Lawyer-Friendly Cameo

Bart's about to deal with the most powerful forces on Earth... lawyers!^NoteThis was before him and half of them ended up under the same owner.

Leela: Who are you people? Haven't I seen you in some copyrighted movie?
Glurmo: [singing] We resemble-but-are-legally-distinct-from the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild...

— Futurama, "Anthology of Interest II"

Sometimes fiction leans towards a rather lax interpretation of trademark issues. You may find characters who are not merely an imitation of characters from a popular show, film or comic, but literally are those characters. Somehow.

You can blur their face a bit or simply not name them. Still, this trope is known enough that you can expect any work that featured these frequently will get modified a bit if the adaptation's sponsors are worried about copyright infringement.

On the other hand, if said cameo characters are famous enough, you're liable to get away with a more overt reference.

Often used as part of a Take That!, but it can also be a friendly Shout-Out. If a real person is being imitated, that's No Celebrities Were Harmed. Compare Writing Around Trademarks, Captain Ersatz, and Expy Coexistence, where Expies and the characters that they are based on live in the same world/canon. See also Bland-Name Product, which is the same thing for real-world products rather than fictional characters.

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Example subpages:

• Comic Books

Other Examples:

Advertising

• 21st Century Insurance runs comparison ads featuring MythBusters-like tests run by a man who has Adam's glasses and Jamie's mustache.
• At one time Vodafone did a series of TV ads in the UK which had Captains Ersatz of Mulder and Scully from The X-Files (the Mulder character a dual parody of Dale Cooper even to the point of being played by Kyle MacLachlan) investigating rumoured paranormal events that turned out to be misunderstandings of people discussing new features on Vodafone handsets. One of them was themed around time travel. As "Mulder and Scully" departed down the street, Jon Pertwee stood in the road behind them, checking his watch before walking into a garage with "Doctor On Call" painted across the doors and a strange glow emerging from it.
• Johnny Turbo was directly attacking Sega in all but name, and even the name was ridiculously close — "Feka".
• A commercial for Ty the Tasmanian Tiger shows that Ty beat up and hospitalized Spyro, Crash and Sonic. Since the characters are in full-body casts, and the characters are only referred to on their charts by their Species Surname, they got away with it.
• Owing to Heneral Luna's popularity, John Arcilla went on to reprise his role in various commercials. Though in some instances his Luna expy would be similar but sufficiently different from his character from the original film, referred to simply in a KFC ad as "Heneral" or a variation thereof.
• The social media part of Tyskie beer's "Przejdźmy na ty" ("Let's know each other's names") has two, both based on the same idea of two people toasting with glasses or bottles of beer, only their forearms visible, with the Tyskie logo on them being replaced with names (similarly to the special editions of the labels):
  • One of the images depicts a hand with a black leather jacket sleeve visible and a glitched silver robot hand, with the names being "Keanu" and "Johnny".
  • Another one depicts a hand in a black leather gauntlet and a hand in purple glove with a green jacket sleeve visible, with the names "Bruce" and "Jack".
• A magazine ad◊ for Clayfighter featured Bad Mister Frosty crushing Blanka and Chun-Li beneath his feet. Presumably, they got away with this because both characters are mostly obscured.

Anime and Manga

• Ah My Buddha had the Show Within a Show Kamen Ranger, and continued to reference it throughout the show's run. The featured Kamen Ranger, Hayabusa 20, could've easily passed for Faiz.
• Anime-Gataris may lay claim to being the first Reference Overdosed show to be comprised entirely out of lawyer-friendly variants. It has so many examples, it deserved its own separate page.
• In one chapter of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Yugi Mutou from Yu-Gi-Oh! pops out of Bo-bobo's afro and summons Sky Dragon Osiris (AKA Slifer the Sky Dragon) to help battle Halekulani. (This is even more lawyer-friendly, as the scene in which this happened was drawn by the original creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!.) This later becomes a combo attack for the two characters in Jump Superstars.
• Case Closed has the shows "Kiss Note", "Urban Hunter", and "Kamen Yaiba".
• Classicaloid: In the episode when Beethoven was challenged to dodgeball by a group of children, one of said children heavily resembled Frisk from Undertale.
• Colonel Sanders shows up a lot as a figure of menace, thanks to the legend of the Curse of the Colonel. A few examples:
  • At one point in Project A-Ko, the main characters watch a horror movie - itself a parody of Rin Taro's scifi/horror anime Harmagedon - wherein a victim, panicking, yells "The Colonel! The Colonel!" His pursuer is... Colonel Sanders.
  • One of the villains in the first series of Slayers dresses up as Colonel Sanders, complete with what appears to be a roast (not fried) chicken, in a particular episode.
  • Higurashi: When They Cry starts saccharine-cute but quickly becomes the story of a town under a terrifying curse. The first sign that we're about to experience Mood Whiplash? A statue of the Colonel.
  • Albireo in the later chapters of Negima! Magister Negi Magi insists on being called "Ku:nel Sanders" (originally just to cover up his identity, later because he liked it). At one point during his insistence, an image of Colonel Sanders appears behind him (eyes blacked out, of course, as though to protect his "anonymity"). (For those interested, "Ku:nel" turns out to be the title of a Japanese leisure magazine, an involved Japanese pun about the purpose of living as well as a play on "Colonel".)
  • In Doraemon: Nobita and the Spiral City about Nobita and friends making a toy land with animated dolls, toys, and statues, one of them is a Colonel Sanders statue.
  • Directly referenced in a chapter of Eyeshield 21, where Hiruma uses a statue he "found in a ditch" as a stand in for Homer, the quarterback for the Nasa Aliens. Said statue has its face covered by a poorly-drawn copy of Homer's face, but it's obviously supposed to be a Colonel Sanders statue.
  • The Colonel also appeared in Super Milk Chan as a selfish, greedy, sexist man who hires assassins to kill a pair of pigs who escaped from one of his meat-packaging plants.
  • In Ranma ½, there is a plotline that involves a man's soul wandering around even though he's not dead yet. In the manga, this was called "the Colonel Sanders Effect".
  • The Colonel also appears briefly in Excel♡Saga at least once, where heavy rains flood most of Fukuoka, floating by as debris. Excel even comments on it in the English version.
  • A lot of hentai features rape by Colonel. So yeah....
• Cromartie High School's Freddie was so obviously Freddie Mercury that the character couldn't be used in another adaptation for fear of lawyers. This was lampshaded with obscure references nearly every time Freddie appeared, and lampshaded most overtly with the brief appearance of another character, Mr. Mercury, who was noted by the other characters as looking exactly like Freddie (except for his clothes- although both Freddie's and Mr. Mercury were wearing exact copies of outfits worn by Freddie Mercury on stage) and who made a very loud emphasis on a number of dissimilarities between himself and Freddie (and, as a result, contrasting Freddie Mercury as well) It should also be noted that a number of other Queen references, such as many of the chapter titles, and literally hundreds of inside jokes and subtle references were present, making the manga a constant source of knowing grins from Queen fans everywhere.
• Shawn Conecone from D-Frag!, who looks like Indiana Jones' father and is Kazama's Inexplicably Awesome English teacher.
• One chapter of Descendants of Darkness had the main characters in a book world. In the background of the wedding scene you can see the figures of Cloud, Aerith, Sephiroth and Rufus Shinra from Final Fantasy VII.
• Dirty Pair's Kei and Yuri show up in a few different Patlabor crowd scenes. They also appear in a few different Urusei Yatsura episodes.
• Doctor Slump featured "Suppaman", essentially a short, pudgy version of Superman. He popped up during the Dr. Slump Crossover in the original Dragon Ball series.
  • Later chapters introduce incompetent Nature Hero Parzan (a play on Tarzan and the Japanese word paa, which can colloquially mean "stupid") and Ultraman knock-off Kintaman (whose name is a play on kintama, "golden balls", or "testicles.).
  • However, Doctor Slump also makes explicit references to Astro Boy, Gamera, Godzilla, and Ultraman.
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu:
  • An episode has a gangster referring to "Ambassador Mama", a reference to Ambassador Magma from Astro Boy, with an accompanying pixelated image of his spaceship.
  • Also a couple of Death Note characters◊ happened to be at the same place at the same time when Sousuke was getting his haircut.
• Gintama does this frequently, typically by having its characters cosplay as characters from other Shounen Jump manga.
  • The secret weapon the Renho plan to use against Earth are mechs called "Gunsams" that have their heads pixellated due to how much of a resemblance they bear to what they're parodying. Shinpachi remarks about how heinous is that they managed to get away with such a blatant rip-off without being sued. The end notes on the episode that usually contain some Reality Subtext, or just plain text, mentions how lucky they are that it's Sunrise making the show.
• Great Teacher Onizuka:
  • At one point, Onizuka challenges an entire gang to arm wrestling and winds up beating look-alikes of Jason Voorhees (from Friday the 13th), Heihachi Mishima (from Tekken), and Giant Robo.
  • Onizuka himself actually dresses as Doraemon and explicitly calls himself as such when forced to fight a gang with his hands stuck in bowling balls.
  • At one point he shatters the bowling balls and draws a bunch of Cross-Popping Veins on himself, screaming about a woman named Yuria. Now, he calls himself Kenshiro and even draws Ken's seven scars. To top it all off, in the anime, he beats the gang with Ken's signature Spam Attack, the Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken.
  • He also dressed up as Devilman (apropos of nothing, naturally) once, and made Tomoko wear a Cutey Honey outfit.
  • The first chapter of Shonan 14 Days includes Onizuka painting Haruhi Suzumiya on the hood of Uchiyamada's car and threatening to write his name into a Death Note.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • Episode 11 has a pixelated version of a Gundam launch and refers to it as the "Gun3".
  • Also, in episode 1, Haruhi holds up magazines to Kyon and Mikuru, featuring other anime series, one of which is SHUFFLE!, with Kaede and Asa on the cover. Note that Yuko Goto voices both Mikuru and Kaede.
• Kamui Gakupo, who is owned by Internet Co. and not Crypton and thus can't legally be used as a character, makes two speaking appearances in Hatsune Mix. He isn't named and doesn't wear his official costume, but anyone can tell he's Gakupo from his hair.
• The anime version of Hayate the Combat Butler is full of lawyer-friendly mentions, although the ones in dialogue are always bleeped out. Being a fangirl, Nagi rattles them off quickly enough that it's common to have half of her monologue melodically beeped out.
  • This happens in the manga as well, although it's so inconsistent (as with the Negima example above), anyone who can put two-and-two together can figure it out.
    • One of the most notable lampshades being when Hayate tries to correct Nagi when she says Mushiking without censorship, to which she explains that they got permission this time.
  • Honestly, the anime hangs a lampshade on the trope and dances in circles around it, pointing at it as a Running Gag in its own right. And episode where Nagi doesn't make a reference is rarer than one where she does.
• In Hellsing, Alucard's and Seras's main weapons are named Jackal and Harkonnen respectively. Though not explained in the anime, their namesakes show up in the manga as the characters' "spirit guides" during dream sequences: the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from Dune in the case of Seras, and Bruce Willis (who starred in the movie Jackal) for Alucard. (The Baron does appear briefly in the anime's omake-style "next episode" teasers.)
• The Helpful Fox Senko-san features fluffy fox-girl versions of popular videogames like Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. The game boxes also resemble that of the Nintendo Switch, but the console and controllers more closely resemble Sony's Playstation 4.
• In the final episode of Imagin Anime, an animated spin-off from Kamen Rider Den-O, the Kyoshouryuku Labs of Mazinger Z is name-dropped, Ultraman Taro shows up, Momotaros attempts to replace Toei Animation's mascot, Pero, then throws a fit at the HeartCatch Pretty Cure! poster. Urataros, at the very end, comments they probably never got permission for all of this.
• In Irresponsible Captain Tylor, a chainsaw-wielding, hockey mask-wearing fellow named "Jason" is a member of the crew of the Soyokaze (mirroring the common Western misconception Jason ever used a chainsaw).
• In Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, the anime that inspired Midori to want to make anime herself is Conan of the Lost Island, which is really Future Boy Conan in all but name. Because Science SARU had support, but not legal permission to use Future Boy Conan in the anime adaptation, the scenes from Conan of the Lost Island were painstakingly traced frame by frame, recolored, and the music cues and sound effects remade to match the original. Some brief dialogue from the show itself also changes Lana's name to Kana.
• Ken Akamatsu, being a video game fan, has dropped numerous character cameos into both Love Hina and Negima! Magister Negi Magi: the "Mahora Budokai" arc in Negima! featured crowd cameos from M. Bison, Sakura Kusanago, Akuma, Hugo, and Adon from the Street Fighter games as well as Athena, Terry Bogard, Ryo Sakazaki, Chris, Yashiro Nanakase, and the Maximum Impact version of Kyo Kusanagi, all from The King of Fighters and related series, and several others.
  • Later, when the robot army arrives, one of the characters makes an extraordinarily blatant Lawyer-Friendly Shout-Out:
  "Wow! Are those Gu_dams? They have to be Gun_ams!"
  • Love Hina also has references to Star Wars quite often; in amongst Keitaro/Naru sniping Naru is stabbed with a lightsaber, Motoko wins Su a mini Death Star, and Seta's van has the license plate number R2-D2.
    • That's nothing: in the official English translation of Chapter 11, Su asks, "Star Wars: Episode One, what is the name of the actor who played the young Obi-Wan Kenobi?!"
  • One chapter of Negima had a number of people dressed up as different anime and toku heroes, such as J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai, Kamen Rider X, and the main heroines of Futari wa Pretty Cure.
• A Season 2 episode of Komi Can't Communicate has Komi and her friends visit a thinly veiled parody of Universal Studios Japan and ride what is obviously The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. During their time on the ride, only Spider-Man's leg is shown and he is referred to as "Spider-San".
• The Legend of Black Heaven features a scene where Mulder and Scully from The X-Files are investigating a mysterious event at a cemetery in the U.S., where a grave has been dug up in an incredibly precise manner. Former band member Watanabe's body had been stolen by the enemy in order to create a clone to defeat the remaining member of the band. The two agents are unceremoniously pushed into the hole by Layla's sidekicks.
  • There's also a Super Sentai parody, the Flying 5.
• As it usually tries to avoid censoring, Lucky Star references titles and locations only indirectly, Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu being the major exception. However, in one episode, Konata tells a 'ghost story' about a bus driver singing "Danzen! Futari wa *** cure", and in another a thinly-veiled conversation about Gundams between Konata and her father seems to be an exercise in "how far can we go before we get sued?"
  • They once made a reference to Pocky beyond obvious when they had Misao say the name twice, the first time having the last half blanked out (Po*** ) and the second time the first half blanked (** cky), alongside having chocolate milk or juice sucked up a straw to a certain point before being held in place to look like the snack.
  • Konata's "fight" with Guile actually has two separate Street Fighter references. The first is the obvious Guile clone, but the second shows up in the form of the "VS screen". The background is taken right out of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.
    • And the "stage" is Ryu's from Street Fighter II. Finally, she knocks him out with the Tatsumaki Senpyukyaku (Hurricane Kick), one of Ryu and Ken's signature moves.
  • One episode has Code Geass and Lelouch's name censored out. Ironically, Bandai Entertainment would later pick up the rights to localize both that and Lucky Star.
  • Tsukasa's Sgt. Frog keychain is worth noting here.
  • During the Initial D parody, Kagami refers to Initial D as "chomei-chomei D", "chomei-chomei" being a placeholder name for something well-known.
    • Kadokawa-Bandai dub: "Bleepin'-D."
  • Cousin Yui reading manga with Rider on the cover. Also, episode 10, when Tsukasa's gentle nature and Kagami's Tsundere nature become blatantly obvious to Soujirou.
    Soujirou: (hands in the air) Sakura! Tohsaka... Tohsaka's your sister!
  • The Gundam discussion segment is meant to parody the ridiculousness of the censoring. Both Konata and Soujirou's eyes have a censor bar over them, and every third word is bleeped out with a different sound.
    • That said, the corresponding manga was published in an official Gundam magazine, so...
  • The Image Song "Yuuchou Sentai Dararenjaa" (A Super Sentai-esque song) mentions, by cutting short instead of censoring, a certain "Lucky Clo---."
  • In episode 19, Hiyori draws Apollo Justice and Klavier Gavin from the Ace Attorney series.
• Lupin the Third has been referenced in quite a lot of different media:
  • Cliffhanger appears in one episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, specifically the car-chase scene from The Castle of Cagliostro, with a player in a green jacket, making it a triple cameo.
  • It's highly likely that there is a Jigen sighting in an episode of Animaniacs (specifically the "Sir Yakksalot" episode) as a wagon driver bearing a very distinctive slouched fedora and pointed beard drives by the screen. Tokyo Movie Shinsha provided animation work for both the Lupin III franchise and Animaniacs.
  • Yet another one is an episode of Samurai Jack where a thief that's basically Jigen in a white suit with light-brown hair tries to steal a time traveling jewel. Or, rather, he looked like Jigen but acted more like Lupin III.
  • Zenigata makes a cameo in the My-HiME manga arresting Shizuru.
  • Megazone 23 has an appearance from a cop who looks exactly like Lupin.
  • Lupin and Jigen can be seen as Federation soldiers who help launch the White Base in an episode of Mobile Suit Gundam. They also show up in another episode alongside Zenigata and Goemon as members of a military brass band.
  • Lupin and Jigen can be seen in a hotel lobby in an episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.
• In episode 5 of Maria†Holic Alive, when the Dorm Leader mentions about the punishment of watching the entire "Legend of Japanese Heroes" series back to back without blinking, the scene cuts to a shot of Yang Wen-li and Reinhard von Lohengramm whose faces are concealed by stereotypical ninja masks.
• Miami Guns has several of these, such as Bruce Tsuji, the "Die Hard detective" from one episode. The most significant example in the series is the father of "heroine" Yao Sakurakoji — who is a bleached-blonde doppleganger of Gendo Ikari, right down to the design of his office. (For some reason, he has a pet dog who's a parody of Muttley. Hey, why not?)
• Lady Lynx from Giant Gorg appears as a waitress in episode 3 of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin.
• My Bride is a Mermaid features the Terminator as an important character. With lines like "I'll be back"◊ and "You must die, human! TERMINATOR!", and "Who's your daddy? TERMINATOR!", it's kinda hard to miss.
  • And then there's Bunta Willis, whom Sun is a die hard fan of.
• My Hero Academia: Two Heroes: One of the heroes introduced in the movie is Godzillo, who is rather blatantly a smaller, slightly more anthropomorphic version of Godzilla who happens to wear clothes.
• Killer Bee from Naruto looks like a black version of Hulk Hogan.
  • The first Raikage also looks almost exactly like Jimi Hendrix.
• In the North #2 arc of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto, blind composer Paul Duncan recants a tale in his childhood where he was pulled from the brink of death by a Japanese black market doctor at the cost of his already weak eyesight. Said series is set in the Astro Boy universe. Said doctor was dressed in a black cloak and, according to North #2's investigations, charged his mother a ridiculously high fee for the procedure. Wild Mass Guessing aside, this doctor's identity should be obvious to any Tezuka fan.
  • Kimba the White Lion also made an appearance in a group of escaping zoo animals.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • "Staging a Heroes' Welcome" had two girls who look suspiciously like Sakura and Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura.
  • Doyle in "Where Did You Go, Audino?" bears a resemblance to Conan Edogawa. Even his name is a reference (playing off of Arthur Conan Doyle).
• Pop Team Epic:
  • The first episode of the anime has a reenactment of the bus stop scene from My Neighbor Totoro, albeit Pipimi as Totoro is heavily pixelated.
  • The fourth episode features Dick Dastardly and Muttley cameo as one of the teams in the Skeleton Grand Prix. Like with the above example, the duo are heavily pixelated on top of being Palette Swapped, though the former is undone in the DVD release.
• The Prince of Tennis anime has Makunouchi Ippo of Hajime no Ippo fame appear briefly in the stands at a baseball game during a chibi episode. He is voiced by the same seiyuu as Prince of Tennis's Kaidoh, making this an Actor Allusion cameo.
• Project A-Ko:
  • It's hinted a few times that Eiko's parents are Superman and Wonder Woman, though they've never appeared onscreen in costume. (Although they have appeared with costume — Mrs. Magami is shown sewing or repairing a Superman outfit at one point.) Dad is also shown reading the Daily Planet.
  • The third movie has a cameo appearance from Yawara Inokuma and her grandfather at the burger joint where Eiko works.
• Episode 27 of Psychic Squad has Konata, Kagami, Tsukasa, Miyuki, Yutaka and Minami appearing in the background briefly; the first four had realistic hair colors and all of them have their backs turned to the camera except for Miyuki, whose face is obscured by a leg. In addition, because Gonzo helped produce the episode, it also has Strike Witches cameos (but how could they get away with their lack of pants in that world?).
• Reversed in Ray the Animation: In the manga, Osamu Tezuka's Dr. Black Jack 'cameos', but his face is never shown and he is never referred to by his full name, due to copyright concerns. In the animation, Black Jack doesn't fall under these restrictions anymore, seeing as how it was produced by Tezuka's animation studio, which of course holds the copyright on the character.
• In Rescue Me Mave-Chan, a parody of Sentou Yousei Yukikaze, the villain of the short, For-Getter (which looks like a combination of GunBuster and Getter Robo G), shows off different characters who have been forgotten by fans, including Lum and EVA-01.
• In Rozen Maiden, Buu, the doll that attacks Jun early on, is quite clearly Winnie the Pooh. In the anime, Pooh is replaced with a generic clown doll. In turn, Jun makes a brief cameo early in the first episode of Ultimate Girls.
• Nobuhiro Watsuki of Rurouni Kenshin fame did that so many times with Samurai Shodown that the owners of the latter asked the author to draw some of the new characters for the fifth game.
• Samurai Champloo featured Ogami Ito and Daigoro from Lone Wolf and Cub at the end of the episode "Cosmic Collisions".
• Samurai Flamenco features tons of in-universe Tokusatsu works that are clearly based off franchises like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has innumerable instances. In speech, one syllable of the word/name in question is either bleeped over or pronounced "maru", in text one letter is replaced by a circle.
  • Pretty much anything from Studio Shaft is guaranteed to be filled with Lawyer-Friendly Cameos. Pani Poni Dash! for example, had a freakin' Yukkuri in the OVA.
• In School Rumble Harima stays home and watches a movie that is pretty much a rip off of Star Wars that at first covers the opening of episode 4 with Lego like star ships, and what some lines that seems to be taken from episode 6. Needless to say this is quite funny to watch.
• In episode 21 of Sgt. Frog, thinly-disguised versions of Lupin III and Jigen get run off the road by the Hinata family car in an obvious parody of a scene from The Castle of Cagliostro. In episode 48, there is an inexplicable appearance by a human-sized version of the giant floating Rei Ayanami from End of Evangelion.
• In episode 49 of the 2001 anime of Shaman King, the members Team LCT/Team Insane Asylum were based off Pro Wrestlers Mark LoMonaco (Bubba Ray Dudley/Brother Ray), one of the Hardys (Matt Hardy or Jeff Hardy) and Adam Copeland (Edge) who used tables, ladders and chairs respectively as their weapons in the WWE.
  • And of course, earlier the heroes had to fight the corpse of a world famous Chinese martial artist from Hollywood movies, who developed his own fighting style, whose favorite weapons were a pair of nunchuks, and who died mysteriously at the peak of his popularity. So, totally not Bruce Lee, then.
• In Smile PreCure!, Yayoi's alarm clock bears a superhero resembling a Kamen Rider, most likely Kamen Rider Scissors of Kamen Rider Ryuki.
• Sorcerer Hunters includes a number of these, exemplified by the chapter "Seaside Days in the Springtime of Youth, one of the series' many Beach Episodes. In it, a magical potion turns the protagonists into cosplaying cameos from other series such as Sailor Moon, Urusei Yatsura, and Darkstalkers. Also, for a Fanservice laden shonen series, the frequent cameos from the decidedly shoujo and chaste dating sim of Angelique were amusing, especially when the game's resident cute boy showed up as a slave boy belonging to one of the manga's villains.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has... Squidward. You have to really be watching to find him though.◊
  • The bathhouse episode has a bunch of female spa employees who resemble major characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Mahoromatic and Diebuster.
• Tiger & Bunny has several Lawyer-Friendly Cameos. The mayor of Sternbild, for example, apparently bears a resemblance to President Obama.
• Touhou Ibarakasen ~ Wild and Horned Hermit, one of the official Touhou Project manga adaptations, had a chapter that involved a mythological creature that emits electricity. Cue Sanae wondering if they were talking about an electric rat while her thought bubble showed a picture of Pikachu with a censor bar placed across its eyes.
• Lum has cameos in quite a few works, including Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel, Dirty Pair and Hunter × Hunter.
  • And speaking of Urusei Yatsura, the show was rife with these. For instance, in an episode spoofing the folk tale of Urushima Taro, amongst the beautiful women whom Onsen Mark is surrounded by in the palace you can spot Misa Hayase, Lynn Minmay, Kim, Shammy and Vanessa. Then there was that one time Megane briefly became Jabba the Hutt during a freakout...
• Yakitate!! Japan's American character Kid is nearly identical to Brad Pitt, for no good reason. Conan from Case Closed also makes a thinly-veiled appearance.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! often has characters in the background, while not outright named, Vash the Stampede (Trigun), Ino, Shikamaru, Choji (Naruto) and Ryoma Echizen (The Prince of Tennis) all have brief appearances (Vash is in the background of the characters walking down the street, the other four in the stands of a duel).
  • The cards for the game are no better. In the card game plenty of cards are named/designed after other Konami products (Gradius games, a card explicitly named DDR, Goemon characters). However, in the anime they do one for another Shounen Jump series. The card Illegal Summon in GX features a character scene from Naruto of Naruto's Frog Summoning training. Sonic Duck is a member of One Piece's Supersonic Duck Squadron. There's a card in 5 D's that increases your D-Wheel's speed counter... featuring a thinly-veiled Eyeshield 21.

Audio Plays

• Until 2015, Big Finish did not have permission to use elements from the 21st-century series of Doctor Who in its plays, but three Fourth Doctor stories involved him interacting with the Eleventh Doctor through Timey-Wimey Ball, recorded message means. This was got away with by simply identifying the Eleventh Doctor as one of Four's "future incarnations" and delivering his dialogue in reported speech rather than having the actual actor play him, but it's obvious from his personality which one he is supposed to be.
• Continuing the Doctor Who spin-off theme, Chris Boucher's semi-official audio drama series Kaldor City, set in the same futuristic Ambiguously Human society as his popular Fourth Doctor TV story "The Robots of Death", introduced a character who is extremely strongly implied to be one of the regular characters from his TV series Blake's 7 under a new identity, played by the same actor.

Comic Strips

• Candorville: After Scott Adams infamously made racist comments supporting segregation, the strip featured a character clearly supposed to be Dilbert and portrayed him as a massive bigot in a clear Take That!.

Fan Works

• Fanfiction written by MJTR occasionally feature or reference characters from works besides the one the fic is based on, but they're usually incorporated without official confirmation of their identities. There's obviously no legal precedent for doing this, just stylistic preference. Examples include:
  • Dante's Night at Freddy's 2: Animatronic Boogaloo features Hellboy and Bill & Ted, though none are identified by name. Dante later references John Constantine, the Winchester brothers, and Blade, but they are only referred to as, "That blonde, bisexual British guy, those good looking brother punks and that vampire with the cool glasses."
  • Harry Dresden later gets referenced by an embittered Constantine in Angel of the Bat: Da Pacem Domine, though like those referenced before, he's not referred to by name, just as, "That fellow from Chicago. He's got a number in the phone book, says he's a wizard and everything."
• The Mouse World League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fic The League of Extraordinary Gentlebeasts, Jupiter from Deptford Mice is only ever referred to as "the Alchemist's Cat", since he serves much the same role as "the Devil Doctor" in the original. This serves as homage, as the League books themselves are chock full of this trope.
• The Lost Child Of Azarath: When the Doctor and Raven visit the Land of Fiction, they naturally encounter a large number of fictional characters from other franchises. However, the ones who aren't important to the plot of the arc aren't named outright, only described, because not having grown up on Earth, Raven doesn't recognize most of them.

Film — Animation

• Played with in Wreck-It Ralph. The title character is basically a human version of Donkey Kong from the 8-bit days, but plenty of other video-game characters cameo as themselves — Bowser, Robotnik, M. Bison, Q*bert, Pac-Man ghosts, etc. Ralph even goes to an Animated Actors-style therapy group for depressed villains. Despite the real cameos, this trope is still played straight at points; one member of Bad Guys Anonymous is clearly based on Kano from Mortal Kombat, and in a clear Fatality reference, there's even a point during the meeting where he rips out Zombie's heart. Despite that, he's only called "Cyborg". Given the game had Australian authorities on the lookout for anyone importing the game, it's little surprise a Disney movie wouldn't go there. Sergeant Calhoun is essentially Commander Shepard were she played by Sue Sylvester.
• Mister Fantastic appears briefly in the Planet Hulk movie, but is shown only in shadow and has no lines. This was due to 20th Century Fox owning the film rights to the Fantastic Four at the time.^note Disney, which acquired Marvel Comics back in 2009, eventually bought out most of Fox's entertainment assets on March 20, 2019, which included the movie rights to the Fantastic Four.
• Similarly, one of the main characters of Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow is Azari, the son of the Wakandan king Black Panther and Storm of the X-Men. Because the X-Men's film rights still belonged to Fox at the time, Storm is not referred to by name and is only shown from behind in a flashback, though her trademark white hair is still visible. The only other clues we get to her identity are a brief shot of a stylized lightning bolt logo (similar to the one Storm wore on her costume during the X-Men's Outback era) and the fact that Azari inherited her ability to generate electric blasts.
• The Undersea Gal, one of the background characters in Halloween Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas, resembles a female version of the Gill-Man with a mermaid's tail in place of legs.
• In Oliver & Company, among the framed pictures of Georgette's admirers is one of Scooby-Doo. It's especially telling that his is the only picture taken so close up you can only make out a small portion of his face.
• In Yellow Submarine, Old Fred and Ringo pass through images of different fictional characters, two of them comic strip characters The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. Of course, the film was produced by King Features, syndicators of said characters.
  Old Fred: Can't we take one of these?
  Ringo: No, Fred. I only work with me mates.
• Mad Monster Party?, while not made by Universal, was clearly working with the characters of Universal Horror. It should be noted that while the literary versions of some of these monsters are in the public domain, their Universal interpretations are not.
  • Count Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster are extremely similar to their portrayals in Dracula and Frankenstein, with a few minor new touches such as a Dracula's High-Class Glass.
  • The Bride of Frankenstein is renamed "the Monster's Mate", but is basically a stop-motion version of Phyllis Diller.
  • The Creature is Creature from the Black Lagoon with just a shortened title, and a slight redesign for the puppet to not make it an exact match.
  • The Werewolf is just as humanoid as The Wolf Man, and is even called "Ron Chanley" in the prequel.
  • "It" is a gigantic ape who kidnaps a woman, climbs a tower, and fights off attacking planes; the only difference from King Kong is the name.
• Shrek 2:
  • During the opening montage, when Fiona and Shrek are making out on the beach, a tidal wave washes an Ariel lookalike up onto Shrek, who reacts in horror. Fiona then chucks her out to sea, where she's apparently eaten by sharks.
  • In a later scene, when Fairy Godmother's factory is flooded with potions, two of her affected mooks resemble Lumiere and Cogsworth.
• At the very end of Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, among three monsters seen with their daughters, one appears to be Gill-Man, though colored orange instead of green, and another is a not-so-subtle cameo by Godzilla, albeit only as a giant foot.
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse features main antagonist Spot briefly visiting a Built with LEGO universe (complete with its LEGO Minifig version of Peter Parker/Spider-Man) that some people assumed that of The LEGO Movie (which two of the movie's producers and writers also made), complete with being animated in the same pseudo-stop motion style and the LEGO characters making their own sound effects as they go to do things as in those movies. But then it's discovered that it's the universe of the LEGO Marvel video games, including LEGO Marvel Super Heroes and LEGO Marvel's Avengers.
• The rattlesnake that briefly appears during the "Rawhide" sequence in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West resembles Kaa.

Film — Live-Action

• Alias Jesse James, a Western comedy by Bob Hope, Hope's character holds off Jesse James and his family with the help of several Western stars: James Garner; James Arness; Fess Parker; Roy Rogers; and many more, all in their trademark characters' Iconic outfits and never identified by name.
• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!: Lois Fairchild knows a flying reporter named Clark.
• Austin Powers in Goldmember has this exchange after the protagonists crash into a parade float:
  Man #1: Run! It's Godzilla!
  Man #2: It looks like Godzilla, but due to international copyright laws, it's not.
  Man #1: Still, we should run like it is Godzilla!
  Man #2: Though it isn't.
  Both: AAAAAAAAAAAA!
• Many of the background cartoon characters from Chipn Dale Rescue Rangers 2022, whether bootlegged or otherwise.
• Coming to America has McDowell's, which is not only an obvious ripoff of McDonald's, but is treated as such in the movie — and the owner has to describe the subtle differences between his store and the McDonald's right next door. When they actually made the building for filming, the owner of the adjacent McDonald's actually threatened to sue.
• Deadpool (2016) was a 20th Century Studios adaptation of a Marvel Comics property. As it was released three years before 20th Century Fox was bought out by Marvel parent Disney, there were two references to Marvel properties that had to be legally veiled due to Fox not owning the rights to them.
  • The movie includes a speaking appearance by Bob, one of the title character's most prominent allies in the comics. But Marvel Studios owns the movie/TV rights for the organization he works for^spoilerHYDRA, so this movie depicts him as simply a mook for the Big Bad.
  • The final battle takes place on a decommissioned S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, which is never identified by name. Concept artist Emmanuel Shiu was even told to make sure it didn't resemble the one seen in The Avengers too closely.
• In The Teaser of For Your Eyes Only, James Bond kills off a bald man in a wheelchair who looks a lot like SPECTRE boss Ernst Blofeld, who goes unnamed and uncredited because Blofeld and SPECTRE had been Exiled from Continuity when the film was made.
• Action movie parody Loaded Weapon 1 includes a cameo by Bruce Willis, still in costume from Die Hard.
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: The emperor transforms into a three-headed dragon identical to Godzilla villain King Ghidorah, but recolored and with extra limbs.
• Murder by Death was an entire crossover of famous but legally-distinct fictional detectives:
  • Sidney Wang = Charlie Chan
  • Sam Diamond = Sam Spade
  • Dick and Dora Charleston = Nick and Nora Charles
  • Miss Marbles = Miss Marple
  • M'sieu Perrier = Hercule Poirot
    • Another role had been written for Katharine Hepburn as Agatha Christie—or "Dame Abigail Christian"—but the character was dropped when Myrna Loy, who'd played Nora Charles in The Thin Man, refused to appear.
    • The movie originally ended with a cameo by two detectives so similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson that Arthur Conan Doyle's estate got it removed from all home video releases.
• In the 1983 reunion TV-movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn is helped by a British agent driving a heavily-modified Aston-Martin played by George Lazenby. His license plates have only two letters: "JB". Who could it possibly be?
• Spider-Man 2: as Mary Jane runs away from her wedding, she passes by a man in a long black trenchcoat. The audio commentary reveals that he's meant to be Frank Castle, played by Thomas Jane's stunt double from The Punisher (2004); however, since Lionsgate owned The Punisher's film rights at the time, Jane couldn't appear as the character.
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: Shortly before the Autobots set out to retrieve the Transwarp Key, Mirage demonstrates his abilities to turn into the alternate modes of several other Transformers as Mythology Gag. These include a Lamborghini (Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Breakdown), a dragster (G1 Mirage, Drag Strip), and a Ferrari (DotM Mirage/Dino, Wildrider). Naturally, considering how overprotective Ferrari is over how their products are portrayed and the fact that Hasbro does not hold the rights to make Ferrari toys (which was in fact the reason why Dino did not get an accurate toy until a decade after the film's release), the transformation occurs entirely offscreen.

Literature

• "After King Kong Fell": Both The Shadow and Doc Savage are there at the site of Kong's body after he falls. They go unnamed, but descriptions of the former's "hawk-like face" and the latter's "gold-specked eyes" make them unmistakable references.
• All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault is set in an Alternate Universe where supernatural monsters and superheroes are a part of normal society. The novel's narrator relates a story at the beginning about how superheroes (called "Sparks" in this universe) first emerged publicly into the world, telling about how a trio of monsters ran afoul of a young, hyper-intelligent, bald man with a massive ego named Alex and his friend, a young man called Cal who wears glasses, is later revealed to be wearing a blue suit and a cape under his clothes, and who promptly wipes the floor with the monsters.
• In the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids story Marksmanship-526 and the Secret Society Stratagem, delegates from the Prime Universe, the Second Universe and the Third Universe are seen.
  • The delegate from the Prime Universe, referred to as "the Prince of the House", is described as a very nice young man with big ears, wearing a "sky-blue crown". If you hadn't previously realised that the Prime Universe in the series is also the Disney Comics Universe, you would be forgiven for not clocking that this is Mickey Mouse.
  • The Third Universe had previously been established as the Faction Paradox universe, which is also the Doctor Who universe, meaning the Three must be representatives of the Great Houses of the Time Lords, as borne out by their being about to launch a war with the eldritch vampires of the universe next-door to theirs. (Although there is no smoking gun, the fact that there are three of them and they come from just before the war with the vampires may lead some to guess that the Three are in fact the Triumvirate of Rassilon, Omega and the Other.)
• In Night Probe (part of the Dirk Pitt Adventures), the British bring one of their old spies out of retirement, who has changed his name to Brian Shaw to avoid assassination attempts. It is strongly implied that Shaw is actually James Bond.
• Discworld: In Witches Abroad, the Lancre witches are on a voyage down a fast-flowing majestic river in a small boat with unspecified hazards on both banks and (although they don't know it yet) a mighty cataract ahead. A strange creature with big frog-like eyes is seen swimming behind them, finally coming to the gunwhale and announcing, apropos of nothing, that it's his birthday. It is stunned with the flat of an oar and thrown back in.
  Ugly little bugger. I wonder what he wanted?
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
  • The Bernice Summerfield novel Ship of Fools by Dave Stone features a 25th century space-liner filled with Great Detectives IN SPACE!, including Emil Dupont (Hercule Poirot) and Khaarli of Czhanos (Charlie Chan).
  • The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Camera Obscura had an appearance of William the Bloody Awful Poet, which was the nickname Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer had as a human. Also, the Past Doctor Adventures novel The King of Terror has a character from Southern California mention Dingoes Ate my Baby as one of his favourite bands.
  • The Past Doctor Adventures novel Millennial Rites briefly mentions a a blond-haired man in a dirty trenchcoat in a Dublin pub, and a thoughtful man levitating in a voluminous blue cloak in a New York brownstone as sensing the psychic shockwave caused by the Monster of the Week.
• The Dresden Files is Reference Overdosed enough as it is, but in Proven Guilty, the Monsters of the Book happen to be taking on the forms of horror movie monsters. Most of them just have the names changed a tiny bit (Chucky becomes Bucky, for instance), but the obviously-a-xenomorph is just described. And Harry quotes the movie at it.
• Simon Scarrow's Historical Fiction novel The Fields of Death, set around the Battle of Waterloo, includes an English rifle commander who looks and sounds exactly like Sharpe. Oh, and he's named Richard.
• Michael Chabon's novella The Final Solution is about a retired detective who, while never named, is clearly Sherlock Holmes.
• In Good Omens there is the alien that looked like a pepper pot, described as beeping, so... the shout out/lawyer-friendly cameo becomes a bit of a twofer.
• Towards the end of Esther Friesner's Harpy High the main character's mother starts dating Dr. Faustus and drawing a comic strip called Mr. Mephisto which, in the words of the main character's best friend, is about "this wizard and this demon and they go around with this fat orange kitten that thinks all these funny things and eats lasagna and-"
• In Robert McCloskey's Homer Price the local kids' biggest fictional heroes are the Lonely Ranger and the Super-Duper.
• House of Leaves: Features appearances by Steve Wozniak, Stephen King, Walter Mosley, Anne Rice, and Camille Paglia, among others, all of whom have quite a bit to say about both the house and the film that it's the subject of.
• How Much for Just the Planet?: At around the point where Scotty and Chekov's golf game stops being a normal game and starts being a Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game, with a completely accurate sign reading "Bunker Left - Minefield Right", they and their Klingon counterparts are interrupted by a man in a khaki uniform with a pencil moustache who speaks with a clipped voice, or, in other words, The Brigadier from Doctor Who. Just to make sure that you don't think it's a coincidence, one of this man's few lines is calling on a Sergeant Benson, who is exactly one letter off being UNIT's most notable non-Brigadier character, Sergeant Benton.
• Simon Cardigan in Marty Pants likes to draw a character that can't be featured in the book for legal reasons. So, Marty uses a substitute called ''Anenomebob Trapezoidshorts".
• A major element of Neil Gaiman's short story The Problem of Susan is that the character of "Professor Hastings" could be a much older Susan Pevensie (Hastings also being just along the coast from Pevensey, Sussex), although the narrative never outright confirms it.
• Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal: Of Noble Family has a slim black woman who works as a doctor on Antigua in the early 19th century, named "Dr. Jones" (no first name given). Even the author's note admits that the resemblance to Martha Jones of Doctor Who is more than coincidental.
• Spider-Man: Sinister Six Trilogy: Spider-Man: Gathering of the Sinister Six features the Machiavelli Club, an elite New York establishment that caters to criminal geniuses. An industrialist named Lex and a female thief named Carmen are mentioned as members, as is a deaf German by the name of Taubmann. Deceased former members include the Gentleman's dear friend Auric, a pair of terrorists known as the Gruber Brothers, and a wealthy, long-lived Asian man who perished during a conflict with his son. Additionally, it's heavily implied the club's original founder was James Moriarty.
• In the Solar Pons story "The Adventure of the Orient Express", Pons encounters several characters who are thinly disguised (very thinly) famous fictional spies and detectives, including Ashenden, Hercule Poirot, and The Saint. Pons himself is something of a Lawyer-Friendly Star based on Sherlock Holmes.
• Sonic the Hedgehog and the Silicon Warriors features a plot where Tails is sucked into a computer world and Dr. Robotnik is using video game characters to conquer the world so there are lots of these. The pair are attacked by falling blocks (that come in L, S and I shapes) that fuse together, a large yellow sphere with a split in the middle, like a mouth, that makes electronic gulping sounds, a blond fighter in a red karate suit and a black haired blue costumed female called "Chin Lie". Sonic recognizes the latter as being from "Road Warrior Two".
• The Roger Rabbit short story "Stay Tooned Folks" features such toons as Sir Lanced Alot (an Arthurian knight with a bowl haircut), Poopdeck the Pirate (a bulging-armed, spinach eating sailor) and (in a sort of double-whammy) Dr Ignatz Cats, Head Shrinker to the Muckety Mucks.
• Kim Newman:
  • A short story in the Unforgivable Stories collection features an unnamed teenaged journalist who has an uncontrollable cowlick and is accompanied by a small white dog who is a Nazi collaborator in occupied Paris.
  • Another - Nice Mice Vs The Garganuabots - features two races of aliens selling toys of themselves on Earth. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • The Red Baron has an unexplained hatred for a white dog in The Bloody Red Baron.
• Villains by Necessity:
  • Barigans are stand-ins for hobbits, being short, hairy and usually rustic people, with Arcie going so far as to lampshade this (like Biblo or Frodo, he's the Black Sheep due to being an adventurer thief).
  • The Nathauan also seem like ones for dark elves/drow, given their attributes (e.g. being a pretty Always Chaotic Evil subterranean people who would raid surface dwellers) and one theory is even that "they were elves once".
  • On a more parodic level, the Gnifty Gnomes are thinly-disguised Smurfs, being sickly sweet tiny people that live in the same kind of houses the Smurfs did along with sharing their appearance.
• In the X-Men and Spider-Man: Time's Arrow trilogy's third and final book, Spider-Man finds a set of Ominous Multiple Screens showing several dimensions of the multiverse... one of which displays a Gothic cityscape with a man wearing a pointy-eared bat costume and scalloped cape.
• Young Wizards: The Fifth Doctor makes a cameo in High Wizardry, helping Dairine give some pursuers the slip.

Live-Action TV

Series:

• Granny from the The Beverly Hillbillies makes an appearance on Mister Ed. Irene Ryan, dressed in "Granny" garb, and with Granny's accent, meets Wilbur Post while touring a wax museum. She offers to take Wilbur home and poultice his head; very Granny-type actions. In the credits, however, Irene Ryan is credited as "Irene Ryan" with no character after her name.
• Doubly lampshaded in the "John Lennon's Dead Day Off" sketch in Bo' Selecta!; John bumps into Ringo Starr as Thomas & Friends at a train yard, Ringo tells him that he's wearing the wrong-coloured Sgt. Pepper suit^note John is wearing the pink suit, which Ringo wore on the album cover. John knows that and answers back asking isn't Thomas supposed to be blue, Ringo responds that he has to be burgundy for copyright reasons.
• The original version of Burke's Law spun off Honey West - Anne Francis returned to the role in the revival's "Who Killed Nick Hazard?", but for legal reasons she became Honey Best.
• Kind of an odd one here: Actor Patrick McGoohan starred in a show called Danger Man (renamed Secret Agent when imported to the US) in which he was, well, a secret agent named John Drake. His next series The Prisoner had him as a retired secret agent of some sort who was kidnapped and imprisoned in "The Village", where he was addressed only as "Number Six". Number Six was never outright stated to be John Drake, but ... Of course given that Patrick McGoohan loved himself some Trolling Creator and Mind Screw, and he and the show's other producer were at odds over whether Six was Drake (McGoohan adamantly denied it, the other producer said Sure, Why Not), take it as you will.
• Goodness Gracious Me did a parody of The Sooty Show with Sweep's face pixelated to hide his resemblance to the original puppet.
• Deputy U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco appears in an episode of Justified, though they had to rename her Karen Goodall for rights reasons. She's even played by the same actress who played Sisco in the short-lived TV series, and a reference is made to her new married surname.
• Perhaps the biggest example of "Pushing it" with this trope would be an Ultraman episode where the hero fights Jirass, a monster that looks a lot like Godzilla with a neck frill attached (And in fact it was an old Godzilla suit with a collar attached). Said frill is then torn off by Ultraman about halfway through the fight. Keep in mind though that series' creator Eiji Tsuburaya owned the Godzilla suit, not Toho as he was the head of their special effects team.
• In Two and a Half Men, after Charlie dies, a married couple played by Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson consider buying the house. They're not named in dialogue, script, or credits, but they speak and act exactly like Dharma & Greg.
• The Stargirl (2020) episode "Brainwave" features a photograph of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, including a pair of archers who are obviously supposed to be Green Arrow and his Kid Sidekick Speedy. However, neither character is named (tellingly they are the only ones to get this treatment; the Star-Spangled Kid, Vigilante, Shining Knight, Crimson Avenger and Wing are all explicitly identified by Pat), presumably to avoid confusion with Arrow, which had also aired on the CW and was still in recent memory.
• RuPaul's Drag Race:
  • The show officially forbids contestants from referencing fictional characters, but several queens on the show have specialized in cosplay, like Phi Phi O'Hara and Dax ExclamationPoint. As a result, the show has gotten extremely permissive and basically lets the queens do everything but reference the character by name, such as the African-American Dax wearing a white wig and lightning motifs when she first entered the Werk Room (accompanied by thunder and lighting, no less). However, the show seems to have done away with this rule. In Season 16, during the second episode's metallic-themed runway, Jax (no relation) flat-out admitted that her look—army fatigues with metal arms—was based on her semi-namesake, Jax from Mortal Kombat.^note "Semi" because her real name out of drag is Jackson or Jax for short, but the decision to use it as her drag name comes from the irony of having the same name as the character, a super-masculine Army major.
  • In the Once a Season challenge "The Snatch Game," a Match Game parody where the queens impersonate celebrities and try their hand at improv comedy, they're not allowed to impersonate fictional characters, but they can impersonate the actor/actress who played that character and base the impersonation on that specific role, like Season 3's Stacy Layne Matthews officially impersonating Monique but specifically channeling the abusive mother from Precious.

Manhua

• In Bowling King, a nefarious physician bears an eerie resemblance to Black Jack... and in a Lampshade Hanging, claims to have strived to be like Black Jack his entire life.

Manhwa

• Volume 7 of Faeries' Landing has a brief one panel cameo of Luffy D. Monkey from One Piece.

Tabletop Games

• The disowned joke module Castle Greyhawk for Dungeons & Dragons does this a LOT. Some levels in the dungeon are nothing but Lawyer-Friendly Cameos to '80s pop culture icons including Doctor Who, Michael Jackson, Marvel Comics, The Blues Brothers, and even Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken!
• Gary Gygax's own seemingly aborted version of the castle (of which only the top levels have been published due to his untimely death) were a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo storm of their own — many names and locations had to be changed since they were Wizards of the Coast IP, even though Gygax tried to keep as much of the Greyhawk feel so that canny DMs could fill in the blanks if they wanted to. In one section, he takes a brief Take That! against TSR, talking of the corrupt city of Dunfalcon...
• Palladium Fantasy has a quite obvious Maleficent analogue depicted in its section on warlocks.
• A Pyramid Magazine article about the possibilities of giving superheroes a connection to the Cthulhu Mythos had several examples, all Lawyer-Friendly Cameos of Marvel and DC characters. For instance there was a millionaire vigilante who had been possessed by the Great Race of Yith, and was reluctantly considering asking "the Martian" to scan his mind; a note from industrialist "L.L." to his research teams about how the alien fungus samples seem to have the ability to take human form, possibly with powers and abilities far beyond mortal men; a powerful telepath unable to prevent his mutant-detecting machine from broadcasting the chant of "Tekeli-li!" to his students; and a chant to Nyarlathotep which reveals his many names include the Surfer in Silver and the Blackened Racer.
• TheOdd1sOut's card game on kickstarter, Can't Catch Harry, has a card based on a skeksi from The Dark Crystal, referred to as "Evil Bird".

Toys

• Jakks Pacific's SLUG Zombies featured characters based on Rambo, Crocodile Dundee, Indiana Jones, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Velma Dinkley, Superman, Shaun of the Dead, Nurse Ratched, "Tallahassee", Ash Williams, Lara Croft, and more. Plus, future releases were planned to include Popeye, Dirty Harry, Happy Gilmore, Blaine from Predator, Ripley from Aliens, Harry Potter, the Dude, and the guy from They Live!.
  • The toy line also included especially stealthy versions of Moe, Larry and Curley from The Three Stooges - they split up the trio so that each Stooge came with a different set of figures, with the Flavor Text only vaguely hinting that the characters have any connection to each other.

Video Games

• Sonic the Hedgehog features the Death Egg as Eggman's ultimate weapon to destroy Sonic.
• Pokémon Platinum features an "International Police" detective named Looker who bears a striking resemblance to Koichi Zenigata from Lupin III. Pokémon makes quite a few references. For starters, Rotom is based off of Pulseman◊ and Volt Tackle is based off of his signature move. It helps that Game Freak also made Pulseman.
• In Romancing SaGa 3, there is a Zorro-esque character called Robin, and in the credits, said character pulls off Zorro's infamous Z cut (Strongest Foil technique)
• The first print versions of The Revenge of Shinobi for the Sega Genesis featured bosses that resembled Spider-Man, Batman, the Terminator (who wore no shirt and turned green as he took damage), and Godzilla. To avoid any potential lawsuits, Sega released a revision of the game which replaces Godzilla with a metal skeletal dinosaur and Batman with a Devilman-like creature. Spider-Man was kept as an official cameo (with a new copyrights screen acknowledging Marvel Comics' ownership of the character), since Sega had the Spider-Man license for a couple of other games (namely the Spider-Man arcade game and the Genesis game Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin). In the Virtual Console re-release, Spider-Man is now colored pink (Due to Sega losing the rights to use Spider-Man to Activision). Ironically, the Terminator/Hulk has appeared in all versions of The Revenge of Shinobi with no modifications whatsoever.
  • Shinobi III, on the other hand, was able to get away with Mechagodzilla.
• In the VGA remake of Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, the Droids-B-Us shop (which itself features an android Geoffrey the Giraffe as its logo!) has a "Dalick" for sale, which bears a striking resemblance to a certain creature from Doctor Who. There's also the robot from Lost in Space, as well as another droid, HA-Y-AO, which clearly was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. The Blues Brothers also have a cameo as bar singers.
  • ZZ Top had a cameo in the original, but this wasn't so lawyer-friendly, as Sierra got slapped with a lawsuit and had to replace them in the remake by a band of similarly dressed midgets, while The Blues Brothers were replaced with a pair of blue-skinned MIBs. Their respective musics were also changed. The former's sprites could still be found Dummied Out in the game data.
  • There was a robot called the "Def-Tech" resembled a Rifleman 'Mech
  • Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge had a Xenomorph-like alien and an ersatz of ED-209 from RoboCop, and Vohaul resembles Darth Vader unmasked.
  • Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon has Arnoid, a killer robot (Terminator).
    • And Monolith Burger, with its large yellow "M" logo.
    • The garbage ship is full of these, including a "bow tie fighter from the Cologne Wars" and an expy of Optimus Prime's head.
  • Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers features a Radioshock store which suffered the same case with Droids-R-Us which was renamed to Hz. So Good.
  • Space Quest V: The Next Mutation featured the rear end of the USS Enterprise in the Starcon hangar bay. Captain Picard appears in the conference room on the station. There's also Spike. No lawsuits, somehow. Of course, the entire series is filled with this sort of stuff.
    • It wasn't in Quest for Glory II, though. That was the USS Exitprise.
• In Clock Tower 2, one possible encounter with ScissorMan in Scenario 2 is finding him on a rocking chair watching Tom and Jerry on television.
• Shin Megami Tensei II featured lawyer-friendly cameos from Mr. Thriller, Audrey Jr. and Betelgeuse. Yes, that Betelgeuse.
• Starcraft has a few hero units with oddly familiar names hidden away in the map editor. Examples include the flamethrower-wielding Gui Montag.
  • And Mech pilot Allen Shezar.
    • Wraith fighter ace pilot Tom Kazansky, anyone?
• Street Fighter has the character "Mike Bison", a boxer, in the Japanese version. However, his name was changed to "Balrog" in the English release to avoid lawsuits. It's still obvious who he's based on, however. The name Mike Bison was shortened to M. Bison and given to the Big Bad.
• SNK sold off the rights to its pachinko assets between The King of Fighters XIV and The King of Fighters XV, rendering both Mui Mui and Love Heart unable to reappear due to being in legal limbo. As a result, they are only alluded to in the official backstory for Team Samurai, which opens with the two of them being Put on a Bus.
• While Burnout normally uses Bland Name Cars, Burnout Paradise has the Legendary Cars DLC pack, which has four cars inspired by famous cars from films and television: Hunter Cavalry Bootlegger (complete with Dixie Horn), the Carson GT Nighthawk, the Hunter Manhattan Spirit, and the Jansen P12 88 Special. Toy versions of these cars are also unlockable in the Big Surf Island DLC.
  • Burnout 3: Takedown also had The B-Team van, and the first lorry you get in crash mode has a particular disguise to it.
• Final Fantasy has the recurring characters Biggs and Wedge, named after the pair from Star Wars — although Biggs's name was romanized as "Vicks" in the SNES release of Final Fantasy VI.
  • Not only did they show up in Chrono Trigger as well, but that game even has an Admiral Piett to go with them.
  • The Japanese version of Final Fantasy basically used the original Dungeons & Dragons bestiary down to the names, and most monsters were renamed in localization to prevent legal action.
  • Final Fantasy VII has the summon Hades, a skeleton wearing a hooded robe that curses enemies with fumes from a giant kettle, and his attack is explicitly named "Black Cauldron".
• An early conversation in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has Emil and Marta discussing whether the mask that Lloyd dropped reminded them of the one from "Phantom of the Operetta", "F for Foe", or "The Man in the Aluminum Mask". Also the Centurion Rangers.
• Every Quest for Glory game features a cameo by at least one famous comedian. The list includes The Three Stooges in the first game, the Marx Brothers in the second, Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford, Cerebus the Aardvark, and Laurel and Hardy in the third, and a sound-alike of Rodney Dangerfield in the fourth.
  • In Quest for Glory I, the VGA remake, if you're in the forest at certain times at morning or afternoon, you can see a dinosaur either going to or returning from work
  • In Quest for Glory IV, one of the farmers at the inn is a Lawyer-Friendly Archie Bunker.
• Due to licensing issues, The Incredible Hulk was one of the few prominent Marvel heroes not to appear in the launch version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance.^note The rights issues were eventually worked out at a later date, allowing the Hulk to be released as a DLC character for the Xbox 360 version of the game. However, the developers were able to sneak in a Hulk cameo for the "Doom's Day" cutscene, where he was briefly glimpsed among the fallen heroes who'd tried to stop Doctor Doom. The same thing was done in Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, where the Hulk's sole appearance consisted of a giant green hand poking out from beneath some rubble during the opening cutscene.
• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness does this quite obviously with the infamous Prism Rangers.
  • And how could you forget Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth!
  • The second game also features a conversation with a member of monster-type demon race that's usually considered female for pretty much the rest of the game. At the end of the conversation the monster reveals that it is, in fact, a boy. At this point, you realize/remember that the monster in question is named Bridget.
  • And then there's the third game with not one, but two of the Diez Gentlemen. One is Bo Tie (flip his name around). Then there's Se-To-Oh, who ironically, summons a bunch of monsters in one turn.
• Classic H-game Season of the Sakura features characters from Magic Knight Rayearth, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tenchi Muyo!, Saint Tail, and Pia Carrot, but given how blatant the references were, this may simply be a Shout-Out (or an excuse to let fanboys pursue anime girls popular in the mid-90s, when the game was made).
• The Masters in MadWorld are explicitly said to use the For—— Magnets! (With that exact wording.) And other reminiscent things.
• World of Warcraft isn't exempt from this either. In Un'Goro Crater, a gnome wearing a green tunic and cap, named Linken, sets you on a long quest line that references everything from "Eastern peninsula is the secret", to tossing a sword into a spring and receiving it tempered, to receiving a magical boomerang that deals ranged damage and stuns or disarms. And not too far away you'll find Dadanga, and the hammer-wielding dwarves Larion and Muigin. The list goes on. The zone is basically one long shoutout to Nintendo, but there are plenty of other examples of this trope in the rest of the game.
  • One of the characters describes a movie trilogy that is Lord of the Rings, but with WoW characters and barely disguised titles such as the third movie being called "Hey, the King is Back!"
• Gunbird 2 is full of expies and Shout Outs, but the one that takes the cake is the end boss, who attacks with pills, and above all is a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of Sato Pharmaceutical's mascot.
• Ownership of Lieutenant Linn Kurosawa from Alien vs. Predator (Capcom) is apparently tied up with Twentieth Century Fox, so while Capcom usually uses any excuse to revisit its own obscure characters, Linn's cameos have been limited to hanging out far in the background of stages in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter III and an unrelated character Cosplaying as her for a split-second during a super attack in Namco × Capcom.
• 3D Dot Game Heroes has direct appearances by Minwu, Josef, Guy, Firion, and Maria from Final Fantasy II, "Pizarro", Rosy, Alena, Brey, Cristo, Mina, Mary, and Healie the slime from Dragon Quest IV, and the Hero, Bianca, and Flora (and their kids) from Dragon Quest V, among others.
• Super Smash Bros.
  • The series has "Lightsabers" and "Blasters" as usable weapons, even going so far as to using the original sound effects (or at least something similar) for when the items are used.
  • The Motion-Sensor Bomb item is a twofer - the item itself originates from GoldenEye (1997), one of the big system-sellers for the Nintendo 64, but its series name is listed as [TOP SECRET] in order to avoid dealing with Eon Productions' copyright requirements. So in the Japanese version of Melee, the Motion-Sensor Bomb is redesigned to look the way it was in Perfect Dark (made by the same team at Rare who did GoldenEye), but come Brawl and the Motion-Sensor Bomb was given a new physical appearance entirely due to Rare being acquired by Microsoft.
  • On several occasions, songs that original had vocalized lyrics in their home series only got instrumental versions in Smash - one such example is Snake Eater, which has the instrumental version sourced from the original game (which played during the latter half of the Final Boss fight) and an instrumental remix added in Ultimate that ups the James Bond influences.
  • Ms. Pac-Man makes a cameo appearance on the Pac-Land stage, but the copyright issues surrounding her prevents any other references from being made towards her outside of it.
  • Final Fantasy VII was hit with this hard upon its initial inclusion and return in Ultimate. Outside of Cloud as a playable fighter, the recurring series summons on the Midgar stage (Ifrit, Ramuh, Leviathan, Odin, and Bahamut ZERO) and the Chocobo costume were the only other characters shown outright, with VII not getting any other characters as collectible Trophies, Spirits, or Assist Trophies - not to mention that only two battle themes from VII were selectable music choices. This ended up being fixed with Cloud's Arch-Enemy Sephiroth was added as DLC in Ultimate, upon which nine other music tracks were added, as well as Spirits for VII's main party (Barret, Tifa, Aerith, Red XIII, Yuffie, Cait Sith, Vincent, Cid), several summons (Chocobo & Moogle, Ifrit, Shiva, Bahamut ZERO), and the secondary antagonists of VII (Rufus Shinra and the Turks).
  • When Sora from Kingdom Hearts was added to Ultimate, the game's developers had to painstakingly go through and remove almost all references to any Disney or Creator/Pixar movies, namely Donald Duck and Goofy. The only exception to this was the Mickey Mouse keychain attached to Sora's Keyblade, and just that - even Mickey himself doesn't have any references beyond that.
• Transport Tycoon featured real-life vehicles in the original British release. Just to give a few examples, there were aircraft from Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, and Airbus; road vehicles from British Leyland, Ford, and Volvo; train locomotives designed by Stanier and Gresley, and later in the game the Eurostar and TGV. For the American release, these were changed to fake companies to avoid litigation. These were carried forward into Transport Tycoon Deluxe and OpenTTD.
• And of course we have Champions Online, with player created wonders such as The Incredible Haulk, Iron Dude, and Deadsea. These characters, of course, look almost the same with maybe a slight color change.
• The Dark Mod, a fan remake total conversion inspired by the original Thief series, uses this for some of the more uniquely named concepts, creatures and factions. Hammerites become "Builders", Haunts become "Revenants", Burricks become "Belchers", the "Inventor's Guild" is a loose analogue of the Mechanists, etc.
• The 5 to 2 Cafe in Silent Hill is lifted from Natural Born Killers.
• The title cards for the PARANOIA songs in DanceDance Revolution display expies of Kraftwerk's robot alter egos.
• Team Fortress 2 features the Pyro hat Triboniophorus Tyrannus as a nod to the brain slugs of Futurama.
• Star Trek Online had a special Christmas event where a little green man in front of a hermit's hut was giving away glowing melee weapons.
• The Very Big Cave Adventure has a sequence set in Gotham City, with a masked crimefighter known only as "THAT MAN" and his archnemesis "THE JESTER". And yes, their names always appear in allcaps.
• Portal 2's Perpetual Testing Initiative: When you enter a specific chamber, Cave Johnson will say that you are "the first half-man, half-machine police officer" named Robot-a-Cop.
• Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: The ending results screen shows Earthworm Jim's blaster and Sonic's shoes lying discarded by a trash can with a sign that says "No Hopers".
• Silent Dragon features Jagi as the third boss, except he's called "Wolfkid." The flyer states that you can't see him in the daytime despite the boss fight taking place in broad daylight.
• Chronicles of Albion 2: The Wizbury School of Magic features a talking painting called Tripstaff. After you hang it on the art room wall, clicking on it produces a wide variety of increasingly ridiculous excuses, one of which is "Sorry, can't talk now, I'm watching a Fluffy the Werewolf Slayer marathon."
• Royal Envoy has a girl pirate named Tippy Long-Boots.
• The player character in Spandex Force reminisces about what a shock it was when "meek Kenneth Clarke" revealed his secret identity as Miracle Man.
• In Cowboy Blues the denizens of the local saloon are Normal, Dyanne, Speckle and Spam the bartender.
• The Kingdom Rush series, being packed with references and cameos, features some.
  • In Kingdom Rush Frontiers, a total of three Predators are hidden across three different maps, but are called 'Alien Hunters'.
  • In a map on Kingdom Rush Origins, two kids (named 'Hans' and 'Ethel') can be freed from a candy house inhabited by a witch. The achievement for freeing them is also a Lawyer Friendly Cameo: 'Candy Rush'.
• A number of Little Alchemist's cards are clear Captain Ersatzes of popular media characters like Adventure Kid, Windmaster Eng, Malevolent, Lieutenant USA, Care Chilla, The Snake Lord, and much more.
• The Amiga Platform Game The Adventures of Quik & Silva had a lot of suspiciously familiar-looking enemies, including Bubblun and Sonic the Hedgehog, whose own flagship game had not even been released yet!
• Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Mission: Las Vegum features Romans dressed as Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, Pac-Man, Ryu, and Lara Croft.
• In the Yoshi's Island series, there are enemies and bosses called Burt, which wear blue and white striped pants. In German, they are called Xilebo. In French, their name is Bélixo. You can guess who they are based on.
• Antagonist has a minor character called Teeth who works for Evil Productions, a company that specializes in supplying video game villains. Her usual role is the Cat Burglar, a foe of Fatman.
• Persona 5: You can rent dvds and go to movie theaters to watch parody versions of Beverly Hills, 90210, Ghost (1990), The X-Files, Ugly Betty, ER, Prison Break, The Walking Dead, Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight Rises, Before Midnight, Les Misérables (2012), Doraemon, The Godfather, Back to the Future, Mission: Impossible, The Avengers (2012), Saw, Die Hard and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. As Atlus doesn't have the money to license all those works, each have silly names like "I, Miserable" or "Mansion Impossible", and you can hear dialogue making fun of tropes from the given work as your character watches the show or movie off-screen.
• Discworld Noir has a young female Stealth Archaeologist with the suspicious initials L.C.
• In Forza Horizon 3, the baby blue AMC Pacer from Wayne's World is present in all-but-name; one of the exclusive barn finds is a rusty old blue Pacer X with a flame-colored lightning bolt on its side and a guitar sitting on its hood, and your mechanic is dumbfounded that you haven't seen "the movie".
• In Friday the 13th: The Game, the Jarvis Tapes namedrop various names locations from other slasher movies like Halloween, Shocker, and Hatchet. The final tape ends with Tommy being institutionalized at Springwood and suffering mysterious lacerations whenever he goes to sleep.
• Ghost Recon Wildlands has a scene in which Sam talks about how he's one of the few of the covert op old guard. He mentions that there's one other old operative, an Army Operations member who wears a bandana, only to be informed that said operative retired fairly recently. "So there's only me..."
• The unreleased Japanese prototype of Monster Party had several enemies and bosses based on famous fictional characters, many of which were modified to avoid lawsuits in the game's limited American release. Examples of the bosses include a singing potted plant that uses musical notes as projectiles^note Changed to a pitcher plant that shoots bubbles in the American release., an ape-man on horseback who fights with a ruined Statue of Liberty appearing in the background^note The American release changed it to a pumpkin-headed ghost boss and removed the ruined Statue of Liberty seen in the background, a grotesque head on spider legs^note Changed to a Giant Spider in the American release., a Mogwai that turns into a Gremlin as the boss fight starts^note Changed into a cute cat that turns into a feline monstrosity in the American release., and a Xenomorph^note Changed to The Grim Reaper in the American release..
• In the original PGA Tour Golf, the fictional course "Sterling Shores" is an unlicensed version of Pebble Beach.
• Lina from Dota 2 is an odd example. Back when DotA was a humble game mod, she was straight-up named Lina Inverse and all her spell names were copied off the ones she used. She was built with purely in-game assets, so it wasn't meant to be a blatant copy. In Dota 2, she was one of many heroes that were renamed, and she's now called Lina the Slayer and is pretty distanced from the character she used to reference, but for some reason her spells weren't renamed, so she ends up being a sort of In Name Only Expy.
  • Another similarly weird instance happened regarding Aghanim. Aghanim's Scepter is an item whose name is just a Shout-Out to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past villain. Dota 2 for a while skirted around name dropping Aghanim for hero voice lines, but suddenly this trend stopped with the newer heroes. Then Aghanim was introduced as a lore character, far removed from the character the item used to reference.
• In Expeditions: Rome, the player can encounter a pair of Gaulish menhir merchants who sound just like Asterix and his friend Obelix.
• Homescapes:
  • A couple of characters comment that their favorite TV shows are Baking Bread and Mouse, PhD.
  • When Andy gets a bit too creative with his design ideas, Olivia comments that they're not trying to recreate Billy and the Bubblegum Factory.
  • William states that some novels are detailed enough to count as scientific books, such as The McGlinchey Code or The Fame of The Nose.
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has a lot of fun implying as hard as it can that the twelfth founder of the pirate colony of Libertalia, whose name has been mostly lost to time, was actually Monkey Island protagonist Guybrush Threepwood. He's portrayed as looking almost exactly like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge-era Guybrush, had a pirate flag with a monkey on it, and Nate even drops a "That's the second biggest X I've ever seen!" joke later into the game. (Officially, the man is named "Guy Wood", but this name only appears in supplementary material.)

Webcomics

• Each story in Devilbear features a "special guest" character that represents a more famous character such as "Winnie the Pimp" instead of Pooh or "Pandatchoo" instead of Pikachu...
• Sonoda Meimi from MegaTokyo is suspected to be Haneoka Meimi from Kaitou Saint Tail. At one point a character even starts to refer to her as "Myster..."(ious Thief Saint Tail), but gets cut off. (On two other occasions, he only gets as far as "Mys".)
• A supporting character in It's Walky! was a short, quiet girl with coke-bottle glasses named Marcie. No mention is made of what she was like as a child, but it's safe to take a guess. (For bonus reference points, she's openly bisexual.)
• In The Order of the Stick Rich drops an entire lamp, never mind the shade, on the subject with the Mind Flayer.
  • Vaarsuvius attempts to exploit this trope by claiming Zz'dtri is not one, causing a pair of lawyers to show up and arrest him. He is acquitted by getting classified as a parody, which is protected speech.
• In The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: "Mace Windu is a Lucasfilm character. I'm Samuel L. Jackson in a bathrobe."
• Meet Weapon Brown. The comic that is literally constructed wholesale out of this trope. Whether it be the main characters Chuck "Weapon" Brown and his dog Snoop, the pointy-haired CEO of 'The Syndicate', CALv1.n and HOBS, or the currently unknown-in-name alliance of characters including Pops, Val, and the blind Annie, you can be sure that you can easily recognise everybody, provided you're learned enough in your newspaper comics.
  • And if you're not, JY tags the images with the names of either the characters or strip he's parodying.
• Academia features one by Yo-Yo Ma, who is secretly an angel.
• Leif & Thorn does this with background characters, given names in the transcripts like not!Touga, not!Buffy, and not!Bella.
• Mechagical Girl Lisa ANT: Nanoha and Vita appear in episode 3, attending a free samba lesson for kids. Along with many cameos from the girls of W.I.T.C.H..

Web Original

• Averted in Soon, I Will Rule The World!, which makes no real bones about the fact that the main character comes from a D&D-based world with a bit of Warhammer Fantasy thrown in, with all creatures and gods referred to by their in-game names.
• Legion of Net.Heroes: At one point in Decibel Dude & Vigilante Guy, Decibel Dude was ready to quit being a superhero due to a number of extremely stressful plot developments. A quiet chat with four guys known only as Clark, Bruce, Frank, and Peter convinced him to get back in the game.

Web Videos

• To Boldly Flee features as a major villain an alien of an unnamed species named Ferdinand von Turrell, who is quite clearly Terl the Psychlo from Battlefield Earth; he even goes by his last name, pronounces it Terl, and originates in a review of Battlefield Earth.
• Steven Ogg appeared in the short parody film GTA VR where he played the role of that psycho criminal kingpin Ogg became best known for, but wasn't referred to as such due to copyright issues (though if there's any consolation, Trevor Philips didn't look any more different from the actor who portrayed him anyway).

Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: During the Grand Finale, Wile E. Coyote (!) briefly stops chasing the Road Runner to answer the Twilight Bark.
• In an interesting case, one episode of Arthur had Arthur and friends writing pilot scripts for a contest. These were all obvious parodies of other popular cartoons. The thing is, most of these parodies were of shows aimed at a- to put it lightly- more mature audience, like South Park, Beavis and Butt-Head, and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. What makes this more bizarre is that each of the stories were actual submissions by kids for a contest to generate ideas for the show, implying that the kids who sent those stories in watched those shows themselves.
  Francine/Cartman?: Hey, you squished Buster!
  • One episode had a Domo plush in the background, another referenced a show called "Judo Kittens" whose characters looked pretty familiar...
• "Tomato from the Black Lagoon", an episode of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! animated series, has one scene where Chad Finletter waits in line to get on a plane, with one of the people ahead of him being an angry and impatient man who becomes green and muscular as his rage worsens.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has a lawyer-friendly version of Ryu seen losing to June at arm wrestling at a bar (he's still there the next time they visit and is part of a Bar Brawl).
• In the episode "Living Legends" from The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Kim Possible and Ron make a cameo. Kim also showed up in the Spot-The-Diff event for Phineas and Ferb.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: The episode "The Copycats" was made as a direct response to a very infamous series of milk commercials in China that featured scenes from the show ripped off shot-for-shot. In a huge case of irony, though, even the rip-offs here had to be slightly altered in design to avoid legal trouble. It's worth noting that the storyboards for the episode still presented these characters in their original "Miracle Star" designs.
• The titular game in the Batman Beyond episode "Sentries of the Last Cosmos" is clearly modeled off of the Star Wars franchise. The "save the distant universe" game plot, the imposing armor for the "sentries", and their lightsaber-like flaming swords are relatively generic enough. However, there is no way of getting around the fact that the villain du jour is straight-up wearing Jedi robes and furthermore has the hood up for the climax like Emperor Palpatine. To seal the deal, there is this gem of dialogue:
  Terry: They said they were sent on a sacred mission by "the wise one".
  Max: "The wise one"... that's what Corey calls Simon Harper! [...] Do you think there is a connection?
  Terry: Is Jar-Jar lame?
• During the first two seasons of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Wonder Woman was deemed off-limits due to the notoriously convoluted legal red tape regarding the character's media rights. The creators were able to give Wondy a cameo in a Flashback sequence by only showing her from behind, thus avoiding any of her trademarked iconography (such as her tiara or W crest).
• The Beetlejuice Off to See the Wizard episode has the Munchkins (here, giant beetles) greet Lydia (as Dorothy) with "Welcome to the Land of Public Domain!" Let's make this very clear: you do not have to write around any copyrights to use characters from the first book (and a few others, all the ones written before about 1923) of the Oz series (it's in the public domain now) ...the movie, on the other hand, is copyrighted. No ruby slippers for you.
• One of the episodes of Ben 10 has Konohamaru's team appear in the background. In another, an orange-haired girl dressed like Sakura is on screen briefly.
• In the fifth-season finale of Bojack Horseman, Gert Yorkes can be seen among the crowd protesting against Henry Fondle.
• In The Boondocks episode "Guess Hoe's Coming to Dinner", there's a background character who resembles Jin from Samurai Champloo.
• Bounty Hamster has a carefully unnamed coyote show up and recommend that the eponymous hamster try a better catalogue than Acme Products.
• The "Nubian vs. Nubian" episode of The Boys: Diabolical features a brief appearance from Barret Wallace and Jessie Raspberry as pedestrians.
• Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.' iconic cartoon star, appeared in cameo in Paramount's Puppetoon "Jasper Goes Hunting". Unlike most examples of this trope, his design is not altered in the slightest and he's even referred to by name.
• The last episode of Camp Lazlo had a twist ending where it was revealed that Lumpus wasn't the real scoutmaster of Camp Kidney. The real scoutmaster isn't named, but he looks strikingly like a shaved and elderly version of Heffer Wolfe from Rocko's Modern Life, another cartoon by Joe Murray, from Nickelodeon, whereas Camp Lazlo aired on Cartoon Network. In case there was any doubt that he was a lawyer-friendly cameo of Heffer, the character even references the Running Gag of Heffer insisting that he is a "steer". The two characters are even voiced by the same actor, Tom Kenny.
• In the Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "'Teers in the 'Hood", Shaggy and Velma from Scooby-Doo can clearly be seen in the backdrop of a school hallway.◊
• The Clarence episode "Video Store" features a significant appearance from an unnamed video store clerk who is heavily implied to be a grown-up version of Brendon from Home Movies. In addition to the clerk being voiced by the same actor and having the same personality and appearance (albeit nearly a decade and a half older), a photo of Brendon's old coach John McGuirk can be seen in the store, cementing the connection.
• In Codename: Kids Next Door a kid dressed exactly like Ash Ketchum (wearing Ash's outfit in the original series) from Pokémon: The Series can be seen often in the stands. He's usually next to Yugi. They were seen together in a couple episodes with large crowds of KND operatives. There was also an expy of Kairi in the Lotus-Eater Machine.
• Dexter's Laboratory:
  • A recurring segment features the "Justice Friends," a superhero group made up of Major Glory, Val Hallen, and The Infraggable Krunk, who despite the name, are clear expies of a different group.
  • One episode featuring Dexter getting a rugged beard had him walk past Fred Flintstone and George Jetson.
• In one episode of Doug, Doug buys a new video game console and quickly becomes addicted. The game in question is a pretty obvious knock off of Wing Commander with squirrel aliens instead of cats.
• Done quite often on Drawn Together. In "Gay Bash", Elmer Fudd and Snagglepuss (their faces covered by Pixellation) show up at Xandir's "coming-out-of-the-closet" party. In "Requiem for a Reality Show", a masked Charlie Brown and Natasha Fatale (from Rocky and Bullwinkle) with a black bar over her eyes show up as the new BDSM partners for Foxxy Love and Captain Hero, respectively. In another episode, a down-and-out Wooldoor Sockbat is lying on the street when two characters, one fat wearing a white shirt and green pants, and one slender wearing a blue blouse and off-white pants (whose heads are cut off by the screen) walk by and give him some change. The skinny one, in a voice a little more than very reminiscent of Lois from Family Guy (because it was done by the very same actress as Lois), chastises her pudgy counterpart for it.
  • In another episode when Toot, Xandir, and Wooldoor get high off Ling-Ling's sweat, the next day following their hangovers, Homer Simpson can be seen lying next to them.
  • "Oh my god! It's Mickey [beep]!" "I can't believe it! It's [beep] Mouse!"
• Duck Dodgers:
  • The short "Attack of the Drones" was written by Eric Kaplan and directed by Rich Moore, both of whom worked regularly on Futurama; thus, Zoidberg is clearly visible at the council early on. Same scene had a Klingon and The Great Gazoo in the council. Not to mention the Langoliers.
  • There's also Samurai Quack and the evil wizard Achoo. Even the Cheshire Cat was the alarm clock.
  • In "Fins of War", when the chancellor snaps at King Great-White and calls him a sea-sponge, which cuts to a green sponge-like character in the room who resembles another sea-sponge.
• In the first episode of DuckTales (2017), Lupin III's trademark yellow Fiat 500 can briefly be seen driving past Scrooge's limo, complete with a dog version of Jigen poking his head out through the sunroof. The episode "Astro B.O.Y.D.!" took this even further by including cameos from Lupin himself and a young woman dressed as Sailor Moon.
  • Disney isn't above pulling this trope on themselves. When DuckTales (2017) first went into production, the showrunners had the rights to every Disney Afternoon franchise except Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, because a movie starring them had long been in production and Disney didn't want conflicts with the brand. The showrunners knew however they couldn't leave them out, so they slipped them in by only referring to them as "intelligent rodents" in the script, didn't have them speak, and never explicitly refer to them as the Rescue Rangers. By the time Disney execs found out, they felt the references were harmless and let the episode air as is.
• After his fallout with Marvel Comics, Steve Gerber wrote the Man-Thing character into an episode of the Dungeons & Dragons (1983) television series, for which he was a head writer. The fact that the game had a monster type^note the Shambling Mound based in part on Man-Thing provided legal cover.
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, while a very prominent holiday figure, hasn't appeared in many Christmas specials lately because he is a registered trademark of The Rudolph Company and using him would entitle The Rudolph Company to royalties. Nevertheless, the Christmas Episode of Earthworm Jim features a brief appearance by an unnamed red-nosed reindeer who complains about Santa barring him from the reindeer games and only needing his help because of his nose.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • The President always appears dressed up as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln and has No Name Given, but once you hear his voice you can tell he is a parody of George W. Bush.
  • One episode had Charlie Brown (who had a tuft of brown hair in this cameo for some reason) falling for Lucy's football trick like he always does and Snoopy was sleeping on his dog house.
• Nearly every episode of Family Guy has this with characters appearing in a Cutaway Gag. If anyone cares, besides the Kool-Aid Man, the most prolific cameo is Superman, who in one early appearance in the episode "Holy Crap" got around trademarks by both not calling him by name and by the framing of him sitting at a poker table, with his cards conveniently covering up his S symbol.
• In Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, Johnny hires a freelance photographer to take pictures of him and make him look good to the media. The photographer is cut off right before he introduces himself, but he resembles another freelance photographer of superheroes Marvel was not allowed to use due to a contract with Sony at the time.
• One episode of Disney's Fillmore! has a pan of the school cafeteria, which shows a well-known tough girl who has apparently graduated from elementary school into middle school, as well as a young hero-to-be, who is sitting with friends and a future enemy from a concurrently airing series on a rival network.
• Freakazoid! loves "The guy who hits stuff with mallets". He's obviously talking about 80s comedian Gallagher, whose main schtick was to hit watermelons with giant mallets. But he's referred to as "Gulliver".
  • In the very first episode, the narrator says that only one hero is able to stop Cave Guy. The camera then pans up to a certain silhouetted caped crusader, but then the narrator says that that hero is "on another network", since the World's Greatest Detective was airing on Fox Kids at the time, and Freakazoid aired on what was then The WB.
• Justice League:
  • The opening of one episode has a Humongous Mecha that looks a hell of a lot like a turquoise EVA Unit 01.
  • An episode in Justice League Unlimited begins with Supergirl, Stargirl, S.T.R.I.P.E., and Green Lantern saving Japan from a giant turtle monster.
• Possibly due to its anime influence, Kappa Mikey has a few of these.
  • A few of the guest appearances include a fat, middle-aged Speed Racer, a palette-swapped version of Puchiko from Di Gi Charat, and Yugi Muto with ridiculously exaggerated hair.
  • In one of the first episodes, you can also see a figure that looks like Mega Man X and Zero combined.
• La Familia Del Barrio: El Noruego wears a lawyer friendly Mickey Mouse T-shirt as part of his Iconic Outfit.
• One episode of Megas XLR featured a villain who was a dead ringer for Captain Harlock.
  • May not exactly fit this trope, but a Motoko Kusanagi-lookalike can be spotted in one episode
  • In general, Megas is swimming in lawyer-friendly-cameos. Even the titular 'bot has one - before having it replaced, his head looks exactly like Soundwave's.
  • And then you have the fact that the second time you see Mag Nanimous, his robot has a shotgun and a chainsaw for arms and dresses like Elvis. (Of course, considering who VOICED that particular villain, it's not all that surprising.)
• The Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures episode "Don't Touch That Dial" had the hero being transposed into other cartoons, each of them a Captain Ersatz of existing shows "The Jetstones," "Ring-A-Ding, Where Are You?," "Rocky & Hoodwinkle," and "The Real Gagbusters". A rapid-fire series of channel changes showed a bizarre rendition of Beany and Cecil and Popeye as a Smurf.
• In the two-part pilot of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Sakura Haruno, Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha can be seen at a classroom in Lunella's school. Sanji from One Piece can be seen as a cook in another episode.
  • The trend continues in season 2, where Star Butterfly (sans cheek marks) and Monkey D. Luffy can be seen as guests at the roller rink.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic gets away with this all the time since said cameos are ponies. So far we've had Karl Lagerfeld, Anna Wintour, the entire cast of The Big Lebowski, Indiana Jones, Big Boss, Mike 'Viper' Metcalf, Rick and Morty, and although they won't admit it was intentional, Braeburn looks an awful lot like Roy O'Bannon.
  • An accidental example that has since become Ascended Fanon is the pony named Time Turner, AKA "Doctor Whooves", who strongly resembles the Tenth Doctor. In addition to further appearances of Time Turner since then, there have been occasional background cameos of other ponies who resemble other incarnations of the Doctor.
  • The comics have even more examples. You can find Mario and Luigi, Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, Loki from The Avengers, the Inner Senshi from Sailor Moon, Mabel Pines from Gravity Falls and tons of others. The comics also imply that Discord actually is Q from Star Trek.
• The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries features two characters who are clearly based on Thomson and Thompson from Tintin.
• An episode of Phantom 2040 features a guest appearance by an "old family friend" who strikingly resembles, but is not named as, Mandrake the Magician, the other famous character created by Lee Falk, the writer who created The Phantom.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode "Are You Ready for Some Megafootball?!" lists Luna Nova Magical Academy as a competing school defeated by P.O.I.N.T. Prep. The subtitles actually spell the school as "Loo Nanofa Magical Academy" which ends up sounding indistinguishable from "Luna Nova" thanks to some homophonal shenanigans.^note The school was abbreviated on screen as 'LN' - an abbreviation applicable both to "Luna Nova" and the mock name "Loo Nanofa"
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Knock It Off", has the villain of the episode sell Powerpuff Girls knockoffs to Japan and when he does, the camera pans to find expies of Great Mazinger, Getter Robo, and Ultraman bowing their heads in defeat, along with a giant, face always obscured somehow, Wally Gator. Another episode features a montage of The Mayor calling the girls to stop various crimes, including a bank being robbed by "two barefoot criminals" resembling Fred and Barney.
• In the Regular Show episode "Party Pete", Party Pete bears a striking resemblance to the Swedish singer Günther◊.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show:
  • In the pilot "Big House Blues" dog versions of Fred Flintstone and George Jetson can be seen at the pound.
  • The episode "I Was a Teenage Stimpy" features Stimpy inviting a few friends over; although not named they are obvious parodies of Archie Andrews and Jughead Jones. Jughead can be seen tattooing Archie's back with their high school graduation years which date back to the 1950's to the 90's referring to the fact that the characters never age.
• The Simpsons:
  • "The President Wore Pearls" is a spoof of Evita and ends with a note from the directors that says, "based on the advice of our lawyers, we must say that we have never heard of a musical based on the life of Eva Perón".
  • In ''Treehouse of Horror V", Groundskeeper Willie refers to Bart's newfound psychic power as "the Shinning" for fear of copyright infringement.
  • In "Sideshow Bob Roberts" Homer is thrown out of Riverdale by the Archie Comics gang.
  • In "'Round Springfield", Lisa has a dream in which she gets to give a final goodbye to her recently deceased jazz musician idol "Bleeding Gums" Murphy. In this dream, his visage appears in a large gathering of clouds in the night sky. Soon after he appears and starts speaking to her though, he is joined in the clouds by the faces of a rather familiar looking and sounding lion^note who even proceeds to accidentally refer to his son Simba as Kimba immediately after he appears and an equally familiar looking and sounding armored space warrior^note hint, he is Luke's father, as well as their voice actor^note This is CNN.
  • During one episode, Lisa and Bart fight over the TV remote. Although the TV screen isn't shown, a man with a Texas accent can clearly be heard saying "I got propane in my urethra."
  • Shary Bobbins, who definitely isn't based on Mary Poppins but instead is a original creation, like Ricky Rouse and Monald Muck.
  • The opening of "Black Widower" shows the Simpsons watching their own clear parody of Dinosaurs.
• Speaking of The Simpsons, Warner Bros. managed to drop Bart Simpson in episodes of both Animaniacs and the Tiny Toon Adventures Spring Break Special. The former case was in the episode "Hooray for North Hollywood Part 1," in which he appears, albeit only through his hair, during a song by Dot Warner referencing the Simpsons. The latter case is a bit more exposed; he appears as one of the animals caught by Elmyra Duff, but he doesn't speak and only appears for a few seconds. The Bart Simpson-like character also appears in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Weekday Afternoon Live" (a parody of Saturday Night Live) as the "show"'s host.
• South Park: In "Cartoon Wars Part II", Cartman is joined in his quest to get Family Guy taken off the air by a kid who's obviously supposed to be Bart Simpson from The Simpsons, but is never referred to by name. In a turnaround, an episode of The Simpsons has Bart and Milhouse watching an unnamed version of South Park. Which was in turn a reference to the South Park episode "Simpsons Did It".
• The Spider-Man (1981) episode "Curiosity Killed the Spider-Man" has a scene in which Spider-Man runs into a mild-mannered gentleman with an unlikely build and glasses using a phone booth, noting that there is something familiar about him.
• In the original airing of the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Apokoplips...Now! (Part 2)", Peter Parker, the Fantastic Four, Nick Fury and Stan Lee were seen at Dan Turpin's funeral, which was meant as a nod to the passing of Jack Kirby (Turpin's creator and the show's inspiration for Turpin's design). This was later changed for the DVD release.
• The Shadowkhan show up in the antepenultimate episode of Teen Titans (2003), fighting Bushido.
• Various Street Fighter characters make appearances as background characters in Leone Middle School in El Tigre.
• The Tiny Toon Adventures episode "New Character Day" begins with the titular character of Who Framed Roger Rabbit being rejected at the audition for new characters to appear on the show. Since that film was made by Warner Bros.' rival Disney, however, legal action was avoided by never giving the audience a clear shot of his face and referring to him as "White Rabbit" in the credits.
• Tooned has McLaren driver James Hunt (later of Rush (2013) fame) take on his nemesis "Lautfinger" in a James Bond parody set in Monte Carlo, Lautfinger being a thinly-veiled reference to Hunt's real life arch-rival Niki Lauda. Lauda actually drove for McLaren in the early 80s following his stint at Ferrari and Brabham, but due to the fact that he (and Lewis Hamilton, who previously voiced himself in the series) was working with Mercedes at the time, they could only settle for an expy instead.
• A slight subversion of this occurs in The Transformers; Jetfire was based upon Super Dimension Fortress Macross' VF-1 fighter. While this proved no issue for Hasbro (who licensed it from Bandai themselves), it did for Takara and the character wound up being redesigned (and renamed) so that he could be shown on the show. And even then, Takara did whatever they could to prevent him from appearing in the Japanese version of the show. Hasbro and Toei on the other hand, were able to use a robot similar to the VF-1 in Jetfire's animated toy commercial.
  • Similarly, Transformers: Animated's Starscream has Isamu Alva Dyson's YF-19 "Alpha One" from Macross Plus as his vehicle mode, but this time the staff got away with it.
• The Venture Bros. plays with this a lot. Many of the characters on the show are parodies, but the characters they're based on also exist, either as fiction (Baron Underbeit is mockingly compared to Doctor Doom) or actual people. For instance, Dr. Rusty Venture is a parody of Jonny Quest (a boy adventurer with a genius scientist for a father), which doesn't stop his bodyguard/Race Bannon parody Brock Samson from being old friends with the actual Bannon, or Rusty from being in a therapy group with "Action Jonny" himself. Not to mention the time that the Impossible Family won a costume contest by dressing as the Fantastic Four.
• Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?:
  • "Cube Wars" has Robot Jones fantasize that solving his Wonder Cube will cause it to become Cubik, the Amazing Rube.
  • Robot Jones encounters parodies of Michael Knight and KITT in the episode "Work."
• Sailor Moon's Usagi Tsukino appears in the school lunch line in an episode of W.I.T.C.H..
• X-Men: The Animated Series would sometimes feature cameos from Marvel characters who were off-limits due to their TV rights belonging to other networks or production companies. The use of generic placeholder names in the scripts, such as "Large Green Neanderthal Robot" for an android duplicate of The Incredible Hulk or "African Mutant Refugee #3" for Black Panther, helped get these past the lawyers. In one instance, after being told that he couldn't use Spider-Man in an episode, storyboard artist Larry Houston managed to sneak a cameo in anyway by showing Spidey's arm firing a line of webbing. Fantastic Four: The Animated Series did the same thing, such as showing a group of plain-clothed tourists who were clearly supposed to be Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm and Gambit in "Nightmare in Green", or Storm and her godson Mjnari popping up in Wakanda in "Prey of the Black Panther". "Nightmare in Green" also showed a shot of the Juggernaut's hand bursting out of the water, a reference to an earlier X-Men episode where he'd been hurled into the ocean by Gladiator.
• Hilariously lampshaded in Yin Yang Yo! when referring to a Batman villain-like villain.
  Yin: Is that a peng...
  Yang: No, that's a puffin! Can't get sued for a puffin.

Real Life

• When The Legend of the Lone Ranger, the 1981 movie remake of The Lone Ranger, was in production, former TV Lone Ranger Clayton Moore was legally prevented from appearing in public as the Lone Ranger... so Moore varied his costume slightly and exchanged the mask for similar-looking wraparound sunglasses until he won his countersuit. The situation was parodied on Night Court with a Captain Ersatz who faced the same exact dilemma.

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