History GeniusBonus / LiveActionTV

** "The Target" features a psychopathic ([[spoiler:and possibly cannibalistic]]) hunter calling himself "Richard Connell". Richard Connell wrote a short story called ''Series/TheMostDangerousGame'', in which the [[spoiler:protagonist is hunted by a psychopath, as sport, and winds up killing him]] in a plot deliberately echoed by the episode.

** According to the producers, {{sitcom}}s generally run on "the 70% joke", where 70% of the TV-watching audience will get the joke and laugh, while ''Frasier'' often had "the 20% joke". It didn't seem to hurt them, though. Then it's parodied when Creator/KelseyGrammer and Creator/DavidHydePierce guest-starred on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':

** While sneaking into the Initiative during the fourth season, the Scooby Gang are surrounded by enemy soldiers. Buffy quickly grabs their leader as a hostage with a crossbow to his head:

* TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir has an episode where Will is trying to impress a college girl who Uncle Phil has invited to dinner. During dinner she mentions that her favorite play of Shakespeare's is Theatre/HenryV. Will quips that he finds that interesting, since sequels usually aren't very good. Not only is Theatre/HenryV really a sequel, it's also a prequel, and the last written play of an eight-play sequence.

** The [=UnSub=] in "I Love You, Tommy Brown" defends her relationship with [[spoiler:a teenage boy who was a student of hers]] by arguing that Henry VIII's first wife was twenty years older than him[[note]]Not quite; Catherine of Aragon was only six years older than Henry VIII[[/note]], and that RomeoAndJuliet were teenagers as well. Now that might sound all very intelligent and cultured, but think about how both those relationships turned out...

* ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' included many of these (hell, the group met in [[{{Oxbridge}} Cambridge University]] for goodness sakes!), mostly references to literature, history, philosophy, animals, science and art. They would also throw in obscure references to British cricket players, villages, TV stars, politicians,... Hell, the ''Cheese Shop'' sketch is just a bunch of cheese brands summarized together. In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNRkhJc2d_w words]] of Matt Stone, "They'll do that joke that they know only 20% of the audience is gonna get, so you know that 80% is not gonna be with you, but you know that 20% is [[JustForFun/OneOfUs gonna follow you to the grave.]]"

* In a Season 3 episode of ''Series/HappyDays'', Richie and Ralph are watching a [[UsefulNotes/NationalFootballLeague NFL game]] between the Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals. When the Bears quarterback makes a bad pass, Richie called for the backup to come in. Ralph dismissed this, as the Bears backup quarterback was "washed up. He's old. He's 30. He's got no future." Richie's response was "George Blanda has two or three good years left." The actual joke was that the episode was set in 1956. At the time of its broadcast (1975), Blanda was [[BadassGrandpa still an active NFL player]] (He'd play the last of his record 26 seasons the following year)

* ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' included many of these (hell, the group met in [[{{Oxbridge}} Cambridge University]] for goodness sakes!), mostly references to literature, history, philosophy, animals, science and art. They would also throw in obscure references to British cricket players, villages, TV stars, politicians,... Hell, the ''Cheese Shop'' sketch is just a bunch of cheese brands summarized together. In the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNRkhJc2d_w words]] of Matt Stone, "They'll do that joke that they know only 20% of the audience is gonna get, so you know that 80% is not gonna be with you, but you know that 20% is [[OneOfUs gonna follow you to the grave.]]"

* ''{Series/Smallville}'' had the episode "Slumber" where the plot focused on a comatose girl who was pulling people into shared dreams for help. All the songs featured in the episode were by [=REM=] who took their name from the acronym for "rapid eye movement', a sign of dreaming.

* In ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'', the Overlords (leaders of the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Inves]]) have their own language, much like past ''Kamen Rider'' antagonists. However, the Overlord language was included in the show's closed captioning script, which lead to one especially clever fan to discovering that it's actually a fairly simple substitution cipher for Japanese, allowing it to be translated and offering early insight into some major plot points. Fansub group [=Æ=]sir devised their own version of the cipher so English-speaking fans could work it out for themselves.

* TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir has an episode where Will is trying to impress a college girl who Uncle Phil has invited to dinner. During dinner she mentions that her favorite play of Shakespeare's is HenryV. Will quips that he finds that interesting, since sequels usually aren't very good. Not only is HenryV really a sequel, it's also a prequel, and the last written play of an eight-play sequence.

* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory''.
** How about with [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 Cylon toast]]? To the general public, funny because Sheldon is making toast with scifi characters on it. To nerds, funnier because [[DontExplainTheJoke Cylons are often called toasters]].
** Also, the equations on the whiteboard are always real and recognisable to physicists. They have a physics professor helping them out.
** In fact, the equations on the boards change throughout each season in a logical manner as the characters work on and solve the problems depicted.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': While sneaking into the Initiative during the fourth season, the Scooby Gang are surrounded by enemy soldiers. Buffy quickly grabs their leader as a hostage with a crossbow to his head:

** In "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" there's an example that's either this or CriticalResearchFailure on the writers' part. Amy casts her love spell by invoking "Diana, goddess of love and the hunt". Anyone who's savvy on their Roman mythology knows the spell is going to backfire because Diana was '''NOT''' the goddess of love, Venus was. It's probably why the spell had the opposite effect and enchanted every woman except the intended target (Cordelia).
** While to the vast majority of the show's audience the Greek letters Willow writes on Tara's back in "Restless" will be undecipherable, the inscription is an invocation to Aphrodite, which is responded to by the goddess's promise to make whoever the poet desires love her back in return "if she does not love, soon she shall love - even unwilling". The particular verse has special meaning for the pair - Sappho and Aphrodite as representative of their being lesbian and witches respectively, but also on another level because Willow in the future will indeed use magic to sustain her love with Tara.

** In the Season 6 premiere, Anya corrects Xander when he worries that Buffy will come back as a zombie and eat their brains. Anyone savvy on their mythology knows that zombies eating brains is NewerThanTheyThink and only popularised by ''Film/TheReturnOfTheLivingDead'' (made in ''1986''). Even before that, the zombie as we know it today is influenced more by ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968''. What Anya corrects Xander on is that the original Afro-Caribbean legends had zombies being resurrected and controlled by a specific person.

** According to the producers, {{sitcom}}s generally run on "the 70% joke", where 70% of the TV-watching audience will get the joke and laugh, while ''Frasier'' often had "the 20% joke". It didn't seem to hurt them, though. Then it's parodied when Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce guest-starred on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':

** In one episode, Toby tells the president, "Your favorite movie was on last night." They then spend a few minutes (mis)quoting and discussing it, and Toby eventually applies AnAesop from the movie to their current situation. But neither of them ever actually says the name of the movie. (It's ''The Lion in Winter''.)

* In a much less genius of a bonus, over the course of several episodes ''Series/NewsRadio'' had a running gag concerning every time a character goes to a movie theater, the same terrible movie is playing, though its name is never mentioned. Astute viewers will pick up that the crappy movie is John Travolta's ''Film/{{Michael}}''.

*** "Deep Breath," Peter Capaldi's first full episode as the Twelfth Doctor, is full of these.
*** In one scene, the Doctor rambles about his new face, insisting that he's seen it somewhere before and asking "why did I choose this face? Who frowned me this face?" Though this could easily be dismissed as typical post-regeneration rambling/confusion (8 had amnesia, 10 fell into a coma, and 11 looted Amelia's fridge), it's actually a reference to Caecilius, the Roman marble merchant whom David Tennant's 10th Doctor saved from Mt. Vesuvius. Caecilius was portrayed by Capaldi. [[spoiler:It was later explained that the Doctor chose Caecilius's face to remind him who he is: even if it "violates the rules of time," he is the Doctor and he saves people.]]
*** The whole episode is sort of a loose sequel to [[spoiler:"The Girl in the Fireplace."]] The writers drop hints throughout that the antagonists are similar ([[spoiler:rogue repair droids cannibalizing humans for parts]]), and finally reveal that [[spoiler: the antagonists are from the sister ship to the SS Madame de Pompadour]], but if you haven't seen the "prequel" episode, all the hints and the final reveal will totally fly under your radar, just as they fly under the Doctor's. He never gets it.
** A chalkboard in the background of "An Unearthly Child" episode 1 has the quadratic formula written on it.

** "The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Eve" is based around this trope. Since it's the companion's DayInTheLimelight and the Doctor is missing for most of the story, the story foregoes the usual HollywoodHistory settings to focus on a historical event that was and is fairly obscure to British audiences (the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day). Viewers are presumably supposed to identify with Steven's [[PinballProtagonist lack of any idea what's going on]] and the retelling of the historical events is given much more attention than usual. If you're familiar with the history, you end up identifying with the Doctor instead and the whole sympathy of the plot changes.
** The story ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS24E4Dragonfire Dragonfire]]'' had a sequence in which the Doctor distracts a guard by discussing semiotics with him. The real joke... the dialogue came verbatim from a semiotics text examining ''Doctor Who''. ''And'', the Doctor's line is semiotics-jargon for something like "The less relevant an in-joke is to the story, the greater its cultural significance". Particularly impressive for a story which came out way back in 1987, before such post-modern humor appeared everywhere.

** The episode "[=QPid=]" is a ''lot'' funnier to anyone who's seen ''Film/TheAdventuresOfRobinHood'', as it's basically a WholePlotReference, down to several shots and some of the background music cues. It also makes Vash's complete inversion of the Marian character all the more hilarious.

** A much more subtle one for those who know their advanced chemistry, biochemistry, organic chemistry, or Latin comes up in Time's Arrow, Pt. 1 (Season 5, Episode 26). Upon finding what appears to be his own head stuck in a cave from the 18th century, the android Data is asked if it could be his EvilTwin Lore. Data replies that Lore has a type "L" TechnoBabble, while Data has a type "R." Logically, the head is Data's, and Data's fate is for his head to be in that cave somehow. Left is ''sinister'' in both stereochemistry and Latin, so we have here a subtle callout to the very old school trope, ASinisterClue.

** In the Season 6 premiere, Anya corrects Xander when he worries that Buffy will come back as a zombie and eat their brains. Anyone savvy on their mythology knows that zombies eating brains is NewerThanTheyThink and only popularised by ''Film/ReturnOfTheLivingDead'' (made in ''1986''). Even before that, the zombie as we know it today is influenced more by ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968''. What Anya corrects Xander on is that the original Afro-Caribbean legends had zombies being resurrected and controlled by a specific person.

*** In one scene, the Doctor rambles about his new face, insisting that he's seen it somewhere before and asking "why did I chose this face? Who frowned me this face?" Though this could easily be dismissed as typical post-regeneration rambling/confusion (8 had amnesia, 10 fell into a coma, and 11 looted Amelia's fridge), it's actually a reference to Caecilius, the Roman marble merchant whom David Tennant's 10th Doctor saved from Mt. Vesuvius. Caecilius was portrayed by Capaldi. [[spoiler:It was later explained that the Doctor chose Caecilius's face to remind him who he is: even if it "violates the rules of time," he is the Doctor and he saves people.]]
*** The whole episode is sort of a loose sequel to [[spoiler:"The Girl in the Fireplace."]] The writers drop hints throughout that the antagonists are similar ([[spoiler: rogue repair droids cannibalizing humans for parts]]), and finally reveal that [[spoiler: the antagonists are from the sister ship to the SS Madame de Pompadour]], but if you haven't seen the "prequel" episode, all the hints and the final reveal will totally fly under your radar, just as they fly under the Doctor's. He never gets it.

** Ironically, Sheridan is probably the real Garibaldi expy: CrazyAwesome general specialized in coming BackFromTheBrink and who wins battles even when his side has ''already'' lost the war? Check, Check and re-Check. Plus the events described in Severed Dreams resemble a lot the events of the siege of Montevideo.
* The ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' episode "The Betrayal" is based on Creator/HaroldPinter's ''Betrayal'' and is far funnier if you've seen the play first. In one episode Elaine's boyfriend takes Jerry's parents to the art museum and his father spends the rest of the episode obsessing about how Claude Monet must have been nearsighted to paint waterlilies like that. This parallels the Jewish scholar Max Nordau's theory of ''Entartete Kunst'' (Degenerate Art), the belief that the oddities of 20th Century modern art reflected various disorders on the part of the artists, such as impressionism being symptomatic of a diseased visual cortex. This idea was famously (and somewhat ironically, considering Nordau's background) co-opted by the Nazis as justification for their censorship of the art world.

** They also centered a storyline around a birthday party thrown for a Hapsburg. If you knew who the Habsburgs were, there's a chance you could know where things were going at the start of the episode when the name Hapsburg is first mentioned, but either way, the Habsburg in question is so ridiculously inbred to cause everyone to laugh on sight.

** In "Trivia," Robert California, while discussing the various unpleasantries of living in Florida, remarks, "Alligators are ''dinosaurs'', Dwight. You know that, right?" Dwight makes a pained face and replies, "[[ArtisticLicensePaleontology Mmm... it's complicated]]."

* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' introduces a character named Janus in an episode featuring time travel into the distant past and stasis. In myth Janus was The God Of Memory And Sleep; seems more than a little suitble to me.
** Knowledge of myth, history, physics, and millitary strategy, while rarely unexplained, can occassionally make moments in Stargate more fun.

** In another episode, Bartlet learns that his daughter Ellie, who seemed to be manipulating him by appearing to express confidence in him, [[spoiler: was simply, [[SincerityMode honestly]], expressing confidence in him.]] He just says, "My God, ''Theatre/KingLear'' is a good play" (in that play, the daughter Lear thinks is the least loyal is the most).

* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' contains constant references to philosophy, religion, literature, and science. Is the casual viewer really expected to understand the significance of someone named John Locke, or their using the alias [[spoiler: Jeremy Bentham]]? Plus, the plot became increasingly complicated as the show has gone on, with innumerable callbacks to previous episodes, making it extremely hard for new viewers to understand what is going on.

*** The whole episode is sort of a loose sequel to [[spoiler: "The Girl in the Fireplace."]] The writers drop hints throughout that the antagonists are similar ([[spoiler: rogue repair droids cannibalizing humans for parts]]), and finally reveal that [[spoiler: the antagonists are from the sister ship to the SS Madame de Pompadour]], but if you haven't seen the "prequel" episode, all the hints and the final reveal will totally fly under your radar, just as they fly under the Doctor's. He never gets it.

* ''Series/Gotham'': when Cobblepot goes to meet with Gordon in ''Arkham'', he tells Barbara his name is Peter Humboldt. A fitting alias, since there's a real animal called the Humboldt penguin (it lives in South America and is also known as the Chilean or Peruvian penguin).

'''Sheldon:''' ''[naively]'' And talked about physics with them!

-->'''Howard:''' I bet he picked up a lot of cute grad students in this bad boy.\\

* An episode of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': Sam and Dean meet an author who has been inexplicably writing sci-fi novels about characters named "Sam and Dean" whose monster-fighting adventures are [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs exact retellings of their own story.]] When confronted, the author has a moment of realization when he admits that his still-unfinished new novel is kind of inspired by KurtVonnegut. Dean asks "''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive'' Vonnegut or ''Literature/CatsCradle'' Vonnegut?" and he replies "[[AuthorAvatar Kilgore Trout]] Vonnegut." The references are not elaborated upon, it's just assumed that the viewers understand what that means. Doubles as a HiddenDepths moment for [[BookDumb Dean]], since that kind of question would generally be in [[TheSmartGuy Sam's]] arena.