Inside jokes and obscure references

I've rescued Peter Kent, a newspaper reporter, during a radio mission. Peter Parker and Clark Kent. He was worried he'd be forced to reveal his secret identity.

Lois Watson (Lois Lane/Mary Jane Watson) was less than impressed when I rescued her because I wasn't "Unbelieveble Man".

I also rescued a game designer named Jake Emmit. Seems the thugs who captured him weren't happy with the way they appeared in his game. He was anoyed I wasn't Statesman or Positron.

And I've rescued Ann Race from the undead a few times.

---

The Case Against Hardcase- arc id: 438272

Clowning Around- arc id: 408447

Down the Rabbit Hole- arc id: 193055

[ QUOTE ]
My favorite reference is really a tribute.

The exploration badge called "Newsman" is earned by visiting the Theodore Knight building in Faultline. Obviously paying homage to Ted Knight playing Ted Baxter on the old Mary Tyler Moore show.

[/ QUOTE ]

And through that, to the Baxter Building (Ted Baxter) from Fantastic Four.

---

[ QUOTE ]
There's a radio mish where you have to fight an Arachnos Lt. named LoPan. Reference to the baddie in Big Trouble in Little China? (though such a ref would seem more appropriate if the Lt were a Tsoo. :P)

[/ QUOTE ]

ALL the Arachnos radio-mission bosses are named for movie villains or anti-heroes, I believe. I've seen Sark (Tron), Whorfin (Buckaroo Banzai), Bickle (the anti-hero of Taxi Driver), Greench (who I assume is supposed to be the Grinch) and a dozen others that didn't stick in my mind.

As for radio missions I ALWAYS take, nothing tops the Wave Motion Generator. As a long-time Matsumoto fan, I just have to do it.

---

Oberation Oscillthruster. Paper mission, not sure if there's a radio equivalent. I didn't know what it was actually a reference to, I just really like Might & Magic 7, and at the end of the game you have to retrieve the Oscillation Overthruster. Then I found the actual source.

---

And of course, there's always rescuing Dr. Frank N. Scott.

That never gets old

---

"Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." --Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I don't know if anyone's noticed this yet, but I once rescured Clive LoveKing.

Cliver Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.

When you go to rescue this person, his captors are shouting at him to stop pitching weird horror story ideas to them.

---

I just discovered this thread, and I have stuff to share. And things!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

At my workplace, all the servers are named after various gods of mythology. I conside one of my finer moments convincing networking that 'Enki' was a good name for our new server.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ours were Harpo, Groucho, Chico, and Karl.

[/ QUOTE ]

In college, our five Unix machines were named Doc, Kitty, Wyatt, Maverick and Matt.

Wildcat

---

[ QUOTE ]
the red river is a river that divides oklahoma and texas. In fact, whenever Oklahoma plays Texas in a sporting event, it's called "The Red River Shootout". It's a very popular river to those in this region.

[/ QUOTE ]

No it's not! The Red River is the border between Minnesota and North Dakota!

Wildcat

---

[ QUOTE ]
Back when they were the 5th, this made a little more sense, but the real Nazis were involved in occult research, looking for a weapon to use against the Allies. Seems the COH version found that weapon in the Vampiri and Warwolves.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I recall, there were only a few Germans -- Hitler to some extent, but mostly Himmler -- seeking supernatural/mythological weapons, specifially, the "Spear of Destiny"... the rest of the German army were pretty much committed to conventional weaponry, while racing to built an atom bomb...

Wildcat

---

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know if anybody has mentioned this one, but Doc Delilah in the new Faultline is obviously a joke on Marvel's Doc Samson.

[/ QUOTE ]

To show how slow I can be, when I first encountered Delilah, I put the pieces together in the wrong order -- I took the clues given (an archaeologist) and visual (her hat, her glasses, and her Amazonian phsique) and my first thought was that she was a tribute to Gina and Brittany Diggers from the Gold Digger comic. A few seconds later, it clicked. Delilah's one of my favourite contacts/NPCs in the game, and the Faultline arc is definintely my favourite!

Wildcat

---

[ QUOTE ]
All in reference to the movie UHF.

[/ QUOTE ]

Weird Al Yankovic's UHF. >

Wildcat

---

[ QUOTE ]
Gabriel's Hammer, the inventable sledgehammer power, is named for Peter Gabriel, the musician who recorded the song _Sledgehammer_.

[/ QUOTE ]

And to show how dense I can be... here I am, probably the biggest Peter Gabriel mark you'll find in the whole game, and I only just grokked *this* connection a couple of hours ago! This is what drove me to eventually find this thread and dig it up again! o.o;

After all this, I have my own original contribution!

The police scanner missions are great for these pop culture references! One I haven't seen mentioned yet is that in which your hero is to retrieve the Hand of Omega from the Circle of Thorns. The Hand of Omega is one of the most powerul artefacts in the Doctor Who universe.

And speaking of scanner missions, you'll notice that every pair of Detectives who serve as the contacts for these missions are tributes to various television and movie characters. I'll leave it to someone more enterprising than I to make *this* list.

I know there are others that I'm not remembering right now. I'll share them as I remember them!

Wildcat

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Back when they were the 5th, this made a little more sense, but the real Nazis were involved in occult research, looking for a weapon to use against the Allies. Seems the COH version found that weapon in the Vampiri and Warwolves.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I recall, there were only a few Germans -- Hitler to some extent, but mostly Himmler -- seeking supernatural/mythological weapons, specifially, the "Spear of Destiny"... the rest of the German army were pretty much committed to conventional weaponry, while racing to built an atom bomb...

Wildcat

[/ QUOTE ]
It's a common comic book concept too though, just look at Hellboy.

---

This has probably already been mentioned, but The Paragon Wiki has an article on ingame references. It's a good read, and if you find something else, please be sure to add it!

---

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)