In The Navy - Pop-culture Occurrences

Pop-culture Occurrences

• The Spanish group Parchís covered this song in 1979, and became one of their most popular songs. The cover was titled En la armada, sung in Spanish, and covered again by other groups with the same lyrics of Parchís. It is possibly the first cover of the song, and definitely the first in Spanish.
• Captain Jack rerecorded a cover of the song and it was parodied by Billy Connolly as "In the Brownies".
• The song is performed during a sketch on The Muppet Show, in which Viking Pigs raid an unnamed village whilst singing the song.
• Japanese female pop duo Pink Lady had a top 10 hit in Japan in 1979 with a cover of "In the Navy" titled "Pink Typhoon" (see the Japanese Wikipedia article), which substituted the words "Pink lady" ("Pin-ku re-di") for "In the navy" in the song's chorus and "I want you, you want Mie/I want you, you want Kei" (referring to group members Mie Nemoto and Kei Masuda) for "They want you as a new recruit."
• The song is played in The Simpsons episode "Simpson Tide" (where it's identified as an "ancient sea shanty"!) and it ends as a submarine submerges (taking the Village People, and Smithers, with it). It is also briefly sung by The Sea Captain in the episode "Mr. Plow".
• In the game Grand Theft Auto III, there is a gay pedestrian who will occasionally say "In the navy!"
• The finale of the 2000 Leslie Nielsen comedy 2001: A Space Travesty features a performance of "In the Navy" sung by impersonators of the Three Tenors.
• An updated music video version of the song, featuring the cast of the film along with the Village People is in the end credits of the movie Down Periscope.
• The Israeli pop-rock band "Tislam" has a very famous line in on of their greatest hits, "Tnu Li Rockn'Roll" (Give me Rock 'n'Roll), that says "Hoshavt oti Ba'cheder etmol ad meuchar, lishmo'a Indeonezi shel Anshei Hakfar" (You sat me down in the room yesterday evening, to hear "Indinezi" by The Village People). This line was written after the songwriter, Yair Nitzani, was a DJ at a club where people kept asking him to put on the song "Indonezi" (meaning "Indonesian") because they misheard the real name of the song. This is an example of a mondegreen, the mishearing of a phrase such that it acquires a new meaning.
• The Japanese singer Teppei Shibuya also covers the song on his cd "On-Demand", this version being a full translation of the original song, except for the chorus.