Greenwich Time Signal not allow the pips to be broadcast except as a time signal. Radio plays and comedies which have fictional news programmes use various methods to avoid playing the full six pips, ranging from simply fading in the pips to a version played on "On the Hour" in which the sound was made into a small tune between the pips. "The News Quiz" also featured a special Christmas pantomime edition where the pips went missing, and the problem was avoided there by only playing individual pips and not the whole set. The 2012 project "Radio Reunited", however, did use the pips
The Five Orange Pips ship's sternpost marked "LS" sighted in the North Atlantic. The 1945 film "Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear" is partly based on "The Five Orange Pips". "The Five Orange Pips" was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 1990 as part of Bert Coules' complete radio adaptation of the canon, starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. The November 2014 episode of "Elementary" titled "The Five Orange Pipz" takes some story elements from this short story. The unusual "Pipz" spelling is the trademarked name of a fictional bead toy where a manufacturing error rendered the orange beads