The Fly (1986) has one of the most famous Signature Lines / Taglines in motion picture history: "Be afraid. Be very afraid." It is writer-director David Cronenberg's most popular film and one of his most-acclaimed, serving as many people's formal introduction to the Body Horror subgenre. And while his later turns in films like Independence Day and especially the Jurassic Park franchise are more popular with the masses, Seth Brundle was the role that made Jeff Goldblum's career and it remains a favorite of his. For all these reasons and more — particularly the word fly having multiple meanings depending on the context — it's enjoyed a significant pop cultural legacy for decades.
Tropers looking for references specific to the 1958 film are directed to this page.
Advertising (Multiple Media)
- A 2004 promotional flyer for Cirque du Soleil's various shows had the Tagline "Be Amazed...Be Very Amazed."
- Disney+ used "Be afraid. Be very afraid!" on Twitter to promote Lego Star Wars: Terrifying Tales in October 2021.
- The Drew Carey Show's first Halloween Episode (Season Two's "The Devil You Say") included Drew dressing as Mimi, with the TV Guide ad warning "Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid" with that in mind.
- One Tagline for the 2002 Scooby-Doo Live-Action Adaptation was "Be afraid. Be kind of afraid."
- One of the ads heralding the debut of That '70s Show had the tagline "Be Groovy. Be Very Groovy."
Comic Books
- In one issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac Nny cribs pieces of Seth's "fear of the flesh" rant for one of his nihilistic monologues. Lampshaded when the victim witnessing this calls him out on just quoting the film!
Film - Animated
- Likely inspired by Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles going the 1987 and 2012 cartoons' route of making Baxter Stockman a fly-based mutation (instead of a cyborg as in the original Mirage comics and the 2003 series), Keith Ferguson was channeling Jeff Goldblum as Stockman.
- In Addams Family Values, Wednesday Addams introduces herself to Debbie with "Be afraid. Be very afraid." (Kids of the '90s are known to associate the line with this movie rather than its original source.)
- A theater marquee advertising this film turns up in the background of a N.Y.C. street scene in *batteries not included.
- A trailer for Bean had: "Be afraid...be very afraid...be very very very afraid!"
- In the early going of City Slickers, Mitch notes to his wife that hairs are starting to grow out of his back; "I look like The Fly!"
- In The Exorcist III, Father Riley claims this is his favorite movie — doubles as an Actor Allusion as he's played by Lee Richardson, who played the Big Bad of The Fly II the previous year. Later, an old woman performs a Ceiling Cling move out of sight of Lieutenant Kinderman, in a shot composed similarly to Seth preparing to ambush Stathis in this film's climax.
- As background detail, in Ready Player One there's a poster for this movie on the wall of Aech's room.
- In Slither, Grant gets his meat from Brundle's Meats — one of the film's multiple references to David Cronenberg movies.
- At least two of Jeff Goldblum's later films have Actor Allusions to this one:
- In Earth Girls Are Easy, the reveal of his alien character post-makeover has him emerging shirtless from a stand-up tanning bed, and thus dramatically backlit — all a lighthearted analogue to Seth emerging from the telepod. And if that weren't enough, this movie's heroine, who nearly swoons at the sight and ends up falling in love with him (and he her), is played by Geena Davis!
- In Mister Frost Goldblum plays a serial killer who is really Satan in human form. The odd fly seems attracted to his presence; in one scene he uses one on a window as a Literal Surveillance Bug to eavesdrop on the leading lady, but later a buzzing fly just annoys him and he unsuccessfully tries to shoo it away. A clip of the former scene actually opened the movie's trailer!
- A subtler allusion turns up in The Tall Guy: Goldblum plays a struggling American stage actor who finally gets his big break in London's West End when he's cast as the Elephant Man in an overblown stage musical. While Elephant! is primarily a spoof of The Phantom of the Opera, knowing that in real life Goldblum finally found his star-making role (after 15 or so years in the business) by playing a tragic grotesque adds an additional layer of humor to the story — right down to the heavy, repulsive stage makeup his character spends much of the movie's third act wearing.
- A subtle example in the 2017 teen comedy Don't Talk to Irene needs some explanation: The titular outcast, an overweight would-be cheerleader, is a mega-fan of Geena Davis and holds imaginary conversations with her (via a poster for A League of Their Own) when she's in need of encouragement and advice, with Davis herself providing voiceover and later appearing in a Dream Sequence as a cheekily idealized version of herself, as well as narrating the movie. So with all that in mind, Irene's Establishing Character Moment in the opening scene is her (temporarily) adopting a maggot with the Butterfly of Transformation trope in mind — flies have wings too, after all, and she wants to fly away from her unhappy life — and naming it "Veronica". The happy denouement even has a double-meaning Fly-at-the-Camera Ending with a CGI fly with this in mind!
- In Sound of Metal, Ruben tells Lou that he saw this movie and wished Jeff Goldblum was his dad.
- Animorphs: Just before morphing into flies for the first time, the team has the incredible bad luck of seeing that The Fly is on TV... both versions... and watch them... While it turns out watching someone morph into a fly is in fact nausea-inducing, being a fly is exhilarating and a useful morph.
- Sociologist Robert Wuthnow titled one of his nonfiction books Be Very Afraid: The Cultural Response to Terror, Pandemics, Environmental Devastation, Nuclear Annihilation, and Other Threats.
- More Information Than You Require jokingly claims that when Franklin D. Roosevelt said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was, in fact, referring to just his cabinet, who were protected by a thick steel wall. "Normal Americans need to be afraid, very afraid indeed."
- When Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis came out to present Best Documentary Short Subject at the 1989 Academy Awards ceremony, the orchestra played "Flight of the Bumblebee" as a gag.
- The first season ALF episode "La Cucaracha", which aired in May 1987, has one of the earlier recorded shout-outs. ALF is alone in the Tanners' living room, trying to not be nervous about the now-giant cockroach from Melmac that's in the next room. But when it starts beating down the door, ALF says "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
- In one Tom Bergeron-era episode of America's Funniest Home Videos, security camera footage of a gas station's lot goes awry when a fly on the lens looks like a giant roaming around. Bergeron quips "I prefer the version with Jeff Goldblum."
- In the Season 16 Halloween Episode Bergeron introduces a spooky Family of the Week segment with "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"
- The Colbert Report's second night of coverage of "Murder in the White House" in June 2009 — said "murder" being Barack Obama managing to kill a distracting fly in passing during a TV interview — had Colbert moaning "Why am I alone?" in speaking up for the helpless fly...whereupon Jeff Goldblum (in the first of several tongue-in-cheek appearances on the show) stepped out and said "You are not alone!" as the audience cheered. In the monologue that followed, Goldblum defended flies and noted "After all, you never know: Somebody who started out as a fly may go on to such great things as Jurassic Park...Independence Day...and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Sundays at 9 on USA!"
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Toward the end of the episode, "Best Laid Plans", after Uncle Phil informs Will that he's not going to punish him right now and that he needs to think a long, long time about what Will's punishment is going to be, he says, "Be afraid, Will. Be very afraid."
- Of all things, a late 1980s Disney Channel bumper — part of a long run of bumpers involving Mickey Mouse, whose gloved hands were all that was seen (with his POV being the viewer's as well) — referenced this movie! Trying to teleport a mouse ear hat from one chamber to another, the first two tries each end with the ears in the wrong spots. The third time sees a bee fly into the chamber with the ear, and the result (initially obscured by fog) is a giant bee with Disney Channel's original logo in place of its traditional stripes, which turns to Mickey/the viewer and flies straight at them as the spot cuts to black.
- The British sketch comedy Hale and Pace created a short parody trailer, complete with similar graphics and offscreen narration as those of the actual trailer, in which a scientist goes through the telepods and emerges, to the horror of his female companion and surrounded by Ominous Fog, as...a giant pants zipper. Close on Title!
- VH1's I Love the '80s Strikes Back has its panelists humorously discuss the film as the closing segment of the 1986 episode. Hal Sparks notes that the One-Sided Arm-Wrestling scene resulted in the only time he ever screamed in a movie theater. Another panelist, Young MC, remembers going to see the movie and noticing evidence in the lobby that people had fled the theater to throw up.
- I Love the '90s covered Independence Day in the 1996 episode. Loni Love sums the film up as "The Fly and Will Smith getting jiggy with it" to save Earth.
- One The Kids in the Hall Overly Long Gag was the following exchange: "I never saw The Fly." "How could you NOT SEE THE FLY?!"
- In The Larry Sanders Show episode "Nothing Personal" Jeff Goldblum appears as himself. Sanders needs an A-list guest on his show so he reluctantly approaches his friend Goldblum at a reception following an American Film Institute tribute to the actor; The Fly is mentioned as one of the films featured in a tribute montage there. (Goldblum shrugs off being honored, saying the institute had previously done a similar tribute to Steven Seagal.)
- Reality Subtext: Garry Shandling and Goldblum were friends in real life, and serving as a Guest Host for The Tonight Show Shandling interviewed Goldblum twice in 1986 and '87. The latter interview included a clip of the "insect politics" monologue from this film and Shandling quipping afterward "It's great, and you never looked better!" Geena Davis was there too and joined the interview for the last few minutes.
- Occasionally when Jeff Goldblum appears as a guest on The Late Late Show with James Corden, this film is playfully referenced.
- In the Ariana Grande pastiche "thank u, jeff", the opening lyric is "First saw him in The Fly/But his face was grotesque" as Corden lovingly looks at a scrapbook layout of stills of Goldblum in the film with such captions as "Disgustingly good" and "My fly guy". Later, one of Corden's backup dancers is dressed as Seth as he appears in the movie's opening act (the other three? Dr. Ian Malcolm, David Levinson, and the Grandmaster).
- In the "Drop the Mic" rap battle between Corden and Goldblum, the last couplet of Corden's opening run of insults is "But when they first cast you as the lead in The Fly/The producers said 'Repulsive, gross creature...I know just the guy!'"note
- When Jeff Goldblum appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman in February 2004 to promote the film Spinning Boris, Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra scored his entrance with an instrumental of the Lenny Kravitz song "Fly Away" as a Stealth Pun.
- On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a Parody Commercial from 2019 hypes a tax preparation service staffed by...Jeff Goldblum, as himself, complete with video conferencing. Unfortunately, Goldblum knows nothing about taxes and instead just resorts to going on and on about his career, boring one user by recalling how long he spent in the makeup chair on this film (an actual stock anecdote of his).
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 used "Be afraid. Be very afraid", or variants thereof, as a riff in three different episodes — Gamera, Master Ninja I, and Being from Another Planet. In the last case, not only does it appear as a riff ("Be scared, be very a-scared!") but in the episode's opening, when Joel and the Bots are playing 20 Questions to guess a movie title, Crow asks "Uh, should we be afraid, be very afraid?"
- RuPaul's Drag Race:
- In Season 6's "Drag Queens of Talk", BenDeLaCreme's runway presentation evokes the comment "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
- In Season 12's "Choices 2020", RuPaul announces to the contestants that one of the evening's two celebrity guest judges is "the super fly Jeff Goldblum". Come the debate, "via satellite" correspondent Michelle Visage makes a Double Entendre involving the word fly too.
- After a fly spent a good two minutes on Vice President Mike Pence's head during the 2020 Vice Presidential debate, three nights later Saturday Night Live addressed the incident in the Cold Open of the October 10, 2020 episode: Midway through the debate Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden (Jim Carrey), watching from home, decides to disrupt the show by teleporting to it in a not-yet-perfected telepod. Aided by doctored clips from the movie, he ends up not only merged with a fly but also undergoing a Slow Transformation into Jeff Goldblum as he mocks the Republican party — in turn his hair turns black, he paraphrases Jurassic Park, hypes Apartments.com, and even gains a pair of Nerd Glasses! The debate moderator asks him (and the fly reincarnation of Herman Cainnote ) for closing remarks and he says — after vomiting — "Be afraid. Be very afraid! And live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"
- The meta subtext of this sketch: The night of the actual debate saw the fly undergo Memetic Mutation instantly online, and with it came a nigh-overwhelming demand from fans of SNL to have Jeff Goldblum play it. However, Goldblum was in England filming Jurassic World: Dominion, and especially given coronavirus protocols could not have participated on such short notice, so Carrey-as-Biden served as an intentionally obvious Poor Man's Substitute.note For bonus points, Apartments.com is an actual SNL sponsor and one of its ads featuring Goldblum ran during the second commercial break.
- Quite a few episodes of The World According to Jeff Goldblum have Actor Allusions to or straight-up mention this movie.
- In "Sneakers", Goldblum is quite amused to be given the basketball nickname "The Fly" as he prepares to participate in a street court game with several professional players. (He even gets his own chyron caption!) A headshot from it also turns up in the Blipvert covering most of his film roles near the start of the episode.
- In one of the animated transitional segments of "Barbeque", as Goldblum's voiceover describes how scientists are working on developing meat substitutes, the animation whimsically shows a cut of meat inside what looks very much like a telepod. Later, when Goldblum is introduced to the concept of insects being raised as an alternative meat source of the future, he looks pensive as he wonders in voiceover "Insects..." as Stock Footage from old B-movies about giant insects on the rampage appears, as if all this reminds him of something but he can't quite put his finger on it...
- At the top of "Coffee", Goldblum explains in voiceover that he used to drink coffee as a performance-enhancing aid, but he gave it up in part because he doesn't care for the taste. The visual accompaniment to this is a clip from this movie: Seth at the cafe as he loads his cappuccino with sugar to Veronica's bemusement. (Goldblum has admitted elsewhere to drinking a lot of coffee on the set of this particular film.)
- At the top of "Cosmetics" he notes that this was one of several films he's made in which makeup was especially important to his work, the others being Earth Girls Are Easy and Thor: Ragnarok.
- In "Magic", Penn & Teller's demonstration of a card trick involves Penn juggling three grapefruits with the titles of three of Goldblum's movies on them — The Fly, Jurassic Park, and Thor: Ragnarok. The card Goldblum thinks of (by being asked in turn to choose a number between one and ten, a color, and a suit) turns out to be hidden in the second fruit when he chooses it, while the others are "empty" as it were.
- It goes without saying that he mentions his work in this movie at the top of "Monsters"!
- One line of Childish Gambino's "Sweatpants" is "More green than my Whole Foods and I'm too fly, Jeff Goldblum". This and a similar pun from Kendrick Lamar are discussed in Goldblum's Hot Ones appearance.
- On Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra's first album The Capitol Studios Sessions (a live concert), the introduction to "Gee Baby (Ain't I Good to You)" has Goldblum and guest singer Haley Reinhart discussing how they only added the number to the set that day, with her noting "We just kind of did it on the fly." It takes a moment and her affectionately taunting laugh for him to get the intentional pun (whereupon she adds "My favorite, Jeff").
- Ice Nine Kills' song "F.L.Y." is based off the film.
- The Will Wood song Thermodynamic Lawyer contains the line "pulls back skinny lips to reveal a proboscis- seems Seth Brundle's at it again."
Newspaper Columns
- In Dave Barry's mid-'90s column featuring the results of his Bad Song Survey, later expanded into Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, the number three ranked song was Paul Anka's "(You're) Having My Baby". Barry quotes a reader who recalls that the only time that song did any good was when they and some friends went to see this movie and one of them sang out loud "Having my maggot!" during the Nightmare Sequence.
- A Bloom County story arc has Oliver's experimental research in teleportation result in Oliver getting crossed with Bill the Cat. Oliver starts growing mangy hair, while Bill starts wearing glasses and reading Ebony magazine.
Newspaper Reviews
- In a review of The Transformers: The Movie by the Palm Beach Post (they were released the same month, August 1986), the reviewer gave this film the same one star rating as the former.
Other
- The 1988 Topps bubblegum card line Fright Flicks, which featured publicity stills from then-recent horror movies given humorous captions, included this film as one of the subjects. Brundlefly even warranted a sticker!
- Screen Drafts, which has a rotating stable of guest hosts draft ranked lists of movies by topic, genre, etc., has seen this film drafted in six different episodes: "Remakes", "David Cronenberg", "Horror Remakes", "Relationship Horror", "Body Horror", and "Mad Scientist". In the last two cases it ranked at number one, and they were both released in the same month to boot (October 2021). This also rendered the film the most-drafted in the show's run thus far (ahead of multiple films on four lists apiece).
- This film, it's sequel, and the original The Fly trilogy of films were reviewed by the podcast Now Playing for their Fall 2016 retrospective series.
Stand-Up Comedy
- Chonda Pierce's 2002 stand-up special was titled Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid.
- In Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Mary Jane gets her break as a stage actress in a musical version of The Fly as the protagonist's girlfriend — a Genius Bonus given that the movie's storyline is basically an Evil Counterpart to Peter Parker's journey in this show.
- The film was not only referenced with clips in the original version of Universals Horror Makeup Show in The '90s but actually was the basis for the finale: With replicas of the telepods onstage, Mark gets in one for a teleportation demonstration, with neither he nor host Alex aware there's a fly in them. When Mark emerges from the receiver pod, dry ice and all, he's turning into a mutant; Alex tries to fix things by sending him back to the transmitter pod, but that results in (an animatronic) Brundlefly trying to emerge from it. Alex finally restores Mark with one more sequence, although as they take their bows, little fly wings are seen on Mark's back. Footage of this sequence appeared in the official souvenir VHS Experience the Magic of the Movies through its 1994 edition; one of the first TV ads for Universal Studios Florida even included Brundlefly as one of the movie characters featured at the park.
- One of the playable characters Broforce, Seth Brondle, who was introduced in the Broforce Forever update, is a direct reference to Seth Brundle from this movie. Brondle can spit Hollywood Acid as an attack and hover through the air.
- Deep Rock Galactic has an enemy named the Brundle, which is a variant of the fly-like Mactera species.
- Monster Party has a boss fight (pictured on its trope page) in which the hero has to fight tempura seafood that emerges from a pair of pods that look juuuust different enough from the telepods to avoid copyright infringement issues. It's The Fry!
- In Pokémon Red and Blue and its variations, the encounter with Bill the Pokemaniac (needed to get the ticket for the S.S. Anne) starts with him in the form of a talking Pokemon (specifically a Clefairy in the Leaf Green/Fire Red remakes) due to a Teleporter Accident that turned him into a Half-Human Hybrid. The player has to run a "Cell Separation System" while he's in the teleporter to return him to human form; it works.
- In the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Summertime Shorts music video "Mad Twience", the robot emerges from a teleporter that's similar to Seth's telepods as one of the video's multiple references to 1980s sci-fi movies.
- Funny or Die spoofed this film and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2018 by combining footage from the former with some from Ant-Man and the Wasp to create the Real Trailer, Fake Movie Ant-Man and the Fly.
- RiffTrax:
- In the martial arts movie Kill and Kill Again, the nickname of one of the hero's colleagues is "The Fly" (because he's remarkably agile and can even scale walls). He's the hardest one to track down, too; one riff in response to the other characters asking where he can be found is "You try Brundle in the White Pages?"
- The titular creature in Godmonster of Indian Flats is a giant mutated sheep; one of the riffs mocking its absurd appearance notes "Creature designed by Seth Brundle entering the telepod with Snuffleupagus".
- In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Dr. Ian Malcolm's line "And now we've got genetic power, so how long is it going to take to spread around the globe and what's going to be done with it?" is expanded by Bill to have him ask if this finally means half-human, half-insect hybrids can be created, "like I've dreamed?"
- In Gumby the Movie, a shot of the Evil Knockoff Gumby inside the duplication chamber inspires Bill to quip "Jeff Goldblum gets trapped there with it, becomes half-man half-clay..."
- In The Christmas Martian, the brother saying "Just because [the odd stranger] was blowing bubbles doesn't mean he's a Martian!" is appended by Kevin with "He seems more a Brundlefly!"
- Allison Pregler reviewed The Fly II in an Obscurus Lupa Presents episode and many of her quips point out how it comes up short when compared to its predecessor (on Eric Stoltz's performance: "Wow, he's just like Jeff Goldblum, if Jeff Goldblum were a robot!") She even gets bored enough with it to take a break and briefly discuss the first plotline conceived for it, in which Veronica found Seth's consciousness dwelling in the telepods' computer, because while it would have also yielded an awful movie it would have been more ridiculous and thus fun.
- Cinematic Excrement:
- In the Cutthroat Island review, the Smeghead notes that the pirate film was a change of pace for Geena Davis because up to that point she'd done lighter fare. The poster for this movie pops up as he notes "Mostly."
- In the Indecent Proposal episode, Smeghead finds the film's music ridiculously intense: "It kinda sounds like they took the score for The Terminator and they put it in the machine that made The Fly."
- In the Cinematic Titanic version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, the unconvincing Martian robot inspires Trace to blandly quip "Be not that afraid. Be very not that afraid."
- Cinematic Venom did an episode on the film as part of Rob's ongoing project to review all of the films covered in the book 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. He reveals that it's his favorite horror movie, although he does make a Running Gag out of what he sees as a rare flaw — Jeff Goldblum's Chewing the Scenery reading of the line "YOU'RE JEALOUS!" — by using the clip of it again and again as a sort of punctuation for his thoughts. He later reviewed The Fly II (and liked it far more than he expected), calling back to this review by adding the sound bite of "YOU'RE JEALOUS!" to a clip of a scientist listening to Martin's chrysalis with a stethoscope.
- The Dom Reviews: After his first attempt to review The Thing (1982) goes awry he unleashes a Rapid Fire "Nope"; at the end of the video That Movie Chick suggests he review THIS movie next and the same reaction ensues.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Future Bulma comments on how hideous Imperfect Cell is and that he looks like someone stepped in a teleporter with Jeff Goldblum.
- The Honest Trailers take on Jurassic Park refers to Jeff Goldblum as "Brundlefly".
- JonTron: In his review of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jon notes the original film's outstanding special effects by showing the audience...how good Jeff Goldblum looks, as opposed to how he "really" looks — cuing a clip from the climax of this movie as Seth's One-Winged Angel transformation takes place.
- Tamara's Never Seen: Following on from her enjoyment of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park in one episode, viewers recommended The Fly to her. In the subsequent episode centered on it, she realized too late she tempted fate by agreeing to watch it, not realizing how brutal it is even by the standards of The New '10s.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: When Weevil's Parasite Paracide infects Joey's monster, Joey comments it is like The Fly, except it's not happening to Jeff Goldblum so it is less repulsive.
- The Invader Zim episode "Bolognius Maximus" parodies body horror transformation in general, and the scene where Dib discovers ZIM corrupted his DNA with that of Bologna is an almost shot-for-shot spoof of Seth finding out about the housefly via his computer.
- Animaniacs: In "Hello, Nice Warners", Yakko, Wakko, and Dot say, "Be afraid. Be very afraid" after they reluctantly agree to star in Mr. Director's movie.
- The cold open of the Family Guy episode "Eight Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter" has Stewie testing out his own set of telepods but realizing too late that his teddy bear Rupert is in the transmitter pod with him. He ends up a Tortured Monster fusion of baby and bear. This scene currently serves as a video example for the Teleporter Accident trope.
- Pinky and the Brain: In "Brinky", Brain says the "Be afraid" line when he finds out that DNA from one of Pinky's toenails entered his cloning machine, resulting in a clone that's a mix of both of them.
- One of the Rick and Morty: The Non-Canonical Adventures interstitial shorts parodies the film's climax, with Rick saying "We'll be the ultimate family!" just before he goes One-Winged Angel and starts dragging a protesting Morty towards a telepod.
- Robot Chicken: A sketch from "Musya Shakhtyorov in: Honeyboogers" has Brundlefly attending Eleroo's birthday party because he is half-man and half-fly, which makes him a Wuzzle by default. Brundle attempts to eat Bumblelion and Eleroo until he is shot in the head by Butterbear.
- The Simpsons:
- Near the end of Season 3's "The Otto Show"
, Bart reminds Otto that Homer called him "a sponge" for crashing at their house. Enraged, Otto pounds on a brick wall hard enough to crumble some of it and yells "Does this look like something a sponge would do?" This parodies Seth's You're Just Jealous rant to Veronica and his demonstrating his Super-Strength by punching a wooden support beam and splintering it ("Does this look like a sick man to you?"). - The Season 9 Halloween Episode "Treehouse of Horror VIII" parodies this film and the 1958 version of the short story that inspired it in its second segment, "Fly vs. Fly". Elements borrowed from the 1986 film include the Mysterious Mist / Ominous Fog that accompanies the use of the teleporter (which also physically resembles the design of that version more than the old-time phone booths of '58) and Bart theorizing that going through the pods with a fly would merge them into one creature, albeit in a much more positive manner than what happened to poor Seth Brundle. Instead, he and the fly have heads proportionally swapped as in the '58 version. Fly!Bart ambushing Bart!Fly and Lisa is a variation on the grotesquely mutated Seth ambushing Stathis from above when he comes to rescue Veronica. The hybrids created from a fusion of Snowball II and Santa's Little Helper (one with a head on each "end", the other getting both rear ends) might even have been inspired by the notorious "monkey-cat" Deleted Scene, which was already a legendary loss in horror fan circles. The matter teleporter later appeared in the video game The Simpsons Hit & Run.
- Near the end of Season 3's "The Otto Show"
- "Be Very Afraid" is the title of a third season episode of Tangled: The Series.
