Shout Out / The Wonderful 101

Seeing as The Wonderful 101 is another title by PlatinumGames, tons of Shout Outs should be expected (and not just the Shout Outs to other games by the Platinum Games team).

Miscellaneous Shout Outs

• The game itself is one giant love letter to Super Sentai and Tokusatsu in general.
• The way Wonder Blue henshins looks oddly familiar...
• Wonder Pink hails from Transylvania and her Beautiful Whip is made of Belmont Alloy.
• Wonder Black would appear to be constantly playing a Nintendo 3DS with a Game & Watch skin (orange color and styling is the same as on Donkey Kong model).
  • If you fail one of his QTE's he will simply close the 3DS, putting it into sleep mode.
• Wonder Green's Unite Power can take the form of a Super Scope◊.
• When Wonder Pink is introduced, Wonder Blue cries out "Hey, can we save the meet-and-greet for later? We got a pain in the butt hedgehog to get rid of!" It's unintentional, but when you consider the fact that his English VA is famous for voicing a certain blue hedgehog...
• The latter part of Operation 005's boss fight is one big love letter to Punch-Out!!. You even get to gain stars during the fight to do a KO punch.
  • The boss even falls down for the count in the exact same goofy retro way as the boxers do in the NES version. And you can charge your laser attack during this section by rapid button pressing, similar to how Mac can restore health in the Wii version.
  • The 005 boss is a combination of Don Flamenco's castanet punches and Glass Joe. The 007 boss is like many of the boxers who use dirty tricks against you. The final boss is basically Punch-Out meets Power Rangers.
• At the end of Operation 007-B, after Vorkken wakes up when the group has returned from inside of him, Professor Shirogane comments "We just went through a scale model o' Hades." This is a nod to Kid Icarus: Uprising, where Pit ended up inside Hades after the latter swallowed him and had to venture through him.
• One of the recruitable heroes is Wonder Fixit, whose civilian name is Felix.
• In the ending, Green finds it implausible that Jergingha would come back in time just to "terminate" people. Yes, he does say terminate.
• At one point, at the end of a shoot 'em up stage, the boss is introduced by "Warning! A huge Jerk-matter object is approaching fast!" In typical Darius style. The boss is a giant robotic sea-creature, in this case, an Octopus.
  • In the same shoot 'em up stage, you can recruit submarines the same way you would with civilians, etc. When you do, Alice says "Option".
• The Legend of Zelda references:
  • One operation takes place in the lost city of Lowrule. One has to wonder if Kamiya knew something we didn't.
    • Wonder-Green is always holding food, with different types such as baguettes throughout the game. For this Operation, it's the meat from the original Zelda.
  • You even get a bottle cap for cutting all of the grass.
  • The first optional Wonderful One has the title "Warrior of Wisdom," and his weapon is a protractor dubbed the Triangle Force.
  • Hero Heart Fragments work in the same way Pieces of Heart do throughout the Zelda series: they are parts of hearts in a way, and collecting four of them increases the maximum health limit.
  • The only way to harm armored, turtle-like Megangs is to smack them a Hammer and flip them over. A reference to Kamiya's personal favorite game of all time — The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
• Wonder-Dancer's tagline is "Show me your moves!"
• Wonder-Makeup is a drag queen named Priscilla.
• Wonder-Zombie is a zombie-infected special forces agent named Chris Garfield.
• Attacking with the Unite Hand while it's on fire will result in a fireball being shot out, bouncing across the ground Mario-style.
• When chasing after the Shirogane Comet, the game plays like Space Harrier, including having an animation for running along the "ground" if you happen to be near the bottom of the screen.
  • Blue even says "You're doing great!" just like the original game does.
  • Two mini-bosses are encountered in this section, both of whom copy tactics used by bosses in that game.
  • This also mirrors the air battles of Kid Icarus: Uprising.
• Star Wars references:
  • Wonder-Blue at one time says Never Tell Me the Odds!.
  • When the team flies towards Shirogane Comet:
    Green: Ah, the stars... They are so beautiful!
    Blue: Here comes a shooting star! Make a wish!
    Professor Shirogane: That's no shooting star!
  • There's a space station towards the end of the game called the GEATH-Wahksay. "GEATH" rhymes with "death" and "wahksay" is an obvious corruption of the Japanese word 惑星 (wakusei), meaning "planet". Here's what the "GEATH planet" looks like◊.
    • Chip Cheezum mistranslates "wakusei" in his LP of the game, but it means he found another possible reference to the same thing.
      Chip: Pretty sure wakusei means star, so it's a GEATH Star.
• The Big Bad is a giant brain that, at one point, fights you in the form of a large head with two hands, followed by an escape through the tunnel of his collapsing fortress. It's also possible that the first form of the fight is a reference to Mother Brain.
  • The second form is a reference to Andross from Star Fox, Wham Bam Rock from Kirby, and Bongo Bongo from Zelda.
  • The final form is basically a Shout-Out to the Megazord fights from Power Rangers.
  • Kamiya stated on Twitter that his giant brain form is inspired by The Mystery of Mamo.
• The second GEATHJERK invasion 20 years in the past is stopped by a lone aircraft crashing into the alien mothership and hacking its computers.
  • First shot of said flashback to previous war is a recreation of Gradius cover art◊
• Wonder-Green names his weapon Christine Daae.
• Wonder-Goggles' weapon, which shoots Eye Beams, is called the Stingy Eye.
• Wonder-Sniper's weapon is called Salsa 13.
• Wonder-Cellphone is stationed in Espoo, the location of Nokia's headquarters.
• Wonder-Death is stationed in Sweden, the origin country of The Seventh Seal.
• The "Alan Smithee" part of Luka Alan Smithee's name is a reference to the name a movie is attributed to if its director requests his or her name removed from it (due to Executive Meddling, for example).
• Geathjerk might remind some of the Interstellar Federation from the Starlord comic book before it was merged into 2000 AD.
  • On the other hand, they are a race of Card Carrying Villains who come from the future to stop their annihilation at the hands of the Omnicidal Maniacs that the heroes will become, with the final battle being fought with an army of Humongous Robots. sounds familiar.
• The secret character Poseman is both a reference to Viewtiful Joe (Poseman was one of the working names for Joe, as well as always performing Ukemi) and to the original Kamen Rider (his name is Hayato and his untransformed model looks like Takashi with Ichigo’s Scarf of Asskicking)
• The Wonderful Ones' Unlimited Form mask is an homage to Kamen Rider's masks. Both of Nelson’s Unlimited forms have Mazinger Z’s face plate instead.
• It's worth noting that the J in GEATHJERK is short for Jiggawatt.
• The "Continue?" screen features the most recently used Wonderful One looking defeated in a spotlight. Selecting Yes will cause them to spring up into a rigid pose like an action figure.
• Wonder-Death is modeled after the grim reaper and is apparently from Sweden.

Shout Outs to Platinum Games' Library

• Wonder-Blue's design looks familiar. BFS? Badass Longcoat? Almost white hair? Douchey, devil-may-care attitude? Hmmm...
  • At one point, he even outright yells, "Let's rock, baby!"
  • Your two first Morphs are a red hand that can be imbued with fire, and a blue sword than can be imbued with lighting. Alastor and Ifrit anyone?
• One of the characters is a kid by the name of Luka Alan Smithee. He even has Luka's exact scarf, and uses the "L-U-K-A, Luka" line.
• The Gaia Defence Army vehicle that Blue arrives on in the prologue is designed exactly like the enemy vehicles from Chapter 8 of Bayonetta.
• Like Wonder-Blue's similarity to Dante, Pink has a lot of similarities in theme to the title character from Bayonetta. Her transformation sequence includes a lot of sexy posing and camera shots, which is something that occurs in cutscenes and gameplay in Bayonetta. Her QTE prompt for repeatedly hitting an enemy with her whip says "Punish", which was used in the similar prompts for Bayonetta's Torture attacks.
  • She also talks about the Red Hot Trilogy at some point.
• During a cutscene in the Prologue in which the narrator is talking, Blue is separated from everyone else, and also isn't frozen. He fidgets around, swings his sword a few times, then draws a circle in the air with it, as if charging Shuraba, Angel Slayer, Pillow Talk or Bloody Moon from Bayonetta. (Of course, when he tries to use this charged slice, he falls off the bottom edge of the screen.)
• Wonder-Black's Unite Power also seems to be based on the Cherry Bomb technique from Ōkami. It's even drawn in the same way.
• You can revive wilted flowers by using the Wonder Liner in a circle around them. This is a nod to Ōkami, where you did the same with the Celestial Brush.
• Wonderful Stinger is a reference to Dante's Stinger attack.
• Vijounne has an attack where she blows a kiss and transforms Blue into a dog during their solo fight, just like Shannon can do to Gene. It is also a reference to the final boss from Bayonetta. Although Jubileus can't turn Bayonetta into a dog, she can turn Bayonetta into her younger self, and she will be completely defenseless in this form, just like Blue in his dog form.
  • During the second encounter with her, Blue will strike a pose while his mask closes around his mouth, just like Joe does before a boss fight.
• The Shocking Red bomb, a red bomb with a W on it, is a lot like Viewtiful Joe's Shocking Pink bomb, a pink bomb with a V on it.
  • Prince Vorkken's signature morph during his battles with you is a bladed boomerang shaped like his "V" emblem, similar to Joe's Voomerang.
  • Two special moves you can purchase after completing the game are Wonderful Forever and Platinum Forever. Both, especially Wonderful Forever, are references to Viewtiful Joe's Viewtiful Forever attack. Similarly, a recovery move called Ukemi exists, and functions much the same as Joe's Ukemi. Finally, the secret hero Poseman has a special skill called "Heroic Forever", which can be used with the same input as Ukemi to pose and damage surrounding enemies, mirroring the function of Joe's Viewtiful Forever.
• You can mix foods you pick up to turn them into dishes that boost your health and unite gauge, among other benefits. This is the exact same sort of system that was in Bayonetta with lollipops.
  • The button-mashing QTE prompts (particularly during boss fights) are also back from Bayonetta.
• Diekuu Ohrowchee, while sharing a name with a mythical, giant, multi-headed serpent (that also appears in Ōkami), has the appearance of King/Mecha Ghidorah and the color scheme (marble white and shiny gold) of the angels from Bayonetta.
• Towards the end of the game, Vorkken's ship, the Meizzer tears through an Envan and devours some sort of blue cylinder core, which looks remarkably similar to a well-executed Zandatsu. Similar characters even appear during the attack.
  • Earlier, Walltha, brother of Laambo, mentions he isn't out for "revengeance", but merely following in his sibling's footsteps to serve GEATHJERK.
  • Even earlier, the way the 100 finish off Laambo and Ohrowchee is very much reminiscent of Raiden's takedown of Metal Gear RAY.
• As revealed during the flashback section of Operation 006, Wonder-Red attended Clover Kindergarten, a possible reference to Platinum formerly being Clover Studios.
• The Shirogane Comet shares its design with that of the space colony from Vanquish. One of the shots even has the exact same framing◊.
• Wonder Blue mouths off to Wanna, who looks like a house fly, "Buzz off, bug face!", which is just the line "Flock off, feather face!" with the species changed.
  Green: Ah, Blue! A variation on a theme! I approve!
• During his boss fight, Gimme refers to the Wonderful 100 as 'crying baby cockroaches'. This hybrid is Bayonetta's worst fear.
• Wonder-Witch is said to be from a tribe of gun-wielding witches, and turns into a hairy beast when angered. This is, of course, another reference to Bayonetta. Specifically, the titular character comes from a similarly depicted coven that are called the Umbra Witches. Amusingly, Bayonetta herself is also a secret character in this game, as "Wonder-Bayonetta".
  • According to bio, her civilian profession is a librarian, which is a joke on how she was received on the internet at first reveal.
• Yellow's hammer is very similar to that of Big Bull's, in that it has jet thrusters on the back that activate when the hammer is swung.
  • Also, Pink's spiked whip is rather similar to Mathilda's weapon, which normally takes the shape of a spiked club but, in the execution for a mutant, can also be used as a very lethal whip, while Pink's whip is basically both whip and club.
• The Tumeeky and Koh-Tumeeky enemies encountered in the ruins of Mt. Ogretoe resemble the Golems from Bayonetta. They even fight the same way: mimicking the player characters' transformation attacks and battling that way (in Bayonetta, the Golems copied Bayonetta's demonic summons).
  • The Orgon enemy resembles a stripped down version of Inspired, from Bayonetta. They even collapse in the same way when damaged.
• The Hero Time and Dodge Time techniques work just like Bayonetta's Witch Time, and even have the exact same sound effect.
  • And the Hero Counter technique functions similarly to Bayonetta's Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa counter (or parrying in Metal Gear Rising).
• One of the miscellaneous Wonderful Ones, Wonder-Cheerleader, is a blonde-haired, blue colored, glasses-wearing, cheerleader-themed, gun-wielding hero named Sylvia with a boyfriend named Joe, who's voiced by Christina Puccelli. Actually deliberate, since Kamiya-san apparently stated that Wonder-Cheerleader IS Sexy Sylvia.

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