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It's not just the Ghast, that eerie Enderman noise you hear right before it teleports and lunges at you traces back to the same batch of cat recordings the developers used for other mobs. Layer and pitch-shift a startled cat enough times and apparently you get one of the most feared sounds in the entire game.
The game gets a proper appearance in the 2010 film Kick-Ass, another sign of how quickly it became shorthand for gaming culture at the time.
When Steve mutters "Hail Hydra" to get the scepter off Sitwell, it's not just a throwaway gag - it's a direct nod to the Secret Empire comic run, where the real Steve Rogers turns out to be a sleeper agent for Hydra and uses that exact phrase to prove his loyalty.
Cory Walker, who drew the earliest issues of the comic alongside Kirkman, didn't just hand the property over and walk away. He came on board as lead artist and executive producer for the show, working to make sure the animated designs still felt true to his original linework.
When Ezio first meets his uncle Mario Auditore, Mario greets him with "It's-a-me! Mario!", a direct lift of the first line spoken by Mario in Super Mario 64.
The game invents a fictional pre-war tech company called Macrosoft, whose operating systems get named things like Winblows 57, Fenestra '98, and Wyndoze 99. It's a not-at-all-subtle jab at Microsoft Windows, and the kind of joke that ages perfectly for anyone who's ever had a computer crash on them.
The razor-blades-in-the-cap-peak trick that gives the show its name is probably a myth. Razor blades were a genuine luxury item for working-class Birmingham lads in that era, and the idea seems to trace back to a novel called A Walk Down Summer Lane rather than anything the actual gang did.
Long before he was Miles' interdimensional headache, The Spot was Dr. Jonathan Ohnn, a scientist working for Wilson Fisk back in a 1984 comic run. Fisk had him trying to reverse-engineer Cloak's teleportation powers, and it went about as well as these things usually do, leaving Ohnn permanently covered in portal-spots after a lab accident gone wrong.
The Distant Lands special "BMO" leans hard into classic sci-fi and fantasy references. When BMO and Olive travel through the Drift, the colorful lights are a direct homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and if you look closely at BMO's insides, there's a tiny medal and diploma tucked next to their heart, mirroring the gifts the Wizard gives to the Tin Man and Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
The recurring flames that seem to follow Tommy Shelby around aren't just moody set dressing. Season two director Colm McCarthy has confirmed it's meant to draw a straight line between Tommy's criminal path and where it's ultimately taking him, spiritually speaking.
