Referenced By / The Shining

"An iconic piece of horror cinema... that was probably scary before it got parodied to death."

— Jon Bailey, Honest Trailers

The Shining has become a major part of the pop culture landscape (despite Stephen King's initial hatred of the film) that you may have encountered at least one film or show that's referenced it in one form or another in your lifetime. Not unlike James Bond, it's basically one of the few pieces of media out there where you can make shout outs to, and almost everyone that sees them will recognize the references instantly, even the people that may not have seen the work for themselves yet.

See also "Here's Johnny!" Homage.

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Advertising

• An old Cartoon Network Halloween bumper has Mr. Jinks riding a tricycle down a hallway and encountering Pixie and Dixie, who say "Come play with us, Jinxie!"

Anime & Manga

• Monster Musume has a Shout-Out to the here's Johnny scene◊.
• In Chapter 32 of The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length, Kogori replicates the famous "Here's Johnny" face when he sees an "inappropriate relationship".

Comic Books

• Daisy Kutter: In the "Phantoms" comic, Daisy finds herself hunted through a spooky mansion by a killer android. As she and an injured deputy take shelter behind a locked door, the android begins to chop down the door with an axe. Daisy hides the injured man in a bathroom and escapes out a window.
• Dylan Dog:
  • In issue #10 "Through the Looking Glass" a poster of the film shows up.
  • In issue #11 "Diablo the Great" at page 61, when the magician gets up from being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and assumes a Nightmare Face that is identical to Jack's in the "Here's Johnny!" scene.
  • Issue #30 "The Haunted House" takes a lot of elements from The Shining, with the Big Bad being the ghost of the Girl of the Week's late husband, Jack (who looks just like Jack Nicholson), who has a connection with their Creepy Child Danny, and there's a corridor in the house with a carpeting that has a geometrical pattern.
• In the Enki Bilal graphic novel The Woman Trap when checking in at the Mauer Palast hotel, Nikopol is given the keys to room 412, but he asks for room 237.
• In X-Men #201, after Kitty Pryde loses contact with the team, Colossus suggests that he should reconnoiter with them. Kitty answers, "You mean 'split up'? One of these days I've got too sit you down in front of some good horror movies, babe." Later, while they check the mansion's security, they have a discussion about The Shining:
  Kitty: Then he wheels his bike around the corner and there are these two creepy little girls.
  Piotr: Little girls are scary?
  Kitty: They're dead little girls, Petey.
  Piotr: Logically, Katya, that makes them less dangerous.
  Kitty: It's not about logic, Mister Dialectical Materialist, it's about the shiver down your spine!

Fan Works

• J-WITCH Series: When one of the Razor Khan starts forcing its way into the train car the heroes are in, Irma nervously quips "Here's Khanny".

Film – Animated

• The Angry Birds Movie: As Red looks for the eggs in the pig's palace, he encounters pig versions of the Grady twins saying "Redrum".
• Coco: In the scene where Dante wakes up and climbs into Miguel's attic, the axe from the film can be seen in the background, in front of a red drum.
• Finding Nemo: "Heeeeere's Brucie!"
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Katie's socks have the Overlook's carpet pattern on them.
• The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water: While Plankton explores SpongeBob's brain, he meets twin popsicles who act like the Grady twins.
• Toy Story: The carpet in Sid's house looks like the one from the Overlook.

Film – Live-Action

• Poltergeist: Carol Anne is awoken by ghosts at 2:37 AM, a reference to Room 237.
• Carlito's Way: This is a subtler Homage Shot to the "Here's Johnny!" moment from The Shining. Carlito will shortly after crash his way into Gail's apartment, although without needing to destroy the door with an ax.
• Twister: The tornado destroys a drive-in theater that is showing The Shining, during the "Here's Johnny!" scene. Jack's face is even projected onto the twister as if to give it a murderous, psychopathic persona.
• The Descent has Beth and Sarah driving towards their doom in an overhead hanging shot that is reminiscent of the opening scene.
• Event Horizon: Being largely "The Shining... IN SPACE!" the film doesn't skimp on a direct reference towards the end by having the liquid of a large tank in the hypersleep pod bay becoming dark red and erupting into a bloody flood when the glass fails from the high pressure.
• Kung Fu Hustle: The elevator scene is referenced when the protagonist walks towards the prison cell of "The Beast", giving him the creepy vision of the door opening and releasing a torrent of blood in slow-motion.
• Seed of Chucky: Towards the end, Chucky breaks into the room where Tiffany and Glen are by demolishing the door with an axe, recreating the "Here's Johnny!" scene. Unlike most spoofs of that scene, however, Chucky remains speechless after positioning himself like Jack and mutters "...I can't think of a thing to say. Fuck it!" before moving on with the attack.
• Carrie (2013): As Jackie prepares to kill the pigs, he says "Uncle Jack is going to bash your head right in." Appropriately, both films are based on Stephen King books.
• Ready Player One (2018) has an entire segment based on the film, with the players having to brave the events of the film in a virtual reality simulation while on a time crunch to solve a riddle and find the next Plot Coupon. Naturally, it's Aech, who never saw the movie or read the book (because he doesn't do scary), who ends up blindly stumbling into every scary part of the movie. King's hatred of the movie is even referenced as part of the clue leading to the simulation: "A creator who hates his own creation."
• Us homages the film all over the place.
  • There's an overhead shot of the family driving away from the chaos at the end of the movie.
  • There's a lot of identical twin symbolism; when identical twin girls Becca and Lindsay are murdered by their Tethered, their bodies are in the exact same position as the Grady Twins in Danny's vision.
  • The use of Ominous Latin Chanting is also acknowledged by Word of God as being a reference to this movie.
• Barbie (2023): As Barbie and Sasha blankly stare while sharing a memory, an exasperated Gloria asks her mother if she's actually "shining" with the Barbie.

Literature

• Checkout Time at the Dead-End Hotel have the heroes checking into Hotel Muerte early in the story, only to discover it's haunted and the resident ghosts wants them to stay forever. The Hotel is also sentient, not unlike the Overlook, actively trying to corrupt it's guests, including having a Room 402 where anybody who enters will never leave.
• The horror-themed gamebook, House of Hell, has three pre-generated players available, two of them which are named Jack Bates and Carrie Torrance.
• Stephen King's wife, Tabitha King. In her first novel Small World, a character become nervous of an elevator that reminds her of the one in The Shining and references the Overlook by name, as a fictional entity. Oddly, in another Tabitha King novel, Pearl, the titular Pearl's mother worked at Dick Hallorann's winter hotel in Key West, where he taught young Pearl how to cook. Pearl also mentioned that in the summer, Dick worked at a fancy hotel out west. So while Small World is clearly set in the "real" world where Stephen King published a novel about the Overlook, Pearl appears to be set in the same fictional world as the Overlook, where Dick Hallorann exists as a real person. ^note Likewise odd is that in Pearl, the title character also states that Dick "died a few years ago." Pearl was published in 1981, and appears to have been set around the date of its publication; The Shining was published in 1978, and likewise seems to be set congruous to its publication date. Together, this would imply that Dick did not survive the events of The Shining by more than four years. Yet later, in Doctor Sleep (published in 2013), we are told that Dick died in 1999. Obviously it's better to assume that Dick died in 1999, the year his original creator gives for him; likely Tabitha King's novel was written at a time when Stephen King believed that The Shining was a stand-alone novel and that it was okay for his wife to sneak in a reference to the character's death in a book most fans of Stephen would be unlikely to read anyway.
• In Being Bindy, Bindy and her mother stay at a guest house that Bindy thinks looks like something from the set of The Shining.

Live-Action TV

• iCarly:
  • In "iScream on Halloween", Room 13-B is a parody of Room 217.
  • In "iStill Psycho", Nora and her parents trap the gang in their house and tell them they're gonna stay "forever, and ever, and ever." After they're defeated near the end, the gang tells them they're going to jail "forever, and ever, and ever."
• The Expanse: In the Season 5 episode "Mother", Alex walks down a Martian hotel corridor with a familiar-looking carpet pattern, a subtle hint that he's walking into danger.
• Jessie: Season 2's "The Whining" has several references. Specifically Zuri's go-kart which resembles Danny's car, the creepy twin girls appearing in the hallway, Tony spilling punch in the elevator like the spilling blood, and Jessie busting through a door crying out, "Heeeeere's Jessie!".
• Liv and Maddie: In "Haunt-A-Rooney" when Johnny Nimbus emerges from the port-a-potty, he shouts, "HEEEERE'S JOHNNY!"
• The Office (US): In Cafe Disco (Season 5 episode 27) Dwight jokes: "All work and no play makes Michael a dull boy!" while holding his hair back to do a Jack Nicholson impression.
• Stranger Things:
  • While under the influence of the Mind Flayer, Billy stops the Party from escaping from the mall by removing part of their vehicle's ignition system. This is the same tactic Jack Torrance, while under the influence of the hotel and its ghosts, uses to prevent Wendy and Danny from escaping the hotel in The Shining.
  • According to Dacre Montgomery, his performance as Billy is inspired by both Kiefer Sutherland 's performance as Ace in Stand by Me and Jack Nicholson in The Shining and other roles.
• In Twin Peaks, Jerry references a line from the shining by saying "All work and no play make Ben and Jerry dull boys".
• In The Young Ones episode "Flood", Mr. Balwoski becomes an axe wielding homicidal maniac and chases the lads through the house in the manner of Jack Torrence, even saying "Little pigs".

Music

• Kate Bush's 1982 song "Get Out of My House" is a Whole-Plot Reference to the book and film, being about a person who attempts to look after an old building but finds themselves attacked by the ghosts of its past residents. The song even ends with donkey brays that parallel Jack's bellows in the climax of the movie.
• Red Velvet: In the music video for "RBB (Really Bad Boy)", Irene and Yeri are dressed up and act like the Grady twins when they rap the second verse.
• The Norwegian band Shining named themselves after the novel/film. The Swedish band Shining, by contrast, did not, and they seem to get kind of annoyed when people assume they did. (It doesn't help that the two bands are now frequently confused with each other; they started out playing very different genres of music, but their styles have since converged substantially.)
• The video for Slipknot's "Spit It Out" features the band members acting out various scenes from the movie (Corey Taylor as Jack Torrance, Jim Root as Wendy, Clown and Fehn as the Grady Twins, etc)

Video Games

• D4DJ Groovy Mix: One of the featured cards for the "Nano of the Dead" event has Miiko and Nagisa replicating the "Here's Johnny!" scene, in the roles of Jack and Wendy, respesctively, with Miiko busting through a door with a chainsaw (as opposed to an axe like in the original scene) with the iconic Slasher Smile on her face. It's quite in-character for Miiko, who is a big fan of horror movies.
• Fallout 76: A pretty faithful and detailed re-creation of the Overlook Hotel can be found in the game, appropriately renamed "Torrance House". A Big Wheel even sits out on the front porch.
• Grand Theft Auto V: Trevor (an unhinged character who bears a strong resemblance to Jack Nicholson c.1980) has an unlockable outfit called "Overlooked", which is closely based on one that Jack Torrance wears in the Kubrick movie.
• Heavy Rain:
  • The bartender that gives Jayden advice is practically identical, down to the outfit, to Lloyd. His existence as a living being is also just as ambiguous.
  • The cocktail lounge Jayden plays piano in in the chapter "Jayden Blues" bears a resemblance to the Overlook Hotel's bar.
• Hyperviolent has a stage whose floor is based on the Overlook Hotel's red-and-orange carpets.
• Layers of Fear 2: As a psychological horror game themed around cinema, a couple of references to the Kubrick movie were inevitable:
  • Near the beginning of the game, you can find a recreation of one the Overlook Hotel's hallways where Danny rides his Big Wheel, complete with the carpeted floor's iconic hexagonal patterns as well as Danny's tricycle.
  • Towards the end of the game, there are mannequin representations of the Grady twins standing in a hallway; interacting with them triggers a brief re-creation of their death scene.
• Minecraft: If a player renames a vindicator "Johnny" it becomes hostile with an axe against almost any entity.
• In Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch, Nancy has to escape from underground before the game's villain discovers her. Otherwise, the villain will pop in from behind a corner and give a variant of the "Heeeeeere's JOHNNY!" catchphrase.
• The Simpsons Game: Using the elevator in the Game Engine hub will occasionally have it open with Sheri and Terri imitating the Grady twins.
• The Simpsons: Tapped Out: Sheri and Terri dress like the Grady twins during Halloween.
• Super Mario Sunshine: Phantamanta is an homage to the ending of the novel, where the image of a paper-thin manta ray is seen from the fire engulfing the Overlook Hotel. For bonus points, Phantamanta ends up sinking Hotel Delfino with electric goop, much like how the original mantra ray shape was seen from the Overlook Hotel's destruction.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the infamous Ocean House Hotel is haunted by a family of ghosts based on the Torrances. (It's not a spoiler to say that the wife and kids didn't make it out of this one.)

Web Animation

• Super-Villain-Bowl! has Jack Torrance showing up as one of several horror film villains killing each other. He even lets out a "Here's Johnny!" before getting killed.

Web Original

• The Nostalgia Critic:
  • In his review of James and the Giant Peach, the Critic dubs "Heeeeere's Peachy!" over the scene where Spiker and Sponge come after James with axes.
  • In his review of The Cat in the Hat, he says that Things One & Two look like the Grady twins "if Bozo the Clown gave them Jägerbombs".
  • In his review of The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, the Critic dubs "Come play with us, Mia" over the twin female servants. He also edits the scene of Mia and Nicholas walking through the garden's labyrinth by having them casually walk past a frozen Jack Torrance.
  • In his one commercials video, he likens the thoughts of the various children in the Corn Pops commercials to living in suspense/horror films and amongst the imagery are of the Grady twins in the hallway and then of their bodies after being hacked to death.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-2786 is a metaphysical entity that can insert itself into horror narratives, where it attempts to portray itself as a brave hero and alter the story itself. One of these is listed as the film The Shining.

Western Animation

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: In the episode "Night of the Gorilla", Ace tries to prove that a gorilla did not murdered the scientist that raised her from infancy and with her knowledge of sign language and painting it would look like a sure deal that she can testify, but all she keeps repeating is the word "murder". Ace finally figures out that the gorilla is dyslexic and she is saying that the killer is a rival scientist named Dr. Redrum when, like in the film, Ace sees the reflection of one of the painted "murder” signs in the mirror.
• Beetlejuice: In the episode "A Dandy Handy Man" Beetlejuice fails at being a handyman and has a bunch of sentient demonic tools (a Jack Nicholson-looking jackhammer among these) do all the work. When BJ makes it clear that he's taking all the credit and openly mocks them, the tools retaliate and wreck havoc while attacking him. During the assault, the jackhammer references the "Here's Johnny!" scene.
• Big City Greens: In "Heat Beaters" when Tilly is shown shivering, she looks exactly like Jack Torrance in the final scene as he freezes to death.
• Bob's Burgers: In the episode "Crawl Space", Bob gets stuck in the restaurant's crawl space and starts hallucinating talking to Louise's Kuchi Kopi night light in a scene reminiscent of the conversation Jack had with Grady in the men's bathroom.
• Chibi Tiny Tales: In the Amphibia short "Hop Pop Photo Op", when Anne, Sprig, and Polly run into the Plantar house to hide from Hop Pop, he uses his camera to hack the door open like the "Here's Johnny!" scene, only since it's a Mime and Music-Only Cartoon, he just laughs maniacally.
• Doug: In one episode where Doug has nightmares about an unseen monster in a horror film he watched, one of these nightmares was of Porkchop as Jack Torrance (complete with a "Heeeeerrrre's Porkchop!")
• DuckTales (2017): The final shot of "The Trickening!" spoofs the film's ending, with the camera ominously focusing on a framed picture of the Duck family with their new monster friends.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater", Stewie encounters the Grady twins inside the mansion and blasts them with a bazooka.
  • In "Love Thy Trophy", Stewie spells out "REDRUM" with toy blocks.
  • In the Naked Gun-inspired opening to "PTV", Stewie runs over the Grady twins with his tricycle.
  • In the third act of "Three Kings", in which three Stephen King stories are retold, Peter appears to be setting up an adaptation of The Shining before announcing he's telling The Shawshank Redemption.
  • In "Girl, Internetted", after Meg loses the use of her feet to Type 2 diabetes, Joe senses it and says he has a gift for knowing when something bad happens to someone's legs, "kind of like a Shining". Peter then attacks Cleveland with an ax, and the episode ends with Chris saying that he also has the Shining now.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum: In "Digital Pet Cemetery", when Fanboy, Chum Chum, and Yo hide from the zombified Scampers in the bathroom, Scampers burst through the door and meows evilly, as a subtext reads: "Heeeeere's Scampers!"
• Futurama: In "The Honking", Bender sees a set of binary code written in blood on the wall, and thinks it's nothing, but then sees it reflected in the window and freaks out. The code is indeed binary for "Redrum".
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: At the end of "Five O'Clock Shadows", Mandy and his shadow world counterpart tell Grim that he's going to play with them "Forever, and ever, and ever."
• Hey Arnold!: In "Curly Snaps", Curly attacks several people with dodgeballs while shouting "Heeeeere's Curly!"
• Mickey Mouse (2013): In "Duck the Halls", two of Mickey's relatives in his flashback are mouse versions of the Grady twins.
• Molly of Denali: In "A-maze-ing Snow", the scene where Trini (and later Tooey) become lost in the snow maze references The Shining. (Specifically, the scene at the end of the movie where Danny is being chased in the snow maze by his father Jack and Jack later freezing to death in the maze where Danny makes his escape out of the maze. As you can see, both scenes of The Shining and Molly of Denali episode ended up in the same predicament.)
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In a Halloween Episode, Doof and Perry encounter a pair of twin girls in the elevator.
  • In "She's the Mayor", another pair of creepy identical people appear in a Cutaway Gag.
• Rocko's Modern Life: "Uniform Behavior" has various nods to the film, including Hef riding a tricycle, the creepy twins, Lloyd the demon bartender, and "Heeeeeeeeere's Heffer!"
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Brother from the Same Planet", Homer forgets to pick Bart up from soccer practice, and Bart tries to contact him with the Shining. The scene then cuts to Milhouse writing "TRAB PU KCIP" on the wall before his father punishes him.
  • The chalkboard gag for "The Last Temptation of Homer" has Bart writing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
  • In "The Boy Who Knew Too Much", when Otto picks up students in a prison bus:
    Otto: The regular school bus broke down, so take a seat before I blow your heads off! (beat) Sorry, this bus and I have sort of a Shining thing going on.
  • The first segment of "Treehouse of Horror V", titled The Shinning, is a parody of the film.
    Willie: Boy, you read my thoughts! You've got the Shinnin'!
    Bart: You mean Shining?
    Willie: Shhh! You wanna get sued?
  • In "Treehouse of Horror VI", producer Richard Sakai is credited as "Redrum Richard Sakai".
  • In "The Springfield Files", the Title In caption repeatedly types "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
  • In "Realty Bites", Marge tries to sell the Flanders family a house where an infamous murder took place. At one point, Todd has red paint on his shirt and says "Red room, red room".
  • In "Girl's in the Band", Homer has to take the night shift at the plant, where he hallucinates the bar scene. Later, Jack passes by with an axe.
    Jack: I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just going to bash your brains in!
    Mr. Burns: Ah, there's our head of human resources now.
• Harvey Street Kids: "Clinging in the Rain" has Dot attempting to write a novel while stuck indoors, but all she manages to write is "All rain and no play makes Dot a dull girl." repeatedly.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: In one episode of the "Galactic Monsters'' arc, Ben and co. are exploring Zs'Castle Zs'Skayr when they look down one hallway and find a pair of Ectonurite twins. This happens:
  Ectonurite twins: Come play with us! (creepy smile)
  Hobble: We are not going that way.
• Ben 10 (2016): In "Xingo", the first thing Xingo says upon exiting Ben's TV is "Heeeeeeeeeeere's Xingo!"
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", when the Smooze escapes from a storage closet and floods the ballroom, it's staged just like the wave of blood pouring from the elevator. There are even some reaction shots from a colt in a sweater who looks just like a pony version of Danny. Storyboard artist Sabrina "Sibsy" Alberghetti confirmed the reference on Twitter and called it her "greatest boarding achievement/reference".
  • In "Where the Apple Lies", a blink-and-you-miss background moment shows the pony versions of the Grady twins in the hospital hallway.
• Samurai Jack: In "Aku's Fairy Tales," one of the stories Aku tells is a retelling of The Three Little Pigs, with Jack replacing the Big Bad Wolf. Instead of blowing the pigs' house down, Jack starts chopping at the door with his sword right before sticking his head in the hole and saying "Here's Jackie!!"
• South Park: The subplot of Randy owning a haunted Blockbuster Video in the episode "A Nightmare on Face Time" is a parody of this film.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Jolly Lodgers", SpongeBob and Patrick appear at the end of the hallway complete with Staggered Zoom and "Psycho" Strings, like the Grady Twins.
• Trolls: TrollsTopia: In "Extreme Sleepover Club: Spooky Edition!", as the Trolls are being chased by Raisin Ruby, they randomly come across Satin and Chenille dressed as the Grady twins.

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