References to the joke appear even outside the field of scientific modeling. "Spherical Cow" was chosen as the code name for the Fedora 18 Linux distribution. In the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, a joke is told by Dr. Leonard Hofstadter with the punchline mentioning "spherical chickens in a vacuum", in " The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization " episode. In the space gravity simulator educational video game Universe Sandbox, a spherical cow was added as a user-placeable object in March 2023.