Shout Out / Video Games (A to L)

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• In 20XX, one of the special weapons Nina can acquire is the Quint Laser, a Painfully Slow Projectile named and modeled after the Mooninites' Quad Laser from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
• In 2064: Read Only Memories, when you examine the coffee pot in your apartment, your character says that they can see the letters "F and K" in it.
• In 30XX, the sequel to 20XX, the Lander's Essence fully restores your health and increases your maximum health, a nod to the Blue Lander item from The Guardian Legend.

A

• Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl has plenty of these.
  • Each enemy you meet has a specific first name, which sometimes are references to prominent figures within the Doom community. For example, "Rhaluka" is the name of John Romero's wife.
  • One boss is Hugo Andore, who is in turn a Captain Ersatz of André the Giant. His "you're dead" message is simply "OBEY." ^note The OBEY Giant, meanwhile, was a modified version of a sticker fad starring, you guessed it, André the Giant.
  • A cutscene before one of the boss fights: "He's huge. But that means he has huge guts. Rip and tear."
  • One boss fight is against human expies of Bebop and Rocksteady.
  • One of the bonus points pickups in the game is The Red Stapler, complete with quotation. Not to mention that you can find Daikatana (the game, not the weapon) as a points item too.
  • Some of the ornaments hanging up in Peter Crisp's office includes the Master Sword and Cloud Strife's Buster Sword.
• Adiboo: Magical Playland: There are at least two Tintin references:
  • In the original French game, one name Adiboo suggests for Buzzy Galump is "Bachi Boulouk", which is taken from one of Captain Haddock's insults: bachi bouzouk. Adiboo then says that this name isn't really good and that it reminds him of something.
  • One element the player can place in the drawing minigame is a rocket ship with a red and white squares color pattern, just like Professor Calculus's rocket ship.
• Adventure: The Inside Job:
  • The protagonist Thalia James is inspired by Queen Valanice from King's Quest, and the scene where she catches a jackalope references a similar puzzle from King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride where Valanice has to do the same.
  • The game's concept is inspired by Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, and the light blue book in Thalia's room is actually The Eyre Affair, the first book in these series.
• In Aero Fighters 3, one alternate Final Boss is preceded by a black ball that flashes the following:
  "WELCOME TO MARS. WARNING! A HUGE BATTLESHIP "SOH-TAKEKO" IS APPROACHING FAST."
• Alliance of Valiant Arms has one in the form of the "Winchester M1887S" shotgun, which is clearly made to look and operate like the Sawed-Off Shotgun used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The player-character even does the iconic flip-cock move between shots.
• American McGee's Grimm turns many of the Grimmified fairy tales into pastiches of various movies. For instance:
  The Master Thief: Dracula
  Iron John: The Terminator, complete with an Ahnuld-soundalike and "Prince Connor"
  The Pied Piper: Surprisingly obscurely, German expressionist films such as M and Metropolis; the scene at the end is virtually identical to the "Moloch Machine" scene in Metropolis, and the Pied Piper is voiced by a convincing Peter Lorre impersonator.
• Angry Birds 2 features one to Mary Poppins—some stages have one pig wearing a black hat with a flower that escapes being popped by floating to the ground using an umbrella.
• Antichamber: Several puzzles contain pop culture references in their names, such as "Down The Rabbit Hole", "Cry Me A River", "I Like To Move It", "A Link To The Past", or "Stairway To Heaven".
• APICO:
  • The intro of the Basic Tools chapter of Grandpa's Guidebook says that you can't "just go around punching trees!"
  • The chapter in Grandpa's Guidebook that teaches you how to make incenses is called "Full-Beetal Alchemist".
  • The Melodic Bee's description wonders if bees listen to The Bee Gees.
  • The Abyssal Bee's description wonders what exactly a Wellerman is.
• Arc Angle has a few. The Shoop Da Whoop face appears as a miniboss, and another is based on the turret circle from the first level of R-Type. Your character's weapon is based off the Free Range from Thunder Force V. Also, there's an option to make the second boss (a Giant Spider) skippable, in which case he's encountered lying on the floor and his dialogue is "Sorry, I'm dead".
• There is one in the trophy list in Arcana Heart 3 to, of all things, Saturday Night Live's Celebrity Jeopardy! skits. Using four different sword techniques in a single match while playing as Kamui will net you a trophy called "That's 'S' Words, Mr. Connery!"
• Almost every achievement in Army of Two is a reference to some famous movie.
• Arthur's Nightmare:
  • Some of the game's mechanics allude to Five Nights at Freddy's, chiefly the use of a handheld device with limited power to track the antagonist and the levels being referred to as "nights".
  • Baldi can cameo on very rare occasions.
• Assassin's Creed II:
  • Ezio's uncle Mario introduces himself with a cheerful "It's-a me! Mario!"
  • When you're climbing walls and leaping across buildings, you'll occasionally hear a bystander say: "Another capering crusader."
• Assemble With Care has one in both the first and last levels of the game where you can see Maria's passport from the United Federation.
• Astalon: Tears of the Earth:
  • The title screen looks a lot like the tower entrance screen in Terranigma.
  • Arias greatly resembles the hero from Dragon Quest. One of his alternate designs in the Dimensional Mirror also resembles the one from Dragon Quest III.
  • The deal that reduces the amount of knockback you suffer from taking damage is called Poise.
  • Secret Character Bram plays just like the protagonist of a classic Castlevania game. His name, by extension, is presumably a reference to Bram Stoker.
    • He also calls Arias a "peck" during his introductory scene.
  • Zeek's design is based on the dancing merchants from Secret of Mana, and the items he throws for his attack include a coin from Super Mario Bros., what looks like a Game Boy, and the elixir from Matt Kap's previous game Castle in the Darkness.
  • The achievement/trophy for getting Ending 1 is titled "Fly, you fool!"
  • The Dimensional Mirror is a set of concept art pieces, some of which are references:
    • "'Your poison comes from another tower.'": A re-enactment of the boss fights from Super Mario Bros. with Arias and a cyclops in place of Mario and Bowser.
    • "Burning Emblem": A pastiche of Fire Emblem.
    • "Astalius: The Second Lightning": Algus as the protagonist of a shoot-em-up game battling Epimetheus in a spaceship.
  • The gargoyles in the Ruins of Ash resemble Red Arremers in their behavior. Additionally, one of the alternate game modes lets you play as one.
  • The unused Stranger enemy in the Lost Souls gallery is unmistakably similar to the Licker from Resident Evil.
• The video game adaptation of Asterix at the Olympic Games has a cutscene where Asterix knocks out a Roman with a headbutt. For a brief moment, the background changes to a soccer field and a referee raises a red card. It's an obvious reference to the infamous incident involving Zinedine Zidane at the 2006 World Cup Final, and may be also a nod to the cameo of Zidane himself in the movie.
• Astro Boy: Omega Factor has several reference to past Treasure games:
  • Gunstar Heroes gets the brunt of these references:
    • The first level has signs reading "Gunstar".
    • Pook's various forms are referred to as "forces", like the Seven Force.
    • Astro's six stats (plus the titular Omega Factor) are referred to as "the Seven Forces".
    • The ending theme is taken straight from Gunstar Heroes.
  • The Artificial Sun is given a single eye, making it resemble one boss from Alien Soldier.
  • One hidden alcove◊ has a Unique Enemy with a face identical to those of the Clancers from Mischief Makers.
• In Astro Boy: The Video Game, the first boss's introductory dance consists of a moonwalk followed by a spin and toe stand.
• The final stage of The Astyanax is a Xenomorph hive from Aliens, and the boss, of course, is the Queen.
• In Psygnosis's Awesome (itself referenced in a Lemmings level) for Amiga, the Asteroid Field music begins with a "blip, blop" riff as a shout-out to Asteroids. The instrumentation is also similar to V'Ger's theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

B

• Backpack Hero:
  • The Snake's in-game description is "Poisonous, dangerous, keep them away from planes".
  • The Cobra wears a karate outfit, a reference to Cobra Kai. Its in-game description is "Strike first, strike hard, no mercy".
• 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 (2022): 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 & Breakfast:
  • Anni mentions falling asleep halfway through watching a movie with Will about a dog named Marley.
  • Inspecting the huge woodpile next to Tony's workshop makes Hank wonder why he doesn't simply punch the trees.
• Bear With Me: A few examples:
  • Amber: "A save point! ...Nah just kidding, what is this Resident Evil? We have auto-save, you dingus."
  • Ted puts on sunglasses and the "yeeeeah!" NCIS sound effect plays after a bad pun.
  • Ted: "A book. Titled: "Half-Life 3"... Oh, I bet it's fantasy..."
  • If you click on the toilet Amber will say "Where's the money Lebowski?!"
• 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.
• In Beecarbonize, the callout message for building a VR utopia remarks that there's a movie about the consequences of using it to distract people from a post-apocalyptic reality.
• 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 (2009) 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 MegaCorp 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.
• Brave Nine Story: The substory That Time I Got to be a Slime Slayer is a clear reference to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.
• Bread & Fred:
  • The fishing penguin in the first area may randomly start singing "Na na nana nana naaa... You know what song it is, don't you?"
  • Stevie_33's gamer cave is filled with various video game references, such as a Mario cap, giant strawberry, and a mask from Hollow Knight. There are also pixelated posters plastered across the walls of games like Mirror's Edge.
• 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:
  • Burger-making robot BurgerTron quips during the introduction "If you fry it, they will come."
  • Level 60, which is the end of a stage at a beach hut restaurant on a formerly-deserted island, is called "Hippies, Surfers and the Rest".
• 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.

C

• In Cake Mania 4: Main Street:
  • Reopening the flower shop prompts the quip "If you build it, they will spend money.".
  • The "Minor Renovations" upgrade screen for the Burger Barn says "A step above fast food, but not quite fine dining. Needs more cowbell."
  • Sumo Sushi has the following description for the "Crouching Tiger Prawn Roll".
    Ebi, ebi, burning bright,
    On my plate on sushi night,
    What immortal tongue or eye
    Could thy tastiness deny?
• The whole Calmere Nightmare map is one to the Cthulhu Mythos, but there are many specific examples from all over the maps.
• In the old Mac game Capn' Magneto, the wizard in the Shrine is named "? (The Mysterian)", a reference to the band ? and the Mysterians.
• Caravaneer 2:
  • Lois of the Lane's Amazon Brigade that can be temporarily recruited to attack Regin's Gang are made up of a Lagertha, Brienne (both with high sword skill), and Tauriel (with high crossbow skill), who resemble their namesakes.
  • The player can acquire motorcycles named after Toecutter.
• In the text intro to Chapter 78 of Caribbean Hideaway, Planky the parrot steals back a magical talisman which had been traded to some other pirates for a ship. When he returns with it he says "Hey Mr. Talisman, tally me banana, squawk!"
• Cartoon Network Racing
  • Saturday Fright Fever's title is one to Saturday Night Fever.
  • Days Of Blunder is a parody of Days of Thunder.
• Castle Chase: From Word of God:
  The "Red Herring" is a small and subtle tribute to the amazing Monkey Island games.
  
  The series that Milly is constantly parodying is the anime Code Geass. Her name being one of the characters, Arthur being the name of the cat in the show, and her love for the Encyclopaedia Britannia because of its extra definition of the word zero are all hints towards this.
  
  The book Hubert is doing his book report on is a parody of the Vocaloid song by the same name, Magnet.
• Castle in the Darkness:
  • In one area, you encounter an NPC who reveals a giant treasure chest and says "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this!".
  • In another area, you can encounter an NPC who says 'What a horrible night to have a curse.'.
• A downright bizarre case of one: The hidden object game Cate West: The Vanishing Files has a good number of the street names named after characters from Monster, including a Tenma Street, apparently to drive the point home that it's not just generic European names. Now, how many people who play hidden object games do you think are going to get a reference like that?
• Nicalis's releases of Cave Story changed a few things in the translation. One can't help but think of the Kool-Aid Man when Balrog shows up for any reason at all. The first time he shows up (through the Shack door), think of Balrog speaking in the Kool-Aid Man's voice for cheap, yet instant lulz:
  "Oh yeahhh!"
• Celeste Strawberry Jam Collab:
  • The level Potential for Anything is a reference to VVVVVV, mimicking it in its design and gameplay.
  • The level Rose Garden is a nod to Gusty Garden Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy. The rose mechanic plays similarly to the flower mechanic in Gusty Garden, and the music features a nearly identical version of the Gusty Garden motif.
• The first boss of Centipede (1998) is named Ant May, a pun on Aunt May.
• Chex Quest 2's "Cinema" level (its upgraded version, at least) has several "movies" playing, including one that is a loop of a baby carriage rolling down stairs, in a reference to Battleship Potemkin. This is probably the most cerebral shout-out to be seen in a game about heroic anthropomorphic breakfast cereal.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale:
  • The music that plays during the interrogation for the "Simmering Springs" mystery is called "Turnabout Squeeze", complete with the real culprit having a breakdown during their confession.
  • One of the furniture pieces in the Studio set is a painting in the style of graffiti artist Keith Haring (referred to as a Herring Painting, of course).
  • The achievement/trophy for solving all of Oats's clothing riddles is "Passion for Fashion".
  • Brussels Sprout claims to be good at Mega Mash Sisters, while Pizza is terrible at it.
• Chinese Parents: Lightning Boy and the Magic Stone movie is a play on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
• In Chronicles of Osgorth: The Shattered Alliance, Sir Tandy is a reference to Tandy computers.
• Chrono Trigger:
  • The game has a blonde cavewoman named Ayla, a Captain Ersatz of the main character of The Clan of the Cave Bear.
  • In the English SNES/PlayStation version, Ayla offers Crono "special Jurassic pork soup" (in the original version it's a sake cocktail called Rock Crash).
  • A mini-game requires the player to identify one of three identical men, named Vicks (Biggs), Wedge, and Piett. Biggs and Wedge are Luke's wingmen when blowing up the first Death Star, and Admiral Piett is an Imperial Officer. Biggs and Wedge also appear in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (two soldiers who accompany Ceodore in the beginning of the game, and also retconned into the original Final Fantasy IV), Final Fantasy VI (the two soldiers accompanying Terra in the beginning), Final Fantasy VII (two AVALANCHE members), Final Fantasy VIII (the Quirky Miniboss Squad [or maybe Terrible Trio]), and Final Fantasy X (two guards you can recruit for blitzball).
  • Magus's three main henchmen are named, in the English translation, "Ozzie", "Slash", and "Flea"!
  • One of the cavemen in 65,000,000 B.C. will say "Happy happy, joy joy" after the Reptites go extinct.
  • One of the chapters of Chrono Trigger is "Forward to the Past". Another one, in Japanese, translates to "The Call of Lavos".
• City of Heroes:
  • The police contacts in almost every city zone are thinly-disguised versions of famous TV cops, including characters from Dragnet, Due South, Miami Vice, and RoboCop.
  • One mission sends you after the "Overation Oscillithruster". And one of the types of Enhancements is the actual Oscillation Over-thruster itself. It makes your Phasing powers better.
  • Another instructs you to rescue "Stephen Fayte" — his surname was Strangefate in earlier versions — who is repeatedly described by everyone in the mission as "a gifted surgeon, nothing more", although he is said to be often mistaken for Earth's greatest sorcerer.
  • One radio mission has the hero sent to rescue "Dr. Frank N. Scott" from the clutches of the bad guys. When the hero stumbles across Dr. Scott, he's reciting a ritual to create a "time warp" that involves a "jump to the left" and a "step to the right". When you interrupt the bad guys, a mini-version of the "Janet! Dr. Scott! Janet! Brad! Rocky!" exchange occurs.
  • Referencing Peanuts: "You got a rock."
• Civilization:
  • In IV, the loading screen music is the opening music from Colonization, another game by Sid Meier.
  • In V, the achievement for destroying an enemy unit in one turn is called "It's Super Effective".
  • Civ VI had a lot of fun with this for its achievements. As well as the references to real life history, we also have:
    • Absolutely Nothing Rotten In The State Of Denmark: Win the Vikings, Traders and Raiders scenario as Canute.
    • And The Walls Kept Tumbling Down: Have a Roman city lose at least 6 population from Mt. Vesuvius erupting.
    • Arabian Knights: Capture a city with Saladin's Mamluk unit.
    • Army Of Cthulhu: Levy the military of Nan Madol, the historical city that reportedly inspired R'yleh.
    • Circle Of Life: Build a Fishery next to the Great Barrier Reef.
    • Crouching Tiger Hidden Cannon: Station five of China's Crouching Tiger units on the Great Wall.
    • Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal!: Join a Betrayal Emergency.
    • Die Another Day: Neutralise a Governor with a Spy.
    • District Twelve: Build every district - and the Colosseum - in one city.
    • Eight is Enough: Win a game on the eight-player map size.
    • Emperor's New Groove: Win a game on Emperor difficulty or harder.
    • Everything Is Awesome!!!: Have an ecstatically-happy city in your empire.
    • Give Peace A Chance: Earn 35 Faith in one turn from Gandhi's leader ability - which requires minimal warfare.
    • Hello, Cleveland!: Perform a rock concert in a city named Cleveland.
    • Here's Looking At You, Kid: Win a Duel map.
    • I'm Going To Break The Wheel: Achieve three Golden Ages in a row.
    • I'm Kind Of A Big Deal: Win the Pirates scenario with mostly Infamous Pirate points.
    • If You Build It, They Will Come: Have 6 tile improvements at once.
    • Legends of the Hidden Temple: Build a Holy Site with a Temple, then build one of La Venta's Colossal Head tile improvements next to it.
    • Let Our Powers Combine - Wait Heart Is Missing!: Build a Wind Farm, Solar Farm, Geothermal Plant and Hydroelectric Dam in one city.
    • Luftballons: Use a bomber aircraft to detonate a nuclear device, with the bomber's base - and 9 Observation Balloons - being on the continent of Nena.
    • Man On The Moon: Win a Science Victory in which you activated the Great Scientists Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, and also captured an Egyptian city.
    • Master and Commander: Win an Archipelago map.
    • Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss: As Eleanor, use loyalty pressure to gain control of a city owned by the other Eleanor.
    • Mission to Mars: Win a Science Victory.
    • Modern Major General: Win a game that started in the Modern Era.
    • More Wind For The Wind God: Win the Gifts of the Nile scenario.
    • Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition: Launch an inquisition as Spain.
    • Nobody's Business But The Turks: As the Ottomans, capture someone else's capital and rename it.^*Original song by The Four Lads, but They Might Be Giants' version is the one most people have heard of.
    • One Does Not Simply Walk Into Ngauruhoe: Discover Mt. Ngauruhoe with a Maori Tao unit.
    • Pizza Party!: Activate Leonardo da Vinci in a city that contains Great Works from Michelangelo and Donatello - and a sewer.
    • Po-tay-toes!: Build a Terrace Farm next to four mountains and two Aqueducts.
    • Purple Reign: Move Phoenicia's capital four times in one game.
    • Quite A Crowded House: Play an online multiplayer match of the Outback Tycoon scenario.
    • The Spice Must Flow: Win a game as Portugal.
    • Try To Snatch The Pebble From My Hand: Fully promote a Warrior Monk.
    • Walk Like An Egyptian: Build a Sphinx next to the Pyramids (must be both on Floodplains).
    • We Are The Champions: Win a Religious Victory with your religion being Zoroastrianism, while also being Suzerain of Zanzibar.
    • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Build an Archaeological Museum and a Zoo in a city with an improved Amber resource.
    • Wood For Sheep: Build a Pasture over sheep as Australia so that the resulting Culture Bomb steals someone's Lumber Mill.
  • Civilization VI also added the Monopolies and Corporations mode as part of its New Fronteir expansion, which allows you to create companies based on the Luxury Resources you have available in your territory. Each corporation can produce products based on their Luxury, including: Heidi's Alpine Hot Chocolate Mix (cocoa), Jurassic Gems Amber (amber), Bertie Wooster's Billiard Balls (ivory), Dark of the Moon Silver Jewelry (silver) and Ishmael's Lamp Oil (whales).
• Clarence's Big Chance:
  • The plumber enemies look very similar to Luigi. The narrator even tells you, "Just don't let them near any mushrooms and you should be fine." The credits show you that the enemy is named "Bluigi", making the reference even more obvious.
  • If you get the best ending, you get reference to the other brother. Clarence himself is the "Mario" based upon how his sprite moves. The girlfriend also looks a little like Pauline.
  • Clarence himself, as well as certain NPCs, have noses resembling Wario's.
  • If you look close enough at the internet trolls you're supposed to kill, they have horns that look very similar to a certain other kind of troll.
• In Clash of Clans, the description of the Laboratory includes a blatant call-out to Daft Punk.
  ...All we know is that their [Alchemists'] research makes our spells and troops harder, better, faster and stronger!
• In Clash of Cuties, near the beginning of the game, the Player Character says "It's dangerous for a girl to wander alone at this time.".
• Claws of Furry:
  • In the sewer levels, you can find graffiti in the walls saying "Croc's Not Dead".
  • Mama Croc, making her soup before her boss fight, wonders where the other turtle got to. You can even see a blue, a red, and a purple ninja mask hung on the counter behind her.
  • One of the rankings you can get at the end of levels is called "Hairy Pawtter".
  • The third boss of the game is called Robodog.
• In the second Clock Tower game, Scissorman is revealed to be Edward, the sole survivor of the first game. Edward Scissorhands reference?
• Coffee Talk:
  • The "GRA Media" publisher Freya talks about is one of the Indonesian Major Book Publishers: "Gramedia".
  • The description for espresso is "Blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than hell itself".
  • The description for Gingerbread Coffee is "Sweetened with brown sugar to satisfy the cookie monster."
  • The Chubby Bubbles Girl can be seen running away from a werewolf in the headline image of October 1's news.
  • Some of the special drinks you can make are called Midsummer Night's Dream, The Grinch, Lemony Snippet, Bedchamber^note an Indonesian indie band, Bitter Heart^note a song by Malaysian singer-songwriter Zee Avi, Spiced Lady, and Spanish Sahara^note the song used in the ending of Life Is Strange.
  • Episode 2:
    • The headline image of September 20's news is a parody of the Distracted Boyfriend meme.
    • Silver's outfit is inspired by a "fictional universe where all the stories take place in the stars", with its insignia loosely based on the Starfleet's.
    • When Detective McQueen drops by the café to help Jorji with his case involving the culprit behind the slashed tires, the former asks him, "You need to bust a ghost?"
    • Detective McQueen talks about a case where his team investigated an apartment haunted by a widow's deceased husband. They had to exorcise the ghost, but he fled to the basement and played romantic music and shone a spotlight on them to cast an illusion on them. As McQueen further explains the case, the Barista points out that it's the plot of Ghost (1990).
    • The achievement for getting Silver and Amanda's good ending is called "How I Met Your Ancestor".
    • One of Aqua's status updates shows her playing Super Brawl Pals 2 on the Switch.
    • In Silver and Amanda's bad ending, Silver mentions that Amanda, an alien in a spacesuit, hid away from the F.I.R.E agent in a vent.
    • October 3's headline image in a "bad" run shows a person vaguely resembling Dora the Explorer telling a fox wearing a bandana, "Hacker no hacking".
• Command & Conquer:
  • The series' resident Tank Goodness incarnate, the Mammoth Tank, is a nod to the Nazi German super-heavy tank Panzer VIII Maus, the largest WW2 tank to reach the prototype stage; it was captured by the Soviets before it ever managed to hit the production lines. How is that relevant? It was going to be named Mammut^note That's German for "mammoth"., at one point.
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade:
    • The boat level has shout-outs to Gilligan's Island and The Love Boat.
    • In the final Soviet mission, completing one of the objectives causes President Ackerson to rage "Why, you little...!"
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has a reference to Zero Wing: In the Extras menu under soundtrack, Track 34 is titled "All Your Base Are Belong to Us".
• Condemned: Criminal Origins features an investigation into the murders of several serial killers who are being offed by their own methods. Late in the game you fight an overweight lunch lady in a rundown school who used to cook her victims and serve them to the students as a means of hiding evidence. Replace Ethan Thomas with Cassandra Hack and the game could be renamed Hack/Slash.
• In Contra Rebirth, one of the unlockable characters you can obtain is a reptile named Plissken.
• In the opening cinematic of Cortex Command, in one panel that shows the various alien creatures that humans have met, one on the edge is very obviously a Spathi.
• Cosmo Calamity Vs Yukichi: A wanted poster of Cesar Fever can be seen in the background of Yukichi's planet, in reference to the events of Week 5 of Friday Night Fever.
• In Creepy Castle, one of Slugger's attacks is a barrage of baseballs that he calls "Consecutive Normal Home-Runs".
• In the iOS game Crime Scene Mystery (produced by TeamLava), each case has a Shout-Out to something else. To name two, David the forensic specialist bears a very strong physical resemblance to a forensic specialist on a well-known crime show, and the second case, "Trial By Fury", centres around a defence attorney named Nick Rong, a medium who moonlights as his co-counsel, and a potentially corrupt prosecutor.
• Cruelty Squad has a few sprinkled in:
  • The means of accessing the above-mentioned secret levels is based on Super Mario 64's painting courses.
  • The Cerebral Bore acts identically to the weapon of the same name in Turok.
  • The "Psyker" enemy's behavior is almost identical to the Controller in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: them spotting you causes your vision to zoom in on them. The only difference is that they've got guns, and also force you to empty your weapon if you don't kill them quickly.
  • The Skullgun implant is a reference to Deus Ex, where in an e-mail Gunther Hermann filed a request for a "skul-gun" so he can "kil just by thought". In addition, the "Zippy 3000" pistol is a nigh useless pistol with only one round, similar in function to the memetically bad PS20 from the first game.
• The four main heroes of the Newgrounds game Crystal Story are named Tristam, Kaeli, Phoebe, and Reuben.

D

• The title of the Goblin Slayer crossover campaign Dungeon & Goblins from DanMachi: Memoria Freese clearly comes from Dungeons & Dragons.
• G-Darius, of the Darius side-scrolling sci-fi spaceship-shooter series, is intentionally an anagram of Gradius according to some sources.
• The final stage of the NES and Game Boy Darkwing Duck (Capcom) has some ducks with guns, jackets, and sunglasses that get stripped down to cybernetics as they take damage.
• In Dash Quest, the merchant says "It's dangerous to go alone..."
• Dead Island:
  • As well as numerous references in its achievements, the original game has Jason from Friday the 13th, the sword used to slice up Zed in Pulp Fiction, and a zombified Jenna Jameson.
  • When Dead Island: Riptide introduces Australian soldier John Morgan, he's posing with Wolverine Claws and is modeled after Hugh Jackman. Snickt!
• DEFCON is largely inspired by the NORAD screens in WarGames, so scrolling text in the lobby screen includes the list of games from the movie ("FALKEN'S MAZE, BLACK JACK, GIN RUMMY...THEATERWIDE BIOTOXIC AND CHEMICAL WARFARE, GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR") and "How about a nice game of chess?"
• In the Super Nintendo video game adaptation of Dennis the Menace, in the sewer level, Dennis fights ninja turtles.
• Descent II has green homing missile-launching robots called Lou Guards (which are also expies of the Super Hulks from the first game), a possible reference to Lou Ferrigno of The Incredible Hulk fame. Also, one of the later levels is named "Drec'nilbie K'luh".
• Densetsu no Stafy 3:
  • The introductory animation for the Jungle stage shows Starfy, Starly, and Moe exploring the forest, in which Moe is equipped with a Indiana Jones-style hat and whip.
  • The Makaika Group, introduced here as a rival group to the Squirts, is based on the Makai Club, a former Japanese professional wrestling group with five main members designated by number.
• Almost everyone in Devil May Cry has a name that references Dante's The Divine Comedy. Those that do not usually reference something else in myth or legend - like Beowulf.
• Dicey Dungeons:
  • The Robot's exclusive dice-gimmick-dependent items, Buster Sword, Ultima Weapon, and Ruby Weapon.
  • The Polyjuice Potion in the Halloween Special transforms the enemy into another random enemy of the same level, or if combined with a target-reversing item such as Polarity Flip or the "No, You" gadget, it can permanently transform the user into a random contestant.
  • In Reunion, the Warrior has a unique gimmick revolving around workouts. He has a variety of one-use workout plans that cause powerful effects. Among these are the Shoryuken, which deals damage and burns the enemy. As the Warrior levels up, he gradually learns four workouts that each grant one of four "Victory Points" when used. They are, in order, 100 Push-Ups, 100 Sit-Ups, 100 Squats, and 10Km Run. If the Warrior performs all four, the Victory Points will unlock the Omnislash work-out Limit Break, which deals 9999 damage; enough to kill the boss in one hit.
• The Dink Smallwood mod Grasp of Darkness has an encounter where an indestructible slime offers you cake if you can last a certain number of minutes against it and its babies. A different portion of the tunnels contains a note which reads "The babies are not worth thy fists. The cake is a lie."
• Rick from Dino Crisis, upon the revelation that the island is crawling with dinosaurs, laments that "it is just like that movie". Shinji Mikami, the game's director, confirmed this in an interview in Edge Magazine and went on to cite both Aliens and The Lost World: Jurassic Park as heavy influences on the game's tone and environments.
• Disco Zoo:
  • One of the random events has you seek out a goose that escaped from Untitled Zoo and is now annoying all your guests.
  • The fox pen is one big "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" joke: visitors will occasionally ask what their sound is, other visitors might suggest "wa-pa-pa-pa-pow", while the foxes themselves say "ring-ding-ding", "ahee ahee", and strings of Morse code.
  • The time machine that lets you go to the Jurassic appears to be a Delorean.
  • The Mythical animal in the city is a "sewer turtle" dressed in ninja gear.
• Discworld Noir is mostly a big homage to Film Noir, but includes a few Shout Outs to other things, including Doctor Who ( Satrap's big villain speech is a fairly direct lift of Davros's in "Genesis of the Daleks") and other video games ("They'd hidden in a wine barrel. Now why did that make me think of the phrases 'You wait. Time passes.' and 'Thorin sits down and begins singing about gold'?" - the two phrases coming from the "hiding in wine barrels" scene in The Hobbit (1982).)
• In Dishonored, one of the guests at Lady Boyle's party is named Brisby and wears a rat mask.
• In DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition, one of the clubs in Club Tour mode has courses titled "Harder", "Better", "Faster", and "Stronger".
• The "Party RPG" Dokapon Kingdom features a character name Robo-Agent. While he's normally a friendly, affable robot, when someone puts money into his mouth, he turns into a Killer Robot named Robo-Sassin. When he transforms into Robo-Sassin, he shouts: "EX-TER-MI-NATE!"
• The main menu music from Donut County uses a sample of the Equip sound effect from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
• Doom:
  • In the Doom Game Mod series Back to Saturn X, the title itself, the names of all the levels, and every other phrase in the intermission texts are titles of songs and albums by Guided by Voices.
  • Doom II has a secret level which is basically lifted right out of id software's previous FPS, Wolfenstein 3-D. If you dig deeper, you can find a secret room where you must gib four strung-up Commander Keens to progress.
  • Doom³: One of the distress calls after the Teleporter Accident is "They're breaking through the walls!", a possible reference to the Aliens line "They're coming out of the goddamn walls!".
• Dota 2: Axe's denied phrase ("YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!") is based on Wonka's infamous meltdown scene from the 1971 movie version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
• Dot's Home:
  • The movie theater is showing The Wizard of Oz for "Throwback Thursdays" at the beginning of the game. When Dot time travels back to 1959 and 2010, the theater is showing Imitation of Life (1959) and The Karate Kit 2010, respectively.
  • One of Carlos's favorite video games his Supreme Bash Bros., which features characters such as "Curbo" and "Iron Knight".
  • If Dot hangs a picture of her lacrosse team on her bedroom wall, she remembers when Phoebe, Rachel, and Monica mad fun of her hair.
• Double Homework:
  • By the protagonist in the registrar’s office, talking to Tamara:
    Protagonist: Are you not entertained?!
  • Often subverted by Dr. Mosely, who regularly tries to reference popular culture, but gets the references wrong.
• Dra+Koi has a Dragon Ball Z shoutout when the dragon estimates the protagonist's power level as being five. The story also does a shoutout to Demonbane, a work from the same company.
• Dragon Creek:
  • The description for eels says that dragons are scared of them, just like in How to Train Your Dragon.
  • If you input the names of certain fictional dragons as codes in the shrine, you'll get dragons that resemble them. The known ones include Spyro, Toothless, Haku, Smaug, Mushu, Shenron, Maleficent's dragon form, Drogon, King Ghidora, Saphira, Barioth, and Salamence.
• Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu has the Black Onyx and Fire Crystal items, whose names are likely inspired by The Black Onyx, the first successful Japanese RPG, and its sequel The Fire Crystal.
• Drakengards Easter Egg is a Shout-Out to cavia inc., who develops the Ace Combat series of games and also developed the Flight Sim portions of Drakengard.
• Dream Daddy:
  • Among the options available to drink with Mat are "Iced Tegan & Sara", "Godspeed You! Black Coffee" and "Chai Antwoord". You can name the banana bread he offers you "Banana Bread Kennedys", "Grateful (Banana) Bread", or "Right Said Banana Bread."
  • The store Dead, Goth and Beyond is a clear nod to Bed, Bath and Beyond and Hot Topic.
  • Dadbook is a play on Facebook.
  • The achievements for going on all dates with Robert and Brian are called "Knife Dad" and "Soft Boy" respectively. Mat's is "King of Carrot Flowers" and Damien's is "Interview with the Vampire".
  • The achievement for dying on Joseph's second date is called Panic! at the Disco.
  • While on the first date with Joseph, you can prompt Christian and Christie to repeat classic Creepy Twins lines from movies like The Shining and Children of the Corn.
  • The reality TV shows that Amanda and the player watch are all parodies of real shows, most notably Ice Road Truckers.
  • To Ernest Hemingway:
    • Hugo's son's name is Ernest Hemingway Vega. Hugo himself is an English teacher, and takes his class on a field trip to the aquarium because they're having a discussion on The Old Man and the Sea.
    • Brian makes a reference to Ernest Hemingway when discussing a large fish he caught once.
  • There are a number of My Chemical Romance references. The player character asks if Damien's father took him to the city to see a marching band. Damien doesn't get the joke. Lucien also listens to the band, and his first appearance has the player character describe him as a "low rent Gerard Way". On Damien's first date, one of the options for a flower's meaning is "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge!"
  • During Character Creation, there are options that make your character look like Goku.
  • Mario Batali is mentioned as the player character's celebrity crush, and at one point he calls on his spirit to help him bake brownies. Mary's map of the neighborhood also calls Brian "Mario Batali."
  • The vinyl store Mat frequents is called Vinyl Fantasy VII.
  • The Death Endings have a reference to a notoriously difficult video game series.
    YOU DIED...
  • The message, "Welcome. You've got Dads!" is a pun on the America Online quip, "Welcome. You've got mail!"
  • On Robert’s third date, you and Robert join a ghost tour. You can make up a name based on which reference you make. For example, the 80’s reference gives you Loomis.
  • The song that the Dadsona plays during Open Mic Night is called [[Star Trek: The Original Series "Beam Me Up, Ska-tty"^note although the original quote was never said in the series.
• Drift Girls: in Episode 3: "He just doesn't understand. You have to believe in the heart of cars."
• A "Create Gold" spell in Dungeon Keeper 2 is cast with the incantation "Expressus Americanus".
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • You start with seven dwarves.
  • There are also these pages at the DF Wiki. And it's incredibly easy to add more as you see fit. For instance, there's a player-created mod that adds new reasons for dwarfs to like existing critters; among those added are "...likes bat men for their awesome theme songs. DANANANANANANA BATMAN!"
  • Sperm whales are rarely generated with white skin, and dwarves can admire them for their "vengeful natures".
• While Koei have been known to deliberately make internal references and homages in the course of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, it's much more noticeable, and a bit startling, when shout outs like this turn up in a quote from Dynasty Warriors 7 of all things.
  Cao Cao: This sword is capable of piercing the very heavens themselves! There is nothing it cannot cut!

E

• EarthBound:
  • The game makes tons of references to The Beatles (of which Shigesato Itoi is a big fan), the most notable one being the yellow submarine.
  • The series also has a lot of old pop culture, such as The Runaway Five being a reference to The Blues Brothers, which was so obvious they were changed for the American translation. There's also a reference to the Barrett Strong song "Money That's What I Want".
  • The Apple Kid's mouse's self-introduction is a near-exact quote of the opening sentences of I Am a Cat; only the species has been changed.
• EastWard:
  • When Mung hands you the subway pass he proclaims that "Whenever. Wherever. You and the subway are meant to be together."
  • The Game Within a Game "Earth Born" plays a lot like the old-school Dragon Quest games, even down to the generic "Knight must save Princess from Demon Lord" plot. For extra points, the knight on the cartridge cover is a Captain Ersatz of Loto/Roto from Dragon Quest III.
  • At one point in the game you can visit Lowtown and find Margolari Pittore painting the people there. One of the inhabitants will claim to be reminded of that grand ocean liner years ago.
    Lulu: I'll never let go, Jack...
  • In the Monkollywood train you can find cardboard cutouts of multiple franchises such as Godzilla fighting a Captain Ersatz version of Ultraman, as well as a Gundam suit.
  • Over the course of Solomon's three boss fights, he give you keys representing wisdom, courage and... strength.
  • The bullies Grandis, Sansey, and Hansey are named after the Terrible Trio of ''Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The series in general has plenty of shout outs. Almost all of the gods in the series are named after people who have worked on the series, and many NPCs have names that reference other fictional characters (such as Lucien Lachance and Vincente Valteri), sports teams (Tarhiel), and characters from folklore ("Springheel" Jakben of Imbel).
  • Morrowind:
    • At least one of the developers seems to have really liked Pokémon. Weepingbell Hall, Marowak's Spine, Peke Utchoo, etc.
    • One of the developers went to Duke, so, being a big fan of Duke basketball, there is an easter egg sword called Eltonbrand that you get by retrieving Shashev's Key (among other requirements). Elsewhere in the game, you come across a (likely dead) enchanter who believed he could fly named "Tarhiel".
    • The very name "Morrowind" could be a reference to The Elf Queen of Shannara, which features the island of Morrowindl, which also has an active volcano being held in check by magic.
    • In Omalen Ancestral tomb, the corpse of an adventurer can be found crushed under a rock due to a cave in. There's a scroll that records his last thoughts, signed "Indie". It also mentions that his father made jokes about his childhood pet.
    • The Bjorn ice cave on Solstheim has a skeletal corpse with his feet stuck to the ceiling and a sword just out of his reach down below. He apparently didn't use the force.
    • Two sections of the Temple canton in Vivec City are called the Hall of Justice and the Hall of Wisdom.
  • Oblivion:
    • One of the ruined Ayleid cities is named Vindeisel.
    • One quest involves a floating inn being hijacked by a group of bandits, and when asked who the main character is, there's an option to reply "I'm just the ship's cook".
    • In the Shivering Isles expansion, there's a unique chest called the Dark Chest of Wonders. Any doubt that it's a Nightwish reference is erased when you crack it and find the Ring of the Oceanborn.
    • The Blue Suede Shoes item is a reference to the song by Carl Perkins.
    • In another Indiana Jones shout for the series, a quest wherein a rival treasure hunter tries to take your spoils right as you emerge from a trap-filled ruin is named "Nothing You Can Possess".
  • Skyrim has so many it needed its own page.
• Elite calls its two lowest combat ratings "Harmless" and "Mostly Harmless".
• Elite Dangerous features the Python multipurpose ship, which was designed by the Whatt and Pritney Ship Constructions, a reference to Pratt & Whitney.
• The graphical roguelike Elona features as a potential player class, the Claymore: a mostly-female Half-Human Hybrid with silver eyes and inhuman dodging capabilities, with the ability to heal quickly (but at a price).
• Emerald City Confidential is a Film Noir "retelling" of the Land of Oz books. At one point, busts of L. Frank Baum and the game creator, Dave Gilbert, show up.
• Enchanter: The road leading west from the starting point has signs along it writing out a message one word at a time in the style of Burma-Shave billboards.
  Why
  are
  you
  going
  west
  when
  the
  castle
  is
  east?
  Burma
  Shave
• In Endless Ocean: Blue World, after befriending the Pacific White-Sided Dolphin, the narration says "You caught the wild Pacific white-sided dolphin! Give it a nickname..? What? Wrong game? Oh."
• In the German Amiga game Enemy: Tempest of Violence, the antagonists are a ruthless alien race known as the Tschahis. "Tschahi" is a German phonetic rendering of the surname of Eric Chahi, creator of Another World, a game which Enemy not coincidentally resembles.
• Escape Velocity:
  • The game includes numerous shout outs to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its featured films: the adjacent systems of Manos and Torgo, another cluster of systems named Gamera, Guiron and Zigra, and a system named Gymkata containing a planet named Hikeeba. The Easter Eggs in the game include a killer forklift, the Satellite of Love, and an alternate Opening Scroll parodying the MST3K Theme Tune.
  • There are also a fair number of Hitchhiker's Guide references, with planets named Beeblebrox (in the Zaphod system) and Ursa Minor Beta, and "Mostly Harmless" as the combat rating just above "Harmless" (and yes, the game was influenced by Elite).
  • The uninhabited planet George's World lies in the THX-1138 system, and elsewhere there is a forest moon named Endor.
  • Escape Velocity Nova has a randomly-occurring Leviathan-class ship called CATS. Its picture in the communication dialog is the portrait of CATS from the Zero Wing opening, and its lines of dialog are also from the Zero Wing opening.
  • Also Raczak's Roughnecks (the animated one).
  • The total conversion plug-in Colosseum has not only shout-outs to the trilogy (Wild Geese, the Virtual Battle Network being themed off of Classic EV), there is also Sarge, Grif and Tucker found in one TAS system, mentions of the CIS, as well as Rogue Squadron. Heck, just listen to the menu theme when the game starts up.
• The doujin game Eternal Fighter Zero has many references to Key/Visual Arts works, as well as for other fighting games.
  • Mio Kouzuki changes costumes with each special attack, referencing Street Fighter, The King of Fighters, Shingetsutan Tsukihime, Darkstalkers, Cardcaptor Sakura, and more.
  • Kano Kirishima's entire set of spells is directly lifted from the Mage and Wizard classes in the MMORPG Ragnarok Online. Her staff is an actual item from the game (Mighty Staff).
• One system in EVE Online contains a massive black monolith.
• The MMORPG EverQuest is full of these. Ironically, it is against the rules for players to name themselves in such a fashion, but it is fine for the designers to name NPCs to make a shout out.
• Exit the Gungeon:
  • His Majesty's Chancellor is named Toadstool.
  • Meduselier is a combination of Medusa and Carmilla from the Castlevania series.
  • Meowitzer is based on Eggman.
  • Gungamesh, with his red cloak, multi-armed appearance and dimension-hopping, resembles not the Mesopotamian king of myth, but the haughty sword-stealer that shares his name.
  • The subtitle for the Sepulchergeist is "The Shrining".
  • Achievements called Smash Brother and Sunset Overdrive.

F

• Fae Farm: The description for amber says, "Don't even think about using this to clone terrible lizards!" This is a reference to dinosaurs being cloned from mosquito blood preserved in amber in Jurassic Park.
• 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:
  • One of the medications in the pharmacy is a hemorrhoid cream called "Preparation G", presumably a forerunner to modern hemorrhoid cream Preparation H.
  • The game makes a few shout-outs to other Sierra games.
    • One of the people in the bar is Zircon Jim Laffer, ancestor to Leisure Suit Larry (whom he resembles closely).
    • There's a bridge that informs you every time you cross it that you have only three crossings left (the number never goes down), referencing a bridge that actually does have limited crossings in King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne.
    • Cedric the Owl has a cameo. A very short cameo.
    • Dying in certain circumstances causes the narrator, wrapping up Freddy's story, to launch into new ones, containing references to another King's Quest game, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, and (in a non-Sierra reference) The Music Man.
• 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.

G

• Gift:
  • The first level is a nod to Titanic.
  • There are Indiana Jones' hat and whip in a temple in Paztec.
  • The sleeping princess and the dwarves are nods to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
• Ginger Beyond The Crystal
  • The level "The Miracle Manor" is one big nod to Resident Evil, being set in a spooky mansion full of monsters, viewed through fixed camera angles, it even comes with the door opening animation.
  • One of the accessories you can by is a backpack with a red bird in it.
• The Glider series has a few references to The Wizard of Oz. Glider PRO, with its Art Nouveau aesthetic, also alludes to Little Nemo in the name "Slumberland" for the principal game scenario and the name "NEMO" on the mailboxes.
• God Hand has tons of these. Elvis wears Akuma's prayer beads, Gene has the Shoryuken as a juggle move, and one of the God Reels is 100 Fists, a Spam Attack that references Fist of the North Star. There are also many, many tips of the hat to Clover Studio's games, such as Ōkami (one of the chihuahuas you can race is called Amaterasu) and Viewtiful Joe (the Mad Midget Five). Elvis himself is a giant Shout-Out to, well, Elvis.
• Mind-reading a certain lumberjack NPC in Golden Sun has him say "I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay... with that" (it even pauses for a second after the "okay" appears before that "with that" does).
• An early quest chain in Grand Fantasia takes place on "The Lonely Island", and the victory message you get after you complete it reads "I'm on a Boat!"
• Several in the Grow games:
  • There is a Onky wearing Waldo's clothes in both endings of Grow Valley.
  • Some of the park guests from Grow Park include: Krillin, Piccolo, Goku, and Vegeta; Miku; the Bug Catchers; and Pacman and a ghost.
  • In Grow Comeback, there is a way to give your hero a familiar red cap and mustache.
• Growing Up is a game that's set in The '90s, and it's chock full of references to various works from that decade (and also from The '80s):
  • Some of the movie posters you see are reminiscent of Titanic (1997) (The Ship), The Lion King (1994) (The Lion Monarch), and The Little Mermaid (1989) (The Young Siren). The parody for Jurassic Park (Dino World) gets mentioned often in some routes: the protagonist sometimes watches it with their parents while Richard is a big fan of it.
  • Wendy often gets called "Captain Hook" by her bullies for her prosthetic arm, and the achievement you get for getting her good ending is called "Wendy Krueger".
  • One of the arcade machines in Starcade 80 is called Croakker.
  • The achievement for getting Vivica's good ending is called "Teen Spirit".
  • The protagonist's description for the activity "Reading Comics" is, "I wonder how arachnid-person will get out of this one!"
  • The description for the activity "Playing Video Games" is, "Embody anyone: a hero, a villain... a plumber?"
• Guild Wars:
  • The game has a whole list of Shout-Outs in the skills players can equip.
    • Interestingly, most of them are "shout" skills, like "For Great Justice!" and "Make Your Time!" (Zero Wing), "I Meant to Do That!" (Pee-wee's Big Adventure), "None Shall Pass!" (the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and "Can't Touch This!" (MC Hammer).
    • A few fire elemental spells are named after Rodgort, which in turn comes from Trogdor, the dragon created by Strong Bad in Homestar Runner.
    • A less commonly known one is the skill Headbutt, which for a short time, was named Enadiz Headbutt (Enadiz is Zidane spelled backwards). This is an obvious reference to this meme. Alas, the skill was renamed to just plain Headbutt in time for Nightfalls release.
  • And then there's the berserking dwarf Kilroy Stonekin, obviously inspired by the famed Leeroy Jenkins, right down to the battlecry.
  • There is also The Black Beast of Arrgh, another shout out to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but this monster is actually black rather than being green like in the movie.
• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game: To Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
  Lady of the Lake: Watery tart? I'll show you.

H

• 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:
  • A guy and his cat in Twoson reenact a Garfield strip.
  • The Final Boss shows up looking like a modified Uboa.
  • The Id boss is based on one of the Final Bosses from Final Fantasy Legend III, and plays the same background music. Specifically, it's meant to be an inversion - while the Final Fantasy Legend III boss is begging your party to give him a Mercy Kill, the Halloween Hack one is pleading for his life.
• 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.
  • In Tape 1 there's a Redrum graffiti on the building's wall.
  • The victim's house in Tape 2 is on Lampkin Lane.
  • The Haunted House in Tape 9 has the masks of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Ghostface hanging on a wall backstage.
  • The motel in Tape 12 is the Bates' Motel.
  • Madison Carpenter is obviously named after famous horror and science fiction director John Carpenter.
  • Tape 16 takes place in and around a house on Elm Street.
  • The hospital in Tape 17 lists a certain Dr. Voorhees as its cardiologist and one Dr. Loomis as its psychologist.
• 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:
  • Captain Frank Lee English can call Aled Jones, when commenting on him, the [1] to his Morse, the Gromit to his Wallace, and the Andrew Ridgeley to his George Michael.
  • In the ship's laboratory, the Captain can find a typewriter that serves as the game's Save Point. He can examine it, which makes him comment that someone was typing about STARS.
  • When English and Jones reach the planet and climb down into the trench, the Statue Of Liberty can be seen to the left.
  • When the French astronauts hold English and Jones at gunpoint, one thing English can say to try to convince them to leave is "By the power of Grayskull!".
• 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).

I

• 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."
  • Another Hulk reference is made when Sol insists on delivering the soil to Geoponics by themself by telling Cal, "Sol Smash!!!"
  • If Sol gets a lecture from Flulu for skipping school a second time, the lecture includes the phrase "We live in a society."
  • Professor Hal's nickname is also the name of the spaceship AI from a well-known sci-fi movie. He's even an AI programmer himself!
  • If Sol is close enough to Dys to figure out where he might have gone after leaving the ninth Vertumnalia Festival, they will find him in the middle of trying to convince Sym of how dangerous humans are for the planet with a couple of hypotheticals that consist of all the planet's trees getting cut down and its rivers getting poisoned. This alludes to the best-known version of a famous quote: "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money."
  • When Tang explains to Sol her plans for a Super Breeding Program in order to prevent hereditary diseases from being passed down, they can tell her, "Cool motive, still eugenics."
  • The Creativity skill check for your first time working at the bar says, "Take chances and make mistakes!"
  • The scene where you name the stray vacubot gives you four sections worth of pop-culture name suggestions before you can finally choose to give it your own. Some of these suggestions are R.O.B, R2-D2, C3PO, Asimov, Optimus Prime, Bender, and WALL•E.
  • The board game that you can play with Marz and Rex is all but stated to be Monopoly since it involves trying to bankrupt the other players by charging them rent for your properties.
  • One generic defense training session has you playing a virtspace game where you slice fruits and vegetables thrown at you with your hands.
  • When Rex checks in on Nomi's progress on the latter's interactive holonovel, he says, "How's the game going, Nomestar Runner?"
  • If you team up with Nomi to investigate half the lake's circumference to study its water, they go, "Team Clockwise is blasting off again!"
• 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.

J

• Jade Empire has a shout out to Knights of the Old Republic, another of Bioware's games. In Jade Empire, the recruiter at the arena remarks something along the lines of "you are indeed mysterious, stranger." In KOTOR, Mysterious Stranger is the codename given to the player character when (s)he participates in the Duel Ring.
• The Jak and Daxter series has a few Shout Outs to Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet & Clank. Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier alone has shout outs to Star Fox, MST3K, Diablo, and Planet of the Apes. Also Dr. Strangelove, with Daxter referring to "missile hat an' spurs".
  • In particular, Daxter features Dream Sequence mini games serving as homages to a handful of iconic films, namely The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Braveheart, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Jardinains!:
  • Level 33 of the first game looks like a blue ghost from Pac-Man.
  • The second game has a level that resembles Space Invaders.
• In Jetpack, many levels reference classic Arcade Games in their names and designs, including:
  • "Wizard of Wor" (Warlords, despite the misleading name)
  • "Jet-Pac" (Pac-Man)
  • "Donkey Pack" (Donkey Kong)
  • "Jetpack Invaders" (Space Invaders)
  • "Breakout" (Breakout)
  • "Centipack" (Centipede)
• The King Carl mission of Jimmy Neutron vs. Jimmy Negatron is a parody In Name Only of King Kong. The loading screen for the mission extends the reference a bit further.
• Here lies a lonely Flower in the third level of Journey (2012). A flOw-like creature is also found. Since all three were developed by thatgamecompany, this is almost immediately noticeable if you played the pre-Journey titles.
• One of the bosses of Journey to Silius resembles the Space Jockey pilot from Alien. And since the game was a dolled-up version of a cancelled Terminator game, the Final Boss is a Terminator endoskeleton.
• In The Journeyman Project:
  • The death message for being run over by the Mars maintenance tram is "Well, at least you weren't eaten by a grue!"
  • Mercury, the robot assassin at the World Science Center in 2310, has the ability to shapeshift into a human disguise, in the style of the T-1000.
  • The AI Arthur in the second and third games may be named after sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke.
• Just Cause:
  • One of the cities in Just Cause is named "Nuevo Estocolmo", being an obvious reference to Stockholm, capital of the developers' native Sweden.
  • Some of the soldiers in Just Cause 2 will occasionally yell "If he bleeds we can sure kill him!" in combat.

K

• 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:
    • The second boss begins the battle wearing armor, which comes off after a few hits, and he continues to fight in his boxers.
    • The fifth boss's appearance and fighting style appear to be inspired by Shōnen anime characters such as Goku.
    • The penultimate boss, an Indian magician, is likely a reference to Great Tiger from Punch-Out!!.

L

• La Tale has a minigame named Dot Nuri, which is a clear shout out to Super Mario Bros., right down to the low-res mushroom enemies.
• Lands of Lore:
  • When you examine a random bush, you get a response: "Is that a Pseudobushia Hugiflora?" Pseudobushia Hugiflora is a talking plant you have to grow in The Legend of Kyrandia (both games were made by Westwood Studios).
  • Likewise, both in Lands of Lore and Legend of Kyrandia you can find a "Piscata Rosea" item.
• The Last Remnant has a few Shout-Outs, but at least three to Devil May Cry.
  • The two yama NPCs in Athlum and Ghor are named Vergil and Dante, respectively.
  • Rush (voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch) at one point shouts "Jackpot!"
  • A tournament's slogan is "Welcome back to the stage of history!"
  • Almost all of the Remnants and formations are shout outs to previous entries in the SaGa series. Then there's the Bilqis, a weapon that looks like a cross between an axe and a chainsaw...
• LEGO Legends of Chima Online:
  • The first quest to retrieve stolen item blueprints is called "Prints of Thieves".
  • A signpost near a raised drawbridge reads "You shall not pass!"
  • Several components for player names are nonsense words from Jabberwocky, including "Slithy", "Momerath", "Frumious", "Vorpal" and "Frabjous".
  • "Wabbit" is a potential player name competent.
• A Critical Choice in Let's Build a Zoo: Dinosaur Island, called The Builder, is from a client named Bob, who wears a yellow hard hat, blue overalls, and an orange chequered shirt. He talks about using dinosaurs in construction, based on a cartoon he saw, which might be a reference to The Flintstones.
• Levelhead: The cutscene "RUN GR-18!" which describes Lizumis say they have an airless tire which "never gives you up, never lets you down".
• In Life: the Game, the "date" level has Zoidberg from Futurama as one of the potential dates.
• Lonesome Village has a few, most of them to Nintendo games:
  • One of the plants in the swamp looks like a giant Piranha Plant.
  • There appears to be a Yoshi egg floating in a container in Cooper's lab.
  • One of the villagers is a raccoon named Rocky.
• One line in The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure is a Title Drop for the M. R. James work, A Warning To The Curious, that provided much of the inspiration for the game's storyline.
• A subtle one: At one point in Lost Planet 2, you have to fend off a giant (nearly) invincible Sand Worm type creature in a desert. It has scurrying legs at its front that are suspiciously identical to those possessed by the Ohmu from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — similarly invincible insect creatures inhabiting an Earth that's largely desert.
• Love & Pies: In the Rival Season Pass, Edwina comes in like a wrecking ball by riding on it with her legs raised to destroy Appleton's historic gatehouse.
• Luck be a Landlord:
  • The Frozen Fossil symbol is a nod to the Magic: The Gathering card "Thing in the Ice // Awoken Horror". Both are Magikarp Power examples that start off frozen, but if you wait long enough, you get a powerful Eldritch Abomination.
  • The Unique Item Highlander is a nod to the Highlander franchise, in particular the tagline "There can be only one".
  • One of the achievements, "Breakfast", is a nod to The Binding of Isaac as getting two Pool Ball Essences require you to empty the essence pool, referencing how the Breakfast item will begin to appear when the item pool is empty.