Shout Out / Torchlight II

• The whole main plot, which involves one of the heroes from the first game turned evil and the new hero(es) chasing after him through several acts, could be seen as a shout out to Diablo II, which had the same basic story.
• Many unique items and all of the late patch legendaries are movie titles, and others have references in their descriptions.
  • A unique wand is named Galaxy Quest with the tooltip "Never give up! Never Surrender!"
• One otherwise irrelevant cave has a group of archaeologists discovering a shape-shifting thing in the ice that threatened to infect the world if it got out. MacReady's shotgonne can be found after defeating the weird and pissed off thing in the dog kennel.
• Another quest has you enter a pirate's cove, complete with a skeletal pirate named 'One-eyed Willie'. You even get his other eye as a socketable!
• Another cave, called Notch's Mine, contains honest-to-god Creepers and a chest that drops any one of types of swords from wood to diamond, each with different stats and a unique tooltip.
  • The wooden sword provides a damage bonus to wands and staves.
  • The cobblestone sword adds 18 to each attribute.
  • The iron sword boosts pet and minion stats.
  • The gold sword is prismatic, dealing damage in all four elements instead of physical damage, referencing that while gold swords in that game have poor damage, they can be easily enchanted with high level enchantments like Fire Aspect.
  • The diamond sword simply has a major boost to physical damage, imitating a Sharpness V enchantment.
• One quest has you battling a race of monster mushrooms known as the Mycon.
• In the secret room of the Scrapworks boss area, there is a Claptrap cameo (with unique dialogue from the original voice actor). Mousing over him reveals the title "Annoying Automaton", which he has been seen as such even in-universe in Borderlands 2.
• One of the pets is a headcrab and one of random names is Lamarr.
• Other random pet names include notable examples such as Bowser, Chewie and Falcor (Which is also the name of Runic's papillon, making it an interesting case of Tuckerization with the papillon pet in the game).
• In the bandit cave, there's a bucket next to a pit. It's a side quest to put lotion in it. Doing so summons a minor skeleton that always drops the rare helmet "Buffadon Bill's Hide Mask". You might want to think twice about wearing that helmet considering what Buffalo Bill did in the book.
• There is a pair of unique Outlander specific boots called Boots of Missile Deflection. Its tooltip contains the flavour text "An arrow to the knee can end your career."
• An Engineer specific pair of pants known as the Breeks of the Railsmith has the flavor text "Smelts like teen spirit".
• When you click on the horse at the start of the game, you get random message that says: "That's the second biggest horse I've ever seen.", which is from Monkey Island and is itself is a Shout-Out from Get Smart.
• One of the Unique random drops is a ring called "The Long and Winding Ring". It's inscribed with a message of love and loss.
• There's a unique Outlander necklace called Symbol of the Davi Child, which has the description "It sometimes turns purple, in the presence of Praxis Ember." While it is set with a green gem, the developers perhaps missed an opportunity by not making it look more like a stalk of celery.
• One Unique Outlander amulet is named "The Pendant of Rejected Realities” and the Flavor Text reads "Only a true savage would wear something like this in public."
• The Engineer's Spider Mines look almost exactly like the Vulture combat bike's from StarCraft II.
• One of the unique hammers is called Maxwell's Silver Hammer, with flavor text that reads "Bang! Bang!".