This page serves to catalogue less relevant, mildly interesting, somewhat serviceable, or completely useless information on Monster.
The Manga and Anime:
Numbers:
- 402 is the number of Johan's room at the Eisler Memorial Hospital, as well as the number of Eva's hotel room (which also gives the title to Chapter 113).
- 16 Necker Street is the address of the Fortners. 16 is 4^2 (or 2^4).
- 204 is the room number of Edmund Fahren, the "Thursday boy."
- 42 is the number of people poisoned at the Red Rose Mansion.
- 302 is the number of Runge's room at the motel in Ruhenheim.
- 47 is Hartmann's building number, as well as the number of the locker hiding Johan's cassette tape from Kinderheim 511.
- 606 is the room number of Kristof, the "devil's disciple."
Birthdays:
- Kenzo Tenma: January 2, 1958
- This is, incidentally, also Urasawa's birthday (although he was born in 1960)
- Johan and Anna Liebert: May 1975 - arguably,
10 March 1975 - Wolfgang Grimmer: 1954
- Julius Reichwein: 1937
Music:
- The opening theme, "Grain" by Kuniaki Haishima, contains a choir repeatedly singing the first line of the third stanza of the Coventry Carol: "Herod the king, in his raging." The carol recounts the events of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents, wherein Herod, the King of Judea, ordered the slaughter of all the male infants in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill the coming Messiah.
- The original anime broadcast used David Sylvian's "For the Love of Life" and Kuniaki Haishima's "Make It Home" for its ending themes, respectively.
- An abandoned building in Episode 11 sports the graffitied logo of the band Einstürzende Neubauten. The band's name translates into "collapsing new building," ''new building'' referring to post-war architecture.
- According to Eva and Another Monster, Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" is one of Tenma's favorite songs. In the anime, an instrumental version is played when Eva dances with Roberto at the bar.
- An instrumental version of "Over the Rainbow" is played in Episode 55.
- Tenma (like Urasawa) played the guitar in high school.
Fairy Tale allusions and motifs:
- "Beauty and the Beast": How Bonaparta sees his situation with the twins' mother. It could also be applied to the twins themselves.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: A name, eh? And strength? And a Deal with the Devil? How about reunion with your other half?
- City with No Name: "The Nameless Monster."
- Deal with the Devil: "Big-eyes and Big-mouth."
- "Hansel and Gretel": Poor, abandoned brother and sister wandering alone...
- "Little Red Riding Hood": ... And running into a guy called Wolf.
- Knight in Shining Armor/Prince Charming: One of the chapters is titled, "A Prince on a White Horse", and it is also who Nina thinks Tenma is, mistakenly thinking that he was the one sending the anonymous "romantic" emails to her when in reality the sender of the emails is Johan.
- Another chapter is titled "Brother and Sister," which is a European fairy tale in which the sister takes care of the brother, who is turned into an animal.
- Another is titled, "Frogs in a Fairy-Tale Land."
- Magic Mirror: Explicitly in the God of Peace sequence, but it is also used as a motif throughout the series.
- Once Upon a Time: "The Nameless Monster."
- "The Pied Piper of Hamelin": Johan's magnetic and destructive influence on children.
- Rule of Three: The Three Frogs; Otto, Hans, and Thomas.
- "Sleeping Beauty": Evoked by the Red Rose Mansion, both in the name and the overgrowth of the flora.
- Walking the Earth: "The Nameless Monster," reflected in Johan's own itinerant quest.
Tropes
- Adored by the Network: Was played frequently on Syfy and sister channel Chiller.
- Children Voicing Children: Yūto Uemura was 10, later 11 when he voiced young Johan.
- Defictionalization: The Nameless Monster was turned into a real children's book with a holographic cover. However, it is out of print.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes:
- Thanks to an edited version of the first ED song beyond Viz Media's control, there's a good chance that there will never be an R1 Monster DVD Volume 2. It also doesn't help matters that Naoki Urasawa's works have never been successful in the United States. While the subbed version was eventually added to Netflix with the ED intact, the dub remains missing from streaming and the only way to legally obtain it is to import the Australian release.
- And Youtube for no-American viewers.
- And Youtube
- Thanks to an edited version of the first ED song beyond Viz Media's control, there's a good chance that there will never be an R1 Monster DVD Volume 2. It also doesn't help matters that Naoki Urasawa's works have never been successful in the United States. While the subbed version was eventually added to Netflix with the ED intact, the dub remains missing from streaming and the only way to legally obtain it is to import the Australian release.
- Playing Against Type:
- Richard Epcar normally goes for more hammy characters than the subdued role of Lunge. In fact, you may know him for voicing hammy characters such as both Etemon and Myotismon in Digimon Adventure, as well as Mr. Noisy in The Mr. Men Show — now contrast that with Lunge.
- Patrick Seitz often plays brutish or sadistic villains. In Monster, he voices Wolfgang Grimmer, a polite Friend to All Children.
- Travis Willingham, who usually plays authoritative heroic roles, plays Smug Snake Bastard Understudy Christof Sievernich.
- Technology Marches On: Enforced trope, due to the animated adaption first airing a full ten years after the manga debuted. Tenma uses a pager to be reachable by his hospital, and he has to request the use of a newspaper publisher's archives to gather information about Johann's disappearance a decade earlier. In the same episode, email is treated as the way youngsters chat and set up dates, with Nina later using a phone booth to alert her parents she's going to be out for the night. It should be noted that doctors still use pagers to this very day.
Miscellaneous:
- The word Ungeheuer, found in a wine brand in one of the episodes, means "monster."
- In the anime, the streetlights are mistakenly rendered as blue instead of green. This is because streetlights are that color in Japan.
- Even odder Pedestrian streetlights in Munich use East German symbols instead of West German ones.
- One article in a Bavarian newspaper says something along the lines of: "Kahns Liebesaffären, Promi-Luder" ("Kahn's Affairs, Prominent Hussy," Kahn being a former Bavarian goalkeeper).
- At one point, a few of Dr. Reichwein's files on patients are shown. The names on these files aside from Richard are all German language film personalities, including Werner Herzog, Nastassja Kinski, Wolfgang Becker, Bruno Ganz, and Wim Wenders.
The Film:
- Dyeing for Your Art: Charlize Theron put on about thirty pounds, partially shaved and bleached her eyebrows, wore prosthetic dentures and brown eye contacts to cover her blue eyes and had her actual hair thinned and damaged to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the film.
- Fake American: South African (though now a naturalized American citizen) Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos.
- Underage Casting: Charlize Theron was twenty-eight when played Aileen Wuornos, who was in her mid-thirties during the events of the film.
The Game:
- Development Hell: The game has remained unfinished since the 2000s, and the collapse of its development team at the time means its chances of ever seeing any sort of finished release are incredibly slim. Ancient Cline doesn't even have the benefit of having a playable build available, making it true Vaporware.
- Dummied Out: One aspect of the known playable builds being unfinished is that many of the options present in-game had yet to be implemented, such as the Story Mode and some sort of Mini-Game that was apparently planned for the final release. Trying to access these options in the game simply does nothing.
- He Also Did: The game's lead designer Sho Kawakami (known online by the moniker "ShoK") is believed to have worked on the original Darkstalkers as a character designer, and created the original design for Jon Talbain. He may also have contributed some concepting work to Morenatsu, another kemono-centric doujin project.
- No Export for You: Suffice it to say that the game being Vaporware killed any prospect of it ever getting a release outside of Japan, even though the developers were apparently interested in spreading news about the game overseas.
- What Could Have Been:
- Ancient Cline itself is one big What Could Have Been — it was going to polish up various aspects of the game, revamp the shift system, and add more characters, but a playable version of it still has yet to be found.
- According to some sources, the game was almost picked up by Arc System Works at one point. The dwindling development team is presumed to be why the deal never went through.
