[List] In-Jokes, Third-Party References, etc.

The question should be "Why not?"...

 

Just noticed there's also a third Baron named Lundi. "Feared by office workers everywhere, Lundi inflicts exhaustion which no amount of coffee can remedy" and which can trigger The Mondays when it hits. Unsurprisingly Lundi means Monday in French.

There's also a weapon named Pyrrhic Diamonddagger or something like that. The text was "With a weapon like this, you'll be unlikely to live another level". This is a reference to the term pyrrhic victory which originates with Pyrrhus, a Greek king who won a battle against the Romans but lost enough men that he said that one more such victory would be his undoing.

 

I have a feeling the portrait of the Adventurer in the centre of the skill/quickslot UI element is a reference to Doom. I really only just realised that.

 

Oy.

 

No worries. WoW is a bit of a life and other MMORPG eating monster. I can certainly understand your taking a dim view of it.

 

Lutefisk for the lutefisk god is from "Blood for the blood god", part of a chaos battlecry, pulled from Warhammer 40k (I have NO idea if 40k pulled it from elsewhere). For those who don't play miniature games, it is also featured in the 40k franchise game, Dawn of War.

 

Occasionally in the scrolling feed, random messages will appear. One of these is You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth, a reference to various Dungeons & Dragons games if my memory isn't too shabby.

The tooltip for the Lucky monster is an obvious play on the Irish. Aside from the monster looking like a leprechaun, there's a reference to the pots of gold that they are said to horde, as well as a mention of the alcoholic beverage Guinness, which itself originates from Ireland - though it's no longer the sole producer - and is noted for its distinctive appearance.

Sabatons are described as meaning you never need to worry about dropping plate armour on your toes again. I believe this is - due to their visual representation - a literal take on "steel toe-capped boots", which are safety equipment worn by people who work in construction, warehousing, distribution/logistics and other occupations where crushing forces could potentially be applied to feet.

The Steel Recurve Crossbow has a simple tooltip - "Pew Pew". Obviously, this is a reference to the onomatopoeic sound often associated with pistols in old Western movies and laser guns in science fiction/science fantasy movies, which has become a sort of generic 'gun' sound, particularly in the play of children.

The Hoplon shield is either a bad joke or a very clever one depending on your sense of humour. It says that without it, you would have half your life expectancy. The shield is decorated with a lower-case lambda, a symbol critical to atomic physics as it represents blah blah blah blah blah that it's too early to even think about, and is very important in working out the half life of an atom. It's also, in gaming culture, the recognisable logo of Valve's Half-Life series of games.

I found some Magic Sandals, and they're described as being made of 100% organic hemp and as making you feel "like so close to the world in these, you know?" - it's an obvious joke based on 'hippie' culture.

The Scutum shield's appearance isn't particularly remarkable - it's a fairly accurate representation of a legionnaire's shield. The flavour text, however, sums up the period of the Ancient Romans rather well. Whilst that shield and the Roman Army were instrumental in the expansion of the Roman Empire into the territory of 'barbarians' (such as the Gauls), the collapse largely came due to the internal politics of Rome, something a shield is pretty useless at stopping.

Leather Cap states that it's fit for even the foulest peasant, a reference to the stereotypical - and not necessarily accurate, though I could be wrong - depiction of mediaeval people wearing leather caps. An example would be in a film like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where some of the peasants in the scene with the witch are shown wearing leather caps.

Also a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the Holy Hand Grenade, its tooltip being a quote from the film.

 

Most famous game with this quote is Baldur's Gate 2, it was also used in BG1, KotOR and IWD (and in a different form in DA:O). It is displayed when you try to move to another location with some of your party members far from the location change point.

 

So perhaps it's more of a BioWare (a studio originally from and still headquartered in Canada) reference than a D&D one?

 

I just realized... that first splash screen lies: Near as I can recall, there's no kittens in the game!

 

No lie. A kitten can be the object of an Inconsequentia fetch quest.

 

In case this has allready been mentioned excuse me, but the "Conceptual Reinforcement" lvl5 encrust for wandcrafting is probably up there with the best jokes I've herd/seen in my life.

The fact that it actually quite obscure and insanely high-brow is part of why I find it hilarious.

So, technicaly, it's a reference to the philosophical school of Classical German Idealism which among other people numbered Immanuel Kant (unless I'm much mistaken). The fact that it offers a critique of german idealism by interpreting it as composed of "Lederhosen + Starry Orb + 2 Bottles of Absinthe" is hilarious, becaus it's sort of true. Halucinantly drunken stargazing Germans indeed

 

Soylent Green is...Soy, Actually: Although this has already been mentioned as a reference to the 70s scifi film starring Charlton Heston, it's more of a reference to the 1966 novel "Make Room! Make Room!" by the late Harry Harrison. Harrison's novel was where soylent green came from, though in the book it's just soylent, with no colour attached. It also isn't made of people, that was just made up for the film. So, soylent green actually is, soy. In it's original form.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Sallah, I said no camels, Only The Penitent Man Shall Pass, He Chose...Poorly, It Belongs In A Museum, Remember Your Charlemagne. Achievements and skill levels along the archaeology tree and all of them quotations from the last Indiana Jones film. The last one. Nothing that came after is of relevance.

Thibault's Trompemont: Almost certainly a further Princess Bride reference. "I find Thibault cancels out Capa Fero." "He does. Unless your opponent has a-studied his Agrippa. Which I have."

Morale Improvement Expert: The Mace mastery achievement. Probably a reference to "The beatings will continue, until morale improves," a phrase of unclear origin which has been attributed to sources as various as Japanese WWII officers, Stalinist/Maoist propaganda and training techniques employed by military NCOs since the Dawn of Time™.

The Sea is A Cruel Mistress: Either a direct riff on the general "The sea is a cruel mistress" adage employed by sailors around the globe on the nature of the sea and their profession or one on Heinlein's classic "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress."

Powder Of Ibn Ghazi: Lovecraftian reference. The powder, described by ole Howard Philips as being a "silvery dust" in short story "The Dunwich Horror," does exactly what it did in the Mythos, and makes the invisible, visible. It was also a staple of Chaosium's PnP RPG "Call of Cthulhu," for obvious reasons.

40K and WFB's early concepts were strongly influenced by Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series, and Elric of Melnibone's battle-cry was "Blood and Souls! Blood and Souls for Arioch!" Arioch being the King of Chaos whom Elric served. It's not a direct descendant, but chances are strong that Khorne's devotees own warcry of "Blood for Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne!" drew at least a little on this. I'm pretty sure Rick Priestly / Andy Chambers have commented something to that effect.

 

Not to mention that Moorcock's work (Elric among it) is probably the origin of even including the chaos - order axis in heroic/fantasy/sf fiction. So it's probably true even if they weren't aware of it

 

Soylent Green is made of people. Period. That was actually a line in the movie version. And it was in the book too.

I do not care about other books that may well have contributed to that particular one. Sorry. That is just not the way it is.

 

I'd have to reread the book, but if I remember correctly that was THE plot point (or reveal, or whathave you). I think the line "It's people!", however, was made for the film. Or at least made dramatic, it's possible that the protagonist thinks it in the book, but doesn't say it. Not too sure.

 

I do not entirely remember. But I do recall that it was not soy. I suppose I may well have paraphrased the actual quotes above too.

The problem of the fictional times in the book/movie was only partly starvation. Overcrowding was another equal problem. Soylent Green being made of Humans solved both problems. (Or at least put off the inevitable.)

 

I've never read Make Room! Make Room! But it's Wikipedia page makes no reference to soylent being made of people (contrast the Soylent Green page), in fact it is described as a combination of soya and lintels, thus the name. The focus of the book seems to be more on rampant crime and social disintegration than food shortages...

 

re: Thibault's Trompenant -- The reference in The Princess Bride is actually an even further callback to Shakespeare. In Romeo & Juliet, Juliet's cousin Thibault (USA "Tybalt") is the fencing badass of the Capulet clan, and he's also a hothead known for charging directly into battle. "Trompenant" translates from French as "wronging", so you can read "Thibault's Trompenant" as "the wrongdoing of the angry fencer".