The Belchers recently made the leap to the big screen in a movie adaptation of The Shining.
From Tina’s imaginary “Die Hard meets Working Girl” crossover musical, Bob’s Burgers includes inventive references to a wide range of iconic movies.
The Runway Club
The season 5 episode “The Runway Club” is primarily a parody of The Breakfast Club as Tina, Gene, Louise, Jimmy, Jr., Zeke, Tammy, and Jocelyn attend a Saturday detention at their school.
The opening and closing scenes of the episode reference the classic John Hughes comedy with a riff on Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on the soundtrack.
Mr. Frond As The Terminator
In the anthology episode “The Frond Files” Mr. Frond is furious that Tina, Gene, and Louise have used their latest homework assignment – an essay entitled “Why I Love Wagstaff” – to write three genre-bending short stories that paint him as a villain.
Louise’s story is a riff on the Terminator franchise in which a futuristic Frond sends a robot back in time to kill Louise in the present. As it turns out, Frond built this robot to get revenge against Louise for a prank that led him to quit his job.
O.T.: The Outside Toilet
Season 3 includes an homage to E.T. with the wonderfully weird episode “O.T.: The Outside Toilet.” Instead of forging a friendship with an alien stranded on Earth like Elliott, Gene forges a friendship with a high-tech toilet voiced by guest star Jon Hamm.
Much like Elliott when the U.S. government comes after his alien buddy, Gene has to protect his toilet friend from nefarious forces. The episode even recreates the iconic shot of Elliott and E.T. flying past a full moon.
Bob Loves Spaghetti Westerns
The season 1 episode “Spaghetti Western and Meatballs” reveals that Bob is a huge fan of Italian spaghetti westerns – particularly the Banjo franchise, a spoof of the iconic Franco Nero-starring Django movies. Instead of dragging around a coffin full of ammo like Django, Banjo carries around a banjo that he plays before engaging in pistol duels.
Bob’s spaghetti western fandom paves the way for a sweet emotional storyline. Louise feels that her special time with her dad is being threatened when Gene takes a liking to their favorite western subgenre.
The Belchies
The season 2 premiere, “The Belchies,” is a spot-on spoof of The Goonies. The kids go searching for hidden treasure in an old taffy factory that’s due for demolition after believing that a butt-shaped map (drawn by Teddy as a joke) points to a real fortune.
The episode ends with Cyndi Lauper singing a parody version of her Goonies theme song “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” with the title “Taffy Butt.”
Aliens Meets Freaky Friday
In season 7’s “Mom, Lies, and Videotapes,” Linda is too sick to attend a Mother’s Day show at the school and Bob messes up his attempt to film it, so the kids recreate the show for Linda in the living room – and spruce it up. Tina describes a mash-up of two great mother-daughter movies as a staged re-enactment of the plot of Aliens that turns into a Freaky Friday-style body swap comedy.
She describes the story of Aliens beat-for-beat until putting her own spin on it when Ripley and the xenomorph queen magically switch bodies due to “scientific anomalies.”
Louise’s Anton Chigurh Costume
Louise’s Halloween costumes have been the source of some of Bob’s Burgers’ sharpest pop culture references, from “The Bjorn Identity” to “The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo.” In “The Wolf of Wharf Street,” she dressed as ruthless hitman Anton Chigurh from the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning neo-western masterpiece No Country for Old Men.
She carries around a captive bolt stunner and wears a bowl cut wig over her signature bunny-eared hat to evoke Javier Bardem’s Oscar-winning villain.
The Deepening
The season 3 episode “The Deepening” offers a hilariously meta parody of Jaws and the wave of shark thrillers that followed in the wake of its blockbuster success.
The episode revolves around a mechanical prop shark from an in-universe B-movie about a shark terrorizing a seaside town. The still-operational shark ironically ends up wreaking havoc on the Wonder Wharf.
Bob Hallucinates A Visit To The Bar From The Shining
In the second episode of the series, “Crawl Space,” Bob pretends to be trapped in the crawlspace to avoid Linda’s parents while they’re visiting. But he ends up actually getting stuck in there, and Linda leaves him in the crawlspace to teach him a lesson.
Bob goes stir crazy with nothing but Louise’s Kuchi Kopi nightlight for company. He hallucinates a visit to the bar from Stanley Kubrick’s horror opus The Shining, with Kuchi Kopi taking the place of Lloyd the bartender.
Work Hard Or Die Trying, Girl
In the season 5 premiere “Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl,” Gene and Courtney stage competing musicals based on classic ‘80s movies. Gene’s musical is based on Die Hard and Courtney’s musical is based on Working Girl.
After fighting over the audience’s attention for the first couple of acts, Gene and Courtney end up combining their shows into an impromptu hybrid production called Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl.