Welcome Back, Kotter - After The Show

After The Show

Kaplan welcomed back Hegyes and Jacobs on his short-lived 1981 sitcom, Lewis & Clark. Their characters joked that Kaplan seemed familiar and being a smart guy, "should become a teacher."

The Simpsons referenced the sitcom in the fourth season episode Selma's Choice (episode 9F11), first aired on 21 January 1993. Marge is impressed to find one of the Sweathogs listed as a donor in the Springfield Sperm Bank’s “101 Frozen Pops” catalog. She is disappointed, however, to learn from Selma that it’s not Horshack.

When Travolta hosted Saturday Night Live in 1994, he appeared in a sketch that lampooned his old show. Quentin Tarantino's Welcome Back, Kotter gave viewers a humorous look at how the Pulp Fiction director might have brought a strong dose of violence to the tame show. Travolta reprised his old character, Barbarino, with Mike Myers as Mr. Kotter, Adam Sandler as Epstein, Tim Meadows as Washington and David Spade as Horshack.

In 1997, Hegyes, Jacobs and Palillo reprised their Sweathog roles on an episode of the NBC sitcom Mr. Rhodes. Kaplan did not appear; instead, John Kassir assumed the role of Mr. Kotter. The episode originally aired on February 3, 1997 and was titled The Welcome Back Show.

Kotter had a renewed surge in popularity in the mid-1990s when it aired as part of the Nick at Nite lineup on Nickelodeon. Kaplan later said that the show found plenty of new fans during that run, but that they were turned off by the quality of the episodes from the fourth season (as a result, the fourth season episodes were rarely seen on Nick at Nite). A full weekend marathon aired on TV Land during their Fandemonium weekend stunts in 1999.

In the 1990s, Hegyes, Jacobs, and Palillo reprised their Sweathog roles in a MTV Movie Awards parody of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Palillo played the role of John Travolta, Jacobs played the role of Samuel L. Jackson, and Hegyes played the role of Phil LaMarr who was sitting in the backseat of the car eating a hamburger. While discussing hamburgers, near the end of the skit, Horshack turns to Epstein waving his gun and accidentally discharges his weapon. Instead of blood and brain matter splattering all over the back window and in the car covering the occupants, it was condiment sauce, while pickles and tomatoes were dangling down the hair of the occupants.

In the late 1990s, Hegyes, Jacobs, and Palillo reprised their Sweathog roles for a commercial for Ames Department Stores. The commercial showed the three (by this point clearly in middle age) waiting for Mr. Kotter to show up, but then hear over the PA system that Mr. Kotter wasn't teaching today because he went to a sale at Ames. An instrumental version of "Welcome Back" was playing in the background.

Cast members opened up about their experiences on the show in 2000's Welcome Back, Kotter: The E! True Hollywood Story. The two-hour program included interviews with cast members, including Kaplan, Scott, Palillo, Jacobs, Strassman, Iranga and Shortridge. Kaplan spoke of a difficult relationship with executive producer James Komack, whom he saw as not serving the show's best interests. Like many viewers, Kaplan said the quality of the show dropped off in the fourth and final season. Jacobs agreed, saying that the new writers brought in that year were not suited to a show of this nature. Palillo said the impact of an attempted ratings-grabber in the final season, Horshack's wedding, was derailed when President Jimmy Carter gave a televised speech that pre-empted the heavily advertised episode. Strassman recalled how disappointed she was at her limited time on camera, a situation that changed in the fourth season when her character became a substitute teacher at Buchanan High.

In 2003, as part of ABC's 50th Anniversary Celebration telecast, Kotter was featured in tribute montage and the original cast appeared together on stage.

In 2011, all of the living cast members, except Ron Palillo, appeared at the 9th annual TV Land Awards to accept the award for the show's 35th anniversary.

The Transformers: Timelines character of Rodimus is based on Vinnie Barbarino, using variants of his catchphrases.

"Hey Mr. Kotter" by Kingsauce parodies the show's main characters.

The sign from the opening credits that reads "Welcome to Brooklyn, 4th largest city in America, Hon. Sebastian Leone Borough President" currently hangs in the lobby of Brooklyn Borough Hall.

The 2012 science fiction novel "Year Zero: A Novel", by Rob Reid, makes extensive references to "Welcome Back, Kotter". In the novel, the only achievement the human species has made is music of the '70s, '80s and '90s, and all the extraterrestrial intelligences of the entire Universe goes into a state of ecstatic insanity the first time they hear the theme song from the TV show, and promptly reforms the Universe calendar to include year PK (pre Kotter) and year PK (post Kotter).