I love references!
Remember when Wario was on SNL?
Or that time Rick and Morty showed up in Space Jam 2? That was so awesome.
I will remember that scene until the day I die.
References like these cater to this strange appeal in our minds to see two
things we are familiar with get combined to create a fun and unique experience.
And when it comes to indie games, crossovers, cameos and references happen all the time. Like
when Shovel Knight made it into Smash Ultimate. Or when Shovel Knight made it into Yooka-Laylee.
Or when Shovel Knight made it into Fall Guys. Or when Shovel Knight made it into Shovel Knight.
While the Knight from Hollow Knight isn’t as prevalent as Shovel Knight from Shovel Knight in
terms of crossovers or cameos, there are still a few references to be found here and there.
The one I have seen the most is probably the Hollow Knight portrait found in Dead Cells.
This image of the Knight’s head can be found among a bunch of other bug specimens
in a room found in the third level of the game.
But this isn’t the only Hollow Knight reference found in Dead Cells. Content from Hollow Knight
and five other indie games has been added to Dead Cells in their most recent Everyone is
Here update. And by recent, I mean it launched the same day this video was uploaded. The developers
behind Dead Cells, Motion Twin, were kind enough to give me early access to this new content.
So consider this a bit of a hot scope. I had actually never played Dead Cells before this
either, so it was a nice excuse to finally try it out. And I can see why people like it so much.
It’s sort of a roguelike-metroidvania hybrid, but the combat gets pretty addicting after a while.
As for the new Hollow Knight content,
in the first area of the game you can find various elements from different games such as Guacamelee,
Blasphemous and Hyper Light Drifter. For Hollow Knight, they added a bench,
an object first popularized by its inclusion in Hollow Knight. Interacting with the bench
will give you the Pure Nail item. The Pure Nail isn’t like other weapons in Dead Cells, as it
allows you to swing upwards and downwards. And you can even pogo off of stuff by downward striking.
You can also unlock a costume called Vessel. Unfortunately,
it’s not as detailed as some of the other skins from this update.
I’m not sure if this was a limitation from Team Cherry or if they decided the Knight’s proportions
just don’t work well on a full sized human body. Regardless, it's still a pretty cool skin.
And this is easily one of the most involved Hollow Knight cameos in this video.
Another well known Hollow Knight reference is from Bug Fables. Bug Fables is a spiritual successor to
the Paper Mario franchise, harkening back to the more RPG-heavy gameplay from the N64 and
GameCube eras. At one point, you are able to open a bank account at the Bank of Bugaria.
But one of the characters, Vi, is hesitant, claiming that the banker might steal their
money and go to a hot spring. This is a pretty cheeky reference to Millibelle,
a bug who steals all your geo and then goes to a hot spring in the City of Tears. Or it
might be a cleaver reference to the sham that is central banking and modern monetary theory.
Hollow Knight also makes a cameo in Guacamelee! 2. The Guacamelee games are absolutely stacked with
references to pop culture. Metroid, Castlevania, Super Mario, Space Invaders. It even references
Wreck-It Ralph, itself a reference to Donkey Kong. And then there’s the Knight.
It shows up in a billboard facing off against Shovel Knight. I’d like to think Shovel Knight and
the Knight would get along if they met in the real world. But perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.
The Binding Of Isaac is another indie game with lots of little references to other media. Zelda,
Castlevania. In fact, the title of the game “Binding of Isaac”
is actually a reference to a somewhat obscure piece of literature known as
the Bible. More importantly, there’s actually a Hollow Knight reference hidden in this game.
Binding of Isaac Rebirth features a drop-in co-op system, where additional players can join
in mid-game as little babies. In the Repentance release of the game, not to be confused with the
Binding of Isaac Rebirth or Binding of Isaac Afterbirth, or Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 reMix,
they added a baby that resembles the Broken Vessel boss from Hollow Knight.
While I’m talking about Binding of Isaac, I should mention the Binding of Isaac: Four Souls card
game. It was released in late 2018, and in 2021 its first expansion, Requiem, was kickstarted
for 6.7 million dollars. Requiem features four Hollow Knight inspired cards: the Knight, Focus,
Grubfather, and The Radiance. Not only that, but Requiem also features other famous characters such
as the Boyfriend and Girlfriend from Friday Night Funkin’ and another character known as “Crewmate”
from a somewhat obscure piece of media known as Among Us. Speaking of which, the Crewmate also
appears as a skin in Fall Guys. Another fictional character who appears in Fall Guys is Ninja,
who also appears in Fortnite. Which means we can now connect Hollow Knight to Fortnite.
Of course, if they put the Knight in Fall Guys, we could make this chain much shorter. In fact,
the Fall Guys twitter page publicly reached out to Team Cherry to do a
collaboration. But alas, as of yet, we still haven’t seen a skin of the Knight
in Fall Guys. This really bums me out, because out of all the games
for the Knight to make a cameo, Fall Guys probably makes the most sense.
Another game to get a Knight cameo is Forager. Forager is an open-world adventure game about
purchasing and exploring islands for challenges and rewards. In the game,
the player can find a skull chest, which gives them a custom skin of the Knight.
There’s also a Hollow Knight reference in another Metroidvania style game known as Grime. In one
section of the game, you can find graffiti of both the Knight and Zote. Another Metroidvania,
F.I.S.T., features a steampunk version of the Knight as a coating for a drill weapon.
This art is pretty dope, and it’s clearly drawn from the Void Heart
artwork done for the console release of the game.
There’s a cheeky reference to the Knight in the DLC for the crazy wall jumping Metroidvania game
Dandara. There’s a Hollow Knight figurine sitting on a desk in one area.
There is a sticker of the Knight in a platformer game called The Adventure Pals. In
the deck building game One Step From Eden, there’s a card called Ice Needle. The flavor
text for this item seems to be a reference to a certain phrase that appears in Hollow Knight.
And there are probably even more subtle nods to Hollow Knight in other games that I didn’t
find in my research. So let me know if I missed anything, and check the description for a link
to the games I mentioned, if any of them seem interesting to you. But it isn’t just games that
reference Hollow Knight. There have actually been a few TV shows to reference it as well.
Amphibia is an animated Disney show about a young girl stumbling into a strange fantasy world,
where she must learn how to live among bizarre, new creatures and maybe even make a few friends
along the way. The show draws a lot of inspiration from video games like The
Legend of Zelda and Chrono Trigger, and it’s chock full of random video game references.
There’s even an Earthbound reference at one point. In one episode, the characters spend time getting
combat training from some guy pretending to run a daycare who tricks them into robbing a train.
In one shot, we can see a weapon rack with a few different swords on it.
At the top, we can see what appears to be the Sharpened Nail from Hollow Knight, right above the
Master Sword from Zelda. But Amphibia isn’t the only show to reference Hollow Knight like this.
The Owl House is an animated Disney show about a young girl stumbling into a strange fantasy world,
where she must learn to live among bizarre, new creatures and maybe even make a few friends along
the way. The Hollow Knight reference in Owl House is actually pretty blatant, as it appears in the
opening credits of the first season. There’s one shot in the opening where this dog thing,
named King, is standing in a pile of plushies. There are a ton of references in this one
image. There’s the Fourth Angle from Neon Genesis Evangelion. There’s the Ohmu from Nausicaa
of the Valley of the Wind. There’s that annoying ass cat from Sailor Moon. There’s that annoying
ass penguin from Digimon. There’s a giraffe, which is a reference to a somewhat obscure continent
known as Asia. There are even references here to Bosch’s famous painting from 1510,
The Garden of Earthly Delights. And of course, the Knight also makes an appearance here.
For this next one, I’m not really sure we can call it an Easter egg. There’s an Australian
television show called The Block. This reality television show is about couples competing to buy,
renovate and flip houses. It's apparently been running for 17 year and has over 800 episodes.
Which is impressive, because I didn’t even realize there were that many houses in Australia.
During an episode that aired in September of 2020,
they actually used the Main Theme from Hollow Knight.
This wasn’t a reference. They weren’t talking about Hollow Knight.
They were just using the song. Now I don’t really have any hard evidence for what happened here,
but from my understanding and from what I’ve heard this wasn’t any sort of copyright infringement
or anything. It has to do with music rights in Australia. Due to the small size of the country’s
entertainment sector, rights holders will allow one another to use their music, within reason.
And we can keep going down this rabbit hole if we want. Like the Knight cameo that appears in
the Brazilian comic series Turma da Monica, alongside Shovel Knight, a green elephant
version of Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu, and the Black Knight from Scooby Doo.
Apparently the Knight even appears on a craft beer in Russia.
Well, I guess there’s one more reason to go to Russia.
It’s no surprise that the Knight is popping up in all these random places.
The character is easily recognizable, and the game itself is really good. I wouldn’t be surprised
if the Knight started showing up on TV more often, or on the moon, or in our blood cells.
But this does raise an interesting question. Are there any references or
homages in Hollow Knight? That sounds like a pretty interesting topic if I’m being honest.
I wonder if anyone has made a video about that yet. I wonder if there’s a
link on screen right now that you could click on to watch a video like that.