The "line to draw" is fuzzy. Is the reference fleeting and minor? Does it become a hot Youtube view? Does chat about it rise to the level of Internet meme? What kind of mood is the IP owner in when s/he hears about or finds your "homage"?

Give up trying to figure out where the "line" is drawn. It depends on your risk-taking comfort level. Everybody has to draw his own line.

Disclaimer, I am not a copyright lawyer.

Whether your usage turns out to be legal or not, you can be sued for any alleged infringement. The cost of fighting that to the point where you can win might be problematic. On the other hand, the legal cost pursuing such a trivial potential infringement might be deemed excessive by the copyright holder. On the other hand, some companies might have in-house lawyers, and they might as well be out doing something rather than sitting there encrypting the EULA.

There are usually conditions before copyright infringement has occurred, and I would guess such usage would usually fail to meet these conditions. For example, one copyright defence in the US is parody. To the far left of the screenshot posted there appears to be the back of one of these Star Wars space ships. I believe that merely including the work isn't a parody. However, maybe if there was a sequence in the game where this ship's unfolding wings gets in the way of the other ships launching, that might be considered a parody (disclaimer part deux: In addition to not being a lawyer, I am not a comedian either). I don't know whether that would suffice to protect the usage, and of course giving a more prominent position to a copyrighted work could actually elevate the risk of litigation.

In general, I think you might better focus on making your own game funny, if that is your goal, rather than placing copyrighted works as "in jokes" into the game.