Shout Out / The Cabin in the Woods

• Angel: The symbol on the floor and the one on the controllers' talismans sure looks like the Circle of the Black Thorn...
• The whole facility (as well as what's happening to it) is very reminiscent of the Black Mesa Research Facility from the Half-Life series.
• The Evil Dead (1981):
  • College friends, cabin in the woods, evil basement, ominous book with ancient chant, and evil molesting trees. "Deadites" also show up on the betting board.
  • The cabin itself looks almost identical to the one from the movie. Word of God says this was intentional. Rumor has it that the filmmakers actually painstakingly built it from scratch because they couldn't track down the original house.
  • The scene where the basement trapdoor swings open is nearly identical to the scene from the original Evil Dead. Watch them back-to-back and the recreation is strikingly faithful.
• Mordecai is meant to be a homage to the "crazy old loner" archetype like the gas station attendant from The Hills Have Eyes (1977) or Ralph Neeley from the early Friday the 13th movies. Speaking of, the lake near the cabin in the woods does strongly harken back to Camp Crystal Lake.
• Hellraiser: The pale guy in black bondage gear, holding a puzzlebox, with sharp metal things embedded in his head. They even use the franchise's iconic music to show him and the other monsters.
• Halloween: One of the Buckners does a sideways head tilt a few times, just like Michael Meyers.
• Alien: On a monitor during "The Carnage", you can see the foot of a Xenomorph advance towards a cowering woman, the same way the shot happened in the first Alien film. Additionally the long-tailed alien monster that leaps onto a security soldier's head is similar to the Facehugger.
• Left 4 Dead: A Boomer, a Hunter, a Tank, and a Witch are seen among the various monsters. The production team even went so far as to use the in-game models in the film itself.
• The third act is full of shout outs to a bevy of horror films from recent years, among the more generic zombies and Giant Spiders are:
  • A torturer in a mask and leather apron straight from Hostel.
  • The scarecrows that tear apart Truman are actually from the 80s B-movie of the same name. They even get taken out the same way.
• Carrie: The very end, with the hand coming out of the ground, might be a reference to the ending of Carrie.
• The shifting square containment cells might be a shout out to Cube.
• The Ring: The Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl that attacks the Japanese class resembles Sadako.
• The Shining: The twin girls can be seen when all the containment cells are shown. Later a pair of elevator doors open to reveal a flood of blood.
• First Encounter Assault Recon: A formerly heavily armed SWAT member crawls away from a Creepy Child.
• The Strangers: Some of the villains in the carnage are a group of silent, well-dressed men and women with white porcelain masks. They are later seen dousing some bound technicians with gasoline and lighting them offscreen.
• Funny Games: The rather jarring title card at the beginning is the same effect (red block letters, sudden sound, quiet conversation leadup) in both films.
• Silent Hill: The Vampire Bat bursting through the plate glass window toward the end is pretty much exactly how the first fight in the first Silent Hill game begins.
• The unseen but unspeakably horrible Kevin is explained in the director's commentary to be a reference to the character of the same name from We Need to Talk About Kevin.
• Dana and Marty sitting next to each other for One Last Smoke after accepting their death is straight from Shaun of the Dead.
• The Scarecrows attacking Truman may be a reference to the Doctor Who episode "The Family of Blood".
• Jules's dance may strike some viewers as familiar. It's from the original The Wicker Man (1973).
• Given The Reveal, Truman's name is likely a reference to The Truman Show.
• The Doctors are highly reminiscent of the Splicers from BioShock.
• The "Giant Snake" appears to be a reference to King Cobra, given that it's a cobra-rattlesnake hybrid.
• The amplified female voice attempting to reason with Marty and Dana as they enter the laboratory (even if it's merely a distraction) recalls the final level of Portal.
• The first kill in the facility goes to a crawling hand.
• In a Rewatch Bonus, the first massacre of security guards includes one getting harpooned and dragged into buzzsaw range by the Killer Robot. One of the berserk security bots in Chopping Mall fires a similar grapple to take out an unsuspecting victim.
• Marty's quote, "We are not who we are", is from the ''X-Files episode "Ice".
• The Living Dead Series:
  • The original Night of the Living Dead (1968) famously involved someone getting dismembered with a trowel by a zombie.
  • Truman's death recalls Rhodes's death in Day of the Dead (1985).
• The true antagonists bring to mind H. P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones.
• One of the locations on the monitors that show the other failed rituals around the world is Stockholm: A helicopter flies over ruined buildings in a snowy terrain, which is very similar to the destroyed Norwegian Base from The Thing (1982).
• Another failed ritual in Buenos Aires shows a giant horned gorilla laying dead, which is a nod to King Kong.

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