Shout Out / Billions

Showtime's Billions has become (in)famous for peppering its dialogue with references to music, movies, television, and sports galore — so much so that a compilation page like this was inevitable sooner or later.

Unsorted

• "The Good Life" events. It has Bobby namedrop Rocky before having him watch Citizen Kane, as he's never seen it.
• An easy season 1 episode has Connerty and Agent McCue quote Glengarry Glen Ross when scoping out Axe capital traders.
• Chuck tells Adam DeGiulio that he was feeling a little Hank Kingsley, prompting DeGiulio to say the character's catchphrase, "Hey now!"
• "The Deal" has Dollar Bill's response to Chuck: "I'm Keyser Soze, motherfucker."
• When Chuck decides to Bluff the Eavesdropper in his office, he says he's going to "Tinker Tailor him."
• When Adam DeGiulio answers Chuck's phone call in the first episode of season 2, he quotes Hamilton. Chuck doesn't get the reference, saying he hasn't had the time to catch it. By season 5, he clearly has seen it because he gets Kate Sacker's references to it.
• "Quality of Life" is one extended one to The Big Lebowski, from Donnie, to Donnie's husband Walter, to the quoting of "the beauty of nature he loved so well".
• Wags quotes All That Jazz (as well as David Costabile's former Breaking Bad costar Bob Odenkirk): "It's showtime, folks!"
• "The Oath" has Wags shrieking "are you ready for some football?", Bryan and Chuck snarking about the "Hans Gruber Memorial Exit", Lara quoting The Wire, and Chuck's lawyer Ira referencing "Ali, boma ye" from Ali vs. Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle.
• "Currency" gives us one to Crimson Tide.
• Axe wonders how Mafee tore himself away from watching Da Ali G Show.
• "The Kingmaker" has Wags exhorting some traders to "fire walk with me". Also, Taylor buys Mafee an autographed poster from the 1998 The Undertaker- Mankind Hell in a Cell match (with Dollar Bill complaining that "everything after Sammartino and Zbyszko is bullshit"), and the titular Kingmaker's name is "Black" Jack Foley (also one of Mick Foley's wrestling names).
• "Sic Transit Imperium" has a callback to when Axelrod says he's The Terminator and won't stop fighting. The quote is recorded in the official US Attorney's briefing, including references to Cyberdyne.
• When Axelrod bursts into Chuck Sr.'s club, he's delivering the Orphaned Punchline, "... and she stepped on the billiard ball!" This is a reference to a similar Orphaned Punchline delivered by Bunny in Trading Places, which was itself a reference to a botched anecdote delivered by Gloria Upson in Auntie Mame (though it's a ping pong ball in that film).
• Axelrod makes plenty of references to The Godfather, his favorite film, and usually drops some pertinent line to quickly describe his analogous situation. When in trouble with Lara, she says "Appollonia died in a car bomb," referencing the part in the film when the wife of Michael is killed as collateral damage during a mob war, mirroring Lara's position.
• When Dake insists on taking down Axelrod himself, Rhoades tells him to be sure to bring one thing: a lot of body bags. This is a quote from First Blood.
• Rhoades relies on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he usually has to explain the references.
• Further wrestling shoutouts in "Tie Goes to the Runner", namedropping the Iron Shiek and his finisher, the camel clutch.
• As well as referencing Star Wars with the episode title, "Flaw in the Death Star" gives us a fairly explicit parallel and shoutout to L.A. Confidential, with Lawrence Boyd and Bryan Connerty quoting the scene where Bud White asks Ed Exley if he wants to destroy his own reputation to bring down a corrupt superior (though while Chuck may be the Dudley Smith in this analogy and Bryan the Exley, Boyd is definitely not Bud White):
  Boyd: The Nite Owl case made you. Do you really want to tear all that down?
  Connerty: With a wrecking ball. Wanna help me swing it?
• When a case is dropped, Lonnie tells Bryan: "It's Chinatown, Jake."
• Surprisingly, it's taken until season three to get a Company (Sondheim) shout-out, with Todd Krakow answering a call from Axe with "Bobby, baby". Another one to Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd is Todd remarking "glad, as always, to oblige my friends and neighbors".
• Taylor and Bobby quote Bob Dylan - "he that is not busy being born is busy dying".
• "Kompenso" gives us Sacker selling AG Epstein on going after Jeffcoat with the Flair-ism "to be the man, you gotta beat the man".
• Wendy shouts out Apocalypse Now ("should I mention napalm in the morning?"), Shakespeare's King John ("no vice but beggery") and the University of Alabama Crimson Tide ("Roll Tide!") at the beginning of "Elmsley Count".
• Grigor shouts out Happy Days (even calling Bobby "Fonzie") and the original Rollerball in "Chucky Rhoades's Greatest Game."
• In "Chucky Rhoades's Greatest Game," Taylor makes an extended Starship Troopers reference, saying that as employees of Axe Capital, they and Mafee were like soldiers sent to Klendathu only to realize that they were the bad guys all along.
• In "Arousal Template," Chuck identified Reverend Charles Lucas's poem "Joseph" as the origin of the phrase "champ at the bit" and quotes the relevant line.
• In "Chickentown," When Axe and Wags confront Bill in front of a chicken coop, Axe asks him, "What's in the bag? What's in the bag?" a la 7. Wags then says, "Forget it Bill. It's Chickentown.
• In "Overton Window," Axe tells someone on the phone that he wants to make a trade as quick and silent as Le Samouraï. After a pause, he clarifies, "It's an old French movie."
• In Season 4, Chuck visits a doctor he sent to prison. The first shot of the doctor standing in his cell is a direct copy of the first shot of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Chuck and the doctor start referencing the film soon afterwards.
• In "Maximum Recreational Depth," Axe gets a bad feeling and calls his lawyer, saying, "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K," quoting Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Season 2

The Kingmaker

• Mick Foley (one to his wrestling career as Mankind, another to his father's name of Jack Foley)

Season 4

Chucky Rhoades' Greatest Game

• The title of the episode comes from William Kennedy's novel Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, the second book in his "Albany Cycle." Chuck Senior references Billy Phelan at one point.

Arousal Template

• Chuck identifies Reverend Charles Lucas's poem "Joseph" as the origin of the phrase "champ at the bit" and quotes the relevant line.
• Bach boasts that Axe Capital's new non-compete agreements are "tighter than AC/DC in '78."
• Chuck listens to Al Green's Belle Album in his office.
• Bobby drops a reference to Alexander "Ovi" Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom in conversation with Bonnie.
• Taylor says of her time at Axe Cap: "Axe and Wags, and even Wendy, are like the United Citizen Federation. They turned us all into Starship Troopers, sent us to Klendathu and some of us got our brains eaten. And it wasn't until the end of our time in that we realized we were the bad guys all along."
• Sara and Mafee reference Vito's admonishment to Sonny in The Godfather after Mafee similarly speaks out of turn.
• Wags and Farhad debate adjusting the Sheikh's structured fee to Axe Cap:
  Wags: Two and twenty is standard.
  Farhad: Was standard. Not for an investment the size of ours.
  Wags: It doesn't matter if it's as swole as Dirk Diggler on his first night with Roller Girl. This is one of those cases where size does not actually matter.
  • Wags closes the meeting by asking if Farhad and the Sheikh's representatives have ever heard of Chaka Khan, riffing on her song "I Feel For You."
  • When Wags sees Taylor walking into their own meeting with Farhad wearing a wig and dress, he later describes them as "Kate Jackson hot."
• Andolov states that he picked up English by watching Happy Days, Mike Wallace and Rollerball. He later calls Axe "Fonzie."
• Wags describes being roofied and thrown in a closet for most of the episode:
  Wags: I mean, everything was going great. And then they turned on me like Sharon Stone in Total Recall.
  Axe: Well, you do look a little like Kuato.

Fight Night

• The training regimes undergone by Dollar Bill and Mafee prior to their fight are of course an homage to the Rocky movies.

Season 5

The Chris Rock Test

• A nod to Chris Rock provides the title of this episode, referring to the ability of a man to keep his daughter from becoming a stripper. Wags fails this test.
• When Bobby claims he's a "carnivorous monster", Mike Prince claims that he's "a cuddly monster, like in Monsters, Inc.".
• Chuck has apparently been watching Dexter, explaining his ruthless pursuit of Axe and the illegal dealings he undertakes to achieve this aim as his own "Dark Passenger". He wants Sacker to act as his Harry Morgan and keep his darker impulses in check.

Liberty

• Chuck cooking eggs while Eva and Mike Prince is a very detailed homage to the final scene of Big Night down to the way Eva sits on the table and how the entire scene is done without dialogue.

Season 6

Cannonade

• Wags ends up having a heart attack while on a Peloton exercise bike and later declares "I'm not going out like Mr. Big"^note Probably the most up-to-date reference in the show's history since the AJLT episode in question had only premiered one month before the episode's air date and the line is clearly ADR'd in. Word of God claims they felt the need to add it because "it was what Wags would say"