I think the borderlands games take the award for the quantity of egregious pop culture references
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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The binding of Isaac has shit ton of them.
Do old build-engine shooters like Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, etc count?
Sapienza, Italy in Hitman has outfits for red and green plumbers.
Sam and Max has references to all kinds of things.
Hypnospace Outlaw has a ton of references to pre-y2k pop culture.
Power Wash simulator has a number of official crossovers with IPs like SpongeBob, Warhammer, Laura Croft, Final Fantasy VII, etc. (oh shit I just checked and there's a Shrek one coming out soon).
Final Fantasy XIV has tons of them as well, especially in the side quests and FATEs. The localization teams do a stellar job sprinkling all sorts of references and nods to pop culture.
Conkers Bad Fur Day (live and reloaded).
Borderlands 1/2
Heh, does Astrobot count?
The Henry Stickmin Collection is a set of games that were on Newgrounds that is a choose your own adventure game with a ton of references to other things. From Marvel VS Capcom 2's Ironman Infinite combo to Jojo.
It's made by the same developers as Among Us
Alan Wake, Control, and especially Alan Wake 2. AW2 even has a legally distinct Max Payne with both the likeness and the voice of the original.
What do you mean legally distinct? You know that's Sam Lake, writer and creative director at Remedy, and face model for Max Payne 1/2, both also developed by Remedy?
I know. Rockstar acquired the rights to Max Payne at some point before releasing Max Payne 3. Remedy couldn't just include a character they didn't own, but they couldn't stop Sam Lake being Sam Lake either. Plus Casey being the knock-off of two out-of-universe characters is funny.
Ah, I guess I didn't know they didn't have the rights anymore. Tbh I played through AW2 and didn't connect that Casey was a reference to Max Payne lol.
It's a bit more obvious if you've played through AW1 and Max Payne recently. AW1 contains a couple of excerpts from Wake's book The Sudden Stop, starring detective Alex Casey. They are written in the exact same style as Max Payne, and narrated by James McCaffrey, Payne's VA.
They are 20 years old at this point but the original Guild Wars was full of pop culture references.
Grand theft auto. Mainly San Andreas and Vice city.
Evoland 2! Where the first game is mainly reference and no game, the second one is a completely original story and world which includes references. I highly recommend it.
Oh damn, I didn’t think I wouldn’t be the first to post about Evoland 2 of all games in this thread, it’s pretty obscure, isn’t it. Great game though.
Cookie Clicker is overflowing with them.
I just recently played man-eater and that had a ton of references in it
Alan Wake 2 has a lot