Stephen Hawking’s 5 best and nerdiest pop culture cameos

Stephen Hawking died on Wednesday at the age of 76 years old, a loss of one of the world’s most brilliant scientific minds — and one of the most delightful presences in pop culture.

In between devoting his life to understanding the universe, developing the theory of Hawking radiation, and helping the rest of the world understand it all with A Brief History of Time, Hawking found the time to make guest appearances on some of the nerdiest pop culture properties out there. And since his first outing — on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993 — Fictional Stephen Hawking has become a recognizable character himself: petty, self-aggrandizing, prone to stealing ideas, and always the funniest person onscreen.

In celebration of the legacy of a man who devoted his life to making the universe a more comprehensible place for the rest of us, here are five of Stephen Hawking’s best pop culture cameos.

Hawking is the only person ever to play himself on Star Trek (or rather, a hologram of himself). In this 1993 episode, Data decides to try to understand humanity better by hitting the holodeck to play poker with some of the greatest minds in human history: Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking. Hawking gets off a few sick burns about Newton’s tendency to drone on about his apple story — and if his grin of pure glee at the end of the scene as he wins the hand is fake, then in all honesty, he deserved an Emmy.

Hawking would lend his voice to The Simpsons four times, but his first and perhaps greatest cameo came in the 1999 episode “They Saved Lisa’s Brain.” After the Springfield chapter of Mensa takes over the town, Hawking arrives to see this new utopia of the mind — but, he declares disapprovingly, “Your utopia is more of a fruitopia.” As Springfield’s citizens riot under the iron fist of Mensa, Hawking uses the helicopter function of his wheelchair (sure) to rescue Lisa, and even finds time to pronounce Homer’s theory of a doughnut-shaped universe “intriguing” and suggest that he might steal it.

Hawking, who said that he loved Futurama “more than George Takei,” cameoed on the show twice, and proved just as willing to rip off the ideas of idiot savants there as he was on The Simpsons. His first appearance came in the 2000 episode “Anthology of Interest,” in which he plays one of Al Gore’s Action Rangers, responsible for repairing any rips in the spacetime continuum. When Fry discovers one such rip, Hawking hastens to name it after himself.

“No fair!” protests Fry. “I saw it first.”

“Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?” smirks Hawking.

The Hawking of The Simpsons and Futurama might have stolen his ideas from very stupid people, but the Hawking of The Big Bang Theory got a lot more mileage out of destroying the ideas of smart people. When he meets Sheldon, Hawking pronounces Sheldon’s theory about the Higgs boson particle “fascinating,” but then casually destroys him by adding, “Too bad it’s wrong.” An arithmetic error on the second page of Sheldon’s paper invalidates his whole theory, Hawking explains: “It was quite the boner.”

Lest we labor under the impression that Hawking can only bring the sass when he’s playing a fictional version of himself, his 2014 interview with John Oliver is well worth watching, mostly because you get to see Hawking brutally destroying the comedian.

“You’ve stated that you believe that there could be an infinite number of parallel universes,” Oliver says. “Does that mean that there is a universe out there where I am smarter than you?”

“Yes,” Hawking replies. “And also a universe where you’re funny.”