Dead man's hand in popular culture

The dead man's hand, a legendary "cursed" poker hand usually depicted as consisting of the ace of spades, ace of clubs, eight of spades and eight of clubs with an undefined fifth card, has appeared or been referenced in numerous works of popular culture.

In the novel Along Came a Spider by James Patterson, Jezzie Flannigan tells the story of how her father won his gun with a hand of aces and eights – she also uses "Aces&Eights" as her computer password.

Dead Man's Hand is the name of the seventh book of the "Wild Cards" series.

In "Batman R.I.P.", while Batman is talking to The Joker in Arkham Asylum, the Joker sends a cryptic message to Batman by dealing himself a "dead man's hand, with a twist." The "twist" is that the 8's in the hand are red cards, while the aces remain black. His final card is a Joker.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, McMurphy has a dead man's hand tattooed on his shoulder, "a poker hand fanned out across his muscle - aces and eights".

The title of the fourth novel based on the film Final Destination is titled Dead Man's Hand, and takes place in Las Vegas. Also, a comic mini-series based on the film used the "dead man's hand" as a means of foreshadowing.

There is a Las Vegas bar called the Nine of Diamonds in the novel Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, "out on Boulder Highway....According to Bigfoot Bjornsen, for whom this piece of western trivia had won him many a bar bet, the nine of diamonds had been the fifth card in Wild Bill Hickok's last poker hand, along with the black aces and eights."

At least two of John Ford's films feature the aces and eights hand as a foreshadowing of death. In Stagecoach (1939), the hand is held by Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler), soon to be shot by the Ringo Kid (John Wayne). In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Liberty Valance draws the hand just prior to his death.

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