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A shout out is something subtle (a name or line of dialogue) in a show that refers to fans or family members of the cast or crew, or to another source of inspiration. By nature, these can be obscure for casual fans.
See also Homage, Stock Shout Outs, Opening Shout Out. Literary Allusion Title is a subtrope. Easily confused with a Mythology Gag and Continuity Nod.
Examples not included in the above categories:
Web Prose
- Tales Of MU is loaded with these - mostly to Dungeons And Dragons, the basis for much of the setting. After Gary Gygax passed away, a previously unnamed building was dubbed the Gygax Memorial Healing Center. Two of the funniest non-D&D examples that spring to mind are the in-universe equivalent of Occam's Razor, "Durkon's Hammer" (a Shout Out to Order Of The Stick) and Cat Girl Suzi asking, in broken "English", "I can has a cookie?" (a Shout Out to the LOLcat
 phenomenon)
- And let us not forget the history class that was entirely devoted to making a "the cake is a lie" gag, in reference to Portal.
Tabletop RPGs
- Cartoon Action Hour campaigns are fake series that pay homage to Eighties cartoons. The book itself includes shout-outs to many of these shows, especially in the "game seeds" section, which includes ideas for campaigns based on series such as Transformers ("Transbots") and ''Thundercats"' ("Action Cats").
- Warhammer 40000 has tonnes of these, some subtle, some just plain obvious. The Inquisitor Lord Fyodor Karamazov is a Shout Out to The Brothers Karamazov, there's a Dark Eldar character with black and white hair called "Kruellagh the Vile", a Shout Out to Cruella de Vil, and the entire Necron race is one big Shout Out to the Terminator franchise.
- The GURPS Super Hero sourcebook International Super Teams has a number of shout outs buried in its text and timeline, including references to The Man From UNCLE, the Wild Cards novels, John Irving's The World According To Garp and the 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean.
Theater
- Shakespeare's plays include several Shout Outs to earlier Shakespeare plays. Notably, Hamlet includes several references to Julius Caesar. At one point Polonius claims to have played Caesar on stage, almost certainly indicating that the actor who originally payed Polonius had previously played Caesar in Shakespeare's version. (Like Caesar, Polonius is also stabbed to death, although in his case it's due to mistaken identity.)
- Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida quotes Marlowe's Doctor Faustus on Helen of Troy. This sounds slightly weird to a modern audience, as the line in question ("Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?") has become cliché - it's probably the most famous sentence Marlowe ever wrote.
- The third Dream Sequence in Lady In The Dark includes a Shout Out to a famous number from The Mikado:
Jury: Our object all sublime We shall achieve in time, To let the melody fit the rhyme, The melody fit the rhyme. Ringmaster: This is all immaterial and irrelevant! What do you think this is — Gilbert and Sellivant?
Other
- In a Let's Play of X-COM: Terror From The Deep, the Leviathian used to hit T'leth was named the Thunderchild
Web Original
- Survival Of The Fittest character Keiji Tanaka is shoutouterffic. Among other things, he is constantly referencing the Final Fantasy series.
'Man, it's like the beginning of that game, except I don't have a gunblade, I got a broken sabre. Least Lenny can't fireball me, with like, kaPOW and stuff! Man, that would hurt.' (The opening sequence of Final Fantasy VIII)
'Shit! SHIT! Injury! Medic! Somebody get me a potion! Who's on healing duty!? Critical hit people! Critical hit! With, like, the extra loud sound and red numbers and stuff!' (A general reference to the common healing item in the series)
- This troper, who plays Quincy Archer, is actively trying to put as many shout outs as he can in Quincy's posts. So far he's done No More Heroes, Homestar Runner, Monty Python, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and Zero Punctuation, as well as a Literary Allusion Title to I Wanna Be The Guy.
- With a name like "Quincy Archer", This Troper hopes you're including as many Bleach shoutouts as possible.
- "Oh, poopy" was also the catchphrase of Dr. Clayton Forrester from Mystery Science Theater 3000, and his last line in the series.
- Also, Guy Rapide mentions in passing having had a friend named Lucien Lachance.
- This troper, who played Sloan Henriksen, made a Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann reference in a scene shortly before his death.
Music
- Part IV from Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C minor contains a very obvious shout out to Beethoven's Ode to Joy - written into the Symphony when Robert Schumann named Brahms "the second Beethoven". After the Symphony was finished (it only took Brahms 14 years to write it) Hans von Buhlow dubbed it "Beethoven's Tenth".
- The band Fightstar did an entire concept album about Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it's actually not bad.
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