I started watching Dark Matter and the professor is there explaining Schrodinger’s Cat to a college class like no one ever watched The Big Bang Theory or Steins;Gate or Dark or played Portal or ever heard that reference from dozens of pop culture sources before, because every major franchise in the last 10 years decided to go “Multiverse” and shit, so it’s everywhere, and shows trying to show how into science they are, like so nerd and you are getting so smart and hearing about these so obscure theories that makes you so big brain, they make a section just to tell you about Schrodinger’s Cat.

I feel like this used to be E = mc², I can’t pin-point sources but I feel like every average movie when the professor was talking sciences they would be teaching E = mc², like knowing the formula exists is such a brainy thing that get your intellect so high you’d even qualify to watch Rick and Morty, like someone asked you if you knew anything about sciences you just be like “E = mc²” and *BOOM* take that, bitch! *supa hot fire gif ensues*. It was in cartoons like Animaniacs, Ghost Busters, probably Freakazoid, the Mask, etc, you had a few songs mentioning, like hip-hop playing with the words “MC squared”. My memory is more of 80s and 90s pop culture but I watched later the 1965 Godard movie Alphaville and to show how hard into sciences it was there was random graffiti of E = mc² all around the place, like a gang of hardcore scientist thugs committing vandalism because sciences 4 life.

tl/dr it’s a hard science concept adopted by pop culture that is repeatedly repeated and people with no real science knowledge will repeat them to sound smart.