Joisey



"Speaking the name of the State of New Jersey shall always get a big laugh. The Constitution cannot say exactly why."

- Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, The Constitution of the United States of America, Article IV, Section 5

New Jersey is the fourth smallest state in the US, but it is also the eleventh most populated and the most densely populated, being home to more people than New York City. It has a high level of ethnic and religious diversity, being home to Italians, Irish, Jews, Russians, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jamaicans, Haitians, Guyanese, Trinidadians, etc. in large numbers. Its landscape is also highly diverse, especially for a state of its size, being home to forests, mountains, swamps, cliffs, white sand beaches, and miles of rolling farmland. It is the location of several military facilities, including one of the largest in the country, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. It is the second most affluent state in the US, and possesses one of the most highly-regarded education systems in the country. There are affluent suburbs, bustling cities, and lush dairy farms all within a few miles of each other. Plus it is home to the best golf course in the world. In short, it's one of the most diverse states, filled to the brim with a plethora of different cultures and lifestyles.

But don't tell that to Hollywood (or New Yorkers).

In the media, New Jersey is often portrayed one of three ways:
 * 1) An overgrown Little Italy. Everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody who is "connected", be they a mechanic in Hoboken or a soccer mom in Parsippany. The politicians rival Third World dictators in brazen corruption. All the white people are Italian (and as of the 2010s they'll be white in name only, as they'll be slathered in fake-tan body paint), and they all know what the hottest clubs are. The men have blowouts, dress in either Armani Exchange clothing or muscle shirts, do vast quantities of steroids, drive '80s IROC-Z Camaros or entry-level BMWs, and are insanely misogynistic and homophobic. The women, known as "Jersey Girls," are all Bottle Fairies, still have Eighties Hair decades after it went out of style, wear ten pounds of makeup, and are always dressed like they're headed to the club. The only radio station is WKTU, and they are always playing Lady Gaga or Cascada remixes. If a techno-sounding beat starts playing, the natural response is to start pumping one's fist in the air. And everyone speaks with an obnoxious, nasally, highly Flanderized Italian-American/New York accent.
 * 2) A Place Worse Than Death, where people's hopes and dreams go to die. Suburbs, malls and smokestacks dominate the landscape, most of the kids are either vapid Alpha Bitches, Jerk Jocks or guidoes (see above), and the adults aren't much better. The cops are inept and more concerned with DWB (Driving While Black) than with the dude beating his wife just down the street. Our heroes are forced to have "fun" by loitering in convenience stores or malls, going to Action Park, and moping around to either a hip indie/Emo soundtrack or '80s power ballads (preferably Bon Jovi or The Boss). The highways are jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. You can only wonder why 8.7 million people choose to make New Jersey the most densely-populated state in the nation. This is arguably the most popular portrayal of New Jersey in the media, and will be played either for laughs or dead seriously.
 * 3) A Weirdness Magnet, with UFOs, monsters, ghosts, and The Jersey Devil waiting around every corner, and with the gateway to Hell sitting in the sewers of Clifton. Parts of it may be an out-of-New England branch of Lovecraft Country.

Not to be confused with Funetik Aksent.

Oh, and:

"Q: How is New Jersey like the Vatican? A: Neither wants you pumping your own gas."

For information on the various regions, cities and locales of the state of New Jersey, as well as a long list of famous New Jerseyans, check out our handy Trivia page.

The trope name comes from what is commonly believed to be the local pronunciation of New Jersey. In reality, this is only how it is pronounced by people who think they're being clever—saying "Joisey" to a New Jerseyan will earn you a boot up the ass. New Jerseyans, however, can use it any time they like—as evidenced by billboards for the 2010 New Jersey State Fair, which proudly proclaimed that the fair "puts the 'Joy' back in 'Joisey'". One of the easiest ways to tell if someone is from New Jersey or not: those who are (poorly) faking a New York accent say "Joisey," those from anywhere besides Jersey (including actual New Yorkers) say "New Jersey," those from Jersey simply say "Jersey."

Not to be confused with that other Jersey, which it was named after.

Anime & Manga

 * Shangri-La, the hometown of most of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ's main characters, is a lot like the stereotypical image of Jersey... if it were a 60 km-long cylinder floating around in space. Unsurprisingly, it's mostly used as a space garbage dump.
 * Part of the Intoccabile Arc of Noir, of all series, takes place in the Skylands.

Comic Books
"Lost Housewife 1: Ehwajehno! Wigodda perra skoytsfum sumuddaboyg! (Translation: Hey whaddaya know! We gotta pair of skirts from some otha' burg!)"
 * Some comic book fans believe that Batman's Gotham City is a thinly-disguised Newark. In current continuity, the city is now confirmed to indeed be located in New Jersey.
 * If this is true, then perhaps Bludhaven is a version of the nearby Elizabeth or Linden.
 * Given its position on the coast it seems Gotham is in the area of Little Egg Harbor. This would make Bludhaven the equivalent of Camden, which we can all agree is fair. Gotham's official history (yes, there really is such a thing) explains that it was heavily settled by Swedes; since Swedish immigrants had a large presence in southern New Jersey and Delaware, Camden is a fair candidate.
 * And then there's this.
 * Dude, that's the Egg Harbor area -- mentioned, like, two points up?
 * For a while, the third Steel lived and worked in Jersey City.
 * In a Booster Gold comic, Booster travels to some point in the future and wonders aloud what Jersey City looks like at this point in time, or whether the city even exists.
 * The Metal Men are headquartered in Hoboken.
 * Buddy Bradley moves back to Jersey after giving up on Seattle in the pages of Hate.
 * While the state itself isn't featured, Tomorrow Stories had Cobweb and Clarice running into the Lost Housewives of New Jersey, a tribe of housewives who got lost on "a cheap package tour, never to return" in Gowandogandoland. Their "language" is a very exaggerated New Jersey dialect.


 * An issue of The Mighty Thor featured a tall tale by Hercules of a fight he got into with Thor. At the end, he changed course and claimed that Thor had actually been holding back ... and when the Thunder God stopped holding back, "He flung me into a land the gods forgot! New Jersey!"
 * For a while, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch made their home in suburban Leonia, and commuted into Manhattan for their Avengers duties.

Film
"Victor: Why is New Jersey called "The Garden State?" Gracie: Because it's too hard to fit "Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State" on a license plate?"
 * Felix the Cat: The Movie has Felix setting his eyes upon the crumbling, corrupt Progress City, and what does he say? "Where are we, New Jersey?" Also an example of Self-Deprecation when you realize that Felix the Cat Productions Inc. just happens to be located in New Jersey.
 * Rural New Jersey, no less.
 * New Jersey features in every film of Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse, often as the main setting. Smith himself is from Highlands.
 * Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle Go to White Castle. Starts (and ends) in Hoboken, and goes through Newark, New Brunswick, Princeton, Cherry Hill, and miles of the New Jersey Turnpike.
 * Which makes their journey all the more interesting as there are fifteen different White Castles within ten minutes of driving.
 * Artie Lange's Beer League. Became a running joke on The Howard Stern Show (which Lange is one of the hosts of) due to its poor production values.
 * Garden State, obviously.
 * In Dude, Where's My Car? the good Aliens threaten to banish the bad Aliens to none other than Hoboken, NJ.
 * The first half hour of The Remake of The War of the Worlds had New Jersey (specifically Bayonne) getting blown up. The film crew actually did blow up a small park in Bayonne as part of the movie (the crew rebuilt it afterwards).
 * For that matter, the infamous 1938 radio show was also set largely in New Jersey.
 * The New Jersey Turnpike makes notable appearances in Being John Malkovich and Men in Black.
 * Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, in which, if nothing else, the hip indie kids have the initiative to go into New York City. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Paul Blart: Mall Cop, though it suffers from some Boston Doubling (to be more precise, the well-loved South Shore Plaza in nearby Braintree).
 * At one point in Zoolander, Derek goes to work with his family in the coal mines of South Jersey. The real South Jersey is a vast coastal plain, hardly the place where one would find coal mines... but of course, this is supposed to be a joke.
 * Especially since the scene was actually filmed in an old mine (now a tourist trap) in the Highlands.
 * This is the state Gracie represents while undercover in Miss Congeniality. We never actually get to see the state outside of one deleted scene, but Gracie can't resist going for the easy target when her training starts to wear on her nerves.

"Eddie: Baby, there's nowhere else in the world like the Garden State! You got miles of swamps and mountains of dumps... different colored rivers... automobile graveyards, breweries, factories, ballparks, all mixed up together. It's the best place to live. Diane: Uh huh. Then why does the Statue of Liberty face the other way?"
 * The Wrestler. There the state is depicted as a feckless purgatory of trailer parks, run-down local shops, monotonous public housing, and abandoned amusement parks (no, not that kind).
 * Hellboy's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense is located in New Jersey, where it's disguised as a waste treatment plant.
 * In The Long Kiss Goodnight, Geena Davis' character, a CIA agent, lives in New Jersey, and has to get out. She complains that she gave birth to a child got herself out of Beirut, so getting out of New Jersey shouldn't be too hard. Samuel L. Jackson's character disagrees, saying many have tried and failed, including the state's entire population.
 * Camp Crystal Lake, the setting of the bulk of the Friday the 13 th series, is in New Jersey (most likely the Skylands—there's even a Voorhees State Park).
 * The original was filmed in Hope and Blairstown, both in the Skylands.
 * Most Troma movies, particularly The Toxic Avenger.
 * Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen spends a fair chunk of the movie in Princeton. (Although the university is left unnamed, it's pretty obvious that Sam's not going to Westminster Choir College.)
 * The slasher film The Prowler takes place in Avalon Bay, New Jersey.
 * Léon: The Professional (aka Leon) fails Jersey geography spectacularly in its final moments: Mathilda is at the Spenser School, which is (according to an overheard conversation) supposed to be in Wildwood, New Jersey. However, the final moments of the film show that it overlooks the Hudson River and Manhattan. Wildwood is in fact an oceanfront community near the tip of Cape May, over 150 miles away from New York City. (The scene was actually filmed at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.)
 * Live Free or Die Hard opens up with John McClane keeping an eye on his daughter's dorm at Rutgers.
 * Events of the 1982 Alone in the Dark (1982 film) happen in New Jersey.
 * Daniel and his mom from The Karate Kid were originally from New Jersey.
 * Michael Myers' hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois in the Halloween series was named after producer Debra Hill's hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey... which shares a freeway exit with the nearby town of Voorhees.
 * Saturday Night Fever is largely set in New Jersey.
 * In Eddie and the Cruisers and its sequel, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!, Joisey-accented Eddie Wilson is proud of his home state, warts and all. In fact it seems like the warts are what he likes about it. From a conversation about his inexplicable homesickness while on tour in the sequel:


 * The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension takes place entirely in New Jersey (allegedly; one must ignore the palm trees outside the New Brunswick police station to maintain Willing Suspension of Disbelief). Among the locations it visits are New Brunswick, Princeton, and Grover's Mills -- and the Banzai compound is located in Holland Township.  It's an odd mix of accurate and Did Not Do the Research; the 1930s-vintage physics lab at Princeton is spot-on, but rural Grover's Mills looks like an industrial park.

Literature

 * The two protagonists of The Wizard, The Witch And Two Girls From Jersey, as one can easily guess by the title.
 * F. Paul Wilson's short story "The Barrens" sees the Pine Barrens as an annex of Lovecraft Country.
 * Almost ALL of F. Paul Wilson's books include some form of thise, especially the Adversary Cycle, this series being at least partially a Once Upon a Time In New Jersey.
 * Stephanie Plum cheerily bills herself as a Jersey girl, and yes, among her relatives, friends, and colleagues, a lot of New Jersey stereotypes get covered.
 * Daniel Pinkwater's books tend to be set in New Jersey.
 * Several Philip Roth novels, including American Pastoral and Portnoy's Complaint, are set in Newark, New Jersey.
 * Jean Shepherd wrote many short stories about Joisey. Many of them satirizing pop art—such as the large ship sailing against traffic on Route 22, Lucy, the giant elephant hotel room in Margate, and them concrete Mexicans and flamingos on people's lawns.
 * Irene Adler, one of the few people (and the only woman) to have ever outwitted Sherlock Holmes, was from New Jersey.
 * In Spider Robinson's 1985 SF novel Night of Power, when a black revolution makes its masterstroke over New Year's Eve 1996, they declare New York and Pennsylvania to be the territory of a new independent black nation. When asked why they didn't lay claim to New Jersey as well, Michael, the leader of the revolution, says words to the effect of "Are you crazy?  New Jersey belongs to the Mob."

Live-Action TV
"Leonard: You may be from Texas, but I'm from Jersey!"
 * On Big Bang Theory Leonard is from NJ, which comes up from time to time. For example in the 2011 Halloween episode Leonard manages to pull a trick on roommate Sheldon who says as a Texan native he is an expert at retribution. However when Sheldon tries to pull a trick on Leonard, Leonard manages to turn it against Sheldon.

"I'm from Joisey! You from Joisey? Hahahahaha what exit?"
 * Boardwalk Empire is set primarily in Prohibition-era Atlantic City.
 * The highly acclamed Dramedy Ed filmed exteriors of its fictional location Stuckeyville in Upper Middle Class Westfield, NJ. Many local residents were used as "Stuckyville Extras".
 * The credits for Ed consisted of him driving through town. To this Westfield native, it was very odd to see the familiar sights of downtown Westfield, cut and pasted out of sequence.
 * In certain towns in the area it was filmed some shops still have the Stuckyville name painted on their windows. Most visible at a Jewelry shop in Westwood.
 * New Jersey is often used as the butt of jokes by late-night comics like Jay Leno and David Letterman, as well as New York-based sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends. Listing all of the instances of this would require a separate page.
 * Particularly notable is How I Met Your Mother, which has devoted entire episodes to mocking Jersey, despite the writers seeming to have no idea what the state is like.
 * Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, the fictional hospital where House takes place, is in New Jersey.
 * A genuine Princeton-Plainsboro hospital now exists on Route 1; the design of it has obviously been inspired by House. (The actual building used for House is just a mile or so away -- it's the back side of Princeton University's Frist Student Center.)
 * The Sopranos was set in New Jersey, and helped to reinforce many of the Mafia stereotypes.
 * Point Pleasant was set on the Jersey Shore, but was filmed in California. It showed.
 * Similarly, the short-lived 1992/1993 Sitcom Down The Shore was set in a townhouse in an unspecified Jersey Shore town (possibly Belmar).
 * The X-Files featured the Jersey Devil in its fifth episode.
 * The Docu Soap The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
 * The notorious MTV Reality Show Jersey Shore followed eight self-proclaimed guidoes/guidettes (most of whom weren't from New Jersey, and two of whom weren't even Italian) living and partying in a Seaside Heights beach house, cranking the "Joisey" stereotype Up to Eleven. New Jersey residents and Italian-American groups were pissed, but it did nothing to stop the show from turning into a hit a pop culture phenomenon.
 * Before that, MTV did two of their spring break specials (1998 and 2002) in Seaside Heights.
 * According to Jersey-native and Cracked.com writer Daniel O'Brien, Jersey Shore is the worst thing to happen to the east coast since 9/11.
 * A later season took the entire cast to Italy itself to "get back to their roots." According to the previews, we can expect an international diplomatic incident within the first episode or two.
 * After the media started mocking New Jersey after a massive corruption scandal, Jon Stewart took time out of his show to defend his home state.
 * Stewart is also a devoted fan of fellow Jersey native Bruce Springsteen. When he announced on the show that he went to see Springsteen in concert over the weekend, he added, "It was, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah, the greatest night of my life?" He also delivered a heartfelt tribute to The Boss during the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors.
 * The Cake Boss takes place in Hoboken. Chef Buddy was slightly irked when a Manhattanite took a call while ordering her cake with a "Yeah, I'm in Jersey, can you believe it?"
 * And later: "You went all the way to Jersey for a cake?"
 * Will and Grace played with this. They described Jersey as something of New York City's suburb, a nice, peaceful place to raise a family. However, this being Will and Grace, that was also considered where New Yorkers go to die. The only reason to go to New Jersey (aside from the outlet malls) is if you've gotten married and had kids (and essentially your "interesting" life as a New Yorker is over.)
 * And let us not forget the inestimable Uncle Floyd and the various incarnations of his (deliberately-cheap-looking) program.
 * Particularly his character of Jerry Jersino ("I love New Jersey and I'm proud!") and his Cowboy Charlie parody song "Deep in the Heart of Jersey".
 * Several episodes of The Adventures of Pete and Pete took place in Cranford, New Jersey.
 * Parts of (if not the whole) series was actually filmed in New Jersey. The bowling alley shown in the series is Lodi Lanes.
 * Also, Rick Gomez is from New Jersey and has a perfect North Jersey accent.
 * Monk's first assistant, Sharona Fleming, is from New Jersey originally (and moves back there in the third season).
 * The reimagined Hawaii Five-O features a new Danny Williams that is a former Jersey detective. In a touch of irony (or possibly a Take That), he's not really all that fond of the beach.
 * Sonny With a Chance briefly features a skit about fairytale princesses in New Jersey.
 * Jean Shepherd hosted a program on New Jersey Public Television called Shepherds Pie, which concentrated on New Jersey.
 * After New York's then-Governor David Paterson made an otherwise forgettable verbal jab at New Jersey, Saturday Night Live cast member Fred Armisen made Jersey-slamming one of the main points of his caricaturization of Paterson, in part to make the joke portrayal less about Paterson's visual impairment.
 * This was pretty much the only joke of the early Joe Piscopo Saturday Night Live character Paulie Herman, that he was from New Jersey.

"Dr. Wayne Fiscus: Today, sleep is regarded as a complex and inconstant state, a state not unlike New Jersey."
 * Problems arose from one Paulie sketch, which portrayed Piscataway -- a near-rural suburb that does happen to host several office parks -- as heavily covered by chemical plants and toxic dust. Ted Light, Piscataway's then-mayor, was not at all amused.
 * Despite being set in Boston, St. Elsewhere managed to get in the occasional dig at New Jersey:


 * A grief-maddened Wanda Maximoff takes over the town of Westview, NJ and imposes a Sitcom reality on it in the 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe series WandaVision.

Music
"I'm goin to Hell, (he's going to hell) in a handbasket. (in a handbasket) And I might like it that way. ''No this ain't no lie, I'd rather be Kentucky Fried Than live and kicking in Jersey any day"
 * Voltaire's song "Bomb New Jersey" (the other Voltaire). However, there are enough in-jokes that only people from New Jersey would get that it's hard to be offended.
 * Voltaire grew up in New Jersey (and hated it), and mentions it in more then one of his songs. For example: "Hell in a Handbasket".


 * Bruce Springsteen is from New Jersey, and several of his songs are love letters to his home state. Several others are about how much the state sucks (see: "Born to Run"). He also contributed the Ending Theme for the above-mentioned The Wrestler.
 * Less Than Jake's song, "Never Going Back to New Jersey"
 * John Gorka has a song called "I'm from New Jersey," which is a pretty accurate impression of residents' reactions to New Jersey jokes. Can be seen here.
 * The Bloodhound Gang's "Ten Best Things About New Jersey", which is around 10 seconds of silence.
 * The band Fountains of Wayne got its name from a lawn-decoration store in Wayne by that name, which closed in 2009.
 * They sing about Jersey a lot, too -- "Hackensack", for instance.
 * The rock band My Chemical Romance is from Newark. And even then, three of them are from Belleville and one is from Kearny.
 * Back in the day, between North Jersey (places like Maxwell's, the Loop Lounge, VFW halls, Alex Saavedra's house/the Eyeball Records house, people's basements) and Central Jersey (Club Bene/Club Krome, Birch Hill, Starland, many places all over New Brunswick including people's basements, The Stone Pony, Asbury Lanes), there was a pretty busy scene going on. (In New Brunswick, though, almost all of the best clubs have been lost to the unstoppable growth of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, aka the Hospital That Ate New Brunswick.)
 * Dean Friedman's 1977 song "Ariel" is about a Jersey boy who meets a spacey Jewish girl in Paramus Park and falls in love with her.
 * The Bouncing Souls are from Jersey, and reference the state (especially Asbury Park) a lot in their songs.
 * "My Ancestral Homeland, New Jersey" by The World/Inferno Friendship Society. Their first album, "The True Story of the Bridgewater Astral League," also takes place there.
 * "Weird Al" Yankovic has a song called "I'll Sue Ya", which states, "I sued Delta Airlines / 'cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey / I went there, and it SUCKED!" It never fails to get massive cheers when he performs in New Jersey.
 * Bon Jovi's fourth studio album was named New Jersey, and most of the band hails from the state.
 * The Gaslight Anthem, a Springsteen-esque punk band, are from and sing about New Jersey. They've even appeared on stage with The Boss
 * Titus Andronicus, an indie-punk band, are from and sing about New Jersey
 * Tom Waits' song "Jersey Girl".
 * Modern Man was a New Jersey act to begin with, and their song "Eggs Like These" uses a parody of Springsteen's "Born to Run" to skewer a brief-lived New Jersey law outlawing the sale of runny eggs by restaurants.
 * Uncle Floyd, himself a home-grown Jersey act and phenomenon as noted above, had in his repertoire a parody of "Deep in the Heart of Texas" called "Deep in the Heart of Jersey".

Newspaper Comics

 * The Fusco Brothers, which takes place in Newark, combines types 2 and 3. As the page quote indicates, the very name of the state is treated as a joke.

Professional Wrestling

 * TNA, in a transparent effort to cash in on Jersey Shore's popularity, briefly had the gimmick "Shore", featuring expies of the Situation and Snooki who feuded with the real J-WOWW.

Radio

 * Comedian Artie Lange on The Howard Stern Show. When on the show and in his comedy act, he'll sometimes exaggerate his Joisey characteristics to the point of becoming the epitome of a stereotypical Hudson County resident.
 * Humorist Jean Shepherd broadcast nightly from WOR, and would often talk about New Jersey, coining the phrase 'Slob Art' for concrete Mexicans, and other such, and particularly applying it to Rt. 22 in northern NJ, pointing to the big ship sailing along in the median.
 * And Lucy the Margate elephant.
 * In 2005, Todd Pettingill of NYC radio station WPLJ released a Song Parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl" called "Jersey Girl".

Stand Up Comedy

 * On his album What Am I Doing In New Jersey?, George Carlin proposes retitling New Jersey from "The Garden State" ("Ha-ha, sure...if you're growing smokestacks, yes") to "The Toll Booth State".
 * Dom Irrera got mileage out of the fact New Jersey wanted to use Born to Run as the state's official song, apparently without having heard the lyrics.

Theatre
"John Adams: Wake up Franklin, you're going to New Brunswick. Benjamin Franklin: [half asleep] Like hell I am, what for? Stephen Hopkins: The whoring and the drinking. ''[Franklin leaps to his feet and marches out behind Adams.]"
 * This bit from 1776:

"John Hancock: New Jersey. Where the hell is New Jersey? John Dickinson: Somewhere between New York and Pennsylvania."
 * The reference is to a camp of the Continental Army located at New Brunswick, New Jersey at the time, where whoring and drinking were rampant and discipline was nearly dead. One poor innocent delegate gets a truckload of jokes poured on him and his family when he says, confused, "That can't be, I have an aunt who lives in New Brunswick!" Of course, by the time 1776 came out in 1969, Rutgers University in New Brunswick had a strong reputation as a "party school", meaning that the joke still worked for modern audiences.
 * And of course, the running joke about the delegation from New Jersey not being present.

"There's a place between heaven and hell Don't need a map, just follow the smell A place full of filthy air A place filled with dark despair ''A place you have no prayer A place called New Jersey"
 * Which leads to the most love New Jersey has even been shown on screen: When the New Jersey delegates enter just in time to tie the vote for independence, prompting John Adams and co. to run to embrace them.
 * In One Touch of Venus, the characters, being New Yorkers, sing a number called "Way Out West In New Jersey," whose premise is that the territory beyond the Hudson River might as well be The Wild West.
 * The obscure, but hilarious Once Upon a Time In New Jersey. It's exactly what it sounds like.
 * The jukebox musical Jersey Boys about the singing group, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
 * The Toxic Avenger musical is particularly gleeful in its bashing of New Jersey. The Villain Song is called "Jersey Girl", and it describes the mayor of Tromaville to be evil and slutty. Then there's the opening song that establishes the setting.

Video Games

 * The island of Alderney in Grand Theft Auto IV is based on New Jersey.
 * Which replaces the actual New York City island of Staten Island, which is an improvement on the geography of the city.
 * New Jersey is the first level of Tony Hawk's Underground, where it is depicted as a run-down, polluted suburb.
 * Superhero League of Hoboken takes in place in tri-state area, with super heroes having headquarters in, well, Hoboken. It's not much better even with heroes.
 * The Cell Phone game Tank Battles in Suburbia has eleven levels set across New Jersey suburbs like Montclair, Glen Ridge and Raritan, with the final level being on the Turnpike.
 * The increased amount of Real Is Brown, grungy textures and film grain in Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse as opposed to its earlier two seasons is Hand Waved in-story as being due to the New York local government 'importing grime from New Jersey'.
 * In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Pvt. Sweetwater says it "smells like Jersey" when your squad goes into a drainage ditch.
 * Obsidian Entertainment's "Project New Jersey", which was ultimately canceled.
 * Several levels in the final stage of Need for Speed: The Run take place in New Jersey, and they play the Type 2 stereotype to the hilt. No prizes for guessing that said tracks mainly comprise industrial parks, highways and landfills, or that the one area of Jersey covered in greenery also happens to be within sight of New York. And in Challenge Mode, there's even a race called "The Situation".

Web Comics

 * According to Faye of Questionable Content New Jersey is where Wonder Bread is mined. Yes, mined.

Web Original

 * My New Haircut. Originally a pair of viral videos (warning: NSFW ) that affectionately parodied the Jersey guido lifestyle, it's now being turned into a web series. Here's the trailer.
 * James Rolfe, of The Angry Video Game Nerd fame, is from southern New Jersey and filmed the first 50 episodes (and a few segments of the 51st episode) in the state. In college, he made a film called Legend of the Blue Hole that was inspired by Weird NJ and New Jersey's urban legends. He has plans to make sequels to it, but thanks to his work doing AVGN videos, those plans have been put on hold indefinitely.
 * From Cracked.com: "A Pop Culture Tour of New Jersey."
 * The American on The Bugle.
 * AH.com Wars, a spin-off of Alternate History: The Series that parodies Star Wars, features a Naboo-analogue planet called Najoisey, a Planetville version of New Jersey.
 * In Decades of Darkness, much of the action during the North American War takes place in New Jersey, which serves as an analogue to the Western Front. That's right, even in an Alternate History New Jersey is still Hell on Earth.
 * Slowbeef, of Let's Play fame, lives in Jersey. He alternates between mocking it and defending it.
 * The automatic censor at Worth1000.com changes "hell" to "New Jersey".
 * Michael Jones, Rooster Teeth employee and star of Rage Quit, was a New Jersey resident before he moved to Austin, TX to work at RT full time.
 * The End of the World: The Jersey War. On December 21, 2012, Snooki turns into an Eldritch Abomination and gives birth to a tide of hair-gelled, tanned, A-shirt-wearing insectoid gremlins onto New Jersey, while a poisonous black gas that smells like hairspray swells over the landscape.
 * Among the Urban Legends circulating in Fenspace is the (false) tale of the New Jersey Tripod.

Western Animation
"Fry: Alright, what's the catch? Landlord: Oh, no catch... but we are technically in New Jersey. Fry (back home): Man, not one place even remotely livable."
 * Megas XLR: The New Jersey Fireball is a regular occurrence on the show. The show is set in Jersey City, although the creators seemed to know nothing about the location (culturally, Jersey City and indeed all of Hudson County are quite different from the suburbs and the Shore that most outsiders are familiar with). The suburbs and Shore tend to conform more to the Jersey stereotypes outsiders are familiar with. But Jersey City, on the other hand, most definitely does not.
 * American Dragon: Jake Long had the Jersey Devil.
 * The inexplicable 80s cartoon Dinosaucers features an odd episode revolving around football where the titular characters assume a football jersey and New Jersey are one and the same thing... and thus during the game wear "new jerseys" featuring the state's outline on the front rather than regulation numbers.
 * Futurama, taking place in (essentially) New York City, takes jabs at New Jersey on a regular basis:
 * Fry and the gang are touring a beautiful apartment, after looking at several dumps earlier in the episode.

"Leela: Who would've thought that Hell actually existed? And that it would be in New Jersey? Fry: Well, actually... (Trap Door opens)"
 * Or this tidbit:

"Narrator: The landfills were full. New Jersey was full."
 * Seems to be a frequent target of Futurama. In "A Big Piece of Garbage" the Planet Express crew watch a documentary about what New York did with its gigantic piles of garbage.

"[After Fry has taken a swim in goat vomit) Leela: (hugs Fry and smells him in the process) What have you been doing, rolling around in New Jersey? Fry: Well, actually..."
 * And they continue to mock it since it was Uncanceled.

"Leonardo: Way to be stealthy, Raph! Michelangelo: Yeah, I don't think they heard you over in Joisey."
 * In "All The President's Heads", it is revealed that back in 1776 the Continental Congress voted to make New Jersey the official joke state.
 * An episode of South Park has Randy and the boys going up against the Jersey people. Every person from New Jersey is incredibly loud and arrogant and "all they do is have sex and fight each other". It's a Jersey thing. It gets so bad they have to get help from.
 * That whole episode was more of a jab at Jersey Shore.
 * Aqua Teen Hunger Force, specifically South Jersey.
 * An episode of Extreme Ghostbusters had the team going to New Jersey to fight the Jersey Devil. It's as awesome as it sounds.
 * Referenced several times in the 2003 TMNT series—which makes sense, given that most of the protagonists are life-long New Yorkers. One particular jab involved Casey Jones' description of a world were global warming had caused humans to evolve into mole-people to survive the scorching heat. Jersey, apparently, was the first to go. Also, in the first episode the Turtles are stuck above ground and trying to find a manhole with which they can head back underground without anyone seeing them. The first one they come across gets parked on by an armored truck; leading Raphael to kick it in rage.

"John Corzine: Hello. I'm New Jersey governor John Corzine. I hope you've enjoyed this reenactment of our state's proud history. [eats some rainbow] The Garden State: Come get in on some of this rainbow!"
 * The 1987 series had characters making references and similes to New Jersey.
 * Bugs Bunny: "Hoboken? Ooooooooh, I'm dyin' again!"
 * According to Robot Chicken, Care-A-Lot is turned into New Jersey as a result of the Care Bears provoking the Great Cloudkeeper's wrath when they begin an ethnic cleansing of the Care Bear Cousins.

"Homer: "What, they've never seen a fat guy making out? It's on the freakin' state flag!" (Cue a shot of a flag featuring a fat man kissing an attractive woman.)"
 * Harley Quinn has a New Jersey accent, which mixes with the implications of Gotham City in relation to New Jersey.
 * Squirt, the street smart chihuahua in The Hub's Pound Puppies has a Jersey accent and, in an episode, even mentions he's from Hoboken.
 * In The Simpsons, they do a parody of Jersey Shore when Fat Tony invites them to his mansion after Selma snubbed Marge at their wedding.
 * In another episode, Marge and Homer are supposed to go to Dayton, Ohio for an elderly relative's birthday, but decide to take a last-minute romantic getaway to Miami...then wind up in Atlantic City when they find they're being tailed by Bart and Lisa. Homer and Marge are making out in a glass elevator, and Marge expresses (mock) concern about other people seeing them.

Other

 * The magazine Weird NJ has undoubtedly contributed to New Jersey's reputation as a Weirdness Magnet. Teenagers will often go on tours of the state using the magazine as their guide. Has been spun off into two books, as well as books covering other states.
 * Atlantic City has the distinction of being the original setting for the board game Monopoly. While other variations (read: licensed editions) of the game are abound, official Tournament Play uses the AC-based version, a fact that many Shore residents are proud (and defensive) of. (And yes, it's possible to stand at the intersection of Boardwalk and Park Place.)
 * Most media about The American Revolution will reference New Jersey in some capacity. The state played a pivotal role in the war, being the host of some of its most famous battles. George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River, immortalized by the famous painting, was the beginning of his attack on Trenton, and he made his winter camp at Morristown twice in the war.
 * New York and Philadelphia (two of the three largest cities in the colonies at the time, with Patriot hotbed Boston the other) are literally next to it, and control of New Jersey meant quick access to both.
 * A few broadcast stations have ended up with New Jersey cities on their broadcast licences and station idents, even though they primarily serve New York City. WNET is a prime example; when it launched in the 1960s, the last of the seven available VHF TV spots available to the NYC area was WATV 13, an existing fourth-ranked independent station for which the Educational Broadcast Corporation paid millions. New Jersey's governor wasn't willing to give up the state's only VHF TV station, so the station identification remains as "Newark NJ" and the schedule includes 2.5 hours/wk of New Jersey-related public affairs programming.
 * An Iranian journalist who was imprisoned following the 2009 election riots said that his jailer/interrogator was obsessed with New Jersey, which he saw as some sort of capitalist American paradise and was intensely jealous that the journalist had been there. Neither the journalist nor Jon Stewart could figure out the cause of that.
 * Be Nice To New Jersey Week was July 4–10, 2010.
 * Why did New York get all the lawyers and New Jersey get all the toxic waste? New Jersey got first pick.
 * Speaking to almost any Pennsylvanian about New Jersey will almost inevitably result in them stating that New Jersey should be blown up. Why, you ask? Because New Jersey is the armpit of the country and Pennsylvania needs a beach. What lovely neighbors...
 * It does not help that immediately across the river from Philadelphia is Camden, a Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy.
 * Nor does it help that on the other side of that very same river is Philadelphia.
 * The vast majority of bridges leading out of New Jersey (either east across the Hudson to New York or west across the Delaware to Pennsylvania) are tolled (those that aren't are small ones that trucks wouldn't be able to use). Moreover (in order to avoid perpetual traffic congestion in New York or Philadelphia), all tolls are one-way leaving New Jersey—it's free to enter New Jersey, but you have to pay to leave it (and it ain't cheap—the Holland Tunnel to Lower Manhattan, for instance, costs $15 in cash as of 2018).
 * Unlike, say, the Brooklyn Bridge with its raised promenade, the Manhattan-NJ tunnels are not pedestrian-friendly. One does not simply walk into Jersey.
 * On the contrary, friend. The Ben Franklin Bridge has not one, but two walkways on each side of the bridge that you can walk from Philly into Jersey. Though it takes you into Camden, which is pretty much the worst city in the country.
 * The Holland Tunnel is particularly cruel: it's labeled as an Interstate, but it's an at-grade road with driveways and stoplights. Which leads us to....
 * An old cartoon in The New Yorker shows a religious pilgrim walking through a dark tunnel with a glum look on his face. The caption explains that he has just learned that "the light at the end of the tunnel" is New Jersey.
 * Why do so many people move from New Jersey to Vermont? They were in the northbound lane, had to go that far out of their way to make a U-turn and figured they might as well stay...
 * In late 2011 a New Jersey resident created a demographic map of the state (which is the current picture for the Joisey/Trivia page). Thanks to Facebook and Twitter it immediately went viral and made the local papers. A couple of politicians were unhappy with the portrayal, but the vast majority of residents found it to be both hilarious and pretty much dead-on, as seen here
 * Q: How many people from New Jersey does it take to change a light bulb? A: Three: One to change the bulb, one to witness, and the third to shoot the witness.