Mass Effect/Shout Out

Series

 * The mass relays with their spinning rings look uncannily similar to the FTL machine of Contact.
 * Cerberus Daily News on 4/01/2185 (April Fool's Day) has an interesting article about the destruction of a planet...with a single infant survivor.
 * Picked up by a starship named Kent no less.
 * His native atmosphere is "65% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 15% krypton".
 * And then you have the planet's name, DC1938.
 * Another CDN shout-out: A news story references about an exclusionary zone around relays due to the difficulty of cleaning debris, including representative (Lisa) Tanabe referencing an incident where a single metal bolt breached the crew compartment of the starship Mihairokov, killing the passengers. Planetes is an anime about debris collection in space, including among the Debris Section's employees Ai Tanabe and Yuri Mihairokov..
 * The turians had a Unification War in which the home world brought the colonies back under control. Asari commandos can "kill you with their brains" according to Wrex.
 * Then there are the Blue Suns Mercenary Band, which is a reference to either the "Blue Suns" of Firefly or "Black Sun" of Star Wars. Or both.
 * The quarians with their rag-tag, fugitive fleet fleeing the geth genocide are very close analogues to Battlestar Galactica.
 * The whole story of the geth uprising, coupled with  draws several similarities to The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance
 * The Spectres' unlimited authority is very much like a Lensman's.
 * Mass Effect's story is very similar in many ways to Welsh astronomer/author Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space, which details a Jerkass archaeologist's study of a long-extinct alien species. Eventually it turns out that Which is in and of itself a Shout Out to the late Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series.
 * There are a lot of similarities to Frederik Pohl's Heechee Saga. The parallels are numerous. Additionally, the hanar may be modeled in part after the Sailship People, who were also tentacled and sheltered drell-like refugees.
 * Commander Shepard's name is probably a Shout Out to Alan Shepard, the first American in space, as well as Stargate Atlantis' main character, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard. The similarities between mass relays and Stargates further cements the relationship.
 * Shepard's name is also a Bibical Shout Out  John 10:11-'I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.'
 * In fact, there's an entire cluster of such references - the Armstrong cluster which has stars named Gagarin and Tereshkova, amongst other things.
 * Lot of elements from the story are similar to the plot in Star Control 3.
 * A huge proportion of the game seems to pay tribute to the Star Control series, except no longer Played for Laughs. The Krogan and the Thraddash are both races of warriors who cite nuking themselves back into the stone age as a step towards improving their species. The Reapers, and especially Sovereign, mix the motivation of the Eternal Ones with the personality of the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah. The planet exploration and resource gathering of Mass Effect seems like an updated version of Star Control's planet exploration and resource gathering. And so on. If it weren't for both games being unapologetically Troperiffic in their homage to the Space Opera, and therefore embracing the same Sci Fi tropes that were around long before either of them, you could keep citing examples all day.
 * The entire origin of the rachni, as told by the scientist on Noveria: apparently, Binary Helix found some eggs on a derelict ship.
 * The Rachni (and their overall story) are a damn near perfect Expy
 * The Rachni are also expies of the Arachnid alien species from Starship Troopers. The mission chain "UNC: Listening Post Alpha", "UNC: Listening Post Theta", and "UNC: Depot Sigma-23" are based off scenes from the movie, even including a character named Elena Flores as a shout out to Isabel 'Dizzy' Flores from the movie.
 * The Running Gag where you get to punch Khalisah al-Jilani in the face is reminiscent of a similar gag in the Scream films, where Sidney does this to the Jerkass reporter Gale Weathers.
 * The Cerberus Daily News had some news stories about an isolated colony on Alpha Centauri. Both colonization missions left the Earth around the same time, even.
 * There is a possibility that whoever designed the turians read Salt by Adam Roberts, given that it featured a ship named the Senaar where "they live by the hierarchy" which had a past captain named "Tyrian, or Turian".
 * Krogan are large hunchbacked aliens with red eyes and aggressive tendencies. The Grendlers from Earth 2 are large hunchbacked aliens with red eyes and aggressive tendencies.
 * The Reaper lasers, particularly in 3, sound very similar to the alien tripods in 2005 War of the Worlds film.

Mass Effect 1
"Ashley: Nothing like a nice, relaxing stroll on the beach... blasting bad guys with my boomstick!"
 * Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams says...

"Shepard: The turians were old too. We gave them a boot in the ass.
 * One side world, Junthor, has references to monsters from the id and Percy Bysshe Shelly's "Ozymandias".
 * At a certain point in the game, Shepard can mutter "We are going to need bigger guns".
 * In a similar vein, a conversation between Shepard and Kaidan has this gem:

Kaidan: With all due respect, sir, I think we're going to need a bigger boot."

"Shepard: You know this place is falling apart?
 * There are several Kowloon class freighters, which is probably a reference to Snow Crash.
 * The optional sidequest for the Colonist background is one big shoutout to Aliens.
 * Animal Farm, of all things. Remember on X57? "Two eyes good, four eyes bad."
 * Also in a minor sidequest, from Lieutenant Durand: "Two legs good, four legs bad." (A direct reversal of the line from the original story.)
 * It got reversed in the story, too.
 * Lieutenant Durand? Hmm...
 * The Feros mission is another big Aliens shoutout. Thankfully, you get to kill the Burke character yourself.
 * Zhu's Hope is a reference to Hadley's Hope.
 * Then there's the rachni quest, which has very eerie similarities to Ender's Game.
 * There's also a sidequest where you help a bunch of stranded marines against hordes of rachni inspired by the battle at Whiskey Outpost in Starship Troopers. Their commanding officer is Lt. Elena Flores, a shout out to Lt. Isabel 'Dizzy' Flores from the movie.
 * One of the last things you do on your way to defeating the Big Bad is take your vehicle through a "Trench Run". (Yes, that's what the map screen calls it.)
 * In one sidequest, you find a human distress beacon which turns into a geth ambush. Ashley comments "I've got a bad feeling about this..." Once they attack, she yells "It's a trap!"
 * It gets better with other party members... Wrex looks a lot more Ackbar-like than Ashley could ever not hope to.
 * When talking to the V.I. in Exogeni's headquarters on Feros, you discover what the Thorian is and can learn about the experiments that were being conducted. If you pay attention, you'll find that this is Day 28 after the discovery and initial exposure of the Thorian's "infection," which can turn its victims into kinda sorta zombies. In other words, Shepard & crew arrived on Feros... 28 Days Later.
 * Liara's "embrace eternity" line might be borrowed from one in Planescape Torment: "I would place myself in a thousand dangers, embrace eternity for you, my Love!"
 * In the Hydra Cluster, you're sent to apprehend a Major Kyle who went off the deep end and has styled himself Father Kyle for his commune of biotics. While there's neither smell of napalm in the morning nor a termination with extreme prejudice (at least not if you resolve the situation peacefully), the reference is clear.
 * After rescuing Liara on Therum, you're stopped by one of Saren's krogan. The paragon exchange gives you this little gem:

Krogan: Exhilarating, isn't it?"

"Mira: It looks like you're trying to restore this facility. Would you like help?
 * Compare the opening of Top Gun to the opening text of Mass Effect
 * When you successfully re-activate the Mira Core for the Peak 15 facilities on Noveria, the Mira V.I.'s initial query is clearly modeled after the Microsoft Office Assistant "Clippy the Paper Clip". Sheperd's Renegade response even lampshades this:

Renegade response: Crap, a pop-up."

"Sovereign: Your words are as empty as your future."
 * When Shepherd confronts Sovereign on Virmire, the ship makes what is possibly a callback to the infamous dialogue at the beginning of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

"Shepard: Why not? We've got oceans, beautiful women, this emotion called love. According to the old vids, we have everything they want."
 * In yet another Alien shout out, the planet Maji has an odd skull that bears more than a bit of resemblance to an alien queen. And if that's not enough of a shout out, Maji happens to be used as a big game preserve where vicious animals are brought to be hunted for sport, and the skull indeed shows signs of weapons fire.
 * Stargate shoutouts are a-plenty in this game. Most notably would have to be the Prothean artifact imprinting partial knowledge in Shepherd's brain, and despite being the one unlikely human who was genetically capable of handling it, he still has to seek out the help of the advanced race who created the artifact to sort out his mind again. This same plot led to Shepherd discovering the fate of the Protheans and saving the galaxy several times over and led O'neill to discovering the asgard and saving the galaxy several times over.
 * "Okay, important safety tip: don't press the big red buttons."
 * If Shepard brings Ashley and Kaiden down to the Citadel wards it's possible that, after one of them notes a ditincr anti-human sentiment, Shep will give a giant shout out to old sci-fi:


 * Which the opposite gendered character will have snarky remark about

"Ashley: If you expect me to get into a tinfoil miniskirt and some thigh-high boots, I want dinner first. Sir.

Kaidan: When you put it that way, there's no reason they wouldn't like you. I mean us. Humans. Ma'am."

Mass Effect 2
""Some days I just feel like turning off the inertials and pulling a Crazy Ivan, y'know?""
 * One of your engineers on the Normandy SR-2 has a Scottish accent and makes use of colorful verbiage. One half expected him to shout "I'm giving her all she's got!"
 * Zaeed is a walking Firefly shout out. Between his big goddamn heroes quote, the fact he named his old assault rifle, and the fact the, he seems to exist for shoutouts.
 * If you stand by Joker at the bridge, in addition to saying a ton of funny lines, he'll at one point say:

"Joker: All right... but if you start singing Daisy Bell, I'm done. (to himself) Great. See, this is where it starts, and when we're all just organic batteries, guess who they'll blame? "This is all Joker's fault. What a tool he was! I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord!""
 * Which is itself a reference to The Hunt for Red October. (More specifically, it could be from Firefly, which was referencing Red October, which was using an actual submarine tactic - take your pick.)
 * While Zaeed has several obvious shout outs to Firefly, his character is a subtle shout out to another series. A morally questionable mercenary who founded an organisation only to be betrayed by his partner(s)? Who is missing an eye (Zaeed's current eye is a cybernetic replacement)? I wonder what other series has a character like that, huh?
 * Hmm. Doesn't sound familiar.
 * Speaking of Firefly, The Collectors totally attack (New) Canton.
 * The Collector Cruiser's Leitmotif is an homage to the Reaver ship theme as well.
 * On Pragia, there is a throwaway dialogue that says that they were planning on moving the facility to focus on kids in an Alliance program. Considering what River went through, this could be a much darker shoutout.
 * One of Male Shepard's default casual outfits is Canderous Ordo's default outfit.
 * When starting Grunt's loyalty quest, Wrex says, "Next thing you'll tell me is he's a quint and craps dark matter."
 * Side note: Krogan have four testicles, so when they someone's got a quad it is the human equivalent of saying someone's got a pair. A quint would be the rare krogan who has five.
 * One of the quarian Admirals is from a ship named Qwib-Qwib. This just happens to be the name of the lone anti-Berserker sentient machine in the Berserker universe. Bonus points in that the Berserkers are eerily similar to the Reapers in some ways.
 * You can buy a pet space hamster.
 * And it looks at you knowingly with a smile.
 * Tali calls her combat drone Chikktika vas Paus and tells it to "Go for the optics!"
 * A Shout Out to The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy: "'Spending a year dead' is a popular tax dodge."
 * Dual Shout Out to the members of Pink Floyd, who actually pulled it off in the seventies, if The Other Wiki is to be believed.
 * In addition to the response to one character remarking about your death: "I was only mostly dead."
 * And there's a Dakka system. Fittingly, Jack takes you here to blow the shit out of a Cerberus facility.
 * There's also a heavy pistol called the Carnifex Hand Cannon.
 * ...you guys know the word means "butcher" in Latin, right?
 * Jack also has a Shout Out to Babylon 5. Has anyone else has a good look at the tattoos on her [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cCl5i7abykg/TbwuYnb2CKI/AAAAAAAAARM/Kgu_W8bl7O8/s1600/Mass
 * On top of this, Bio Ware just couldn't resist a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference :

"Shepard: This is... it's green."
 * This is particularly genius, because it's also referencing the Executive Meddling that caused the machines' use for humans in The Matrix to be changed from using human brains for distributed computing to power sources.
 * The atmosphere of the gas giant Anjea (Amada system, Omega Nebula, available with the Normandy Crash Site DLC) has "large numbers of hollow, unpowered objects with dimensions 3.14 by 12.56 by 28.26 meters circulating in the equatorial cloud bands". In other words, pi by 4 times pi by 9 times pi, matching the 1:4:9 dimensions of the Monoliths.
 * There's a scene in a bar where you can get Shepard to start drinking. It's not exactly identified what it is Shep's drinking.

"Shepard: What should I call you?
 * The bartender at Dark Star implies that Batarian ale is an especially strong drink, generally illegal in Council Space. Swap "Batarian" for "Romulan."
 * The game merchant on the Citadel will mention a game called Grim Terminus Alliance, that is apparently pretty controversial ("So what if you can capture and beat slaves? It's just a game!")
 * The same game merchant has a number of Shout Outs and Take Thats to various aspects of gaming.
 * On Tuchanka, a derelict building bearing a strong resemblance to the Ryugyong Hotel can be seen in the distant background.
 * Several of the wrecked spaceships seen in the second game seem to be inspired by art from the old Terran Trade Authority books, particularly Space Wreck: Ghost Ships and Derelicts of Space.
 * Look closely, and you might be able to spot the Pillar of Autumn amid the wreckage.
 * Legion is responsible for many of the game's more obscure shout outs:
 * Legion says that the geth  do not share our pity, remorse or fear.
 * Another obscure one: when asked about, he explains it's a difference in the calculation of a specific floating point number. This is a reference to the Intel Pentium FDIV bug.
 * During his loyalty quest, if you, he notes that it requires exactly 1.21 petawatts of electricity to do so.
 * In that same quest he uses 'sudo' to turn deactivated turrets over to your side.
 * Legion has many similarities to Kosh and the Vorlons, the eye, the ethereal speech, but most notably:

Legion: Geth.

Shepard: No, I mean you, specifically.

Legion: We are all geth."

"Cpl. Hicks: I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A pulse rifle. Ten millimeter with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher. *hands the rifle to Ripley* Feel the weight."
 * He also, at one point, answers an "A or B" question "yes", a trademark Kosh response.
 * Legion at one point tells you that every race should have the right to self-determination, or put more plainly, that freedom is the right of all sentient beings.
 * Lair of the Shadow Broker tells us that Legion is an avid gamer; he plays Galaxy of Fantasy and Grim Terminus Alliance mentioned above, and has achievements for completing a playthrough without killing slaves as well as killing one hundred quarians. He also plays N7 Call of Honor: Medal Of Duty and has over 200,000 sniper-rifle kills, but only three shotgun kills and no melee kills.
 * If you convince the asari on Illium to date the krogan, you'll see them later on Tuchanka. After the asari claims that the planet is too dusty, the krogan notes that it "builds character."
 * The distress beacon for one of the side missions in "Mass Effect 2" is numbered 655321
 * The Tupari vending machine in the Citadel will occasionally say: "Tupari: it will bring your ancestors back from the grave." This is in reference to a marketing campaign Pepsi ran in China. See the Snopes.com entry for details.
 * The vending machine may be a reference to Talky Toaster of Red Dwarf: a machine obsessed with getting people to eat/drink their products.
 * In the Hahne-Kedar Facility sidequest, you shut down a factory of rebellious robots on the planet Capek.
 * Since we don't have a page for that yet, to elaborate: R.U.R., written by Karel Čapek, coined the term 'robot'. It's a thinly-veiled Communist allegory where the robots stage a mass uprising.
 * This troper just realized another one while looking at this entry: Hahne-Kedar has a facility for producing mechs that Shepherd must shut down.
 * The Firewalker DLC pack throws another one in: the wife of one of the scientists is Helen O'Loy, which is also the name of an Isaac Asimov story where a human and a robot fall in love.
 * So, Kasumi got Shepard's cover mentioned in Badass Weekly, didn't she?
 * Ahem.
 * Shepard can listen to the ramblings of a racist batarian "Mad Prophet" on Omega who brings to mind a racist human prophet from another BioWare project.
 * Kasumi's outfit bears a striking resemblance to Visas Marr from Knights of the Old Republic 2.
 * It may also incorporate some elements of the assassin robes from Assassin's Creed; the resemblance becomes even stronger when she freeruns up a collection of pipes and towers to jump onto Hock's gunship. And those pipes are red, which should remind you of another EA title, Mirrors Edge.
 * More importantly, however, it's eerily similar to the thief model from the Infinity Engine.
 * Among the valuable artifacts locked in Donovan Hock's vault is a statue of an Ogre from Dragon Age.
 * While on Horizon, the mechanic says that one of the colonists the Collectors kidnapped was named Sten.
 * There's also Captain Gavorn, who shares a name with one of the Dwarf clans from that series.
 * Also, the mangled head of the Statue of Liberty along with Kasumi using part of the "Damn you all to Hell" line
 * Morinth is smuggled aboard the Demeter, the name of the ship that ferried Dracula to England.
 * An Ardat-Yakshi's power to seduce, entrance, and slowly drain the life out of their victims is further reference to Dracula and vampire legends.
 * The entire idea for the Ardat-Yakshi is a shout out of sorts to ancient world myths. A female demon named "Ardat-Lili" was a Succubus, that is, a female demon who kills her victims by having sex with them.
 * Also, Yakshi is a class of benevolent nature spirits in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain mythology. This troper doesn't really know where to go from here, but it sure as hell isn't just a coincidence.
 * The star cluster in which you find the IFF is named Hawking Eta. It contains the star systems Chandrasekhar and Schwartzschild. That's right, an astrophysics Shout Out.
 * The star system "Skepsis" (probably a play on "skeptics") has planets named after famous scientists: Crick (Francis Crick), Darwin (Charles Darwin), Watson (James Watson) and its moon Franklin (Rosalind Franklin), Keimowitz (most likely Alison Keimowitz), Pauling (Linus Pauling), and Wallace (Alfred Russel Wallace).
 * Skepsis, as a Greek word, means also 'to examine'. That is, to do research.
 * The M-451 Flamethrower. What burns at Fahrenheit 451?
 * Not books; they burn at 451 Celsius
 * Convince Niftu Cal to leave and Thane may bid him sleep well, and dream of bulbous women.
 * There is the M-3 Predator, a popular heavy pistol in the ME universe (and the first gun you get). Those who are familiar with Shadowrun probably know about their most popular heavy pistol...the Ares Predator.
 * The planet where the Overlord DLC mission is set has skies full of dragons.
 * Listening to Khalisah al-Jilani after punching her, she has a line quite similar to Bart Sibrel after Buzz Aldrin punched him for calling him a liar (and other things).
 * A numerical shoutout: Legion has 1,138 geth programs in its platform. Although most would call it a Star Wars Shout Out, but it's really more of a Shout Out to George Lucas, who many attribute to the revival of the science fiction genre because of the popularity of the movies. The number comes from a film he made earlier called THX 1138, and has been hidden in all his movies since. It also pops up in various other places when the writer wants to shout out Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Lucas himself.
 * This isn't really a direct Shout Out. The Legion has 1,183 geth programs. This maybe a numerical anagram. It's not clear.
 * On a related note, in one of the Collector missions, the Commander is trapped in a room with locked doors. EDI hacks one of the doors so you can proceed, mentioning "Firewall 3217" while doing so.
 * The famous exchange on the Citadel involving Sir Isaac Newton is a vague Shout Out to Aliens

""The council thought that Blasto, the first Hanar spectre would play by the rules. They were wrong!"
 * The Krogan trucks on Tuchanka look a lot like the vehicle the finds the derelict space ship in Aliens.
 * At the end of the game, you can see what the Collectors did with the captured humans. This is amazingly similar to the fate of humanity in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 * There are also other hints throughout the games that would make one possible explanation for the creation of the first Reaper.
 * Keiji's greybox seems to look almost identical to a "self sealing stem bolt", a Cow Tool from Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
 * On Haestrom, if Grunt is brought along, he'll yell "Then we fight in the shade!"
 * The Cigarette-Smoking Illusive Man is a shadowy power-broker at the head of a mysterious organization whose exact agenda is cloaked in secrecy, his name is unknown and he chain-smokes all the time...
 * EDI's name is a reference to Stealth.
 * On the prison ship Purgatory, you see one prisoner being beaten up. If you talk to the guy in the cell next to him, he'll reveal that his name is Bimmy.
 * When Aria tells you the one rule on Omega (Don't fuck with Aria), one of Shepard's possible responses is I like it. Easy to remember.
 * When you get Thane's loyalty mission, he will mention that he and his son would "dance crazy."
 * Here's an easy-to-miss one--during the car chase in "Lair of the Shadow Broker", one of the future-billboards you pass by is Jack's "Wanted" sign. Her prison number is 24601.
 * The car chase itself is very reminiscent of Attack of the Clones.
 * Or maybe The Fifth Element, you're even in a taxi!
 * Easy to miss in the Lair of the Shadow Broker (literally): The Shadow Broker says: "You travel with fascinating﻿ companions, doctor."
 * In the updates preceding the release of the Arrival DLC, there is a break-in at 4:13 AM, two researchers tampering with the Lowas Relay and 612-billion credits lost in the galactic economy.
 * Slightly obscure one: apparently the planet Siano wandered to its current location from another system, and is home to an abandoned base on one side and a nuclear waste dump on the other. Looks like we found out where Moonbase Alpha finally ended up.
 * The nuclear munitions ship hijacked by Geth, who are planning to suicide bomb it into a colonized moon? MSV Broken Arrow. (Complete with title inaccuracy.)
 * Jack's entire existence seems to be one big reference to The Chronicles of Riddick.
 * Her name and bald-shaven nature are exactly similar to Jack, the girl who latches onto Riddick in the film series. Additionally, both are broken out of their equivalents of a mercenary-controlled supermax prison by a suitably Badass figure who they come to trust.
 * The Blue Suns method of imprisoning her is more similar to Riddick himself, being transported on a ship by mercs who keep her in cryo-storage at all times.
 * And similar to another futuristic prison we have seen.
 * A prison where a protagonist is forced into cryo-storage in the future? It'll never catch on.
 * Her poetry of herself in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC is a reference to the future generation nuclear waste warning project.
 * On her loyalty mission, you find a room with a chair that looks suspiciously like the one in Dollhouse, with Jack saying "This is a bad place"
 * Not to mention that Jack from Pitch Black was assumed to be male for the majority of the movie, and until Shepard & Co. see Jack in her prison, they all assume her to be male as well.
 * On Illium there is one radio broadcast that can easily be mistaken for one of the frequent news broadcasts, but turns out to be a commercial for a new blockbuster movie:

"This one has forgotten whether his heat sink is over capacity. He wonders if this criminal scum considers itself fortunate.""


 * Omega bears a particularly striking resemblance to Los Angeles in 2019.
 * The ship "Qwib-Qwib" is apparently a reference to the Fred Saberhagen Berserker novels, which were about rampaging robots trying to wipe out all life in the galaxy (sound familiar?)
 * When scanning the planet Shasu, one can find the "Forever Alone" meme face on the planet's surface, as seen here.
 * 2175 Aeia, the planet where Jacob's loyalty mission takes place, looks extremely similar to The Unknown Planet from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, complete with a large ship crashed into the ocean. Bio Ware made both games.
 * The dog-like mech's name is FENRIS.
 * The human-like one is LOKI.
 * The enormous sub-boss level mechs are YMIR. For those that don't know their Norse mythology, Ymir was the father of the jötnar, the chaos-loving giants.
 * Avina on the Citadel remarks that asari futurists believe poverty will not be eliminated until the production of cornucopia technology that enables the user to create anything they desire. This is exactly like Gene Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek, where the availability of replicators has eliminated the need for currency and eliminated poverty on Earth, creating an idealistic future for humans.
 * One of the advertisements on Illium goes "There are some things omni-gel can't fix, for everything else..."
 * On the assignment "MSV Strontium Mule", the payload you discover at the end is neither seen nor directly explained but casts a golden glow from its container.
 * The Achievement for completing Kasumi's mission, 'Broke, Blind and Bedlam' is from a quote from the new Oceans Eleven.
 * After using the Omega 4 Relay, the Normandy comes out of its jump on a collision course with a debris field made of destroyed star ships bathed in an apocalyptic shade of gold. The sequence is almost identical to one in the 2009 Star Trek film, where the Enterprise comes out of warp and has to maneuver through a dense collection of wrecked star ships in a similarly golden sector of space.
 * The "Reave" ability itself struck me as this. A power that lets you drink your enemies' life force from afar? Now where have I seen that before?
 * The Collector General scurrying around the ship's control hub bears more than a passing resemblance to Pilot from Farscape.
 * As well, Morinth is an intensely sexual blue-skinned babe with a knack for 'herbs' and, making her remarkably similar to Farscape's Zhaan, as well. The shoutout feels complete each time an asari makes a remark to The Goddess.
 * Patriarch, the elderly, ex-crimelord krogan who was dethroned by Aria, paces around giving business advice to younger generations. In one of his spiels, he tells his listeners that they can expect someone to approach them at the funeral with an offer to meet with another crime group, and whoever does so is the traitor.
 * Thane's loyalty mission is a big shout-out to Harry Chapin's song "Cat's in The Cradle" including the father, Thane, never being around for his son, Kolyat, and Kolyat following in his father's footsteps. To make the shout-out even more blatant, the achievement for completing the mission is called "Cat's in The Cradle."
 * The krogan call their huge, gun-laden trucks "Tomkahs". Probably a lawyer-friendly reference to Tonka toy trucks.
 * A bit of a stretch, but Jacob is an African-American by-the-books former soldier whose favorite film is Old Yeller, just like John Stewart. He even has the ability to manipulate things with his mind.
 * A soldier is killed when his ship is ambushed and destroyed by an enemy cruiser, and is brought back to life by a disavowed black ops organization as a hard-to-kill cyborg via a project named for Lazarus. Just like in the early Babylon 5 episode A Spider In The Web.
 * Samara's loyalty quest on Omega, with Nef. Including the little video diary, seems to be an almost direct shout out to Lost In Space, given the similarity to Penny.
 * Jacob's loyalty mission involves you investigating the wreckage of the ship the Hugo Gernsback. Hugo Gernsback was a magazine publisher widely regarded as the father of science fiction.

Mass Effect 3

 * Kai Leng acts very like another cyborg ninja.
 * He also leads a horde of all-female assassin ninja.
 * Between the flame throwers, the need for flashlights to navigate dark corridors and the creepy eggs that unleash insectoid horrors on anyone who gets too close, the mission on Utukku is one big tribute to Alien. (If you kill them both times, Joker even starts to comment that maybe they should nuke the planet, because it's the only way to be sure.)
 * Also, right before opening a HUGE can of whoopass on some Rachni, Grunt simply remarks, "My turn!"
 * It goes much deeper than the quote. Observe the use of the pipe, an the fact the music theme playing is very, very similar as well.. and then cuts away to a Black Screen of Death.
 * Brutes, the krogan/turian husks, behave almost exactly like ogres in the Dragon Age games.
 * And Banshees have more than a passing similarity in behaviour to the Witch in Left 4 Dead
 * They also look a **lot** like the true form of Sil from Species
 * Historical footage in the Geth consensus shows that the Quarian creator of the first Geth was named Zahhak.
 * Which is itself a reference to Iranian mythology.
 * A sidequest involves Shepard finding a kakliosaur skull preserved in amber and suggesting a salarian scientist clone its DNA to produce living kakliosaurs. So the krogan can ride them into battle against the Reapers.
 * If you've romanced Liara all the way through, her last kiss with Shepard ends with them silhouetted in each other's arms as a bright light on the horizon envelops them, looking a lot like one of the dream sequences from Watchmen.
 * Further Watchmen reference; one hanar you encounter has the face name Zymandis and the soul name Regards the Works of the Enkindlers in Despair. His plans are almost the opposite of his namesake's.
 * There's a lost civilization on planet Carcosa in a twin-sun system. One of the few remaining ruins is a throne room overlooking a lake.
 * As anyone familiar with Logan's Run will know,
 * When you invite Traynor up to your cabin for chess and she challenges you, the Paragon response on the conversation wheel is, "I have a bad feeling..." The line Shepard actually says is, "This is a trap, isn't it?"
 * On the mission on Arrae to rescue defecting defecting Cerberus scientists there is a scene as they're evacuating the base of anti-air batteries firing away as a shuttle flies off. Inside the base the announcement "Shuttle One is away!" is made as everyone cheers.
 * The Turian leader is called Primarch, as you all know.
 * Fight like a Krogan! by Miracle of Sound.
 * While trying to sneak past some Geth using their stealth system, Joker comments the only way the Geth could detect them was if they started singing the Russian national anthem.
 * The slow building romance between Joker and EDI is a shout out to Lester del Rey's short story "Helen O'Loy", a story about a human and a robot that had achieved true sentience falling in love.
 * During the mission to rescue the ex-Cerberus scientists led by Dr. Brynn Cole, the evacuation scenes resemble the opening of the Battle of Hoth, where surface-to-air guns clear a path for transports. Some of the lines are exactly the same, too.
 * One of the reasons the endings broke the base so wide open was that
 * Some of the music that plays during the quarian-geth arc sounds remarkably similar to some of the music from Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. Given how similar the quarian-geth conflict already is to that series, this can't be just coincidence.
 * Spoken of in the geth memories, is a "Mistress Hala'Dama", which is also referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 * Dr Eva's Robotic Reveal when she emerges from burning wreckage with her skin burned off looks like a Terminator homage.
 * Near the end of the game, the discussion of cybernetic bodies comes up. Shepard has a moment of doubt in which s/he wonders about possibly just being a VI that thinks it's Commander Shepard; while not a direct quote, this is very similar to Major Kusanagi's philosophical moment in Ghost in the Shell.
 * After the raid on the Citadel Joker will comment how he used to like Cerberus, when they were vigilantes and helping the helpless.
 * The Collector's Edition robot dog is named Kei 9.