Wanda, you got some 'splainin' to do!
Being considered one of the greatest TV shows of all time and setting standards for others to follow, I Love Lucy has gotten many shout-outs throughout the decades.
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- An Oreo commercial for their "Uh-Oh" cookie (a "reverse" Oreo with chocolate icing filling sandwiched between two vanilla cookies) portrays the idea stemming from a factory worker accidentally hitting a conveyor switch that switched the cookie and icing flavors. He and another factory worker do the conveyor belt gag to hide the mistake before someone notices, only for a boy on a visiting tour guide say, "Uh-oh" when he sees a missed one.
- Hercules: Before the climax, Hades barges into Mount Olympus and shouts "Zeus-ie, I'm home!".
Fan Works
- Rocketship Voyager. Reference is made to a soap opera of the 2020's called I Love Lucy: The Next Generation.
- Stay Tuned: One of the television series shown in Hell is a show called I Love Lucifer except with an actual human heart seen in the background instead of the famous ❤ symbol.
- Pretty Woman: At one point, Vivian and Edward are watching the "Job Switching" episode, namely the well-known chocolate candy conveyor belt scene.
- Rat Race: At one point, some of the characters encounter a busload of Lucy impersonators who are headed to a convention (which was in all likelihood added to celebrate the show's then-50th Anniversary.)
- The Cable Guy: At the end of the film after Chip ends up seriously injured due to a failed suicide attempt, he decides to reveal his real name to Steven...as Ricky Ricardo as he then imitates his signature laugh and cries out "Babaloo!"
- The Mambo Kings: The main characters, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, two musicians who moved from Cuba to New York City, actually appear on an episode of I Love Lucy (with Desi Arnaz Sr. playing his own father, and archive footage of Lucille Ball inserted in).
- Stakeout: When Bill and Chris, two cops, arrive at the house they're using, and see what a mess it's in, Bill yells out, "Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do!", which Chris laughs at.
- ...And Your Name Is Jonah: After Danny walks out on the Corellis, Jenny gets drunk while watching "Ricky Thinks He's Going Bald."
- Being the Ricardos takes place during a week of filming an episode of I Love Lucy, though it also takes a look at the Real Life relationship between Lucy and Desi.
- The Parent Trap (1998): Hallie's new cabin mates who help get her duffel bag from under the huge bag pile notice her luggage tag says she's from California and start asking if she lives in Hollywood and knows anyone famous, leading Hallie to ask them "Who are you two, Lucy and Ethel?"
- The Speed of Sound: While Barnes is spying on Jacob Hendrix, he blocks out the sound of people in a nearby apartment watching I Love Lucy dubbed into Spanish.
- In Counting to D, Kaitlyn and Sam watch I Love Lucy together.
- Frasier recreates the multiple-translations scene from "Paris At Last".
- Drake & Josh: The episode "I Love Sushi" recreates the conveyor belt scene from "Job Switching", this time with sushi, as the episode title suggests. Nailing the reference home, the company's name is Ball & Vance.
- That's So Raven: In "Soup to Nuts", Raven dreams that she's on the show Oh That Raven, with herself as Lucy, Eddie as Ricky, Chelsea as Ethel and Cory as Fred.
- Power Rangers Ninja Storm: "I Love Lothor" has Big Bad Lothor creating a kitschy television sitcom not unlike I Love Lucy in order to hypnotize Blue Bay Harbor into believing he's their ruler.
- Square One TV: Season one features a parody called I Love Lupy, which has parody versions of Lucy and Ethel estimating how many elephants they could fit in the Ricardo apartment to get back at a sarcastic comment made by "Dizzy".
- The 1990s Nickelodeon game show What Would You Do? had one of the challenges being for contestants to imitate both Ricky Ricardo's "Lucy, I'm home!" and his signature laugh, something that host Marc Summers liked to do whenever he could.
- Fellow game show Double Dare, also hosted by Summers, had an entire episode dedicated to the sitcom, with physical challenges themed after the show.
- The subplot of The Golden Girls episode "Son-in-law Dearest" has Rose and Blanche watching a marathon of the show with the former admitting that she never heard of it. While the latter found it hard to believe, it eventually comes out why: she and her late husband spent most of their free time having sex.
- In "Rose Fights Back", in a job interview with her would-be boss Enrique Mas, he at one point says that the only heroes he had growing up were Zorro and Ricky Ricardo, or as he called them, "a gay caballero and a man who couldn't recognize his own wife in a fake mustache."
- In Living Color! had a spoof called "I Love Laquita" featuring Kim Wayans as Laquita and Jim Carrey as Ricky.
- California Dreams had a Imagine Spot called "I Love Lorena", which leads to the revelation that Jake had feelings for Tiffany and the title card then was changed to "I Love Tiffany" with "Lorena" being striked out.
- Will & Grace: The season eleven episode "We Love Lucy" has the gang wondering which of them is the "Lucy" to Will's "Ricky". Most of the episode is dedicated to recreations of famous I Love Lucy scenes with Will as Ricky and the other three taking turns playing Lucy, Fred and Ethel.
- Married... with Children:
- In "The Worst Noel", while Al and Peg are fighting over a program to watch, she suggests the show, which he dislikes, saying how Ricky and the girls should have been killed off so that the real star of the show, Fred, could have his own show called Mertz's World.
- In a line that was deleted from the final script, in "The Bald and the Beautiful" when Al is trying to console Steve about his hair loss, one of the cool bald guys he mentions as heroes include Fred Mertz.
- In Full House episode "It's Not My Job", while Jesse's band is rehearsing a song for an advertising jingle pitch, Joey suggests adding a harmonica solo and proceeds to play a few notes. When Jesse stops him he says "Lucy I didn't say you could be in the show!", and Joey pouts "Aw Ricky!"
- All That had a recurring sketch called "I Luv Lucy" done in black-and-white with Amanda Bynes as Lucy, non-main cast member Victor Cohn-Lopez as Ricky, Lori Beth Denberg as Ethel, and Kenan Thompson as Fred. In one sketch Lucy and Ricky buy a color TV which Ethel lampshades won't be invented until 15 years from now.
- Mad TV did a parody sketch of the conveyor belt scene, only instead of chocolate they were cutting heroin for a drug run scheme.
- Veronica Mars: In the second season episode "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang", when Veronica finds out Logan's been sleeping with Kendall Casablancas, she goes to his house to confront him, and asks him what he'd have done if it was Richard Casablancas in the house instead. Logan replies, "I guess I'd have some 'splaining to do", and does so imitating Rickie's voice.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Ricky" is an overt parody of/homage to the show (along with "Mickey" by Toni Basil.) The music-video version
features Weird Al and Tress MacNeille doing pretty impressive impersonations of the two stars.
- The Nostalgia Critic
- In his review of It, the Critic, drunk from a Stephen King drinking game, imitates the Vitameatavegamin routine.
- In the Disney Afternoon review, the Critic describes Don Karnage as if "Ricky Ricardo got fed up with his wife, took his Caribbean band and just started robbing the shit out of people". Incidentally, Jim Cummings stated that Desi Arnaz was an inspiration for the voice.
- Animaniacs
- In the Pinky and the Brain segment "Battle for the Planet", Brain credits Desi Arnaz with the creation of the three-camera filming setup.
- One Cold Open features an ad for Slappy Squirrel's one-woman show Oh, Oh, Ethel, and Slappy is disappointed that it's about Ethel Merman and not Ethel Mertz.
- Beetlejuice: A Rod Serling-expy forces Beetlejuice to help save him from a lunatic Lucy-expy out to kill him and take over his TV series. Instead, Lydia and Beetlejuice use a spell that make "Rod" and "Lucy" fall in love, and then trap them in a purgatory of starring in non-stop reruns of "I Love ——" for eternity.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Laugh, Ed, Laugh", Eddy shouts "Lucy, I'm home!" as he chases down a dollar bill that Edd is luring him into a trap with.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Power Mad", Cosmo and Wanda stage various TV shows, among them I Love Wanda, to keep Vicky from noticing that the TV isn't really on.
- Family Guy
- In "Burning Down the Bayit", Peter and Quagmire imitate the chocolates scene when trying to case pills at Mort's pharmacy, and they end up overdosing from swallowing all those pills.
- The episode title "Stewie is Enceinte" is a reference to "Lucy is Enceinte".
- Futurama: In "A Tale of Two Santas", the highest speed setting on the elves' toymaking machine is labelled "LUCY".
- House of Mouse: In the short "Donald's Goofy World", Donald dreams that he's in a world where everybody is Goofy and notices that he's on every TV show, including I Love Goofy.
- Kim Possible: In "Emotion Sickness", Kim scolds Ron Stoppable with, "Ron! You got some splainin' to do!"
- Mixels: In "Hamlogna Conveyer Belt", Lunk and Tentro are assembling Hamlogna sandwiches at a conveyer belt when Zaptor cranks up the belt's speed causing them to work faster, imitating the chocolate factory scene.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "The Last Roundup", the Mane Six work on a conveyor belt picking cherries while in Dodge Junction. Overtime, they abandon their posts to confront Applejack on why she ran away from home, leaving Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie to recreate Lucy and Ethel's chocolate disaster.
- In the Made-for-TV Movie for Phineas and Ferb, Doofenshmirtz and Doofenshmirtz-2 appear dressed as Lucy and Ethel from the episode "Job Switching" as they sing "Brand New Best Friend".
- The Ren & Stimpy Show
- In "The Big Shot!", Ren channel-surfs and sees Stimpy on various shows, one of which is I Love Stimpy.
- The title card for "I Love Chicken" is styled like the famous "heart" title sequence.
- The Simpsons
- In "The Springfield Connection", Homer begins to draw a line across the house "à la I Love Lucy" after a fight with Marge. He ends up drawing himself into a tiny corner of the bedroom.
- In "Little Big Mom", Lisa is kept up at night by Homer and Bart watching I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball later appears to her in a dream.
- In "Three Gays of the Condo", Homer refers to Julio as "Picky Ricardo".
- In "Homer the Father", one of the shows on Tube Town is I Lost Lucy, in which Mr. Mooney visits Lucy's grave.
- In "Havana Wild Weekend", the family prepares to go to Cuba and Homer says that he'll finally put the Spanish he learned from I Love Lucy to use.
- In "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy", while Homer and Marge are at a specialty hotel with various roleplaying themes to spice up their marriage, the receptionist at one point calls them "Fred and Ethel".
- The Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "K-Acme TV" features an Affectionate Parody of the show called "I Love Dizzy", which homages the legendary chocolate factory moment from the I Love Lucy episode, "Job Switching".
- Rocko's Modern Life: An episode featured a Show Within a Show with two amoebas as Lucy and Ricky, with the latter coming in, saying that "she has some 'splaining to do" and the former doing her signature "Waaah!"
