Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Shout Out / Marathon Expanded Universe

Go To

The Game Mods for Bungie's Marathon that we've collectively dubbed the Marathon Expanded Universe have taken cues from their source material by including a ton of Shout-Outs, especially in level names.

    open/close all folders 
    Tempus Irae Levels 

Most of these have been explicitly confirmed by their creators:

  • "Ain't My Bitch" - first song of Metallica's Load (1996)
  • "Gates of Delirium" - first song of Yes' Relayer (1974)
  • "Downward Spiral" - Nine Inch Nails' second album The Downward Spiral (1994)
  • "Brain Damage" - penultimate song of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
  • "The Revealing Science of God" - first song of Yes' Tales from Topographic Oceans (1974)
  • "Never Satisfied" - seventh song of Judas Priest's debut album Rocka Rolla (1974)note 
    • "What's in a Name?" - a number of sources; originally a Shout-Out to Shakespeare (it's in Romeo and Juliet); it's also the name of a game show (which the level creator claimed as the source of the puzzle name) and a section on the Marathon's Story page.
  • "You Gotta Sin to Get Saved" - 1993 album by singer-songwriter Maria McKee
  • "KMG-365" - reference to the TV show Emergency Squad 51
  • "Il grande silenzio" (secret level from 2020 remake) - 1968 spaghetti western directed by Sergio Corbucci and with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, named The Great Silence in English-speaking markets.
  • "Mt. Vesuvius 2 - Electric Boogaloo" - play on Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (and of course a case of Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo). (Since Redux recombines the two "Mt. Vesuvius" levels into one, this title only appears in the 1997/2006 release.)
  • "For Your Eyes Only" - James Bond film
  • "The Library of Babel" (interlude level added to Redux to link the main game and The Lost Levels) - short story by Jorge Luis Borges, originally published as "La biblioteca de Babel" in his collection El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths, 1941), which in turn was reprinted in full in his widely-republished collection Ficciones (Fictions, 1944). It was first translated to English in 1962 - twice, as it turns out: one by James E. Irby in the collection Labyrinths and another by Anthony Kerrigan in a collaborative translation of Ficciones.

The sequel Tempus Irae II: The Lost Levels itself is a reference to Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, one of the most infamous cases of No Export for You, Mission-Pack Sequel, and Sequel Difficulty Spike - fitting in the latter two cases as it includes the same textures and is quite a bit harder than the original Tempus Irae, though not to the point of Platform Hell as the Mario game was (except maybe on the highest difficulties).

  • "Prison Sex" - second song of Tool's Undertow (1993)
  • "This Is the First Day" - first line of Nine Inch Nails' "Wish", the second track of their EP Broken (1992)
  • "Big Man with a Gun" - another Nine Inch Nails song, the ninth track of the aforementioned The Downward Spiral (1994)
  • "I Do Not Want This" - yet another Nine Inch Nails song, this time the eighth track from The Downward Spiral (1994)
  • "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" - named after one of the most infamous and frequently parodied opening lines in literary history, appearing in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford, and later in A Wrinkle in Time and countless Peanuts strips.
  • "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" - named after the 1986 debut album of Swedish Doom Metal band Candlemass, probably their most famous and influential album

    Other Tempus Irae shout-outs 
  • Most of the terminal images on Italian levels include facsimiles of Leonardo's trademark backwards handwriting. Most of the second image in The Gates of Delirium (the page starting with "...the purpose, whatever it may be") is from Petrarch's Canzoniere #365. This sonnet also appears in the text of a terminal from "Hang to Dry", so it is described below. The first few lines are from Canzoniere #269 (nice). They read (with words that are omitted from the image in parentheses):
    (O nostra vita ch'è sí bella in) vista,
    com perde agevolmente in un matino
    quel che 'n molti anni a gran pena s'acquista!
    • A. S. Kline translates this as:
      O this life of ours, which is so fair, outwardly,
      how easily it loses in a morning
      what many years with great pain have acquired!
  • A secret terminal in "The Revealing Science of God" contains an excerpt of Petrarch's Canzoniere #22:
    Con lei foss'io da che si parte il sole,
    et non ci vedess'altri che le stelle,
    sol una nocte, et mai non fosse l'alba;
    et non se transformasse in verde selva
    per uscirmi di braccia, come il giorno
    ch'Apollo la seguia qua giú per terra.

    Ma io sarò sotterra in secca selva
    e 'l giorno andrà pien di minute stelle
    prima ch'a sí dolce alba arrivi il sole.
    • And translates it as:
      To be with her when the sun fades,
      To be seen by none but the stars
      For one night, never to greet the dawn;
      She never transformed into green wood
      To flee my arms, as happened the day
      That Apollo harried her across the Earth!

      But I shall be under the earth,
      And the day will be filled with tiny stars
      Before such a sweet dawn shall arrive.
  • "Hang to Dry" quotes Petrarch's Canzoniere #365 in full:
    I’ vo piangendo i miei passati tempi
    i quai posi in amar cosa mortale,
    senza levarmi a volo, abbiend’io l’ale,
    per dar forse di me non bassi exempi.

    Tu che vedi i miei mali indegni et empi,
    Re del cielo invisibile immortale,
    soccorri a l’alma disvïata et frale,
    e ’l suo defecto di tua gratia adempi:

    sí che, s’io vissi in guerra et in tempesta,
    mora in pace et in porto; et se la stanza
    fu vana, almen sia la partita honesta.

    A quel poco di viver che m’avanza
    et al morir, degni esser Tua man presta:
    Tu sai ben che ’n altrui non ò speranza.
    • And translates it as:
      I go in grief for the times I spent,
      bent to the love of a mortal thing,
      never lofting the wings of my soul
      to fly after your perfect image.

      You who know my disgraceful sins,
      King of Heaven, shadowed, shining,
      pity my soul, weak and astray,
      and repair my faults with your grace.

      And as my life was wind and storm,
      having found port, let me die in peace.
      If life was vain, the parting is honest.

      In these moments of life that remain to me,
      and in my death, Lord, save me:
      you know I have no hope but you.
  • A secret terminal in "I Can Feel It" mentions several musicians, games, and films that inspired its designer (one of the game's most prolific level designers and artists, and also the director of Redux):
  • A secret terminal in "Silent as the Grave" quotes William Butler Yeats' famous poem "The Second Coming" in its entirety.
  • Redux uses some of Nine Inch Nails' actual music, though it's not yet confirmed how many levels or tracks; however, "From Now We Go On" is shown in a video to use "34 Ghosts IV". Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV and The Slip under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license allowing distribution or reuse under certain conditionsNote, so the songs in the game are almost certainly from those albums.
  • Redux, as seen in this video, adds a secret terminal in "KMG-365" with a lengthy message from an anonymous source who claims to be "a high-ranking Pfhor official who's quietly been working to undermine the Empire for – well, I don't think you'd believe how long; I certainly wouldn't." (Players of Eternal 1.3 may correctly surmise the sender to be Hathor, after her Heel–Face Turn, in her guise as the Hindmost Crèche / Great Mother Crouched Behind the Throne.) Her message is titled "Book of Armaments", a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Holy Hand Grenade scene.

    Eternal Level Names 
This list is no doubt incomplete, and because the levels have been reshuffled several times, you will not see all these titles in all versions of Eternal. Nonetheless:

  • "Remedial Chaos Theory" (name used starting in 1.3) - season 3, episode 4 of Communitynote 
  • "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" - quote from Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy in his eponymous play by William Shakespeare, ca. 1600 (also the source for for "The Slings & Arrows of Outrageous Fortune" from Marathon 2).
  • "Enantiodromia" (title introduced in April 2022, replacing "Hysterical Womb") - major concept of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus; as explained under Gratuitous Greek on the main page, this has been one of Eternal's main themes since its first release, and it's also central to a plot arc that begins on this exact level.
    • The codirector confirms in a YouTube video description that the title is primarily intended as a reference to Heraclitus, with "bonus secondary references" to Friedrich Nietzsche (who discusses the idea in Human, All Too Human and Beyond Good and Evil - see "Other Eternal Shout-outs" below for further Nietzsche references) and Deathspell Omega, whose The Long Defeat (which is full of references to Heraclitus) opens with a song entitled "Enantiodromia" (the codirector's YouTube channel, though it mostly focuses on Marathon gameplay, also features a remastered version of Deathspell's Fas - ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum - which, as a warning to the uninitiated, is a very, very intense Black Metal album; said remaster is here). However, the primary Shout-Out here is Heraclitus.
  • "Unity of Opposites" (new level name in 1.3 as of September 2022, replacing "Unpfhorseen") - another reference to Heraclitus, relating to enantiodromia and nondualism, both central themes of the game. Heraclitus saw everything as being in constant change, yet remaining the same, comparable to the modern aphorism "The more things change, the more they stay the same." The universe contains a unity of opposites in simultaneously encompassing difference and sameness. "The road up and the road down are the same thing," as Heraclitus wrote, since a slanted road is by necessity an ascent in one direction and a descent in the other. Likewise, every changing object contains at least one opposite (though not necessarily simultaneously) and every pair of opposites is contained in at least one objects. The succession of opposites is itself the basis for change: "Cold things grow hot, hot things grow cold, a moist thing withers, a parched thing is wetted."
  • "May the Pfharce Be With You" - corrupted quote from Star Wars (level was combined with "Forever My Greatest and Only Love" and subsequently renamed for 1.2)
  • "Killing the Giants as They Sleep" (composite level introduced in 1.2) - named for the sixth track of Panopticon's 2012 album Kentucky
  • "My Kingdom Pfhor a Horse" - corruption of quote from Richard III
  • "The World Is Hollow" - reference to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (though the phrase "the hollow world" also appears in the terminal text for "Flight of Icarus", along with two of the other "success dream" titles)
    • "Terra est inánis et vacua" (Latin translation thereofnote  used as a subtitle of this level starting in 1.3) - slight paraphrase of the Vulgate Book of Genesis 1:2; however, the game's codirector and Latin translator confirms in a YouTube video description that it's meant as a Shout-Out to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada (which contains the same verse's Hebrew original on its cover) and "not [...] to express any religious belief (or lack thereof)".
  • "The Abyss Gazes Also" (level name in 1.3, replacing "S'pht Happens") - reference to a famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil's Aphorism 146 (1886): “He Who Fights Monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”German original Leela has just gazed into an abyss and is quite clearly shaken by it.
  • "...how deep the rabbit hole goes" - quote from The Matrix (1999, dir. the Wachowskis). (This is a combined version of the levels "Eat S'pht and Die" and "Flight of Icarus" from previous versions of the game.)
  • "Second to Last of the Mohicans" - named for James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans
  • "Third Rock from Lh'owon" - presumably a reference to 3rd Rock from the Sun
  • "Flight of Icarus" (name used in 1.2.x and early previews of 1.3) - in addition to the mythical reference found in this and the original name "Flames of Icarus", this doubles as a reference to the third track of Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind (1983)
  • "Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail" - song from Have a Nice Life's 2008 debut album Deathconsciousness. (This is the new name for "Third Rock from Lh'owon" after 1.3 preview 4 moved it to Lh'owon.)
  • "The Incredible Hulk" - comic franchise of the same name
  • "Babylon X" - A result of the TV series Babylon 5 being combined with "X" Makes Anything Cool, though whether "X" is meant to be pronounced "X" or "Ten" is syntactically ambiguous. (This level was known as "Babylon VII" in Eternal's original Mark releases, but the developers have pronounced the later title as both "X" and "Ten" in their commentary.)
  • "Eádem, sed aliter" - a quotation from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's magnum opus The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer wrote that the motto of history should be "Eádem, sed aliter", which is Latin for "Likewise, but differently". This seemingly paradoxical phrase can be considered to dovetail with the unity of opposites (discussed above). And it also serves as a Leaning on the Fourth Wall description of how the failure branch and success branch paths differ: in all five branch levels, the success path contains an action that is absent from the failure path, but is otherwise identical in every aspect - hence, likewise, but different. As with "Enantiodromia", a secondary reference can be inferred to Deathspell Omega's The Long Defeat, which also has a song with this title.
  • "Once More Unto the Breach..." - line from Henry V
  • "This Cave Is Not a Natural Formation" - line from Halo: Combat Evolvednote 
    • 1.3 renames it to "Haec caverna nón fórmátió nátúrális" (the Latin equivalent) for the Rule of Funny of rendering such an infamously stupid line in a language commonly used to sound smart
  • "I've Got a Bad Feeling About This" - every Star Wars film evernote 
    • 1.3 changes this title to "Teneó affectum malum dé hóc" (again, the Latin equivalent), also for Rule of Funny
  • "This Message Will Self-Destruct" - recurring line from the Mission: Impossible TV series and films
  • All the failure dreams ("The Tangent Universe", "The Living Receiver", "The Tangent Universe", "The Ensurance Trap", "The Philosophy of Time Travel") are named after elements of Donnie Darko (note that some of these are only named in supplemental materials to the film)
    • plus all the levels named after lines from the trilogy: "She Is the Dark One", "Forever My Greatest and Only Love" (level removed from 1.1 and folded into "Killing the Giants as They Sleep" for 1.2 as noted above), "We Met Once in the Garden" (all three are quotes from the garbled "Kill Your Television" terminal that provides the backbone for the entire scenario's story), "Frog Blast the Vent Core" (phrase shouted by assimilated Bobs; changed to "Rána explóde corpus spírámentí", a very loose rendering of the phrase into Latin, in 1.3)

Eternal Mark V, which was almost completely remade for 1.0.x to the point where it could be considered a completely different (albeit vastly inferior) game, had several additional shout-outs in its level titles, including:

  • "I Can't Believe It's Not Total Carnage!" - take-off on the butter substitute I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
  • "Can't TOZT This" - pun on MC Hammer's most famous hit, "U Can't Touch This", from his 1990 album Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em
  • "Carnagee Hall" - pun on the famous concert venue Carnegie Hall
  • "War and Peace" - shout-out to Leo Tolstoy novel War and Peace, first serialised from 1865-1867 and then published in its entirety in 1869
  • "Back to the Future" - shout-out to the franchise starting with the 1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd
  • "Mad World" - single by Tears for Fears from their 1983 album The Hurting, later Covered Up (for listeners of a certain age, at least) by Gary Jules and featured in the film Donnie Darko
  • "Ducky Go Down the Hole" - reference to the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Henry Youngman Day"
  • "We Interrupt This Project to Annoy You..." / "...and Make Things Generally Irritating" - slight paraphrase of a quote from Monty Python's Flying Circus (the original had "program" rather than "project")

    Other Eternal Shout-Outs 
  • The start of Eternal has Marcus and Hathor departing K'lia exactly 111 years after the start of Marathon. Likely always intended as a reference to Bilbo Baggins' 111st birthday party at the start of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955); in 1.3, Hathor says "eleventy-one" in her introductory terminal, removing any doubt.
  • Also in 1.3, she uses the word "grok" in the same terminal, which originated in Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), one of the Trope Codifiers for Free-Love Future. Eternal 1.3 implies its setting to be a Free-Love Future a few times; "Bug-Eyed in Space" and "Once More unto the Breach..." probably contain the clearest evidence.
  • In "Deja Vu All Over Again", one of the Marathon crew (presumably R McCollum) says of Durandal's erratic behaviour, "I'd rather not be waiting out here with flashbacks to 2001", referring to the novel by Arthur C. Clarke (1968) and the film directed by Stanley Kubrick (also 1968).note  Specifically, McCollum is comparing Durandal to HAL 9000, who is probably the Trope Codifier for A.I. Is a Crapshoot (he goes rogue and murders the crew because of a Logic Bomb accidentally created by his programmers).
  • The musical soundtrack for this level, as of 1.3 preview 6, contains several disparate musical references:
    • The second movement mashes up Marathon's "Landing" with two tracks from Chris Christodoulou's Risk of Rain 2 soundtrack, namely "The Rain Formerly Known as Purple" and "A Glacier Eventually Farts". Regarding the former, the game's codirector (and one of the co-creators of the level music) wrote on Discord:
      the instant i heard "The Rain Formerly Known as Purple", i noticed how similar its main synth hook was to "Landing"; the moment i found out RoR2 composer Chris Christodoulou had released the stems for the OST, i immediately knew i'd have to make a mash-up of the two songs.
    • Meanwhile, "A Glacier Eventually Farts" made its way in because it had a "similar twelve-bar structure", chord progression, and mood to "Landing".
    • The level soundtrack also contains two brief quotes of Mick Gordon's "The Only Thing They Fear Is You" (from the similarly named Doom Eternal).
    • Finally, the drum part quotes the drum intro from Nirvana's "Scentless Apprentice" a few times.
  • In "Dysmentria" (version 1.3), Hathor uses the phrase, "Go do that voodoo that you do so well," a verbatim quote of Hedy Lamarr (that's Hedley!) from Blazing Saddles.note 
  • In 1.3, Durandal's lengthy terminal in "Roots and Radicals" contains at least two.
    • He writes "Ego delendus sum: I am to be destroyed, am I not?" This is a reference to a famous phrase from Roman politician Cato the Censor, "Carthago delenda est." See Marathon's Gratuitous Latin page atqueTranslation Eternal's Gratuitous Latin entry for more on this.
    • He also writes, "Do with this slave-creature what thou wilt." This phrasing recalls Aleister Crowley's "'Do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the Law", though we should note that Crowley meant "what thou wilt" less as an endorsement of hedonism than as a reference to his concept of True Will.
  • A possibly strange musical example in the extended version of "Flowers in Heaven" used in "Heart of Fusion" as of 1.3 preview 5 is that the drum machine pattern is lifted from Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" (it even samples the same drum machine, the Roland CR-78). There's also a close copy of its famous drum fill. This is confirmed by its creator as a deliberate reference.
  • Every level on the Pfhor planet in chapter two uses what the map scripts describe as a purple haze. The Jimi Hendrix Shout-Out is confirmed to be deliberate. 1.3 adds purple rain to most of these levels (seen here and in several of the subsequent videos) as well; the Prince Shout-Out is again confirmed to be deliberate.
  • In the level "A Friend in Need", Leela says, "If you and Blake's men can get into the city and destroy the force field generator, the S'pht'Kr can make a flyby and demolish this entire complex from orbit. It is the only way we can be certain of victory." This is an oblique allusion to a popular phrase from the film Aliens (1986, dir. James Cameron).
  • Starting in Eternal 1.3 preview 5, the background music for "Unlucky Pfhor Some" contains two blink-and-you'll-miss-it quotes of Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" (from A Charlie Brown Christmas and other Peanuts specials). The game's readme credits Vince Guaraldi as a cowriter for the track, so it's clearly an intentional tribute.
  • "The Midpoint of Somewhere" (a new level in 1.3 preview 4) has Leela-S'bhuth describe their:
    One thousand years of solitude

    staring into the abyss
    • This contains two shout-outs: the first to Gabriel García Márquez's classic 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad), and another being (once again) to Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (see "The Abyss Gazes Also" above for the context).
  • "Bug-Eyed in Space" and "Once More unto the Breach" (which take place simultaneously in different timelines) are the first levels in which Leela brings up the Egyptian myths of Hathor and Sakhmet (the latter seen under the more common spelling "Sekhmet"; both are acceptable romanisations). Leela goes into great detail on both goddesses, who were most often presented as different aspects of each other; post-preview 3, she explains her "lengthy Egyptian mythology lesson" by noting simply:
    "I could name numerous parallels, but in short, Hathor has undergone a personality shift so radical that, when I first encountered her again, I couldn't believe she was the woman who'd served humanity so faithfully on the Marathon and Tau Ceti. Better that we call her Sakhmet."
  • As of 1.3 preview 6, the soundtrack for "Bug-Eyed in Space" quotes Ennio Morricone's title theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Metallica's "Enter Sandman" for a few seconds each.
  • Yet another musical example is a quote of "YYZ" by Rush, which shows up towards the end of the arrangement of "Fat Man" in "Run, Coward!" It's quoted twice, which the creator has confirmed is in turn a shout-out to Mastodon's "The Last Baron", which quotes the same "YYZ" riff twice in much the same manner. There's also an even briefer segment inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (but not the segment you're probably expecting), again confirmed by the creator.
    • A later version of this track adds two different quotes from Yoko Kanno's "Tank!", partly as a gag on its bass line being almost identical to the main riff of "Fat Man" (it's missing only one note). An even longer version of the extended organ solo also appears in the first movement, complete with yet another quote of Toccata and Fugue.
    • The Ominous Latin Chanting section in this track is an Affectionate Parody of (and contains a few verbatim quotes of) the medieval Latin hymn Dies Irae.
  • In "The Ensurance Trap", Hathor, newly in possession of a Jjaro dreadnought, makes several Badass Boasts. Among these is:
    "Now I am become God - no, now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."
The end of this sentence is a verbatim quote from the Bhagavad Gita that was made famous in the West by nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer in describing his reaction to the Trinity atom bomb test:
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed; a few people cried; most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."
We should note that there are, of course, other translations of this passage. Another fair one might be "Death am I, and my present task destruction." (Also, "the Prince" to whom Oppenheimer refers is Arjuna.)
  • "Floating in the Void" contains several shout-outs to Shakespeare - most specifically to Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. "To sleep, perchance to dream" has already been used as a level title; it opens Durandal-Thoth's terminal on this level as well. There's one specific reference to "the literary mind of the Old Bard". "Those who know what dreams do come within that sleep of death" paraphrases the line "for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come." "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" is taken verbatim from the same soliloquy (before 1.3, it is paraphrased slightly as "Thus conscience makes cowards of us all"). Incidentally, this also slightly foreshadows the Jjaro's translation of their language into English, which assumes that Shakespeare's English is the "purest" example of the language and that more recent works are somehow corrupted; thus, all Jjaro terminals are translated into Elizabethan English.
  • Beyond the level name mentioned above, there are several other references to Halo: Combat Evolved in Eternal, particularly in the fifth chapter. Nicholas Singer's three pieces for the soundtrack contain motifs from both Marathon and Halo's soundtracks, and the idea of the Forerunners being descendants of humanity who time-travelled to the past was taken from a draft of Halo's story before Bungie went in a different direction. It has been also remarked that the level design seems intentionally reminiscent of Halo's at times, which is undoubtedly no coincidence. The structure the player falls onto at the start of chapter five in both Mark V and 1.3 also looks a bit like (and, in Mark V, was actually intended to be) a Halo. There are undoubtedly further examples.
  • In 1.3, one terminal in "Dark Grotto of the Lethe" (formerly "Deep into the Grotto") contains an excerpt from "Historia populí dé potestáte super armís", written In-Universe by a Jjaro historian named Naomi Zinn. This is Latin for "A People's History of Arms Control", an obvious Shout-Out to A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It's quite likely that Naomi's given name is also a Shout-Out to Howard's close friend, the linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky, since Naomi (נָעֳמִי‎, no'omí, literally my pleasantness) and Noam (נועם or נֹעַם, nó'am, literally pleasantness) have the same root. The codirector listing Chomsky as an influence (see below) may be a further hint that this is intentional; Eternal's overall political stance is certainly quite compatible with both Zinn and Chomsky's.
  • Also in "Dark Grotto of the Lethe", Hathor writes, "ego delenda sum - i must be destroyed." See our entry on Durandal's almost identical quote from "Roots and Radicals" above for links to more info about similar references on that level and in "Welcome to the Revolution" from the original Marathon.
  • “Apep”’s terminal from “This Message Will Self-Destruct”, introduced to 1.3, contains several.
    • “The arkhé of this galaxy is fire” (like the references to enantiodromia) is a reference to the philosophy of Heraclitus, who believed the origin of the world was fire.
    • It quotes Watchmen’s Ozymandias almost verbatim, down to “thirty-five minutes ago” (the Former Trope Namer for You Are Too Late, incidentally):
      “I assure thee, no soy ningún comandante incompetente Pfhor. I would not tell thee my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of thee affecting it. Admiral Ksandr launched the novam praemátúram thirty-five minutes ago.”
    • The terminal’s primary author has confirmed that “Everything hath proceeded according to my plans” is a mash-up of well-known phrases from Return of the Jedi’s Emperor Palpatine (“Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen”) and Death Note’s Kira (“Just as planned”).
    • “Thine entire quest hath been nothing but tilting at windmills” is, of course, a reference to Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
  • Although this isn't confirmed, Hathor's◊ cyborg◊ form◊ in 1.3 may be at least partially an homage to a rather famous example of A.I. Is a Crapshoot from one of Marathon's contemporary series – her largely black suit and Medusa-like hair are pretty big giveaways on this count. (Note that, despite their superficial similarities, the two do have some substantial differences in terms of characterisation, though - not least that Hathor has undergone a Heel–Face Turn by the point Marcus "fights" her; she's mad at Marcus, but she acknowledges that it's her own fault, and she's not even trying to kill him, since she knows he has the wave motion cannon and gravitronic blades, which both nullify damage from wave motion cannon blasts if active.)
  • In Hathor’s farewell message in “We Met Once in the Garden”, also introduced in 1.3, she makes several.
    • “Aut futue, aut pugnémus”: In addition to being a Sophisticated as Hell Precision F-Strike, this is a verbatim quote from Martial's Epigrams 11:20 (translating roughly as “Either fuck me, or let's fight”), which the co-director describes (see video description) as "really quite a nasty piece of propaganda", but also notes as fitting Hathor's mood and the level's Latin subtitle perfectly ("Coíbámus ólim in hortó" can also translate as "We Copulated Once in the Garden" or "We Came Up Against [One Another] in the Garden"). See Eternal's section under GratuitousLatin.Marathon Expanded Universe for further info on the translation and Latin obscenity more broadly.
    • She makes two references to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche:
      • The phrase "Eternal Recurrence" („ewige Wiederkunft“) comes from his writings. He seems to have first come up with the concept in 1881; he discusses it in The Gay Science (1882), Also sprach Zarathustra (1883), and Ecce Homo (1888).
      • She also alludes to He Who Fights Monsters when she writes of the ascended Jjaro’s conflict with the W'rkncacnter, “the abyss has gazed into the jjaro, who have become enantiodromic mirrors of their foes.” See "The Abyss Gazes Also" in the level names section above for the source of this quote, which is also Trope Namer for He Who Fights Monsters. This is, as Hathor herself notes, a further example of enantiodromia, discussed separately in the level name section above; Heraclitus was a clear influence on Nietzsche, and beyond this aphorism, Human, All Too Human Aphorisms 1-3 and Beyond Good and Evil Aphorism 2 also discuss enantiodromia.
    • “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” is a verbatim quote from Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”, found on Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970).
    • The quote:
      Both take as granted that in-groups will be protected but not bound by the law, and that out-groups will be bound but not protected by it.
      • Is, as the author openly acknowledges, a close paraphrase of composer Frank Wilhoit’s definition of conservatism:
        There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
      • Her counterproposal:
        The law must equally both protect and bind everyone, including leaders
      • Is likewise a paraphrase of Wilhoit’s:
        The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
      • The author’s Pfhorums signature has included the latter quote (with attribution) for several years, so its provenance is hardly being kept secret. (The very next level’s secret credits terminal also mentions Wilhoit.)
    • She also, of course, refers to Egyptian myth in comparing the W’rkncacnter to Egyptian mythology’s Apep, a God of Chaos and God of Evil that wants to destroy existence itself. The parallels are close enough that the W’rkncacnter qualifies as an Expy to some extent. Beyond that, she also discusses the myths of her namesake and Sakhmet and acknowledges that Sakhmet is a fair comparison for the vengeful personality she'd gotten locked into for some 700 years.
    • It's subtle and obscure enough that, without official confirmation, it's hard to be certain it's intentional, but she may make one final shout-out (or Take That!) in saying, "i can't accept the eternal recurrence they seek as fate inexorable." "Wyrd bið ful aræd" is a line from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer that is as famous as any line from Anglo-Saxon poetry can be said to be these days.note  It's traditionally been translated along the lines "Fate is wholly inexorable," but this reading has attracted criticism recently: wyrd is far more complex than our common understanding of fate, and inexorable is but one possible meaning of aræd. Rutgers University's Dr Aaron Hofstetter has a lengthy exegesis explaining why he translates the same line as "The way of the world is ever an open book" - basically the exact opposite meaning! Hathor's unusual word order of "fate inexorable" may be meant to suggest the line from "The Wanderer", but since she's saying she doesn't accept fate inexorable (a nice real-life Mythology Gag: Hathor's namesake was strongly linked with fate in Egyptian Mythology - but then, the Egyptians also didn't see fate as inexorable), the passage may be a playful Take That! at the line's traditional translation. (Also, some trivia: Our word weird is a direct linguistic descendant of wyrd. Also, Wyrd was a deity in Bungie's later series Myth - in fact, the creator of the world.)
  • As of 1.3 preview 6, the level soundtrack for "We Met Once in the Garden" briefly quotes the Doctor Who theme. The first movement is in a similar tempo and has a similar atmosphere to the Keff McCulloch arrangement from the era of Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor in particular.
  • As of version 1.2.1, the penultimate level, "Where Giants Have Fallen", features a mournful bird song. The song continues as all the enemies die off, so the only sounds left on the level by the end are howling wind and the bird's "poo-tee-weet?" - an intentional reference to the final phrase of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (confirmed by looking at the map in an editor, as "Poo-tee-weet?" is scrawled on it, as is "so it goes", another reference to the novel; also confirmed in a secret terminal in 1.3). Parallels can also be drawn between Eternal's depiction of the Jjaro and Slaughterhouse-Five's depiction of the Tralfamadorians; both works are subtly condemning fatalism. Like the parallels to Michael Moorcock's writings, this apparently wasn't planned in the original release; the developers just noticed it later and ran with it.
  • In 1.3, Custós' final message to the player (in "Where Giants Have Fallen") ends with the line "Avé atque valé", which translates from Latin as "Hail and farewell" or "I salute you, and goodbye". It comes from Catullus 101, Catullus' elegy to his brother.
  • Also in 1.3, Leela has two cryptic lines in Latin in "Where Giants Have Fallen" (seen here): "imperátrícés cónstituunt malás amantés" and "débés tuum imperium vénumdare". These translate roughly as "Empresses make bad lovers" and "You should put your empire on sale", respectively, and are references to a similar couplet in Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman": "Rulers make bad lovers / You'd better put your kingdom up for sale."
  • As of 1.3 preview 6, the fade-out to the version of "Splash (Marathon)" used on "Where Giants Have Fallen" briefly quotes Nobuo Uematsu's "Terra's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI. The co-director stated on Discord that this was a tribute to one of his favorite composers, who recently announced that his health issues will very likely render him unable to compose any further full game soundtracks.
  • "The Near Side of Everywhere" opens with the complete "I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh" message from Marathon 2's "Kill Your Television" to which the entire scenario is in fact a Whole-Plot Reference. Notably, this version includes passages that were not present in Marathon 2 itself; they were taken from Jason Jones' finger protocol text, as mentioned on the Marathon's Story Page. Before 1.3 preview 3, they were punctuated quite differently than the original text; however, they now have only slight differences. 1.3 also adds a complete Latin translation of the text in a later (optional) terminal in the same level, which seems to be meant as an Overly Long Gag. In recent versions, both terminals are printed entirely over artwork (beware spoilers, and note that a couple of images could qualify as vaguely NSFW) generated primarily from MidJourney prompts (02511 through 02519 for English, 03520 through 03533 for Latin).
  • Starting in 1.3 preview 4, Durandal and Thoth make a few final shout-outs in "The Near Side of Everywhere", many tying in with Hathor's final message in "We Met Once in the Garden" (see above):
    • Durandal recapitulates Hathor's discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence. In addition, "circumstances are indeed cyclical" is a Call-Back to a phrase Thoth wrote at the end of Marathon 2's level "Requiem for a Cyborg".
      It seems circumstances are indeed cyclical; and in their rush to save themselves, the Ascended Jjaro have doomed not just their forbears to immolation, but the galaxy entire. And, having witnessed this, do they attempt to prevent it? Quite the contrary; they wish for its eternal recurrence.
    • After saying that the Ascended Jjaro "have effectively / built their civilization on the bedrock / of one woman's suffering" (i.e., Hathor's), Thoth alludes to Ursula K. Le Guin's classic short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973):
           "we must not walk away from Omelas
       we must first free the suffering child
                 at its heart"
      • Which, interestingly, takes the exact third option mentioned on TV Tropes, which the story itself never discusses. (Incidentally, Le Guin's story is another source quoted in the codirector's Pfhorums signature.)
    • Durandal refers to Egyptian myth in discussing the mythical Hathor, Sakhmet, and Apep. Our Egyptian mythology characters page discusses all three in greater detail (Sakhmet is found under the more common spelling "Sekhmet"; both spellings are acceptable romanisations of the name).
    • Durandal also makes a final reference to Heraclitus' writings by mentioning enantiodromia, discussed above in both the level names section's discussion of the level of the same name, and in this section's discussion of "We Met Once in the Garden". As Durandal says,
      "Call it enantiodromia, if you must: in the absence of balance, forces may become their very own equal and opposite reactions. Nature abhors a vacuum, even one of balance."
  • 1.3 has numerous shout-outs written in Gratuitous Latin on several of the maps - so many they've gotten their own folder under GratuitousLatin.Marathon Expanded Universe. The recipients of the shout-outs are spoiler tagged, in case anyone with a bit of Latin knowledge wants to figure them out for themselves. The shout-outs are most often to Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal bands, but numerous other genres are represented as well, from Jefferson Airplane to Liz Phair to Dishwalla to Nine Inch Nails to The Police, and the lyric excerpts sometimes (though not always) have something to do with elements of the level, story, characters, or level title; occasionally they also constitute a Stealth Pun. The artist to receive the most of these is tool, with map writing on three different levels excerpting their lyrics. The codirector posted a screenshot of "Remedial Chaos Theory"◊ that shows an example of this in a YouTube video description. In this case, the map writing doubles as a reference to the level's namesake, a Community episode.
  • In a secret terminal in "Where Giants Have Fallen", the codirector mentions several creators and works as influences, including:
  • In addition to the above, the codirector has also confirmed Johann Sebastian Bach, Phil Collins, Talking Heads, Windir, and Frank Zappa as musical influences either in the liner notes for their Marathon arrangement album (much of which was also added to Eternal in 1.3 preview 5), the comments to the YouTube video of same, or Eternal's own readme.
  • Eternal's soundtrack also employs Frank Zappa's concept of xenochrony (in which an element originally written for one song is reused in another, often over an entirely different chord progression) liberally, although as of late September 2023, the clearest example by far is the "disco" movement of "Flippant" that 1.3 preview 6 is slated to use in "Once More Unto the Breach" - it reuses the organ solo from "Fat Man" and the main melody of "What About Bob?" in their entirety as guitar solos. Zappa has been explicitly cited as the inspiration for this. Another example of this occurs in the level "Run, Coward!" where, coincidentally (or not), wowbobwow and Aaron Freed's "disco" movement of "Fat Man" reuses the main melody of "What About Bob?" (plus an extended melody that Aaron wrote for the latter song in See You Starside: The Marathon Soundtrack Reimagined).
  • The readme included with version 1.3 has a couple. Of the S'pht Defenders, it says, "Try not to anger the friendly ones. You wouldn't like them when they're angry." It also compares the gravitronic blade to a lightsaber, and regarding the ZX Class Wave Motion Cannon and ZX Class Gravitronic Blades, it mentions the ZX Spectrum.

    Marathon Rubicon 
  • One of the crewmen in the engineer lift maintenance log in "Honk If You're an Underpaid Cyborg" is named Upton Sinclair, after the author of The Jungle and Oil! (basis for There Will Be Blood), among others. Another is named Davis Hartman as a reference to two characters in Full Metal Jacket (1987, dir. Stanley Kubrick, starring Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, and R. Lee Ermey), J. T. Davis (better known as Joker) and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (the Trope Codifier for Drill Sergeant Nasty).
  • One of the terminals in "Like Flies on a Corpse" was written by a character named Mark Renton. This is the name of the protagonist of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1993), Porno (2002), and Skagboys (2012), who is portrayed by Ewan McGregor in Danny Boyle's film adaptations of the first two, Trainspotting (1996) and T2 Trainspotting (2017).
  • The chapter name "Goethe's Faust" is named after, well, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (1808 and 1832).
  • "The Ascension Factor" is named after a 1988 novel by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom, the fourth (and final) novel in the Destination: Void series (also known as the Pandora Sequence or the WorShip series). This series is itself said to have been an influence on Bungie's games; The Jesus Incident, an earlier novel in the series, takes place on a ship orbiting Tau Ceti and features AIs directing human colonists' response to a threat to their survival; Destination: Void itself may have influenced Durandal's Rampancy with its idea of "rogue consciousness".
  • A log in "The Gators of NY" is verified by one "C.{Bukowski}"note , who is presumably named after the American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski.
  • "People Under the Stairs" is named after the Horror Comedy film The People Under the Stairs (1991, dir. Wes Craven).
  • "Comfortably Numb" is of course named after the Pink Floyd song from The Wall (1979).
  • "The Exit Door Leads In" is named after a Philip K. Dick short story published in 1979.
  • In "iwannavacuum", after remarking on the current state of the Pfhor Empire, Durandal asks the player if they ever read Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789), a classic historical treatment of Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The first four lines of the terminal in "Just a Little Further" are from Othello (they are spoken by Iago, the main villain of the play, in Act I, Scene 2). The final line appears to be original to Rubicon.
  • Rubicon provides its own In-Universe history of artificial intelligences in the level "Rozinante XI". Two projects were started at a particular period of détente between three superpowers in Earth's history. One, established in Bungie's canon, was Traxus, which anyone who's played the first game is likely to remember. The other was Gaiman — as in Neil.

    Apotheosis 
  • The name of Apotheosis itself is a Shout-Out to The Gap Cycle by Stephen R. Donaldson, in which the word apotheosis serves as a code word to give one of the characters unrestricted access to his memory. Level names:
    • "We Got Knives, Sharp Sticks": A quote from Aliens (1986, dir. James Cameron) uttered by the character Private Hudson, portrayed by the late Bill Paxton:
      Private Hudson: "I'm ready, man, check it out. I am the ultimate badass! State of the badass art! You do not wanna fuck with me. Check it out! Hey Ripley, don't worry. Me and my squad of ultimate badasses will protect you! Check it out! Independently targeting particle beam phalanx. Vwap! Fry half a city with this puppy. We got tactical smart missiles, phased plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, we got sonic electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks..."
      Sergeant Apone: "Knock it off, Hudson. All right, gear up."
    • "43% Burnt": The Signature Song of The Dillinger Escape Plan, found on Calculating Infinity (1999).
    • "Don't Step on the Mome Raths": Probably a reference to the works of Lewis Carroll and their adaptations. The Mome Raths are originally mentioned in his poem "Jabberwocky" (1871); in the accompanying illustrations, they are pig-like creatures running around in the background. In Disney's film adaptation (1951) of Alice in Wonderland, they are portrayed as a race of bipedal, flower-like creatures.
    • "All Things Uncertain": A reference to the album The Attraction to All Things Uncertain (2001) by Tweaker, the (at the time) solo project of former Nine Inch Nails sideman Chris Vrenna.
    • "Omega Devices for Dummies": A dual reference to Wiley Publishing's ...for Dummies series and the Omega Devices in Doctor Who, a term sometimes referred to creations of the Time Lord Omega. "Remembrance of the Daleks" (1988) contained the first canonical usage of the phrase "Omega Device" as a reference to the Hand of Omega.
    • "Calm Horizons": Name of an alien ship in The Gap Cycle (see the info on the scenario name itself, above).
    • "Gravin Threndor": A mountain in The Land in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson. Also known as Mount Thunder or Peak of the Fire-Lions.
    • "Planet Caravan": Third song on Black Sabbath's Paranoid (1970).
    • "Perfect Day": Third song on Lou Reed's Transformer (1972).
  • Although several of the above level titles are kept in Apotheosis X, several others are modified. New titles include:
    • "Cracks in the Pleasuredome": song by Pinch & Shackleton from their 2011 self-titled album
    • "Lost Behind the Stars": slight paraphrase of a line from Beastwars' "Dune", from Blood Becomes Fire (2013).
    • "Ghost Hardware": 2007 EP by Burial
    • "One More Fluorescent Rush": single by Avalon Emerson from Whities 013 (2017).
    • "After the Flood", "Ascension Day": songs from Talk Talk's Laughing Stock.
    • Saturn Devouring His Son: famous painting (c. 1819-1823) by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.
    • "The Arch of Time": the fundamental structure underlying the Land's universe in Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (see above).
  • Beyond that, there are shout-outs elsewhere in the game in both versions.
    • In "No Assembly Required", Noah says, "do not think that i came / to bring peace / i did not come / to bring peace / but a sword", which is a very slight abridgement of the Matthew 10:34 (it's missing "to the earth" after the first "to bring peace" - which is only natural, since the phrase wouldn't fit the context).Other translations/languages
    • The zombie Bobs in the original Apotheosis included the line "More human than human, that's my motto," a close paraphrase of Tyrell Corp's motto from Blade Runner.
    • Apotheosis X's track "Carpenter" is named for John Carpenter.
    • In the credits terminal for Apotheosis X, one of the co-creators included, "for no real reason", an AI-generated image of Beyoncé as the Doctor.
    • Another co-creator featured a parody of the "Remember this / This is important" moment from Metal Gear Awesome, with an Enforcer replacing Meryl.
    • The chapter screen for "Ascent" (can be seen here, or here at 22:30) is a homage to Craig Mullins' iconic S'pht fanart.
    Other Fan Games 
  • In a later level of Courier 11, you throw a rock at a switch to crush an otherwise-invincible Enforcer expy, just like the Rancor in Return of the Jedi.
  • The ship in Return to Marathon is called the Kubrick, an obvious reference to legendary film director Stanley Kubrick. This is a fairly good harbinger of what kinds of Mind Screw and atmospheric horror await the player.
  • Istoria has several:
    Other Marathon-Related Content 
  • Aaron Freed's mapping guide has several.
    • Beginners’ guide:
      • Aaron writes, "you need to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals before moving onto more advanced techniques. (If you don’t know how to play a paradiddle, you aren’t ready to cover a Neil Peart solo.)" Neil Peart was Rush's late drummer and lyricist, who is considered one of the greatest drummers of all time and received widespread acclaim among other drummers for his mastery of drumming fundamentals - which, in fact, include the paradiddle.
    • Advanced guide:
      • A footnote lampshades how silly the phrase "on the third hand" is by noting, "You don't have a third hand? Then you must not be Zaphod Beeblebrox" - referring, of course, to the President of the Galaxy in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (who does in fact have three hands).
      • The author biography has several in a row.
        "I’m not saying that because I think it’s worth being proud of having acquired so much useless and pointless knowledge, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me… oh, sorry, that’s Taken."
      • The phrase "useless and pointless knowledge" comes from Bob Dylan's "Tombstone Blues":
        Where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bedroll
        \\Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole
        And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
        To the old folks' home and the college

        Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
        That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane
        That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
        Of your useless and pointless knowledge
      • The next phrase, as lampshaded immediately, comes from Liam Neeson's famous monologue in Taken, which goes in its entirety:
        "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
      • "Oh, sorry, that's Taken" is a close paraphrase of a line from David Tennant in the Doctor Who episode "The Christmas Invasion", wherein Tennant's Tenth Doctor likewise quotes a different source at length before realizing what it is:
        Look at these people, these human beings. Consider their potential. "From the day they arrive on the planet and, blinking, step into the sun. There is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be" - no, hang on. Sorry, that's The Lion King. But the point still stands: Leave them alone!
      • Which is, in fact, an almost verbatim quote of "Circle of Life".
    • Map Complexity: A Case Study:
      • One of the endnotes says, "One of the crossbeams has gone out of skew on the treadle." This is a verbatim quote from Monty Python's Flying Circus' "Spanish Inquisition" sketch - and it won't be the only one.
      • "Crossbeams: A Closer Look" is titled in the style of a popular segment from Late Night With Seth Meyers.
      • This section twice includes the word "trick" struck through and followed by an italicized illusion, a reference to Gob Bluth's Insistent Terminology in the pilot of Arrested Development. (In the uncensored version of the pilot, the word "candy" was actually "cocaine".)
        Gob: Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money.
        Michael silently gestures to nearby children listening in on their conversation.
        Gob: Or candy!
      • "The Law of Conservation of Sound Objects" may be a reference to this very wiki's Law of Conservation of Detail.
    • Map index reduction:
      • This page has an image of the level "Monument to All Your Sins" (whose name is itself a reference to a famous Gravemind quote in Halo 2) from RyokoTK's Starlight called "Monument to Nonexistence", with the Title Text "I will destroy extraneous polygons! I will create a monument to fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice, red uniforms... oh, bugger." This refers, respectively, to a quote from Final Fantasy VI's Kefka:
        "I will destroy everything! I will create a monument to nonexistence!"
      • And Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition:
        "Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh, damn!"
      • The words "Oh, bugger" appear later in the episode - at its very conclusion, as it so happens.
      • The page also refers to El Estepario Siberiano, a drummer who has become famous for extremely complex, technically skilled, and entertaining one-handed covers of popular songs on YouTube, as "possibly the greatest drummer alive" and cites his argument that "talent is a lie".
    • Sounds & Sources:
      • A footnote notes that the Jjaro ship creak sound is:
        Inexplicably labeled in the Lua mnemonics as ‘Nuclear Hard Death’, the physics’ name for the screen flash and sound effect made when Juggernauts die. (Worst Prince cover ever.) That sound is Juggernaut Exploding (#198, ID 14650).
      • "Worst Prince cover ever" refers to Prince's famous track "When Doves Cry," from Purple Rain.
    • Where Are Monsters in Marathon...Maps:

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top