Good Will Hunting
Episode: Season 1, Episode 24: English as a Second Language
Reference: Turning Good Will Hunting on its head, a janitor discovers Troy’s savant-like abilities with plumbing and tries to tempt him away from college to the glamorous world of pipe-repair.
Abed attempts to play the Ben Affleck role but doesn’t quite pull it off, managing to offend Troy with his paraphrasing of the “best part of my day” speech.
Caddyshack
Episode: Season 2, Episode 20: Competitive Wine Tasting
Reference: As Jeff and Pierce prepare to chat up ladies at their wine-tasting class, Pierce is feeling a little under-confident. “Don’t sell yourself short,” Jeff tells him in a subtle reference to Chevy Chase’s classic comedy, “you’re always a baboon.”
Cat Scare
Episode: Season 2, Episode 6: Epidemiology
Reference: Labeled “one of the most overused Hollywood cliches”, Community once again shows it knows its pop culture tropes by including a cat scare - an insane mog intent on attacking Troy and Jeff.
Blazing Saddles
Episode: Season 2, Episode 15: Early 21st Century Romanticism
Reference: “Where the white women at?” asks elderly Leonard, referencing Mel Brooks’ classic Blazing Saddles , as he arrives at Jeff’s apartment to join in some soccer-watching fun.
Adaptation
Episode: Season 2, Episode 5: Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples
Reference: Shirley and Abed go head to head as the pair work on a viral video about Jesus.
In the kind of Kaufman-esque twist that only Abed could get away with, he becomes the school’s messiah in order to teach Shirley a lesson in meta.
Armageddon
Episode: Season 2, Episode 4: Basic Rocket Science
Reference: As well as the episode’s clear Apollo 13 parallels, the gang also manage to pull of the iconic Armageddon slow-mo walk.
Perhaps the only difference between the film and the show being Jeff’s “Can we stop walking in slow-mo now?”.
Apollo 13
Episode: Season 2, Episode 4: Basic Rocket Science
Reference: Thanks to the study group’s involvement in making the Greendale College flag look a bit like an anus, Dean Pelton tasks them with cleaning the vintage Kentucky Fried Chicken sponsored space simulator.
When the simulator is towed away with the gang inside, Abed is left on Earth (in the study room) to act as mission control and bring them safely home.
George A. Romero
Episode: Season 2, Episode 6: Epidemiology
Reference: Taking on several horror tropes for their Season 2 Halloween episode, the Community gang find themselves in a George A. Romero situation when a nasty case of food poisoning turns into a full-scale zombie outbreak.
Cue fanboy nods aplenty.
My Dinner With Andre
Episode: Season 2, Episode 19: Critical Film Studies
Reference: In possibly the most heavily referential episode in Community ’s back-catalogue, and directed by Submarine ’s helmsman (and Total Film columnist) Richard Ayoade, Critical Film Studies pays homage to not one, but two classics.
As the study group organise a Pulp Fiction -themed birthday party for Abed, he spends most of the evening with Jeff at a fancy restaurant, having a deep conversation about life-changing experience, and unknown to Jeff, re-enacting My Dinner With Andre.
Ghost
Episode: Season 1, Episode 19: Beginner Pottery
Reference: Jeff might have picked pottery for the easy A, but it turns out not to be that easy when the teacher lays down his “No Ghosting” rule - that is, nobody’s allowed to make any kind of reference to hit 1990 film Ghost .
When Winger inevitably acts out the iconic scene with another man, he’s ejected from the classroom - belting out Unchained Melody as he goes.
