Animal Farm in popular culture

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story is a satirical novella by George Orwell, ostensibly about a group of animals who oust the humans from the farm on which they live. The book was written during World War II and published in 1945. As with Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four ("1984") references to this novella are frequent in other works, particularly popular music and television series.

In music

 * The famous quote from the final chapter of the book, in which the animals look "from pig to man" and see no difference was used as the back cover of anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba's second LP, Never Mind The Ballots.
 * Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals was partially inspired by Animal Farm. It categorises people as pigs, dogs, or sheep. The songs are all deeply linked with Orwell's Animal Farm. The album cover has an image of Battersea Power Station which is also an image used in the film of 1984. While Animal Farm catalogs the excesses of communism, Animals does the same regarding capitalism.
 * Half Man Half Biscuit's song Arthur's Farm was inspired and named after Animal Farm.
 * Radiohead's song, "Optimistic," on their 2000 album, Kid A, contains the lyrics, "This one dropped a payload/Fodder for the animals/Living on Animal Farm."
 * In Moxy Früvous's live performances of their cover of the Spider-Man TV theme song, singer Mike Ford often led the chant, "Eight legs good, two legs bad!"
 * Rappers Dead Prez released a song called "Animal in Man" off their debut LP, Let's Get Free, re-telling the story.
 * A song on Canadian band Protest the Hero's debut CD A Calculated Use of Sound, called "Red Stars Over the Battle of the Cowshed" is presumably a reference to Animal Farm.
 * Canadian rapper Buck 65 also used "Four legs good, two legs bad" in a remixed version of his song "The Centaur," found on the ZeD compilation CD Live Off The Floor
 * Metal band Clutch has a song "Animal Farm" on their self titled album Clutch.
 * Canadian Musician/Composer Friendly Rich energetically chants the phrase "Four legs are good; two legs are bad" at the end of the song Science Diet on his 2005 album We Need a New F-Word
 * In the NOFX song 'Wolves in Wolves' Clothing', there is a line stating "We are Animal Farm pigs."
 * The Clash used an image from the movie Animal Farm on their single "English Civil War".
 * A popular Dutch rock band is named Animal Farm.
 * Animal Farm is a song on the Kinks' album "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society."
 * A swedish band formed in 1998 is named "the ANIMAL FARM band".
 * Gatsbys American Dream's 2003 album Ribbons and Sugar is loosely based around Animal Farm.
 * Bob Dylans song "Ballad of a Thin Man" references Mr. Jones.
 * R.E.M.'s song Disturbance At The Heron House is based on Animal Farm.
 * Coldplay's music video "Trouble In Town" is based on Animal Farm and shows a copy of the book.

On television

 * In an episode of Johnny Bravo ("Aunt Katie's Farm"), Johnny, while dressed in a pig costume, goes crazy and yells, "Four legs good! Two legs bad!" over and over.
 * In an episode of Sealab 2021, the captain starts a Communistic reign over the station and even buys a large pig named Napoleon (he seems to have read the book but not understand anything from it).
 * In the first episode of Moral Orel, there is a book in the pile "to burn" clearly labeled "Animal Farm" in all caps.
 * In an episode of the Australian comedy series CNNNN the network covers the story of a new reality show called Animal Farm, a parody of the reality series Big Brother (hence the use of another Orwell fiction name).
 * In an episode of X-Men, the character Beast is seen reading a copy of Animal Farm while sitting in a jail cell. The guards, obviously not knowing what the book is all about, teases him and says that he problably "just looks at the pictures."
 * The Lost episode "Exposé" involves flashbacks with Nikki and Paulo involving an argument with Kate about the handgun case. During this scene, Dr. Leslie Arzt yells at Kate that "The pigs are walking," a reference to Animal Farm where Napoleon and his generals begin to adapt human characteristics and change their oath from "Four legs good, two legs bad" to "Four legs good, two legs better."
 * In an episode of the Food Network series Good Eats about pork, the episode opens with Alton Brown reading an excerpt from the book to a group of feeding pigs.
 * In an episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert, discussing the film Over the Hedge, referred to the animated film adaptation of Animal Farm, saying "The trailer would have us believe this is a harmless family cartoon along the lines of Animal Farm or Fritz the Cat."
 * Animal Farm is mentioned in the Jericho episode "The Day Before".
 * In episode 12 of Greek, "The Great Cappie", character Rusty uses Animal Farm to point out corruption of man as an example of the situation they are facing and how they should not fall into the trap due to the rivalry between the two houses.
 * In season 2, episode 5 of the Canadian TV show Trailer Park Boys, the character Ricky reads it in his trailer and tries to understand the deeper meanings of the novel as he thought all the book was about was animals talking.
 * In [[Media:["My Family"]]] when Ben angers the cyclist they chant: "2 wheels good. 4 wheels bad." As opposed to: "4 legs good, 2 legs bad."
 * In the anime series School Rumble, the character Kenji Harima has a vast number of various pets, one of them being a pig by the name of Napoleon.
 * On the British car show Top Gear on the topic of communist cars James May says "Although all the animals were equal, some were more equal than others"
 * In an episode of Coronation Street a girl Tina McIntyre tells her uninterested boyfriend, David Platt, about the oppression in Animal Farm.

In other media

 * Snowball's Chance, a 2002/03 bestselling book by U.S. author John Reed updates/parodies Animal Farm in a 9/11 context. The controversial work was criticized by the Orwell estate which declared itself "hostile to the book and its execution".


 * The online game NationStates contains an imaginary pro-bicycle environmental group known as "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad."
 * In the comic book series Fables, the second story arc (issues 6 to 10) is titled Animal Farm and features a plot line very similar to that of the book.
 * In the video game "Destroy All Humans!", by scanning a cowboy's mind, you hear him make references to the book.
 * Dale Grover and John R. Deller, in their textbook Digital Signal Processing and the Microcontroller, explain their choice of notation: "Although we will work a lot with continuous-time signals and systems in this book, we finally decided to stick with the convention that Oppenheim and Schaefer established, which is: 4 legs good, 2 legs bad.  No, wait -- that's Orwell's Animal Farm.  Make that: Continuous-time frequency: F (Hz) and Ω (rad/sec), Discrete-time frequency: f (dimensionless) and ω (rad)."
 * In the game Mass Effect, a captain standing guard against large insect-like aliens makes the backwards remark: "Even hopped up on stims, my men know the rule: two legs, good, four legs, bad."
 * The graffiti crew 'Animal Farm' based in Belgium and later on expanded towards the Netherlands pay homage by using it as their group's name. Their work can be seen on subways, commuter trains and walls mainly in their home countries, most often with characters of various animals.
 * In a Far Side comic, there's a room with a donkey reading Animal Farm and a rabbit watching TV. The donkey thinks, "Dumb bunny," and the rabbit thinks, "Smart ass."
 * In Ogan Gurel's novel Waves (2009) reference is made to the concept of "some are more equal than others" in Chapter 2 (Slaughterhouse) of that novel.
 * In Planet of the Apes, the following conversation occurs:

Dr. Zaius: "Tell me, why are all apes created equal?" George Taylor: "Some apes, it seems, are more equal than others."


 * The slogan of online RPG distributor Indie Press Revolution is "Some Games Are More Equal Than Others".
 * Several references are made in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, Napoleon is shown as a creation of Dr. Moreau. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, a file on Manor Farm is shown in the archives of the Ministry of Love.
 * In the PS3 game Resistance: Fall of Man people on the radio say: "Be careful when you shoot, two eyes good, six eyes bad."
 * In the book The 10pm Question by New Zealand author Kate De Goldi, Animal Farm is mentioned as being on the side table near the telephone.


 * In the Nancy Drew video game, Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock, there is a dairy in town, with characters named after characters in the book, such as Mr. Jones and Napoleon.