Top 13.5 Hollow Knight cameos in other media

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.