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Pop Culture References in EarthBound

Mr. Itoi and the Development team certainly love the Beatles and pop culture references in general, as EarthBound is loaded with them. These are the ones that I have run into or at least can verify. I haven't heard every Beatles album in its entirety, nor do I play the game's soundtrack through to find familiar melodies.

The Beatles:
In Mother 2, each character's list of default names included a Beatles name (or in Paula's case, a Beatle Wife). Ness was John, Paula was Yoko, Jeff was Paul, Poo was George, and King was Ringo. Bad luck there, Ringo. D:

In the Dungeon Man's body, you see that he has a Yellow Submarine tucked away in his unused vehicles collection. The sign says something like "The yellow color was completely coincidental." Prft. Yeah right; I bet you Dungeon Man was totally hunting for a yellow submarine.

There's also a man in Onett who asks you a question: "A Beatles song, XXXterday. Can you answer it? Yes or No?" Answering yes filled the XXXes with yes, resulting in YESterday. Yesterday is a Beatles song.

The first three notes of the Cave of the Past in the present are from All You Need is Love. Well, it's actually from the Marsailles, since All You Need Is Love samples lots of different music pieces, but nobody cares about that.
To listen to this comparison, click here in .wav format or here in Ogg Vorbis format (.ogg).

A member of the Runaway Five says something like "Money, that's what I want. Money, that's what is hot." Money, that's all I want is a song covered by the Beatles.

This is more of a John Lennon reference than anything, but Lennon wrote a song called Mother which made Itoi cry. The name of the series in Japan is *guess what* Mother.

This might not be a reference, but the Moonside transportation men say "Hello. Goodbye!" Hello, Goodbye is the name of a Beatles song.

Other References:
The Casey Bat is one of the most useless items in the game since it has only a 25% chance of hitting, but it has a reference to the famous poem "Casey at the bat". Casey seems to be the savior of a baseball game with his unrivaled strength, but his cockiness causes him to purposely miss the first two pitches, and he fails to hit the ball in the third pitch. The Casey Bat has a lot of attack power, and the name to match.

The song that plays when you fight the New Age Retro Hippies and Frank has a part that sounds rather familiar... it's from a Chuck Berry song, Johnny B. Goode. There are actually some problems surrounding the song.

Starmen are supposedly named after the David Bowie song Starman.

The Runaway Five are based off the Blues Brothers. This is particularly obvious in the Japanese Version where they are called the Tonzura Brothers and wear matching outfits.