Being an EarthBound inspired game, there are many references to other media and culture.
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LISA: The Painful RPG
- A few, to EarthBound:
- Throughout the game, the "Plain" text-box border from EarthBound is used for all text.
- Near the broken bridge in Area 1, a blonde man will give his Final Speech from atop a truck to a mostly uninterested audience (Brad, and a man in sunglasses who's completely nonchalant). The man's name? Lukas.
- One of the party members' names, Frank "Fly" Minetti, alludes to Frank Fly, the leader of the Sharks.
- The truck that houses the Secret Boss Satan is referred to as "The Devil's Machine".
- One of Rando's soldiers that confronts you in Area 1 is named Porky Roy, and has the same piggish nose as his namesake.
- The cart race manager on Garbage Island is a palette-swap of Everdred, and there exists an unused sprite of him with Everdred's proper colors.
- One of the dojos Brad can get a karate scroll from requires him to complete a Waiting Puzzle in which the player must leave Brad idle for several minutes, much like a puzzle from EarthBound in which the required "password" to get into the next area is three minutes of doing nothing. It is also quite similar to Poo's Mu training, which requires him to do nothing and to not reply to anything happening around him.
- The local gang of Area 1, the Blue Rockets, consists of Captain Ersatz's of Ralf Jones, Terry Bogard, and Clark Still from The King of Fighters, named Dolf Bones, Jerry Humphrey (a dual reference to Humphrey Bogart) and Bark Bronzee, respectively. Additionally, if one looks very closely, Brian Battler is a part of Buzzo's gang when the latter ambushes Brad in the warehouse.
- The local gang of Area 3 is known as the Gale Motorcycle Club, the leader being named Rex Thunderstorm, a reference to the motorcycle gangs from the Streets of Rage series, whose members are all named after weather conditions of some sort (Gale, Fog, Storm, etc.).
- In the Factory Town, there's a pair of Mario Bros lookalikes sitting at a table with a (male) stripper. Appropriately, the Mario lookalike admits to a past of chasing women, and the Luigi lookalike says he hates his life, and that everyone hates him. Also appropriately, should they be killed by the Road Scholars if you fail to defeat the latter, the Luigi lookalike will have a plunger attached to his head.
- In the spritesheet, there are sprites for (unused) characters resembling Ness, Mr. Saturn, Tingle, Lucky Glauber, Ryo Sakazaki, Geese Howard and Shovel Knight
- The Ambusher enemy, upon defeat, will recite a verse and the chorus from "The Crossroads" by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
- Geese Thompson bears resemblance to Choose Goose from Adventure Time, who also speaks entirely in rhymes.
- A handful of characters are named after pro wrestlers, notably Brad Armstrong
, Bo Wyatt (full name Bovine Rotunda Wyatt), named after Bo Dallas and Bray Wyatt, and Shocklord, who's based on Shockmaster. There's also Benny Omega, a reference that actually predates his meteoric rise in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and subsequent founding of All Elite Wrestling. - During the Wrestling side plot, there is an entire extended pastiche of the infamous “IT’S ME, AUSTIN” moment from WWE when Vince McMahon revealed himself to be Undertaker’s Higher Power. It even includes the infamous “NOT EVEN MY OWN FAMILY” line.
- The song "Go Home Johnny" is likely a reference to the movie First Blood. Similarly to Rambo, Brad undergoes a PTSD-induced meltdown near that causes him to lash out violently at the people with the best intentions.
- Hawk's defeated cry of "Hard times, Daddy! Hard times!" is a reference to Dusty Rhodes, particularly his popular "Hard Times" promos.
- When one of the guys chasing Buddy, Big Pancake Norton, dies at your partys hands he cries out “I did it all for the nookie...”
- According to the DLC Artbook, Bo's favorite food is Mom's spaghetti.
- Nern Guan's name, as well as the naming scheme of his neighbors (Tom Forknight, Karen Plateburger, Dale Spooner) is a reference to the kung-fu movie Fight Among the Supers, whose plot centers around the gods of tableware fighting each other; Nern himself is named after the movie's protagonist.
- The members of Han Tsunami's gang are all named after Japanese comedians appearing on Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende: Herman (Hamada) Masatoshi, Ned (Naoki) Tanaka, Huey (Hiroshi) Fujiwara, Yo (Yamasaki) Hosei, Ernie (Endo) Shozo, and Marco (Matsumoto) Hitoshi.
- The swamp in Area 2 is named Muddy Waters, likely a reference to the Blues musician of the same name.
- A random NPC in Area 1 says the phrase "Praise the sun" a reference to the infamous phrase from Dark Souls.
LISA: The Joyful
- Mr. Beautiful's cracked mask during the second phase of the fight with him somewhat resembles Uboa from Yume Nikki.
- When defeated, the bartender enemy will say, "I am the liquor!" in reference to Jim Lahey from Trailer Park Boys. Should you approach Vega van Dam while wearing the Joy mask (which is ordinarily impossible), he'll refer to Rando as "Rando-Bobando", similar to Lahey's nickname for Randy.
