The Dance of Shiva/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Trivia about The Dance of Shiva includes:

  • Shout-Out: No few shout-outs are scattered through the text. A sampling:
    • There are Biblical references scattered throughout the story. Initially they are few and fairly subtle, but they start growing more obvious as the action escalates.
    • Meylia ducks into an S-Mart while trying to escape the assassin boomers in the prologue.
    • There exists a Magical Girl anime called Magical Princess Evangelia.
    • Leon compares the ADPolice to the Tank Police shortly after.
    • Early on, Linna and Nene joke that Meylia's using the Force.
    • H.P. Lovecraft -- an extremely minor character is mentioned as staying at the "Charles Dexter Ward Home for the Mentally Injured"
    • According to chapter 2, the President of the United States is David Xanatos.
    • One of the performers Priss as a child idolized and wanted to be like was Debbie Gibson.
    • At one point Leon suggests he and Priss go see Mystery Boomer Theatre 2034.
    • Early in the story, Leon and Mihoshi are assigned to car 54. At one point in chapter 2, Nene is listening to the AD Police band and hears someone asking "Car 54, Where Are You?" over and over again.
    • The Prisoner gets an In-Universe shout-out in chapter 6:

The third figure, the one on the table, sat up. "Nooo!!!!!!!!!" She blinked. "Hey, where am I?"
"In the village," the first figure said.
The second one promptly clonked her on the head again.

  • The rampaging barber boomer in chapter 6 is dressed in a way that is reminiscent of Principal Kuno from Ranma ½ (who himself was obsessed with giving people unsolicited haircuts).
  • Chapter 6 also has

"The look on great-grandfather's face when he found tribbles under the sheets on his bed..."

There are a couple references throughout the story to this incident.
  • When Professor Hikaru Hiyama tries listening to the radio in chapter 6, she briefly tunes into the North American dub version of the theme to Sailor Moon, and a snippet of the song "Masquerade" from The Phantom of the Opera.
  • There's a Cthulhu reference in chapter 6, when Macky is watching tapes of old TV show Nick Hatchett, Robot Fighter, specifically of the season when "the robots were working for Cthulhu". This is strange, since the Mythos is non-fiction in the story.
    • In chapter 7, Setsuna references The Wizard of Oz when she tells Priss she's not there to threaten her or her little dog, too.
    • The two Galaxy Police officers in the flashback that starts chapter 8 are Kay and Yoori.
    • A flashback in chapter 9 reveals that Chief Goto of the ADPolice had been one of the police investigating odd happenings at Shinonome High School in the mid-1990s.
    • One of Linna's favorite hang-outs is a bar called simply "Beers".
    • Professor Hiyama owns a CD by DoCo, the vocal group made up of voice actresses from Ranma ½.
    • When Kyosuke, Madoka and Hikaru about to teleport somewhere in chapter 9, Kyosuke, laughing, says, "Beam us up, Scotty."
    • Nene's parents apparently know Shinobu and Lum from Urusei Yatsura; Shinobu was a high school friend of theirs, and they all met Lum when she crashed their high school reunion to challenge Shinobu to a tag race for the fate of the Earth. It does not appear that Ataru Moroboshi exists in the setting, or at least didn't make it to that reunion.
    • Nene's father is Kazuya Hasekawa from Here Is Greenwood; he took his wife's name when they married.
    • Ryouko calls herself "the dread space pirate Ryouko" in chapter 11, probably as an In-Universe reference.
    • When visiting Nene's elaborate medieval fantasy-themed dream of Ryu and herself as a king and queen in chapter 12, Linna notices that dream!Macky is dressed like a wizard, including a pointed hat with "Wizzard" written on it.
    • During a dream excursion in chapter 13, Priss and Linna defend a little girl (the young Serenity) from Deep Ones. Later, they witness an attack by a horde of byakhee.
    • Also in chapter 13, Priss quotes, "It's a good day to die." Priss being Priss, it's almost certainly a Star Trek reference rather than a classical one.
    • One of the psychics learning how to fight in a mech from Noa Izumi appears to be Umi Ryuuzaki from Magic Knight Rayearth
    • Professor Tomoe references Fu Manchu in a sarcastic way that suggests he's fictional in this universe.
    • Two bankrupt European companies from whom Celia bought a great deal of equipment in the 2020s were called Fogg Industries and Verne Robotics.
    • She also mentions that some hardsuit parts are made by US Robotics and Mechanical Men, and name-checks Dr. Susan Calvin.
    • Chapter 14, during one of Linna's dream excursions, she finds herself in a vision of the future reading a newspaper with a headline about a "Solar-Kzinti" trade agreement.
    • The Khunds from DC Comics have territory within 30 lightyears of Earth.
    • Aeka compares the pre-Tenchi Ryouko to Peter Pan.
    • Kanuka Clancy McClaine notes that before she was married she used to get asked all the time if she was related to Tom Clancy.
    • A crewman on monitor duty aboard the Genaros station in Chapter 16 is named Jonathan Frakes.
    • A Brown Note-filled CD created to torment Manami includes, among other things, Vogon poetry.
    • When the group questing for the Empyrean Silver Crystal encounters a Threshold Guardian, his questions remind several of the participants of the Old Man From Scene 24 at the Bridge of Death in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
    • As the story gets closer and closer to its conclusions, the number of Biblical allusions and outright quotes grows.
    • Early in chapter 17, Linna and Skuld share a joking exchange referencing The Divine Comedy.
    • One of the forms SHIVA takes when initially facing Linna is Cthulhu.
    • The poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley is referenced in one of the visions of the past offered by SHIVA in the final confrontation.
    • The Prisoner gets another shout-out in chapter 17 when an imprisoned Sailor Venus demands to know who an anonymous voice on a speaker is, and it replies, "The new Number Two."
    • In chapter 18, Belldandy paraphrases a passage by C. S. Lewis (fron The Weight of Glory) when she tells Linna that she dwells "in the forge of souls, the place where the immortals either ascend to glory or descend to the depths of horror."
    • After demanding it manifest a "big Wizard of Oz flaming head" for her to talk to, Wasyuu gets in a Doctor Who reference while bantering with SHIVA in chapter 18:

I AM THE MASTER HERE.
"So where's your Tardis?"

THE HANDS OF A QUEEN HAVE POWER TO HEAL.

    • Just a paragraph or two after that there is mention of Azathoth "malingering at the heart of the universe".
    • The Sailors Pluto make a joke about the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie in chapter 19.
    • Chief Todo says "Sock it to me" to Nene in chapter 19 when she offers to explain what happened in the previous chapter. The narrative voice makes it clear he's referencing the TV show.
    • In the midst of a great space battle, Serenity dispatches her forces, then turns to Sailor Mars and whispers, "Set phasers on kill." Later in the same scene, she issues an order by saying "Make it so."
    • When Serenity shows unexpected knowledge of an arrival and one of her courtiers expresses surprise, she smiles and says, "You have to know these things when you're a queen."
    • Apparently, in the 40th century The King and I is dimly remembered as an ancient myth.
    • Ukyou Kuonji of Ranma ½ makes a Cameo appearance in the "cast party" after the end of the story proper.


Back to The Dance of Shiva
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Dance_of_Shiva/Trivia?oldid=1943519"