Referenced By / Poltergeist (1982)

Films — Live-Action

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: "I have exorcised the demons! This house is clear!"
• The Boondock Saints: One of the targets the Saints go after is a contract killer who says "This house is clean." in a Flash Back of them taking out a family and removing all the evidence.
• Fear Street: In 1994, the kids directly compare the disturbance of Sarah Faiers' bones to this movie.
• Ghostbusters (2016): In which interacting too closely with the other side turns one's hair shock white. Also, the fact that Erin clamped a cable on herself to go after Abby, and the other two women had to tow them back from the other side.
• Poltergay: A 2006 French comedy that replaces the spirits by the ghosts of five gay disco partygoers from The '70s.
• Scary Movie 2: A few scenes from Poltergeist are parodied, such as Alex being forced against the wall and up to the ceiling by invisible forces like Diane and the scary clown doll scene.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In "The Force of Gravity", right after the lights go out in the Zephyr, Daisy tells Coulson "they're heeere...."
• Faerie Tale Theatre: The climax of the adaptation of Robert Browning's version of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" manages to be both faithful to the poem and an extended Played for Drama homage to this film, perhaps inspired by the fact that the nature of the Piper's music (which "tells" its targets that if they follow him they will reach their idea of Paradise) is not unlike how Carol Anne is lured to the Other Side. When the Piper enchants the children of the town to follow him, a disembodied female voice cries "He's heeeeere!" as they suddenly and obediently leave their schoolwork, etc. behind. From there, when they reach Koppleberg Hill and the portal opens in the rock, all that can be seen is a blinding white light that the Piper and the contentedly smiling children file into.
• Stranger Things: A child, abducted by paranormal forces into another dimension, who contacts his family through household appliances is a reference to Poltergeist, a movie that is referenced by name in the series.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: In "Team Tipton", Zack tries to keep a tourist away from the St. Mark's hotel by claiming it has "TV sets coming to life" and "trees eating children".

Video Games

• Alan Wake: The achievement "They're Heeeeeeeeeeere!" is awarded for destroying possessed objects.
• Beyond: Two Souls, being about ghosts, uses the famous Poltergeist chair-stacking twice; once when Jodie was still a little girl living with her foster family who can't begin to explain the paranormal phenomena happening around her, and again during "The Dinner", contextualized as Aiden throwing a tantrum regarding her approaching date with Ryan.
• Luigi's Mansion 3: On the Hotel Shops floor of the Last Resort hotel, a random event will see chairs appear stacked on top of a table, referencing the famous scare from this film.

Web Videos

• Kane Pixels' The Backrooms has the episode "Backrooms - Found Footage #2" open with the main character filming a rift in their garage that leads to this universe's version of The Backrooms. She experiments with woodchips and a baseball, the later being a similar idea to the tennis balls used in the 1982 Poltergeist film. Like with Poltergeist, insertion of an extension item (a tape measure in this case) into the rift has unpleasant consequences; rather than pulling a monster backwards through, it instead pulls the camerawoman through into the alternate dimension where the bulk of the video commences thanks to the camera staying intact.
• The Nostalgia Critic
  • The clown doll is #2 on his list of "Top 11 Scariest Nostalgia Moments".
  • In his review of A Troll in Central Park, Critic says that the movie is even bad to show to a wall, and he cites the last time somebody did that.
    Critic as Steve: [watching the house implode] Should've rented Iron Giant.

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • In "Homeland Insecurity", Stan tells Steve that if he dies, he'll meet plenty of kids in Heaven "That little girl from Poltergeist...Well, she must be at least 16 by now. You could totally hit that."
  • In "The American Dad After School Special", an anorexic Stan hides the food that's given to him in the family pool, and the scene where Francine falls in it and discovers the "food graveyard" spoofs the scene where JoAnne discovers the corpses.
    Francine: He never cleaned his plate! He just moved the food!
  • The episode "Poltergasm" is a spoof of this movie, in which the house is haunted by the ghost of Francine's sex drive. Roger even dresses up as "Ruby Zeldastein".
• Family Guy: The episode "Petergeist" is a spoof of this film
• The Simpsons
  • The first ever Treehouse of Horror segment, Bad Dream House, is a spoof of this movie.
  • In the segment Homer³ from "Treehouse of Horror VI", Bart goes inside the third dimension to save Homer with a rope tied around his waist.
  • In "Treehouse of Horror XXVI", producer Michael Price is credited as "Poulter Price".
• South Park
  • In "Spookyfish", the pet store is built upon an Indian burial ground, and the "Employees Only" door leads to another dimension.
  • In "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", Chef's mom says "This child is clean" after expelling Kenny's spirit from Cartman.
  • In "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", Cartman tries to make a midget activist say "Carol Anne, don't go into the light".
  • In "Dead Celebrities", the hospital's psychic is a parody of Tangina.
• In a later season of The Fairly OddParents! there is an episode which has the episode cover reference the poster, with Timmy in the place of Carol Anne.

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