Besides being a Spiritual Successor to Palace Software's Barbarian, Age of Barbarian is essentially a love-letter to Swords and Sorcery Heroic Fantasy stories, with many homages to it in the game, some subtle, some overt.
- Fountain of Expies: Plenty, to wit:
- Rahaan is, naturally, based on Conan the Barbarian, and particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger's depiction of the character.
- Sheyna is based on Mariana from The Dungeon of Drax.
- Necron is basically a nerfed version of Nekron from Fire & Ice, but with horns and no ice magic.
- The Rogaks, who are basically Orcs, also take overt inspiration from Nekron's Sub-Human minions from Fire & Ice.
- The Ancient Dragon is almost a dead-ringer for "Taro
" from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. - From ARENA:
- Murduk is Drax, down to being bald and wearing similar purple robes.
- Sion is Sláine mac Roth, minus the warp-spasms.
- Ayla may be named after the main character of the Earth's Children literary series.
- Two from Conan the Destroyer: Xula the Amazon and Mombata the Terrible are both a couple of letters away from Tula and Bombaata.
- DLC character She-Red is Red Sonja in all but her name, which appears to be a combination of hers and She-Ra.
- Death Bringer is Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer.
- One battle has you pitted against a pair of swordsmen with their faces obscured by helmets in a large cage, the setting and the appearance of the two combatants call to mind Kutchek and Gore being pitted against one another.
