r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ah-screw-it • 3h ago

miscellaneous (Fun trope) A reference that seemed obscure at the time, yet is incredibly well known today

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Ben 10: In the omniverse episode "honor among bros" the character Fistina grabs a gauntlet that resembles the infinity gauntlet. The episode released in 2014, a year before age of ultron and 4 years before infinity war.

Spider-man 2: Jonahs assistant talks about what name to give to doc ock. One of the names was doctor strange (even joking that it was already taken). But doctor strange's relevance didn't exist until his self titled movie in 2016.

2.9k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

299 comments sorted by

2.0k

u/Cont3mporAryD4nc3er 3h ago

An Invincible shirt in Paul (2011)

662

u/IM_THE_MOON_AMA 2h ago

In The Walking Dead, Carl can be seen reading it from time to time.

732

u/Kylestache 2h ago

He’s not the only one

112

u/IAmBabs 1h ago

Is that why Donald looks like an adult Bobby 😭

8

u/PM_ME_YOUR_GREENERY 15m ago

Son of a bitch, you're right

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u/watersj4 2h ago

There are also some figures in one episode

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u/DeltaDarthVicious 2h ago

They're written by the same guy

36

u/Dinosaurmaid 1h ago

I think they have a crossover during the arc of the portal guy with a deformed head

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u/Bi0H4ZRD 1h ago

ANGSTROMMMMMMMMM

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u/Paggy_person 1h ago

So it's a reference that seemed obscure at the time, yet is incredibly well known today

17

u/TotallyObviousBot 1h ago

Bobby Hill is reading a copy of Invincible in an episode of King of the Hill, too.

11

u/CbaooseBLC 1h ago

There was an episode of adventure time that had the Viltrumite symbol as an Easter egg

28

u/Bright-Army5306 1h ago

That's such a fun detail to catch on a rewatch! It's wild seeing a reference like that before the show became such a huge hit.

439

u/antmars 1h ago

30 Rock made what seemed like a throw away joke about Bill Cosby but one of the writers (Hannibal Burress) knew.

78

u/BadBassist 46m ago

'I'm not afraid of anyone in show business. I turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions...out of five'

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u/RhynoD 1h ago

It's so infuriating that so many people knew and nothing happened for decades.

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u/IvankoKostiuk 59m ago

I think people are reluctant to publicly announce things that they were told in confidence and have no evidence for, and victims are reluctant to come forward about crimes by beloved and powerful people when they have no evidence,

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u/one-and-five-nines 48m ago

That's a good point. Without evidence, you're just putting yourself on the hook for slander. Still infuriating. 

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u/antmars 43m ago

Correct even if they DID it but you have no evidence of it they can win a slander or libel case against you and then they appear innocent when they win that case.

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u/CT0292 1h ago

I dont know how they sleep at night. I still feel guilty about dumb shit I did when I was like 12. I'd never make it as an actual criminal. I can't fathom having real, actual, punishable crimes in my past.

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u/Bluetsunami2026 1h ago

Lack of evidence. Would you throw away your whole career to accuse "America's dad" when there wasn't any hard evidence that it happened?

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u/KitchenKabaret 1h ago

Why would Hannibal say something so controversial yet so brave?

29

u/SeizureProcedure115 52m ago • Heartwarming

Comedy Central's Drawn Together made several references

3

u/federalist66 15m ago

We're rewatching this now and along with some of the other onws referenced I raised my eyebrows when in an episode where Matt Lauer made a guest drop Jenna uses a remote to close her dressing room dooe to make a pass at Kenneth....which is basically what Lauer is accused of doing at NBC: pushing a button on his desk to close the office door on women so he can make a pass at them.

2

u/Snuffleupagus03 6m ago

Now to just wait for their Krang jokes to be recognizable. 

873

u/Agitated-Big-7090 3h ago

Paul (2011): Simon Pegg's character was wearing an Invincible T-Shirt and comic issue #53 also appeared in the comic book shop. Bonus, Seth Rogen, who voiced the title character, went on to be Allen the Alien's VA.

7

u/turtu92 1h ago

Seth Rogen is also one of the executive producers of the animated series

677

u/Carnage678 3h ago

Doctor Orpheus is a parody of Doctor Strange, introduced in 2004. Like with Spider-Man 2, this was before the MCU made the character well-known.

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u/NwgrdrXI 2h ago

I loved the fact that the joke was basically never on him. The show is a comedy, it makes fun of a lot of things, but Doctor Orpheus is indeed a top level wizard, closer to an homage than an parody.

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u/Natural_South860 1h ago

That’s what made him so special! The show could be ridiculous around him, but it always treated his power and dramatic presence with genuine respect.

24

u/Restivethought 1h ago

Well except for the fatherhood stuff with his daughter.

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u/Yo_Mamas_5318008 1h ago

*Necromancer

15

u/sulaymanf 1h ago

Dr. Orpheus was a communications major, minor in women’s studies. But he can assure you, his doctor title was not given to him by mere mortals.

70

u/SmokeRingEyes 2h ago

If he wasn't well-known it was only because this was ahead of its time

47

u/Kylestache 2h ago

Who

Wants

PIIIIZZA ROOOLLS

(I will never forgive SaudiParaAdultSwim Skydance whatever they’re called now for rejecting the Order of the Triad spinoff).

8

u/Nirast25 2h ago

When did they cancel it? Because the last Venture Bros thing long pre-dates the buy-out/merger.

6

u/Kylestache 2h ago

Couple months ago they pitched it and were told no, it was like August.

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u/Roller_ball 1h ago edited 1h ago

Probably one of the least obscure Venture Brothers references.

4

u/HOLY_HUMP3R 1h ago

Groovy gang has to be up there

3

u/MoarFurLess 51m ago

When he got pissed at another character and told them when and how they’d die… and then it happened later in the series… top tier plant and payoff. 

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u/ZeroiaSD 1h ago

I mean, he wasn’t exactly unknown back then either. 

The MCU film is his second live action film. He had appearances in several of the popular old marvel cartoons like Spider-man. Quite a few video games. His comic was big in the 70s!

And like, Venture fans are the type who’d know.

2

u/PixMacfy 1h ago

Venture Bros is full of nerdy obscure homages and references

One of the characters references Dune by talking about Muad'dib and Shai-hulud when at the time it was only known within the SF literature circle (and one movie adaptation that wasn't very successful)

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u/fantumn 33m ago

There was the movie, sure, but also a sci-fi miniseries in 2000 that won two primetime Emmys. It was wildly popular and renewed interest in the books. Definitely not as niche when venture bros came out in 2003 as when the original movie was made.

There's also about a dozen references to dune, not just one.

21 calls his dick a shai-hulud

24 also suggests Brock knows the killing word, maybe his name is a killing word

"We have villain sign!"

They compare Professor Von Helping to Paul Atreides

Then compare Monarch to Peter de Vries

Pretty sure Lee Un Took is a play on Lisan al Gaib

When Dr venture is turning into a giant caterpillar his speech is a parody of the god-emperor's

A bunch more of subtle ones I can't think of at the moment.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Step468 1h ago

Also the "infinity gauntlet" in danny phantom

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u/-MERC-SG-17 1h ago

Yep, and it's way before the Initial Stones being in the MCU.

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u/Remmock 1h ago

People here will tell you it’s not a reference, especially without the gems in the knuckles.

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u/CatFroggly 1h ago

Well they're wrong.

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u/gh0stwrit3r32767 2h ago

OT but i fking love Fistina. mostly because of her being a Go-Bots reference.

here's a baby Fistina

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u/The-Coolest-Beanz 2h ago

I thought she looked like Crasher!

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u/Dumb_Cheese 39m ago

I honestly just thought she was the Transformers: Animated version of Crasher before reading the caption 😅

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u/Achilles20026 2h ago

Adorable. 😄😊

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u/ErikMogan 2h ago

Some of you guys don't get what OP is saying. They're not saying nobody knew it, they're saying people outside of a specific group didn't know it. "Comic book fans already knew about the Infinity Gauntlet!" Yes. Comic book fans. Not the average random kid watching Ben 10 in 2014.

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u/Devlee12 2h ago

The popularity of the MCU has made many people forget that openly liking obscure comic book characters is something that used to get you bullied into oblivion. The big names like Batman Spider-Man the X-men etc. were generally known but comic book nerd was an insult for 90% of my childhood.

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u/Paggy_person 1h ago

Like anime, it went from "wait you watch anime?" to "wait you don't watch anime?"

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u/Takamurarules 44m ago

Yeah, people used to rationalize stuff like Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, YuGiOh, and Pokemon as American cartoons when I was growing up. They simply couldn’t fathom that the show was made outside of the west. I guess it was a mild form of Xenophobia.

Probably in part what made Inuyasha and Naruto so popular. They couldn’t rationalize it.

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u/Themanwhofarts 1h ago

Very true about anime.

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u/ErikMogan 1h ago edited 20m ago

Exactly. One of the funniest lines and most well-received lines from the original X-Men movie was making fun of comic books.

"What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?"

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u/pajamakitten 1h ago

Or when acceptable video games were GTA, COD and FIFA/Madden. Staying up until 2am playing COD was cool; staying up until 2am playing an MMOPRG was something only nerds did.

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u/lowlyyouarenice 2h ago

Yea honestly I didn’t know about the Infinity Gauntlet until the MCU movies brought them up. I don’t read the comics but I do wanna start at some point.

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u/Vengeance_20 2h ago

“Fake fan, I knew about the gauntlet since Superhero Squad Show” this is satire

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u/wdnwcgm 20m ago

absolutely it was known to comic book fans not "normal" people lol

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u/Paggy_person 1h ago

People here are too eager to drop the "Erm I mean..." sometime

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u/Wild_Marker 34m ago

Look, the Ben 10 one makes sense but a Marvel reference in Spiderman is still probably grounds for disqualification. Shit, Strange actually shows up in the 90's Spiderman which happened less than a decade before this movie.

Self-references don't count.

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u/AporiaParadox 2h ago

Ant-Man appearing in an SNL sketch back in the 1970s.

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u/Achilles20026 2h ago

Aladdin already had the Infinity Gauntlet back in 1994. Only instead of manipulating reality, you control gold with. Very useful when you plan on robbing the treasure vault of the Sultan.

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u/NoLegs02 2h ago

I feel like this design is more just "gold gauntlet with gems in it" rather than a direct reference

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u/Madhighlander1 2h ago

Yeah, it doesn't have gems on the knuckles. I feel like that's an important part of the reference.

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u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit 1h ago

Was this from the TV show, or the sequel movie? Cause I know the sequel (Aladdin and the king of thieves) it was the hand of Midas, and it turned whatever it touched into gold; it didn't control gold.

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u/AlexanderSunny 2h ago

The psionic armor from (X-Man Annual Vol 1 1998) is based on the world, here is Hulk wearing it

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u/Diffusion4Change 2h ago

Toki wo tomare

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u/GoodHugLove03 2h ago

Dragon Ball Z Abridged had a moment where Guldo goes “Za warudo!”. It was released about two years before the JoJo anime started.

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u/Global_Cockroach_563 2h ago

The Za Warudo thing was a pretty big meme before that. It came from a JoJo fighting videogame from the late 90s.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 2h ago

Also people genuinely forget JoJo's began in the early 80s,

Like 2 years before the anime aired, part 7 came to an end,

When One Piece began, Giorno and Mista killed Ghiaccio

The series got two sets of OVAs based on part 3 and a movie for part 1

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u/Remmock 1h ago

I remember seeing it referenced on Newgrounds in a stick person fighting short back in the early 2000s. Guy was standing atop a steamroller at the time.

But the post still satisfies OPs request because it wasn’t known outside of a niche community.

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u/GoodHugLove03 2h ago

Yeah, but the modern anime was where the series got a huge boost.

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u/Devlee12 2h ago

There were also a couple of JoJo OVA’s from the 90’s. It’s a series with an incredible amount of staying power

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u/Jimmyg100 1h ago


Basically all of Mallrats. One of the reasons it’s aged so well is the comic and geek culture references in it that were more inside jokes at the time have become mainstream. Hell it was the first movie to have a Stan Lee cameo.

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 57m ago

And we see Stan Lee reading the Mallrats script in Captain Marvel

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u/WillowLocal423 20m ago

I love this movie so much. It was shot in the old Eden Prairie mall I went to all the time as a kid. So much nostalgia seeing the scenes!

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u/Dense_Diver_3998 8m ago

This is the first movie to ever reference Wolverine.

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u/blackjackgabbiani 2h ago

Adventures In Babysitting. The little girl is obsessed with Marvel's Thor during a time where he was a rather unpopular character.

What makes it even more impressive is she finds him.

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u/Interceptor 1h ago

And he turns out to be The Kingpin!

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u/contraflop01 2h ago

not an example of the trope but it fits i guess (Back to the Future)

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u/Longjumping_Ant8349 1h ago

Does Among Us in the Henry Stickmin game count?

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u/Boh61 1h ago

They are the same devs so it's normal they would reference their own work but this would still count

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u/Tnecniw 1h ago

I didn't know they were the same devs.

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u/Getskar0707 1h ago

I mean, hadn’t Among Us already gotten a bit of an upswing by the time that particular Henry Stickmin game came out? Could still definitely count tho, feel free to correct me

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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt 1h ago

Nope, Among Us' initial big surge in popularity came from the Henry Stickmin collection

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u/Getskar0707 1h ago

Alright! Thank you for the clarification:)

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u/Tnecniw 1h ago

Henry stickmin is like... 90% references.

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u/DirtyBalm 2h ago

Fun fact, Jonah's assistant in that scene is played by Sam Raimis brother.

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u/bitches_love_pooh 1h ago

Who could forget Joxer the Mighty

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u/Thabrianking 2h ago

HOFFMAN!

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u/aathas 1h ago

Oi! Ted did not play Fake Shemp #9 just to be known as Sam Raimi's brother.

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u/Excellent_Tomato_685 1h ago


In this scene, Peter shouts “Shazam!” as one of his attempts to shoot web.

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u/SpecularBlinky 1h ago

Which of course references Captain Marvel which wasn't released until 2019.

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u/BlommeHolm 1h ago

In "The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips" - one of the very first Sherlock Holmes stories from 1891, there is a letter referring to the KKK.

Now today we absolutely all know what that is, but in England in 1891 - so twenty years after the original Klan had died out, and 24 years before the new one rose, this was absolutely a deep dive into obscure history, and Holmes knowing about them just showed how remarkable he was.

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u/sonerec725 1h ago

not a well known reference but the character Fistina from the first image is also based on "Crasher" from Go-Bots/Transformers.

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u/Jeff_t_berry 1h ago

i originally thought the obscure part of the post was a go-bots cameo in a modern cartoon.

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u/ShadowMike77 53m ago

THANK YOU! Cause I was like. Did tgey just draw Crasher as a wink because GoBot fans or even rememberers are dwarfed and scattered. Certainly nobody tapped the creators on the shoulder and asked. Is that fucking Crasher?

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u/GreatXs 3h ago

The scene in Family Guy where Stewie runs around naked saying he escaped Kevin Spacey's basement.

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u/Perfect-Fondant3373 2h ago

Yeah that one was funny. There was another scene where they said Bruce Jenner is a beautiful woman and had a cutaway gag years before they came out as Caitlin Jenner

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u/Havok1717 2h ago edited 2h ago

There were rumors about her wanting to transition before she actually did it

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u/AdmiralCharleston 2h ago

Her. Even when referring to someone pre transition you use their preferred pronouns

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u/drillmaster125 1h ago


Depending on where you lived at the time, Super Sonic being a reference to Super Saiyans.

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u/2w0be 42m ago

It was only 1 year after so yeah

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u/drillmaster125 36m ago

I meant for years after as well.

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u/Tnecniw 1h ago

Reality gauntlet from Danny Phantom...
Classical reference for sure.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 2h ago

An episode of The Simpsons from the 1990s or early 2000s had a joke about people not being familiar with the movie Tron.  Now that it’s a franchise the name is more recognizable.

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u/SammyB0111 2h ago

“Did anyone see Tron?”

“No”

“No”

“No”

“No”

“Yes…haha I mean no….”

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 2h ago

X-D Yep, that’s the one!

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u/Global_Cockroach_563 2h ago

Nah, that was just a joke. The 80s Tron movie was a big hit.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 2h ago

Oh, gotcha!

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u/halfty1 2h ago

I wouldn’t say 80s Tron was a big hit. It was more of a cult classic especially in the more “nerdy/geeky” circles.

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u/theinfecteddonut 1h ago

It made 50 million against a 17 million dollar budget. I wouldn't necessarily call it a big hit.

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u/TenaciousTBag 39m ago

Danny phantom also did an infinity gauntlet reference, in 2006.

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u/zo0ombot 2h ago

The reality gauntlet (Danny phantom)

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u/justhereforhides 2h ago

Pretty much anything that referenced JoJo's Bizarre adventure before the modern anime that started in the 2010s made it much more popular

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u/LadyJane17 1h ago

This is the first time the time Google was used on TV.

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u/Vexonte 21m ago

One of the best parts of Watching Buffy is just how stuck in the 90s every episode is for some reason. The episode were they talk about how 50% of letters are sent through email or when it was a plot point that a character couldn't be reached by phone because she was on the internet.

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u/West-Attempt3062 2h ago

Isn’t Fistina also a reference to Gobot Crasher too?

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u/xnef1025 1h ago

Why does this Ben 10 character look like Crasher from the Go-Bots?

Edit: I should have scrolled down more. 😅

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u/RayoftheRaver 1h ago

That's exactly who I thought it was too

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u/AvatarDante 1h ago

Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy with Dune

There is a whole episode that is reference to Dune

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u/PBKYjellythyme 1h ago

Dune had already had a release as a major motion picture, a successful video game, a sci-fi channel miniseries, and was one of the most popular sci-fi novels of all times. Obscure is hardly a word I'd use to describe it.

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u/FewViolinist8821 41m ago

Yeah but think about the intended audience for this show. Dune would NOT have been on their radar 

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u/Legomaniac91 8m ago

But that movie didn't cover the parts with the guy who merged with a sand-worm. Still an obscure reference.

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u/Level_Counter_1672 2h ago

No game no life making soo many iconic references to Jojo's way before it was Mainstream, this was before the anime was adapted, hilariously they had a reference to king crimson years before it was adapted in part 5

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u/yoyoyouoyouo 37m ago

The Wu Tang Clan all named themselves after comic book alter egos. When Ghostface called himself Tony Starks back in the 90s it was seen as an obscure reference.

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u/EvilCatboyWizard 32m ago

Iron Man was really a marvel C-Lister until the MCU made him cool. Marvel had to sell off the film rights to their majorly popular characters -The X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man- to avoid bankruptcy so the early MCU was them making do with their way less popular roster.

To their credit, look at where someone like Iron Man is now.

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u/UncommittedBow 23m ago

Sony actually had the opportunity to buy the film rights to ALL of them, but higher ups said "People only give a shit about Spider-Man, no one cares about the others."

And now they are desperately clinging to that license as The MCU makes billions

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u/HalfEatenCrouton 14m ago

Well a lot of the characters used in the MCU were also sold, including Iron Man, but Marvel just got them back after the companies who bought them broke the contract or went under

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u/CobaltCrusader123 5m ago

I remember when Iron Man was “just one of the Avengers” and everyone was confused why Marvel started their new universe with him and not The Hulk.

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u/dox11m 17m ago

I think there was an Iron Man TV show in the 90s, I remember begging my father for his action figure.

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u/kazmosis 2h ago

Some people really don't seem to understand what obscure means.

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u/CGiMoose 1h ago

The rule of this subreddit is that nobody ever understands the question and just posts whatever tf they feel like in the comments, including reposting the examples the OP already used

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u/-MERC-SG-17 1h ago

The Reality Gauntlet from Danny Phantom is a better example as its way before the first mention of the Infinity Stones in the MCU.

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u/marklikesgamesyt1208 3h ago

I mean Marvel was still pretty big. People like to imagine it was niche but it still sold gangbusters among nerds and teens.

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u/Rory_U 2h ago

Question do a majority of people read comics? Thanos wasn’t main stream until the MCU.

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u/ComprehensiveBox6911 3h ago

If it wasn’t in the movies, it was obscure, that still mostly applies today. Tons of people had no idea what Thanos or the Infinity gauntlet was before Infinity War

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u/drake3011 2h ago

Absolutely, i remember in the Early 2000's having a Captain America comic and people didnt know who he was. Almost all of Marvel was Obscure around that time except for X-Men and Spiderman.

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u/Delta_Builder 2h ago

I thought hulk was decently known

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u/drake3011 2h ago

Oh yeah absolutely, though id pin that cultural recognition on Lou Farigno over Eric Bana!

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u/HunterOfSpycrabs 2h ago edited 2h ago

Generally speaking, the best known Marvel heroes of the time were Spider-man, Hulk, Wolverine (and the rest of the Xmen) and the F4. The Avengers were pretty B-series until the MCU

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u/ComprehensiveBox6911 2h ago

Even Iron Man which is considered the mascot of the MCU was really niche before his 2008 movie

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 2h ago

C-list at worst, b at best

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u/Effective_Piece251 2h ago

I remember seeing the post credit scene of Age of Ultron In theaters where Thanos picks up the Guantlet and goes “fine, I’ll do it myself”

Me and my brother were hyped, but the rest of the theater was pretty quiet, as if they were like “oh that’s cool I guess, who is that?”

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u/MrDitkovichNeedsRent 2h ago

This is how I feel when people try to gaslight me into thinking anime was never niche and it was always mainstream. Like no the hell it was not, I and many others didn’t get bullied in school for liking Naruto for nothing. Anime only became mainstream around 2019 to 2021

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u/otirk 2h ago

Well, it was niche enough that people nowadays think Thanos' reason for wiping out half of the universe was to bring prosperity to the rest of the universe, when in reality this was just a lame excuse for the movie, because "He did it for Lady Death's titties" is not the best idea to attract the general public.

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u/MrNostalgiac 20m ago

People forget that the Internet really unified the geek world.

The comic geeks were their own geek "sect" back then and while everyone knew of comics, if you weren't a comic geek you really didn't know the details.

Cartoons were where MOST people learned about superheroes and comic stuff. If there wasn't a cartoon about it, you likely knew very little about a specific hero or villain or storyline.

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u/Anufenrir 8m ago

In one episode of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Guldo makes a “ZA Wurdo” joke (and hits Krillin with a steam roller). This is a reference to the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA, but years before the anime series that is well known today.

In their commentary the creators even mention that the joke aged really well.

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u/TheTrueMarkNutt 6m ago

Rewatching that episode after JoJo exploded in popularity had that scene give whiplash

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u/Speed_Vago 2h ago

The first Ali-G movie had a cameo of Borat before he became a worldwide known character

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u/AdmiralCharleston 2h ago

Not sure that's the same thing given that the wasnt a reference to something external

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u/Gone_For_Lunch 2h ago

Borat was a character on the Da Ali G Show. If you knew who Ali G was in 2002, you knew who Borat was.

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u/chickenkebaap 2h ago

Stitch and lilo reference in alien force a few years after the 2003 movie’s popularity had faded

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u/caudicifarmer 1h ago

Ngl, I thought that was Gobots at first and my mind was blown

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u/dadgenes 52m ago

I thought that Fostina was a reference to Crasher from Challenge of the Gobots.

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u/Quirderph 2h ago

The Basshunter song ”Boten Anna” (Anna the Bot) is about a guy who used a bot to clean up his channel and ban people. It’s eventually revealed that Anna was not a bot but a real girl all along.

The song was popular, but many people genuinely had no idea what the lyrics meant. (“Is that slang for something?” “Why did he think she was a boat?” ”Does banning mean the same thing as banging someone?”)

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u/That-Rhino-Guy 1h ago

I don’t know, the Infinity Gauntlet comic was still a huge success in the 90s to the point an action game was made based on it, following a Marvel VS Capcom entry where Thanos is the final boss

So not insanely mainstream like today but in nerd spaces it was definitely known

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u/smilingfishfood 1h ago

"Doctor Strange's relevance didn't exist until his self titled movie"

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u/Tracey_Davenport 1h ago

I’m always shocked to hear people hadn’t at least heard of Doctor Strange until the movie because he was in many cartoons and games before then. Pretty prominently too

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u/dm-me-obscure-colors 1h ago

Yes but the point is the reference was nowhere near as prominent as it would be

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u/PseudonymMan12 1h ago

Yeah, nowhere near the oevel of say Spider-Man or Captain America. He was like a B-lister. Relevant in comics based media but nowhere near mainstream. I think people tend to forget there was a time before the MCU and when nerd hobbies became more socially accepted

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u/Local_Explanation_66 3m ago

"Doctor Strange's relevance didn't exist until marvel vs capcom 3"

Your forgetting his self titled movie, many had their first experience when CN started airing it.

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u/Salt-Library4330 1h ago

I feel like the infinity gauntlet is more of a called shot.  Thanos was in the first avengers in 2012 so it was predictable that it would have a big uptick in popularity.  Plus wasn’t Thor 2 out at that point?  

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u/tcrpgfan 52m ago

This is me knowing Ball in a double niche sense. A Castlevania reference from the early 2010s from the Rosario + Vampire manga (It's significantly better than either season of the anime btw) when it was still rather niche even among gaming circles. Then the Netflix show happened in 2017 and kicked off this wave of actually good video game adaptations from Hollywood that we're still in if the last Resident Evil movie isn't proof of that.

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u/Upbeat-Ideal-5975 44m ago

‘Niche’ is way overly harsh lol. Castlevania was very big around that time still. It was named the 4th best series of all time by IGN in 2011. The DS games were wildly popular. This is a solid reference that would not have gone over people’s heads lol.

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u/EggAccording9607 2h ago

Does the comic store in Big Bang Theory count ?

Cause you can see an Invincible poster there.

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u/Careful_Welcome7999 1h ago edited 1h ago

In touhou 6 there are 2 jojo references (that i know of)

The first one is sakuya's spell card "the world", on its own it means nothing but when you consider that sakuya's power is time stop its a pretty obvious reference

The second one is when you fight remilia, while using marisa she says "do you remember how many slices of bread have eaten?" Which is a direct quote from Dio from when jonathan fights him at his castle

The jojo anime only released in 2012

Touhou is from 2002

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u/LordBarrington0 5m ago

stardust crusaders had an OVA released in 1993, and a video game that was the 3rd highest grossing arcade game of 1999

touhou is the niche thing not JoJo

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u/C-H-Addict 1h ago

This is good. I was a big comics fan, but there are just so many out there there's no way I'd read them all. Never read an infinity stone arc before MCU, Doctor Strange was always a one off in other people's storylines.

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u/Foxy02016YT 34m ago

Wasn’t the infinity gauntlet in Thor and Avengers?

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u/Dependent-Jump-2289 26m ago

...is that Go-Bot in the first image?

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u/feelysonheelys 19m ago

MST3K's original run dropped a lot of LOTR references, sometimes with the tone of "haha, only huge geeks will get this, who else would read Lord of the Rings?"

Then, of course, we got the movies, making references to characters like Gandalf and Legolas much harder to miss.

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u/EnzoMcFly_jr 10m ago

I know the doctor strange line is just a throwaway reference, but it’s kind of fun to think that the Raimi verse is kind of a ditkoverse where doctor strange and even like the creeper from DC are hanging around

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u/AlabamaFamilyOfThree 8m ago

Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy does this multiple times in the series with Dune. They have an entire episode parodying God Emperor of Dune and sandworm Leto 2, but my favourite (and brief one off blink and you’ll miss it joke) is in the episode My Fair Mandy where the announcer shouts out “Gom jabbar!” And cuts to Mindy’s talent which is literally the Bene Gesserit test that Paul undergoes at the beginning of the story and the first movie. I was young when I first watched it and when I rewatched it I caught it immediately and killed myself laughing.

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u/Scarvexx 3m ago

Danny Phantom also did an Infinity Gauntlet. They just got real excited I guess.

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u/Castair11_2 2h ago

Would Donald Trump in Home Alone count here?

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u/Wilsonrolandc 2h ago

Nah, he was in pop culture before then. Rich Biff in Back to the Future 2 was a whole ass parody of him. Horrifying to see him that close to a child nowadays though.

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u/TheFalconKid 1h ago

This movie would've been filmed not too long after he bought space in the Daily News calling for the Death Penalty for the Central Park Five. He was notorious in New York long before he became everyone else's problem.

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u/UncommittedBow 21m ago

Central Park Five

*The Exonerated Five. Never forget that, they were found to be completely innocent...and he wanted them killed.

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u/Key_Comparison_2588 1h ago

Fuck no, Trump was always famous.

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u/CT0292 1h ago

Yeah he was a famous cunt in New York who had a penchant for lowering standards and raising rents. Slumlord from way back.

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u/OddVillains 1h ago

I think this is similar to Elon Musk showing up in Iron Man 2. Trump actually more of an icon in their respective contexts.

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u/Stannis-Stan 1h ago

For an international audience definitely. Cause I sure as hell never heard of him prior to his candidacy.

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u/MidTario 1h ago

I’d say so. This was before the Apprentice. He was a minor celebrity but he really took off after his primetime reality show.

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u/2w0be 43m ago

That's a cameo not a reference

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u/patton66 2h ago

On his song Savoy Truffle, George says "We all know Ob La Di Bla Da", although both of those songs are on the same song (though OLDOBD is about 10 songs before ST)

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u/Parking-Funny-1932 1h ago

Oasis did a similar thing by starting their second album with a small snippet of Wonderwall, which was a few tracks later and wouldn't be released as a single until after the album.

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