Dumbing of Age has been going for quite some time, and the Walkyverse that it's based on has a lot of material to reference, so naturally a lot of these have happened.
Referencing multiple, or the Walkyverse in general
- Not exactly a gag, but Joyce losing her memory when she was drugged parallels nicely with being mind wiped in the Walkyverse.
- Walky tells Joyce that they can't be friends.
In the Walkyverse, they're an Official Couple. - According to Mike's Twitter, his turn-ons are hats, strong tempers, and fuckable moms on the brink of death, referencing Mike's romantic relationships in It's Walky! and Shortpacked!
- Dorothy's decision to forget about Amazi-Girl's identity on the news by offhandedly referencing how Dexter and Monkey Master suffered a lacklustre Post-Script Season and deciding to mindwipe everybody on the following season.
- Walky's idea for a comic strip is LAWsome, a strip Willis created starring Mike and Bart O'Ryan.
- According to this strip, Mindy told Anna that Leslie ran away to Bulmeria to become a missionary, which was Walkyverse Joyce's cover story when she was recruited into SEMME.
Referencing Roomies!
- "No, Joe isn't climbing out the windows to get into their rooms. That'd be ridiculous."
- The irony in Mary's snide comment was lampshaded in the Alt Text.
- A redheaded character is in car that's out of control, with a truck speeding towards it. Just to drive it home, the character tags claim this is "definitely that same truck driver dude as in Roomies!"
- "Is A Song Forever?", the last portion of Book 10, is named after one of the last chapters of Roomies! proper.
- Joyce's idea is a college prequel to her space opera stories, which is basically Roomies!/this very strip in relation to It's Walky. (Strictly speaking, "Space Captain Julia Gray" is equivalent to Willis's very old Danny, Joe and Ultra-Car stories, which inspired many elements of the Walkyverse when it went sci fi, but the analogy still holds.)
- Her first strip is directly based on the first strip of Roomies, right down to the first word balloon extending past the panel's right edge. The strip is later named as Roommates!!!
- A Patreon bonus strip is based on Walkyverse Joyce's first appearance, complete with the Danny character wearing a shirt with a psi on it (but also Dumbingverse Danny's hat). In keeping with their Dumbingverse non-relationship, the main difference is that Julia doesn't react to him in any way, and later tells Doris she vaguely remembers seeing a hat.
- Another Patreon strip riffs on a Roomies strip in which Danny ignores Joe's Girl of the Week, with Julia ignoring Doris claiming that a character based on Walky is going to be her Vice-President.
- And one more doesn't riff on a specific strip, but does give Dina's counterpart, Cerie, Walkyverse Dina's hat.
- When Joyce is planning the strip, she at one point considers that, since she needs some kind of conflict between Julia and Doris, maybe Doris Really Gets Around and Julia disapproves. The subtle mythology gag there is that, while Doris is based on Dorothy, her role in the strip is actually equivalent to Joe's role in Roomies!
- Her first strip
- In this comic Joe talks about finding "some other romantically-codependent doofus" for Danny, with the punchline implying that Joyce would be a good fit. Meanwhile, Walkyverse Joyce was Danny's Stalker with a Crush before she was mindwiped.
- This DoA strip is a reference to the Roomies! storyline starting here.
Referencing It's Walky!
- Walky mentioning that Sal is basically Batman (and is thus prone to disappearing). Sal's usual method of entry (the window) was done as a Batman parody back in It's Walky!.
- Sal's status as The Unfavorite refers back to her being Switched at Birth in It's Walky.
- Sal's bikini has the yellow SEMME stripe.
- Joyce's discovery of Walky in her old Hymmel the Humming Hymnal tape is supposed to parallel her meeting and then forgetting Walky as a toddler in the old 'verse.
- So Sal and Jason walk into a bar...
- When Joyce suggests borrowing the car without asking her parents, Becky thinks she's been replaced by "some sorta Anti-Joyce".
- Also lampshaded in the Alt Text: Walky saying that "bein' superhuman'd be a bummer".
- Anti-Joyce gets referenced again when Joyce attributes her sexual thoughts to her in order to process them, which is pretty much exactly how Walkyverse Anti-Joyce worked, only not as a metaphor.
Referencing Joyce and Walky!
- Dorothy's favorite episode of the "Dexter and Monkey Master" cartoon is the one where Dexter and Monkey Master crash a wedding, a reference to the final storyline of Joyce and Walky! in which the Head Alien crashes their wedding in Dorothy's body. Willis lampshades this in a Tumblr post.
Referencing Shortpacked!
- This strip shows Leslie joking that every female in Gender Studies is a lesbian. Readers who've read Shortpacked! know that she is a lesbian. She also displays a noticeable crush on Congresswoman Robin DeSanto, the same dynamic she had with Robin in Shortpacked!.
- Amber's early dedication to her laptop is akin to that of her early Shortpacked! addiction to her computer. Only with several years advancement in technology meaning she isn't using Usenet, but playing online games.
- Amber and Mike's Shortpacked! relationship is referenced in this strip, with a Lampshade Hanging in the Alt Text.
- In early 2017, Leslie's apartment is shown to have a Star Wars: The Force Awakens poster hanging in it. Shortpacked established Leslie as being a Star Wars fan. Specifically, the poster is of General Leia. Back in Shortpacked, Leslie told Robin that it was watching Return of the Jedi and seeing Leia in the slave bikini that helped her realize she was gay.
- Joyce spends one storyline convinced — on the basis of zero evidence — that having Fuckface the iguana sitting on her head compels people to do what she wants. Sydney Yus believed the same thing in Shortpacked, and in that continuity, may even have been right.
- Lucy has a poster of the Teen Titans Go! version of Starfire. Her introduction in Shortpacked was as a representative of the demographic who loved the Teen Titans cartoon, bought Red Hood and the Outlaws because they were told "The New 52 is a great jumping on point and it's got Starfire in it" and were ... not impressed.
- Dina has strong opinions on which cereals may be combined based on their milk absorbtion, specificaly referencing Cap'n Crunch. This is a sideways reference to the "Soggies may rule" finale of Shortpacked in which Walkyverse Dina made an unexpected return.
- Lyle's first appearance is pretty much an exact redo of his first appearance in Shortpacked!
- Mike's notes here reference one of his running gags in Shortpacked!
- One bonus strip on Patreon has Riley asking about Robin's policy ideas, to which she replies that she plans to "ban cancer forever". This is a reference to Proposition 469 from Shortpacked! which, among other things, would have banned cancer forever.
