Shout Out / Small Favor

Book #10 of The Dresden Files sees the return of the Denarians, conflict with both Faerie Courts, and a hidden plot for much higher stakes than Harry'd ever suspected. Can Chicago's top wizard wisecrack his way out of this one?

• "Faeries. Why did it have to be faeries?"
  • Harry later remarks that the Church probably stores captured Blackened Denarii in a big warehouse with a gazillion identical boxes.
• Thomas's remark, on the subject of Denarians, is a direct quote from Angel: "I already have one demon inside of me. What's one more?" Harry quickly corrects him.
• The Gruffs inspired the story "Three Billy Goats Gruff" in-universe.
  • One of them one-ups the Big Bad Wolf by smashing through a brick wall.
• Harry calls Thomas's huge, pseudo-military Hummer "Das Truck", in a possible oblique reference to Das Boot.
• Riding home in the back of Michael's truck, soaked and freezing, while watching the passengers in the cab getting warmed by the heater, Harry starts feeling like a Charles Dickens character.
• Re-read the scene in which Harry and Nicodemus are in the boat, then compare it with the final fight between Malcolm and the Operative in Serenity.
• Harry calls Kincaid "Wild Bill" when the mercenary nearly gets provoked to violence by Nicodemus.
• Murphy threatens Harry in the style of The Honeymooners after he cracks one too many short jokes.
  Murphy: Pow, Dresden. Right to the moon.
• Toot-Toot does a full-blown parody of Full Metal Jacket: "This is my box-knife. There are many who like it, but this one is mine."
  • The original quote comes from the Rifleman's Creed, which apparently was/is a genuine part of US Marine doctrine. Toot-Toot is probably more likely to have seen the movie though, particularly since Harry attributes it to the movie when he hears Toot-Toot say it.
  • Toot-Toot's "uniform" includes boots filched from a Ken doll or a vintage G.I. Joe.
  • In the same scene, Harry hums "When You Wish Upon a Star" while waiting for Toot's return.
• A serious gut wound is sealed up with superglue, with the victim mentioning that they saw it in a werewolf movie.
• Hiding from the Gruffs, Harry recalls a scene from one of the Scream movies.
• He also thinks of the Gruffs as Inky, Binky, and Pinky, three of the ghosts from Pac-Man. (Although it's actually Blinky, not Binky.)
• Talking about how The Masquerade holds up even in cities, Harry quotes William Randolph Hearst.
• Uriel leaves Harry a copy of The Two Towers, with a significant phrase underlined.
  Harry: "The burned hand teaches best." What the hell is that supposed to mean?
• Thomas refers to the White Council's attitude towards him as 'Leper, outcast, unclean', a reference to The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
• Harry explains that Denarians' Fallen partners are schemers that would make Cardinal Richelieu look like Mother Teresa.
• Mab's snow-sculpture re-creation of the safe house's destruction depicts humans as the size of Star Wars action figures.
  • Harry compares Marcone's safe house to his own warded apartment, saying that his defenses are a little more Merlin and a little less Bond.
• When Nicodemus finds his operations compromised by his habit of cutting out the tongues of his followers, Harry sighs that he didn't read the Evil Overlord List after all.
• Harry quotes The Princess Bride: "You rush a miracle-worker, you get rotten miracles."
  • This, after paraphrasing Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" when he gets the idea for the miracle in question.
• Faced with opponents whom Michael and Mouse can sense but he can't, Harry complains about not getting to be the Jedi.
  • He quotes Star Wars again a few paragraphs later, and calls Mouse "Chewie".
• Thinking about the Gruffs' possible maneuvers, Harry guesses that one might jump clear over him Kung Fu Theater style.
• Charity is like the MacGyver of the kitchen.
• After a reference to the Predator^note Specifically, that the Predator's glowing blood was made by cracking glowsticks open movies goes unrecognized by a centuries-old demon:
  Harry: That's the problem with you nearly immortal types. You couldn't spot a pop culture reference if it skittered up and implanted an embryo down your esophagus.
• Somehow, a collection of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips got stashed with Harry's books on Nevernever creatures.
• Faced with the largest of the gruffs, Harry gloomily compares his circumstances to a Tom and Jerry cartoon... except Jerry is not going to win.
• The dolphins at the Shedd Oceanarium are Pacific white-sided dolphins, not bottlenosed—or, as Harry puts it, not "the attractive Flipper kind."
• Bob's been talking like a pirate ever since Harry took him to see a certain movie.
  • Fleeing the island in a leaking boat, Harry starts singing "Blow the Man Down" on Bob's behalf.
• Thomas, armed with sword and pistol, hums "Froggy Went A-Courting". Discussing the Denarians' abilities, he points out that the one he fought wasn't Superman.
• Sanya quotes from the 1981 film Excalibur, and Harry remarks that Merlin and Captain Picard were the only good things about it besides that line.
  Sanya: The king and his land are one.
• Hail to the King, baby.
• The clay model Harry gives Thomas to disguise him looks a bit like Gumby.
• When Murphy objects to a plan on the grounds that it steps too far outside the law, Harry asks her to impersonate Sylvester Stallone's Judge Dredd role.
  Harry: Do me a favor. Hold your nose shut, put on a Philadephia accent, and say "I am the law."
• Michael says that Shiro knew swordplay like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart knew music.
• Harry gets annoyed that Michael isn't able to step in and solve the crisis in one go, like Superman would.
  • Later, Harry tells Michael that because of his Walking Techbane effect, he doesn't ride planes. Michael responds that "statistically speaking, flying is still the safest way to travel."
• Gard misses both Harry's MC Hammer reference and his Yertle the Turtle joke.
• The super-elaborate circle used by the Denarians to hold Ivy captive is similar to the Magitek pentacles used by Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, which also incorporated colored light, sound, and the like.
• Harry remarks that Butters, if called in to tend the injured Kincaid, will do a McCoy impression:
  Harry: "Dammit, Murphy. I'm a medical examiner, not a pasta chef."
• Once again, the Archive is compared to Bill Mumy's character Anthony Fremont from The Twilight Zone (1959)’s adaptation of "It's a Good Life".
• Subverted when Harry wants to quote The Bible to scold Molly, but admits he can't remember the exact words.
  • He does recognize where Nicodemus's surname of "Archleone" came from, however.
  • Later, he compares what he and the Knights are doing to the biblical Daniel entering the lion's den.
• Harry points out that in mid-fall, a Denarian is no more immune to gravity than anyone else in the hands of Mother Earth and Isaac Newton.
• As the trouble piles on, Harry is tempted to just stay in bed and Rip Van Winkle his way past the crisis.
• Faced with the obviously contrived tableau of Nicodemus posed with his followers, Harry undercuts their pretensions by asking if they're auditioning for Family Feud.
  • Playing the Righteously-Angry Wizard role as he approaches them, Harry tells himself: Eat your heart out, Sir Ian.
  • His insults to "Monkeyboy" Magog—references to King Kong, Magilla Gorilla, and Grape Ape—are a lot more lowbrow.
• Gard has excellent timing when it comes to blaring "Ride of the Valkyries" as she arrives.
• Discussing soulfire with Bob, Harry paraphrases Swamp Thing.
• Yet again, the Water Beetle is compared to Quint's boat from Jaws.
• The Senior Council, according to Harry, couldn't find its heart with a copy of Grays Anatomy (no, not that one), X-ray vision, and a stethoscope.
• Murphy quotes the same Yeats poem which Harry'd quoted back at the end of Storm Front.
• Bandaged up after the battle at Shedd Aquarium, Kincaid looks like The Mummy's stunt double.
• The projected soulfire-hand Harry uses to beat the crap out of Thorned Namshiel is strongly reminiscent of the Bigby's Hand spells from early editions of Dungeons & Dragons.
• After Michael reveals that it’s not Kincaid's time yet, Harry 'Spocks' an eyebrow and gives him a look.
• There's a subtle reference to Jurassic Park when Harry describes a Denarian's clawed footprint as "like a turkey's, only larger."^note A kid at the beginning of the film calls the Velociraptor skeleton a "six-foot turkey" before Dr. Grant informs him just how dangerous they were. A bit later, what's likely the same Denarian stalks Ivy through some faux foliage and leaps out at her, raptor-like—only to be instantly vaporized by the Archive.
• Eldest Gruff's approach at the abandoned cannery plays out a lot like the first on-screen appearance of a shrieker in Tremors 2: Aftershocks.

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