Shout Out / Unreal

In general

• The Skaarj are heavily inspired by Predator, including such homages as dreadlocks and wrist-mounted blades.
• The planet Na Pali is named after a state park on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
• The Izanagi corporation is named after the eponymous deity of Japanese Mythology.
• It turns out that the Nanoblack referenced across the series exists in Real Life.

Unreal

• The Vortex Rikers prison ship is named after Rikers Island. Appropriate, since they're both prisons. This was outright confirmed by its author.
• The multiplayer map DmAriza has the Quake shape.
• The name of the Glathriel Village from Return to Na Pali comes from the human hex in in Jack Chalker's "Well of Souls" books.
  • Also, there's an Easter Egg which guides to a secret. It has the Unreal Tournament clan Ocrana's logo^note which mapper Matthias Worch himself was a part of previous to being hired by Legend Entertainment, and the translator has the following message:
  "Will you die for this? http://www.ocrana.de"
• The Temple of Chizra is inspired by the Indiana Jones movies.
• The filenames of the Rrajigar Mine and Depths of Rrajigar levels are named "Dig" and "Dug" respectively.

Unreal Tournament

• Word of God stated that CTF-Face, a.k.a. "Facing Worlds", was inspired by a third-party map from the first Unreal.
• DM-Morpheus is inspired by a scene from The Matrix, and its name was taken from Morpheus, one of the main characters.
• The name of the map DOM-Sesmar is taken from Ramses's Sdrawkcab Name.
• AS-Overlord ("Operation Overlord") is inspired by D-Day.
• Picking up the Chainsaw either via cheat or as a pickup in a third party map outputs this message:

  "Its been 5 years since I've used one of these."

• The Sniper Rifle is a custom scoped M16.
• When you play in the campaign, in the Venom team, two of the characters are named Ada and Lovelace, named after the first woman programmer in the world.
• Two members of the ladder team Red Claw are named Pestilence and Plague.
• One of the Female Commando (Dark Phalanx) characters is called Nikita.
• One of Xan Kriegor's quotes is "I am the Alpha and the Omega". The phrase is also used as the description for the "Godlike" difficulty that practice bots can be set to.
• One of the ladder bots is called Toe Cutter.
• The secret Easter Egg room in DM-Codex has a shootable message saying Pretty fly... ...for a white guy.
• One of the members of Thunder Crash in this game and UT2004 is named Othello.
• A Dummied Out taunt for the male commando characters has them saying "It's clobberin' time!"

Unreal II: The Awakening

• The main body of space authority in the game is named Terran Colonial Authority.
• Aida is stated to be a 3-D Chess champion, and the board in her quarters looks vaguely familiar.
• The Seagoat is a reference to the zodiac symbol Capricorn.
• On Acheron the entrance to the dig site is clearly inspired by the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi.
• The Flying Snake, a creature which can be spotted at the Severnaya Waterfront level, is the Unreal universe's take on the Zerg Mutalisk.
• The spaceship of the final mission is called "The Dorian Gray".

Unreal Championship, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004

• The UT2003 intro, where Malcolm, Brock and Lauren are presented as a team, has a lot of influence from wrestling entrances.
• AS-Junkyard, from its description to the objectives of the map itself, references Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars.
• The LBX-7683 asteroid, where the Assault map AS-RobotFactory takes place, is a reference to the LBX networking protocol.
• DM-Leviathan features this reference:
  "They say keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. You won't find any friends here, so reach out and touch someone."
• DM-Inferno explicitly references The Divine Comedy.
• A taunt from robot characters goes "Faster. Stronger. Better."
• Two maps, one for Deathmatch and another for Capture The Flag, are given the name "Grendelkeep".
• If you finish a match without allowing the opposing team to score a single point, the announcer will yell "Flawless Victory!"
• The Nightmare voicepacks have varying shoutouts to horror films:
  No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.
  I'll swallow your soul!
• Two of the Thunder Crash members are called Picard and Riker.
• Gorge's team, their suit, and their name (Juggernauts), are shout-outs to the Juggernaut from X-Men.
• The Bridge of Fate maps (one for Bombing Run, one for Capture The Flag) are modelled after an environment from The Lord of the Rings (more precisely, from the movies).
• One of the taunts found in the Dummied Out voicepacks have the characters saying "I'm sorry! Did I break up your concentration?"
• Winning an air-to-air fight with either the Raptor or the Cicada has the announcer yelling "Top Gun!"

Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict

Raiden's references towards his home series qualify as a Mythology Gag, which can be seen in the UC2 character sheet.

• Continuing with the Shout Outs to Mortal Kombat, after freezing an opponent, the announcer yells "Finish Him!!" before you do a Coup De Grace.
• Some of the Liandri bots taunts are references to internet lingo.
  "You are teh suck!"
  "Llama."
  "RTFM."
  • There's also these two references to Microsoft Windows:
  "Logging crash dump."
  "I see the blue screen."
• The Juggernauts are also keen on references:
  "Me smash!"
• One of the challenges have three slow but tough males going against three fast but weak females. It's called "Tortoise vs. Hare"
• Another of the Challenges has Malcolm going against 4 undead characters. It's called "Day of the Dead".
• Anubis's Ladder, which takes place after the events of the Ascension Rites, mentions that he was offered an offer he couldn't refuse.
• One of Apophis's taunts is "Damn, I'm good!"
• One of Devastation's adrenaline combos, "Head Turret", has her activating mounted turret defenses like Fulgore's No Mercy.
  • Many of her Ladder challenges have references to programming concepts. One of her matches is labeled "GOTO: Next Match", and the description of another match has a C++ fragment.
  "if (Target.Color == Self.Color) ProtectTarget(); else DestroyTarget()"
  • One of her Ladder challenges is called "The Next Generation"
• One of Raiden's Ladder challenges pits him against the Skaarj Torgr and the human female Sappire. The match is called "Beauty and the Beast".
• One of Raptor's challenges is named "Carnage++", a reference to the C++ programming language.
• One of Sobek's taunts is "It's better to burn out, than to fade away."
• One of Szalor's Ladder challenges is called "Armed and Dangerous".
• One of the in-game awards, given to the achiever after reflecting an opponent's charged adrenaline fueled melee attack, is called Smackdown!.

Unreal Tournament III

• The achievement for beating Chapter 4 is called "Not In Kansas Anymore".
• The achievement for defeating the Final Boss in Insane is called "Fear The Reaper".
• Get the "Combo King" award 15 times, and you get the "Don't taze me bro!" achievement. invoked
• Jester is designed around Epic Games' president Mike Capps' sister.
• The Ronin team has "Damn, I'm Good!" as a taunt.
• The Greed gametype is inspired in the Greed mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 which in turn is based on Quake III: Team Arena's Harvester gametype. Given that the UT2004 mod replaces the skulls of Harvester with coins and the UT3 gametype brings the skulls back, it's possible that UT3!Greed is a mix of both.

---