Magicka/Shout-Out

So many they were clogging up the main page. But no more!

• The very first sentence to be uttered in the cutscene before the first level has no less than six shout outs. See for yourselves: "Stay a while and listen, and I will tell you a story. A story of Dungeons & Dragons, of Orcs and Goblins, of Ghouls and Ghosts, of Kings and Quests, but most importantly -- of Wizards and Vamp -- Well, a story of Wizards."
• The imps in the tutorial bear a striking resemblance to those in Dungeon Keeper. They even chip at the walls with their little pickaxes.
• The first (and only) sidequest in the game involves killing rats in the basement, except that the NPC changes her mind upon realizing how trivial that problem is.
• The first thing you hear from a goblin is a call to his friend "Rakanishlol".
  • Also, the bleak village in the middle of the swamps in Chapter 9 features what anyone familiar with the game will instantly recognize as the Tristram music from Diablo (even though it's actually not, obviously).
• In the room before the tutorial boss, there's a sign saying "You don't have to, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to burn the rope." And sure enough, you can burn the rope, dropping a chandelier on poor Behold, the Watcher, killing him instantly.
• Pretty much ALL of the achievement names, some of which include "I put on my Robe and Wizard Hat" and "I think Magicka is a Pretty Cool Guy". If it's a meme, it's in there somewhere.
  • There are also achievements called 88mph, State Alchemist, OMG, They Killed Yellow!, Blue... No, Yellow!, Deep Impact, Good Company, No Power = No Responsibility, among others.
• The same goes for many of the magicks' pictures:
  • The image depicting the Grease magick shows the three mages in exact same poses as the Wehrmacht soldiers from the "Hammerzeit" photo ^{[dead link]} (minus the leftmost one).
  • The image for the Crash to Desktop magick pretty nicely mimics the FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- image macro.
  • The image for Summon Death resembles a scene from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey which in turn parodies The Seventh Seal. Fittingly, you fight Death on a giant chessboard.
  • The image for Vortex strongly resembles the title scene from Army Of Darkness.
  • The slowing magick is called Time Warp.
  • Tractor Pull was inspired by a fan-made video.
  • And, well... Portal.
• A sword called Stung which glows whenever enemies are nearby and the Staff of the White Wizard, which frightens enemies and upgrades your light radius.
  • Also the Morgul Blade, which, unsurprisingly, poisons enemies.
• The reservoir robes description "I don't want to read about no reservoir wizards."
• The overworld map shown in chapter intros features the island of R'lyeh.
  • Which you actually go to in the DLC The Stars are Left.
• In chapter 2, you'll come upon Gram's Workshop, from which "a powerful hammer of the dark and gritty sort" can be retrieved.
  • And if you speak to the villagers in the town just before that, one of them says he heard that "in the distant north, there is only war."
• A Sword of the Masters which shoots arcane bolts on swing if you're at full health.
  • The cover art looks a lot like Four Swords'.
• Vlad, who is totally not a vampire, says in the middle of chapter 3, "To boldly go where no vamp .... err MAN has gone before".
• A guy named MacLeod, standing in front of a grave at a cliff edge with a katana. You even get the achievement "There can be only one" for killing him!
• When you get the M60, the dialogue goes something like, "Our blacksmith and handyman Angus made this using nothing but a paperclip... and a shotgun."
• By itself, Star Wars gets a huge number of references:
  • The first six chapters are named, respectively, The Fancy Menace, Attack Of The Goblins, Revenge Of The Tribes, A New Hope, Havindr Strikes Back, and Return Of The Wizard.
  • A wizard studying a dead moose in the first chapter mentions that "only goblin rangers are so precise".
  • You find two dead burned corpses in front of a burned farmhouse in the beginning of Attack of the Goblins who resemble Owen and Beru's corpses.
  • During the city assault portion in chapter 4, you and three NPCs will get surrounded by enemies in the town square. One of the NPCs, Admiral Agnar, shouts, "IT'S A TRAP!"
  • After the wizard holding the King hostage at the end of chapter 4 is defeated, he begins charging a massive lightning spell, only to have the king pick him up and throw him down a conveniently placed shaft as electricity arcs around him.
  • There is a lightsaber to be found next to a charred skeleton lying by a lava river...
  • During your duel with him, Vlad makes a few random comments, one of which is: "Impressive! Most impressive!"
  • When you win the mind duel, Grimnir says: It seems that this battle will not be decided by the strength of our minds, but by our skill in spellcasting.
  • At the very end of the game, Future Vlad, Behold the Watcher, and a hooded wizard all appear before you, like Yoda, Anakin, and Obi-Wan at the end of Return of the Jedi.
  • Upon entering the goblin camp in Chapter 2, the goblins yell "Intruders!" and "Blast them!"
  • Prior to abandoning ship in Chapter 3, Vlad says he senses a great disturbance in his town.
  • One of the villagers in Chapter 2 says: "Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways! Yeah, you heard me right! What're you going to do? Strangle me?"
  • In the swamp: "There's a faint outline of a small X-shaped vehicle in the water."
  • At the end of Chapter 11, Vlad implores Fafnir to help the heroes by saying: "Help us, Fafnir. You're our only hope."
  • They even throw in a reference to the infamous mistranslation of Star Wars Episode 3 known as Star War: The Backstroke of the West.
• The names of chapters 7-11 (Return to Castle Aldrheim, Mine Sweepers, Symphony of the Twilight, A Grim Tango and Raiders of the Lost Ruins) are video game and/or movie titles.
  • In the Count's castle on level 9, you find a guy in a leather skirt with a whip lying dead on the floor.
  • In Chapter 10, Future Vlad explains that the ruler of the underworld, Death, is part owner of a travel agency.
• Finally, Chapter 12 is titled At the Mountains of Madness, already foreshadowing the Lovecraftian chapters to follow in the The Stars are Left DLC.
  • The true final boss is introduced as "The King In Yellow", as befits a yellow-robed (vaguely) Humanoid Abomination.
  • And when you beat him, he lets out a Big No, of memetic proportions.
• The King who, in a conversation with a soldier right next to a pit says "Madness?!?... Well, yes, now that you mention it, I suppose you're right..." Though you can throw the soldier into the pit yourself. (For an aptly named achievement: "This is Magicka!")
• A knife of Counter-Striking which makes you run incredibly fast.
• The achievement for killing 20 enemies with one spell or Magick (harder than it sounds), is appropriately named "MU-MU-MU-MULTIKILL!".
  • ...kill...kill...
• The Yeti from SkiFree didn't forget you; it just patiently waited until you decided to play Magicka.
  • Fittingly, the first time you encounter a yeti (or "Snow Troll") is at the beginning of the snow chapter. You see a soldier skiing down a snowy mountain, jumping off a rainbow-colored ramp shortly before the yeti devours him. Also, while the other trolls are very slow and the Cave Troll's instant death attack takes a long time, the Snow Troll is really fast and it devours your wizard in less than a second.
• "Remember: The safety word is banana!"
• The Vietnam expansion DLC added even more.
  • In the trailer, the beginning is a reference to Cannon Fodder
  • One of the new achievements is titled, aptly, Lead Farmer.
  • One of the POWs that you have to rescue in the DLC mission is named John, and attacks enemies with explosive-tipped arrows.
  • At the end of the rescue mission, Captain Vlad swoops in on a Huey and shouts, "Get to the chopper!"
• The DLC Challenge map, Marshlands, boasts the following description: Left for dead, your party must fight to survive the unrelenting hordes of the undead and all their friends."
• The entire Final Frontier DLC is an obvious reference to the Star Trek series. Even the new robe is based on the Star Fleet uniform.
• The chests in versus mode walk around on hundreds of little legs and try to eat you
• The live-action trailer for the new Player versus Player mode is a straight shout out to the "nicknames" scene from Reservoir Dogs.
• The fifth boss, an Orcish warlord, is named Khan. The developers admit in the commentary that the sole reason for this was so the king could do a KHAAAAAAAAAN! scream.
• The broken hourglass from the front cover of Braid can be seen in Chapter 10.
• In Chapter 2, there's a house that if you knock on, a person inside will say "Go away! I'm... not dressed properly!".
• The Mace of the Molten Core's name is a nod to World of Warcraft.
• The map at the start of Chapter five has an island named The Lonely Island and there's a boat right next to it.
• There is an achievement for pushing someone off a cliff called Wingardium Leviosa
• The Gamer Robes DLC pack added three new robes: a zombie with a parasite on his head wielding a crowbar, an epic equipment set, and a purple tentacle monster.
• The free community update added a space marine armor set and a cyber robes set.
• There's a skeleton wearing brown shorts and a teal shirt lying on the floor of a tomb. Upon examining it, you're told that it "seems she was raiding this tomb".
  • The developer commentary/Let's Play elaborates that this reference was meant to go even further by having "milk jugs" on the floor as well.
• James Bond gets an obvious reference in Chapter 4, both in dialog and in the way the boss decides to kill the king using a ridiculous contraption.
• Chapter 3 gives us a twofer in the form of a stone circle with some druids and the corpse of a knight in blue. When engaged in combat, the druids shout "Shrubbery!" and "Ni!". The description for the knight says that he looks like he's had a really hard day. The sheer amount of blood and gore in the game is very much reminiscent of Moonstone as well.
• The bosses of Chapter 8, the goblin ruling body, are referred to as The Aristocrats. The achievement for defeating them is called "More like The Aristocats".
• One shout out doubles as a Stealth Pun - at one point you encounter a goblin archer wearing a green shirt and a hat straight out of the Errol Flynn film, making him of course Goblin Hood.
• One of the bosses is introduced as Fafnir, the Burninator.
• If you go into "cover mode" in the Vietnam game mode, you start to regenerate health.
• Gram (of Gram's Workshop) quotes lyrics to the Iron Maiden song 'Run To The Hills' when the goblins come. "RUN TO THE HILLS! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"
• You have the checkpoint fairy following you around, constantly interrupting with "Hey! Listen!"
• Where you pick up the Nullify spell, the goblin shaman shouts Kah-lee-mah!
• The Steam achievement "Ice Age" mentions in its description that "It's what killed the dinosaurs."

Back to Magicka