Shout Out / Left 4 Dead

• If Louis' clothing change from a sweater and combat gear to a white dress shirt and a red tie doesn't clue you in...
• The Passing has a bunch of graffiti:
  "Otis: Out of film. No helicopters. Zombies too fast. Not going to make it. --Frank West"
  "Roger, went to the mall --Francine"
  "Went to save my dog. If not back in 15 minutes, everyone drop everything and come save me. --Nicole"
  "Looking for an M60? Come see me. —Crazy Dave"
  "REPENT. THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH."
  "Ed is King of the Zombies"
• The arena in the finale of Dark Carnival is conveniently named The Peach-Pit. This may in fact be a reference to the diner in Beverly Hills, 90210, in which the diner hangout was named the same. Or to a certain Mangaka who goes by that as their pseudonym, which too is based on the same show.
• Some of the graffiti (and one of the achievements) in the first game references the "Zombie Genocider" achievement of Dead Rising which rewarded the player for killing 53,594 zombies. Left 4 Dead tops it by exactly one zombie.
  • It appears that this has caught on; [PROTOTYPE] has a "Trail of Corpses" achievements, for killing 54,596 infected. Difference being that the Prototype Infected are totally not zombies.
    • And of course, Dead Rising 2 offers up the "Z-Genocider 2: Genocide Harder" achievement for killing the exact same number of zombies.
  • Valve introduced a new twist — the "Littlest Genocide" achievement, which requires you to kill 5,359 zombies on the Crash Course DLC campaign.
  • And to top it off, an achievement added to the second game in the Last Stand update goes by the name "Z-Genocidest 2: Episode 2" and requires 53,599 zombie kills (one more than Dead Rising 4's zombie genocide achievement). Its description even reads "You made sure the dead won't rise anymore!"
• The first game takes place in Pennsylvania, starting in Philadelphia and moving outwards from there. George A. Romero's movies were all set in Pennsylvania.
• One of Ellis' many stories about Keith is how he "bought a laser sword off the Internet, left town and became an assassin".
• One of Zoey's numerous film references:
  "Oh, nice, a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I know how this movie ends."
  • And when she picks up a shotgun, she will sometimes say "Groovy."
  • Francis gets in on it too:
    Francis: (picking up a shotgun) Groovy.
    (Zoey or Louis snicker)
    Francis: What? It IS groovy!
• The messy lawnmower scene in Blood Harvest is a shout out to the zombie movie Braindead, which was directed by Peter Jackson.
• The campaigns themselves are a homage to the entire zombie movie genre. Each campaign is presented as a movie, with a theatrical poster at the beginning and a credits sequence at the end. All in-game graphics are shown under a subtle film grain filter, and musical cues are used to highlight certain situations. Various zombie movie tropes are played with. And of course, the placement of enemies and items being controlled by an AI Director.
• A brilliant reference to a completely non-zombie movie:
  "He slimed me!"
• Even though it's ostensibly from a fictitious school, Louisiana gamers may appreciate that Coach wears a purple and gold shirt.
  • Fun Fact: Purple, gold and green are the official colors of Mardi gras and LSU adopted the first two while sister school Tulane took green.
• The Dead Air campaign features a shout out to Nietzsche. A man spray-painted "God Is Dead" (a phrase made famous by Nietzsche himself) on the walls at several points before he apparently killed himself.
  Zoey: "Oh no, the Zombies killed God!"
  Francis: "God's dead, huh? Well, join the damn club."
• Upon picking up an SMG, Louis might say, "This is just like in Counter-Strike!". Which itself is a reference to how Left 4 Dead started when the dev team of Counter-Strike: Source was messing around with playing as armed Terrorists against knife wielding Counter-Terrorist bots.
  • Louis has an unused line in Left 4 Dead 2 for picking up a Crowbar. "Man, I feel like Gordon Freeman!"
  • One of Ellis' community campaign stock lines, "Dude, this is just like Team Fortress 2!"
  • On the back of a cereal box seen in the apartment at the start of No Mercy (after you leave the safe area, the roof), you can see an advertisement for a Team Fortress 2 figurine.
• During Dark Carnival, you may notice "Pyro's Hamburgers" and "Heavy Gulp" signs on some of the stands.
• "Game over, man! Game over!"
• The escape vehicles in Crash Course are clearly modeled on the zombie-smashing buses from the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake.
• One scene in the trailer for Left 4 Dead 2 shows Coach eating a chocolate bar and another scene has Nick make fun of Coach by trying to convince him to go up the stairs faster saying that the escape helicopter is made out of chocolate. This could be a possible reference to Doc Louis who also had a heavy preference to chocolate.
  • Note that the chocolate bar Coach is eating was a "chocolate helicopter." Just look on the box by Rochelle which says "choco Heli" and mentions something about blades.
• In the first map of The Parish, a jukebox can be played in the bar and has a few songs selected at random, one of them being Still Alive.
  • And by the same singer, "Re: Your Brains."
• "Dark Carnival" may be a shout out to House of the Dead: OVERKILL's "Carny" level, or possibly the "Dark Carnival" level from Blood (a game brimming with shout outs). Or, for that matter, any of a dozen horror movies that have used circuses and theme parks as settings or set pieces.
• The gnome you win for getting 750 points at the shooting range game is the exact same model as the gnome from Half-Life 2: Episode 2.
  • And, just like its predecessor, you get an achievement for carrying it with you for the whole campaign.
  • Its name, "Gnome Chompsky", references the noted linguist and psychologist Noam Chomsky.
• Speaking of Half-Life, the combat shotgun in this game is modeled after the SPAS-12, the same shotgun used in that series - particularly, it bears a resemblance to the model from Half-Life 1's HD Pack with the stock folded up and over the gun.
• "Swamp Fever" begins the same way "Crash Course" does: one Survivor having shot the infected pilot, and another berating him for it.
• "Disco pants and haircuts. Man, lots of space in this mall."
• The female soldier seen here in Part 2 of the Sacrifice comic may be a shout out to The Pyro as the two share the same distinctive gasmask and suffer from a bit of gender confusion.
• Louis has a figure of Heavy Weapons Guy on his desk in Part 1 of the Sacrifice comic.
• Part 3 of the Sacrifice comic has a poster of Chuck Greene found in this page. It also has a hidden image of Ellis wearing Chuck's default Case Zero shirt with the text of "The Left 4 Dead 2 team congratulates the Dead Rising 2 team on their release".
• During "The Sacrifice", Francis points out that they have no evidence that Louis is not crazy. Louis responds that he would love to make a lady suit out of Francis, and Zoey says she hates putting the lotion in the basket.
• The achievement for killing a Special Infected with an Exploding Barrel is called Barrel Rolled.
• The achievement you get at the end of The Sacrifice if you have Bill sacrifice himself is aptly named Kill Bill.
• One of Zoey's possible responses if she goes to restart the generator in The Sacrifice's finale:
  "I'll be back... Oh god, no I won't."
• When coming upon the trapped Tank in The Sacrifice, Louis may quip "tanks on a train".
• At the end of The Passing, Zoey may quote the "you blew it up" speech from Planet of the Apes.
• Nick sometimes calls himself "Dr. Nick" when healing a teammate.
• In line with her profession as a producer in the news, Rochelle is heard to say "Knights of Columbus!" and "Son of a bee-sting!" when hurt.
• At the end of The Passing, Zoey may say
  "Remember, Soylent Green is people!"
  • The Japanese arcade game Left 4 Dead: Survivors replaces this with a Zombieland reference.
    "Rule #32 – Enjoy the Little Things!"
• At one point in the Crash Course campaign, the survivors must pass through a small area with a broken steam pipe. Francis says "watch out for that steam pipe!", quickly followed by veiled references to a different kind of steam.
  Zoey: Man, I love steam.
  Francis: Oh yeah, I love steam. I just hate the pipes.
• When Ellis picks up an axe, there's a chance of him saying "Heeeeere's Ellis!"
• Or if he grabs a chainsaw, Man, if I lose my hand, I'm stitchin' this thing onto the stump."
• Something of an Easter Egg, there's a very small chance that, upon getting hit with friendly fire, Nick will say:
  "You're going to shoot the guy in the 3000$ suit? COME ON!''
• Jimmy Gibbs, Jr., one of the uncommon infected from Left 4 Dead 2, is a shout out to NASCAR. This can be seen from his car (a Plymouth Superbird/Dodge Charger Daytona without the aerodynamic front end seen on the real car), the car livery (resembles Fireball Roberts' 1963-64 scheme), and his name (he got his name from team owner Joe Gibbs).
• One of the achievements added in The Last Stand update requires you to find and obtain 22 hidden golden crowbars in every Left 4 Dead 1 survival map. The achievement's name? "GOLDEN FREEMAN". The icon even shows Gordon's hand holding up a crowbar.
• The Last Stand update's new melee weapons are shout-outs to Postal 2 and Blood featuring a shovel and a pitchfork as melee weapons, respectively.
• There is Japanese graffiti in The Last Stand that reads "Yare Yare Daze". Throughout the campaign, there is also graffiti that references the community members who worked on the update, the real-life passing of Bill's voice actor, the Midnight Riders song "Save Me Some Sugar", and Left 4 Dead having a crossover with PAYDAY: The Heist.
• One magnum pistol skin in The Last Stand is manufactured by "Magnum Dong Inc.", and another is the Desert Eagle as seen in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The CSGO AK-47 can also sometimes be obtained from the same weapon crate as these two magnum pistols.
• The Stache Whacker minigame in Dark Carnival is won by scoring 42 points.
• Numerous references can be found in achievement names:
  • Robbed Zombie
  • Crass Menagerie
  • Club Dead
  • Bridge Over Trebled Slaughter
  • Fried Piper
  • Rocky Horror Picture Throw

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