There’s a riff in “MST3K: The Movie” that must baffle young people watching it today: As a plane comes in for a crash landing, Mike yells “Look out President Clinton!” It’s a reference to this largely forgotten 1994 incident.
With that in mind, alert regular Steve suggests:
What’s your favorite outdated reference in an episode riff? Mine is from The Touch Of Satan when Servo comments, “Look at those high gas prices. Where are they, Port Au Prince?” on a sign showing what now looks like a comparatively low ppg.
Mine would be from episode 610- THE VIOLENT YEARS. Movie: “A nice little conspiracy, for a nice young man.” Mike: “Like Whitewater.”
What’s yours?
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Another Japanese economy riff – in the first Master Ninja, when the Japanese guys enter the Prancing Ninny’s nightclub, the riff is “Hi, we’re here to buy everything.”
I didn’t word my post right, let me clarify it:
Where they make commentary about how difficult and complicated logging onto the internet is with such little to show for it.
OT: Anyone see the movie Single White Female? That movie contains a scene where the characters are logging into the Internet. In 1992. It’s hilarious how primitive and plain the Information Superhighway was back then.
Monster A-Go Go: Scientist wanders around in a field with an instrument that looks a bit like a radar gun. Servo says he’s going to clock Nolan Ryan’s fastball.
There’s also at least one O.J. Simpson-is-a-criminal reference in another episode, though I don’t remember which one at the moment.
Funny, I just mentioned the “Mathias Rust” riff about the 19 year old who flew, and landed his Cessna 172 in the middle of Red Square in Moscow, flying from Finland into the then USSR without getting shot down.
But my fav probably is in The Crawling Eye, where the two mountain climbers finally make it to the cabin, and they hear something outside. Crow says “It could be the pizza man.” ( or perhaps the pizza “van”, I never could tell.) Ultimately Servo refers to the sounds as “the Noid” the devilish creature who mucked up your pizza order unless you ordered from Domino’s.
Having just watched the re-release of “Manos” the other day, the freshest then-current reference I can think of is the scene where Torgo plays peeping Tom on Maggie. As he’s oogling at her undressing, Crow says, “It’s the latest edition of the Tasters’ Choice saga!” I remember those (somewhat pretentious) commercials of the early 1990’s, which involved a man and woman neighbors exchanging encounters. The instant coffee being promoted always seemed remotely included amidst the mini-drama that these two people were always involved in.
Yeah, I should rephrase that. Nobody who’s under the age of 20 will understand that skit or the Big Me video unless they’re of a certain age. Those stupid commercials were everywhere. Mike really nailed that goofy face.
Another topical riff somebody probably mentioned already is from Santa Claus conquers the Martians when they say something about baseball bats going to the LAPD. I guess people would still get that joke now though.
I remember a lot of baseball references, e.g. to Kirby Puckett (Phantom PLanet), Chuck Knoblauch (Mole People) and not on the Twins, Cecil Fielder(Prince of Space). In the latter, the giant mutant guardian full-figured shape is compared to Fielder; funny thing is, you could now just replace it with Prince Fielder (his son) and the joke would work. Wait — Prince of Space/Prince Fielder…coincidence? We think not!
From the “Catching Trouble” short…
Narrator:Hey,don’t you know you’re wanted in Chicago?
Joel:For voting twice?
Isn’t that always topical for Chicago? (That and the Cubs sucking…)
“Would you like to make more money? Sure, we all would.”
and in response to “Pusher Man!” from Angels Revenge, “Cookie Man!”
I don’t watch commercials anymore because I can still remember too many of the old ones.
I also remember when “Johnson Sununu goes for a haircut” used to be funny.
Season 6 is definitely a product of its time – practically every episode screams “1994”, from Crow trying to log on to the “information superhighway” to Mike turning into Brad Roberts of the Crash Test Dummies to Frank being brainwashed by Speed and trying to blow up Deep 13. “Racket Girls”, however, seems to be the most topical episode of the year, with riffs like “I don’t like the new ‘Models Inc.’ storyline”, “This is where Forrest Gump shows up”, and “I knew if baseball went on strike, other sports would take over!”, not to mention Lisa Loeb showing up in the Hexfield. “I thought she was Courtney Hole!”
Season 8 got pretty topical too, with a lot of jokes specific to the culture of 1997. Kevin Murphy said in one interview that he was a little embarrassed when they did “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and built the climactic payoff of the host segments around an Adam Duritz joke, knowing what a short shelf life it would doubtlessly have.
That Adam Duritz bit will continue to have relevance and merit as long as the radio keeps playing the Counting Crows. I feel his power to annoy is up permanently up there with Joe Cocker’s ability to stagger.
I remember a few jokes from the early 1990s about Ross Perot, who now seems forgotten by history. The best was in The Day the Earth Froze, when the Sampo is producing gold coins and Crow says “This is what it would’ve been like if Perot had won.”
I think it was a Christmas Riftrac but Kevin Murphy started singing poker face by lady gaga haha. Im to young to know a lot of what theese mean!xD
Great topic!
One of my favorites is from “A Case of Spring Fever,” when the protagonist is examining his pocket watch and Servo chimes in, “My Tamagotchi seems OK!” What sells the line is that he says it in Bobo voice, which makes it even funnier.
From the final episode:
“DAN QUAYLE ANNOUNCES HIS CANDIDACY!!!”
What I love most about this riff is Servo says it over a shot of news reporters laughing.
For a riff that has become more topical Now than Then would be in some early episodes (I forget which but remember it from more than one) where Danny Elfman was ragged on for not being able to come up with a memorable tune. Elfman’s early career provided a lot I can’t forget (i.e. the Simpsons theme) so those digs at ol’ Danny boy never made much sense to me until about 1997 and every following year progressively so.
I forget the episode but I remmeber Traces’ Crow saying over the establishing shot of a small boat at sea ‘Mr Maxwell….Mr Maxwell…? As a Brit, most of the American popculture riffs passed me by on first viewing, so riffs like this one stood out; Robert Maxwells was a notorious UK newspaper publisher and his suicide was a very big deal at the time.
There’s a joke about how bad Crystal Pepsi was in one episode, delivered by Tom Servo I believe. Probably won’t hear a lot of jokes about that these days.
In Prince of Space, the Japanese business men are shocked by something off-screen, and Servo says, “Ah! Speed!” Speed was a Japanese version of the Spice Girls popular at the time (at least for Japan).
In Jack Frost, as the feather floats across the screen, Servo wants the feather to kill Forrest Gump since, by then, everyone had enough of Forrest Gump jokes.
#69 Atomic Womble
That might be in Bloodlust. Or Killer Shrews. Or…
But in any case I imagine a British band couldn’t play Dixieland Jazz, right captain?
Are you sure that wasn’t just a Speed Racer reference?
…that was directed at Josh P’s comment, by the way.
I’m fairly sure there was a reference to the woods being crammed with Y2K survivalists, maybe in Boggy Creek 2 but I’m not sure. I actually liked Crystal Pepsi. Regular pepsi is the problem.
I’ve been offline all weekend and just got to see this. When I suggested this thread I KNEW the scene was from Werewolf and when I typed it my brain said, “No! You mean ‘Touch Of Satan'”! Dumb, stupid brain. I really enjoyed reading everyone else’s comments though!
In MST3K: The Movie when part of the ceiling falls on the mutant someone says “It’s the Kingdome!” Tile’s from the arena’s ceiling had collapsed over a seating area before a game.
“Wow! Thirtytwo pages for Gwen Stephani alone!”
“Ride Morrisy’s Wild Mouse!”
“This sounds like something from side 5 of SANDINISTA!”
I like the references to the Coors TV commercials of the time. “Men! Commence to tap the rockies!” and I think Joel says “Shouldn’t a giant dog appear, chasing a giant frisbee?” when he sees the snowy mountain peaks.
From Alien from L.A. – Servo quips about “Captain Ron’s boat,” which elicits a disgusted groan from Mike.
Captain Ron, 1992, another sad chapter in the film career of the otherwise pretty awesome Kurt Russell. Not a politically topical reference, to be sure, but who the hell knows anything about Captain Ron these days? You’d be better off referencing Soldier. Er, maybe not.
P.S. – Did you know that Soldier is apparently set in the same universe as Blade Runner? Think about THAT.
Love all of these! But there were a couple that came to my mind right away.
In Prince of Space they say something like “Those Heaven’s Gates people were supposed to meet us here”
and
Boggy Creek “Checking on the land they bought from the Clintons”
oh, and
Soultaker “George Clooney’s taking his shirt off!”
For anybody who doesn’t know what they were talking about. Look it up! Be informed! Know your history!
From the Brain that Wouldn’t Die- When we see a bunch of tubes and bottles filled with drugs leading to Jan in the Pan’s head, Crow says something like “It’s Kurt Cobain’s house”. This was aired on 10-30-93, less than six months before Cobain’s death.
Wild Rebels where there is a Nazi flag in the backround and I think it’s crow that says something about the David Duke campaingn. Then there is that awful singer in Mixed Up Zombies that Tommy and Mike start singing the lyrics to Baby Got Back. I still get a kick out of those to this day.
I think it was very prophetic that Mike says, “I’m beginning to agree with the Taliban – dancing should not be allowed,” in Horror of Party Beach. In 1999, when very few of us had ever heard of them.
And Pearl: “He’s reading Ye Firm.”
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