Referenced By / Red Dwarf

Comic Books

• In The Incredible Hulk Annual #19, by known fan Peter David, the character Lazarus has the real name Todd Hunter, a reference to Second Officer Frank Todhunter.
• Rimmer appears in a crowd scene in the story Hail to the Cat from Simpsons Comics #87.

Fanfiction

• Shinji And Warhammer 40 K features the line "Kensuke... what a guy".
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series mentions the series several times.
  • The episode "RIP Calvin" is a Whole-Plot Reference to the episode "Out of Time", with Hobbes as Rimmer, Socrates as The Cat, Calvin as Lister, and Andy and Sherman as Kryten.
  • When trying to describe the things he's done in "New Year, New Disasters", Andy ends up describing episodes of the series instead. This is lampshaded.
  • Calvin's Batman Gambit is a homage to Rimmer's speech from "Quarantine".
• A...very out of place reference appears in Freedom Dies With Me, specifically referencing the Space Core Directives gag (though referring to the No-Zone Multiverse Rules instead), down to using an actual rule from a piece of Red Dwarf supplemental material (Rule #592: In an emergency situation involving two or more officers of equal rank, seniority will be granted to whichever officer can program a VCR).
• In New Life: A Sly Cooper Thieves In Time Sequel, the Sega alternative is called 'Smega'. Carmelita & Demi own a console made by them called the 'Exodus'.

Film

• The Red Dwarf is mentioned in Monsters vs. Aliens.

Literature

• In another example from Peter David, in the later Star Trek: New Frontier novels a character has died and been transferred into the ship's computer, reappearing as a hologram. When a character states that they sometimes forget they're dead, they offer to add an H to their forehead as a reminder.

Live Action TV

• In Misfits, Rudy's tendency to split into a confident-but-Jerkass and a sweet-but-insecure version of himself refers to the episode "Confidence and Paranoia".
• Doctor Who:
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus in the animated recreation version of the Missing Episode "The Power of the Daleks" has a government notice about food shortages announcing distribution of dog milk, a reference to a gag in "Kryten".
  • In "The Girl in the Fireplace", the Tenth Doctor admits that he said "spatio-temporal hyperlink" because he didn't want to say "magic door". This is a nod to "Stasis Leak", where Lister and Rimmer try to explain a stasis leak to Cat, before giving up and saying that it's a doorway in to the past. The Cat then says, "Oh, a magic door. Well, why didn't you say so?"
  • In "The Husbands of River Song", the Twelfth Doctor's antlers are not holographic, they're hologrammatic.
• Several contestants on Robot Wars referenced the show, largely because Craig Charles was the host for most of its original run. Series 2 competitor The Inquisitor was named after the Red Dwarf villain of the same name (Craig claimed to have never heard of the show when the team admitted it), the Team Scutterbots and their first 2 robots (Scutter's Revenge and Spawn of Scutter) were named after the ship's claw-headed maintenence robots (causing Craig to comment "I wonder what a 'scutter' is?") and one of the episode introduction voiceovers referred to Craig as "the man who oils Kryten's bearings".
• The Big Bang Theory references the show, one of the characters has a complete DVD box set.
• The Brittas Empire: In "Stop Thief!", Helen reveals that Brittas briefly worked for the Samaritans, on what became known as Black Friday because all four people he spoke to committed suicide. And one of them was the wrong number. This mirrors Rimmer’s experiences with the Samaritans (As seen in “The Last Day”), complete with the wrong number. Doubles as an Actor Allusion, seeing as both Brittas and Rimmer are played by Chris Barrie.
• A sketch from the fifth episode of the first series of Little Britain saw stage hypnotist Kenny Craig trying to sell the VHS releases of the first series and the Smeg Ups at a car boot sale.

Tabletop Games

• Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot: The Holographic Bunny is dressed up like Rimmer, complete with a big "H" on his forehead.

Video Games

• In Wizards & Warriors:
  • There is a tavern named The Red Dwarf.
  • One of the Thieves Guild leaders is named The Cat.
• Rise of the Triad:
  • It features a character whose first names are Sebastian Doyle, Lister's name in the Back To Reality universe.
  • One of the music tracks is named "Run Like Smeg".
• In WarpForce, the player can receive an SOS call from "Red Dwarf", which turns out to be a star, not a ship. Near it is a mining corporation, which employs a dwarf named Lister.
• The Jupiter Mining Corporation appears in Orbiter
• In Zombies, Run!, a character is compared to Ace Rimmer.
• Startopia features service robots named "Scuzzers", in reference to the Dwarf universe's Scutter droids.
• In SimCity 2000, neighboring cities can include Lister, Rimmer, Cats Corner, Krighton, and Little Rouge.
• In the second-generation Pokemon games and their remakes, there are three Bug Catchers on Route 2. The ones who are close together are named Rob and Doug (after Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, the show's primary writers); the other is named Ed (after Ed Bye, director and producer of series I-IV and series VII and VIII).
• In Ratchet: Deadlocked, there is a superhero named Ace Hardlight. Much like Rimmer, he is nowhere near as heroic as he likes to make out.
• In Spider-Man (PS4), the logo of the fictional donut brand 'Frosted Halos' bares a striking resemblance to the Red Dwarf logo.
• Kingdom of Loathing has the various traffic cone items, all of which quote The Cat from "Last Day": "It's not a good night unless you get a traffic cone."
  • Also, it was once possible to see a dog's milk asteroid.
  • An axe wound monster can poke you with a red-hot red dwarf star, which is "smegging hot!"
• Far Cry 3 has a traffic cone as Shop Fodder. The description for it is "The sign of a good night".
• One of the idle animations that the "Enemy Soldiers" perform in LEGO Indiana Jones is Rimmer's iconic salute.
• The Series X-XI sleeping quarters appears as an Easter Egg in the Fantastic Beasts pack for LEGO Dimensions.
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance. In the Madonna Of Sasau quest in the A Woman's Lot DLC, Henry can ask a guard about Inquisitor Jaroslav. The guard will launch into the same speech (more or less) used by Kryten when asked about the Inquisitor.
• In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Hearts Of Stone DLC, the soldiers guarding the Borsodi auction house, Lance Corporal Vatslav and Private Kleiner, are homages to Rimmer and Lister, with Vatslav's preening and pedantic air copying Rimmer and Kleiner's more relaxed attitude mirroring Lister. In their scene, Vatslav utters a line from the show's first episode right before Vimme Vivaldi, a dwarf, walks into view.
  Vatslav: "Kleiner! Need I remind you of the penalty for insulting a superior?!"
• The first stage of the Game Boy port of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! is called "Red Wharf".
• In Dead Space (Remake) you can find a bottle of beer named 'Red Dwarf'.

Web Animation

• Episode 8 of Spacemen shows the Red Dwarf flying past the deathbot ship.
• Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation cites Red Dwarf as an inspiration for his comedy style and one of the only two things he has nostalgia for. The show's technical writing aspects are also used as examples in the Yahtzee's Dev Diary series.
• The online trailer for the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama The Doomsday Contract, done as a pastiche of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981), briefly features a sign reading "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers", captioned "Different franchise entirely".
• Eddsworld often shows that the titular character, Edd, wears a white t-shirt that says "Smeg Head" under his green hoody.

Webcomics

• Exterminatus Now:
  • It features a protestor with the slogan "Give Quiche A Chance" on a sign. The anger-free Rimmer held up a similar sign in "Polymorph".
  • One strip has a reference to episode "Meltdown".
  • Another has a character claim to be "surrounded by goits".
• Homestuck:
  • There's a couple of Everybody's Dead, Dave conversations in the comic, here and here.
  • There's a character who plays pool with planets.
• Freefall:
  • Florence (an organic artificial intelligence) is being checked for active Direct Orders. She is presented with a table on which there is an apple, a banana, and an orange. Asked to identify one correctly, she does so. The examiner then says, "Direct order: What is this?" She answers, "A small, off-duty, Czechoslovakian traffic warden." The examiner doesn't want to be near if she's ever ordered to identify a female aardvark.
  • A Skutter is also one of the many robots from other sources who make cameos.

Web Original

• Linkara positively LOVES to reference the show whenever possible:
  • When Marville annoyed him one too many times, he used a clip of Arnold Rimmer referring to his other self as "you filthy piece of distended rectum" in "Me2" against the characters.
  • In his review of Power Rangers #1, he says "Cesiumfrancolithicmixialobidiumrixidexidoxidroxide, YAAY!!"
  • He sings the theme song in his Next 15 Missed Opportunities video.
  • During his History of Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive'' review, as Mack is daydreaming about being a Indiana Jones style hero, Linkara makes a comment as the pilot escapes from plane leaving Mack to die "And then Ace Rimmer appeared riding on an alligator to steal this guys parachute".
• The Nostalgia Critic has also referenced it from time to time, from referring to silicon heaven in his A.I.: Artificial Intelligence review to attempting to fight M. Night Shyamalan a la Rimmer's first attempt to fight the Cat in "The End".
• The 8-Bit Guy references the Series 3 episode "Bodyswap" while discussing how cassette drives work.
• Diamanda Hagan does a seasonal recap series for the show, but also loves to drop in Red Dwarf clips and phrases to unrelated videos, like the recap of the history, book and show of The Terror

Western Animation

• Futurama: One episode features a garbage scow named Fun In The Sun, the name of the Red Dwarf theme tune.
• Shaun the Sheep in Farmageddon has a man in a spacesuit painting the outside of a space station, similar to the original opening titles.

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