When you think of Easter eggs in popular culture, you tend to think of them being included in
movies - and rightfully so, as movies are full of fun references and nods these days
- but television shows are also starting to get in on the act.
You can often find sneaky inclusions - or even explicit mentions - of other franchises
in television series.
As one of the most popular movie franchises of all time - and an important part of pop
culture history - Star Wars is one of the most often referenced franchises in fiction.
Here, we'll list ten examples in which that's been the case on the small screen.
So please, watch our video, subscribe to our channel, and keep checking ScreenRant for
more great videos in the same mould as this one.
Here are ten popular TV shows that referenced Star Wars.
Family Guy How could we make a video about TV shows that
referenced Star Wars without mentioning Seth MacFarlane's brilliant Family Guy?
As well as multiple references in the regular shows, it also goes without saying that the
animated series about the Griffin family and their friends and associates has full-on parodied
Star Wars on more than one occasion in the form of Laugh It Up, Fuzzball: The Family
Guy Trilogy.
The first of the trilogy was 2007's Blue Harvest, which was followed by 2009's Something, Something,
Something, Dark Side and 2010's It's a Trap!
It's a retelling of the original Star Wars trilogy with Family Guy characters as Star
Wars characters, such as Peter Griffin as Han Solo, Stewie Griffin as Darth Vader, Brian
Griffin as Chewbacca and Chris Griffin as Luke Skywalker.
If you haven't seen the trilogy already, watch it!
It's superb.
American Dad Predictably, given that it's also a Seth MacFarlane
show and he's clearly a fan of the franchise, American Dad has also made a number of references
to Star Wars over the years.
While it hasn't explicitly parodied the franchise like Family Guy has, it's certainly been mentioned
in the show a lot.
Examples include Steve Smith's ongoing interest in the franchise, Stan Smith confusing Star
Wars with Star Trek, Stan meeting the internet phenomenon known as Star Wars kid at a convention
that also included characters dressed as Stormtroopers and Ewoks, and Steve having two assistants
dressed like Princess Leia in her slave girl outfit.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Phase 2 movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe all had a recurring Easter egg that
was a nod to the Star Wars franchise - characters would lose a hand or arm, just like Luke Skywalker
did in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back.
The likes of Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3 and Ulysses Klaue in Avengers: Age of Ultron
are examples of that.
But it also extended to the MCU's television spin-off, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Agent Phil Coulson asked Mack to amputate his lower arm to prevent further petrification
caused by a Terrigen Crystal in the season two finale S.O.S. and he now has a prosthetic
hand - which is also like Luke Skywalker.
Doctor Who Doctor Who is among the most likely television
shows to reference Star Wars, given the space-settings in each franchise, so it's no surprise that
there was a cool reference in one episode of the show.
It came in Face the Raven - the tenth episode of the ninth series of the show's modern run
- and it came in the form an odd looking box in the background.
There was a bizarre language written on the box, which actually turned out to be Aurebesh,
the standard language in the Star Wars universe.
Even more interestingly, fans of Star Wars have deciphered it - and it actually says
"DeLorean", which means it doubles-up as a Back to the Future Easter egg too!
The Simpsons We now come to another classic animated series
in the form of The Simpsons.
Matt Groening must also be a big fan of the Star Wars franchise, as The Simpsons is absolutely
teaming with references to it - so let's get to a few of them without further ado.
The first ever Treehouse of Horror episode saw Lisa snooping around Kang and Kodos' ship.
The ship itself and the and music playing at the time were very reminiscent of the halls
of the Death Star and Luke Skywalker's theme from the first Star Wars movie.
In the episode Lisa the Beauty Queen, Lisa tried a few different hairstyles - one of
which was Princess Leia's.
In the episode Burns, Baby Burns, Darth Vader's mask could be seen in Springfield's costume
shop.
And in The Last Temptation of Krust, the "Java the Hut" coffeehouse was an obvious reference
to Jabba the Hutt.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Joss Whedon's classic television show Buffy
the Vampire Slayer had a lot of references to Star Wars - with Nicholas Brendon's Xander
Harris and the evil Trio in particular being huge fans of the franchise, as they quoted
and referred to it on many occasions - but they weren't the only characters to do so.
Faith, Ben and a number of other characters made references to the franchise, while Spike
even referred to Angel as "his Yoda" in the episode School Hard.
It should also be noted that the spin-off show, Angel, had a number of Star Wars references,
such as Charles Gunn referring to Angelus as "Darth Vampire" in the episode Calvary.
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme tune was also notably performed by the band "Nerf Herder",
who were named after Princess Leia's comment to Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.
Firefly Joss Whedon must have a thing for Star Wars,
because Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel weren't the only shows of his to reference
the epic sci-fi franchise - the short-lived Firefly series did too.
In the pilot episode, when Inara is docking the shuttle, an Imperial shuttle from Star
Wars flies over head.
Also, in the episode Shindig, just as the camera pans down to the crew in the streets,
you can see the Star Wars ship known as the Starlight Intruder.
This ship isn't from the Star Wars movies, but it is from the Dark Horse Comics Star
Wars metaseries from the 1990s entitled Dark Empire.
The Big Bang Theory The Big Bang Theory's four main characters
- Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper, Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrappali - are all
huge fans of all things sci-fi, and that undoubtedly includes Star Wars, so we could be on all
day with the number of Star Wars references in the show.
With that in mind, we're only going to mention the best one.
It happened after Sheldon's childhood hero, Bob Newhart's Arthur Jeffries who played kids'
TV character Professor Proton, had sadly passed away.
Professor Proton's ghost returns as a Jedi, dressed in full Jedi garb, to give Sheldon
some advice in The Opening Night Excitation episode (the one in which Sheldon wants to
watch The Force Awakens, incidentally).
South Park Trey Parker and Matt Stone, like previous
show creators in this video, are quite obviously huge Star Wars fans, because their brilliant
animated series South Park contains countless references to the franchise.
Here are just a few examples...
The character of George Lucas appears on more than one occasion in the show - in the episodes
Free Hat and The China Probrem, for example.
Chef is turned into a cyborg called Darth Chef in The Return of Chef.
Luke Skywalker, is seen as a member of the Council of Nine in Imaginationland, Episode
II.
And Stormtroopers are seen murdering The Lollipop King in Imaginationland, Episode III.
The Walking Dead The Walking Dead is, arguably, the most popular
television show on the small screen right now, so it's only fitting that it should reference
one of the most most popular movie franchises of all time in Star Wars - and it has.
That being said, The Walking Dead is unique on this list, in the sense that the references
don't come from in the show itself.
One of them was on Twitter, when the show's official account tweeted a mashup poster of
the two franchises and prompted fans to reply with similar crossovers.
Additionally, on Red Nose Day in 2016, NBC aired a sketch that saw The Walking Dead cast
spoofing the classic Star Wars Christmas special - a sketch that even featured two actors playing
Han Solo!
Thanks for watching our video about ten popular TV shows that referenced Star Wars.
Can you think of any other TV shows with Star Wars references in them?
Have your say in the comments section below and be sure to subscribe to our channel for
more great videos like this one.