Referenced By / The Sopranos

The Mezzo-Sopranos

Comic Strips

• Pearls Before Swine:
  • Several strips reference the ending of The Sopranos, usually in the form of someone about to reveal what would've happened after the Smash to Black, only for something to prematurely end the strip.
  • One of the collected editions is called "The Sopratos", and its cover parodies the Season 5 poster.

Film -- Live-Action

• Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Kemo gives Peter this advice on getting over his breakup: "It's like The Sopranos. It's OVER! Find a new show!"
• The Social Network: Divya says, in response to Cameron's question about how he'd deal with Mark for stealing his idea, "I want to hire the Sopranos to beat the shit out of him with a hammer!".

Literature

• Saving Max: While Doaks is talking about something he witnessed, Sevillas says, "Come on, Doaks. This isn't the sequel to The Sopranos, you know."

Live-Action TV

• The IT Crowd: In "Aunt Irma Visits", Moss has been seeing the company psychiatrist after lying about Jen being dead in the previous episode. When he tells Roy that she's an attractive older woman, Roy comments "Ah, she's the Dr. Melfi to your Tony Soprano."
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson referenced the Sopranos among several other stock references in its Grand Finale. After revealing the show to be All Just a Dream, the camera pans over to a snow globe as Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" starts playing and cuts off mid-sentence.

Radio

• In 2007, the short-lived New York City radio station Jack FM had as its final song "Don't Stop Believin'", which ended at the exact point it cut off during the then-recent finale of The Sopranos.

Web Video

• Schaffrillas Productions: When he did a video ranking all the characters in the Mario Kart franchise, he called Tony Soprano the most forgotten Mario Kart character, claiming he was in Mario Kart: Super Circuit for years and no one noticed. (He wasn't actually a character in the game, this "fact" was just for Rule of Funny.) He continued the gag in his ranking of every course in Super Circuit.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In "Widowmaker", Roger, acting as a counselor for Stan and Francine, asks Stan "You like staring at those long gams, don't you, Mr. Soprano?"
• Arthur: In The Teaser for "Bleep", Arthur takes us behind the scenes of The Altos to demonstrate what a "bleep" sound is for.
• BoJack Horseman: In "The BoJack Horseman Show" (which takes place in 2007), a teenage Todd meets a girl named Emily, whose father is an editor on The Sopranos. When they hear him come home while they're making out in her room, Emily has him escape out her window with film from a reel containing the only copy of the show's finale, which breaks off as he does.
  Todd: (looking at the film) Tony marries Dr. Melfi? Mamma mia!
• The Boondocks: In "The Fundraiser", while Riley Freeman is confronting a British mob boss over the sale of chocolate bars, a gang of mafiosi suddenly barge in to violently take over the chocolate business for themselves. The British gangster mockingly taunts the Italian-American mobsters with lines like this:
  "What is this, a casting call for The Sopranos reunion?"
• Family Guy:
  • The infamous ending is mocked at the end of "Stewie Kills Lois".
    Stewie: Well, at least it didn't end like The Sopranos, where it just cut to black in mid sen—(episode ends)
  • Stewie and Brian's musical number at the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards also mocks the ending.
    Now, The Sopranos is a show I'll recommend
    Because you never know just how it's gonna—
  • In "Christmas Guy", Vinny (voiced by Tony Sirico) does a parody of Paulie's "Oh!" tic after hearing that Carter Pewterschmidt is Lois' father.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: The special opening for "The Dabba Don", in which Fred Flintstone is accused of racketeering, is an mixture of the Sopranos and Flintstones titlte sequences.
• Milo Murphy's Law: In "Smooth Opera-tor", the opera the characters go to is an operatic parody of The Sopranos.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge", Fat Tony's ride to the Simpson house to kill Homer is a spoof of the Sopranos opening. There are even paper thin Expies of Christopher, Paulie and Silvio among Fat Tony's enforcers.
  • In "Pray Anything", the church's marquee reads "God: The original Tony Soprano."
  • In "Yokel Chords", Peter Bogdanovich plays a psychiatrist to another psychiatrist.
  • The episode "Papa Don't Leech" opens with Homer having a dream about suffocating Grampa following a car crash, similar to Tony murdering Christopher in "Kennedy and Heidi".
  • In "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution", one of the shows in the HBOwtime promo is a parody of The Sopranos.

Real Life

• When the ill-fated New York City radio station Jack FM ended its run in 2007, its final song was "Don't Stop Believin'", which was cut off at the exact point where it ended in this show's infamous No Ending.

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