STRAFE has numerous shout outs to influential First-Person Shooter games as well as well-known games on the Indie scene.
Shout outs to other first-person shooter games
- The appearance of the first area of the game, the Icarus spaceship, is highly reminiscent of the Ishimura spaceship from Dead Space.
- There's a playable Easter egg in level 1-2 called Luftenstein 3D, based on Wolfenstein 3-D with the aesthetics of the WW2 plane themed indie 2D shooter Luftrausers.
- The monorail trains that take you from one level to the next in Area 3: The Burbs is based on the monorail train from the beginning of Half-Life.
- Athena's second level has a secret minigame parodying Environmental Narrative Games. And then it all gets flipped on its end come the ending: the narrator is Duke Nukem, as indicated by his baritone voice, references to his famous quotes (such noting he's out of gum when inspecting an empty wrapper), and his enamorment for the stripper at the end of the sequence.
- The pre-game ship you choose a gun in has a secret minigame which is a parody of Chex Quest, where you must pizza ingredients for a sentient Totino's Pizza Roll and use toy-like weapons to fight through levels packed full of weird enemies.
Shout outs to non-shooter games
- There's a secret room right before the start of The Burbs that has a picture of the Dopefish painted on a wall in it.
- In level 3-3, there's an SNES-style console on which you can play a Mode 7-esque third-person shooter based on the indie game Enter the Gungeon.
- The achievement for beating the minigame "Trappy Mine" from the second world is called "Mine Crafted".
- The "Speed Runner" achievement has a picture of the protagonist running with a rainbow trail following them, a-la BIT.TRIP.
Others
- Shoot wooden crates, and piles of assorted items will pop out. One possible item that can appear from crates is a Nintendo64 cartridge with a Strafe logo.
