Interesting Shout Out

For the past few days, I've been playing Mother 3, and I found something quite interesting.

One of the scenes involved pulling a "needle" out of a castle courtyard in order to summon some sort of Dragon. There are seven needles in all and the sort of dragon that comes out depends on the "Heart" of the person pulling the needles. If they have a "good heart", then the Dragon is good, but if they're evil, then it's rather obvious. However, the keeper of the Needle said that the person who pulled out the first needle didn't seem to have a heart at all.

He basically asked, "Can someone exist without a Heart?" I don't remember the exact quote, but that was the gist of it. My answer? "Yea, a Nobody". Or a Heartless. I wonder if that scene/statement was a shout out to Kingdom Hearts? Given that the Earthbound series is notorious for shout outs, it wouldn't surprise me if it were.