Trivia / Nightblade

• Overtook the Manga: Somewhat, while Nightblade hasn't caught up to the light novels for SAO, the material that Knight typically bases the content off of is the anime (though he has confirmed he's read the light novels and plans on giving them the Nightblade treatment). Which, at the time of this writing, he's covered all of the anime.
• Shout-Out
  • A quick nod to Sword Art Online Abridged makes an appearance in Gaiden, Yui's response to Thinker's obviously dumb idea of going into a high level dungeon unarmed.
  • The main cast of Knight's previous work, The Fallen Angel makes a nice little cameo appearance in Nightblade III. Complete with a Rythin and Asmodeus stare down.
  • A quick nod to Undertale's "Sans Battle" appears in Viper's Bite chapter fifteen.
  It was a beautiful day, outside.
  The sun was shining, the birds were singing... On days like this, kids like us...
  It felt like were burning in hell.
  • A quick nod to Queen during Viper's Kiss while playing a game of Cops and Robbers during the parkour training session that Karasama and Korosensei give E-Class.
  Okajima: Look just be careful, he's like a ninja. For all you know, he's right there.
  Scream
  Okajima: Sugaya? Sugayaaaa!
  Nick: Another one bites the dust, and another one gone and another one gone, another one bites the dust.
  • During Korosensei's speech before starting the Civil War arc Nick makes a quick reference to The Pirates of Penzance, or more specifically name dropping the song "I am the very model of a Modern Major-General".
• Teasing Creator: Knight tends to have some fun at the fan's expense sometimes, most notably posting the first chapter of Viper's Bite a few months early as a Christmas gift to fans for not bugging him about when it was being released, only to have them think Nick had died by the end of the chapter. He lampshades this in the author's notes for the next chapter too. Another instance was when he published Nightblade III after being bugged about its release. The released copy was simply a one chapter story over-exaggerating all of the characters and promptly ending the story with as little build-up as possible.
  LESSON: Trolling my readers
  I learned it's fucking hilarious. That's good, right? ^note  This quote is actually taken from one of Knight's other stories, Shared Strength.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally Nick wasn't meant to actually start dating Kana at the end of Wings of Vengeance. While things probably would have stayed mostly the same, there are a few glaring plot points that happen in Defining Strength because they're a couple, one could only think what those scenes would be like if they weren't.
  • Kazuto was actually supposed to join Nick in E-Class during the first two books of Nightblade IV, but was scrapped to invoke more character development out of Nick. Though it does lead to interesting thoughts of what could have been had the tag team been together to try and murder Korosensei.
• Write What You Know: Nick is, for the most part, based off of the writer KnightEstoc. So it's only natural that this is the case, one notable example is Nick's problem with making and maintaining friendships, which goes back to Knight's real-life issue of making friends.
  • Emmit the cat is based on one of Knight's three cats.