[9][10][11] In the 2009 Star Trek film reboot, when McCoy first meets Kirk, he complains that his ex-wife took all their shared assets following their divorce: "All I got left is my bones", implying this was the origin of the nickname.

[2] McCoy continues to serve on Kirk's crew aboard the captured Klingon ship in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

[2] In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), McCoy (through the intervention of Spock's half-brother Sybok) reveals that he helped his father commit suicide to relieve him of his pain.

[2] Kelley reprised the role for the "Encounter at Farpoint" pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), insisting upon no more than the minimum Screen Actors Guild payment for his appearance.

[21] However, for the rejected pilot "The Cage" (1964), Roddenberry went with director Robert Butler's choice of John Hoyt to play Dr. Philip Boyce.

[22] For the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (1966), Roddenberry accepted director James Goldstone's decision to have Paul Fix play Dr. Mark Piper.

[5]: 156 "Exquisite chemistry" among Kelley, William Shatner, and Leonard Nimoy manifested itself in their performances as McCoy, Captain James T. Kirk, and Science Officer Spock, respectively.

[5]: 154 For the 2009 Star Trek film, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman saw McCoy as an "arbiter" in Kirk and Spock's relationship.

"[31] Kelley said that his greatest thrill at Star Trek conventions was the number of people who told him they entered the medical profession because of the McCoy character.

[5]: 166  During filming of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when Spock is dying from radiation exposure, Kelley felt it would spoil the gravitas of the moment, so he and James Doohan agreed to swap their lines: McCoy warns Kirk not to open the chamber, and Scotty says, "He's dead already".

McCoy repeats the line when he must perform some task beyond his medical skills, such as when he is asked to treat the unfamiliar silicon-based Horta alien in "The Devil in the Dark" (1967), saying, "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer.

"[40] Variations of the line have also been used by doctors in other Trek series, including Julian Bashir, Phlox, and the Emergency Medical Hologram stationed aboard Voyager.

Kelley parodied the phrase in a 1992 commercial for Trivial Pursuit's 10th Anniversary Edition, in which the question is asked, "How many chambers are there in a human heart?"

(taken from the episode "I, Mudd") was sampled by Minnesota-based New Wave band Information Society on their 1988 hit single "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)".

In a rebuttal to a tongue-in-cheek analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which claimed that Dr. Nick from The Simpsons was a better role model than his competitor Dr. Hibbert,[44] both of which were published in the same journal in 1998, both doctors are cast aside for Dr. McCoy, "TV's only true physician" and "someone who has broken free from the yoke of ethics and practises the art and science of medicine beyond the stultifying opposition of paternalism and autonomy.

[48] In 2017, Screen Rant ranked the reboot film (Kelvin timeline) McCoy, played by Urban, as the 17th-most attractive person in the Star Trek universe.