The four future members of ABBA performed a Wild West-themed version of the song for their first joint television appearance in 1970, on the SVT program Five Minute Saloon.

The song, often as an instrumental version, was frequently used by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn, musical directors at Warner Bros. Cartoons.

(1955), features the four principal cast members beginning a cross-country road trip from New York City to California, where Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) plans to make a movie.

Ricky, who is shown behind the wheel driving across the George Washington Bridge from New York into New Jersey (and westward), begins singing the song's chorus and he is soon joined by Fred (William Frawley) and Ethel (Vivian Vance), and then, finally, by a badly off-key but highly spirited Lucy (Lucille Ball).

At one point, Fred sings part of the chorus as a short solo in a manner that is highly suggestive of the syncopated style often associated with Al Jolson, and Ricky joins in briefly with a similar apparent nod to the song's originator.

[8] The song is featured as the main title theme of the 1945 motion picture Back to Bataan, starring John Wayne and Anthony Quinn.

In the 1980 movie The Shining, while freezing and losing his verbal coherency in the hedge maze, some believe Jack Nicholson recites part of the song at one point.

In the 1981 Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise comedy The Cannonball Run, Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing (portrayed by Jack Elam) musses the chorus in the background during a discussion.

The song may have been intended as a deception, as the severely outnumbered American forces depended on surprise to gain an advantage in the battle.

Richard Nixon, in a set of instructions he left in case he were to die in office, directed that "California, Here I Come" should be played "softly and slowly" at his funeral.

[citation needed] When President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan left Washington, D.C. in 1989 to return to Los Angeles, "California, Here I Come" was played as they boarded Air Force One.