Darwin's Soldiers/Shout Out

Since Darwin's Soldiers features many, many players, it is natural that the players will include references to their favorite media.

Video Games

• The character of Ridley is named after a similar character from Metroid.
• Shelton is disappointed at the lack of a crowbar in the closet when raiding Raulson's lab.
• The Phase Tank is modeled off the tank from Red Alert 2.
• Sharon compares the sublevels to Silent Hill and Resident Evil in the first RP.
• Shelton facetiously refers to himself as Dr. Gordon Freeman.
• A converted supertanker that is a floating Dragonstorm lab is called Surrounded Sea.
• The champion of a military themed shooting competition is named Nicholas Parker.
• Subject 19's claws are based upon Alex Mercer's claws.
  • Subject 19 is given the code name Athena. Alex Mercer was given the code name ZEUS by Blackwatch. Word of God states that it was suppose to be a joke, using another Greek mytholgical God as Subject 19's code name.
• Cobalt Leader's real name is revealed to be Zachary Slavik
• The Human Cobalt Soldier's name is Sharon Redfield
  • The Raccoon City incident is also mentioned by General Ross as well.
  • The mysterious woman moves suspiciously like Albert Wesker
• The trigger phrase for Kain's chip is Would You Kindly?
• Kagetora is based on a minor enemy in Ninja Gaiden
• Neku is named for the main protagonist of The World Ends With You
• Roux is named for a character in ZZ Gundam and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam

Music

• The clearance question to auxiliary control references lyrics to "MacArthur Park."
• American Pie by Don McLean is heard at the beginning of part 2 of Card of Ten.
• Vic says, "Ground Control to Major Roy," when testing Roy Hawkeye's radio in Card Of Ten.
• The password to the ADSA HQ is "Shave and a Haircut."
• Many, many songs are heard on the radio as James and Co. drive to various places in their cars.
• It is revealed by Hailey that Trinity is a fan of classical music and to the point that Beethoven's 9th Symphony is heard playing with the Trinity Facility as well.

Historical Figures

• Darwin, duh.
• Shelton mentions Sacco, Venzetti, and Daniel Ellsberg when Hans asks about his chances at freedom.
• Shelton himself takes his first and middle names from Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde.
• Many of the titles of LB&T's works include famous names, like Schrodinger and Nietzsche. Others come from famous quotes, like Card of Ten and Ship of State.
• Not really an historical figure, but Gustave the crocodile is named after the real life Gustave.

Science

• The Einstein-Rosen Bridge is named after the hypothetical wormhole proposed by the eponymous names.
• The Double Helix eatery.
• Shelton mentions Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion when describing how Gamas formed.
• James uses the Coriolis Effect to select a corridor in Pavlov's Checkmate.
• Shelton also mentions having an Erdos number of 7 in the first RP. Which is actually a rather pathetic Erdos number.
• The Cobalt Squad in the first RP had a tendency to use famous scientists' names as derogatory terms directed toward the scientist characters, Examples of names used as such include Newton, Hawking, and Bill Nye.
• Kerzach is mentioned as having worked on a Small Hadron Collider, which later plays a role in Schrodinger's Prisoners.
  • Also, Shelton justifies his knowledge of Half Life by explaining that "one of my fellow scientists at the Large Hadron Collider looked like Gordon Freeman."
• Rara Terra Smelting from Fool's Gold by Serris is established as lanthanide refinery.
  • Rara Terra means "Rare Earth" in Latin. Rare earth is an old name for lanthanides.
• Shelton says the Dragonstorm "thought network" was a branch-off of the phone tooth invented in 2002.
• A scientist named Dr. Dyson Holmes is the subject of a really long and convoluted shout out. Spoilered below:
  • "Dy" and "Ho" - the letters for Dysprosium and Holmium.
  • The lab report he worked on is titled "Toxicity of Lanthanide Containing Alloys In Pediatric Psions" - Dysprosium and Holmium are lanthanides.
  • There is also a reference to Dr. Holmes being "hard to find". Dysprosium is named after the Greek word "dysprositos (δυσπρόσιτος)", meaning "hard to get".
    • LB&T's answer works too. He thought "Dyson Holmes" was a reference to Sherlock Holmes and the Dyson Sphere, since both are "hard to find" (Holmes because he's a detective, good at remaining unseen, and Dyson Sphere because 1] they don't exist and 2] a Dyson shell would block the rays of the encompassed sun making it hard to see from an astronomical viewpoint.)
• Krebs-Calvin Pharmaceuticals is mentioned in the second RP.
• James's favorite expression is allegedly "I'll trust you when there are two electrons with the same spin occupy the same atomic orbital". Spoilered below:
  • Electrons cannot occupy the same atomic orbital unless their spin quantum numbers are different.
• A tiny mining town in Texas is named Platanna Town.
  • It is home to an arena called Xenopus Arena. An electronic band playing there is named Helix-Turn-Helix.

Literature

• Main character Ender McThair from the Furtopia RP.
• A sadistic canine guard is nicknamed Miss. Cujo.
• The complete works of Shakespeare play an important role in Card of Ten.
• Lab 101 was named after Room 101 in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • Shelton also says, "Big Brother's back in the saddle!" when they get the cameras working again in the first RP.
• The code used by the Dragonstorm scientists in the first RP consists of multiple references to Homer and the Aeneid.
• Dragonstorm passed out copies of The Art of War to everyone in the organization.
• The Anaconda who saves Dr. Kerzach's life by killing Jake Sachs and teams up with him in the story Fools Gold is named Paul Gamay
• <Characters who use the Dragonstorm thought network are referred to as thought-speaking, and their dialogue is punctuated with triangular brackets, like in Animorphs>
• The head of security on the Dragonstorm supertanker/lab is named John Cade.
• In a Gaman library, Dr. Joe finds a book called The Gamas Delusion ^[dead link] , referencing Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion.
• Shelton mistakes ROSS' name as "Rossum", a name from RUR - Rossum's Universal Robots, the play that coined the term 'robot'.
• In the third roleplay, right when Calchas is about to finish what he needed to interrogate Shakila...

Assistant: Mr. Babcock!
Calchas: Out I say, out!

Film/Live Action TV

• Shelton says he feels like MacGyver when he gets himself out of a locked room.
• PFC Reynolds, a minor recurring ally, is named after the character from Firefly.
• Several background characters are named after redshirts from other franchises, such as Compton, Carstairs, and Udesky.
  • Eddie McKay was named after guest star Rodney McKay on Stargate SG-1, before LB&T learned that he became a main character on Stargate Atlantis.
• Branston mentioned that during a heist at the Zzyzx Desert Studies Center, Camilla knocked over a soup ladle while trying to be sneaky.
• In the second RP,

Branston: Dr. Zenarchis has the other trigger.
Shelton: Doctor Who? He's dead!

• • • The author has stated that this was intentional.
• Die Hard is mentioned in the first RP, and Die Hard on an X is discussed.
• When Neku activates his lightsaber, Shelton warns him that it's not nearly as strong as the ones on Star Wars.
• Weyland-Yutani is mentioned in the 3rd RP as being "one of the foremost manufacturers of prosthetic limbs and other cybernetics"
• Shelton pocket-texts Dr. Kelton. Kelton was a patrolman in Plan 9 from Outer Space.
• The third RP reveals that a big budget movie is being made about the first terrorist attack. Name-dropped actors include Robert Downey, Jr., Thomas Kretschmann, and Neil Patrick Harris. We also get this exchange:

Shelton: "You could be looking at the next Dave Bowman."
Cobalt Leader: "Hm, the way I remember your role in the whole situation, you'd probably be closer to the Chevron Guy on Stargate."

• A shooting range in the 3rd RP is called Czerka Tactical Arena.
• Shakila has revealed her last name to be Brennan
• Zachary facetiously refers to a Dragonstorm experiment that attacked them as the Terminator.
• A Texas based juvenile detention facility/Dragonstorm lab is located on 623 Deadwood Drive. And the warden is named Francis Wolcott
• A certain Captain Kirk Lutra is the head of the Dragonstorm floating lab Surrounded Sea.
• "I'm sorry Soundwave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
• Shakila punches Calchas in the face, but injures her hand doing so

Other

• Shout-outs to weaponry all over the freaking place.
  • One of the soldiers used a Patton tribute pistol in the first RP. It was never explained exactly why he had one of those.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is referenced when James blasts through the floor with a gun in Card of Ten.
• Shelton's password to the computer system is killapp123, both a reference to killer apps and Lotus-1-2-3, a spreadsheet program and early killer app.
• Jessica Boyle of Escondido, a play mentioned in the first RP, is named after an actual person LB&T knew in real life.
• The reference to Ender McThair in Card of Ten established the anti-matter universe the characters were stuck in as synonymous with the Furtopia universe.
• In Pavlov's Checkmate, James uses "Nigel Munroe" as an alias, which happens to be the protagonist's name of a failed attempt to start a Darwin's Soldiers RP in the Bulbagarden forums.
• Not really science, but James finds a CD encrypted in BASIC.
  • It's actually binary, Shelton misspoke.
• A woman named Selina Kyle is mentioned.
• Shelton mentions being in Mensa in the first RP.
• The Dragonstorm experiment who first attacks the group is named Magneto.
• A single shot doctor in the 3rd RP is named Dr. McCoy.
  • I was positive that was a reference to Star Trek the Original Series's Dr. McCoy, especially since the doctor who discovered the body said, "He's dead!"
  • That works but canonically his first name is Henry but everyone calls him "Hank".
• Alfred's response to Zachary when he is asked if he can tip a 3 ton truck over.

Alfred: I exceed the strength of the strongest Human by quite a bit but I am not Colossus!

• Shelton makes an offhand comment about TV Tropes.
• Dr. Zanasiu sarcastically calls Dr. Shelton Professor X through the thought network.
• The fictional actor Stephen Di Georgi is named after two people that Serris knows in real life.
• Marcus uses the name Logan on his name tag.
• Stern's two assigned allies in the Schutzhund are competitors 1138 and 1337.
• After taking out Project Zeta, Shakila says this:

Shakila: Batman eat your heart out.

• It is mentioned that Dr. Stan Lee first discovered the mechanism by which psychic powers work in 1963.
• The first psi-experiment created is named Jean Gray and in a Shout-Out to X-Men The Last Stand she is eventually put down by the scientists after her telekinetic powers went out of control and killed several scientists.
  • Do note however, that the "telekinetic meltdown" manifested in the form of people getting violently thrown around, not in the form of people and objects getting disintegrated.
• A Sgt. Frank Castle is seen as a member of the United States Army
• A Chimera-based Dragonstorm experiment attacks Kiara and Hailey in the 3rd RP
• A certain elderly Dragonstorm researcher in the spin-off story New Divide goes by the codename of Old Mother Hubbard and she has a canine assistant.
• Drake has the inventory number of Experiment 626
• The town of Cornova is named after the author of the Poké Wars series.
• Shakila gives off the fake name of Violet Parr and the fake number of A113 as her experiment number.