In the Los Angeles mission of the Japanese Campaign in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the player can (and is actively encouraged with rewards) blow up the EA-Los Angeles building. Upon its destruction, a Japanese soldier will yell "Your ill-begotten products shall taint the shelves no more!"
The first thing one saw upon booting up Conker's Bad Fur Day for the N64 was the typical N64 logo... which is immediately ripped apart by Conker with a chainsaw, to be replaced by the Rareware logo. This is probably a good first indicator of what someone seduced by the game's disarming appearances is actually in for...
In the Luigi's Mansion series, Professor E. Gadd creates a new Nintendo console-based device to contact Luigi. In the first game, it's the Game Boy Horror, and in the sequel, it's the Dual Scream. Those following the pattern would likely be expecting something like a DSI or Nintendo 3DS, or maybe a jump to consoles with a Wii U gamepad. But in Luigi's Mansion 3, Professor E. Gadd's newest communication device is the "Virtual Boo"! He plans on selling this on the market, predicting that it'll be a huge success. Anyone who knows their Nintendo history will no doubt be in hysterics over this little nod to one of Nintendo's most infamous failures.
Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo fame considers the Blur commercial, a Take That! at Mario Kart, to be this on the basis that the game's publisher, Activision, also did the GoldenEye remake exclusively for Nintendo. On a similar note, Blur was developed by Bizarre Creations. When Blur failed to meet sales expectations, Bizarre went defunct and most of their employees went to SUMO Digital, and helped them develop Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. A company that made fun of the kart-racer genre in a commercial, then went on to developing a kart-racer.
Overlapping with Self-Deprecation, Dragon Age: Origins has the Human Noble origin: "Giant rats? It's like the start of every bad adventure tale my grandfather used to tell." Though, this is probably less a joke about Baldur's Gate itself and more a joke about how every other RPG of the era copied Baldur's Gate for no good reason. The first combat encounter in practically every single RPG (both singleplayer and multiplayer) made in the period between 1995 and 2000 was rats (generally giant). While Baldur's Gate was not the first game to have giant rats as a low-level encounter, it was almost assuredly because of Baldur's Gate that so many games used this as the first combat encounter/combat tutorial. At the time when Dragon Age was made, those who had played Baldur's Gate and its imitators as children were now adults: meanwhile RPGs had long ceased to be so uncreative with their combat tutorials, and the only holdover of that era was Runescape (which managed to be far more than a Baldur's Gate clone thanks to its robust crafting system).
Nitrome did this and a bit of Self-Deprecation with their 100th game, Nitrome Must Die. Example: in one level, the whiteboard in the background shows ideas for a new game... with a deadline of 8 hours.
Ultima: In Ultima V, "ELECTRONIC ARTS" is found in the profanity filter file. In Ultima VI, the pirates are named after Electronic Arts employees Trip Hawkins, Bing Gordon, Stewart Bonn and Joe Ybarra. In Ultima VII, Elizabeth and Abraham form the initials EA, and the cube, sphere and tetrahedron generators match the square, circle and triangle of the EA logo. The cube, sphere and tetrahedron appear in the morphing object in Ultima VIII.
Paper Mario: Sticker Star falls victim to the You All Look Familiar trope heavily — almost every generic NPC is a Toad, with the only rare distinguishing characteristics being different-colored spots on their mushroom caps. In a sub-franchise renowned for its creative and engaging characters, this... did not go over well with the fanbase. It seems the American English localizers aren't any happier about it, either, judging from a throw-away line in the follow-up, Paper Mario: Color Splash:
Rescue V Member: Mario, sir! I'm a huge fan! Thanks for taking the time to talk to a normal Toad like me with no unique traits or discernible characteristics!
Played for Drama in Paper Mario: The Origami King, where it's eventually revealed that King Olly's plot started as a means to take revenge on a certain Toad — but since all Toads look the same post-reboot, he has no way of knowing which one wronged him, so (he believes) he has no choice but to destroy all of them. It's very easy to read this as the folks at Intelligent Systems complaining about how they're not allowed to create unique character designs for the Toads anymore.
Invalid - I've just decided that's a feature! Won't fix, won't fix, won't fix - gosh, this is easy! Hmm...what do I name THIS file? Ah, screw it...nobody's gonna see it anyway! F*** - ship it! More like Memelands 2. More like Memelands, the Pre-Memequel. More like Bordermemes. More like meme meme meme meme meme meme meme...meme.
Life Is Strange, published by Square Enix, has a running gag about Max being a colossal fan of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within — a notorious Box Office Bomb that nearly bankrupted Squaresoft, forced them to close their animation studio, and resulted in director and series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's departure from the company.
The fan-mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Falskaar, was made by creator Alexander Velicky as a sort of job-application for Bethesda; in spite of that, however, it notably takes a few jabs at the vanilla game, most prominently mocking the infamous "arrow in the knee" comment to the point that bandits declare they won't shoot you in the knee.
You can destroy EA's logo in one level of Boom Blox.
The game Bugsnax has one from a meta-perspective, the Launch Trailer presents a review from The Onion that states it "Looks like[...]honestly[...]one of the[...]best games for PS5." What's hidden behind the ellipses?
"Looks likeshithonestly but for a window of several weeks it will be one of the nine best games for the PS5."
After you complete the puzzle in Rugrats: Search for Reptar, you get to play as Reptar and destroy an entire city. One of the buildings Reptar can smash has the THQ logo on it.
The Sega Dreamcast game Illbleed has a bizarre example of this with a boss fight in a Toy Story parody level where you fight a boss that is a demonic version of Sonic the Hedgehog completed with rings and his signature so old Finger Wag.
In the third DLC Scenario of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, Rayman in the Phantom Show, the final battle against the Phantom starts with a "The Hero Sucks" Song, just as he did in Kingdom Battle, but the first verse is directed specifically at Rayman, and very heavily referencing how Rayman had been pushed Out of Focus by The Rabbids.
that the game's publisher, Activision, also did the GoldenEye remake exclusively for Nintendo. On a similar note, Blur was developed by Bizarre Creations. When Blur failed to meet sales expectations, Bizarre went defunct and most of their employees went to SUMO Digital, and helped them develop Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. A company that made fun of the kart-racer genre in a commercial, then went on to developing a kart-racer.