ABC’s The Goldbergs is a love letter the 1980s and contains a veritable cornucopia of pop culture references and jokes about decade in each and every single episode. While it’s next to impossible to list every single 1980s reference on The Goldbergs, we’re going to run down some of each episode’s geekier and more obscure pop culture moments. Please note that this column tries to cover only the “unique” references that appear in each episode, while passing on the posters, toys and other background pieces that appear in every episode and are irrelevant to the plot.
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Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Adam wears a Who Framed Roger Rabbit t-shirt during the opening sequence of the show. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a 1988 movie executive produced by Steven Spielberg and financed by Disney featuring a mix of live action and cartoon characters interacting in a single world. The movie centered on an evil judge’s plan to demolish Toontown, the area of Hollywood where most cartoons live, leaving only Roger Rabbit, a cartoon comedian, and an alcoholic private investigator to stop it.The movie received rave reviews upon its release and just about every kid growing up in the 1980s and 1990s has fond memories of the movie, which featured countless cameos by classic cartoon characters.The movie not only was one of the biggest hits of the 1980s, many credit the movie for launching the modern era of animated television and film.
Sally Jessy Raphael
During the opening sequence, Adam hides a TV Guide featuring talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael on the cover, as his teenage hormones cause him to find just about any female attractive. Raphael, best known for her distinctive red rimmed glasses, got her start in radio and later hosted The Sally Jessy Raphael Show, a daytime talk show that ran through from the early 1980s all the way to 2002. The Sally Jessie Raphael Show was the first daytime talk show to feature a female talk show host. Raphael, along with Oprah, helped popularize a new era of “tabloid” talk shows, which became the dominant daytime programming until the early 2000s.
A Chorus Line
This episode’s main plot revolves around Adam dealing with his changing voice and its impact on him winning the lead role of A Chorus Line. A Chorus Line is a musical about a group of performers trying out for a musical production, many of whom reveal their life stories over the course of the show. The original production was a smash hit through the 1980s and ran on Broadway for over 15 years, making it the longest running show on Broadway at the time. The movie even spawned a 1985 movie adaptation starring Michael Douglas, which wasn’t nearly as well received as the original show.
Milli Vanilli
The breaking Milli Vanilli scandal inspires Beverly to convince the choir teacher to let Adam and his friends lip sync their way through their rendition of A Chorus Line. Milli Vanilli was a popular German pop group during the late 1980s that quickly rose to international fame with the release of their first (and only) album “Girl You Know It’s True”. While the band publicly consisted of two members, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, several other singers actually sang the vocals for the group’s songs. After winning a Grammy in 1990, Milli Vanilli admitted that they didn’t actually sing their own songs, leading to the group falling out of favor with the public and losing most of their awards. The group often wore brightly colored jackets, which Barry and his friends mimic while practicing their dance moves for homecoming.
Christian Slater
Erica mentions that she would date a boy who acts and looks like a teenage Christian Slater. While Slater was popular mainly in the 1990s, he got his start in the 1988 cult movie Heathers, in which he plays an edgy and murderous teenaged outsider. The “Greetings and salutations” line quoted by both Erica and Geoff comes from Heathers and is one of the movie’s most popular lines.
Gleaming the Cube
At the end of the episode, Geoff tries to impress Erica using skateboarding moves he learned from watching Gleaming the Cube, a skateboarding moving starring Christian Slater. Several professional skateboarders appeared in the movie, including a young Tony Hawk.No one really knows what “gleaming the cube” means, although Slater’s character in the film claims it means “pushing the limits”.
