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Shout Out / Video Games

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mitsukniR_konami_shoutout_4202.png
Can you recognize all Konami characters present in this Purikura sequence of this Konami game? note 

"Want to be A Winner Is You?"
— Earl, Pokémon Gold and Silver

Shout-Outs from Video Games.

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  • Backpack Hero:
  • Backyard Sports: Oh, where to start. Reese Worthington makes tons of Star Wars references, Dmitri Petrovich talks about many computer languages, and Sunny Day has a Putt-Putt watch. There are many more, too many to fit on this page.
  • In Bacon Man: An Adventure, two of the titular character's alternate skins make him look like Papyrus and Earthworm Jim.
  • The realm Star Kriege from Ball Revamped 3: Andromeda looks like something from Star Wars. There are T.I.E. starfighters in the background and "Kriege" means "wars" in German.
  • Barbarous: Tavern of Emyr has several in a bit of Spy Speak between Emyr and O'rho.
    Emyr: Psst! Creatures of the night on the dark side of the moon!
    O'rho: Aye! And the master of puppets is back in black.
  • BARK: In your owner's room, on the side of the rocking chair facing the plant, is a picture of a pink moustache with "WARFCORP" written underneath it.
  • Emma, the DJ from Barrow Hill, is an obvious, albeit younger, Shout-Out to Stevie, the female DJ from John Carpenter's The Fog (1980).
  • Level 8 in Battle for Dream Island Again episode 5b has a box styled like the Companion Cube from Portal. Like in Portal, it becomes your companion in level 9 and is left behind in level 10 by falling into a bottomless pit. Still better than being incinerated.
  • In Olivia's second Story Mode path in Battle Fantasia, she encounters a mysterious stranger who calls himself the "Romance Knight" (actually a masked Ashley) and is basically a walking shout-out to Tuxedo Kamen from Sailor Moon. He tosses a single rose at his opponent, signaling his arrival, and then gives a short speech about love and devotion before disappearing.
  • Battle Princess Madelyn: The opening sequence of Madelyn being told a story by her Grandfather, as well as playing a video game that is clearly Minecraft by another (unmentioned) name, is based on the Framing Device of The Princess Bride.
  • The easy mode for single-player in Battlefield: Bad Company has the line "hear the lamentations of... uhh...the people they know".
  • Beastieball: The team "Rutile All Stars", led by a coach named Redd, has all its Beasties named after various games in the Pokémon franchise, while their team numbers reference their respective years of release.
  • Bear With Me: A few examples:
  • The Beatles: Rock Band:
    • Playing "Yellow Submarine" leads to a shout out to the movie of the same name. The band wears the same outfits as they do in the film, and the submarine itself is very similar to the one in the movie.
    • Playing "I Am the Walrus" leads to a shout out to the sequence with the song in the Magical Mystery Tour film.
  • The Beauties Battle tutorial contains a reference to Skyrim.
  • Beyond Good & Evil has a reference to its creator's most well-known work, the Rayman series, in the form of one of its photographable animals. The animal is a cartoonish mosquito found frequently in the Rayman universe, and has the species name A. raymanis. The main character of another Michel Ancel production, Tonic Trouble, appears as the Mascot of the game's brand of healing items in a Parody Commercial.
  • BioForge: Two dropships named Roenick and Chelios, in reference to two then-players of the Chicago Blackhawks.
  • In the Bionic Commando remake, you can find a Tricell billboard. There's also a billboard with a Servbot.
  • When Helen, Tom, and Luke are on the run from the police and the Mega-Corp and escape to Mars in the Visual Novel Bionic Heart, Luke's alias is Lucas Walker.
  • BioShock:
    • BioShock has many of these.
      • Many of them are references to Ayn Rand and her works (Rapture's society was founded on Randian and Objectivist philosophy).
      • One of the major characters is named Atlas. Another is coyly named Andrew Ryan.
      • There are a number of posters plastered around saying "Who is Atlas?".
      • Fontaine in his final mutated form resembles the famous statue of Atlas as seen on the cover of Atlas Shrugged.
      • Each bottle of Arcadia Merlot is embossed with the name "Fountainhead Cabarnet Sauvignon", as in The Fountainhead, another of Rand's novels.
      • Sander Cohen may be a reference to the pre-WWI playwright, songwriter, dancer, and director George M. Cohen. Sander Cohen and George M. Cohen both have a similar appearance and a similar way of criticizing people who do not perform a piece perfectly. However, George is less likely to kill you for it.
      • Non-Rand: One of the books in the library is titled Headology.
      • "Would you kindly find a crowbar or something?"
    • In BioShock 2, a poster◊ for Sofia Lamb's services looks extremely like the "Eyes of T.J. Eckleburg" billboard from The Great Gatsby.
  • The BIT.TRIP series has several:
    • The second boss of Beat is pretty much a sideways version of Breakout.
    • The second boss battle in Core is a direct Shout-Out to Missile Command. You have to use your laser to zap the "missiles" (Bits) before they reach the cities below.
    • The bonus stages in Runner are designed similarly to Pitfall!, where Commander Video has to run through a jungle collecting bars of gold while avoiding unattended campfires.
  • Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King has a few:
    • The game's intro references The Legend of Zelda by implying that Grandpa has told stories about Link before.
    • The Mario franchise is more subtly referenced in a quote from an NPC, who says he doesn't sell mushroom soup to "people who look like mushrooms" because that'd just be weird. He does add that they have a lovely princess, however.
    • Shovel Knight is also namedropped in a minor bit of dialogue.
  • Boktai is stuffed with references to Westerns, most commonly Spaghetti Westerns. The main characters are named Django (after the protagonist of the Django movies, played by Franco Nero) and Sabata (after the protagonist of The Sabata Trilogy, played by Lee Van Cleef and Yul Brynner). Django kills vampires by getting them into the sunlight - to do this, he has to drag their coffins, which they sleep in, outside, referencing how the Django from the movie carries a Gatling gun in a coffin he drags along behind him. In Boktai 2, at a certain point, you encounter a character who is obviously Solid Snake, but it's actually a dual Shout-Out - he declines to identify himself, instead calling himself a "man with no name", a Shout-Out to Clint Eastwood's character from the Dollars Trilogy (which is nonetheless in character for Snake). To further the reference, he's dressed with no bandanna, but with combed-back hair, a dark blue shirt, and tight brown jeans, the same outfit worn by the Man With No Name in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly during the scene where Tuco tries to hang him in the hotel room.
  • Level 29 of Bombuzal has the player destroy tiles in such a way that the tiles left behind form letters that spell out "ZZAP64", referencing the computer gaming magazine Zzap!64, which mainly covered Commodore 64 games and was popular when the game was made.
  • The first game in Bubble Bobble series does shout outs in all directions.
  • Buddy Rush:
    • When you clear a mission, there's a chance your helpers will compliment you by calling you "Magic Hands". In an earlier version of the game, they actually called you "God Hand".
    • A ruins-themed chapter has items related to Indiana Jones (whip, hat and Holy Grail).
    • A mushroom item obviously has a description that alludes to Super Mario Bros..
  • The Worldbuilder game Bug Hunt is an homage to the original Alien movie. Scientist gets Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong, Chest Burster hatches, and causes havoc around the space station.
  • Burger Shop:
  • Bush Whacker 2 is chock full of these. One of the most notable examples is the game's art-style and gameplay premise, which are homages to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and the ability to cut down things like grass and bushes in The Legendof Zelda series respectively.

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  • In Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, when you're in the downtown part of the city while searching for Ayumi, a night club promoter mentions that while Ayumi isn't at the bar, they do have a Rei and an Asuka.
  • In Fap Titans, the Poke-monster is a shout out to Pokémon.
  • In Fate/stay night (a Visual Novel already full of shoutouts to old legends and myths), there are skits that you earn depending on how many "Bad Ends" you receive. The second of these skits features Rin Tohsaka and Sakura Matou, two of the game's heroines, in a rather blatant Shout-Out to the Touhou Project series, complete with danmaku patterns and parodies of the Spell Card activations.
  • First Encounter Assault Recon:
    • In F.E.A.R, the office building has a couple of shout-outs to Office Space - namely Milton's trademarked Red Stapler (no Swingline label, though), and TPS Reports scattered on the floor.
    • F.E.A.R. 2 has a few shout-outs to various Internet phenomena and other forms of media, such as:
      • A reference to the infamous Onyxia Wipe animation on a computer console.
      • "Two Beans One Cup Latte" on a menu at a cafe — a reference, of course, to the coprophiliac, uh, "classic" Two Girls One Cup.
  • Fisher-Diver has a Shout-Out to The Most Dangerous Game in the form of a character named Captain Connell.
  • The Formula: A goal called "Cue That Bee Movie Reference" is completed for getting 15 B-Power.
  • Forza Motorsport 4's "Drift" events have a white Toyota AE86 drifting through a corner. Players can get an achievement for doing 88 miles per hour in the Delorean, and different badges and titles (avatars and such shown in-game) usually have a shoutout - buying a Ford Falcon XB will give you the "Last of the V8s" badge.
  • Someone on the localization team for Fossil Fighters liked silly Internet memes. In addition to one NPC wondering what the worth of a man's life is ("...guarding a miserable pile of secrets?"), another gets in a "DO NOT WANT."
  • Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, a fairly obscure Sierra game:
  • An in-game newspaper in Fret Nice talks about the new hit band "Grinning Colossus".
  • Friday Night Funkin' Vs Cassandra: A school bell can be heard ringing in the background of Berzerker, in a reference to Pico's School, the game Cassandra originates from.
  • Frozen Synapse's RED expansion has, at the bottom-right of the first challenge map (outside the actual map boundaries), a dwarf.

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  • Half-Life:
    • Half-Life: Opposing Force has a lot of fun with these. The Drill Sergeant Nasty in the training mission barks lines from Full Metal Jacket. The wisecracking soldiers riding in the chopper with you at the start of the game quote a line or two from Aliens. And later in the game, there's a puzzle where you have to activate a gearbox and open a valve, referencing Valve Corporation (developers of Half-Life) and Gearbox Software (creators of Opposing Force).
    • Half-Life 2:
      • One of the rebels is named Winston, possibly in reference to Winston Smith, protagonist of Nineteen Eighty-Four, from which the game gets a lot of its influence.
      • Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab is called "Lamarr" and sometimes "Hedy". This is a Shout-Out to Hedy Lamarr who, aside from being a rather attractive actress, co-invented the early form of the frequency-hopping technology vital to modern wireless communication.
      • "That's Hedley!!!"
      • "Great Scott!"
  • Overlord Hol's description in Half-Minute Hero reads: "The last evil lord Noire went to. He can emit a giant laser. If only he had sharks." It also has a fully monochrome level with a boss named CATS, complete with references to the "All your base are belong to us" meme.
  • The Halloween Hack:
  • Hamsterdam: One of the items that you can make Pimm wear is a yellow jacket known as "Bruce Lee".
  • Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak has the character search the world for three coloured marbles and insert them into a pedestal in a triangular fashion so you can pull a legendary "weapon" from a stone, whilst a familiar chest-opening score plays...
  • The Happyhills Homicide: The game references several well-known horror/slasher franchises through Easter Eggs in practically every tape.
  • Harvest Moon:
    • Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility features a pair of carpenter's apprentices named Bo and Luke, who even share hair colors with their counterparts from The Dukes of Hazzard (Bo's got blond hair and Luke's a brunette). Their personalities are inverted, though: Luke's the impulsive apprentice, and Bo's the rational one.
    • Harvest Moon: Animal Parade has a few more:
      • In one of Animal Parade's events, Calvin can find Owen and Luke attempting to demolish a very historic wall in the mines and, scolding them, cry that "It belongs in a museum!"
      • The Pantsuit item has, as its description, "A suit for taking care of business and working overtime."
  • The acronym for the titular unit of H.A.W.X. may be a reference to HAWC from the novels by Dale Brown.
  • Hell Let Loose's Update 7 trailer blatantly references 3 other famous Works Set in World War II, not helped that the game is also set in similar locations as them. They are: Fury (2014) (the scene where Sherman tanks are shown engaging a Tiger head-on), Band of Brothers (the Urban Warfare in Carentan, complete with execution of a German paratrooper by a US paratrooper), and Saving Private Ryan (the assault on the radar station).
  • Hell Pie:
    • The fly-cherub mutants are clearly based on the titular monster from The Fly (1958), with various teleporters that created them based on their design from the 1986 film.
    • The last scene at Lil' Smoke's crib is an homage to the Signature Scene from Scarface.
    • Jaques Huseau's fate — eating so much that he explodes, still alive but with his rib-cage exposed — is similar to Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
    • One of the costumes you can unlock in the third room in Greed is based on the title character from Pumpkin Jack.
  • Hellgate: London, features a Wart, a young boy with a prosthetic leg, who will give you his spare pegleg to use as a weapon. This is a reference to a similar, but more obnoxious, character from Diablo II, Wirt, whose pegleg can be used as a weapon. This is made more explicit by the Peg Leg having the flavor text "This won't cost me 50 Palladium, will it?", a reference to Wirt's tendency to charge the player character for anything he can get away with — most noticeably, access to his shop of rare items. Hellgate: London was developed by many of the same people as the two Diablo games. Also, there's a usable cricket bat called Shaun's Trusty Sidekick.
  • Her Majesty's Spiffing:
  • One of the characters in Homeworld, Group Captain Elson, is named after Peter Elson, an artist who inspired the artistic design of the game.
  • The [adult swim].com original game House of Dead Ninjas is a Retraux affair designed to resemble an early NES game - and even comes with a manual. The first enemy profiled, Niji, is described as "a Pretty Cool Guy" who runs straight ahead "and doesn't afraid of anything", which may be more memetic than referential. But then it says he likes to pretend he's a girl and calls himself "Ninjetta" - a reference to Birdo's profile in the original Super Mario Bros. 2 manual. Most of the enemies are based on classic Mario or Zelda enemies; the stone-faced crusher Gror is basically a Thwomp, while Magicloke is a Wizzrobe (note the name).

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  • I Was a Teenage Exocolonist:
    • The old Earth teen magazine that Marz reads during her five-heart event contains a passage that references The Wizard of Oz:
      Don't be afraid to use green concealer! You may look like the Wicked Witch at first, but don't click your heels and go home! Stick with it and you'll be on that yellow brick road to clear, beautiful skin.
    • Two of the suggested names for the hopeye you can hatch from its egg are Hoptimus Prime and Hop Solo.
    • Similarly, options for the unisaur you can tame include Clever Girl and Twilight Sparkle.
    • The caption for the unlockable image of a manticore attacking Tonin is "Attack on Tonin."
    • One of Nomi-Nomi's events involves talking to them some time after they have discovered a series exclusive to the Stratospheric's archive that they really like only got its finale after the ship left Earth. One of Sol's possible answers to this is "Sounds rough, buddy", which reads suspiciously close Zuko's famous "That's rough, buddy" line from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
    • If Sol tries to hide and observe after Rhett tells them to return to the creche during the second Glow attack, they bump into Kom, who reiterates Rhett's advice all while sarcastically calling them "Naruto."
    • Anemone has two reasons to not like "Annie" as a nickname for herself. One is that her mother, Antecedent, already goes by "Anne." The other is the potential association with a well-known fictional Annie who shares her hair color.
    • A card that can be obtained via making the choice to add spice to something is called "The spice must flow."
    • When Flulu asks the protagonist what they want to be when they grow up, they can say that they want to be a monster hunter. Flulu's response?
      "You've been playing too many hologames, <name>. Hunting monsters? I hope it doesn't come to that here."
    • If Sol falls for Marz's trick into getting them to yell at customers to earn more tips for her, Marz laughs and gives them the tips anyway, saying that she didn't mean to "turn [them] into the Hulk or anything."
  • In Icewind Dale 2, there's a bunch of mercenaries in the starting town (Targos) you can strike a conversation with. They go on to gripe about all sorts of menial tasks they had to do to "prove their prowess", the tasks in question being the very same you face at Candlekeep, the starting town (and tutorial level) of Baldur's Gate, an earlier Infinity Engine RPG, involving, at least, clearing rats out of a warehouse and fighting illusionary monsters. The "other" adventuring band seems to have taken a rather more...straightforward approach to the errands than the player at Baldur's Gate, though (e.g. ending the illusionary battle by whacking the illusionist over the head with a shield).
  • Implosion: Apocalyptic Log messages you collect that aren't part of the storyline tend to be shoutouts, many written by people like "Stephen Jobbes" (Head of I.T.), "Albert Weinstein" (Head of R&D), and some lowly researcher named "Nikola Telsar". Other shoutouts: Advertising messages from "Macrosoft Engineering", a memo titled "Full Metal Jacket", a plea from someone who lost his "IDBook" contacts to everyone asking them to resend their contact info, and a message from the ticked-off victim of a practical joke: "I will find you and I will kill you."
  • In the Hunt is basically a giant shout-out to the Sega Master System II game Submarine Attack. Both feature Superior Firepower: Missile Submarines that also have Superior Firepower: Surface To Air Missiles and produce major missile Beam Spam. They have a similar number of levels and similar enemies. The boss that drops parts of an ancient ruin on top of you exists in both games, too.
  • Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures: A bandito who says "Hey, I don't got to show you no stinking badges!" and barricades himself in his home when you try to talk to him.
  • In Insanity Clicker, there are the companions Flounder and Rafael, and the enemies Jango chained and Nyarlthotep.
  • Insanity's Blade is basically a mashup of every old-school sidescrolling action game featuring a barbarian or fantasy hero against hordes of monsters. So there are a lot of graphic and gameplay elements inspired by (or lifted from) Ghosts 'n Goblins, Rastan, Golden Axe, Black Tiger, Magic Sword, Castlevania, Rygar, and so on. There's also a couple of references to Forgotten Worlds, namely the item shops suddenly appearing from the ground and the final boss being similar to that game's War God boss.
  • In Intrusion 2, the Steam achievement for killing enemies with a Goomba Stomp is called "Plumbing" and the icon is a mushroom.

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  • From the Tsukihime "sequel" Kagetsu Tohya:
    • There is a shoutout to the boxing manga/anime Hajime no Ippo. For comedy purposes Ciel uses a fighting style she calls "The Hitman Style" and assumes a stance similar to that of Mashiba Ryo, the character who uses that style in Hajime no Ippo. This is a reference to this manga because Thomas "Hitman" Hearns, the real-life boxer who this style was based on, did not call his style "the Hitman Style".
    • Arc, in her cat form, counters this by avoiding the punches in an "oddly familiar circular motion", a reference to Ippo's "Dempsey Roll" and peek-a-boo style.
  • The arcade beat'em-up Karate Blazers by Visco, which can be found all over the place in Flash game form, references Black Rain in its third boss, identical triplets who all look like Sato, the bad guy of the film. The weirdest shout out is the fourth boss: a morbidly obese man dressed exactly like Nadia from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
  • One of the bosses in Ki Ki Kai Kai for the SNES (Pocky and Rocky in the west) is a Dracula-themed scientist. His name? Dr. Lee.
  • The hotel manager in Killer7 bares an uncanny resemblance to Edo Macalister, the hotel manager from Flower, Sun and Rain. Furthermore, when you talk to him, Gymnopedie plays in the background, the main theme of hotel Flower Sun & Rain.
  • Killer Instinct:
    • A few of the fighters are reminiscent of characters from other works, like skeleton warrior Spinal coming right out of Jason and the Argonauts, werewolf Sabrewulf being loosely based on a character of the same name also from a Rare game, or the resident alien Glacius sporting the Shapeshifting abilities of the T-1000.
    • For the 2013 reboot, Tusk mostly borrows from Conan the Barbarian, with the physical appearance of Marvel's Thor, the backstory of Vandal Savage and a little bit of the Last Dragonborn sprinkled on for flavour. More amusingly, many fans have pointed out that he looks a bit like a jacked-up, tattooed, and shirtless barbarian version of the famous fighting game YouTube personality Maximilian Dood, which may have even been intentional on the part of the developers - Sabrewulf has a skin that looks like Max's dog, Benny.
    • There also is Eyedol's parodic ending, in which a woman in purple approaches him claiming that he's her long lost son Billy, lost in a car incident, and that she gave him his bracelets for his birthday-mirroring exactly the epilogue of Blanka in Street Fighter II. Minus the last scene...
  • Kindergarten:
    • The first game:
      • The player character has a very pixelated poster for The Force Awakens in his room.
      • Lily getting blood dumped on her at the end of Cindy's route is an obvious one of Carrie.
    • Kindergarten 2:
      • With a bit of a playful Take That!: The developers apparently saw Matpat's video on the subject of how many nuggets would be needed to survive the fall into the Nugget Cave, because now there are even fewer nuggets to cushion the fall than the first game, and there is a message that, while some theorize it should be bigger, apparently it's enough.
      • In the Monstermon card ending, half of the characters turn into dust and fade away after Nugget snaps his fingers, and Nugget, not being satisfied with half, snaps again and the other half is struck by the same lightning as in the first game's secret ending. It serves as a Continuity Nod to Cindy's line when she dies in this ending in the first game, which is coincidentally extremely similar to Spider-Man's infamous line from the movie:
        Cindy: Ms. Applegate, I don't feel so good...
      • The main character has changed the poster in his bedroom to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
      • A mission that involves a dodgeball game is titled "If You Can Dodge a Nugget".
      • The mission where you help Monty create drugs in chemistry class is called "Breaking Sad".
      • The name for the mission "The Hitman's Potty Guard" is a reference to the movie The Hitman's Bodyguard.
      • A girl named Penny turns out to have been a robot (or rather, a Cyborg) all along, only to get torn to pieces in the end. Where have we seen that before?
    • The in-game card game Monstermon is a mix between Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon, and the cards contain several Shout-Outs in themselves.
      • Blue Eyes Gold Dragon is based on Blue Eyes White Dragon. Lampshaded by the card's description, which says "Please don't sue us".
      • Faptain Calcon is Captain Falcon, but with his initials swapped.
      • Cactus Outlaw is the Cactuar from the Final Fantasy series.
      • Man-With-Long-Arms is likely Slenderman from The Slender Man Mythos.
      • Giraffe Serpent is likely a Girafarig from Pokémon, while Lonely Dragon looks strikingly like a Charizard.
      • Dune Worm is a shoutout to the Sandworms from Dune.
      • Dank Magician, Mystical Tomato, and Pot of Grease are Yu-Gi-Oh card Shout-Outs.
      • Legendary Sword is clearly the Master Sword from the The Legend of Zelda series. The way you get it is a reference to the Lost Woods puzzle that has appeared in multiple games from the franchise.
      • Monstrous Flytrap is based on Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.
  • Kingdom of Loathing gives shout-outs to absolutely anything and everything. It would be easier to list things which it doesn't reference.
  • In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, the Batmobile will come out of Hagatha's Cave while the Batman theme plays.
  • The Deluxe Pack for Kitty Powers' Matchmaker has a new Dating Dilemma where you have to identify the candidate's favorite actor from various movie posters that are parodies of real-world movies such as How to Train Your Drag Queen.
  • Kung Fu Chivalry, a Macintosh beat-em-up released just a year after Street Fighter II, has several shout-outs to it:
    • The first player character's special moves are ostensibly based on Guile's Sonic Boom and Somersault/Flash Kick.
    • Characters display Circling Birdies when stunned.
    • The third boss wears a mask similar to Vega, which breaks when he is defeated.
    • The fourth boss is a thunder-thighed amazon reminiscent of Chun Li, with Ryu/Ken's Hurricane Kick, Blanka's Electric Thunder, and M. Bison's Psycho Crusher.
    • The ending screen depicts the cast of bosses bruised and bandaged similar to SF II's defeat portraits.
    • Shout-outs to other franchises:

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  • The first phase of the boss of Raiden IV's second stage looks and behaves similarly to the stage 2 boss of DonPachi, while the third boss, which consists of multiple ships that first attack separately then combine, was apparently inspired by the third boss of Konami's old Raiden clone Lightning Fighters.
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army:
    • There's a homeless NPC that you can encounter in Chapter 2 early on. After you bribe the Lucky Charm out of his hands, you can read his mind again to reveal him saying "You all assume I'm safe here in my hood, unless I try to start again." This is a shout out to Linkin Park's song, "Breaking the Habit".
    • Also in Chapter 2, Oboroguruma, a ghost car that appears at the full moon, says this:
      Oboroguruma: IN tHe NaMe of ThE fULl mOOn, I wIll PuNiSh YOu!
  • Rakuen:
    • One of the paintings in Monsieur Bud's mansion is of him observing two people dancing inside of a lighthouse.
    • A recurring NPC seen in Morizora's Forest is a singing sunflower. Creator Laura Shigihara's first big break was composing the music for the game, as well as voicing the Sunflower.
    • As a more general RPG reference the frog the Boy finds and hopes to keep as a pet is named Glenn. The Boy's mother also mentions during one of her dialogues that she used to play a videogame where the characters traveled through various time periods.
    • There is also the obvious parallel between Gemma & Winston and Romeo & Juliet.
  • Randal's Monday is filled with references to everything, from The Lord of the Rings to The Legend of Zelda to Terminator.
  • Freebie MMO Rappelz has many NPCs in the first area directly named after characters from the Ogre Battle strategy RPG series, at least in the English version.
  • The Revenge of Shinobi features a boss fight with Spider-Man. And when you defeat him, he turns into Batman. Watch this video.
  • The Re-Volt RC car driving game has two tracks called "Toys in the Hood", set in peaceful suburbs.
  • Revolution X has several of these.
    • Mondor's nonplussed reaction to getting its legs blown off. "It's only a flesh wound!"
    • The credits end with a "Llamas Trained by" credit, and the screen starts flashing to complete the reference.
    • Steven Tyler crying out, "TOASTY!", when you shoot the Skull Bomb. Well, this was made at the height of Kombatmania. Not to mention it's the same developer.
    • In the Middle East level, Mortal Kombat II machines can be found.
    • "Welcome to the real Pleasuredome!" (Good ending only.)
    • Blow up the school bus in the Middle East and you get a screen informing you that "School's Out... Forever."
    • The New Order Nation's logo looks like a parody of the Nine Inch Nails logo.
    • The game itself is a nuttier take on Kilroy Was Here. A lot nuttier.
  • In Roots Of Pacha, Garrek's dance is reminiscent of Gangnam Style. He even calls it "Garrek Style".
  • One of the items in Rule of Rose is a storybook titled The Little Princess. No, not that one. Although both the book and game explore the journey of an emotionally repressed orphan girl struggling to retain her moral integrity when faced with the stark realities of life in Victorian England, so the mistake is understandable.

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