The "Sausage" and "Legendary Sausage" weapons in Holocure: Save the Fans! are based on the mobile games Sausage Legend and Sausage Legend 2, which are known for being played on livestreams by Hololive talent Oozora Subaru and her viewers. According to developer Kay Yu, he was granted permission by the Sausage Legend developers to reference the game via these weapons and its collaborations. In 2023, the references culminated in Hololive working with the Sausage Legend developers to release special skins for Sausage Legend 2 based on Subaru and fellow member Hakui Koyori.
The male Berserker class in For Honor was voiced by Stefán Karl Stefánsson, an Icelandic actor best known for portraying the villain Robbie Rotten in the live-action children's series LazyTown. The character was the subject of various internet memes throughout the show's run, the most popular of which being the song "We Are Number One" from the episode "Robbie's Dream Team". Following Stefánsson's widely-publicized death from bile duct cancer, a pair of Robbie Rotten references were added to the game as a tribute. These include:
• An emote named "Number One", where the Berserker transforms into a statue raising a finger upwards, resembling a pose Robbie Rotten does leading into "We Are Number One", with the caption "In Memoriam - to our Number One villain". • A bot named "RobbieBotten" who plays as the Berserker and wears blue and red stripes, a similar but not exact proximity to the color scheme of Rotten's outfit.
Just before fighting Spoiler:Praya Dubia towards the end of the game, the background music that plays in the lead-up to the boss fight is a song titled "Crab Grave". The title of the song and its core notes (while not sharing the exact same melody) are a reference to "Crab Rave", a house song composed by Irish electronic music producer Noisestorm and accompanied by a CGI music video depicting crabs dancing on a remote island that later became a meme.
In New Carcinia, there are many cardboard boxes featuring a QR code. When scanned, it will link the player to a YouTube re-upload of a Rickroll-style meme called "You just got Coconut Mall'd", referencing a track from the game Mario Kart Wii.
When putting The Joker against Black Adam, the former will mockingly ask "Weren't you supposed to be 'rearranging the hierarchy' or something?". This is a jab at the 2022 film "Black Adam" starring Dwayne Johnson in the titular role. In the lead-up to the film's release, Johnson released a series of real life promos in which he declared that Black Adam would "change the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe". This quickly became an internet meme, and was poked at even further after the film bombed at the box office (the film had grossed $390 million, but needed to reach $600 million in order to break even).
In The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, when Sonic is found presumed dead on the ground, the pose he is laying in is a reference to a meme within animation circles known as the "Family Guy Death Pose". This pose is frequently used throughout the animated series of the same name created by Seth MacFarlane, which became criticized in later years for utilizing cheaper animation. This is not the first time this pose was referenced in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise; the first time being in Issue #3 of the IDW comic book miniseries "Sonic the Hedgehog: Imposter Syndrome", where the character Surge collapses into the pose at one point.
By clipping the camera through a wall in the 6th level "Munition Line", a hidden image of a creepy person can be found. This is an old Internet meme known as "Creepy Ugly Guy", a photoshopped image based on an example photo used in the API plug-in "Kai's Power Goo", that spliced together stock images of a man, a young girl, and a chimpanzee, and is believed to have been spread online as early as 1996 when the software originally came out.
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In the level "NSFW Island," there are several enemies that are references to different suggestive media as well as suggestive fan creations from the Five Nights at Freddy's fan community, including:
• Flying Freddy Fazbear heads with helicopter propellers, but their faces are replaced with the Lenny Face emoticon: "( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)" • Giant spinning blocks reading "RULE 34" • A take on Toy Chica that makes her more suggestive with heart eyes, commonly known as "Love Taste Toy Chica." • A feminine Toy Bonnie, which is a reference to the fangame series "Five Nights in Anime" originally made by Mairusu Paua, that took the animatronics and gave them feminine features. • A take on Freddy, depicted with a more muscular physique, pink shorts and a small black top hat. This appears to be a reference to a teaser poster released for Freddy in Space 2 that depicted Freddy as being extremely muscular and having a pronounced bulge. Soon after this teaser's reveal, series creator Scott Cawthon took it down and posted an apology on Reddit for it being "over-the-top". • The level's boss fight "Foxy Coming for your Booty", a reference to an early meme within the community about Foxy running down the hall in the first Five Nights at Freddy's game with the caption "Swiggity Swooty - I'm coming for your booty."
After getting the Blue Streamer, a Toad will appear at the entrance to the Shogun Studios, trying to look through a window and complaining about the price of admission, exclaiming "Let me in—LET ME IN!" This is likely a reference to the segment "Eric Near the DNC" from the Adult Swim series "The Eric Andre Show", which features a similar moment that became a popular internet meme.
When Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2 first released in Japan, fake leaks were posted on various websites claiming to be ROMs of the game, but in reality contained an FMV of a parody of the theme song to the Disney Channel series Cory in the House. The parody featured several of the games' characters and other memes at the time superimposed over the actors' heads, including talk show host Stephen Colbert, a caricature of the Pokémon fan website Serebii.net with a Trollface superimposed over it, and legacy Pokémon character Gary Oak. Before the title card of the show appears at the end, a barely visible screenshot of a post from the imageboard 4chan can be seen featuring the box art of the Nintendo DS game adaptation of the show, implying that the parody and fake ROMs originated from there. The video also features several scrolling text statements including:
• "Amber killed Gary" - supposedly referring to an incident on 4chan's dedicated Pokémon board /vp/ starting on August 26, 2010 where several posters using Gary Oak and Mewtwo as avatars tried to "revive" or "kill" the anime-only character Amber from The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin by trying to predict their post numbers in advance. • "SHE IS BLACK ?!?" - referring to Pokémon Black & White Gym Leader Lenora. • "GIANT HAIR EVERYWHERE" - on the following shot with four Bouffalants superimposed over Mount Rushmore. • "FINAL GYM LEADER (IT HAS BEEN SEREBII CONFIRMED)" - referring to Iris, the last Gym Leader in Pokémon White and seems to be referring to leaks from the first Pokémon Black and Pokémon White games. • "THIS FLOATING TEXT IS UP IN YO' SCREEN DAWG" • "AMERICA" - on a shot of Stephen Colbert.
An upload of the fake ROM's FMV on YouTube dates back to September 16, 2010, two days before Pokemon Black & White's release date in Japan, and features several comments mentioning 4chan and /vp/ on top of the references in the video, suggesting that the hoax actually dates back to the release of the first Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, although discussion of this FMV from that time does not appear to have been preserved. While this ROM is also not known to be preserved (though its contents are), as recently as 2018 there have been reports of ROM dumps of Pokémon White 2 being silently modified to include Cory in the House references, including NPCs with dialogue featuring the lyrics to the show's theme song.
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Within the data for the Mooncrash expansion pack is an unused texture depicting Dick Butt, a drawing from a 2006 installment of K.C. Green's webcomic Horribleville. The texture's filename, "vfx_temp.png," indicates that it was a placeholder image that simply wasn't removed before the expansion pack's release.
When it was announced that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl's paid DLC characters were due to be revealed, it was with a tweet reading "Back to the lab again". Some theorized this was a tease for either Jimmy Neutron or Jenny Wakeman, both highly-requested characters with a technology theme. However, this seems to actually be a reference to a livestream by Super Smash Bros. Ultimate YouTuber GimR from two days earlier. GimR advertised the livestream for days prior, promising a new technique that would change the game's competitive scene, only to fail to actually start the stream due to technical issues. During the time he was live, he played a looping intermission animation depicting him as Dexter from the Cartoon Network series Dexter's Laboratory and playing the song "Back to the Lab" by Prince Paul and Wordsworth for over an hour. This mistake would become a meme within the Super Smash Bros. community for a short while afterwards. Ultimately, Jenny, Rocko and Hugh Neutron, the latter two not being related to technology, were revealed, and GimR would separately reveal the promised new technique, the "Slingshot", two days after the failed livestream.
Yo! Noid 2 was made for a game jam called New Jam City, hosted by the Vice Waypoint community. One of the rules of the game jam was that its name had to be derived from an episode of the Waypoint Radio podcast, with "Yo! Noid was Ahead of Its Time" being chosen for the game, and the Noid himself being used as the protagonist. The name itself is not actually used in-game, but is used on its Itch.io page. The inclusion of dabbing in this game was in reference to this, with the joke being that the Noid would be so "ahead of his time" that he would dab in a late-1990s video game.
Sonic X Shadow Generations' title was leaked a day prior to its reveal by notable leakers and a URL registration. Following the leaks, some fans and gaming news websites jokingly noted that the term "Sonic X Shadow" had previously also been used on the internet since the 2000s to refer to fan art, fan-fiction and slash fiction depicting the hedgehogs as a romantic couple.
Lemmings was originally going to use a soundtrack of plagarised copyrighted music, something that was common in microcomputer games the decade prior, including pop songs and television theme songs. In the final game, these were swapped for public domain songs, though a sample of Don Messick as Scooby-Doo used for a cover of the Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo theme song would be retained in the How Much is that Doggie in the Window? music track. The Mission: Impossible theme seems to have been chosen in reference to a fad on British television at the time of showing squirrels performing stunts to the song.
The "X-Potato" weapon is a reference to one of Inugami Korone's livestreams of Blasphemous, in which she accidentally mispronounces the name Exposito while looking up boss names up after beating the game. It is unlocked by surviving 10 minutes while playing as Korone in a run. Its available Collabs (fusions between two weapons) are also references to Korone:
• Rap Dog (combined with Idol Song): Alludes to Korone's ability to rap, most prominently shown off when she and Nekomata Okayu sang "if..." by DA PUMP. • MiKorone (combined with Elite Lava Bucket): A portmanteau of Inugami Korone and Sakura Miko's names, a term for streams featuring the two collaborating together. • I'm Die, Thank You Forever (combined with Holo Bomb): References a collaboration between her and Mori Calliope played Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, each using their non-native language (English for Korone and Japanese for Calliope). During one attempt, Korone, realizing she couldn't diffuse the bomb in time, uttered "Ah, I'm die, thank you forever" before exploding.
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Both the Bounce Ball and Cutting Board items have different effects based on which character is using it. Specifically, they appear to be affected by bust size. For example, characters with larger chests (i.e. Tsukomo Sana, Ouro Kronii, Pavolia Reine) will spawn larger Bounce Balls. Conversely, characters labeled as being "flat chested" (i.e. Gawr Gura, Natsuro Matsuri, Kobo Kanaeru) will spawn larger projectiles when equipped with Cutting Board. Both these items, and their effects, reference former hololive member Uruha Rushia, who would get upset at people for teasing her flatness, insisting that she is actually "boing boing" (the Bounce Ball references this onomatopoeia).
Hannah Montana: Wireless Quest has an unused graphic, likely a placeholder, that is a red square with the word "Doge" written below. While the game's exact release date is unknown, it was available at least one year after the Hannah Montana TV show began in 2006, but the "Doge" internet meme first appeared 2 years after the show was cancelled in 2011. The shared name is a coincidence rather than a reference to the meme, and it is not known what "Doge" means in this context, though it is likely some kind of debug function, as there are other unused square graphics with phrases like "Control Game" and "Control Main" next to them.
Around six copies of the Doge meme at different sizes exist in the files of 2016's Hitman. These were likely placeholders for an item or weapon's menu images.
When the first episode of the Hello Neighbor animated series debuted on YouTube, series publisher tinyBuild unprofessionally and unsuccessfully attempted to encourage MatPat of The Game Theorists and The Film Theorists YouTube channels to make a video on it by sending him public messages on Twitter such as "I believe @MatPatGT will enjoy dissecting this frame by frame" and "Yes @MatPatGT you should totally reply to our DM". These tweets have since been deleted, and have become a minor meme of sorts. tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik would later claim on The Game Theorists' subreddit that he felt the tweets were "the cringiest moment of [his] career".
In 2024, shortly before MatPat's retirement from YouTube, he would analyse the cartoon frame-by-frame to pay tribute to the meme.