RELX proudly presents
A journey to the movies
...and beyond
Our brands, names and businesses are a fabric of life and they have been used to inspire films, books, TV programmes, podcasts and more.
If you’re a farmer, a radiologist or a nerd, a police officer, a vinyl acetate monomer buyer or a legal researcher, the chances are you’re a RELX customer - although you might not know it.
The company the internet couldn’t kill, RELX has been innovating and helping customers for decades, even centuries. Did you know we have also been inspiring popular culture along the way?
Even while writing this story, I turn the page of a paperback thriller and suddenly: “My baby photos would have been more at home in The Lancet than in a family album.” (The Devil’s Dice by Roz Watkins, page 75)
With the popularity of medical and crime dramas, it’s no surprise that The Lancet and LexisNexis are mentioned regularly, from Sherlock Holmes to Only Fools and Horses, from CSI to Orange is the New Black. Many of our other brands appear in popular culture too.
"Had it been The Lancet or The British Medical Journal it would have helped me."
"You know, he made the front page of
The Lancet, don’t you?
As being the only living man in history to be treated for rigor mortis."
"It’s called LexisNexis. It’s like Google, if all you’re looking for is old legal cases."
LexisNexis Legal & Professional’s marketing team quickly saw this previous quote as an opportunity, explaining: “Yes. We’re totally real. And we do so much more than just ‘old legal cases’ too.”
The RELX offices in New York feature in the poster for 2008’s The Dark Knight film, as well as films including Coming to America, with Eddie Murphy, released in 1988.
Parts of Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise in 2015, were filmed in London’s Trafalgar Square, and include sweeping shots of RELX’s Strand office.
Elsevier’s logo, first introduced by Isaac Elzevir in 1620, features in the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. It’s on the cover of Galileo's text Diagramma Veritatis, in the Vatican library. And the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy has a title alluding to Gray's Anatomy, the classic human anatomy textbook now published by Elsevier.
LexisNexis is mentioned in TV shows including Without a Trace, Chicago PD, FBI, The Good Wife, House, The West Wing and Supernatural.
Click on the images below to see more quotes from books, movies and TV - then continue reading below...
"Thank god for LexisNexis, huh?"
"Hey, I just e-mailed you all those LexisNexis searches, on the male models who've appeared in Mugatu campaigns. It's pretty weird. It seems like all of Mr Mugatu's models have a bad habit of dying young in freak accidents."
Yes, even Hannibal Lecter reads Elsevier journals. Find out more below...
The presenters of popular podcast You’re Wrong About frequently reference LexisNexis as part of their research, with mentions in episodes including Shannon Faulkner & Sex Discrimination at The Citadel.
The Lancet has been referenced in Call the Midwife, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Shameless and Carry on Nurse, among many others.
Did you know Hannibal Lecter, the fictitious serial killer who eats his victims, reads Icarus, Elsevier’s international journal of solar system studies: "Starling called me...She said Dr Lecter might use several mail drops that were conveniently close to each other. I got a hit that way. The journal of Neurophysiology's going to one zip code and Physica Scripta and Icarus are going to another." (Hannibal, Thomas Harris)
A Young Frankenstein also enjoys passing the time on a train to Transylvania by reading The Lancet, played by Gene Wilder in 1974.
More Lancet mentions below...
Reed Exhibitions doesn’t escape the limelight either. Filming locations for Matt Damon’s movie Hereafter, released in 2010, included a re-creation of Reed Exhibitions’ London Book Fair at Alexandra Palace.
Parts of TV programme I Hate Suzie were filmed at London Comic Con, where the main character appears as a panellist at Comic Con to try to win her fans back. And our exhibitions feature in Rotten Tomatoes classic film Return of the Killer Shrews, and TV drama Raising Dion.
"We're here to shoot the sizzle reel for MIPCOM." (Return of the Killer Shrews, 2012)
“I found these amazing new comics at Comic-Con, and I really want to show them off.” (Raising Dion, Season 1, Episode 1)
Back to Elsevier, the business’ books were featured in the background of Hawaii 5-0 episode ‘Hana Keaka’ (Season 6, Episode 9). “The cast and crew sent me some goodies as a thank you, and even returned the books,” says Susan Ikeda, Senior Editorial Project Manager, STM.
The band They Might Be Giants, used a Netter image in one of their album cover inserts.
And Elsevier provided several psychology books to use on the set of the award-winning movie The Big Sick starring Kumail Nanjiani in 2017. Elsevier is mentioned in the Special Thanks credits and the books can clearly be seen in the movie and in the trailer. Forensic Pathology, published by Elsevier, is also mentioned in Seize the Night by Dean Koontz.
LexisNexis Legal & Professional’s Shepard’s Citations Service has become a popular and widely-used verification term in the US legal system, with judges often asking: “Did you Shepardize?” This has been reflected on screen: “Pull the cases, Shepardize them, make sure they're still good law.” (Bosch, Series 6, Episode 5)
In a real-life example of the importance of our products, Shepard’s was mentioned in the OJ Simpson murder trial. The prosecutor Marcia Clark did not Shepardize one of her cases and Judge Ito called her out on it.
On the same theme, pivotal to the plot of the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinny is the book ‘Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure’, now in its fifth edition and still available in our online LexisNexis bookstore.
We’ve even made a few famous friends along the way. “Bestselling crime writer Michael Connelly’s lawyer, detective and reporter characters regularly research cases through LexisNexis,” says Peter Carter, Analysis Editor, The Lawyer’s Daily, Legal. “I was reading one of his most recent novels “Fair Warning” and the lead character Jack McEvoy is a reporter at a low-budget newspaper. He is investigating a series of murders and wanted to consult LexisNexis files but didn’t have a budget so he had to ask a lawyer/friend to use his account. I was reading the book thinking “he could just phone me. I’d help him” then I remembered he is a fictitious character in a made-up story. Ha. Monday morning, I googled Connelly’s site, and sent an email to the “contact us” address. His web manager Jane Davis immediately wrote back: Ha, Peter! That’s great. I’ll forward to Michael. Be careful-he might just take you up on it!”
No matter how often we star in popular culture, it’s always the one that got away that niggles most: “One story that still infuriates me all these many years later is that we gave the producers of the Tom Cruise movie ‘The Firm’ permission to reference and display LexisNexis in the film,” says Shari Townsend, Lead Paralegal - Intellectual Property Group, RELX. “I was literally in the theater waiting to see the reference, only to be blindsided that somehow West (our competitor) managed to get their books and references in. I got up and walked out of the theater after that and still can’t watch the movie.”
Whatever happens, we look forward to many more years of enriching popular culture with our logos and brands.
RELX is a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.
We help scientists make new discoveries, doctors and nurses improve the lives of patients and lawyers win cases. We prevent online fraud and money laundering, and help insurance companies evaluate and predict risk. Our events enable customers to learn about markets, source products and complete transactions. In short, we enable our customers to make better decisions, get better results and be more productive.
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