Popular Culture References
"Klaatu barada nikto" has been used extensively in popular culture. The Robot Hall of Fame describes the phrase as "one of the most famous commands in science fiction" and Frederick S. Clarke of Cinefantastique called it "the most famous phrase ever spoken by an extraterrestrial."
Two instances where the phrase is used as a command are the films Toys and Army of Darkness. In the film Toys, the character Leland Zevo speaks the phrase to stop a rampaging robotic sea creature he calls the "Seaswine". In the film Army of Darkness of the Evil Dead series, Ash has to speak similar words in order to retrieve the Necronomicon but fails to remember it properly ("Klaatu... verata... n... Necktie. Nectar. Nickel. Noodle."). In the end he speaks the words again after consuming a potion, allowing him to return to his era. The words were altered from their original use because their meaning was unclear in the original.
"Baradas nicto" appears on the inner sleeve of the 1977 Chrome album Alien Soundtracks.
The phrase has also been used humorously as is the case when Senator Alan K. Simpson's office used it. The June 7, 1994, edition of the now-defunct supermarket tabloid Weekly World News reported that 12 U.S. Senators were aliens from other planets, including Simpson. Then-Senator Simpson's spokesman Charles Pelkey, when asked about Simpson's galactic origins, told the Associated Press: "We've got only one thing to say: Klaatu barada nikto."
Approximately 26 minutes into the 1982 film Tron, the words are seen posted on a sign hanging in Alan Bradley's cubicle.
In the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, two of Jabba the Hutt's skiff guards reference this phrase: one guard is an alien of the Nikto species named Klaatu, and another is an alien of the Klatooinian species, named Barada.
The phrase was used by Commander John Crichton in the T.V. series Farscape, in the season 4 episode "I Shrink Therefore I Am".
Protagonist Charlie Baker speaks the words in the play The Foreigner by Larry Shue (who misspells Klaatu's name). At first Charlie, a meek proofreader for a science fiction magazine, tells a friend, "I sometimes wonder whether a science-fiction magazine even needs a proofreader. Does anyone really care whether there is one K or two in "Klatu, barada, nikto"? Later, he uses the phrase as part of a tirade against a superstitious Ku Klux Klansman who is threatening to lynch him:
"You—dare—to—affront—me? I, who have lain in wait, lo, these many centuries for such a night as this! ... I, child of Hrothgar and of Moloch! I, whom the Old Ones have given suck, to rise now from the forest mold and smite thee! Klatu! Barada! Nikto! ... You dare to sneer at me! You—puny earthling!"Read more about this topic: Klaatu Barada Nikto
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“Parents’ ability to survive a child’s unabating needs, wants, and demands...varies enormously. Some people can give and give....Whether children are good or bad, brilliant or just about normal, enormously popular or born loners, they keep their cool and say just the right thing at all times...even when they are miserable themselves, inexhaustible springs of emotional energy, reserved just for children, keep flowing unabated.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)