Live Action TV
- 30 Rock: Frank mentions that the writers used the company credit card to pre-order Mass Effect 3.
- The Expanse:
- The protomolecule hybrid soldiers look very similar to the Husks.
- The psychic vision Holden gets from the Ring Station in "Dandelion Sky" is very reminiscent of the message that Shepard got from the Prothean beacon in the first game.
- In Silicon Valley, Bertram Gilfoyle refers to a character as someone who's "as pointless as the multiple endings of Mass Effect 3".
- Halo (2022)'s first episode features an ADR voice paging Cmdr. Shepard to the Skillian Response Center, an intentional
reference at that.
Video Games
- Civilization: Beyond Earth:
- The achievement for playing a mod? "I'm in the middle of some calibrations".
- The ANGEL's quadrupedal, insectoid design◊ resembles a Reaper destroyer, in case you feel like being the vanguard of the other guy's destruction, for a change.
- Dragon Age II:
- If you purchase a drink at the Hanged Man, Hawke's drinking animation is identical to Commander Shepard's. Hawke also finishes conversations with the bartender with "Thanks. I should go.".
- The upgrade of the revival spell is called Unity.
- Isabela sometimes shouts, "enemies everywhere!" when the fighting starts.
- One quest has you framing a Templar for various illicit activities. The name of the Templar? Ser Conrad Vernhart.
- When talking to Seneschal Bran in Act 3:
- "To hunt the wyvern on its ground is to tempt fate. A terrible risk - but the prize..."
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: Many of the cryptic comments Cole makes are shout outs to novels, films and other video games, mainly by invoking It Was His Sled including "It always had a soul. The question is the answer."
- Dust: An Elysian Tail has two achievements tied to a sidequest involving a decision of whether to lace an NPC's clothing with poison ivy; fittingly, they're "Paragon" and "Renegade".
- Stellaris:
- Some of the species portraits look like the hanar or yahg.
- If the blue, tentacle-haired cute alien girl is not a shout-out to The Fifth Element, it's to the asari.
- A possible random event is to have your survey ship struck by passing mass driver rounds fired from another galaxy billions of years ago, proving that Sir Isaac Newton really is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.
- It’s also possible to find a planet into which someone carved a message complaining about his/her/its life.
- An event chain involving sentient machines begins with the question "Is this unit in possession of a soul?"
- The generic, non-specialized machine intelligences are akin to the geth; an isolationistic, live-and-let-live amalgamation of semi-independent, highly-connected programs that are not individually sapient, but together form a greater intelligence.
- The Contingency is a dead-ringer reference to the Reapers, right down to the black-red coloration and using a strange signal to subvert machine populations to turn on your empire. The "Machine Integration" living standard tooltip also reads "Assuming direct control."
- One of the Holy Guardians' Gaia worlds is dubbed Walled Garden, which is the meaning of the quarian homeworld, Rannoch. (Of course, it's also the meaning of the word "paradise," which was also the intent in Mass Effect.)
- A rare, lategame resource is "Zro," an addictive substance that enhances psionic abilities.
- Purchasing assistance from the Curator Enclave to deal with the Infinity Machine grants your empire the "Infinite Calibrator" modifier.
- A possible random event leads to the player deciding between a blue, red or green liquid to modify their population with. The game even says "The effects are unknown but we are assured they are all positive," a clear jab at the Mass Effect 3 endings.
- Relic Worlds, in the Ancient Relics DLC, are city planets that fell into ruin after their creators died out, much like the planet Feros in Mass Effect.
Web Original
- In the Mutants & Masterminds fan setting A World Less Magical, But No Less Fantastic, the Superman Substitute is named Paragon. On its own, this is simply the generic M&M term for Superman Substitutes. But the name of his rougher-edged counterpart in the parallel "World More Grim"? Renegade.
