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alt title(s): Shout Outs; Allusion "Why must you take everything that is honest, pure, sweet, and wholesome, and turn it into some vague Alan Arkin film reference? Why, why, why?!" — Joel, MST3K: It Conquered the World
A shout out is something subtle (a name, line of dialogue, or prop) 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.
You can even talk about them in English class if only you call them "allusions".
See also Homage, Stock Shout Outs, Opening Shout Out, Shout Out Theme Naming. Literary Allusion Title is a subtrope. Easily confused with a Mythology Gag and Continuity Nod. Contrast Take That, which is a negative-spirited Shout Out.
See Stock Shout Outs for a list of Shout Outs and other references common enough to earn their own page.
See also Obligatory Trope Overdosed Reference for those Shout Outs that just can't be avoided.
Examples
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Other Examples
General
- Be it novel, video game, comic or TV show, anything related to Star Wars will do this without shame. We can only assume the makers of Prozac must be filthy rich in this universe, what with everyone having a bad feeling about this and that...
Advertising
- A Filipino snack ad best described, as one comment put it, as "SACRILEGE TO LUCKY STAR." In terms of character designs, Sailor Moon wasn't spared either.
Card Games
- The Collectible Card Game Magic: The Gathering likes to slip Shout Outs and in-jokes into the titles and art of its cards. Probably the most high-profile (that references something outside of M:tG itself anyway) is Nevinyrral's Disk. "Nevinyrral" is "Larry Niven" spelled backwards. Niven wrote a series of stories about magic as an exhaustible resource, the nature of which was proven in the story "The Magic Goes Away" by a wizard who enchanted a spinning disk in such a manner that it used up all the mana in its vicinity, exploding violently in the process.)
Pro Wrestling
Toys
- In GI Joe, the redheaded Shana O'Hara was born in the South (specifically, Atlanta, Georgia). She is, indeed, a fierce and attractive Southern belle. Her codename? Scarlett.
Real Life
- A lot of scientific names end up being Shout Outs to things. Often it's to the scientist who discovered it or to the location it was discovered, but there are some more unusual ones:
- There's a dinosaur called Gojirasaurus.
- Interesting story behind Utahraptor spielbergi — scientists felt the raptors in Jurassic Park were too big, so when they did find ones at that size they named the species after the movie director.
- A group of "hedgehog" genes — whatever that means — are desert hedgehog, Indian hedgehog, and sonic hedgehog.
- In addition, one of the macrocycle inhibitors of the gene sonic hedgehog continues the reference. It is named Robotnikinin
- Likewise, a retinal protein was named Pikachurin.
- There are several flower varieties called Sailor Moon
 . Surprisingly, Naoko Takeuchi makes one of them as part of an artbook drawing, since she loves when fans homage her works, and compliments it back as she can.
- Strigiphilus garylarsoni, a kind of louse, after the creator of The Far Side and his frequently insect-related humour.
- Psephophorus terrypratchetti, a prehistoric turtle which is not large enough to appear on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram. Terry keeps a fossil of it on his desk.
- And Gingoites nannyoggiae, a Mesezoic plant.
- The "Ogg" multimedia format is not a reference to Nanny Ogg; however once the coincidence was pointed out, the makers named their audio format after Vorbis from Small Gods.
- The trapdoor spider Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, and inevitably, Aptostichus stephencolberti.
- Calponia harrisonfordi.
- The pachycephalosaur Dracorex hogwartsia is shouting out loud and clear.
- The lemur Avahi cleesei is named for lemur-lover John Cleese.
- A scientist named a rock in the Main Asteroid Belt 18610 Arthurdent". Later, another asteroid was dedicated to the author: 25924 Douglasadams
- Tanz Metal band Rammstein had a minor planet named after them.
- The asteroids 12796 Kamenrider and 12408 Fujioka, named for the Kamen Rider franchise and its original star, Hiroshi Fujioka.
- Asteroids 46610 Besixdouze and 2578 Saint-Exupéry.
- Asteroid 99942 Apophis. Even funnier, there is a small chance that the asteroid may hit Earth in 2036, so Apophis is our real-life enemy.
- The sea slug alderia willowi.
- The dwarf planet now known as "Eris" was nicknamed "Xena" for 2 years while a final name and designation were decided. Its moon was officially named "Dysnomia" (Lawlessness) as a shoutout to actress Lucy Lawless.
- Google's Wave service was named such because that's what communications were called in Firefly. The crash message is even Wash's infamous line "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
- Programmers love to do this. Examples include (feel free to add):
- Soylent, a project to merge all contact info (e-mail addresses, IM screennames, etc.) for a person into a single account in GNOME (Linux-and-its-ilk desktop).
- Plan 9 From Bell Labs, the successor to UNIX as Bell Labs' main research OS.
- Along with Plan 9 From User Space, a port of the main Plan 9 programs to UNIX-like systems. (and yes, userspace actually means something in context)
- The TIFF standard specifies "An arbitrary but carefully chosen number (42)."
- Star Trek has provided several. Among them:
- The inventor of the flip-open cell phone design has apparently said he was inspired by the classic Trek communicator.
- One of the more famous ones was, of course, the successful campaign to get the first space shuttle named Enterprise.
- When the US Space Command was reorganized a few years ago, they introduced some new insignia. There's a stylized arrowhead in the middle.
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