List of Syphon Filter references to other media sources

This page contains a list of references to various media sources in Syphon Filter, and a corresponding list of references to Syphon Filter in various media sources.

Owing to the nature of this page, it is currently under construction and may not necessarily be complete.

Literature

Inferno by Dante

• Quoted by Gabe during his fight with Richard Kress in Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror during 'The Trojan Horse'.

Games

Metal Gear Solid

• The Syphon Filter virus is rather similar to FOXDIE. Both are bio-weapons that can be engineered to specifically target certain demographics while leaving others unharmed.
• The 'Base Tower' mission where Gabe must fight off a gunship in a snowy environment is akin to the Sniper Wolf battle, which takes place in an identical area. Lian would eventually chase Gregorav in a similar cold environment and the player would be in such a surrounding in Mazyr, Belarus: Belaya Vezha. Logan would later find himself in snow again in the Red Section assault on KemSynth and when escaping from Gebel Tyorma.
• There are certain stealth segments in each Syphon Filter game (except Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow, both of which allow the player to choose whether or not stealth is used), just as MGS places a heavy emphasis on sneaking around.
• As with the Syphon Filter Conspiracy, Metal Gear's story is incredibly puzzling and involves multiple plot elements tied together.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

• Mara and Vamp are somewhat comparable. Professionals at killing and violence in general, they are both also invincible, apparently demonstrating immortality even against fatal attacks that would outright kill most normal humans.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

• Snake mentions Gabe in a conversation with Colonel Campbell during Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (in the game Snake vs Monkey).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

• In the Logan's Shadow mission 'Trinidad', the player is assailed by enemies firing from an elevated vantage point while in a shower room, just like Task Force 141 in the mission 'The Gulag'.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

• As with the FOXDIE example from Metal Gear Solid, the Manticore virus is strikingly identical to Syphon Filter. All three are weapons of mass destruction that can be modified to affect only certain targets with a particular genome.

Doom

• The M82 BFG sniper rifle borrows its namesake from this game's Big Freaking Gun.

Tomb Raider

• Trinidad (and Zohar) dual wield pistols like Lara Croft does. The player can learn this skill in The Omega Strain, Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow.

Movies

Tomorrow never Dies

• Perhaps the most famous example of a 007 reference in Syphon Filter is how Dr. Kaufmann, from Tomorrow Never Dies, pleads for his life when Bond forces a pistol to his head, justifying himself with the fact that he was just "a professional doing a job", which Jason Chance also uses to explain himself in Syphon Filter 2.
• Another element from 007 seen in Syphon Filter is the Walther PPK pistol, which is Bond's signature weapon, being used in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain.

Die Hard

• The Steyr AUG bullpup assault rifle, made infamous in this action flick which set the convention of featuring one character taking on odds that are believed to be impossible to overcome for many other movies (and games), is used from SF3 all the way to Logan's Shadow.
• Bruce Willis' character, John MClane, is also seen sneaking through vents in much of the film, and each playable character does this at some point during the Syphon Filter series.

Alien

• In Syphon Filter 2, Archer comments how his men are 'expendable', which is the exact line that Ash and MUTHUR both use: "Bring back life form, priority one. All other priorities rescinded. Crew expendable."
  • This theme continues all the way throughout the entire franchise in general. Ranging from Aliens, where the Marines were slated to be killed so Burke could recover a specimen of the extraterrestrial which would be smuggled within Ripley and Newt, to Alien 3, where almost all the prisoners were slain for Weyland-Yutani to again attempt to capture the creature, to Alien: Resurrection where the monsters tried to massacre the spaceship personnel, to Alien: Covenant, where a malevolent David 8 continued experimenting with the crew of the Covenant using Xenomorph embryos.
• In Logan's Shadow, Cordell comments that Gabe and Alima were also both 'expendable'.

Predator

• In The Omega Strain's Tokyo mission, players fight off Ryusaki, who's armed to the teeth with a chaingun similar to the one used in this movie. The theme would be repeated in Dark Mirror, where Gabe takes down a guard under Jimmy Zhou's employ, the patrol having an identical weapon.
  • Additionally, players can acquire two weapons equipped with infrared scopes: the AU300 Mod R and the DSC-1 Thermal. Both these firearms highlight targets by detecting their heat signature, which is one of the Predator's vision wavelengths.
• Just as in Alien, Cordell comments that Gabe and Alima were both 'expendable'. The NIOC director also tells Logan he used him 'to get the job done'. This is exactly what Dillon admits to Dutch following the guerilla camp assault.

• In Predator 2, Jerry Lambert taunts the City Hunter with 'Let's dance!', which Jason Chance also uses in Syphon Filter 2.

Robocop (1987)

• In the original movie, Alex Murphy is heard using the line "Dead or alive, you're comin' with me" which is also similar to what Pulikovsky says in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain during 'Belaya Vezha' (I want them found, dead or alive).

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

• Gabe's line: "I'm making this up as I go", which then evolves into total chaos during Syphon Filter 2.

The Beast of War

• A mission set in 1987 war-torn Afghanistan titled "The Beast" features Gabe squaring off against a T-62 Soviet tank in a Kabul square during Syphon Filter 3 flashbacks.

The Rock

• The shower room ambush where the Marines massacre the Navy SEALs is strikingly similar to the mission 'Trinidad' during Logan's Shadow, where Gabe and Maggie are pinned down by enemies occupying an elevated position.
  • This sequence was also used during Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in the mission 'The Gulag'.

The Shawshank Redemption

• The scene in which Andy Dufresne crawls out from the prison sewage pipe is similar to how Gabe and Maggie escape from Gebel Tyorma.

The Terminator

• When Gabe rescues the hostage in 'Hotel Fukushima', he tells her to "Come with me, if you want to live."

Saving PVT. Ryan

• The fourth episode in Dark Mirror is called 'Saving PVT Janzen'.

Broken Arrow, Collateral, Speed

• Collateral: At the climax, Vincent (the principle antagonist and a professional hitman) pursues Max and Annie onto a subway train, where a shootout ensues. This is a callback to Mara, a veteran assassin, and her showdown with Gabe in Syphon Filter 3. This also technically occurs in her first encounter with Gabe.
• Shootout at a nightclub in Syphon Filter 2 also seen in Collateral.
• The last mission of Dark Mirror, Matter's End, was originally supposed to happen on a moving train, with Singularity escaping on the subway system, having seized numerous canisters of Project Dark Mirror, while Gabe endeavoured to stop him. Although this was not implemented in the main game, Logan's Shadow allows players to take on a bonus mission where they needed to wipe out an enemy contingent.
• Broken Arrow: Vic Deakins uses a train to transport a nuke, picking up a hostage along the way. This echoes Mara in Syphon Filter 3.
• Speed: Mara snatches numerous hostages and loads them on a train with bombs, like Payne does.
  • Interestingly, both Broken Arrow and Speed were written by Graham Yost.

Batman Begins, The Lego Movie, Toy Story 3

• Batman Begins: Near the climax, a bridge is destroyed to stop a train from advancing any further, like Archer does in Syphon Filter 2.
• Toy Story 3: In the prelude, Potato Head blows a bridge to force Woody to make a decision: rescue the hostages on the train before it falls off the destroyed bridge, or pursue the criminals.
• Lego Movie: Bad Cop fires his weapons at a bridge to halt the main characters and make them fall into the canyon.
  • Both sequences of the bridge being destroyed in Lego Movie and Toy Story 3 take place in a 'Wild West' environment. The same background is used in Syphon Filter 2.
• Lego Movie: After Lord Business 'wipes off' Good Cop's conscience, the latter turns into 'Bad Cop' and tells his parents he has a 'job to do', before using the 'Kragle' to permanently glue them, a line similar to Jason Chance's at the end of Syphon Filter 2.
  • Liam Neeson portrays the antagonists, which are Ra's al Ghul (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises) and Good Cop/ Bad Cop (Lego Movie).
  • Also, Batman is forced to destroy the bridge in Batman Begins, while in the Lego Movie he instead rescues the main characters, giving him a flipped role.

• Also in the Lego Movie, Lord Business remarks 'No more Mr Nice Guy!' during the aforementioned scene when he removes the 'good' side from the cop, which is the same line that Stone uses during the mission to Ukraine in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain.
• Additionally, President Business' right-hand man is constantly seen switching between his good and bad sides, which mirrors how Mara and Trinidad both treat Gabe - they sometimes act friendly, and suddenly become hostile at a different occasion.

Olympus has Fallen, London has Fallen, Angel has Fallen*

• The main character, Mike Banning, constantly uses a knife in a couple of fight scenes and Trinidad does the same.

The Dark Knight

• Jimmy Zhou's line 'do you like to play with knives' and what the Joker uses are both identical. (Do you want to know why I use a knife?)

The Dark Knight Rises

• Johnathan Crane, or Scarecrow, rigs show trials in a kangaroo court to summarily charge people and Hadden does the same to Gabe as well as his team in Syphon Filter 3.
• Bane weaponises a normally harmless instrument which was intended to revolutionise the energy industry and uses it to hold Gotham hostage; Bitar forces Shen Rei to produce the X-Z-2, which was originally supposed to end poverty altogether, and attempts to escape to strike the United States with the device.

Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Sniper

• Curse of the Black Pearl: Jack Sparrow never shoots anybody until the end of the movie, where he finally discharges his only shot to kill the traitorous mutineer Barbossa. Stone also never fires a round, with a policy that he uses 'only one shot' to complete his mission.
• Sniper: Same as the above.

The A-Team, Shooter

• Main characters are framed for a crime they never committed which is what happens to Gabe and Lian in Syphon Filter 2, as well as its sequel, resulting in their attempt to exonerate themselves.

Inception

• Syphon Filter 3 plays like a 'dream within a dream', jumping from one character's experience to a second character's flashback, and then finally going back to 'reality' at the end.
• At the end of Logan's Shadow, the cliffhanger is strikingly similar to Inception's finale, when Cobb turns away from his spinning top and decides to ignore it in favour of his family.

Pulp Fiction

• When one of Zivmovic's men interrogates Private Janzen, he dares him to "Say what again!" during Dark Mirror's mission 'Forged Under Fire'.

Star Wars 6: Return of the Jedi

• When Lian interrogates Holman in Syphon Filter 2 during 'MacKenzie Air Force Base Exterior', she tells him "Your boss might not be as forgiving as I am." This echoes Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) who says "The emperor is not as forgiving as I am."

Scarface

• "Say hello to my little friend!"

Pacific Rim, Battleship

• In both these movies, the main character is an initially immature man who eventually becomes the key to stop disaster, just like the agent 'Cobra' in The Omega Strain.

Tomorrow when the War Began, Red Dawn

• In both these films, a group of combat-amateurish teens gang up to take on a massive invasion force when their country is attacked, which is also re-enacted during the ALA Assault on Carthage

The Perfect Weapon (1991)

• In The Omega Strain, a SWAT team uses smoke grenades to try to blind Masson and his ALA thugs in the Carthage shopping centre, just like how Jeff sprays a fire extinguisher at a corridor to gain the advantage during a fight with Sam's thugs when he tries to exact revenge on behalf of Kim.

SPECTRE

• When Bond brings Blofeld's copter down and threatens to kill the criminal at the end, the antagonist tells the secret service agent to 'finish it', which is what Mara dares Gabe to do at the epilogue of Syphon Filter 3. However, Bond and Gabe both decide to instead keep the terrorists alive, which results in the latter being apprehended.

Suicide Squad

• Mara and Trinidad are both somewhat similar to Harley Quinn. Dr. Harley Quinzel was initially a good guy but later falls in love with the Joker. She then spends much of the movie alternating between fighting off the alien invasion and returning to her lover. Both Aramov and Trinidad can be said to be hostile to Gabe at one point, yet suddenly friendly when the timing suits.

Ms Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Kids

• When Jake tries to shoot Barron with a crossbow, he misses, causing Barron to comment 'When will you realise you are a terrible shot with that thing?!' mirroring Mara's Syphon Filter 3 taunt "It seems your aim still sucks Logan!"

Demolition Man

• During 'The Long Descent', Lian tells Gabe 'Heads up!' when she distracts al-Jamil thugs with a C4 explosion. This is also the line that John Spartan tells Simon Phoenix before killing the criminal.

The Fast and the Furious 7

• Kiet's line to Brian 'Too slow!' after beating him to the back of a bus going towards the side of a cliff is used by Rhoemer, 'You're getting too slow!' in the missile silo.

*Angel has Fallen is not yet released and it is assumed Banning will again use a knife, IF he indeed appears. This will be altered when there is more confirmation of the movie.