[2] Between 4 January 1944 and 9 May 1945, Eldridge sailed on the vital task of escorting, to the Mediterranean Sea, men and materials to support Allied operations in North Africa and on into southern Europe.

[4][5] The story is considered a hoax: there is a general lack of evidence for the alleged experiment; the person who started the myth—a merchant seaman named Carl Meredith Allen—admitted that he had made up the story and relayed it to Morris K. Jessup; and the Eldridge's deck log and war diary (preserved on microfilm) show that the ship was never in Philadelphia between August and December 1943.

In the third episode, it is revealed that the US Navy believes that the experiment aboard the USS Eldridge in 1943 was responsible for creating a tear in the fabric of space-time which they refer to as the Bermuda Triangle.

The Doctor Who audio drama, The Macros, explores the proposed Philadelphia Experiment as if the ship had entered an alternative dimension but at the loss of its crew.

The USS Eldridge makes a brief appearance in the episode "Journey into Mystery" of the Disney+ series Loki, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).