's poem on display beside the Merlion statue
In music • Shortly after the introduction of the symbol, Dutch artist
Johnny Lion composed a song called "Merlion City Singapore" which sought to boost Singapore's reputation and characteristics overseas.
In film • In the 2021 animated movie ''
My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission'', a Singaporean hero with a design clearly based on the Merlion is seen. His quirk (superpower) allows him to spit high-pressure water from his mouth, just like the main Merlion statue. His name is Big Red Dot, a reference to Singapore's nickname of
Little red dot.
In TV series • The Merlion (Japanese: マーライオン) appeared in the influential anime
Cowboy Bebop (episodes 18 and 24), where its appearance in an ancient home movie offers Singaporean amnesiac bounty hunter Faye Valentine a clue to her true origins. • The Merlion featured heavily in Hajime Satō's (佐藤 肇, Satō Hajime) re-imagining of
Shinjuku in the 2005 anime,
Karas. • Together with
The Little Mermaid of Denmark and
Manneken Pis of Belgium, the Singapore Merlion is ranked in Japan as the 'Three Major Disappointments of the World'. •
The Amazing Race 25 had teams search the five official Merlions in
Singapore (Tourism Court,
Mount Faber,
Sentosa and two in
Merlion Park) to find a clue box in front of one of them, which was at
Mount Faber. • The Merlion and its supposed history are explained in ''
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders in episode 7 of the series in which the main characters travel to Singapore. Also in Stardust Crusaders'', there is a supporting character named Anne Merlai (Japanese: マーライ・アン), named after the Merlion, though only her given name "Anne" is mentioned. • On
TLC reality series
Cake Boss, a cake was made in the shape of The Merlion to commemorate Singapore's 50th Anniversary, incorporating flavors that are typically used in Singaporean desserts.
In gaming • Merlion Virtual Airlines, virtually based in Singapore, is a virtual airline focusing on the free flight simulator,
FlightGear, which uses the Merlion as its logo. • A kart based on the Merlion, known as the Roaring Racer, was added to
Mario Kart Tour during the game's Singapore Tour event in January 2022. The original Merlion statue also cameos on the Singapore Speedway track, which debuted during the same event and was later added to
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as part of paid downloadable content. In addition, a Roaring Racer Mii Racing Suit based on the Merlion was introduced in the Winter Tour event for
Mario Kart Tour in January 2023.
In literature •
Edwin Thumboo cemented the iconic status of the Merlion as a
personification of Singapore with his poem "Ulysses by the Merlion" in 1979. Due to Thumboo's status as Singapore's unofficial
poet laureate and the nationalistic mythmaking qualities of his poetry, future generations of Singaporean poets have struggled with the symbol of the Merlion, frequently taking an ironical, critical, or even hostile stand – and pointing out its artificiality and the refusal of ordinary Singaporeans to accept a tourist attraction as their national icon. The poem "attracted considerable attention among subsequent poets, who have all felt obliged to write their own Merlion (or anti-Merlion) poems, illustrating their anxiety of influence, as well as the continuing local fascination with the dialectic between a public and a private role for poets, which Thumboo (as
Yeats before him, in the Irish context) has wanted to sustain as a fruitful rather than a tense relation between the personal and the public." Among the poems of this nature are "Merlign" by
Alvin Pang and "Love Song for a Merlion" by Vernon Chan. More recent poems include "Merlion: Strike One" by
Koh Buck Song in the 2009 anthology,
Reflecting on the Merlion. • Merlions as a species were fictional characters in
Gwee Li Sui's
Myth of the Stone (1993), the first full-length graphic novel published in Singapore. They were depicted as calm and wise creatures that fought on the side of good and eventually overcame the dreaded
Kraken. Gwee further popularised the
iconoclastic image of the spitting Merlion in the early 1990s. It reappeared later with his poem "Propitiations" in his book of poems
Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? (1998).
As mascots and performance characters • For the inaugural
Singapore 2010 Summer Youth Olympics, a pair of mascots,
Lyo and Merly, were introduced. Merly is a "Merlion-ess cub" based on the Merlion. Her hair is inspired by the lion top half, while her fish half is represented in light-blue
scales on her body. Unlike the actual merlion, she has hands and legs instead of a tailfin. • The 37m-tall Sentosa Merlion appeared in the
Magical Sentosa show, awakening at the last scene of the show and shining two
laser beams out of its eyes at the audience. (Similar to the storyline of the
Songs of the Sea show.)
In local parlance • Singaporeans often substitute the term "Merlion" in lieu of
vomiting, in reference of the constant gushing of water from the Merlion's mouth.
In sculpture • The Merlion was featured during the 2005
Venice Biennale in the controversial work
Mike by artist
Lim Tzay Chuen. He had proposed taking the sculpture in the Merlion Park to the Singapore Pavilion at the exhibition, but was refused by the STB. STB offered to install of a life-sized replica of the Merlion at the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale which was rejected by Lim. ==See also==