Shout-Out examples in Captain Marvel (2019).
- To Independence Day, which given that it's an iconic movie from The '90s, seems even more fitting:
- The Grand Canyon chase has a similar feel to the one in the aforementioned film, since it takes place in the exact same spots, uses very similar shots and camera angles and pulls off all its maneuvers.
- The shot of the deployment of Ronan's warheads on Earth is very similar to the one when the alien mothership deploys its city destroyers.
- There is also the scene of Carol walking through the desert and dragging an alien behind her, which is a very similar situation that Will Smith's character faces in the aforementioned film.
- To Pulp Fiction:
- When Fury and new guy Coulson, both clad in dark suits, get into a car to chase down Vers, it's shot similarly to Jules and Vincent Vega's driving scenes, with Samuel L. Jackson in the driver's seat in both sequences.
- When Talos shows up at Maria's house, he's drinking a milkshake from a cup with the exact same design as the cups from Big Kahuna.
- To Terminator:
- Realizing she sticks out like a sore thumb in her Starforce outfit while she hunts down the Skrulls, Carol takes a page from The Terminator's book and steals a motorcycle and a set of clothes to blend in. Included in the outfit she stole was a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, which she wears for half of the movie. (NIN in turn made a shirt featuring the heroine's star symbol
... perhaps as a compromise for how the one in the movie is clearly a bootleg) - The extended deleted version of the scene above plays a more overt homage to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which the biker guy that hits on Carol and tells her to smile, gets his hand squeezed by Carol and hands over his bike's keys in an identical way as in the aforementioned film.
- Realizing she sticks out like a sore thumb in her Starforce outfit while she hunts down the Skrulls, Carol takes a page from The Terminator's book and steals a motorcycle and a set of clothes to blend in. Included in the outfit she stole was a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, which she wears for half of the movie. (NIN in turn made a shirt featuring the heroine's star symbol
- While looking around the Blockbuster store, Carol goes, "Vers to Starforce command", a nod to Buzz Lightyear (another recently-crashed, lost space ranger) saying, "Buzz Lightyear to Star Command" in Toy Story.
- When she crashes into the Blockbuster video store, Carol, a former NASA/USAF test pilot who has been to space, picks up a copy of The Right Stuff. Pancho's Beer appears to be an expy of the bar owned by pioneer aviatrix Pancho Barnes in the same movie as a hangout for Air Force pilots.
- Instants earlier, she had blasted through the head of a cardboard cutout of True Lies' Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- One of the pieces of communication equipment that Carol salvages for parts is a Nintendo Game Boy.
- The train chase sequence is an extended one to The French Connection.
- During Talos's Due to the Dead moment, he whispers to his comrade's corpse that he will finish what they started. Bonus point for Talos being portrayed by Ben Mendelsohn who previously had a Star Wars role.
- One of Carol's memories is her playing Street Fighter II at Pancho's Beer. It appears to be the Champion Edition, since it shows Sagat vs. Dhalsim in the latter's stage. This is in conflict with the timeline as Street Fighter II wasn't released until 1991, and her memories are from 1989.
- Carol entering the bar and the camera going around the place is inspired by the Epic Tracking Shot of The Conversation.
- When Carol asks Fury for something that would identify him and prove he's not a Skrull, he offers his AOL password.
- Goose is named after Maverick's hot-shot co-pilot from Top Gun. In the comics she was called Chewie.
- Yon-Rogg's telekinetic gauntlets are shown to function in a similar fashion to that of the Gravity Gun.
- The hangar at Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. is full of aircraft that shout out to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., with predecessors to the quinjet, the Bus, and Zephyr 1.
- In the scene where Carol changes her uniform's colors, the first color combination she tries is red and gold.
- Upon learning that Talos is frightened by Goose's very appearance, Fury holds her up in front of him to scare Talos, just like how Rick O'Connell holds up a cat to scare Imhotep in The Mummy.
- Monica thinks her mom should help Carol instead of hanging back to watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
- The words "I'm only human" are used in regards to a human surrounded by aliens. This might be a reference to the ill-fated Green Lantern, where Hal Jordan used the same expression to prove a point.
- The pinball machine that one of the Skrull children has been mastering for the last six years is Bally/Midway's Space Invaders.
- A Fonz-themed Happy Days lunchbox makes for a very handy and safe container for the Tesseract.
- When the Kree put a muzzle on Goose, Fury tells them that it's just a cat, not Hannibal Lecter.
- After Carol goes Binary for the first time, her hair is briefly shown standing up and her whole body glowing gold, looking exactly like a Super Saiyan
- Carol catches one of the Kree missiles and detonates it in mid-air. All the other missiles stream into the explosion and are destroyed. It's a familiar sight to anyone who's played Missile Command.
