The Secret Return of Alex Mack/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Actor Allusion: Scattered here and there throughout the story:
    • The brunette pixie cut that Alex adopts to distance her appearance from that of Terawatt just happens to be the look that Alex Mack's actress Larisa Oleynik was sporting as of her appearances in Hawaii Five-0, Mad Men and other works in the early 2010s.
    • A twofer: When discussing with Willow how different she appears from her adoptive parents, Jack O'Neill tells her:

You, on the other hand, look like your last name ought to be Flaherty or Hannigan or O’Clancy.

    • Alex thinks Jack could cosplay as MacGyver because he resembles the actor.
    • Buffy Summers is a former ice skater, and her boyfriend is named Freddie.
  • Mythology Gag: Yuki gives Gojira its name because, she says, "It swims like a whale and it walks like an ape." "Gojira" (which was Americanized into "Godzilla") is a portmanteau of the Japanese words for "gorilla" and "whale", and was originally the derisive nickname of a worker at the studio where the Godzilla films were made.
    • For reasons nobody, least of all Alex, can figure out, Jack insists on calling Bruce Paine's home "Stately Paine Manor".
    • According to the Where Are They Now? Epilogue, Samantha Carter ultimately goes to work in Deep Space Radar Telemetry, the official cover for Stargate Command in its universe.
    • At the end of the India operation, while spaced out from hunger and exhaustion, Alex comments on Willow's current code name (taken from The Herculoids):

Alex tried not to move, but the sky seemed to be spinning around. "Tara’s a pretty name. I bet you’d like someone if her name was Tara."

Unlike many other things about Buffyverse!Willow she learned during The League of Extraordinary Women, Alex apparently doesn't know about her relationship with Tara Maclay.
  • Recursive Fanfiction: The Secret Return has inspired nearly a dozen other writers to add their own contributions to its 'verse.
  • Shout-Out: Many, many, given it's a Mega Crossover with more than a few Pop-Cultured Badasses in the cast. What isn't a direct source is often the subject of an off-the-cuff quip or quotation.
  • Shown Their Work: Castle has made a point of doing enough research (or perhaps using her own knowledge) to make the jargon and exposition of experts in various fields -- including IT, physics, biochemistry, genetics, even the economics of being a freelance photojournalist -- accurate and plausible.