Atomic Robo is definitely a good series for fans of this trope:
- The title of The Shadow from Beyond Time, and of each of its chapters, are riffs on the titles of H. P. Lovecraft stories.
- The creature from Robot Monster appears as a Funny Background Event in The Shadow from Beyond Time.
- In one of the Free Comic Book Day stories (also released online), the monster seen can only shout Waargh. Yes, Clevinger does play Warhammer.
- The Sparrow mentions the OSA and The SS Special Projects Division at one point.
- "Should an intense young man or a wild-eyed gentleman ever approach you and mention the word 'Tunguska', I want you to shoot them."
- Robo has a Hellboy poster in his office, after the other Nazi-punching non-human who works for a paranormal/fringe science operation.
- "Nice shootin', Tex!", Total Protonic Reversal (when Charles Fort witnesses the Shadow From Beyond Time exploding in the last issue of Volume 3), the jumpsuits worn when trying to capture and study the "ghost", among others—both creators have said that Ghostbusters (1984) has had an influence.
- The Humongous Mecha Science Team Super Five brings out to fight a raging monster must function with cords attached and is only used to aim and fire a very large gun. This rather resembles the fight against the fifth angel in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- The Telluric Interchanger that Emma presents at the National 4th Grade Science Fair is more than a little bit similar (read: identical) to the Flux Capacitor.
- A historical Shout-Out would be the ending of Deadly Art Of Science with the final showdown between Tesla and Edison and the real reason for the War of the Currents.
- Science Team Super Five's scientist mentor shares a name with an actual Super Sentai mentor, and their enemy Dr. Shinka's name is not far off from Dynaman's enemy, the Jashinka Empire.
- The Science Team's armor cannot withstand Biomega of that magnitude.
- Tesladyne's Exotic Ballistics Division
which Robo visits in The Ghost of Station X Issue 2 Explosion does hold some... exotic (and familiar) types of weaponry indeed. Among exhibits stored there, you may notice M41A pulse rifle, Deckard's blaster, second version of C-14 Impaler gauss rifle and Tau Fire Warrior pulse rifle. - Robo is wearing a Beartato T-shirt in ''Ghost of Station X'' #4.Robo: I get RSS feeds in my head, what do you want me to say?
- In vol. 1, issue #5, Robo has a one-panel flashback to his last encounter with Heisengard, in 1985 France. In that flashback, he and his three Action Scientists are dressed like members of the G.I. Joe team; Robo has Chuckles's outfit on, while he's apparently got Roadblock, Scarlett, and Bazooka with him.
- Volume 7, in which Robo and a group of independent-minded aviators fight The Remnant of Japan's WWII navy, has shout-outs to anime including Porco Rosso and Space Battleship Yamato.
- In Vol. 8, issue #1, just before Bernard loses his grip on the edge of a cliff and is pulled down by a tether bearing Robo and other Tesladyne agents, he tells the people still on the cliff, "Fly, you fools." Later on, while leading the Army of Hollow Earth, he yells "A day may come when the courage of rockmen fails! But it is not this day!"
- In Volume 8, Dr. Dinosaur's explanation of his nuclear-explosion-powered time machine includes the sentence "It is like Back to the Future, only I did away with the car."
- In The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur Issue 4 The Fall of Tesladyne, when Tesladyne employees are getting ready for incoming Majestic 12 troops in the corridor, they take the exact same positions as crew of Tantive IV when they're getting ready for incoming Stormtrooper boarding party◊.
- At the end of "Why Dr. Dinosaur Hates Atomic Robo", Dr. Dinosaur does an imitation of Wolverine emerging from the sewers in the Dark Phoenix Saga.
- Dr. Dinosaur has misquoted Captain Ahab's "From hell's heart I stab at thee!" from Moby-Dick on more than one occasion.
- Volume 9, Issue 1:
- The note on Robo's dwelling's wall, while not a direct ''Futurama quote, reads "Do nothing unless you're supposed to."Robo: Old colleague of mine. He used to say, "wherever you go, there you are."
- The two secret service agents who come to investigate at the end of Volume 9, in an epilogue titled "The Night of the Inferno", are Artemus Gordon and James West.
- Sheriff Waldrip, who also appears in the epilogue of Volume 9, may be a shout-out to Howard Waldrop, whose "The Night of the Cooters" is about a 19th-century small-town Sheriff dealing with science-fictional war machines falling out of the sky on his patch.
- In the Real Science Adventures arc The Billion Dollar Plot, George Westinghouse faces down a group of attacking mooks with a lightning gun and speech that prefigures Dirty Harry:Westinghouse: You've got to ask yourself two questions. "How conductive is the man next to me?" and, "How fortunate am I?"
- Each chapter in The Ring of Fire is named after a Godzilla film. "Taskforce Ultra vs. Biomega" could be anything, but "Resurgence," "Terror of Biomega," "Tokyo SOS," and "Destroy All Monsters" are unmistakable.
- The cover for the first chapter of Ring of Fire is the oft-homaged cover to Days of Future Past, only with Tesladyne scientists labelled "IN CUSTODY" or "DEAD" rather than mutants labelled "SLAIN" or "APPREHENDED"...and Bernard, of all people, standing in for Wolverine.
- The title of Issue 4 of The Ghost of Station X is more than meets the eye
- The heist crew in "The Nicodemus Job" is basically an 11th century Leverage Consulting and Associates.
- Nicolas Fardas is Nate Ford.
- Sofana is Sophie.
- Palatina is Parker.
- Iskander is Hardison.
- Emir, the Prince of Knives, is Eliot.
- Volume 15, Issue 3 features a flashback to 2013 of Robo and Dr. Dinosaur astride a triceratops arguing the implications of radically altering human genetics with dinosaur DNA:Robo: You can't just genetically transform people into dinosaurs. It will literally kill everyone.Dr. Dinosaur: Not my fault their genes suck out loud!
