Cylon (1978) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the source code of Mozilla (and its Netscape predecessor), the indeterminate progress bar that slides back and forth — rather than rolling or filling up from left to right — is referred to as the "Cylon".
• A Cylon appears in the Futurama episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He’s part of the musical duo Cylon and Garfunkel, a parody of Simon and Garfunkel.
• In Farscape episode "I Shrink, Therefore I Am", Crichton's ship is invaded by a race with bioengineered exoskeletons. "This is John Crichton paging the head cylon, pick up the phone imperious leader."
• The classic Cylons have also appeared on The Simpsons on several occasions, the most notable in Mayored to the Mob during a sci-fi convention. There's a quick gag in a boxing arena where three Centurions square off against R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars. ("See the mighty robots from Battlestar Galactica fight the gay robots from Star Wars!") They easily pin C-3PO to the floor, and R2 refuses to help.
• In the FOX Animated Series Family Guy, the host of 'KISS Forum' also hosts 'Battlestar Galactica Forum' on Quahog's Public-access television cable TV channel. He introduces the forum by putting a classic Centurion mask on and saying "Welcome to Battlestar Galactica Forum" in traditional Cylon computerized-monotone.
• Several Cylons appear briefly in the South Park epic Imaginationland, as one of the evil fictional creations set free when the barrier between the "good" and "evil" halves of the imagination is destroyed by terrorists.
• In the opening credits of certain seasons of The A-Team, Dirk Benedict watches a Cylon walk past (while at the Universal Studios tour), raises a finger and opens his mouth as if to say something, then gives up. Dirk Benedict played the character Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica series. This scene is later recreated on the animated show Family Guy.
• In a third season episode of Knight Rider, "Halloween Knight", the episode villain is shown briefly in a Cylon mask. KITT's red LED forward scanner throughout the series, of course, is an homage to the Cylon's red eye, which oscillates back and forth while active while using the same sound effect. Both series were created by Glen A. Larson.
• Cylons were the focus of a short skit on the Adult Swim program Robot Chicken in which it is said that the original cylon actors had so many problems walking around in their suits that they were constantly falling down.
• A Cylon makes a brief appearance, firing off his blaster in the 'Alien Attack' section of the ride, in the final firefight scene of Beverly Hills Cop 3.
• A Cylon lookalike robot is featured in the official music video for Bloc Party's single, "Flux".
• In The Replacements episode "Space Family Daring", Riley finds a head of a Cylon in a cabinet onboard the spaceship.
• The re-imagined series shows that the original Cylon models were extremely similar to the ones from the original series.
• In the video game Persona 3 one of the items the player can buy is a drink called "Cylon Tea." (This may be a misspelling of "Ceylon"; this nation, now called Sri Lanka, is famous for the quality of its tea.)
• The album Programmed to Love by British electronica band Bent features the song "Cylons in Love".
• In SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the episode "Plankton's Army", Plankton uses a robotic fish that features a revolving light over its "eyes" that is highly reminiscent of the Cylons' eyes.
  • In another episode, "Komputer Overload" Plankton replaces his computer wife, Karen, with three robots made from random items lying around the Chum Bucket, one of which happens to be an old chrome-plated toaster, possibly meant to be a reference to the Colonials' nickname for the Cylon Centurions ("Toasters").
• In the Dark Horse Star Wars Comic series Tag and Bink, Cylons appear as the Emperor's Guards, Tag and Bink feature many other references to other Science Fiction Franchises.
• In the CBS program The Big Bang Theory The character Sheldon makes Cylon toast.