Franchise: Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Throughout several games in the Yakuza series, songs from Sega franchises will play in businesses like convenience stores and karaoke bars. While an official list of every song and where they were used throughout the series has not been finalized, some known examples include songs from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, the Phantasy Star series, Jet Set Radio Future, Nights into Dreams..., Clockwork Knight, and Space Channel 5: Part 2 among others.

Starting from Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, most games in the Yakuza franchise have featured destructible environmental objects, even extending to stores and businesses. However, real-life businesses like Yoshinoya that were put into the series have never been able to be destroyed in-game even when fictional stores are breakable. You also cannot enter a real-life store when in combat, and any aggroed enemies that chase after you will suddenly no longer want to fight you should you enter a real-life store in the game.

Kaito, Sugiura, and Makoto from the Judgment sub-series make cameo appearances in the games Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Despite this, Judgment's main protagonist Takayuki Yagami has never made a cameo in the Yakuza series. This may be due to the fact that his face was modeled after his voice actor, Takuya Kimura, who is a popular celebrity in Japan and could be expensive to license out.

Through out the Yakuza series, the character of Goro Majima speaks with a Kansai accent, a Japanese accent associated with the Kansai region where Osaka is located. This accent is also stereotyped as being associated with criminals or gangsters. There are multiple instances where Goro Majima seemingly slips back into speaking in a Kanto accent, more associated with Tokyo and without this connotation, and this is even commented on by other characters, (with one notable instance being in Yakuza 4 where his sworn brother Taiga Saejima who speaks in a more natural Kansai accent informs him his accent is slipping) suggesting he puts up the accent to make himself seem tougher or more serious.

The antagonist of the original Yakuza was voiced by Kazuhiro Nakaya, who later went on to voice Ichiban Kasuga, the protagonist of Yakuza: Like A Dragon. The two characters also have the same koi tattoo, leading fans to speculate on the parallels between both characters, but aside from their voice actors and tattoos, there are only surface-level parallels.