One of the main psychopath's in the game, Slappy, actually has a face modeled underneath his mask.

The stuffed toy bear from the first Dead Rising game was apparently going to be an in game weapon again as it is seen in one of the reveal trailers and in the Fortune City Commercial trailer. It was later removed for unknown reasons (possibly replaced by the robot bear).

Ijiek, the fictional motorcycle company, is just Keiji Inafune's (creator of the Dead Rising series) first name backwards.

A set of Knight Armor, referencing Capcom's Ghosts and Goblins, is available in the game. Equipping it reduces incoming damage but too much damage will cause it to break, leaving Chuck in his underwear.

The "Goblin Mask" is based on Blanka from Street Fighter.
This is furthered by a combo weapon utilizing this mask and a battery to create a weapon called "Roaring Thunder" which shocks all zombies in radius to the target.

The outfit "Tattered Clothing" is a reference to the main character of Shaun of the Dead.

One of the in-game weapons is a cardboard cut out of Protoman from the Mega Man series.

At a time during his development, Chuck's last name was Reid, a slight change in the color "Red". His final last name, Greene, plays off this, as it is a slight change of the color "Green". This is most likely a reference to Red Green of The Red Green Show, seeing as they both have an obsession with duct tape.

Within the game's text files, an "Ending E" is mentioned. However, no other data relating to it exists in the final version.

Katey is seen playing a handheld game console that resembles a PSP.
After Spoiler:Chuck gives Katey a shot of zombrex, Katey says "Look, dad! I got a new power in Mega Man!", some of the samples in her game are from Mega Man 7.

The disturbing personality and appearance of the psychopath, Randall Tugman, both appear to be at least partially based on that of Weston Chandler, an internet personality known to have created a character named Sonichu, combining both Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The achievement "Z-Genocider 2: Genocide Harder" is a reference to an achievement from the first Dead Rising, "Zombie Genocider". The first game's achievement was awarded for killing 53,594 zombies, which was the population of the fictional town the game took place in. Valve later made an achievement for Left 4 Dead which required killing 53,595 Infected, exactly one extra zombie. Capcom continued this long-running gag by requiring you to kill 53,596 zombies for the "Z-Genocider 2: Genocide Harder" achievement.

When you perform a powerful attack move with the chef's knife, you'll hear a small shrieking theme reminiscent of the one played during the bathroom scene in the firm "Psycho (1960)" as Chuck recreates the scene with the zombie character.

The executive producer of Dead Rising 3 Josh Bridge, stated that Blue Castle Games had to create the game from scratch by looking at videos from Dead Rising, because they could not obtain any kind of code of the game from Capcom to build the sequel from.

There is a slot machine based on the Capcom game Mega Man 10, several of which can be found in the Yucatan Casino. However, there is another slot machine based on Capcom's Street Fighter series (using artwork from Street Fighter IV) that went unused and can be found in the the PC version's files.