Well, it’s no secret that I’m very unsubtle with the references in my hacks, so might as well.
Three Legacies
Ah, this mess of a first project. I’m going to exclude things like “literal returning FE characters since this is a vanilla setting” because like. Yeah, gee, Edelgard appearing in a Fodlan hack is a “reference” but that’s obviously not what we’re talking about lol. So…
- Cynthia - Cynthia from Pokemon, but also doubles as a play on “synthetic” since she was created by Myson.
- Archie and Maxie - Archie and Maxie from Pokemon. The least-subtle one in the hack, which is saying something.
- Ares - Greek mythology names barely feel like they count, but it is kinda funny that I used the war god’s name for a guy who’s a bit of a cowardly loser lol.
- Alvi - Alvis/A from Xenoblade.
- The names aren’t references, but I can’t talk references in 3L without mentioning Etherin and Dolgrim being obvious Sephiran and Black Knight knockoffs.
- Beta - So, this one has a story behind it. I ran a D&D adaptation of Three Houses for some friends of mine, and at one point in time they captured a group of three generic Agarthan soldiers, who for lack of better ideas for names we just referred to as Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. One of the players decided to do a silly drawing of the three, and I used that drawing as the basis for their personalities. Beta was “the angry one”, and so of course the players fixated on her. Things ended up going Very Badly when they attempted to befriend her, and she escaped and became a major villain for the rest of the campaign. This is her, and that’s where her name comes from.
- Tadakatsu - I think the name originally comes from an actual historical figure, but I got it from Pokemon Conquest.
- Ryusei - I got the name from Magic: The Gathering’s Ryusei, the Falling Star, but unlike these next three it wasn’t purely a case of “look up cards of the appropriate creature type to fill out names for minor bosses of that category”.
- Faren - Named after Magic: The Gathering’s Syr Faren, the Hengehammer.
- Vance - Named after Magic: The Gathering’s Captain Ripley Vance of Vance’s Blasting Cannons fame.
- Brass - Named after Magic: The Gathering’s Admiral Beckett Brass
- Ramsus - General Kahran Ramsus from Xenogears.
- Blumiere - The real name of Count Bleck from Super Paper Mario.
There’s also a bunch of characters whose names are just words in some way related to them or translations and/or corruptions thereof. I wouldn’t really count those as “references”, but:
- Felakhos - Corruption of greek φύλακας (fýlakas), the second result for “guardian” on Google Translate (which it says can also mean guard, keeper, custodian, or warden)
- Jay - Bluejay, to Yuri’s title of “Savage Mockingbird”.
- Ven - Shortening of “venom”, because she’s the poison specialist.
- Titan - He’s a guy who made his armor out of a Titanus mech.
- Tinker - She’s a tinkerer.
- Bennett - Derived from reversing part of latin “tenebrae”, meaning “darkness”, because he’s the “heir of dark”.
- Altenect - I think the “tene” part came from the same source as Bennett, and then the ending also sort of mixes in the “noct” from “nocturnal”?
- Vox - “Voice” in latin, because he’s mute.
- Lyca - Shortening of “lycanthrope”, because she’s a wolfskin.
- Hikari - “Light” in japanese, because he’s the “heir of light”. You see this one a lot lol.
- Akuma and Tenshi - “Demon” and “angel” in japanese, respectively. They’re siblings who hate each other, so I went for the “rogue demon” and “avenging angel” mirror.
- Mizukai - Combination/corruption of japanese 水 (Mizu) and スカイ(Sukai), meaning “water” and “sky” with the intent of also indirectly referring to rain (probably not remotely correct Japanese but the name I came up with from it sounded nice).
Fall of Shambhala
There are only four characters in this hack that are not returning Three Houses/Three Hopes characters (though many of the playables were originally just one-off named generics with no dialogue, and I could probably go into depth on the logic behind the personalities I gave them in some other post at some point). Of those four, two return from 3L (Felakhos and Ares), and the other two are new to FoS. Leonidas gets his name from the Spartan king in 300 – there’s little resemblance, but I wanted a greek or greek-ish name to match the vanilla Agarthans, and he’s a nobleman making a doomed last stand so sure. Liana then I think just was, like, “her husband is named Leonidas so derive something from that”.
Spaghettimancer’s Apprentice
Most of the characters in this are almost entirely ripped directly from existing media, in the “this is literally, canonically, [guy] from [thing]” sense not even the “I blatantly ripped off [guy] from [thing]” sense. So like, sure:
- Sigma is user SigmaRaven, also known as BigMood
- Ultrax is me!
- Ashley, Elys, Alexander, and Myson are from 3L
- Kronya is from Three Houses
- Shez is from Three Hopes, but all his text is just “Shez!” because for a while in one server I’m in people would respond to any mention of him with a gif that just said “Shez!”
- Citan Uzuki, Big Joe, Id, and Grahf are from Xenogears
- Allen is from Xenosaga
- Klaus is from Xenoblade. The three Blade generics that spawn with him reference Alvis, Malos, and Pneuma, and have unique palettes based on them.
- Lora and Jin are from Xenoblade 2
- Grovyle, Dusknoir (and his Sableye squad), and Guildmaster are from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky
- Armstrong and Sam are from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The generic gwyllgi that spawns with Sam is an unnamed reference to Blade Wolf.
- Iago is from Fates
- Seth and O’Neill are from FE8
- Wil-fre is a fusion of Wil from FE7 and Wilfre from Drawn to Life, which together form a reference to user ArcherBias
- The cyclops named big boy is from Trainee Emblem
- Moulder is Moulder from FE8, with his portrait being a literal boulder because of the “Moulder the Boulder” joke
- Suselik is Kelik from TLP but as an Among Us impostor, hence the name “sus Kelik”
- Stunfisk is a Stunfisk from Pokemon, but more specifically it’s the Stunfisk from a joke hack I made for a friend’s birthday once. Said friend hates Stunfisk, hence why he’s kinda pissed off for having been tortured there.
- Marthissa’s name is a bad fusion of Marth and Marisa. She’s a joke on bad beginner portraits and generic sh*tty OCs. Marisa splices are known to be very common in hacks, so she’s an edit of Marisa with all the infamous portrait errors and a palette meant to be (beneath all the paletting mistakes) a “generic lord” palette with blue hair, white clothes, and gold trim – “generic lord” is where the Marth part of the name comes from.
- The generic faction “Myson’s Men” is a pun on the “best-laid plans of mice and men” quote, which is also referenced in their unit description.
- The command blocks are real event commands or event command macros from FEBuilder.
The new hack I’m working on
No title or public link yet, but I’ll drop the portrait sheet so far and you can probably point to like half of them being direct references in both name and appearance to characters from something with “Xeno-” in the title. Unlike Spaghettimancer, these aren’t meant to be literally, canonically “[guy] from [thing]” and are more “character directly based on/inspired by [guy] from [thing]”, but at least at this point in dev I am not bothering to be subtle about it lol.
