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Advertising
- A Fandango commercial spoofs the music video of this song
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Films - Live-Action
- In Cop Land, when Freddy suggests they find a way to bring in Superboy, Ray is dismissive of the idea, calling it akin to everyone marching down the street singing "We are the World".
- The ending of Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star has a bunch of real-life former child actors singing an anthem similar to "We Are the World".
- Kickin' It Old Skool: Justin recites the first two lines of the song to Jennifer after giving money to a homeless man. Almost expected since it's basically The '80s Reference Overdosed: The Movie.
Live-Action TV
- 30 Rock gave us "He Needs a Kidney", in which Jack meets his biological father, played by Alan Alda, who needs a kidney donor, so he gathers some celebrities to sing a charity anthem. The singers included Clay Aiken (the in-series cousin of Kenneth the Page), Sara Bareilles, The Beastie Boys (only Mike D and Ad-Rock, MCA was unavailable because he was undergoing cancer treatment), Mary J. Blige, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Talib Kweli, Cyndi Lauper (who was in the original "We Are the World" song), Adam Levine, Michael Mc Donald, Rhett Miller, Moby, Robert Randolph, and Rachael Yamagata. The song was later released on iTunes with proceeds going to the National Kidney Foundation.
- The Golden Girls: One episode has Blanche spoke about a "charitable donation" she's made in the form of buying the "We Are the World" album.
- Married... with Children: "Rock of Ages" has Al pretending to be a former rock star to get onto a first class flight with several famous rockers. At the end, they all sing a spoof called "We Are The Old".
- In Living Color!: A season four skit had a Take That! towards some of the stars in the video for apparently being washed-up called "We Were The World (We Really Blew It)".
- Saturday Night Live:
- In 1994, several popular musicians, including Phil Hartman as Elton John and Rob Schneider as k.d. lang, sung about the Clinton Administration's Whitewater Scandal.
- In 2010, musicians including Jennifer Lopez as Rihanna and Kristen Wiig as Gwen Stefani did a song "We Are The World 3", in response to the reviled reaction of "We Are The World 2". It ends with Kenan Thompson's Quincy Jones concluding that the latest version was pretty bad as well.
Music
- "Weird Al" Yankovic wrote a style parody of the song called "Don't Download This Song".
- The music video for Genesis' "Land of Confusion" (featuring Spitting Image's puppets) ends with a parody of this song's video, featuring not only rock and pop stars but also random celebrities and characters such as Pope John Paul II and Popeye.
- "We Are the Worms" ("We are the ones who make a squishy mess, so watch where you walk"), a parody by Las Vegas DJs Johnson & Tofte, is a longstanding Dr. Demento favorite (though it ran into legal troubles over copyright issues after its 1985 debut, and he didn't start playing it on his show again until 1993).
- Italian comedy rock band Squallor parodied the song with their satirical "USA for Italy". Here's an excerpt of the music video.
Newspaper Comic
- Doonesbury devoted a week of strips to the recording session around the time of the song's release in March of 1985. Jimmy Thudpucker is one of the singers, getting a solo on the word "the" and questioning the grammar of the phrase "you and me".
Stand Up Comedy
- The late Kevin Meaney had a sketch in which he sang the song and impersonated the voices of every single person in the song.
Web Animation
- The ending of the 150th Strong-Bad Email ends with all the alternate versions of Strong Bad recording a song parodying "We Are the World".
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Refund" has one of Gumball and Darwin's efforts in convincing Larry to give them a refund consist of singing a parody of We Are the World that paints denying children refunds as a serious problem that one would have to be heartless to ignore.
- The Christmas Episode of Phineas and Ferb, "Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation!" has the entire town of Danville record a charity single for Santa to let them know they are nice. Several of the elements from the "We are the World" video are imitated, such as the "Danville for Niceness" sign at the back of the studio having the same font and color as the "USA for Africa" logo, and Phineas conducting the choir from a podium like Quincy Jones did.
- The Simpsons spoofed this song as "We're Sending Our Love Down The Well" in the episode "Radio Bart".
- The teaser of the SuperMansion Earth Day Episode "World War Tree" shows Titanium Rex and Da League (the 1990's roster of The League of Freedom) sing a pastiche of the song titled "If Trees Could Talk (What Would They Tell Us)", with the song pleading that deforestation be kept to a minimum and that trees should be treated like people. In the present day, the song is shown to be yet another old embarrassment for Titanium Rex, as the song was not commercially successful and utterly failed to stop excessive deforestation.
