Darwin's Soldiers/Shout-Out

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Since Darwin's Soldiers features many, many players, it is natural that the players will include references to their favorite media.

Video Games

  • The character of Ridley is named after a similar character from Metroid.
  • Shelton is disappointed at the lack of a crowbar in the closet when raiding Raulson's lab.
  • The Phase Tank is modeled off the tank from Red Alert 2.
  • Sharon compares the sublevels to Silent Hill and Resident Evil in the first RP.
  • Shelton facetiously refers to himself as Dr. Gordon Freeman.
  • A converted supertanker that is a floating Dragonstorm lab is called Surrounded Sea.
  • The champion of a military themed shooting competition is named Nicholas Parker.
  • Subject 19's claws are based upon Alex Mercer's claws.
    • Subject 19 is given the code name Athena. Alex Mercer was given the code name ZEUS by Blackwatch. Word of God states that it was suppose to be a joke, using another Greek mytholgical God as Subject 19's code name.
  • Cobalt Leader's real name is revealed to be Zachary Slavik
  • The Human Cobalt Soldier's name is Sharon Redfield
  • The trigger phrase for Kain's chip is Would You Kindly?
  • Kagetora is based on a minor enemy in Ninja Gaiden
  • Neku is named for the main protagonist of The World Ends With You
  • Roux is named for a character in ZZ Gundam and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam

Music

  • The clearance question to auxiliary control references lyrics to "MacArthur Park."
  • American Pie by Don McLean is heard at the beginning of part 2 of Card of Ten.
  • Vic says, "Ground Control to Major Roy," when testing Roy Hawkeye's radio in Card Of Ten.
  • The password to the ADSA HQ is "Shave and a Haircut."
  • Many, many songs are heard on the radio as James and Co. drive to various places in their cars.
  • It is revealed by Hailey that Trinity is a fan of classical music and to the point that Beethoven's 9th Symphony is heard playing with the Trinity Facility as well.

Historical Figures

  • Darwin, duh.
  • Shelton mentions Sacco, Venzetti, and Daniel Ellsberg when Hans asks about his chances at freedom.
  • Shelton himself takes his first and middle names from Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde.
  • Many of the titles of LB&T's works include famous names, like Schrodinger and Nietzsche. Others come from famous quotes, like Card of Ten and Ship of State.
  • Not really an historical figure, but Gustave the crocodile is named after the real life Gustave.

Science

  • The Einstein-Rosen Bridge is named after the hypothetical wormhole proposed by the eponymous names.
  • The Double Helix eatery.
  • Shelton mentions Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion when describing how Gamas formed.
  • James uses the Coriolis Effect to select a corridor in Pavlov's Checkmate.
  • Shelton also mentions having an Erdos number of 7 in the first RP. Which is actually a rather pathetic Erdos number.
  • The Cobalt Squad in the first RP had a tendency to use famous scientists' names as derogatory terms directed toward the scientist characters, Examples of names used as such include Newton, Hawking, and Bill Nye.
  • Kerzach is mentioned as having worked on a Small Hadron Collider, which later plays a role in Schrodinger's Prisoners.
  • Rara Terra Smelting from Fool's Gold by Serris is established as lanthanide refinery.
    • Rara Terra means "Rare Earth" in Latin. Rare earth is an old name for lanthanides.
  • Shelton says the Dragonstorm "thought network" was a branch-off of the phone tooth invented in 2002.
  • A scientist named Dr. Dyson Holmes is the subject of a really long and convoluted shout out. Spoilered below:
    • "Dy" and "Ho" - the letters for Dysprosium and Holmium.
    • The lab report he worked on is titled "Toxicity of Lanthanide Containing Alloys In Pediatric Psions" - Dysprosium and Holmium are lanthanides.
    • There is also a reference to Dr. Holmes being "hard to find". Dysprosium is named after the Greek word "dysprositos (δυσπρόσιτος)", meaning "hard to get".
      • LB&T's answer works too. He thought "Dyson Holmes" was a reference to Sherlock Holmes and the Dyson Sphere, since both are "hard to find" (Holmes because he's a detective, good at remaining unseen, and Dyson Sphere because 1] they don't exist and 2] a Dyson shell would block the rays of the encompassed sun making it hard to see from an astronomical viewpoint.)
  • Krebs-Calvin Pharmaceuticals is mentioned in the second RP.
  • James's favorite expression is allegedly "I'll trust you when there are two electrons with the same spin occupy the same atomic orbital". Spoilered below:
    • Electrons cannot occupy the same atomic orbital unless their spin quantum numbers are different.
  • A tiny mining town in Texas is named Platanna Town.

Literature

  • Main character Ender McThair from the Furtopia RP.
  • A sadistic canine guard is nicknamed Miss. Cujo.
  • The complete works of Shakespeare play an important role in Card of Ten.
  • Lab 101 was named after Room 101 in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • The code used by the Dragonstorm scientists in the first RP consists of multiple references to Homer and the Aeneid.
  • Dragonstorm passed out copies of The Art of War to everyone in the organization.
  • The Anaconda who saves Dr. Kerzach's life by killing Jake Sachs and teams up with him in the story Fools Gold is named Paul Gamay
  • <Characters who use the Dragonstorm thought network are referred to as thought-speaking, and their dialogue is punctuated with triangular brackets, like in Animorphs>
  • The head of security on the Dragonstorm supertanker/lab is named John Cade.
  • In a Gaman library, Dr. Joe finds a book called The Gamas Delusion, [dead link] referencing Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion.
  • Shelton mistakes ROSS' name as "Rossum", a name from RUR - Rossum's Universal Robots, the play that coined the term 'robot'.
  • In the third roleplay, right when Calchas is about to finish what he needed to interrogate Shakila...

Assistant: Mr. Babcock!
Calchas: Out I say, out!

Film/Live Action TV

Branston: Dr. Zenarchis has the other trigger.
Shelton: Doctor Who? He's dead!

Shelton: "You could be looking at the next Dave Bowman."
Cobalt Leader: "Hm, the way I remember your role in the whole situation, you'd probably be closer to the Chevron Guy on Stargate."

Other

  • Shout-outs to weaponry all over the freaking place.
    • One of the soldiers used a Patton tribute pistol in the first RP. It was never explained exactly why he had one of those.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger is referenced when James blasts through the floor with a gun in Card of Ten.
  • Shelton's password to the computer system is killapp123, both a reference to killer apps and Lotus-1-2-3, a spreadsheet program and early killer app.
  • Jessica Boyle of Escondido, a play mentioned in the first RP, is named after an actual person LB&T knew in real life.
  • The reference to Ender McThair in Card of Ten established the anti-matter universe the characters were stuck in as synonymous with the Furtopia universe.
  • In Pavlov's Checkmate, James uses "Nigel Munroe" as an alias, which happens to be the protagonist's name of a failed attempt to start a Darwin's Soldiers RP in the Bulbagarden forums.
  • Not really science, but James finds a CD encrypted in BASIC.
    • It's actually binary, Shelton misspoke.
  • A woman named Selina Kyle is mentioned.
  • Shelton mentions being in Mensa in the first RP.
  • The Dragonstorm experiment who first attacks the group is named Magneto.
  • A single shot doctor in the 3rd RP is named Dr. McCoy.
  • Alfred's response to Zachary when he is asked if he can tip a 3 ton truck over.

Alfred: I exceed the strength of the strongest Human by quite a bit but I am not Colossus!

  • Shelton makes an offhand comment about TV Tropes.
  • Dr. Zanasiu sarcastically calls Dr. Shelton Professor X through the thought network.
  • The fictional actor Stephen Di Georgi is named after two people that Serris knows in real life.
  • Marcus uses the name Logan on his name tag.
  • Stern's two assigned allies in the Schutzhund are competitors 1138 and 1337.
  • After taking out Project Zeta, Shakila says this:

Shakila: Batman eat your heart out.

  • It is mentioned that Dr. Stan Lee first discovered the mechanism by which psychic powers work in 1963.
  • The first psi-experiment created is named Jean Gray and in a Shout-Out to X-Men The Last Stand she is eventually put down by the scientists after her telekinetic powers went out of control and killed several scientists.
    • Do note however, that the "telekinetic meltdown" manifested in the form of people getting violently thrown around, not in the form of people and objects getting disintegrated.
  • A Sgt. Frank Castle is seen as a member of the United States Army
  • A Chimera-based Dragonstorm experiment attacks Kiara and Hailey in the 3rd RP
  • A certain elderly Dragonstorm researcher in the spin-off story New Divide goes by the codename of Old Mother Hubbard and she has a canine assistant.
  • Drake has the inventory number of Experiment 626
  • The town of Cornova is named after the author of the Poké Wars series.
  • Shakila gives off the fake name of Violet Parr and the fake number of A113 as her experiment number.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Soldiers/Shout-Out?oldid=2050983"