Mythology Gag/Tabletop Games/Card Games


 * Magic the Gathering's Time Spiral block, whose set theme was nostalgia, is naturally full of Easter Eggs and other little jokes about cards from older sets. For example: in the flavor text of Viscid Lemures, Norin the Wary remarks that it's nice to face something harmless, like a lemur. On the (much) earlier Hyalopterous Lemure, the artist had apparently never heard of a "lemure", so the card is illustrated with a lemur.
 * The Lhurgoyf card had the flavour text "Ach! Hans, run! It's the Lhurgoyf!". Much later, a card with a similar power had the flavor text "Not again", attributed to Hans.
 * And in Time Spiral, Saffi Eriksdotter, who said the immortal line, became a card in her own right. Hans, unfortunately, did not survive to get his own.
 * That phrase also became an Unglued card. It summons a creature for one turn if the player says, "Ach Hans! Run, it's the..."
 * The card Lotus Petal is a weakened version of the Game Breaker card Black Lotus - and its flavor text is a reference to how much money you'd have to spend in order to get one of the originals.
 * The card Deep Analysis has the flavor text "The specimen appears to be broken." The artifact being examined in the card's art is a Masticore, another card famous for being exceedingly powerful.
 * The card Persecute Artist doesn't let the caster choose Rebecca Guay. This is a nod to the time when rumors that Guay was being fired as a Magic card artist led to an Internet Backdraft.
 * The twelth editions print of Giant Spider states that "The wild is always changing, but it does have a few constants." This is probably a reference to the fact that by this point, Giant Spider was the only card that has been in all core sets since the game's beginning
 * A few cards in the Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game are based upon storylines from the original manga from before the card game came to prominence:
 * Zombyra the Dark is based upon a character from a Show Within a Show Zombire, who is a Spawn Expy. Like Spawn, he gets closer to death the more he fights, represented by an ATK reduction.
 * Dark Master - Zork was the Big Bad of the Monster World story arc, which was a Tabletop Game. From that comes the die-rolling effect, including the fact that a lower role is better and the highest roll is a fumble.