Shout Out / Darths & Droids: Literature

Shout-outs to literature in Darths & Droids.

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• The Aeneid: #1215 is titled "Beware Ubese Bearing Gifts".
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: #95 is titled "Just What I Choose it to Mean".
  • When Jim first gets the idea to take over playing Queen Amidala, his first reaction is to quote the Queen of Hearts: "Off with their heads!" #198.
  • #1412 is titled "The Mad Hooder" and has Palpatine quoting the White Queen ("six impossible things before breakfast") and the Cheshire Cat ("We're all mad here").
  • And then #1413, titled "Much Hair" has him add "It's no use going back to yesterday, I was a different person then", as well as quoting the Tim Burton film (see under Film).
• All Quiet on the Western Front: When Wicket leads the rebels to the back door of the Imperial base on Endor, by convincing Han that it's the front door (since Han wants to do a frontal assault), the strip title is "All Quite on the Western Back". #1403
  • #1433 is titled "The Wicket's Witch of the Western Front".
• —All You Zombies—: The unexpected Vader/Luke twist in the non-canon intermission episode #1191.
• Anarchist Cookbook: #1305 is titled "The Anakin's Cookbook".
• Animal Farm: C-3PO channel's Old Major's "Is it not crystal clear, comrades," speech to the animals in #1075, directing it to the oppressed droids of Cloud City.
  • In a strip full of pigs (and pig puns), the title of #1784 is "Some NPCs Are More Equal Than Others".
• Arabian Nights: #1001 (a significant strip number) is titled "Tales of Raving Spites".
  • #1210 is the 1001st night of Oola's "interpretive dance epic". The strip title "Charade is Hard" is a pun on "Scheherazade".
• Baba Yaga: Qui-Gon thinks the Hutts are big scary cottages "with giant chicken feet". #51.
• Better Than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love: #1668 is titled "Better Than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Krennic".
• The Bible:
  • #78 is titled "The Wagers of Jinn" (Romans 6:23).
  • #111, in which the ridiculously wasteful Qui-Gon Jinn returns to the spaceship on Tatooine, is titled "The Prodigal Master" (Luke 15:11-32).
    • Later, Pete returns to the game in a strip titled "The Prodigal Robot". #376
  • #189 is titled "The Root of All Chaotic Neutral" (1 Timothy 6:10).
  • #555 is titled "No Arrest For the Wicked" (Isaiah 48:22).
  • #571 is titled "Massacre of Innocence", referring to the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2:16-18).
  • #582 is titled "One of Thy Members Should Perish" (Matthew 5:29).
  • #690 is titled "Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death" (Psalm 23:4).
  • #728 is titled "Visited Upon the Son", and the next strip is titled "The Sins of the Father". (Exodus 20:5).
  • #881, in which Luke suspects Leia of being a traitor, is titled "Kiss of Jedis" (Matthew 26:47–50).
  • #952 is titled "Lamb to the Slaughter" (Isaiah 53:7).
  • #1042 is titled "The Trail is Hot, But the Vengeance is Cold" (alluding to "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak") (Matthew 26:41).
  • Twisting the Fourth/Fifth Commandment^note Fourth in the Catholic list, fifth in the Protestant/Jewish list., #1271 is titled "Thou Shalt Honour Thy Father, Thy Mother, and Thy Other Father" (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16).
  • #1382, titled "Words from the Bibble", has Sally riffing on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Revelation 6:1-8).
  • In the same strip, Sally continues narrating: "And in Death I found new [l]ife", echoing Christian resurrection (Romans 6:4).
  • And then more about the Horsemen's armies coming to wage war (Revelation 19:19).
  • #1420 is titled "In a Scanner, Darkly", echoing "in a mirror, darkly" (Corinthians 13:12).
  • In strips #1578 to #1580, Galen Erso's presentation about the Peace Moon echoes lines from Carol Marcus's presentation on Project Genesis from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In that film, Spock comments at the end of the presentation, "It literally is Genesis," while in the comic Chirrut Îmwe comments, "This literally is a revelation," referring to the book at the opposite end of the Bible. This is reinforced by Cassian talking about the Peace Moon bringing about "an Apocalypse".
  • #1686 is titled "Tower of Babble" (Genesis 11:1-9).
  • #1809 is titled "Am I My Brother's Creeper?" (Genesis 4:9).
• The Book of Common Prayer: #608 is titled "Ashes to Ashes, Trust to Trust".
• Bunduki: #1033 is titled "Fearless Master of the Jedi", after the title of J.T. Edson's fourth Bunduki book: Fearless Master of the Jungle.
• Callahan's Crosstime Saloon: When Pete makes a dreadful pun (on lambda calculus), the other long-term players throws peanuts at him, and Annie presumes it must be a tradition. #475.
• The Canterbury Tales: #299 is titled "The Replicanterbury Tales: The Protocol Droid's Tale".
• Cat's Cradle: Jim gets excited about a planet made of water, going through the physical properties of various phases of ice that would form, all the way up to ice X, but studiously ignoring ice-nine (but it's mentioned in The Rant). #1641
• The Catcher in the Rye: #1008 is titled "The Catcher on the Sly".
• A Christmas Carol: The GM tries to teach the players a lesson about min-maxing their character builds by having them observe a group of NPCs playing a roleplaying game. One of the NPC gamers says he put every character point into Speed, but then when running away from a fight fails to spot a rock, trips over, and dies. He says his previous character "had every point in Strength and got swallowed by a tortapo". And now his future character will have every point in Wisdom, to avoid getting into fights in the first place. Pete totally misses the point, exclaiming, "What the dickens?? This guy has no idea how to make a well-rounded min-maxed character." For good measure, the strip is titled "A Min-Max Carol".
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: A Stealth Pun is used in #1453 when the GM describes the Ewoc named Wunka as being "wiry".
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • #2021 is titled "Avoidage of the Down Treader" after the third book's title, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader".
  • #2029 is titled "I Travel the Woods Like the Pevensies".
• Cthulhu Mythos:
  • #1425 has Palpatine quoting Lovecraft's "Dagon" and "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn". The title is "The Terrible Old Man", one of Lovecraft's early stories.
  • And again in #1439, where Palpatine quotes "The Other Gods", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", and "The Hound". The title is "What the Moon Brings".
  • And he's still at in in #1452, where he quotes "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Thing on the Doorstep", and "The Shunned House".
  • In #1465 he quotes from "Herbert West: Re-Animator".
  • In #1468 he quotes from "Nemesis".
  • In #1478 he quotes from "The Tomb".
  • In #1483 he quotes from "The Tomb" again (twice), "The Crawling Chaos", "Hypnos" (twice), and "The Call of Cthulhu" again.
  • In #1761 Waldorf quotes a line from Lovecraft's poem "Ex Oblivione".
  • In #1812 Waldorf states, "That is not dead which can eternal lie..."
• Destination Unknown: The title of #1657.
• Dick and Jane: #1545 is titled "See, Spot, Run", referencing sentences used to refer to Dick and Jane's dog.
• Discworld: A strip featuring Cockney-esque salesmen droids insistently selling services the players neither want nor need is titled "Cuttin' Me Own Throat". #425
  • #832 is titled "Divors Alarums".
  • #1382: The Rant talks about how a good entrepreneur can profit from anything, including by running a sausage-inna-bun cart.
  • #1768 is titled "Inside Every Young Person is an Old Person Wondering What Happened", a reversal of a quote from Moving Pictures.
  • #1939. Pete asks for a "three-eighths Gripley", the same tool Ned Simnel asks Death for in Reaper Man. The strip title is "Charisn'tma", a word used to describe Nobby Nobbs in Feet of Clay.
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: #229 is called "Do Hovercars Dream of Electric Eels?".
  • #1380 drops hints about Sally's campaign being something to do with robots and humans in conflict, and is titled "I Have an (Electric) Dream".
• Doctor Dolittle: Mentioned explicitly by Pete in #637.
• The Domesday Book: #871 is titled "The Dome's Day Hook".
• Dr. Seuss: #397 is titled "One Sword, Two Sword, Red Sword, Blue Sword".
  • #773 is titled "Green Lasers and Ham".
  • #905 is titled "Do, Sir, You, Sir, Choose to Choose, Sir?" (from "Fox in Socks").
  • #1371 is titled "Owe the Places You'll Go".
  • #1723 is titled "One Ship, Two Ship, Sped Ship, Through Ship".
  • #1774 is titled "Luke's Lookalike Likes Larks Luke Likes" (from "Fox in Socks").
  • #2147 is titled "Who Sees Who Shoot Whose New Hex, Sir? Hux Sees X-wings Shoot His Hex, Sir!" (from "Fox in Socks")
• Dune: GM: "Giant worms in a desert is just silly." in #394, titled "Duned to Failure".
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The title of #1748: "Leaves, Stalks, and Shoots".
• Ender's Game: Punned in the title of #1309: "Endor's Name".
• Father Brown: #2407 is titled "The Incredulity of Fathier Brain".
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: #120 is titled "Fear and Loathing in Mos Espa".
  • #2042 is titled "Sphere and Roving and Lost Status".
• For Dummies: #1204 is titled "Base Invasion for Dummies".
  • #1615 is titled "Assassination for Dummies".
• For Whom the Bell Tolls: #813 is titled "For Whom the Smell Roils".
  • #1457 is titled "For Whom the Fun Rolls".
• Foundation Series: Cassian and K-2S0 talk about avoiding a pebble in the sky in #1592.
• Gone Girl: The title of #1609, verbatim.
• Great Expectations: #1568 is titled "Great Expectorations".
  • #1947 is titled "Grate Expectations".
• The Guns of Navarone: "big guns" are mentioned in #1851, which is titled "The Guns of Never-Own".
• Guns, Germs, and Steel (the book and the Mini Series): #1100 is titled "Guns, Jerks, and Steal".
• Harry Potter: (see also the Film section)
  • #513 is titled "Mace Windu and the Chamber of Secrets".
  • When Corey is asked to choose a new surname as cover, he picks "Potter", and Sally enthusiastically agrees. #741.
  • #818 is titled "Dianoga Alley".
  • The #918 intermission strip re-imagines Obi-Wan's meeting with Luke using the dialogue of Hagrid's first meeting with Harry Potter.
  • Yoda says that Luke has to learn to keep Vader from entering his mind, and offers to teach him the "Jedi skill" of Occlumency. #1063. Then in #1077, Yoda channels Dumbledore: "Open your mind to Vader, you must not."
  • Cassian talks with a very Hagrid-like minor character in #1542, who quotes lines such as "I shouldn' have told yeh that".
  • A trooper tells Cassian and Bria about the "Chamber of Secrets" in Scarif Tower, "Down that corridor, through the bathroom, third door on the left." #1665. And the strip title, "Stealth Level: 9.75", is a stealth reference to Platform 9 3/4.
  • C-3PO: "It's like Snape versus Quirrell at the Quidditch match!" #1797.
  • #1966:
    GM: Books! And cleverness! There are more important things - friendship and bravery and—
    Finn: Oh Rey, be careful!
  • Darth Kanata channels Ollivander: "But I did terrible things - great, yes, but terrible." #2012.
  • Pete, as Rey, quotes Arthur Weasley: "Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain." #2033
  • Chewbacca channels Ron Weasley: "That Galen Erso is a little scary sometimes. Brilliant, but scary." #2045
  • KYLO NABIDALO REN -> BOY ANAKIN ROLLED #2178
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  • "Here I am, brain the size of a planet(...)" #72.
  • In the non-canon extra strip where Qui-Gon actually does Summon a Bigger Fish (and crushes Padmé with it), a bowl of petunias lands a moment after the fish. #208. The author's note continues it by mentioning it is helping to reduce stress and tension, as the Guide did.
  • #320, about overcoming translation difficulties, is titled "You'll Need to Have this Bigger Fish in Your Ear".
  • "How depressingly stupid." #422.
  • #568 is titled "So Long and Thanks for All the Bigger Fish".
  • "My name... is not important." #721.
  • #746:
    Luke: Wow, I've never seen so many people, and... things.
    C-3PO: The things are also people.
  • Darth Vader: "Looks like a moon, moves like a moon, steers like a cow." #868.
  • When Boba Fett says "To my destiny", Admiral Piett repeats the line and then explains "I'm sorry. I thought you were proposing a toast." This is the same reaction Ford Prefect has to the line "To business" during the discussion with the mice. #1042.
  • #983 is titled "Paranoid Droid".
  • #994 is titled "Space is Small. Really Small".
  • #1142, in which Lando calls for "last drinks" like the doomed barman just before the Earth is destroyed by the Vogon fleet, is titled "There Was a Terrible Ghastly Silence".
  • #1753 is titled "Pan-Galactic Goggle Master".
  • In #2166, Pete speculates that a device is either a hyperdrive or "can make all the molecules in everyone’s undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left".
  • In Backstory #166, after Qi’ra plugs L3's processor into the Millennium Falcon, he complains that "I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side."
• The Hobbit: Bilbo should have listened to The Rant for #763 before hosting a dinner party.
  • R2-D2 implies he had a riddle contest with the dragonsnake in the Dagobah swamp. #1050, titled "If It Loses, We Eats It".
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The title of #549 is "I Have No Moth, Yet Ice Cream".
• Illuminatus!: Bria Tharen attempts to pull off a Bavarian fire drill to trick the Toprawa gate guards into letting Rebel ships through the planetary shield in #1681, titled "Briatharian Fire Drill".
• I, Robot: #1287, where Salacious Crumb picks out C-3PO's eye, is titled "Eye, Robot".
• Jack Ryan: Padmé: "We're a clear and present danger!" #589, the title of which is "Patriot Fears", a blend of "Patriot Games" and "The Sum of All Fears".
• James and the Giant Peach: The title of #1596 is "Flames and the Giant Peace".
• James Bond: Backstory #49 is titled "Bond; Flames Bond".
• Journey to the West: The title of strip #1563, in which the rag-tag party, including Chirrut (a monk), are literally taken on a westward journey from Jedha City.
• A Kiss Before Dying: #986 is titled "A Kiss Before Die-ing".
• Lensman: Allotropic Iron torpedoes #415.
• The Little Engine That Could: #1054 is titled "The Little Jedi that Could".
• The Little Prince: After Pete gave her a copy of The Prince earlier, Sally reciprocates by giving Pete a copy of this. #634.
• The Lord of the Rings: Name dropped as a story Jim is confusing with a previous game they actually played, in #260.
  • The Council of Elrond is referenced in #308, titled "The Council of El Ronco".
  • #383, titled "Fly, You Fools".
  • And then later, #440 is titled "Fry, You Fools".
  • Anakin channels Galadriel on Naboo: "I will rule with my Queen of Light. She shall be loved by all as I love her." #600
  • #763, titled "One Does Not Simply Walk Through Mos Eisley":
    Obi-Wan: Always remember, Luke, the Orb is trying to evade its quester. It wants to be lost.
    R2-D2: [quietly] My precious...
  • #781 is titled "Helm's Deep".
  • #842 is titled "The One Thing" and is about R2-D2 wanting to retrieve the Lost Orb, which had previously been alluded to as an analogue of the One Ring.
  • #992 is titled "Speak, < doip >, and Enter".
  • Pete has dice with the numerals written in Quenya. #1019.
  • Obi-Wan says "Fool of a Luke!" when Luke opens his psychic connection to Vader to find out where he is, echoing Gandalf's "Fool of a Took!"
  • Actually from The Peoples of Middle-earth, but close enough: R2-D2 uses a tongue twister as a shibboleth to prove he is not being controlled by the digitised mind of Nute Gunray in strip #1147, in a scene visually referencing the split personality between Gollum and Smeagol in the film of The Lord of the Rings. The strip title is "You Say Serindë, I Say Þerindë, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off", referring to "The Shibboleth of Fëanor"from Tolkien's The Peoples of Middle-earth.
  • The GM's original adventure plan for Episode V (#1189) involved the PCs recruiting the Force ghosts of many deceased Jedi to help them win an epic battle against the Empire, just like the Battle of Pelennor Fields.
  • The concept of Force ghosts helping the PCs is alluded to again when the ascended midi-chlorians of past Jedi decide to accompany Luke from their home on Dagobah, in #1312. The strip is titled "It Worked for Aragorn".
  • Pete comments that "skipping third dessert" is restraint for a Hobbit, in #1497.
  • Jim (as Kyle Katarn) echoes Théoden's speech at the start of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, only twisting it around to urge his followers to fight a sandstorm, in #1591.
  • The GM modifies Galadriel's speech about "things that should not have been lost were forgotten", while revealing information about the second Peace Moon, in #1980.
  • #2008 is titled "The Battle of Deep Helms".
  • Pete talks explicitly about Frodo and the Ring quest in #2043.
• A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates: Explicitly mentioned by Pete in #1473.
• Moby-Dick: By way of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Boba Fett quotes Khan's "He tasks me" monologue. #1041.
  • And in the non-canon bonus strip #1528, Boba Fett does the full on "To the last, I will grapple with thee" speech. The strip is titled "Mopey-Shtick; or, The Wail".
  • Finn's buddy Gil quotes Ahab as he dies: "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Finn!" #1829
• A Modest Proposal: #1578 is titled "An Immodest Proposal".
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: #1980 is titled "The Moon is a Lost Fortress".
• The Most Dangerous Game: General Grievous, being chased and hunted by Obi-Wan: "The most dangerous game! Exhilarating, is it not?" #544.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four: #1984 (appropriately enough) is titled "Double Plus Ungood".
• "Nightfall (1941)": Evoked in a discussion of the possibility of eclipsing both of Tatooine's suns. Jim comes up with a plausible explanation (he works in astro-geophysics), but when the GM awards him "five stars", Jim says that five is right out, implying that producing a nightfall-inducing eclipse in a system with as many as five suns is implausible ("Nightfall" has six suns, making it even less plausible). #1581
• Night Shift: #578 is titled "Children of the Scorn".
• Nursery Rhyme:
  • #1427 is titled "Little Po Beep".
• The Old Man and the Sea: #647 is titled "The Young Man and the Lava".
• Pride and Prejudice: In #1350 Luke takes the step of "pride" on the Path to the Light Side. The strip is titled "Without Prejudice".
  • Luke talks about Pride being the opposite of Humility, in #1389, titled "Hue and Humility".
• The Prince: Pete gives Sally a copy of this book in #583. Mentioned again in #619.
• The Princess and the Pea: #677 is titled "The Princess and the Pete".
  • #798 is titled "The Princess and the Orb".
  • #1116 is titled "The Princess and the Wookiee".
• The Princess Bride: "Hello. My name was Greedo Solo. You killed my father. Prepare to die." and "I want my father back, you son of a bantha!!" #2182
• Sense and Sensibility: #230 is titled "Sense and Sensitivity".
  • And later, in the courtroom scene: "Sentence and Insensibility". #357.
  • Later again: "Scale and Scalability". #1713.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: #812 is called "A Series of Unfortunate Vents".
• The Sheep Look Up: #1765 is titled "The Sheep! Look Out!"
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • "Alimentary." Obi-Wan twists Holmes's catch-phrase in #258.
  • #411 is titled "Elementary, My Dear Obi-Wan".
  • "Minions, the game is afoot!". #470.
  • #1097 is titled "Eliminate the Impossible", alluding to the quote "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".
  • "The game is afoot!" again when R2 works out the "real mission" buried in the GM's ad-libbed scrambling, in #1756.
  • The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: #50 is titled "The 23% Solution".
    • #1971 is titled "The Three-Per-Cent Solution".
  • Backstory #218's title "A Study in Crimson" is a clear reference to A Study in Scarlet.
• Snow Crash: The scene where Luke's speeder crashes into the snow on Hoth is titled "Downfall of the Protagonist Hero". #976.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • In a non-canon intermission strip, Qui-Gon is appointed Queen by Amidala, and immediately spouts a quote from Cersei Lannister: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die." #1523
  • Pete calls Corey "my sweet summer child" in #1530.
  • "Hondo Ohnaka’s daughter sends her regards!" #2184
  • See also Game of Thrones in the Live Action TV section below.
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: #1328 is titled "The Guy Who Got in With the Code".
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: #434 is titled "Heckle and Hide".
• A Tale of Two Cities: GM: It was the best of times for Jabba, it was the worst of times for our intrepid band of Rebels. #1217
  • Finn's buddy Gil quotes, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." in #1829.
• Tales of Troy and Greece: When Bodhi joins the Rebellion in #1627 he quotes "your foes are my foes" from Medea's promise to Theseus in Andrew Lang's retelling of the myth: "I swear by the Water of Styx that your friends are my friends, and your foes are my foes, always, to the end."
• The Three Little Pigs: #1788 is titled "House of Straw".
• Through the Looking Glass: #1540 riffs on the poem The Walrus and the Carpenter, with the title "The Time Has Come, the Players Said, to Talk of Many Things".
• To Kill a Mockingbird: "To begin with, this case should never have come to trial." #356.
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Referring to the Sarlacc, #1252 is titled "Twenty Thousand Legs Under the Sand".
• The Twilight Saga: Nien Nunb reveals a pathetic sounding infatuation with Mon Mothma in #1402, which is titled "Still a Better Love Story than Twilight".
  • The players (mostly Jim) being annoyed that the campaign Annie ran featured vampires that sparkle in the daylight.
• Valley of the Dolls: #715 is titled "Valley of the Rolls".
• War and Peace: #407 is titled "Peace and War".
• War of the Worlds: Sally riffs on "regarded this Earth with envious eyes" in her last sentence in #1381. Chirpa calls it a "War of the Stars".
  • Followed up by "the Forces of Darkness and Regulation, which swarm and multiply like creatures in a drop of water." #1383, titled "The Ides of Mars".
• Wuthering Heights: #614 is titled "Mothering Fights".
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: #52 is titled "Zen and the Art of Spaceship Maintenance".
  • Annie, out of character, referring to her father: "He taught me the Zen of car maintenance." #884.