Nintendo/Shout Out

• Nintendo games heavily reference each other, ranging from a Yoshi doll in The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening to Arwings as furniture in Animal Crossing.
• Not to mention the huge Shout-Out to Nintendo's franchises put together as a Fighting Game known as Super Smash Bros.
• Animal Crossing is pretty much chock full of references to other Nintendo games. The one for the GameCube (i.e. the first one released outside of Japan) had a Pokémon Pikachu villagers would sometimes request from other villagers, as well as items like the previously mentioned Arwing, a Master Sword, and a hidden set of Super Mario Bros.-themed furniture. Not to mention that the game borrowed some sound effects from Super Mario Bros., like the familiar coin sound representing Bells, the game's currency. The same sound would also play when hitting rocks with money hidden in them, which would change to the 1-Up sound effect as the amount of money increased. Wild World for the DS added even more, like a Triforce and more hidden items, like a Blue Falcon, Pikmin, and a Metroid. Both games also have a blue bench with the Nintendo logo, with it being hidden in the original and being an ordinary item at Tom Nook's store in Wild World.
  • In a non-Nintendo-related example, a blue eagle townsperson named Pierce has the Verbal Tic "hawkeye".
  • All three iterations of Animal Crossing have a frog villager named Jeremiah, a reference to the Three Dog Night song "Joy to the World".
  • Lots of Animal Crossing characters make specific references to Zelda, for some reason. "Perky" type girls in Wild World will sometimes tell you how they traveled to a nameless "far-off land," where they met "a cute boy with green clothes and a Magic Boomerang." In the original, the sailor Gulliver talks about one of his various girlfriends, who allegedly lives in Hyrule. Hyrulian Loach, anyone?
• A traditional Shout-Out in the Kirby series is Kirby donning Link's cap when copying the Sword ability, even in the anime. In addition, his yo-yo ability could be a Shout-Out to EarthBound. Not to mention that one item you can find in Great Cave Offensive is a Mr. Saturn. Also, the Great Cave Offensive is chockfull of shout outs, including: A Mario coin and green shell, a Screwball, a glass slipper, a bucket with an M (or W) on it, Captain Falcon's helmet, the Master Sword, a shield and the triforce, and Kong's Barrel. And his "Fighter" form wears a red headband. Especially true in Super Star, where he actually can do a Shoryuken, and in Squeak Squad, where he can pull off a Hadouken.
• In Kirby's Dream Land 3, one of the level objectives is to defeat a bunch of Metroids^[1]. Samus herself rewards you with a heart star for doing so. She even takes off her helmet for '100% completion'.
• Occasionally in the SNES version of Donkey Kong Country 3, you can enter Wrinkly's Save Cave and find Wrinkly Kong playing a Nintendo 64. The music in the background when this happens is an arrangement of the music that plays inside Peach's castle in Super Mario 64.
• Mario characters are drawn on the walls on Wuhu Island in Wii Fit Plus. In the Jogging Plus game you have to remember which one you passed. The ocean liner docked off Wuhu Island? As revealed in Wii Sports Resort, it's called the Queen Peach. And in Sports Resort's Island Flyover game, there's the sound of someone in the Hill Village playing Super Mario Bros. on the NES.
• The icon for the Links club in the portable Mario Golf games is a recolored Triforce. This doubles as a Stealth Pun.
• Zelda:
  • One rather bizarre reference occurred in The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games. In the linked game, Zelda gets kidnapped and you have to save her...by going through a side-scrolling area with lots of ladders and rolling fireballs. In other words, Link has to play Donkey Kong.
  • In The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, there are the characters Thelma and Louise the bartender, and her cat Louise. Granted, her in-game name is Telma, but it's because Japanese doesn't really have a "th" sound. The name should be "Thelma", it was just mistranslated.
  • The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple has the 4 Poe sisters who are named Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
  • The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks, according to Eiji Aonuma, was inspired by Japanese children story The Tracks Go On, a tale he once read to his son.
  • One of the items Link gets to use in Spirit Tracks is a whip. Upon closer examination, it has a snake motif, rather like the rope snake of Mother 3.
  • Zelda games often contain numerous shoutouts to each other, for example, in Majora's Mask, the various members of the Indigo-Gos are playing musical themes from The Legend of Zelda and The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past in their rooms.
  • The Ancient Cistern from The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword has a design and concept that has been closely compared to the events of the Japanese story The Spider's Thread.
  • Koji Kitagawa, one of the developers of Skyward Sword, said in an Iwata Asks interview that the Ancient Robots were modeled after the Dogu clay figurines, a commonplace treasure from the Jomon period of Japan.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
  • When the brothers are asked to escort Princess Peach through Teehee Valley, she asks, "Won't you take me to...Little Fungitown?", a reference to the 1980 song "Funkytown" by Lipps, Inc.
  • In Yoshi Theater, you can see a poster with Kirby on it that says, "Kirby Story". Other posters include The Legendary Starfy and Wario Ware.
  • Starbeans Cafe is a play on Starbucks, obviously. Olimar (who dubs Mario "Marlio") and his Pikmin, Samus, Link, Wario (who calls himself a guest star), Fox, Peppy and Slippy, and even an Excite Bike racer were planned to appear and give the Mario Bros. useful items. The items were still used in-game, but the names were changed.
• Super Mario Galaxy:
  • The game features an in-game storybook with an art style noticeably similar to the illustrations from The Little Prince. Many people had commented on how Super Mario Galaxy was oddly reminiscent of the book before its release.
  • There's also a small mechanical planetoid in the Buoy Base Galaxy that looks like a Pokeball. Also, at some point during the Space Junk Galaxy, Mario lands on Olimar's ship.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show reference in Mario Party 8: During Bowser's Warped Orbit, if a player lands on a Reversal Space, Bowser mentions doing "the crime warp".

1. ↑ with Kirby's ice attack, naturally