Do you ever recognize "inside" jokes in movies or TV?

Only in every episode of Arrested Development ;)

Sometimes – particularly used to on The Simpsons.

I see a lot of them in Futurama.

In Lord of the Rings, Boromir touches Isildur’s old sword, cuts his thumb and says “Still sharp.” (Sharpe?) I swear that was deliberate.

@bookish1 And in every episode of Community. :)

Here’s an example: in three otherwise unrelated episodes, (Season 1, ep 16; Season 2, ep 8; Season 3, ep 5), some character makes a reference to the movie Beetlejuice. On the third mention, a guy in a Beetlejuice costume walks by in the background. For those who don’t remember from the film, Beetlejuice is summoned by saying his name three times.

Well, The Simspons is all about satire, there’s some inside joke about something or other every twenty seven seconds.

Top Gear, Jeremy likes bashing things with a hammer & his favourite word whilst driving is Power!!
Richard denies he’s had his teeth whitened.
James drives slowly & cautiously & likes to smoke weed.
The Stig only knows 2 facts about ducks & both of them are wrong.

Yes, all the time. One of the benefits of age, I guess. I catch tons of references for example on Family Guy that I swear you’d have to be at least 30 to notice. Stuff about late 70s and early 80s pop culture that you wouldn’t catch had you not been around at the time.

@downtide I read that that was absolutely deliberate.

I’m always on the lookout for the kind of stuff and pretty good at catching it. Unfortunately, most of my friends are younger and don’t appreciate the references I come up with.

Yes, often. My partner never gets it though when I explain them.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room : This dress is actually bright red, but Technicolor is soooo expensive! ;)

Most of the time

The best one I ever saw was in the 1980s on Sledgehammer, which was a comedy police show airing on Friday Nights opposite Dallas and Miami Vice.

In one episode, Sledgehammer was told that what he was looking for was somewhere between Dallas and Miami. He then said, “Between Dallas and Miami? What a horrible place to be.”

If you watched “Paul” (short alien), there were several good “inside” jokes, although overall I found the movie a bit immature. Near the end, one of the good guys yells at the evil villain (played by Sigourney Weaver of the Alien movies), “Get away from him, you b*****!” Sigourney said that exact same line in the second Alien installment while defending the little girl from the alien on board.

(I forget the others…sorry.)

@glacial @bookish1 Every time I watch those shows with other people, they’re totally baffled at why I’m laughing my ass off.

An annoying example of this is the Star Trek reboot. The whole thing is nothing but references to the original series!