Shout Out / Sym-Bionic Titan

• The series is set in Sherman, Illinois.
• The Galatic Guardians are one big one to 70's anime superheroes and tokusatsu like Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and Kamen Rider (albeit more as the bad guy organizations than anything).
• The opening of the Rift Gate looks strangely like one of the later openings for Toonami.
  • Rift Gate, you say?
• There's a shop in the mall called "Jerk Store". (Three of them, if you look closely. Must be a chain.)
• And another one called "Floor Mart".
• And another called "Ugly Baby".
• Confrontation, a political debate show in the vein of Crossfire and Hardball.
• Ilana's clothes at the end of Episode 4 look a lot like Velma Dinkley's usual outfit.
• The first fight scene. The army's firepower does nothing to the monster, and then its first attack knocks the Titan flat on its arse against a building. Shades of Shinji's first fight in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• When Xeexi Mind Rapes someone, their bodies become more vascular, much like what happened to Ayanami Rei.
• Lance fights Hans Gruber in a bank in episode 4.
• The White Dragon bears an uncanny resemblance to Travis Touchdown.
• The episode itself episode seems to have been one huge reference to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
• The White Dragon's crew all drive popular Lawyer-Friendly Cameo versions of popular tuner cars such as the Nissan 350z, Nissan Skyline, Toyota Supra, Subaru Impreza WRX STI, and a Ford Focus.
• The Alpha Bitch of the cheerleading squad is named Kimmy and some of her fellow cheerleaders look like DeeDee and her friends. And Ron Stoppable voicing their mascot helps.
• Episode 8 bares a number of similarities to Harry Potter. Orphaned youth with chip on his shoulders; check. Blonde-haired perfectionist with two hench-friends who antagonize the boy; check.
• Baron's aristocratic name, long nose, and hairstyle marks him as a younger counterpart to Osamu Tezuka's character Duke Red.
• Episode 8 also had short plump young boy with red hair and big eyeglasses. Hmmm...
• The farm in "Tashy 497" is the exact same one from Courage the Cowardly Dog. All that was missing was an old lady yelling at her grumpy husband because of the house blowing up and the man blaming it on a pink poodle.
  • Eerily, the farm house and its surroundings seem to be completely abandoned and decaying.
• The Titan resembles a semitransparent version of Gigantor.
• Galaluna and the Mutraddi beasts recall similar concepts from Voltron. As do Lance and the Princess.
• Overall, there's some overlap with UFO Robo Grendizer.
• General Steel recalls General Ross from The Incredible Hulk (2008).
• A popular death-metal band, Alien Death Hammer, in the tenth episode, looks very familiar.
  • Hell, the lead singer sounds like Nathan, and looked like Eddie Riggs.
• Solomon shares the exact same fashion sense as Alucard.
• Solomon's full name is Solomon Kane.
• The organization designed to protect Earth from alien invasion is called GGG.
• G3's standard soldiers' outfits look a lot like those worn by Red Impulse, although the helmets are reminiscent of Bioman's.
  • On the subject of Gatchaman, Lance can be considered an expy of Joe Asakura, and his father is a dead ringer for Dr. Nambu.
• Right before he stretches out his nose, Octus' shifting disguise in episode 11 looks suspiciously like Nick Cave.
• Those G3 bipedal mechs that appeared near the end of episode 11 bear a striking resemblance to Zentraedi battlepods.
• Scary Mary's last name is Cavanaugh, a reference to Christine Cavanaugh, the original voice of Dexter, who retired from voice-acting in the early 2000s and became very reclusive ever since. Scary Mary's appearance seems a visual shout out to Velma Dinkley.
  • Her first name might also be a reference to Mary Kay Bergman, a voice actress who passed away in 1999, and played Daphne Blake for a while.
• The Ballad of Scary Mary ended by showing Mary being picked up by a dude with stylish hair in a leather jacket riding a motorcycle
• The Spirit appears on a subway train in "I am Octus".
• The sequence with a town of mysteriously paralyzed people in "I Am Octus" resembles one from Village of the Damned (1960).
• Also in "I Am Octus", you can see the (original) Robot from Lost in Space in a store window.
  • And if you look closer, there's a jet with legs as well.
• The soldier General Steel sends in to spy on the trio looks like an older Archie Andrews — albeit after spending a few years trapped in a gym.
• In "Disenfranchised", anyone else notice how Lance looks a bit like Jiro carrying that guitar case on his back?
• "WHAZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!?"
• Hobbes from "Escape from Galaluna" looks quite a bit like Race Bannon, don'tcha think?
• The Mutradi invasion fleet seems to be made out of Planet Crackers
• Kristin looks like an older version of The Big-Eyed Girl.
• Newton holding the boombox over his head was obviously inspired by the romantic gesture from Say Anything..., although he seems to be Comically Missing the Point, given that he's playing commercials instead of a love song.
• In the episode "A Family Crisis", the G3 space station looks like it was built to reactivate a dying sun.
• In the episode "A New Beginning", General Steel drives what he calls "THE HAMMER!" and proceeds to beat up a monster while saying "Can't touch this".
• In "The Demon Within", Ilana mentions that the only one of her arranged dates on Galaluna she was actually interested in was "Prince Simon of Duran," a reference to Simon LeBon.
• During the series finale, after the HMER gets wrecked, Steel blasts away at the enemy with an assault rifle in a manner very reminiscent of Dozle Zabi in Mobile Suit GundamHe's lucky enough to not meet quite the same fate, though.
• The monster in "Roar of the White Dragon" looks an awful lot like Clover from Cloverfield.
• The G3 interrogator looks an awful lot like Bask Ohm from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
• Speaking of Zeta Gundam, young Lance in greatly resembles Kamille Bidan
• The concept of Transformation Trinket's as watches seems to be directly based on the Omnitrix from Ben 10.

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