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But don't tell that to Hollywood (or New Yorkers).
In the media, New Jersey is often portrayed one of three ways:
# An overgrown Little Italy. Everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody who is "[[The Mafia|connected]]", be they a mechanic in Hoboken or a soccer mom in Parsippany. [[Sleazy Politician|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 [[Cool Car|'80s IROC-Z Camaros or entry-level BMWs]], and are insanely misogynistic and homophobic. The women, known as "Jersey Girls," are all [[Bottle Fairy|Bottle Fairies]], still have [[Eighties Hair]] decades after it went out of style, wear ten pounds of makeup, and are always [[Stripperiffic|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]] [[American Accents|Italian-American/New York accent]].
# A [[Place Worse Than Death]], where people's hopes and dreams go to die. [[Suburbia|Suburbs]], [[The Mall|malls]] and smokestacks dominate the landscape, most of the kids are either vapid [[Alpha Bitch|Alpha Bitches]], [[Jerk Jock|Jerk Jocks]] or guidoes (see above), and the adults [[Adults Are Useless|aren't much better]]. [[Police Are Useless|The cops are inept]] and more concerned with DWB (Driving While Black) than with the dude beating his wife just down the street. [[Emo Teen|Our]] [[Jaded Washout|heroes]] are forced to have "fun" by loitering in convenience stores or malls, going to [[Amusement Park of Doom|Action Park]], and moping around to either a hip indie/[[Emo]] soundtrack or '80s [[Power Ballad|power ballads]] (preferably [[Bon Jovi]] or [[Bruce Springsteen|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 [[Played for Laughs|for laughs]] or dead seriously.
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** And then there's [http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111228234052/batman/images/6/6b/Gotham_New_Jersey.jpg this].
* 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.
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* ''[[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 (film)|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 (film)|Men in Black]]''.
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* ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen]]'' spends a fair chunk of the movie in Princeton. (Although the university [http://www.michaelbay.com/archives/site/2008-2010/newsblog/files/d56f71572ffbeb023c7bea941830a529-226.php is left unnamed], it's pretty obvious that Sam's not going to [[wikipedia:Westminster Choir College|Westminster Choir College]].)
* The slasher film ''[[The Prowler]]'' takes place in Avalon Bay, New Jersey.
* ''[[Léon: The Professional]]'' (aka ''Leon'') [[You Fail Geography Forever|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.
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* The notorious [[MTV]] [[Reality Show]] ''[[Jersey Shore]]'' follows eight self-proclaimed guidoes/guidettes (most of whom aren't from New Jersey, and two of whom [[Fake Nationality|aren't even Italian]]) living and partying in a Seaside Heights beach house, cranking the "Joisey" stereotype [[Up to Eleven]]. [http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/state-new-jersey-mtv-jersey-shore-one-dimentional-portrayal-11238 New Jersey residents] and [http://www.npr.org/blogs/tellmemore/2009/12/mtvs_jersey_shore_reality_or_r.html Italian-American groups] were ''pissed'', but it's done nothing to stop the show from turning into <s>a hit</s> 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 [http://www.cracked.com/blog/jersey-shore-is-the-worst-thing-to-happen-to-the-east-coast-since-911 worst thing to happen to the east coast since 9/11].
** The upcoming season takes the entire cast to Italy itself to "get back to their roots." [[Trailers Always Lie|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 [http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=8162101 a massive corruption scandal], [[The Daily Show|Jon Stewart]] took time out of his show to [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-july-28-2009/hey--c-mon-that-s-not----why-would-you----whoa- defend his home state].
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== Music ==
* [[Voltaire (
** 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".
{{quote|I'm goin to Hell, ''(he's going to hell)'' in a handbasket. ''(in a handbasket)''
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* The rock band My Chemical Romance is from Newark. And even then, three of them are from Belleville and one is from Kearny.
* 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|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!"
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Megas XLR]]'': [[The Tokyo Fireball|The New Jersey Fireball]] is a regular occurrence on the show. The show is set in Jersey City, although the creators seemed to [[Did Not Do the Research|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'''.
* ''[[
* 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:
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{{quote|'''Leela''': Who would've thought that Hell actually existed? And that it would be in New Jersey?
'''Fry''': Well, actually... ''([[Trap Door]] opens)'' }}
** 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.
{{quote|'''Narrator''': The landfills were full. New Jersey was full. }}
** And they continue to mock it since it was [[Uncanceled]].
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{{quote|'''Leonardo''': Way to be stealthy, Raph!
'''Michelangelo''': Yeah, I don't think they heard you over in Joisey. }}
** The [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|1987]] series had characters making references and similes to New Jersey.
* [[Bugs Bunny]]: "Ho''bo''ken? Ooooooh, 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 [[Crystal Dragon Jesus|Great Cloudkeeper's]] wrath when they begin an [[Sugar Apocalypse|ethnic cleansing]] of the Care Bear Cousins.
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* 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 $12).
** Unlike, say, the Brooklyn Bridge with its raised promenade, the Manhattan-NJ tunnels are not pedestrian-friendly. [[Lord of the Rings|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.
** Holland Tunnel is particularly cruel: it's labeled as an Interstate, but it's an at-grade road with driveways and stoplights.<ref>Interstate 78 was originally planned to go through Lower Manhattan and into Brooklyn, but this would have required demolishing a lot of residences and led to "freeway revolts" that forced its cancellation.</ref> 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.
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