Shout Out / TitansGrave: The Ashes of Valkana

• Wil goes for less than 5 minutes (of the intro video!) before dropping his first shout-out—a angry rant about the death of his character Aeofel in an acid pit in season three of Acquisitions Incorporated.
• The best beer in the house is The Old Chaotic Neutral.
• Hank Green wastes exactly zero time remembering to be awesome, making it Aankia's very first action. She succeeds in being awesome.
• After S'lethkk gains the Lightning Bolt spell, a shout out to the eponymous meme is made immediately.
• While escaping from a crime scene, Lemley accidentally runs down an unfortunate cabbage merchant.
• Jeremy to Aankia: "I'm a leaf on the wind boss!"
  • And earlier in the same episode: "I guess I picked the wrong day to start drinking."
• Kiliel when they're sent to save the brewery from Hellions: "Save the beer, save the world"
• While talking about the 'Staff of Forlorn Hope', they comment that the 'Three-lorn' hope is not what they need, and "Five-lorn is right out."
• When an attack fails to disable a hostile robot, it prompts the announcement "Number Five is still alive!"
• During a fight scene in episode 5 where many things go wrong, one of the players bemoans that they're the Apple Dumpling Gang of adventuring parties. Wil responds that he sees them more as the Bad News Bears. In episode 8, Alison compares the party to the Island of Misfit Toys, and Wil is obliged to state for the record that they are not, in fact, the Goonies.
• In chapter six, while the party is exploring and finds yet another deactivated cyborg, Yuri jokingly complains that the other Teen Titans are suffering from a lack of representation.
• In chapter seven, Runcible the Teddy Bear urges the party to play more games. A bit later, Hank drops a reference to Paul and Storm's cover band name avalanche from the Chez Geek episode of Tabletop. The chapter also includes a cameo appearance by Tabletop's owlbear mascot, in the illustration of a garden full of rare and exotic birds.
• When the party ride to Mount Moonperch, Wil describes one of the mounts by reference to the lizard-like mount ridden by Ookla the Mok in Thundarr the Barbarian.
• The Sadistic Choice Wil pushes on Lemley in episode 7 may be a subtle reference to the last Acquisitions Incorporated episode he appeared in, where he didn't roll well enough to pull another player out of an acid pit and the DM made him decide whether he drops his friend back into the acid or falls into it himself.
• Wil describes the creature the party fights in episode 7 as making the same noise as a particular monster from Scooby-Doo.
• Surprisingly, there was no acid pit (see above) or even a reference to one when the party explored the foyer of the Reed Mansion. However, if viewer comments are anything to go by, a lot of fans were expecting it, anyway.
• In episode 8, Laura lights up upon a mention of trinkets.
• In episode 8, the party encounters an artifact which Wil tells them is black, or blue-black depending on how the light hits it. Laura jokes that in the right light it's white and gold.
• In episode 10, after the party begins pondering non-violent approaches, Wil drops a shout-out to Solid Snake.
• In episode 10, after S'lethkk pulls off the highest damage roll seen in the campaign yet, Yuri yells "Enchantment!", which is the catch phrase of Sandal Feddic—an Idiot Savant from the Dragon Age series whom he also voices and who mysteriously manages to perform repeated feats of incredible badassitude (like slaughtering an entire company of Darkspawn by himself or snap-freezing an ogre mid-charge) despite being barely able to look after himself.
• Before entering the Tomb of the Prophet, Yuri compares it to entering the Tomb of Horrors. Funny he should say that, considering how the trick Prophet Dhawan uses to escape after being seemingly defeated is very similar to what Acererak does at the end of Return to the Tomb of Horrors...

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