Mythology Gag - TV Tropes

Webby's original design used as a weapon by Magica De Spell.

Liu Kang: Are we the Deadly Alliance?
Raiden: That is Kronika's Deception.
Liu Kang: Or a recipe for Armageddon.

— Mortal Kombat 11

A Mythology Gag is a work making a reference to concepts previously only found in the greater meta-franchise. One such idea would be a Costume-Test Montage includes a Beta Outfit resembling what a superhero wore in the comics before deciding on a more tactical updated version. The important part is that the thing it is referencing is not Canon to the work in question or a deliberate attempt to bridge different parts of the Expanded Universe. A meta-Continuity Nod, if you will. Very common in Reboots or Series Franchises when an element from the previous version is referenced or seen in some way, usually as an acknowledgment to fans of earlier incarnations. If it's not directly connected to the meta-franchise but something else, then it would just be a Shout-Out.

This trope can be taken largely as a bit of gratuitous humor, since if the program you're watching is "real" then the characters wouldn't be thinking in terms of any continuity, alternate or otherwise. Sometimes this will be lampshaded by the characters, who wonder how they could possibly know such a thing. When a work has an extremely large creation history and an effort is made to represent that history as much as possible, such gags can end up being strung along to the point every scene is filled with them like a Continuity Cavalcade. The Celebrity Paradox might come into play.

See Remake Cameo for when the Mythology Gag involves actors from the original production. Compare Call-Back, Continuity Nod, Discontinuity Nod, Recurring Element, Canon Immigrant, Reunited as Guest Star, Actor Allusion, Continuity Cameo, Company Cross-References, Ascended Meme, Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness (when taken a step further). Contrast Development Gag, which references things that would have been part of the work but were left out halfway through production, and Early-Bird Cameo.

Remember, if it's deliberately referencing a past event known to the characters, it's a Continuity Nod or a Call-Back.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

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Advertising

Clippy's first spoken words in the Microsoft Office XP ad campaign before his Adaptational Jerkass personality kicks in are "It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like help?"
Raid Insecticide Campaign: A commercial from The '60s has the insects say they were sent by Bugsy — doubling both as a pun for bugs and Bugs Bunny's name. This is made evident by the fact the speaking insect is voiced by Mel Blanc doing a rendition of the iconic bunny.

Arts

The Sistine Chapel, the physical building itself, has the same dimensions (40.9 meters long by 13.4 meters wide) as the Temple of Solomon does in The Bible. This reinforces one of the main theses of the Chapel: to demonstrate that the Christian tradition flows directly from the teachings of Judaism.

Asian Animation

The Animated Adaptation (and its non-canon chibi Spin-Off) of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi often references novel events that aren't present in the adaptation.
- Wei Wuxian flips through his old notebook that Lan Wangji kept and briefly pauses to admire his flower bookmark. This is a reference to the flower bookmark Lan Wangji uses in the novel, which is hinted to be given to him by Wei Wuxian from one of the multiple instances he threw flowers at him.
- In the final episode, the protagonists return to a cottage in the mountains that's implied to be a home they live in outside of Gusu. In the novel, Wei Wuxian mentions multiple times his dream of retiring in a house in a secluded area to live a rural life with Lan Wangji.
- One episode of the spinoff has Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen trying out Wei Wuxian's food "suggestions" (such as eating lotus seeds from a lotus pod that has its stem intact). This references the novel extra chapter "Lotus Seed Pod", where Lan Wangji asked his brother about the food suggestions during their training session and later looked for fresh lotus pods so he could try them out.
- The chibi Spin-Off twice brings back the Heavenly Maiden statue (a troublesome Arc Villain the cast has to defeat early in the main story) just to have characters comically beat it up.

Comic Strips

Popeye: Due to a series of misunderstandings and copyright claims too convoluted to explain here, the early Popeye adversary Bluto was Put on a Bus while various Suspiciously Similar Substitutes fought Popeye. Many went unnamed, at least one receiving the appelation "Mean Man" on a cereal box, and there was also confusion between two of the substitutes, Brutus (a Canon Immigrant) and Sonny Boy, the son of the Sea Hag. Then, in the 1991 storyline "The Return of Bluto", the original Bluto returns, vowing to teach all his knockoffs a lesson. One strip shows a meeting of the various Brutuses, and one of them claims that, because of "blacklistings and witch-hunts", some of them had to change their names just to keep working. Cue Sonny Boy and Mean Man piping in and introducing themselves.
Mean Man: I made it to a cereal box!

Music

In Lupe Fiasco's character biographies for The Cool, Michael Young History's birthdate is listed as the day Lupe's first album Food and Liquour was leaked. The Cool's is listed as six months later, a reference to the line in the song The Cool. Yes, there's a song, a CD, and a character all named The Cool.
In Voltaire's song "Alchemy Mondays", in the middle he stops to say "Hold everything they're playing my song!" and he sings part of one of his most famous songs, "When You're Evil", and then continues with the song.
The Beatles song "Glass Onion" is one long series of references to their earlier songs in the same surreal mode, mostly mainly-Lennon works: "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am The Walrus", "Lady Madonna" and "The Fool on the Hill".
- "Lady Madonna" is mainly-McCartney, "Fool on the Hill" entirely so: Paul is the only Beatle to play on the latter track.
- And "I Am The Walrus", in itself, name-checks a song from the previous album: "See how they fly, like Lucy in the sky, see how they run..."
- "Glass Onion" also references the infamous "Paul is dead" rumors that some conspiracy buffs floated at the time with the line, "And here's another clue for you all,/The Walrus was Paul". Post-Beatles, John Lennon wrote a line for the song God: "I was the Walrus, but now I'm John."
The Rolling Stones' "Flight 505" opens with a boogie-woogie piano intro that segues into in the famous "Satisfaction" riff before launching into the song proper.
A few examples from They Might Be Giants:
- Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal name-checks The World's Address, Rabid Child, and Chess Piece Face.
- I'm Sick (of This American Life) cribs lyrics from Cyclops Rock and I've Learned the Value of Human Sacrifice.
- How Can I Sing Like a Girl? was inspired by John Flansburgh having to sing in falsetto during live performances of She Was a Hotel Detective.
  - And that song has been interpreted as an allegory for the band's transformation around that time.
- Managing to pull this off on their first album, Rhythm Section Want Ad details various things the band dealt with after their demo tape earned them attention from the NYC music scene — the song title is a specific complaint one exec had about the (then-)drum machine-reliant band, while the lyric "you guys must be into the Eurythmics" was a comment made by a prospective manager who meant well but didn't seem to quite get their style for similar reasons.
- The title of "Stalk Of Wheat" calls back to the song "They Might Be Giants" from Flood (They Might Be Giants) - the latter included the lyric "they might be frying up a stalk of wheat".
The song Sweet and Low by Strippers Union has the line, "It's not his suits that got the girl." This is a reference to the Odds song Someone Who's Cool, with its lyric: "It was the suit that got me the gig, it was the tear that got me the girl." The gag being that Craig Northey, Doug Elliott and Pat Steward are members of both bands.
Veruca Salt's song "Volcano Girls" references their past hit song "Seether", with the line "Well, here's another clue if you please/The Seether's Louise" (as in Louise Post, one of the band's former leaders). This is also a reference to the aforementioned Beatles song "Glass Onion".
Tommy and Gina, from Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer", are referenced fourteen years later in "It's My Life":
And this is for the ones who stood their ground
For Tommy and Gina, who never backed down.
- Tommy and Gina didn't have to wait 14 years for a name check. They're mentioned in "99 in the Shade" off of the New Jersey album.
  Somebody tells me even Tommy's coming down tonight
  If Gina says it's all right.
Steve Miller name checks three of his previous songs in the opening lines of "The Joker" ("Space Cowboy," "Gangsters of Love" and "Enter Maurice"). Of course The Joker became a much bigger hit than any of those, to the point mentioning the earlier songs often confuses people. (When Rock Band released both Space Cowboy and The Joker simultaneously, many were confused, thinking they were the same song.)
Queen's "Lily of the Valley (from Sheer Heart Attack) references the made-up kingdom of Rhye and its Seven Seas, from their previous album.
Bad Religion's "21st Century Digital Boy" references two of their past songs near the end, "Suffer" and "No Control."
Hip Hop artist notoriously reference past songs, possibly the best example being Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's "The Next Episode," a reference to a throwaway line from the song "Nuthin But a G Thang."
In Men Without Hats' song "Pop Goes The World", the lines "And every time I wonder if the world is right,/End up in some disco dancing all night" are followed by about three bars of a distinctive melody from their earlier hit, "Safety Dance".
Gary Cherone of Extreme (and formerly of Van Halen and Tribes of Judah) has been known to reference lyrics from bands he's been influenced by. When Extreme reunited in 2008 with their album "Saudades de Rock" the song "Sunrise" featured the lyrics "She don't need to beg or borrow", a reference to "Runnin' With The Devil", by the David Lee Roth era Van Halen.
- While he was briefly sitting in as Van Halen's third frontman, the song "Dirty Water Dog" featured the phrase "under the sun", which is a throwback to an Extreme triptych (3-part song) entitled "3 Sides To Every Story". The second part of which was entitled "Everything Under The Sun".
  - Additionally, the Van Halen tune "How Many Say I", also written by Cherone, features the phrase "all you need is love". A Beatles reference if ever there was one.
- The song "God Isn't Dead?", again, by Extreme, begins with the words, "Aahh, look at all the lonely people". This one's an obvious shout-out to The Beatles "Eleanor Rigby".
The break at the end of the guitar solo in "Rest In Peace" features a musical quote from Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)".
Eminem does this multiple times, particularly when he name checks Dr. Dre. "My Name Is..." sets up the joke:
Eminem: And Dr. Dre said...
Dre: Slim Shady you a basehead!
Eminem: Uh-uh!
Dre: Then why's your face red? Man, you wasted!
- Cue "The Real Slim Shady":
  Eminem: And Dr. Dre said... nothing, you idiots, Dr. Dre's dead! He's locked in my basement!
Ian Anderson references life as being a "passion play" in various songs. A Passion Play was one of Tull's most successful albums.
- The Passion Play album refers to "life's long song". A 1971 single of theirs is "Life Is A Long Song".
- The song "Mountain Men" on Crest Of A Knave has the line "And who am I to fast deny the right to take a fish once in a while", alluding to his real life salmon farming pursuits.
- "Christmas was my favorite holiday", a line from 1999's J-Tull Cot Com, may be ironically referring to his Anti-Christmas Song, "Christmas Song".
- In "Strange Avenues", he mentions "looking like a postcard from 1971", referring to Aqualung.
- Hares/rabbits were always in abundance in Tull imagery: "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles", the columns about "Do Not See Me Rabbit" and "non-rabbits" in the newspaper of Thick As A Brick, the line, "you're a rabbit on the run" in "Skating Away On The Thin Ice Of The New Day", the band wearing rabbit suits onstage...
Fall Out Boy's "What a Catch, Donnie" has lines from several of their songs ("Grand Theft Autumn", "Sugar We're Going Down", "Dance, Dance", plus others) sung in the background during the third stanza.
Pink Floyd's The Wall has a few of these. One of the most obvious is "Young Lust"'s borrowing from "The Nile Song," an earlier tune, but there are others, including a sound effect in "Is There Anybody Out There?" mirroring one from "Echoes."
- The Division Bell is filled to the brim with musical and lyrical allusions to past works. "Cluster One" sounds similar to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" ("Cluster One" was written as a tribute to Roger Waters, as SOYCD was written as a tribute to Syd Barrett), "Keep Talking" has a synth solo similar to "Run Like Hell" and a talk-box effect similar to "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", "What Do You Want from Me" has a groove similar to "Have A Cigar", and "High Hopes" is reminiscent of "Fat Old Sun" and "Grantchester Meadows". Allusions to "the wall" coming down on "A Great Day For Freedom" are by Word of God, not about The Wall, nor Roger's Berlin "Wall" concert, but it can be easily interpreted that way.
- Roger Waters has used an inflatable pig or two in The Wall tour and solo concerts post-Animals. For a few recent solo tours, he scrolled political/social messages (or anti-George W. Bush screeds) on the pigs.
One of Hannah Montana's earliest hits is called "Life's What You Make It". The chorus of a Miley Cyrus song from 2009, "The Time Of Our Lives", has the line, "Life is only what you make it, now."
- The verses of "See You Again" have "I knew you were something special", while the chorus of "He Could Be The One" by Hannah Montana has "he's got something special". Another line of "See You Again" has "I have a heart that will never be tamed". A song and album called Can't Be Tamed came out two years later.
Genesis has many:
- Tony Banks plays an electric grand piano part with the same over-the-hand technique he developed on a few of the tracks on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway for "No Reply At All".
- The lyrics to the "Willow Farm" section of Supper's Ready refers to the "fox on the rocks" (the album the song was on was called Foxtrot, the cover of which features a fox standing on some rocks) and "the musical box". "The Musical Box" was a track from Nursery Cryme.
  - The end section of Supper's Ready has the line, "There's an angel standing in the sun". Phil Collins sang the line, "There's an angel standing in the sun, free to get back home" in the end of "Los Endos" as a tribute to Peter Gabriel in their A Trick of the Tail album.
- The Gabriel-era song "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight", from Selling England by the Pound, features the line "'Paper, late!' cried a voice in the crowd," which later served as the inspiration for the Collins-era song "Paperlate."
Emilie Autumn's song Swallow has the line "I'm not a fairy, but I need/more than this life, so I became..." referencing her Enchant era where she performed in fairy wings.
In a particularly meta form of the trope, The Dresden Dolls song "Backstabber" has the line: "And don't tell me not to reference my songs within my songs."
Knife Party's "Centipede" opens with "Giant tropical Centipedes share their territories with Tarantulas." A nod to Tarantula by Pendulum.
Ben Lee's song "Into the Dark" has the line, "I was one of those breathing tornados", alluding to his earlier album Breathing Tornados.
Pearl Jam's Greatest Hits Album rearviewmirror opens with the first song on their debut album, "Once", and ends with the song they usually close shows with, "Yellow Ledbetter".
This is literally half of The Hold Steady's lyrics, and a solid amount of their appeal.
In the Legends & Diamonds song "Running Out Of Time" Lamar raps "Too many nights, I tried to make it shine, then I tried to fly, but it didn't work", referencing his three solo hits.
In NOFX's song "Now for Something Completely Similar", the lyrics mention the "blatant similarity" to Linoleum, referencing the similar sound to that of their earlier work.
Lady Gaga's Gypsy has the line "I don't speak German, but I try", referencing the start Of Scheibe: "I don't speak German, but I can if you like."
ASP's "Wechselbalg" from the 2011-album Fremd has the lines "Das Innerste geäußert und aufs Äußerste verinnerlicht. Ein Wechselbalg, die Welt getauscht und nun werden wir sehen." in it's chorus. They are originally from their song "So viel tiefer", which was only realeased on their 2008 Best of Horror vacui.
3 Doors Down released a live album called Another 700 Miles, referencing a line from the song "I Feel You."
The cover of Austra's third album pictures a dark-colored horse, calling back to their first album's opening track, "Darken Her Horse".
In "Wrote My Way Out" from The Hamilton Mixtape, the line "I know abuela's never going to win the lottery" references the plot of In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's production immediately prior to Hamilton that centered around a lottery winner from a Hispanic neighborhood. In the context of "Wrote My Way Out," it makes the point that Hispanics are never going to find prosperity by luck, so it's up to Lin-Manuel Miranda to help and represent them through his writing.
Madonna's song "Deeper and Deeper" contains the lines "You got to just let your body move to the music/You got to just let your body go with the flow," a reference to her previous hit "Vogue".
Many examples from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, particularly in the album Murder Of The Universe:
- The bassline from the first four songs on I'm In Your Mind Fuzz reappears at the end of "Lord Of Lightning".
- "Lord Of Lightning" also references the title of Nonagon Infinity.
For Rush Jet 1's Mega Man V Remade album, the third variation of the Wily Star theme is a VRC 6 version of a prior arrangement he made of the same song.
Two of A. G. Cook's breakout online singles were "Beautiful" (released in 2014) and "Superstar" (in 2016). Come his second debut album, Apple (released in 2020), it features a song titled "Beautiful Superstar". While they're in vastly different genres (the former two are bright and shimmery hyperpop, the latter is a pillowy acoustic ballad with some futuristic elements), "Beautiful Superstar" reuses a few recurring riffs from "Beautiful" (most notably part of its outro), and a brief interpolation of the "I'm a superstar" hook features on the final chorus (bonus points for the very first verse containing the line "I don't wanna use the same old words").
The Music Video for "Bibbidiba" by hololive's Hoshimachi Suisei is one to her previous smash hit "Stellar Stellar". In that song, she says that, rather than being a Cinderella who waits around for someone to save her, she wants to be the prince or knight who takes action and gets things done. In "Bibbidiba", she plays the role of Cinderella in a themed video shoot, but is far more assertive and take-charge than the actual Prince Charming, whose actor is completely ineffective once the cameras stop rolling and fails to do anything against the video's Prima Donna Director, unlike Suisei who angrily confronts him and nearly gets into a fight with him over his Jerkass behavior.
The In Flames song "We Will Remember", released in 2019, promptly remembers a lot of previous songs by the band. References in order of mention are at least: Crawl Through Knives, (possibly) Artifacts of the Black Rain, Behind Space, (possibly) Worlds Within the Margin, Colony, The Hive, Ordinary Story.

Mythology & Religion

Statius begins The Achilleid by praying to Apollo to give him more inspiration after using it all up of writing about Thebes, referencing the first epic he wrote.

Podcasts

Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe? naturally fits in references to the source material during their hypothetical film pitches.
- Upon being resurrected in Frankenstein, the Bride lets out her iconic scream before being killed again.
- While no Romani appear in The Wolfman, Gwen and Larry encounter a large settlement of them in House of Dracula while dealing with their own lycanthropic problems.
- In a rather heartbreaking example, Van Helsing brings things full circle, and has Frankenstein die in a burning windmill.
- The end of Mystery Men features the team interviewing a bunch of potential new candidates, including several new incarnations of the original team, all while "All Star" plays.
Bleeker Trails: In The Stinger for Episode 4, Lady Liggett reads Patience's fortune and reveals that they are connected across time and space to figures such as Isabelle and a Mrs. Wilkerson... err... Wilkinson (a reference to the chronically misnamed Professor Wilkinson from Y'all of Cthulhu); doubling as an Actor Allusion since three of these other selves mentioned are Detective Max Hammett (Rina's character in Max Hammett Mysteries), Irene (Rina's character in The Meat Trade), and Nevada Jones (Rina's character in Ain't Slayed Nobody's playthrough of Edge of Darkness).
Waldo: [squawks] Pimm's! Pimm's!
The RiffTrax for Batman & Robin contains a joke pointing out the resemblance between Dr. Woodrue and a certain character from Rifftrax's spiritual predecessor...
Bill Corbett: (as Woodrue) Yes! Now to achieve my lifelong dream of launching a man into space and forcing him to watch really bad movies!
- The Rifftrax for the first X-Men 1 movie has a Call-Back to a joke from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  Mike Nelson: She wandered into Thunderdome!
  Bill Corbet: Mike...
  Mike Nelson: (realizing) Oh. Oh no...
  Bill Corbet: Mike... can't we get beyond Thunderdome?
  - Even funnier as the exchange being referenced was in one of the last sketches between Mike and Crow as played by Trace Beaulieu, not Bill Corbett.
- The Rifftrax for Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope has a throwback to a Running Gag on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Space Mutiny, one of the most popular episodes.
  Han Solo: Chewie! Get us outta here!!
  Bill: Kalgan, take me away!
  - Not necessarily a throwback, because there is a real product (Calgon) with this slogan.
- Bill Corbett comments of Anakin and Palpatine in the theater in the Rifftrax for Revenge of the Sith:
  "So, they're just gonna sit alone in those theater seats and make wisecracks about the show? What jerks!"
- Bill also comments on X-Men's setting of "The Not-Too-Distant Future".
  Bill: Huh, that seems familiar...
- In D-War, a deep voiced villain asks for help. Leading to "Zap Rowsdower, is that you?"

Radio

The Quintessential Phase of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) had a couple of suggestions that Arthur, possibly due to bouncing through parallel universes, was remembering some of the scenes that were in the books and TV series but not the earlier Phases of the radio series, much to Ford's confusion.
The DiscContinuity Guide, a website analysing the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas, lists each story's Mythology Gag (if any) under the heading "intertextuality".
- The audio The Kingmaker had clips of the Fourth Doctor (voiced by John Culshaw) dictating notes for a book called Doctor Who Discovers Historical Mysteries. This is a parody of the Doctor Who Discovers books published by Target in the seventies.
  - Not to mention that Richard the Third was played by an actor who sounded suspiciously like Christopher Eccleston and uttered the word "Fantastic!" with a Northern accent. The Fifth Doctor also writes a letter to be delivered by himself two years in the past. It is ultimately delivered by a "big eared Northern chap."
- Minuet In Hell features Nicholas Briggs as a madman who believes he's the Doctor. Briggs had previously played the Doctor in a series of fan-audios ... including the original version of Minuet In Hell!
  - The Briggs Doctor also appears in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip a couple of times, once as an unspecified "future Doctor", and once as a fake Ninth Doctor.
  - Cameos by Briggs in other stories suggest that his Doctor is actually an Alternate Universe Second Doctor, coming between the Nick Scovell First Doctor from the stage play of The Daleks Masterplan and the Arabella Weir Third Doctor from the Doctor Who Unbound audio Exile.
- Frozen Time also contains references to Briggs's fan audios, being a sequel to Endurance with Ice Warriors instead of Silurians.
Star Trek: The opening of the sequel to "Spock Vs. Q":
Spock: Good evening everyone, and welcome. I am Spock.
Q: Are you sure?

Tabletop Games

Dungeons & Dragons:
- The 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide used exactly the same sample dungeon for its demonstration of game play as had been presented in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. The characters' actions were nearly identical, although Lidda fared much better against the ghouls than did the original version's gnome.
- The 3rd edition sourcebook for military adventures, "Heroes of Battle", has rules for using the Bluff skill to rally troops with an inspiring and reassuring lie. An example of a difficult lie to sell to your troops is "dragons can only breathe fire once per day", which was true in 1st edition, but in this edition, they can do it about four times per minute.
- 4e loves tossing in shout-outs to settings that are not part of this edition's gameline. Sigil is once again center-stage at higher tiers, the Spelljamming Helms can be used to navigate the Astral Sea, and it's made throw-away references to defunct settings like Greyhawk and even Dark Sun before it was confirmed as a campaign setting for this edition.
- In the Monster Manual for 5th edition, the Goblin entry contains a short flavor text consisting of "Bree-Yark!", with an assurance in parenthasis that, to the best of the author's knowledge, this is Goblin for "We Surrender!" Those who have played (or at least are familiar with) the original Keep on the Borderlands module, where the phrase originated from, know that whilst this is what the goblins in that adventure claim it means, it actually translates as something closer to "Hey, Rube!" — a battle-cry demanding aid from all nearby allies in a potentially life-or-death struggle.
- Spelljammer: In the 5th Edition monster compendium, the Space Hamster is given the power "Go For The Eyes!" after the battle cry of Minsc, the ranger party member from Baldur's Gate who had a Miniature Giant Golden Space Hamster named Boo as a companion and had the battle cry "The eyes, Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!"
Exalted:
- The Return of the Scarlet Empress has the Ebon Dragon construct an enormous Black Spiral. In addition, the entire world of Autochthonia is based on Mage: The Ascension. These qualify as Mythology Gags because Exalted was originally supposed to be a prequel to the World of Darkness, which has more or less fallen off with subsequent editions.
- Exalted had another Werewolf reference in "Shards of the Exalted Dream", with a sinister corporation in the Modern Age shard being named after a subsidiary of Pentex.
- In Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals, their Excellencies (usually straightforward dice adders) are known as Augmentations because they were designed before the term "Excellency" was coined. The first edition Alchemical charmset was the one that first introduced the concept before second edition gave them to everyone.
Hoyle's Rules of Dragon Poker was the third or fourth attempt to complete the game. All previous versions, including the one from the books, were woven into the back story the author created for the game.
Magic: The Gathering:
- The Time Spiral block, whose set theme was nostalgia, is naturally full of Easter Eggs and other little jokes about cards from older sets. For example: in the flavor text of Viscid Lemures, Norin the Wary remarks that it's nice to face something harmless, like a lemur. On the (much) earlier Hyalopterous Lemure, the artist had apparently never heard of a "lemure", so the card is illustrated with a lemur.
- The Lhurgoyf card had the flavour text "Ach! Hans, run! It's the Lhurgoyf!". Much later, a card with a similar power had the flavor text "Not again", attributed to Hans.
  - And in Time Spiral, Saffi Eriksdotter, who said the immortal line, became a card in her own right. Hans would eventually get his own card too in Commander Legends.
  - That phrase also became an Unglued card. It summons a creature for one turn if the player says, "Ach Hans! Run, it's the..."
- The card Lotus Petal is a weakened version of the Game-Breaker card Black Lotus — and its flavor text is a reference to how much money you'd have to spend in order to get one of the originals.
  - Black Lotus has inspired the creation of a few other mana producing artifacts themed around lotuses (as well as some lands)
- The card Deep Analysis has the flavor text "The specimen seems to be broken." The artifact being examined in the card's art is a Masticore, another card famous for being exceedingly powerful. This doubles as a Take That, Scrappy!.
- The card Persecute Artist doesn't let the caster choose Rebecca Guay. This is a nod to the time when rumors that Guay was being fired as a Magic card artist led to backlash.
- The twelfth edition's print of Giant Spider states that "The wild is always changing, but it does have a few constants." This is probably a reference to the fact that by this point, Giant Spider was the only card (aside from the five basic lands) that has been in all core sets since the game's beginning.
- Lightning Bolt was cut from the main set after Fourth Edition as too powerful and replaced by cards with basically the same effect but less powerful/mana efficient. It was reintroduced in the 2010 set with the flavor text, "The sparkmage shrieked, calling on the rage of the storms of his youth. To his surprise, the sky responded with a fierce energy he'd never thought to see again."
- Call of the Full Moon gives your creature a power boost, but it goes back to normal if anyone casts two or more spells in a turn. This card represents turning your creature into an Innistrad-origin werewolf, and that drawback is shared by all the double-faced werewolf cards in the Innistrad block.
Star Trek Adventures: The first mission of A Star Beyond the Stars sends the PCs in search of the USS Alcubierre, which went missing while testing a new warp drive variant. Miguel Alcubierre is the theoretical physicist who formulated the theory behind the Alcubierre Drive, inspired by Star Trek's warp drive.
Warhammer 40,000:
- The oldest of the Assassin orders, the Adamus, are visually based on the original 1989 Imperial Assassin miniature.
- In older versions of the Horus Heresy lore, the Drop Site Massacre was said to have been so brutal that only seven loyalists survived, which would have meant that the Raven Guard, Salamanders and Iron Hands would have been hugely depleted and unable to play too substantial a role. Then priorities changed behind the scenes, leading to the Horus Heresy books and a spinoff game from 40K proper. These made it so that while the Drop Site Massacre was certainly accurately named, with the Cavalry Betrayal reaping a massive tally of loyalist Space Marines, there were dozens of loyalists to make it out battered and bloodied but alive (meaning that fans of those Legions would be able to field them in the game and had an incentive to keep reading the books). However, as a sneaky nod, one of the Forge World supplements giving a broad overview of the Heresy threw in a reference to early reports that did claim only seven survivors, which later turned out to be wrong.
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
- The Flesh-eater Courts — an entire faction that serves as an exceptionally dark take on feudalism — have the fleur-de-lis prominently featured on the Cadaverous Barricade and Charnel Throne, likely as an allusion to how the fleur-de-lis was prominently associated with the also feudalistic Kingdom of Bretonnia in Warhammer Fantasy.
- From a certain point of view, the Flesh-eater Courts can be seen as a fantastical take on both the Genestealer Cults and Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000 — both are mutated humanoids who are massive Wild Cards, profoundly deluded to the point of encouraging their own self-destruction, can infect their foes and convert them to their own side with dismaying ease, and are ultimately motivated by their ravenous hunger.
Warhammer Fantasy: In the early supplement Realm of Chaos there are rules for randomly generating demons; one of the example demons, called Kweethul Gristlegut, is similar to the Horned Rat, god of the Skaven. A later Skaven army book briefly mentions Kweethul as being a heretic.
The World of Darkness: New World of Darkness gamelines often contain references to their Old World of Darkness predecessors.
- Mage: The Awakening:
  - The origin of the Free Council order occurred when they refused the Seer of the Throne ministry known as the Union's invitation to unite and create a world-controlling Technocracy.
  - Word of God is that the Old Man of the Hollow, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Abyss, visually resembles renegade Euthanatos archmage Voormas. Rather disturbingly, the Old Man is a lot nicer than his inspiration...
  - Many of the Legacies take their names, nicknames, and/or thematics from Ascension — the Dreamspeakers strongly resemble their Ascension predecessors, the Subtle Ones take inspiration from the Ahl-i-Batin, the Thread-Cutters from the Euthanatos, etc.
- Vampire: The Requiem: In Vampire: The Masquerade, the Camarilla was the ruling body of vampiric politics — a worldwide conspiracy meant to keep the Kindred operating behind the scenes and hidden from mortals. In Requiem, the Camarilla was a vampiric body politic that stretched throughout the Roman Empire... and fell when it did, emphasizing the game line's shift from global to local politics.
- Werewolf: The Forsaken: Several in-game elements are refers to lore and factions from Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
  - The game has a giant worm-like entity known as Zmai who may or may not have something to do with vampires. It is loosely based on the Zmei, worm-tainted dragon from Apocalypse.
  - The antagonistic Pure Tribes are at least partially based on the less liked elements of WTA: the Ivory Claws are based on the Silver Fangs, arrogant werewolf aristocrats whose inbreeding may have been driving them to insanity and extincion, and the Get of Fenris who never recovered, In-Universe or out, for the fact that a large faction of them happily aligned themselves with the Nazis and saw their ideology as being complementary to National Socialism. The the savage, anti-civilisation Predator Kings are basically the Red Talons, a vehemently anti-human tribe, as a villainous splat rather than a technically heroic one.
  - The Urazakh-Angir, a prophesied messianic figure in Pure mythology, is a werewolf born to a werewolf father and a normal wolf mother. This is a reference to the Lupus (wolf-born) werewolves from Apocalypse.
A few cards in the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game are based upon storylines from the original manga from before the card game came to prominence:
- Zombyra the Dark is based upon a character from a Show Within a Show Zombire, who is a Spawn Expy. Like Spawn, he gets closer to death the more he fights, represented by an ATK reduction.
- Dark Master - Zorc was the Big Bad of the Monster World story arc, which was a Tabletop Game. From that comes the die-rolling effect, including the fact that a lower roll is better and the highest roll is a fumble. And the art for its corresponding ritual spell card, Contract with the Dark Master, is based on the scene in which Zorc first reveals himself by transforming from a seemingly friendly NPC.
- Number 67: Pair-a-Dice Smasher is a reference to the shadow game from Duel 2. Its first effect makes both players roll a die and puts a penalty on the player with the higher roll and its second effect changes the result of any die roll into a 7. The die split in half in the artwork continues this reference. ^note

Toys

LEGO:
- One of the figures for the third Space Police line has an Octan logo on its leather jacket. Octan used to be the Brand X fuel station for Lego's City range.
- Additionally, a "statue" of the first astronaut is actually a Classic Space mini-figure with a blanked-out face. The Latin inscription on the base (in annos triginta ad caelum infinitum construxit) means "Thirty years of building in the infinite heavens," referring to the fact that Space Police III was released on roughly the thirtieth anniversary of the introduction of Classic Space.
- The graffiti on the alien's spaceships references the much-loved "Blacktron" and "Spyrius" (early space "bad guy" themes — indeed, Blacktron was the enemy of the previous Space Police lines) and mostly-loathed "Insectoids" ("Insecturds" or "Insucktoids" being popular names) lines of space sets. Also two of the set designers, who were well known 'Adult Fans of Lego' prior to being employed by The Lego Group, managed to add their online "AFOL" handles ('Nabii' and 'Mister Zumbi') to the alien's spaceships. Basically, the designers really had fun with this line of Lego sets!
  - One recent set makes it even more blatant — one of the Alien baddies is wearing a suit very reminicent of an original Blacktron figure with a Blacktron II logo on it.
- The Death Star Playset of 2008 had a megaphone piece with neon orange stud on the end, resembling the blasters of 1999 until 2007, being swapped with more realistically looking models. Granted, there wasn't that much time for building up the mythology part.
- Crossing over with comics, when the Minifigure collection of blind bags came up with a DC Comics series, one of the included minifigures was Bat-Mite. And true to his characterization of being an interdimensional fanboy, not to mention a nod to his Medium Awareness in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, one of Bat-Mite's accessories is a copy of Detective Comics #27 (Batman's first appearance) done in minifigure style.
- The Lego Town set 1592, Town Square Castle Scene, includes a statue commemorating a prominent citizen from the previous century — who was apparently one of the pre-1978 minifigures without movable arms or legs.
Transformers:
- The toys are known for giving newer versions of Optimus Prime the iconic chest-windscreen in robot mode, even if it's not going to be the windscreen in vehicle mode. Likewise, Alternators Tracks and Animated Bumblebee, to name a couple.
- Another Transformers example would be Generations Soundwave. Ostensibly, it represents the one from Transformers: Prime while in the altmode he used on Cybertron. In actuality, he looks almost exactly like G1 Soundwave, except with a vehicle mode.
- Given that Soundwave figure also represents the War for Cybertron version of Soundwave, that makes this a video game example as well; indeed, most of the War for Cybertron cast have bodies that resemble some combination of their various G1 Earthen and Cybertronian appearances.
- The Masterpiece line of action figures are well known for giving G1 characters accessories and features that reference many iterations of the character, some of which made only one appearance in the cartoon:
  - MP-08 Grimlock comes with waiter attire from the cartoon episode "Madman's Paradise" and an intelligence transfer helmet from "Grimlock's New Brain". The eyes of the figure can alternate between cartoon blue and the original toy's red. Later iterations of the toy even include a crown Grimlock wore during his stint as Autobot leader in The Transformers (Marvel).
  - MP-13 Soundwave has a chest display and attachable empty energon cube (both abilities he displayed in the cartoon), as well as a sensor that attaches to either one of his arms. This sensor only appeared in one episode ("Fire on the Mountain", for those interested).
  - MP-14 Red Alert comes with sparks that attach to his head to recreate the damage he had in the episode "Auto Berserk".
  - MP-20 Wheeljack comes with a hypno-chip disruptor (which made only one appearance in "The Ultimate Doom, Part 3") when purchased through Amazon.jp. Interestingly, his faceplate (unremovable without dismantling the head) hides a face similar to that of his Transformers: Animated counterpart, which goes completely undocumented in the instructions. A similar thing is in place with MP-01 Optimus Prime - under his faceplate (which can move to simulate speech à la the cartoon) is a series of squares similar to what a dying Optimus Prime had under his broken faceplate in the Marvel comics.
  - MP-21 Bumblebee has three swappable faces, one of which is the visored, more robotic face that his original toy had.
  - MP-22 Ultra Magnus has, in addition to a Matrix of Leadership, a hidden face similar to the white Optimus Prime repaint that the original toy used.
  - MP-27 Ironhide has several gadgets originally used in miscellaneous cartoon episodes, oftentimes never to be heard from again. He also has a "battle sled" similar to what the G1 toy (infamous for not being accurate to the cartoon or comic^note) had.
  - MP-29 Shockwave has an alternate translucent purple hand and gun barrel, referencing the ones the original Shockwave toy had. One hand even does a salute (referencing a single gesture done in "More Than Meets The Eye, Part 1"), and some even reference what were possible animation goofs (namely having a removable gun hose and barrel to emulate the curious lack of it he had in the aforementioned first episode, and a miniature version of his own gun mode that he wielded in "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1").
- Most of the Titan Masters from the Titans Return line that weren't direct G1 references were more often than not a mythology gag of some sort:
  - A dark gag was Six Shot's Titan Master, Revolver. The smaller figure is sculpted to resemble Jack, a Toyless Toyline Character from the Japanese Anime continuity whom Six Shot turned into an Action Bomb and eventually killed.
  - A much cheerier reference is laser Optimus Prime's Titan Master, Diac, whose name and appearance are based on the old Diaclone driver figures.
  - Alpha Trion's Titan Master is based off of Beta Maxx, the Minicon partner of Alpha Trion in another continuity. Alpha Trion's alt-modes of a spaceship and a lion reference the figure of said other Alpha Trion and a cancelled toy for G1 Alpha Trion respectively.
- Power of the Primes Nemesis Prime is basically an arsenal of mythology gags relating to other versions of the character.
  - Per the original Paint It Black version of Optimus, he sports the classic black, teal, and red highlights color scheme, along with a large red sword.
  - Said sword is molded to resemble (and, on Amazon.com's original listing, named) the Dark Saber, which was wielded by the Transformers: Armada version of Nemesis Prime. He also includes two blasters that mount on his forearms resembling his smokestack guns.
  - His other sword turns into a bird named Giza, a reference to Nemesis Prime's Arms Micron toy, who comes with a saw shark who turns into a sword.
The Grossery Gang:
- Some Grosseries are given names that are the same as previous characters from The Trash Pack, the predecessor to the franchise. Some of the names include Putrid Pizza and Shoccoli.
- The Series 1 large pack and Series 2 surprise pack both say "Best Before 1985", in reference to the founding year of Moose Toys, the company that owns Grossery Gang.
- Blow Fly and Trash-a-Pillar themselves reappear as figures in Series 3. Blow Fly, being an exclusive action figure, gets an extended bio that makes use of his original Trash Pack bio, while giving his nickname as "Buzz", the name he was called in the failed Mondo TV cartoon.

Visual Novels

AQUARIUM (2022):
- When Marine tells Fubuki "kitty, come here", the first thing Fubuki says is that she's a fox and not a cat.
- In the game Marine can get her pirate ship like she's always wanted.
- When Theo catches Aqua, he remarks she must be about 44.5 kg.
- Fubuki failing to find a Golden Magipepper for days and disappointingly getting red ones is a reference to her Pokemon streams where she hunted the shiny Magikarp for almost 120 hours. It's also referenced in Chapter 3 when Theo says his sister spent a month trying to catch a shiny fish and only found red ones.
Artificial Nexus: Examining a crack in the testing room has Susan peek through it and see some sort of circle for a Summoning Ritual, a reference to the developer's previous game. To hammer the reference home, the achievement for doing so is called Darkness Black as Midnight's Ire, part of the summoning chant performed by the characters from that game. It also foreshadows that the games are more connected than they first appear to be...

Web Animation

13 Cards:
- There are quite a few references to Land of Kings, a comic made by Fedor Comix. In Clones Clean Up The House
  - The kingdom Waru fantasizes about at the start of the episode? That's his kingdom in Land of Kings, right down to the outfit he is wearing. Waruland is even directly namedropped.
  - Felix's Cockroach Kingdom is called Felicia, which is also the name of Felix's Kingdom in Land of Kings.
  - Fëdor threatens to send the clones back to the Card World, which was how Land of Kings began.
  - When the apartment gets flooded with suds, Waru uses some of them to wear an outfit that rivals his outfit in Land of Kings.
  - In the Joker Presents episode, Ceiling, the broken statues of Felix, Spade, and Romeo show their outfits in Land of Kings.
- In Clones Order Pizza, The jacket that Waru steals from Fëdor's closet is the same one that Kuromaku used to wear as a teenager in Fëdorx9.
Albeit briefly, Animated Inanimate Battle pulled one off in the show's intro. As a nod to its pilot episode, Brain and Bouncy Ball can be seen playing poker, with the same Early-Installment Weirdness that can be seen in the pilot.
Four and X, the hosts of Battle for BFDI^note, are taken from X Finds Out His Value, an old educational animation created by Cary and Michael Huang before they became known for creating BFDI. These characters have since become the mascots for the jacknjellify channel, as seen during subscriber Milestone Celebration videos.
In Black Rhino Ranger's animated music video, "Now That's What I Call Skylanders Polka", when Kaos sings "Only got twenty dollars in my pocket", Terrafin appears in the corner and shouts "THAT'S HOW MUCH HE OWES ME!", referencing a commercial for Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure where Terrafin claims Kaos owes him money.
Bonus Stage often made references to its predecessor series, High Score, especially in earlier episodes. In one episode, Phil makes such a reference to an evil robot ex-girlfriend. Joel responds by laughing and then gruffly saying that they don't reference High Score anymore.
Disventure Camp: In “A Heart’s Desire”, after Fiore’s go-kart crashes into a tree in the finale, Fiore claims she feels as if she was hit by a bus - a reference to her Laser-Guided Karma from her ending of the beta version.
- Also, Tom briefly jokes that he failed to retrieve Miriam's prize money from Jensen, which is a reference to how Jensen successfully ran away with either winner's money in the beta version.
The Lackadaisy animated pilot features a few nods to the original comic despite being relatively self-contained.
- The opening poem Rocky recites is an original written by the author, and featured in this strip.
- Mitzi reads Isadora Duncan's real-life obituary to the portrait of her late lover. The comic's primary plot is kicked off by a hidden message inside an obituary.
- Viktor angrily retorts he has a 'very good idea' of what Rocky went through to get his alcohol, referencing his past in the comic working for Lackadaisy as a rum-runner.
- During his Rummage Fail, Rocky tosses aside the cactus he gifted Mitzi in a non-canon side strip, later canonized by the cactus' appearance in the same car.
GEOWeasel makes references to its past as a comic, particularly as a sprite comic.
If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device has some examples of one fan work referencing another:
- The Emperor mentions a card-games-and-chess parties the top Magnificent Bastards of the 'verse^note have in the Webway. This is a joke from /tg/.
- At one point, Torquemada Coteaz from fan-film The Lord Inquisitor shows up, leds a hand to the antagonist and then returns to finish his film.
- In the second Q&A, one of the letters is from the Millennial, a character from fanfic Defrosted.
Kirby Guardian: One of the agents of the Banshee Clan is named Keke, identical to an enemy from Kirby's Dream Land 3 that the Banshee Clan was based off.
Lucky Day Forever has some visible influence from Alek's other animations, like the robots from "Smile", the strange attitude of "Polsupah", and 514's facial structure which is comparable to the poet from "Hanged Man's Elegy".
Minilife TV: The show Ian watches on the TV in the episode "Starsaber Duel" is Terry Serpent's Swimming Spectacle from Chris Salaises' old YouTube channel, chris14S.
My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale:
- In "Mane Melody", the pony who gives Pipp a three-star rating resembles Posey, a pony from Generation 1. She has a similar color scheme, green mane and tail bows, and a flower cutie mark. She's even called Posey Bloom in the toyline.
- In "Foal Me Once", the art gallery has several pieces featuring G4 characters in parodies of famous artworks, including Rainbow Dash in a "The Scream" Parody and multiple pieces featuring Tree Hugger.
- Princess Luna's cutie mark is one of the hooficure designs in "All That Jazz".
- In "Nightmare Night Party", Sunny dresses up as Nightmare Moon for Pipp's party, while Jazz (after accidentally tumbling through a rack of outfits) ends up looking like Rainbow Dash.
- In "As The Misty Clears", Opaline's necklace corrupting the Mane Five into their opposites is similar to what Discord did to the Mane Six in "The Return of Harmony".
Puyo Puyo Happy!!:
- The series replicates the "ARS" naming scheme that comes from the Puyo Puyo game continuity's main character trios, with Arin being the A, Ralph being the R, and Suketoudara being the S.
- Multiple aspects of the show tie into the previous Puyo Puyo games Puyo Pop Fever and Puyo Puyo Fever 2.
  - All three works take place, at least partially, in or around a school; the Primp Town Wizarding School in the Fever games, and Primi Yochien in Puyo Puyo Happy!!.
  - Arin has blue hair and red eyes, making her look like Sig; Ralph has green eyes and yellow hair like Amitie. Amitie and Sig were introduced in the first and second Fever games respectively and are both students like Arin and Ralph are.
  - The Puyo Puyo Happy!! logo has the words "Puyo Puyo" in almost the exact colors as the Japanese logos for Puyo Pop Fever and Puyo Puyo Fever 2 (here's boxart of that first one for reference). The first pu (ぷ) is red, the second pu is orange, and the second yo (よ) is blue in both; the sole exception is the first pu, which is green in Puyo Puyo Happy!! and purple in both Fever games.
Sonic × Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings:
- The G.U.N Commander is finally given a name in Episode 2 and 3—Abe, short for "Abraham Tower", his name in the Archie Comics. Fittingly, Ian Flynn, the writer for Dark Beginnings, is the one who gave him that name.
- Shadow imagining a future where Maria was alive and living on Earth is similar to a scene in Sonic X where Chris Thorndyke reminds Shadow of Maria's wish, which also had him briefly imagining Maria and Shadow living on Earth.
Twinkling Friendship Racing: The rise of racers Heartsping and Hopping: In the beginning of the animation, there are so many Allurepings. In an episode of 'Catch! Teenieping'', Allureping can duplicate herself and with the ability, she can make a lot of herselves.

Web Video

SCP: Overlord: Though it's never referred to as such, whatever Besson sees that makes him convulse and kill himself is clearly a Cognitohazard.
The Spider (Just Preston):
- The music sting used at the reveal of the murdered burglar the the first chapter is a musical sting associated with the Prowler in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, emphasizing that this Spider-Man is more ruthless than his canon-counterpart(s).
- In the third chapter, Gwen directs to the protagonist to Stanley Leiber to artistically depict potential mutations regarding Peter's condition. He draws up three different conclusions: two depictions of vaguely human-esque tops with an entirely spider-like bottom and unrecognizable face, and a bipedal humanoid with six arms (each with three fingers), four eyes, and jaws full of sharp teeth (in reference to The Six Arms Saga).
- In the fourth chapter, Spider-Man's webbing turns red and everyone thinks that they were his veins, a reference to his Undead Counterpart in Marvel Zombies. He would later grow six spider-legs out of his back, not unlike the robotic legs typicall accompanying the Iron Spider-suit and Superior Spider-Man.
- In Chapter 6, it's mentioned that Wilson Fisk, AKA The Kingpin, is running for election as Mayor of New York like his Marvel Cinematic Universe-counterpart.
- In Chapter 11, Kraven dies at the hands of The Spider with the Venom symbiote protecting him from any permanent harm as Harry helplessly watches from the side, not unlike in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 where Kraven dies with his head getting eaten by a Venom-possessed Harry.

Mythology Gag
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Example subpages:

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Video Example(s):

XMen Theme in Dr Strange 2

Alternative Title(s): Fan Wink, Mythology Gags

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XMen Theme in Dr Strange 2

Mythology Gag 62 Following

Example subpages:

Other examples:

Video Example(s):

XMen Theme in Dr Strange 2

Alternative Title(s): Fan Wink, Mythology Gags

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Index

Next

XMen Theme in Dr Strange 2

Mythology Gag
62 Following