Favorite *Unexpected* Video Game References in TV/Movies

[BigFatHairyDeal]

Episode 4 of X-Men 97 made me think about this topic.

What are examples of your favorite unexpected references to video games? By "unexpected," I'm thinking more of something that references video games out of the blue, as opposed to something like Wreck it Ralph in which you're fully expecting the references from the get go. But, if there's something in that movie that was a well-hidden Easter egg, feel free to share. Heck, list that movie if you'd like. Go wild!

Here are my top four (off the top of my head), all of them coincidentally about fighting games:

1) Gravity Falls: Easily my favorite. It references so many arcade titles from the 80s and 90s, but the depth they went was above and beyond. My favorite parts are "Oh my car!" and the Dr. Karate character, the name spoofing Mr. Karate from Art of Fighting, and whose design was Guile's hair, Rugal Bernstein's cybernetic eye, and M. Bison/Vega/Dictator's body.

2) Family Guy: There are quite a few references to video game throughout the seasons I watched, but this was easily my favorite for authenticity. I'm also a sucker for every time someone makes fun of pronouncing tatsumaki senpukyaku.

3) Justice League Action: "BLVD Brawlers 2," LOL. Recreating scenes from the Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter Alpha 2 attract modes. I feel like a lot of lesser spoofs would make it about fighting games in general, but the callbacks were so specific and good.

4) Shawn Kemp Reebok "Kamikaze" commercial: A bit more obscure, but if you were a gamer of the 1990s, there's almost no way you would miss the Mortal Kombat inspiration in this commercial.

 

[Classic Speedy]

One of the earlier Whose Line revival episodes had Wayne playing a Grand Theft Auto character. Later on in the run he had to play a character from Fortnite but was limited because he admitted he's never played it.

 

[the_joker]

Made some edits to explain myself better.

I don't think the following two would count as "favorites" as they didn't make me feel overjoyed about seeing them, but here are some references I can remember.

In one episode of The Powerpuff Girls, the Mayor was playing a Zelda game. That was definitely a reference to Ocarina of Time as that game apparently released during the same year Powerpuff Girls debuted, and good detail was the game being shown as a 3D game instead of 2D. I recently got into Zelda, and I have played the remake on the 3DS. I should also mention that I played that game after noticing that reference, but I didn't quite understand its significance until recently. So I did enjoy that reference, but too bad that game felt too old to me, and playing it on a small screen didn't help.

There are 2 references to Pong I can think of. In one episode of Green Lantern: TAS, Hal was using his ring to play Pong by himself. Wall-E had the character playing Pong with a shut-down EVE. I suppose I mentioned the former as I quite liked the show, and Hal could use the power ring to entertain himself on the spot while the latter just also mentioned Pong.

Here's one I really enjoyed, but it actually goes under one video game referencing another, and we don't have a thread for that, so I'll post it here. In Tomb Raider (2013), Lara can stab an enemy with an arrow to the knee, referencing Skyrim. Even better, there's a trophy appropriately called "Former Adventurer" for doing that enough times. Another one of its trophies had a reference to Mortal Kombat ("Get Over Here!"), but I never played any of those games.

 

[wonderfly]

In the Adam Sandler film "Pixels" (a movie revolving around celebrating the early 80's arcade life), there's a seen where Adam Sandler is stunned watching kids playing "The Last of Us", and he says video games have gotten "too violent" and have "no strategy".

 

[Pooky]

There's an episode of the infamous Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island where the eponymous character is dressed as Cloud from Final Fantasy VII and another character is dressed as Navi from Ocarina of Time. Obviously these are\were very popular games, but for the standards of the time they were kind of deep cuts (ie it wasn't Pac-Man). And honestly even now I had to look up Navi's name.

Side note; I'm seeing that Coconut Fred, Johnny Test and Loonatics Unleashed all debuted on Kids'WB! at the same time. That's quite the trifecta.

 

[TnAdct1]

While it probably should have been expected due to the Playstation Underground segment featuring that show, I'm sure a lot of MST3K fans weren't prepared to see a Parappa the Rapper reference during the Sci-Fi era.

 

[Classic Speedy]

Watched Bring it On yesterday (hey, shut up. It was better than I was expecting) and there's a brief moment when the main character's brother is playing one of the Twisted Metal games. Ah, early 2000s.