The Middleman/Trivia

• Main
• Characters
• Trivia
• YMMV
• Fridge
• Fanfic Recs
• Headscratchers
• WMG
• Crowners
  • Funny
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

Trivia about The Middleman includes:

• Actor Allusion: In "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse", they stick Tyler (Brendan Hines) in the interrogation room, to find out if he's telling the truth. The room has a lie-detection system.
• The Bechdel Test: Lacy and Dub-Dub pass, and it's mentioned by name on one of commentaries.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Doesn't that guy from Varsity Fanclub look familiar? It's Bobby Edner, who played Justin Smith in the second episode of Veronica Mars.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: The aformentioned Little Vladdie was played by Gideon Emery, who is best known for his roles in video games.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • The first episode is called "The Pilot Episode Sanction," from the first trade paperback titled "The Trade Paperback Imperative."
  • The second is called "The Accidental Occidental Conception".
  • The third? "The Sino-Mexican Revelation," which was an adaptation of the graphic novel "The Second Volume Inevitability."
  • "The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum"
  • "The Flying Fish Zombification"
  • "The Boy Band Superfan Interrogation"
  • "The Cursed Tuba Contingency"
  • "The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation"
  • "The Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown"
  • "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation"
  • "The Clotharian Contamination Protocol"
  • "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome"
  • And #13 - "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse".
• Mentor Ship: Between the Middleman and Wendy according to some parts of the fandom, and between the Middleman and his Middleman, Raveena Rao, in Canon.
• Shout-Out: To other TV shows, movies, comic books and pop culture. Dozens in any given episode.
  • Animal House
  • Anime: Wendy explicitly refers to the first weird thing she meets as "a hentai tentacle monster".
  • Astro City
  • The Austin Powers movies.
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
  • The Avengers - Like Wendy's father, Emma Peel's husband disappeared in a mysterious and unexplained DC-10 crash. Also, Wendy's Imagine Spot upon being asked to join the Middleman is a pastiche of the Avengers opening credit sequence.
  • Back to the Future (thankfully all of them annotated here)
  • Batman
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Chinatown

Malfunctioning Ida: She's my sister. She's my daughter. My sister. My daughter.

• • Die Hard: Multiple times in multiple episodes.

Wendy:"Yippie Kai Yay -Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep-"

• • Doctor Strange: And the anti-vampire Montesi Formula.
  • Doctor Who: The NASA experts are named after Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sgt. Benton, and Zoe Herriot, as well as a reference to "Zygons," "McCrimmon College" (for Jamie McCrimmon), and "The Treaty of Periperpegilliam" (for Peri, because that was actually her first name).
    • In the unmade thirteenth episode, the Middleman's instructions to Wendy before his Heroic Sacrifice are a direct quote from the speech the First Doctor gives his granddaughter before they part.
  • Dracula
  • Dr. Strangelove Balthorium
  • Dudley Do-Right
  • Dune: Frank Herbert High School, House Corrino
    • Fake identities: Dr. Kynes and Rabban
  • Escape from New York
  • The Flintstones: MM invokes the name of The Great Gazoo.
  • Flowers for Algernon
  • Galaxy Quest: Possibly, one episode features a stolen beryllium sphere.
  • Gaslight: Mentioned by name as Wendy calls Pip out on trying to run an Insanity Ploy on her.
  • Ghostbusters: On par with the Shout-Out list for Back to the Future Annotated here.
  • Guns Of Navarone
  • "Hentai Tentacle Monster"
  • Howard the Duck: MM tells Cindy she's trapped in a world she never made.
  • Indiana Jones
  • Jake2.0: A show Javier Grillo-Marxuach worked on before The Middleman
  • James Bond
  • Joe 90
  • Kill Bill
  • Lost in Space
  • The Matrix: The Ida-inside-of-Ida is a polite, well-dressed, middle-aged lady.
  • Men in Black
  • Minority Report

Ida: We got a red ball!

• • Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Brotherhood of the Pointed Stick
  • Monsters, Inc.: Varsity Fanclub is using a scream harvester
  • My Little Pony
  • Planet of the Apes
  • Spider-Man: Dub-Dub actually quoted the Catch Phrase: "With great power comes great responsibility."
  • SeaQuest DSV
  • Star Trek: Namechecked multiple times.

Middleman '69: "Maybe Scotty can beam us down. Sorry. Obscure reference to a canceled TV show. I'm sure you've never heard of it."

• • • And another time...

altPip: "You mean the sci-fi series [...] starring the great George Takei?" Wendy: "This is an evil universe."

• • Star Wars
  • The Story of O
  • Superman
  • Terminator
  • The Church of the SubGenius

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs International Airport

• • The Princess Bride:

Wendy: "I don't think female problems means what you think it means."

• • 24: Wendy refers to beating a confession out of a robot as "Jack Bauering".
  • Usagi Yojimbo
  • Wild Wild West
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
  • The X-Men ("Old school, not Ultimate.")
  • The titles of each episode/graphic novel are homages to Robert Ludlum.
• Stock Scream: The "Wilhelm" can be heard Once an Episode. Including the comic version of Episode 13, where it's rendered as "aaaah-aaaaargh!", with a note in the annotation explaining that's the best they could do.

---

Back to The Middleman