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*** Even better, in that same Sandman book, a character the protagonist of the book met is telling a story about a meeting he had with someone, who told a story about his mistress, who in THAT story started telling many stories...one of which was a story about a bunch of travelers stuck at an inn, telling stories to pass the time. Yes, it was recursive to that extent, and boy, was Gaiman proud of managing to include the moment.

*** Gaiman's also a huge mythology nut and loves to reference a huge range of tales from almost any culture you can think of, particularly if at some point they were [[Bowdlerization|bowdlerised]] and the original forms were much darker and more gruesome. [[The Fair Folk]] are treated as the trope describes, the original (and deeply [[squick]]y) tale of Red Riding Hood makes an appearance and a thematic point in ''Sandman'', ''[[American Gods]]'' and ''[[Anansi Boys]]'' are probably set in the same continuity and are all about myths being real and alive (and trying to stay that way), and [[Shakespeare]] himself and his King's Men perform ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' for the entities it was based upon, during which some members of the audience have to be reminded not to eat the performers.

* [[Cordwainer Smith]] loved to include cats (including an early, Western example of the [[Catgirl]] trope) and references to Chinese culture in his science fiction stories.

* [[Mercedes Lackey]] loves to include birds and intelligent avian creatures in her fantasy novels. Valdemar has gryphons, ''tervardi,'' and the Tayledras ("Hawkbrothers") and their semi-intelligent [[Bond Creatures|bond birds]]; the Free Bards books all have bird-themed titles; and one of her fairy tale adaptations has a minor character who's interested in falconry.

*** See [[Magic Mushroom]] and [[Fungus Humongous]]

*** A variety of fungoid monsters: ascomoid, basidirond, phycomid, shrieker, ustilagor, violet fungi, Zuggtmoy the demoness lady of fungi, etc.

*** Appear repeatedly in modules B2 ''The Keep on the Borderlands'', G3 ''Hall of the Fire Giant King'', D3 ''Vault of the Drow'', EX2 ''The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror'', S1 ''Tomb of Horrors'', T1-4 ''Temple of Elemental Evil'', WG4 ''The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun'', WG5 ''Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure'' and WG6 ''Isle of the Ape''. In some cases they appeared so many times it appeared that Gygax had suffered a "purplegasm".

** Gygax also made a number of Lovecraftian references in those same works, as evidenced by such creatures as the Kuo-Toa (inspired by Lovecraft's Deep Ones), the Aboleth (inspired by some sort of Great Old One), the Illithids (which are basically a race of Cthulhus without the bat wings), the Elder Elemental God (shown in G3 ''Hall of the Fire Giant King'' as being shaped like a [[wikipedia:Chthonian (Cthulhu Mythos)|Chthonian]]) and certain elements of [[Nightmare Fuel]] in the temple of the [[Eldritch Abomination]] gods. He outright acknowledged Lovecraft as an important influence on D&D.

*** Gygax needed a lot of content to make the game work, so he drew from a very large number of sources. He didn't ''quite'' make D&D into an [[All Myths Are True]] setting, but he came pretty close.

** And polearms... Ever want to know why [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0136.html the glaive-guisarme seems to crop up in D&D so much]?

* [[White Wolf]], the writers of the ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' RPG, made it very obvious they preferred Humans, Elves, and Dwarves over the other races (especially [[Demoted to Extra|the trolls]] and the entirely absent [[Discontinuity|draenei]]) in the series. Even in the Horde Player's guide, they'd go on about elves, dwarves, and humans.

 

** His earlier works were rather definitely based on his childhood experiences, too.

** The premise of ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' was based on his exploration of caves as a child. In an interview for a game-developer site, he flat-out tells other designers to base their games on things they like.

* Yuji Horii of ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' fame is a compulsive gambler which is why many of the games in the series have some sort of gambling mini-game in it. (Though its been said that the fact that you can only save in the town's churches is a way to try to make going out in the field/dungeons feel a bit more of a gamble as well.)

* Speaking of belts, ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' character designer Daisuke Ishiwatari seems to use belts as a unifying motif minus a few rare cases (Anji Mito has only a sash). [[Author Avatar|Sol Badguy]] tops the list with 24 belts in his costume design. Funnily enough, the costumes still manage to look pretty cool.

** Apparently among those green things are [[She Hulk]] and [[Hot Amazon|women built like her.]]

* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' is all about things the authors like, but also seems to feature a lot of [[Nightmare Fuel]]-ish [[Starfish Aliens|aliens]] and [[Eldritch Abomination|strange creatures]] for little reason.

* ''[[Girly]]'' features a lot of kitties. The creator has mentioned that he loves cats.

* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'''s author has mentioned a few times how cool he thinks it would be to have a Zombie Head On A Stick. This probably explains why the characters acquired one, have been dragging it around with them, and will defend it to the death, despite the facts that Z.H.O.A.S. (its name) adds nothing to the plot and the joke got old months ago.