References and Easter Eggs

Throughout the series, several references or "Easter Eggs" about real life or other pieces of media have been made. These are normally indirect or visible throughout the sets.

Azur Lane
Azur Lane is a gacha-type mobile game originating from China that is popular in Japan. The game is done with an "anime" (Japanese animation) appearance to its characters with them being based off warships from the Second World War. The game was launched in May 2017 for China, followed by Japan in September 2017, Korea in February 2018, internationally in May 2019, with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan seeing their servers launched in October 2019. The game has an international following in China, Japan and in some Western countries. While the design of the characters normally appealed to a mature audience, the game itself spawned several mangas and animes based around it, as well as fan fiction stories.

References or Easter Eggs

 * County of Hants and County of Bedford's dynamic is based off Portland and Indianapolis respectively.
 * Several images from the game appear as posters at several stations, even long before the idea was thought of.
 * Glorious' introduction episode "Glorious Battle" is named after an event in the Azur Lane game.
 * During his visit to Japan in 1991, Mathew says this when he sees an anime girl on an advertisement, "What's the next thing they come up with? Warships as humans with skinny, clad clothing?"
 * As part of the international launch of Azur Lane, Glorious has the character design of "Glorious" applied to her to help promote the game after another Jubilee and a a certain 1F refused to have an "anime girl" applied to them.

Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto, commonly called by gamers as "GTA", is an adult-focused, role-playing video game series made by Rockstar Games. The game was made in the late-1990s by a team of British developers for Rockstar North, with the name derived the crime of motor vehicle theft, known in the United States as "grand theft auto". The first game was released in November 1997 and became popular in the 2002 and 2004 with the releases of 'GTA: Vice City' and 'GTA: San Andreas' respectfully. The series was hugely updated to high definition (HD) in 2008 with the release of 'GTA IV' and now has several players since 2013 with the release of 'GTA V', considered the most advanced in the whole series.

References and Easter Eggs

 * Just after a wagon is taken from the goods siding at Monaton in 1997, Antonio calms that "someone's done a GTA I on us!"
 * Antonio would often say he came from "Los Santos" (based off Los Angeles, California).
 * Blue Comet tells Casey not to become a member of "The Lost MC", confusing the 2-8-0.
 * The car crusher at Nerland Metal Recycling resembles the one seen in GTA III and GTA: Liberty City Stories.
 * Blue Comet would always call New York City as "Liberty City" (GTA's Liberty City is based off NYC in real life, with its GTA IV counterpart resembling it closer than its 2001 counterpart GTA III).

Wargaming
Wargaming is a vehicular combat game developer from Belarus based in Cyprus. The first was founded in 1998 by Victor Kislyi with the original intentions for it to be a strategic video game development company. The company made itself internationally famous in August 2010 with the release of its first online title, 'World of Tanks', with this same game being released a year later in North America. This title was followed by two similar games in 2013 and 2015, these being 'World of Warplanes' and 'World of Warships' respectfully. In the gaming community, all three titles are called "WoT" (World of Tanks), "WoWp" (World of Warplanes) and WoWS (World of Warships) and have a major global following with millions of international players.

References or Easter Eggs

 * Some of HMS Thorndyke's scenes were made with WoWS.
 * McConnell's line: "Why would someone make a series of games where the people in the real things never came back? It's just wrong," only to be interrupted by his fireman saying, "I play it, all three of them games. I find it fun playing against everyone across the globe."

Country and Western
Country and Western are a type of music genre that originates from the United States.

"Kpop" and "Jpop"
"Kpop" and "Jpop" are two types of popular music that originates from South Korea and Japan.

Rock
Rock, also known as Rock n' Roll, is a type of popular music that originates from the 1950s and 1960s.