Earthbound has a distinct visual style that can be described as "cartoony". This would be different from a game like Final Fantasy in which the characters are supposed to have a certain aura that can only be accurately represented by Japanese manga/anime style images. Because of the lighthearted nature of Earthbound it makes sense for the visuals to have been designed the way they were. The game's opening sequence before the start menu begins with this image, which is similar to Orson Welles's War of the Worlds.  There are no UFOs blowing up the planet in the game at any point. This scene is simply used as a contrast to illustrate a point: this is quite the opposite of the fairly light hearted nature the game.   Anybody at the University of Virginia knows how important Thomas Jefferson is... but does the rest of the world? Apparently so. Or at least "Tomas". It seems like such a strange thing for the designers to use in the game... but at this point you shouldn't really be surprised by anything.   Here we seen Nintendo playing off of another one of their more "cartoon looking" games, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This is the type of reference that doesn't affect the story in the least but serves as entertainment for those that catch it.   These two locations are Giant Step and Lilliput Steps respectively. This is a play off of the Giants and Lilliputs in Jonothan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I never knew this until about a week ago when doing research for this section of the project. Thanks to The Flying Omelette for pointing this out. This just goes to show how references like this don't even need to be known to add to the personality of the gameplay. Also, check out this animated interpretation of a Salvador Dali clock: 
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