Around Peter Quill's room and house there are many seemingly fictional things that are actually homages to 1980's pop culture media, but with the names, concepts or brands slightly changed or parodied:

• Prouix Calculator Wristwatch Advertisement - Based on real calculator wristwatches sold by companies like Casio.

• "The Lost Starwalker" Film Poster - A spoof of the film "The Last Starfighter" and its poster.

• "Caves & Creatures" Table-top RPG - Based on table-top RPGs popular in the 1980's such as the Dungeons & Dragons series.

• "Furthings" Monster Film Poster - Parody of the film "Gremlins".

• A banana figurine playing the guitar - Resembles the old McDonald's mascot "Mac Tonight".

• "Nukegames" - a take on the film "WarGames", the plotline of which involves nuclear warfare.

• "Deathtrap Dungeon" book - An homage to "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.

• "Robot Within" newspaper ad - The poster's imagery and film's concept is a callback to the sci-fi horror film "They Live".

• "Animal Graveyard" novel - An homage to Stephen King's novel "Pet Semetary".

• "VROOM!" Show TV magazine ad - A reference to popular 80s action show "Knight Rider".

Star-Lord keeps a poster of Mutant Superheroine Dazzler (who is part of the X-Men) on the wall of his room on the Milano.

In the Quantum Continuum, a few different universes from different Marvel Comics-based media can be heard:

• Captain American and Hulk speaking from Square Enix's 2020 Avengers game.

• Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) Speaking to Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

• Audio from Insomniac Games and Sony's 2018 Spider-Man game

Right outside of the Collector's Emporium, there are vending machines that are based on and portray Marvel characters such as Nova (Richard Rider), Mutant rock star Lila Cheney, and Empress Lilandra Neramani of the Shi'ar.

For the game's fictional hard rock band Star-Lord, Eidos Montreal's Senior Audio Director Steve Szczepkowski ended up singing the band's songs himself until a proper singer could be found. However, the game's creative director, after hearing the temp tracks and asking who sang them, was shocked and pleasantly surprised to learn it was Szczepkowski himself and the dev team ended up using the Szczepkowski vocals in the final release, much to his delight.

During the campaign for Chapter 6, Gamora, Drax, and Starlord discuss different names for their team. Gamora suggests they call themselves the "Stardust Crusaders," which is the same title used for Part 3 of the manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.