The basis of legality I believe is mostly parody law, but technically I think a lot of the content we see like this is illegal. I see little interest from the fed in intervening though.

Max doesn't play enough flight sims

I would have much preferred The Wind Waker 2 instead of Twilight Princess. I would like to see more of that art style in 3D Zelda.

A lot of room air filters will display a particle count. I see mine jump when I cook.

Seiken Densetsu 3 is my go to example of this. Also this is a common approach in strategy games as it gives you an excuse to have the player go through the content of each army set.

Mine still works!

I think there are 10 times more weird games being made today than 15 years ago, but there is like 100 times more games getting made now, and I admit the percentage has potentially gone down for the reasons you describe.