Mythology Gag/Live-Action TV/Sherlock

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The following list is very long and likely to get much longer, as Steven Moffat has openly admitted that he's having "endless fun" with finding modern parallels for aspects of the original stories.

Examples of Mythology Gags in the Sherlock TV series include:
  • In "A Study in Pink", a character who is a Red Herring for being the murderer is an American visiting London for the first time. This is a nod to the original A Study in Scarlet, in which the murderer was an American visiting London for the first time. In both, the killer is a cabbie.
  • In the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet, the police assumed that the person writing Rache was trying to write the name "Rachel", and Holmes poo-pooed this by advising them that "Rache" is German for "revenge". However, this is completely inverted in "A Study in Pink".
  • John reveals that he was actually shot in the shoulder, not the leg, referencing Doyle's habit of forgetting where exactly his wound was in the books.
    • In both cases he was shot in a recent Afghanistan War, though...
  • Mycroft is the British government, according to Sherlock.
  • John finds Sherlock lying down on the sofa moving his arm in a way that made it look (from the audience's POV) as if he had just treated himself to a ringer of cocaine.
  • It's a three-patch problem. = It's a three-pipe problem.
  • Mrs. Hudson's neighbour's name, Mrs. Turner, is a particularly obscure reference to "A Scandal in Bohemia".
  • Sherlock's deductions from John's phone are based on his deductions from Watson's pocket watch in "The Sign of the Four".
  • When Sherlock is standing, the shock blanket looks suspiciously like his Memetic Outfit.
  • There's a brief shot in 221b Baker Street of Sherlock pinning some papers to the mantelpiece with a small knife. In the books this is exactly how Holmes keeps his unanswered correspondences.
  • On John's blog, he reveals that Sherlock apparently doesn't know the Earth goes around the Sun, as mentioned in "A Study in Scarlet". This is also referenced in Episode 3.
    • Sherlock's explanation for why he doesn't memorize "useless" facts is updated from his head being an "attic" with limited space to a "hard drive".
  • Sherlock decorating the walls with gun shots. In this case, it's a happy face (painted on with what looks suspiciously like the yellow spray paint from last week.)
    • It has been established that Holmes uses the drawing room for target practice with a pistol.In the books, with "VR" for "Victoria Regina". The modern equivalent would be "EIIR" (for "Elizabeth (The Second) Regina"), which does SORT OF look like a smiley face, if you turn your head and squint.
  • "The Great Game" is full of these. The scene with the stationery is "A Scandal in Bohemia", the pips are a sly nod to "The Five Orange Pips", the Bruce-Partington plans are a subplot of sorts...
    • "Domestic bliss must suit you Molly, you've put on another three pounds since I last saw you." "Two and a half." "No, three." From "A Scandal in Bohemia" (though it's Watson, and seven and a half pounds).
    • Sherlock repeatedly refers to the Czech Republic by the anachronistic name "Bohemia", just to make sure we get the reference.
    • "Any ideas?" "Seven, so far..." From "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches".
    • Sherlock's network of homeless people is a deliberate update to the Baker Street Irregulars, a gang of street kids Holmes would pay to spy on people for him.
    • "I'd be lost without my blogger" is from "A Scandal in Bohemia" again, where it's "Boswell".
    • "You do see, you just don't observe!" Also from "A Scandal in Bohemia", but delivered to Lestrade instead of Watson this time around.
  • Sherlock makes several digs about his brother's weight. Mycroft is traditionally portrayed as extremely fat and sedentary, though Gatiss is surprisingly trim for the role.
  • Mrs. Hudson says several times in the first episode "I'm not your housekeeper, you know..." Indeed she isn't, but many people miss that the books refer to her as Holmes's landlady.
  • The book code in "The Blind Banker" is similar to the one in "The Valley of Fear".
  • John is instructed to keep a blog, which he doesn't actually use until he signs up with Sherlock, at which point he records their mystery solving. It's very popular. Traditionally Watson publishes books about his and Holmes's mystery solving, and those were also rather popular.
  • Sherlock whipping the corpse in his first scene is a shout out to a reference in "A Study in Scarlet", in which Stamford tells Watson that he saw him "beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick".
  • A few nods to the canon only appeared in the pilot version of "A Study in Pink":
    • Since the Mycroft subplot didn't appear in the pilot, an e-mail to "mycroft@dsux.gov" is intended to be this.
    • The e-mail to Mycroft is simply "When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains must be the truth". This line first appeared in "The Sign of the Four", and is a common phrase of Holmes throughout the original canon. The pilot has Sherlock saying it in some form repeatedly. (This also comes up if you Log Onto The Fourth Wall on Sherlock's homepage: When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth.)
    • The location in which Mike Stamford and Watson dine in the pilot is the real Criterion Bar, in which they first met in the original A Study in Scarlet which led to Watson and Holmes sharing a flat. The 90-minute version showed them having coffee in a park instead, but ensured that the viewer saw the cups bearing the name "Criterion" to retain the reference in spirit.
  • Both versions of "A Study in Pink" have John's phone being used to text the dead woman's phone because Sherlock's number is on his website and might be recognized. A Study in Scarlet had a newspaper advertisment in Watson's name because Holmes had gained some minor credit in the press from previous cases and so his name might have been recognized.
  • Also from "A Study in Pink", remember one of the victims was a guy walking along in a downpour, who told his mate to go on without him while he popped back for his brolly? In "The Problem of Thor Bridge", Watson mentions some of the cases he hasn't written up yet, one of which "...is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world."
  • Moriarty's line to Sherlock near the end of "The Great Game": "I mean, I'm gonna kill you anyway, someday..."
  • The hilarious stance Sherlock briefly adopts during his fight with the Golem might be a reference to the Victorian Sherlock Holmes' boxing skills. Or, a Shout-Out to Jeremy Brett's version, as Brett would adopt the same pose in fight scenes.
  • In "A Study In Pink", Watson has no luck at all getting the attention of Mycroft's female aide. In the books, Watson was reputed as something of a ladies man.
  • In "The Great Game", Sherlock asks John to make deductions about the pair of shoes, and then congratulates him before saying he missed out almost everything of importance. He does the same in "A Case of Identity".
  • In "A Scandal in Belgravia", Sherlock throws on a deerstalker cap to try and disguise himself from a throng of new-found fans. And much like his real-world fans, these fans get the impression that he wears it all the time.

"This isn't a deerstalker anymore, it's a Sherlock Holmes hat."

  • In that scene, Watson also grabs a hat: a flat cap similar to the one worn by Nigel Bruce (The Watson to Basil Rathbone's Holmes).
  • This conversation at Christmas, with Sherlock obsessing over John's blog:

Sherlock: You've got a photograph of me wearing that hat?!
John: People like that hat.
Sherlock: No they don't, what people?

  • Sherlock's inability to tell John's girlfriends apart in "A Scandal in Belgravia" calls back to the fans' confusion over Watson's many wives in the original novels.
  • The early minutes of "A Scandal in Belgravia" go through a proper Hurricane of Puns over the names of many of the original novels: The Geek Interpreter, The Speckled Blonde, The Navel Treatment...
  • The bit of dialogue where Sherlock asks "And my client is?" and the government official answers "Illustrious" is another reference to a story title, "The Illustrious Client".
  • Sherlock's analysis of tobacco ash on his website - in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," Holmes remarks that he has "written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco".
  • The severed thumbs in the fridge are a nod to "The Engineer's Thumb".
  • At Buckingham Palace, the government official tells John that his employer likes his blog, "particularly the one about the aluminium crutch". In the stories, one of Holmes' early cases before he met Watson revolved around an aluminium crutch.
  • Sherlock's remark that "I'm used to mystery at one end of my cases, both is too much work," is lifted straight from "The Illustrious Client".
  • Many of the details of Sherlock and John's first meeting with Irene Adler (the priest disguise, the fire alarm ruse, "Goodnight Mr. Sherlock Holmes") are the same as they were in the original story.
  • "Vatican cameos" is a reference to a throwaway line in "Hound of the Baskervilles" about a case Holmes had worked on.
  • Moriarty's cryptic, gloating message "Dear me, Mr. Holmes, dear me," is directly from The Valley of Fear.
  • Sherlock's remark that "the wheel turns...nothing is ever new" is reminiscent of Holmes saying "There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before" in "A Study in Scarlet".
  • Sherlock harpooning a pig carcass to solve a case comes straight from "Black Peter".
  • Sherlock's frustrated "I need something stronger than tea! Something 7% stronger..." is a reference to his famous cocaine habit in "The Sign of Four", where he injected a 7% solution.
  • Sherlock's remark about his mind being "like an engine racing out of control, a rocket tearing itself to pieces on the launch pad" when he doesn't have work is very similar to a line from "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge".
  • In "The Hounds of Baskerville," Sherlock spots the horse-racing section of a paper rolled up in the back pocket of a potential eyewitness. When the man is not forthcoming with his information, he pretends to have bet John that the man couldn't produce proof, and the man immediately gets very talkative. The original Holmes pulls the exact same stunt in "The Blue Carbuncle".
  • "Once you've ruled out the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be true," is a favorite Holmes Catch Phrase employed in several of the original stories.
  • Sherlock's remark that emotion is like "grit on the lense, a fly in the ointment," is a reference to the line "Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his" (From "A Scandal in Bohemia").
  • Sherlock's waffling about whether or not he will go to Dartmoor or send John to investigate is a wink at the fact that, in the Conan Doyle version, Holmes does send Watson down to Baskerville Hall in his place. Sort of.
  • In addition to the major plot points and most of the character names, "The Hounds of Baskerville" keeps arguably the two most famous quotes from the original: "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" and Holmes' reference to Watson as a conductor of light. "Murder - refined, cold-blooded murder" is also lifted straight from the novel.
  • The glowing bunnies are a nod to the original hound, which was painted with phosphorus to appear supernatural.
  • The Grimpen Minefield is, of course, wordplay on the Grimpen Mire. The villains in both stories die trying to flee through it.
  • The hallucinogenic fear gas is reminiscent of "The Devil's Foot," as is Sherlock's experiment with it, although in this case the results are merely emotionally traumatizing rather than life-threatening.
    • Sherlock's experiment on Watson also recalls a remark of Stamford's in "A Study in Scarlet" that he could imagine Holmes "giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry...".
  • Henry Knight's name is a play on "Sir Henry" from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Many of the other names are taken more or less straight from the original - including the surname of the original villain. Interestingly, the character with the original villain's name turns out to be a Red Herring who eventually helps Sherlock and John to solve the case, but the real villain of this story did actually have similar personality traits to the original and also dies in a very similar way.
  • A fairly minor plot point in "A Scandal in Belgravia" is that John's blog's hit counter is stuck at 1895. This is because it's an image file.
  • In "The Hounds of Baskerville", Mycroft is seen briefly sitting alone in a place that seems awfully similar to The Diogenes Club. It is later established that the Diogenes Club does in fact exist in the show's universe.
  • Sherlock and Jim's final exchange in "The Great Game" exactly mirrors the opening of their first exchange in "The Final Problem":

Moriarty: All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.
Holmes: Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.

  • When Sherlock is having his nicotine freak out in the beginning of Hound, one of the places he looks for his hidden stash is in the toe of an old Persian slipper.
  • In "The Hounds of Baskerville" Sherlock describes Lestrade as being "brown as a nut" (meaning his tan). This is lifted word-for-word from "A Study in Scarlet," although there it was Stamford describing Watson.
  • In "The Reichenbach Fall", Sherlock attempts to track down the hostages from traces of dirt from a building site by visualising a map of London and identifying possible locations. One place he briefly highlights is Norwood, a reference to "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder".
  • In the very first episode, Sherlock exclaims, "the game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!" Doubtlessly a modernized version of "the game's afoot!" no?
  • Probably unintentional, but the inclusion of a character named Molly has gotten some children of The Nineties thinking of The Adventures of Shirley Holmes. It may have also fueled some of the WMGs that Molly is Moriarty or is involved with him.
  • John's blog entry "The Geek Interpreter" has several references to the original, "The Greek Interpreter". The client's name is Melas, the name of the interpreter in the original and KRATIDES, the fictional organisation, is the name of the Greek prisoner. The names Davenport, Kemp, Latimer, and Sophy are also taken from the original story. Mention of 'a storyline about Latimer, one of the superheroes, defeating two masked terrorists on Shaftesbury Avenue...' might also be a reference to how Sophy originally killed her captors.
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