Ingame References?

[barawn]

Does anyone else use references to movies, books, or other games in your games or characters.

The one game I run has a fluff point that a weakening fabric of reality is causing large amounts of random magic spillover in certain areas (especially underground), "mutating" people in vestigial ways - that is, the more exposure the characters get in certain areas, the more they pick up odd vestigial physical traits. One's turning into a human-turtle, one's turning into a human-raven, one's turning into a human-demon, etc. No benefits from any of these (vestigial purely - no attacking someone with demon horns).

At some point random Final Fantasy references were driving me nuts, and I decided "OK! Next person who makes a Final Fantasy reference gets a Cow Point. The more Cow Points you get, the weirder your character looks." This didn't have nearly the effect I thought it would, mind you. My players have also frequently pointed out references that I've made which could be considered from FF games. Pointing out how many Cow Points the DM has is considered grounds for getting pwned.

So, yeah, there are frequently references in my games, although often it's not intentional.