Homage

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Homage is the deliberate recreation of one work of fiction within the context of another. In the 21st century this is usually done for comedic effect (and frequently confused with parody), but in older works it is usually serious, paying homage to the feudal concept of homage while paying homage to an existing work. Sometimes it's both. A homage is an extended sequence, significantly more than a simple Shout-Out, but does not actually constitute a Crossover even when (as in the case of several 1980s/90s Brady Bunch homages) some of the original stars recreate their roles. (The memory of "A Very Brady Episode" of Day by Day, where an obviously pregnant Maureen McCormick reprised her role as "Marcia", comes to mind.)

"...And Rainbow Dash, who retains her own identity, wail taking queues from another represents the Element of: The Homage" —Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Camaraderie Is Supernatural, "The Elements of Parody"

Sometimes — especially when the homage is blatant, or is part of a comedy series — it's All Just a Dream. But sometimes it's a weird or haunting reflection of the original series that is a native part of the "reality" of the show in which it is found.

If a series is doing anything deliberately evocative of its own past then it is an Internal Homage.

See also: Actor Allusion, Homage Shot, Post Modernism, Shout-Out, Trapped in TV Land, Whole-Plot Reference.

Examples of Homage include:

Anime and Manga

• Keroro Gunsou is full of these, mainly references to Mobile Suit Gundam and other Humongous Mecha series for the older audience. Examples include Keroro being loaded into a suit a la Mazinger Z ("Pilder on!"), the use of the phrase "Sieg Keron!" (a nod to the phrase "Sieg Zeon!"), and an extended scene where Keroro does his impression of Char Aznable to impress visiting cadet Taruru (the dub even cites the episode they're spoofing: "To appreciate the next minute or so, watch Mobile Suit Gundam episode 12: 'The Threat of Zeon'"). Other, mainly older anime and manga series are paid homage to as well. A Neon Genesis Evangelion homage exploited the fact one of its characters shares the look and voice actor of Kaworu Nagisa. They hang a lampshade on their use of this in episode 24, where after the frogs and Kogoro disappear in the middle of a send-up of Kamen Rider, the following dialogue occurs:

Natsumi: What in the world was that? Fuyuki: It's probably some kind of parody...

• Haruhi of The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya pays tribute to Phoenix Wright at the conclusion of a murder mystery episode. During the same scene, Koizumi duplicates the mannerisms of Phoenix's rival, Edgeworth, and Mikuru copies poses from Phoenix's sidekick Maya.
• Hellsing
  • Hellsing Ultimate OVA: Konami Code
  • Seras and Alucard's guns qualify as well, having been named after Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from Dune and the assassin from The Day of the Jackal respectively, with the Baron himself and Edward Fox (and Bruce Willis as a crazy impostor) even making cameos in dream sequences.
• In an episode of Hayate the Combat Butler, Hayate gets stabbed by three blades. In two different points, the blades change. Each time, they appear to be swords wielded by the Humongous Mecha in the Super Robot Wars series. Really, Hayate, being a series filled to the brim with homages, does this all the time. Most blatantly whenever the homage has something to do with either of the anime's main sponsors (Konami and Geneon).
  • Two Words: Puppet Butler.
• Lucky Star will occasionally break into homage sequences of anything from Yu-Gi-Oh! to Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu to entire extended sequences straight out of Anime Tenchou.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex practically invented homages. If the episode isn't a homage to an American, French, or Japanese movie, it's a reference to its source material, the Ghost in the Shell graphic novel. Let's just look at it shall we?
  • "Jungle Cruise" is a homage to two American horror movies, one of them The Silence of the Lambs.
  • "Night Cruise" is a homage to Taxi Driver.
  • "Make Up" is a homage to Abre Los Ojos (the original version of Vanilla Sky).
  • "Poker Face" is a homage to Full Metal Jacket (which is even lampshaded with someone saying the story that was told sounded a lot like a movie they saw).
  • "Trans Parent" is a homage to Wings of Desire.
  • "Chain Reaction" is a homage to volume 4 of TGitS.
  • "Fabricate Fog" is another homage to volume 4 of TGitS.
  • "Endless Gig" has two references to GitS.
  • "Interceptor" has a homage to Blade Runner.
  • "Cash Eye" is a homage to Cat's Eye and Ocean's Eleven.
• Somewhere between homage, Internal Homage and Mythology Gag is a scene in the second episode of Digimon Savers where Masaru attempts to hide Agumon by walking him around underneath a box—much like Matsuda Takato from Digimon Tamers before him. Made even funnier in the dub, as Takato and Savers' Agumon are both voiced by Brian Beacock.
  • And due to censorship issues, an early episode with a BomberNanimon became a rather fitting sendoff for Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo.
• Excel Saga once did an entire episode Homage to Fist of the North Star.
• Naruto (example here), as well as plenty of other anime, contain fight scenes which (either through just plain luck or intentionally) look just like fight scenes from another piece of fiction.
  • Then there is this.
• Mega Man NT Warrior has two episodes in its second season devoted to these. One is a perfect homage to Speed Racer, and the final one of the season was one to Ghostbusters.
• Mouse, has entire chapters of the Manga devoted to recreating series such as Cat's Eye or Galaxy Express 999.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei is full of these of everything from Alias to Sailor Moon, in one episode each of the girls is murdered and their dead bodies positioned to look like characters from various anime.
• Oddly enough, SD Gundam, the Negative Continuity parody of Mobile Suit Gundam, had a Wacky Races homage.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is an explicit Getter Robo homage, but is full to bursting with others. There's a reason why people have said that the show parallels trends in the mecha genre:
  • The Action Prologue is an homage to Captain Harlock (especially the clanking noise the captain makes when moving), which lead to fans calling the figure "GA Rlock"
  • Several parts of the aquatic fight against Adiane where an homage to the fight against the aquatic angel from the eighth episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, most noticeably defeating the aquatic Gunmen by firing at it with battleship cannons at point-blank range and the cross-shape explosion it makes.
  • There's also the arms crossed pose that the Chouginga Gurren Lagann has when it appears, the look of the Lazengann, the 8th parallel work with Gunmen that look like Getter Robo, Mazinger Z, and other classic Humongous Mecha, having the first city of a rebuilding humanity around a giant robot ship, Simon holding Nia while covering her in his cloak, the famous "becoming your mech" visual, the Gurren Lagann's helmet.
  • And then there was Squidward
• Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt: One can argue that the entire series is just made of a never-ending series of homages...
• Pokémon once did an homage to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, believe it or not.
• One Piece's Impel Down seems to be built like Hell in The Divine Comedy.
• Yakitate!! Japan is so full of references and outright parodies to other series it's hard to list them all. Starting with Gundam over Detective Conan unto Naruto, also including minor series.
• In Mahou Sensei Negima, Kotaro's demon form was intended as a Homage to Inuyasha. There's also a minor character, the mage teacher Seruhiko, who was a Homage to Serpico of Berserk. Kentaro Miura even approved the character.
• Princess Tutu is filled to the brim with homages to famous ballets and operas. All the Japanese covers are based on a ballet, several episodes mimic plots of ballets or plays ("Giselle" and "Midsummer Night's Dream" being the most blatant), a large number of the dances performed in the series are based on choreography from productions of actual shows...the list goes on.
• Chapter 4 of Ito Junji's Yami no Koe appears to be an homage to fellow horror author Hideshi Hino. The two follow-up chapters reveal it's all just a dream, although the kid does seem to have supernatural powers that nonetheless rebound back on him badly.
• In Monster, Grimmer's favorite TV show The Magnificent Steiner which also serves as the basis for his split personality is clearly a homage to The Hulk.
• A two-part story in Ai Kora pays homage to The Kindaichi Case Files, complete with panels introducing the suspects and a mystery involving apparently supernatural causes.
• Basically, the whole story behind Shiki is a homage towards Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot.
• Highschool of the Dead is this for almost every zombie film ever made.
• The Duel Monsters game in Yu-Gi-Oh! started as a homage to Magic: The Gathering, but proved so popular, it became the focus of the entire series.

Comic Books

• Many comic book covers.
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Fan Works

• In Imperfect Metamorphosis‍'‍s side story, IM: Rhapsody of Subconscious Desire, Kaguya, Mokou and Ex-Rumia are trapped into Dream Land and meet The Zerg. Not a cross-over, because it's only a one-shot scene, and these things are directly coming from Kaguya's memories.
• The Celebrity Deathmatch Crack Fic Final Stand of Death has a lot of shout-outs to YouTubers watching and talking about what they're watching. It points out events from the show and other programs, like Fullmetal Alchemist and Mobile Suit Gundam.

Films -- Animation

• Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise has Shiro, a fictional astronaut in a fictional nation's space program, become the first man in space—launched on what looks an awful lot like a real-life Russian rocket.
• Up has numerous references to Star Wars throughout the climatic sequence in the dirigible.
• Chicken Run is one great big homage to The Great Escape.
• WALL-E paid some obvious homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The autopilot is clearly inspired by HAL, and the scene where the passengers learn to walk uses "Also Sprach Zarathustra".

Films -- Live-Action

• Doomsday is a scifi/action/thiller flick almost made of homages. The lead villain, Sol, has the same haircut as Wez from Mad Max 2, and leads a road gang to match. The director describes the hero's Eyepatch of Power as a Snake Plissken homage. The cannibal gang includes a random Baseball Fury. They also use a bus which pursues the heroes in a neat recreation of the attack of the Turnbull ACs from the same film.
• Slither is a scifi/horror/comedy flick almost made of homages of to gory B-Movie horror films.
• Pandorum is a scifi/horror/Thiller has loads of these as well.
• The fight scene between Nemesis and Alice near the end of Resident Evil: Apocalypse plays out almost exactly like the fight between Kirk and the Gorn in the Star Trek episode "The Arena". Both are fights that are forced on participants that don't want to fight each other. Both contain one combatant who's human, and another who's not human. Both contain a combatant who's fast and agile against one's that's large and strong. Both are a person fighting someone in a rubber suit. The part where Nemesis breaks off a pipe is almost an exact homage to when the Gorn breaks off a limb of a tree. It also ends nearly exactly the same, with the large, muscular one impaled through the chest (with a pipe rather than the diamonds in Star Trek), but refusing to finish him despite urgings from whoever forced the fight. The homage ends when rather than complimenting the human on the virtues of mercy, the fight's forcer instead chides the human for being weak.
• Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey has an homage to this fight as well, Lampshaded by having the episode playing on a TV in the background earlier in the film. In the battle with their evil robot doubles, they (briefly) fight for their lives on Kirk's Rock, where the Gorn fight was filmed.
• The Indiana Jones movies themselves are one big homage to the classic adventure films of the '30s and '40s.
  • The now-iconic "rolling boulder" sequence at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark was, according to George Lucas, an homage to a similar scene in the Carl Barks comic book The Seven Cities of Cibola.
  • The nuclear testing scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is an homage to the first draft of the Back to The Future script, in which Marty McFly manages to power the time machine, not with a bolt of lightning but with the radiation from an atomic blast. The entire fake town, complete with mannequins and a television playing the Howdy Doody Show, is ripped straight from the BttF script. Oh, and the time machine? Was originally, not a car, but a refrigerator.
• Ditto with Star Wars and the similar sci-fi serials of the time such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
  • The pod race from The Phantom Menace has quite a lot in common with the race in Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, not to mention the chariot race in Ben-Hur.
  • The plot of A New Hope is an homage to Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, right down to the Princess Escort Mission. Lucas even used similar Idiosyncratic Wipes.
• Similar to the WKRP example below, Polly Perkins' phoned-in report on the invasion of New York by robots in Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow bears a striking resemblance to the Hindenburg coverage and actually includes lines lifted directly from a similar scene in Orson Welles' radio version of The War of the Worlds. Just to add a little extra fillip, the robots emit a sound effect stolen from the Martians of the 1953 The War of the Worlds film.
• Mars Attacks!!. The flying saucers are modeled after the saucers in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and the War Room was made to look like the War Room in Dr. Strangelove. The aliens land in Parrumph, Nevada. That's an homage to Art Bell, who for many years broadcast Coast to Coast AM out of that city.
• Almost Famous contains two examples. The first is a scene where the band members think their airplane is going to crash—it's a played-for-laughs homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd. The poignant second example involves a musician passing out after he receives a shock from his microphone—this references Keith Relf of the Yardbirds, who actually did die in very similar circumstances.
• Play It Again, Sam is Woody Allen's homage to Casablanca.
• In Superman Returns, Superman rescues a runaway car (used as a diversion by Lex Luthor). The shot where Superman stands on the ground, leveraging the car in mid-air, is a direct homage to the cover of Action Comics #1, the first Superman comic book.

Literature

• Discworld:
  • Wyrd Sisters is a homage to Macbeth and Hamlet.
  • The play featured in Lords and Ladies is a homage to A Midsummer Night's Dream. A lampshade is hung on both of those.
  • Maskerade is an extended, if parodic, homage to The Phantom of the Opera.
• Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances are homages to Alexandre Dumas's D'Artagnan Romances (The Three Musketeers and sequels); the four main characters are Captain Ersatz Our Elves Are Better versions of the Dumas's protagonists, and the titles of The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, and The Viscount of Adrilankha correspond to The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After (with the time period scaled appropriately), and The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
• The first Hyperion book has a lot of these on top of the mixed Whole-Plot Reference to Keats' Hyperion and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (or maybe Boccaccio's Decameron). Each story the pilgrims tell is an Homage to one or more styles of literature. The Priest's Tale is an epistolary novel. The Soldier's Tale is high action military science fiction, a la Starship Troopers. The Poet's Tale is a mash up of fairy tales, darker elements intact. The Scholar's Tale is Old Testament Biblical. The Detective's Tale is Noir with elements of Cyberpunk. The Consul's Tale is a Shakespearean tragedy, mixing Romeo and Juliet with Hamlet.
• Martine Leavitt's Young Adult novel Calvin (which won the 2016 Governor General's Literary Award in Canada) is about a boy named Calvin and a girl named Susie setting off on an adventure with a talking tiger named Hobbes. Word of God confirms the homage. In part, the novel deconstructs the "Hobbes is a product of Calvin's imagination" theory.

Live-Action TV

• iCarly: "iBelieve in Big Foot" is a direct homage to Scooby Doo (further lampshaded by Freddie) sans the dog. There's 2 males and 2 females; they are investigating a certain creature; they have a vehicle; and also turns up that the said creature is actually a guy they know, in a costume.
  • Dan Schneider stated himself that Sabrina's thrashing of Carly's project in "iBeat the Heat" is a reference to Godzilla.
• The Brady Bunch episode from the last season of The X-Files. ("Sunshine Days", broadcast 5/12/02.) (Not to mention any number of other Brady Bunch episodes on sitcoms in the 1980s and 1990s.)
• In the episode "Visitors From Down The Street" of Crusade (the short-lived sequel to Babylon 5), the Excalibur discovers a world of English-speaking aliens with a UFO/conspiracy culture/mythology similar to that of late 20th-Century Earth—only humans are cast in the role of the saucerfolk! But it's the appearance of alien versions of Mulder and Scully (and Cancer Man) -- and the conspiracies around them—that turns the episode into a clever homage to and satire of The X-Files.
• The episode "Meltdown" of The Pretender is a homage to the film Reservoir Dogs, albeit with a more network-TV-friendly level of mayhem and an ending featuring The Cavalry.
• A season one episode of 8 Simple Rules has dad Paul (played by John Ritter) dreaming his daughters and the boy both are pining for are in an episode of Three's Company.
• One episode of 2point4 children consists largely of an homage to The Prisoner set in Portmeirion, Wales, complete with appropriate costumes and giant bouncing ball.
• "Countdown to Destruction", the season finale of Power Rangers in Space, contains a poignant homage to the "I Am Spartacus" scene of Spartacus, which may have earned the episode its fan-nickname of "Crisis of Infinite Rangers".
  • The very next episode, that being the premiere of Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, pays homage to a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with Blue Danube playing.
  • The Time Force premiere demonstrates the new suits' space-time abilities by having the Rangers Matrix-ically duck under bullets.
  • Of course, this show's been around long enough that by now it can make cultural references to itself:
    • SPD homages Time Force with occasional use of Bullet Time and sending 'destroyed' monsters to containment. Even one Ranger's battle cry was a homeage to Time Force, matching the title of the TF premiere. Also, one brand of Mecha-Mooks carries swords identical to those of the Time Force Rangers. Theories abound about how the organization in Power Rangers SPD evolves into the one in Time Force over the years.
    • Mystic Force and Overdrive each contain a Sealed Evil in a Can who says something akin to season one's famed "After ten thousand years, I'm free!" upon emerging. The evil in Mystic Force isn't connected (probably), but Overdrive's is.
    • Or they could be both referencing the opening credits of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, in which original sealed evil Rita Repulsa says the line.
    • Speaking of Rita, Mystic Force has the Mystic Mother, a sort of deity of Magic. In passing, she is said to have "been known as Rita in the dark days," implying that said character is the purified Rita. What's more, all footage of the character was dubbed-over sentai footage. This is possibly because the actress who portrayed that character, who also played the sentai equivalent of Mighty Morphin's Rita, had recently passed away.
• The "Connecticut" house set of Who's The Boss? was made to strongly resemble the Connecticut house in the last season of I Love Lucy, with only those changes that might have reasonably been made to a real house between 1959 and the mid-1980s.
• Scrubs addressed the constant comparisons between Dr. Gregory House of House and Dr. Cox by actually having an episode where Dr. Cox hurt his leg and had to walk with a cane while he was faced with three bizarre mysteries in the hospital. And one of those mysteries was even the same as the clinic case in the very first House episode! Also, the 100th episode "My Way Home" was riddled with references to The Wizard of Oz. There was also an episode that homaged the standard sitcom format, titled "My life in Four Cameras".
• Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Signs off with "Good night and good luck", in openly stated homage to Edward R. Murrow.
• The ending to the Doctor Who episode "Doomsday" is a homage to the ending of His Dark Materials trilogy. The setting is the same (beach) and the issue is also the same (two lovers about to be separated forever across different dimensions).
  • Also, the episode "The Stolen Earth" echoes the ending of West Side Story, when The Doctor and Rose see one another across a street and start running... You know where this is going.
• Fame! did a whole-episode homage to The Wizard of Oz, partly inspired by the fact that it filmed on the same soundstage where the 1939 movie was shot. (According to the cast, a last remaining fragment of the original yellow brick road was enshrined in the stage, and was shown to them with almost religious reverence.)
• Les Nesman's broadcast of the "turkey bombing incident" on WKRP in Cincinnati was a line by line homage to the famous "Martian Attack" sequence from Orson Welle's broadcast of War of the Worlds (which was itself inspired by the Real Life Hindenburg broadcast) right down to the abrupt cutoff.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "School Hard" is a homage to the original Die Hard, complete with Buffy sneaking around in the ceiling.
• The Stargate Atlantis episode "Vegas" is a homage to CSI.
  • We also gets a chestbuster scene (with an iratus bug) in episode "Doppelganger", with the characters mentioning the movie Alien by name.
• Stargate SG-1 has the episode "200" which little more than a series of homages to Star Trek, The Wizard of Oz, and Magnum, P.I. among others along with references to more. It should be noted that one of the producers, Brad Wright's portrayal of Spoof!Scotty was so spot on, his own parents didn't realize it was him.
• The Apocalypse storyline in Supernatural includes a demon named Crowley.
  • And another one called Alistair.
  • The aptly named episode "Monster Movie" was an homage to classic monster movies. It was filmed entirely in black and white and featured a shapeshifting villain who took the forms of a Mummy, a Wolfman, and Dracula.
• The season four finale of Monk, "Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty", was an homage to 12 Angry Men, with a b-plot and the ending making it avert Whole-Plot Reference.
  • Another episode, "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies," had a character who stuffed his dead mother's body and carried her from room to room.
  • The opening murder in "Mr. Monk Buys a House" looks suspiciously like the murder Tommy Udo committed in Kiss of Death.
• The confrontation on the sand bank in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie is straight out of Once Upon a Time in the West, even featuring the iconic music from the movie.
• Tons in Community. Example from just one episode, Modern Warfare:
  • The "ONE HOUR LATER" scene where Jeff wakes up echoes the same scene in 28 Days Later. It also has quite a similar feel to the ending of the first Resident Evil film.
  • The line "Stu-dy grooo-up! Come out and play-y-y!", a paraphrase of Luther's taunt in The Warriors. And it's used by a group of retro disco students who are very reminiscent of some of the film's weirder gangs.
  • Jeff's wardrobe, his anticipation of Britta trying to shoot him ("No paintballs, Hans?"), and his final retaliatory gesture at the Dean are all taken directly from Die Hard.
  • Chang's paint bomb plays out like the end of Predator.
  • Chang's entrance to the study room is straight out of a John Woo movie... minus the doves. Word of God says they didn't have the budget for them.
  • Abed's entrance was stolen from a certain leather-clad action girl.
  • Abed's also stole his goggles from Riddick.
  • The music cues come from the island.
  • "Come with me if you don't want to get paint on your clothes."
  • Shirley spouting bible verses while kicking ass? There are a couple of brothers from Southie she should meet.
  • Troy's football pads referencing all the way back to Mad Max 2.
  • The Brita/Chang scene results in two paintballs colliding, a straight from a scene in the 2009 film Wanted.
• One of the animated sequences from the Monty Python's Flying Circus episode "A Book at Bedtime" is a recreation of the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey... until the music winds down and the space station falls out of the sky and hits the ape on the head.
• In "Shitagi Nashi ...", the first-season finale of Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23, June shows Chloe a comic strip she supposedly drew (complete with Mary Sue versions of herself and a friend) in high school that seems like an homage to Teen Girl Squad.

Music

• "Leonard" by Merle Haggard, which pays homage to songwritter Tommy Collins, the pen name of Leonard Spies. Spies wrote several of Haggard's early big hits.
• The music video of "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood. The rampage scenes – where Carrie flies into a rage upon learning that her boyfriend had cheated on her – recalls Carrie's rampage in the movie (and 2002 remake) Carrie, in particular explosions and destruction on a small-town city street as Carrie walks calmly by.
• Barenaked Ladies' "Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel": "Slow Motion Walter the fire engine guy"
  • A use of a common Mondegreen for "Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky"
• Veruca Salt's "Volcano Girls": "Well, here's another clue if you please...the seether's Louise"
  • A parody/homage to the Beatles' "Glass Onion": "Well, here's another clue for you all...the walrus was Paul"
• The Blue Öyster Cult's Cult Classic album carries back cover art which is clear homage to Terry Pratchett's novel Reaper Man. Pratchett previously homaged the BOC by using their only British hit Don't Fear The Reaper as a running gag in his books - in dog-Latin, it is the motto of the extended Death family, Non Timetus Messor. Death, as a Reaper not to be feared, has a novel of his own in Reaper Man. Pratchett homage-references other BOC songs in the Discworld cycle; elements of the front cover of Cult Classic may also reference his work. (The two stained-glass windows in the weird chapel)
• Jimmy Eat World's "A Praise Chorus" contains the following verse, each line of which is a line from another song:

(Crimson and clover Over and over) Our house in the middle of our street, Why did we ever meet? Kick start my rock 'n' roll fantasy. Don't don't don't let's start, Why did we ever part? Kick start my rock 'n' roll heart!

• Motion City Soundtrack's "L.G. Fuad" takes lyrics from "Forget Me" by the Promise Ring, then lampshades it:

I want to thank you for being a part of my Forget-me-nots and marigolds And other things that don't get old Is it legal to do this? I surely don't know It's the only way I have learned to express myself Through other people's descriptions of life

• Stevie Wonder's "Master Blaster" is a homage to "Jammin'" by Bob Marley.
• Kimya Dawson's "My Rollercoaster": towards the middle of the song the chorus to Willie Nelson's "On The Road Again" get thrown in, and then for a while it becomes a series of nods to everything from Metallica to Bette Midler.
• The music video to David Bowie's "Look Back in Anger" pays homage to the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, with Bowie playing both the painter and the subject of the cursed painting.
• The song "I Like to Rock" uses both the riffs of The Beatles' "Day Tripper" and the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" and intertwines them.
• The video for Keri Hilson's "Pretty Girl Rock" is an homage to various African-American female singers throughout the years. They include Josephine Baker, wartime singers, The Supremes, Chaka Khan, Janet Jackson, TLC and Mary J. Blige.
• Inspired by a similar set of releases by Kiss, The Melvins once put out four solo EPs in the same year, which were credited to the band but titled after the member who who wrote and performed the music. Where the homage comes in is the artwork, which directly parodied the style of Kiss releases in question and had the Melvins logo stylized after that of Kiss. Compare The Melvins' King Buzzo with Kiss' Gene Simmons
• The Foo Fighters video "Walk" is a humorous retelling of Falling Down.
• Hanson's video for "Thinking 'Bout Somethin'" is a near shot for shot recreation of the "Shake A Tail Feather" scene from The Blues Brothers.
• The video for A1's version of "Take on Me" pays homages to Tron and The Matrix, complete with Bullet Time and Matrix Raining Code.

Tabletop Games

• The Necrons in Warhammer 40,000 started as a clear and blatant homage to the Terminator films: mysterious robotic skeletons, who carried on trying to kill you even if reduced to crawling torsos with no legs, and a special rule called "I'll Be Back". Later changes departed from this, focusing more on their image as impossibly ancient servants of even more impossibly ancient monsters. Essentially now a bunch of Ancient Evil Determinators with a lot of Implacable Man and Omnicidal Maniac along with rather too much scalpel imagery, they maintain the robo-skeleton and "I'll Be Back".

Toys

• As a Merchandise-Driven franchise with legions of rabid adult fans with long memories, Transformers tends to feature quite a lot of homages, to itself or to others, even in its toys (never mind in its plot-driven media). A simple example is when one toy is rereleased with a new paint job to look like something else (e.g., the mold for Revenge of the Fallen toy Ransack, who turns into a biplane, got a repaint into a robot named Divebomb...using the Red Baron's colors—it's particularly noteworthy that an early Fan Nickname for Ransack was Baron Ransack von Joy). Alternatively, given the number of names that are re-used, a character that has the name of a character from a different iteration of the franchise as a namesake might have design touches meant to emulate the older character. Revenge of the Fallen Bludgeon has two toys; one which is a repaint of an older mold, and another that is a screaming homage to a G1 character of the same name.
  • And the franchise not only homages itself: the character Cannonball's profile is an homage to the Dread Pirate Roberts, and Pyro's personality in the Generation 2 Redux one-shot is based on the Doctor

Video Games

• B. Orchid from Killer Instinct is practically a homage of Cheshire from DC Comics. If you think that is unbelievable, then check out the pictures of B. Orchid and Cheshire here and here.
• The opening cinematic for the Company of Heroes campaign looks a lot like the Omaha Beach landing in Saving Private Ryan... which it then subverts by having the boat full of men first seen by the player get mowed down, including the sergeant-type character who's the only one to have spoken so far in the game. Every WWII game produced after Saving Private Ryan does this. Call of Duty, Commandos, Medal of Honor, in fact the Frontline\Allied Assault games are essentially the game of the film, replete with a Tom Hanks soundalike commanding officer. Not surprising when the man behind the games is Steven Spielberg.
• World in Conflict Soviet Assault has the Russian player character named Romanov, the same name of a certain Premier of the Soviet Union from another wacky universe, although this could be coincidental as well.
  • Probably either a coincidence or yet another derival from the once-existed Romanov dynasty.
• Call of Duty 1 & 2 seem to owe a lot to The Longest Day.
• The (true) end cutscene of Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards is, in essence, a shortened recreation of the ending of the first Star Wars movie, from the heroes' near-escape of the enemy's hideout to said hideout's dithered explosion to the later awards ceremony wherein the heroes receive medals to the male lead getting a kiss from the female lead.
• World of Warcraft is full of homages, the most notable being pretty much the entire Un'Goro Crater zone, featuring:
  • Linken, main NPC of a long chain of quests inspired by The Legend of Zelda themes.
  • Larion and Muigin, using hammers to deal with a pest of plants, a clear Homage to Super Mario Bros..
  • Apes that often drop barrels for no real reason other than a Homage to Donkey Kong's origin.
  • The entire zone is full of references to "Lost World" type movies, including the Warcraft equivalents of Tyranosaurs, Pterodons and Dimetrodons.
  • The zone is also full of references to Land of the Lost, including NPCs with names similar to those on the show (the major travel hub run by Williden Marshal), the aforementioned dinosaurs, and red, green, yellow and blue crystals littering the landscape.
• Final Fantasy IX is full of explicit references and other various thematic connections to earlier games in the series.
• The story from Bomberman Hero was an obvious homage to Star Wars.
• The Katina mission from Star FOX 64 was an obvious homage to the movie Independence Day.
• Popular freeware game Hero's Realm is a distinct homage that harks back to the old school Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games and combines what they have to offer in one package. It flows together as smoothly as what an optimistic gamer would expect.
• Time Splitters is shock full of this. In Time Splitters 2 the level Siberia is an homage to GoldenEye. The level is set at a dam in Siberia, 1990. One might add that Free Radical are made up of the core team of GoldenEye and Time Splitters is regarded as the Spiritual Successor to that game. But it doesn't stop there. Neo Tokyo is set in a rainy Tokyo 2019, that is a copy of the style in Blade Runner (also set in 2019). The Machine Wars levels in Future Perfect are based off the Terminator franchise.
• Champions Online (and presumably the Tabletop Game it's based on) is a Homage to Silver Age Superhero Comics, bordering on Affectionate Parody in its lighter moments.
• Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice has, among others, a magichange skill of the Reaper monsters class which is identical to Starlight Breaker
• MadWorld is an obvious homage to Sin City and the ultra-violent black-and-white independent comics of the 80s which influenced it.
  • Sister game House of the Dead: Overkill is similarly an homage to "grindhouse" exploitation films.
• The freeware game Genetos is an homage to the entire genre of Shoot'em ups from Space Invaders to Radiant Silvergun and Rez.
• The Zeppelin in Ninja Gaiden Xbox heavily resembles the Hindenburg, and goes down in flames in a similar manner. "Oh, the humanity!"
• Though few appear in the game proper, the Crusader games had more than a few Homages and Shout Outs to other media of a similar bent, such as a terminal designated NCC-1701D, or a base of operations for the Resistance in Echo Sector.
• The Contra series has many homages to Alien, eg Giger-esque Womb Levels, facehuggers, the giant Xenomorph head miniboss, the "Queen Alien" in Super Contra and Contra 3, Xenomorph-type mooks in Super C's alien stage, and the Space Jockey skulls lining the walls in the same stage.
• Near the end of Resident Evil Code: Veronica there's a location that's a nearly identical replica of the main hall from the mansion of the original game. There's an in-plot explanation for this.
• A Hidden Object Game called Robinson Crusoe and the Cursed Pirates, created by a Russian developer, contains at least one homage to Monkey Island in each and every scene! The game goes so far as to start with the words "Deep in the Caribbean", have an undead pirate villain with a crew of ghosts, and ends with a cutscene where the two main characters are looking out at their new ship when the mainmast suddenly breaks off. Several scenes in the game are directly redrawn from the old VGA backdrops. The list goes on and on and on. The sheer number of homages is so vast, that it's likely tantamount to copyright infringement on a grand scale. Fortunately for the developers, Lucasarts has done nothing against it. Yet.
• Last Alert is a clear homage to Rambo.
• Sword of the Stars has the "Upstart Apes" scenario, which has been admitted by the creators to be strongly inspired by Imperium.
• La-Mulana is one big Homage to classic MSX games, particularly Konami's MSX games, the entire library of which appears as collectible items. The gameplay is principally based on Maze of Galious (with a secret Nostalgia Level based on it) and Castlevania (which is referenced in all the ways to upgrade Lemeza's whip).
• Baten Kaitos incorporates an extended homage to The Tower of Druaga in a sublevel with oddly familiar 8-bit look and sound. The "Golden Hero" near this area is implied to be Gilgamesh, and all the items you need to get through here are from that game.

Web Comics

• The Optimist pays homage to The Family Circus in this strip.
• The coach getting the protagonists name wrong in this episode ^{[dead link]} of Holiday Wars is an homage to Neil Gaiman's Coraline.
• The wandering stick figure protagonists of A Moment of Peace at one point encounter adventurers from the Kingdom of Loathing and an eyeless stick figure they call the Blind Philosopher who is clearly a reference to xkcd.
• This strip of The Order of the Stick strip is an Homage to the Monty Python's Flying Circus "Cheese Shop" sketch. Notice there's a dead parrot and a python at the bottom. Note that the name of that particular strip is "It's Not a Gaming Session Until Someone Quotes Monty Python", itself a reference to gamers' familiarity with those works.
• In a very recent page of YU+ME: dream, the author/artist made a Homage to a Buffy the Vampire Slayer character known as the Cheese Man.
• Circumstances of the Revenant Braves contains a number of homages, notably to Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu and Ace Attorney in the first few chapters.
• The-FAN had this one scene Honoring G0-T0's entry from Knights of the Old Republic 2.
• A variety of homages appear at times throughout Bittersweet Candy Bowl. Notable targets include Pokémon and Feel the Magic.
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja featured a Flashback to a group of dinosaurs who became intelligent and landed on a planet. The last panel features the main character of Dinosaur Comics.
• El Goonish Shive has the demonic duck who looks very similar to a major character in Goats, the comic strip by Jonathan Rosenberg.
  • Grace's Omega form looks very similar to Naruto's Kyubi forms.
    • Psst. It's... "Very hush-hush, you know".

Western Animation

• The Powerpuff Girls does this a few times. The episode "Boogie Frights" contains an extended sequence based on the Death Star run in the original Star Wars. The episode "I See a Funny Cartoon in Your Future" was done in the style of Rocky and Bullwinkle. "Meet the Beat-Alls" pays homage to several Beatles films (in particular Yellow Submarine and Let It Be) as well as the older Beatles cartoons.
• An episode of Dexter's Laboratory was done as an episode of Wacky Races, complete with an opening sequence based on that of Wacky Races, and a narrator who was a sound-alike for the late Dave Willock, the narrator on the original show. Another episode was done as Speed Racer. Yet another was done is the style of The Pink Panther cartoon series, complete with silent characters, jazz music, and DeeDee doing the panther's unique walk.
• Family Guy is absolutely built on these.
• The Simpsons also has several, from time to time, albeit mostly during the couch gags and/or the non-continuity "Treehouse of Horror" episodes.
  • During one DVD commentary, the song Homer sings to the tune of The Flintstones is described as an "homage", to which the reply by writer Mike Reiss is "Yes, homage: French for theft."
  • Near the end of one episode, a captured cat burglar tells the townspeople that he buried a large amount of money under a giant T. Cue the It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Homage—complete with appropriate music. And Phil Silvers in his car.
• One episode of Tiny Toon Adventures featured a parody of the film Voyage of the Kon-Tiki, complete with a "making-of documentary" parody to fill out the second half of the episode.
  • "Ahh, mango juice" THUD!
• Codename: Kids Next Door has done several of these. Some of them, especially any homages to Star Wars (in "Snowing" and "Elections"), are so close to the originals that they verge on copyright infringement. There's also one (A.R.C.H.I.V.E.) that's an homage to The Animatrix of all things.
  • Incidentally, it was once posted on their blog that they had to scrap a homage to "The Lorax" for being too close to the original.
• The recent Johnny Test episode "Johnny Dukey Doo" is, as you can probably tell, a spoof of your typical Scooby Doo episode, right down to the Laugh Track and "if it wasn't for you meddling kids!" line. This is lampshaded several times, when Johnny remarks that "he's seen this somewhere before".
  • A later episode homages Tom and Jerry.
  • Don't forget the two Tinymon episodes. They even made the antagonist's name sound like Ash Ketchum!
• ReBoot:
  • In the first episode, Bob and Phong play a tennis-esque game using a floating disc and energy-paddles on their hands and feet. Then the camera angle becomes a view from above, and it's instantly obvious that the game is Pong.
  • Another episode, "Number 7", was an homage to The Prisoner, complete with farcical trial scene, seesaw-camera-chair, and use of the phrases "Who is Number One?" and "Be seeing you".
  • The third season also had an episode (written, appropriately enough, by D.C. Fontana) that was an homage not only to classic Star Trek (including a log entry, a tricorder, and original series sound effects) but also superhero teams such as the Legion of Super-Heroes; the death of their leader (who acted and spoke suspiciously like William Shatner overemoting) was due to having something dropped on him... and giving a version of Spock's final lines from The Wrath of Khan.
  • In fact, the third season was full of these, including references to The Six Million Dollar Man, Braveheart, Xena, Mars Attacks!, and more.
• Pinky and The Brain did plenty of whole-episode homages, including ones for The Third Man, Winnie the Pooh, Around the World in Eighty Days, and The Prisoner.
  • TV show doing a homage to a stage musical: Pinky and The Brain includes an episode parodying most of the memorable songs in the musical "Man of La Mancha".
• The South Park film, "Bigger, Longer, and Uncut", is structured with numerous homages to the structure and musical style of the musical Les Misérables. In fact, South Park does this a lot.
  • "Starvin' Marvin" contains a rather obvious spoof of Braveheart before the big fight between the townsfolk and the mutant turkeys.
  • "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery" is a spoof of a typical episode of Scooby Doo.
  • The episode "Pip" is a slightly warped Whole-Plot Reference to Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.
  • The entire fight sequence from "Cripple Fight" is lifted—move for move—from the alley fight sequence in John Carpenter's They Live!.
  • Season 8 Ep 1 "Lets Fighting Love" is a homage to ninja anime shows.
  • Season 5 Ep 9 "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" features Cartman & Osama in a homage to Bugs Bunny & Elmer Fudd cartoons.
  • The Wizard of Oz in "It's Christmas In Canada".
• The series Duck Dodgers does this regularly.
  • One example involves a Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer lookalike Martian ship, features a version of the Death Star trench run, and even has Marvin complaining about people getting themselves killed trying to recreate the scene. Later, just to make sure that no-one missed the reference, the deceased Duck Dodger and Space Cadet appear at the end as glowing blue ghosts wearing Jedi robes.
  • Another notable episode features an uncannily spot-on parody of Samurai Jack.
  • Another one is in the "Fudd" episode it ends with a huge The Wizard of Oz homage. The icing on the cake is that Duck Dodgers breaks the fourth wall and informs the audience "This is not copyright infringement, it's a tribute" when they dress up as the head Fudd's guards (who even do the Winkie chant from the 1939 movie).
• Animaniacs also did these. The hilarious Who's On Stage scene is a clear homage to the original Abbott and Costello sketch. Also, Rita and Runt's version of Les Misérables.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Season 1 episode "The Deserter" seems to be an homage to Apocalypse Now, what with the ex-elite soldier leading a guerilla resistance in the jungle and being spoken of in nigh-worshipful tones by his follower. It would probably be a little too much to expect the line "I love the smell of firebending in the morning," but other than that the resemblance is, if not uncanny, at least enough to make one think.
  • Episode "The Great Divide": the Zhang leader's story is expressed in an animation style strikingly similar to Dead Leaves.
  • A later episode was probably an homage to The Rashomon Gate.
• Recess has a few homages to Hogan's Heroes, one episode going so far as to take the pilot episode of Hogan's Heroes and adapt it to the playground. Similarly, TJ and Hogan both have a trademark hat and jacket and walk into the principal/warden's office with fairly regular ease and often never getting into trouble.
• Histeria! did a few theme songs parodying the intro sequences to other TV shows, including The Addams Family, The Simpsons, and I Spy. One episode also had a framing device featuring the characters in a Star Trek setting.
• In the Teen Titans episode "Revolution", British supervillain Mad Mod took over America and turned it into a Britain heavily inspired by the style of Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam. They even threw in the crushing foot!
• The Transformers Animated episode Decepticon Air is an Homage to both Con Air and the first Die Hard movie, complete with Optimus using the explosives down the elevator shaft and the "air vent rant" scene.
• Several episodes of Code Lyoko contain direct Homages to various movies:
  • Alien in episode "End of Take";
  • Terminator in episode "The Robots";
  • The Matrix in episode "Ghost Channel";
  • Groundhog Day in episode "A Great Day";
  • Dawn of the Dead in episode "Attack of the Zombies";
  • The Birds in episode "The Pretender".
• In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "New Kids in Town", in which Brainiac travels back in time to kill Clark Kent before he can become Superman, a scene set in a diner is lifted almost whole from the bar scene in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
• Futurama features a homage to one thing or another in almost every other episode.
  • In "Brannigan, Begin Again", Zapp and Kif are thrown out of the military and have to live like hobos on the streets. Zapp dresses up in cowboy leather clothing and hustles on a street corner, to the tune of "Everybody's Talkin' At Me". The entire montage is a straight Homage to Midnight Cowboy.
  • Bender's B-Plot in "Mars University" is based directly on National Lampoon's Animal House, though it mixes in various parodies of the 80's era college frat film genre as a whole.
  • "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love", where Fry Plays Cyrano for Dr. Zoidberg. Of course here Fry is not so fortunate when the lady decides that she wants him instead—she's a hideous Starfish Alien—so the plot shifts gears and we're suddenly watching Amok Time.
  • "A Flight To Remember" is a retelling of the story of Titanic... IN SPACE!
  • The episode "Fry and the Slurm Factory".
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Return of Harmony, Part 2" ends with an almost shot-to-shot homage to the ending of Star Wars: A New Hope.
  • "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" has a musical number that homages "Trouble in River City" from The Music Man, right down to the crowd chanting "Cider! Cider! Cider!" like the original song's "Trouble! Trouble! Trouble!"