- The Italian Disney Mouse and Duck Comics spoofed the movie with the comic "La storia (in)finita" ("The (Never)ending Story"), with Disney characters in the main roles, most notably Donald Duck in Bastian's role and Mickey Mouse in Atreyu's, with Dumbo standing in for Falkor, Maleficent taking the role of G'mork, and Daisy as the Empress. As the title hints, this story does end because Donald is too lazy to think of a continuation. And it was All Just a Dream anyway.
- Later, Traitor: The Drag-on is described as a fluffy dragon with a long body, clearly meant as a reference to Falkor.
Gamebooks
- In Deathmoor, there's an area where it's possible where you get overwhelmed by the feelings of sadness and despair of your adventure (you're in a haunted swamp, after all), at which point you decide to let yourself sink into the muck.
- In "The Battle of Starcourt", the season 3 finale of Stranger Things, Dustin sings the movie's titular Award-Bait Song with Suzie, his girlfriend from camp, in exchange for an obscure mathematical constant - and unbeknownst to her, they're singing into everyone else's radios (this is in the midst of the Final Battle) and everyone except for Mike, Eleven and Max can hear them.
Music
- Atreyu thought the character was A Good Name for a Rock Band.
- Korn named an album The Nothing after the first film's antagonist
.
- In the Animaniacs Licensed Game for the SNES, the second part of the Fantasy Studio features the Warners hopping across a large dog/centipede-like creature that resembles Falcor.
- Hero of Sparta II has sphinx statues in the Egypt level, looking exactly like those from the first movie. Where they appear in pairs facing each other, and can vaporize everything trying to cross between them.
- Multi Versus has The Nothing as its Big Bad.
- Psychonauts: According to his Campster, Vernon's favorite movie is The Neverending Story.
- Channel Awesome
- The Nostalgia Critic:
- The Critic has reviewed all three movies in the series.
- In his "Top 11 Saddest Nostalgic Moments", the death of Artax is listed as #5.
- In his review of Digimon: The Movie, Critic says that Magnadramon looks like a My Little Pony version of Falkor
- The ending to the Dolittle review spoofs the film's ending.
- Suburban Knights: Phelous dresses like the Rockbiter.
- The Nostalgia Critic:
- American Dad!: There is an episode titled "The Never-Ending Stories".
- In the Bob's Burgers episode "Bridge Over Troubled Rudy", Mort teaches Bob how to meditate; when Bob succeeds, he imagines riding Mort as an Expy of Falkor.
- An episode of The Casagrandes is entitled "Never Friending Story".
- Family Guy:
- In "Breaking Out is Heard to Do", Brian suggests that Lois go to therapy for her kleptomania, seeing as it worked for Peter when he got obsessed with "that fantasy world of his". The ensuing cutaway shows Peter riding on Falkor, who is forced to make a crash landing due to Peter's weight.
- In "HTTPete", Hammer guides Peter through the millennial lifestyle and shows him how to "be on fleek", which means riding on a Falkor-like dragon named Fleek.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Read It and Weep", a parody of the film's theme plays whenever Rainbow Dash is tempted to read the Daring Do book.
- Robot Chicken:
- A sketch from "Dragon Nuts" has Atreyu and Falkor trying to cure their boredom by throwing a "never-ending party".
- A sketch from "Fool's Goldfinger" has Atreyu getting distracted by the Rockbiter's "big hands" soliloquy.
- A sketch from "3 2 1 2 3 3 3, 2 2 2, 3...6 6?" has Atreyu trying to get a good look at the boobs on the sphinx statues.
- The Simpsons:
- In "New Kid on the Block", Homer wants to sue a restaurant for being denied "all he can eat" and Lionel Hutz agrees to be the prosecutor, saying it's the most blatant case of false advertising since his suit against The NeverEnding Story for its misleading title.
- There is an episode titled "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story".
- South Park: In "Imaginationland, Part III", Butters uses his imagination to repair the damage done to Imaginationland, just as Bastian does to rebuild Fantasia.
- Teen Titans Go!: The episode "Missing" ends with Starfire and Raven riding a metamorphosed Silkie like Falkor.
