David's explaining the plan to take down the mothership). One of the backup dancers is dressed as David as well (the others are dressed as Seth Brundle, Dr. Ian Malcolm, and the Grandmaster).
- Goldblum finishes his "Drop the Mic" rap battle with Corden with "Hey, I just killed an alien/Hey, that's an Independence Day!"
- The Late Show with David Letterman had a ball with this movie and its surrounding hype in the summer of 1996.
- In the week or so leading up to its release, a Running Gag was showing part of the trailer but then cut in a clip of Dave having some kind of domestic dilemma: cold pancakes, a lawnmower that wouldn't start, etc. The aliens' death ray proved sufficient to fix said problem every time, and Dave cheerfully called up to them "Thank you space monkeys!"
- After the film opened, Letterman said the REAL reason everyone was seeing it was one particular moment...and ran the actual clip of President Whitmore's daughter telling her mom over the phone "Daddy let me watch Letterman."
- Finally, one Top Ten List was "Top Ten Signs You've Seen Independence Day Too Many Times".
- Saturday Night Live had "President Bill Clinton" (Darrell Hammond) review the movie in a Weekend Update segment. By far his favorite thing about the movie was the First Lady getting killed off, although he would have liked to see Whitmore be introduced to some strippers by Jasmine with that in mind.
- The title of a 2021 Will Smith-hosted documentary miniseries on Disney+ about nature's wonders? Welcome to Earth!
- Teen Wolf: Coach Finstock's go-to — nay, only — Rousing Speech for his lacrosse players is Whitmore's speech. Delivered in full costume. With microphone bullhorn. In a small, concrete locker room.
- Bug Too!: The game's third world, a space-themed one, is entitled Antennae Day.
- The Scrin Mothership in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is a flying saucer armed with a matter-conversion cannon that can wipe out whole cities in one shot.
- In DreamWorks Super Star Kartz one of Donkey's one-liners is "I gotta get me one of these!" when speeding up.
- Duke Nukem 3D: The secret level "Area 51" in the Plutonium Pak expansion has several shout-outs. The Casse family's RV is seen near the start of the level, the salvaged alien fighter is found in one of the rooms inside, and the nuke control room has a screen showing a ship blowing up a Duke Burger restaurant in a parody of the White House scene.
- Fate/Grand Order: The rerun of Gilfes is taken over by "Space Ishtar" who is in a suspiciously familiar UFO.
- Final Fantasy XIV: The FATE Titles are mostly all Shout Outs, one of which is "Independence Ray".
- Metal Slug 2/X: The final boss is a Martian mothership with a very similar design to the one seen in the film. After the players defeat it, it tries to fire it's Wave-Motion Gun one last time, only for a Rebel Army plane to fly into its core forcing its final retreat.
- Space Bomber revolves around an alien invasion where giant spaceships, the size of cities, start appearing in the stratosphere all around the globe. The player must defeat the aliens and force their way into the spaceship's interiors in various levels, and in-between levels the President will attempt to communicate with the alien overlord, not unlike in the movie.
- Star Fox 64 has Katina, which is basically the climax scene from the film (the official American strategy guide even lampshades this, saying that the Saucerer's plans might have been stolen from another alien race.), complete with Bill Gray, a nod to Gen. William Grey, Robert Loggia's character in the movie.
- Terraria: The description for the buff granted by piloting an UFO says "It's a good thing you had a Mac", referencing the infamous bit of Plug 'n' Play Technology in Independence Day.
Web Comics
- Freefall: The method of defeating the monster in 449
seems to be a parody of Independence Day.
Web Original
- The Angry Video Game Nerd has reviewed the Licensed Game based on the movie for the PS1 by Radical Entertainment and Fox Interactive.
- How It Should Have Ended: In a bit for the Pacific Rim episode Russell Casse from Independence Day appears before the Precursors, saying his famous line "Hello, boys! I'm baaaack!" before Gipsy Danger explodes.
- A video by Lindsay Ellis compares this film with the next big movie about an alien invasion, War of the Worlds (2005), which came after the Real Life 9/11 attacks, examining how each movie portrays the aftermath of the initial invasion and how it affects society at large and individual characters, and how each portrayal was colored by the state of the real world at the time.
- Red vs. Blue had Grif suggesting while Simmons is hacking into the Freelancer systems "You should try uploading a virus to the mainframe. I find viruses that feature a laughing skull tend to work the best."
- The Nostalgia Critic tore into this movie in one episode, and launched a Running Gag ("BOOMER WILL LIVE") for several subsequent episodes in the process. A 2020 episode poked fun at the unsuccessful sequel.
- RiffTrax has tackled this film, and referenced it in other riffings as well:
- In Double Dragon (1994), when an earthquake tremor rattles the martial arts competition our heroes are introduced at Mike quips "Ah, Independence Day is playing in the adjacent theater!"
Western Animation
- The Futurama episode, "When Aliens Attack" has the Omicronian space ships destroy all of Earth's monuments that were conveniently all placed on Monument Beach in the same way the invaders destroyed the White House and serval cities in the Film. Not only that, a smaller space ship destroys Fry's sand castle. Much to Fry's dismay.
- In the South Park episode "Cancelled", a satellite technician tries to help Chef and the kids with the threat posed by aliens who have been using humanity as the unknowing grist for an intergalactic reality show. He's clearly modeled after David Levinson, and his Bat Deduction skills are a parody of this movie's third act hinging on David's "Eureka!" Moment.
