Shout Out / OMORI

• Mother:
  • The series as a whole:
    • Headspace is basically a Whole-Plot Reference to the first two games' Magicant, a surreal dreamscape that exists inside its ruler's head. In the first game, its existence hides a secret behind Queen Mary's past, like how Headspace was made to hide a secret from Sunny's past. In the second game, Ness faces the evil within himself in Magicant, like how Sunny faces Omori, who represents the trauma and self-hatred he feels from accidentally killing Mari, inside White Space.
  • EarthBound Beginnings:
    • The way the Final Boss is defeated in both games is with a song that has an emotional significance to them.
  • EarthBound (1994):
    • Hero's overworld sprite bears a resemblance to Ness's when he's in his pajamas.
    • Sunny's favorite food according to his mother is steak, which is also Ness's default favorite food.
    • A cult based around something ridiculous, as with The Order of the Holy Bin.
    • The final boss battle involves an unbeatable enemy with the background becoming increasingly distorted and disturbing as the battle goes on.
    • One of the strongest pieces of equipment is a baseball cap, dated to 199X.
  • Mother 3:
    • Inside Humphrey is a section where the player is chased by an invincible mutant monster that wants to devour the party, just like the Ultimate Chimera. Not only the mutant is a lab experiment, but Humphrey's insides serves as a lab for the Slime Girls and their other experiments, just like the Chimera Labs; thankfully, unlike the Ultimare Chimera, getting caught by the mutant monster is not an instant game over.
    • Aubrey's weapons of choice are various bludgeons. Her Infinity +1 Sword is a baseball bat, much like Lucas's own at the end of his game.
    • Faraway Town has a cat named Claus and a dog named Lucas. An obvious reference to Claus and Lucas from Mother 3.
• Pokémon Red and Blue:
  • The first room the player character enters after leaving the starting area has a tv showcasing a movie where four boys walk along a set of railroad tracks, much like in Red, Blue, and their remakes. As in the original, this referred to Stand by Me.
  • In Last Resort, you can access the concierge area if you give the guard some bottled water, just like you could gain access to Saffron City in Red, Blue and Yellow if you give one of the guards some fresh water (it was changed to tea in the remakes).
  • The gameplay revolves around Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, with different messages added on to confirm whether or not something was "super effective."
    • "It was a moving attack!" - super-effective
    • "It was a dull attack." - not very effective
  • In Faraway Town, once you defeat enough opponents in Pet Rocks, you are tipped off to the four veterans around town that you have to beat before being able to square off against the champion, akin to fighting through the Elite Four to reach the Champion on Victory Road. When you do find the Pet Rocks champion, all they do is glare at your Pet Rock before Clashing, similar to Red silently starting his battle in Pokémon Gold and Silver. To boot, the Steam achievement for defeating the champion is named "The Very Best", like no one ever was.
• Yume Nikki:
  • The fact that Omori is a bit of a Psycho Knife Nut probably isn't a coincidence.
  • Whenever you try to make Sunny go someplace the game doesn't want you to, such as leaving his house at night, Sunny simply refuses and shakes his head. Not unlike how Madotsuki responds whenever you try and get her to leave her apartment.
  • The entirety of the Black Space and Black Space 2 areas is essentially a Yume Nikki fangame.
  • The Bad Ending has Omori, now in control of Sunny's body, jump off the edge of a building, not unlike Yume Nikki's ending.
• .flow:
  • As Sunny tries to collect the photos for the Black Photo Album during the dream sequence from One Day Left, he gets damaged, to the point where his fingers are torn apart and his head is covered in blood, similar to how mutilated Sabitsuki/Rust becomes when she's touched by a Red Demon, except less graphic.
  • Just like the three secret areas with the empty boxes, Black Space 2 unlocks more secret areas that were previously unavailable in the Main Route, with each area being more disturbing and horrifying than the other. And just like .flow, the player is forced to do something with the Dream World in order to unlock said secret areas.
  • The relationship between Sunny, Omori, and Something has parallels to Sabitsuki, Rust, and Demon Sabitsuki. The first one is the protagonist, while the other two are implied to be manifestations of their illness/depression who serve as the villains.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask:
  • Chapters are represented by "Days", with the game taking place in a timespan of three days after the end of the prologue. The final stretch of the Main Route takes place during the final hours of One Day Left.
  • Headspace being reset over and over again in order to seal Something and Black Space is almost identical to Link's adventure in Termina as he tries to prevent the Moon from falling into the land. It's only in the Main Route that Sunny manages to break the cycle.
• Undertale:
  • The naming system will disallow names already taken by important characters, including even Omori himself, who's supposed to be the Player Character. And similar to the big twist of Undertale, anyone who's played it may figure out ahead of schedule that you're not naming the character you thought you were.^note This may also be a reference to Earthbound Beginnings which also stops you from naming any of the characters after important ones.
  • Related to the above, the Final Boss is Omori himself in a Battle in the Center of the Mind. While no such battle takes place in Undertale, comparisons between Omori and the Fallen Child are otherwise not hard to draw.
  • There are secret events that can only be seen by modifying the WTF value to certain numbers during the Main Route and the Hikikomori Route, just like the "fun" value in Undertale. In addition, the character of W.D. Gaster is somewhat similar to Abbi, who was also effectively erased from the game world with only a few remnants of her existence, and the three Gaster Followers are paralleled with the three Beta Characters (Uni, Tako, Meido) in Black Space.
• Microsoft Windows:
  • The "Download Window" miniboss is based off the Internet Explorer download window. The miniboss being stuck at downloading 99% refers to how widely varying were the downloading estimates Internet Explorer gave.
  • One of the Download Window's attacks involve crashing, complete with the window repeatedly popping up on the screen.
  • The battle background of the Download Window looks similar to the default background of Windows XP.
  • Defeating the Download Window grants 404 EXP. Moreover, the overworld area where you encounter the Download Window has monitors roughly in the shape of a 404. "404" is the error returned whenever a document is not found.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • One of the moves the Squizzards can perform is called "Squid Ward."
  • One of the possible actions by the Creepypasta is that it does nothing...menacingly!
• Various others:
  • You can fight a spider-bunny hybrid, called a Bug Bunny.
  • In the Junkyard, the Life Jam Guy is clearly modeled after the Kool-Aid Man. He even charged from a door, though the door remains intact.
  • One of the Gator Guys in the Junkyark laughs "Kek kek kek...". In other words, he is KekCroc.
  • One of the main protagonists is called Kel. And he loves Orange Joe.
  • Pet Rocks in the real world are virtual pets that can fight one another if two devices are connected.
  • While climbing the ladder to Otherworld, Omori will come across a snake slowly descending to Vast Forest, singing "What a thrill" to itself.
  • The theme for the fight against Pluto's Expanded form is called GOLDENVENGEANCE. Similarly, Sweetheart's boss theme is titled World's End Valentine. Both songs are named in a similar way to certain songs in Umineko, specifically GOLDENSLAUGHTERER (among other songs that have two words in all caps and without a space) and World End Dominator. Both songs also wouldn't feel out of place if they played in Umineko.
  • Rococo's fourth commission is an anime-style rendition of the main group titled "Omori's Unusual Escapades."
  • The battle against The Maverick has him mention his "final form" and, at the end of the fight, he tries to use a Spirit Bomb as his finishing move, both of which are from Dragon Ball Z.
  • When Kel helps Aubrey get un-stuck from the stump, she complains about how long it took him, to which Kel responds "Well sorry, princess".
  • The Rare Card you get for completing Angel's sister's sidequest is one big Blue-Eyes White Dragon joke. It has a very familiar dragon on it, the item description jokes about there being only four copies in the entire world, and she pretended to tear it in half right in front of him.
  • The way to the fight against the Unbread Twins involves an alchemical circle that works like a portal, and their battle theme is named "BREADY STEADY GO". It's up to the viewer to decide if this is a Fullmetal Alchemist reference or convenient coincidence.
  • A message in a bottle contains the lyrics to "That's Amore" by Dean Martin. Well, except for the last word. Filling in the blank with "Omori" maintains the original song's meter.
  • The track title for Sweetheart's Garden is "I Definitely Promised You A Rose Garden", a play on the first line to "Rose Garden" by Lynn Anderson.
  • The Pet Rocks champion is a very strong opponent, boasting 9 hearts compared to your 3, and ridiculously skilled at the game. Their icon is a Jash with a single wing — Sephirock, if you will.
  • The "very expensive and controversial art piece" in the Last Resort is a direct reference to a real-world art piece called "The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind of Someone Living", by British artist Damien Hirst, which consists of the carcass of a tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde.
  • One of the songs in the soundtrack is titled "Jash Bash 2: New Age of Heroes".
  • Two of the members of Aubrey's hooligan gang are named Charlene and Angel. Moreover, Charlene has a familiar-looking zigzag pattern on the front of her shirt.
  • The "Take Me To the River" achievement (gotten by unlocking Snowglobe Mountain via a singing bass toy) is named for an Al Green song, and references the song's use in an actual singing bass toy.
  • There is a Dummied Out FMV sequence that was supposed to be accessed from Omori's laptop. It depicts a short film called "In Memory of a Day" simply featuring Omori sitting in a crudely drawn room before quickly cutting to credits. It's a reference to the Parks and Recreation episode "The Comeback Kid", where Ben makes a short claymation film called "Requiem for a Tuesday" which shows a claymation man sitting in a room before getting up and then it ends abruptly.
  • Sunny winds up having the same trajectory as the main character from Goodnight Punpun, where both are left with eye injuries and are contemplating suicide in response to everything that’s happened with them; though, unlike Punpun, Sunny has the option to successfully go through with it.
  • Mari's hanging corpse, with her huge mass of long hair covering everything but a single unblinking eye, is a dead ringer for Sadako.
  • The Big Yellow Cat bears a great resemblance to Chiyo-chichi.
  • The description for the Star Fruit Soda says that it's meant to be shared with a friend, similar to the local legends about the star-shaped Paopu Fruit in Kingdom Hearts.
  • One NPC you can talk to in Otherworld is a tall, pale woman wearing a white sundress and sunhat named 'Po'. Her design is a dead ringer for the Japanese Creepypasta monster Hasshaku-sama, an eight-foot-tall child-hunting Humanoid Abomination capable of shapeshifting, which in its 'true' voice only ever utters a deep, mechanical, laughter-like "po, po, po" sound. Completely unlike the the creature she references, 'Po' is capable of normal speech and entirely non-malicious, conversing with the main four and marvelling at the cosmos.
  • One "movie" viewable in Sweetheart's theater depicts Sprout Moles appearing across a landscape before cutting to and zooming in on a still image of Sweetheart, directly referencing the "Badgers" animation.

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