Shout Out: Fan Fiction

Fan Fics with their own Subpages:

• Ace Combat: Equestria Chronicles
• A Different Kind Of Truth
• Aeon Natum Engel
  • Aeon Entelechy Evangelion
• A Hollow In Equestria
• Ashes of the Past
• Beautiful Destroyer Sailor Moon
• Boy Scouts ½
• The Calvinverse
  • Calvin and Hobbes: The Series
• Children of Time
• The Chosen Four
• CyberDine Dreams
• Dangerverse
  • Be Careful
• Despair's Last Resort
• The Dys FU Nctional Pirates
• Evangelion 303
• Fairy Tail Redux: Salamander's Time Traveling Escapades
• Fate: Reach Out
• Fellowship
• For Good
• Forward
• Garfield in: "Along Came a Splut"
• Gensokyo 20XX
• Halkegenia Online
• Harmony's Warriors
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
• Hoofstuck
• Hunting The Unicorn
• Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox
• Kyon Big Damn Hero
• Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami
• The Lion King Adventures
• Mass Effect Human Revolution
• Mega Man Reawakened
• Mobile Fighter Evangelion
• Nature Studies
• Nickelodeon Fanon
• Nobody Dies
• Origin Story
• Past Sins MST
• Pokémon: Rise of the Rockets
• Pony POV Series
• PostMU: Life's a Scream!
• RWBY Reckoning
• Shinji And Warhammer 40 K
• Sonic Generations: Friendship Is Timeless
• Sonic World Adventure Rush
• Soul Chess
• Toy Hammer
• Turnabout Storm
• Undocumented Features
• Weiss Reacts
• The Wizard in the Shadows

Other Fan Fics

• Francis Equitas: Ace Casanova (And Attorney): An entire case was done as a shout out to Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei.
• Kristoph Gavin: Ace Attorney: Several of the individual comic's titles, such as Hammer Time!, The J Stands For "Jay" and Still Alive.
• Turnabout Substitution: Quite a few, including to Dragon Ball Z, Zero Wing and Super Mario Bros.

• In The Butterfly Effect prequel fanfic The Butterfly Effect 0, the head of the Sunnyvale Institution is Dr. Emmett Von Braun

• In A Dark Knight Over Sin City, when Dwight first sees Batman, he says, "It's the goddamn Batman."
• Calvin At Camp:
  • The Mouse Trap sequence in "Bringing Down the Mouse" is an homage to MouseHunt.
  • In "Champion Charlie Brown," Lucy quotes a line from Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown.
• Chaotic Harmony:
  • Knuckles mentions getting lost on Route 99 instead of going down Route 280.
  • Both of Celestia's guards warn Twilight if she's caught hiding the visitors, she'll be sent... to the moooooonnnnnn.
  • Combined with a stealthy Take That: Rarity mentions how Rubies and Sapphires are her favorites. To her, they're even better than gold and silver.
• In chapter 2 of Ed, Edd, 'n Pony, as Eddy is showing Edd his horn, he calls him Charlie.
  • And don't even get me started about Ed reading Cupcakes...
• Chapter 1 of Eddward Wright: Ace Attorney has Eddy playing a round of Team Fortress 2 on his computer. Obviously, he's playing as the Scout.
  • Chapter 2 contains a reference to The Annoying Orange Courtroom Episode. Word of God states he's attempting to make this a Running Gag.
  • Since the story takes place after Port-Ed 2, many references to the Portal series exist, such as the Eds having ASHPDs in their possession. This does, however, spoil the ending of the story they come from (it's not finished yet, by the way). Word of God states that Edd does have a Companion Cube and it will show up soon.
    • In addition, Eddy's portal gun has a button that disables both portals, like in Portal: The Flash Version.
  • The following sequence in chapter 4 is (mostly) taken from Turnabout Storm (original follows for reference):
    Maya: The trial's tomorrow... at 10:00.
    Eddy: What?! Ya mean "tomorrow" tomorrow?
    Maya: Yes. "Tomorrow" tomorrow.
    
    Phoenix: When is the trial, anyway?
    Twilight: Oh... Tomorrow morning...
    Phoenix: TOMORROW MORNING!? As in "tomorrow" tomorrow?
    Twilight: Yup. "Tomorrow" tomorrow.
  • In chapter 7 and chapter 8, when Eddy yells "Hold the phone!", this vector image from Sheep in the Big City is added, as a reference to a Running Gag on that show. The second time this happens, the author gets called on by Eddy.
  • A mess-up of John's part in chapter 9 has him initially register the Floor Plans in the Court Record as "EDD!PLAN BAG FUCK".
• Fallout: Equestria - Pink Eyes: Lonesome Pony makes passing references to The Stable Dweller and Security.
• Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons: In the later chapters makes an inference right back at Pink Eyes via an Enclave Saturday Morning Cartoon commercial.
  • and also has Pinkie Pie speak of a Timey-Wimey Ball.
  • and there is Security's "We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?".
    • as well as her ripping open a tank with her 'hands'
• Friendship Contract:
  • Naruto's cloud jutsu that allows him to create a small cloud upon which he can fly, which he trades to Sarutobi's ape summoning for a blank summoning scroll.
  • Naruto covered Sasuke in glitter and stole his shirt, making him look like a vampire.
  • And after Sasuke's Cursed Seal gets a Luna-made seal themed after the phases of the moon, Naruto (jokingly?) tells him that unlocking the full power of the seal requires Sasuke to shout out "Moon Princess Power!"
  • "For Science!"
  • The CMCs suggested Naruto catch a Cerberus and name it Fluffy, as well as keeping it in one of the corridors of the Ninja Academy.
  • Sweetie Belle manages to make a song which was so amazingly awesome that the only thing left to remember it is a rough tribute to its glory.
  • na na na na na na na na CATMAN!
  • There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
  • "Why is the cider/rum gone?" / "If I wasn't this would probably never work."
  • Ninjas vs Pirates, the age-old question.
  • A Twilight Princess is introduced into the Princess Gale films, acted out by Twilight Sparkle.
  • Sasuke bemoans his horrid-looking hand-wings, wishing he’d grown some awesome black-feathered wings, or maybe just one even if it wouldn't be capable of doing anything useful.
  • Hydro Cannon! It’s not very effective…
  • After barely avoiding getting caught by Deidara's suicide explosion, a disoriented Sasuke questions whether or not the resulting mushroom cloud is friendly.
  • Konohamaru is being trained by three young monkeys of the Monkey tribe: Wei, Wu, and Shu
• Friends of a Solar Empire: Several, mostly to Battlestar Galactica, such as Rainbow Dash's callsign (Starbuck), the Everfree Forest Cloudbase, which superficially resembles a squared off Cylon Basestar, and the use of the word "frak".
  • Equestria's Argonev starbase is called the Kasztanka.
• The God Empress Of Ponykind:
  • When the Emperor is taken by the Warp, he is described as A leaf seized by a summer wind.
  • Sequences in the Warp are based off of the Dreaming from It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door.
  • To relieve Luna of her boredom in Chapter 6, Celestia tells her a story about a colt, his friend, and a nice mare from the Inquisition fighting against Genestealers.
  • The current commander of the royal guards is named Steel Rain. He's... a bit too enthusiastic about Deep Striking Pegasi.
  • Commander Icewind's reaction to being surrounded? "Oh good; for a moment I thought we were in trouble."
  • From the sequel The Warmistress of Equestria, many of the Traitor Legionnaires are named after G1 villains (such as Scorpan, Hydia, Grogar...)
• In Little Black Death Note, a Harry Potter and Death Note crossover one of the names that Kira writes in the death note is "Uchiha Itachi."
• Magical Pony Lyrical Twilight: "Confound those ponies".
  • Bardiche's upgrade forms include two new Barrier Jackets: Strike Form and Astray Form.
  • Thanks to the ENTD System, Twilight and Fate have become Gundam Unicorn and Gundam Unicorn Banshee respectively.
  • Luna calls the Tome of the Night Sky's Master Program a machine spirit.
• Mass Effect The Equestrian Equation: Pretty much the entire Equestria Facility is one big one to The Matrix, complete with Mecha-Mooks out in the physical world.
• My Little Avengers: When Pinkie is first explaining Thor's backstory to Big Mac, she starts by giving him the basic information with what appears to be a psychic headbutt.
  • During the epilogue, when Twilight is sealing away Tirek, she does so with the "Chains of Mag'ne".
  • Gilda/The Juggernaut, during her fight with the Avengers, at one point shouts, "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"
  • At the beginning of the story, Big Mac is shown reading what appears to be a pony version of The Lord of the Rings.
• My Little Castlevania: The author was really going for one or two Shout Outs per chapter, and it shows:
  • A small child is attacked by a St. Bernard that used to be such a sweet dog.
  • “It’s a secret to everypony.”
  • Several lines are actually lyrics from different songs, ranging from Hotel California to Thriller.
  • A lot of Rose’s scenes have shout-outs to Eyes Without a Face, the author’s admitted most favorite MLP fanfic.
  • "Are they in a cave, WITH a box of scraps?"
  • The words Twilight must say to a magic book in order to look up its contents? "Klatuu Verata Nikto."
  • Twilight at one point mentions World 8 of Super Mare Sisters to describe doing something that's really hard.
• My Little Denarians: In keeping with his canon status as a Pop-Cultured Badass, Dresden tosses lots of references into his dialogue and narration.
  • Pinkie Pie will occasionally get in on the act, such as calling Discord Q.
  • One chapter name is "Single Rainbow All The Way Across The Sky".
  • "Princess Celestia" eats a banana while subjecting Fancypants to exile. This is a possible reference to the popular fan-animation Friendship Is Magic Bitch.
  • "If we made a deal, it was just a matter of time before the Nickleheads’ sudden but inevitable betrayal."
  • "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … been fooled, won’t get fooled again."
  • “Give up the whole demon thing and take up lumberjacking – I’ve heard it’s a pretty lucrative career. Plus, you get to dress up in women’s clothing and hang around in bars.”
  • Four legs good, two legs better.
  • one-point-twenty-one jiggawatts
  • Well, unless it was one of those evil magical journals that was really serving as a container for the soul of a legendary dark wizard. Wizards named Harry have a bit of a bad record with those.
  • “Since almost everypony thinks you’re dead, you should sing a song about how you’re still alive!" ... When she was a couple lines in and fully occupied with a strange little song about how she considered this a triumph and was making a note about how big a success it was...
  • The Gatekeeper says that there's a "young and impetuous" Warden called Jenkins; Pinkie asks if he's Leeroy, to which Rashid says that he's Richard.
    • “Ah, yes, ‘settling disagreements.’ I thought we had dismissed that claim.”
  • “Yes, well sometimes we have to use what tools are at our disposal, not the ones we want."
  • “Be vewy, vewy quiet, .... “I’m hunting wabbit.”
  • “Doesn’t anyone watch the good old classics anymore?” I put on a very bad imitation of an Austrian accent. “‘I’ll be back.’ ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’ Anyone?”
  • “Looks like Discord,” I paused for dramatic effect, “...just got stoned.” For some reason, that prompted Pinkie to scream "Yeeeeaaah!" and put on a pair of sunglasses.
• My Little Pony Vs: One of the mannequins animated by Esmeraude during the shopping mall fight does a brief Slender Man impression.
• My(stara's) Little Ponies: Friendship is Adventuring: A big one to Phineas and Ferb. Expies of Dr. Doofensmirtz, Vanessa, and Perry the Platypus appear during a dance party.
  • The Ghostly Gang, two of which were Bonnie and Clyde, were forced to retire after being chased around a maze by a giant yellow beholder. Afterwards, they had 3 daughters who they named Inky, Blinky and Pinkie.
• Paper Mario X:
  • Link makes one to Pokémon in a conversation with Kirby.
  • Link makes one to EarthBound in the beginning of Chapter 27 of the first story, when the group receives Skolar's Star Power.^note Which is Star Storm, which is Poo's most powerful move.
  • Link makes one to Pikmin in Chapter 17 of the second story, where he compares the Punies that are following the team to Olimar's Pikmin.^note If you check the previously linked page, you'll see that that actually is a shout out to Pikmin in the original game.
  • "Sheesh Mario, pull out an Ike quote on us why don't you?"
  • In chapter 45 of Super, after Bowser calls Luigi "the guy in green", Luigi asks Bowser if he doesn't even remember his name. This is a reference to Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, where nobody remembers Luigi's name.
  • Bowser has an obsession with the phrase "over 9000".
• Episode 1 of Phoenix Wright: Speed Attorney contains references to other Ace Attorney crossovers, specifically Turnabout Storm, Devil's Attorney and Phoenix Wright in the Mario World. Phoenix brushes off the events of those fanfics as being All Just a Dream due to too much coffee before bed, but Tails reminds him that they did, in fact, happen, as he brought a newspaper from Ponyville to remind Phoenix of the trial against Rainbow Dash.
• Port-Ed: Nazz claims that her cousin worked part-time at Aperture Science and supposedly was also a test subject of the ASHPD. Despite what one review guessed, it's not Chell. (The author was glad the betareader of the story kept this shout out.)
• Revenge Of Lavan:
  • The scientific name of the witchweed plant is Bandora repulsus.
• Super Miyuki World:The chapter titles (with the exception of the Prologue) reference various anime, but with the added twist of being named after the World that Miyuki and Yoshi visit during the chapter.
• Super Sentai Vs Power Rangers The Liveblog contains several shout-outs toward not only Power Rangers and Super Sentai, but other works as well.
  • The subplot in the Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Power Rangers Samurai liveblog mentions that it's inspired by the skits-in-reviews a la The Nostalgia Critic, which continued in the Super Sentai vs. Power Rangers' liveblog's arc.
  • The elemental attacks that some of the All-Stars and Scouts perform, such as Solarbeam, Flamethrower, and Petal Dance, are named after and based on several Pokémon moves.
  • Some of Radiguet's lines and mannerisms are based on Ghetsis.
  Radiguet: "And soon, I—no, we—will rule!"
  • After Aka Red gives Sean a choice to either ascend as the Ultimate Red Legendary Ranger but cursed to wander forever or die, the latter not only calls the former out, but he makes his own rules. This is similar to the final episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, where Madoka becomes hope and makes new rules to how the world will be run.
    • For another couple PMMM shoutouts, Rika says that the "Ultimate" in "Ultimate Red Legendary Ranger" was used as a nod to it without wanting to spoil it. It's in reference to "Ultimate Madoka", and the Ultimate Red Legendary Ranger later becomes like a god in the Ranger worlds. Later in Act 33, in her despair, Rika mutters "...I'm such an idiot" before the Eldritch takes her, similar to what happened to Sayaka before she's turned into a witch.
  • Sean's ascension is also taken from the Nostalgia Critic merging with the Plot Hole in To Boldly Flee, as admitted by the blogger.

• Fanfiction.net has a humorous CSI fanfic in which Ray takes 'Morpheus' as an online username, a shout out to his The Matrix role.

• All You Need Is Love is one to Twilight which is, naturally, also a Take That.
  Light: Those weapons of mass destruction are slippery little devils. I'm beginning to think that the notebook is secretly the one ring lacking both a dark overlord and a fiery Mount Doom in which to destroy it.
  • And:
  For some reason Naomi found herself thinking of The Godfather, and the horse's head tossed into a bed. Except the horse's head was Matt's and it was Mello's leopard printed waterbed that was soaked in blood.
  • Naomi asks L why he thinks he's Batman. Also Mello seems to think he's Samuel L. Jackson.
• In the Crack Fic A Charmed Life Light bought a copy of Icha-Icha magazine for their articles on Kira and L and later uses Star Trek as an example when seriously considering pursuing a relationship with Ryuk. Ryuk plays Mario Kart with Light and Halo: Reach with Matt online. There are also shout outs to Bleach, Japanese Mythology and Norse Mythology, as well as an allusion to the Matt/Mello pairing.
• There are tons in a A Cure for Love: Matt hums the Star Wars "Imperial March" when Kira enters the meeting room. Also when Light gets a scar on one of their misadventures of getting shot at he grumbles in his Internal Monologue that it makes him look like Harry Potter. Also in the deleted scenes Mello compares Light to the Byronic Hero Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights and his Freudian Excuse is similar in this ficverse. There's a stealth one with the Original Character V who has a vendetta. Also "Matt had just been spectacularly killed by a zombie riding a unicycle" and Near points out that "One does not simply walk into Mordor." Also when Light confides in L about his little problem and why he can't just quit: "Think of Faust, L. It's Faust on a shorter time scale." And Light's ultimate scheme is a shout out to Children of Men.
• In Kira Sweetheart there's a Shout Out to the "Got Milk?" commercial, L dreams of Candy Land, Misa shops at Hot Topic, "An Excellent Day For An Exorcism" is a quote from The Exorcist, Rem's line "The conversion has already begun" is a Shout Out to Disturbed, L declares "I am the law,", L gets Ryuk hooked on EverQuest, Dr. House is Light's attending physician, L pays for Light's surgery with his L-Credit Card, Light and L watch Black Butler, and the title of the last chapter, Sugarcoat, aside from being an Incredibly Lame Pun was inspired by the song by Breaking Benjamin. Also there's a couple of stealth ones: one to The Godfather ( even Bad Ass mafia hitmen know it's not fun getting stabbed in the hand). Another scene is inspired by an episode of Babylon 5 where the doctor restricts the crew from eating their favorite foods and they deal with it by trying to switch their plates around.
• In the AU My Stupid Reality the first books Light read as a child that had any substance to them were Evil Genius, Artemis Fowl, Matilda, Ender’s Game, and Battle Royale-this is what causes the canon divergence because after finishing this reading list young Light Yagami decides it might be more prudent to hide his genius. Later when on the run from L, Light sets up a false trail for his pursuers that leads them through Minnesota to Fargo, North Dakota. There are also shout outs to Portal and Super Mario Bros..

• The Tamers Forever Series includes several Shout Outs to Neon Genesis Evangelion such as this scene:
  Gabrielle: Anyway, it seems things are getting pretty messed up in the Eastern Quadrant. The Second already got her Omnivice.
  D.C: The second? The second Archangel?
  Gabrielle: No, dummy, the second EVA pilot. Of course I mean the second Archangel!
  D.C: You know, for someone who has been inside a glass tube for thirteen years, you certainly know your anime stuff.

• EVERYTHING in the Doctor Who webcomic Second Empire.
  • Seriously, DO NOT play the TV Tropes Drinking Game if you plan on including all the ShoutOuts in this thing. It'll be very, very bad for your health.
    • How bad is it? The summary (Two Dalek Empires fight for the future of the Dalek race) is a Shout-Out to Remembrance Of The Daleks and it just goes downhill from there.

• Ed, Edd, Eddy n Edna: "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me, Can't sleep, clowns will eat me, Can't sleep, clowns will eat me, Can't sleep, clowns will eat me."
  • The story itself is full of shout outs to other works, usually due to Author Appeal. For instance, chapter 16 starts with Edna and May watching a One Piece movie and chapter 21 starts with the four Eds watching WWE Summerslam.
• The Ed Of The World: Ed's theory of the moon getting out of orbit and striking Earth may be a reference to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, though it may be just a coincidence.

• The Elemental Chess Trilogy has a few, both in-universe and otherwise.
  • In the first story, the three main characters sneak into beseiged Central City using a hot air balloon, which is a Call Back of sorts to the 2003 anime adaptation.
  • Edward Elric's son is named Lucas, after Luke Triton from the Professor Layton games.
  • The Brotherhood anime showed a photograph of Roy Mustang after the end of the series in which he has a mustache, for reasons unexplained. Many members of the fandom prefer to believe that, as the picture in question belonged to Ed, he had drawn the mustache onto it; this Epileptic Tree is firmly planted in the fanfic.

• In Whose Gay Line Is It Anyway, the Glee club plays a game of Questions Only. Slash (and hilarity) ensues.
  Puck: Do you come here often?
  Kurt: Do you normally cruise an art gallery looking for fashionable and attractive men?

• Arabella and Zsenya's epic fanfiction After the End contains a significant Shout-Out to an in-fandom joke: in the Shipping wars, the Good Ship Harry/Hermione had the iconic symbol of pumpkin pie. In After the End, (a fic that is very Ron/Hermione, based on a website that is strongly geared towards the same) Ron angrily tells his mother that he hates pumpkin pie.
• A.L. de Sauveterre's Harry Potter and the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus pushes over into Reference Overdosed, which works with the fairly tongue-in-cheek tone of the story. A short sample:
  • The prologue refers to a tapestry with the cast of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on it (with the implication that Harry may be descended from the Pevensies).
  • Colin Creevey dressing up for Halloween as famed (Muggle) photographer Annie Liebovitz.
  • Draco Malfoy is encouraged to read Ernest Hemingway's Death In The Afternoon.
  • The Three Musketeers (all four of them) show up in paintings to give Ron love advice, and continue to pursue the now-vampiric Milady.
• In The Jaded Eyes Series Harry/Tristan is friends with a werewolf OC named Logan and the Gargoyles of Avalon. Also Tristan names his faerie familiar Tinkerbell.
• In The Lie I've Lived, a throwaway line has Harry saying, "Yeah, just call me 'Ambassador Potter', expert at foreign diplomacy and purveyor of international goodwill." This refers to one of author's other works Bungle in the Jungle.
• In Oh God Not Again, there are several shout outs, including ones to Star Wars, The Princess Bride, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. What's most notable, though, is that at one point, this trope is lampshaded (along with everything else).
  Snape: POTTER! Enough about your mythological creatures and your obscure Muggle literature!
• In The Ollivander Children, by vifetoile, a certain theory of wandless magic is called Weatherwax magic (a shout-out to Discworld) and the Muggle character, Mark, makes frequent references to The Princess Bride and The Lord of the Rings''.
• In Weres Harry? when the new Marauders are tasked with organizing the now "Tri-Tri-Wizard Tournament," they pattern the new tasks after the trials the Dread Pirate Roberts overcomes in The Princess Bride.
• All chapter titles in Blaze: Into the Inferno are literary references, mostly to Robert Frost poems.

• Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate has Will doubling over in laughter when Lyra tells him she put a wardrobe over an opening to another world.

• 11 Drunk Nobodies Play Slender has a ton of them:
  • The whole fic is a Shout-Out to 11 Drunk Guys Play Slender and Slender in general.
  • Saix is apparently obsessed with the game New York Shark.
  • In their game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, Xaldin and Demyx call out Chuck Norris and Mr. Spock respectively.
  • Xaldin calls the random appearance of the author's friend's Original Character a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
  • Demyx refers to the YouTube video "some guy yells at some cats" when Slender Man shows up for the first time: "RUN! FLUCKING RUN! YAAAH!
  • When Roxas is scared to play the game, Axel decides it's "time to go Hajime Aoyama on his ass!" Roxas' crying is later compared to Keiichirou's.
  • Luxord, who's too drunk to speak right, tells Roxas to "go Modder Wadfern 2 all over [Slender Man's] ass!"
  • Axel sings, "Roasty toasty Slender, roasty toasty Slender!" like Nuka from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
  • After Xigbar calls Roxas "Rocky," Axel tries to sing the Franchise/Rocky theme music.
  • A drunk Lexaeus screams "COCK-A-DOODLE DOO, THE COW SAYS MOO!" when he gets a page.
  • "LEX SMASH!"
  • It turns out that Zexion and Lexaeus are fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
  • When his daughter from the future shows up to say hello, Demyx insists that she much be confusing him for someone else, like the Netherlands.
  • Somehow, Future!Luxord got Demyx' daughter stuck in the Time Vortex.
  • When Zexion snaps and attacks Xigbar, Axel yells "WOOOOO! [[Franchise/Mortal Kombat MORTAL KOMBAT!"]] and Roxas tries to sing the theme song.
  • To Larxene's annoyance, the boys reference Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series when Marluxia finds a giant rock.
  • Marluxia jumps into Larxene's arms Scooby-Doo when he gets scared.
  • Xigbar and Demyx have apparently watched Mean Girls: "Four for you, Mama Axel, you go, Mama Axel! And-none-for-Larxy-and-Mar-Mar-bye!"
  • "ZEXION CHOP!"
  • Demyx's Drunken Song is a variation on the Spider-Man theme song.
  Demyx: Slender Man, Slender Man

  Does whatever a Slender can

  Can he swing, from a web?

  I dunno, I'm way too drunk

  Look out, he is the Slender Man

• In Marks of Time, chapter 15, the characters watch two old films, Somewhere In Time and Titanic, and make references to their plots.

• The Student Prince:
  • Gwen compares riding the train to St. Andrews to being on the Hogwarts Express. She doesn't realise just how apt her comparison is.
  • After seeing Arthur's plane, Merlin asks, "Can it make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs?"

• ''The Writing On The Wall contains a shoutout to the curse of King Tutankhamen's tomb and to the poem Ozymandias in Daring Do's speculation about what the eponymous, then untranslated writing on the wall of the Ancient Tomb meant:
  "'This is the tomb of the great and terrible So-and-So! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! Whosoever steals the treasure will face the gods' curse, and the sky will fall on their heads, et cetera'."
  • The entire story is a shout-out to a proposal for a as yet unbuilt nuclear waste storage facility. The Reveal turns the story into a Horror story, as the reader realizes that the ponies who got sick are suffering from radiation sickness.
  This is not a place of honor. No great deed is commemorated here. Nothing of value is here.
• A Hairy Problem: A new pony in town, Sandalwood, is a deliberate Alternate Universe version of DJ Martinez from All-American Girl.
  • Applejack's first werewolf transformation is largely based on the famous sequence in An American Werewolf in London with some changes due to her being a pony
  • The latest book in the Daring Do novel series is Daring Do and the Philosopher's Legacy
  • The three main characters of The Golden Armor make a brief appearance in a restaurant setting, and later end up saving Applejack from making a bad situation worse where one of the trio is thanked by name.
• All-American Girl:
  • "Wrote lots of books and spells, head of the mage guild, Princess Celestia’s protor…protoss…personal apprentice!"
  • One of the worlds' most popular movie series is Arddun Lleuad.
  • "Well, my parents were both military, and my mom has a small armory she keeps around the house for weapons reference for her artwork, so yeah, I know how to shoot. Learned on Dad’s Seburo M5 9mm."
    • The title of the sidestory anthology — Be Human — is a reference to one of the Scott Matthew songs from SAC, and in universe it's DJ's favorite song, for obvious reasons.
  • When a young Mike asks his sister for advice in dating DJ — an alien — his sister questions whether or not he'll wake up one day with DJ talking about ‘yellow perpendicular with making blue bisector’.
    • Funnily enough, years later one of DJ's favorite games is shown to be a future version of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
  • To continue the Star Wars references, when Cadance asks Lyra on advice for childrearing, Lyra makes light of how things have changed between former foalsitter and foalsat:
  Lyra: “Just don’t expect me to do the whole Darth Vader thing.”
  Cadance: “Darth…Vader?”
  Lyra: “Star Wars reference – hubby’s a big fan of those old movies. ‘When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.’”
  • During a Halloween party, Erica dresses up as the assassin Ambika from Claude & Monet.
  • In chapter 11 the Changelings get "educated" on the difference between tacics meant for terror and tactics meant for war by the Belgian special forces.
    • The start of chapter 6 shows several characters travelling through a portal from Earth to Equestria, and it's described as very similar to a Stargate.
  • Derpy's otherdimensional-sensing device is known as the Stereolab.
    • For that matter, she boards an airship called the Serene Velocity, also the name of a Stereolab album.
  • Somebody claims that mystery girl Subaru may be a student at Furinkan High School in Nerima.
    • For that matter, Tsubasa and her fellow students attend Tamagawa Mikami High School ^note better known as the school attended by Sakura Kasugano of Street Fighter Alpha fame.
  • One original character is named Tiny Dynamine and her unusual magic aura resembles butterflies.
  • Combined with a lovely Take That in the following line:
  Discord: "Would you care for a cupcake? Never cared for them myself. Too bloody."
• A Minor Variation:
  • Rarity's introduction to Discord.
  Rarity: Discord, the Spirit of Disharmony? Good evening, my name is Rarity Bell. As a member of the country and world of Equestria, I ask you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension.
  • When Rarity mentions how Nightmare Moon was banished to the moon, Jackie wants he to clarify whether she was imprisoned IN the moon, or having adventures on the surface in the form of an adorable filly.
  • One of Fluttershy's Omega Flight classmates is named Dorothy Gale, who ends up carried off by a tornado to a faraway land.
• Anthropology:
  • When Lyra first meets Nathan, he's wearing a shirt with the word Aperture on it.
  • Chapter 29 contains a reference to Tay Zonday's popular song Chocolate Rain.
• The First Steps Of The Rest Of Your Life: Hydro Pump.
• Friendship Is Magic: The Adventures of Spike:
  • "It was time to buck up or shut up."
  • After an upset Twilight goes to confront Shining Armor over not telling her about the wedding 'til last minute, Spike wonders if she sent him to a gender-flipped alternate universe.
  • The last three chapters of the "Canterlot Wedding" arc are listed under the name "When A Good Dragon Goes To War". For bonus points, the Doctor himself cameos.
  • The apparent code phrase to magically grow Spike's temporary wings is "Fly Me To the Moon".
  • The first arc after Spike starts Walking the Earth is called "Spike of (Saddle) Arabia".
• Equestria: A History Revealed:
  • The fic is full of these, even from the main character's name, Loose Change, calling out a prominent 9/11 truther film to fit in with her crazed conspiracy beliefs.
  • The Lemony Narrator uses the phrase "hot topic" in passing, which is then followed with a tiny "Buy MLP shirts today!"
  • One of the cited sources in the bibliography on Starswirl the Bearded is written by "Fedora the Neckbearded".
  • Princess Luna, during her transition into Nightmare Moon, was quoted to be darker and edgier. This is then followed by Linkin' Park lyrics.
  • The Lemony Narrator mentions many snack food brands, like Doritos and Skittles, even going so far to call for compensation in the Bibliography for the free advertising.
• Friendship Is Magic Discord Did It:
  • "I'll just kill them with my awesome."
  • Velvet refers to a dream about pink elephants and honey-stealing weasels.
  • The "Grab onto our tongues!" scene from Charlie The Unicorn is referenced at one point.
• Friendship Is Optimal The Law Offices Of Artemis Stella And Beat: To Phoebe And Her Unicorn, which inspired Vibrant's Major General Song.
• Getting Back on Your Hooves:
  • During an argument with Rarity, Applejack comments that "Ah ain't got no accent!" In fact, the entire subplot going on there appears to be based on that fic.
  • Checker Monarch appears to be based on Azula, a perfectionist Manipulative Bitch Chessmaster who is jealous of a younger sibling whom she bullies and has an overbearing father. Moreover, both characters are deeply insecure beneath all their arrogance.
  • Trixie is apparently a big fan of the Harry Trotter novels.
  • Several Shout Outs to the Pony POV Series were included due to the author being friends with Alexwarlorn.
  • The charity play Trixie puts on with help from her friends and Princess Luna is "Rescue at Midnight Castle", the original G1 My Little Pony special.
    • She later tells the story of Grogar to the Cake Twins. Both of those stories are used by Trixie to defeat Checker in her final dream attack.
  • Ditzy, when talking about how she accidentally wrecked city hall with her flank, says that isn't the only time it's happened, and starts to recount another time it's happened until she remembers the Doctor told her not to tell anyone about it.
  • While travelling through the Everfree Forest, the Cutie Mark Crusaders realize their path will go past Zecora's hut. Scootaloo suggests a path leading off the one to Zecora's hut, but Apple Bloom quickly shuts down that idea after remembering where it goes.
  • Pinkie Pie doesn't make cupcakes where audiences can see anymore, and angrily mutters about wanting to sue someone for defamation of character.
  • In chapter 11, Applejack mentions a time Twilight messed up a spell and sent the six of them to a gender-flipped alternate universe.
  • Chapter 12 takes some references to Persona 4 including Checker's One-Winged Angel transformation into an Ursa Major referencing the Shadows' transformations.
  • Pinkie's dream (confrontation with Checker) in chapter 12 contains references to both Scooby-Doo and Wile E. Coyote.
• The God Squad: To the various properties that the squad comes across in its travels.
• Hands: All the time, though no one ever gets Andrew's references.
  • The two people onboard the Enterprise whose iPhone Andrew and Twilight discover are named after the main characters from Dead Space.
• The Immortal Game: To Sherlock Holmes. For a while, the duel between Twilight and Esteem plays out just like the one between Holmes and Moriarty in A Game of Shadows.
  His advantage: Experience. Our advantages: Power. Mobility.
  • During that same fight with Esteem, Twilight makes one to the famous tank chase from Prototype:
  Twilight Sparkle: Where have you run to now? Nothing can save you from me, Esteem! Not ponies! Not puppets! Not gods!
  • And to Captain America: The First Avenger:
  Twilight Sparkle: How do you feel?
  Princess Luna, newly infused with Terra's magic: Taller.
  • Titan is ASSUMING CONTROL OF THIS FORM.
    • Twilight's Godslayer spell is more or less a magical version of the Thanix cannon. Later versions even use the same combination of elements as the Normandy's main gun.
  • Rarity and Esteem have a conversation taken almost word for word from The Empire Strikes Back:
  Esteem: “It is useless to resist! Don’t let yourself be destroyed as your mother did!”
  • Nihilus' name is a Shout-Out to Darth Nihilus.
• Inner Demons: Queen!Twilight's mind control spell is very similar to a Geass. In fact, her statement when shutting down Cadence's magic — "Never use magic again!" — is very similar to Lelouch's "Never speak again!" moment with Mao. Lezard even refers to this ability as "the Power of the Queen", and his explanation of how it works sounds very similar to the mechanics of Lelouch's Geass.
  • When Applejack finally gets a chance to confront Queen!Twilight, the latter states "Element of Honesty... Come to die."
    • When Apple Bloom meets with Trixie in the afterlife, it plays out similar to a scene between Harry and Dumbledore in The Deathly Hallows.
  • When Lezard brings up reincarnation and its implied Eternal Recurrence, the phrase "All this has has happened before, and all this may happen again" comes up.
• It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door: The title is one (of many) to The Lord of the Rings''.
  • When Rainbow Dash first uses the lightning powers she learns from the pronghorns, she says "I am a leaf on the wind."
    • Even better, her mentor who had also been taught by the pronghorns was called Firefly. Though this may just be a coincidence, given that her mentor is an expy of a past-gen pony by that name.
  • Dragons are apparently from Carcosa.
• Knights Of Equestria: There's quite a few Doctor Who references spread throughout both stories... which is a given since the Doctor is a character in both.
• Letters From A Disgruntled Friendship Student: "Once you go Purple, you never go back!"
  • "I encouraged her to get professional help for her addiction, but she just left all huffy, claiming she could quit anytime she wanted."
    • Though unintentional, Twilight's demeanor throughout this series is nearly identical to her "Mentally Advanced" persona, especially in the cynicism department. The only thing that really distinguishes the two parodies in tone is that Mentally Advanced Twilight would be too terrified of Celestia to back-talk her like Disgruntled Twilight does.
  • "If Trixie ever comes back, I'm gonna get her in bed with me, just to show her that I'm better than her physically, mentally, and sexually. Three points, you dirty whore."
  • "So the next plan was to make an exact copy of Ponyville. Every building, every store front, every rock and every tree, right down to the orange roof on Howard Hooves' outhouse. And we actually managed to do it. But then when I realized that you were already on your way, we were going to need a little more time. I raced out with my friends to try and build a hilariously out-of-place toll booth to slow you down even more."
  • There's a lot of references to Friendship is Witchcraft throughout the series.
    • "Rainbow Dash's weather team got a tornado going and flung all the snow over to the next town, so it's Molestia's problem now."
    • "Rainbow tried to set a record for the most ball bounces off her head. And this is a seriously freaking amazing ball. You have got to check it out sometime."
    • Also, references to Rarity's giant hats, the song "Princess of the Night", etc.
  • "Two: I've gathered further evidence that Pinkie is turning into a carnivore. I mean, she tasted the rainbow pools, and everypony knows how the rainbows are made."
  • To Mario Kart: "I heard if you paint it red it'll home in on the closest pony, and if you paint it blue and put spikes on it, it'll automatically home in on the pony that is succeeding the most in life."
  • Twilight comments that "dragons are supposed to have great vision during the day, and even better vision at night."
  • Twilight suggests that if Fluttershy really wants to get out of hurricane duty, she should just tell everypony she has the T-Virus.
• The Life And Times Of A Winning Pony: Perhaps unsurprisingly given one of the author's other works there are one or two references to The Dresden Files.
  • Cloudkicker also makes reference to a spell called Background Pony, which makes everyone else nearby ignore you.
• The Light in the Darkness: Pinkie Pie is a fan of the Marx Brothers.
• Magnetism: To The Legend of Zelda, after Rainbow successfully makes cereal. The line before is a shout out to an episode of The Simpsons where Homer makes cereal and it catches fire.
• The Many Secret Origins Of Scootaloo: The entire premise of the story is to insert Scootaloo into different origin stories.
  • Two of the latest chapters have seen Friendship is Witchcraft and On a Cross and Arrow referenced.
  • Spike's story is a mash-up of elements from James Bond, Burn Notice, and The Emperor's New Groove.
  • The author apparently loves Animaniacs, as Cadence's chapter featured 'mini mares' who find Princess Scootaloo, three of whom are named Yakko, Wakko and Dot. Later, in Discord's chapter, the chaos god opens with his version of The Muppet Show theme.
  • According to Snips and Snails, Scootaloo is a vampire slayer, with Twilight as her Watcher, the rest of the CMC as her team, and Angel Bunny as her vampire lover. Spike, who is the audience while Twilight is getting much-needed reprieve from the madness, is less than enthused to be cast as the villain.
  • Rainbow Dash combines The Six Million Dollar Man with The Incredible Hulk.
  • Zecora borrows material from Dr. Seuss.
  • In the intro, brfore the origin stories start, there is a reference to the CMC summoning a "winged squid creature" while trying to be witches. The context seems to imply it was Cthulhu.
  • A nasty rumor involving Pinkie Pie's cupcakes is mentioned, then subverted when Twilight reveals it's not what we think.
  • A nasty rumor involving Pinkie Pie's cupcakes is mentioned, then subverted when Twilight reveals it's not what we think... The rumor was actually that Pinkie used artificial sweeteners.
• Memories of Days Long Past: Pinkie provides most of these; in the prologue, upon hearing the setup, she directly references Inception, then asks if their ancestors were assassins.
  • Skyline's griffon friend is named Revy.
  • Luna has an Abacus named Abacus.
  • One of the Summer Triangle ponies is named Altair.
  • Vega talks to midnight in the golden land.
• Mendacity: One of the... things... that Bon Bon sees when she almost passes into Faerie appears to be a ponyfied Slender Man.
  • The faerie homeland of Tir na Nog?
    • Nope, that's a reference to real-world mythology.
• Midnight Green: During Midnight's Dynamic Entry into Ponyville, he screams "LEEEEROOOOOOOOOY JEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!!!!!"
  • Midnight later sings music by the Barenaked Ladies and Voltaire.
• Miscellaneous:
  • The beginning of chapter 4 appears to be a reference to The Hangover. Quill wakes up with no memory of what happened the night before, wonders where Filter is, and proceeds to find him on the roof of Sugarcube Corner.
  • When Filter reveals that he has two hearts, he wonders if that has been used before.
  • Dual Image might as well be renamed "The Doctor Who Shout-Out Chapter". Not only do Quill and Filter quote the Doctor various times, the scene where Filter, powered up by King Sombra, completely overpowers Trixie and forces her to surrender before forgiving her is taken straight from "Last of the Time Lords".
• MLP: The Games We Play: To various memes in the MLP fandom, including cameos from Derpy Hooves, wingboners as plot points, "I emptied your fridge", and etc.
  • "We gotta be sneaky, Dashie! Sneaky!"
• The Monster Mash:
  • Count Drache in Rarity: Blood and Water is one to Dracula.
  • Ultradash in Rainbow Dash: The Big Battle is one to Ultraman.
  • Pinkie's reference to pod ponies in Applejack: One of the Herd is likely a Shout-Out to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
• My Little Mages: The Nightmares Return: To Lauren Faust's other works; the first mages were apparently the Powerpuff Girls, and the first Church of Faust was founded by Mac and Bloo.
  • In chapter one, when Twilight complains about having to use the Charon, Celestia suggests the Minnow. Twilight changes her mind.
  • Pinkie Pie mentions that Magiville's haunted house was actually just Old Man Jenkins in a bedsheet.
  • Twilight uses Raven's incantation in one chapter.
  • "Honk honk, mother hubbard!"
  • During Pinkie's fight with the Grand Master, she uppercuts him while shouting something that sounds like 'Shower You Can'.
• Frequent in My Little Unicorn, to the point of plagiarism.
  • The scene of the Grand Ruler dancing and doing hopscotch is inspired by a sketch from Today's Special.
  • Replacement villain Serpent-Terror was named after a mecha from Power Rangers before the author changed his name to Serpent-Tyrant. Later revisions change it to a female character named Serpentari, but she pretty much acts the same.
  • The general plot of Titan's return and the way the heroes face him of shows parallels to the first episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
  • Inquirius is named after the species/homeplanet of the unnerving mentor of Power Rangers Turbo.
  • The author admitted that the Uniforce is inspired from another Deus ex Machina from Medabots, combined with Exodia's power.
  • The Uniforce is basically the Triforce.
  • Most of the songs were lifted from other sources, including Today's Special and Shining Time Station. He does cite where they came from, narrowly avoiding Plagiarism.
  • The sequence in the third fanfic where the team goes to "Brogan" is heavily inspired by Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie.
• The Non-Bronyverse: TD's lectures to the DORKS on the history of the Human race are entirely composed of references to everything from Star Wars to Kickassia.
  • During TD's shift at Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie gives him a cupcake before leading him down to the basement where he collapses. It turns out to be a hay allergy.
  • Cloud Kicker appears at the Gala in her Ethical Slut mode.
  • TD mentions that he's from "a backwater town that has been so cleverly dubbed 'The Opposite of Hawaii' by a certain popular cutout animation show."
• Of Mares And Magic: Sprinkled throughout, including;
  • Sea Pony Lyra makes an appearance.
  • At one point, Trixie ends up heading into the Everfree Forest to find the CMC, and stumbles upon a certain village.
• On a Cross and Arrow: Pinkie Pie suggests space as the Mane 6 hiding spot. For a moment, she turns into the Space Core whilst doing so.
  • Rainbow Dash's new trick is the "Double Rainboom".
  • There are also a few allusions to fandom memes, such as Rainbow Dash getting a wingboner on seeing Berry Bubble.
  • An interesting one, but Applejack refers to a certain tan pony as "the Professor".
    • Also, PKE energy is mentioned.
    • Later, Doctor Whooves Adventures short: ''Doctor Whooves In: Crossed Wires'', the female counterpart to the Doctor is called "The Professor." On A Cross And Arrow was noted as one of the influences in the short's creation, per Word of God.
  • Speaking of fan fic nods, Twilight mentions a universe where Rainbow Dash DIDN'T pull off the Sonic Rainboom while explaining the concept of alternate universes to her friends.
  • Twilight remarks at one point that Rarity's powers of observation would have made her a great detective, a possible reference to the Sherlock Holmes Fusion Fic A Study in Rainbows.
  • "Well, speak o' th' smooze."
• On A Whisper Of Wind: A magician named Presto? Seems familiar...
• Our First Steps: Apart from shout outs to movies like The Right Stuff and Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, there are numerous allusions to various works on the subject and to the American and Soviet space programs.
• Pages Of Harmony: During Rainbow Dash's Mind Rape torture, the story slightly mentions both Rainbow Factory and Cupcakes, two other well-known gorefics. While Cupcakes is only slightly alluded to with Pinkie in one of Rainbow's Mind Rape visions threatening to hack her wings off, the Rainbow Factory mention is quite blatant... and it makes everything much worse.
  • In a non-MLP example, Pinkie's gesture language and Rainbow Dash's interpretation of it is an reference to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, when Mudra the Shadow Warrior communicates to the Storyteller Rashid in this manner.
• The Party Never Ended: Star Catcher is the name of a G3 pegasus pony.
  • Rainbow Dash mentions the "Swayback Mountains" at one point. This is a nod to a previous Applejack/Rarity fan fic Butterscotch Sundae wrote.
  • Chapter 11 opens up with what can only be described as a Take That parody of Cupcakes, and later, Rocket To Insanity. Made awesome by the fact that it's Nightmare's Mind Rape...which Pinkie subverts by lucid dreaming.
• Party of None: A reference to Cupcakes is made when Rainbow Dash is hesitant to accept a cake from Pinkie Pie, fearing it may have been drugged or poisoned. It’s safe, but Pinkie thinks it’s her worst batch ever.
• Past Sins: At the end of chapter 13, Pinkie Pie's saying "Who's going to make the cake when I'm gone?" is a shout out to one of GLaDOS's lines near the end of the original Portal.
  • In chapter 18, Nyx/Nightmare Moon deals with a scorpio by grabbing its tail, swinging it in circles, and throwing it towards the Everfree Forest.
• Pattycakes: The beginning of Part One is one of Cupcakes, which also began with Dash having a good day.
  • Dash falls under the effects of Instant Sedation and wakes up tied to a table.
  • Fluttershy calls for Pinkie to bring cupcakes in one ending of Part Two.
  • The song Fluttershy sings is based directly off Want You Gone.
  • The foalmula is described as odorless, colorless, and tasteless.
• Pink Personal Hell And Altering Fate: The style of narrative is a Shout-Out to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. The term "Altering Fate" is a shout-out to Vision of Escaflowne.
  • The Escaflowne shout-outs continue when he assumes Dilandau is going to tackle him.
  • Pinkie Pie says "Laughter is the very best medicine". Dominic responds with, "I'll remember that when my appendix bursts next week."
  • Must...control...fist of death.
  • Gummy's biting onto Dominic is a Shout-Out to FoxTrot, specifically the part where he tells Gummy to let go and then Gummy simply substitutes his finger for his nose.
• The Powers Of Harmony: When Blair enters Luna's room at the beginning of the story, he sees she has an abacus.
  • Rarity's morning activities in Chapter 7 include a reference to Lyra's endeavors in Background Pony.
  "Rarity worked all throughout the morning, only stopping briefly to enchant a soundstone for a mint-green unicorn wearing a gray hoodie. After finishing that, she continued to work on the necklace."
  • Celestia's response to whether she'd taught Twilight any offensive magic in Chapter 17 is a nod to The Immortal Game. Also a bit of a Take That to the plot.
  ““If she does, she didn’t learn it from me.” Celestia adjusted one last feather and looked up at Luna. “We covered a few theories on why certain spells have been declared forbidden, but it’s not like I was prepping her for war. The next thing I’m going to hear you say is that I was secretly turning her into a brilliant military strategist so that she’d rise up and become the ultimate weapon.”
  Luna rolled her eyes. “Now that’s just absurd.”
  • "Rarity" asks Grovi about an artifact from The Flight Of The Alicorn while they're walking into Canterlot Castle in Chapter 21, and an airship by the name of 'Fancy Free' is seen from a distance in Chapter 27.
  "Is it true that Princess Celestia keeps the Heavenstone from the Pre-Discordian Era in the Royal Vaults?"
  • Blair responds to Piro's needling about Libra's actions in Chapter 25 with a line similar to one uttered by Gordon in The Dark Knight Rises:
  "Celestia forbid you actually have to make a hard decision by yourself, Piro. Be grateful you've somepony to plunge their hooves into the filth for you."
  • Norric grew up in Gildesdale.
  • Zemblani and Elo's pre-duel banter in Chapter 19 references the famous exchange between Peter Pan and Captain Hook:
    “I suppose we can do this your way, little clone,” Zemblani said. "Prepare to meet 'thy' doom!"
    “Dark and sinister mare,” Elo answered. “Have at thee.”
    • Speaking of Elo, he was the result of an affair between members of rival families Mont'hequ and Gallopulet.
  • Applejack's group visits the town of Gallopfrey, whose ecology causes red grass and silver-leafed trees.
    • That same chapter has a cameo by the title character of the MLP fic "Echo the Diamond Dog".
  • Pilgrim/Pupa's story is based on the MLP fic "The Three Sisters", with some minor modifications. (And permission from the author.)
• Progress:
  • The scene in "Luna vs Baseball" where Grey Marex steps up to bat features a subtle reference to "Casey at the Bat"
  • Also in that chapter, when Applejack doesn't recognize her until after her glasses are broken, she asks, "How could you be fooled by a pair of glasses?"
  • Also in that chapter, Luna's "TO THE MOON" imagine spot is likely one to a certain fan video.
  • Luna's speech when getting a room with Sundance in "Luna vs. Lodging 1" is extremely reminiscent of when The 11th Doctor was getting a flat in "The Lodger."
    • The scene at the Baseball game where she attempts to give a badass boast in response to a simple statement of team pride is also based on that same episode.
  • One of the stallions Hoyden suggests as a possible boyfriend for Luna is named Thistle, is rather depressed, and lives in a tent made of sticks.
  • In "Luna vs Ponyville, Part 1: Television", where the first show that Luna watches on Pinkie's television is a pony version of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and after changing the channel and trying to find it, she apparently stumbles across a horror movie known as Cupcakes.
  • In "Luna vs Ponyville, Part 2", Luna finds a copy of the pony equivalent of Twilight, which is apparently a good deal... racier.
  • Also, "AHA! Gentlecolts! You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Sethisto-!"
  • Also Hoyden's cutie mark, which is a skull with a pair of crutches. His job is testing very dangerous safety equipment.
  • Angel has read Luna's book.
  • "Luna vs. Ponyville, Part 7" features Luna breaking up a fight between a giant ape and a T. Rex.
  • In the same chapter, Luna's Badass Boast to said giant ape and T. Rex is similar to one done by the Eleventh Doctor in his first episode.
  • The Rex monster is a nod to Rex from the original My Little Pony cartoon's second TV special.
  • Also in the same chapter, the Cutie Mark Crusaders crash to the rescue in a familiar pose.
  • At the end of "Luna versus The Heat", Celestia does the infamous Horatio Caine Glasses Pull.
  • Apparently, Priness Celestia mothered a whole group of famous horses, as she explains to Luna in "Luna Versus the Facts of Life." Where to begin? Let's see, Starchild, Shadowfax, Arion, Hengroen, Epona, Widow Maker...
  • In "Luna vs. Storytelling", the old movie Sundance is watching is a pony version of It Happened One Night. There are also references made to Fallout: Equestria, Kamarena, and the Smooze.
  • "Luna vs Ponyville 9" gets a massive one for Warhammer 40,000... by Pinkie Pie's parents, who bust out heavy weapons and shout about exterminating "xenos" in the name of God-Queen Celestia when they think their farm house is under attack by dragons. Apparently, it runs in the family.
  • In "Ponies in Space 2", we meet pony versions of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. Also, Luna's description of the God-Alpha of the Diamond Dogs sounds a lot like Crunch the Rock Dog, and after Blueblood gets scared out of joining the program, Luna quotes Still Alive.
  • In "Ponies in Space 3", Cherilee's tour group gets caught in "Situation 18", a training scenario that involves the possibility of hostile, crab-like aliens on the moon.
    • In addition, Luna mentions her plan for a fusion-driven starship to deal with killer space monkeys and killer space tigers, the latter of which they'd teach a lesson with their fusion drives...
  • "Luna vs. The Dreamlands 2" has a lot of shoutouts to Inception, primarily in the accelerated time the deeper you go into the Dreamlands and the abrupt transitions between dreams.
  • In "Ponies in Space 4", Sundance brings up the possibility of teleporting rockets around the launch pad, and Luna replies that they're not going to try that "after what happened with the cat." Also, Rarity thinks painting Luna's design for a giant robot red will make it go three times faster.
  • "Luna vs. Vigilantism" opens with Luna reading a Batpony comic (which appears to be inspired by The Killing Joke). Later Luna (as Mare-Do-Well) performs a dead ringer for the entrance of Darkwing Duck.
    • Her checklist also contains elements from other famous superheroes. Let's see, Love Interest as a reporter, with a bald archenemy, an origin story that is either vague or multiple choice, cool car and toys...
  • "Well then! Someday, the citizens of this city will not have their toys delivered with their meals, and will instead look up to me with a cry of 'Help us!' and I shall reply, 'No! Petition the manager instead!'"
  • And prior to that, when pondering things for Luna to do? Sundance suggests charity boxing. Maybe she's read (or, likely, hadn't read) 'Of Packages and Punches''.
  • Even the Recursive Fanfiction does this!
    • All of the guards Celestia tries to hook up with Luna in "Luna vs. Threesomes" are named after male porn stars.
    • In the side story Celestia vs. Time, reference is made to Trope's Library of Literary Tools, and two guards discuss the likelihood of an alternate universe where everypony has their gender swapped male for female and visa-versa.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse:
  • When drunk, Trixie starts to quote Londo Mollari from Babylon 5
  • Trixie's and Twilight's favorite novel is Don Rocinante of Equestria, an obvious shout-out to Don Quixote.
    • In Longest Night, Longest Day, to keep herself amused, Trixie sings a few lines of "I, Don Quixote," slightly modified to fit into Equestria (i.e., "I am Don Rocinante" rather than "I am I, Don Quixote").
  • When Lyra says that Pinkie Pie is going to throw Trixie a party, Trixie's response is "Why are you saying that like it's synonymous with 'she's going to drag me into a basement and torture me'?", a reference to Cupcakes.
  • In Carrot Top of the Line: "Help me Rainbow Dash, you're my only hope!"
    • And the same reference in Helping...Hands?, only this time Trixie to Lyra.
  • Secret of Andalantis makes references to a musical called The Legend of Epona
    • Two of the songs mentioned were the Serenade of Water and the Bolero of Fire.
  • Pokey Pierce, at one point, claims that "he won't stop until he's Pierced the Heavens" with his horn.
    • And he gets to quote Kamina's memetic catchphrase in Hero of Oaton.
  • In Elements of Insanity, Twilight unintentionally gets her bearers for Loyalty and Honesty mixed up; they'd be far better suited to each other's elements.
  • The name of Puissance's noble House, Optiebeurs-Golo, is the name of the horse that, in 1991, established the world record for the puissance jump.
  • The beginning of Luna's castigation of the Night Court is based off of the scene in I, Claudius where Augustus learns of his daughter Julia's whorishness.
• School Daze: Dozens of lines of dialogue are lines from 80's songs, especially Men at Work and Talking Heads.
• Scootamom:
  • Scootaloo's introduction to her auntie involves her walking across the ceiling with suction cups, ala a certain Ask a Pony blog.
  • "She seems to be more caffeine than mare now. Twisted and jittering."
  • Celestia also mentions that Luna once got her face covered with alfalfa sauce.
  • Word of God hasn't confirmed this one yet, but the fact that Luna has a magma-powered forge and warns Scootaloo against exploring the castle cellars on her own has led SpaceBattles to conclude that she set the Hidden Fun Stuff loose in her big sister's basement. Whether or not Canterlot also has a Fuck The World lever is also unknown as yet.
  • The oldshopkeeper introduced in the second half of Celestia vs. Knitting is known simply by his nickname 'Uncle', has a collection of animal talismans, and Dope Slaps ponies to keep them in line.
  • Pinkie Pie's siblings and father are named Inkie, Blinkie and Clyde.
• Sophistication And Betrayal:
  • The protagonist's favorite drink is Sparkle Cola.
  • Pinkie Pie takes on the name of Tenacious P for one of her songs. This is immediately lampshaded by the protagonist.
  • To Star Wars, when the protagonist compares unicorn magic to The Force.
  • To The Dark Knight when the protagonist responds to her comment with "We kill the Batman?". Rarity naturally doesn't get the reference.
  • "Time is money, friend"
  • To Pink Floyd numerous times, including Chapter 14's title, "Wearing The Inside Out" and Chapter 17's title, "High Hopes".
  • Eric Clapton during Chapter 3, when the Protagonist starts singing "Wonderful Tonight" to himself while waiting for Rarity to get dressed.
  • Bob Seger as well, in passing.
  • Airplane gets in with the usual Shirley reference. As above, naturally Rarity doesn't get it.
• Strykes Random Elements: “There's the Discordians, the Cultists for the Second Coming of the Mag'ne, the Sect of the Horned Rat just to name a few and far to (sic) many others." Including the meat-eating White Sock Society.

• The titles of the Psych fanfic Lassiter Learns how to Bend as well as its sequels Carlton's Worst Inhibitions and The Case of the Friendly Indians are all shout outs to the show's theme song, the first two to the lyrics and the last one to the band who sings it.

• With Strings Attached has a number of shout-outs, including:
  • Plenty of subtle Beatles references, of course.
  • A line lifted from Sweeney Todd.
  • A reference from a Sheri S. Tepper book.
  • Several references to lines or incidents from the Flashman series.

• Empath: The Luckiest Smurf.
  • The story titles "Smurphony Of The Night", "Empath And The Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", "Where No Smurf Has Gone Before", "I Believe I Can Fly", "Smurfing Like A Ray Of Sunshine", "The New Smurfs On The Block", "Smurfed Behind: The Departure", "Smurfnip Madness", "Days Of Future Smurfed".
  • Its in-universe Star Wars parody has characters like Oggi Ben-Doggi and Chubba the Fatt.
  • "I am Duncan McSmurf of the clan McSmurf."
  • Tapper Smurf is one for the arcade game Tapper.

• Sonic X: Dark Chaos has a whole mess of them.
  • Beelzebub's guitar is called Fuckslayer.
  • Astorath speaks like - and makes numerous references to - the Heavy from Team Fortress 2.
  • The Nephilim can turn their heads 360 degrees to look around them.
  • The conversation between Chris and Cosmo about Tsali at the beginning of episode 60:
    Chris: "You see Cosmo, some people aren't looking for anything logical like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some people just want to watch the universe burn."
  • Episode 66 is titled "Vortal Combat"
    • Episode 59: "A Mirror Darkly"
    • Episode 55: "H2, Ho!"
    • Episode 71: "The Meaning of Truth"
  • During the battle at the end of episode 63, a heavily damaged Tsali suddenly rises from the flames around him, his metal exoskeleton visible.
  • The prototype of the Ultimate Weapon is called Quadraxis, although it's quite different from its original inspiration.
  • Jesus Desjiliac Christos is married to a cloned Mary Magdeline and has a daughter named Sarah.
  • The video recording during the beginning of episode 74 is a direct parody of the "Ezekiel 25:17" scene from Pulp Fiction.
  • The " Chris gets raped by a giant demonic fly-wasp hybrid" scene may or may not be a reference to as similar scene from Berserk.
  • Many of the Demon war machines are both named after - and look like - Cybran units from Supreme Commander and Imperial ships from Star Wars.
  • Tails's funeral in the rewrite of Episode 78 is an homage to Spock's funeral in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - and it's just as powerful.

• Bait and Switch:
  • During Captain Kanril Eleya's Flashback Nightmare that takes up the first half of chapter one, one-shot character Crewman Davos drops the line "Bloody pirates" (referring to an Orion Syndicate Boarding Party).
  • Eleya notes in her narration that there's a theory that replicated food tastes a little artificial because it's exactly the same every time, whereas cooked food has variations (slight variances in ingredient proportions, cooking time, cooking temperature, etc.). This is borrowed from the nonfiction book Life Signs: The Biology of Star Trek (the biology equivalent of Lawrence Krauss' The Physics of Star Trek).
  • At the start of chapter two Eleya is playing Commander Marissa Allyn in a holonovel adaptation of Star Carrier: Earth Strike by William H. Keith, Jr..
  • In chapter six, Tess's and JG Park's "Conn, you gotta give me an Ivan." "Always wanted to try one!" exchange is borrowed from the pilot of Firefly.
  • In chapter seven, Eleya takes a page out of Jack O'Neill (from the Stargate SG-1 episode "The First Commandment"), demanding of an admin petty officer who's being an Obstructive Bureaucrat if it says "Captain" anywhere on her uniform.
  • Among the ships that make up the Marduk Carrier Battle Group is the USS Ivanova.
• "Frostbite":
  • Dalsh Ruul thinks his painstick is very pretty. "The design. it's functional."
  • Tess is well aware that high orbit is the highest ground there is.
• The Headhunt:
  • There's a reference to a Noodle Incident where some rogue Starfleet officers with a Section 31 obsession broke into Facility 4028 to extract an ally. This is a reference to the Foundry series Star Trek: Allegiance.
  • The C.O. of the USS Brisbane is named Sumati Chennapragada, the viewpoint character of a Star Trek lemon titled "A Bad Day for Shore Leave" (which we won't link due to it being massively NSFW).
• "Last Rights":
  • The first line is Fallout's customary "War. War never changes." opener, albeit applied more literally than Fallout usually does (the following Opening Monologue talks about the necessity of surface armies even in an era of starships that can glass planets, rather than exploring human nature and fictional history).
  • The same monologue borrows a line from TV Tropes, specifically How to Invade an Alien Planet.
    "You can bomb it, you can strafe it, you can cover it with poison, you can turn it into glass, but you don't own it unless your army's on it and the other guy's isn't."
  • The author apparently couldn't resist throwing in a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference when Senior Chief Athezra is hit by Vaadwaur shrapnel.
    Athezra: Cap. How bad is it?
    Eleya: Just a flesh wound! Where's that damned medic!
• Peace Forged in Fire:
  • To the Stargate SG-1 episode "Fair Game" in the In Media Res opening when Jaleh explains how the negotiations went south early:
    "Well, apparently we said hello, insulted each other, and broke for recess."
  • Sarsachen refers to a Republic intelligence source codenamed CARDINAL.
  • Omek'ti'kallan quotes the Twenty-Ninth Word of Odo'Ital as "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy--no more, no less."
  • One of Morgan's lines to her command crew when she briefs them:
    "I don't care if they say your mother was a fvai and your father smelled of eigen berries, you will not throw the first punch."
  • D'trel's rant in part 1 borrows lines from Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings and Words Of Radiance.
  • When Morgan complains that Klingon bloodwine tastes horrible, Tovan tr'Khev tells her that "the ale here tastes like a mugato peed in battery acid." Slight tweak of a line from the Castle episode "Hell Hath No Fury".
• Reality Is Fluid:
  • The author's notes state that Professor Atani Dukat was inspired by Emperor Turhan from the Babylon 5 episode "The Coming of Shadows", inasmuch as they're both high-ranking members of an enemy culture who want to mend fences by apologizing for their fathers. Dukat has better luck than Turhan did, though.
  • One of the alternate timelines detected by the Schrodinger's Butterfly sensor array is the Star Trek Novel Verse, as evidenced by Deep Space 9 having been replaced by a Federation-built station on the same site.
  • Dul'krah, the Bajor's security chief, is said to have made the saboteur confess by glaring at him until he gave it up, in reference to Teal'c's favored method of interrogation in Stargate SG-1.
• Reimagined Enterprise: Besides the internal ones to Star Trek itself, there are others.
  • Captain Hwai is a fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and compares the pig-like Tellarites to Zhu Bajie from Journey to the West, for instance.
  • One of the ships visibly trapped within the gravitic anomaly in "Becalmed" appears to be a TIE Fighter, and later in the background of an image on Hebitia / Cardassia we see Goa'uld Death Gliders and the TARDIS.
  • Some members of the turtle-like Chelon race from Rigel wear coloured bandanna masks, and get code named after Renaissance painters by Rajwal. In a subversion, none of the painters' names he picks are those of the actual Ninja Turtles.
• Red Fire, Red Planet:
  • There's a mention of a freighter called the SS Ayanami, skippered by a Captain Ikari.
  • "Case Zulu" as an "enemies inbound, This Is Not a Drill" message is a reference to the Honor Harrington books.
  • When Norigom mouths off to General K'Bor, Brokosh borrows a line from the pilot of Firefly:
    Brokosh: Norigom, you will keep a civil tongue in that mouth when speaking to a superior officer or I will sew it shut. Do we have an understanding between us?
    Norigom: You don’t pay me to talk pretty. Just because—
    Brokosh: NORIGOM!
    Norigom: (meekly) Yes, Captain.
  • There's a MACO petty officer in chapter four named Gordon Freeman. The liner notes say that it was either that or "Django Freeman" and the author thought "Gordon" was funnier.
• "Shakedown Shenanigans":
  • When Bynam test-fires one of the impulse engines it lets off a high-pitched squeal that he calls the "baby's cry", saying it'll go away by the end of the shakedown cruise. This is borrowed from The Black Fleet Crisis: Before the Storm.
  • At the end of the fic, pleased with the Bajor's performance, Eleya strokes the wall and whispers, "That's my girl. That's my good girl." Borrowed from the end of the Firefly pilot, where Kaylee did that after the dramatic escape from the Reavers.
• The Wrong Reflection:
  • Eleya has posters on her bedroom wall for The Fifth Element and Mass Effect, and she ropes Gaarra into watching the former with her.
  • Riker tells Eleya he has "good news, bad news, and ... indifferent news", in reference to Rowan Atkinson's sketch "Pink Tights and Plenty of Props".
  • In keeping with Star Trek tradition of naming Starfleet shuttles after space scientists, Eleya's shuttle Shoemaker is named for astronomers Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker.
  • At the tail end of chapter 2 the fleet goes into a string of "X ship, standing by" messages, including Gray Leader and Gold Leader (the Peregrine fighter wings). Lampshaded when Eleya, who likes Earth sci-fi, comments:
    “Please nobody say ‘lock s-foils in attack position’.”
  • The comm chatter during the fleet battle in chapter three contains lines borrowed from A New Hope, Transformers, and Top Gun.
  • A double one to Stargate SG-1. Mirror Gul Antos remarks to Eleya regarding Dal Kanril, her mirror universe counterpart, that "I’ve been telling Morag for years he has a very insubordinate subordinate." Eleya openly admits that she's even worse.^* In reference to a conversation Richard Dean Anderson had with General Michael E. Ryan, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, when the latter appeared As Himself in "Prodigy". RDA asked Ryan if he had colonels as irreverent as Jack O'Neill; Ryan replied he had worse.
  • To the Mass Effect fanfic The Translation in Blood, when Eleya manages to get Dal Kanril to snap to attention by acting like a drill instructor, and Dal Kanril responds, "Hey, that's cheating."
• "To Absent Friends": To Jayne and Book's conversation in the Firefly episode "Objects in Space", when Biri has trouble believing that T'Var's a virgin.
  Biri: What, never?
  T'Var: No.
  Biri: "Not ever", never?

• In Clash of the Elements there is one to Super Mario Bros. Z in Chapter 45 of Part 1 More specifically, the act of having the Star Spirits appear and using their energy to power-up Mario and the other heroes, a concept which, while it didn't get to appear in the actual series, at least got shown in the intro. Thankfully, the author gives Alvin-Earthworm full credit for the idea instead of claiming it as his own.

• The End of Ends:
  • Too many to count, though for starters, the opening line came from Corpse Bride.
  • As the destruction of the universe nears, Logan makes a reference to Edgar's "It won't matter... in a few minutes, you won't even be matter." line from the first Men In Black film.

• In Courtney and the Violin of Despair, one chapter begins with a verse from the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Patience.
• Legacy contains references to the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Utopia Limited, a song from which is the basis for Trent's tribute song. The same chapter also has the allusive title, "Back To the Present".

• In the JAG fanfic Abyss of the Soul, Marine Staff Sergeant Jonathan Scott Beckett had faked his death and was living under the alias "Sam Archer" when he was arrested.
• In Ringshadow's Slice of Life Star Fox fanfic Butterfly Photographs, Slippy programmed an AI into his pickup truck which has the ability to drive it. Its avatar is a face on a video screen, and its name is Max. At one point a character asks if Max is in one of the stages of rampancy in reaction to Max's slightly odd behaviour.
• Decks Fall Everyone Dies. Examples: "Reverse card open" is a shout-out to the MAD videos that feature Kaiba repeating that line. Yami's line calling dice "rolling bones" (astragali) is a shout-out to the manga.
• Disgaea: Jewel of the gods at the very begining has already gave ones to One Piece, Bleach, Dragon Ball, Soul Eater, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Chrono Trigger, Beyblade, and Metal Gear.
• In the Elemental Chess Trilogy, Ed and Winry Elric have a son named Lucas; the author chose the name after Luke from the Professor Layton games.
• In Mary Mary? Quite Contrary!, there are many shout outs made in the "Sparkly Shiny Alchemist" story. For one thing, the protagonist's full name is Christiana Sophia Maysalee Thomas^note Maysalee is the name of Madge's aunt, for those who don't know. And there's this quote from her "bro" Jeff:
  "I'm a mog. Half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!"
  • From the same author, we have Fullmetal Eds, in which Ed exclaims "Holy *** on a ** sandwich!"
• Stray is full of these. The story's Arc Words are an obvious nod to Planescape: Torment, Snake has a dog named Kaworu (Otacon chose the name), and there are more subtle references to Watchmen and Kafka.
• Tiberium Wars has more shout-outs than you can shake a stick at. Shout-outs range from Snow Crash to Mass Effect to Metal Gear to Generation Kill, with a hefty frequency of references to Firefly and Warhammer 40,000.
  • By the same author, Forward has as many shout-outs, ranging from references to Mass Effect, Portal, BioShock and even Team Fortress 2. There's also multiple ActorAllusions to Summer Glau's roles in The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Nathan Fillion's role in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Some of these are extremely subtle — for example, the Portal reference is almost impossible to spot unless you're looking for a Stealth Pun.
• W.I.T.C.H. Fanfic Kieva Lynn's Season Three features C'thulu in one episode. The episode title "The Telemarketing Call of C'thulu" is a play on the title of Real Ghostbusters episode "The Collect Call of C'thulu." They even beat him in much the same way.
• Lord of the Land of Fire is prone to lacing the plots of his stories with references to things like World War II or The Book of Revelation, among other things.
• Dragon Age fic Middle Of Nowhere has three in its very short first chapter alone: the fic's title, Larry Niven's novel ''The Mote In God's Eye'', and Lethal Weapon. There's a fourth one if you count the direct reference to Life on Mars. And they keep coming....