Referenced By / The Phantom of the Opera

Four Phantoms for the price of one.^{The Phantoms' origins, from left to right} Lon Chaney (1925), Herbert Lom (1962), Claude Rains (1943), and the novel's version

These are works that have made a Shout-Out to The Phantom of the Opera in some form or another.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• The episode Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine "Vissi d'arte, Vissi d'amore" is a reference to the book. The phantom turns out to be the boyfriend of the opera singer Aiyan, who is living underground with him since people wouldn't approve their relationship.

Asian Animation

• Bread Barbershop: In "Choco's Blind Date", Bagel offers Choco to go to a play called The Phantom of the Office with him. It's actually a different play meant to give Bagel a chance to propose to Choco.

Comic Books

• The Phantom is a minor character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• During "The Witch and the Warrior" Wonder Woman's fight with a brainwashed Superman takes them past a billboard advertising the Broadway musical the Phantom of Gotham, complete with a white mask and red rose on a black background.
• Wonder Woman (1942): Bedwin Footh is a bitter actor who wears a mask and lives in the sewers and tunnels beneath a theater.

Fanworks

• In Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail, Atticus is shown reading this book.
• Princess Tutu Abridged: Episode 12, also known as The Prince and the Raven: The Abridged Musical, parodies the refrain from "Phantom of the Opera" in "The Raven of the Ballet", which, by pure coincidence of the source material, also features an underground lake set piece and a kidnapped lover.
  Fakir: (sees underground lake) Let me guess...
  [Opening chords from "Phantom of the Opera" play]
  Fakir: Called it.
• The Ultimate Evil: Valerie Payne reads a passage from the book at two different points to illustrate how she and Shendu view one another.

Films — Live-Action

• El Fantasma De La Opereta is a Mexican parody of The Phantom of the Opera.
• High School Musical: Chad mentions his mother has seen the musical 27 times and is obsessed with Michael Crawford, the original actor who played Phantom in London and on Broadway, in an attempt to dissuade Troy from doing the school musical.
  Chad: [If] you play basketball, you're gonna end up on a cereal box. If you sing in musicals, you're gonna end up in my mom's refrigerator.
• Rigoletto is a modified telling of Beauty and the Beast with elements of The Phantom of the Opera.

Literature

• The Case Files of Ibrahim Helsing has a character named The Phantom of the Opry as part of a Noodle Incident.
• Goosebumps: The book "Phantom of the Auditorium" centers around a ghost haunting Brooke and Zeke's middle school when their class decides to revive a cancelled play from 70 years ago. The ghost in question fits the Theatre Phantom trope, and the play itself is blatantly based on the original Phantom (to the point that the Raoul expy Eric outright got his name changed to Raoul when the book was turned into a musical itself).
• Phantom is based on the original novel with influences of the musical.
• The Phantom of Manhattan serves as a sequel to the musical.
• Maskerade is Terry Pratchett's Discworld parody of the novel.
• In There's More Than One Way Home, Anna thinks that her dining room chandelier is worthy of The Phantom of the Opera.
• In Wicked Good, Archer's mother Rose has the Phantom of the Opera as her ringtone.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: A couple of times.
  • The story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" partially homages the novel with its plot element of a hideously-disfigured madman hanging around a nineteenth-century London music hall.
  • In "The Caves of Androzani", horribly-scarred and masked Anti-Villain Sharez Jek has a Stalker with a Crush fixation on the Doctor's companion Peri which is obviously inspired by Erik and Christine.
• In an episode of 227, after the third night in a row that the Jenkins' cousin Ed has roamed the hallways, moping about his wife leaving him, one of the other tenants angrily snaps "Who does he think he is, The Phantom Of 227?!"

Music

• Iron Maiden (Album) includes a song called "Phantom Of The Opera".

Video Games

• BlazBlue: Relius Clover's design, along with his interest for opera, is inspired by the Phantom.
• Fate/Grand Order features the titular character as a summonable Assassin-class servant, and appears as a Berserker-class servant in Shinjuku.
• Psychonauts: Gloria Von Gouton's Mental World is represented as a theater production plagued by an individual known as The Phantom. When Raz finally catches up with him, he realizes that the Phantom is just Jasper Rolls, Gloria's inner Caustic Critic, wearing a disguise. Jasper initially denies Raz's accusations of being the "rugged and romantic scoundrel that has thrilled and terrified audiences for years," until Raz lampshades how Jasper is too fat to actually be the Phantom; Jasper becomes enraged and admits that it's him.

Webcomics

• Roommates features characters from the novel as regulars.
• Girl Genius includes a fairly unsubtle reference to Gil rescuing Zola from "some overly dramatic maniac who lived in the Paris Opera House."

Web Video

• Lindsay Ellis: Theater nerd Lindsay did a few videos referencing the novel and musical adaptations:
  • Her Loose Canon two-parter on the history of the novel and its adaptations, split into before and after the musical adaptation.
  • Her video essay on The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
  • Her video essay on the musical's sequel, Love Never Dies, which by necessity talks about the original musical and The Phantom of Manhattan.
• The Nostalgia Critic: In his review of Rock-A-Doodle, the Critic calls the Grand Duke of Owls "The Phantom of the Owl-pera".
• Really Freakin' Clever: In "64 Things WRONG With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Part 4", upon noticing the Forest Temple's boss is named Phantom Ganon, Joshua sings a parody of "The Phantom of the Opera".
• Wait In The Wings:
  • "The Tragedy of Phantom & Grizabella" parallels Andrew Lloyd Weber's two most iconic musical characters as outcasts, the titular Phantom (himself an adaptation of the novel's Phantom) and Grizabella from Cats.
  • "The Rise & Fall of the Phantom Chandelier", released in honor of the Broadway musical's impending closure in 2023, detailed the origin of the novel's falling chandelier and creation of the chandelier set piece for the West End and Broadway.
  • The musical also inevitably comes up in any discussions about Andrew Lloyd Weber and megamusicals in general, which come up in multiple videos.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In "The Phantom of the Telethon", Roger dresses up as the Phantom to sabotage Stan's telethon as revenge for stealing his idea.
• Arthur: In "Love Notes for Muffy", Francine tells the Brain to let go of his grudge against Muffy before he "becomes some crazy guy living up in the school rafters dropping chandeliers on people."
• Count Duckula: has the Phantom and his manservant as guest villains in the episode 'A Fright at the Opera.' They reappear in the Villain Team-Up episode 'Venice a Duck Not a Duck'.
• Dead End: Paranormal Park: "Phantom of the Theme Park" is, appropriately, the Musical Episode and has a title song that is a clear homage to the title song from the musical.
• Family Guy: A Cutaway Gag from "Deep Throats" features Peter and Lois attending the Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, and Peter demands that the Phantom reveal the ugly side of his face so he can leave. "That nose better be piggy!"
• In an episode of Milo Murphy's Law, Milo and Melissa go to see Llamalet, Shakespeare's Hamlet with an all-llama cast. On their way to the theatre, posters are seen for a number of similar shows, including Phantom of the Llama. Melissa notes that some of the titles were better than others.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "A Kirin Tale", Autumn Blaze goes off on a tangent about a story she tried to tell her village that is a blatant reference to the stage version of Phantom.
  They didn't like my jokes and songs
  And daily dose of news
  The plays I wrote, the speeches spoke
  Variety revues
  Or the story about the Kirin who hid below an opera stage
  (spoken) And fell in love with this opera singer, and he wore a freaky half-mask thing, and he played the organ a lot and got all broody 'cause the singer was in love with another dude, so he took her away on this underground gondola. I mean, who doesn't love musical theater?!
• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The 1930 short Spooks is a parody of the 1925 film (which was being reissued with sound that same year).
• In the Musical Episode of Phineas and Ferb, Phineas' number includes a montage of the boys homaging various musicals, including himself as the Phantom and Ferb as Christine.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016): In "Bubbles of the Opera", Bubbles wears a half-mask, hood and cape to hide her disfigured face.
• The Real Ghostbusters: in episode, also called 'A Fright at the Opera' the ghostbusters have to deal witha bunch of ghostly Valkries. The Phantom appears at the end, leaving in a huff due to the noise.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • The New Scooby-Doo Movies: The title "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" refers to The Phantom of the Opera, though the episode itself doesn't follow the plot.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The episode "In Fear of the Phantom" is about a phantom controlling a theatre, causing accidents and kidnapping a young female singer.
  • The direct-to-video movie Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright centers around the gang trying to catch a Phantom that's terrorizing an opera house where an America's Got Talent-like reality show is being filmed, and the entire movie is littered with references to both the original and other adaptations. There's actually multiple Phantoms, two of which serve as a Decomposite Character to the original Phantom — one of the four modern-day Phantoms is a Stage Dad who wants his daughter Chrissy (Christine) to win and sabotages the other contestants (including an expy of Carlotta), and the original Phantom was so convinced he was ugly that he hid away from the outside world (turns out he's just never seen himself in a non-funhouse mirror before).
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Flaming Moe's", Homer imitates the Phantom when he reveals the secret ingredient of the Flaming Moe to everyone.
  • In "Lisa's Wedding", it is shown that Martin Price faked his death in the future and is now living below the school à la the Phantom. He ends up playing "A Fifth of Beethoven" on his pipe organ.
  • In "The Italian Bob", Krusty lets the Simpsons appear in his Roman opera to protect them from Sideshow Bob, and Homer asks if he can play the Phantom.
    Lisa: Dad, the Phantom isn't in this.
    Homer: But I do a great impression of him. "A-a-a-a-h! I am the gayest supervillain ever!"
  • In Guillermo del Toro's opening for "Treehouse of Horror XXIV", Mr. Largo is conducting four different Phantoms (three as played by Lon Chaney, Herbert Lom and Claude Rains, plus one based on the cover of the original novel). Largo himself is dressed up as the Phantom of the Paradise.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Something Smells", Patrick walks on SpongeBob, who believes he is ugly, hiding in his house playing a pipe organ while wearing Groucho glasses.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): in the episode 'Phantom of the Sewers'. Shredder even posed at the Phantom in another episode.