8. Steven Spielberg
Paramount PicturesWe shouldn't be surprised when a Steven Spielberg reference shows up in pretty much any movie given how influential his works have been over the years, and considering that the master filmmaker has acted as an executive producer on all of the Transformers movies to date, we really shouldn't be surprised. One of Spielberg's many trademarks is to include a single shooting star during a number of his movies (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Saving Private Ryan and The Adventures of Tintin), and Bay opted to take a page out of his book here. The scene in question occurs early on in the movie, as Mark Wahlberg's Cade looks out into the night-sky, and for around a second of screen time, we can see a shooting star faintly fly by in the distance. It seems strangely whimsical and sorta out-of-place for a cacophonous Michael Bay film, but it's an undeniable nod to one of the legends of the craft, and a man responsible for ensuring these movies could get made in the first place.