Unreal - TV Tropes

• The Vortex Rikers prison ship is named after Rikers Island. Appropriate, since they're both prisons. This was outright confirmed by its author.
• The multiplayer map DmAriza is in the overall shape of the Quake logo.
• The name of the Glathriel Village from Return to Na Pali comes from the human hex in in Jack Chalker's "Well of Souls" books.
  • Also, there's an Easter Egg which guides to a secret. It has the Unreal Tournament clan Ocrana's logo^note , and the translator has the following message:
• The Temple of Chizra is inspired by the Indiana Jones movies.
• The filenames of the Rrajigar Mine and Depths of Rrajigar levels are named "Dig" and "Dug" respectively.

• Word of God stated that CTF-Face, a.k.a. "Facing Worlds", was inspired by a third-party map from the first Unreal.
• Picking up the Chainsaw either via cheat or as a pickup in a third party map outputs this message:

  "It's been 5 years since I've used one of these."

• The Sniper Rifle is a custom scoped M16.
• A Dummied Out taunt for the male commando characters has them saying "It's clobberin' time!".
• One of the ladder bots is called Toe Cutter.
• One of the Dark Phalanx members is called Nikita.
• Two members of the ladder team Red Claw are named Pestilence and Plague.
• One of the members of Thunder Crash in this game and UT2004 is named Othello.
• When you play in the campaign, in the Venom team, two of the characters are named Ada and Lovelace, named after the first woman programmer in the world.
• One of Xan Kriegor's quotes is "I am the Alpha and the Omega". The phrase is also used as the description for the "Godlike" difficulty that practice bots can be set to.
• AS-Overlord ("Operation Overlord") is inspired by D-Day.
• The secret Easter Egg room in DM-Codex has a shootable message saying Pretty fly... ...for a white guy.
• The shape of the map DM-Conveyor resembles the Gluon Gun.
• DM-Morpheus is inspired by a scene from The Matrix, and its name was taken from Morpheus, one of the main characters.
• The map DOM-MetalDream, by admission of its author, is inspired by the oil rig in the movie Armageddon.
• The name of the map DOM-Sesmar is taken from Ramses's Sdrawkcab Name.
• By Brandon Reinhart's own admission, four of the Relics from the Epic Bonus Pack and the Game of The Year Edition are based off the four original Runes for the Threewave CTF mod for Quake.

• The main body of space authority in the game is named Terran Colonial Authority.
• Aida is stated to be a 3-D Chess champion, and the board in her quarters looks vaguely familiar.
• The Seagoat is a reference to the zodiac symbol Capricorn.
• On Acheron the entrance to the dig site is clearly inspired by the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi.
• The Flying Snake, a creature which can be spotted at the Severnaya Waterfront level, is the Unreal universe's take on the Zerg Mutalisk.
• The spaceship of the final mission is called "The Dorian Gray".

• The UT2003 intro, where Malcolm, Brock and Lauren are presented as a team, has a lot of influence from wrestling entrances.
• AS-Junkyard, from its description to the objectives of the map itself, references Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars.
• The LBX-7683 asteroid, where the Assault map AS-RobotFactory takes place, is a reference to the LBX networking protocol.
• DM-Leviathan features this reference:
• DM-Inferno explicitly references The Divine Comedy.
• A taunt from robot characters goes "Faster. Stronger. Better."
• Two maps, one for Deathmatch and another for Capture The Flag, are given the name "Grendelkeep".
• If you finish a match without allowing the opposing team to score a single point, the announcer will yell "Flawless Victory!"
• The Nightmare voicepacks have varying shoutouts to horror films:
• Two of the Thunder Crash members are called Picard and Riker.
• Gorge's team, their suit, and their name (Juggernauts), are shout-outs to the Juggernaut from X-Men.
• The Bridge of Fate maps (one for Bombing Run, one for Capture The Flag) are modelled after an environment from The Lord of the Rings (more precisely, from the movies).
• One of the taunts found in the Dummied Out voicepacks have the characters saying "I'm sorry! Did I break up your concentration?"
• Winning an air-to-air fight with either the Raptor or the Cicada has the announcer yelling "Top Gun!"
• One of the selectable team symbols introduced by UT2003 has a man riding a big rocket. Its internal name is "Strangelove".
• The Scorpion's alternate horn in 2004 is the melody from the first line of the song "Dixie", also known as "The Dixie Horn".

Raiden's references towards his home series qualify as a Mythology Gag, which can be seen in the UC2 character sheet.

• Continuing with the Shout Outs to Mortal Kombat, after freezing an opponent, the announcer yells "Finish Him!!" before you do a Coup De Grace.
• Some of the Liandri bots taunts are references to internet lingo.

  "You are teh suck!"
  "Llama."
  "RTFM."

  • There's also these two references to Microsoft Windows:

  "Logging crash dump."
  "I see the blue screen."

• The Juggernauts are also keen on references:
• One of the challenges have three slow but tough males going against three fast but weak females. It's called "Tortoise vs. Hare"
• Another of the Challenges has Malcolm going against 4 undead characters. It's called "Day of the Dead".
• Anubis's Ladder, which takes place after the events of the Ascension Rites, mentions that he was given an offer he couldn't refuse.
• One of Apophis's taunts is "Damn, I'm good!"
• One of Devastation's adrenaline combos, "Head Turret", has her activating mounted turret defenses like Fulgore's No Mercy.
  • Many of her Ladder challenges have references to programming concepts. One of her matches is labeled "GOTO: Next Match", and the description of another match has a C++ fragment.

  "if (Target.Color == Self.Color) ProtectTarget(); else DestroyTarget()"

  • One of her Ladder challenges is called "The Next Generation"
• One of Raiden's Ladder challenges pits him against the Skaarj Torgr and the human female Sapphire. The match is called "Beauty and the Beast".
• One of Raptor's challenges is named "Carnage++", a reference to the C++ programming language.
• One of Sobek's taunts is "It's better to burn out, than to fade away."
• One of Szalor's Ladder challenges is called "Armed and Dangerous".
• One of the in-game awards, given to the achiever after reflecting an opponent's charged adrenaline fueled melee attack, is called Smackdown!.

• The Darkwalker, being Tripod Terror in vehicle form, resembles both the Tripods from The War of the Worlds and the Striders from Half-Life 2.
• The achievement for beating Chapter 4 is called "Not In Kansas Anymore".
• The achievement for defeating the Final Boss in Insane is called "Fear The Reaper".
• Get the "Combo King" award 15 times, and you get the "Don't taze me bro!" achievement.
• Jester is designed around Epic Games' president Mike Capps' sister.
• The Ronin team has "Damn, I'm Good!" as a taunt.
• The Greed gametype is inspired in the Greed mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 which in turn is based on Quake III: Team Arena's Harvester gametype. Given that the UT2004 mod replaces the skulls of Harvester with coins and the UT3 gametype brings the skulls back, it's possible that UT3!Greed is a mix of both.