Hindenburg disaster in popular culture

In season 1, episode 4 of Entourage, Ari suggests to Vince that his next movie should be Hindenburg, stating that "It's like Titanic on a blimp." No further reference is made in the episode.

In season 2, episode 17 of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, the twist at the end of "Bon Voyage" reveals that the story has been taking place on the Hindenburg moments before the crash. At the end of the episode, the story was revealed to be fictional.

Seinfeld made at least two references to the disaster. At the end of the episode "The Pothole", Newman's mail truck erupts into flames (after a series of events caused by Kramer), causing him to cry out, "Oh, the humanity!" The episode "The Puerto Rican Day" features a subplot in which George attempts to deliver a comical line ("That's gotta hurt!") during the fiery climax of the (fictional) film Blimp: The Hindenburg Story.

In The Sopranos episode, "Kaisha", Phil Leotardo notes the disappearance of Fat Dom Gamiello, and surmises that the Sopranos family killed Dom because he was last seen in New Jersey. Tony Soprano denies that claim, emphasizing the lack of evidence to support it, and adds: "The Hindenburg was last seen in New Jersey, too".

In the 1992 episode of The Simpsons, "Lisa the Beauty Queen", the Hindenburg disaster is parodied as Barney Gumble pilots the Duff Beer blimp with disastrous results, culminating with Kent Brockman reporting the scene by stating, "Oh, the humanity! Anyway...". Four years later in the episode "Bart the Fink", Bart receives a check book depicting the Hindenburg disaster in flip-book fashion, referred to as "Check Style No. 9 'Oh the Humanity...'".

In Rescue Me's first-season episode "Kansas", Sean Garrity learns about the Hindenburg disaster after his crew made fun of him for not knowing what it was.

The Hindenburg disaster is chronicled in the popular 1970s television drama, The Waltons where John Boy Walton wins a writing contest to cover the landing of the Hindenburg, witnessing the unforeseen tragedy in person. Original newsreel footage of the event was integrated into the episode's scenes.

On the popular CBS situation comedy WKRP in Cincinnati episode "Turkeys Away" the depiction of falling turkeys by Les Nessman is intended to emulate Herbert Morrison's broadcast.

In season 4 of the sitcom 'Til Death, Brad Garrett's character Eddy is writing a book on the Hindenburg disaster.

In the season 11 episode of Family Guy titled "Yug Ylimaf", Brian goes back in time to the Hindenburg disaster to have sex with a woman he met. They use the footage of the disaster in that scene and add Brian and the girl to the footage. In the season 4 episode titled "The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire", Peter Griffin owns a zeppelin with his face on it that he calls the "Hindenpeter", which crashes in the same fashion as the Hindenburg, but in the Swansons' property.

On The Richard Bey Show they used the audio from the disaster as a sound effect, specifically the "Oh the humanity!" line.

Victor Rjesnjansky on A&E's Storage Wars: Texas often refers to his competitors, Ricky and Bubba, as "the Hindenburgs", a reference to their portly physique.

In the Archer episode "Skytanic", which takes place on board an airship, Archer makes several references to the Hindenburg due to his paranoia about the airship catching fire, despite the airship's captain repeatedly telling him that the ship uses non-flammable helium.

In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Void", while Gumball, Darwin, and Mr. Small escape from the dimension that Molly is trapped in (full of all the mistakes the world has ever made), they all jump upon an airship resembling the Hindenburg that then catches fire and crashes into a structural pylon, much like the disaster.

In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Feisty Geist", while visiting a fortune teller, Heffer Wolfe is told of his past lives, and one of them is of when he was a hungry passenger aboard the airship Hillenburger (also a play on the name of the show's creative director Stephen Hillenburg). The German Heffer runs for the buffet, causing the zeppelin to lower and crash-land in a fireball, sending him flying.

The CatDog episode "CatDogPig" features a blimp advertising job interviews as a running gag throughout the episode. At the end, the blimp crashes into a pile of characters that CatDog had just dumped off, exploding and sending them all flying.

In the Blue Mountain State episode "The Corn Field Pt. 1", the incident is referenced by Harmon when discussing a large joint of weed. The line "Oh the humanity!" is used jokingly by Donnie who is promptly ostracized by Larry for making light of the tragedy.

The pilot episode of the NBC TV series Timeless (3 October 2016) revolves around a criminal who steals a time machine in an effort to alter the events of the past, starting with the Hindenburg disaster. In the episode, a journalist standing directly under the Hindenburg gets killed when it crashes down (in the original timeline). Historically, however, it was a man on the ground docking crew who died.

Multiple episodes of J. J. Abrams's FOX series, Fringe, take place in a parallel universe, an identifying characteristic of which is the modern-day popularity of airships due to the non-occurrence of the Hindenburg disaster in that universe.

Devious Maids season four episode eight, Adrian and Evelyn toast their divorce with a bottle of 1932 Riesling salvaged from the Hindenburg.

Season One, Episode Six of The Umbrella Academy includes a plot line in which Number Five must guarantee the Hindenburg disaster happens through his work with the Temps Commission. The episode posits that Joseph Späh was the original saboteur, but changed his mind about carrying out the disaster after all and leading Number Five to come up with an alternative solution.

The Discovery Channel series MythBusters explored the incendiary paint hypothesis and the hydrogen hypothesis in an episode that aired January 10, 2007.^[4] While their experiments did not concern what actually started the fire, the show's hosts, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, demonstrated that when set alight with a blowtorch a 1:50 scale model of the Hindenburg burnt twice as fast in the presence of diffused hydrogen as without it. Combustion was observed in the burning skin, which would have accelerated the fire, but their experiments showed that hydrogen was the main fuel. The hydrogen-filled model produced a fire with flames that came out of the nose and resembled the newsreel footage of the Hindenburg disaster. That program concluded that the incendiary paint theory (IPT) myth was "Busted".

The MythBusters constructed three 1/50 scale models made out of welded steel wire and covered in cotton fabric. They were suspended from a hangar ceiling and stayed horizontal the entire time. The first model was painted with iron-oxide and then aluminum powder dopes, closely replicating the actual skin of the Hindenburg. Ignited with a blowtorch, it took about 2 minutes to burn, with thermite-like events (sparkling blazes) noted in a few places. The second model had the same skin, but a water trough inside diffused hydrogen gas at sub-explosive concentrations. This one burned about twice as fast, with more thermite burning. The third model, done more for spectacle than anything else, had the skin painted with a thermite-like iron-oxide and aluminum powder enriched dope. It was noted that it would probably be far too heavy to fly. With model 2's hydrogen enrichment, it took 30 seconds to completely consume the skin. The conclusion was that neither the hydrogen gas nor the flammable skin bore sole responsibility for the speed of the fire, but both contributed.

The National Geographic Channel program Seconds From Disaster had veteran air crash investigator Greg Feith study all of the available evidence, including eyewitness accounts, interviews with the last two living survivors, newsreel footage, weather reports, and the Hindenburg blueprints. Feith burned a sample of doped cloth and it took one minute to consume the whole piece, ruling out the skin as the primary accelerant. Feith's investigation came to a conclusion that the hydrogen puncture hypothesis was most probable. He also proved that by adding white cloth to a hydrogen flame that it would change the fire's color from invisible to orange.

In Search of..., a show mainly focused on paranormal investigations and conspiracy theories, made an episode based on this tragic accident, and immediately raised the question of whether it was really an accident or instead sabotage by then-Nazi Germany.

In the shared alternate history of Ill Bethisad (1997 and after), an analogue of the Hindenburg disaster called the "Dornburg Disaster" appears. The aircraft was called the Dornburg Db-VI (known colloquially in German as "Debe-Sechs"), a flying boat style airplane which was designed in 1935 and built in late 1936 by its namesake, German engineer Klaus von Dornburg. In the fictional alternate universe setting of Ill Bethisad, airships overtook airplanes as the main form of air transport in the 1930s and the Dornburg was intended to show off the advantages of the airplane compared to the airship. On May 6, 1938, the Dornburg's engine catches fire during a flight from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro, killing all 58 passengers and 18 crew members. As a result of the disaster and the publicity surrounding it, public confidence in airplanes is shattered and the airship quickly overtakes the airplane as the most common form of air transport. In the present day, airships are used for civilian uses such as airlines, while airplanes are relegated to military use.