Shout Out / Eureka SeveN

• Director Tomoki Kyoda answered in a Reddit AMA: "The whole series is ultimately an homage to my rebellious phase, and it exists to show respect to everything that helped me develop into the person I am. When I was a student, things like techno and anime weren't mainstream, so this is my way of giving back to what gave me so much."
• The series contains many references to music—primarily House Music—throughout the series.
  • Every episode title is a reference to a song or an album, primarily from Alternative Rock and electronic artists. Wikipedia's episode guide even lists all of them. Examples include "Blue Monday", "Higher than the Sun", "Ill Communication" and "Morning Glory".
  • Various Humongous Mecha designations in the series are mostly taken from the synthesizers' (mostly Roland and Korg) model numbers. The names LFO and KLF themselves are taken from two influential British techno groups.
    • Gekkostate's Terminus LFOs and the Beams' Spearheads are all named after Roland synthesizers (TB-303, TR-606, TR-808, TR-909, SH-101, SH-201) while the Federation KLFs are all named after Korg synthesizers (MS-10, MS-20, VC-10).
    • The Devilfish is a famous mod for the Roland TB-303 that vastly expands the tonal capabilities of the synthesizer.
    • The names are all based based on synthesizers Tomoki Kyoda owns. He bought the TB-303 from a member of Denki Groove (the Japanese electronic duo who produced the finale insert song "Niji") and got signed by Hardfloor (the German electronic duo who produced the "Acperience" songs the episodes are named after).
  • The series-summing "Pacific State" image is named after this song by 808 State.
  • The abandoned excavation site FAC-51 refers to The Haçienda nightclub in Manchester that was co-owned by the band New Order and is associated with rise of acid house and rave music. "FAC51" was its official designation by Factory Records.
  • Similar to above, Tresor Laboratories is named after the Tresor nightclub in Berlin and even has the club's target logo on the lab hardhats and caps.
    • The club also founded its own record label, Tresor Records. American DJ Jeff Mills released the song "Changes of Life" under the label, which was used as the title for episode 30, when Gekkostate visits Tresor Laboratories for the first time.
  • The Second Summer of Love is an event in the series that could potentially destroy all life. It's named after a time in '88 when European music attitude and composition was fused with the budding American techno and electronic, opening up new music and ideas for the 90's and beyond.
  • Warsaw is also known as "The Joy Division". Warsaw is the name the band Joy Division previously went by.
  • The "Acperience" episodes, which typically involve Renton and Eureka entering the Zone in the first three and the Scub Coral Command Cluster in "Acperience 4", are fittingly named after the series of acid trance tracks by the German duo Hardfloor; Acperience being a portmanteau of "acid experience".^note Hardfloor later produced the song "Acperience 7" for the Hi-Evolution 1 film. Tomoki Kyoda and Dai Sato had asked them for permission to use "Acperience 1" as an insert song in the film, but Hardfloor decided to make a new song instead and even skipped over "Acperience 6" so the title matched the series' "seven" motif.
  • The Beastie Boys were used as the model for Gekkostate, and the idea of ray=out magazine was also based on the Beastie Boys' own Grand Royal Magazine.
    • Dr. Bear and Norb's interview could be a reference to Adam Yauch's interview with the Dalai Lama in 1995.
  • The first ED "Himitsu Kichi" references the music video for a-ha's "Crying in the Rain".
• There are many shout outs to extreme sports:
  • Holland's hometown is named North Shore, which is a coastal area of Oahu that is famous for big wave surfing.
  • Episode 33 foregoes the opening credits and starts with Stoner narrating about the similarity between lifting and surfing on Earth 10,000 years ago over an Alternate Universe sequence that shows some of the characters as surfers.
  • Dai Sato learned from interviewing surfers that they want to protect nature because it's fun to surf. Holland delivers this Green Aesop, also in episode 33, when he swears that he loves lifting and the planet that allows him to lift, and he can't forgive those who want to destroy it.
  • The shape of Holland's and Renton's liftboards are based on 1980s skateboards.
  • The tricks, such as the Cut Back Drop Turn, were inspired by snowboarding moves after Kyoda, Sato, and Shoji Kawamori (main mechancial designer) saw an extreme sporting event in Tokyo.
  • The END has a liftboard that can split into two skis.
• Several characters are named after real people, fictional characters, or even objects:
  • Renton is named after Mark Renton from Trainspotting. Similarly, Renton's sister Diane is named after the character Dianne Coulston of the same film.
  • The last name Thurston comes from Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.
  • Renton's father Adroc Thurston was named for Adam "Ad-Rock" Horowitz of the Beastie Boys, and in one episode he's said to have worked with Drs. Yauch and Diamond (Adam "MCA" Yauch and Michael "Mike D" Diamond).
  • Axel Thurston is named after Axl of Guns N' Roses.
    • His wife was named Rose.
  • Eureka is named after the ESA satellite EURECA which was launched with space shuttle Atlantis in 1992. In-Universe, she is similarly named after the satellite EUREKA which the Scub Coral collided with 10,000 years ago, causing it to crash down into the Pacific Ocean where the Scub Coral began to fuse with the marine life.
  • Anemone is named after a character from the Ryu Murakami novel Coin Locker Babies who had a pet crocodile named Gulliver.
  • Talho Yuki is named after the Captain Harlock character Kei Yuki. The kanji for Kei is 蛍, meaning "firefly" which is read as "hotaru" (ホタル) and is an anagram of Talho (タルホ).
  • Holland is named after Bryan "Dexter" Holland, frontman of the pop-punk band The Offspring.
  • The last name Novak comes from Caroline Novac, a member of the fictional vocal group Doopees who sang in the album Doopee Time produced by musician Yann Tomita.
  • Maurice, Maeter, and Linck are named after Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist.
  • Greg Egan, aka Doctor Bear, is a reference to two science fiction authors, Greg Egan and Greg Bear.
  • Two characters, Woz and Jobs, are named after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the creators of Apple. Jobs even looks the part, having the sufficiently similar appearance to real Steve Jobs. Woz... well, if you squint really hard and discount his fashion sense.
  • Gidget and Moondoggie are named after characters from the Gidget series who have the same relationship. Moondoggie's real name, as stated on his pilot license, is James Darren Emerson—a composite reference to the actor playing the original Moondoggie role, James Darren, and Darren Emerson, a noted electronic musician.
  • The Gekko's gunner and owner, Ken-Goh, is a reference to Kengo Watanabe also known as KEN=GO→, an old buddy of the series chief scriptwriter, Dai Sato, with whom he also manages an indie electronic label Frogman Records. Watanabe also established the limited company Frognation which is responsible for the English localization of FromSoftware's Dark Souls games.
  • Ray and Charles are references to both Ray Charles, the Jazz musician, and keeping with the series' less prevalent architecture motifs, Ray and Charles Eames were a married pair of famous modernist architects.
  • Hap is named after Hap Jacobs, a surfboard shaper who helped create the 1960s surf culture in California.
  • Stoner's design is based on the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara who has become a pop-culture Icon of Rebellion. He may be named after one of or both 1960s California surf scene icons Ron Stoner, a photographer, or Rick Stoner, a shaper.
  • The Gekko's doctor Mischa is named after Misha, the Russian bear mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, which is also alluded to by Mischa's former marriage to Dr. Bear who calls her "my little cub".
  • Captain Jurgens is named after German-Austrian actor Curd Jürgens who often portrayed German military officers in war films.
  • Tiptory is named after sci-fi author James Tiptree Jr. (the pen name of Alice Sheldon).
  • Norb is named after the character Lama Norbu from the 1993 film Little Buddha, which was composed by Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto whose music was a huge influence on Kyoda... and also starred Keanu Reeves.
  • William B. Baxter's last name was taken from hard sci-fi author Stephen Baxter.
  • Brittany, the excavator at FAC-51, is named after Britney Spears as he was originally planned to be female.
  • Uno, the ref shop owner, is named after .hack video game series producer Shin Unozawa.^note Eureka Seven was originally conceived as a multimedia franchise named "Project EUREKA", similar to Project .hack. While the anime TV series took off, the video games (Eureka Seven Vol. 1: The New Wave and Eureka Seven Vol. 2: The New Vision) are mostly forgotten.
  • The main character in the video games, Sumner Sturgeon, is named after New Order member Bernard Sumner and possibly the author Theodore Sturgeon.
• Episode 20 features a prison called "Dabu Ghraib".
• Shout outs to classic giant robot shows out the wazoo.
  • Any Macross references likely had the Approval of God with its creator Shoji Kawamori as Eureka Seven's main mech designer.
  • The three annoying kids are designed after the three annoying kids from the original Mobile Suit Gundam.
  • Weird pink explosions are from Mobile Suit Gundam.
  • The Nirvash typeZERO is nicknamed the "White Devil."
  • Ray and Charles' mechs are painted in Max and Miriya's colors from Super Dimension Fortress Macross and have strong similarities to Gundam's Ramba and Hamon. There are similar interactions and showdowns between the Gekkostate and the Beams and those sets of characters.
  • Anemone is a violently insane genetically altered Tyke Bomb in a red and black version of the hero's mech, similar to the situation with Zeta Gundam's aptly named Psyco Gundams.
  • Several elements of the plot and characters resemble elements from Gundam X, though this may be coincidence.
  • In The Movie, there's a spaceship called the Megaroad.
  • An event in the plot happens at co-ordinates 0080 0083.
  • The Nirvash's Spec3 form is basically the Eureka Seven form of the GunBuster, pilot seat and all.
  • Renton, Eureka and Anemone could be easily seen as Expies of Neon Genesis Evangelion's Shinji, Rei and Asuka, both visually and in terms of personality. Beyond this, the second episode of the series very clearly draws parallels with the second episode of Evangelion, as examined by a blogger here.
    • The key comparison is how the lead characters, notably Renton Thurston and Ikari Shinji (boys, both 14 years old) in the first episodes both end in a cliffhanger where the leads are in mortal danger: Evangelion’s end while Shinji is in the thick of the battle while Eureka Seven's end with Renton joining the fray.
    • Talho asking Renton "You were thinking about doing lewd things to her while she was asleep, right?" about a comatose Eureka is a reference to the infamous hospital scene in End of Evangelion.
  • Eureka's design was based on the character Katue Pearson from the 1983 mecha series Ginga Hyouryuu Vifam.
• Renton's LFO toy is similar to Popy's and Bandai's late 1970s and early 1980s Chogokin ("Super Alloy") diecast toys, including blocky Off-Model design and Rocket Punch spring-loaded fists.
• For The Movie, Peter Pan is mentioned at least 3 times and Renton and Eureka are even called "Peter and Wendy".
• Whenever members of the Gekko use codenames, they use characters and such from Alice in Wonderland.
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water seems to have found an odd home in the depths of a mine.
  • A character named Lloydwright appears a few episodes later as a contact of Charles and Ray.
• The Soccer game in episode 39 is a big shout-out to Captain Tsubasa.
  • Moondoggie calls his shots, both of which have different names but are exactly the same.
  • Most jumps last at least three minutes. Three minutes that the jumper will spend in some geosynchronous orbit five meters above the field.
  • Eureka and Renton's using Holland to jump (I'll let you work the physics of that), meet in mid-air and perform a Twin Shoot.
  • Complete and utter disregard of physics.
  • This became Hilarious in Hindsight when Renton's Japanese VA Yuko Sanpei was cast as Ozora Tsubasa for the 2018 anime series.
• Dewey and Holland both have copies of The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer as the book's studies play a huge part in the Novak family background.
• In episode 30, Talho can be seen reading the novelization of Maurice Maeterlinck's play L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird).
• All of the ships are named after discontinued Japanese railway services:
  • The Gekko (月光 meaning "moonlight") is named after an overnight express sleeper train from Shin-Osaka to Hakata.
  • The color motif and name of the Beams' Swan airship was based on the Hakucho (白鳥), a purple and white JR East limited express train between Shin-Aomori and Hakodate. Its code name, SL-1200 MKI, comes from the Technics SL-1200 turntables.
  • The Izumo (出雲) is named after a limited express overnight sleeping car from Tokyo to Izumoshi and Hamada. The upgraded Super Izumo is a reference to the Izumo train's replacement, the Sunrise Izumo.
  • The Ginga (銀河 meaning "galaxy") is named after an overnight express sleeper train between Tokyo and Osaka.
• Dr. Bear has a replica of the golden records that were launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, containing containing photos and sounds as a message to any extraterrestrial life forms, or as a time capsule for future humans, that find them.
• The Pacific State cover of ray=out features the headline "Coralian wa Denki Hitsuji no Yume wo Miru ka?"^note コーラリアンは電気羊の夢を見るか？ which in English means "Do Coralians Dream of Electric Sheep?"
• The Limit of Questions and the Coralian's Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence to save the planet is based on the novel Blood Music by Greg Egan.