Literature
- Terry Pratchett's Mort:
- The narration says that through natural selection, the royal families which lasted the longest on the Disc were those who could recognize an assassin in the dark from the noises they were clever enough not to make- forget peas and mattresses. In both cases, royalty is portrayed as royally sensitive.
- While reminiscing on the good old days, Death's cook Albert mentioned that the princess used to be '...as beautiful as the day was long and could pee through a dozen mattresses- or something like that.'.
- Sesame Street has parodied the story a few times with their News Flash sketches:
- One sketch is called "The Pricness and the Cookie", where a Cookie is hid under ten mattresses, and Cookie Monster takes on the role of the princess. He eats the cookie, but not before eating the mattresses.
- Another sketch is called "The Princess and the C". In this sketch, the princess is unable to sleep because she has a letter C under her mattress instead of a pea, along with things that begin with C; a cactus, a coconut, a clarinet, a crocodile, and a clock.
- Rugrats (1991):
- In "Princess Angelica", Angelica, believing that she's a real princess, has the babies run a few tests to see if it's true. Her second test involves her seeing if she can feel a pea under a lot of blankets. As she explains this test, Lil asks if she's a real princess since she can feel it when Phil pees through a lot of blankets. Angelica tells her that it just makes them both disgusting. Since Chuckie ate the pea Angelica was going to use for the test, she uses a fork as a substitute.
- In the "Acorn Nuts and Diapey Butts" three-parter, the first part begins with Grandpa Lou reading the babies the story of The Princess and the Pea while on a hayride, only to fall asleep halfway through the story. In the second part, after Lou leaves Tommy's house to go to Withering Oaks, Tommy tries to act like Lou so that Dil won't miss him. This includes "reading" the same storybook before falling asleep. Dil is unimpressed with Tommy's impression, and Tommy admits it's not the same at his house without Lou. The third part ends with Lou taking another crack at reading the story, only to fall asleep in the same place, with Lulu taking over and actually managing to finish the story before falling asleep herself.
