American Museum of Natural History - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the fourth volume of Mirage's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Michelangelo acts as a tour guide for visiting aliens. His first assignment is the Saurian Regenta Seri and her Styracodon bodyguards who wish to see the Museum, specifically the dinosaur exhibit.

• The AMNH is featured in the film An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island. Fievel Mousekewitz and Tony Toponi go to the AMNH to meet Dr. Dithering to decipher a treasure map they have found in an abandoned subway.

• Several scenes in the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow were set in the Museum's halls.

• A scene from the biographic film Malcolm X was filmed in the Hall of African Mammals.

• The 2005 movie The Squid and the Whale takes its name from the diorama of the giant squid and the sperm whale in the museum's Hall of Ocean Life. The diorama is shown in the film's final scene.

• The museum in the film Night at the Museum (2006) is based on a 1993 book that was set at the AMNH (The Night at the Museum). The interior scenes were shot at a sound stage in Vancouver, British Columbia, but exterior shots of the museum's façade were done at the actual AMNH. AMNH officials have credited the movie with increasing the number of visitors during the holiday season in 2006 by almost 20 percent. According to Museum president Ellen Futter, there were 50,000 more visits over the previous year during the 2006 holiday season. Its 2009 sequel, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, was partially set in this museum.

• An ending for the film We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story shows all four dinosaurs finally reaching the AMNH.

• The AMNH is featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV where it is known as the Liberty State Natural History Museum.

• The AMNH appears as a Resistance-controlled building in the Sierra game Manhunter: New York.

• Portions of the Sony PlayStation game Parasite Eve take place within the AMNH.

• The novel The Bone Vault, by Linda Fairstein (2003), features the museum.

• The Museum was the setting for the 1970 novel The Great Dinosaur Robbery by David Forrest, but was not featured in the film adaptation One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, which was set in the Natural History Museum in London, England.

• The novel Murder at the Museum of Natural History, by Michael Jahn (1994), features the museum.

• The novel Ritual, by William Heffernan (1989), features the museum.

• The Museum has appeared repeatedly in the fiction of dark fantasy author Caitlín R. Kiernan, including appearances in her fifth novel Daughter of Hounds, her work on the DC/Vertigo comic book The Dreaming (#47, "Trinket"), and many of her short stories, including "Valentia" and "Onion" (both collected in To Charles Fort, With Love, 2005).

• The novel Funny Bananas: The Mystery in the Museum, by Georgess McHargue (1975), features the museum.

• As the "New York Museum of Natural History", the Museum is a favorite setting in many Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child novels, including Relic, Reliquary, The Cabinet of Curiosities, and The Book of the Dead. F.B.I. Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast plays a major role in all of these thrillers. Preston was actually manager of publications at the Museum before embarking upon his fiction writing career.

• In J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield at one point finds himself heading towards the Museum, reflecting on past visits and remarking that what he likes is the permanence of the exhibits there.

• In 2009, the Museum hosted the live finale of the second season of The Celebrity Apprentice.

• On early seasons of Friends, Ross Geller works at the Museum.

• The museum is featured in the How I Met Your Mother episode Natural History, although it is renamed the Natural History Museum.

• An episode of Mad About You, titled "Natural History", is set in the museum.

• In a second season episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man titled "Destructive Testing", Spider-Man fights Kraven the Hunter in the Museum.

• In many episodes of the Time Warp Trio on Discovery Kids, Joe, Sam, and Fred are in the Museum; in one episode they see it 90 years into the future.

• In the episode Top Chef: All-Stars, "Night at the Museum", both the Quickfire Challenge and Elimination Challenge required the cheftestants to cook at the American Museum of Natural History.