Homages
Clint Eastwood's western Pale Rider pays tribute to Shane with a similar plot and similar ending. The movie Nowhere to Run (1993) with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Rosanna Arquette was loosely based on Shane. The 1965 comedy western Cat Ballou spoofs Shane in various ways. Its buckskin-clad "good" gunfighter Kid Shelleen and black-clad villain Tim Strawn are obviously patterned after Shane and Jack Wilson, respectively, though in Cat Ballou the two adversaries turn out to be brothers. The McBain family funeral scene in the Sergio Leone epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is borrowed almost shot-for-shot from the funeral scene in Shane.
The 1984 album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking by British musician and Pink Floyd founder member Roger Waters references the movie Shane extensively. Mainly in the track "5.01AM" where audio samples from the movie are used to punctuate verses of the song.
It is also speculated that the animated series Cowboy Bebop based its final episode loosely on the ending as an homage.
The 1966 television series Batman featured a cowboy-themed villain called "Shame" played by Cliff Robertson. The storyline that introduces Shame also riffs on the film's famous catchphrase, featuring a young boy calling "Come back, Shame!"
The "Come back, Shane" catchphrase was also referenced by Charles M. Schulz in his Peanuts comic strip on occasion (see March 23, 1989 strip).
In the "Jerky Boys the Movie" Kamal says, "Come back Shane" when they show the Caravan Pictures logo.
In the 1998 film The Negotiator, Kevin Spacey's character tries to convince Samuel L. Jackson's character that viewers should conclude that Shane is dead at the end of the movie because he is slumped over his horse and unable to look back. Jackson's character contends that Shane's death is only an assumption. "Slumped don't mean dead," he says.
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