Jerry’s ‘Seinfeld’ Bookcase Was Full of Porn

Other than the fact that it makes about as much spacial sense as The Overlook Hotel, I would argue that the weirdest thing about Jerry’s apartment in Seinfeld is the bookcase. For starters, there are a number of original Nintendo games on there, including Tetris and Sim City, which is odd because we never see Jerry kick back and play the NES he apparently owns. None of the Seinfeld characters seem remotely interested in video games, with the exception of the time George risked his life for a Frogger machine.

Jerry also boasts the most bafflingly chaotic collection of movies in human history. His VHS tapes, which memorably sandwich a Superman figurine, include the spider-based horror comedy Arachnophobia, Martin Scorsese’s classic mob movie Goodfellas and Wired, the god-awful 1989 John Belushi biopic. You know what movie Jerry doesn’t seem to have? Superman!

Jerry also has a Benny Hill tape, the justly-forgotten Groucho Marx movie Copacabana, and not one but two copies of True Colors. Why a stand-up comedian in New York would own a back-up copy of a John Cusack political drama was something the writers left to the viewer’s imagination.

I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Jerry has Child’s Play 2, but not the original. And Back to the Future Part III, but not parts one or two. Who does that? Not to mention the multiple golf videos Jerry owns, despite the fact that Kramer is the only golfer on the show (unless we count George’s fondness for frisbee golf, aka Frolf).

While that easily could have been the end of our deep dive into Jerry’s movie shelf, people have also noticed that early seasons of the show featured a very different assortment of tapes. And they indicate that Jerry may not have been the master of his domain.

Eagle-eyed fans have pointed out that in Season Three, Jerry’s shelf isn’t full of store-bought movies like in later seasons, but rather, dubbed VHS tapes with handwritten labels. Some of the titles are innocuous enough like Gunfights and Cartoons, but there are also movies like Ode to Desire, Easy Love and Rug Burn. 

Yup, Jerry’s shelf is full of porno tapes. And he doesn’t even try to hide them, he proudly displays his bootleg erotica as if they were bowling trophies.

Clearly, someone in Seinfeld’s Art Department was having a little fun (another one of the tapes is simply labeled “The Title”), likely not anticipating that streaming video and high-definition video would one day be a thing that would allow fans to pore over the details of a fictional character’s apartment as if it were a real-life crime scene. 

Still, this means that the character of Jerry Seinfeld canonically had a bunch of porn in his apartment. Although it disappeared in the early ‘90s, perhaps because he figured out how to connect to the internet on that desktop computer he never seemed to use. 

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