Shout Out / Horace

• The game's intro is based on the Thames Television ident from the 1970s and '80s.
• Mr. Deck refers to Horace as a "yellow bastard".
• Horace is dressed up as Charlie Brown of the Peanuts franchise for Halloween, and is confused when the other party-goers keep saying “It’s the Great Pumpkin” to him. This is a reference to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
• Heather watches George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) on the TV in Horace’s room after the Halloween party.
• Horace wonders why Mr. Silton did not double in size after consuming magic mushrooms. This is a reference to the Super Mushroom item from Super Mario. In Mario’s 2D outings (as well as in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World) the power-up transforms Mario into Super Mario, doubling his height and providing him with an extra hit point.
• When Horace watches an old tape in the laboratories beneath the house, André the Giant is on in the "strange sport".
• When the Old Man dies and Horace shuts down the cutscene at first looks like A Space Odyssey's Stargate sequence, then morphs into a game of OutRun and then Space Harrier. OutRun is also the inspiration for one of the playable mini-games at the arcade.
• Certain slippery walls (first found in chapter 4) cannot be walked up, and must be repeatedly jumped up instead. If Horace stops jumping, he will start sliding down, with one hand above his head on the wall as he looks off in the opposite direction. Sound familiar?
• “The Old Woman” demonstrates some nanobots’ ability to form a controlling intelligence around an object by playing music to a toaster, which causes it to dance. This is likely a reference to a similar scene in the film Ghostbusters II.
  • The franchise exists in this world, but is named "Ghost Bastards", as seen on one of the tapes that Horace finds. Also, one of the playable coin-ops at the arcade is a Pac-Man homage, but inverted: the player character is a ghost who needs to "slime" the whole maze and the four Ghostbusters take the place of the ghosts from the original.
• The logo on the manual of the Atlas Gloves closely resembles that of the Japanese game developer Atlus.
• Mr. Silton’s bandmates, Mr. Preston and Mr. Logan, are named in reference to the titular characters of the Bill & Ted series.
  • When they go with Horace to find “the Professor” the only clean clothes they have are their Halloween costumes, which are the outfits worn by Bill and Ted in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
  • Similarly to their namesakes, the two find themselves on a time traveling adventure.
  • At one point Horace narrates about how the two spent literally ten minutes saying “Whoa” and “Dude”.
• PSA posters featuring Lou Albano and Bob Hoskins in their respective Super Mario costumes can be spotted.
• Mrs. Silton describes Mainton as “a wretched hive of scum and villainy”. This is a reference to A New Hope, in which Ben Kenobi described the town of Mos Eisley in this way. In fact, one can enter "Mos Pricey" here, which will result in Horace being told "they don't serve his kind".
• The robot in the train station ticket office bears a strong resemblance to the titular main character of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.
• Mr. Logan and Mr. Preston have this exchange full of movie references:
  Mr. Logan: I suppose it’s like we’re in that excellent movie.
  Mr. Preston: Back to the Future?
  Mr. Logan: No. That ‘Excellent’ movie.
  Mr. Preston: Back to the Future 2? Time Bandits? Time Cop. Terminator. Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day! Groundhog Day?
• A storage room in the BCT building is filled with famous movie props including Marty McFly's Hoverboard and Self Lacing Nike Air Mags from Back to the Future Part II, Jason Voorhees's hockey mask from the Friday the 13th series, the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Wilson the volleyball from Cast Away, and the Zoltar machine from Big.
• The BCT building's garage is filled with vehicles including the Bluth Company Stair Car (although the Bluth Company logo has been replace by the BCT's) from Arrested Development, Herbie the Love Bug from The Love Bug, the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard, and K.I.T.T. From Knight Rider.
• Chapter 6 is all about taking a character outside of prison and its title card features a box of Rita Hayworth posters, which can be seen inside the prison itself too.
• Alice's House is full of numerous references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
  • The first section of Alice's has a tiny door Horace is too large to fit through, a cake that upon consumed makes Horace grow large, and a bottle that when drank from shrinks Horace to the right size to fit through the door.
  • Another section is a cross between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Super Mario Bros.. You run and jump in a grassy area with giant mushrooms, Mario-esque music playing, enemies that can be defeated by jumping on their heads, and mushrooms and invincibility stars to collect. The enemies are comprised of Alice references, including a white rabbit, red and white rose bushes, and a giant Cheshire Cat head that pursues the player, destroying the stage as it goes.
  • The hedgehog croquet balls and flamingo croquet mallets are of course another Alice reference. An additional reference can also be found here, as the before-mentioned hedgehogs have blue quills and are outfitted with red shoes, likely in reference to Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • The games in the Queen-Of-Hearts rush area are derived from the ZX Spectrum console. "Catty" and "Go Snowboarding" in particular are based on two halves of a game that starred a character also named Horace.
• The Mansion arc is a mashup of Jet Set Willy (Inanimate object enemies plus names of rooms being announced when you enter) and Super Metroid (Four bosses plus an end boss who is a giant Brain in a Jar).
• The old women appearing in the washing dishes minigame seem to be The Golden Girls.
• Both Steptoe and Son and Sanford and Son show up running scrapyards.
• The town of Sitcombe lives up to its name as it is inhabited by the casts of Fawlty Towers, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Seinfeld and Friends.
• The Central Lower Staircase in the mansion has as stuffed animal trophies non-anthropomorphized versions of Zool, Lemmings, James Pond, Sonic the Hedgehog, Brian The Lion and Superfrog.
• Falling onto the TV stage from the upper rafters in the BCT building can lead Horace in the middle of the Frost-Nixon interview or an animated segment from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• The Solomon Automation lab stage has a puzzle where Horace has to redirect a laser beam by rotating some mirrors and deflecting the beam on what seems to be a black prism. Given that there are seven mirrors and that they are coded with the colors of the rainbow, the whole setup can be a nod to the iconic cover art of The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.