Next to references to William Shakespeare, (if not surpassing it) are the Shout Outs to Norse Mythology as a whole. Maybe because everything sounds badass, cool or just awesome by naming someone/something after a Norse deity such as Thor, Odin or Loki.
Keep in mind that if several people or things in the same work are all named in reference to Norse Mythology, it's Theme Naming, not a whole lot of shout-outs.
See also Religious and Mythological Theme Naming.
There's a huge list
in That Other Wiki.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, after losing the Berserker Heracles card to Illya, Beatrice replaces it with a new Berserker class card based on Thor, granting her access to all of his abilities, as well as use of Mjölnir. Or, at least, that's what the heroes are led to believe. It's eventually revealed that the Berserker card is not Thor, but rather his son, Magni, who not only has all of the abilities of Thor, but is also able to lift Mjölnir without a need for the belt Megingjörð and the gauntlet Járngreipr, as well as lacking Thor weakness to poison.
- As its title would imply, Record of Ragnarok has a heavy focus on Norse myth. The story follows the Valkyrie Brunhilde, alongside her fellow Valkyries, in her mission to save humanity from extinction at the hands of the gods through the creation of Ragnarok, a tournament in which 13 human warriors battle 13 gods, with the human's victory meaning their continued existence. Among the gods fighting in the tournament, Thor acts as the first to participate, being portrayed as a battle-loving man whose lack of real challenge has caused him to feel unfulfilled. Thor's opponent is the Chinese general Lü Bu, with the battle ending in Thor's victory, giving the gods their first win in the tournament. Among other Norse gods, Odin and Loki are also set to participate in the tournament.
- Slayers has "Ragna Blade" spell. Appropriately enough, it invokes the power of the creator deity living in primal Chaos and as such can harm or kill anything in the world, including Gods and Dark Lords providing "lesser" spells of White Magic and Black Magic. The incantation itself fits well too.
- .hack//Liminality mentions the The Ring of the Nibelung from Wagner's opera as the source of the power of the World.
- The Galactic Empire in Legend of the Galactic Heroes uses plenty of Norse Mythology, from given names to the names of starships and planets. Their capital planet is named after Odin, and characters repeatedly talk about heading to Valhalla after they die in battle.
- Elbaf, the island of giants in One Piece, has so far been implied to have predominant Norse trappings; there's a gigantic tree in the center of the island, and its ruler is named Loki (Loki being a giant is accurate to the myths, but he's probably not meant to be that Loki, given that the Blackbeard in this world is not Edward Teach).
- The Ring of the Neibelung plays a prominent role in Captain Harlock.
- The Goddesses of Ah! My Goddess, Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld, were based on the Norns, with Belldandy being a corruption of Verthandi.
Comic Books
- Thor himself is a prominent superhero in the Marvel Universe, and is usually a member of The Avengers.
- Putting aside that Hellboy has probably met creatures from Norse mythology somewhere along the line, in The Storm and Fury he gets mistaken for both Thor (on account of his hammer-like fist) and Odin (as he's recently given Baba Yaga his eye).
- For a follow up, he battles a dragon on a field called Vigrid, where Ragnarok is prophesied to take place. Ragnarok is also the name of the project that brought him into our reality.
Fan Works
- The Borderworld is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction series that takes heavy cues from Norse mythology compared to the show's Greek analogues. The draconequui that exists in this series particularly seem to be very Norse based, as they are the ones who gave many of the Nine Realms (where the Borderworld takes place in) their Norse names.
Literature
- Aesir: Cross Wars is an Affectionate Parody of it.
- Janine in Dinoverse names a Quetzalcoatlus that she thinks of as a "tricky sucker" Loki.
- Discworld:
- There's a trickster god called Hoki, who was banished from Dunmanifestin for "pulling the old exploding mistletoe trick". The gods wage war against the Ice Giants, and the final battle between them is the Teatime of the Gods.
- The blind 113-year-old (actually 111, but that's so juvenile...) Miss Eumenides Treason and her ravens parallel Odin and his ravens Hugin and Munin: both pairs of aves are used by their respective owners for vision (For Odin it involves Hugin and Munin covering the entire world and Midgard during their flight, then reporting what they see to him. For Miss Treason it's more straightforward), and one raven rests on either shoulder of both characters.
- In Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver, Brynhildr is summoned as the Holy Grail War's Lancer class Servant. This version of the character portrays her as a yandere whose signature weapon, her gigantic spear, is able to do more damage based on how much she loves the opponent, with her having particular affection for anyone who possesses traits that remind her of Sigurd.
- Tolkien's Legendarium
- Gandalf's habit of traveling in a grey cloak and staff, disguised as an ordinary old man, to test certain people's hospitality, is a direct reference to Odin, who did this kind of thing exactly in Norse sagas.
- Many of the dwarves in The Hobbit have Norse-derived names, although they're named for Dwarves, not for gods. Gandalf is also the name of a Dwarf in Norse Mythology, though this name is given to the wizard in the original draft Gandalf was the name given to Thorin.
- In John Myers Myers' Silverlock, the tramp freighter Shandon is traveling on at the very beginning is mentioned in passing to have been named the "Naglfar". When it sinks, his adventure begins, and it's the first of dozens, if not hundreds of references to literature and mythology scattered through the book.
- The redheaded giant Alanna befriends in In the Hand of the Goddess is named Big Thor.
- A character all but stated outright to be Odin appears in The Dresden Files:
- Donar Vadderungnote runs a mercenary company called Monoc Securities (which name itself referencing Odin) whose employees are hinted to be Valkyries; his office building has portals to strange realms on each floor, referencing Yggdrasil, and he has two raven-haired secretaries named Huginn and Muninn (Harry calls them "birdbrains"). Oh, and he has an eyepatch, and is a powerful magic user.
- Kris Kringle- i.e., Santa Claus himself in Cold Days gives Harry a lecture about Becoming the Mask before winking at him hard enough that one of his eyes seems to disappear. In future books he makes absolutely no bones about the fact that he is the same guy as Donar.
- American Gods has Mr. Wednesday, an American transplant of Odin, as well as Loki, while the main character, "Shadow", is heavily implied to be Baldr.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: As a way that Our Orcs Are Different, they have a Warrior Heaven called "Gronyard", based on this mythology's Valhalla.
Live-Action TV
- During the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who, the Doctor battled the Gods of Ragnarok and the Wolves of Fenric.
- Ragnarok (2020), a Danish Norwegian-language series about a teenager who receives the powers of Thor, draws heavily from Norse Mythology.
- Star Trek: Picard: In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", Cristóbal Rios directly compares the Romulan myth Ganmadan ("the Day of Annihilation") to Ragnarök.
Professional Wrestling
- CHIKARA had the Eye of Tyr, a Norse Mythological artifact that could be used to control minds. The catch is that after using it you have to give it away. UltraMantis Black thought he could outsmart the curse. He couldn't. It led to the debut of Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes, which included Tursas, a 6'8, 376 lbs. Wrestling Monster with a Finnish Viking gimmick. One of the BDK's Finishing Moves, performed by Tursas, Ares and Claudio Castagnoli, was called Ragnarök.
Tabletop Games
- The Space Wolves of Warhammer 40,000 are Vikings IN SPACE! on giant wolves, so naturally they get a lot of this.
- Their recruits are chosen among the critically-wounded in the perpetual tribal warfare of their homeworld Fenris. The natives believe that these lucky few are taken by the Sky Warriors into the halls of their gods in the sky, where they will fight forevermore. This being 40K, they do just that, and could not be happier.
- One special character is Lukas the Trickster, an obvious Loki analog (except this Lukas is a jovial prankster, albeit one who has a statis bomb in his body that will force his killer to stare into his laughing face for all eternity).
- The Rune-priests and Wolf-priests can take psyber-ravens called Choosers of the Slain to help them find potential recruits.
- The Valkyrie is a troop transport commonly used by the Guard (though instead of ferrying the recently-alive from the battlefield, they bring the soon-to-be dead onto it).
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
- The Old World upon destruction gets rebuilt into nine Mortal Realms, which map pretty well to those in Yggdrasil's neighborhood. Azyr = Asgard note , Ghyran = Vanaheim, Hysh = Alfheim, Ulgu = Svartalfheim, Aqshy = Muspelheim, Shyish = Helheim, Ghur = Jotunheim, Chamon = Nidavellir. The odd one out is Midgard, which might correlate with the Realm of Chaos (remnants of the Old World).
- Some of the survivors of End Times who achieved godhood are good stand-ins for Norse gods; Sigmar is a cross between Thor and Odin, Alarielle is Freya, etc.
- In Dino Attack RPG, there is a Dino Attack agent named Loki. Although more directly named after the mech from MechAssault, there is also a Mutant T-Rex with the name Ragnorok, a name that fits the Dino Attack rather well.
- Heroscape features generals called "Kyrie" who build armies made from all the greatest warriors of every time period, a clear nod to Valkyries and Valhalla.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has at least three archetypes, Nordic, Aesir, and Generaider, which is based on this mythology.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: C's One-Winged Angel form is his own malice being expelled from his body, transforming into a Draconic Abomination that takes the form of Nidhogg.
- One of the enemies that can be found in The Battle Cats is named Angelic Sleipnir. Also, the Evolved Form of Viking Cat is Thor Cat.
- A couple in Bayonetta, despite drawing its mythos chiefly from Christianity (or at least Dante's version of it); the secret missions are called "Alfheim" and "Muspelheim" (some of the Nine Realms), and the main setting is a town called Vigrid (the name of the place Ragnarok is supposed to go down), the last Lumen Sage is named Balder, and Bayonetta 2 introduces Loki and Loptr, who are revealed to be the two halves of Aesir.
- BlazBlue:
- Ragna the Bloodedge. There's a very good reason why his name derives from Ragnarok, the death and rebirth of the world.
- Noel Vermillion from the same game has a Minigun named Fenrir and a rocket launcher named Thor.
- Brawlhalla takes place in Valhalla.
- Fate Series:
- In Fate/EXTRA CCC, Brynhildr is one of the three beings the Alter Ego Passionlip is made from, alongside Parvati and Durga. This gives her access to Brynhildr's Noble Phantasm, "Brynhildr Romantia: Until Death Divide the Two Apart", an attack based on the spear Brynhildr used to kill Sigurd, which does more damage to an opponent based on the affection Passionlip has for the target.
- Fate/Grand Order includes Brynhildr from Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver as a summonable Lancer class Servant, as well as as a swimsuit-clad Berserker class Servant as part of the game's 5th summer event. On top of this, the game features a Norse myth inspired story chapter as the second chapter of the Cosmos of the Lostbelt storyline, titled "The Eternal Icy Fire Century, Götterdämmerung — The Good Fellow of Everlasting Flame". The chapter's Lostbelt is based around a what-if scenario in which Odin, in a last-ditch effort to stop a Ragnarok that went horribly Off the Rails when Surtr decided to burn everything on Earth before dying rather than "just" wiping out the Norse pantheon, sacrificed himself to seal away an empowered Surtr, leading to a world predominately run by Jötunn, with Skadi and the Valkyries as the only divine beings left to protect humanity. On top of this storyline, the game would introduce several new characters from Norse myth as summonable Servants.
- Sigurd is introduced as a summonable Saber class Servant. While Fate had previously introduced another character by the name of Siegfried, that character is more in line with the character's portrayal in Germanic folklore, with the introduction of Sigurd establishing the two as different people. While the Götterdämmerung Lostbelt initially presents Sigurd as an arrogant and battle-hungry man with seemingly no memory of Brynhildr, it's eventually revealed that this is actually because he's possessed by Surtr's spirit, who's scheming to break his body free and finish the job. Once he regains control of his body, Sigurd is shown to actually be a genuinely nice Knight in Shining Armor who's very much in love with Brynhildr.
- Unlike Brynhildr, the oldest of the Valkyries, the rest of the group are summonable as a singular Lancer class Servant, though only three of them are actually ever seen and useable: Ortlinde, Hildr, and Thrúd. Alongside Brynhildr, the three are a part of a singular Hive Mind that allows them to share information. The game also features a swimsuit-clad Assassin class version of the characters as part of the game's 7th summer event, with this version also introducing three more of the Valkyries: Rindr, Örlún, and Geirskögul.
- Scáthach-Skadi, a fusion of the Celtic warrior-queen Scáthach and the Norse goddess Skadi, is summonable as a Caster class Servant, specializing in using the Primordial Runes. While her body takes the form of Scáthach, her mind is that of Skadi's, leading to some confusion among other Servants more familiar with former. Initially introduced as the main antagonist of the Götterdämmerung Lostbelt, she quickly shows herself to genuinely love all living things, and sees her action in the Lostbelt as the necessary actions to save as much life as possible. The game also features a swimsuit-clad Ruler class version of the character as part of the game's 7th summer event.
- While the Alter Ego class Pseudo-Servant Sitonai possesses the body of Illya von Einzbern, and is predominately controlled by Sitonai, a dragonslayer from Ainu myth, she's also been combined with the Norse goddess Freyja, as well as the witch-queen Louhi from Finnish myth. Through Freyja's influence, Sitonai's wolf companion has been transformed into a polar bear.
- Fire Emblem Heroes uses the Norse Mythology motif for all the Original Generation characters, weapons and locations.
- Two of the heroes in Gauntlet are Thor the Warrior and Thyra the Valkyrie.
- God of War (PS4) is set in the world of Norse Mythology. After Kratos' wife dies he travels the Nine Realms with his son to fulfill his wife's last wish: to have her ashes spread at the highest peak of the Nine Realms. On their journey they encounter many of the gods and monsters of Norse Mythology.
- Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is based on both Celtic and Norse Mythology.
- Kingdom Hearts III: Prince Hans of Frozen (2013) becomes a wolf-like Elite Heartless that's based on and named after Sköll, the wolf chasing the sun to devour it. As Sköll, Hans becomes an Omnicidal Maniac who intends to devour all light in the universe, and traps the player party in a lightless void with the intent of killing them. Fittingly, "Sköll" translates to "traitor", which suits Hans as he betrays Anna when she needed a True Love's Kiss in the film, and by attempting to steal Arendelle's throne, he's betrayed the Southern Isles, too.
- Max Payne and Alan Wake both have elements, the first having a psychotic Big Bad who is obsessed with mythology, and the second features a heavy metal band composed by two wacky old men, which also revolves around Norse mythology. Sam Lake sure loves vikings.
- Xerneas, Yveltal and Zygarde - the Aura Trio from Pokémon X and Y, all take heavy inspiration from the Norse mythos. Xerneas is inspired by Eikthyrnir, a stag that resides in Valhalla whose horns were originally branches of the World Tree. Yveltal is partly inspired by Hresvelgr, the giant eagle that guards the end of the world. Finally, Zygarde takes inspiration from Loki's brood: its 10% Forme is inspired by Fenrir, and the green appendage on its neck is similar to the Gleipnir, the leash that binds him; its 50% Forme is inspired equally by Jormungandr and Nidhoggr; finally, its Complete Forme is inspired by Hel.
- Two of the attacks in Phantom Dust are called Thor's Hammer and Gungnir. Bonus points for Gungnir being one of the most accurate attacks in the game, as never missing was an attribute of its namesake.
- Ragnarok Online is takes place in a world named Rune-Midgard, and uses the Norse Mythology motif for most of its characters, some of its weapons and locations.
- StarCraft II: While there are the obvious ones (units named Valkyrie, Thor, and Odin), Heart of the Swarm has a more subtle one: You find the Odin again, but this time it's piloted by a Dominion pilot. A white-haired, one-eyed pilot with a braided beard.◊
- Super Robot Wars Gaiden brings us Tytti Noorbuck, who's Finnish, and ride the mecha called Goddess/Gaddeath, shaped like a Valkyrie, has a trident called 'Gungnir', has two wolf familiars named Freki and Geri (Odin's two hounds), and her attack names include things like 'Jotunheim', 'Bifrost Fall', 'Jormungandr Ouroboros' and 'Fenrir Crush'.
- Tomb Raider: Underworld: While still treated with some liberties to fit into the pre-existing lore, it's surprisingly well researched, all things considered. Lara basically plays Thor's role in his fight against Jörmungandr, even if the myth is treated as a mere metaphor.
- Too Human is explicitly a sci-fi Cyberpunk update of Norse myth, with genetically-engineered super soldiers as the gods and a robot uprising taking the place of frost giants.
- In Touhou Project, the two vampire sisters each have a spellcard named after the weapon of a Norse god. Remilia has Odin's Gungnir while Flandre wields Lævateinn. It's unclear whether or not they're actually wielding them as weapons though, or just fanciful names given to magical energy attacks.
- Warcraft:
- Warcraft III: Two dwarf Mountain Kings are named Munin and Huginn Ironcliff, after Odin's ravens.
- World of Warcraft's expansion Wrath of the Lich King takes this up to eleven by introducing a whole host of titanforged characters named after Norse gods. Later, Legion introduces even more.
Webcomics
- Girl Genius has some of the objects named after terms from mythology, such as Sleipnir for a vehicle.
- Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki is based largely on Norse Mythology, so naturally has plenty of references, some more obscure than others.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent the premise of the story involves The Magic Comes Back happening after a Zombie Apocalypse in the Nordics. The means by which Icelandic/Norwegian magic works takes quite a few cues from the region's mythology.
Western Animation
- Earthworm Jim: The episode "For Whom The Jungle Bell Tolls" reveals that Santa Claus is actually Woden, the Norse God of Judgment.
