@ryoNot just profit but also nostalgia to the point of not even making anything original. It's a cultural problem here. Anime might have homages with a scene referencing another scene with the reference being "hey this scene is a parody of a scene from Evangelion", if you're unaware of Evangelion you won't get it and it won't seem out of place. Or how say Akira had band names written on the jukebox and I'd assume the director just liked them. Or how MGS doesn't reference western movies explicitly as much as it does tropes and era music.
Meanwhile a guy on Twitter described watching the latest Fast and Furious with no knowledge of the last films like a dementia simulator with all the references you're supposed to get. MCU movies do the same shit but so did Wreck It Ralph/2, ready player one, and especially the new Chip N Dale movie where they made more effort with references than they did making a good movie.