Sandbox / Paper Faces

• Abominable Auditorium: The story is set in the Opéra Impériale, a glamorous performance space smack in the middle of Yue'nan's capital Shenglong. However, because of the Ghost's machinations, it is hardly a safe place, with cast and crew getting into accidents whenever the specter is displeased. The last straw was the chandelier crash that killed a stagehand.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The game is a mixture of Andrew Lloyd Webber's and Maury Yeston/Arthur Kopit's takes on the Gaston Leroux novel.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Marie Cholet, an elven woman whose husband is a dwarf, is insistent that ghosts do not exist. She is proven right in that the Opera Ghost is a corrupted eladrin and not an undead or restless spirit, but ghosts do exist in this setting.
• Casting Couch: Madame Cholet is under the impression that Charlotte is stringing two people along for her benefit, the Viscount and the Ghost.
• Four Is Death: After the fourth letter has been received and ignored, the chandelier crashes and kills a stagehand.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Like her novel counterpart, some Lloyd Webber Christines, and some Takarazuka Christines, Charlotte has curly blonde hair. The curls are natural, but the blonde is a dye.
• Henpecked Husband: Claude Cholet is constantly exasperated at and apologetic for his wife's conduct.
• Innocent Soprano: Charlotte and Marie are both sopranos, though the former plays it straight like her counterpart Christine as a sweet, shy former chorus girl, while the other is a difficult, overbearing prima donna.
• Jerkass Has a Point: The Ghost has clearly let its personal feelings color its judgment and knowledge of theatre. It proposes the casting of a young woman as the major role for The Emperor's Tower - an older, mature concubine who had been forgotten by the despot, who counsels the male lead. While the shy girl hardly fits the role she was assigned to instead (the manipulative, scheming young concubine who charms the Emperor and everyone who isn't the two protagonists), and Marie Cholet definitely did that out of spite, she is not suitable for the lead female role of Dan Thiem. Initially Sariel thinks the managers are cheapskates who refuse to pay a normal consultant's fee of 200 gold, but Marie indignantly points out that she refuses to pay for worthless "advice".
• Mythology Gag:
  • Christine Daaé's stand-in is named Charlotte Bloom, referring back to her rival Carlotta Giudicelli, and the story of Little Lotte that she shared with Raoul. "Bloom" evokes a flower, calling to mind Carlotta's snide remark about Christine being "our little flower" in Notes II.
  • Mr. Đường, the fired manager, has a surname that's homophonic with "road" in Vietnamese. In the Yeston/Kopit musical, the former manager of the Opera was named Carrière, a topographic name for someone whose ancestors lived near a major road.
  • The outside of the Opera Impériale is portrayed with a picture of the Hanoi Opera, which was modeled after the Palais Garnier in Paris - where the Phantom media are set.
  • The concept of the opera managers being a diva and her hen-pecked husband is straight from Yeston/Kopit, only in that one, their names are Alain and Carlotta Cholet rather than Claude and Marie. "Claude" is a shoutout to actor Claude Rains, a famous portrayer of the Phantom.
  • Valeria, the ballet mistress, is named after Christine's adoptive mother figure Mama Valerius, and merged with Madame Giry's role in the Lloyd Webber musical as ballet mistress and liaison for the Phantom.
  • The Viscount de Limoux is an amalgamation of Christine's love interests in the two musicals, the Viscount Raoul de Chagny and Count Philippe de Chandon, "the Champagne King". The oldest recorded sparkling wine is the Blanquette de Limoux. This Viscount is both Charlotte's childhood friend (like Raoul), and introduced her to the Opera (like Philippe) when they reconnect again as adults.
• Shout-Out:
  • An accident in a pas de deux caused an actress to fall into the orchestra pit when her partner lost her grip. This happened in the 2007 Takarazuka production of Elisabeth with Mizu Natsuki as Death and Ouki Kaname as Rudolf.
  • The Emperor's Tower is this universe's take on an operatic adaptation of Vũ Như Tô by Vietnamese playwright Nguyễn Huy Tưởng. Both the fictional and real shows are considered classics in their respective canons.
• Show Within a Show: A revival of the popular and well-loved opera The Emperor's Tower is at the center of the drama.