Shout Out / Deus Ex: Human Revolution

• Adam's design is similar to Molly Millions from Neuromancer.
• In Pritchard's office, you'll find two old, red PC expansion cards on a wall in display cases. Close inspection reveals that they are Gravis Ultrasound cards, with the top card being the Ultrasound Classic while the bottom one is an Ultrasound PnP Pro. The top card's lower-right corner also has a close-up shot of an IC highly resembling the original Ultrasound cards' GF1 chip, but with edited text.
• Next to a toilet, you can find three seashells laying on a windowsill◊
• A large mercenary named Barrett with a cyberarm minigun, in a game published by Square Enix? Sounds familiar... (Although Eidos Montreal has stated this was actually unintentional).
  • This is, incidentally, not the first or only Shout Out to that title in the Deus Ex franchise, intentional or not. Invisible War had a couple too.
• While we're on the subject of Final Fantasy Shout-Outs, don't forget this
• And then there's this. "The Bull has been asking questions about our little basement club. Has somebody been breaking the first rule?".
• One of the prostitutes in Detroit is named Charlotte, confirmed by the Director's Cut commentary to be a direct shout out to the Iron Maiden song "Charlotte the Harlot".
• In the police station, you can overhear two cops discussing some 80s movie set in Detroit that had a robotic police officer. One of the two is even named Alexander Murphy, and one of the e-mails on his computer mentions an Officer Lewis. Given the very similar Detroit-cop-gets-beaten-to-death-and-rebuilt-with-technology, this is a pretty deliberate Lampshade Hanging.
  • There's another Robocop shout-out on a computer in the Detroit LIMB clinic, which references Jensen's augmentations; specifically that his left arm and legs were salvageable but were replaced at Sarif's request. A similar scene occurs in the first film, where Murphy's left arm is initially saved but then replaced to fit OCP's plan of "total body prosthesis."
  • Jensen punching through walls to get to people is also taken directly from Robocop.
• The Dopefish appears as graffiti in the DRB gang territory.
• Named police officers include R. Deckard (short for Robin), W. Gibson, B. Sterling, B. Bethke, H. Ellison, P. Cadigan, J. Ballard and P. Dick. The passwords to their computers are shout-outs too - "lectrolam" (Electro Lamb) for P. Dick, 'solempire' for J. Ballard, "baronnull" for W. Gibson and "cordwainer" for H. Ellison.
  • Not to mention the security log-in for mpost, whose first name is presumably Mike, and whose password is blues
  • If the Detroit cops have a sci-fi theme, the Picus employees have a sports theme. There is a P. Kane, a Seguin, and a Messier.
  • You can find an email in which someone says they should go to a Spos game and they're going to win because Strasbourg is pitching that night. Looks like by 2027, Montreal took the Expos back from Washington. They also mention he's retiring that year, which would be a long but not unimaginable career for Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg..
  • One of the sportswriters is named Red Fisherman, after Montreal sportswriter Red Fisher. He mentions he's starting a column following the Enhanced Hockey League — Red Fisher covered the Habs for years.
  • You can also find some hate mail written to the sportswriter referring to "the worst move this team has made sice they gave up on Carey in 2012." I guess we can expect a lousy season from Carey Price.
  • There's a pocket secretary that lists all of one guy's passwords, including his fantasy hockey password, which is "leafssuck67." They still haven't won the Stanley Cup by then?
  • Passwords in the Sarif building include "tigers" and "redwings" (respectively, Detroit's professional baseball and hockey teams), and David Sarif himself is never seen without a Tigers game or scouting report on at least one open terminal. Someone at Eidos is a sports fan.
• Adam & Megan's dog is named Kubrick.
• Arms manufacturer Steiner-Bisley takes both of its names from Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg's characters from Spaced.
• When Jensen descends to the final floor of the underground base, he sees a mook struggling with controlling a huge robot, who quite obviously resembles Big Dog.
• Surveillance cameras made by "Big Bro Surveillance".
• One of the Achievements/Trophies is Foxiest of the Hounds, gained by completing without setting off any alarms. The image for this achievement also shows exclamation marks next to a mook's head.
  • Plus The Stinger is done in the same style as the ones at the end of each Metal Gear.
  • There's a subtler Shout-Out to the first Solid game during Adam's second trip to Hengsha: Tracer Tong is a Non-Action Guy who uses stealth camouflage to conceal himself from guards once he is rescued, thus avoiding a potentially annoying Escort Mission, just like Otacon did when you rescued him from Grey Fox.
    • Additionally, before you rescue him, you can spy on his cell from above while travelling through air ducts, like you could do in MGS with the DARPA Chief and Meryl.
• There is a sidequest-important character in Hengsha named Lee Hong, who shares a name with a character from another Eidos game series.
  • The manner in which you can stage Diamond Chan's suicide during the "Rotten Business" sidequest, and the picture for the Achievement/Trophy you unlock for doing so, are also reminiscent of this same franchise.
• One of the eBooks the player can find mentions a listing of media stream subscriptions, and the news feed mentions an interview with "elder rocker JoCo."
• One of the achievements/trophies is called "Hangar 18", and it involves hacking into a PC/email whose username is "MSTAINE" and signature is "Dave".
• The "Forever Alone" meme can be found on a post-it◊.
  • You can also find the "look of disapproval" emoticon (ಠ_ಠ) on a spray paint can◊.
• During a side-quest in Hengsha, you have to contact a man named Anonymous X. He's wearing a hat with #chan written on it.
  • Also, the autopsy report he gives you was written by Dr. Gregory H. Lui M.D.
• An eBook in Hengsha details the history of The Triads and the Tongs in the 21st century and makes mention of "the Mark Gor Lau Wars."
• Jaron Namir's augmentations make him look plastinated, and his Boss Arena looks like Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds.
• One of the augmentation companies mentioned in the Picus news reports is called Kusanagi.
• Apparently, Zero Cool is still up and working in 2027◊.
• On your first visit to Hengsha, near the end, there's a computer in one of the rooms near Zhao's penthouse that contains an email directed at a "Kevin Mitnick."
• Several e-mails found on various computers in Singapore are almost directly paraphrased from the automated speech of the Black Mesa Transit System.
  • If you let Zeke live in the Milwaukee Junction level, you get an achievement called "Unforeseen Consequences." Those have become Arc Words in the Half-Life series.
• Highway overpass in Derelict Row is marked HWY 17, a level name from Half-Life 2.
• Emails found in the Picus Sub-Basement involve one employee complaining that the statue of the MJ-12 logo looks like it belongs in a Bond movie.
• In the Omega Ranch complex, there is a computer with an email from 'Dwayne' addressed to the security staff, saying (in unnecessarily fancy language) that he wanted to requisition a camera to try and catch who was repeatedly putting animal porn on his computer, suspecting that it's one of his fellow scientists. It's revealed on another computer that three guards, 'Mark,' 'Lou,' and 'Abigail,' are behind it, and are tempted to humor Dwayne by giving him a camera and repeating the process while wearing an office lab coat. It becomes clear what the Shout-Out is toward when Mark mentions, "I can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees what I did with his stapler."
  • And later, when you find Dwayne's computer, not only does it have conspiracy theories in the outbox, but the general message he sent out includes a postscript accusing someone named 'Jim' of stealing his stapler. It doesn't get much clearer than that.
• Elsewhere in the Omega Ranch, a security memo to all staff from the admin team is a "Urinalysis and Radiation Screening Reminder", and is a word-for-word quote from the original Black Mesa Commute. Later, there's also a "Safety Policy and Regulation Reminder", an "Annual Interdepartmental Mensa Competition Reminder"...
• In Montreal, you visit a seemingly harmless location that turns out to have been guarded by mercenaries, with a secret basement containing critical intelligence, owned by a conspiracy that secretly controls the world from behind the shadows. Oh, and in aforementioned basement, There are extension leads with one end plugged into a wall socket, the other plugged into another wall socket on the other side of the hallway. Subtle.
• During the quest with Brent Radford, if you listen into the conversation between him and his attacker, he will ask if he is getting a new rug, since it really tied the room together.
• In the Detroit police station the hacker's body has been classified Ultraviolet and is off-limits to Blue clearance. One of the classic era supplements was Hil Sector Blues in which the Alpha Complex police were all classified as Blue security clearance.
• Praxis points and kits are very similar to cyber-modules in System Shock 2.
  • While we're at it, the 10mm Handgun looks very much like the one from SS2
  • And even larger one comes when you look at the boss fight with Fedorova. Circular room with a large AI core in the center? A woman running around the perimeter doing her best to kill you? Various consoles that can make your life easier? Sounds a lot like the final boss fight with SHODAN, if you ask me.
• You can discover an email from one "veronica_m" who's working in the sleuthing business.
• There is a GURPS SWAT RPG sourcebook sitting on one of the desks in the police station.
• You meet an airforce General named O'Neill.
• Inherited from System Shock and the original Deus Ex: the Arc Number (0)451.
• In the "Acquaintances Forgotten" mission, you can read a note on one of the MIBs that details "Mr Grey"'s iteniary. It includes stopping at a place called Wimbledon Bridge House. This building exists in Real Life and is one of Square Enix's registered offices.
• There's a sniper rifle on the roof of a gas station. It's entirely possible to get it during the 2nd chapter, even though the normal method for obtaining it requires you to hack a level 4 security panel. Hint: There's a barrel outside of the gas station, and a vent on the inside positioned just above a rack. You can use the barrel to jump up and grab it before you fall.
  • You can also just use a barrel or the high jump augmentation to climb the red dumpster behind the gas station, from which its trivially easy to jump up to the roof.
• The gas station is called S Mart, shop smart
• The 10mm Zenith pistol grip is taken from the Seburo M-5, the standard issue pistol of Public Security Section Nine.
  • Which is also a call forward to the original Deus Ex; the stealth pistol is closely modeled after the Seburo Compact eXploder, another of Masamune Shirow's designs.
• A subtle one: the manager of the Alice Garden Pods is named Jay Chou, a Taiwanese singer/songwriter who's a superstar in Asia and unknown in the west.
• When obtaining information from Picus, Jensen receives the inquiry "Would you like to know more?"
• One of the Picus emails references the employees playing "Universe of Shadows" on Saturdays.
• On the hunt for Eliza Cassan, the rooms she's supposed to be in are a hint as to their and her nature:
  • Her office is room 404. As in HTTP Error 404. She is, of course, not there.
  • Her broadcasting room is 802-11, as in the wifi broadcast protocol. Obviously, because she's broadcasting from it, but also because it's where she's hooked up to the network.
• A possible scroll on the bottom of a Picus news broadcast is, "Pirates sighted off the coast of Tortuga."
• Barrett's death is pretty much the same as Leon's in The Professional.
• The launch sequence codes for the LEO shuttle are the same codes Kirk uses to activate the Enterprise's self-destruct in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
• You can find email correspondance for a Corporal Dwane Hicks.
• The Plasma Rifle shares a lot of characteristics with the Quake 3 BFG10K. Both are extremely rare, state of the art weapons. Both shoot powerful green projectiles that cause splash damage. When the characters hold them, only small portions of the tips (of otherwise pretty massive guns) are being shown. To top it off, the rate of fire is nearly identical. The plasma rifle's description even seems to be a shout out, as it states targets can occasionally be vaporized by the gun. This doesn't actually happen in the game, but was really common with Quake 3's BFG.
• Over the road from the Detroit Police Station is a building that resembles the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles. This is presumably another shout out to Blade Runner, as the real world building is shown in several shots because of it's location across from the Bradbury Building. The game version is even called "MDM," which is obviously meant to be Million Dollar Movies or similar.
  • In one of the more obscure references to this film, the construction site that Malik crash lands in when returning to Hengsha is run by a construction company called Shimata-Dominguez. In the 1992 director's cut of Blade Runner, the tail end of the blimp advertisement states that this is the company responsible for building the off-world colonies.
• One of the computers in Tai Young Medical belongs to a Ms. Tam. This may be coincidental, as Tam is a (relatively) common surname in China.
• When the Japanese dub of Human Revolution was announced, people were not surprised to see Atsuko Tanaka voice the Big Bad of the series...given how she was most famous for her role as one of Cyberpunk's most famous works.
• In keeping with the Renaissance feel of the game, Adam's pointy beard is based off the classic Don Quixote.
• An email◊ found in Panchaea contains arrangements to notify a "Mrs. Trudeau" about arrangements for staying in the Antarctic base and that it won't be as comfortable as Chateau Laurier. It seems as though Justin Trudeau does end up becoming prime minister in the Human Revolution timeline. Turns out they were off by about ten years.
• Megan Reed's room looks much like the hotel room Beyond The Infinite in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• In the Omega Ranch, the hanger that Jensen exits the area by? Hanger 18.^note (This reference is explicitly confirmed in the developer commentary)
• A computer at Milwaukee Junction belongs to an employee named "fbrooks", who is inviting people to a barbecue to celebrate his second year sober.
• Occasionally, an "Officer Deckard" will be paged at Detroit PD.
• The scenes where Adam is being augmented has a lot of similarities with the scenes of Project Lazarus reviving Shepard In Mass Effect 2.
• The Hyron drones are themselves a shout-out to Project Overlord In Mass Effect 2 - humans plugged in to a computer and intermittently screaming their distress. Even Zhao has a similar crucifiction like pose similar to David Archer when she tries to seize control.
  • The Hyron concept is also similar to the kidnapped colonists’ fate in Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission - humans forcefully plugged in together via cybernetics to form a hive mind.

The Missing Link

• The ship Jensen is on is named Hei Zhen Zhu, which translates as 'black pearl'.
• Once again, the Irishman is not an Irishman.
• One of the Jane Does in the stasis pods aboard the cargo ship is labeled with the initials "MM", has implants that include ocular mirror lenses and finger razors, was picked up in Japan, and has "Rose Kolodny" listed as an alias.
• Another stasis pod lists its occupant as the possible descendant of a shipwreck victim who was found with several crude mechanical devices made of coconuts and bamboo.
  • The occupant's name is listed as "JaneDoe1964-7", the years Gilligan's Island was initially aired.
  • Coordinates given for the island on which she was found match those given by The Professor in the episode, "Big Man on a Little Stick".
• One computer in the RBS Admin wing has an email correspondence from a Lt. Milo Binder to a Cpl. W. O'Reilly, advising that, if he is really serious about getting a pizza oven, he should just fill out one of the standard machine gun requisition forms, cross out the machinegun model, and write "pizza". This is something a requisition officer once told the doctors of the 4077th that they could do, after telling them that they could not get supplies they actually needed.

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