Mount Rushmore in popular culture

Replacement or destruction of the existing faces

Alterations in media have frequently included replacement of one or more of the four presidents' faces with other people or characters, or the addition of another face:

• In Courage The Cowardly Dog, at the end of the episode "Family Business", Muriel asked what a thief did with the rest of Mount Rushmore (since he stole the heads of Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt). The camera zooms out with the president's heads underneath the house.
• Thunderbolt the Wondercolt is a minor cartoon character from Bob Clampett. Thunderbolt is a flying horse who wears a helmet adorned with a lightning bolt and carries a quiver filled with lightning bolts. Thunderbolt is heroic, but also a little vainglorious. In the cartoon "The Capture of Thunderbolt the Wondercolt", he hurtles a lightning bolt at Mt. Rushmore. The powerful bolt re-shapes Jefferson’s head to resemble his own.
• In the 1980 film Superman II, General Zod and his criminal partners Ursa and Non (the three escaped supervillains from the Phantom Zone) use their superpowers to replace the faces of Washington, Jefferson and Roosevelt with their own, while destroying Lincoln's. This scene is removed in the 2006 director's cut of the film, replaced instead with a scene showing them destroying the Washington Monument.^[3] The October 1981 issue of MAD Magazine parodies the film and depicts this scene, except that in addition to putting their own faces on the monument, the villains have replaced Lincoln with Richard Nixon.
• In Buried on Sunday, a nuclear missile is accidentally launched and it breaks the nose of Theodore Roosevelt off before landing next to a group of bikers in Sturgis, who decide to trade it for speed.
• In Mars Attacks!, the Martians in a UFO carve their leaders' faces into Mount Rushmore, replacing the Presidents' heads.
• The cover of the Chipmunks' album, Chipmunk Rock, depicts Roosevelt replaced by Alvin the Chipmunk.
• The Nintendo 64 video game Pilotwings 64 (which features a level based on United States geography and landmarks) shows the monument in the approximate location of South Dakota, but replaces Washington's head with that of Nintendo's mascot Mario.^[4] The player can change Mario into his rival, Wario by crashing into his face or by shooting him from the Gyrocopter.
• In a viral video teaser for the Watchmen film, "The Keene Act and You", a brief scene depicts Richard Nixon in place of Abraham Lincoln.^[5]
• In the movie 10.5 Apocalypse, an earthquake hits the site as a fault-line begins to recreate the Western Interior Seaway, destroying the faces of the presidents, which eventually fell.
• In the film Category 7: The End of the World, global warming causes the moisture inside the mountain to expand, which causes the head of George Washington to break off.
• In an episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Ned Bigby and his friend, Jennifer "Moze" Mosely, collaborate on a project involving Mount Rushmore with Ned in place of Thomas Jefferson. By the end of the episode, the project gets ruined after Ned frees himself after getting stuck and the project falls over.
• In Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy, fundamentalist Islamic clerics dynamite Mount Rushmore in a failed attempt to destroy it.
• In the Roger Rabbit short Trail Mix-Up, Roger and some other characters are sent flying by an erupting geyser, and crash into Mount Rushmore, destroying it (the faces comically screaming before the crash).
• In Poul Anderson's dystopian novelette The Pugilist, the United States is defeated and conquered by the Soviet Union. The puppet American government installed by the Soviets orders what is left of the US Army to turn its artillery at the Heads on Mount Rushmore and destroy them.
• In the beginning of the "Boom Boom" trailer for Wolfenstein: The New Order, Mount Rushmore is seen being destroyed by Nazi soldiers after their victory in World War II, with a general observing the destruction of the landmark.^[6]

Addition of extra faces

Depictions of a fifth (and occasionally, sixth) face usually place it to the left of George Washington or to the right of Abraham Lincoln, at about the same height as other presidents:

• The cover of the February 1957 issue of MAD Magazine Issue #31, also depicts Mount Rushmore with a fifth face: that of Alfred E. Neuman. In the final scene of the Michael Weller play "Beast" at New York Theatre Workshop, the disfigured and burned face of George W. Bush appears beside the original four. In MAD Magazine, the fifth face is closer to the base of the mountain, and is below Thomas Jefferson.
• In the movie The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), Don Knott’s title character is transformed into a fish resembling a tilefish. He helps the Allies win the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II. For these exploits, his tilefish image is added (during a fantasy sequence) to Mt. Rushmore, to Lincoln’s right (viewer's perspective).
• In an episode of Phineas and Ferb, Phineas and Ferb carve a face of their sister, Candace, but it was quickly destroyed by flowing magma.
• In the Judge Dredd comic The Cursed Earth two faces are added: President Jimmy Carter to the left of Washington, and the leader of a group of mutants to the right of Lincoln.
• In the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!, Schroeder suggests that Beethoven's face be added to Mount Rushmore.
• In the final scene of the film Head of State, fictional president Mays Gilliam's face has been added into Mount Rushmore next to Abraham Lincoln.
• In the opening titles of British satirical animated series 2DTV, George W. Bush erects his face in the gap between Roosevelt and Lincoln. A nuclear warhead is then deployed from the top of Bush's sculpture, much to the shock of the other presidents.
• In a scene from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a fifth face carved into the mountain is that of an African-American woman (named in the novelization as Sarah Susan Eckert).
• President Barack Obama has been added as a fifth head to Mount Rushmore on internet depictions of the mountain. On July 8, 2009, climate change activists unfurled a banner with the purpose of portraying a fifth face on Mount Rushmore of Obama as a President who could make Presidential changes in leading effective climate legislation as opposed to being a politician.^[7][8][9]
• Prior to the retirement of Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant in 1982, fans of the University of Alabama football team generated an image with Bryant's face added to the left of Lincoln.

Imitation of the style

Deep Purple's 1970 album Deep Purple in Rock has a cover inspired by Mount Rushmore depicting the five members' faces instead of the four presidents. The title is an obvious pun, the music genre of the album being rock music, while the monument is carved from what is essentially a very large rock. In turn, the English cover of the volume 4 DVD release of the anime series Cromartie High School (entitled "Mount Rockmore") is a parody of the Deep Purple album. Here, the anime characters' faces replace those of the band members.

In the Japanese manga, Naruto, four of the main leaders (Hokage) of Konohagakure (Hidden Leaf Village) have had their faces carved into a mountain overlooking the village of Konohagakure, in a style similar to that of Mount Rushmore (with Tsunade's face added later, in Shippuuden. (Hatake Kakashi) and (Uzumaki Naruto) were the 6th and 7th face to be added to the mountain in the last chapter). The village was designed by Japanese manga artist Masashi Kishimoto. The fictional nuclear-equipped warship Outer Haven, in the video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, features a Mount Rushmore-esque sculpture of the four "Snake" characters that have appeared thorough the Metal Gear series (Solidus Snake, Old Snake, Liquid Snake and Big Boss).

In the 1994 live action version of Richie Rich starring Macaulay Culkin, the Rich family has their own version of Mount Rushmore, named Mount Richmore in the movie, built on their property with their own faces sculpted into it. It becomes the setting for the film's finale, echoing the finale of North by Northwest.

The WWE had their own version of Mount Rushmore consisting of the best wrestlers in the company's history. The ones sculpted into the mountain are The Undertaker, Steve Austin, John Cena, and Hulk Hogan.

Appearances set in the future

Alan Weisman, in his book The World Without Us,^[11] suggests that the Mount Rushmore memorial could last up to 7.2 million years and thus be one of the longest-lasting human artifacts. Because of this enduring structure, it has appeared in some science fiction set in the distant future:

• In the Red Dwarf novel Better Than Life, Dave Lister finds Mount Rushmore half-buried underneath garbage, which causes him to realize he is back on Earth (a usage reminiscent of the scene from the original Planet of the Apes film).
• A 1980 episode of the post-apocalyptic cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian, "Attack of the Amazon Women", uses Mount Rushmore as its setting.
• The altered appearance in Star Trek V is also a future setting.
• In Nelson S. Bond's Meg the Priestess series, the short story "Pilgrimage" involves a journey to the "Place of the Gods": Jarg, Ibrim, Taamuz and Tedhi, revealed to be Mount Rushmore.

In theme parks

• Mount Rushmore is one of the landmarks reproduced at the Window of the World theme park located in the western part of the city of Shenzhen in the People's Republic of China.
• A version made out of 1.5 million Lego bricks is featured at Legoland Billund in Denmark. The one at Legoland California has minifigures that move a giant cotton swab in and out of Washington's right ear.

In video games

In addition to in Pilotwings 64, Mount Rushmore also appears:

• As a Wonder of the World in the PC game Civilization IV
• In Capcom's Street Fighter as the background stage of Mike
• In Pro Pinball: Timeshock!, where climbing on it is one of the tasks
• In Fatal Fury 2 as Terry Bogard's stage.
• In the 1993 computer game Sam & Max Hit the Road, one scene features a fictional Dinosaur Tar Pit at Mount Rushmore, where the character Sam can be made to sing "The Name Game" with the names of the Presidents depicted on the mountain. Characters are also seen bungee jumping from each of the Presidents' nostrils using green colored rope.
• In Metal Gear Solid 4, the four computer AIs: GW, AL, TJ and TR are named after the initials of the four presidents and Liquid Ocelot's warship, Outer Haven, is decorated with a "Mount Snakemore" consisting of Solidus Snake, Old Snake, Liquid Snake, and Big Boss.
• In the 2008 strategy game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, an allied campaign mission is staged around the site, with various weapons located inside the heads.
• In Crash Tag Team Racing, In the Tyrannosaurus Wrecks Hub, one can see, in a mount, four dinosaur skulls imitating Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln.
• Brütal Legend has a Mt. Rockmore feature. Due to the game being centered around rock, the legendary figures of the real life Mt. Rockmore have been replaced with figures of legendary rockers (the player also has the option of changing these heads).
• In the 1990 game Fighter Bomber from Activision, one can fly by the monument.
• In Just Cause 2, one of the settlements features a parody of Mount Rushmore, featuring a three-headed sculpture secret base where the head of the middle represents the current president of Panau, Pandak "Baby" Panay. That settlement takes place for the 6th mission of the game "Into the den".
• In the game Flip Out! the aliens visited Mount Rushmore for one of the levels where each face was sliced into four pieces that had to be flipped and put back in order.^[12]

In comics and cartoons

• In the Justice League Adventures comics, Superman is shown as going to Mount Rushmore to seek solitude on at least one occasion.
• A Don Martin cartoon in MAD magazine featured a presidential barber being urgently dispatched from Washington, D.C. In the penultimate panel, the barber descends from a hovering helicopter by means of a rope ladder. In the ultimate panel, the barber - dangling precariously from the rope ladder - reaches out with his scissors and snips the stem of a small tree growing from Abraham Lincoln's left nostril as though it were a nose hair.
• Another Don Martin cartoon in MAD magazine depicted work crews cleaning the monument. While some workers clean the Presidents’ heads, other workers descend by elevator into a huge cavernous underground chamber into order to clean the Presidents’ shoes and boots.
• In the anime Naruto, the heads of all Hokage (Leader of the Hidden Leaf Village) are carved into a mountain in the background of the main village.
• Danger Rangers is a cartoon superheroes, and lived on secret headquarters.
• In the Family Guy episode, "North by North Quahog", Mount Rushmore is featured as being the location of Mel Gibson's home where Peter Griffin and his wife Lois are chased by him. After he falls to his apparent death, Peter and Lois make out on top of Washington's head (to which Washington mentions this to Jefferson and Roosevelt, who both then taunt Lincoln).
• In South Park, there is a picture of Cartman and his mom at Mount Rushmore in Cartman's living room.
• In the Johnny Bullet comic, the hero has to perform stunts for a film at Mount Rushmore. His mechanic replaces him and dies in a car crash, launching the initial conflict of the comic.^[13] Subsequent episodes feature a continuing investigation of the crash site at Mount Rushmore.
• In The Simpsons episode "Lisa Goes To Washington", a congressman is offered money for using Teddy Roosvelt's head to extract oil.
• In the American Dad! episode "Honey, I'm Homeland", a leftist terrorist cell attempts to blow up the faces to re-sculpt Washington, Roosevelt and Lincoln into those of leftist heroes including Sean Penn, Michael Moore and Captain Planet. Jefferson was to be left intact since according to Stan Smith (who was abducted and brainwashed by the cell) he freed the slaves. However, as the missiles fly through to their target, an anti-missile defense activates and takes them out. Bullock arrives and reveals that Stan was used by CIA agents in disguise to test the defense and that the defense system was created because South Dakota had a lot of homeland secretary funds just laying around.
• Mount Rushmore also appears on the Cartoon Network media franchise Ben 10 as a Plumbers base. It was destroyed by Ben as Upchuck two times, once on the first series' 51st episode "Ben 10 vs. the Negative 10, Part 2" by an explosion Ben created while stopping the Forever King; and the 30th episode of Ben 10: Omniverse. "Evil's Encore" due to accidentally spitting out the chair with the Technobugs that Dr. Animo uses and as a result before the destruction, the satellites were shut down and Vilgax in The Ultimate Enemy: Part 2 by ripping off the face of George Washington to break into the base and the Esoterica. Other episodes that the said place can also appear are Secrets as the setting of battle between some alien forms of Ben and Vilgax and Max got some weapons stored in there so that they can enter Vilgax's ship and rescue Ben, Truth where Phil visited so that he can steal the Null Void Projector, Part 1 of the said two parter where the trio saw that the Negative 10 are now complete, War of the Worlds: Part 1 to free Darkstar/Michael Morningstar from the Null Void, and Malefactor that was used to keep a Psycholeopterran safe and later on attacked by Malware while Khyber took a DNA sample from the Psycholeopterran.
• In an episode of The Berenstain Bears, the Bear family visited a monument that was obviously a parody of Mount Rushmore, featuring a scene inside a replica of Abraham Lincoln's ear.

In music

American composer Michael Daugherty's 2010 piece for chorus and orchestra, "Mount Rushmore," depicts each of the four presidents in separate movements. The piece sets texts by George Washington, William Billings, Thomas Jefferson, Maria Cosway, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.^[14]

Alice Cooper references Mount Rushmore in his album DaDa on the song "I love America" with the words, "I love that mountain with those four big heads."

Adam Young composed a score in based on the shrine called "Mount Rushmore." It was released November 1, 2016.

In government media

Mount Rushmore National Memorial 1927-1952 Black Hills, South Dakota

Mount Rushmore commemorative half dollar obverse.

• The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative 3¢ postage stamp on August 11, 1952. The stamp commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Mount Rushmore National Monument.
• Mount Rushmore has been depicted on several United States coins. One of the most recent was the South Dakota State Quarter (seen at the very top of this article) issued in 2006. In 1991 the United States Mint issued several commemorative coins, specifically a 50¢,^[15] $1,^[16] and $5 coin ^[17] for the anniversary of Mount Rushmore.
• Mount Rushmore has been featured prominently on South Dakota's automobile license plates since 1952.
• The flag of South Dakota features the phrase "THE MOUNT RUSHMORE STATE", which was added in 1992, although the image on the flag does not include the monument.

In other media

• From the second season of Pee-wee's Playhouse, Mount Rushmore is seen when Pee-wee is flying out on his scooter.
• A 1960s rock band bears the same name as the monument.
• The Washington Nationals baseball club uses large foam rubber depictions of the "Rushmore Four" in both their marketing campaigns and in a series of in-stadium promotions, which include the "Racing Presidents".^[18] "George", "Abe", "TJ" and "Teddy" appeared in the fourth inning of home games at RFK Stadium; the tradition continued at the new Nationals Park. For almost six seasons, the Teddy character never won a Racing Presidents event, causing Nationals fans to chant his name in the hope that the race they viewed would be his first win. Teddy finally won his first race on the last day of the 2012 season, the first time the Nationals made it to the playoffs.^[19] (Teddy then went on to win the race during all three 2012 postseason games played in Nationals Park.)
• A 2012 Geico TV commercial showed the Gecko walking toward the opening of a long tunnel, which turned out to be inside the right eye of George Washington at Mount Rushmore.^[20]
• In the 2013 film Nebraska, Woody (Bruce Dern) and David Grant (Will Forte) stop by Mount Rushmore on their road trip to Nebraska. Woody remarks that he thinks the faces of Mount Rushmore look incomplete.
• In Professional Wrestling, a stable in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla called Mount Rushmore was established by wrestlers Adam Cole, The Young Bucks, and Kevin Steen.^[21]
• In Part 4 of the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks, FBI deputy director Gordon Cole (David Lynch) expresses disappointment on a trip to South Dakota about being nowhere near Mount Rushmore. His colleague Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) responds by giving him a photograph. "There they are, Albert," Gordon remarks. "Faces of stone."