Shout Out / Megas XLR

Megas XLR is a show that proudly wears its giant robot heritage on its chassis, even as it's tearing it to shreds. So it's no surprise it's filled with references to the media it lovingly eviscerates.

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Anime/Manga

• The Glorft mothership transforms SDF-1-style in the first season finale.
• Speaking of the SDF-1, Coop fires the Reflex Cannon from Megas' chest in "Viva Las Megas".
  • Also in "Viva Las Megas", the elevator at the beginning bears a strong resemblance to one in AKIRA.
• There is a mannequin in episode 11 that looks exactly like one that appears in Macross: The Movie.
• The S-Force:
  • They're basically Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (more specifically, to the Gatchaman English dub Battle of the Planets, hence why the small pilot speaks in clicks, and named after the second dub G-Force: Guardians of Space), with Super Sentai combining animal robots.
  • Some of the voices for the S-Force include Ronnie Schell and Alan Young who were two of the voice actors for Battle Of The Planets. Also Scott Innes who usually other Darrins and impersonates Casey Kasem's roles in animation, voices a S-Force member that sounds like Casey Kasem (who also worked on BotP).
  • Besides the Power Zorps being based on Voltron, one of the team members is an Expy of Hunk. Their combined form is also reminiscent of Brave Series designs.
  • S-Force enemy Zarek. Purple outfit? Check. Large stylized cat ears, high collar, badass cape? Check. Big ego? Check. The guy's an expy of Berg Katze of Gatchaman, known as Zoltar in Battle Of The Planets and Galactor in Guardians of Space.
• And the Ultra Chicks in the episode of the same name are clearly the Sailor Moon girls, complete with ridiculously long Transformation Sequences. And an additional special ability to boot!
• Megas has the original Wave-Motion Gun, complete with the Yamato's bow in its chest.
• In the opening credits, Megas dives onto something sporting a Gundam's crest.
  • Speaking of that, a large amount of the design aesthetic to Evil Coop's army from "Rearview Mirror, Mirror" takes cues from the Zeon empire, from robots that look like they wear gas masks, to his own mech being a red, heavily-modified version of the Sazabi from Char's Counterattack.
• Captain Warlock is so obviously not based off of Captain Harlock. The name alone is one of the names Harlock's gotten stuck with in dubs.
• A planet of sentient robots from "Coop d'Etat" feature lookalikes of Mazinger Z and Brave Raideen.
• Mazinger also gets a shout-out when Coop hits the "This Better Then" button - it launches a Rocket Punch with the twist that twin axe-blades sprout out of the side of the robot's fist after launch. That's Mazinger Z's trademark "Iron Cutter" attack.
• In addition to Star Trek, the series finale is also a giant Shout-Out to Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, with Evil Coop's Mecha #13 bearing a strong resemblance to Sazabi with an army of Zaku lookalikes. For more Gundam goodness, Evil Kiva's mecha has back extensions reminiscent of the V2 Gundam's Wings of Light emitters.
• In "Universal Remote", when Coop declares he'll just "hit him with something bigger," Megas folds out an arsenal that looks just like a Destroid Monster, right down the the quad shoulder cannons.
• Shortly afterward, Coop turns the Megas' heater up to "DANG!", which causes the robot to link its arms together at the wrists and retract both hands to create a flamethrower — just like Combattler V used to do.
• During Coop's fight with S-Force, Megas sends their mecha flying with a guitar.
• Episode 6's main villain is a Planet Eater that looks quite similar to Remina, complete with its similar surface, appendages, and mouth. And as usual, Coop dishes out some Nightmare Retardant by blowing it up by feeding it a supercharged torpedo full of poprocks and soda.
• In "Space Booty", Coop tearing open Megas's chest to grab the horn then throwing it into Warlock's ship looks like a nod to Noriko ripping out the Degeneracy reactor of GunBuster.
• Ep 10 "Junk In The Trunk" features a Dream Sequence were Goat thinks about getting his own bot and his bot in the Sequence apes off the style of various Mazinger Z Franchise shows Fem Bot Mechas in appearance.
• A few times, Megas puts his hands together just like Voltron to form a blazing (energy) sword. On time, so do all of the bad guys he's fighting.

Transformers

• Megas' original head unit looked almost exactly like Soundwave's.
• It's seen with the Autobot Matrix of Leadership in its chest — which Coop promptly fills with processed cheese. The cheese, incidentally, comes to life.
• "Ice Ice Megas" had an army of robots resembling green-colored Shockwaves, while their leader looked like Onslaught, leader of the Combaticon unit.
• "Thanksgiving Throwdown" has Coop use a wrist-mounted buzzsaw, much like Hot Rod's from the 1986 movie.
• The villain Skalgar looks like a miniature Unicron. This is obviously intentional, as the episode never misses a chance to snark about his lacking height and plans for universal destruction.
• Speaking of Unicron, how about the planet-sized monster from "TV Dinner"?
• A yellow Volkswagen Beetle appears in practically every episode, sometimes TWICE in the same episode - usually getting smashed somehow.
• The control unit of Mecha-Megas, despite being silver instead of black, is otherwise an obvious nod to Nemesis Prime.
• The alien planet from "Coop D'Etat", which features Peter Cullen and Frank Welker as guest voices, bears a striking resemblance to Cybertron.
• From the same episode, the leader of the robots who gives Coop the Metal Maiden sword is a dark blue recolor of Alpha Trion.
• The S-Force's Combining Mecha, the S-Force Super Ultra Dimensional Magno Extreme Robotoid Power Zorp, has Starscream's head.

Kaiju movies

• You could make a drinking game out of the Godzilla shout outs in "Breakout".
• The movie monster Bugra shrieks like Mothra and vaguely resembles Megalon.
• The Glorft send a silver Megas clone to attack the city. It makes a roar like Mechagodzilla. Its head appears to be a modified long-nose truck cab, with an opening mouth that makes it look like Kiryu (the Millennium Series Mechagodzilla). It's referred to as Mecha-Megas. Because Coop is dumb. In the end credits, Megas is walking out into the sea. Several Godzilla movies end with Godzilla doing this.

Video Games

• Episode 5 had the gang visit a ringworld with hostile, ancient life forms living on it. Sounds an awful lot like Halo, doesn't it?
  • Or, for that matter, a Larry Niven story.
  • The second episode, which features Bruce Campbell as the villain, takes place on a space station that looks suspiciously like High Charity.
• Most of Megas' controls are rewired video game controllers, from a Playstation gamepad down to Atari joysticks. The "manual control" backup is DanceDanceRevolution. It also involves a pair of Power Gloves.
• "Breakout" showcases expies of many video game consoles, including but not limited to: NES, Sega Genesis, Sony Playstation, and Nintendo Gamecube. Also, the title of the episode is a reference to an old arcade game of the same name.
• Another episode features a super mode controller that looks like an N64 controller with lots more buttons.
• At the end of "Bad Guy", the leader of S-Force is playing Rampage.
• At the gaming convention in Vegas, Goat plays a knockoff of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
• Megas even throws a Hadouken at the invincible R.E.G.I.S. mk. V.
• The Transformers planet has a holy relic called the Flame of Azeroth.
• Ender's weapon is Ivy's sword.

And the rest

• The Bruce Campbell-voiced villain, who's part Vince McMahon, part Marvel Comics villain M.O.D.O.K., and pilots a mech that is a fusion of Elvis and Ash Williams.
  Magnanimous: Groovy.
• Said villain tells Coop "Let's not argue about who tried to kill who."
• And in Episode 2 he directly quotes The Professional.
  Magnanimous: Send in everyone.
  Drone: Which one?
  Magnanimous: EEEEVERYONE!
• In "Ultra Chicks" Jamie was imagined to be like Ming The Merciless from Flash Gordon.
• Evil Future Coop's army appears to travel through time via Stargate.
• Season 2 episode 3 had Coop flipping through channels on his monitor, and it briefly flashes Al's Toy Barn with a man in a chicken suit on the ad.◊
• "Thanksgiving Throwdown": "BEST. PARADE. EVER!"
  • The marching band plays the "Liberty Bell March", the theme song of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • Two of the floats appear to be fruit with cartoony faces, as a pastiche of VeggieTales.
  • Coop's idea of a cool parade float is a fire-spewing War Rig.
  • Two of the balloons are called the Super Favio Brothers, but are colored like Huffer and Pipes.
  • There's a balloon that looks like Sonic but Jamie and Coop mention it's an aardvark from a kid's show they hate. After becoming infected, it mutates into something resembling Ganon and uses a Spindash to attack the Megas.
  • Jamie dressed as The Joker with two palette-swapped Harley Quinn assistants in an imagine spot.
    Joker!Jamie: "Hubba hubba hubba, who do ya trust?!"
• The first season finale features four separate shout-outs to The Blues Brothers: the "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner; and a car chase through the Glorft mothership set to a blues-rock tune, complete with a dispatcher saying the line "Use of unnecessary force in capturing the Earthers has been approved."; "This place has everything..."; and finally, one Glorft mook declaring his feelings to another as death is inevitable (although hate instead of love).
• T-Bot is the daringest, the uncaringest, the most belt-wearingest Mr. T parody in all of fiction! Specifically, to Clubber Lang in Rocky III.
  • Perhaps not coincidentally, T-Bot's name is similar to "T-Bob", the robotic babysitter from M.A.S.K.
• In the pilot, Coop disintegrates a shed using a digitizer weapon like Lord Dread's robot soldiers have in Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.
• One episode is basically an episode of The Prisoner with the Title directly referencing A Clockwork Orange. But with robots. Megas is Number 12.
• The two part finale "Rearview Mirror, Mirror" is basically the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror" in terms of title and premise.
• The secondary command bridge is a shout-out to the battle bridge of the Enterprise-D.
• And another classic Star Trek reference:
  Magnanimous: It's about hurting you, and I wish to go on hurting you.
• In addition to the Gatchaman, Voltron, and sentai homages that fly left and right in "Bad Guy", Jax's unintelligible alien speech noises are possibly a nod to Copper Kid from SilverHawks, or Keyop's verbal tics added to Battle of the Planets due to Lip Lock.
• Speaking of "Bad Buy"...
  Coop: You think you're bad? You ain't no-! POW!
• One of the ending gags with the thrash pickup community service was taken from an episode of MTV's Downtown.
• If you keep an eye out, quite a few people from Downtown make an appearance, including the guy who ran the comic shop, and the nerd Wedge. You know, the one who was missing the Laid figure.
  • And of course, Goat. He's actually meant to be the same character, right down to his voice actor.
• Coop's main rival in the hot dog eating contest is an Expy of real-life world eating champ Kobayashi Takeru.
• The alien huntress Darklos from "DMV" seems to be an homage to Predator, only, you know, a hot alien chick and lacking the face-pussy.
• Jamie: "Note to self: when crazy space chicks ask if you're an ace robot pilot, YOU SAY NO!!"
• The head and torso of RECR look an awful lot like the Martian ships from The War Of The Worlds.
• Megas has buttons for Cruise Control, "Cruise Out-Of-Control", "Cruisin' USA", and "Kelly Crews" (one of the show's producers).
• "All I ever wanted was a Mega Slush. Just one Mega Slush. But you wouldn't give it to me."
• The premise and name of the episode "Terminate Her" both reference The Terminator.
  • Also, in "Rearview Mirror, Mirror part 1", someone is briefly seen using a hollowed out television as a fireplace like in the future flashback from The Terminator.
  • "Buggin' the System" has the Bug Queen getting crushed by a hydraulic press in the same manner as the T-100. Jamie's Bond One-Liner isn't as awesome, though.
• "Rearview Mirror, Mirror part 1" has a scene where Coop realizes he is on Earth. He falls to his knees upon noticing a lumberjack figure and yells "You maniacs! You blew it all up!". This is clearly Planet of the Apes (1968).
• In episode 12 Jamie has an imagine spot where he's Emperor and Coop says the line "You are the Duke. A! Number 1!"
• Appalachian Dueling Banjos.
• Another from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, while flying away as fast as possible from an impending explosion, Jamie asks "We're not gonna make it, are we."
• The villain at the beginning of "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Coop" is a dead ringer for Baron Karza, the Big Bad of the Micronauts.
  • From the same episode, The Blue Danube plays while Coop fixes the Moon in space during the credits.
• Besides the Japanese Tokusatsu references, the S-Force also riff on the American adaptations. Their mentor and leader Targon is a Zordon Expy with bits of Professor X thrown in. The Power Zorps are also obviously named after the staple Humongous Mecha Zords.

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