Shout Out / Dungeon Fighter Online

Due to the large number of moves and character classes, there's bound to be a lot of them.

Class Skills

• For the visual types, a lot of the skills below (and then some) have video comparisons made by a Korean player.
• Slayer's Moonlight Slash looks similar to and functions much like Moriya's Glancing Moon Blade from The Last Blade.
  • Omniblade's second Awakening active essentially works like a set of magical Funnels, including grouping the floating swords on his back in wing formation when they're not attacking.
  • Asura's Wave Eye allows him to shoot out a spinning card with the third slash of his basic combo, much like Genjuro's projectile from Samurai Shodown. Also, his Fire Wave Sword and Magma Wave Sword resemble upscaled versions of Sol Badguy's Gun Flame and Tyrant Rave.
• Female Slayer's Projection Slash likewise functions similar to Moriya's Glancing Blade Haze.
  • Vagabond's Exploding Palm is essentially Buddhist Palm in all but name, including its ability to be used when jumping and leaving a giant palm-shaped crater in the ground when used that way. Her Blade Triangle and Fluttering Blades also greatly resemble Charlotte's Tri-Slash and Crystal Rose.
• As stated below, many of Fighters' attacks are similar to well-known Street Fighter moves, right down to every Fighter having a Hadouken and Hurricane Kick in their basic moveset.
  • In addition to the moves Ryu and Ken are known for, Female Grappler's Neck Snap, a passive Suplex ability that increases its power when it's performed from behind the target and Cyclone Suplex are similar to Alex's moves.
  • Female Striker's first Awakening active is identical to Joe Higashi's World's Strongest Low Kick.
  • Female Nen Master's Nen Implosion is essentially a Kamehame Hadoken in its purest form, while her Brillian Nen is a Spirit Bomb.
  • Male Striker's post-2nd Awakening move Atomic Cannon is similar in appearance and concept to Ralf Jones' Galactica Phantom.
  • Male Grappler's 2nd Awakening Active Sole Bearer: Quaking Tiger is very similar to Raioh's Rising Meteor.
  • Female Nen Master's Energy Shield resembles Chun Li's Kikoushou while the Male version resembles Benimaru's Raikouken.
• Male Gunner's Mach Kick looks and functions similar to Benimaru's Super Inazuma Kick.
  • Female Launcher's second Awakening active Operation Raids is very remiscient of a downscaled METEOR weapon pack used by Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice.
  • Male Mechanic's first Awakening active Gaebolg Punch is Bloodia Punch in all but name. Likewise, his second Awakening active Hell March is essentially a more militarized version of Servbot Lunch Rush. Finally, his TX-80 Dimension Runner is a Terminator in all but name: it teleports on the battlefield via a damaging sphere of energy, shoots at its enemies repeatedly and after its timer runs out and it either blows up or dashes to the closest enemy and performs a suicide attack on them, the explosion leaves behind a puddle of molten metal where one of its arms sinks into while giving a thumbs up.
  • His basic skills are direct references to mobile suits, namely the RX-78 Land Runner, the Ez-8 Time Bomb, and the Ex-S Viper. Additionally, Mech Drop uses an audio clip from StarCraft with its pitch altered, while Sparrow Factory resembles the Protoss Carrier's Interceptors. Finally, his new 2nd Awakening skill that replaces another one is called TX-45 A-Team.
• The Female Mechanic's second awakening is called the Optimus, and the Male Mechanic's second awakening is the Prime.
• Much of the Monk's playstyle is based on other technical boxer characters, mostly Dudley and Steve.
  • Exquisite Combo is a series of fast punches while the Monk shouts "Ora ora ora!"
• Rogue's Vertical Spiral functions the same way as Andy Bogard's (Chou) Reppadan, with an additional sword attack at the end.
• Necromancer's second Awakening, Vallacre's Advent, has Vallacre take on an appearance remiscient of Background Bosses seen in Marvel vs. Capcom games. One of Nicholas' moves also greatly resembles Jedah Dohma's Dio Cega.
• The sword summoned by Kunoichi's 2nd Awakening skill, Sword Of Kusanagi, bears more than a passing resemblance to the design of Falchion seen in Fire Emblem: Awakening and fittingly enough, fire is Kunoichi's main element.
• Shadow Dancer's Abyss Drop is similar in appearance to Guy's Bushin Izuna Otoshi, while her Assassination functions in the same way as Shiki Tohno's Mystic Eyes Of Death Perception.
• Chaos' Sky Sword is essentially a sped-up version of V no Jigiri with an additional horizonal slash at the end.
• Dark Knight's 2nd awakening active, Time Break, looks a lot like Vergil's Judgment Cut End.
• Vanguard's Smash changes in function depending on whether it's used after his first, second or third hit of his basic attack chain, identical to the combo trees in Dynasty Warriors, which is fitting considering that he's the only physical spear wielder in the cast and the most well-known DW characters use them by default.
• Swift Master's Storm Strike functions in a similar manner to Ryo's Tenchi Haoh Ken, and his Spiral Press consists of a wind projectile followed by a M. Bison's Psycho Crusher.
• The Elementalist's level 100 skill, Cosmic Calamity, has an animation that's strikingly similar to Tenebria's Ultimate in Epic Seven.
• The Troublehsooter's level 100 skill has a Mad Max theme going for it, with the Troubleshooter mounting an apunkalypse-esque Cool Bike, trapping his enemies in what looks like giant walls of sheet metal, and then blowing it up sky high. The entire thing also takes place in what looks like a desert wasteland.

Events

• One of DFO Global's first events was the Tau Kingdom event, which was mostly giant rooms with nothing but Tau everywhere, evoking the Secret Cow Level. The second room randomly containing black-and-white Tau and the dungeon having no background music further cement the comparison.
• The Into the Fire dungeon from the Once Upon a Time in Arad event has been compared to Wild Guns by a few players.
• From the same event, the final boss, Wyatt, has "Feelin' lucky? Well, do ya punk?" as one of his combat lines.
• The Creature Gone event involves gathering balls and using them to catch small creatures. If that wasn't enough, said sequence even resembles a Pokémon battle screen!
• The I Want You event's poster is Jakter pointing at you in the same style as the iconic Uncle Sam poster.
• A surprise April Fools' event for 2017 brings a ring equipment called "One Ring" that makes its wearers periodically turn invisible and a bundle of valuable materials from someone named "Sawrun".
• The name of the event when Anton Raid first released was called "Attack on Anton".
• DFO Global's 3rd anniversary brings a minigame where you make sandwiches by catching falling ingredients. If you do well enough, words like "Unstoppable!!" and "Dominating!!" show up on the screen.
• One of the buyable items in the MJ's Blind Deal 2018 event was a Joke Item called "Magical Lyrical Circle".
• The Thanksgiving 2018 event is called "Turkmagotchi".
• The jump server has a number of pre-made guilds named after various NPCs. One of these has a line reminiscent of descriptions that appear when one tries to inspect dead bodies in Dragon Quest.
• One of the DFO 4th Anniversary minigames was a Rhythm Game called Arad Dance Party that resembled the likes of Audition Online or Bust a Groove in its execution.
• Arad Tank Wars is basically a Gunbound clone (and, by extension, a clone of Worms).
• The Darkest Castle event is DFO's take on Slay the Spire.
• The Korean version's Imperial Knights event is a dead ringer for One Finger Death Punch.
• Lotus Jump is a dead ringer for Doodle Jump.
• Possibly unintentional, but the Mercenary Agency event has a limited time cosmetic title called Goblin Slayer.
• The Tower of Despair Challenge is a bite-sized version of the idle mobile MMORPG experience, akin to games such as King's Raid.
• The BitBit 8Bit event is a watered down version of Enter the Gungeon.

Dungeons/Enemies

• The Valley of the Half-Beasts dungeon has trash cans that drop meat and drumsticks, much like in other side-scrolling beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage and Final Fight.
• The Tower of Anguish:
  • Floor 10's boss has a Soul Bender named Ant that starts off a few pixels in height, then grows to three to four times the player's height in the latter half of the fight. His death line also references the "orange slices" line from Captain America: Civil War.
  • Floor 31 has a male Crusader named 60 Cents.
  • Floor 63: The male Striker present on this floor rather appropriately says "Ong-bak!" in one of his combat lines.
  • Floor 76: The Monk on this floor is just straight up DIO. He has the ability to stop time and yells your name when you defeat him. (For some strange reason, he yells "For camaraderie! For camaraderie!" repeatedly, though...)
  • Floor 97: The description of the floor is "The last AI unit", the boss consists of a large number of identical scantly clad female Strikers, and upon defeating them, the last one of them says "For the glory of the 97th floor!"
• The Voyage dungeon "Inner Castle" in DFOG (event dungeon based on Arthurian lore in another version) has an enemy in a hidden room — a certain Killer Rabbit.
• The Imperial Arena allows players to bring in two of their characters and tag them in and out at will using the Tab key, making the dungeon play a lot like Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite or Tekken Tag Tournament.
• One of the Imperial Arena bosses, Paru Meru, expresses a fondness for explosions and calls them "true art" when shifting to her fire damage mode. Luckily for the Dungeon Fighters, she doesn't have anything remotely resembling the magnitude of Megumin's Explosion spell in her arsenal.
• The Fiend War raid is structured much like a MOBA on several counts:
  • The raid's map screen essentially boils down to the typical "three lanes that converge at an HQ at either end" type of map, as shown in the MOBA link above.
  • Players aren't strictly tied to one party through most of the raid, and in fact are only forced to party if multiple players engage the same sector on the map.
  • Players can only use potions specifically designed for Fiend War and no other consumables (although they're sold by a randomly-spawning Intrepid Merchant here rather than at the allied HQ).
  • Both the players and enemy forces respawn at and close to their HQs, respectively.
  • In place of destroying a physical HQ on the enemy's side, simply defeating the final boss completes the raid. On the other hand, if any enemy unit makes it to the allied HQ, the raid immediately fails.
  • Neutral bosses that litter the map are hostile to both the raiding parties and the enemy, standing in for creeps in most other MOBAs.
• One of the Pandemonium Meeting's penultimate bosses, Silent Sergei, attacks with liberal use of teleportation. His attacks usually involve him jumping into (or shooting magic blades into) a blue portal and emerging out of a yellow-orange one, closely resembling the portal colors used in Valve's Portal series. One of his attacks even uses the infinite falling trick used in some of Portal's momentum-based puzzles, except here he uses it to inflict a huge chunk of fall damage to the player.
• Ozma's boss fight in his eponymous raid plays out very similarly to Urizen's boss fights in Devil May Cry 5. Both of them spend the first halves of their fights slouching in their thrones with giant floating crystals attacking tanking the damage for them, and both of them also slowly rise from their thrones to fight the player themselves during the second halves of their fights. The only real difference is how they fight in the second half - Ozma, being a former archmage, prefers to bombard the battlefield with chaos and darkness spells, while Urizen engages in Good Old Fisticuffs. Story-wise, the two of them were both once human.

Misc

• The game as a whole is one ginormous shout-out to classic Capcom beat-'em-up Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara.
• One Feat Quest in the Time Gate area is called "She, The Ultimate Boss".
• The Arad Battle Suit avatar set has a set for the Demonic Lancer that looks remarkably similar to Raiden (specifically, his Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance appearance).
• The trailer for the Golden Capsule event is quite obviously inspired by The Matrix.
• An Epic Quest in Pandemonium reveals that it was not Luke who gave Life Water to the Flamekin. It was HE, GRAGOL!
• The Dusky West zanbato is one angled handle away from a gunblade.
• The Demonic Lancer has ever-so-slightly blue hair and red eyes, bearing a passing resemblance to a certain other lancer with similar hair and eye colors.
• The Ghostblade fights with a demonic familiar who can attack in his place and has roughly the same build as the Ghostblade himself - which, as some people on /r/dfo have pointed out, make him look like a Stand user. The same can be said of the Necromancer and Demon Slayer classes, who have a similar gimmick.
• The logo animation used for DFO ExStream is quite clearly modeled after the various iterations of the Marvel Studios "flipping pages" Logo Joke.
• The Chaos's "Awakened Ones the Second" avatar package has a palette swap that makes her look suspiciously like Morrigan Aensland.
• According to the DFO World Wiki, Mad Scientist Gizel Logan's general demeanor and appearance are influenced by Battle Angel Alita's Desty Nova.
• The game's UI was originally heavily inspired by Diablo II, appearing predominantly made of light brown stone with predominantly dark stone buttons and portraying health and mana pools in red and blue glass orbs, respectively. The glass orbs still persist as part of the game's UI to this day.
  • The Blood Mage's Sanguinem meter is portrayed as his mana orb being split in half, with the left half displaying his Sanguinem reserves in a manner identical to the Demon Hunter's Hatred and Discipline reserves in Diablo III.
  • The level 110 cap introduced certain pieces of equipment that provide players with a regenerating shield, often in exchange for a percentage of their maximum health. This is displayed on the health bar as the portion of health turning brownish-gray and a light blue arc along the right side of the health orb, respectively. Both of these UI elements are inspired by the health/mana reservation display and energy shield display in Path of Exile, another game heavily inspired by Diablo II.