Book 17 of the Dresden Files.
As Harry and his allies prepare to go into their greatest battle yet, he marshals all of his abilities, including plenty of shout-outs.
- The Juggernaut from X-Men gets mentioned a few times in comparison to the heavy hitters on the field.
- Harry notes the Fomor have released the kraken.
- Harry’s unasked-for callsign is Booster Gold. He complains.
- When trading Badass Boasts with a Jotnar, Harry mentions the movies about Thor.
- The character of Drakul can be seen as a giant shout-out to the Castlevania franchise, complete with a similar moveset and power level.
- Perhaps subtler than these others, but Murphy taking out a Jotnar with a bazooka immediately brings to mind Buffy killing The Judge with a rocket launcher. Particularly relevant given how often Murphy is compared to Buffy.
- The illusion of the Carpenters being murdered is explicitly compared to The Fellowship of the Ring—the film version, in which Frodo and company watched their rooms being ransacked by Black Riders from across the street—by Molly.
- And another when Harry and Butters collapse a bridge to hinder Fomor forces:
- The relief charge of Marcone's army and the forces of Summer is already pretty reminiscent of the charge of the Rohirrim in The Return of the King, but the kicker is when River Shoulders takes a captured Jotun horn and blows it hard enough to crack it - just as Theoden does.
- Unintentionally, by Harry at least, to Acquisitions Incorporated:Harry: [shoots a tree with lightning] It started burning up with green flame, green flame—all hell was breaking loose.
- At the end of the book, Harry references The Dark Knight when he quips:Harry: I'm the hero Chicago needs, not the one it swiped on Tinder.
- Harry had expected Mab to put him through Sith boot camp.
- He also muses to Molly that he ought to put in a window like that of Doctor Strange to cover the hole Ethniu had blasted into his new castle.
- Molly herself plays Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" to introduce her attack.
- The “cursed” swords of Mab and her sidhe is very reminiscent of a curse in a different franchise.
- Either that, or the White Witch's icicle sword from Narnia.
- In the middle of a battle against several Fomor sorcerers, Harry keeps shouting "Boot to the head". He's trying to give Butter a literal instruction on how to get the necessary leverage to rip a chunk of rebar out of Mab's throat, but Butter keeps missing the point and finishes the line with "Nah nah?"Harry: Augh, you nerd!
- Mab and Harry note that "fear always leads to anger."
- Mab scornfully asks Ethniu "You do not know me very well, do you?"
- Harry argues that he has "Never been in an epic mythology fight quite this epic before."
- Listens-To-Wind shifting into a bear and dropping from the sky onto an enemy is a maneuver Druids call 'Rawrbombing.'
- Twice within a couple of pages fighting Sudhe are described as looking as if they were doing wire-work.
- The Huntsmen of Annuvin who gain more strength every time one is killed are almost certainly a subtle nod to The Chronicles of Prydain (supposedly, they come from Welsh mythology, but the spelling of Annuvin rather than Annwn gives it away).
- Harry gets to tell Mavra to "cease any and all supernatural activities" the same way Ray addressed Gozer. Knowing Harry, this was almost certainly intentional.
- When Harry needs to convince the "civilians" of Chicago that he is, in fact, a wizard, he produces a bolt of lightning between his hands with the magic words "Eggus Chennus".
