Naturally being a Rhythm Game, Guitar Hero is loaded with plenty of references both to various bands or otherwise.
- The title comes from Joe Strummer's "You're my guitar hero!" yell to Mick Jones during the latter's solo on "Complete Control".
- The first venue in Guitar Hero II is Nilbog High School.
- Complete "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" at the Battle of the Bands/Rat Cellar gig on Guitar Hero II and your drummer explodes.
- There's also the Rat Cellar stage in the second game, based on the former Rathskellar club (famous in the 70's and 80's for punk shows) in Boston. Harmonix even snuck in a poster with the old Rathskellar logo on it in the background.
- The only spoken line in the third cutscene in Guitar Hero III is a reference to the repeated line in the Spin Doctors' hit "Two Princes", "Just go ahead now"
- You can download "Old Time Rock and Roll" for Guitar Hero: World Tour and beyond. It comes with some customised animations for the lead singer
. Fun fact is, this very song was used for one of the GHWT TV ads, but did not come packaged with the game. Well, the singer's entrance is exclusively packaged for Guitar Hero: World Tour, But aside from that... - And there's newcomer Austin Tejas too, for that matter. Tell me you weren't thinking of Ichabod Crane upon seeing his Warrior form, pumpkin-guitar and all.
- His name is a reference to Austin, Texas, or a pun on "ostentatious", i.e. OTT.
- And then there's Axel Steel, who becomes a mummy. Bet someone at the character design team had listened to too much Powerslave at the time.
- "The Priests are in another temple!" Section of 2112 Part 2.
- Shirley Crowley. Just look at her name and see how many references you can think of from it.
- The Xbox version of Guitar Hero II had plenty of Co-op achievements named after famous rock Heterosexual Life-Partners: Joan and Lita, Joe and Steven, Page and Plant and Keef and Mick.
- One of the loading screen quotes in II is "Remember, NO STAIRWAY!".
