Bickle becomes attracted to a woman, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who works in the local campaign office of presidential candidate and United States Senator Charles Palantine.
He begins a physical training regimen which consists of doing 50 pushups and 50 pullups every morning and practices an intimidating, thuggish presence in the mirror to use on whoever challenges him.
He pays her pimp, Matthew "Sport" Higgins (Harvey Keitel), for her time, but is not interested in having sex with her; instead, he tries to persuade her to leave prostitution and return home.
[1] Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and The Walker make up a series referred to variously as the "Man in a Room" or "Night Worker" movies.
Bickle sinisterly utters the line while he stands in front of the mirror, clad in a USMC jacket, threatening his unseen foes with the gun up his sleeve.
Upon hearing of Hinckley's assassination attempt, Taxi Driver director Martin Scorsese considered quitting the film industry.
In Gordon's piece, the scene is projected onto large dual screens placed on opposite walls of a gallery space and plays on a continual loop.
The art duo Beagles & Ramsay created an artwork titled We Are The People – Suck On This (ICA, London 2000),[21] which featured a video based on re-staged, downbeat version of Taxi Driver.
Ramsay was dressed and styled to appear like Travis Bickle, complete with mohawk, and handed a petition into the British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street.
Todd Phillips' 2019 film Joker pays tribute to Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver through the character of Arthur Fleck (played by Joaquin Phoenix).
The film includes a visual reference to Bickle miming shooting himself in the head in a scene in an elevator between Arthur and his neighbour, Sophie (Zazie Beetz).
[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] The Clash song "Red Angel Dragnet" on the 1982 album Combat Rock references Travis Bickle and directly quotes or paraphrases some of his lines from the movie.
In the season 4 episode of Oz titled "A Town without Pity", Clayton Hughes dresses in the look of Bickle, complete with the haircut and tries to kill Governor James Devlin.
Travis Bickle made a cameo appearance during the third issue of the 2012 comic book Before Watchmen: Rorschach, written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Lee Bermejo.
One of the "Elite Bundle" skin sets in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege partially references Travis Bickle's signature mohawk and sunglasses.