- Mother:
- The series as a whole:
- Headspace is basically a Whole-Plot Reference to the first two games' Magicant, a surreal dreamscape that exists inside its ruler's head. In the first game, its existence hides a secret behind Queen Mary's past, like how Headspace was made to hide a secret from Sunny's past. In the second game, Ness faces the evil within himself in Magicant, like how Sunny faces Omori, who represents the trauma and self-hatred he feels from accidentally killing Mari, inside White Space.
- Sunny's mom takes on a role similar to the fathers of both Ninten and Ness in their respective games. She is never seen in person, but she contacts Sunny throughout the entire game via telephone to check on how he's doing and encourage him to take care of himself.
- The Sprout Moles are a colony of small, bizarre creatures with a single antennae that resemble the odd Mr. Saturn from Earthbound and Mother 3.
- The gray spotlight surrounded by pitch darkness in the Something boss fight and Shadow Person’s boss fight looks similar to the spotlight scenes when you get a game over in all three games.
- The Space Pirates have a slight resemblance to the Flying Men found in Magicant, most prominently their beaks.
- EarthBound Beginnings:
- The naming system will disallow names already taken by important characters, including even Omori himself, who's supposed to be the Player Character.
- The way the Final Boss is defeated in both games is with a song that has an emotional significance to them.
- When you first enter the Recyclepath’s dungeon, Sunny and the group cannot leave due to a “mysterious force” similar to when Ninten and his party cannot leave Mt. Itoi with Eve.
- The character Kim’s “grumble grumble” tick might be a reference to what the crowd says in The Live House when you don’t have Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd in your party to sing.
- EarthBound (1994):
- The overworld sprite of Hero in Headspace bears a resemblance to Ness's when he's in his pajamas.
- Sunny's favorite food according to his mother is steak, which is also Ness's default favorite food.
- Both games have a cult based around something ridiculous. In this game it's The Order of the Holy Bin.
- Similar to the cashier at the Onett Burger Shop, the Candy Store owner ends most of her sentences in "smiley, smiley!" and wears a perpetual smile on her face. Both establishments also happen to be decked out in pink decor.
- The rivalry between juice vendors Apple Guy and Orange Guy mirrors the one between rival inventors Apple Kid and Orange Kid.
- The final boss battle involves an unbeatable enemy with the background becoming increasingly distorted and disturbing as the battle goes on.
- One of the strongest pieces of equipment is a baseball cap, dated to 199X.
- The main protagonists, especially in Headspace, follow the three boys one girl mantra for party members.
- One NPC in the Forest Playground, Happy, says her AB Cs backwards, similar to a NPC in Moonside who says numbers backwards.
- Omori can eat magic cakes in certain areas of Headspace which teleport him places to get items. Ness also eats magic cake that calls out an important party member.
- Space Boyfriend’s vocals are sampled from the character Venus. [[note]] Who in turn is actually the voice of Etsuko Kawano.
- The common usage of Polaroids for sentimental value is a motif in both games.
- The unused enemies STRAY DOG and CROW references the enemies the Runaway Dog and Rambunctious Crow respectively.
- The text ”But nausea overwhelmed you”, is similar to the text you get when Master Belch gives a party member the nausea status effect.
- Mother 3:
- Inside Humphrey is a section where the player is chased by an invincible mutant monster that wants to devour the party, just like the Ultimate Chimera. Not only the mutant is a lab experiment, but Humphrey's insides serves as a lab for the Slime Girls and their other experiments, just like the Chimera Labs; thankfully, unlike the Ultimare Chimera, getting caught by the mutant monster is not an instant game over.
- Aubrey's weapons of choice are various bludgeons. Her Infinity +1 Sword is a baseball bat, much like Lucas's own at the end of his game.
- Faraway Town has an orange cat named Claus and a yellow dog named Lucas. An obvious reference to Claus and Lucas from Mother 3. The dog also happens to be wearing a triangle shaped bandana like the one worn by Lucas' dog Boney.
- The final battle of both games involves the protagonist facing off against his twin in an un-winnable 1 vs. 1 duel. Only with the help of a meaningful memento (that needed to be restored from an unusable state prior to the fight) and the ghost of the precious family member whose death kickstarted both the plot and the protagonist's character arc does the final boss finally succumb in the other's arms.
- Talking Frogs and Sparrows appear often in both video games.
- Roboheart heavily resembles Electra the maid.
- The series as a whole:
- “The Legend Of Zelda”:
- In Pyrefly Forest, Omori can throw Clams into a fountain to tell a NPC a joke in order to receive items. This is a reference to The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, which in turn is a callback to the legend of The Honest Woodsman.
- When Kel helps Aubrey get un-stuck from the stump, she complains about how long it took him, to which Kel responds "Well sorry, princess".
- Chapters are represented by "Days", with the game taking place in a timespan of three days after the end of the prologue. The final stretch of the Main Route takes place during the final hours of One Day Left.
- Headspace being reset over and over again in order to seal Something and Black Space is almost identical to Link's adventure in Termina as he tries to prevent the Moon from falling into the land. It's only in the Main Route that Sunny manages to break the cycle.
- Pokemon:
- The first room the player character enters after leaving the starting area has a tv showcasing a movie where four boys walk along a set of railroad tracks, much like in Red, Blue, and their remakes. As in the original, this referred to Stand by Me.
- In Last Resort, you can access the concierge area if you give the guard some bottled water, just like you could gain access to Saffron City in Red, Blue and Yellow if you give one of the guards some fresh water (it was changed to tea in the remakes).
- The gameplay revolves around Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, with different messages added on to confirm whether or not something was "super effective."
- "It was a moving attack!" - super-effective
- "It was a dull attack." - not very effective
- In Faraway Town, once you defeat enough opponents in Pet Rocks, you are tipped off to the four veterans around town that you have to beat before being able to square off against the champion, akin to fighting through the Elite Four to reach the Champion on Victory Road. When you do find the Pet Rocks champion, all they do is glare at your Pet Rock before Clashing, similar to Red silently starting his battle in Pokémon Gold and Silver. To boot, the Steam achievement for defeating the champion is named "The Very Best", like no one ever was.
- The Last Resort is similar to the Game Corner from various Pokémon games, including the slot machines.
- The “Sweet Jelly Filled Donut” password could refer back to the Pokémon anime, which translated a onigiri to this in the English translation.
- Yume Nikki:
- Omori is also considered a big Whole-Plot Reference and a quintessential Spiritual Successor to Yume Nikki, sharing a lot of ideas and motifs. Both are about kids who become hikkiomoris and use their dreams to escape a harsh reality (even when the dreams are disturbing), but Sunny can choose to break way from that style of living over the course of the game.
- The fact that Omori and Sunny are a bit of a Psycho Knife Nut probably isn't a coincidence.
- When Omori drinks the mystery potion, he transforms into a girl with pigtails, like Madotsuki.
- Whenever you try to make Sunny go someplace the game doesn't want you to, such as leaving his house at night, Sunny simply refuses and shakes his head. Not unlike how Madotsuki responds whenever you try and get her to leave her apartment.
- The long staircase surrounded by shadowy hands that rise up around it as Sunny climbs down to confront his fear of heights resembles the Staircase of Hands.
- The entirety of the Black Space and Black Space 2 areas is essentially a Yume Nikki fangame. Both Black Space and the Nexus are dark, mostly empty dream world hubs that house several doors that lead to a myriad of locations that range from abstract and incomprehensible to unsettling but peaceful.
- The Red Hands warping Omori back the starting point of White Space and providing the only means of escape from most areas in Black Space allude to Medamaude, a hand shaped effect that can warp Madotsuki out of dead ends and back to the Nexus of the dream world.
- Both games have a giant Red Maze sprawling through a pitch black darkness hidden deep within the lowest depths of their dreams.
- The Bad Ending has Omori, now in control of Sunny's body, jump off the edge of a building, not unlike Yume Nikki's ending.
- the secret NPC Uni resembles Walking Eye in design.
- The secret NPC Meido resembles Monoko in design.
- Sunny’s bedroom slightly looks like Madotsuki’s apartment room, with there being barely anything besides a bed and one video game they can play that affects their dreams. NASU for Madotsuki and BLACKJACK for Sunny.
- Both Sunny and Madotsuki can have a Catapult Nightmare at some point.
- The Train that Omori and his friends take to go to Orange Oasis resembles the Traincar sequence in the Dense Woods.
- The Underwater Highway parallels the Infinite Road.
- When the characters are holding umbrellas in the Rainy Day sequence, they look like Madotsuki when she equips the Umbrella effect.
- Snowglobe Mountain might reference Snow World. Also the track “Sugar Star Plantation” sounds similar to the music that plays in Snow World as well.
- One can argue that when Space Boyfriend wraps himself up in a bedsheet he look likes Madotsuki when she uses the Towel effect.
- Vending machines that give out sodas are present in both of the dream worlds.
- North Lake and the bridge to Deep Well both resemble The Docks, with several NP Cs in Deep Well looking like creatures that belong in Yume Nikki to boot.
- The many teleporting circles in The Abyss are reminiscent of the Teleport Maze.
- .flow:
- As Sunny tries to collect the photos for the Black Photo Album during the dream sequence from One Day Left, he gets damaged, to the point where his fingers are torn apart and his head is covered in blood, similar to how mutilated Sabitsuki/Rust becomes when she's touched by a Red Demon, except less graphic.
- Just like the three secret areas with the empty boxes, Black Space 2 unlocks more secret areas that were previously unavailable in the Main Route, with each area being more disturbing and horrifying than the other. And just like .flow, the player is forced to do something with the Dream World in order to unlock said secret areas.
- The relationship between Sunny, Omori, and Something has parallels to Sabitsuki, Rust, and Demon Sabitsuki. The first one is the protagonist, while the other two are implied to be manifestations of their illness/depression who serve as the villains.
- Undertale:
- There are secret events that can only be seen by modifying the WTF value to certain numbers during the Main Route and the Hikikomori Route, just like the "fun" value in Undertale. In addition, the character of W.D. Gaster is somewhat similar to Abbi, who was also effectively erased from the game world with only a few remnants of her existence, and the three Gaster Followers are paralleled with the three Beta Characters (Uni, Tako, Meido) in Black Space.
- Microsoft Windows:
- The "Download Window" miniboss is based off the Internet Explorer download window. The miniboss being stuck at downloading 99% refers to how widely varying were the downloading estimates Internet Explorer gave.
- One of the Download Window's attacks involve crashing, complete with the window repeatedly popping up on the screen.
- The battle background of the Download Window looks similar to the default background of Windows XP.
- Defeating the Download Window grants 404 EXP. Moreover, the overworld area where you encounter the Download Window has monitors roughly in the shape of a 404. "404" is the error returned whenever a document is not found.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- One of the moves the Squizzards can perform is called "Squid Ward."
- One of the possible actions by the Creepypasta is that it does nothing...menacingly!
- Maestro, the big mustached NPC searching for art in the Otherworld Junkyard, strongly resembles the art collector from an art themed episode that involves a trip to the dump and the collector exclaiming that Squidward's art belongs in the trash.
- Various others:
- You can fight a spider-bunny hybrid, called a Bug Bunny.
- In the Junkyard, the Life Jam Guy is clearly modeled after the Kool-Aid Man. He even charged from a door, though the door remains intact.
- One of the Gator Guys in the Junkyard laughs "Kek kek kek...". In other words, he is KekCroc
. - One of the main protagonists is called Kel. And he loves Orange Joe.
- Pet Rocks in the real world are virtual pets that can fight one another if two devices are connected.
- While climbing the ladder to Otherworld, Omori will come across a snake slowly descending to Vast Forest, singing "What a thrill" to itself.
- The theme for the fight against Pluto's Expanded form is called GOLDENVENGEANCE. Similarly, Sweetheart's boss theme is titled World's End Valentine. Both songs are named in a similar way to certain songs in Umineko, specifically GOLDENSLAUGHTERER (among other songs that have two words in all caps and without a space) and World End Dominator. Both songs also wouldn't feel out of place if they played in Umineko.
- Rococo's fourth commission is an anime-style rendition of the main group titled "Omori's Unusual Escapades."
- The battle against The Maverick has him mention his "final form" and, at the end of the fight, he tries to use a Spirit Bomb as his finishing move, both of which are from Dragon Ball Z..
- The Rare Card you get for completing Angel's sister's sidequest is one big Blue-Eyes White Dragon joke. It has a very familiar dragon on it, the item description jokes about there being only four copies in the entire world, and she pretended to tear it in half right in front of him.
- The way to the fight against the Unbread Twins involves an alchemical circle that works like a portal, and their battle theme is named "BREADY STEADY GO". It's up to the viewer to decide if this is a Fullmetal Alchemist reference or convenient coincidence.
- A message in a bottle contains the lyrics to "That's Amore" by Dean Martin. Well, except for the last word. Filling in the blank with "Omori" maintains the original song's meter.
- The track title for Sweetheart's Garden is "I Definitely Promised You A Rose Garden", a play on the first line to "Rose Garden" by Lynn Anderson.
- The Pet Rocks champion is a very strong opponent, boasting 9 hearts compared to your 3, and ridiculously skilled at the game. Their icon is a Jash with a single wing — Sephirock, if you will.
- The "very expensive and controversial art piece" in the Last Resort is a direct reference to a real-world art piece called "The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind of Someone Living", by British artist Damien Hirst, which consists of the carcass of a tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde.
- One of the songs in the soundtrack is titled "Jash Bash 2: New Age of Heroes".
- Two of the members of Aubrey's hooligan gang are named Charlene and Angel. Moreover, Charlene has a familiar-looking zigzag pattern on the front of her shirt.
- The "Take Me To the River" achievement (gotten by unlocking Snowglobe Mountain via a singing bass toy) is named for an Al Green song, and references the song's use in an actual singing bass toy.
- There is a Dummied Out FMV sequence that was supposed to be accessed from Omori's laptop. It depicts a short film called "In Memory of a Day" simply featuring Omori sitting in a crudely drawn room before quickly cutting to credits. It's a reference to the Parks and Recreation episode "The Comeback Kid", where Ben makes a short claymation film called "Requiem for a Tuesday" which shows a claymation man sitting in a room before getting up and then it ends abruptly.
- Sunny winds up having the same trajectory as the main character from Goodnight Punpun, where both are left with eye injuries and are contemplating suicide in response to everything that’s happened with them; though, unlike Punpun, Sunny has the option to successfully go through with it.
- Mari's hanging corpse, with her huge mass of long hair covering everything but a single unblinking eye, is a dead ringer for Sadako.
- The Big Yellow Cat bears a great resemblance to Chiyo-chichi.
- The description for the Star Fruit Soda says that it's meant to be shared with a friend, similar to the local legends about the star-shaped Paopu Fruit in Kingdom Hearts.
- One NPC you can talk to in Otherworld is a tall, pale woman wearing a white sundress and sunhat named 'Po'. Her design is a dead ringer for the Japanese Creepypasta monster Hasshaku-sama, an eight-foot-tall child-hunting Humanoid Abomination capable of shapeshifting, which in its 'true' voice only ever utters a deep, mechanical, laughter-like "po, po, po" sound. Completely unlike the the creature she references, 'Po' is capable of normal speech and entirely non-malicious, conversing with the main four and marvelling at the cosmos.
- One "movie" viewable in Sweetheart's theater depicts Sprout Moles appearing across a landscape before cutting to and zooming in on a still image of Sweetheart, directly referencing the "Badgers" animation.
- All of the mermaids in Deep Well are named after songs by The Beatles, and The Mustard Sub restaurant where they work is a yellow submarine.
- Michael the Guitar Guy and his canine Headspace counterpart are guitar playing singers who use vocals similar to K.K. Slider from Animal Crossing.
- Pancake Bunny is one of the many bunny enemies.
- The track “Distance” samples Morning Wood by Edvard Grieg.
- The voiceline of the character Toad from Super Mario 64, “Bup”, is sampled heavily in the track “See You In Your Fantasy”.
- The piano melody Hero plays is actually Lukewarm (body heat) by dream-zero.
- Nagisa's theme from Clannad can be played in the Faraway Cemetery.
- The skill “Gator Aid” can be a pun on the energy drink company Gatorade.
- The achievement See You, Space Husband is a reference to Cowboy Bebop as “See you, Space Cowboy” in text would appear at the end of episodes.
- The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is referenced in the “Noose Room” in Black Space.
- In Orange Oasis Omori can touch a huge piece of bread which he is advised against, when that happens he and his friends eventually have a chase sequence with a bolder, a clear reference to Indiana Jones: Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
- Black Space is likely to be a reference to the location with the same name and a similar appearance from the game LSD: Dream Emulator.
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