For references within the movie, see the Shout Out page.
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Advertising
- This
Best Buy advertisement from the early 90s.
Anime
- Brook's flashback in One Piece features all of his crewmates singing one final song before they all die. As they die one by one, Brook notes how the song ("Binks' Sake") dwindles down to a quartet, then a quintent, followed by a duet, and ending with a solo performed only by him, just like Old Fred does during the Blue Meanie assault. In the end, the pirate dies alone, leaving only the accompaniment to play.
- Visual references flash by among the many images during the trippy "transformation sequence" in the cult classic animated film Belladonna of Sadness.
Comic Strips
- Sherman's Lagoon: One storyline had Sherman and Fillmore encountering three of the Beatles in their yellow submarine.
Comic Books
- Asterix: In the French version fish monger Ordralfabetix' wife is called Ielosubmarine.
- In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Pepper's Land is described as a "musical utopia" located somewhere off the coasts of Argentina, reputedly the source of a "garishly-coloured" phantom submarine and the home of a "malignantly species of blue dwarf or troll". In The Tempest Pepper's Land is shown to be utterly devastated after the Falklands War, becoming a wasteland with a completely rusted Yellow Submarine stranded on the beach.
Film - Animation
- The end credits sequence from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is an homage to the film.
- The entire art and animation style of Johnny Corncob, with heroic character having the proportions of the Beatles and some of the antagonists vaguely resembling the Blue Meanies.
- The same director also references the Beatles in the "wheel of misfortune" segment of The Tragedy of Man, in which all of 20th century history and culture is ground into a squirming pulp.
Film - Live Action
- In the drug-induced animated realm of the Medium Blending movie The Congress the Yellow Submarine can be seen when the protagonist heads towards the Miramount Hotel.
- In Kingsman: The Secret Service a yellow submarine◊ can be seen in the huge hangar of the Kingsmen headquarters.
- In Avengers: Endgame, Tony calls Nebula a "blue meanie".
- Among the many Beatles references in Across the Universe (2007), Mr. Kite has a cast of characters he calls the “Blue People”, a clear nod to the Blue Meanies.
- Near the climax of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic, the team descends into a decidedly psychedelic ocean in a yellow submarine, to meet surreal stop-motion sea creatures animated by Henry Selick.
- In Walk Hard, Dewey Cox takes drugs with the Beatles in India, and the art design of his trip where he meets the "trippy cartoon Beatles" is taken straight from Yellow Submarine.
- R. P. M. (1970): Steve, looking out the window at the cops who have arrived to clear out the building, says, "Well, man, the Blue Meanies are out there."
Live-Action TV
- Mystery Science Theater 3000:
- In Moon Zero Two, the villains are compared to the Blue Meanies.
- The film (or at least the song) is also referenced in Gorgo.
- In The Love Boat episode "Cindy," Gopher says, "I'm shoving off before the Blue Meanies show up."
Music
- Parodied in The Rutles: All You Need is Cash (with a clip from "Yellow Submarine Sandwich").
- The music video for Mika's Lollipop takes clear influence from the movie, with several segments where the words being sung manifest on screen similarily to the All You Need is Love sequence.
Toys
- Any children's bath toy which is shaped like a submarine will invariably be a yellow submarine. It won't be the movie's distinctive yellow submarine, but, same vehicle, same color.
Video Games
- In EarthBound (1994), after exploring the Dungeon Man, you come across a Yellow Submarine which Ness and co. uses to reach the Deep Darkness.
- CrazySonic, a bizarre Game Mod of Sonic the Hedgehog which replaces the blue blur with a yellow bus from CrazyBus, has a reference that comes into play during levels that feature underwater sections. The bus gets around the water by spontaneously turning into a submarine (yellow of course), with the film’s title song playing in the background while piloting the submarine.
Web Animation
- The Homestar Runner Halloween episode "Homestar Runner 2022 Costume Pack Now Available" has Marzipan dressed up as John Lennon as he appears in the movie. An Easter Egg at the end of the episode features "The Homestar Runners and the Yellow Bathyscaphe", which has Marzipan referencing the "When I'm 64" segment of the movie.
Web Comics
- At the costume party near the end of the Paris Arc in Girl Genius the Chief Blue Meanie is one of the many characterswho appear as costumes.
- In Homestuck, the Captor lusus is a "Bicyclops". To further cement the reference, their blood color is yellow.
- The Blue Meanie is one of the main characters of Meanies Comic.
Western Animation
- Futurama: Bender's Game features a parody with the Planet Express ship getting more "submarine-shaped".
- In the The Simpsons episode "Last Exit to Springfield", Lisa has a dream sequence under the influence of laughing gas, inspired by imagery from the film, even with the Beatles passing by in a zeppelin, rather than a submarine. The same episode has a shot of part of Mr. Burns' mansion — a ridiculously long corridor studded with doors on both sides.
- The Batman: The Animated Series episode "What Is Reality?" features a hallway of Scooby-Dooby Doors like this film — in which one door opened by John precipitates a train roaring outward; likewise, when Batman opens a door labeled "Crazy Intent", a loco-motive roars out.
- Mark Hamill (a noted Beatles fan) remarked that he based his portrayal of the Joker partly on the Chief Blue Meanie, mainly because the BTAS Joker design bears resemblances to him, with the raccoon-like masked eyes and a square smile with big yellow teeth and red lips.
- The opening of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog references the Sea of Holes scene with Scratch struggling to hit Sonic with a mallet as the blue hedgehog keeps popping up from different holes whack a mole-style. Then upon trying to get Sonic out of the hole with a plunger, Scratch ends up pulling out a furious Dr. Robotnik instead.
- The Powerpuff Girls episode "Meet the Beat-Alls" has two brief appearances by the Fab Four themselves: one with the character designs from this film, the other with the designs from their 1965 series. Sergeant Pepper from the Townsville police is based on Old Fred. And he requests assistance by quoting/paraphrasing the lyrics to Help!, much like Fred does in Yellow Submarine.
- The "Help!" quote was used earlier in "Mo Job," when Princess calls for the girls to save her from Mojo's lair as a means of trapping them. Did we mention Craig McCracken loves The Beatles?
- The plot of "Mime for a Change" mimics the story of Yellow Submarine, an evil jester who drowns the world of color, and music and love brings it back towards the end of the story.
- More generally, the character of Him was directly inspired by the chief Blue Meanie, most obvious in his voice.
- Robot Chicken: A sketch from "Due to Constraints of Time and Budget" is a mash-up of the film and The Hunt for Red October, where a Blue Meanie submarine is trying to defect.
- The Super Jail episode "Don't Be a Negaton" features a shared hallucination that begins with visuals similar to the ones in the film (referenced with the Twins riding a Submarine-like thing) and then becomes something MUCH worse.
- There's also a similar scene in the episode "The Last Pack" in which The Warden gleefully starts chasing a butterfly in a psychedelic, Yellow Submarine style imagination sequence, even going so far as to include very Beatles-sounding music in the background.
- The episode "Best Friends Forever" shows that the jail has its own petting zoo full of creatures that all look like they came straight from the Sea of Monsters.
- The Teen Titans episodes featuring "Mad Mod", especially the second of the two, "Revolution", employ visuals that are a large-scale homage to this film.
- The Danger Mouse episode "The Dream Machine" has DM and Penfold inside Baron Greenback's dream cloud which has a series of doors with strange things emerging from them.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Atlantis SquarePantis", Lord Royal Highness bears somewhat of a resemblance to the Chief Blue Meanie.
- In the first episode of the South Park "Imaginationland" trilogy, when the boys first go to Imaginationland, one of the imaginary creatures to greet them is a Blue Meanie.
- In the Muppet Babies (1984) episode, "Once Upon an Egg Timer", the babies take turns telling a story when Rowlf loses his voice. When Scooter has trouble telling a story, he turns it into a song, which the babies perform against a stylized, surreal, Yellow Submarine-esque backdrop.
- The '70s Hungarian cartoon „Kérem a következőt!” (Next one, please!) based various aspects of its character designs on the film's art style.
Wrestling
- Pro Wrestler The Blue Meanie, who is billed from "Pepperland".
