Referenced By / Kama Sutra

References to the Kama Sutra in Other Works;

Films — Animated

• In Dragon and Slipper the book Merlin looks up the recipe for the love potion from is the Kama Sutra. By the way, this is a children's cartoon...!

Films — Live-Action

• Hipsters: Given to a less experienced character.
• Scrooged: While with the Ghost of Christmas Past, Frank sees his younger self with Claire and Christmas, where she gives him the book as a Christmas present. The younger Frank then goes through the book, claiming he's done several of the positions described in the book.
• Shanghai Noon: In the sequel, Shanghai Knights, Roy happens upon a copy in the Big Bad's personal library and becomes distracted from the mission at hand.
• The Last Remake of Beau Geste: During his bedroom scene with Flavia, General Pecheur picks up and reads an illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra. He holds the book horizontally at first, then turns it at a 90-degree angle to study the pictures better.
• In The English Patient, Kip mentions liking an English fellow soldier because he doesn't ask him about this book, or any other clichés about Indians.
• Where the Spies Are. On being interrogated by the KGB, Jason Love (falsely) claims this is the book that British Intelligence are using for The Book Cipher (to their surprise).

Literature

• In Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth, travelers from Saturn to Earth have a few hours of zero-gee halfway along, while the ship is flipping over to decelerate.
  No wonder that the most popular item in the ship's library these last few days had been the Nasa Sutra, an old book and an old joke, explained so often that it was no longer funny.

Live-Action TV

• The Americans: In the third season episode "EST Men", Philip (disguised as "Clark") and Martha have sex using a position Martha says she learned from the book. In a later episode, after Stan becomes suspicious of her and searches her apartment, he finds the book.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Mentioned by Raj while wooing Sheldon's sister Missy.
  Raj: Have you ever heard of the Kama Sutra?
  Missy: The sex book.
  Raj: The Indian sex book. In other words, if you ever wondered, wondered who wrote the book of love... it was us.
  • Mentioned again when Raj and Penny are doing yoga and he explains that the Sanskrit term for Downward Facing Dog means "downward facing dog."
  Penny: Yeah, I guess they don't have Sanskrit for "butts up and heads down."
  Raj: Hey, we wrote the Kama Sutra. If it involves butts there's a word for it.
• On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dr. Zimmerman asks an attractive female alien if she's familiar with the book.
• On one episode of Red Dwarf Lister is shown to own a pop-up version of the Kama Sutra, Zero-Gravity edition.

Webcomics

• xkcd: "Mistranslations" depicts a couple with a mistranslated copy of the Kama Sutra that instructs them to do some bizarre ramp half pipe rope swing trick. How this constitutes a sex act is unclear, but the couple are enjoying themselves enough that they refuse to get a properly-translated copy instead.

Web Original

• In The Nostalgia Critic's review of Cool as Ice, the Critic calls Vanilla Ice's questionable dance moves as being like "five pages of the Kama Sutra."

Visual Novels

• In the English localization of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, the Love Hotel in the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles is named Hotel Kumasutra, a pun on the series Mascot Villain Monokuma. In Japanese, it's Hotel Kumanami.

Western Animation

• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
  • The Episode "Juror in Court" has Peter Potamus opening a book called "Kama Sutra for Dum Dums" to a page on Quick Draw Mc Graw and Baba Looey doing the "Cowgirl" postition.
    Peter Potamus: Entry level postion? Like the cowgirl?
• Robot Chicken: A sketch from "Cheese Puff Mountain" features Yakko Warner from Animaniacs singing the Kama Sutra, parodying the "Yakko's World" and "All the Words in the English Language" sketches from his show.
• The Simpsons
  • Homer picks up a copy in "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequency".
  • Marge and Homer are given a copy by Apu in "The Sweetest Apu".
  • In "I'm With Cupid", when Apu and Manjula are having a fight, a copy of the book is thrown out their window and found by Homer, who decides to read it (while driving).
  • In "O Brother, Where Bart Thou", Bart uses a digital version to try and get Homer and Marge to conceive another baby, but it ends up putting them both in traction.

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