A list of pop-culture references found in Granblue Fantasy Versus and its sequel Rising. Some of these are references that are carried over from the original Granblue Fantasy gacha game, though the Fighting Game spin-offs have plenty of things to add, ranging from obvious moveset inspirations and copies from other fighting game IPs, color palettes referencing other characters, and even first-party references to other Arc System Works and Cygames properties.
Character-Related References
General or recurring- There's a Palette Swap here for everyone that references the "Guider to the Eternal Edge" outfit from the gacha game, which itself references Dragon Ball Super by providing the main character with a blue hair and fiery aura
akin to Super Saiyan God SS. - Among the Shotoclones for this game, Gran's and Djeeta's shared projectile move, "Reginleiv", is no other than a blue "Hadoken" fireball, made more obvious by the move borrowing the same quarter-circle-forward control input from Street Fighter.
Katalina
- Katalina has a skill named "Emerald Sword", a reference to the "Symphony of Enchanted Lands" album of Rhapsody of Fire.note
Charlotta
- Charlotta is still basically a reference to Saber just like in the original Granblue gacha. That is, if Saber was three feet tall and had a complex about her height on top of her concerns about being qualified for the position she found herself in. Being an Expy of Saber, Charlotta's Charge Attack in the gacha game is Excalibur in all but name - even the particle effects are similar to Excalibur's depictions in later Fate works. In this game, her Excalibur references are carried over in her Super Skybound Art.
- Charlotta makes the "Obari / Brave Perspective Pose◊" before casting Noble Execution. The pose is commonly associated with Masami Obari and his work on Brave Series.
- As seen in this video compilation, several of Charlotta's movesets are taken from Akuma and E. Honda of Street Fighter. Notably, she has a version of the former's "Demon Flip".
Lancelot
- His Color 2 is a Palette Swap reference to fellow Cygames character Charioce XVII.
- Lancelot has some moves, mechanics and animation copied from other ArcSys character such as Ky Kiske (sword combos), Leo Whitefang (dashing through the opponent) and Jin Kisaragi. Much more so with the latter, who also fights using ice powers. Both Lancelot and Jin can also summon sword-shaped icicles and encase their opponents in ice using their most powerful move.
Ferry
- When Ferry uses her whip to grab her opponent and send them flying toward her, she will sometimes shout "Get over here!".
Lowain
- The round victory animation of the Lowain Bros is taken from the victory animation of Lowain's SR version from the gacha game, which is a reference to EXILE's "Choo Choo Train" music video.
- Lowain has a move named "Come At Me, Bro", which is named after his gacha event version's passive skill, which is in turn, a meme phrase from Jersey Shore.
- Lowain and his bros reference the iconic Guilty Gear fight intronote in their dialogue against Katalina.Lowain: She's gonna rock us so hard. All aboard, boys. 'Cuz this is a one-way ticket...All three: to heaven or hell!
- After defeating Vaseraga, their win quote ends with "Creepers, no creepin'!"
- Yggdrasil's "Earth Pillar" move makes her summon pillars of spiked earth just like in the original game and its anime adaptation. However, the multiple pillars are consecutively spawned forward, mimicking Nu-13's "Spike Chaser" from BlazBlue.
Ladiva
- One of Ladiva's aerial attacks is basically Zangief's dropkick which has also been cloned into other fighting game franchise characters such as Azrael from BlazBlue.
Percival
- Percival's "Anzuenden" is basically just Sol's Gunflame in terms of utility and effects, but with a different (or rather fancier) flame trail appearance.
Zeta
- Just like in the gacha, Zeta's ability names are taken from Rhapsody of Fire.note
- Her Color 3 is a Palette Swap reference to ArcSystem Works character Makoto Nanaya.
Vaseraga
- Just like in the gacha, Vaseraga's ability names are taken from Blind Guardian songs.note
Beelzebub
- In the Weapon Glossary section, Beelzebub's default gauntlet is named Bohemian Rhapsody, alluding to the line "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me" from the song of the same name.
- His "Langelaan Field" skill is named in reference to George Langelaan, the author of The Fly.
Narmaya
- Her Color 4 is a Palette Swap reference to Vergil from the Devil May Cry series. It's also worth noting that Narmaya and Vergil are both Iaijutsu Practitioners, and Vergil also had his Fighting Game debut in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
- Narmaya borrows some moves from characters from The Last Blade series, notably Keiichiro Washizuka and Moriya Minakata.
Soriz
- His Color 11 is a Palette Swap reference to Akuma.
- Soriz's counter is reminiscent of a similar move Azrael uses.
Djeeta
- Djeeta's "Eternal Ascendancy" Super Skybound Art is based on the "Deadly Rave" of Geese Howard from Fatal Fury. It's a super move that requires specific button inputs to unleash the entire attack combo, which ends in a flashy finisher.
- Her Color 12 is a Palette Swap reference to fellow Cygames character Kokkoro.
Zooey
- Zooey's Jumping Unique Action is clearly modeled after Sol Badguy's Jumping Dust, right down to the physics of it knocking the opponent down and wallbouncing on counter-hit. In fact, the final combo in her combo trials has you juggle the opponent in the corner by doing the move twice before landing, just like Sol's infamous dustloop.
Cagliostro
- Cagliostro's Super Skybound Art is named "Everything's Coming Up Cagliostro".
Anila
- As shown in her reveal trailer for Rising, Anila retains her gacha version's references to SNK's Terry Bogard, namely his Power Geysernote and Buster Wolf posenote . Her playable version in Rising takes her Terry influences further and gives her special moves that harken back to Terry's playstyle, including a projectile that travels on the ground like Terry's Power Wave, a forward-traveling attack like Terry's Burn Knuckle, and a command jump special that emulates hops and hyperhops from The King of Fighters.
- Anila has a command named "Flock to the Future", a sheep-based pun to Back to the Future.
2B
- While 2B's gameplay as a whole is a faithful recreation of her fighting style and abilities from her home game, many aspects of her gameplay are also a love letter to many of Arc System Works' older fighting games, as well as certain other franchises.
- Her attack strings from her original game are reflected as DBFZ-style autocombos that can continue even on whiff.
- Unlike other characters who run on a cool-down system for their skills, she has an "SKL" gauge similar to Robo-Ky and his special Electricity Gauge, or Fulgore and his special Reactor Gauge, both of which require using "pips" of the meter to perform certain special moves.
- She has her own version of Nu-13's Gravity Seed and Hazama's Ouroboros chains.
Miscellaneous References
- Rising has an online mode "Grand Bruise Legends!" which is basically a Granblue-themed Fall Guys mode.
