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Shout Out / Cyberpunk 2077

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Cyberpunk 2077's setting borrows heavily from a number of other cyberpunk sci-fi works, many of those being circular references to the original Tabletop Game, while various other details of the setting reference various other movies, shows, books, and games.

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    To Blade Runner 
  • The MAX-TAC flying car designs borrow from similar vehicles in Blade Runner.
  • Whiskey glasses seen throughout the game make no attempt to hide their resemblance to the iconic Cibi tumbler from the film.
  • Doctor Viktor Vector's receptionist Misty sports almost the same hairstyle and general getup as the replicant Pris 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.
  • There are multiple shoutouts to Blade Runner's main antagonist Roy Batty:
    • A run-down building named Batty's Hotel can be found in Pacifica. The logo◊ features an origami bird and a font strongly reminiscent of the movie poster.
    • In the North Oak Columbarium in Westbrook, there is a plaque to Roy Batty inscribed with a line from his famous Tears in Rain soliloquy ("All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.") along with the image of a dove.
    • Stepping out onto the rooftop of the Advocet Hotel in Heywood, the time of day will change to night as rain begins to fall. At the edge of the roof is a white-haired NPC slumped over with a bird sitting in his lap. The music, the lighting and even particular details of the set are all meant to evoke the climatic scene of the film. To really hammer the point home, the words "Like Tears..." appear as a brightly lit sign on a nearby wall.
  • The North Oak Columbarium also contains a memorial to "Syd Mead, Creator of worlds", a visionary designer and concept artist famed for his work on Blade Runner and other sci-fi films.
  • The shard "Corporate Wanted List" can be found on a body in the Biotechnica protein farms. The shard identifies the man as Samuel Morton, an ex-army medic gone into hiding as a protein farmer, details that match Sapper Morton from Blade Runner 2049. The character's birthdate and ID number closely resemble those of Sapper's as shown in the Black Out 2022 short film. The shack next to him has a large chunk ripped out of one wall, as happened during Sapper's fight with K.
  • During the side job "The Hunt", one of the scannable cabinets in the NCPD Lab contains a dossier on "Symbols in Dreams: Electric Sheep and Unicorns", alluding to both Blade Runner and the novel it's inspired by.
  • During the Arasaka ending the psychological test the doctor runs on V is very similar to the Voight-Kampff Test in the tone of the questions asked and the reactions observed. One of the questions has obvious parallels too.
  • Prior to the 2.0 update, the icon for the "Assassin" perk referenced the classic image of Deckard holding his gun at the ready, while the one for "Edgerunner Artisan" was the iconic origami unicorn. When these were removed as part of 2.0's skill tree overhaul, a new perk for bladed weapons was added with the name "Finisher: Bladerunner".

    To William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy 
  • Much of the cyberpunk language, including "cyberspace", "ICE" (intrusion countermeasure electronics), "jack in" and "flatlined" originated in or was popularized by the Sprawl Trilogy and Gibson's earlier short story "Burning Chrome".
  • Night City shares its name and atmosphere with the Night City district of Chiba in Neuromancer.
  • The "braindance" technology as a way to record and play back a person's sensory experiences is a near-exact equivalent of "simstim" in the Sprawl universe.
  • The dollhouses bear a strong resemblance to the work Neuromancer's Molly Millions did to afford her implants, as well as to the House of Blue Lights from "Burning Chrome". Just like them, there's an ugly side that gets revealed over the course of Evelyn's story.
  • 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.
  • The engram of Alt Cunningham has some parallels to the construct of Dixie Flatline in Neuromancer, another master hacker preserved after death as a digital personality.
  • See below for shoutouts to Johnny Mnemonic, which was based on a short story set in the Sprawl universe.

    To Johnny Mnemonic 
  • The plot of Johnny Mnemonic involves Keanu Reeves playing a character who uploads computer data into his own head that will kill him if he keeps it there. In Cyberpunk 2077 the player character uploads Keanu Reeves into their own head, and it will kill them if they keep him there.
  • 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.
  • The look, placement on the body and functionality of the monowire cyberwear arm upgrade is nearly identical to the monomolecular wire used by Yakuza hitman Shinji.
  • The card art for the "Hanged Man" tarot card (connected to Keanu's character Silverhand and found above his grave) depicts a man wearing the same suit and pencil-thin black tie worn by Keanu in Johnny Mnemonic.

    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. And this is all one of Johnny Silverhand's relived memories.
  • 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.
  • The first moments of the hidden ending quest, (Don't Fear) The Reaper resemble the lobby shootout scene.
  • At the corner of Palms View Way is a corpse on top of a ground level airconditioner. The shard next to it contains a transcript of a conversation between a man named Orpheus and the deceased, John Anderson, recreating word for word the office escape scene from the movie.

    To Judge Dredd 
  • MAX-TAC officers borrow elements from the Judges of Judge Dredd.
  • The achievement for taking care of all the Cyberpsychos is "I Am The Law" complete with a MAX-TAC officer as the achievement image.
  • The Megabuilding arcologies resemble the City Blocks as depicted in Dredd.

    To Ghost in the Shell 
  • The HJSH-18 Masamune assault rifle is named after Masamune Shirow, the manga's author.
  • The parade in Japantown is inspired by the one seen in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.
  • The outlook of Night City from the bay has more than a passing resemblance to the skyline of New Port City in the live action Ghost in the Shell (2017) film. The spot with the chairs on the terrace where V decides how to face the final mission is almost identical to the spot (same chair and very similar terrace with a very similar view) on which Batou is seated near the end of the movie when called by Aramaki via mind link.
  • One of the tattoos Judy has on her left shoulder is a cartoon ghost floating out of a scallop shell. It is also seen as her holophone icon.
  • To Ghost in the Shell (1995): The cyberpsycho fight against Lt. Mower references one of the early scenes in the film, where Kusanagi fights a cyborg among skyscrapers in shallow water, just like the place you encounter Lt. Mower. Mower uses stealth, just like Kusanagi, has a similar haircut and even her surname is a pun on "Kusanagi"TL.
  • To Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: A transcript of a conversation found on a corpse in Downtown from where a piece of legendary armor is looted references Marco Amoretti, a war veteran turned serial killer who tortures people to death and disseminates brain dances of his victims. His corpse is even made out to look like Batou, down to his huge frame, white hair and metal button eyes.

    To AKIRA 
  • The staircase leading to the Afterlife bar is strongly inspired by the entrance to the Harukiya bar from AKIRA, as confirmed by a level artist on social media.
  • One of the final stretches of Phantom Liberty has you pursue Songbird into a Militech facility; there's a diagonal cargo elevator that naturally resembles that of AKIRA taking you down into the area where the Cynosure core resides. The core itself also somewhat resembles the containment for Akira's remains.
  • Prior to the 2.0 rework, the icon for the "Revamp" perk was based directly on the AKIRA Original Soundtrack album art.

    To Strange Days 
  • Braindances are a lot like the SQUID devices in the movie. (The invention of this type of technology was depicted in Brainstorm.)
  • In the side mission "Dirty Biz", which involves snuff braindances like the one that was a plot device in the film, you can find a message from a man called Lenny Nero, like the Strange Days protagonist.

    To The Witcher 
As CD Projekt RED's other big game, there are many shout-outs to The Witcher, :
  • 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.
  • The shop clerk you meet in the side mission called "Bullets" is named Dennis Cranmer, like one of the dwarves from Sapkowski's books, who appeared in the "Last Wish" short story. He doesn't appear in the mainline game, but he does appear in Gwent: The Witcher Card Game.
  • If you look closely at Dexter DeShawn's boots, you can see that the gold plates on their tongues have the symbol of the wolf school on them.
  • Some of the graffiti around the town says "Cirilla" and "Cintra Rulez".
  • Near one of the bridges in the western part of Night City, you can find some floating barrels with chests attached to them. It's a reference to "Skellige Contraband" discoverable spots from the third game.
  • In the Vista Del Rey neighborhood you can find a locale called "Dandelion's cocktails", referencing Geralt's bard friend.
  • One of the cyberpsychos you're tasked with taking down, Dao Hyunh, has a shard that references Itlina's Prophecy.
  • An advert for Fuyutsuki Electronics features a man with a medallion that's stylized to look like Geralt's wolf school medallion.
  • On one of the balconies of the Batty hotel in Pacifica, you can find a datashard with conversation between a man named Clint and a drunk named Odrin. It's a reference to a sidequest in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, where Geralt helped a group of drunk Kaedweni soldiers with finding their lost companion, Odrin.
  • Some of the elite Arasaka guards have armor which closely resembles that of Nilfgaardian officers, including antennas on their helmets which resemble wings.
  • The PC version of the game contains two pieces of DLC equipment note  that directly reference the series: the Wolf School Jacket and the Wolf School T-shirt.

    To James Bond 
The entire Phantom Liberty DLC is a big one to James Bond.

    To Robo Cop 
  • Adam Smasher's design is basically "RoboCop, but Obviously Evil". His role in-story (an unhinged cyborg employed by a megacorp, and fought during the story's climax) is closer to Cain from RoboCop 2, however.
  • Your starting vehicle, an '80s-style American sedan called the Archer Hella, looks a lot like the 6000 SUX.
  • The Delamain logo looks like OCP's, but with a D instead of the O.
  • Idle computers have a screen showing several menus, one of them having the title "OCP — Omni Products".

    Mission Titles 
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.
  • "All Along the Watchtower" is a song by Bob Dylan famously Covered Up by Jimi Hendrix.
  • "Beat on the Brat", is by The Ramones of the same name.
  • "Life During Wartime", "Psycho Killer", and "Burning Down The House" are all by Talking Heads.
  • "Riders on the Storm" and "Queen of the Highway" are songs by The Doors.
  • "With a Little Help From My Friends", "Fool On The Hill", and "Tomorrow Never Knows"note  are all by The Beatles.
  • "Imagine" is by John Lennon.
  • "I Walk the Line" is by Johnny Cash.
  • "Killing In The Name" takes its name from a song by Rage Against the Machine.
  • "I Fought The Law" was originally written and recorded by Sonny Curtis and the Crickets, and later widely covered, most famously by The Clash.
  • "Gimme Danger", "Search and Destroy", "Down On The Street", and "Play It Safe" are references to Iggy Pop and the Stooges.
  • "Love Rollercoaster" is a reference to a song by Ohio Players (also covered by Red Hot Chili Peppers).
  • "Totalimmortal" is by AFI.
  • "Rebel, Rebel", "Changes", "Heroes", and "Space Oddity" are all by David Bowie.
  • "Disasterpiece" is a shout-out to a Slipknot song of the same name.
  • "The Highwayman" is a taken from a song of the same name written by Jimmy Webb but made famous by country supergroup The Highwaymen.
  • “Pyramid Song” is a song by Radiohead, with the gameplay of the mission itself being reminiscent of the music video for the song.
  • "Bullets" is named after the song featured in the 2013 announcement trailer by Archive.
  • "Boat Drinks" is a song by Jimmy Buffet.
  • "Violence" is named for the song by Grimes, who happens to play Lizzy Wizzy.
  • "Big In Japan" is named after a song by Alphaville.
  • "Shoot To Thrill" and "Dog Eat Dog"note  are named after songs by AC/DC.
  • "Ezekiel Take The Wheel" is an African-American spiritual recorded by, among others, Woody Guthrie and John Lee Hooker.
  • "Where the Bodies Hit the Floor" takes its name from the chorus of the song "Bodies" by Drowning Pool.
  • "War Pigs" and "Hole in the Sky"note  are named after songs by Black Sabbath.
  • "Talkin' 'Bout A Revolution" is a song by Tracy Chapman.
  • "The Hunt" is a song by New Model Army, made famous by Sepultura.
  • "Send In The Clowns" is a song by Judy Collins.
  • "Stairway To Heaven," and "Dazed and Confused," are named for Led Zeppelin songs.
  • "Sweet Dreams" is a song by Eurythmics.
  • "Gun Music" is a song by Talib Kweli.
  • "Following The River" and "Spider and the Fly"note  are songs by The Rolling Stones.
  • "Coin-operated Boy" is a song by The Dresden Dolls.
  • "Dream On" is a song by Aerosmith.
  • "I'll Fly Away" is a Christian hymn written by Allan E. Brumley.
  • "Epistrophy" is a song by Thelonious Monk.
  • "M'ap Tann Pelen" isa song used by the Bizango, a sect of Haitian Voudou worshippers.
  • "Spray Paint" is a song by Eminem.
  • "Don't Lose Your Mind" is a song by Promise Of The Real.
  • "They Won't Go When I Go" is named after songs by George Michael and Stevie Wonder.
  • "Nocturne Op55N1" is named after a composition by Fryderyk Chopin, which is played by Hanako Arasaka when you meet her.
  • "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is named after the Blue Öyster Cult song.
  • "The Space In Between" is a track by Nine Inch Nails side project, How To Destroy Angels.
  • "Lightning Breaks" is a song by Plasmatics.
  • "We Gotta Live Together" and "Burning Desire" are named after songs by Jimi Hendrix.
  • "Where Is My Mind" is a song by The Pixies.
  • "Who Wants to Live Forever" is a Queen song.
  • "You Know My Name" is named after the theme song for Casino Royale, by Chris Cornell, and also doubles as a shout-out to that film, which contains similar events
  • “New Person, Same Old Mistakes”note  is a song by Tame Impala.
  • "Lucretia My Reflection"note  is named for a track by The Sisters of Mercy.
  • "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"note  is a song by Public Enemy.
  • "Firestarter"note  is named for the song by Prodigy.
  • "Things Done Changed"note  is a song by The Notorious B.I.G..

    Other Musical References 
  • In a bit of self-referential humor, the missions "Chippin' In", "Never Fade Away", "The Ballad of Buck Ravers" and "A Like Supreme" are named after songs by Johnny Silverhand's Fake Band Samurai. These missions also involve members of the band in some way. In the same vein, the mission "Off The Leash" from Kerry's questline references an in-universe collab song by Kerry and Us Cracks.
  • During “Off the Leash," Kerry introduces you to a guy he met “walking in Memphis, off Beale.”
  • The Polish dub doesn't bother with this convention for the most part, but one of the missions from Judy is named "Tysiące twarzy, setki miraży"TL, after a line from "Szare Miraże" by a Polish rock band Maanam.

    Vehicles 
  • One of the two player-ownable versions of the Quadra Type 66 muscle car has a distinctive orange paintjob with a flag design on the roof. The other has the same silver/blue-stripe paintjob as the Eleanor Mustang from the original Gone in 60 Seconds (1974). A third skin, not available to the player without mods, is the same highland green color as the titular character's Ford Mustang from Bullitt. The Type 66 body design in general is a broad pastiche to a number of classic American muscle car designs.
  • 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 Excalibur AV 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.
  • Chevillon Thrax and Villefort Alvarado are based on mid-'70s American luxury cars, especially Cadillacs.
  • To sum it up: Kitsch-styled vehicles are clearly inspired by opulent, yet affordable 1970-'80s American cars. Neokitsch-themed vehicles draw inspiration from 2010s ultraluxury hypercars that are anything but affordable. Entropism style encompasses mostly cheap and poorly-made city cars from all eras, and Neomilitarism, true to its name, thrives on armored SUVs.

    Photo Mode 
Several of the poses V can take in Photo mode are references, either by name only, or the pose itself references something.

    Perks 
Several of the Perk names are references, and sometimes the reference is made even more clear by the Perk's effect:

    Other/Unsorted 
  • The side job "Epistrophy" has you hunt down rogue Delamain cabs across the city. Some of the rogue AIs may sound familiar:
  • 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 "monster".
  • One of Judy's tattoos heavily resembles Vic Rattlehead.
  • 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.
  • 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", a lab you break into has on display a BB pod from Death Stranding. Scanning it tells you its purpose is to detect BTs.
  • 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 (replaced with the Like a Feather perk in update 2.0) 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.
  • Half-Life:
  • 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!
  • One of the quests, "Sacrum Profanum/Losing My Religion", has Maelstrom members kidnapping a monk and forcibly cyberneticize him. And a Valentino also suffered the similar procedure in one of the Cyberpsycho Sightings events. These kinds of procedures used by Maelstrom is familiar to those who knew about Cyborg 009, in which Black Ghost does the same to their victims for kicks.
  • The Handgun Skill Tree under the Reflex perk is a shout out to popular westerns.
  • The gay 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 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.
  • Skippy, the smart gun with a talking A.I., sings to the tune of Rihanna's Disturbia. His name and talking bullet avatar are a parody of Microsoft's Clippy.
  • 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.
  • In the Glen neighbourhood in Heywood, you can find a young man who has died and crashed his bike after attempting to jump from a great height. Nearby, you can find a datashard that says that the man's name is Pablo, and that he was offered a chance to recreate a braindance version of a "cult classic" video from Eastern Europe that was created 71 years ago. It's a reference to a Polish viral video titled "Pawel Jumper", which shows a young man jumping from some stairs on his bike and faceplanting onto concrete. If you plug the coordinates from the datashard into Google Earth, you can see the parking lot where the original video was recorded. In the Polish dub, if you wound an enemy they might scream out "Ala, kurwa, rzeczywiscie!" ("Ouch, fuck, you were right!"), which is what Pawel says after his fall.
  • If you scan one of the guitars on display in Kerry's house, you can see that the model is called "Astral Rock" and it was made by a company called "Delif" in the year 2023. It's a reference to a Polish company called Defil that builds guitars, violins, piano mechanisms and mandolins. Their most recognised guitar model is called "Aster Rock".
  • In the Badlands, you can find corpses of a few members of a LARP session, with a model of vault doors with the number 101 on them.
  • A hidden vehicle V can obtain is one of the most expensive, top-of-the-line models and painted totally black. It's tucked away in a cave underground near a datashard written by a clearly rather unstable man who witnessed his parents' deaths and the evil of Night City. In order to take revenge, he has chosen to combat the darkness by becoming it, naming himself "Murkman".
  • Brokeback Mountain: Two men named Jack and Dennis tried to meet up in the Badlands and didn't make it very far. The tone of their correspondence is affectionate.
  • You can go to the north-east corner of Rancho Coronado sub-district of Santo Domingo to find a pile of trash just off the road to the east. Look in the pile and you will find a broken refrigerator with a dead man partly inside it with an Akubra hat and sandals with socks. Further inspection reveals this to be a man named Steven Hurt and he was trying to see if he could "Crack the Myth" that you could survive an explosion in a refrigerator. This is a shoutout both to MythBusters and Adam Savage, who often wears that type of hat when in the field, and in particular the Indiana Jones special where they tackled that particular myth.
  • North of the oil fields, there is a large tank with the Hanged Man tarot graffiti on it. On top of that tank one can find an abandoned hangout place with an old guitar and a graffiti that says "Цой жив" ("Tsoi lives"). Apparently, Victor Tsoi was a famous rockerboy in the Cyberpunk universe too...
  • One side of the same tank features graffiti that says "Здесь были Киса и Ося" ("Kisa and Osya were here"), referencing The Twelve Chairs.
  • During the Fixer, Merc, Soldier, Spy mission V can meet Russian merc quoting (non-verbatim) famous "power is in truth" speech from Brother 2.
  • The Emperor tarot card features a skeletal cybernetic man sitting on a mechanical throne: a pretty obvious reference to the Emperor of Man.
  • Santo Domingo features, in one tucked-away location, a recreation◊ of Grove Street.
  • In the beginning of the Belly of the Beast mission, at the top of the drilling rig in the tunnel, one can find the machine named "Cyberencabulator". This machine, and its description is a reference to long-running "Turboencabulator" Techno Babble joke.
  • One of the radio segments features a bit about a dolphin learning vowels from a braindance, to which the radio host expresses interest in dolphins "taking a crack at world domination!".
  • A tattoo on Viktor's bicep◊ bears a rather uncanny resemblance to a variation of Wojak◊.
  • In the mission "Down The Street", when V and Takemura talk after Oda's departure, you can see a boat passing by in the background with a neon saying "OKAMI" that's transporting a giant statue of a wolf's head. It may be a reference to the 2006 Capcom game Ōkami, where the main protagonist, the goddess Amaterasu, comes down to Earth and takes the form of a wolf.
  • Death Grips gets a reference in the form of a street vendor named Stefan (the real name of Death Grips frontman MC Ride) who offers to sell some kind of exploitative video — alluding to the infectious track "I've Seen Footage".
  • Several firearms designs bears more than passing resemblance to real life ones:
    • Arasaka Shigure and Militech M221 Saratoga submachine guns looks very much like MP5 and UMP45, respectively.
    • DS1 Pulsar submachine gun is based on experimental Soviet TKB-022 assault rifle, complete with bakelite stock.
    • The Darra Polytechnic DR-5 Nova is a futuristic take on the Mateba MTR-8.
  • The NCPD Organized Crime Activity location in Rancho Coronado has a terminal which mentions a group consisting of Faye Spiegel, Spike Valentine, Jet White, Vicious Volaju, and Elektra Ovirova. The group later appears in a hostage situation in Rancho Coronado, however they sadly don't look anything like the characters.
  • In the 2023 sequence, there is a movie poster with several soldiers shooting at zombies from a helicopter, appropriately titled Black Hawk Dawn of the Dead.
  • In the Polish version, the mission called "Human Nature", where you're tasked with recovering the Archer Hella V used before the heist, is titled "Gdzie Moja Bryka?", which is the name that the 2000 comedy movie Dude, Where's My Car? was released under in Poland.
  • In a cave out in the Badlands, due east of the Tango Tors Hotel, you can discover a bunch of dead Wraiths and a journal belonging to a Militech engineer. The journal details the Engineer's time as a captive of the Wraiths, who want him to reverse-engineer some heavy weapons. Aware that the Wraiths will kill him as soon as the job is done, the engineer instead opts to build himself an armored exoskeleton and fight his way to freedom, even going so far as to count out the exact amount of steps he would need to exit the cave. Judging by the carnage and lack of a trashed exoskeleton, it seems the engineer's plan was successful.
  • In the sidequest Space Odyssey, you find a locked laptop with info that leads you to the rest of the sidequest. The laptop also contains an email revealing that the owner was banned from a dating website for sending unsolicited dick pics and doxing other users. The owner's banned username is "GoldenGod215". Other banned accounts linked to this one include "Hugh_Money", "Anteater_Tongue", and "6_star_man". These are all various references to Dennis, one of the main characters from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (with 215 from the first screenname being an area code in Philadelphia).
  • One message you can find from illegal braindance makers has them brainstorming ideas for future products, including one based on a movie featuring kids forced into sex, domination, and playing with shit.
  • One video game review you can find describes a four player vampire co-op game featuring Dracula, Carmilla, Varney, and Herbert, with Viago mentioned for good measure.
  • To Old Boy: A dead end alley in Heywood is strewn with corpses and melee weapons. Next to a hammer is a data shard detailing a conversation between a man who has been imprisoned for fifteen years and his mysterious captor.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: One of the toys that can be found in various sex shops throughout the city is a red and black phallic device, named "Captain Pickhard". It even features the tagline, "Beam Me Up, Scotty!".
  • Transformers (2007): Another toy is named the Conquerer, with the tagline, "To Punish and Enslave"; in the first Transformers live-action movie, one of the Decepticons, Barricade, is disguised as a police car, with the aforementioned phrase in place of where "To Protect and to Serve" would normally be printed on his livery.
  • In front of the weapon vendor on Halsey & MLK, a girl is trying to entice her friend to avail of the services of a clandestine group that facilitates hunts of homeless people.
  • To Die Hard: You can find an ill-fated "John McBane" inside a ventilation shaft along with a couple of corpses behind a tall office building.
  • One of the posters that can be found is for a movie called Crime and Punishment and Zombies, reference to the book and film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
  • An NCPD dispatch in the badlands leads to some Militech soldiers that have recently secured a trailer park. Clear them out, and in the park you can find an archived conversation between John Obmar and Samuel Teasle. These two men are veterans of the Corp wars, and Obmar talks of having piloted AV's, driven tanks, and carried million-eddie equipment, like Rambo's breakdown speech from the movie.
  • One of the clothing items V can find is a black "tactical turtleneck".
  • Before the 2.0 update retconned V's age down to 23, they were 27 years old and can, in most of the endings, "die" a legend at that age - making them a member of the infamous 27 Club. However, V's new age also carries a reference: "I'm 23 now, but will I live to see 24? The way things is going, I don't know."
  • The Peter Pan killer questline is a pretty clear homage to The Cell. Both feature detectives entering the mind of a comatose serial killer to rescue his victim stuck in an automated trap.
  • The sparring bots, most prominently the one in V's megablock that introduces players to the boxing mechanics, look very similar to Atom, the obsolete sparring bot from the movie Real Steel.
  • During a radio segment, Maximum Mike is talking about the idea that all the art in museums is all forgeries and the originals are being stored off-world. For emphasis, he mentions a bunch of artists, one of which is named Pickman.
  • In-game street name signs closely resemble those found not in the US - but in the developers' own Polish capital of Warsaw.
  • The Departed: In Downtown, you can pass by an alcove in a building where a body is lying in a pool of blood, a reference to the scene where Captain Queenan is thrown off a building. Climbing up the nearby scaffolding will bring you to three bodies, all killed in a shootout in a reference to the film's penultimate scene. You can even find an archived conversation on one of the bodies between two NCPD officers named Costigan and Dignam, with references to a crime boss named Costello, and his mole, Sullivan.
  • When V is referred to by their real name by the doll at Clouds, they reply that "only people who know me real well can use my real name."
  • A shard found by a wrecked boat on the Pacifica beach holds instructions for Theo to get a mother and daughter to the Human Project.
  • In the epilogue if you chose to let Johnny Silverhand keep your body, you'll meet a young aspiring rocker who'll ask you if you've heard the new Curse These Metal Hands album.
  • The Crow (1994): Later in the game, Johnny Silverhand drops the line "It can't rain all the time", a reference to Eric Draven's pre-revenant life as a rocker guitarist/singer in a dystopian urban setting.
  • One of the NCPD hustles in Arroyo has you taking out a group of 6th Street gangers who just executed an old-time member of the gang who just got out of prison and isn't happy with how things have changed. A shard you can find at the scene indicates that one of the hitmen for the job was a fellow named Christopher Gualtieri. Bonus points for the old-timer being named Tony.
  • Point Break (1991): During the first Silverhand flashback, Johnny bids farewell to Kerry, wishing for him to do his own thing and hoping to see him in the next life.
  • The words 'Get Rich or Die Trying' are written on the in-game textures for eurodollars.
  • The plot of Phantom Liberty involves V being tasked with rescuing the President of the (N)USA after their plane crashes into a dangerous place in America in order to save their life. Sounds awfully familiar to another film with the same premise...
  • The compendium description for the HJKE-11 Yukimura smart pistol notes that you could "shoot as poorly as the robots in a certain late 20th century space opera" with it and still hit your target with 100% accuracy.
  • At the main questline, Takemura is said to be looking like Hideshi Hino, an in-universe comedian. You can meet the person himself at Dogtown, noted that he'll be looking out for doubles. The in-universe Hideshi Hino may or may not be named after the infamous real-life manga artist and director whose gore/horror based filmography won't look out of place in Cyberpunk universe, especially for the back alley braindance markets.
  • One potential response V can give to Judy in "Pyramid Song" after learning about what happened to Clouds, whether they followed Maiko's plan or not, is "Forget it, Jude. It's Japantown."
  • Who else goes by just the letter V, was involved in a top-secret experiment Gone Horribly Wrong, and ends up waging war against the ones at the top? A certain man in a mask. It helps that there's also a character in V for Vendetta named Valerie, too.
  • This isn't the first video game where the assassination of an Emperor that the player character witnessed helped kickstart the main plot.
  • In the backstory for the Bloodsport gig, a boxer takes money from the Tyger Claws to take a dive in his next fight; Instead, he uses that money to bet on the fight he was supposed to take a dive in, wins, then skips town. This is essentially Butch Coolidge's story arc in Pulp Fiction, and the boxer in the game even has the same last name as Butch.
  • In the Olive Branch gig, V helps out a Russian man, Sergei, who ran afoul of the Tyger Claws via a "misunderstanding" involving a hitman that had a beard, brown shoes, and his little dog. When asked, Sergei states that what actually happened was "much worse" than if Sergei had killed the man. This is a shout out to John Wick, in which the titular hitman had his house broken into and dog killed because he wouldn't sell his car to a Russian man.

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