1964 New York World's Fair - Cultural References

Cultural References

• The 1966 pilot episode of Batman, "Hi Diddle Riddle", opens with a daring robbery at the Gotham City World's Fair, using stock footage from the 1964 New York World's Fair.
• The 1966 Woody Allen play, Don't Drink the Water has the line "I'm a failure ... not just a little failure - I'm a big failure - like the World's Fair"
• The Riddler hides in the World's Fair in one episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
• New York native band They Might Be Giants has paid homage to the fair several times:
  • Ana Ng mentions the line "All alone at the Sixty-Four World's Fair / Eighty dolls yelling 'Small Girl After All'", a direct reference to the fair and the "It's a small world" attraction. It also mentions the DuPont Pavilion.
  • The band made the music video for their single "Don't Let's Start" at the former fair site, in Queens, New York.
  • The band performed a cover of the theme song to the Carousel of Progress ("There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow") on the soundtrack to the film Meet the Robinsons.
• The Unisphere, observatory towers, and New York state pavilion can be seen as a site in Grand Theft Auto IV as part of "Meadows Park" in the borough of Dukes.
• In the 1997 film Men in Black, the observation towers are revealed to contain the ships used by the first extraterrestrials to visit Earth. The World's Fair was organized to cover up the evidence of their landing ("Why else would they hold it in Queens?" says Agent K).
• The Flight of the Conchords TV show often films at Flushing Meadows Park, with the Unisphere and observatory towers as a backdrop.
• Queens based rap duo M.O.P. appears in front of the Unisphere throughout the video for their song "World Famous"
• The Unisphere and Tent of Tomorrow in Flushing Meadows, and part of World's Fair park appeared in CSI: NY's season 6 episode "Manhattanhenge".
• The fair was the inspiration and design for the Gotham City's World Fair in the 1993 animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
• The Simpsons episode "Marge vs. the Monorail" showed the poorly built monorail system starting to decay by showing the decal that says "Springfield Monorail" come undone, revealing that the original decal reads "1964 World's Fair Model".
• In the 2010 movie Iron Man 2, Flushing Meadow Park is where the fictional "Stark Expo 2010" and "Stark Expo '74" take place.
• The Unisphere and observation towers are a backdrop during a portion of the opening credits to the CBS comedy The King of Queens.
• In the "Get Shredder!" episode of 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show, Shredder and Krang use an abandoned building from the 1964 World's Fair as their hideout when they lose access to the Technodrome, which has ended up stuck in Dimension X.
• Parts of Universal Studios Florida in Orlando, Florida may have been inspired by the 1964 New York World's Fair. The entrance to the park has a globe that resembles the Unisphere with "Universal Studios" on it (although Universal Studios began using the globe as its logo decades earlier), and an area of the park called "World Expo" that features world music and flags of many nations. In 1999, the World Expo area expanded and opened the Men In Black: Alien Attack attraction with recreations of the old New York State Pavilion observatory towers in front of the building. The attraction itself is based on a fictional World's Fair pavilion. Visitors enter as tourists, but soon ride an elevator to the facility and learn that they are trying out to be a part of the Men in Black team.
• A Stella Artois commercial featured Belgium and the beer at the World's Fair with Japan's calculators and Soviet rocketry; however, the only nation featured that was actually at the Fair was Japan.
• The Flintstones and the Rubbles visit the 1964-5 New York World's Fair via a time machine in the television show, The Flintstones: Season 5, Episode 18, titled "Time Machine" (aired 15 Jan. 1965).