Shout Out / Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Shout-Out examples in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

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General

• There are references in the game to a number of classic and not-so classic vampire movies including Nosferatu, The Lost Boys, and of course Dracula (1931). For example one of the options when speaking to the bartender is "I don't drink... alcohol", a clear reference to Bela Lugosi's Dracula. Additionally, the Camarilla ending is a Shout-Out to the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which itself was a Shout-Out to Citizen Kane.
• One of the weapons the player can use is a severed arm.
• There are several references to being shot like "Old Yella".
• The flamethrower runs on burninator-brand fuel.
• Futurama:
  • Smiling Jack is seen smoking a cigar in the intro despite vampires not being affected by it, as befitting for the same voice actor that played the robot Bender.
  • In the Santa Monica health clinic: if you examine the patients' files on the doctor's computer, one of them suffers from frequent bouts of sexlexia.
  • You can also use Zapp Branningan's classic pick-up line—"I find the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies"—on a would-be Blood Doll in Hollywood. It works about the same as it did for Kif.
• "Nobody expects the Malkavian Inquisition."
• A radio ad for a brand of butter called "I Thought it was Margarine" (All the crappy taste of margarine, with all the saturate fat of butter.)
• A male Nosferatu PC's default outfit consists of white pants, a codpiece and black boots.
• The Katana looks like Connor MacLeod's sword.
• One of the T.V news reports involves a giant squid-like creature being washed up on the shoreline at Providence, Rhode Island. Also doubles as a Shout-Out to The Bible, as a massive sea creature washing up on shore is a sign of the Biblical Armageddon.
• One of the books for learning hacking says something about "Don't Copy That Floppy", a old PSA about anti-copyright infringement laws, back when floppy disks were the standard data storage device.
• One of the ads on the Deb of Night radio broadcast is for a line of toy robots that transform into office devices (stapler, coffeemaker, optical mouse) and form two warring factions. The ad even identifies them as a spin-off of a toy that debuted in 1984 and "became an instant classic."
• Some of the passwords:
  • In the medical clinic, the password for the "administration" folder is "lakers", and the one related to the morgue is "cowbell".
  • "antoniobay" on the Elizabeth Dane is another reference to John Carpenter's "The Fog".
  • During the museum quest: "iluvgabe".
  • The password you're instructed to use by Mitnick to hack Megahertz Computing's net security is "gil bates", either a reference to previous Troika title Arcanum or directly to Bill Gates. Later, during the same quest, Metalhead Industries use passwords based on Metal music, including "turbo lover" and "bang your head".
• The Werewolf sequence practically tears half the pages out of the Terminator's book. Superhuman, nigh-unstoppable, and with its only goal being to kill you in the most violent way possible. The method to killing it even mirrors the Terminator's death, albeit with a sliding observatory door rather than a hydraulic press.
• You can find a Computer skill book in the Ground Zero cafe titled "The Cowboy's Guide to Cyberspace by Case" - a reference to Neuromancer's protagonist, "console cowboy" (hacker) Henry Dorsett Case.

Santa Monica

• In the Hell Hotel level, obviously an homage to The Shining, the ceiling has collapsed right in front of Room 217 (which was replaced in the film by Room 237).
• The clock in the PC's apartment is a "Zaphod" brand clock.
• In the health clinic's computer, you find a listing of doctors, including a Dr. Roberts, who has never lost a patient. The file notes that "No one can succeed like Dr. Roberts."
• Perhaps more subtly, if you choose to save Heather Poe by giving her your blood, the cutscene goes through the exact motions of the scene in Interview with the Vampire where Lestat Embraces Claudia.
• There's also a one armed man named "Gimble" who turns out to be a serial killer. Sound familiar?
• Malkavian to Arthur Kilpatrick, the bail bondsman: "Are you the key master?"
• One of the dialogue choices when asking Kilpatrick for reward money is "negotiable America currency" a shout out to D.B. Cooper.
• The Malkavian PC has an option of replying "I SEE DEAD PEOPLE" when asked by Beckett if they have encountered anything out-of-the-way.
• Dominating the security guard in the blood bank leads to him saying that he feels asleep.
• When a Malkavian frees Carson from Gimble's prison, they will say "Heeeeeeeeeerrrrreeee's JOHNNY!", which doubles as a reference to The Tonight Show. Carson won't be amused.
• Malkavian seducing a woman in the Asylum: "I'm not only fully functional, but programmed in multiple techniques."
• The Malk response to finding out the blood bank freezer password from Phil (1969): "Just like the summer."
• If you turn off the power for the house of drug dealers at the beginning of the game, one of them angrily shouts that he was about to unlock "Sheng Long".
• If you talk to the group of thin-bloods at the Santa Monica pier, you can, with sufficient Persuasion, convince one of them that either a) killing the head vampire will turn him human again or b) that a full blood transfusion will do the trick.
• If you log in to Carson's computer, the messages "Grumble Grumble" and "It's a secret to everybody" appear at the top of the screen.
• The bum with the "End Is Near" sign is (among other things) shouting lyrics from "The Dead Flag Blues" by Godspeed You Black Emperor!. In particular, he screams about "The sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides!"
• A very subtle one, but everyone who has ever taken a contracts class in law school will recognize the name McGee, from the famous case Hawkins v. McGee. McGee was a doctor who operated on Hawkins, promising to remove a scar from his hand by means of a skin graft, but who instead mutilated his hand. In the game, McGee is instead one of the victims of Gimble, who cuts pieces off of him.
• Bertram Tung has an obnoxious Ghoul whose name is Knox Harrington.
  • Knox's design is also a visual shout out to a different work. His hair, facial design and color scheme are all heavily based on Riley Finn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Riley was also written out of the show with a storyline where he was willingly letting vampire suck his own blood, in an inverse of Knox's role.
• The conversation between Therese and Jeanette is reminiscent of the argument between Gollum and Sméagol in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
• An entry for "Falz, D" in one of the computer databases in the morgue of the medical clinic states the body was frozen and disturbing to look at.
• Therese‘s name possibly alludes to a character from Trilogy of Terror. Both characters had incestuous relationships with their fathers, and more importantly, both are actually one person suffering from a split personality. Additionally, a potential outcome of the Therese storyline is to have one of the personalities kill the other, which is what happens in the aforementioned film, albeit more literally.

Downtown

• The ship the Elizabeth Dane is the name of the Leper Ship in John Carpenter's "The Fog".
  • What happens with the Dane, i.e., a ship transporting a coffin shows up in harbor with its crew mysteriously having vanished is likely an allusion to how Dracula arrives in London in Dracula.
• Pulp Fiction: A cool, afroed Jive Turkey sends you on a mission to retrieve a briefcase, with "beautiful" unknown contents.
• The Malkavian Player: "How long have they raged against the machine?" when asking Jack about the Anarchs.
• Malkavian to Damsel after you agree to spy on LaCroix: "I heard a rumor that he was into field hockey players."
• Hannah's appointment book mentions that she needs to bring pliers and the blowtorch for her meeting with Vandal.
• Damsel refers Strauss as a Magic Missile casting motherfucker.

Hollywood

• Gorgeous Gary Golden, a former movie star, loves to make these.

  [About the Ankaran Sarcophagus] "Where, where, where did it go? That thing seems to get around more than Mae West."

  "Forget it, boss. It's Chinatown."

  • He also organizes a "dinner party" with corpses that supposedly belong to the cast of The Misfits.
• In a minor side-quest in Hollywood, LaCroix asks you to make a critic's review of an Italian restaurant to be a bad one. If you are playing Malkavian and have enough dots in Dementation discipline you can use "Maggots. You are eating maggots." Line from '87 movie about vampires — The Lost Boys. You even get to lampshade it in a subsequent dialog choice:
  Tommy Flayton: This place will pay for this! As sure as my name is Tommy Flayton, they'll never serve food in this town again!
  Malkavian PC: How could they do that to you? I bet they didn't get that idea from a movie.
• Mitnick the computer hacker is a reference to Kevin Mitnick, previously one of the world's most notorious social engineers. He now runs an IT security consulting service.
• The network you set up for Mitnick in one of the sidequests (on which all the in-game Nosferatu, save for your PC if applicable, have e-mail accounts) is called "SchreckNet", a clear reference to Max Schreck, who played Orlok in... Nosferatu.
• The ghoul called Romero has zombie-killing as his profession, which is the the plot to Cemetery Man.
• The NPC who hangs out at the convenience store in Hollywood ranting about "piznachos" (and who later calls Deb on the radio) is called Spicoli.
• When Romero warns not to allow zombies to bite, a Malkavian character can ask if it causes Zombie status. Because he/she is out of holy water.
• One of the computers in the Ground Zero internet café contains a directory featuring short biographies of famous Hollywood actors, all of whom are thinly-disguised expies for their real-life counterparts (Jon Revolta, for example, had his bio removed at the request of the Church of Solicitology). Even a minor character, Ash Rivers, is a stand-in for Robert Downey Jr.: Rivers is a successful Hollywood actor with a history of problems with drink and drugs, whose star-making role was in an L.A.-set drama film called Negative Zero. His name is a reference to River Phoenix; at one point, the Malkavian PC can refer to him as a phoenix in dialogue. His night club, the Asp Hole, is also a reference to Phoenix's Viper Room.
• During your exploration of the sewers, you can find a newspaper and a logbook discussing three missing sanitation workers, implied to have run afoul of the Nosferatu. Their names are Whitman, Price and Haddad.
• The name of the food critic, Tommy Flayton, is suspiciously similar to that of real-life chef Bobby Flay.

Chinatown

• The dialogue option of "Did I just fight a landshark?" is a pretty obvious reference to the old SNL skit.
• Bruno Giovanni mentions his desire for an "endless night".
• When enduring the Mandarin's experiments, his verbal notes call the squad of commandos you kill "The Belmont Squad."
• The experiment right before that, which tests if a cross can repel you, is given the name of Dr. Van Helsing from Dracula.
• When you rescue Kiki from the Tong the first thing she asks you (if you're playing a male PC) is Aren't you a little tall for a Tong?
• At the Giovanni Mansion, Christopher's dirty little secret is that he's a bastard, the son of a writer named Michael Avellone. Thus making him "Chris Avellone". This callout is particularly amusing in hindsight, as Chris Avellone was working as a writer for the game's upcoming sequel.

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