B-A-N-A-N-A-S: The Top 10 Banana Moments in Pop Culture History

Do you remember where you were the first time you heard “Hollaback Girl?” I, for one, was a wee lil fourth grader jamming out in my bright purple bedroom to a song I definitely should not have been singing at that age. Nevertheless, it was then and there that I realized just how vital the yellow fruit was not just to food, but to pop culture as well. (OK, fine, I realized it just now for the purpose of this assignment, but I’m sure I thought about it back then too. Maybe.)

From movies to music and our favorite TV shows, bananas have shown up in our lives in so many ways. So as part of our recent enthusiastic banana undertaking, we are taking a look back in time at the top banana moments—both good and not so good—in recent-ish pop culture. You know, the ones that are so burned into our subconsciousness that we think of them every time we pick up a banana at the store. The ones you already know made this list! The ones we’ll no doubt tell our grandchildren about whilst rocking back and forth gently. “In my day, they put pajamas on bananas and raced them down the stairs,” and such. You get it! Without further ado: the definitive banana moments of our time.

10. Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stand from Arrested Development

If you know Arrested Development, you know about the banana stand. “There’s always money in the banana stand,” George Bluth Sr. would continually say to his kids. Turns out, it wasn’t just a saying; there actually was always money in the banana stand—about $250,000 of it that lined the walls, until it was burned down by his son, Michael Bluth.

9. Andy Warhol’s Banana

What started as an interactive art piece for The Velvet Underground’s 1967 album The Velvet Underground and Nico eventually became one of Warhol’s most notable works of art (and one ultimately synonymous with the Pop Art movement). The piece was even crowned best album cover of all time by Billboard in 2023. Fast forward to today, and you can easily find the art plastered on everything from T-shirts to mock prints—and even our banana spotlight’s cover art—further cementing the banana as an icon. An orange could never!!

8. “The Comedian” Art Installation by Maurizio Cattelan

Miami’s annual Art Basel event is notorious for attracting all kinds of art. In 2019, the event shocked all when an art installation simply displaying an actual banana duct-taped to a wall sold for a whopping $120,000—along with two other editions that sold for upwards of $150,000 each. The installation was titled “The Comedian” and was the work of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It examined how material objects become important depending on their context while also poking fun at art and capitalism. Performance artist David Datuna ended up peeling the banana off the wall and eating it as a prank. Though onlookers were shocked, at the end of the day, it was just a regular banana, and the exhibit was replaced with another piece of the fruit, further proving its absurdity.

7. Slipping on Banana Peels

A comedy trope as old as time—so much so that MythBusters even tested the theory to see how likely it is to slip on one! Plot twist, it’s not, unless you’ve got a whole lot of bananas littered on the ground, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from making it into a thing. The bit is believed to have originated in the 20th century as a Vaudeville act. Vaudeville comedian “Sliding” Billy Watson saw someone struggling to maintain their balance after slipping on a peel, and incorporated it into one of his shows. The act later appeared in the silent film “The Flirt,” and the rest is history. But history is different from reality–lmk if you’ve actually ever witnessed someone slip on a banana peel. In my 29 years, I have not.

6. The Savannah Bananas

If there’s one team I’m always rooting for, it’s baseball’s Savannah Bananas. Not necessarily to win, but to provide entertainment. I’ve yet to see them play in person, but it’s high on my bucket list. This team is committed to the bit in every way possible. First off, they play in kilts. Most notably, however, they perform choreographed numbers at every game, from Mariah Carey to One Direction and even songs from Aladdin. This is probably one of my favorite videos from them to date—the suspense!!—but they always find a way to keep things interesting.

5. Bananas in Pyjamas

This Australian children’s television series from the 90s was a classic. Who didn’t love watching these two bananas and their endless shenanigans? OK, maybe we didn’t love watching them—they did skew scary sometimes—but their theme song was catchy and the show was, well, bananas.

4. Britney (and Banana) at the 2001 VMAs

While performing her hit “I’m a Slave 4 U,” the singer emerged on stage with an albino Burmese python named Banana wrapped around her. It was a bold move not seen by many, if any, performers before, and Spears reflected on it in her recent memoir:

In my head I was saying, Just perform, just use your legs and perform. But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing,” Spears writes. “I was thinking, Are you f—ing serious right now? The f—ing goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God.

3. The Banana Boat Scene in Jaws

Cue the dramatic music! You know, the one that immediately makes you think of a shark swimming up to you in the ocean?? In this scene from the fourth installment of the Jaws movies, a group of beachgoers is seen atop a banana boat when a shark suddenly starts swimming towards them, eventually biting the leg of a woman and pulling her off the boat. Okay, so maybe we’re not eager to hop on a banana boat anytime soon after watching this, but if you pause the movie right before things take a turn, it doesn’t look like such a bad time!!

2. “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis

This song originated as a rhyming game that makes it easy to rhyme to practically any name—but you probably know it most as a way to rhyme the name Hannah with banana. How many parents raised their Hannahs by singing this song to them? In fact, do you even have a daughter named Hannah if you didn’t sing this song to them at least once a day?

1. “Hollaback Girl”

If you didn’t know how to spell bananas, Gwen Stefani changed that in the year 2004. I was a mere elementary school girl when this song came out, but that didn’t stop me from belting the lyrics at the top of my lungs. The whole thing was generation-defining hit: The singer’s music video featured a high-school theme, and this part of the song saw a cheerleading squad decked out in banana-themed uniforms spelling out the name of the fruit with signs. It made me want to audition for the cheer squad, which I never did get around to, but I did use the inspiration to wear a cheerleader Halloween costume that year.