American Gothic Couple - TV Tropes

"Wow. From the size of that fork, I think it means that guy was hungry!"

• The dating website Farmers Only recently started using a caricature of the couple in their commercial, but rather than looking dour they're happily carrying vegetables with hearts around them. And that's the least bizarre part of the commercials.
• In the early 1960s, the iconic couple sang "They won't wilt when you pour on milk" as part of a commercial for General Mills Country Corn Flakes. Grant Wood's sister, who was still alive at the time, was not amused.
• Brilliantly spoofed at the end of this (banned, NSFW) IKEA commercial. (Also contains copious amounts of the Parental Sexuality Squick trope, and a Fish Called Wanda reference for good measure.)
• Paul Newman and his daughter Nell reproduced the pose for the packaging of Newman's Own Organics.
• The Red Robin chain of restaurants has the painting featured on the wall — but with a burger added to the farmer's pitchfork.

• Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman posed for a parody photograph of the painting with Palmer holding a floor cleaner and Gaiman holding a BBQ fork. The photo was taken by Kyle Cassidy.
• American Gothic by Gordon Parks. The couple is replaced by a maid, the gothic house is replaced by the back of an American flag, and the pitchfork is replaced with a broom.
• A sculpture on the Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois entitled "God Bless America" and featuring the American Gothic couple was put on display in December 2008. The sculpture is located just south of the Tribune Tower.

• Crossed: The cover of Crossed: Family Values #2 depicts the couple as Crossed with Slasher Smiles, bloodstained weapons, and the house behind them on fire.
• The Flash: One issue has a montage of people who've hired a particular mercenary; one panel has a pastiche of the couple, intoning:

  Man: We would've lost our farm... but he shot the banker.
  Woman: Good riddance, too.

• Green Lantern: The 17th issue of Green Lantern Mosaic depicts a pastiche of the painting with John Stewart and Katma Tui standing in for the farmer and his daughter and the pitchfork replaced by John Stewart's ring projecting the image of one of the Green Lantern Corps' lantern-shaped power batteries, while the house in the background is surrounded by dragon-like creatures that are fought by Kilowog, the Flash, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, J'onn J'onzz and Power Girl.
• Mister Miracle: The first issue of the 1990s series, with the title character assuming the position of the daughter while his wife, Big Barda, is assuming the father with her horned helmet taking the place of the pitchfork.
• Plastic Man: The cover of the 11th issue of Plastic Man 2004 depicts a pastiche of the painting with Agent Morgan as the farmer's daughter, Chief Branner as the farmer and Plastic Man taking the shape of the farmer's pitchfork.
• Route 666: The cover to issue #16 does a version of this with the two protagonists.
• The Sandman Universe: The cover to issue six of House of Whispers depicts a pastiche of American Gothic with Uncle Monday and Erzulie taking the place of the farmer and his daughter, in addition to Uncle Monday holding a pitchfork that has a prawn impaled on each of its tines.
• She-Hulk: She-Hulk and Man-Wolf become the couple on the cover of issue #11 of She-Hulk (2004).
• Superman: The cover of Superman #42, part one of "Bizarroverse", shows Bizarro and Bizarro-Lois in front of a burning barn, with the addition of Boyzarro and the Bizarro Super-Pets.
• Tomorrow Stories: The Splash Brannigan story featured in the seventh issue has Splash Brannigan confront a pair of criminals resembling the painting's subjects known as Mom and Pop Art.

• Beauty and the Beast (1991) has a brief image of the clock Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts looking like this during the song "Human Again".
• A reference to the painting appears in Mulan, of all things, in a scene where Mulan's ancestors argue about what to do about her situation. Two of them are revealed to look just like the characters, albeit Chinese, complete with the man saying "Not to mention they'll lose the farm."
• As part of the Credits Gag sequence at the end of the Over the Hedge film, RJ and Verne take up a silly pose with a spork. They're drawn; the result is the two as if in this painting.
• A picture of the couple as robots appears on Fender's bedroom wall in Robots.
• "American Gothic" is one of the paintings parodied in the "Tigger's Family" song sequence of The Tigger Movie.

• The poster of American Dreamer, which stars Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine.
• The picture is also parodied in the film poster for the 1988 slasher film American Gothic starring Yvonne De Carlo and Rod Steiger.
• For Richer or Poorer, a 1997 comedy film starring Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley, makes a direct reference to the painting in its cinematic poster.
• The movie Good Fences starring Whoopi Goldberg has a parody of the painting on its cover.
• In the first Men in Black, a spoof version of the painting (the man's head is a skull with eyes) appears on the cover of a tabloid magazine Kay buys while investigating the disappearance of Edgar.
• Main villains of Motel Hell pose like this on the film's original poster.
• During the "Iowa Stubborn" number of The Music Man part of the shipping crate (a "frame") for the new pool table is moved past a farm couple, temporarily creating this sort of tableau. They're wearing similar clothes to the people in the painting and the man is holding a pitchfork just in case you thought it was a coincidence.
• In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the couple (along with pretty much everything else in the museum) come to life and the man has his pitchfork taken by Larry in order to fend off Kah Mun Rah's Mooks.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
  • "Riff-Raff" (Richard O'Brien) and "Magenta" (Patricia Quinn) pose as the couple in front of the arched church doors during the song "Dammit Janet", after the wedding of Brad and Janet's friends Betty Monroe and Ralph Hapschatt. At the end, when they reveal their alien identities, the pitchfork has turned into a trident-shaped raygun. The painting can also be briefly seen on a wall in the castle.
  • In the sequel Shock Treatment, it can be seen hanging on a wall in the prop room as a reference to the first movie.
• The cover of Son in Law.
• The animated sequence of Stay Tuned features the characters in the painting screaming as the house is destroyed around them.

• Ingeborg Refling Hagen actually wrote a poem called American Gothic, referring to this picture. While she presumed the woman was the wife of the man, she also stated this expression was almost generic — she claimed the looks of the man was similar to several Norwegian immigrants she had encountered in the United States. Then, she proceeded to explain his backstory, and how he had come to look so haggard and stern.
• The cover of John Sweeney's book The Art of the Laugh.
• One of the pieces in the book The Art of Discworld features Death taking the place of the man, from his brief retirement in Reaper Man. The woman, therefore, is Miss Flitworth.
• Dragonriders of Pern: The portrait book The People of Pern depicts Menolly's parents, Yanus and Mavi, as an American Gothic pastiche.
• Spoofed in Woody Allen's short story "A Twenties Memory" (in Getting Even) — the protagonist claims that the pair were actually Scott and Zelda, but Scott kept dropping the pitchfork during the sittings.
• The cover of the children's book, ''Old McDonald Had An Apartment House," has a simplistic cartoon rendering of McDonald and his wife in this pose before an apartment building.
• The Shivers (M. D. Spenser) book, "Creepy Clothes", inexplicably depicts the couple as skeletons. In classical Shivers fashion, there aren't any skeletons, animated or otherwise, in the book.

• In one episode of Boy Meets World, Eric dresses as the farmer to try to ambush his brother's girlfriend. He has a one-sided "conversation" with the woman in the painting, mistakenly believing her to be his wife as he comments "I don't know why I married you."
• In the Chuck Halloween Episode "Chuck Versus the Sandworm", two of the Buy More employees dress up as the farmer and his daughter. It's Jeff and Lester.
• In Desperate Housewives, the couple appear briefly in the opening credits.
• Dexter and his older brother pose in front of a poster with the house in it. Dexter is holding a freshly bloodied pitchfork.
• The Dick Van Dyke Show: In "The Masterpiece", Rob and Laura Petrie bought a painting from an auction. They discovered another painting beneath the visible painting. The uncovered painting was revealed to be a different version of "American Gothic" in which the couple was smiling compared with the original version seen in the book in their living room. The reason was, the painted-over painting was a forgery rather than an actual Grant Wood.
• Doctor Who: In "Gridlock", the couple in the Motorway at the start of the episode are based on the couple in the painting, both having identical hairstyles, glasses and fashions.
• In one episode of The Drew Carey Show, during a Halloween party at Drew's workplace, a male and female employee both dressed up as the respective subjects in the famous painting, complete with an oversized picture frame attached to their bodies.
• Eerie, Indiana: In "Mr. Chaney", the parents of the 1979 Harvest King are dressed identically to the couple.
• Green Acres also had the lead couple pose as the couple in the painting during their opening credits.
• The Incredible Dr Pol: Charles commissions a "Dutch Gothic" painting of his parents for Jan's 70th birthday.
• After a resemblance was noted between Late Night with Conan O'Brien's host Conan O'Brien and Finland's President Tarja Halonen, occasional gags would pop-up comparing the two; one recurring one would be the two replacing the couple in American Gothic occasionally aired before cutting to a commercial, or as they return.
• On My Name Is Earl, Darnell paints himself and Joy like this.
• The pilot episode of Nowhere Man shows the protagonist's self portrait photograph which is him and his wife posed the same with a camera on a folded up tripod in his hand in place of the pitchfork.
• In Oz, A Town Without Pity, likenesses of the two prominent figures of the painting are featured in a narrative of how prisons in the US are mostly located in rural area of the country.
• Press Your Luck: One Whammy slide introduced in the fourth season of the 2019 reboot has Whammy and Tammy imitating this pose.
• It is used in a Showcase on a May 2007 episode of The Price Is Right with a live-action model replacing the daughter and trying to excite the father with prizes that are in the showcase.
• Rove Live replaces the couple with Melissa Doyle and David Koch.
• A Saturday Night Live sketch with host Anne Hathaway shows the couple's "outtakes" of the famous pose.
• Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie pose as the couple during the title and opening credits of The Simple Life.
• In The Suite Life on Deck episode "Mulch Ado About Nothing", Cody's re-creation of the Mulch Festival for Bailey includes a couple of passengers posing as the couple from the painting. Lampshaded by Cody:

  Cody: More American, and less Gothic.

• Tales from the Crypt: George and Luisa on the faux comic cover for "Four Sided Triangle;", although Luisa is the one holding the pitchfork.
• In an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Drew and Ryan did this pose during a game of Props when their prop was a vaguely pitchfork-looking thing.
• A million dollar question was answered correctly related to the painting on the American version of the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Nancy Christy, a high school teacher, correctly answered this question and won the million dollars, as she remembered that the man in the painting was based on Grant Wood's dentist.
• In Xena: Warrior Princess, Ares copies the pose with Gabrielle (Old Ares had a farm).

• An old issue of the official Dungeons & Dragons magazine, Dragon, had a version of this on the cover, with the subjects holding D20s in their outstretched palms.
• Lavender Magazine parodied the work for a special gardening issue (April 27, 2007), featuring drag queen Wanda Wisdom and podcast producer Bradley Traynor.
• MAD:
  • As part of the long running "If Norman Rockwell depicted the 20th century" series, magazine Mad printed a parody of the picture titled "American Gaythic", featuring two men.
  • They parodied this painting on the cover of an issue using The X-Files characters Scully & Mulder.
  • They parodied the actual painting in a faux comic strip ("Harrie & Carrie").
• The June 2019 issue of The New Republic, featuring two well-known American politicians with Socialist leanings, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

• The cover of American alternative rock band Everclear's 2000 album Songs From An American Movie Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile. It shows the band's members holding guitars in front of a house and not smiling.

• A collection of Muppet parodies of famous artworks, under the title The Kermitage Collection, included Kermit and Miss Piggy in American Gothique.

• At Ohio State Buckeyes football games (usually after a touchdown), the scoreboard will sometimes display the painting, and a few seconds later, the mans eyes bug out and his tongue waves all over the place.

• The cover-art for the TSR alien-invasion themed board-game Theyve Invaded Pleasantville is a riff on this, with the woman sporting a pair of antenna and blank white eyes.

• Anthony Weigh's play 2000 Feet Away, which had its London premiere at the Bush Theatre in 2008, is primarily set in Eldon, Iowa. The play opens with a scene featuring the painting at the Art Institute. American Gothic is thereafter a key motif throughout the play.
• In The Music Man, a brief visual reference is made during the "Iowa Stubborn" number as two workmen moving a pool table packing case frame stop in front of a farmer and wife, who strike this pose as they sing.

• On the Disneyland Railroad, just before reaching the Tomorrowland station there is a billboard featuring the American Gothic couple alongside a robot watering crops, labelled "Agrifuture".
• In the queue area for The Time Machine ride at the Futuroscope, you have a Raving Rabbids version of this painting, along with many other artwork parodies.

• In episode 3 of Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game, there is a portrait of First Citizen Brown and his wife Edna in the former's office that looks like American Gothic.
• The front cover of the Animaniacs PC game Crazy Paint shows Wakko Warner painting the picture with his siblings Yakko and Dot◊.
• Darkest Dungeon has a random event in the Hamlet called "Bumper Crop", where the farmers increase efforts to supply the heroes. During this event a familiar looking couple can be seen standing in the center of town along with their harvest.
• Death Road to Canada has the rare "Gothic Farm" event, where you can rescue the American Gothic couple, referred to as Ma and Pa, from a farm overrun by zombies. If you can rescue them both, you get options for training in medical or mechanical skills (from Ma and Pa respectively), a stash of food or a sickle, a decently strong light weapon with multi-target that never breaks. Curiously, Ma and Pa are rare characters that cannot be played as by the player at all, not even in O*P*P mode.
• Hearthstone: The "Showdown in the Badlands" set added a legendary minion named Maw and Paw, who are a pair of zombies standing in the American Gothic pose with a similar-looking background.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, one monster in Spookyraven Manor's Haunted Gallery is "a guy with a pitchfork, and his wife."
• One of the new paintings added to Minecraft in the 1.21 snapshots is a pair of villagers recreating the pose, in front of a village house.
• In Spiritfarer, the Old Painting that can be sold to Francis has a pair of bird spirits reenacting the famous Grant Wood painting.
• Starbound has a copy of that painting appear in Koichi's museum after completing his questline. There's also an Apex version found within Miniknog bases.
• Terraria has a painting in it called the Terrarian Gothic, featuring the Mechanic and Goblin Tinker.
• World of Warcraft:
  • It features a parody of this painting. There's one in the inn in Vengeance Landing where the couple is replaced by a pair of equally dour-looking undead (well to be fair, they are undead).
  • With the shattering, a pair of orc NPCs were added into the orc starting area. They stand, completely immobile (as opposed to the majority of other NPCs who breathe and occasionally shift their weight) arranged in custom positions that mimic the painting, and that is all they do. The male orc is even holding a pitchfork in a vertical position, when an NPC holding an item would normally hold it horizontally.

• The traditional first panel of webcomic San Antonio Rock City by Mitch Clem.
• War and Peas: The compilation release War and Peas: Funny Comics for Dirty Lovers spoofs the painting, with Slutty Witch in the position of the woman, the Grim Reaper in the position of the man, and the Reaper's sickle in place of the pitchfork.

• Kitboga is a scambaiter popular on YouTube and Twitch. He usually sets videos of his calls to fake backgrounds using Chroma Key. One of these backgrounds has this, with his character Nevaeh as the daughter and himself as the father.

• In 101 Dalmatians: The Series, The couple who run the local market resemble the American Gothic Couple. The store sign even has an image of them resembling the painting.
• They show up toward the end of the eagle's flight (about 1:14) in Vincent Collins's "200".
• 2DTV: The picture appears in the background of their "The Saddam Family" (Saddam Hussein in The Addams Family) sketch, but the woman is wearing a burka.
• The Addams Family episode "Hide and Go Lurch" has a gag where Gomez and Fester are hiding from Lurch inside a similar painting, with Gomez disguised as the daughter and Fester disguised as the father.
• In one episode of Arthur, Arthur and Buster parody the two farmers in the painting in an episode that focused on famous artwork.
• The second disc of the Beavis and Butt-Head Mike Judge Collection Volume 1 has a cover depicting Beavis and Butt-Head as the characters in American Gothic.
• In the The Backyardigans episode "Newsflash", the first shot we see of Pablo and Tyrone at their farm (unintentionally?) resembles the "American Gothic" painting.
• The Beetlejuice episode "Brinkadoom" has Beetlejuice and Lydia fly past a pair who resemble the farmer and his daughter, but with icicles hanging off their bodies. BJ refers to them as Uncle and Aunt Arctica.
• Clone High: During the song "The Pusher" in "Raisin the Stakes: A Rock Opera in Three Acts", Abe's parents are depicted as the American Gothic Couple to show how uncool parents in general are.
• In the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "So in Louvre Are We Too'' Courage and Muriel use the "American Gothic" painting to get home due to the resemblance between the house in the painting and their own. The farmer and his daughter are quite startled when Courage and Muriel run right past them.
• One of the end credits alter-egos for season five of Daria depicts Daria and Tom as the characters in the painting.
• In the Hey Arnold! episode "Stinky's Pumpkin", the picture is presented as a photograph of Stinky Peterson's grandparents and their farm in Arkansas.
• In the series Histeria!, the American Gothic couple frequently appear as characters. In one sketch they were Joan of Arc's parents. Sometimes the farmer appears without his wife, often with a voice similar to Don Knotts or Pat Buttram, actors noted for their portrayals of rural sitcom characters.
• The House of Mouse short "Mickey and the Color Caper" features of the Phantom Blot's parents is a Blot-ified version of the portrait.
• Johnny Bravo:
  • The episode "Bravo Dooby-Doo", which is a send-up-slash-crossover with Scooby-Doo, has him and Shaggy hiding from the Monster of the Week in such a painting during the chase scene.
  • "The Johnny Bravo Affair" features a parody of the painting called Sad Puppy Gothic, where the farmer and his daughter have a pair of gloomy dogs taking their place.
• The opening sequence of King of the Hill ends with Hank and Peggy posing together, plus Bobby in front of them, as the logo forms around them.
• In the classic Looney Tunes short "Louvre Come Back to Me!", Pepe Le Pew and Penelope Pussycat hide in the Louvre's air conditioning, his scent pervades into a gallery above, reaching American Gothic, and the figures' heads disappear into their costumes.
• On the [adult swim] show Metalocalypse, Toki Wartooth's parents resemble the painting, albeit much darker and sinister-looking.
• The beginning of The Mr. Men Show episode "Farm" has Mr. Grumpy and Miss Scary in the position of the painting.
• One of many parody paintings that appears in the Muppet Babies episode "Summer's Disasterpiece", with Floyd and Janice (and the house replaced by Trinity Memorial Church from The Muppet Movie).
• The Apple family has a ponified version of this painting hung up on a wall in their house in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• In the Ready Jet Go! episode "The Mindysphere", Sunspot shows a picture^note  on his tablet of Carrot and Celery posing as the American Gothic couple, with Carrot holding a rake instead of a pitchfork.
• A series of Rocky and Bullwinkle VHS volumes had covers and titles parodying famous paintings. Canadian Gothic consisted almost entirely of "Dudley Do-Right" episodes, with Dudley and Nell on the cover in the American Gothic pose and Dudley's horse standing behind them.
• In The Simpsons episode "Bart Gets an Elephant", Bart is seen cleaning the wall with a cloth. Without looking, he makes his way across the American Gothic painting, removing the paint to reveal the message: "If you can read this, you scrubbed too hard. Signed, Grant Wood".
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • In "Artist Unknown", Squidward Tentacles is revealed to have made a version of the painting, with the two figures drawn in his likeness. All of Squidward's art is just his face drawn in various degrees of abstractness.
  • In "FarmerBob", SpongeBob is sent to work on Old Man Jenkins' farm. Early on, there's an image of Jenkins holding a pitchfork and SpongeBob dressed as the daughter, facing forward with the barn behind them.
• In Superman: The Animated Series, Mr. Mxyzptlk turns Ma and Pa Kent into an American Gothic-inspired painting for "safekeeping".