Continuity Nod/Video Games

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Examples of Continuity Nods in Video Games include:

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Other games that are not yet sorted by genre

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Other examples

  • In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia at one point Shanoah comments "I am the morning sun, come to vanquish this horrible night!" a reference to Simon's Quest and the day/night mechanic therein.
    • In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, when Maria first mentions Richter, she imagines him as the game renders him. Alucard, though, remembers his last encounter with a Belmont - and imagines Trevor's sprite from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.
  • Ace Attorney Investigations goes out of its way to never specifically describe any cases in the first three games, probably to avoid spoiling it for people who play Investigations first, but the continuity nods are everywhere for the older fans. A major example is that flashback Manfred von Karma goes from ambiguously creepy to chillingly terrifying if you know that he murdered Miles Edgeworth's father. If you inspect Edgeworth's flashback to the moment in the elevator, you can even pick out the second bullet hole in the wall where Miles accidentally shot von Karma in the shoulder.
  • The music in the Magmoor Caverns in Metroid Prime and in the PYR sector in Metroid Fusion are almost note-for-note the same as the Norfair music from Super Metroid.
    • Not to mention the Torvus Undertemple music in Metroid Prime 2 being taken from the red area of Brinstar from Super Metroid as well, and the Pirate Homeworld music from Metroid Prime 3 being taken from Crateria from Super Metroid.
      • Phendrana Drifts from Prime 1 was remixed in both Hunters and Prime 3. And of course, Prime Pinball. Let's just say recent Metroid games are remixing a lot of music - which is no bad thing, considering how awesome the soundtracks are.
    • In the beginning of Super Metroid you travel through the exploded ruins of Tourian from the very first game. You can even see the remains of Mother Brain's tank.
    • Even a number of power-ups from the original were kept in their same locations. The Morph Ball, that ceiling-mounted Energy Tank just to its west, the one in Ridley's lair surrounded by the fake floors, and, retroactively, the missile pack under the ruins of Mother Brain's jar, located first in Super Metroid and then again in Zero Mission. And this is just scraping the tip of the iceberg.
  • In Unreal II the Awakening, a tech tests your powered armor with a simulated deathmatch, then mentions he could sell tickets, maybe even get Liandri to back it. This is a reference to Unreal Tournament (which was released after this game, but takes place before in the universe's timeline) in which the gameplay and plot (such as it was) revolved around a blood sport run by the Liandri Mining Corporation.
  • The dark-blue-on-light-blue humanoid robot Mega Man is one of the most recognizable characters in all of video gaming. Mega Man Zero, the sixteenthish installment of the series, was really quite effective at getting the players' attention by coming out of a long timeskip After the End with La Résistance being slaughtered by degenerate dark/light blue robot cyclopes.
    • In Mega Man ZX Advent, the "Control Center" area is very obviously the bombed-out ruins of Slither, Inc. HQ—the final area of the original ZX.
      • In an extension, Area F in ZX is covered in snow during Aile/Vent's visit; by the time Grey/Ashe get to it in Advent, it's become a snow-free scrapyard thanks to Vulturon and a recently-revived Model W. The Highway in Advent is likewise a part of Area D that borders water, and the Floating Island is a distant part of Area A brought off the ground by, you guessed it, Model W.
    • ZX Advent has quite a few of these, such as the model train you're send to recover in one Fetch Quest. It's identical to the trains used in various missions in the Zero series. Another mission has you recover various "artifacts" that are all from the original series, such as an Energy Balancer (from 6) and a Life Tank (from 5). Additionally, the Three Wise Men in the game are named after the three main roboticists from the classic Mega Man series (and one may or may not actually be one of them).
  • Phantasy Star IV, being the final game in the series, has several. There is a town that has a statue in honor of Alis Landale, heroine of the first game. That very same town sells expensive Alis-themed merchandise, including a replica of her sword, which can be used as a weapon for Chaz (it pretty much sucks, although it's needed for a sidequest). An optional dungeon is the wreckage of a worldship like the one PSIII takes place on. Rika and Rune are (for lack of a better word) descendants of Nei and Lutz respectively. On the outskirts of town, Aiedo has a bakery with its storefront underground. The player can also visit an optional dungeon full of Musk Cats and meet their chief, Myau. Of course, none of these things are elaborated on in any way, so if you didn't play the first game, it can feel like you're missing out.
  • Phantasy Star Online had an occasional special limited-time event called Max Attack G. In the Phantasy Star Universe storyline, researchers unearth some computer code and load it into a virtual-reality system. It's the original game code for M.A.G., and PSU players are given the opportunity to run through PSO levels, meet PSO NPCs, and find PSO weapons aplenty... all as a promo event that has no bearing on the main story.
  • In one level of Star Wars: Republic Commando, you can find a lightsaber on a ship that's been taken over by mercenaries. Upon seeing it, the player character alludes to Obi-Wan's "civilized weapon" line, then adds "Well, times have changed."
  • The King of Fighters '98 features a headless Goenitz sitting in the background of the Black Noah stage, with wires coming out of his neck. In continuity, Goenitz took out Rugal Bernstein's left eye (the character to whom the stage belongs).
  • Capcom vs. SNK has a ton of these (as would be expected of a Crossover game), with many of them being character-specific. For example, playing on a certain stage with Kyo and Benimaru results in Goro Daimon showing up in the background, a reference to the older King of Fighters games where your teammates would watch you fight from the background and cheer you on.
  • In Jedi Academy the player finds the statue of Darth Vader Luke toppled in Dark Empire to defeat a group of Dark Side Elite.
  • In Tomb Raider 3, it is possible to gain entry to a secret room in Lara's mansion, which contains artifacts from her previous exploits displayed in glass cases.
    • Also, in Tomb Raider 2, a different secret room can be entered, which, amongst other things, contains an Egyptian cat statue, which can be seen in the Egyptian levels of the first game.
    • The Crystal Dynamics-developed games contain several nods to the films, such as the title art, Lara's father Richard disappearing in Cambodia, and Croft Manor coming under siege in Underworld after Lara discovers a secret chapel beneath the mansion.
  • Monster Rancher games frequently contain references to monster species not present in that particular game, including those that haven't been seen in several games.
  • The Halo series is fond of making references to itself, to the point where several characters, organizations, etc. initially exclusive to the Expanded Universe end up playing major plot roles in the games themselves, most notably in Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.
    • A few minor examples in Halo 3 alone include the Cortana "visions", which make several references to the very first Halo book The Fall of Reach; a message from ONI Recon 111 to Miranda Keyes, which marks the first time the Office of Navel Intelligence is ever directly referenced in the games; and Cortana calling the Master Chief by his real name, which everyone who read the books already knew.
  • In The Secret of Monkey Island, there's a hollow tree stump that you can try to enter, only to be told to "insert disk 23"...then disk 47...and then disk 117, none of which actually come with the game. Many players apparently took the joke seriously and called LucasArts' help line about the missing floppies: In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge: LeChuck's Revenge, the player can actually call the hint line and ask about the stump joke, prompting the operator to mention that she's sick and tired of people calling and asking about the stump. In The Curse of Monkey Island, you can enter a tunnel on Blood Island, and come out in that same tree stump, complete with the very same background used in the VGA version of the original game. Guybrush refuses to pass through, however, since the hole is too small for him to squeeze through, and the forests of Melee Island are rife with hyper-realistically rendered jaguars.
    • Note that the joke is changed in the CD version. rather then referring to the disks, Guybrush just comments about a series of catacombs. When you can check the stump in Curse of monkey island, you're in, well...the Goodsoup family catacomb.
    • This same joke is echoed in some of Tim Schafer's games, particularly Grim Fandango and Psychonauts (where examining a tree stump will make Raz discover a tunnel that opens up to a system of catacombs underneath).
    • Also from Secret, when Guybrush introduces himself to the Lookout with "I'm Guybrush Threepwood, and I want to be a pirate!", the Lookout responds "You look more like a flooring inspector." In Curse, when a ghostly bride with a thing for pirates asks Guybrush what he does for a living, our hero hastily answers "Flooring inspector."
    • In the vein of the above-mentioned stump joke, Curse features another throwback to the first game: If the player repeatedly asks Guybrush to walk into the ocean on Blood Island, he will eventually comply...and wind up under the pier in Melee Island from the first game, seeing his past self as a corpse, having choked to death under water. This is in reference to a puzzle in the first game, where Guybrush has ten minutes to free himself and get back out of the water before he chokes.
  • A Continuity Nod is found in the Database description of the top-down shooter stages in Bionic Commando: Rearmed. It mentions that the stages "remind you of the war stories Super Joe used to tell you." Super Joe is originally from Commando, an arcade game that was entirely a top-down shooter, and is the character you rescue in the NES version of Bionic.
  • Zork: Grand Inquisitor is filled with references to earlier Zork and Enchanter games. For example, one of the Plot Coupons is a Cube of Foundation like the ones found in Spellbreaker. Also, at one point the game has the player going back in time to visit The White House, the house from the original Zork. And of course, there's the ever-present threat of grues.
  • Grand Theft Auto is fond of those. Both Vice City and San Andreas, which were released after GTA III but are set before them in the series continuity, include character nods to III. The San Andreas nod has some emotion behind it, as the Player Character from III makes a cameo with a woman he'll end up killing at the end of his own game.
    • The Lost and Damned expansion pack runs in parallel with GTA IV; several events from IV are referred to on the radio, and one character in TLAD is killed offscreen near the start by "some Serb bastard," because he was going out with the daughter of a Russian gangster - a mission that the player did indeed carry out as Nico in IV.
      • The Ballad of Gay Tony begins with Luis being one of the hostages at the bank from the mission "Three-Leaf Clover". All three characters from GTA IV end up at the museum, trying to escape after the diamond exchange goes sour. At the end of Ballad, we see the hobo finding the diamonds, as reported on the radio in the original IV.
  • Oh so many in the Legacy of Kain series. Thanks to time travel the protagonists frequently revisit familiar locations, so there's plenty of chances for these and few of them are wasted.
    • In Soul Reaver, one area contains an enormous skull toppled to the ground, which those who played Blood Omen would recognize as part of the first big dungeon that Kain goes through. Later games, with their use of time travel, has Kain and Raziel ending up alongside other big events in the series; for example, Raziel's slaughtering of the six Sarafan inquisitors in Soul Reaver 2 coincides with Vorador's attack on the Circle of Nine.
    • The basin room Raziel enters from the Timestreaming Chamber at the start of Soul Reaver 2, and the hallways of the Sarafan Keep are modeled after the building seen in the flashback of Vorador slaying the Circle in Blood Omen. Furthermore, in Soul Reaver, the Oracle's cauldron room and its antechamber, known as Moebius' Museum, have been modeled after the originals, down to the tattered old ruins of a banner that hung there since before Kain first entered the caves, thousands of years before. Incidentally, the emblem on said banner is the emblem of Moebius' mercenary army as seen in Soul Reaver 2.
    • Also, the earring Kain sports in his evolved form from Soul Reaver onward is the ring Vorador gave him in their first meeting.
    • The climax of Defiance takes place literally minutes after the end of Blood Omen, so the final few levels are full of nods to the first game, including Mortanius fighting the Hylden Lord's control, Vorador's capture by Moebius' forces, and Kain's decision to reject the option for a Heroic Sacrifice, shattering the pillars and allowing the Hylden Lord to possess Janos.
  • Summoner 2 contains many Continuity Nods and Call Backs to the previous game. Luleva and Erho, minor characters from Lenele, both make short appearances as adults, as does Empress Sihua aka Flece.
  • Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood contains a particularly obscure Continuity Nod. One of Amy Rose's POW attacks is based on her ability to see the future—in her first appearance in Sonic CD, this was why she was involved in the adventure in the first place... but seems to have been completely forgotten until this nod.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of zOMG! chapter one is filled with these. The ruins of Gambino's Tower, Grunnies, and Labtechs all make appearances. Not to mention the fact that the story ties many of the older storylines. Other Continuity Nods exist as well, but this is the most extreme example.
  • In the first Ratchet & Clank game, at one point the duo are "hired" by Gadgetron to serve as the image for their new line of hoverboards. Ratchet then asks if they will receive a special discount only for the CEO to explain they have to be with the company for two years before the employee discount kicks in. In Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal (which was released two years after the first game), if you still have a Ratchet & Clank saved game, you actually get said discount.
    • Being a follow up to A Crack in Time (which also had quite a few nods, in and of itself), the |new comic series has already had several of these, varying in importance. For example: Alister's wrench and pocket watch, Vorn's comment that Veldin was "devoid of any real value, (echoing Drek's sentiment) the hoverboots, the semi-forgotten tether for the omniwrench...and, most heartwarming, Ratchet's belief that, despite being rather incompetent, the Galactic Rangers would lend a hand, when things went pear-shaped. And that's just the first issue.
  • The first two games of the Fatal Frame/Project Zero games have no connection at all, beyond the Camera Obscura, however both are referenced frequently in the third game, especially with the protagonist of the first game is for some parts of the game a playable character. Another playable character is the uncle of the twin girls from the second game.
  • This has become very common in the more recent Tom Clancy games. The Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter series, Rainbow Six Vegas series, EndWar, HAWX, and Splinter Cell all contain slight references to each other, since they all take place in the same universe. The vast majority of the nods are usually quick name drops, but a notable exception can be found in HAWX, where the player actively assists the Ghost Recon team on several missions.
    • Briefing cutscenes in HAWX also have some video clips that look like they're taken straight from EndWar, and the SLAMS anti-ballistic missile system is obviously the initial phase of the worldwide anti-missile shield the Russians in EndWar sabotage to start World War III. You can also fly the fighter plane that provides air support for the JSF in HAWX, and it's even specialized for air-to-ground, although its stats make it perfectly capable of dogfighting.
    • When playing as the JSF in EndWar, the Ghosts make up your riflemen, whereas the EF get Rainbow.
  • Gradius ReBirth, despite its name, is more or less a prequel to the lesser-known MSX Nemesis arc:
    • The plot is set in cosmic year 6664, 3 years before the events of Nemesis 2.
    • The pilot's name is James Burton, who was the protagonist of Nemesis 2.
    • Venom, the Big Bad of Nemesis 2 and 3, appears as James's CO.
    • The powerup sounds are from Nemesis 2 and 3.
  • The Suikoden series is rather fond of this. In the 5th game the gladiator Shoon mentions a fellow gladiator who had his eyes removed because he was too powerful, making for unbalanced matches. He was still far stronger than the others, so he was shipped off to the Island Nations and never heard from again. This isn't mentioned again in the game itself, but fans of the series may realize that he was referring to Morgan, a blind martial artist you can recruit in the first game, which takes place several years after S5 chronologically (supplemental materials reveal that Morgan's ship was wrecked, which is how he escaped and ended up in the Scarlet Moon Empire instead).
    • Suikoden 5's plot itself is a continuity nod to the second Suikoden's characters background; namely Georg, Lorelai and Killey.
    • Suikoden 4 has a character that appear in the first Suikoden (Ted)
    • In Suikoden 2 you actually can visit Gregminster (the first Suikoden central city) and meet some characters from the first game too.
  • While House of the Dead: Overkill is mostly self-contained from its parent franchise, it includes a few more subtle callbacks to past games in the series. For example, the in-game title for Agent G's theme song is Suffer Like G Did.
  • In Banjo-Tooie, Klungo is last seen walking off into the distance, saying he's going to quit being Grunty's minion and "find easssy desssk job, maybe make ssstupid gamesss..." So, that's just Self-Deprecation coming from Rareware, right? Actually, when Klungo returns in Nuts 'n' Bolts, he's managed to create a minigame called Hero Klungo Sssaves Teh World, which is indeed stupid.
    • At the end of the first game, you compete in a game show against the Evil Witch, beat her, roll the credits... then you need to fight her AFTER the credits. And if you don't have enough Jiggies to get to the top of the tower, get some more. By the way - this description is exactly correct for the second game too.
  • The island of Mira, which played a major part in the first Baten Kaitos game, was conspicuously absent from the prequel, Baten Kaitos Origins. However, near the end of the game, it's mentioned briefly (which probably created a small Continuity Lock Out for people who only played the prequel).
  • Kirby & the Amazing Mirror has the Smash ability, which lets Kirby "attack with... familiar fighting moves", specifically his moveset from his appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series. Oh, and the enemy you get it from? Master Hand (who also brings Crazy Hand with him in the final Mirror Shard boss fight).
  • Kotomine remarks offhandedly about how Tohsaka will feel much better after being buried underground for a bit amidst a conversation that skims along the topic of vampires. Shirou isn't sure whether to take the comment literally or seriously. This little conversation gave rise to some Epileptic Trees suggesting that Tohsaka is the descent of a vampire.
  • The Persona series:
    • Persona 4 makes a few references to the previous game. A few of the major characters from Persona 3 make an appearance as minor characters in the game.
    • Additionally, Persona 3 makes a number of references to the first two Persona games; for example, the Kirijo Group used to be part of the Nanjo Group, the latter of which was the company owned by the family of party member Kei Nanjo/Nate Trinity.
    • The Answer, the follow-up to Persona 3 included in the Updated Rerelease FES, has several flashbacks. One is to when Mitsuru first discovered her powers. When she uses her Persona, a scientist standing by is amazed. This scientist has no given name, but he's voiced by Dan Woren, meaning it has to be Shuji Ikutski (advisor to SEES in The Journey).
  • Almost the bread and butter of Disgaea. For example, the Prism Rangers making a reappearance in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories... and are terrified of demons because of what Etna did to them in the first game.
  • Deus Ex Human Revolution has a lot of Call Forward versions of these. Not all of them are related to the plot of either game.
  • Final Fantasy IV: The After Years has plenty of such moments with regard to Final Fantasy IV, from Leonora being the girl Palom was bragging to in the end sequence of the original, to Calca and Brina's Band attack that turns them into Calcabrina, to all flashbacks to the distant past being done in the same graphical style as the SNES version of Final Fantasy IV, including playable flashbacks in Porom's and Golbez's scenarios.
  • World of Warcraft has an involved continuity, and so pulls out many continuity nods to previous games in the series and early, obsolete content. The human starting area contains five farms, the same number as you are asked to build in the same area in the human tutorial mission in Warcraft I. Characters from all three games appear as minor NPCs in WoW, although some give quests and some have become enemies. Heirloom items, special items that level up with a character and can be traded between alts, are usually references to desirable items from the original game. The most commonly referenced nod is "Hogger", a level 10 elite monster in the human starting area who is not only the first monster players need to team up for, but can be quite difficult to kill even then. These continuity mods extend to mechanics, as well: the final boss of the Ulduar instance in the second expansion, the Old God Yogg-Saron, works somewhat similarly to the Old God boss that appeared in the original game, C'Thun: the boss stays stationary in the middle of a circular room, and needs to be attacked from the inside by a small strike force before it can be damaged on the outside. Both fights are involved enough, though, that the strategies required are different.
  • Ace Combat has quite a few of these in subtle details; the series article proper lists some of them.
  • Metal Gear Solid has a fair few of these in the overall series. A musical one occurs in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: get into an encounter, and occasionally you can hear what sounds like the encounter music from the first game.
  • In the first Jak and Daxter game, Power Cells were the "most important Precursor artifact you could find." In the sequels, they inexplicably disappeared... until Jak X, when they were used for the Turbo Dash races.
  • The reappearance of Steele Stadium in Backyard Baseball, removed from earlier installments.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Wind Waker: The Great Deku Sprout reappears as a grown Deku Tree, all the sages are referenced and have stained glass windows in Hyrule Castle, there's a portrait of what is quite obviously Ocarina of Time's Princess Zelda (her dress looks different from the Wind Waker one), Tetra's other lucky charm (Not the golden one...) is a shard out of a Gossip Stone, the statues of the three golden goddesses look exactly like their respective Oracles from the Oracle games and there's a badass statue of Ocarina of Time's Link in Hyrule Castle.
    • Twilight Princess has one with the entry hall in the Temple of Time (of the past). It's an almost exact replication of the one from Ocarina of Time - right down to even the background music. Additionally, almost all the wolf songs are lifted from the playable songs in Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and The Wind Waker, in addition to the Sacred Grove having Saria's Song, from the former two games, as its background theme.
    • In Spirit Tracks, Zelda makes a comment about how her ancestors were 'good at waiting'. Considering that practically every Princess Zelda in previous games, has spent most of it locked up and/or awaiting rescue. Also, Hyrule Castle has references to The Wind Waker, from having a giant stained-glass window of herself in the throne room, right down to how every single guard in the castle is dressed like her best friend and hero, Link. And Niko, the pirate who nicknamed Wind Waker's Link "swabby", is still alive. Naturally, his house has Continuity Nods as well.
    • The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap's opening gives a subtle nod to the opening of The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past, whilst also subverting it. LttP begins with Zelda calling for help from Link and his uncle. In MC, she visits their house to take Link out to the fair. In both, it is down to Link's uncle whether he does or doesn't go. The house itself is visually very similar to the house in LttP, situated on a similarly small hill with some grass growing on the front.
    • The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, seeing as it was released during The Legend of Zelda's 25th anniversary, is full of references to pretty much every game in the series.
  • Thunder Force V is set sometime after Thunder Force IV. The Rynex, the protagonist ship of TFIV from a faraway galaxy, is found drifting within Earth's Solar System and its advanced technology is utilized by Earth for massive technological improvement. This goes over very badly with the AI in charge of the project.
  • In the second Spider-Man movie game, there are feathers near the top of the game's second tallest building. Why? Because that's where you fought the Vulture in the first game.
  • Even ignoring the identity of the final boss, Mother 3 still has a good number of nods to EarthBound. The Friend's Yoyo and Real Bat being references to Ness's choice of weaponry is one, but one of the funnier ones is the various "useless" actions the Porky Bots can take, which area ll basically the same as the useless "attacks" that Pokey would take when he was on your team in Earthbound, but with "Mechanical" appended somewhere. Like "Mechanically pretended to cry", or "suggested a mechanical truce" or "flashed a mechanically insincere smile".
  • This is the primary reason to load your save files from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2. Sure, there's a lot of important stuff that ports over, but almost every single decision that you made in the first game is referenced in some way. Truly, this trope is present to such a massive degree that the game feels completely different from if you just played it from scratch.
  • At one point in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, you encounter an area covered in poisonous gas. You are provided with a small pot that can be temporarily enchanted with a barrier that keeps the poison away, requiring you to carry the pot around with you if you don't want to take damage. People who played the original Crystal Chronicles will be very familiar with a mechanic like this.
  • he True Final Boss of Pokémon Gold and Silver and its remakes is Red, the hero of Pokémon Red and Blue, and he's highest level trainer in series history. He doesn't even speak, a nod to the fact that he was a Heroic Mime.
    • And in the Game Corner: "Behind this poster...is nothing!", alluding to Team Rocket's secret hideout from the first games.
    • The remakes of RBY (FireRed/LeafGreen) have a character talking about Misty having plans for a certain bridge as a dating location, referring to an actual dating scene from GSC.
    • There are other numerous references to previous games. A notable one, that typically passes past people, happened in Pokémon Black and White. One was the Hiker ferris wheel date, it features a Memetic Molester Hiker who seems to have an interest in the male protagonist. It relates to Generation 1 where there was a Hiker that would basically sexually harass you (the one with the Nugget), and you could only play as a boy.
  • In Rayman 3, if Globox is punched successively he will remark that Rayman was "nicer in Rayman 2".
  • Silent Hill isn't technically one cohesive continuity (except in the case of direct sequels and prequels), but several games still make references to each other:
    • The Good Ending to Silent Hill Origins attempts to answer the question of: "Okay, so just how did baby Cheryl end up by the roadside in the first place?"
    • Heather stumbles upon the old Silent Hill save points just before and gets to read Harry's thoughts.
    • Silent Hill 2 has a newspaper discussing the arrest of Walter Sullivan, a serial killer caught when he murdered a pair of twins; Walter's backstory is expounded upon in Silent Hill 4, and the twins have become terrifying in the meantime.
      • Lacking the actual location of Silent Hill as a setting, SH4 relied on a lot of Nods and Call Backs to tie it to the rest of the series.
      • It's hard to spot unless you're paying attention, but it also features the woods near a mysterious orphanage in Silent Hill and the mysterious tower from that orphanage as game locations - in this case, it includes copies of the information on the orphanage in case you forgot since Silent Hill 2... but it only hints at the in-game locations being those places.
    • Silent Hill Homecoming opens with a much older-looking Travis giving Alex a lift into Shepherd's Glen. (Thanks a bunch, Travis.) Arguably, Pyramid Head's Cameo can be seen as a continuity nod as well. *** FYI, Origins and Homecoming had the same development team.
    • Silent Hill, the Arcade machine, borrows monster designs from the other games, and the doomed steamboat The Baroness from Silent Hill 2 in particular.
    • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: The UFO ending gives a hilarious Alternate Character Interpretation to the entire series: Cheryl and James in particular are just patients to Dr. Kaufman, a psychiatrist. Oh, and the whole town may or may not be a spaceship.
      • For that matter, all of the games' UFO endings have nods to the other games: Harry shows up to abduct James in the second game's UFO ending, and then both of them appear in the third game; and Mira the Shiba Inu of the second game's "Dog Ending" makes a cameo in the UFO endings of both Origins and Shattered Memories.
  • The Nancy Drew game series is packed with these, from the souveniers of past plotlines that turn up on Nancy's desk in the tutorials to newspaper and magazine headlines about celebrities she's previously investigated.
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars the Red Zone missions include the withered husks of the Blossom Trees from Tiberium Dawn and Tiberian Sun. The first GDI Washington mission also has a statue of Nick "Havoc" Parker from the Renegade FPS.
    • One of the unlockable intelligence entries even quotes his negative opinion about the Mammoth MkII's retirement. It also confirms that he has made Colonel Badass Grandpa in the intervening time.
    • Plus, in some maps there's wreckage of humvees and Obelisks from Tib Dawn, and Nod powerplants and the wreckage of the aforementioned Mammoth Mk II from Tib Sun
  • In Sam and Max: The City That Dares Not Sleep, Sam recalls all the molemen he's met, including Shuv-ool and Dug from Sam and Max Hit The Road.
    • In the same episode, Max has an entire shelf of items from Sam and Max Hit The Road in his Inventory, including a Snuckey's pecan log, a bucket of fish, a Car Bomb game, and the roach farm from Sam and Max's office. The Flaming Max head in the room also speaks with a stereotypical New York accent similar to the one affected by Nick Jameson to voice Max in Sam and Max Hit the Road, a reference which is lampshaded if Sam examines the bucket of fish.
    • In the preceding episode, Beyond the Alley of the Dolls, if the player orders Max to use Psychic Ventriloquism on the jukebox in Stinky's Diner, he warbles "I remember my childhood in Brighton", the first line of Conroy Bumpus' big musical number in Sam and Max Hit The Road.
    • The team have Jessie James's hand mounted on the wall, an appendage used as one of the combinable items in Sam and Max Hit The Road.
    • In The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball, one of the nonsense things Sam can ask Bosco for is 'stray tufts of sasquatch hair', a reference to Hit The Road, where tufts of sasquatch hair were the MacGuffins used to locate the missing sasquatch.
  • Canvas 2 has multiple references to the original game and several of the heroines, mostly in Misaki and Saya's routes. Both of them are sisters of heroines from the original.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, there's a Shroob from Partners in Time sitting in the Fawful Theater.
    • After finishing the game, you can actually fight two Shroobs in the theater. The characters even reference events from Partners in Time.
  • Main series Mario games generally avoid using Continuity Nods, but Princess Peach's Castle has had the same general design since it appeared in Super Mario 64.
    • Paper Mario games, on the other hand, tend to make quite a few continuity nods... Even if they have to break the fourth wall to do it.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn contains a lot of nods to the GBA games. Remember the Dancing Idol? Takeru? The girl you had to save from being washed away after she had been turned into a tree? You will now.
    • The mute monk, the adorable baby pirate, the Philosopher's Stone, the Sol/Luna symbols in Sol Sanctum, and the werewolves and their Fantastic Racism problems all come back as plot points.
    • Subverted where you'd expect it most, though. The in-game retellings of the first two games' storyline suffer from in-verse unreliable narration including casting Felix as a villain and not explaining the Fire Clan at all, making the latter look like freaky dragon people from nowhere.
  • In Resident Evil Zero, you take a short trip through Birkin's laboratory facility from RE 2. In RE 3, Brad is killed by Nemesis in front of the police station, where he appears as a zombie in RE 2 on a New Game+.
  • In Medal of Honor: Allied Assault's Behind Enemy Lines mission, you rescue the pilot of the deceased G3 officer from the first game, as well as meeting La Résistance operative Manon Batiste. In the second level of that mission, you can find the wreckage of the Greta rail cannon, in the exact same area where Patterson destroyed it. The final mission of the game takes you back to Fort Schmerzen.
    • The 2010 game has Sgt. Jim Patterson, the grandson of Jimmy Patterson.
  • Dead Space ends with Isaac narrowly avoiding planetary-scale destruction, but as he begins to relax in the chair of his ship, he gets attacked by the hallucination of his dead girlfriend. Dead Space 2 ends with Isaac narrowly being saved from a reactor meltdown by the female lead, Ellie. He sits down in the chair of their escape ship, relaxes, then tenses up, gets a terrified look on his face, turns towards Ellie... who is just piloting the ship and wondering why he's staring at her.
  • The Somtaaw Archangel-class dreadnought in Homeworld Cataclysm and the Hiigaran battlecruiser in Homeworld 2 share a similar design with two heavy ion turrets on the top and bottom. Seeing that Cataclysm is semi-canon and never gets a single reference from the sequel.
  • Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith introduces the immigrant goddesses and their Miko Sanae to Gensokyo.
    • Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism's Extra stage has Sanae reveal that Kanako was fascinated by technology from the outside world and gave the powers of nuclear fusion to Utsuho to spur a technological revolution in Gensokyo. This means Kanako is responsible for Utsuho's brief insanity that frightened Rin who set off geysers to call the heroines down to Hell to fight Utsuho, aka the entire plot of Touhou 11.
    • The geysers of Touhou 11 enabled the escape of the sealed-away youkai characters of Touhou 12: Unidentified Fantastic Object, making Kanako indirectly responsible for that game's plot, too.
    • Touhou 12.3: Hisoutensoku eventually shows us what exactly that technological revolution was for, and even includes stages in Story Mode where the characters enter a nuclear reactor in Hell and fight Utsuho, who is powering it.
      • That's four games so far the Moriya Shrine has been responsible for.
    • Another example is in Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom, when Alice greets Reimu and Marisa with familiarity, because she fought them in PC-98 exclusive Touhou 5: Mystic Square.
    • Heck, Marisa's "Master Spark" spell is a Continuity Nod, seeing as how she stole it from Yuuka in Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story, and her "Earth Light Ray" spell debuted in Touhou 3: Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream (which is lampshaded when it's described as "a really old spell that she never expected to use again").
    • Another Lotus Land Story reference happens when Yuuka returns in Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and Reimu immediately accuses her of being responsible for the incident because of how she was involved in "that other one". (which, incidentally, was pretty much composed of Reimu jumping random youkai for being youkai... which is also her storyline for Flower View!)
    • All in all, for a series that ZUN insists isn't a series, there are a lot of these.
  • In Gran Turismo, Special Stage Route 5 and Route 11 are set in the same semi-fictional city (based on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway system), and appear to have an overpass connecting them, resulting in rumors of an extra-long Route 16 track. This was partially realized with SS Route 7 in GT 5, which runs over said overpass and parts of the other tracks, as well as the suspension bridge (an analog of the real-life Rainbow Bridge) previously seen in R11's background.
  • At the end of Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Princess Zelda defeats Ganon with the title wand, and is for some reason trapped inside the Book of Koridai from Link: The Faces of Evil. again.
  • In The Godfather 2, your Made Man told to crack a safe might comment that he thought he would have to blow the lock. In the previous game, you had to blow safes open with explosives.
  • Star Trek Online takes this to positively ludicrous extremes, having references, Shout-Outs, and nods to almost every place, thing, and character in Trek history, even a lot from the EU. Case in point, one of the NPCs who gives you a mission is a joined Trill named Damar Kahn, the seventh host of the Khan symbiont, who offhandedly mentions having also done research into wormholes (which is a reference to Lenara Khan (the sixth host) who appeared in an episode of Deep Space Nine).
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