History TheBigBangTheory / TropesPToS

---> '''Althea''': Where's the rest of the robot?
---> '''Howard''': I only built the arm.
---> '''Althea''': ...'Cause that's all you needed, right?
---> ''(Later...)''
---> '''Althea''': I need an orderly with a wheelchair, I got a robot hand grasping a man's penis out here.
---> '''Howard''': Do you think you could be a ''little'' more discreet?
---> '''Althea''': I'm sorry, we don't have a code for "robot hand grasping a man's penis."

--> '''Raj''': I am talking to you?! *''Shakes hand''* Hello Penny! How are you?!

** Creator/WarnerBrothers owns the show (alongside Creator/DCComics) and the vast majority of comic references comes from DC, and the comic shop the guys frequent seems to sell predominately DC titles (with Comicbook/{{Madman}}, Creator/{{Darkhorse}} comics and Star Wars memorabilia rounding it out). But Creator/MarvelComics, as well as smaller companies and series, do show up from time-to-time, notably the episode with guest star Stan Lee. [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk Hands]] is a recurring prop, though.

*** His idiosyncratic door knocking, three sets of three knocks, with the name of the person on the other side between each knock. And when he does it to Penny, her responses to such. Notable examples of this are when Penny turns it into a door knocking war (repeating his knocking pattern from the other side of the door and saying his name), another time interjecting a cheerleader-ish "Who do we love?" between the knocks and "Penny," and when Sheldon knocks as Franchise/TheFlash. Also when he's inside Amy's apartment, knocking while she's in the hall.

** On a smaller scale, in an early episode Sheldon and Raj argue about whether Comicbook/{{Wolverine}} has bone claws with adamantium coating or just adamantium prosthetic claws. They settle the dispute by looking it up in ''Wolverine: Origins'' #4, which does indeed show that Logan was born with bone claws.

* SpitShine: Raj uses his spit to clean off dirt from the crotch area of an Comicbook/{{Aquaman}} action figure bought in a garage sale.

* ShoutOut: This ReferenceOverdosed show is full with these.
** [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Bottle city of Kandor]], is mentioned in one episode.
** A more subtle example: Leonard, Sheldon and Penny watch an anime called "''Oshikuro the Demon Samurai''". That was an allusion to an episode of ''Series/TwoAndAHalfMen'', in which the animated adaptation of "Oshikuro" (which was a comic book then) was being made, and Charlie had to compose the opening song.
** When Sheldon won a prestigious award and was nervous about giving an acceptance speech. He took a few drinks to calm his nerves, overshot the mark, and one of his hijinx was singing the periodic table of elements to much the same tune as Music/TomLehrer. Actually it's a shout out to Creator/GilbertAndSullivan as the tune he was singing to was "A Very Model of a Modern Major-General." [[FilkSong Which is the same tune.]]
** Mega nerd Creator/WilWheaton wore a [[Webcomic/PennyArcade Fruit Fucker]] T-shirt in one of his appearances on the show.
** When the four come back from their Arctic expedition, Leonard, Howard, and Raj all have grown caveman-like hair and beards, while Sheldon has a perfectly-groomed goatee... just like the one alternate-universe [[Franchise/StarTrek Spock]] had.
** Sheldon's various superhero T-shirts. Most frequently seen is his Franchise/GreenLantern t-shirt.
** In the episode guest starring Creator/StanLee, the judge who [[spoiler: throws Sheldon in jail]] is named "[[Creator/JackKirby J. Kirby]]".
** In the fourth season New Year's episode, the gang (plus Penny's current boyfriend, Zack) dressed up as members of the Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica for a party at the comic book store. Others were dressed as [[Series/DoctorWho the Fourth Doctor]], [[Literature/HarryPotter a Hogwarts student]], and ComicBook/TheJoker, among others.
** One more subtle: "The Apology Insufficiency" featured guest star [[{{Series/Dollhouse}} Eliza Dushku]]. Towards the end of the episodes Sheldon tries to get Howard to forgive him for a mistake by "reprogramming" him.
** Sheldon's line [[Film/{{Casablanca}} "Of all the overrated physicists in all the labs in all the world, why does it have to be Leslie Winkle?"]]
** There are several shout outs to ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''. They range from the characters talking about watching the show to Leonard, as Howard puts it, "taking out his aggressions on innocent Cylons" (i.e. he destroys a Cylon action figure with a laser). Don't forget the Cylon Toast! Everyone loves Cylon Toast.
** Many shout outs to ''Franchise/StarTrek'' both old and new. Penny gives Star Trek figurines to the guys, Sheldon is at first upset that he missed the Star Trek reboot then upset that he didn't get a Creator/LeonardNimoy Spock standee, a quick [[WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries Lt M'ress]] mention, Sheldon's feud with [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Wil Weaton]], Sheldon compares their friends to a landing party ("Now we have a Dr. [=McCoy=]!"), and of course...."Do you know what this means?! I possess the DNA of Leonard Nimoy!!!"
** There was an ironic shout-out to ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' in "The Staircase Implementation":
---> '''Sheldon''': "Roommates agree that Friday nights shall be reserved for watching Joss Whedon's brilliant new series, ''Firefly''."
--->'''Leonard''': "Does that really need to be in the agreement?"
--->'''Sheldon''': "Well we might as well settle it now, it's gonna be on for years."
** Sheldon's journal in "The Bozeman Reaction" is a shout-out to Rorschach's Journal in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}''.
---> '''Sheldon''': Sheldon’s journal. Security system in place. However, sleep continues to elude me. I’ve seen the underbelly of Pasadena, this so-called City of Roses, and it haunts me. Ah, the injustice, I lie here awake, tormented, while out there evil lurks, [[FauxHorrific probably playing ''Donkey Kong'' on my classic Nintendo.]]
** Strangely enough, there is no mention in that episode that ''Bozeman, Montana'' where Sheldon decides to move to was also the location in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' where humanity made first contact with the Vulcans. You'd think ''Sheldon'' of all people would have brought that up.
** Wil Wheaton's ''WebVideo/TheGuild'' t-shirt when he appears on ''[[ShowWithinAShow Sheldon Cooper's Fun With Flags]]''
** Sheldon's frequent quoting from the extremely detailed Housemate Agreement, right down to paragraphs, sections and subsections, evokes Rimmer's obsession with the [[BigBookOfWar Space Corps Directives]] on ''Series/RedDwarf''.
** In fact, Sheldon owns all sixty-one released episodes of the BBC series "Red Dwarf", as revealed in "the Friendship Contraction".
** And... the whole idea of Howard going up into space as the world's least likely and most temperamentally unsuited astronaut. Everybody, including university benefactor Mrs Latham, makes dismissive remarks about his being a "space plumber". Howard soon finds out he's only there to do the equivalent of servicing the chicken-soup dispensers. His quirks make him the butt of the joke from more macho astronauts. While entranced with the view at first, he soon comes to regard it as excruciatingly dull. [[Series/RedDwarf DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything?]]
** And in the one where Howard gets into an embarrassing situation with a robot arm, he programs the arm to respond to a snarky Sheldon comment, by having it turn to him and jerkily, but very obviously, making a finger-gesture. This is not the American middle finger, but the British V-Sign with two fingers. Compare the skutter (maintenance robot) in ''Series/RedDwarf'' who makes a similar derisive gesture to Arnold Rimmer after being provoked by a similar superior sneer.
** Bernadette proving to Howard that she can fake realistic laughter at his jokes is a pretty clear reference to the fake orgasm scene in ''Film/WhenHarryMetSally''.
** Stuart's comic shop not only features the usual geek properties, but also posters and swag from licenses not overly known in the non-geek mainstream like ''{{Manga/InuYasha}}'' and ''VideoGame/MirrorsEdge''.
** In "The Cooper Extraction", several WhatIf scenarios are explored. Two of them contain shout outs to well known stories. Penny ends up with [[DumbIsGood nice but dimwitted]] Zack Johnson. They live together in Penny's apartment. Zack is so naive that he spends their rent money to buy magic beans, in a Shout-Out to ''Literature/JackAndTheBeanstalk''. Howard never moves out of his mother's home. We hear Debbie Wolowitz shouting for food, claiming that she is starving. Howard brings her food. [[PeekABooCorpse The face of Debbie is revealed to be that of a mummified corpse.]] We hear "Mother" say: "You’re a good boy, Howard, such a good boy." Howard has simply gone insane, treating his dead mother as still living, and having conversations with her. Howard, who narrates this scenario, leaves ambiguous if his mother died of natural causes, starved to death, or if he killed her. The entire scenario is a ShoutOut to ''Film/{{Psycho}}''.
** In "The Alien Parasite Hypothesis", Sheldon and Amy are performing a differential diagnosis to determine what had caused her reaction while she was out with Penny and Bernadette [[ItMakesSenseInContext (she met Zack and got turned on)]]. Aside from the fact that both of them are arguing what her problem could be, one will notice that [[Series/HouseMD they are using a whiteboard, and lupus is listed as one possible cause]].
** In ''The Holographic Excitation'', there is a blatant shout-out to Sir Terry Pratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books. Specifically, the ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'' series, co-authored with prominent British scientists, in which Pratchett's fantasy world is used to mirror and illustrate developing scientific thought. In the books, the wizards of Unseen University (among them a rather nerdy type with glasses who affects a big baggy parka) accidentally create a bizarre pocket universe centered on a spherical world which orbits its sun. Stuck for what to do with it, it ends up gathering dust inside a protective glass sphere on somebody's desk. Meanwhile a geeky glasses-wearing scientist in a parka fires up holograms of Earth, planets and solar system to please his girlfriend. Leonard speculates that everything might just be one giant information-gathering hologram, being read by intelligences an unguessable distance away... The creation of the pocket universe in the Discworld -- including Planet Earth -- was done with the specific intention of ''averting'' a seriously Big Bang (at least in ''their'' universe), by diverting a lot of dangerously destructive energy down a harmless path... the secret of the Big Bang is down to a bunch of semi-sane Wizards who are, within their own University, every bit as asocial and strange as those at Caltech.
** One of the authors of ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'', Professor Jack Cohen, is well-known in US academic circles. In one of the books he explains the torrid time he had trying to convince a hostile audience of the truth of evolutionary theory. He was in East Texas at the time getting heckled by Creationists. ''The Science of Discworld'' books -- especially the second -- are peppered with "common ground" references to people, science, and events in science also covered in ''TBBT''. These shared references occur beyond all reasonable expectation of coincidence.
** And after seven or eight seasons where Amy casually refers to all primate cousins of humanity as "oh, just monkeys", she suddenly ascends a level and ticks off Sheldon for terminological inactitude - when he refers to orang-utans as "monkeys", Amy emphatically corrects him and points out an orang-utan is an ''ape'', Sheldon. She considers this point to be very important...
** The (broadcast in 2013) episode "The Raiders Minimization" partially revolves around Sheldon having ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' ruined for him by Amy, who points out that Franchise/IndianaJones is basically a PinballProtagonist who has no real effect on the plot of the film. At one point in the 2012 novel ''Literature/ThisBookIsFullOfSpidersSeriouslyDudeDontTouchIt'', David Wong mentions his girlfriend Amy ruining ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'' for him by pointing out that Franchise/IndianaJones is basically a PinballProtagonist who has no real effect on the plot of the film.

* PerverseSexualLust: For several seasons, Amy desperately wants to have sex with a man who doesn't want to have sex with her at all. Even when she finally convinces him, he makes it clear he's only doing it for her sake, not his own.

** The one directed at all four guys in "The Nerdvana Annihilation". It caused a DespairEventHorizon moment for Leonard.

* StupidStatementDanceMix: Well, perhaps not ''stupid'' statements (they're all geniuses after all); but CBS used single words from various episodes to cobble together a promo stating rhytmically [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgArhI-TjAA "New night, new time, same ''Theory''. Thursday this fall only C B S."]]
** A similar trick is used in the syndicated version, clipping together bits to say [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6oB99szNoE "''Big Bang Theory,'' five nights a week."]]

* PromotionToOpeningTitles: The opening sequence doesn't actually give off a cast list but the final shot of the group eating take-out together has [[EvolvingCredits evolved a few times]] but always with the core 5 cast members. In season six Bernadette and Amy are finally added.

* SuperOCD: Sheldon is ''powered'' by this.

** During the first season, it was heavilly implied (though not outright stated) that Sheldon's father had only recently passed away. Missy brings over some papers from George's estate and when Mary tells Dr. Gabelhauser that George has been dead "long enough" in a tone that suggested that he hadn't been dead for long. More conclusive evidence appears in "The Pancake Batter Anomaly". Sheldon said at the age of 15, he got sick in Germany, and his mother had to fly back to Texas to help his dad at that time. Later episodes established that George died when Sheldon was 14.

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: The show started with five main characters: the four male nerds, and TheChick who lives across the hall. However, in seasons 1 and 2, there was often Leslie Winkle acting as a female SixthRanger. And later the show got eve more females, with Bernadette and Amy both being upgraded to main cast status for all the episodes they appear in. Raj's sister Priya was also a major character, and mothers of the main characters are frequently involved.

*** The use of high-end scientific research equipment to perform everyday food prep tasks

** Sheldon is this way with Amy, it's made quite clear that he is not attracted to anyone else. His initial interest in her was simply because [[DistaffCounterpart she thought the exact same way as he did]]. It took a long time for him to approach basic forms of physical connection like holding hands or kissing, and he admits that he has considered the prospect of having sex with Amy but his deep rooted fear of intimacy is a major hurdle. ''Years later'' they eventually do have sex, which [[GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex both really enjoyed]], but viewed it as something to do for special occasions (it was Amy's birthday). When a colleague approaches him romantically, he realizes that he will never think of anyone except Amy, and this makes him propose to her.