Referenced By / One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Comic Book

• The Incredible Hulk: In one issue there is an extremely obvious shout out to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Films — Live-Action

• In 20th Century Women, Julie remembers getting her first period while watching Cuckoo's Nest, saying she never got to see how it ended because of that.
• In Cult of Chucky, Chucky (voiced by no less than Brad Dourif himself) refers to the asylum he's killing people in as a "fuckin' cuckoo's nest".
• High Anxiety: Nurse Diesel, head nurse of the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous, is a parody of Nurse Ratched.
• Matty from The Rainbow Experiment once starred in a high school production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Literature

• In The Cinderella Murder, Jerry refers to a somewhat bossy hospital nurse as "Nurse Ratched".
• In Saving Max, Danielle reads about the unnecessary medication and isolation Max has been suffering while institutionalized and thinks that this seems more like something from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest than the modus operandi of the most respected psychiatric hospital in the nation.
• In There's More Than One Way Home, Val says that a "Nurse Ratched" is insisting on tranquilizers for a boy who keeps demanding television.

Live-Action TV

• Friday Night Lights: In the fourth season episode "Laboring", when Mindy goes into labor, Billy complains about getting kicked out of the delivery room by a nurse whom he refers to as "Nurse Ratched".
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (SE4, EP10: Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack): There are multiple references to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which was Danny DeVito's film debut) in this episode:
  • A character is named "Martini", which is also the name of Danny DeVito's character in the film. Like DeVito's Martini, this Martini sits perched on the back of his chair, and he is playing a card game with no regards to the rules. His repeated line "Hit me, Mac" is directly taken from the film.
  • The orderlies wear white uniforms with black bow ties, like the orderlies in the film.
  • The head nurse resembles Nurse Ratched.
  • Light "easy-listening" music plays in the background at the mental hospital, as in the film.
  • There is a large, mute, Native American man, who is played Tim Sampson, son of Will Sampson who played Chief Bromden in the film.
  • All the patients line up for "medication time", as in the film, taking it out of white paper cups with little cups of juice.
  • The episode ends with the "Chief" throwing a fountain through a window, though here it's to help Frank escape, whereas in the movie Big Chief does it for his own escape.
  • The music at the end of the episode is the closing theme to the film.
  • One of the nurses address the mute Native American Chief, while he waiting for medication in line, as in the film.

Music

• David Bowie: In "Scream Like a Baby", the narrator is arrested and institutionalized for being gay, with the asylum orderlies administering him with "strange drugs" that leave him a stuttering wreck. Said stutter is modeled after Billy Bibbit's, which is compounded by how the drugs' effects deliberately parallel a lobotomy (which was historically used as an extreme form of conversion therapy).

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: A "Monsterpiece Theater" sketch is entitled "1 Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", which depicts a number 1 flying over a Cuckoo's nest. However, it takes a while for this to happen, as the preceding cutaways show a number 3 flying over a chicken coop and a number 4 flying over a pigsty.

Theatre

• The song "Didn't I See This Movie?" from Next to Normal references Cuckoo's Nest.

Video Games

• Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel has a copy of this book in the hotel's library, forming part of a Numerological Motif puzzle where you arrange the books to unlock an exit. Case in point? The other books includes titles like Three Musketeers, Slaughterhouse Five and Seven Deadly Sins.
• Fallout: New Vegas, specifically the expansion Old World Blues, has a location called The Cuckoos Nest, a cave den full of junk, equipment, and human remains. The cave is implied to be used as a safe haven by the main threat that aimlessly wander Big MT, the Lobotomites, people who were abducted from the Mojave and suffered a botched brain surgery that destroyed their original brain and replaced it with a high tech hunk of junk that’s near-useless with the patients original brain to transmit signals to, effectively lobotomizing them into walking husks.

Western Animation

• An episode of Animaniacs (1993) is titled "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock". In this episode, Slappy Squirrel is driven to insanity from watching too many talk shows, so her nephew Skippy is forced to send her to a retirement home for aged cartoon characters.^note This episode was inspired by writer and producer Tom Ruegger's memories of visiting his aunt, who had Alzheimer's, at a retirement home.
• The Critic: In "Dr. Jay", Duke Phillips creates Phillipsvision, a process which allows him to alter any movie to his liking, such as changing the endings and adding gross Product Placement. One such example is him changing the ending to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where instead of dying by Vorpal Pillow, McMurphy asks Chief how he got the pillowcase so white, which segues into an advertisement for Phillips Detergent. Then Nurse Ratched shows up and starts undressing.
  Chief: Chief get down with nurse. Makem bacon.
• Futurama: In "Insane in the Mainframe", Bender and Fry are sent to an insane asylum for robots. There are characters there based on Nurse Ratched, Max Taber and Martini.
• The Simpsons:
  • The scenes at the insane asylum in "Stark Raving Dad" feature characters based on McMurphy and Chief Bromden (who speaks for the first time in years when Homer says "hi" to him).
  • "So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show": The ending is spoofed when Barney, upset that Homer is afraid of beer now, tries to smother him with a pillow, then throws a sink out the window and escapes, with Don McLean's "Vincent" playing in the soundtrack.
  • In "The Old Man and the 'C' Student," Bart asks another Bromden expy at the Retirement Castle if he doesn't want to be free. "Chief" says he doesn't live there but is just distributing pamphlets in support of legalizing casino gambling. He escapes by throwing a sink through the window anyway.
• The Transformers: Bob Budiansky has said that he named the Autobot medic Ratchet after Nurse Ratched.