In Spaced a British Sitcom starring and created by Simon Pegg (who later wrote and starred in Shaun of the Dead) there is a giant poster for Evil Dead 2 on the wall of the main characters flat. Simon even poses like Annie Knowby on the poster in one bit when he is scared.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a few references to Evil Dead. Xander calls Spike (a Vampire) The Evil Dead in one episode, whilst in Amends the First Evil chants "DEAD BY SUNRISE" in an homage to DEAD BY DAWN.
Joss Whedon who created Buffy is a big fan of Evil Dead (he also wrote Cabin in the Woods which as a previous poster pointed out has a plethora of Evil Dead references.) IMO the Vampires in Buffy are very similar to the Deadites too in the following ways.
1: Physically they are similar. Both can appear human, but then morph into their Demonic forms, where they have big bumpy, wrinkly foreheads, large teeth and weird eyes.
2: Both the Deadites and the Vampires of Buffy are created by the Old Ones from HP Lovecraft's mythology. In Buffy the Old Ones ruled the earth many thousands of years ago, but were banished into a hell universe. One of the Old Ones however fed on a human, turning him into a hideous, Demon/human hybrid, the first Vampire, who went onto infect more. Vampires in Buffy (at least in the earlier seasons) seek to free the Old Ones from their prison so they can bring an end to the world of man.
In The Evil Dead universe as we know the Dark Ones, hugely powerful godlike Demons ruled the earth for thousands of years, before they were banished to a hell dimension. The Deadites, who are less Demons' goal meanwhile is to free their masters so they can rule the earth.
Both the Deadites and the Vampires in the finales of both of their franchises usually summon up a giant Lovecraftian nightmare that's their master (the Hellmouth Demons in Prophecy Girl, the Kandarian Demon in Ash Vs Evil Dead and the Tree Monster in Evil Dead 2.)
3: Both the Deadites and the Vampires of Buffy are not humans. They are Demons who inhabit human corpses of the people they kill. They do however inherit the memories of the people they take over and even some of their negative personality traits which they use to torment the people close to their hosts in life (See Jessie, Xanders friend in Buffy, and Kelly's mum in Ash vs Evil Dead.)
4: They are both completely evil, chaotic monsters. The Deadites as we know have no motivation but to torture, mutilate and kill people. The Vampires in Buffy are sadistic, bloodthirsty monsters. They enjoy not only killing, but torturing their victims in horrific ways.
5: The main characters of both Buffy and Evil Dead are able to kill them both in absolutely horrific ways without any ambiguity because neither are human, and both are evil bloodthirsty monsters. Both shows often come up with quite creative ways to kill them like when Buffy uses a torch to impale one sneaking up on her, and burn one charging at her with a hammer at the same time!
IMO the Buffy Vampires are the descendants of the Deadites in popular culture. Of course Buffy went in a different direction with Vampires thanks to Spike and Angel. They pushed the Buffy Vampires into more romantic Anne Rice territory which I wasn't as keen on. Still I do think that at their heart the Buffy Vampires are basically Deadites.