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 culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)