Infinite Monkey Theorem in Popular Culture - Television and Radio

Television and Radio

• 1983 — In the Doctor Who episode "Mawdryn Undead", the Doctor mentions the theorem in passing (quoting it as "a treeful of monkeys"), stating to Tegan that "you and I both know, at the end of a millennium they'd still be tapping out gibberish." Tegan's response: "And you'd be tapping it out right alongside them."
• 1993 — In The Simpsons episode "Last Exit to Springfield", Montgomery Burns has his own room with 1000 monkeys at typewriters, one of which he chastises for mistyping a word in the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities — "'It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?' You stupid monkey!"
• 1998 - An advertisement for Molson Canadian beer depicts an array of typing chimpanzees filling a seemingly endless cathedral-like structure while a voice-over sardonically asks "Could an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters eventually define what it is to be Canadian?"
• 1998 - In the "Battle of the Sexists" episode of That '70s Show, Eric Forman yells after his girlfriend Donna Pinciotti scored during a game of basketball:

  "Pinciotti actually scores! Hell freezes over! A monkey types Hamlet!"

• 1998 — In the animated series Fat Dog Mendoza one of the series main villains, Doctor Rectangle, keeps a basement full of monkeys typing away on typewrites. The running gag is that Doctor Rectangle mistakenly believes that he can directly and practically use the infinite monkey theorem, using real monkeys and typewriters, to create a great work of literature or come up with a plan that will make him famous and/or powerful. It is also believed that, unbeknown to Doctor Rectangle, the monkeys are in fact very intelligent and just type things at random to amuse themselves and receive a steady income of bananas.
• 1999 — The infinite monkey theorem is the subject of a brief sketch in the Histeria! episode "Super Writers".
• 1999 — "A Troo Storee", an episode of I Am Weasel, features a large room filled with several types of monkeys with typewriters who are working on a novel. When Weasel tries to pay them in bananas, they consider it an insult and quit their job, all except for Baboon.
• 2000 — In the Family Guy episode "The King is Dead", Lois questions Peter's creativity, to which he replies:

  "Oh, art-schmart. Put enough monkeys in a room with a typewriter they'll produce Shakespeare."

  The scene then cuts to several monkeys in a room, arguing over which flower is most appropriate in the famous line from Romeo and Juliet.
• 2001 — In the sixth episode of the first season of The Ricky Gervais Show, comedian Ricky Gervais tries to explain this theorem to Karl Pilkington, who refuses to believe it possible. In attempting to explain the mathematics behind the theorem, Gervais eventually gives up and storms out of the room when, after a long explication by Gervais and Stephen Merchant, Karl says, "If they haven't even read Shakespeare, how do they know what they're doin?"
• 2004 - In "The Science Fair Affair" episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Sheen's science fair project is having an iguana sprawled on a typewriter under the assumption that it will "write the next great American novel".
• 2005 — At the end of the Robot Chicken episode "Badunkadunk", the Stoopid Monkey production logo's background is made up of upside-down text pertaining to the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
• 2005 — In the Veronica Mars episode "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang", Veronica, commenting on the sudden realization she did know David 'Curly' Moran says:

  "Somewhere, those million chimps, with their million typewriters, must've written King Lear."

• 2006 — In June 2006, The Colbert Report featured a humorous segment on how many monkeys it would take for various works. This was in response to comments made in the news on monkeys typing out the Bible or the Qur'an. According to Colbert, one million monkeys typing for eternity would produce Shakespeare, ten thousand (drinking) monkeys typing for ten thousand years would produce Hemingway, and ten monkeys typing for three days would produce a work of Dan Brown.
• 2007 — In an episode of the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (broadcast January and February 2007 in Canada and the USA), when Colleen Carlton copies scrambled letters obtained from the Grugeon Reliquary onto a dry board, Professor Adrian Korbel jokingly asks if she's testing the Infinite Monkey Theorem. When asked what this is, he replies:

  "Thomas Henry Huxley said if you gave keyboards to an infinite amount of monkeys, and gave said monkeys an infinite amount of time… Well it is safe to say…you are not the magic monkey."

• 2009 - "The Infinite Monkey Cage" is a "Witty, irreverent look at the world through scientists eyes. With Brian Cox and Robin Ince" on Radio 4 on the BBC.
• 2010 - BBC Horizon, To Infinity And Beyond
• 2011 - on an episode of the topical comedy programme Mock the Week, Comedian Micky Flanagan references it in a segment of "Scenes We'd Like to See."