Shout Out / Disco Elysium

General

• There are multiple references to 'dirtbag left' injokes and media:
  • The protagonist of an in-universe crime fiction book series is called Dick Mullen, a reference to Nick Mullen, one of the hosts of the Cum Town podcast and frequent guest on Chapo Trap House, two podcasts referred to as being "dirtbag left".
  • The Scab Leader's resemblence to the eccentric arch-Hillaryman Peter Daou is also a reference to this subculture, which made him internet famous for his inflammatory rhetoric about Hillary Clinton in the runup to the 2016 election.
• The game references itself with people trying to make a tabletop campaign into a radio game; apparently, the furnace with drawings exists in real life, because DE's developers didn't have a whiteboard.

Anime

• Possibly unintentional, but your most effective, though perhaps most sadistic, tool is the Spirit Bomb, formed from a glass bottle of nearly pure, medical strength alcohol and an improvised wick. The spirit bomb probably got its name for being a grenade.
• According to one of the developers, Kim Kitsuragi's surname is derived from Misato Katsuragi.

Comics

• After using the phrase "I am the Law!" one too many times, you get a thought concerning how saying that phrase makes your jaw shift and the words come out in a strange way that sounds really awkward. Completing the thought reveals you have partial facial paralysis from childhood polio. In a nod to Dredd's Improbable Aiming Skills, the thought increases the cap for Hand-Eye Coordination to six.

Film

• One of the skills is called Inland Empire, which has been described by the developers as "the Lynchian skill."
  • "Yellow Man" and the use of insects as a motif are subtler nods to Blue Velvet; you can also find a sheet of literal blue velvet in the Doomed Commercial Area.
• Your hotel bathroom at the beginning of the game: "Words fail to describe how rank it smells in here. They should've sent a poet."
• The wallpaper on the north wall in your hotel room and Klaasje's duplex is the carpet from The Shining.
• Talking to Plaisance after the Tribunal has her glumly note that the sixth element (in her weird supernatural worldview) is crime.
• After Idiot Doom Spiral tells you the story of the Headless FALN Rider, Esprit de Corps says: "Oh, headless brother, where are thou?"
• The Drunks' nickname for Harry, "Tequila Sunset", is a real cocktail, a variation of the Tequila Sunrise, the latter of which dates back to Prohibition: tequila and orange juice layered over bright red grenadine, producing the appearance of a pinkish sunrise — a Tequila Sunset puts the red layer on top, and may substitute brandy or Chambord for the grenadine. The drink experienced a resurgence in popularity in the '70s and '80s, peaking around the release of Tequila Sunrise, a crime thriller about, fittingly for this game, love, friendship, and the cocaine business.
• In the ultraliberal vision quest from the Final Cut, if you fail the Suggestion check with Cindy the Skull, she demands you to "squeal like a piggy".
• In the files, the check that determines whether or not Kim gets shot during the Tribunal is titled SAVIGPRIVATEKITSURAGI.

Literature

• Émile Zola's Germinal served as the inspiration for the game's strike subplot.
• Titus Hardie and his posse, who act as muscle/law for the Union, are known as the Hardie Boys.
• If you get lost in a labyrinthine conversation with Egg Head, the game will refer to it as a "garden of forking paths," the title of a story by Jorge Luis Borges about a spy who stages a murder scene to send a coded message.
• Cuno reminds Kim of a book about a rabid dog.
• Cuno mentions that he was in Night City at one point. An encyclopedia check can additionally say it sounds like "the name of a city in some pulp science fiction novel."
• Investigating the sign that blocks the water lock will result in an Incredibly Lame Pun on one of the factions in The Butter Battle Book: "Butter sign down!"
• Half-Light quotes Heraclitus.
• An in-universe book, Sixteen Days in Coldest April, is a parody of classical Russian literature — but its title is a play on (Soviet) war/spy novel and miniseries Seventeen Moments of Spring.
• The in-universe Dick Mullen series of hard-boiled crime novels includes a character named Charlie Spillane. This is probably a reference to Mickey Spillane, the author of the Mike Hammer books, whose protagonist is a similarly irresponsible hard-boiled detective.
• Harry's first name is a reference to Hunter S. Thompson.
• In the final confrontation, when asking "Who am I?" to Vicquemere, he will replay "You're a gym teacher, Harry" in a flat tone.

Live-Action TV

• The Wire:
  • When when you figure out the exact spot the bullet that killed the mercenary was fired from, by examining its trajectory, you can underscore the occasion with an emphatic exclamation of "Motherfucker."
  • Season 2 of The Wire possibly provided the inspiration for the dockworkers' union strike and drug trade.
  • During your conversation on the docks with the remaining members of the special task force you led to Martinaise, Jean Vicquemare informs you that the unit you belong to is called the Major Crimes Unit.
• The achievement for completing the game on Hardcore Mode is called simply "True Detective". Fittingly enough, the Detective also has a large number of similarities with Rust, with both of them being alcoholic, self-destructive drug users with a number of matching personality quirks and character traits (nihilism, being divorced, having in-universe nickname(s), etc) that tend to go on wild tangents at a drop of a hat and hallucinate things at random, but they're both also exceptionally good at their jobs, can deduct a great number of details at a glance, will stop at nothing to solve their cases and are experts at manipulating people to get them to do what they want. They both also have a ledger that they carry everywhere with them and are first introduced sporting unkempt hair and a handlebar moustache that they (optionally) shave off later, and they both have mysterious pasts that are slowly revealed bit by bit over time. Finally, both of them have a strong connection with a woman called Dora.
• In The Final Cut, Morell the Cryptozoologist speaks with an Australian accent in a voice that resembles that of Steve Irwin.

Music

• Disco Elysium, as opposed to "Disco Inferno". "Disco Infernum" may also be invoked by the player. The game's cover of Sea Power's "Want To Be Free", "Burn, Baby, Burn", includes a whispered "Disco Inferno" at several points.
• Egg Head's look, accent, and many of his Catchphrases are an homage to the German Electronic Music band Scooter and their frontman H.P. Baxxter, including "HARD CORE!" "[insert city name], the place to be!" "Latierski materialski," and "The question is, what is the question?" Spiky-haired Andre refers to "the sound above my hair." Union lookout Call Me Mañana is named after another of their songs.
• When sending the sound from The Swallow through the ravers' sound system, you can yell "I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY!" at Egg Head, who responds "I WANNA FEEL THE HEAT WITH SOMEBODY!", the first two lyrics of the chorus to Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody".
• A number of references to German experimental/industrial music group Einstürzende Neubauten.
  • The "Col Do Ma Ma Daqua" thought/cryptid, said to translate as a "a whisper light and low" is taken from the song "Ein leichtes leises Saeuseln" (ie. "a whisper light and low" in German).
  • The description for the "Cleaning Out the Rooms" thought (itself another song from Sea Power) is translated from the lyrics for "Gruendstuck".
    Someone's been walking around in your dreams lately, looking for something. Tidying up, rearranging. Storing away all the unrealized dreams, putting old pains in boxes. The worst nightmares have settled down for a while. A spot of light on the bedroom door after the dark.
  • The band's logo, a petroglyph of a stick figure said to be taken from Stonehenge but variously attributed to Toltec, Olmec, or ancient Chinese inscriptions, is one of the various things you can paint on the wall (with a Conceptualization check) between the front and back of Capeside Apartments.
• Sea Power, who wrote the game's soundtrack, exist in-universe as the band The Etenniers. Whirling-In-Rags is named after a lyric from "Hail Holy Queen", and the thought "Cleaning Out the Rooms" is another of their songs.
  • When you first encounter Tommy Le Homme in The Jam, the song he briefly sings before talking to you shares its lyrics with "Want to be Free", from Sea Power's album "Let the Dancers Inherit the Party".
  • "Time to go to work in the shit factory" is the opening line of their song "Shit Factory" from the bonus EP for Valhalla Dancehall (which is echoed in the musical genre / afterlife of the game title).
  • The karaoke song is a version of Smallest Church In Sussex, a b-side from their debut album.
  • The Cleaning Out The Rooms thought solution has some of the song lyrics "if everybody knew - you never did. She'll be coming soon", and the stat bonuses are taken from the last verse:
    • +1 Suggestion: Wake up
    • +1 Inland Empire: In a new life
    • +1 Rhetoric: By the seaside
• "Revachol" is a misspelling of the nom de guerre of French anarchist Ravachol, lifted from the lyrics of "Welcome to America" by Estonian punk band Vennaskond: "Welcome to Saint Petersburg, Emile Henry and Ravachol!"
• The game's dialogue contains several references to the lyrics of Welsh alt rock band Manic Street Preachers, some more oblique, others directly quoting song lyrics. A number of story elements seem to have been inspired by the band's body of work:
  • The in-universe communard anthem "La Revacholiere" is the lyrics of "If you Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" (whose music video samples the Real Life socialist/communist anthem "L'Internationale" for its opening and ending).
  • Klaasje's nickname, Miss Oranje Disco Dancer is a reference to "Miss Europa Disco Dancer", and her relationship with and alleged rape by the Hanged Man seems to reference "Tsunami": "...disco dancing with the rapists...".
  • "You Stole The Sun From My Heart" contains the lines "But there's no, no real truce with my fury" (the game's Working Title being "No Truce With the Furies") and "I have, I've got to stop smiling" (perhaps the inspiration for the Expression).
• A number of poetic/cryptic phrases in the game (The Far Out Son of Lung, Her Face Forms in the Summertime, Everyone in the World is Doing Something Without Me) are songs by 90s psychedelic electronic group The Future Sound of London.
• During a Shivers segment, where you have a vision of Jamrock, you can ask "Where the hood, where the hood, where the hood at?" La Revacholiere herself will reply with: "HAVE A BROTHER IN THE CUT. WHERE THE WOOD AT?"
• In the dancing segment, when attempting to convince Kim to join you, one of the dialogue options that appears reads "Hardcore will never die - but you will!" This is most likely a reference to Post-Rock band Mogwai's 2011 album of the same name.
• The massive traffic jam outside the Whirling-in-Rags nicknamed "The Jam" might be a reference to the band of the same name.
• If you succeed in shooting Kortenaer, and you have a *very* high Conceptualization, it'll quote the opening lines of The Troggs' Love Is All Around.
• There is a mention of a tabloid called "Trompe Le Monde", which could be a reference to the album of the same name by Pixies.
• If you fail a Logic check while trying to prove that Ruby shot the hanged man, Logic proceeds to both quote and title drop the novel song "Witch Doctor" by Ross Bagdasarian (though the cover version by the Danish Eurodance band Cartoons is probably better known to modern audiences).
  Logic: Sorry. You're not coming up with anything. Again, the pieces are there: she could have done it, somehow, something else, wala-wala-bing-bang — it's just not coming together.
  You: Walla-walla-bing-bang?
  Logic: I don't know what it means, but it felt like the most appropriate thing to say. That's what the *Witch Doctor* would say, at least.
• If you crash into Lena's wheelchair and say it's worth it, the Ancient Reptilian Brain says "Admit it, you just missed the quarter-light. The darkness on the edge of town". This is likely a reference to Bruce Springsteen's fourth album, particularly the title track.

Paintings

• The surrealistic images that illustrates all the thoughts are very similar in style to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, specially the ones depicting hell.

Theatre

• If you fail the Logic check to convince Titus that Klaasje has been manipulating him this whole time, one of the possible dialogue options is "'Tis Pity She's a Whore. (wink)"
• Avid theatre fan Drama at its luvviest urges you to say "Five hundred Lears and I can't remember the first line!", a line spoken by Albert Finney (almost — he says 227) as aging Shakespearean actor "Sir" in 1983's The Dresser — a quote sampled at the end of Manic Street Preachers' "P.C.P." on the album The Holy Bible.

Video Games

• Various allusions in Homage to Planescape: Torment, which is cited by the game's creative team as their biggest inspiration. For instance, when rereading your case notes for the so-called "Unsolvable Case", you go on the record as saying nothing can change the nature of a man — at least when it comes to drunken old repeat offenders who enjoy public nudity and vandalism.
• In Evrart's office, you can spot an emptied-out cup of coffee with grounds on the bottom. Inland Empire will chime and tell you that it believes it sees an "F.K." in them. This is a reference to Deadly Premonition where the main character York sees the letters F and K upon pouring cream into his coffee.
• The "Motorway South" ^note an unreleased Sea Power song from the 2012 demo EPs thought, and the conversation with the paledriver which triggers it, are allusions to the dreamlike, eponymous Route Zero in Kentucky Route Zero. A pre-release devblog post featured the latter as one of their favourite indie games, and it was later tweeted as part of a list of the game's notable influences.
• The way Harry gets assaulted by a huge flock of seagulls as a result of repeatedly harrassing one of them as described on the main page is a reference to a similar thing that happens in most The Legend of Zelda games when Link keeps hitting Cuccos with his sword.
• Helen Hindpere, one of the writers of the game, has said that The Pale was inspired by the Fog World from the Silent Hill franchise.

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