Shout-Out/Web Comics

This page lists Shout-Outs seen in webcomics.

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• El Goonish Shive
• Gunnerkrigg Court
• Homestuck
• Megatokyo
• The Order of the Stick
• Precocious
• Sabrina Online
• Square Root of Minus Garfield

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• In Holiday Wars, April Fools' Day makes a shoutout to Gilmore Girls, as seen in this strip
• The April Fool's comics at Shortpacked! involve a Shout Out both subtle and obvious. They use the same narrative structure as Dinosaur Comics, but with the panels arranged vertically.
  • This Shortpacked! strip may well be a Shout Out to? us.
  • And then there's this familiar-looking coffee house.
    • And a double Shout-Out here and here between Questionable Content and Shortpacked!. On the same day.
    • And a further Shout-Out to Questionable Content here. See the AnthroPC?
  • The quantum coffee making dinosaur from Questionable Content makes and appearance in The Whiteboard here.
  • The entire previous strip is also a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Adam's law, as well as the sperm whale scenario. This is just one of of many; "Beeblebrox's Gambit" was mentioned in an early strip, for one.
• The top row of panels in this page of Erfworld is formatted like a Partially Clips (Rob Balder's other webcomic) strip.
  • And, given the nature of Erfworld, it is easier to count pages that don't have shoutouts to something, explicit or otherwise.
    • One troper lost a bet about five pages without a shout out, because he didn't recognize Sergeant Schlock from Schlock Mercenary in this strip and the Leeroy Jerkins; but at least he had chicken.
  • This strip features a cameo by the Weird Sisters.
• Silent Hill: Promise: The heroine has a Problem Sleuth poster on her bedroom wall. Promise borrows its interactive format from MS Paint Adventures.
• Girl Genius: Observe the advertisements at the bottom of this strip, as well as the next.
  • Also, look at Airman Higgs' hat here and here. Given Moxana and Tinka, Rozen Maiden must be deliberate.
  • In Volume 7, Page 71, in the Heterodyne Crypt, there is a grave marked only "Zod"
  • Look at the Walking Boxes (luggage, anyone?) here. -- Terry Pratchett strikes again!
  • The nefarious Prince Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus is visually based on Phil Foglio's fellow webcomic artist and Dragon magazine alum Aaron Williams, and his servant Nod is Williams's signature character, Nodwick.
    • Also, Aaronev's dogsbody Artacz, who looks like a younger version of Artax from Nodwick, only with a shorter moustache.
  • check out the gauntlet of Gil's outfit here. Link much?
    • More Ganondorf to me.
  • Theopholous is trying to track down his father's lost temple in India, which somehow involves finding the "eye of the snake eater."
  • This strip has Major Resetti of the First Subterranean Mecha Mole Brigade.
  • Fairly blatant reference to Metroid and the whole Samus Is a Girl thing here.
• Red Mage of Eight Bit Theater has a universe-destroying spell called "Ice-9". This is a triple shout out to the also dangerous substance from the Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, level-nine spells in Dungeons & Dragons, and the simple naming system in early Final Fantasy games (Ice-1, Bolt-2, Fire-1, etc.).
  • 8BT also has an archer captain... With a second-in-command called Commander T'Pol.
  • Black Mage's HADOKEN!
  • After a few episodes of the second season of Heroes aired, Black Mage asked "Did getting skewered through the chest somehow (and nonsensically) remove all my powers?" Thankfully, he did not proceed to turn up in Mexico.
    • The comic referenced Heroes one more time.
  • Thief and Red Mage are betting on whether Black Mage's internal dia/monologue will last five or ten minutes:

Red Mage: Go ten, Go ten, go!
Thief: I'm more of a Gohan guy.

• • When Thief stole his class change from the future the title of the strip was Thief of Time.
  • From this strip:

Red Mage: Black Mage, initiate Plan 9.
Black Mage: From Outer Space?
Red Mage: The same.

• • • From the same strip:

Kary: I'm living fire. You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?
Red Mage: You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did.

• • Black Mage once mentioned that he used to like black robes, but "they were killed by that play, The Magics."
  • "So we've struck him down only to make him become more powerful than we could possibly imagine?!"
  • the title of this comic is a shout out to the first Ghostbusters film.
  • Early on there were numerous references to old Simpsons dialogue.
    • Dental plan!
  • The film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, gets more than a few gags lifted from it. Later Thief gets turned into a toad...
  • Darko takes the form of Magus to talk to Black Mage.
  • Undead Dinosaur Comics
  • Is it just me, or should FFVII fans find this scene disturbingly familiar?
  • the opening segment of the epilogue is an obvious shout out to Kingdom Come
  • And in one strip, prior to a mass stabbing, Red Mage tells the victim that the Light Warriors are "gonna get Ides of March on your ass."
  • In this strip when Drizz'l describes the true guardian of Marsh Cave, Black Mage imagines Trogdor.
  • Fans of a certain other game series should find Fighter's helmet very familiar.
  • And in this strip:

Red Mage: Love, hate, clouds, *thud*.

• • This strip makes another Family Guy reference - one Black Mage hilariously subverts.
  • The Final Boss, Chaos, has Fomortiis' head.
  • When Red Mage tells Fighter to "Make your swords as things unto chainsaws", the card he uses to do it is an Exalted charm-tree card; the name and effect refer to a (now fixed) exploit with Exalted's Glorious Solar Saber charm where you could theoretically conjure a sword capable of making infinite attacks in a single second, which fans affectionately called the Glorious Chainsaw Method.
  • The strip where Dr Swordopolis asks Fighter "Did you choose the sword, or did the sword choose you?" is titled "A Shout-Out to All You Web-Heads Out There", presumably referencing J. Michael Straczynski's "Did the spider choose you?" storyline.
  • In the Epilogue, Akbar's Not-Useless Tools has among its implements for sale a buster sword and gunblade, while one of the notices Fighter reads on the quest board is a recruitment notice for SOLDIER (Black Mage's response? "Lame").
  • And than there was this comic which referred to the too short-lasting Ninth Doctor Who along with the famous Sixth.
  • There's also the title of episode 158: Unfamiliar Ceiling
• The webcomic Freaks N Squeeks has a boy-genius mouse whose full name (used only once) is "Albert Jeremy Nonn". In case you don't get how that's a shout-out, try sounding out just the first syllable of each name.
• Ctrl-Alt-Del featured a character strikingly similar in appearance to Tyler Durden from the movie Fight Club speaking for the character Ethan with the line "he fell down some stairs" to explain to a doctor the reasoning behind some suspicious facial trauma.
  • Similarly, there's a strip where Ethan imagines himself in a "happy place"—a frozen cave with Ted's hated pet penguin, and a giant mallet. The penguin's even panicking and thinking, "...slide?"
  • To The Big Bang Theory in this strip.
• In Freefall, an early strip has Helix caring for a pair of rabbits that, unbeknownst to him, Florence intends to eat. He names them Bun-Bun and Kevin.
• A handpuppet of Grace from El Goonish Shive can be seen in this filler comic of The Wotch.
• See if you can spot the sneaky visual Shout-Out in this Bigger Than Cheeses strip. (Answer: That's unmistakably a Gary Larson cow.)
• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Gordito quotes part of The Gunslinger's Creed, which convinces Dan to allow him to keep his revolvers. Dark Smoke Puncher points this out, which Gordito responds by noting that he knows an awful lot about The Dark Towers.
  • One Story Arc involved the good doctor going through an ancient temple. Shout Outs to Legends of the Hidden Temple and The Legend of Zelda were inevitable.
• This ^{[dead link]} installment of Jack. The same arc shouts out to Redwall again with the fact that Sue is in "Saint Ninian's Hospital", and another occurs in Buster Charlie's personal Heaven.
• Jayden And Crusader frequently references other webcomics including the Wotch, the Wotch Cheer, Misfile and Questionable Content
• SERGOM has a nice reference to the current Twix ad campaign.
• In the Marvel comic Blaze of Glory: The Last Ride (essentially a "whatever happened to...?" focusing on Marvel's Wild West characters, specifically Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, Outlaw Kid, Gunhawk, and others) a young boy excitedly rattling off the names of his dime-novel heroes mentions the name "Jeb Kent" - a character from the DC series The Kents.
  • Oh, and the large number of characters with "Kid" in their nickname is humorously Lampshaded within that issue; someone runs into the bar where they are drinking and calls out "Hey, Kid!" and they all turn and say, "Yeah?"
• In No Rest for The Wicked, the cat from "Puss in Boots" is named Perrault.
  • Also, Red tells Perrault about a plan to get through gates: "Your huffing and puffing wouldn't blow it down."
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob is full of these, including references to Bugs Bunny, Mr. Magoo, Pepe Le Pew, The Transformers, Pinky and The Brain, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python, Sesame Street, Barney and Friends, You Can't Do That on Television, Cosmos, Martin and Lewis, Bob and Ray, Little Richard, Marcel Marceau, Mr. T, Richard Nixon, Che Guevera, Bloom County, Peanuts, Terry and the Pirates, Norb by Pinkwater and Auth, Melonpool, Zortic, Zeera the Space Pirate, My Little Pony, Tenchi Muyo!, Ultraman, Where's Waldo?, Metropolis, Gamera, Frankenstein, Indiana Jones, Return of the Jedi, Clash of the Titans, Heavy Metal, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Last Unicorn, The Little Prince, Zork, The Legend of Zelda, Atari, Izod, Pepsi and Penn State University (where the strip originated).
  • The spaceship quiz featured spaceships from Cowboy Bebop, Flash Gordon, Doctor Who, Josie And the Pussycats In Outer Space, Doctor Snuggles, and 3-2-1 Penguins!!
• In Wily's Defense has tons and tons of shout outs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just about anything else by Joss Whedon, Ace Attorney, Max Payne, 24, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda, EarthBound, Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Sonic the Hedgehog, Don Henley, Farscape... and that's just off the top of my head.
• The Fleetway Sonic the Comic had several elements of Knuckles' floating Island clearly inspired by Laputa Castle In the Sky, most notably the robots.
• Sinfest's inspiration by Calvin and Hobbes is made obvious in this early comic strip.
• Torg from Sluggy Freelance is named after the character Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate.
  • The elftrooper line from this Sluggy Freelance strip is a shout out to A New Hope.
• Super Stupor is pretty blatant when they do a shout out to the TV Tropes Wiki itself, in this strip.
• In this strip from Muertitos, Lafcadio hides in a closet amongst a pile of plush alien toys, including Lum Invader, Marvin the Martian, ALF, King Nikochan, Dr. Zoidberg, and Sgt. Keroro.
• DMFA references The Princess Bride here.
• A 2005 Antihero for Hire mentions "the Eccleston effect forming across the D-W matrices".
• VG Cats rips off The Colbert Report, complete with Stephen himself threatening to sue them for it.
• Lots found in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Fan Web Comics by Entropy Max, including, but not limited to, Neon Genesis Evangelion (sample), Suzumiya Haruhi (sample), Doraemon, Astro Boy (sample), and Dai Mahou Touge (sample).
• In Everyday Heroes, the bio pages for Dolly Bird and G-Nat mention that their father was a genetic engineer known as the Somewhat-Below-Average Evolutionary (a Shout-Out to Marvel Comics' High Evolutionary). Another episode features three consecutive panels of Shout-Out references:
  • First, the strip is set in Kurt Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis.
  • Second panel features Mell Kelly from Narbonic, and the Muzak is from the song "Wind Beneath My Wings". ("Did I ever tell you you're my hero?")
  • Third panel has a sign labelled "Sciuridae Labs", a reference to El Goonish Shive.
• This strip of Slightly Damned shouts out to The Legend of Zelda and Ace Attorney.
  • There are also more subtle Ace Attorney shout-outs with some of the speech bubbles fading to red at the bottom when a character is angry.
• This strip from WCI High features a shout-out to Bambi Meets Godzilla.
• Questionable Content is also fond of Shout Outs at times. Most prominent victim is probably Dune (The booze is life!) though also animes are referenced at times, such as a crazy chick on vespa hitting men at random.
  • There's also this shout-out to Evangelion over here
  • Two in this strip; obviously there's the AnthroPC shop called Idoru (Literature), but also "Hott Topik" is selling troll horns.
• This strip of Dominic Deegan, with "Ghost in the Spell" as an obvious shout-out to Ghost in the Shell.
• Lightbringer does it a lot. Main character quetes Watchmen, his friend once dressed-up as a spoiler, and when he asked another character about how can he be sure he don't kill anybody, the answer he get was Cassandra Cain
• Here Schlock the mercenary travels in "A bright, blue box, nice and inconspicuous" which "looked bigger from the inside."
• This Dinosaur Comics contains a Shout Out to this Perry Bible Fellowship.
• Too Much Information has plenty of sci-fi refs, but the serious Shout-Out is given by Gina Gibs, the mother of main character Ace (who actually is The Ace). Years ago we learned she spoke lots of dialects of four Oriental languages, and has served in the Air Force in Korea as a translator when Ace was little. Then we learned she picked up some other languages 'when she was bored', like Arabic. Then she re-enlisted in the Air Force at the height of the Iraq War. What does she really do for the Air Force? Something else entirely.
• Nerf Now's news post here: "Sigh. Times are tough."
• Early in the "A World Without Piffany" arc in Nodwick, the hapless henchman plummets between realities... passing, as he does, a police box with a scarf stuck in the door. The author, Aaron Williams, seems to like Who shoutouts, since he has also had an elven healer mistakenly refer to Piffany as "Romana", and then offer her a jelly baby.
• Xkcd strip "Qwertial Aphasia" has the Alt Text "If this were SMBC, the alt-text drawing thingy would be a giraffe hooker fluttering her eyelashes." The following day, Zach did just that.
  • The Alt Text for this strip contains one to Cryptonomicon.
  • The "Swine Flu" strip has one Twitter message saying, "How long until the Swine Flu reaches me here in Madagascar?" and another from Questionable Content's Hannelore.
• Sandusky contains multiple classic rock references.
• 21st Century Fox is full of various references and shout outs, to the point we'd need an entire page just to list them. The most common ones include classic songs ("White Cliffs of Dover"), various Sci Fi movies and the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
• This page of YU+ME: dream is both a Shout-Out to The Twilight Zone and an annoyed fan.
  • This page, as well as others from this section, are Shout Outs to two other webcomics, Sister Claire and Evil Diva.
  • While many of the different styles are Shout Outs, the style that starts on this page, is a definite Shout-Out to Junko Mizuno.
    • And Disney style in this page.
  • The Cheese Man is in the last page of this 5 page update.
  • Skleebs was a Shout-Out to some fans on the original forum. Unfortunately, it brought more drama than the author anticipated.
  • This page references another webcomic: Diesel Sweeties.
• I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space has Red Shirt Shout Outs starting here and here.
  • Unfortunately, some fans forgot the cardinal rule of Red Shirts (hint: they die) and fell in love with a certain Red Shirt.
• Chicanery is overflowing with corny pop culture references. For starters, two story arcs are largely parodies of Parasite Eve and Metal Gear Solid.
• In Mob Ties, you can play a fun game called the Mob Ties Shout-Out drinking game. Take a shot every time you spot a Shout-Out on a strip. Just be sure to play it someplace where you can get emergency medical attention very quickly, or you may be dead before you get halfway through the archives.
• Freak Angels had this little gem: "All your forthcoming bone fractures are belong to us."
• In Mortifer, when Lord Artemis is explaining his reason for "removing" Johnathan:

"He's done no severe crime. technically, he was a good angel. But lust is not a good quality. Leads to jealousy. Leads to anger. Leads to violence.

• Bob and George: "Oh god, I hope it's not Superman, he's a dick."
  • Also The Lord of the Rings here, Star Wars here, Star Trek here, The Wizard of Oz here, and many, many, many more.
• Shadowgirls artist Dave Reynolds throws in a lot of these into the book. Some are nods to personal friends, fans of the book, and sources of inspirations.
• Akuma TH has plenty of these, taking place in a Massively Multiplayer Crossover verse, but The Undertaker stands out as one big Shout-Out to... well, guess. Other than the name, his sprites are recolors of Kane, his evil organization is called The Ministry, he uses a chokeslam in his first appearance, and his finisher is called the Super Tombstone. Which is like a regular Tombstone, only from ten feet up and on fire. This gets lampshaded in this first appearance, where Akuma mistakes him for a Kane cosplayer.^[1]

Akuma: Nice costume, but Kane doesn't wear a mask anymore...
Undertaker: I'm not Kane. I'm The Undertaker! And don't you dare say "I don't look like him!"

• A sort of a Naruto shout out appears in The Cartoon Chronicles of Conroy Cat when Doggy is training Conroy how to be a toon. Conroy comments how it sounds a lot like chakra from Naruto. And is immediately hit whit a crow-bar for it.
• Wapsi Square: Priceless!
  • A lightsaber would have been much more civilized
• Arthur, King of Time and Space:
  • Many secondary characters are based on other comic characters, including Elaine of Carbonek, who is Helen B. Narbon, with her loyal knight Sir Bromell as Mell (a male Mell in the baseline arc).
  • Merlin's magical incantations are English phrases in Greek script, usually from appropriate 20th century sources. For example, the incantation to trap someone in a cave is "Both please, but never mind the bread".
  • Merlin's rambling when trapped in the Crystal Cave include insisting Gawaine is "unbalanced" with gold and silver in the same pouch, and something about oysters, just like Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective".
  • The superhero arc is an extended Shout-Out to various superhero characters and tropes, mostly obvious (Kingman is Superman, White Night is Batman), but also subtler (one storyline features Percivale as Kingman's lawyer; no mention is made of a heroic identity, but he's blind).
    • The space arc's Ancient Greece is also full of superhero Shout Outs: Hercules is Superman, Arachne is Spider-Man, etc...
• Spinnerette has things like a security guard who pulls off a Crowning Moment of Awesome showing up with "CMOA" on his jacket in his next appearance, and a Canadian superhero known as The Werewolf of London, Ontario. Also, a villainess learns magic from a Dungeons & Dragons rulebook, and you would not believe how often Marvel and DC are mentioned (especially Marvel, because it's...kind of obvious the writer is a fan of Spider-Man).
• Pibgorn First panel, Edward Hopper
• Drive: Skitter's Laser-Guided Amnesia is referred to as like a "bad episode of Gilligan's Island".
• In Irregular Webcomic, Isaac Newton has a time machine shaped like a police box. The noise it makes when dematerialising is "Jurrrz".
• The long-defunct Blown Away featured appearances from a friendly face who liked to go inside Cubic houses
• Many, many in Lovecraft Is Missing. Not only to Lovecraft's own works, but also Robert E. Howard and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
• Sonic the Comic Online features the occasional shout-outs to the Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog. In the 250th milestone issue Sally was revamped from her original anthro-shift design to something that more resembles her Archie design ^{[dead link]} (though it looks like something Sega would make). Joe Sushi also wore a jacket similar to his Archie design.
• The Fuzzy Five: The Fluffton P.D. has an Officer Krupke. For extra points, the strip title is Hey, Look! Social Commentary!
• The only real recurring shout-out in Elf Blood lies in Carlita Delacroix, a large-breasted dark-skinned catwoman. Other shout-outs have included the obligatory sunglasses one-liner and a hidden magical community with corresponding Take That.
• The title of Chapter 9 of Jay Naylor's Better Days comic, about one of Lucy's peers dating her to get a stab at her mom, was appropriately titled "Lucy's Mom"
• Ménage à 3 often has Gary wearing shirts with various symbols from retro TV shows, like ReBoot, as well as newer but still rather obscure shows, like Code Lyoko.
• Blue Yonder:
  • With great power comes high insurance bills
  • Kevin observes he's faster than a speeding bullet, but not that much faster.
  • Having code-named Jared "Chicken Little", Black Dog tells him the sky has fallen.
• A List of Karate Bears Shout Outs
• Narbonic has so many shout outs and obscure references that one has to read the Director's Cut version to find all of them. Shaenon Garrity lists everything from other webcomics to manga to Shakespeare.
• The small town in which Buffet of Lies takes place is named for American actor Ted Danson.
• The Packrat shouts out to Back to The Future, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (a reference which synth geeks will get the most easily) and Spies Like Us. The author, Retarded Animal Babies creator David C. Lovelace, also declared shout-outs to CustomSynth and Metasonix, although these aren't shout-outs in TV Tropes' sense.

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Back to Shout-Out

1. ↑ That said, this gets far less excessive after his first appearance, as he gets a more varied moveset thanks to his specialty.