The Land: Founding
- One of the very first in the series is Richter killing a fox, and giving in to an emotion.... the urge to sing Ylvis' "What Does The Fox Say".
- There's a scene that echoes one from the Firefly episode "The Train Job": Richter gives a speech to one of their defeated opponents, the man snaps back defiantly, and Richter kills him before moving on to the next guy and starting the speech over before the second guy quickly agrees. Bonus points for name-dropping both Firefly and Serenity though it all ("I could continue to let fire fly between you and my friend here"... "Richter's voice was full of calm and serenity.")
The Land: Alliances
- Richter assigns two people to use the passcode "Rick" with the response "Morty". When Basil reports that they did indeed use the words, Richter shouts "Wubbalubbadubdub!"
The Land: Predators
- Several of the new villagers have names that appear to be references, among them the courtesan Inara and the sailor Jerry
. - When Richter first sees the tovuut mauler, his reaction is "Ummmm. It's a rancor."
- Vibranium exists in The Land. When Richter discovers this, he thinks about how he wants to make a Captain America shield and Black Panther armor.
- Richter meets another chaos seed, who goes by the name "Heman". They reveal to each other that they're chaos seeds when Heman explains that his name is pronounced as "He-Man", Richter replies that he's "always glad to meet another master of the universe", and Heman exclaims, "By the Power of Grayskull!"
- Firefly is name-dropped, and the narration discusses how a line from it ("I look out for me and mine. That don't include you 'less I conjure it does.") relates to Richter's current situation.
- A scene toward the end of the book, where Richter rides the body of the evolved mauler as he falls to his likely death, arm in the air yelling "Yahoooooo!", reads suspiciously like a similar scene in Dr. Strangelove, especially since the phrase "strange love" is used just a sentence or two before.
The Land: Monsters
- Several references to Indiana Jones regarding scorpions.
- Richter's position at one point is compared to having "the high ground, in Jedi parlance".
- The phrase "hakuna matata" is used, although it's used in a context that would more accurately be describing the Circle of Life.
- To determine whether any of the people he's just met are chaos seeds, Richter asks them if they know how Bond takes his martinis.
