Oh geez, I have a lot of references, it would be easier to list the characters without any.
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.
Maybe I should put more dorky references in my designs. They amuse me, I just so rarely make characters from whom such references fit. :P
-Matlals' ship - the one he gained from his Vinland benefactors to go explore The Old World on - is named The Árþúsund Fálka. Which is icelandic for The Millennium Falcon (I have one of my fellow players to thank for that though :D).
-Not sure how dorky it is but Parable of the Cave is literally named and "designed" as a shout-out to Plato.
-I had an "OC" made around my "character" in the "Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery" app. She was a pureblood witch who had some muggle-born friends to an extent where she had - in her youth - been exposed to muggle franchises. Let's say that her owl was named Dr. Whoo.
Check Poppy's images! She's a librarian, with the egyptian symbol for learning from the past etched into her inner thigh. Also, the piece with the book on her head is of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War."
fishy beat is named after the fishy beat remix of goldfish's song "we come together"
the sillier bits of mukade's personality are inspired by scp-811 (when i finally write her bio lol)
Brownie points if anyone can guess where her name came from :3c
Here's a hint: it's a location in a game!
BYRD.WAV's name is a play of bird wyvern which is type of monster you can fight in monster hunter (bonus points: a good chunk of bird wyverns are based off raptors and BYRD.WAV is well... a robot raptor)
They're also heavily inspired by harsh noise and noisy music in general hence why they screech a lot, hoard a ton of noise CDs and equipment, and are just loud and obnoxious in general
Showtime is just completely the sandworm from beetlejuice pretty much...my favorite movie.......aaaaaaa
I love them
Mack the Knifeis based off the song of the same name by Bobby Darin!! It’s my favorite song! Basically the song describes a murderer known as “Mack the Knife” who kills practically without a thought. The opening lines of the song liken Mack to a shark
“oh the shark babe/has such teeth dear/and he shows them,pearly white/ just a jackknife/has old macheath babe/and he keeps it out of sight”
Soooo...he’s a shark-dog :))
And Astro is a lava lamp dog named after the original name for lava lamps (Astro lamps)
I literally have a tag just for characters that are bomb of references with legs-
But there are a few other details that I can remember rn that aren't characters overall
Zacchiaro's pet, a tarantula named Giocanta, has that name because of "Yo Canto", a Laura Pausini song
Griblack's name came from a specific verse of Butterfly by smile.dk (Green, black and blue, make the colors in the sky; I just fused green and black and, well-)
And Dikai's name came because of the DK rap-- Most of the time I get ideas from the dumbest things hHHH-