Apollo hoax in popular culture

This article provides references to the alleged Apollo Moon Landing hoax theories in popular culture and parody.

In print

* President Clinton in his 2004 autobiography, "My Life", states (on page 156): "Just a month before, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the Moon, beating by five months President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the Moon before the decade was out. The old carpenter asked me if I really believed it happened. I said sure, I saw it on television. He disagreed; he said that he didn't believe it for a minute, that 'them television fellers' could make things look real that weren't. Back then, I thought he was a crank. During my eight years in Washington, I saw some things on TV that made me wonder if he wasn't ahead of his time."
*Norman Mailer in 1969 wrote "The event (Apollo 11 Moonwalk) was so removed, however, so unreal, that no objective correlative existed to prove it had not been an event staged in a television studio—the greatest con of the century—and indeed a good mind, product of the iniquities, treacheries, gold, passions, invention, deception, and rich worldly stink of the Renaissance could hardly deny that the event if bogus was as great a creation in mass hoodwinking, deception, and legerdemain as the true ascent was in discipline and technology. Indeed, conceive of the genius of such a conspiracy. It would take criminals and confidence men mightier, more trustworthy and more resourceful than anything in this century or the ones before. Merely to conceive of such men was the surest way to know the event was not staged."
*In the book "Great Lies To Tell Small Kids" by Andy Riley one of the lies is, "All the Moon landings were shot on a set on Mars".
*The book "Elvis and the Blue Moon Conspiracy" by Mark McGinty tells the satirical story of the 1969 moon landing, where Elvis Presley accompanies astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface and becomes the first man to walk on the moon. An accident on the surface causes NASA to abort the mission and broadcast a version of the landing without Elvis, later dubbed a "hoax" by a little known reporter named Dani Mitchell.

On film

* Aron Ranen's DID WE GO? Documentary at http://www.moonhoax.com. Produced by Aron Ranen and Benjamin Britton, funded by the state of Ohio. Premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

* The 1978 film "Capricorn One" portrayed a fictional NASA attempt to fake a landing on Mars.
* In 1971, there was a brief sequence in the James Bond movie "Diamonds Are Forever," in which the action takes place in a Moon setting where astronauts were being trained. [ [http://www.007magazine.co.uk/Moon_buggy.htm JAMES BOND 007 MAGAZINE | PAGE NO LONGER EXISTS ] ] Agent 007 steals what appears to be a Moon buggy from the model set, and drives it off to escape from an enemy compound. This scene may have helped to spread the idea of the Moon landings being a hoax"We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle", Bill Kaysing, Pomeroy, WA, USA: Health Research Books, 2002. ISBN 1-85810-422-X. ] ^{, p. 62}.
*In 2002, William Karel released a spoof documentary film, "Dark Side of the Moon", 'exposing' how Stanley Kubrick was recruited to fake the Moon landings, and featured interviews with, among others, Kubrick's widow and a number of American statesmen including Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld. It was an elaborate joke: interviews and other footage were presented out of context and in some cases completely staged, with actors playing interviewees who had never existed (and in many cases named after characters from Kubrick's films, just one of many clues included to reveal the joke to the alert viewer). [http://www.pointdujour.fr/Va/programmes/prog_fiche.asp?idProg=20965]
* In the 2004 film "Man on the Moon" , Richard Fortunato fictionally explores the links between Apollo 11, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, and a Russian spy in an effort to explain the staged moon landing
* In the 1992 movie "Sneakers", the Mother character, played by Dan Aykroyd, mentions "It's the same technology that NASA used to fake the Apollo Moon landings, so it shouldn't give us any trouble."
*In the movie "", as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are in Area 52 they browse the videotape shelf, one of the videotapes searched read "Moon LANDING DRESS REHEARSAL".
*In the movie "RV", singer JoJo's character commented that the RV camp they were staying overnight was "where NASA faked the Moon landings."
*In the outtakes/end credits for the film Daddy Day Care, the cameraman is struggling to focus the camera. Eddie Murphy then says, "This is why I know we didn't land on the moon."
*In the movie "" the answer to the Apollo hoax was supposed to have been inside the book of secrets.

On television

*In an episode of Da Ali G Show, Sacha Baron Cohen, dressed in character as Ali G, interviews Buzz Aldrin and asks him "Is it true that the moon really exists?"
*A television drama called "The News-Benders," the key plot device of which stipulated that all major technological advances since 1945 had been faked in some way, aired in January 1968; it postulated a "Moon landing" falsified with models. It was written by British writer Desmond Lowden.
*In an episode of Fox TV's "Family Guy", a flashback shows the ending of filming the hoax, with Neil Armstrong walking out of the studio and a pedestrian seeing him. When the pedestrian asks why he is not in space, Neil Armstrong makes a feeble excuse about "solar winds" before killing the man. In the episode "If I'm Dyin', I'm Lyin'," Peter said that his "healing powers" were a fake, "like the Moon landings".
*In the "ITV" sitcom "Believe Nothing" an Illuminati type council kills one of their members after stating "we faked the moon landing" but their caterers can't supply "a decent prune danish"
*In an episode of "Friends", Joey asks Phoebe for a good lie, and she responds, "Okay, how about the whole 'man-landing-on-the-Moon' thing? I mean, you can see the strings, people!!"
* In an episode of "Newsradio", Jimmy James pretends to fly a hot air balloon around the world, but this is actually a hoax being filmed in a television studio. When Lisa finds out about this and criticizes him, he says, "It's not like I was faking the Apollo Moon landings, now that was a big deal." Lisa says, "What?" Jimmy gets nervous and says, "Nothing, I gotta go."
* On the May 11, 1998 edition of the "Late Show With David Letterman", actress Gillian Anderson read a Top Ten List entitled "Top Ten Things The Government Doesn't Want You To Know." Number three on the list was, "Due to a navigational error, Neil Armstrong actually landed in Wilmington, Delaware."
*In "Roswell That Ends Well", an episode of "Futurama", when the crew is mysteriously flung back in time to 1947, President Harry S. Truman requests that Zoidberg, an alien, be taken to Area 51 for study. When informed that Area 51 is the location for the faked Moon landing, he replies, "Then we'll have to really land on the Moon. Invent NASA and tell them to get off their fannies!" [ [http://www.tv.com/futurama/roswell-that-ends-well/episode/100702/trivia.html#quotes Futurama: Roswell That Ends Well Episode Trivia - TV.com ] ]
*In an episode of "The PJs", Thurston said that if people can fake a Moon landing, anything's possible.
*In an episode of "King of the Hill", conspiracy theorist Dale Gribble suggests that the Super Bowl is pre-selected and is filmed in an unidentifiable location where they filmed the fake Moon landing, months before the game ever began. On another episode, Dale discovers that the government report on the Kennedy assassination made sense and said, "If the government was right about this then maybe we really did go to the moon."
* Stephen Colbert has made a running joke about how his character doesn't believe in the Moon landing:
** On the June 7, 2006 edition of "The Colbert Report", host Stephen Colbert said "Tonight's guest is a pioneer in Mars exploration. Hopefully tonight he'll explain how they faked a space landing there too."
** On the July 27, 2006 episode of "The Colbert Report", host Stephen Colbert said "And here's the Smithsonian Institute's Air and Space Museum, where you can see the original rocks from the soundstage where they faked the Moon landing. It's a part of Hollywood history."
** On the August 1, 2007 edition of "The Colbert Report", Stephen Colbert said, "Unless you've been on the moon this week, you know I broke my wrist. And if you have been on the moon, congratulations, you are the first!"
* In February 2007, Craig Ferguson commented that the Lisa Nowak scandal was the biggest thing to happen to NASA "since they faked that moon landing thing in the sixties."
* In a Washington Mutual commercial, the spokesperson is confronted by rival branch members in a parking garage. Comparing the rates of Washington Mutual to other known banks, one of them mentions that the moon landing was staged.
* In an episode of The Whitest Kids U'Know, Trevor Moore tells a group of young schoolchildren that the Moon landings were faked.
* In the TV show , The Kids Next Door say they faked the moon landing by redirecting the ship to a fake moon set on earth so the adults couldn't find their headquarters in the moon.
* In some episodes of "My Name Is Earl", Darnell Turner (Crab Man) suggests that the moon landing is a hoax.
* In a Red Bull drink commercial, Neil Armstrong is shown to actually land on the moon, then drinks a Red Bull, causing him to start flying. Someone over a radio then says, "You drank a Red Bull, didn't you? Come back and we'll shoot it in a studio."
* On August 27, 2008, the Discovery Channel aired an episode of "Mythbusters" that tested and debunked some common claims made by moon landing conspiracy theorists. (MythBusters_(season_7)#Episode_104_-_NASA_Moon_Landing)

In video games

*The plot of Activision's 1998 computer game "Battlezone" is based largely on the idea that while the lunar landings did take place, both the United States and Soviet Union had already spent considerable time on the moon and were actively waging war against each other on the lunar surface using equipment based on alien technology and materials discovered there. In the game's universe, the Apollo landings were a hoax of a different kind, using only technology that had been admitted to the public, rather than the highly advanced and secret alien technology.

*In the 2005 first person shooter "Area 51", one level is based on the idea that the lunar landing was faked. The room is filled with cameras, cranes, lunar vehicles, and recordings of radio transmissions, positioned in a way to portray a fake lunar terrain and a black wall in the back with a picture of the Earth in the distance.

*In the 2006 Video game Destroy All Humans! 2, if you scan a male Russian while in disguise, he will sometimes say that he thinks that the moon landing was just a TV set in Newark. Whilst on the moon planet, one of the side-quests involves a delivery from a certain company; "It's being delivered by a courier company called... The North American Shipping Association."

In music

*The REM song "Man on the Moon" implies that the Moon landings may have involved sleight of hand ("If you believe they put a Man on the Moon, if you believe there's nothing up his sleeve...").
*The [http://www.menfromearth.co.uk Men From Earth] song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-IJhr3CCHs "I Faked the Moon Landing"] tells an imaginary story of someone's deathbed confession to assisting with the hoax. Among the many references in the song to popular hoax accusations is the line "that wasn't Buzz next to the LEM / just a guy who looked like him."
*The group Looper have a song called "Dave the Moon Man" on their album "Up a Tree". It features a character who does not believe in the Moon landings and repeats several of the major conspiracy arguments.
*The video for the Rammstein song "Amerika" depicts the band on a movie set wearing NASA suits and a theme of the video is the faking of the Moon landing.
*There is a song by metal band Margret Heater called "Apollo Conspiracy".
*Swedish hardcore punk band Refused recorded a song called "The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax" for their final full-length album, The Shape of Punk to Come.
*The Beta Band song "Eclipse" ends with a series of lines stating opinions such as "and the roads are not very clean" and "and the food we eat is not very healthy", after which another voice replies "okay, we're agreed on that." The final line is "and the moon is a big ball with nothing on it, but I don't think anyone's ever been there", to which the second voice replies "ok, so we're KIND of agreed to that."
*The Tullycraft song "Sent to the Moon" includes the phrase, "we watched it all with our folks...it was the world's biggest hoax", indicating a possible NASA conspiracy involving the Apollo moon landings.
*The song 'Fall Out' from the album Six by British band Mansun features the lyric, "Did Stanley Kubrick fake it with the moon?"
* The Solillaquists Of Sound song 'Mark It Place' includes the phrase "I saw the American flag waving proudly on its own without a care, but it was on the moon and there's no wind out there."
* The Diamond Rio song "It's All in Your Head" includes the line "we never walked on the moon" as well as other conspiratorial references such as "Elvis ain't dead."
* The Maryland based band Clutch questions the moon landings in their song "Spacegrass" about the singer traveling through space in a 1973 Dodge Swinger with the lyrics "Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong, or maybe just me.
* The song Holloway Prison Blues by British Rock band Million Dead features the lyric "And I confess I helped fake the Moon Landings as well."

Other references

* Former Major League Baseball player Carl Everett has said in interviews with Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy that he doubts the validity of the Moon landings. Shaughnessy would go on to nickname Everett "Jurassic Carl" due to Everett's assertion that dinosaurs never existed.
*Episode 45 of the machinima Red vs. Blue involves the characters arguing about conspiracy theories, including "We never landed on the sun!"
*Two strips of the webcomic xkcd make reference to the Lunar Landing hoax - in [http://xkcd.com/202/ one] , the strip jokes about YouTube video comments, and, in [http://xkcd.com/258/ the other] , the character files a bug report with God for the belief in conspiracy theories.
* One strip of Wulffmorgenthaler features alien conspiracy theorists asserting that "the Earth landing has never happened".
* A website [http://stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_landings/moon_landings.htm] parodies popular British children's television programme The Clangers (which was set on a moon-like planet) to prove the moon landings were faked.

References