Referenced By / The Love Boat

Films - Live-Action

• In the middle of a jailbreak in Airplane II: The Sequel, Jack Jones appears in the light of a searchlight singing the theme.
• In Demolition Man, Lanina's apartment plays the show's theme as mood music.
• The Running Man. A poster in Killian's office shows a cruise ship on fire and the title The Hate Boat.
• In One-Trick Pony, Marion tells Jonah that Matty persuaded her to let him stay up late to watch The Love Boat.

Literature

• In Eye Contact, Morgan's mother is anti-TV because she wasted her childhood watching "trash" like The Love Boat.

Live-Action TV

• Birds of a Feather: In "Sailing", Sharon brings up the series when trying to guilt trip Tracey over giving away her cruise ship tickets to Dorien and Marcus.
• Saturday Night Live also made a parody on an episode guest-starring Patrick Stewart: The Love Boat: The Next Generation (complete with surprise cameo by Bernie Kopell).
• Short Ribbs had a sketch called "The Hate Boat", in which the cruise ship became a World of Jerkass. It is the third sketch in this compilation video.
• Weird Science: "Chett-A-Nator" from Season 4 sees the group abducted by aliens. In a recreation of Wyatt's room, Ted Lange suddenly appears to serve the guys drinks, and Wyatt immediately recognizes him from The Love Boat (with a little riff on the theme song thrown in for good measure). When the oddness of this is pointed out, he explains he's just a recreation doing A Form You Are Comfortable With to try to make this situation more relaxing for them. The guys quickly make their escape out a vent.
  Wyatt: See ya. Say hi to Doc.
  [Ted points appreciatively]

Magazines

• MAD did a parody called "Lust Boat".

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street did a sketch with Ernie and some Anything Muppets, called "I Love This Boat".

Web Original

• This mash-up of Star Trek and Love Boat
• In a similar spirit, Titanic Love Boat.

Western Animation

• Phineas and Ferb, of all things, had a parody with "Boat of Romance".
• Robot Chicken:
  • One sketch had the show as part of a VH1 countdown of the best final episodes.
  • There was later an "Indian Love Boat" sketch. In it, the singer of the main theme was uncomfortable with not being sure whether the sketch was progressive or racist and asked to just go to the next one.
• The 1979 animated special Scooby Goes Hollywood had Shaggy and Scooby on The Love Ship.
• South Park did one called "The Catholic Boat", making fun of the priest sexual predator scandals.