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  • Alan Wake: Finnish rock band Poets of the Fall provides the vocals for Fake Band "The Old Gods of Asgard", but their original songs also feature in the game. Radio host Pat Maine even says that Poets of the Fall reminds him of the Old Gods, but he can't quite work out why.
  • Broforce: Each one of the characters is a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of action movies, making several characters played by the same actor happening:
  • Brütal Legend, oh so hard. Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy Kilmister, Lita Ford, and Rob Halford show up in the game, are IDENTICAL to their real-life appearance, and they're not recognized as such by metal uberfan Eddie Riggs.
  • In Burnout Paradise, all car companies are parodied brands of real car manufacturers, such as Carson for Chevolet, and Hunter for Ford. However, the song "Snowhill" by the band Agent Blue is featured in the game's soundtrack, and is under the album name "A Stolen Honda Vision". It's hard to see how this would work, as Honda is replaced by Kitano in the game.
  • Metal Gear:
  • Super Robot Wars loves to play with its casting like this, with characters mentioning other characters' similar voices, and even making Shout Outs.
  • Captain Lou Albano played Mario in both the live-action and animated segments of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. In a particularly memorable live-action segment, Luigi mentions that Mario idolizes Captain Lou, who goes missing. Albano appears at the end of the episode, shortly after Mario leaves... In the Super Mario Adventures comic serial that ran in Nintendo Power, the first thing we see Princess Peach doing is playing a Super Mario Bros. game.
  • Grand Theft Auto:
    • California (and possibly part of Nevada) and New York City don't exist, having been replaced by San Andreas and Liberty City respectively, but some of the songs on the radio still reference California and New York City. For example, Grand Theft Auto IV takes place in Liberty City, but the song list still includes "New York Groove" by Hello, and Bob Seger's "Hollywood Nights" is featured in Grand Theft Auto V, while the in-universe equivalent of Hollywood is known as Vinewood.
    • A radio DJ in Vice City Stories explicitly mentions New York at one point.
    • Lampshaded in a Something Awful Forum Let's Play of San Andreas, when the narrator and his friend at one point note Snoop Dogg's rapping about Compton is "obviously" a disguised version of the game's Ganton. And there's a Jack Thompson Expy who thinks that rap music encourages people to violence.
    • In San Andreas, the DJ for the Classic Rock station (K-DST) is voiced by Axl Rose, who often takes shots at the heavy metal/grunge station Radio X. Radio X plays the Guns N' Roses song "Welcome to the Jungle."
    • Grand Theft Auto III contains a billboard which reads "See you in Miami!". The Definitive Edition resolved this paradox by changing it to say "See you soon!".
    • In V the song "Convoy" plays on the radio and references Kenworth, Peterbilt and GMC trucks, despite these brands and vehicles being parodied in the game.
    • In Vice City, the song "Kids in America" contains the lyrics "New York to East California."
    • In Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, Funkmaster Flex on The Beat will do a Take That! towards R. Kelly's pedophilia, except it involves a fictional celebrity instead of R. Kelly himself. However, the original IV already features an R. Kelly song on The Vibe.
    • Grand Theft Auto V includes several references to memes originating from 4chan like "Rule 34" and "Epic Fail", without an in-universe equivalent to 4chan to make them. To make matters worse, the use of "Fail" as a meme is considered to originate from Blazing Star using the term awkwardly, and it too would not exist in GTA and doesn't have an equivalent.
  • An NPC in EarthBound (1994) says that he is eagerly awaiting the release of EarthBound 2. In another level, a closed building is said to be housing a conference for the developers of EarthBound 2 as well. A bit Hilarious in Hindsight, given what happened to the actual EarthBound 2...
    • A couple of characters even mention playing the game Earthbound. After the boss fight against the police chief, he asks you to see him later. All he does is say that he's having trouble getting through Earthbound.
  • Rainbow Six: Vegas had a few Splinter Cell arcade machines in it. However, Third Echelon is mentioned as having gathered intelligence for one mission, so Splinter Cell is probably canon within the R6 universe.
    • Maybe Third Echelon or someone else had the games commissioned in that universe so that any reports of the real Third Echelon would be dismissed as made by game obsessed nuts?
  • In Saints Row 2, it is mentioned that the character Benjamin King from the first game has written an autobiography, which will be made into a movie where King will be played by Michael Clarke Duncan, his real-life voice actor. In Saints Row IV, King is voiced by Terry Crews due to Duncan having passed away, and characters note that the actor who played him in the movie doesn't sound like him.
    • Saints Row IV also has Keith David, who previously voiced Julius in the first two games, appear as himself, and a Running Gag is that he constantly gets compared to Julius which extremely annoys him. You can even have Keith and Julius in your party at the same timenote , prompting this conversation between the two:
      Julius: So... Keith David. I'm a fan.
      Keith: Thank you. That's very kind.
      Julius: Y'know... some folks say I remind 'em of you.
      Keith: Yeah... I get the same with you.
      [Beat]
Julius: I don't see it, though.
Keith: Me neither!
  • Averted in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, where if you use DFM to do a certain stunt, another character will chastise you by directly saying that "this isn't Ace Combat". Makes a little bit of sense, in that it's one of the few games in the series to take place in the "real world".
  • A curious and perhaps unintentional one exists in the continuities of the first Tomb Raider games in relation to both film adaptations. According to Core's biography, Deliverance was Lara's favorite movie. In case you don't know, it stars John Voight. Now John Voight plays Lara's father in the first Tomb Raider movie, and his real-life daughter, of course, plays Lara. This means that John Voight and Angelina Jolie also have to exist within the universe of Core's games, and perhaps even the TR movies themselves. So the movie probably exists within its own continuity. In Lara's promotional interviews for Angel of Darkness, she compliments Angelina Jolie on looking so much like her.
  • Played with in Deadpool, where Deadpool can call his voice actor Nolan North in his apartment.
  • In Day of the Tentacle, Weird Ed has a copy of the original game on his computer. The justification is that it's based on the true events of the previous game, licensed out by Dr. Fred. One puzzle requires amending the contract in the past to ensure more lucrative royalties for the family.
  • An early scene in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has Nate and Elena playing the original Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation. Which means Naughty Dog, the company behind both the original Crash Bandicoot games and the Uncharted series, must exist in the Uncharted universe.
  • In Overwatch (made by Blizzard), playable character D.Va was selected to be a mech suit pilot because she was one of the best StarCraft II (also made by Blizzard) players in South Korea. Hearthstone is also shown being played by other characters.
    • Complicated even further by the winding up of the real-world StarCraft II leagues in Korea in 2016, in part because of the popularity of Overwatch!
    • D.Va's appearance in Heroes of the Storm, crossover between all of Blizzard's franchises - including StarCraft. D.Va even starts fangirling once she gets to meet Kerrigan.
    • Taken even further with the introduction of the "Blizzard World" map, which features elements from Heroes of the Storm... a game that includes playable Overwatch characters.
  • In Jurassic World: Evolution, one of the dinosaurs available in the deluxe edition is Crichtonsaurus, an armored herbivore named after Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton. Since the game is part of a franchise based on the novel, this suggests that Crichton himself exists within the Jurassic Park universe.
  • The developers of Pokémon, Game Freak, exist in their own games - there is always a Game Freak office somewhere in the game. In one game your character can even examine a computer and remark "It's the story. Better not look at the ending." So basically, your character is meeting the creators of their own universe.
  • La-Mulana features all the developer's previous games as ROMs that can be used on the Mobile Super X laptop. Including La-Mulana itself.
  • Lone Survivor features several games referencing game developer Superflat's other previous titles, including one labeled "L.S." that is clearly the game itself.
  • Nippon Safes Inc. has one of the playable characters find a floppy with a copy of Nippon Safes Inc. on it, lamenting that Digital Piracy Is Evil. In the sequel, The Big Red Adventure, the event of the previous game apparently both happened and were a video game of the same name. Also, both games have the designer and graphic artist appear as Those Two Guys NPCs.
  • The stadium stage in Project Justice features posters for Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000, both of which feature Sakura, a character who appeared in Project Justice's predecessor, as a playable character. Millennium Fight 2000 would eventually spawn its own sequel in Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium, which featured Kyosuke from Project Justice as a playable character, and his friends Hinata and Batsu as Assist Characters in one of his Super Combos.
  • Final Fantasy XV:
    • The boys all play a lot of King's Knight (a Square Enix) RPG. Prompto even comments a few times on how much of what's going on is like King's Knight. They also listen to soundtracks of other Final Fantasy games in the car (including the soundtracks to other XV spinoff media), and Prompto is familiar with the perennial Chocobo Leitmotif enough that it's associated with him in one specific scene.
    • Vivienne Westwood is the designer of Luna's wedding dress. Since her design work was a heavy influence on Tetsuya Nomura's character design, this is appropriate, if geographically troubling in a world without Britain in it.
    • Assassin's Creed apparently exists as an intellectual property in the Final Fantasy XV universe and the boys are all fans. It's difficult to see how this would work, seeing as the games heavily revolve around real-life historical figures, like Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, and so on.
  • Kleptocats has characters from Epic Beard's other games as inventory items in the first room. The game even states things along the lines of "From one of our other games".
  • A Sega Mark-III console with a copy of its Hokuto no Ken game can be found in Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, leading to the truly surreal sight of Kenshiro playing a game based on his own adventures.
  • The fan-made game adaptation of The Room (2003) reveals that Johnny's bank's new client is "the acclaimed film writer, director, producer and star, Tommy Wiseau". He also made the movie that Johnny and Denny see.
  • In Fate/Grand Order, the Assassin Osakabe-hime has a tablet computer. A Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals the title screen of Fate/Grand Order on it! (specifically, the title screen from Observer on Timeless Temple, before Osakabe-hime was introduced)
  • In Persona 5, Futaba mentions the Super Smash Bros. series by name once. The game's protagonist, Joker, would become a DLC fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and bring along with him cameos of the rest of his team, Futaba included.
  • In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, one of the random banters of Bradford in the situation room of the headquarters is him complaining that some members of the staff are playing Civilization V (which is made by the same software house, Firaxis, which thus exists in the world of XCOM):
    Officer Bradford: Are you really using our tracking terminal to play Civilization?! I at least hope you're going for a Military victory.
    • Similarly, one of the EXALT base location hints says that "It is/isn't in a country you can play in Civilization V".
  • In Sakura Wars (2019), the Shanghai Combat Revue's headquarters are based in a restaurant named Shenlong, establishing the existence of Dragon Ball. Yohei Azakami (Seijuro Kamiyama) and Nana Mizuki (Elise) had roles in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Masaharu Sato (Yattansai Mochizuki) and Ryōko Shiraishi (Komachi Oba) appeared in Dragon Ball Super, and Show Hayami (Tekkan Amamiya) appeared in Dragon Ball Z.
  • An AMA for Friday Night Funkin' revealed that Boyfriend's favorite game on Newgrounds is Newgrounds Rumble, a game that starred an iteration of his ex Pico and his later opponent Tankman, among other characters, let alone being hosted on the same site as the game he's in.
  • Tokyo Xanadu has a fictional video game named Magical Alisa, which is inspired by the Trails games. It was confirmed by Falcom to contain the character Towa Herschel from said series... Except that Tokyo Xanadu also has a character named Towa Kokonoe who looks exactly like Towa Herschel, and nowhere in the game is Kokonoe said to look like the Magical Alisa character.

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