Biohazard might be the best for this thread. He is a fan character for Resident Evil, and named himself Biohazard for his infection virus. Biohazard is how Resident Evil is called in it's original country - Japan.
Is there anything more fun than creating new characters? Probably not...but there are certainly things that we enjoy outside of that creative process. From movies we love to watch, songs we listen to on repeat, books we can go back to over and over, and games we could play for hours if not days on end, and as a result. Sometimes, intentionally or not. We inject a bit of our other loves into the creative process. This thread is for that very purpose. Was your character's name a reference to someone from your favorite book? Was their fashion sense lifted from a show you watched? Did you get their hairstyle from an anime you saw ages ago or did some aspect of their past come about from listening to that song that you just love? Why not post the connections here? All references from big to small. From details that may seem super obvious to you to the minor minutia that someone only as in-depth in whatever lore as you would even start to recognize? It doesn't matter. If you have something that helped influence your character why not share it here and let everyone know, not only something that went into your creative process, but also maybe introduce people to something new.
Examples:
Your character's pet is named after something from a video game
Your character wears a bit of jewelry taken from some part of a short story
Your character has a phone charm of some video game faction
Please note: This is just a thread for references. Sure these references could inform large parts of a character's design or world but there's a difference between that and say a fan character for whatever bit of media they were made for. Nothing against fan characters it is just not the goal of this thread. However, if you have a fan character who has a reference to some other bit of media? Say a wizard for the Harry Potter universe who loves a particular band from the 90s enough to have some merch on them to a Homestuck fantroll with some obscure video game reference? They are more than welcome here. In essence.
X: A fan character on their own
✔: A fan character with a reference in their design to some outside media.
AK’s design was based on Der Freischütz from Lobotomy Corporation; I really wanna play the game but I can’t (for now hopefully, at least) but I found Der Frei a really interesting abnormality... plus I really like his design lmao so here we are
I've been into Calvin and Hobbes since I was idk 10? But anyways Calvin has one of many alter egos "Spaceman Spiff," which is basically just him daydreaming about having adventures throughout strange planets. As I was still going by my birthname that began with A, I kinda thought about having my own mini alter ego like that with Ace slapped in front for daydreaming. Years later in middle school, as I began developing ocs with my friends, I tried to make a sona with the name "Ace" harking back to Calvin and Hobbes. Later on, Ace became her own character, keeping her name.
My Astra's last name is the title of a song by my favorite artist, T.M.Revolution.
Also, my Megumi's last name https://toyhou.se/4039942.megumi is the same as my favorite member of the boyband LEAD xD Also her weapons are based on weapons in anime I have seen.
https://toyhou.se/1165986.liliana-van-duijn also this babe's surname is the same as a Dutch comedian, but spelled differently (she's a dutch character so I thought I'd dive into it a bit more lol)