2077's setting borrows heavily from a number of other cyberpunk sci-fi works, while various other details of the setting reference various other movies, shows, books, and games.
- To Blade Runner:
- The MAX-TAC flying car designs borrow from similar vehicles in Blade Runner.
- Doctor Viktor Vector's receptionist Misty has almost the same hairstyle and general getup as the replicant Pris sports in the early parts of Blade Runner. In a similar vein, Evelyn Parker is strikingly similar to Joi from Blade Runner 2049 in both appearance and color palette.
- The graphic for the Assassin perk is an iconic image of Deckard holding his gun at the ready.
- There are multiple shoutouts to Blade Runner's main antagonist Roy Batty. In Pacifica, you can find an abandoned hotel named "Batty's Hotel" featuring a folded Origami figure in the logo. In the Westbrook Columbarium, you can find a memorial to him featuring a piece of his famous Tears in Rain soliloquy. Finally, in northeast Heywood you can find on the top of the Advocet Hotel a dead man slumped over with a dove sitting in his lap. Rain will even start to fall as you enter the rooftop. To his right are the highlighted words "Like Tears" on a nearby wall, once again referencing the Soliloquy.
- To Johnny Mnemonic:
- Doctor Viktor Vector's appearance is clearly inspired by Spider.
- There's also a TV commercial advertising a courier service with "the first 80GB discounted" and showing the cranium implant the couriers use.
- To The Matrix:
- In "Love Like Fire", you break into a heavily guarded building, plant a bomb on the elevator and shoot the cable to send it plummeting to the basement.
- Misty gives V two pill bottles following the heist, one blue (which stalls the relic's progress) and one red (which speeds its progress). Ironically the pills in the blue bottle are red and the pills in the red bottle are blue.
- One television commercial asks "What do you need?" "Clothes... Lots of clothes." The next shot is an exact replica of the gun rack scene from the film.
- If V allows Johnny to take over their body for a bit, Johnny will go on a bender. That bender will include buying drugs from a bald man, who offers him a blue pill in one hand, and a red pill in the other.
- In one of the cyberspace dives you can encounter the same cat twice while going up a set of stairs.
- To The Witcher, CD Projekt RED's other big game:
- One of the car models, featured in the Street Kid prologue, is named "Aerondight", after the Infinity +1 Sword from The Witcher (itself a reference to Arthurian mythology).
- In the "2077 in Style", you can catch several Freeze-Frame Bonus easter eggs, like the "Milfgaard" magazine or a pizza box from "Tom's Diner".
- In the beginning of the Corpo origin story you can open V's desk drawer and see a copy of Retro Gaming Monthly with a The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt cover featuring Ciri.
- A rather easy one to miss for anyone not familiar with the Witcher III: Blood and Wine soundtrack, but during the first part of the Beat on the Brat questline, the guy with a guitar can be heard playing The Beast of Beauclair
, the music from the final boss battle of the DLC. - The Archer Hella, the first car V owns, has a sticker of a horse with "Roach" written underneath, referencing Geralt's steed in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
- Another one to Roach: one of the arcade games is titled "Roach Race", where you play as a horse that has to avoid roofs, griffons, fireballs, and houses. If you get close, you can hear a musical motif reminiscent of Wild Hunt.
- You can hear two police NPCs by a bar near V's apartment complex, a man and a woman, where the policeman is mad at the woman about her going into a fight with a heavily armed combatant instead of calling for Max-tac. The policewoman says that civillians were in danger and that she couldn't just leave them and not try to do anything. This parellels the conversation between Ves and Roche in the third game, from the sidequest "eye for an eye". Driven home more in the polish dub, since the policewoman and Ves are voiced by the same actress, Barbara Kałużna.
- After the personality of rockerboy Johnny Silverhand is slotted into your brain, all further missions have titles named after songs. The use of song titles may itself be a Shout-Out to Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, whose episodes were all named after songs or albums.
- One of the sidejobs, called "Beat on the Brat", is a reference to a song by The Ramones of the same name.
- The missons "Life During Wartime", "Psycho Killer", and "Burning Down The House" are all songs by Talking Heads.
- The missions "Riders on the Storm" and "Queen of the Highway" are a shout out to the songs by The Doors.
- The mission "With a Little Help From My Friends" is a shout out to the song by The Beatles and Joe Cocker.
- The mission "I Walk the Line" is a shout out to the song by Johnny Cash.
- The mission "Killing In The Name" takes its name from a song by Rage Against the Machine.
- The mission "I Fought The Law" shares a name with songs by, among others, Sonny Curtis and the Crickets, Bobby Fuller, The Clash, Green Day, Dead Kennedys and Hank Williams Jr..
- The missions "Gimme Danger", "Search and Destroy" and "Play It Safe" are references to Iggy Pop and the Stooges.
- A side mission called "Love Rollercoaster" is a reference to a song by Ohio Players (also covered by Red Hot Chili Peppers).
- The mission "Totalimmortal" is a shout out to the song by AFI.
- The missions "Rebel, Rebel" and "Space Oddity" are a shout out to David Bowie.
- The mission "Disasterpiece" is a shout-out to a Slipknot song of the same name.
- The mission "The Highwayman" is a taken from a song of the same name written by Jimmy Webb but made famous by country supergroup The Highwaymen.
- The side mission “Pyramid Song” is a reference to a song by the same name by Radiohead, with the gameplay of the mission itself being reminiscent of the music video for the song.
- Several of the poses V can take in Photo mode are references, either by name only, or the pose itself references something.
- In the Name of the Moon, I’ll Punish You!: Sailor Moon's pose when she says the titular quote.
- Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls: Laid down on their side like Jack's drawing of Rose in Titanic.
- V's Bizarre Pose: Jonathan Joestar and Caesar Zeppeli's signature hand over the face pose.
- Joker Stairs: Joker's stair dance.
- V For Victory: The "Praise the Sun!" pose.
- V Shot First: Han Solo's famous shooting pose.
- Hard Pass and Now You're Talking: The memetic shots from Hotline Bling.
- My name is V, Just V: Bond Pistol Pose, particularly mimicking some of the Pierce Brosnan publicity stills.
- I Know Kung Fu: V with their guard up.
- Oh My God! They Killed V!: V lying on the ground dead.
- Run the Jewels: The duo's hand display.
- Talk To The Hand: The T-800's pose from the titular quote.
- Waiting for Godot: V miming leaning against a wall.
- You're Breathtaking: V pointing like Keanu Reeves did during the E3 conference.
- Be Cool, This Is A Robbery!: V aiming a pistol at the camera.
- Vehicles:
- The custom version of the Quadra Type 66 muscle car has a distinctive orange paintjob with a flag design on the roof.
- Your starting vehicle, an '80s-style American sedan called the Archer Hella, looks a lot like the 6000 SUX from RoboCop (1987).
- One of the vehicles you can buy is mentioned as being previously owned by "a guy from Memphis named Nicholas". This is a reference to Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), in which Nicolas Cage played a car thief with the nickname "Memphis".
- One of the cars in the Badlands race is painted bright red and green, and driven by Margot and Luigi.
- The Yaiba Kusanagi motorcycle is named after Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell (or the ancient sword that forms part of the Imperial Regalia of Japan, which Motoko named herself after, since Yaiba literally means "blade"). The Kusanagi's design somewhat resembles Kaneda's bike from AKIRA.
- The Rayfield Caliburn is based on concept cars designed by Syd Mead.
- The Makigai MaiMai P126 is a reference to the Fiat 126p, also known as "maluch" (pronounced "malooh") - a licensed version of the Fiat 126 produced by Polish company FSO between 1973 and 2000. It even has the engine in the same place (in the rear).
- The entire line of Thornton Motors vehicles is a nod to the antagonist's fictional car company in the first The Love Bug
- Several of the Perk names are refences, other times the reference is made even more clear by the Perk's effect:
- A Fistful of Eurodollars
- Westworld
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Judge, Jury and Executioner
- Transporter: (Allows you to wield pistols and carry a body).
- Wolverine: Health Regeneration
- Total Recall and Totaler Recaller
- Mnemonic: Reduced quick hack cost against targets already hacked - who are much like the titular character who is suffering from an overly charged implant.
- Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon
- In the side-mission "Epistrophy," one of the rogue Delamain cabs you have to find has been hijacked by none other than GLaDOS herself, complete with repurposed dialog from both Portal and Portal 2.
- Another cab calls itself Clarice and insists you help her silence... the flamingos.
- Braindances are a lot like the SQUID devices in Strange Days.
- MAX-TAC officers borrow elements from the Judges of Judge Dredd.
- There's a reflex booster drug ingested via inhaler that causes time to slow down, a concept from one of the original Cyberpunk pen-and-paper's game major influences, Walter Jon Williams's novel Hardwired, and more recently seen in films like Dredd. Also a nod to how Jet works in Fallout.
- The ripperdoc who does modifications on your body goes by Doctor Viktor Vector, as a reference to Mary Shelley's Dr. Victor Frankenstein. V can even point this out by referring to themselves as his "creature".
- Remember the three seashells from Demolition Man? Well, you can spot them on the shelf next to V's toilet.
- One hostile psycho NPC shouts "Du blir løyst fra banda som bind deg", Norwegian for "You will be freed from the ties that bind you", a lyric from a song by the band Wardruna.
- The Voodoo Boyz may be a shout out to Count Zero, which also prominently featured a group of Afro-Caribbean hackers who were Voudon believers and equated interacting with AI to being ridden by the loa.
- You can find the aftermath of a motorbike accident on some train tracks, with the corpses of two African-American males, one fat and one skinny, both toting SMGs. The fat one also has a trillby on his body you can loot. Reading the shard reveals an exchange from the late duo, nicknamed "Little Smoke" and "JC" respectively, with the former berating the latter for failing to follow the "damn train".
- In one of the side missions, "The Hunt", you can see a BB pod from Death Stranding.
- In one of Regina's gigs, "The Heisenberg Principle", you're tasked with destroying a drug lab, with tons of allusions to Breaking Bad, such as yellow hazmat suits, one of the cooks being named Shiro (Japanese for "white"), and the name of the mission itself.
- The graphic for the Massacre perk is a reference to one of the Evil Dead franchise's signature shots, Ash Williams holding up his shotgun. The game uses a combination of the Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness versions of the scene.
- One piece of lore is a video game review for the third installment in the "No-Life" series, which is finally coming out in 2077 after years of Development Hell.
- Less snarkily, the description for weaponised crowbars references MIT physicists.
- There's a street called Pondsmith in Japantown that references Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the tabletop Cyberpunk game.
- During a discussion at a stake out, Johnny will jokingly ask V which they expect to show up, Reptilian Aliens or Techno-Necromancers. V can reply "The Spanish Inquisition". Johnny replies that he "didn't expect that".
- In the Biotechnica farms, you can find a wrecked tanker truck that, going by the document left behind, was driven by one "Charlize Fury", a woman with a shaved head and cybernetic arms who was breaking a group of pregnant, artificially inseminated women out from Biotechnica's labs, and who were chased down by their corporate enforcers, all while accompanied by a man in a black leather jacket named Max.
- In a storm drain, you can find the wreckage of a semitruck and a motorcycle and two bodies, one of them heavily cyborg'd up. Recovering the log, you learn that the Edgerunner was contracted by Jimmy O'Connor's mother to rescue him from the pursuer in the semitruck, a cyborg.
- One sidemission involves saving a Japanese surgeon who secretly killed a crime boss he was operating on by intentionally botching his operation.
- One of the Iconic Katanas is called "Cottonmouth", the code name of O-Ren Ishii, who takes part in the first volume's climactic Katana fight.
- The mission "Fixer, Merc, Soldier, Spy" takes its name from the John le Carré novel and film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
- The achievement for completing all NCPD and fixer jobs in Watson is called It's Elementary!
- The dollhouses bear a strong resemblance to the work Neuromancer's Molly Millions did to afford her implants (and also the House of Blue Lights from William Gibson's earlier short story, "Burning Chrome"). And just like them, there's an ugly side that gets revealed throughout Evelyn's story.
- The Handgun Skill Tree under the Reflex perk is a shout out to popular westerns.
- The parade in Japantown is inspired by the one seen in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.
- The strip club known as Dicky Twister is a clear nod to the "Titty Twister" from From Dusk Till Dawn.
- Panam's name, with the implication that it stands for "Pan-American", may be a reference to Amy Shaftoe from Cryptonomicon: her real name is America because any man in America could be her father.
- Cyborg boxing, as seen in the "Beat on the Brat" missions, may be an homage to Megalo Box.
- One spot heard on the radios mentions a scientist by the name of Richard Sanchez.
- The HJSH-18 Masamune assault rifle is named after Masamune Shirow, the creator of Ghost in the Shell.
- The Gold-Plated Baseball Bat is probably a reference to the signature weapon of Shonen Bat from Paranoia Agent.
- Doctor Viktor's last name is Vector.
- When playing AR "Cops and Robbers" with River's niece and nephew, the kids choose the aliases Joan McClane and Henry Callahan.
- Henry Callahan is, of course, gettin' too old for this shit.
- Skippy, the smart gun with a talking A.I. sings to the tune of Rihanna's Disturbia.
- In the Many Ways to Skin a Cat gig, one of the workers in the warehouse makes a reference to a Polish stevedore named Sobotka who is involved in helping their smuggling operation.
