Stock Shout-Outs

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Revision as of 21:23, 16 October 2016 by Robkelk (talk | contribs) (→‎Film)

A Shout-Out that pops up in a lot of places. An oddly specific Shout Out.

Apparently multiple authors independently noticed the same detail and decided to reference it in their own story. The fact that so many authors possess such a thorough knowledge of the original story goes to show just how influential the subject of the Shout-Out is.

Stock Shout Outs differ from Stock Parodies in two ways: They aren't played for laughs (beyond the inherent in-joke-esque nature of the common reference point) and they're usually blink-and-you'll-miss-it short.

Some are so famous that they've become tropes themselves.

The Other Wiki also has more information.

Subtropes: If an example fits into one of these subtropes, it should be on that page, not here.

Examples of Stock Shout-Outs include:


Film

Music

  • The phrase Welcome to the Jungle pops out everywhere.

Live-Action TV

  • 42: Most famous as the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, though it occurs over and over again in Lewis Carroll's works.
  • 23: Used in a similar way, as a reference to its appearance in conspiracy theories. (There even was a whole movie just about that...)or maybe just to A Tale of Two Cities.
  • 4 8 15 16 23 42: The Lost numbers, which notably include two numbers listed separately above.
  • "Be seeing you!" with a particular hand-to-eye gesture: The Prisoner
  • "That's the second-[adjective]-est [noun] I've ever seen!" from Get Smart
  • "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." from the Hulk.

Uncategorized

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. [pause] Time to die.