Live-Action TV
- Lost: In the second season in the 17th episode "Lockdown" Sawyer calls Jack "Cool Hand".
- Malcolm in the Middle: In "Traffic Jam", Francis is dared to eat 100 Candy Quacks (a Bland-Name Product version of Marshmallow Peeps), a parody of the scene where Luke eats fifty boiled eggs.
- Saturday Night Live: When Strother Martin hosted, he reprised his role of The Captain. He was teaching French to prisoners. When Bill Murray refused to answer the question, "How big is the cat?" in French, note he is punished, and Martin uses the iconic line, "What we've got here is... failure to communicate", in a different context.
- That '70s Show: After Kelso seemingly shoots Hyde in the eye with a BB gun in "Black Dog", Eric sarcastically says "Watch the gun, Cool Hand Luke".
Music
- Guns N' Roses's "Civil War" from Use Your Illusion II opens with Strother Martin's "What we've got here is... failure to communicate" speech Sampled Up.
Videogames
- Wasteland 2: At the farm just near the prison entrance one can find Jim Auwaerter and his bunch of foremen. If a battle ensues with them, Jim will cry out the phrase about the failure to communicate. There is also a quest to help Dekkar Firehawk find his dogs, one of which is called Cool Luke.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: In "The PTA Disbands", Jasper Beardley's "That's a paddlin'" speech, where he explains all the things that are punishable by paddling, parodies the "Night in the box" monologue.
