Viscera Cleanup Detail are based on the questions of "What happened after I left that level of [insert video game]?" or "How does the aftermath of [insert gory movie] play out?". Unsurprisingly, this means that the game contains a number of shout outs ranging from classic literature, movies (of both horror and sci-fi) to modern video games.
- One of the common gags is the use of pictures or character designs from the developer's other game, Rook's Keep.
- To a lesser extent, several of the 'toy' weapons seen in Santa's Rampage are those from Runestorm's previous Unreal Tournament 2004 mod
, Ballistic Weapons.
- To a lesser extent, several of the 'toy' weapons seen in Santa's Rampage are those from Runestorm's previous Unreal Tournament 2004 mod
- Cryogenesis:
- This level contains a digital data pad with a log entry by one "Dr. Jordan Friedmann", a Theoretical Cryogenicist, who with his Dangerous Environment Vest and trusty prying bar is going to get to the facility's armory and fight back against the monsters now stalking the halls in the wake of a failed experiment. Remind you of anyone? News stories mention he's a "man-of-few-words".
- Some of the cryo pods have what look like baby Cthulhus floating inside.
- Santa's Rampage is one big shout out to "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "The Night Santa Went Crazy".
- Gravity Drive is an obvious homage to Event Horizon, with a crew driven insane by horrors outside their ship during the maiden voyage of an experimental warp engine. Said engine is a near exact copy of the movie, complete with pointless spikes. The tagline on the Punchomatic even references spacefolding by noting the shortest distance between two points is zero.
- Revolutionary Robotics features references to I, Robot and The Terminator among other robot fiction, and is especially a shout out to RoboCop. In addition to multiple robot models bearing resemblance to ED-209, you can find a meeting room with Mr. Kinney shot to death, his corpse laying on top of a model city and a note by him complaining about being used for beta testing.
- In the security office, the overly-complicated keyboards have an N7 button.
- Unrefinery was overrun when "Mantis" aliens from below the surface were disturbed by the operation.
- The Paintenance Tunnels are located in an underwater base attacked by a giant squid-like alien. The base itself is called the Verne.
- Unearthly Excavation has a log entry by an archaeologist named Lara Kraft.
- One of the most common organization names to appear on the data logs is Dead Space Corps.
- The hidden collectibles are all from well-known movies and video games.
- A Minecraft steel pickaxe can be found by digging through a large amount of dirt to find a voxel-like cave.
- Nuclear warning symbols guide the way to Duke Nukem's sunglasses and gum.
- Gordon Freeman's glasses and crowbar can be found in the same level as his expy.
- In the Robot War aftermath map you can find a set of red and blue pills.
- Isaac's helmet can be found hidden in a map whose lighting and color scheme is reminiscent of the game.
- A facehugger is hidden inside the vent of a science lab.
- A red Warhammer 40,000 bolter is in Bob's hiding place.
- Bob's secret stash can only be reached using a red keycard, allowing you to get a suit of armor and shotgun from the same game.
- One of the sand worms, usually called sarlaacs by fans, will vomit a lightsaber if fed a lit explosive.
- In one of the levels, there is a toilet stall with 3 seashells, and the name on a flash drive is John Spartan.
- The in-game News Ticker has several.
- The commercial mining freighter The Nostradamus was destroyed after an "alien entity" killed all but one member of the crew. The lone survivor was Helen Shredley.
- Scientists recently managed to revive a Harvester, a race of sentient machines that consumed all advanced civilizations in the galaxy and starved to death as a result.
- An excavation on the planet Ares uncovered an ancient civilization wiped out when their portal network tapped into a "plane of evil".
- If it wasn't obvious enough, the article's title and final line note archaeologists may have uncovered humanity's "doom".
- The Brotherhood of Kane is in a bidding war for arms supplies.
- Sgt. Jack Hammer saved the colony Eden Prime.
- The House of Horror Map is pretty much one Horror Movie reference after another.
- "Uprinsing" features poor Roger Wilco with free-flow ventilation in his abdominal cavity after the robots came in to deal with the janitor rebellion.
- "Core Sample" lifts characters straight from the Half-Life series, such as Stanley Rosenberg, Richard Kellar and Gina Cross (all from Half-Life: Decay), Arne Magnusson, "Ellis" Vance and "Zack" Kleiner, as well as namedropping the Resonance Cascade (though as a completely different event from the one in the source material).
- The map from The Vulcan Affair references numerous secret agent films, most prominently James Bond and Austin Powers.
- Almost the entire level of Frostbite is a reference to The Thing (1982) in both plot and the names (Kurt and Wilford, and the hero's name MacReady). You can even find the ice sarcophaguses in one of the caves, a small cage/kennel in the underground science lab and a burnt pile of corpses found near the second tunnel entrance.
- Overgrowth features the aftermath of a team of scientists mining for "unobtanium" on an alien planet consisting mostly of dense forests. Data logs and notes reveal that everyone was hunted down and killed by an alien entity, with some of the scientists being hung from trees after the alien skinned their corpses.
