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"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 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.
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.
Other Examples
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 played 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?
- In Urinetown, the end of "Snuff That Girl" is an obvious Shout Out to the "Tonight" ensemble in West Side Story.
- The opening/title number of In the Heights gives a shout out to Cole Porter, mentioning "Too Darn Hot" from Kiss Me, Kate.
- In the Heights also contains shout outs to the song "Take the A Train", the Broadway star Chita Rivera, and It's a Wonderful Life.
- RENT gives a specific shout out to La Boheme, the opera it's based on, in "La Vie Boheme" when Mark remarks Roger's song sounds like "Musetta's Waltz". Roger's guitar motif is the opening phrase to "Musetta's Waltz." A more subtle reference to the same aria occurs in "Take Me or Leave Me," where Maureen's first verse (where she describes people admiring and flirting with her as she walks down the street) has the same basic theme as "Quando me n'vo." The opening number contains another riff taken directly from La Boheme.
- Ironically enough, the same riff is used in Lloyd Webber's "Make Up My Heart" from Starlight Express.
- George Gershwin referenced one of his previous works in Of Thee I Sing by having the French soldiers march onto the stage to the first few bars of "An American In Paris."
- Tick Tick Boom!, another Jonathan Larson musical, is filled with shout outs to Stephen Sondheim. The biggest of these is the song "Sunday", which is an update of a song by the same name in Sunday in the Park With George.
Web Original
- 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 cheeseburger?" (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.
- And the supplementary series MOAR MU had "I call it Vera" directly quoted, referencing Firefly.
- KateModern features several Shout Outs to lonelygirl15. For example, Danielbeast is one of the webcam users hacked by Project Orwell in "The Leak", and the name "Bree" appears on Gavin's "PEOPLE I HATE" list in "The List".
- Similarly, in "Straight To The Top", Gavin suggests that Lauren could audition for fellow Bebo show Sofia's Diary.
- LG15: the resistance mentions The Return of the Jedi and The Return of the King in "Fun Things to Do in Hiding — Volume Three!"
- The first two chapters contain several allusions to The Matrix, both direct and indirect.
- In Chapter 12, Jonas whistles part of the theme from The Great Escape before rescuing Reed.
- On Homestar Runner, characters will do things like exclaim "What in Pete Sampras is going on?" or dress up as, say M. Bison or Jambi the Genie for Halloween. One character, Coach Z, has the initials of Craig Zobel, who, along with Mike Chapman, wrote the original Homestar Runner children's book.
- 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)
- Guy Rapide also mentions in passing having had a friend named Lucien Lachance. Other shout outs include catchphrases from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, an adopted character suddenly talking like Kefka, direct quotes from films and games, visual tricks, namedrops, and sometimes characters that're slightly revised versions of one from some other media (the recent mod applications had a sample profile that was quite literally just a modernized Riku.)
- There are also tons of these (to other literary and artistic works) in the blog novel Fartago. Just the ones I've caught: 2001: A Space Odyssey (the entire premise, that a monolith gives a tribe of cavemen self awareness, and they soon discover a bone can be used as a weapon), The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn and Don Quixote (the plot structure of two members of a society being outside their society and commenting on it), the writings of Sigmund Freud (the fact that the characters are motivated by their realization they will eventually die), Waiting for Godot (the writing style), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Chapter 1: "The Unbearable Lightness of Cat Poop"), Superman and Batman (Flying Tago and Furry Night Bird Farta), The Lord Of The Rings (Chapter 3: The Fellowship of Fartago), "The Treachery of Images" ("Zis Ees Not a Poop"), and those are just the ones I caught in the first three chapters.
- Decades Of Darkness has shout outs to, among other things: a group of popular rock bands, Star Wars, Call Of Cthulhu, and so on and so on.
- Tiberium Wars has more shout-outs than you can shake a stick at. Shout-outs range from Snow Crash to Mass Effect to Metal Gear to Generation Kill, with a hefty frequency of references to Firefly and Warhammer 40000.
Other
- In a Let's Play of X-COM: Terror From The Deep, the Leviathian used to hit T'leth was named the Thunderchild. (A reference to Wells' War Of The Worlds.)
- 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...
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.
- 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.
- The trapdoor spider Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, and inevitably, Aptostichus stephencolberti.
- Calponia harrisonfordi.
- The pachycephalosaur Dracorex hogwartsia is shouting out.
- The lemur Avahi cleesei is named for lemur-lover John Cleese.
- A scientist named a rock in the Main Asteroid Belt "18610Arthurdent". Later, another asteroid was dedicated to him: 25924 Douglasadams
- Tanz Metal band Rammstein had a minor planet named after them.
Advertising
- This 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.
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