Allentown's reputation as a rugged blue collar city has led to many references to the city in popular culture:
- Allentown is mentioned in the 2011 movie The Hangover Part II when Ed Helms sings a cover of Billy Joel's song "Allentown".
- Allentown is mentioned in the song "Fed to Death" by indie rock band Say Anything. It is the opening song on their 2009 album Say Anything.
- Allentown is mentioned in the 2008 movie The Wrestler as a location where Mickey Rourke (playing Randy "The Ram" Robinson) had wrestled leading up to his comeback.
- Allentown is where the Free Armies and the U.S. military first meet in combat in the fictional comic series DMZ Comics, launched in 2005 by DC Comics.
- On August 10, 2003, CNN broadcast Achieving the Perfect 10, a critical documentary about the Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center, located in Allentown.
- The TV production company Medstar Television, which produced the series Medical Detectives from 1996 to 2000, and the series Forensic Files from 2000 on, is headquartered in Allentown. Locations throughout the city have been used as settings for dramatic reenactments of crimes profiled by the shows.
- The 1990 dark comedy film, I Love You to Death, directed by Lawrence Kasdan, is based on an attempted murder that happened in 1984 in Allentown.
- Allentown's Dorney Park was a film location for John Waters' Hairspray, released in 1988.
- The city is the subject of the popular Billy Joel song, "Allentown", originally released on The Nylon Curtain album in 1982. Joel's song uses Allentown as a metaphor for the resilience of working class Americans in distressed industrial cities during the recession of the early 1980s.
- Allentown is the hometown of up and coming showgirl Peggy Sawyer in the long-running, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical 42nd Street, released in 1980, and its associated Academy Award-nominated movie. When Sawyer expresses her desire to leave Broadway to return to Allentown, the show's director and entire cast successfully dissuade her by singing the famed musical number "The Lullaby of Broadway."
- Allentown is mentioned twice in the 1970 Frank Sinatra song "The Train," which appears as the first song on his album Watertown.
- Allentown was the film location for much of James Neilson's film Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, released in 1969.
- Hiding The Bell, a 1968 historical fiction novel by Ruth Nulton Moore, chronicles the events surrounding the hiding of the Liberty Bell in Allentown in 1777.[69]
- Allentown was the subject of the 1963 Irving Gordon song "Allentown Jail", which was subsequently recorded by several other artists, including The Kingston Trio, The Lettermen, The Seekers and Jo Stafford.
- In the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie, character Rosie Alvarez is from Allentown. In the song "Spanish Rose," she sings: "I'm just a Spanish Tamale according to Mae/ Right off the boat from the tropics, far, far away/ Which is kinda funny, since where I come from is Allentown, PA."
- Allentown is mentioned in the 1957 book, On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.
