10.06
Skull and Bones place in popular culture is significant, since, although it is a ‘secret society,” it is probably the best known college secret society in America, as can be seen from the recurring references to it in all kinds of media. Skull and Bones has featured from time to time in the Doonesbury comic strips by Garry Trudeau; especially in 1980 and December 1988, with reference to George H. W. Bush, and again at the time that the society went co-ed.
In The Simpsons, Montgomery Burns is both a Yalie and a Bonesman. The 2000 film The Skulls concerns a highly elaborate secret society with clear parallels to Skull and Bones at a university beginning with a “Y”; A portrayal of Bones also played a substantial role in Matt Damon’s 2006 film The Good Shepherd, about the Central Intelligence Agency.
A Gilmore Girls subplot involves the main character, Rory (a student at Yale), associating with a Skull and Bones-like group called Life and Death Brigade. The 2000 political-economic novel Crashmaker (see Victor Sperandeo) centers around Skull and Bones-like societies.
In the Gossip Girl episode New Haven Can Wait, Chuck Bass gets abducted by Skull and Bones. At the next meeting, he brings three prostitutes, for each member, with hidden cameras on them, which provide him incriminating material against Skull and Bones. When Skull and Bones finds out, he shows some pictures and states that he from thereon ‘owns’ the Skull and Bones Society.
Additionally, in an episode of Family Guy, Lois’ father, Carter Pewterschmidt, is a member of the Skull and Bones (whose initiation is satirized) and offers Chris membership.