Top 10 Rom-Com References on The Big Bang Theory

In the Season 12 episode “The Grant Allocation Derivation,” the university has some extra grant money to hand out and President Siebert gives Leonard the responsibility of deciding who gets it. Although Leonard’s newfound power does endear him to Penny, it also stresses him out as he knows that giving the money to one person will end up making everyone else angry. He ends up narrowing it down to three applications, which includes one from Raj, but not Howard. Howard is initially incredulous about being denied, asking if it’s because he’s an engineer. It wasn’t. Let’s just say his proposal relied a little more on Cuba Gooding Jr. than is probably appropriate for an academic setting.

If it was anyone else, we might’ve been shocked to know that they had never seen “Grease.” But given what we know of Amy’s mother, we weren’t as surprised as Penny seems to be. As with many of the firsts that Amy experiences after becoming a part of the group, she seems to really enjoy it. Maybe not as much as one of the other firsts, but she comes back to borrow the movie right away and doesn't have to wait till her birthday to watch it again if she wants to.

In Season 10, we learn two things about Rajesh Koothrappali. One is that he can hold his breath for a rather impressive amount of time. And two, his favorite movie isn’t “Waiting to Exhale.” It is, he announces after finally taking air, “The Princess Bride.” This winded declaration isn’t the only time the classic 1987 fantasy rom-com is referenced on the show. “The Princess Bride” comes up in the previous season when the guys decide to take fencing lessons, leading to Howard and Raj doing their best Inigo Montoya impressions back-and-forth at each other.

This movie’s got a little more com than rom, but this reference is too good not to include. Given Raj’s love of movies of the romantic and comedic variety, one wouldn’t expect to hear him saying anything negative towards said types of films. Especially one starring his homegirl Sandy B. However, as it turns out, according to many movie critics and Raj, “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous” is definitely not fabulous. In fact, when Raj suggests that the guys have a movie night with the theme being film sequels that killed their franchises, he includes the 2005 sequel as one that sadly fits the theme.

We all know Raj loves romantic comedies. Leonard? Not so much. However, there are exceptions to every rule, and in Leonard’s case, those exceptions are Meryl Streep and Cher. When Raj gets asked to be on the local news to discuss a meteor shower, he compares the opportunity to how Neil deGrasse Tyson got his big break. Then he contemplates needing to prepare a list of all the scientific inaccuracies in “Mamma Mia 2.” Which, as it turns out, Leonard saw with him. And all because of Meryl Streep and Cher. Which, for the record, are two good reasons to see most things.

In Season 8, the girls decide to have a prom to make up for the disappointing experiences they had at their real ones. Well, Amy and Bernadette had disappointing experiences, whereas Penny went to a whopping seven proms back in her high school days. When the guys find out about it, Raj is particularly excited given that he never had a prom in India but always wanted to go to one after seeing the film “Pretty in Pink.” And while “Carrie” turned him off the idea, another rom-com put him back in the pro-prom camp.

Raj’s love of romance and rom-coms doesn’t just affect how he acts in relationships, but also, at least in this case, how he suggests others act as well. When Penny, who is, let’s say, “romantically challenged,” asks for his help in creating a romantic evening for Leonard, Raj’s suggestions mostly come from classic scenes in romance movies. While Penny holding a boombox over her head would’ve been awesome and we would have loved to have seen her say “No one puts Lenny in a corner,” these moves just didn’t fit the bill.

“The Princess Bride” may be Raj’s favorite movie, but he’s definitely a big fan of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” as well. And his friends know this. So much so, that when Raj is eating pie and feeling bad about his lack of a girlfriend, Leonard’s first thought is that he must have recently rewatched the movie. That isn’t the only time the film comes up on the show. In the previous season, while the gang all spends a night in a hotel, all Raj wants to do is watch it. But that night it just isn’t meant to be for him and old Bridget, as well as for Leonard and Penny.

A character running through the airport to stop the person they love from leaving is a classic rom-com trope that we’ve seen over and over and over again, from “Liar Liar” to “Not Another Teen Movie.” When Howard races off to the airport to stop Raj from moving to London to be with Anu, that right there is a rom-com reference par excellence. It gets even better when Howard tells Raj how much everyone loves him and that a proposal in Notting Hill should be to someone who knows what that movie is. To which Raj does his best Julia Roberts impression from the climax of said film.

Anu is definitely not the big romantic that Raj is, and “Notting Hill” isn’t the only rom-com she’s unfamiliar with. The cue card scene from “Love Actually” might be to millenials what the boombox over the head scene was to kids growing up in the 1980s. But when Raj tries to apologize by recreating that classic scene, it bombs like “Gigli” because Anu has no idea what he’s doing. At the end of the day, she’s just a girl, standing in front of a boy, telling him “I don’t know what that means.”