Vincent van Gogh / Referenced By

For references to his signature painting The Starry Night, go here.

Anime & Manga

Happy Heroes: In Season 8 episode 12, one of art teachers Little M. hires for Big M. is named Van Golf. According to Little M., his best-known work is a painting called the "Back of Sunflowers".
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean: Weather Report encounters Vincent van Gogh as one of the many figures brought by Bohemian Rhapsody, and because Weather was interested in Van Gogh's work, the Stand's effects forces him to reenact how Van Gogh died exactly.

Suske en Wiske: Lambik travels back in time to meet him in De Kleurenkladder. He shocks Van Gogh by making an abstract painting.
De Kiekeboes: In Hotel O. a man receives the keys to the Van Gogh room, while a servant brings a jar with sunflowers for the room. The hotel lobbyist advices him: Watch out when you're shaving!, a reference to Van Gogh's cut off ear.

Films — Animation

Loving Vincent: This is an animated film about the last few weeks of Van Gogh's life.
The Tigger Movie: At the start of the "Round My Family Tree" number, Tigger shows off Tigger-fied versions of various paintings, including one based on Van Gogh's self-portraits.

Films — Live-Action

Robert Altman's Vincent And Theo (1990) tells the story about the relationship between Vincent, played by Tim Roth, and his rich brother Theo.
In Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) during the segment Crows an art student (a character wearing Kurosawa's trademark hat who provides the POV for the rest of the film) finds himself inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world of Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the artist (played by Martin Scorsese) in a field and converses with him. The student loses track of the artist (who is missing an ear and nearing the end of his life) and travels through other works trying to find him. Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field with Crows is an important element in this dream.
Vincent And Me is about a girl whose paintings look like Van Gogh and whose work is actually sold under his name instead of hers.
At Eternitys Gate has Willem Dafoe play Van Gogh during the last period of his life.

Hit List by Lawrence Block. Dot has a You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! response when Keller talks of buying a painting by an artist he's been hired to kill.
“If you absolutely have to have a souvenir,” she said, “why don’t you cut off one of his ears? You’ll save yourself ten grand just like that. Anyone asks, you can tell ’em it was Van Gogh’s.”
In Like No Other Boy, Chris thinks of a painting chimpanzee as Chimp Van Gogh.
In Eye of a Fly, Ernest's brother Warren's paintings remind him of Vincent Van Gogh.
When recovering his memories in The Chronicles of Amber, the immortal Corwin remembers having been acquainted with Van Gogh, whom he thinks of as "mad, bad, sad Vincent van Gogh". He also thinks it's a shame that Van Gogh isn't there to paint the scene he's looking at.

Live-Action TV

The Irving Stone novel Lust For Life, adapted to the big screen as the Kirk Douglas film Lust For Life is based on his life.
The Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor" had the Doctor and Amy meet Van Gogh. The episode's ending is considered by many to be one of the most poignant pieces ever put to broadcast: The Doctor decides to bend the rules of time travel to take Vincent into the modern day to visit an art museum... where he learns that in the future he is admired as one of the greatest painters to have ever lived, but sadly it isn't enough to alleviate years of poor mental health and he still commits suicide - he does however dedicate Sunflowers to Amy.
An episode of The Nanny featured this one-liner:
Fran: Oh, you heard me?
Niles: Van Gogh heard you. He's dead AND missing an ear.

Music

"Vincent", a ballad by Don McLean from his album American Pie.
While it doesn't actually name him, the His Name Is Alive song "Ear" is about Van Gogh's infamous act of self-mutilation.

Newspaper Comics

Theatre

Three operas have been based on his life, among them Vincent (1990), composed by the Finn Einojuhani Rautavaara.

Video Game

Fate/Grand Order: He shows up, with an Historical Gender Flip, under the "Foreigner" Class. In actuality, the Van Gogh of that game is actually the Greek water nymph Clytie given the powers and memories of the actual (male) Van Gogh. She was created by an Outer God (speculated to be the very one that inspired some of his paintings, including The Starry Night) due to the actual Vincent refusing to have any part in its schemes to the point of killing himself.
Luigi's Mansion: Vincent Van Gore is an obvious parody of Van Gogh (though inexplicably French instead of Dutch), he's apparently never sold a painting in his lifetime, kept painting long after death and brought numerous ghosts to life from the artwork in his studio.

Web Video

Star Trek Continues: In "The White Iris", Captain Kirk is entrusted with the password for a planetary defense grid, but suffers a head injury and cannot remember it. After getting some issues sorted out, he remembers it is "Irises". Spock looks up the painting Irises by Vincent van Gogh, which he believes van Gogh meant to symbolize loneliness, and suspects that is why Kirk chose that as the password.

Western Animation

Animaniacs: In "Roll Over, Beethoven", after dealing with Beethoven, the Warners go next to see Vincent van Gogh.
His clone counterpart appears sporadically in Clone High. In his first appearance, he's voiced by Andy Dick and depicted as an emo kid, curled up in his bedroom in Arles while talking on the phone to Ghandi about his depression. When Ghandi puts him on speaker phone so everyone at a party can laugh at him, Van Gogh takes vengeance by painting a naked mural of Ghandi in front of the school.

Referenced By / Vincent van Gogh