Shout Out / Metal Slug

Metal Slug

• One of the POWs in stage 3 is named Pvt. Joestar.

Metal Slug 2/X

• To Independence Day; the mothership is destroyed by a lone pilot who flies into the Wave-Motion Gun's core, just like in the movie.
• The Martians sometimes land from the sky in patterns reminiscent of the Space Invaders.
• The spider mech Dragon Nosuke in the third level of Metal Slug 2/X is an outright parody of the Metal Gear.
• The Iron Lizard itself is a direct reference to Lupin the Third.
• Hyakutaro Ichimonji's name is a play on Hayato Ichimonji.

Metal Slug 3

• In level 2 the boss drops a series of large black slabs with writing on them that some might say looks like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which in Metal Slug 3D it's outright called "Monolith".
• Mission 3 is one huge shout out to Metal Gear, starting out with a stealth mission and security cameras as the player proceeds into a secret robot factory.
• There is an enemy on level 4 that looks like the brain-eating bug from Starship Troopers.
• In one of mission 4's secret paths there's enemies that look like Nausicaa's Ohmu. They are not as benevolent as in the movie.
• The meat eating plants look like the evil plants from Little Shop of Horrors.
• The final level features small alien grunts who bear a striking resemblance to the tripod aliens from the musical version of War of the Worlds, which are themselves based on the description from the novel. (Yes, it did have a description for them. The only-showing-the-Tripods bit came from later adaptations)
  • This appears to be an ongoing theme with Japanese-designed Martians. Google around.
• The final boss looks similar to E.T., though appearance is about where the likeness stops.
• Also in the final level, the Martians have elite guards who look like Daleks of Doctor Who fame.
• The BGM for the first level is known as Blue Water Fangs a.k.a. The Island of Doctor Moreau.
• The submarine paths are most likely a reference to earlier game In the Hunt, right down to the part where you have to dodge lava. Another In The Hunt reference can be found in MS2, the China stage, where you have to avoid missiles coming up from the ground: in ITH the submarine had to endure a similar stunt. The visuals are pretty similar, too.
• The Slug Mariner is essentially a chibi Thunderbird 4 from Thunderbirds.
  • The Slug Mariner's color scheme is one to In the Hunt.
  • Also, the Slug Mariner looks suspiciously (and ironically) based on a little HELICOPTER (complete with vulcan cannon,but not placed the same way as the aforementioned Slug) from Battle Chopper, another game by Irem.
• The Tarman zombie is lifted wholesale from The Return of the Living Dead.
• The Martian flying saucers are cute versions of the ones◊ claimed by the ufologist George Adamski to come from Venus back in The '50s.
• Maybe it's a coincidence, but the final stage's climax is similar to the ending part of the film Invaders From Mars (the 1986 remake): soldiers storming a Martian base that becomes more fleshy the more they get to the core, the bizarre rounded forms of the Martian grunts and the fact that in both the invasion is masterminded by an ugly Brain Monster.

Metal Slug 5

• The Ptolemaic Army is said to be modeled after the Brotherhood of Nod.
• The name of the first boss is "Metal Rear".

Metal Slug 7 / Metal Slug XX

• The boss of the fifth mission, "The Union", bears a HUGE resemblance to the Compiler, the 4th boss of R-Type. Both are made of three separate parts, each with a weak core that the player had to shoot. See the similarity here◊ (the cores are circled). Not surprising, as the founders of Metal Slug broke off from Irem, the company who created R-Type.

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