Shout Out Cleanup

Shout-Out is a trope that suffers from a lot of Fan Myopia and questionable examples. Similar to certain YMMV concepts, fans often draw connections where there are none; the difference here is that a Shout-Out is meant to be intentional, so anything that we can't prove was done deliberately and obviously wouldn't qualify.

This thread is meant to weed out bad examples and discuss things we're not sure about. We can also discuss tropes beyond Shout-Out if they follow similar rules, like Actor Allusion, Mythology Gag, and Company Cross References.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 16th 2021 at 1:47:21 PM

Yeah, I agree a Shout-Out has to be an intentional overt reference to another work by the creators. If there are vague coincidental similarities that don't necessarily reference something, then chances are, they are not Shout Outs.

While we're at it, we may as well include Mythology Gag in the discussion as well because it's being used as "Shout Out, but to works by the same creators".

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Jul 15th 2021 at 2:01:24 AM

If we're going to establish rules for the crowner, I think we could borrow from the Expy Cleanup Thread. Most of the rules on that thread can just as well apply to Shout Outs.

Here's one bad example that comes to mind, on ShoutOut.Steven Universe under "Change Your Mind":

• A half-human hybrid that, while less violent than full members of their alien ancestry, proves to be stronger than either parent race when pushed too far by a self-proclaimed perfect life-form. Steven or Gohan?

Ugh, it reads like a bad Hilarious in Hindsight example. Cut it (or move to Surprisingly-Similar Stories).

I'll need to run ShoutOut.Phineas And Ferb by later. It's big, and there are a lot of "maybe", "possibly," etc. Just to give an example of what we're dealing with:

• Danville was also the name of Rob Petrie's hometown in The Dick Van Dyke Show.

For P&F, "Danville" was pretty simply taken from the name of one of the creators, Dan Povenmire.

There's one from House of Anubis that I've found questionable for a while now:

• Villain/s search for the relic/s that will provide immortality. Also, they mistook "The Chosen One" when there are two girls born in July on the same date. Significant differences aside, Joy and Nina are like the Distaff Counterparts of Neville and Harry.

Significant differences here is a pretty big thing to overlook. I can see a few similarities here, but the show wouldn't have been this subtle about a Shout-Out, especially since they've even referenced Harry Potter at multiple other times (mostly in dialogue). Someone probably would've called attention to the similarities at least once if it was meant to be intentional, and again, Nina and Joy are way different from Harry and Neville. As for the first part, I mean, it's a pretty common plot-thread and the Cup is much different from the Horcrux thing.

All in all, I think this is a cut, but I wanted to bring it up here first.

I'm actually surprised it took this long to create a dedicated Shout-Out cleanup effort. Well, good to know we're getting the ball rolling.

I agree in the past I've seen quite a bit of questionable examples of this trope, no doubt due to Fan Myopia and fans drawing connections between their favorite Work A and Work B. I think Zootopia used to have some questionable ones, like one connecting the Big Donut in the movie to the Big Donut in Steven Universe, but they were removed.

Actually, now that I'm looking at it, that page still has a few questionable examples. I'll see if I can round them up.

EDIT: Here we are:

• The way Judy holds that carrot-shaped pen is almost identical to the trademark pose of another famous animated, anthropomorphic rabbit. There aren't that many ways to hold a carrot TBH. I've looked in three different◊ shots of Judy holding her carrot pen, and none of them resemble how Bugs normally holds his carrot.
• A minor one when Nick is patting Bellwether's head. "It's so fluffy!" IIRC, Nick says, "So fluffy!" and he doesn't even say it the same way as Agnes did. This one's a real stretch. The example even admitting it's minor is kind of a red flag anyways.
• The iPhonies have a carrot logo with a bite taken out. Same logo used by such products in the long-running Furry Webcomic Kevin & Kell. How well known is this webcomic? Seems like Fan Myopia since carrot-themed Apple knockoffs are kind of expected in works featuring anthropomorphic bunnies.
• The Rainforest District as a whole gives off very Tarzan vibes, especially during the scene where Manchas goes feral and chases after Nick and Judy, which is very similar to the Tarzan vs. Sabor fight. Sure, they're similar, but are they glaringly similar enough that we can be confident it's intentional?
• Nick and Judy's civilian outfits are a similar color◊ to the outfits of another animated Disney fox-rabbit duo. I'll admit, the resemblance is uncanny, but it could just as well be coincidental.
• Finnick's pacifier bears a strong resemblance to Maggie's famous red pacifier from The Simpsons, which Rich Moore worked on for five seasons and directed many episodes. Don't all pacifiers kind of look the same anyways?
• To crack a case, a police officer working under a 48 hour deadline needs to team up with a streetwise con man who is their only lead. Sound familiar? Not sure. I think the 48-hour deadline is just a common trope for the genre, but these are some pretty substantial similarities.

Edited by PacificGreen on Jul 15th 2021 at 10:57:43 AM

I feel like this kind of misuse is especially common in pages on kid's animated shows, for the same reason Nightmare Fuel examples are, i.e. adult fans eager to point out parts too "mature" for kids to understand. I remember in the heyday of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fans of that show always went wild anytime something like The Big Lebowski or The Benny Hill Show was referenced. Anyway, found this questionable example in ShoutOut.Gravity Falls:

• PIONEER DAAAY!!!

Not only is that a Zero-Context Example, but I don't think a guy shouting counts as a Dan Vs. reference.

Yeah, Skyward Scream is a trope outside of Dan Vs. Cut.

Doing a minor rewrite in the IDW Sonic section:

Original:

• Shout-Out:
  • At the end of Issue 21, among the survivors seen are a ladybug and a cat that look similar to Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste.
  • The leader of the Sonic Fan Club is always seen wearing◊ a bright-pink shirt with a yellow star.
  • One of the Chao on the main cover for issue 35◊ is wearing a rock over its head and is donning a number 8.

• Shout-Out: The guitar shape of the prison is one to Sonic X which likewise looked like one as well.

Rewrite:

• At the end of Issue 21, among the survivors seen are a ladybug and a cat that look similar to Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste as anthropomorfic characters.
• The leader of the Sonic Fan Club is always seen wearing◊ a bright-pink shirt with a yellow star, just like the titular Steven Universe.
• One of the Chao on the main cover for issue 35◊ is wearing a rock over its head and is donning a number 8. This is a reference to Rocky from The Great Snail Race from SpongeBob SquarePants.

The Sonic X reference is moved to Mythology Gag.

Remember, let's avoid zero context examples and explain why these are references.

All the Zootopia ones — well, save for the Brer Rabbit reference, maybe that is legit since its also from Disney — are bad shoehorns, and can all be fed to hungry predators.

And then there's this two from Wonder Woman 1984. Permission to cut?

• Diana and Steve's car chase through the desert in pursuit of Max's convoy is highly reminiscent of similar scenes in the Indiana Jones franchise. — There are tons and tons of movies with chase scenes in the desert, also the entry violates the Examples Are Not General rule.
• During Diana's story of the death of Asteria, the Greek men who supposedly killed her during her Last Stand to protect her sister Amazons, ie toxic masculinity and misogyny personified, look suspiciously familiar. — Shoehorn of the highest order, cut?

Cut away. Those do seem like stretches.

Question: is it a shout-out when a work mentions another, unrelated work of fiction as a work of fiction? For example, a scene from X-Men: Apocalypse when the gang leaves the cinema after watching Return of the Jedi and discussing it for a little bit.

I think so. Shout-Out broadly refers to any reference to another person or work, be it an homage or the person/work existing in universe.

I will cut the Zootopia examples.

WarJay77, I agree it's safe to cut that House of Anubis example. If you have to mention "significant differences" in a Shout-Out example, it's most likely not an example.

Edited by PacificGreen on Jul 16th 2021 at 8:42:18 AM

This should welcome Actor Allusion questions too. It has problematic entries for the same reason as Shout-Out.

I've deleted a few from Black Widow (2021) for definitely being stretches, but these I'm not as sure of. Shout-outs have to be obvious, right?

• Alexei, Melina, Natasha and Yelena are shown operating in America as deep cover Russian spies disguised as an American family unit, reminiscent of The Americans.
  • Deep Cover Agents as Americans I think is a common thing to pretend to be.
• The protagonist's family member sends them the MacGuffin to keep it safe, only for the protagonist to bring it right back to that family member, just as in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
  • Similar thing happens but doesn't sound to me like it was deliberate

x6 Wouldn't that be Company Cross References?

Edited by Tabs on Jul 16th 2021 at 10:48:36 AM

I don't mind tackling all the Shout Out Tropes here, I'll update the OP.

ShoutOut.Mass Effect is a hot, steaming mess of Shout-Out misuse. Below is just the first few examples from the topmost folder. I'll leave it to consensus whether this page needs a dedicated cleanup thread or not.

• Ashley Williams' name comes directly from Ash's full name in the Evil Dead series. Ashley makes a crack about boomsticks in the first game, which confirms this was intentional.
• While Kaidan Alenko's name (a combination of Japanese ^note  Granted, "Kaidan" isn't really a name and Eastern European) might reference Takeshi Kovacs. The name "Kaidan" is of Arabic origin, not Japanese. Which invalidates whatever connection this troper saw to the Altered Carbon character. The use of the word "might" also makes the example ambiguous, which is a knock.
• Admiral Steven Hackett is named after the former Genesis guitarist. Legit.
• The mass relays with their spinning rings look uncannily similar to the FTL machine of Contact. Spinning gyro rings are actually pretty common in science fiction, chief.
• The Crucible storyline in Mass Effect 3 also parallels Contact. Both involve humanity pooling its resources into a massive engineering project based on designs obtained from mysterious aliens, even though they have only a vague idea of its final purpose. That's a really general Whole-Plot Reference. That is, if you can confirm that the developers did, in fact, take inspiration from Contact, and didn't just happen to write a similar story for their video game using common science-fiction tropes. Otherwise, this is just Wild Mass Guessing on the fandom's part.
• They also bear a strong resemblance to the logo for Comstar That particular shape layout is also common in science fiction. Compare the shape of the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek.
• Cerberus Daily News on 4/01/2185 (April Fool's Day) has an interesting article about the destruction of a planet named DC1938...with a single infant survivor, picked up by a starship named Kent. His native atmosphere is "65% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 15% krypton". Looks legit. However, this example and the ones indented under it are referring to content that appears on the Cerberus Daily News real-life website. This folder is labeled "Series", indicating that these are shouts that occur within the body of the games. If we're going to include shouts from Expanded Universe material, then I think there should be a dedicated folder for them.
  • Another CDN shout-out: A news story references about an exclusionary zone around relays due to the difficulty of cleaning debris, including representative (Lisa) Tanabe referencing an incident where a single metal bolt breached the crew compartment of the starship Mihairokov, killing the passengers. Planetes is an anime about debris collection in space, including among the Debris Section's employees Ai Tanabe and Yuri Mihairokov. Yuri was one of a few survivors of an incident when a bolt struck and depressurized the passenger compartment of the suborbital liner he was traveling on. Kinda wordy, but looks legit.
  • Another one: Nekiya Corridor, a very hyped-up film that managed to be the highest-grossing film ever, its lead female star throws a tantrum and walks off set. A pothole to Terminator Salvation doesn't adequately explain what happened on the set of that movie that the CDN story could be referencing.
  • A group called TruthHax leaks important government documents. Unlike Lulzsec, though, they're taken down by a Spectre and four of them get shot. Another example that relies too much on potholes and weblinks to provide context. Who is Anonymous? What is WikiLeaks? How are they being referenced here?
  • Another one reports of Super Bowl CCXIX, where the New York Giants defied the odds and beat the favorite team in a tight game. A news report about a football team winning the Super Bowl is another really common trope.
• The vorcha species is probably named for either the Vor'cha class attack cruiser in Star Trek or the Vorchan class medium warship in Babylon 5. Another ambiguity knock. The fact that we have three unrelated properties using some variant of the word "vorcha" tells me it may just be a stock alien word in science fiction, unless Word of God for any of them says otherwise.
• The turians had a Unification War in which the home world brought the colonies back under control. Asari commandos can "kill you with their brains" according to Wrex. Two examples run together as one. These could be separated out into different bullets, maybe expanded to better provide context for how they connect with Firefly. There are other Firefly shouts spread throughout the page. My vote is the ones that are valid be grouped together within each folder they appear in. Same for other works that get a lot of shouts in Mass Effect.
• Then there are the Blue Suns mercenary band, which is a reference to either the "Blue Sun" corporation of Firefly or "Black Sun" crime syndicate of Star Wars. Or both. Ambiguity knock. It has to be a clear reference to one or the other.

Regarding the supposed Shout-Out to The Americans, that show was based off of real life attempts by the Russians to place deep cover agents in the United States. I'm sure multiple works would use the same idea without it being a deliberate Shout-Out.

Edited by RustBeard on Jul 16th 2021 at 1:14:30 AM

Thanks for the info. I've removed that example.

Super Sentai has some pretty reachy Mythology Gag entries. Here's some choice examples from MythologyGag.Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger:

• The Red and Yellow Rangers of Power Rangers S.P.D. used to be thieves (although of the less glamorous variety) and had an encounter with the Blue (who later would be Red after Jack retires), Green, and Pink Rangers.

The bracketed parts make this feel like a stretch.

• For that matter, the good guys being armored police (and three of 'em!) while the bad guys are a criminal organization from an alternate dimension basically sums up the premise of the Space Sheriff franchise.
• One of the two Reds lost loved ones to a MOTW that has ice powers. Are we sure that it's not the Weather Dopant that's responsible?

Both of these are Company Cross References. I think every Super Sentai Mythology Gag entry, be it a subpage or on a regular trope list, should have a commented-out note saying that only references to Super Sentai and Power Rangers count.

There are also a lot of entries on various SS MG subpages that go like, "X aesthetic thing hasn't been done in Y years."

Cut the above as necessary. No objections.

Thinking if it's possible to give this thread a bit more activity; is it possible to change the header title to "Shout-Out AND Actor Allusion Cleanup?"

These two appears to come hand-in-hand, and Actor Allusion is as prone to misuse as Shout-Out since there are editors who goes "XYZ actor happens to do something mundane in two movies", so...

Edited by RobertTYL on Jul 21st 2021 at 10:07:00 PM

I mean, if you want to holler a mod for the change go ahead. I can't change the title myself.

I think Actor Allusion needs its own thread, though it could be lumped with Casting Gag.