2 + 2 = 5 - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command, Part II", Picard is tortured by a Cardassian in a manner similar to a torture scene from Nineteen Eighty-Four. During the episode, the Cardassian officer tries to coerce Picard to admit seeing five lights when in fact there were only four. Picard valiantly sticks to reality. Near the end when Picard is about to be brought back to his crew, he defiantly declares, once again, "There are four lights!". However, later in a counselling session with Troi, Picard admits that he believed he did see five lights at the end.
• In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the hero John Galt posits that "the noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four". Responding to this claim, psychologist Albert Ellis wrote "Here Rand falsely notes that two and two make four: and that you are noble for grasping this 'fact.' She fails to note that two and two, definitionally make four; and that her own mind, apparently, isn’t sufficiently noble to acknowledge this definition."
• "2 + 2 = 5" (a.k.a. "The Lukewarm.") is the opening track on English rock band Radiohead's sixth album, Hail to the Thief, released in 2003.
• In the Abra-Catastrophe! special of The Fairly OddParents, multiple characters state that the magic "Fairy-versary" muffin is so extremely powerful that it could "make two plus two equal fish!".
• In presidential debates prior to 2009 Iranian presidential elections reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi accused his interlocutor, president Ahmadinejad, of being illogical and said: "If you ask (the president) what two by two makes he would answer five." In the following days one of the slogans chanted by Mousavi's supporters was "two by two makes five!"