See also JustForFun.Forty Two.
Audio Drama
- Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
- Big Finish Doctor Who:
- In Storm Warning, the Doctor has a double-headed Altairian dollar.
- In Max Warp, one of the impressive-looking ships at the spaceship trade show is "a Lazlar Lyricon custom job". This is also how Ford describes an impressive-looking spaceship when he and Zaphod are looking for one to steal in the Milliways carpark.
- In the BBC Audio drama Hornets' Nest: The Sting in the Tale, the Doctor makes a list of alien invaders that includes the Vogons.
- Big Finish Doctor Who:
Comic Strips
- The movie gets mentioned as part of a gag in a FoxTrot strip; Jason goes to Marcus for help in writing his own The Boondocks strips, but Marcus ends up demonstrating that he's The Whitest Black Guy when he fails to recognize Mos Def for anything but his role as Ford Prefect.
Fan Works
- Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space
- Dr. Zarkendorf complains about their Master Computer taking "seven and a half million years to do a simple mathematical calculation."
- Proton tries to get help against the cyborg uprising from Sapient Cetaceans. The response is indifferent: "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"
- In Enterprise Special Edition Season 4, the Xindi Council announces they've reduced Earth's status to 'mostly harmless'.
Film - Animated
- A teaser
for Chicken Little opens the same way as the teaser for the film version... until the screen falls back when it gets to the "Don't Panic" text, revealing "Panic". (Both were released under Disney, the Hitchhiker's Guide film by Touchstone Pictures, Chicken Little by Walt Disney Animation Studios).
- Ciaphas Cain: From The Greater Good one of the books that Inquisitor Vail admits to using while editing the Archives is Sekara's Travologue "Interesting places and tedious people" which has a single line entry "Dreary Beyond Belief" in reference to one of the planets Cain visits.
- The Dresden Files: In "B Is For Bigfoot" Irwin is reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when Harry first sees him, triggering a prompt flurry of Vogon jokes and other references from Dresden.
- The Rivers of London novel False Value is set in a tech company called the Serious Cybernetics Corporation. All the departments, buildings and offices are also named as Hitchhikers references (security are the Vogon Enforcement Arm, HR are the Magrathean Ape-Descended-Lifeform Utilisation Service), and the words "Don't Panic" are written on the front of the building in large, friendly letters. The employees call themselves "mice", which sounds self-deprecating, but in this context is quite the opposite.
- The Star Trek Encyclopedia entry for Earth ends with the words "Mostly harmless".
- The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes has a quick bit that goes, The food dispensers aboard ship can give you something that is not entirely unlike coffee.
- Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
- In the short story "A Midsummer's Nightmare" in the Doctor Who Annual 1981, Romana chooses to see the stage adaptation of Hitchhikers rather than A Midsummer Night's Dream.
- In the short story "Into the Nowhere" by Jenny T. Colgan, the TARIDS lands on a mysterious planet which neither the Doctor or the TARDIS databank recognises. When the Doctor is checking other sources, and getting the same result, he frustratedly throws "a hand-sized item covered in buttons, with the letters D and P just visible on the cover" the length of the console room.
- Doctor Who New Adventures:
- In Damaged Goods by Russell T Davies, Chris finds a copy of the book in the TARDIS library, but isn't sure if it's fiction or not.
- In Night of the Living Dad by Kate Orman, Joel's Long List of aliens stranded on Earth includes "Hitchers" and "buzzers"; in Hitchhikers, "buzzing" is defined by Ford as "rich kids with nothing to do [...] They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises".
- Doctor Who Novelisations:
- In the novelisation of "The Christmas Invasion", also by Colgan, she expands on the Arthur Dent reference (below), saying the Doctor also knows Ford Prefect.
- In the novelisation of Shada, by Gareth Roberts, Professor Chronitis claims to have replaced The Worshipful Law of Gallifrey with "an Earth classic by one of the greatest writers in that planet's history". He remembers it's very funny, involves thumbing a lift, and has towels in it, but not the title.
- The Big Bang Theory: In "The 43 Peculiarity", Howard and Raj find a room where Sheldon goes every day in secret and find 43 written on a chalkboard.note Raj suggests it's "the meaning of life" from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Howard corrects him, saying that it's actually 42.
- Burn Notice: In "Last Rites" Nate and Sam are pretending to be CDC field agents when a subject walks in on Nate opening a phone receiver to bug it. The excuse to cover for this? Nate's handling the very bacteria the CDC was looking for — in other words, he's a phone sanitizer.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Christmas Invasion" the newly regenerated Tenth Doctor saves the day wearing pyjamas, stating that it was "Very Arthur Dent. Now there was a nice man."
- Adams served as the show's script editor in its seventeenth season, and the Doctor reads and riffs on a book written by Oolon Colluphid in the season's opening serial, "Destiny of the Daleks".
- Colluphid's Origins of the Universe also appears in a Freeze-Frame Bonus in "Silence in the Library", next to Hitchhikers itself.
- In "The Bells of Saint John", after establishing that neither he nor Clara can fly a plane, the Doctor says "Fine, we'll do it together". This is the same line Zaphod uses after discovering nobody knows how to pilot the Heart of Gold manually.
- In "The Rings of Akhaten" the aliens on Akhaten include a Hooloovoo, a species mentioned in the first Hitchhikers book as being "a superintelligent shade of the colour blue".
- Legion: In "Chapter 27", David Haller pulls out a fish from his ear, which is an allusion to the Babel Fish.
- Star Trek: Voyager
- In "Threshold", Tom Paris reaches Warp 10 and passes through all points of the universe simultaneously, causing ridiculous things to happen—which sounds a lot like the Infinite Improbability Drive.
- In "Renaissance Man", Space Pirates threaten to maroon the crew in a star system where the inhabitants are "mostly harmless".
- Taskmaster: In "How Heavy Is the Water?", Alex mentions Zaphod Beeblebrox during a bit of banter about creatures with multiple heads.
Music
- BTS: When j-hope is flying on his bed into space in the "Daydream" music video, he looks at his phone, which displays the message "DON'T PANIC!"
- The band A Perfect Circle using the dolphin's final message to mankind for the title of the song "So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish", a song depicting the end of the world. The song itself even uses the line, "All the dolphins have moved on."
- Radiohead referenced the franchise three times with their album OK Computer. The name of the album comes from a line in the radio series where Zaphod says "okay, computer, I want full manual control now," while "Paranoid Android" takes its title from Marvin the Paranoid Android. A line in the song, "when I am king, you will be first against the wall," additionally nods to an anecdote about how the marketing department of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came." Both the song and the album regularly appear on best-of lists and many fans regard both as career-bests from the band.
Theatre
- Word of God says that Hitchhiker's Guide was one of the many influences on Octet. One of the main characters in the show is named Marvin, and he mentions during the song "Little God" that one of his colleges is named Trillian.
- Antimatter Dimensions: One ticker message claims, "If you put infinity into your calculator, it will result in 42!"
- Civilization: Beyond Earth:
- The achievement for razing 100 alien nests is "Making Way for a Hyperspace Bypass".
- In this same vein, the achievement for researching every single tech in the game is simply "42".
- COVID '99: Paddle Royale: The second-lowest threat level is "Mostly Harmless".
- Everybody Edits Flash: The Deep Thought NPC appears as a regular PC desktop and monitor, once obtained through an Easter Egg by reaching 42 gold coins, 42 blue coins, and 42 deaths. Unlocking the NPC causes a message and sound clip saying "Don't Panic". Its Flavor Text states that it's a computer of "infinite majesty and calm", the same way the book characterizes Deep Thought when revealing its Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
- Goat Simulator: Near the dam in Goat City Bay is a crashed spaceship. On the hotel balcony is a towel with the number "42" printed on it. Combine the latter with the former and you become Hitchhiker Goat, which has the power to summon whales from the sky.
- The Impossible Quiz:
- In the first game, Question 42: "What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?" The answer, of course, is the 42nd 42.
- The second chapter of the third game, The Impossible Quiz Book, is called The Phlovomite's Guide to the Galaxy.
- Question 55 of the aforementioned chapter asks "Define Earth" and one of the options is "Mostly Harmless". It's correct.
- Hovering over Earth in Question 66 gives the description "Earth (Mostly Harmless)".
- Question 142 of the third game's third chapter also involves finding a 42, but here it's the fourth in the bottom row 42.
- The title character of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, at one point, is trying to seduce Morgan, a pretty college student who is known for being rather nerdy. One of the "positive" lines he can say that endears him to her is that he's been idly perusing his "much dog-eared" copy of Hitchhiker's Guide.
- Marathon: In "Rise Robot Rise", Tycho says, "Don't sweat the details, little monkey. Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains", a clear reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which Marvin complained, "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to take you to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't".
- In Skin Horse, when Tip descends to the Annex-1 subbasements, filled with abandoned shadow government files, there's a just visible sign reading "BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD".
- In Questionable Content, when Faye's espresso dinosaur art project rematerialises just as the gallery owner was asking about it, Raven claims this is "Adams' Law — under certain circumstances, a super-improbably event can be MORE likely to happen than not. Basically, the universe has a sense of humor." The gallery owner asks if they can fix it before it turns into a sperm whale.
- A Housepets! strip showing Falstaff hitchhiking is called "Forgot His Towel".
- A three part Full Frontal Nerdity story, starting here, has the group play a d20 game set in the Hitchhiker's universe. Nelson takes advantage of Adams's It Runs on Nonsensoleum to create a highly unfeasable star drive, the Donut D-Hop Drive, which creates wormholes from donuts, which Frank allows since it's very much in the spirit of the Infinite Improbability Drive and the Bistromathic Drive.
- Big Finish Doctor Who:
- The trailer for the audio drama The Doomsday Contract, based on an unmade TV script by Hitchhikers producer John Lloyd, is done as a close pastiche of the Guide animations in the TV series.
- Arthur Dent and Zaphod Breeblebrox make a cameo as prisoners in suspended animation in the webcast version of Adams' unproduced Doctor Who serial ''Shada''. There's also a Nutrimatic drinks machine at St Cedd's, and books about Zaphod Beeblebrox and hyperspace planning law in Chris's digs.
- The trailer
- Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: The alien Fleeblebroxians are named in reference to the two-headed alien Zaphod Beeblebrox.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
- Bloo plays a video game where the villain is named "Lord Beeblebrox".
- In "Bus the Two of Us", there's a hitchhiker wearing a bathrobe with a sign that reads "Magrathea".
- In "Good Wilt Hunting", the two nerds that discovered Coco are named Douglas and Adam; the latter has a blue shirt with 42 on it.
- In an especially obscure reference, the friends unite together to rescue a cat from a tree using what Frankie calls "Plan Z-Z-9-Plural Z-Alpha".
- Fanboy and Chum Chum: In the episode "I'm Man-Arctica!", Chum Chum shouts, "42!" as one of the answers during Oz's game show.
