Season 4: Basic Human Anatomy – Freaky Friday

Troy and Abed imagine that they’ve switched bodies like in Freaky Friday. Yeah. Moving on…

Season 4: Advanced Introduction to Finality – The Terminator

When Evil Jeff and Evil Annie arrive from the darkest timeline into our own, Jeff arrives kneeling and basically nude, save for his underwear—just like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the numerous Terminator franchise films.

Season 5: Repilot – The Social Network

With Harmon back at the helm of the writers room, the references get a little less mundane: Troy says he has spent his post-college life waiting for Abed to create a billion-dollar app. So he can sue him.

Season 5: Introduction to Teaching – Nicolas Cage Movies

Nicolas Cage: Good or bad? It is an unsolvable question.

Season 5: Basic Intergluteal Numismatics – Zodiac, David Fincher, and Jaws

While a bit of an homage to the entire David Fincher filmography, “Basic Intergluteal Numismatics” is most especially a painstaking beat-by-beat recreation of Fincher’s serial killer procedural instincts encapsulated by Zodiac. It is also the first truly brilliant episode of season 5 and the first time in over a year Community felt like it was firing on all cylinders.

In this episode, a fiend that is never apprehended is able to sneakily place coins of various sizes into unsuspecting students’ buttocks. Nothing seems to stop him, including eerie children’s choral arrangements of Radiohead’s “Creep,” a la The Social Network trailer. Annie and Jeff try to figure out who the ass crack bandit is with all the obsession of Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in Seven. But alas, like the Zodiac killer, no amounts of desaturated green filters and ensemble detective work in perpetual rainfall will result in the threat’s apprehension.

Oh, and a victimized Troy confronts the falsely accused Star-Burns, and slaps him harder than Amity Beach Chief Brody.

Season 5: Cooperative Polygraphy – Catfish and The Grey

In another strong performance from the first half of Community season 5, the group essentially has a “bottle episode” by agreeing to be polygraphed by the late Pierce Hawthorne’s legal attorney. And during all the lie detection, it comes out that Abed “catfished” Annie for months on Facebook so that she would happily make her roommates more pancakes.

Sidebar: “Stop giving The Grey four stars.” / “I like Liam Neeson!” / “Then send him a message about the movies he makes.”

Season 5: Geothermal Escapism – Waterworld and Return of the Jedi

For Donald Glover’s final episode of Community, and one the last great ones, Abed throws Troy a going away party in the vein of paintball: Hot Lava (also known as: The Floor is Lava). As a result, Greendale turns into a post-apocalyptic world like Mad Max or, more acutely, the Mad Max clone, Waterworld. While Greendale takes on a fiery imaginary hellscape, as opposed to an aquatic one, the idea that there is a sanctuary island in the middle that all fight for or trade with via lava (or water) gliding vehicles is very similar.

Also, on “Shirley Island,” the surviving Hot Lava players learn of the “before lava” days with the cooing and awing sound of Ewoks in Return of the Jedi.

Community Season 5: Cork-Based Networking – Leon: The Professional

As Annie borrows from Gary Oldman, “Bring me everyone. EVVVVERRRRRYYYYONNNNNEEEE!” *Chang also did this in “Cooperative Polygraphy.”

Community Season 5: Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality – The Sixth Sense

Chang is tricked into believing he has been dead all along and is a ghost like Bruce Willis in that famed twist ending.

Community Season 5: App Development and Condiments – Zardoz, Logan’s Run, Van Wilder, and More

And Community returned to dystopian parodies in a quick way with “App Development and Condiments” where the entire school once again falls into a crazy game/fad, this time by ranking themselves with the status points of a new social media app. (Yep, they did it before Black Mirror.) Hipster Britta, who procrastinates in getting the app, and the usually cool Jeff are left begging at the bottom rung of society, much like how Zardoz develops a hilariously costumed future divided by a status ranking of five levels and pure apathy. Star-Burns even wears Sean Connery’s infamously terrible costume from that movie. Some of the costumes also seem inspired by Logan’s Run.

Sidebar: Other references include the “Fives” of Greendale (those with the highest ranking) dressing like Kryptonians from Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie; fours dress like they’re from Logan’s Run; and threes and twos dress like the literal meat and cattle of Soylent Green.

Also, while likely based on general French Revolution iconography to a degree (as well as Che Guevara), Britta’s kangaroo “People’s Court” also is reminiscent of the French Revolution inspired Scarecrow set from The Dark Knight Rises. Finally, cool aging student Coogler is obviously a riff on the titular Ryan Reynolds character in Van Wilder.

Community Season 5: VCR Maitenance and Educational Publishing – Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Before she was an Oscar winning movie star and superhero, Brie Larson was an indie darling with major cred… and the occasional guest star on Community. In her last appearance as Rachel, the sullen introvert who becomes Abed’s romantic interest, Abed wins her back after a fight by making a proclamation of love while having another student pour “rain” onti his head inside the school walls. This could reference a thousand movies and TV shows, so we’ll just shout out to our favorite, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Season 5: Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons – Die Hard and Looper

Abed has never been very good at creating names for a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Take Sir Joseph Gordon Die Hard, a clear reference to Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing a young Bruce Willis (of Die Hard) in Looper.

Season 5: G.I. Jeff – The Shawshank Redemption

For an episode about a foolishly near suicidal Jeff regressing into childhood delusion about animated 1980s toy commercials, they were still able to sneak in a subtle nod to an R-rated prison drama like The Shawshank Redemption. In this case, it is because a rejected G.I. Joe chef who has been imprisoned by the Joes for decades has been digging a hole out of his cell–conveniently hidden behind a Smash Mouth poster.

Season 5: Basic Sandwich – Aliens

In the most obscure and nerdy reference possible, the blueprints reveal that the vault with supposed buried treasure at Greendale is located in “Sub-Level 3.” Sub-Level 3 is also the name of the facility that the space marines in James Cameron’s Aliens locate via blueprints, only to discover the titular xenomorphs are hiding there in a nest.

Season 6: Lawnmower Maitenance and Postnatal Care

So this episode obviously references the terrible The Lawnmower Man. Pretty subtly too with that title. To be fair, having the Dean gain a God Complex by playing ugly, rudimentary VR from the early ’90s is a good joke that might just be dragged on too long.

Season 6: Modern Espionage – Captain America: The Winter Soldier, True Lies, and The Man with the Golden Gun

The third (and mixed bag) paintball episode is modeled after a variety of spy movies, but the moment fans likely most jumped with excitement at is an homage to the Russo Brothers’ then-recent success directing Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier. When Dean Pelton goes inside of an elevator and is surrounded by hired guns working for a mysterious assassin, the incremental menace of them boarding the same small space as him humorously alludes to one of the most famous Marvel scenes. It is then subverted when they all shoot each other, but not the Dean.

The episode more broadly also homages the James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun. In that movie, Christopher Lee’s villain uses the eponymous weapon with special bullets. The assassin in this episode uses silver paintballs, and at the end, Jeff and the Dean corner the fiend in the Custodian Museum that includes maniquin replicas of the custodial staff, a la how 007 ends up tricking his foe at the bizzare end of this lesser Bond movie by standing in for the manquin version of himself.

Also Abed and Annie dancing a psuedo-waltz while spying on their surroundings is right out of James Cameron’s Bond-inspired True Lies.

Season 6: Wedding Videography – RoboCop, Etc.

In the episode that confirms Abed has stealthily transformed Annie into the new Troy–dissuading her desire to pursue her own interests and throwing her into a world of pop culture minutiae –we are introduced to the two roommates as they film “Annie’s Lost Lover” video message. This is for if she ever dies or is put in a coma and her lover (or Abed?) can remember her with absurdly rose-colored glasses wherein “she is full of love almost to the point of being stupid.” Think RoboCop and a million other bad revenge movies, and a few good ones too like The Fugitive.

Season 6: Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television – Marvel Movies

Season 6 was honestly a mixed bag. While both Keith David and Paget Brewster wound up being superb additions to the cast, the magic really did leave as the original cast fractured. Some episodes of season 6 were solid and others disappointing, but it just all wasn’t the same. Yet the finale found a surprising grace note where Harmon and Jeff Winger allow themselves to let go of what Community and life had comfortably become and face the unknown of moving on.

… But not without taking a few potshots at those flavorless Marvel movies on the way out!

Curiously despite the Russo Brothers having graduated to the Marvel Studios conveyer belt in a big way by 2015–and soon enough Community alum like Donald Glover and Brie Larson would as well–Harmon took valuable screen time out of Jeff and Annie’s heartfelt goodbye to stick the knife into the homogeneity of the MCU output. And it’s hilarious. More a scathing critique than a loving homage, here is what Jeff and Annie have to say about Marvel while contrasting the virtues of being young versus middle aged.

“I want to have an opinion about those boring ass Marvel movies,” Jeff laments mid emotional outpuring. Annie then gives her own measured thoughts about aging before adding in a low whisper, “[I don’t want to be] a slave to what’s in front of me, especially these flavoress, unremarkable Marvel Movies.” What relieves the anxiety of uncertainty is a shared certainty of how unimpressive the MCU is to both of them!

It is a succinct and vivid summation of many Marvel critics’ frustration with how same-y Marvel movies can be, and it also breaks the fourth wall in a way that no non-Abed character has done before when Annie (but really Alison Brie) concedes she can’t speak her opinion about Marvel Studios loudly lest she wants to “screw myself” out of being in a Marvel movie. And given how Ms. Brie has criticized the parts she’s auditioned for inside the MCU since, it makes this scene all the better. Hence why we are including the chance to watch it above!

So there you have it! The 61 Movie References in Community. Again, as a mere mortal, please let me know of any that I missed! Also, you can tell me about which are your favorites in the comment section below!