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Shout Out / Teen Titans (2003)
aka: Teen Titans

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Teen Titans (2003) features plenty of Shout Outs. Here's the list:

  • There are many references to FLCL and Battle of the Planets, as Glen Murakami is a fan of both. Murakami has even said FLCL was a huge influence on the show.
  • "257-494" ("Don't Touch That Dial") is pretty much twenty-two minutes of references. They even got in the Star Wars Kid Most notably, the climax is an extended parody of The Empire Strikes Back..
  • "Fear Itself" is the introduction of Control Freak and has many Star Wars and Star Trek references.
    • Control Freak's sole reason for attacking a video rental store was because he found out that they had not made "Warp Trek 5" one of their top suggested movies to rent.
    • The sound that Control Freak's remote makes is the same sound the transporter from Star Trek makes.
    • Control Freak assures that although the Teen Titans are not afraid of him, they will be soon, mimicking Yoda's trademark speech pattern.
  • In "Bunny Raven, or How to Make a Titananimal Disappear", among other shout-outs (including a Statler and Waldorf shtick), there's a shout-out to "Yes! We Have No Bananas", a part of a 20s Broadway revue.
  • In "For Real", Control Freak's Hacker Cave contains multiple computer screens with Matrix Raining Code.
  • Beast Boy briefly turns into Chewbacca in "Stranded". Then later carries Cyborg as if he were C-3PO! Immediately after that, he turns Cyborg into Giant Robo (and himself into Daisaku Kusama)!
  • Possibly jumping the line between homage and plagiarism, the episode "Car Trouble" copies the entire minutes long chase scene from The Castle of Cagliostro, down to the level of detail visible in each shot.
  • "The Prophecy" has Slade stopping time using the same visual effect as the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OAVs.
  • The creators of Robot Chicken did a parody of the show and credited Cyborg as the basis for their Chicken design. This is acknowledged in "Stranded", when Beast Boy accidentally rebuilds Cyborg as a chicken.
  • Kitten and Killer Moth's house is identical to The Brady Bunch house, right down to the landscape in the back.
    • Speaking of Killer Moth, his design in this show takes a lot of influence from a different insect-themed superbeing to the point it barely resembles his traditional comics look.
  • "Mad Mod" features a plethora of shoutouts; including the Sea of Holes from Yellow Submarine, a door sequence ripped straight out of Scooby-Doo, mind-boggling paintings by M.C. Escher, and mind control devices not entirely unlike the ones used in A Clockwork Orange. Robin's discovery of the real appearance of The Chessmaster, Mad Mod, is a shoutout to the Cowboy Bebop episode "Bohemian Rhapsody" where the Big Bad is found to be a decrepit old man playing chess.
  • In "Revolution":
  • The opening scene of "The Apprentice " parallels the cave scene of The Empire Strikes Back.
  • Brain's robot body and voice in "Homecoming" is based on Dalek.
  • In the last episode of the fifth season, "Things Change", a kid who resembles Napoleon from Napoleon Dynamite is also attending Terra's school and can be seen passing by in front of the camera in a few scenes, notably in the library and at the end of the episode in the hallway. Adding to this is the fact that, in the school's hallways, posters reading "Vote for Pedro" can be seen.
  • In the short "Movies", Control Freak is painted as a Navi from Avatar riding a mecha suit from either the same movie or Aliens, which appears to be the movie the Titans are watching.
  • The title of the first Raven-centric episode, "Nevermore", is a reference to the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem The Raven.
  • In the New Teen Titans short "Turn Back The Clock", Mad Mod is turning back time with a red TARDIS. As time goes backwards, the teams' costumes go through their previous iterations from the comics, including pants-less Robin and Stripperific Starfire. When they reach the 70's, they get the costumes from the Scooby-Doo gang, complete with B.B. Snacksnote  When Robin cranks time forward too far, he's turned into "Robin the Toy Wonder" from DC One Million; the other four titans are replaced with the futuristic heroes of Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stonenote , with the designs done by the series' character designer Derrick Wyatt for fun in 2006 (which helps explain why "Witchie-Poo" looks remarkably like a post-upgrade Sari Sumdacnote ).
    • The opening animation of the sun & Big Ben is straight from Yellow Submarine.
    • The ending animation where Mad Mod is having trouble keeping up with the conveyor belt is an homage to the ending credits from The Jetsons.
  • At one point in the episode "Sum of His Parts", Robin's 'locator' sounds identical to the Star Trek: The Original Series' communicator. And, to cast aside any doubt, it looks oddly similar, too.
  • In "Wavelength", turns out that Cyborg doesn't like being called Sparky.
  • Melvin, the little girl from Hide and Seek, not only has hair similar to Chiyo-Chan, but expresses her emotions in the same way.
  • In "Employee of the Month", the moped Beast boy wants looks like a white-colored version of Haruko's scooter from FLCL, with a T! instead of a P! sticker on it. When later riding a moped, he dons a scarf like Haruko's.
  • In The End - Part III, Beast Boy fights his own evil side. When he turns into a T. rex, his inner demon counters by transforming into a Spinosaurus, referencing the infamous scene in Jurassic Park III in which the latter kills a Tyrannosaurus and establishes itself as the apex predator on the island.
  • In issue no. 11, June 1987, by RJM Lofficier and Joe Orlando the characters meet a muscular boy with a quiff named Tin, whose planet went through a post apocalyptic war. This may sound a bit too obscure, but later in the story he tells about his planet's history and we see him, Captain Haddock and professor Calculus drawn in realistic drawing style. [1]
  • In "Transformation", Starfire's forehead growth and the way she tries to push it back into her head directly mirrors Naota's from FLCL, the anime that influenced much of the show's art style.
    • Also from "Transformation," the fly Starfire catches whimpers "Help meee..."
  • One of the "New Teen Titans" DC Nation shorts that never aired on TV (but can be watched on the DC Universe streaming service) is titled "It's The Great Pumpkin, Garfield Logan", and has a smooth jazz soundtrack that mimics much of the background music in Peanuts specials. The end of the short has the Titans all dancing to a jazz piano remix of their Leitmotif, with Robin and Beast Boy mimicking some specific dances from A Charlie Brown Christmas and Cyborg playing a piano. (Beast Boy even shifts into a beagle that looks like Snoopy.) There are also some obscure DC shout-outs; Robin dresses up as Deadman, Silkie is Mister Mind, and Cyborg is the Watchtower.
  • In "Betrothed," Robin interrupts Starfire's wedding from a large window overlooking the chapel from across the altar in a shot identical to one from The Graduate.

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