Shout Out / Yakuza: Like a Dragon

You can't have an epic final showdown in a Like a Dragon game without the Millennium Tower...

Considering that Yakuza: Like a Dragon is heavily based on JRPGs, you're bound to see various references to JRPG games. Here are some examples.

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• Kasuga directly namedrops Dragon Quest every now and then, being a fan of the games. The games are also referenced in numerous other ways:
  • Kasuga's response to examining a passed-out drunk is reminiscent of Dragon Quest's memetic "There's no response. It's just a corpse." line.
    Kasuga: (...No response, huh? It's just a drunk.)
  • Several people scattered around Ijincho offer Kasuga a "Honk-Honk", a nod to the "Puff-Puff" girls from DQ.
  • The electric element being available on the upgraded Hero's Bat, along with its scarcity everywhere else, might be an allusion to the Zap family of spells, traditionally only available to the Hero in each Dragon Quest game.
  • Two NPCs who wish they could be reborn as the opposite gender so they could work at a host/hostess club are a reference to a running gag starting from Dragon Quest III, where old men talk about wanting to change vocations to become young bunny girls.
  • One of Kasuga's victory quotes is "The enemy is defeated!", which is the exact wording of the victory message in the Dragon Quest series.
  • When completing a Part-Time Hero request, Kasuga will say "With finesse!", a reference to the quest completed message in Dragon Quest IX , "Success! This Quest has been transgressed with finesse!"
  • Kiryu and Tendo are weak to Ice and Electricity and have tattoos of a white and blue dragon, respectively. This is a reference to the elemental weaknesses of Dragons in DQ.
  • In one of Joon-gi Han's Drink Links, he says that he and his family were treated like slime and they always had to run away when they were attacked. Ichiban immediately compares them to Dragon Quest's infamous Metal Slimes. One of Ichiban's responses even suggests that Joon-gi was only attacked because he's worth a ton of experience.
  • The way enemies with sledgehammers occasionally fail their attacks, by over-extending the windup and falling on their ass, is directly based on how DQ's Troll enemies behave.
  • After Ichiban wakes up from an Imagine Spot, he mumbles a tune that sounds almost identical to the level-up jingle.
  • As is tradition in DQ, there's a hidden casino staffed by bunny girls, and as in some of those games it's found in an unusual underground location; here, instead of being down a well, it's behind a hidden door in a public restroom that Ichiban has to be stylish to enter.
• One of the playable pachislot minigames is themed after Souten no Ken.
• One of the summonable characters is a butcher wearing a hockey mask, whose name is "Jiei-san".
  • A second reference along that line is present in the enemy known as the "Dark Sweeper", which wears a purple jumpsuit, turquoise gloves, and a light-blue bucket as a mask.
• One of the musician's skills is called "We Are the Globe".
• There are a few shout-outs to Metal Gear here and there, too.
  • On a meta-level, the fact that both of Solid Snake's voice actors (sans Kiefer Sutherland, sadly) are in this game - in the form of Adachi in the Japanese audio and The Bartender in the English dub.
  • The Bartender's establishment is called Survive Bar, which is not only a Call-Back to Kashiwagi's (supposed) death back in Yakuza 3, but also a reference to the most recent entry in the Metal Gear series at the time of its release.
  • And if that wasn't enough, at one point, Bartender casually mentions being attacked by a helicopter. Which has happened to Solid Snake more than once.
  • When Ichiban, Nanba, and Adachi are infiltrating the Seiryu Clan HQ, they hide from some Seiryu thugs chasing them down a hallway. One of them looks out the window to check for the boys to find nothing but a cardboard box in plain view. While Ichiban and Adachi were (literally) right above the thug's nose, Nanba was hiding in the cardboard box.
  • One of the patches on Adachi's jacket resembles the Diamond Dogs logo.
• The Substory "Who's that Sujimon" is a massive Homage to Pokémon, starting with a run-in with the "Sujimon Sensei" after an encounter with one, to gaining a "Sujidex" used to record data on enemies, to part of it involving choosing between a Red, Blue, and Green Sujimon, and even down to some of the dialogue referencing famous phrases (heck, the name of the Substory is based on the "Who's that Pokemon" segments between commercial breaks). Speaking of Pokemon, Ichiban says "I choose you!" when summoning a Poundmate.
• Getting imprisoned for more than a decade and coming out as a socially-awkward weirdo hellbent on revenge caught up in a labyrinthe plot while using combat skills taught from entertainment? Ichiban shares Dae-su's haircut, and the final battle is an assault on a skyscraper.
• The partier category of enemies dress and pose like New Age Retro Hippies.
• Speaking of enemies, many of them have names that reference other things both in name and appearance:
  • One-Hitman, a bald hitman who can allegedly kill his victims in one hit.
  • Weltraiser, an acupuncturist with needles sticking out from his face just like Pinhead.
  • Notorious V.I.P.
  • Scarredface
  • Skaterboi
  • New Age Hippie
  • Edison of Anarchy
  • Ramblin' Man, a scruffy-looking guy with a guitar.
• The Part-Time Hero Challenges have their own little shoutouts as well.
  • Part-Time Hero's boss wears a helmet just like the one worn by Viewtiful Joe.
  • Crazy Taxi: Rode the Taxi 30 times.
  • Johnny Be Good: Collected two Musician weapons.
  • Karaoke All Night: Sang a total of 10 karaoke songs.
• In addition, Like a Dragon is also heavily inspired by the Persona series as there are references from it.
  • The battle UI itself is straight-up lifted from Persona 5, where instead of a traditional menu, each face button controls a specific battle option.
  • Tag Team: Essence of Mayhem is essentially this game's equivalent to an All-Out Attack, first introduced in Persona 2.
  • Likewise, the Tag Team skills Ichiban can do with his party members (e.g., Nelson Strike, Bombadier Rush, and Heat Buster with Adachi, Saeko, and Nanba, respectively) are similar to the Co-Op Attacks from P3 and P4, as well as the Showtime Attacks in P5R.
  • In Survive Bar, you can listen to the instrumental version of "Life Will Change", which is one of the main themes in Persona 5. "Tokyo Emergency" and "Beneath the Mask" from the same game are also available to listen to as well.
  • Just like in every game since P3, Ichiban has Personality Traits (six in total) that can be upgraded as you progress through the game. Some of which actually power up Ichiban's skills in the Hero class, namely Fearless Command and Hero's Compassion.
    • Furthermore, doing various mundane tasks (e.g., karaoke or taking a quiz at Ounabara) and completing challenges via Part-Time Hero yields experience points towards Ichiban's personality, not unlike how simple things such as studying or fishing also raises the Protagonists' stats in the Persona series.
  • The alias that Mizue (from Nanba's Drink Link, this game's equivalent of Social Links/Confidants) takes on as a hostess, Futaba, is somewhat of a shout-out to P5's own Futaba Sakura, also voiced by Erica Lindbeck in the dub.
  • The final substory. Ichiban is caught having an affair with six different women, including two party members, and gets the crap beaten out of him by all of the women. This is an obvious reference to the harem route for Valentine's Day, where Joker met the same fate.
    • Funnily enough, The Bartender/Sojiro also proceeded to save Ichiban/Joker and clear the misunderstanding.
    • Even more amusing is that three of the women that Ichiban cheats on have also voiced potential love interests in P5's English dub as well. Manae being Ann, Eri being Hifumi, and Ririka being Makoto. Or four in Saeko's case assuming you remember that Sae was also intended to be a love interest in P5 as well. Complete with Dummied Out lines, to boot. Bonus points for Iroha also sharing a voice actress with Morgana, too.
    • And the cherry on top of all this goes to Ichiban for sharing a voice actor with none other than Iwai himself, who used to be a yakuza just like Ichiban.
  • Saeko and Sae have the same voice actor in English, as well as both having a younger sister being voiced by Cherami Leigh. Not only that, Saeko has an attack where she uses a roulette wheel, of which the latter's boss form is fought on. This might be a stretch but is most likely intentional.
  • The Post-Final Boss of this game is very similar to that of Royal: Ichiban and Masato have one last fistfight akin to how Joker and Maruki vent their frustrations on each other after the latter's defeat.
• There's also a few shout-outs to SEGA's flagship franchise here, too.
  • Adachi's Essence of Hell's Wheel bears a striking resemblance to the blue blur's Spin Dash.
  • You can find a CD that lets you listen to "Open Your Heart" from Sonic Adventure in Survive Bar.
• The Vocational School exams are chock-full of both these (SEGA Proficiency) to other SEGA titles and various callbacks to the series itself (Underworld Studies).
  • Which of the following is SEGA's popular fighting game series? Virtua Fighter.
  • In SEGA's Sakura Wars, which division is the young Sakura Shinguji affiliated with? Flower.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog is an action game released by SEGA. How old is Sonic? 15.
  • The Valkyria Chronicles series is a strategy RPG by SEGA. In the first title of the series, which country are the protagonists from? Principality of Gallia.
• As shown in the above image, just before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, Ichiban looks up at the Millennium Tower. The shot looks quite a lot like the NTSC cover for the original Final Fantasy VII.
  • Another possible shoutout is the very existence of Eri Kamataki as a playable character. She is an optional character hidden in a sidequest, who starts with the exclusive Clerk job, which is Yakuza's take on the Ninja job. All of these match up with FFVII's Yuffie Kisaragi, and how she's obtained.
• The movies that Ichiban can watch at Seagull Cinema are in-universe equivalents of classic movies from the 80s to the early 2000s.
  • RoboCook is about a cybernetic chef who loses his memories of who he used to be and focuses only on cooking as efficiently as possible, until the smell of a familiar recipe brings him back to his former life.
  • Office Alone is about an exhausted office peon who is left behind while the rest of the company goes to the Christmas party, and must fight off a corporate spy using various invented gadgets and booby traps derived from office equipment.
  • Shark Vacation, about a group of college students being terrorized by a Threatening Shark.
• In one of the Party Chats, Ichiban mentions that he was a big fan of a certain manga in the 90s before he got locked up in jail and was really excited to catch back up on it after getting released only to find out the series had been on extended hiatus. He could be talking about any number of manga, but given that this game is steeped in Dragon Quest references, he's likely implying it was Hunter × Hunter.
• The Dragon Kart mini-game is unabashedly a giant reference to Mario Kart.
  • The golden rings scattered throughout the courses are similar to the ones from Sonic the Hedgehog, and the ability to buy items using said rings after collecting them is a recurring feature from Sonic Adventure onwards.
• The basic setup for "The Crawfish Caper" substory is very similar to the side plot in the Simpsons episode where Homer likewise has a lobster as a pet that he also goes to walks with and is devastated when something happens to it, with the main difference being that while their initial motivations were the same (raise a healthy, fat lobster so that they can eat it later), Homer grows attached to Pinchy while raising him and kills him by mistake by cooking him alive in what he intended to be a "hot bath", while Ebihara's behavior is thought to be distress over a lost pet by Ichiban, even though he was more devastated than some weirdo in a red suit threw his future lunch away and was intending to eat Nancy all along and her life was only spared when Ichiban got him a fancy sushi set as a replacement.
• The elder bum who runs the homeless camp is a dead ringer for the Old Caretaker, AKA Yanni Yogi, from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The only difference is the color of his clothing.
• The Seagull Cinema takes its name from a similarly-named business in Takeshi's Challenge.
• Mr. Masochist's Poundmate Call is titled "Uncomfortably Numb".
• In the Business Management minigame, one of the employees you can hire is a man named Hanzawa, a banker with a strong sense of justice who fights to expose financial corruption.
• In one of the party chats, Zhao mentions that he learned about the meaning of the word "croissant", which means crescent moon in French, from a video game he used to play. Given Zhao's age (around the early thirties), the fact that he owned a Dreamcast (as revealed in another chat), and the frequent referencing of other SEGA games in this installment... the said game is very likely to be Sakura Wars 3.
• At the end of the “Home Run Heroism” substory, a weeping Kasuga remarks that it’s a good thing there’s no crying in baseball.
• In another party chat, Adachi talks about a movie he watched a while ago but couldn't remember the name of. He says it's a boy meets girl movie and thinks the movie was called 'My Pancreas Wants To Scream', a possible reference to the novel which was adapted into a movie; I Want to Eat Your Pancreas.
• High-level Survivalists wear red-eyed gas masks and military armor dyed black, in reference to Resident Evil's very own HUNK.
• One substory has you investigating a hockey mask wearing, machete wielding murderer.
• In the "Underworld Studies" quiz at Ounabara, one of the incorrect spellings for Majima's name is "Gaara Majima".