Referenced By / Literature

List of allusions which authors and books received from other works of fiction.

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Writers

• Maya Angelou
• Isaac Asimov
• Jane Austen
• Iain Banks
• William Blake
• Anne Brontë
• Charlotte Brontë
• Emily Brontë
• Lord Byron
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Anton Chekhov
• Emily Dickinson
• Robert Frost
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• A. E. Housman
• Franz Kafka
• John Keats
• Stephen King
• H. P. Lovecraft
• Herman Melville
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Alexander Pushkin
• Dr. Seuss
• William Shakespeare
• Richard Sharpe Shaver
• Mary Shelley
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Sojourner Truth
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Jules Verne
• Virginia Woolf
• Voltaire
• H. G. Wells
• Walt Whitman
• William Butler Yeats

Works with subpages

• 101 Dalmatians
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• The Adventures of Pinocchio
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• The Aeneid
• Aesops Fables
• Alice in Wonderland
  • Alice Allusion (when a character is explicitly named Alice to make the reference)
• Animorphs
• Anna Karenina
• Anne of Green Gables
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
• Around the World in Seventy-Two Days
• Arsène Lupin
• Ars Goetia
• Atlas Shrugged
• The Awakening
• Babar
• Baba Yaga
• Beowulf
• The Berenstain Bears
• The Bible:
  • As the Good Book Says...
  • Book of Ecclesiastes
  • Song of Songs
• Black Beauty
• The Black Company
• Breakfast of Champions
• Brighton Rock
• The Call of the Wild
• A Canticle for Leibowitz
• Captain Underpants
• Carmilla
• Carrie
• Casey at the Bat
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Cat in the Hat
• C. Auguste Dupin
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Charlotte's Web
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• A Christmas Carol
  • Yet Another Christmas Carol (when the plot is based on the story)
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Cinderella
• Clifford the Big Red Dog
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Crime and Punishment
• Cthulhu Mythos
• Curious George
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• Danny, the Champion of the World
• The Demolished Man
• Desperation
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Dick and Jane
• Discworld
• The Divine Comedy
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Doc Savage
• Doctor Zhivago
• Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
• Don Quixote
• Dracula
• The Dresden Files
• Dune
• The Elric Saga
• Emma
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• Enders Game
• The Erl-King
• Everyone Poops
• The Exorcist
• Faction Paradox
• Fahrenheit 451
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Fisherman and His Wife
• The Five People You Meet In Heaven
• Flatland
• Flat Stanley
• Foundation
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Frankenstein
• Freaky Friday
• Frog and Toad
• The Giving Tree
• The Gingerbread Man
• Go Ask Alice
• Goldilocks
• Gone with the Wind
• Goodnight Moon
• Good Omens
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Great Expectations
• The Great Gatsby
• Green Eggs and Ham
• Gulliver's Travels
• Hainish
  • The Left Hand of Darkness
• Hansel and Gretel
• Harry Potter
• Have You Seen My Potty?
• Heart of Darkness
• Hearts in Atlantis
• Henry Huggins
• Hilary Tamar
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Horatio Hornblower
• Howl (1955)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
• The Hunger Games
• I Am a Cat
• The Iliad
• Illuminatus!
• Infinite Jest
• Invisible Man
• The Invisible Man
• Jabberwocky
• Jack and the Beanstalk
• Jack The Giant Killer
• James Bond
• Jane Eyre
• Jetlag Travel Guides (Molvanîa: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry)
• Journey to the West
• Jumanji
• Kama Sutra
• Kidnapped
• The Lady, or the Tiger?
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• The Little Engine That Could
• Little House on the Prairie
• The Little Match Girl
• The Little Mermaid
• The Little Prince
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Little Women
• Lolita
• Lord of the Flies
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• The Maltese Falcon
• Mansfield Park
• The Man Who Was Thursday
• Mary Poppins
• The Master and Margarita
• Mein Kampf
• Mercy Thompson
• The Metamorphosis
• The Midwich Cuckoos
• Les Misérables
• Moby-Dick
• Momotarō
• Mr. Men
• Mutiny on the Bounty
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Myth Adventures
• Nancy Drew
• Nero Wolfe
• Noddy
• Northanger Abbey
• The Odyssey
• Of Mice and Men
• The Old Man and the Sea
• Old Yeller
• Oliver Twist
• The One and Only Ivan
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• On the Road
• The Outsiders
• Paradise Lost
• Persuasion
• Peter Pan
• Peter Rabbit
• The Phantom of the Opera
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Pilgrim's Progress
• Pippi Longstocking
• Pride and Prejudice
• Principia Discordia
• Puss in Boots
• Raggedy Ann
• Rapunzel
• Rebecca
• The Red Shoes
• Reynard the Fox
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• A River Runs Through It
• Robin Hood
• Robinson Crusoe
• Rosemary's Baby
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Rumpelstiltskin
• The Scarlet Letter
• The Scarlet Pimpernel
• The Screwtape Letters
• The Second Coming
• The Secret Garden
• The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
• Sense and Sensibility
• Shadow Children
• Sharpe
• Sherlock Holmes
  • Sherlock Homage
• The Shining
• Sinbad the Sailor
• Slaughterhouse-Five
• Sleeping Beauty
• Snow White
• A Song of Ice and Fire
• Spenser
• The Stars My Destination
• Struwwelpeter
• The Sun Also Rises
• The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
• The Tale of Genji
• Tarzan
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles
• Thérèse Desqueyroux
• Three Billy Goats Gruff
• The Three Little Pigs
• The Three Musketeers
• Thumbelina
• The Time Machine
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Tolkien's Legendarium
• Tom Thumb
• Trainspotting
• Treasure Island
  • Long John Shout-Out (when a character is a thinly veiled appearance of the titular pirate)
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
• Twilight
• The Ugly Duckling
• Ulysses
• Uncle Tom's Cabin
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• The Voyage of the Space Beagle
• War and Peace
• The War of the Worlds
• Warrior Cats
• The Waste Land
• Watership Down
• Where's Wally?
• Where the Wild Things Are
• The Wind in the Willows
• Winnie the Pooh
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Woman in White
• Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
• Wuthering Heights
• Xanth
• The Yellow Wallpaper
• Zorro

Others

Writers:

• Allen Ginsberg: Hark! A Vagrant:
  • "Hipsters Ruin Everything, Part 1" has some of the The Beat Generation watching some Beatniks create a pop culture that caricatures the poets in bemusement. At least Allen thinks they're amusing.
  • "Car Games" depicts Allen having an unconventional take on playing I Spy.
• Joseph Conrad: Hark! A Vagrant: A cover of an edition of Victory is used in one of the Edward Gorey book cover comics. The cover has an island, which Kate Beaton uses to have a victor offered Party Island or Spain. They choose Party Island and are disappointed to learn the name was ironic.
• Henry James: Hark! A Vagrant: A cover of an edition of The Ambassadors is used in one of the Edward Gorey book cover comics. It presents the ambassadors as being for concepts rather than nations.
• Søren Kierkegaard: Hark! A Vagrant: In "A Book By its Gorey Cover, Pt 2" Kate Beaton has fun with Gorey's apparent complete unfamiliarity with Kierkegaard's work (she likes lampooning his covers because of the overdone illustrations, while his illustration for a compilation of Kierkegaard's work is just Kierke-Gaard in giant letters taking up the whole cover) by having Kierkegaard falling on the unsuspecting illustrator.
• Ellery Queen: Timmi from Grass and Sky subscribes to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It's one of the few things that makes her more excited than baseball.
• Stendhal: Hark! A Vagrant: The cover illustration for an edition of Stendhal's On Love was included in one of the Gorey Cover comics. Beaton took inspiration from the fact that the man on the cover seems to be in the process of collapsing and tripping while trying to look suave.
• David Foster Wallace:
  • Castle: A Season 7 episode has an It's a Wonderful Plot in which Castle is a Wallace Expy, complete with a novel titled Finite Laughter.
  • Gilmore Girls: Rory has mentioned Wallace a number of times throughout the show.
  • Liberal Arts: Jesse discourages Dean from repeatedly reading Infinite Jest after the latter's Bungled Suicide, even referencing Wallace's depression and suicide as a cautionary tale.

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Works:

• Because of Winn-Dixie: In Because of the Rabbit, Emma sees some of her favorite books, including Because of Winn-Dixie, on the shelf in her fifth grade classroom.
• The Big Sleep: The convoluted plot structure of Brick owes itself to The Big Sleep, and Raymond Chandler's style in general.
• Charlotte Temple: In chapter 5 of The Story Of A Bad Boy, Tom Bailey finds a Charlotte Temple book.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: In An American Werewolf in London, Alex reads the beginning of the book to David in the hospital.
• Contact: Civilization: Beyond Earth: The Contact victory is stated by developers to be inspired by the Carl Sagan novel of the same name.
• Divergent: In Dogs Don't Talk, Emily wonders why so many writers today write about dystopias, and gives Divergent as an example.
• Eloise: In About Scout, Sam talks about living in a hotel like Eloise. Scout asks if Eloise is one of his bimbos. Sam explains the premise of the books.
• The Elves and the Cobbler: In Hark! A Vagrant, KISS elves make questionable shoes. They later moved to Santa's workshop where they continued their trend.
• Encyclopedia Brown: In West Meadows Detectives, Myron reads Encyclopedia Brown stories in Room 15.
• Ethan Frome: In My Dark Vanessa, Mr. Strane teaches Ethan Frome the day after he and Vanessa kiss. He talks about Ethan's love for Mattie, and Vanessa thinks he's also talking about the two of them.
• Fortunatus: In chapter 4 of The Caxtons, it is mentioned Dame Primmins had a huge budget of stories, one of them being Fortunatus.
• Gil Blas: In chapter 5 of The Story Of A Bad Boy, Tom Bailey finds a Gil Blas book.
• The Giver: In Dogs Don't Talk, Emily wonders why so many writers today write about dystopias, and lists The Giver as an example.
• A Hero of Our Time: Hark! A Vagrant: One of the lampooned Edward Gorey book covers is an edition of A Hero of Our Time.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull: In I Think I Love You, Bill's girlfriend has a copy of ''Jonathan Livingston Seagull' on her bookshelf.
• Known Space: Wayne Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials includes an entry on the Puppeteers and another on the Thrintun.
• Lazarillo De Tormes: In volume 1 chapter 22 of Don Quixote, Gines de Pasamonte mentions he writes an autobiography about himself.
  Don Quixote: Is it so good? Gines de Pasamonte: So good is it, that a fig for Lazarillo de Tormes, and all of that kind that have been written, or shall be written compared with it: all I will say about it is that it deals with facts, and facts so neat and diverting that no lies could match them.
• Little Lord Fauntleroy: In A Drowned Maiden's Hair, Hyacinth and Maud act out scenes from the book, with Maud as Fauntleroy and Hyacinth as everyone else, so Maud can learn how to behave in an appropriately angelic manner while impersonating dead children in Hyacinth's séances.
• "The Lives of the Saints" (1894) by Alban Butler: From Mermaids: It's the name of the book that Charlotte Flax reads.
• The Magic Tree House: In The Mermaid's Mirror, Lena's mom reads a Magic Tree House book to six-year-old Cole.
• The Martian:
  • In The Expanse, a Martian ship is named the Mark Watney. According to Andy Weir, it's just a Shout-Out and does not indicate a Shared Universe.
  • In Babylon's Ashes two of the ships in Michio Pa's fleet are named after Atlas Shrugged and The Martian's protagonists:
  In the middle column, the colony ships she and her fleet had taken: the Bedyadat Jadida, out of Luna. The John Galt and the Mark Watney, out of Mars.
• Moll Flanders: In There's More Than One Way Home, Anna notes that DC Washington, like Moll Flanders, was born in prison.
• Mother of Learning: A character resembling Zorian, mumbling about finding a character named "Zach" appears in On The Shoulders Of Titans, by Andrew Rowe.
• Nicholas Nickleby: Matilda: When Miss Honey is assessing her reading ability, Matilda gives a long list of books she has read recently, including Nicholas Nickleby.
• Pale Fire:
  • The X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" shouts out Pale Fire, with a delusional character receiving a revelation from an alien named "Lord Kinbote".
  • Lines 703-707 of the eponymous poem^note "And blood-black nothingness began to spin / A system of cells interlinked within / Cells interlinked within cells interlinked / Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct / Against the dark, a tall white fountain played." are referenced and quoted verbatim in Blade Runner 2049, when "K" is given a police post-traumatic stress debriefing, in which he is asked to repeat the words "cells", "interlinked", and "cells interlinked within cells interlinked" in response to several quite brutally invasive questions. Later, "K"'s holographic wife asks him to read Pale Fire to her, but he replies that he hates the book, probably because he's exposed to lines from it every time he "retires" someone.
  • My Dark Vanessa takes its title from a line in Pale Fire.
• Ratman's Notebooks:
  • Shining Force II has a moment when your party is shrunk and must fight through a cluster of rats; the lead boss rat is named Willard.
  • Gary the Rat has a Dream Sequence in "Mergers and Acquisitions" in which he is given the Willard suite in a hotel.
• There's a Wocket in My Pocket!: In The Simpsons episode "This Little Wiggy," Mr. Burns tells Smithers, "There's a rocket in my pocket!"
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: In Downton Abbey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the book title acted out by Lady Mary Crawley in a Christmas charade.
• Tristram Shandy: In chapter 5 of The Story Of A Bad Boy, Tom Bailey finds an "odd" volume Tristram Shandy book.
• The Trumpet of the Swan: In The Someday Birds, Charlie's dad tells him to make a list of birds he'd like to see in the wild. The first bird Charlie comes up with is a trumpeter swan, because he's just read The Trumpet of the Swan.
• Vanity Fair: Anna from There's More Than One Way Home's main reaction to Vanity Fair was "What the fuck were they thinking?"
• What Maisie Knew: Hark! A Vagrant: In one of her "Books by their Edward Gorey Cover" strips Kate Beaton included an edition of What Maisie Knew. She interprets the scene on the cover as Maisie being disgusted by some adults having a rather inappropriate discussion of their sex plans for the evening.

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