Stock Shoutouts - Television Tropes & Idioms

A Shout Out that pops up in a lot of places. An oddly specific Shout Out.

Apparently multiple authors independently noticed the same detail and decided to reference it in their own story. The fact that so many authors possess such a thorough knowledge of the original story goes to show just how influential the subject of the Shout Out is.

Stock Shout Outs differ from Stock Parodies in two ways: They aren't played for laughs (beyond the inherent in-joke-esque nature of the common reference point) and they're usually blink-and-you'll-miss-it short.

Some are so famous that they've become tropes themselves.

The Other Wiki also has more information

Subtropes: If an example fits into one of these subtropes, it should be on that page, not here.

Examples

Film

1138: George Lucas' student film, later made a full motion picture, THX 1138.
- Even referenced in the Disney Theme Parks in Star Tours
"Hello, Clarice". If used, it's oftenly lampshaded as well ("Who is Clarice?").
The "One of Us" chant from Freaks

Music

The phrase Welcome to the Jungle pops out everywhere.

Live-action television

42: Most famous as the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything in The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, though it occurs over and over again in Lewis Carroll's works.
23: Used in a similar way, as a reference to its appearance in conspiracy theories. (There even was a whole movie just about that...)or maybe just to A Tale of Two Cities.
4 8 15 16 23 42: The Lost numbers, which notably include two numbers listed separately above.

Uncategorized

The "King of the World" stance from Titanic
A113: A reference to the California Institute for the Arts, specifically the classroom for first-year graphic design. This one is common in Pixar films (witness "special order A113" in WALL•E), but Cal Arts grad and Pixar stalwart Brad Bird also included references in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
"Be seeing you!" with a particular hand-to-eye gesture: The Prisoner
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike", from Colossal Cave.
"Feed Me!" Or "Feed me, Seymour!", delivered in a Large Ham fashion, usually in a voice as deep as the speaker can manage; from Little Shop of Horrors
"He who controls the X" from Dune
"I'll get you, my pretty! And Your Little Dog Too!", from The Wizard of Oz
"I'm walkin' here!", from Midnight Cowboy
The Major General Song, from The Pirates of Penzance; also a favorite stock parody
The Metropolis Tower, from Metropolis
2001: A Space Odyssey
- The monolith
- "Open the pod-bay doors, HAL." Often paired with:
- "I'm afraid I can't do that." or the misquote, "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
"Nevermore." Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". Expect it wherever or whenever anything corvid-related appears.
"Oh Captain, My Captain!", along with standing on a desk — from Dead Poets Society, and therefore often used with Save Our Students plots.
"Klaatu Barada Nikto!" From The Day the Earth Stood Still.
"Preciousssssss" or "my Precioussssss". Lord of the Rings
"See you next Wednesday": to director John Landis' Creator Thumbprint.
- This one was actually inverted once. See here. JMS, creator of Babylon 5, used the phrase in reference to the series being aired on Wednesdays and would have changed it if he knew it could be seen as a John Landis reference.
Pirate Jenny, from the song by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill
"Tannhäuser Gate", usually as a space battle in Science Fiction. From Blade Runner. Spelling may vary. Or the whole speech may be used:
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. [pause] Time to die.
"STELLLLLLLLLLLAAAA!!!!!!" A Streetcar Named Desire
Room 101 from, Nineteen Eighty-Four
"That's the second-[adjective]-est [noun] I've ever seen!" from Get Smart
"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?" from Taxi Driver
Catch-22, from the novel of the same name.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning" and "The horror . . . the horror . . ." from Apocalypse Now
- Though "The horror...the horror..." is actually a Shout Out to Heart of Darkness.
"Be afraid. Be very afraid." From the 1986 remake of The Fly.
Planet of the Apes:
- The Statue of Liberty half-buried or submerged
- The line "You maniacs! You blew it up!"
"You meddling kids!" or the whole line, "I would have gotten away with it, too, if not for [you/these/those] meddling kids" from Scooby-Doo.
"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." from the Hulk.
"It's a bird! It's a plane!" from Superman. Also, "This looks like a job for..."
"I'll be back." From the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger, including but not limited to the Terminator series.
The children dancing during A Charlie Brown Christmas.

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