Emacs , originally released in 1976, is a veteran and still-active text editor that continues to be updated even 50 years later, as of the time of writing. Due to its long history, it has many devoted fans, and there is no shortage of memes, such as the ‘ editor wars ‘ with vi , which also has a long history. Emacs is also sometimes used as a tool to create scenes in movies and other media, and Emacs enthusiasts who spot it can’t help but smile. Ian YE Pan, a software engineer at AWS, is one such person, and he has written about various scenes in which Emacs appears on his blog.
Emacs Appearances in Pop Culture | Ian YE Pan
https://ianyepan.github.io/posts/emacs-in-pop-culture/
◆The film ‘The Social Network’ (2010)
In the movie ‘ The Social Network ,’ which depicts the founding of Facebook, there is a scene where a young Mark Zuckerberg builds ‘Facemash,’ the precursor to Facebook. Facemash was a website where users voted for photos of female students, but it required scraping photos of female students from the websites of all the dorms at the university. Zuckerberg, while launching Emacs, says, ‘There’s no way I can go through 500 pages and download each photo one by one, so I have to modify the Perl script in Emacs.’
◆The movie ‘Tron: Legacy’ (2010)
‘
Tron: Legacy ‘ is the second film in the ‘Tron’ series, and Emacs appears in one of its opening scenes. When the protagonist, Sam Flynn, launches a hacking program to attack Encom’s operating system, Edward Dillinger Jr. uses grep to search for and terminate it, launching Emacs’ eshell.
◆The film ‘Silent World: Earth Frozen’ (2010)
Around the 20:30 mark of ‘
Silent World,’ a science fiction disaster film co-produced by Australia and Canada, there is a scene where two scientists, Jack and Zoe, are trying to recover satellite images from a frozen hard drive. While they are disheartened that almost all the files are corrupted, a scrolling display of Emacs Lisp code is briefly visible on their computer monitor. Keywords such as ‘;;;###autoload,’ ‘interactive,’ and ‘save-excursion’ can be seen, confirming that the displayed code is undoubtedly Emacs Lisp. A closer look at the displayed Emacs Lisp code reveals that it is the source code of a real module called xml-parse.
◆TV drama ‘Silicon Valley’ (2014-2019)
The American television drama series ‘
Silicon Valley ‘ is a comedy-drama that parodies the culture of the high-tech industry and was a popular series that aired for six seasons. In a scene from season 3, episode 6, the main character Richard is coding with his girlfriend Winnie at her apartment when they clash over the use of spaces and tabs. Richard stubbornly insists that tab characters should be used for indentation, saying, ‘I don’t understand why people use spaces instead of tabs. If you’re going to do that, why not just use Vim instead of Emacs?’ But Winnie retorts, ‘I use Vim more than Emacs.’ At this, Richard cries out, ‘Oh God, help us!’ and breaks down in tears. This exchange may be difficult to understand if you are not familiar with the ‘editor wars.’
In Season 4, Episode 2, there’s a scene where the team is brainstorming feature ideas for their product, and there’s a yellow sticky note that says ‘Emacs keybindings.’ Emacs keybindings, which are notoriously difficult to use and can get your fingers tangled, are famous enough to be a running joke for years, and you’ll need to use them countless times in various situations.
◆Manga ‘The Hacker Files’ (1992-1993)
‘
The Hacker Files ‘ is a 12-issue miniseries published by DC Comics that depicts a freelance hacker exposing a conspiracy by a multinational corporation and taking down evil companies. In the first issue, there is a scene where the protagonist, Jack Marshall, uses Emacs to edite itself is not depicted; only the command ’emacs cure.c’ is shown
◆Manga ‘The Kings’ Vikings’ (2013-2019)
‘
The Kings’ Vikings ‘ is a Japanese manga about a high school hacker who teams up with a wealthy angel investor to try and rebuild the world order. In one chapter, an enemy hacker uses Emacs Lisp to infiltrate security cameras. At first glance, the code looks like just an ordinary variation of Lisp, but upon closer reading, you can see that it uses Emacs Lisp-specific keywords such as ‘pcase’ and ‘seq-map’.
◆OVA “KEY THE METAL IDOL” (1994-1996)
‘
KEY THE METAL IDOL ‘ is a 15-episode Japanese anime from the 1990s that tells the story of Mima Tokiko, a girl who believes she is a robot named ‘Key’. In episode 9, ‘Return’, there is a scene where a mysterious man named ‘D’ is locked in a cell with only a computer terminal. When ‘D’ presses the return key on the terminal, Emacs Lisp code scrolls and appears on the terminal screen. Here, we can see that Emacs Lisp-specific keywords such as ‘save-excursion’ and ‘set-buffer’ are being used.
◆The movie ‘Internship’ (2013)
‘
The Internship ‘ is a comedy film about two 40-year-old salesmen competing for jobs at Google against other applicants who are much younger and more technically skilled. In a scene where one of the characters, Nick Campbell, is giving a presentation to Google executives, he tries to make a good impression by asking, ‘Why not try using Emacs instead of vi as the default editor for Ubuntu?’ The executive replies, ‘That’s a really good idea,’ but Pan comments, ‘This scene is unrealistic because if there were real programmers sitting next to him, an all-out war would have broken out on the spot.’
◆TV anime ‘Aldnoah.Zero’ (2014-2015)
In episode 5 of the Japanese sci-fi anime ‘
Aldnoah.Zero ,’ Emacs and Emacs Lisp briefly appear during a battle scene between two mechs. If you look closely at the bottom right of the screen, you can see the pilot debugging a bug in the initialization file ‘.emacs.’ Any Emacs user has probably experienced a corrupted initialization file, so the frustration is understandable, but debugging it in the middle of a battle is unprecedented.
In the following scene, an Emacs Lisp snippet is displayed on the screen. If you look closely, you can see distinctive keywords such as ‘progn’, ‘insert’, ‘beginning-of-line’, and ‘forward-char’.
AlphaGo ‘ (2017)
‘AlphaGo’ is a documentary film about how AlphaGo, a program developed by Google DeepMind, learned to play Go using AI and played against Lee Sedol, a top-class Go player. In the opening scene, where the narrator explains the meaning of ‘neural network,’ the camera shows the Ubuntu desktop of a software engineer programming Lua in Emacs.
Upon checking the desktop, Pan noted that everything—the terminal app, fonts, theme, and so on—was still at its default settings, ‘clearly indicating that this software engineer is a die-hard minimalist and purist.’
◆<a href="https://comicvibe.com/meghan-markle-emmy-nomination-for-netflix-show-with-love-meghan/” title=”Meghan Markle Emmy Nomination For Netflix Show 'With Love, Meghan'”>Netflix original drama ‘The Fastest Online Drug Sales Manual’ (2019-2025)
‘
The Fastest Online Drug Sales Manual ‘ is a Netflix drama series from Germany. In the first episode of season 2, Emacs enthusiast Kira jokes that ‘vi only has two modes: a ‘constant beeping’ mode and a ‘destroy everything’ mode,’ to which her date Lenny retorts, ‘Emacs is far superior, until your hands get tired from mashing shortcuts.’ In response to their exchange, Pan claims, ‘I use Emacs with Evil-mode enabled (an extension that replicates Vim’s keybindings and advanced editing features on Emacs), so I get the best of both vi and Emacs!’
◆Hulu original drama ‘Murder in the World’s End’ (2023)
‘
Murder in the World’s End ‘ is a murder mystery psychological thriller television miniseries, and in one scene, the protagonist, Darby Hart, suddenly asks a woman, ‘Are you a vi user or an Emacs user?’ He asks this question to see if the woman gives a clear answer, and to conclude that ‘if she doesn’t answer, she’s probably not a hacker.’
◆The movie ‘Haker’ (2002)
‘
Haker ‘ is a Polish comedy film about two high school friends who share a passion for hacking and gradually get involved in trouble with real gangs. In one scene, one of them is struggling to break through a firewall when the other suggests, ‘Have you tried using Emacs via sendmail?’ At first glance, ‘hacking via Emacs and email’ may sound far-fetched, but it was actually a method used in a real international hacking incident that occurred in the mid-1980s, and it is such a famous episode that a non-fiction novel based on the incident, ‘ The Cuckoo Lays Eggs in Computers, ‘ was published.
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Jul 19, 2026 12:00:00
in Software, Anime, Movie, Manga, Posted by log1c_sh
