Referenced By / Animorphs

Animorphs has had quite the impact on pop culture, especially now that the generation who grew up with the books are starting to make media of their own.

Comic Books

• Animaniacs: In Issue #56, Slappy begrudgingly takes Skippy to buy the latest Animanimorphs books.

Fan Works

• Ashes of the Past: Brock suggests that a Deoxys, an alien with No Mouth, is off to find out what cinnamon buns taste like.
• Code Prime: There's quite a Freeze-Frame Bonus if one reads the reaction of the royals to the beginning of the Decepticon attack. The royals' reaction describes them as "like watching people turn into cows", followed by a statement that it's alien to them. Put two and two together, and you have a sly reference to Animorphs, to which Hasbro also managed its toyline under the Transformers license.
• The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum: The Griffon King is named Tobias.
• Dangerverse:
  "Even better", Sirius broke in. "Spread around four or five different stories. It was us, it was Aurors, it was real animals on some kind of intelligence potion the Department of Mysteries dreamed up, it was animals under Imperius by other Death Eaters making a power play, it was shape-shifting American kids playing superhero—"
• Diamond and Silver's Excellent Adventure: JB is named after Jake Berenson and paraphrases the opening line of the books.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Ma'lack, one of the bounty hunters that comes after Dib in Season 2, Episode 3, is stated to be a Garatron, a minor alien species from one of the later books.
• Pony POV Series: In the "Penultimate Beta 1" Chapter (AKA Fluttercruel POV Black Pearl), one of the tabloid articles Luna mentions claims that Luna was turned into Nightmare Moon because she was infested by an evil mind control slug.
• Steven Universe: Alternate Future: Envyrno infiltrates the Servant by calling herself Escafil and claiming she's on the run from the Yeerk-Bajir.

Let's Play

• Upon realizing that Atreus can shapeshift into a bear during his playthrough of God of War Ragnarök, CoryxKenshin remarks that he's a ''fricking Animorph".

Literature

• Darwins Soldiers: <Characters who use the Dragonstorm thought network are referred to as thought-speaking, and their dialogue is punctuated with triangular brackets, like in Animorphs.>

Video Games

• To the Moon: Animorphs was Johnny's favorite childhood book series, although he admits in his memories that he doesn't read them much anymore thus not remembering much from it.
• Overwatch: The "Echomorph" spray depicts Echo transitioning through a transformation to Winston just like the infamous covers of the Animorphs books.
• Urrezko Kaiola: The quiz is full of references, including how many Animorphs books there were.

Webcomics

• Questionable Content: Aurelia mentions that her kids loved the Animorphs books. Unfortunately, this is in the context of her reading some slashfic about her Virtual YouTuber persona "Mommymilkers" and "Burger Oni" (Marigold), who is utterly horrified by it, particularly when she learns that her lactose intolerance is a plot point — involving Mommymilkers having "Toiletmorph" powers...
• explain xkcd has a list of every comic that references Animorphs.
  • The Alt Text for "Aspect Ratio" mentions Randall mistaking "Anamorphic widescreen" for a widescreen Animorphs movie.
  • The Alt Text in "Old Files" mentions him finding a file named ANIMORPHS-NOVEL.RTF (presumably a fanfic), and quietly deleting it in shame.
  • "Manual for Civilization" is about a collection of books to rebuild civilization. It's nothing but Animorphs books.
  • "Incognito Mode" has a woman (possibly Rachel, since she has blonde hair) warning Cueball to never stay in incognito mode longer than 2 hours. The title text mentions morphing into apples to infiltrate Apple (the company).
  • The title text for "Ears" hypothesizes that people whose earbuds don't fall out must have a Yeerk in their head holding the earbuds for them.

Western Animation

• Arthur: "D.W. Talespins" has D.W. trying to come up with a better story than the Vegemorphs series, a spoof of Animorphs that Arthur and Buster have recently gotten into. The cover is even in the same morph-stages style as the real books (interestingly, there actually is an Animorphs parody called Vegemorphs, but it isn't like the one shown here).
• Inside Job (2021): When Brett and Glenn switch bodies, a child in the cafe "Glenn" visits is reading an Animorphs book, and calls the horrifying half-dolphin man an Animorph. The book is surprisingly detailed, with a Freeze-Frame Bonus showing that it even has the text on the back of all the books that says "We can't tell you who we are..."
• Robot Chicken:
  • A sketch from "Never Forget" features Jake and Marco attending college.
  • A sketch from "Spike Fraser in: Should I Happen to Back Into a Horse" features Marco reviving the Red Panda population.
• Steven Universe: One of the promo posters◊ for the episode "Cat Fingers" is a direct parody of the covers to most Animorphs books.