Referenced By / Evil Dead 2

Ash: The TV-Y7 version.

Anime and Manga

• One episode of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt features Chuck punching a fly on the wall and being hit in the face by an endless swarm of flies, a scene very similar to the one in the film where Ash gets sprayed in the face by an endless jet of color-changing blood coming from a hole in the cabin's wall.

Films — Live-Action

• In Blade, Blade fights with his own hand, and quotes the "dead by dawn!" line from the film.
• Dead Snow: one of the characters amputates his infected hand and replaces it with a chainsaw.
  • Also done in a 2010 zombie movies pastiche They Walk.
• Dog Soldiers:
  • One of the characters is named Bruce Campbell.
  • Copy of Shaky Cam POV effects running through the woods.
• High Fidelity: Rob's girlfriend Laura has dumped him and moved in with Ian, though when Rob asks, Laura admits she and Ian haven't had sex yet. Rob is happy at first, but then thinks the word "yet" implies she might do so in the future. So, in the store, he asks Barry what he would think if he told Barry he hadn't seen Evil Dead 2 yet; would it mean he'd want to (in the novel, the movie used was Reservoir Dogs)? Barry thinks Rob is crazy.
• Idle Hands lifts its entire plot off the hand-battling scene.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Elizabeth's father fights a disembodied hand.
• In the hospital scene of Spider-Man 2, a side view of one of the tentacles zooming toward a screaming woman also mimics the "flying eye" gag. The doctor grabbing a chainsaw-esque surgical tool in particular feels like a nod to the chainsaw-handed Ash Williams.

Live-Action TV

• Weird Science: "Bikini Camp Slasher" has two. While fending off Mittface in the cabin, Gary tells Wyatt to get the chainsaw out of the closet (on the grounds that there's always a chainsaw in the closet in these kind of movies). Upon finding it, Wyatt remarks, "Groovy." Later, Wyatt and Gary have boarded up various weak spots to keep Mittface out, with the latter citing the cellar from this movie as one such example.

Music

• The Foo Fighters music video for "Everlong" is a parody of the film, with Dave Grohl's character dreaming that he's in a demonic cabin.
• The Prize Fighter Inferno song "Holiday Fool" is about the movie.
• The official claymation music video for the Sufjan Stevens song "Mr Frosty" references the chainsaw montage.

Video Games

• Cyberpunk 2077 has a perk called "Massacre", the graphic for which is Ash Williams holding up his shotgun (the game uses a combination of the Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness versions of the scene).
• Darkstalkers: Lord Raptor's "Ultimate Undead" Super Mode from the third game has his partner El Malta merge with his hand and shapeshift into a chainsaw.
• Piratez: The entire description of the chainsaw says: Groovie.
• Resident Evil 7: Biohazard: When fighting Jack Baker, he'll say "Groovy" when he grabs his chainsaw.
• The Splatterhouse series is all about referencing Western horror and splatter movies, and among the nods it also features disembodied hands flipping the bird and laughing taxidermied deer heads.
• Turbo Overkill grants you twin chainsaw-arms as one of the power-ups, as well as chainsaw shins. An online review even references Evil Dead 2, that "35 years after Evil Dead 2, the chainsaw leg is finally here, it was worth the wait."

Western Animation

• The character of Hoss Delgado in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, while primarily based on Snake Plissken, has a weapon for a hand, like Ash. (Among other things, it can take the form of a chainsaw).
• Happy Tree Friends, "Remains to be Seen": a moose (!) gravedigger fights with his own severed hand, and later attaches a weapon to the stump.
• In the season 4 premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the plunder vines are bound to remind one of the possessed trees.
• ReBoot: the game in "To Mend and Defend" is titled Malicious Corpses and owes a lot to this movie. As the undead, Enzo and Dot have to keep the User (who looks like Ash by the end of the movie and keeps saying, "Groovy") from completing The Manual of Mortality. The final showdown takes place in the cabin and involves knocking the User into the cellar, after which he shouts about being dead before dawn. This version of the User would reappear in "System Crash" later in the season.

Misc

• British director Edgar Wright is a self-proclaimed fan of the Evil Dead trilogy; his films have been noted to have a similar horror/comedy balance, as well as the same reliance on visual gags and dynamic cinematography. Specific references include:
  • Shaun of the Dead:
    • Shaun, who works in an electronics supermarket, has a colleague named Ash.
    • The shot of the characters looking down into the Winchester cellar is identical to the shot of Annie & co. looking down into the fruit cellar.
    • Shaun quotes the "join us" line in a manner similar to the demonic voices in the film.
  • Spaced:
    • Tim & Daisy have a poster of the film in their apartment, and Tim at one point imitates Annie's stance on it.
    • In the Paintball Episode, Mike says "Groovy" after the Raimi-esque crash zoom montage of paintball gun construction.
    • Daisy sees ghostly faces styled after the archaeologist's ghost in the film.
    • Aggressive zoom-ins on the grandfather clock.