I&#39;m working on a game and want to reference some other games and movies. How much trouble could I get in with the examples below?
<p>I'm wondering what trouble a game developer could get into with making references to other things that served to inspire the dev. Suppose the dev plans to sell the game; would such references possibly cause issues later down the line</p>
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<p>I refer tpo references such as, for example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>drinking bird (<em>Alien</em> movies)</p>
</li>
<li><p>Glasses with &quot;A. Wesker&quot; written on the side (Resident Evil)</p>
</li>
<li><p>A brochure that advertises The Overlook (<em>The Shining</em>)</p>
</li>
<li><p>Newspaper talking about a shark killing &quot;Martha Vineyard&quot;, aged 75 (<em>Jaws</em>)</p>
</li>
<li><p>One of the lockers has the name &quot;S. Henriksson&quot; (Cry of Fear)</p>
</li>
<li><p>Book titled something like &quot;The favourite fellow&quot; by Charles L. Ray (Chucky)</p>
</li>
</ul>

<p>In general this kind of brief literary reference is not unlawful, and such things occur in both novels and commercial games with some frequency. Making such a reference a major part of the plot, such as by using a name from a previous work as a major character, particularly if other aspects of that character are also used, is far more likely to cause a problem.</p>
<p>In the <a href="/questions/tagged/united-states" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;" rel="tag">united-states</a> this would be a matter of <em><strong>fair use</strong></em>. In general, when only a very small part of the source work is used, such a a single name; where the use is &quot;transformative&quot;, that is used for a rather different purpose than in the source work; where the use does not harm the market for the original work; and where the use does not serve as a replacement for the original, it is likely to be held to be fair use. But fair use decisions are always fact-dependent, and are made case-by-case, so it is hard to be absolutely sure of one in advance. But the kind of literary reference described in the question is very unlikely to be held to be copyright infringement.</p>

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