The Owl House has some examples of Cerebus Call-Back.
Episodes
- "Understanding Willow": Or, "Call Forward", as it were. When her posse question if she used to be friends with Willow, Amity turns it down by stating how "Blights are only friends with the select few". Later, when it's revealed her parents actually threatened Amity to break her friendship with Willow, they tell her she's not allowed to be her friend because "Blights only associate with the strongest of witchlings." This paints a picture how just how much they controlled their reluctant daughter to break off her friendship.
- Gus being fooled by the Glandus High students was played off in "Through the Looking Glass Ruins", with Gus being distracted by trying to scare them away from the Graveyard. "Labyrinth Runners" reveals that Gus has self-doubt and anxiety issues, and in the climax one of the illusions he's conjuring has the trio dancing around him in a circle, as Gus beats himself up over having been fooled by them.
- "King's Tide": Darius told Raine in "O Titan, Where Art Thou" that they're a terrible actor. Funny at the time, but unfortunately for the CATs' plan, Terra Snapdragon thought the same thing.
Characters
Luz Noceda
- "Hunting Palismen": Back in "The First Day", Luz wanting to study all the tracks was presented as a good bit of rebellion against the repressive coven system. Here it's presented as a character flaw, because just wanting to study magic in general isn't a strong enough conviction to attract a Palisman, especially when she can't even answer what she'd even do once she learns all she wants to learn. By contrast, Viney from the same episode manages to attract a Palisman with her desire to open a veterinary clinic one day.
- In the first episode "A Lying Witch and a Warden" it was established that Luz Noceda loves the Good Witch Azura books. And because of Luz's eccentric book report that unintentionally caused harm, her mother and principal decided to send her to Reality Check Camp so she could learn to separate fantasy from reality. "Thanks to Them" puts all those things into a darker light.
- Luz's love for the Good Witch Azura books was presented mostly as an endearing character quirk, and was often Played for Laughs. This episode throws her fixation on the series into a new light, as it's revealed her father gave her the first book right before he died, and she got really into the series when she read the book after his death. In that context, it's very likely that a lot of Luz's devotion to the series, along with just liking fantasy in general, stemmed from the connection to her late father, and the books and the fandom surrounding them providing her with a means to cope with her grief.
- Luz's eccentric book report whose consequences the series kicked off with turns out to have been an attempt to try and prove to her mother that her weirdness can be academically useful in order to cheer her up after her father's funeral.
- In "Witches Before Wizards", Luz exclaims that she "always suspected there was a reason no one understood [her] wacky antics back at home". As "For the Future" later reveals, the fact that no one in the human realm has made the attempt to understand Luz is a major source of insecurity for her, and her refusal to fully acknowledge that fact is implicitly what keeps her palisman from hatching until the end of the episode.
Hunter
- In "Any Sport in a Storm", Hunter has to come up with an alias on the fly, and after Flapjack seemingly suggests the name "Caleb", spends most of the episode going by "Caleb Jasper Bloodwilliams". "King's Tide" reveals that "Caleb" was the name of Belos's brother, Flapjack's original owner, and the man Hunter is a clone of. Hunter has an existential crisis at the idea that he technically is Caleb and will be blamed for Caleb's crimes as a witch hunter, and Belos starts openly referring to Hunter as Caleb as he starts projecting his unresolved grief around his brother's death onto Hunter.
