Ciaphas Cain/Shout Out: Difference between revisions
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* There are several references to [[Gaunt's Ghosts]]:
** At least one footnote in one of the books makes a reference to a certain individual who held the dual rank of Colonel-Commissar for a number of years.
** In ''The Traitor's Hand'' (possibly a [[Take That Me]]):
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*** Possibly a [[Multiple Reference Pun]] -- the phrase itself dates back as far as Frederick the Great, was likely popularized by ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'', and has been quoted in ''many'' combat novels since, including badly-written ones. It was also used in [[World War I]] by a U.S. Marine who won the Medal of Honor '''''twice'''''.
** ''Duty Calls'' has a limousine with a cabinet made of naalwood, native to Tanith. Cain remarks this probably cost more than the dropship that brought him down to the planet. No wonder - keep in mind, the Cain books are set in the 900.M41/00.M42 era, while the ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' books are set in the 700.M41 era and feature the Tanith ''First And Only'' for [[Apocalypse How|a very good reason]].
** ''For The Emperor'' has a footnote listing notable mixed-gender regiments.
** ''Cain's Last Stand'' features a retired Guard veteran who repeatedly lets out a war cry of "Give them the straight silver!" echoing the Ghosts' order to fix bayonets with their distinctive "straight silver" warknives.
** This makes it a double reference, as the character is clearly Corporal Jones of ''[[Dad's Army]]'', who often said "They don't like the cold steel up 'em, sir!"
** ''For The Emperor'' also makes a reference to "the Sabbatine Incident" regarding a clash between two different classes of ship, one of which was created to replace the other. These two classes actually fight in ''Sabbat Martyr''. (Though the chronology is of debatable correctness.)
* Sandy Mitchell seems to have a particular knack for combining this trope with [[Stealth Pun]]:
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* From ''Caves of Ice'' again: ''[[Dune|Fear is the mind killer]]''. (Part of the Catechisms of Command.)
* ''Caves of Ice'', yet again: ''[[Predator|"If it bleeds, we can kill it"]]''.
* Heavy usage of the word "[[Battlestar Galactica
* Grasshopper, a game played in the Britannicus cluster with arcane rules, month-long matches, and frequent rain delays. [[Cricket Rules|Sound familiar?]]
* An extended one: in ''Duty Calls'', the plateau of Aceralbaterra on the planet Periremunda. Aceralbaterra is "High Gothic" for "Maple White Land," the name given the plateau in Sir [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s ''[[The Lost World (novel)|The Lost World]]''. Periremunda translates as "Lost World," and the planet, after being discovered by Acer Alba, was rediscovered by Magos Provocare (which could be translated as Professor Challenger). Just to rub it in, the principal settlement on Aceralbaterra is Konnandoil, and "the locals imported thousands of sauropods from [[Ray Harryhausen|Harihowzen]]." The author was clearly having a ''lot'' of fun with this one.
* One of the chapter quotes from ''The Traitor's Hand'': "If you don't expect gratitude you'll seldom be disappointed." - ''[[The Eeyore|Eyor]] [[Winnie the Pooh|Dedonki]], Memoirs of a Pessimist. 479.M41''
** In ''Cain's Last Stand'', there is a ship called "Trespassers William".
** Barely hinted at in ''Death or Glory'', but slightly more obvious in "Sector 13," is the female law enforcer with whom Cain uncovered the genestealer cult on Keffia: Wynetha Phu. This is rather subtle, as she's petite but curvaceous -- not at all like a yellow plush bear.
* It's been mentioned in ''Death or Glory'' that "The Tracks on the Land Raider Crush the Heretics"<ref>AKA "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round"</ref> is a ''very'' popular preschool song.
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* One of the stormtroopers in ''Caves of Ice'' is named Hastur. Unlike his namesake [[Eldritch Abomination]], the soldier of that name is a quick victim of {{spoiler|the Necrons}}.
** He only ''speaks'' three times. And the moment he's spoken the third time, he's {{spoiler|disemboweled and skinned by a Flayed One.}}
* Auspex (radar) operator Orrily in ''Death or Glory'' might be a corruption of [[
** The badass vet Ariott, who [[Closest Thing We Got|got to be]] the team's [[The Medic|medic]] in ''Death or Glory'', is a clear send-up to the no less badass [[Real Life]] vet and writer James Alf Wight, better known under his pen name of [[James Herriot]]. It's even noted that Arriott wrote a book titled ''[[All Creatures Great and Small|All Lifeforms Large and Small]]''.
* In a wave to the '''origin''' of the ''[[Flashman]]'' stories (a book titled ''[[Tom
* From ''Cain's Last Stand:'' ''The Fungoid Menace: Orkish Physiology and its Implications'' by [[H.P. Lovecraft|Migo Yuggoth.]] Bonus points for the Migo being themselves fungus.
* Amberley's rendezvous with Orelius is at void station [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Delta Sigma Novem]]. Remember that November was originally the ninth month.
* In ''The Beguiling'' there is the [[wikipedia:St
* Another [[Back to The Future]] [[Shout-Out]] is in ''Death or Glory'', wherein a shot-up radio pack's most (and implied to be the only) damaged part is a 'Flux Capacitator'. It also gets a mention in "The Emperor's Finest"
** In the same scene Amberley's flying D'Lorien is introduced, there's also a number of things implying her cover is essentially [[Thunderbirds|Lady Penelope]] (including a mention of her 'home planet' being Creightonward.)
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* The statement "I can always get another techpriest...but there's only one psychic enhancer" in ''Duty Calls'' clearly refers to ''The Maltese Falcon''. And then in ''Cain's Last Stand'' {{spoiler|Magos Felicia Tayber}} uses much the same phrasing about the possibility of blowing up the dam '''again''' to keep the Shadowlight.
* The name of the Chaos Warmaster Varan the Undefeatable sounds a bit like [[Godzilla|Varan the Unbelievable]]
* After finding {{spoiler|a Necron tomb}} deep underground in ''Caves of Ice'': "[[The Lord of the Rings|There are worse things than greenskins]]."
* A [[Machine Worship|tech-priest]] in ''Caves of Ice'' says that tagging along with Cain is "better than recalibrating the [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|interociters]]."
* Another from ''Duty Calls'': The Adeptus Sororitas are drilling with a precision that [[R. Lee Ermey|Sergeant Lermie]], the 597th's Drill Instructor, would nod grudging approval of.
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** As a matter of fact, [[Whole-Plot Reference|the entire plot of the story]] is pretty much "''[[Die Hard]]'' on a luxury liner," right down to the idea of the antagonist using a terrorist attack to cover up a theft.
* The title of ''The Caves of Ice'' [[Literary Allusion Title|references]] [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]]'s "Kubla Khan", either directly or (more probably) by way of [[wikipedia:Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice|Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice]].
* In ''The Emperor's Finest,'' Cain paraphrases Rick's parting speech to Ilsa in ''[[Casablanca]]'': 'If I got on that shuttle with you now, you'd regret it. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.''
* Part of the device to create long distance images in ''The Emperor's Finest'' is called an 'interociter', the name of the device for interplanetary communication in ''[[This Island Earth]]''.
* "Kaeti," the name painted on a field ambulance in ''Death or Glory'', is also the main character of two books' worth of fantasy short stories by Keith Roberts.
* In ''For The Emperor'', Cain loses his [[Commissar Cap]] and has this monologue. Try to read it without thinking about [[Indiana Jones]].
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* The verse from "The Guardsman's Duty" used as a chapter quote in ''For The Emperor'' (''"Whatever happens, we have got / The Emperor's Blessing. They have not"'') is taken from [[Hilaire Belloc]]'s ''The Modern Traveller'', with "Emperor's Blessing" substituted for "Maxim gun".
* The children's book that Vail quotes in ''Caves of Ice'', ''Our Friend Promethium'', owes its title to the 1957 [[Disney]] educational film "Our Friend the Atom", but it reads almost exactly like [[John M. Ford]]'s own parody of the concept, the short film "Dilithium And You", in the [[Star Trek|Classic Trek]] novel ''How Much For Just The Planet?''
* Cain alludes to an incident where he almost drowned at a place called "Rikenbach" in ''The Emperor's Finest'', a reference to Reichenbach Falls, where [[Sherlock Holmes]] had his final encounter with Professor Moriarty and died ([[Back
* Cain mentions clearing out a genestealer-infested Space Hulk called the Spawn of Damnation with a squad of Space Marines. [[Space Hulk]] is the game where you do just that (sans cowardly commissar), onboard the Sin of Damnation. Lampshaded by Cain wondering who the warp ''names'' these things.
** A rather subtle and [[Fridge Brilliance|clever]] one is the way the encounter plays out like a game of ''Space Hulk'' itself, with Terminators peeling off to cover corridors and genestealers massing just out of range before rushing en-masse to overwhelm them by weight of numbers. One of the Terminators even goes down when his weapon jams in the face of a rush of genestealers, a frequent occurence in the tabletop game which usually dooms the unfortunate Terminator to death.
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* Bit of a stretch, but the Arbites justicar sent to chaffeur Cain in ''Duty Calls'' is [[Bill Nye the Science Guy|Bill(em) Ny(t)e]].
** Alternatively, his name could be read as a reference to [[Knight Rider|Wilton Knight]].
* In ''The Traitor's Hand'' one of the footnotes refers to an Abandoned Biological Testing Station,
* Magos Izembard, the techpriest who figures out what's going on in ''The Last Ditch'', is likely named after celebrated Victorian engineer [[wikipedia:Isambard Kingdom Brunel|Isambard Kingdom Brunel]].
* The tunneler creatures of ''The Last Ditch'' are a lot like the sandworms of ''[[Dune]]''... but also to the graboids of ''[[Tremors]]'', and Cain manages to defeat one [[Feed It a Bomb|in a similar fashion]].
* A footnote in ''The Traitor's Hand'' mentions the Nauga, "A species of animal indigenous to the hotside of Adumbria. Its [[wikipedia:Naugahyde|toughened hide]] is highly prized for certain hard-wearing applications, particularly the covering of sofas in waiting rooms."
* There's a brief mention in ''The Last Ditch'' of something important happening in "the Halcyon Drift," which also happens to be the title and setting of the first of Brian Stableford's "Hooded Swan" novels.
* ''Dead in the Water'': The ship Ciaphas and Jurgen use for their mission is the [[wikipedia:Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109|PB-109]], and the captain is [[Forrest Gump|Lt. Dan]].
* In ''Traitor's Gambit'', when the planetary governor offers a visiting Cain an alternative to his world's disappointing amasec: "[[wikipedia:Hava nagila|Have a nagila]]?"
* One of the passages not by Cain in ''The Greater Good'' is the transcript of an Imperial Navy debriefing. Admiral Flynt, the officer in charge, has the given name [[Star Trek: The Original Series/Characters|"Jaymstea."]] A "Commodore Stocker"<ref>Another name known to Trekkers ... for almost getting the ''Enterprise'' destroyed.</ref> is also mentioned, lost fighting the [[Last Stand|rear-guard action]] the debriefing is about.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Ciaphas Cain]]
[[Category:Shout-Out]]
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