Hiya,
In America people quote movies/tv shows or refer to characters in daily conversation.

For example, when someone ask me to do something and I answer "I'll try to do that." then a star wars nerd may retort "Do or do not. There is no try."
Someone who is not familiar with the movie or watched a dubbed version of the movie will not understand why that is a corny joke.

Anyway, do Japanese people use pop culture reference in their daily lives?
If so, what are some of the things every Japanese person know and refer to?

I would say that popular sayings/catchphrases from TV personalities and comedians are among the most widely used and known pop culture references.
Some of the more recent examples I can think of are ones like 「言うよね～」 (Haruna Ai), 「ワイルドだろ～？」 (Sugichan), and 「オッケ～/いい感じ」 (Lola).

When a comedian/talent gets popular, they are *everywhere* on TV, so the general public becomes familiar with their catchphrases pretty quickly, and you'll hear them referenced in conversations

lhong1987 Wrote:Anyway, do Japanese people use pop culture reference in their daily lives?

Considering the vast amount of memes to come out of Japan, I'd only assume there would be also a vast amount of popular references floating about casual conversation within Japan.

lhong1987 Wrote:If so, what are some of the things every Japanese person know and refer to?

It would depend on the age demographic, and divided interest groups within. Simply knowing a collection of popular references doesn't mean they are going to sound any more natural/less out of place if used for the sake of using references. Being popular references, they are better off discovered through experiencing them repeatedly used throughout various forms of Japanese media, so you can get an idea of the context, how people general react to them, and the relevancy of the reference in respect to the audience.

For instance, even as a native English speaker living in Australia, you could amass a collection of pop culture common amongst one of the largest consumer groups (let's say it is teenagers), and I probably wouldn't have a clue or any interest in what you were talking about, and that is only some 5-6 year age gap.

Variety/owarai shows are awesome for this kinda stuff. I feel like they don't get the props they deserve.

The comedians on the panels in these shows make all kinds of references to other celebrities, music, movies, dramas etc. Stuff like sugi-chan, as jessui said, and あたりまえ体操 come up a lot and I'm guessing are big pop culture references that everyone would know. Just watch a lot of TV and see what stuff comes up most often.

There's text all over the place so its easy to pick stuff up even if you're still nooby. Even the references are subtitled with a picture of who they're referencing, an album cover, etc occasionally popping up on screen. I know, its awesome. And the subject matter is usually very light so casual viewing is easy. Right now I'm really into London Hearts and アメトーーク. So check those out if you're interested