History Animorphs / TropesIToP

* Edwin Winthrop, a character in Creator/KimNewman's ''Literature/AnnoDracula'' and ''Literature/DiogenesClub'' series, has a private plane named Katie after an old girlfriend.

** According to WordOfGod, Cassie and Marco are based off of Creator/KAApplegate and her husband, Creator/MichaelGrant, respectively. Applegate's first name is Katherine, so she's probably called "Kathy" a lot, which explains "Cassie", and "Marco" sounds pretty similar to "Michael".

** Sometimes obvious, sometimes not. According to Word Of God, ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' references are everywhere; "Yeerk" is a reference to "Yrch", the Elvish word for "Orc", and Elfangor and Aximili's names are references to Middle-Earth locations (Fangorn and Esgarrouth). Jake and Tom's (and possibly Rachel's) last name, Berenson, may also be a reference to Beren and Luthien (though it's also a real surname).

** The revelation of Jake's last name ([[spoiler:Berenson]], which is probably also Rachel's) is used to highlight the seriousness of the new situation.

*** James, the leader of the Auxiliary Animorphs, was crippled due to an accident rather than a genetic disease, so after demorphing from pigeon, he finds that he can walk again. Loren's blindness is cured by morphing. Marco also heals a dog bite [[spoiler:and the rabies virus that came along for the ride]] by morphing then demorphing.

** Also, Marco isn't very good at hiding the fact that he takes pleasure from killing Yeerks. In #19, he tells Cassie, "You don't make peace with parasites. You don't turn them around. You bury them."
*** It eventually subsides, though, as part of Marco's CharacterDevelopment; over the course of the series he becomes much less emotional, which makes him a more effective strategist.

** Marco and Jake's friendship is a theme in the series. Jake and Marco have been best friends since they were old enough to talk, and are immensely loyal to each other. It's said that Marco only initially joined the war effort because of his loyalty to Jake. Marco is the only one who ''never'' criticizes Jake when it's apparent that he's already under a lot of stress, notable because normally 99% of criticisms come from Marco.
*** Made even more heartwarming by the fact that Jake is the only person Marco really respects. Everyone else just brings out Marco's sarcastic DeadpanSnarker mockery.

** Thought-speech seems to be a physically measurable phenomenon (the Nesk had thought-speak detectors; Andalites have thought-speak microphones) present in the brains of some species that allows them to broadcast thoughts. Even more supported in that only linguistic information is usually transmitted, suggesting that the transmitter is located in the language centers of their brains. Apparently absolutely any brain can act as a receiver without any specialized neural structures.
*** Further supported while simultaneously providing an explanation for why the morphing technology grants thought-speech to those in morph. If an Andalite's thought-speech transmitter was a physical structure in their brains, they would lose it during a morph and thus be unable to thought-speak unless the morphing technology included that feature.