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Crusader Kings II
- A random character in Gotland turned up with the name Tengil "The Liberator"
- If you select a plague-ridden province, a sound clip of a man saying "Bring out your dead" will play in the background eventually. Also, if you're winning a war (but not by a huge margin), your opponent's reason for rejecting a peace offer may be "It's only a flesh wound" or "come on, you pansy!"
- One of many random events in the sequel is about dealing with a child ward's fear of spiders. One of the options is called "Fear is the mind killer".
- Patricians might also get a random event about their galleys bringing in rare spices from the Orient. "The spice must flow."
- A Song of Ice and Fire//Game of Thrones naturally gets several.
- One event involves a child discovering you and your lover. One of the options is "The things I do for love." Another involves disciplining a child who insists on climbing the old tower.
- Increasing your diplomacy education by following the family focus leads your character to proclaim "Hear Me Roar!".
- "[Girl] was supposed to work on her embroidery, but she clearly favors another kind of Pin. -There's no harm in letting a girl learn swordsmanship." Arya Stark much prefers practising with her sword Needle to embroidery.
- 2.6 added the trait "Sea King/Queen" as an upgraded form of "Viking". The button text reads, "I do not sow."
- Holy Fury has added the nicknames "the Leechlord" note and "The Knight of Turnips".
- One of the responses when Death comes for you in the Chess with Death event is "Not today!"
- The phrase "It's Good To Be The King" appears when having an affair with a female courtier as a king.
- There's an assassination event message
◊ that references John F. Kennedy's assassination and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. (Here it is again◊, from the victim's perspective.) - In the Sword of Islam expansion, it's possible for two of your wives to fall in love with each other, triggering a series of events that can result in the two driving a carriage off a cliff. The internal character flags that keep track of them are labeled "Thelma" and "Louise".
- Blackadder:
- If you look around in Scotland, you can sometimes find members of the House of Blackadder.note
- Having a character's ambition set to increase their learning attribute can trigger a series of events that can involve a dungsweeper and local dogsbody, Meldrick with a propensity for "Cunning plans". The Rajas of India (Possibly Sword of Islam?) expansion adds a further twist to this, naming the dogsbody Bah Al'Drik.
- Also possibly a Blackadder the Third reference: the Turnip Act, wherein a Lunatic liege substitutes turnips for precious metal currency. The Lunatic liege is also given a choice between this, two equally ludicrous Acts...or abolishing torture and execution of heretics and foreigners, which is viewed as equally insane, echoing the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party's support of the abolition of slavery.
- If you look around in Scotland, you can sometimes find members of the House of Blackadder
- An occasional event to increase intrigue features a former spymaster who became a tailor.
- In this loading screen◊ the man on the lower left corner is holding a staff with a crescent-shaped head, similar to the staffs of the Magicka Wizards.
- The Republic allows the leaders of Patrician families to build upgrades to their family palaces, including a hidden vault, the description of which suggests that you're swimming around in your money like Scrooge McDuck.
- One random event for Patricians has your character recite one of the Rules of Acquisition.
- One of the branches of a diplomacy-increasing event has you attempt to settle a peasant feud while you are cut off during a Rousing Speech almost concluding with "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"
- While looting in The Old Gods, you can find◊ a +2 Axe (with a strange purple sheen), and in true RPG fashion, your character will immediately discard his old axe in favour of the new one. It gives you a decent bonus to your martial stat. As of the release of Monks and Mystics, the +2 Axe now counts as a bona fide treasure◊, too.
- The Old Gods has an event chain about the oldest gods of all, The Old Ones.
- Which you can kill, earning you the title "Godslayer".
- The method in which the Old One (clearly Cthulhu) is defeated is precisely the same method used by a character in H. P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu.
- Similarly, the Scholarship focus from Way of Life can allow you to build an observatory, realize the stars are coming right, and purchase a copy of the Necronomicon.
- In Reaper's Due, a sign of the Old Ones awakening is when an old cotter and his wife are killed under suspicious circumstances after a lifetime of cruelty to cats.
- Which you can kill, earning you the title "Godslayer".
- One of the names that Norse characters can receive is Gandalfr.note
- As a republic it's possible to have a ship lost at sea and then return, with the event box saying 'The captain will have a story to tell', which is all done in reference to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
- If you kill someone in a plot by having them "accidentally" fall off a high ledge, the confirmation text if you don't arouse any suspicion is "Gravity can be a cruel mistress...".
- An expansive event chain in Sons of Abraham can give you a demonic child straight out of The Omen.
- As pointed out here, the blue-clad blond knight on much of the promotional artwork is Wilfred of Ivanhoe. He even wears the same colours and coat-of-arms as Ivanhoe did at Ashby in the 1982 film adaptation (that's the one with John Rhys-Davies and Sam Neill).
- Likewise, the king on the cover of Way of Life is Conan the Barbarian from the 1982 film with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Hosting a religious celebration as an adherent of Zunism (an Afghan sun-worshipping religion that exists in the Charlemagne start) naturally has you proclaim "Praise the Sun!" (which was already being associated with the Zunists by fans as soon as they were revealed).
- Star Wars:
- If you besiege a county in Tuscany and siege-related random events are set to provide a pop-up instead of just appearing in the sidebar, you'll get a message that Tuscan Raiders have attacked the siege camps, and your character remarks that they will be back in greater numbers. (Everywhere else, the message is more generic.)
- In an event where the Byzantine Empire loses its supply of Greek Fire, some pirates are seen with a supply of it. There are two options, one of which is to capture the pirates, which is "Alert all commands. Deploy the Fleet."
- There is a random event wherein you have an option to burn down a Trading Post from a Patrician with whom you have a low opinion with. Should you succeed, your character will remark "Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen."
- A character with the Cannibal trait that gains their victim's traits from devouring them will exclaim "Unlimited power!"
- If you besiege a county in Tuscany and siege-related random events are set to provide a pop-up instead of just appearing in the sidebar, you'll get a message that Tuscan Raiders have attacked the siege camps
- One event for characters looking to improve their Martial stat is to kick down the door to a peasant's hut and play Warhammer with the teenagers inside.
- Declaring a blood feud with another nomad clan makes your character proclaim "Beware the [clan name]. They are without honour."
- In a merchant republic, there's a random event chain that can occur when two families are feuding. The result is that young members of the two families fall in love and commit suicide. The title of the final event is "Never Was A Story of More Woe...."
- The Reaper's Due adds new interactions with prisoners, including reading bad poetry to them.
- One of the new diseases you can get in The Reaper's Due is scurvy. When you recover from it, the text tells you 'you shall surely avoid scurvy if you eat an orange', while the text at the bottom says 'Door hinge?'
- An event chain that can take place during a Black Death outbreak in The Reaper's Due is a Whole-Plot Reference to "The Masque of the Red Death".
- The base game has a random event where a Lunatic ruler fires his chancellor to be replaced with his horse, Glitterhoof, in reference to one of Caesar Caligula's bouts of insanity. Conclave makes Glitterhoof an actual character. The Reaper's Due adds another such event where you can acquire a horse from a traveling physician and name it Horse M.D. You can then make the horse immortal by feeding it your blood, which may lead to it being killed by an immortal intelligent horse named Incitatus after the actual horse owned by Caligula.
- Demon worshippers can be targeted by demon hunters. One particular demon hunter is a young woman armed with a wooden stake who has an unusually casual attitude towards fighting evil.
- One of the possible names for French characters is Gargamel. note
- A character from the Chinese culture group, with Khitan culture, with Jurchen culture, or with Tangut culture who has the Strong, Cruel, and Wroth traits can get the nickname "The Black Whirlwind", the nickname of Li Kui from Water Margin.
- It should be noted that the Outlaws of the Marsh themselves (well, 40 of them) are in the game proper in the 1066 start. Most of them have random stats but a few like Song Jiang and Li Kui (himself!) will have more interesting rolls on their stats (Song Jiang will usually have very good overall stats while Li Kui will always have an obscenely high Martial).
- The Reaper's Due may sometimes generate an immortal Scottish courtier named Ramirez.
- If you put your court into seclusion during a disease outbreak, you may catch a courtier sneaking extra helpings from the larder. You can forgive him, throw him into the dungeon, or exile him, or you can declare "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" and pick up the "Cannibal" trait.
- While very rare, you can occasionally receive events in which members of the Hermetic Society discuss the nature of the Judgements and the Bazaar.
- A military trait for experts who fight in winter is "Winter Soldier".
- When a Possessed character gets an event adding "Voice of Satan", the button text is "Redrum".
- One of the books you can get in II is Ordinary Beasts and How to Avoid Them which is pretty much the opposite of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
- If you're playing as a child and you do well in your Stewardship education, your character will proclaim "Accumulate! Accumulate!"
- During the Astronomy event chain (Way of Life scholarship focus), you must decide whether or not to continue your studies in the face of setbacks. Choose to persist and your character will declare "The truth is out there!"
- With Holy Fury expanding on animal cultures, many of the names they can get reference other media:
- Among possible names for horses are Epona and Boxer.note
- Hedgehogs, predictably, can have the names Sanic, Knucklys, Silver and Amy. In addition, while the map colors for the other animal cultures all fit the look of their species, the Hedgehog color is a shade of blue.
- References are plenty in dragon names:
- Many reference mythology and legends, such as Tiomat, Fafnir, Ladon, Apopis, and Ryujin.
- Fire Emblem gets a butt-ton of references; you can have your dragon named Bantu, Mannu, Khozen, Morzas, Xemcel, Medeus, Naga, Tiki, Nagi, Nils, Ninian, Myrrh, Morva, or Nah.
- Others include Bahamut, Rathalos, Rathian, Deathwing, Katla, Glaurung, Teethless, Dovah, Quicksilver, Grey Ghost, Seasmoke, Puff...
- Darkwing is a possible name for ducks.
- Go check the lineage of Harald Bluetooth. One of his daughters is named Ylva, married to a man named Orm.
Achievement-related for the second game:
- Duke Nukem: "Always Bet On Duke" (start as a count and become a duke)
- Ivanhoe: "On English Neck a Norman Yoke" (Conquer England as William the Bastard)
- History of the World Part I: "It's Good To Be The King" (Start as a count and become a king)
- Blackadder: Two to the first series episode "The Archbishop":
- "Turbulent Priest"note (assassinate a vassal bishop who likes the Pope better)
- "All Three Popes" (two antipopes exist simultaneously)
- The Princess Bride: "Never Start a Land War in Asia" (start in Western Europe and conquer Mongolia)
- Dwarf Fortress and Snow White: "Dwarf Fortress" (have seven courtiers with the "Dwarf" trait)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: "Kali Maaa" (sacrifice a king or emperor to Kali)
- Charlemagne (the Concept Albums by Sir Christopher Lee): "I Shed Blood of Saxon Men" (completely conquer Saxony from the Charlemagne start as a Christian non-Saxon)
- The Four Lads (and by extension They Might Be Giants): "Nobody's Business But the Turks" (conquer Constantinople as a Turkic horde)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
- "Scarrrrrred for Life", which uses the Black Knight as its image (become one-eyed, one-legged, and one-handed)
- "I Got Better" (recover from the Black Death)
- Highlander: "There Can Be Only One" (become immortal)
- Karl Marx: "Saxons Everywhere, Unite!" (be king of both Saxony and England as either a Saxon or Anglo-Saxon)
- Judge Dredd: "I Am the Law", whose picture is a mashup of a knight and Dredd in his helmet (use a favor to change a law while playing as a vassal)
- Arabian Nights' Aladdin (Concept of the achievement) and Disney's Aladdin (Depicts a character similar to this version of Aladdin on the achievement icon): "Aladdin" (While starting and staying as a Han Chinese, rule over all of North Africa as an independant King or Emperor)
- Lord of the Flies: "Lord of the Flies" (While starting as a Count in a random world where all characters are 0 years old, become a King or Emperor before the age of 16.)
- The game occasionally generates brothers named Mario and Luigi.
Crusader Kings III
- When going on a hunt, you can encounter a giant man covered in layers of dirty clothing, who will ask you "What are you doing in my marshland?"
- When organising a hunt, you can encounter a polar bear, regardless of where you are conducting said hunt (and no place on the map is sufficiently north anyway). This is both part of a Running Joke within Paradox games about the killer bears from Jan Mayen Island and a nod toward Lost.
- One assassination method is to get the target drunk and then brick them up in a wine cellar.
- Dwarves can fall afoul of a (very rare) random event where they drown in their/their lord's pond due to being attacked by Carp.
- Literalist religious debates can occasionally cause the loser to literally be destroyed with Facts and Logic, causing them to die of "being destroyed in a literalist debate".Explanation...
- One of the new command traits added in v1.3 is called Winter Soldier
- One of the options for a "your child develops wanderlust" event quotes lines from "You'll Be Back".
- If you are playing as an immortal ruler and kill another immortal, your character will shout "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!".
- If you try learning too many languages, an event can give you a dream where you're haunted by an owl following you pestering you about languages.
- One event refers to the Battle of Chibi/the Red Cliffs, where one commander by the name Huang Gai pretends to surrender to the enemy in order to set the opposing fleet aflame.
- A pilgrimage event involving a pushy beggar can, if you follow it to the end, be ended with the phrase "You Forgot I Gave These Also"
- One artifact that can show up in the Middle East is a mysterious lamp that "gives you a sense of phenomenal cosmic power".
- One event has your Court Physician procuring a potion which is described as "favored by those who are going into battle, but only the strongest can handle its power".
- In the initial screen introducing the Iranian Intermezzo struggle, the button to dismiss it says "These foolish ambitions must be put to rest!".
- An inspired adventurer can have his head stuffed into a box with a beehive. The event is called "Not the Bees!"
- During a random encounter while traveling, you can meet a wise old man that can teach you the gardening trait if you just "stay a while and listen".
- For a double whammy: If you take a lover with whom you have a secret relationship with you on a hunt, you can get an event where they lure you to the woods for some private time. The text box for agreeing to it says: Let's do it like they do it in a Bestiarium Vocabulum!
- During a Great Tournament, the Dueling contest may result in an event where one of the duelists recalls a technique that they read in fighting manuals, and decides to unscrew the pommel of their sword. If they actually go ahead and throw it, it will result in the "Ended Rightly" negative modifier for the target.
- A random Royal Court event involves an exotic foreign prince of dubiously highborn background seducing one of your children, with the special nickname "Fabulous He/She".
- One adventurer that appears in all start dates is a Czech named Henry, of house Skalitz (which has the motto "I feel quite hungry") or Kobyla, who leads the Band of Bastards.
Achievement-related for the third game:
- The Emperor's New Clothes: You can get the achievement of the same name by holding Emperor title while naked (which you need Natural Primitivism tenet for your current religion).
- The Wizard of Oz (1939):
- Fly, My Pretty for completing the Falconer trait track.
- Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! for capturing a large wild animal during a hunt.
- Pokémon the Series: The Very Best for completing a track of the Hastiluder trait, and Like No One Ever Was for completing them all.
- The Hobbit: There and Back Again for completing both tracks of the Traveler trait.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Friendship Is Magic for using a friendship hook on a ruler of a different faith in the Iberian Struggle.
- The Empire Strikes Back: The Umayyad Strikes Back for starting as a member of the Umayyad dynasty and holding the Arabian Empire and Sunni Caliphate.
- Zero Wing: All Your Caliphate Are Belong To Us for achieving the Abbasid Humiliation ending in the Iranian Intermezzo struggle and taking the Dominate the Caliph foundation.
- A Knight's Tale in the Tours and Tournaments DLC is received for having a lowborn knight win a jousting event in a tournament, and then granting land to that knight.
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare: Pay Respects for having a funeral for a Legend Protagonist. The image for the achievement is an F.
- Kubla Khan: In Xanadu for building a Pleasure Dome.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: The Stallion that Mounts the World for conquering the world as Temujin.
- KPop Demon Hunters: How it's done, done, done for unifying Korea.
- Smile.dk: Yes I need, I need my Samurai for adopting the Sōryō government.