Call Back / Literature

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• Animorphs: Jake's decision to "ram the Blade Ship" in the series' ending mirrors Elfangor's decision to ram an enemy ship in The Andalite Chronicles. While Elfangor won his battle involving that tactic, the result of Jake's decision is unclear.
• The BIONICLE books contain examples aplenty, due to their generally tight continuity and because certain characters, objects and plots had a tendency to go missing for many novels before suddenly resurfacing. One of the more famous ones is the fear displayed by Air-type characters to go left.
• Dale Brown does this from time to time. For example, in Warrior Class, Dave Luger is angered and emotionally crippled when he meets one of the former personnel at the Soviet base he was rescued from in Night of the Hawk. In A Time for Patriots there are a few, such as the nanotransponders from Edge of Battle being used on the FBI agents and Pat being reminded of Hal Briggs's death.
• The Cat Who... Series: After the disappearance of Iris Cobb's cookbook in book #10 (The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts), it's finally recovered in book #18 (The Cat Who Said Cheese), with the thief's son turning it over to Celia Robinson to return to Qwill, its rightful owner (as he was left the cookbook in Iris's will).
• In The Chronicles of Prydain first book The Book of Three Taran helps a gwythaint, one of the dark lord's creatures, against the advice of his more experienced companions. The gwythaint appears at the end of the final book The High King and buys Taran some time at the expense of its own life.
• Constance Verity Saves the World:
  • Connie uses the Sleeping Grace to knock out an ornery alligator woman she had managed to tie up before her date with Byron, a move that was established to be in Connie's arsenal in The Last Adventure.
  • When Larry's private jet takes Connie to an undisclosed location with rolling hills, she sardonically asks if they're in Kansas, her disdain for the state having been established.
• Constance Verity Destroys the Universe:
  • When Connie comes to Tia's pre-wedding party, all of Tia's other friends are noticeably wary of Connie considering she had to beat them all up when they were possessed by the evil roquefort in Constance Verity Saves the World.
  • Tia's first wedding — the one where mobsters crashed it — was mentioned in The Last Adventure of Constance Verity and is brought up again here. While Tia is fine with it, Zoey still blames Connie by association.
  • It's mentioned more than once that Tia and Byron had inherited a fraction of Connie's caretaker destiny in the climax of Constance Verity Saves the World.
  • Connie's honorable epitaph to Yars mentions "The Hungry Earth", the name of the Eldritch Abomination present at the beginning of the first book.
  • Connie's intense hatred of Kansas is brought up again, though she admits she has no love for Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri either because they're the states that surround Kansas.
• Deltan Escape: In a story from Earth 2788, Fian's father used blackmail to try and get Fian thrown off his University course in an attempt to force him to study science. That story ended with Playdon pretending to agree to expel Fian on some pretext, while privately noting that Eklund Sr will not enjoy attempting to follow through on his threat. Presumably he's since realised the plan won't work, because he's now trying other means of controlling his son's life.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • The Cheese Touch from the first book is referenced in Double Down. Greg says that people are trying to start it again with different foods, but the teachers always catch them.
  • In The Meltdown, Greg talks about his Christmas vacation from The Getaway.
• The Divine Comedy:
  • In Purgatorio Canto 27, Virgil mentions the time he and Dante flew the beast Geryon in Inferno to convince Dante that Virgil can guide through terrifying circumstances.
  • In Paradiso Canto 17, Dante references the many, many times he's heard people in Hell and Purgatory vaguely predict doom in his future when he asks his the soul of his great-great grandfather what that doom is.
• Doctor Who:
  • In The Clockwise Man, the TARDIS landing in a junkyard invokes the first story, An Unearthly Child, suitable for the first in a New Series. The Doctor also sees a painting of The French Revolution and says "That's not right", which Susan also said in the first episode when reading a book on the subject.
  • Engines of War:
    • The Doctor recalls the events of "Genesis of the Daleks" and says if he had been the man he is now, he could have prevented the course of events of the Time War.
    • Rassilon points out the Doctor had seen Demat guns before even though he doesn't prompt him where they came from.
    • The Doctor and Cinder at one point help Karlax into a Zero room.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In White Night, a minor character from Storm Front comes back and plays a significant role in the plot. Additionally, an aspect of one character's Backstory which was mentioned only twice in the entire series (Once each in Storm Front and Death Masks) is expanded on, and becomes a major Plot Point.
  • A certain line from Storm Front gets a Call Back twelve books later in Ghost Story.
    Harry: Paranoid? Maybe. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.
    
    Harry: Paranoid? Maybe. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't a wizard's ghost standing next to you with tears in his eyes.
  • What must be the all timer occurs in Battle Ground in the graveyard scene Harry weaponizes his Conjuritis to drop an anvil on a Black Court Vampire fulfilling his promise of Anvils from Blood Rites
  • And there's the bit in Battle Ground that brings up a line first mentioned in Grave Peril
    Harry: Murphy was in another place. The lights were on, but no one was home.
    
    Harry: It was nothing but an empty house.
• Edgedancer (a novella of The Stormlight Archive):
  • Wyndle grumbles that he was supposed to be assigned to a cobbler; a book earlier, the readers were briefly introduced to a Knight Radiant initiate who's a shoemaker. And it's probably a good thing Wyndle didn't get assigned to him, he was killed by the main antagonist in Edgedancer.
  • In one of the earlier books, Hoid mentions having once spent a better part of the year in the stomach of a greatshell; here, it's mentioned again, as it turns out Lift has witnessed the moment Hoid hopped into the creature's maw.
• Felse Investigates series by Ellis Peters: In Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart, there's a clue whose significance Dominic Felse recognises because of something he learned during the foreign holiday depicted in the previous novel, The Piper on the Mountain.
• Genrenauts: From The Absconded Ambassador: "Chapter Six: Rescue Op": "“At least we’re not making you wear heels,” Shirin said." is a reference to Leah's need to wear heels for her previous job before becoming a Genrenaut, as said in the previous story, The Shootout Solution.
• Good Omens is particularly fond of these. One footnote joke near the beginning becomes a major plot element near the end.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
  • Mrs. Weasley says witches and wizards can't join the order of the Phoenix until they're of age. Fred and George, who turned seventeen the previous April, protest in outrage, and Molly amends her statement to refer to witches and wizards who have left school. The twins end up leaving Hogwarts a few weeks early to start their own joke shop.
  • When forming their Defense Against the Dark Arts group in the face of Umbridge's insistence against practical knowledge, Hermione mentions that she put a spell on the paper they all signed so that they would know if anyone in the group ratted them out and, when asked, says that it would make Eloise Midgen's acne look like cute freckles. Eloise was mentioned a few times in the previous book as a student who was so desperate to get rid of her pimples that she tried to curse them off with magic. Hermione's payback for when Marietta Edgecombe betrays them is for boils spelling out "SNEAK" to appear on her face.
  • When the group travels to St Mungo's Hospital, they meet Gilderoy Lockhart, who had accidentally removed his own memory in the second book. Although he still remembers very little, he proudly claims he can do joined-up writing now.
• Halo: Hunters in the Dark sees the return of N'tho 'Sraom and Usze 'Taham, two Sangheili that serve under Thel 'Vadam (the Arbiter) and were last seen accompanying the player in Halo 3 (being the third and fourth players in co-op mode, respectively).
• The Hercule Poirot novel Cat Amongst the Pigeons has a callback to Mrs McGinty's Dead, when Julia explains to Poirot that she thought of coming to him because her mother is a friend of Mrs Summerhayes, whom Poirot stayed with when he was in Broadhinny.
• The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan:
  • Ma Gasket shows up in Son of Neptune wanting revenge on Jason, Leo, and Piper. Percy also shows up to reclaim his place as a main character after being absent for the first book.
  • "We've got a dam hole." And this one is from the original series.
  • When Percy shows up again after falling off a giant cliff and Hazel and Frank are surprised, he mentions that he's fallen from higher, which was another reference to the first series.
  • A lot of references to the past series show up in House of Hades, the curses from past enemies that Percy and Annabeth encounter in Tartarus and Percy's brief time on Ogygia being just a few.
  • Some of the centurions in Son of Neptune are caught playing Mythomagic, the same card game Nico was obsessed with in his first appearance. Later, when asked how he knows what a katobleps is, Nico admits it's because he remembers them from the game.
• This gem from The Hollows Series by Kim Harrison:
  "Hey, Rache," Jenks said, dropping down from who knew where. "Your back is clear. And what is Plan B?"
  My eyebrows rose and I looked askance at him as he flew alongside, matching my pace exactly. "Grab the fish and run like hell"
  • Then, two books later, this exchange takes place...
  "Plan B?" Ivy said. "What is plan B?"
  Jenks reddened. "Grab the fish and run like hell," he muttered, and I almost giggled.
• The Hunger Games:
  • In Catching Fire, during the Quarter Quell, an amused Peeta finds a pearl and shows it to Katniss, saying "If you put enough pressure on coal, it turns to pearls!", said by Effie Trinket in the previous book, to Finnick's confusion.
  • Finnick offers Katniss a sugar cube again in Mockingjay, to add to her coffee, referencing when he offers her one previously at the 75th Hunger Games tribute parade.
  • Katniss notices Prim's untucked shirt just after her name is called at the Reaping, and again in Mockingjay just before her death.
• Joe Pickett: In Savage Run, Joe finds the legendry secret path the Native Americans used to cross the supposedly impassable Savage Run canyon more than a century ago to escape the cavalry. Near the top of the path, he finds a doll dropped by one the Indian children and untouched since. Eleven books later in Breaking Point, Joe is desperately searching for the path so he can escape an oncoming wildfire. He manages to locate the path when he spots the doll.
• In the third book of the Knight and Rogue Series Burke, while boasting about his pack of magic hounds, mentions they're immune to the drug Aquilas. Though it got no mention in the second book, it was discussed several times in the first before the characters actually drug somebody with it.
• From The Lord of the Rings: Tom Bombadil gives Merry, Pippin, and Sam a long knife (a sword to a Hobbit) taken from the Barrow-wights. The enchantments on these knives, or at least Merry's, play a MAJOR role in saving Minas Tirith.
• In the second book of The Machineries of Empire, Mikodez mentions that he has learned all languages Jedao knew in life, including Tlen Gwa. That's in reference to short story Extracurricular Activities, where Jedao's attempts at speaking Tlen Gwa lead to quite a few more-or-less comical misunderstandings.
• Max & the Midknights: The Tower of Time: At the beginning of the book, Mary tells her friend Perrin what she saw Max doing during the climax of the previous book.
• Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape: In "Rise Of The Robot Army", Miles, as Gilded, carries a fire truck and uses it to put out a fire near the Hollywood sign. While doing so, he begins to tell the driver about hydrostatic pressure, referencing his first time out as Gilded, and the consequences that resulted from his actions.
• The opening sentence of The Night of the Triffids is the protagonist waking up and realizing something must be very wrong because it's a summer morning but he can't see anything — in almost exactly the same words as his father, in the opening sentence of The Day of the Triffids, woke up and realized that something must be very wrong because it was a weekday morning but he couldn't hear any human activity.
• In the Paladin of Shadows books:
  • As the situation gets worse in Unto the Breach, various heads of state call the US President about some highly sensitive material the Keldara are holding onto from Choosers of the Slain.
  • The intel expert seconded to the Keldara in A Deeper Blue is "Bambi" from Ghost.
• The Railway Series was fond of these.
  • In The Eight Famous Engines, Thomas references an earlier, similar story where he ignored a "Danger" sign and fell into a mine. Percy doesn't see how that's relevant, because they're at the harbor, not a mine.
  • In Duck and the Diesel Engine, the big engines think Duck is making fun of them. While making their plan, they say "He did it to us, we'll do it to him, and see how he likes it" — and in the next scene they're blocking Duck line to the sheds, just as he and Percy did in Percy the Small Engine.
• In the first The Spirit Thief book, Miranda is enraged upon finding a very Hollywood History book on wizards by one Mortimer Kant in a royal library. In the fourth book, Lelbon mentions offhandedly that "Mortimer Kant" is Illir's pen name, and the wind spirit publishes Hollywood History books to see if they can change the way people act.
• In Spock's World, numerous references are made to the episode "Amok Time" including the Big Bad of the current story.
• Volume II of Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars opens with Roberta up on a scaffold trying to sabotage a rocket launch, just like Gary Seven in "Assignment: Earth".
• A number of authors in the Star Wars Legends dabble in this and Call-Forward.
  • Timothy Zahn is particularly adept at this — in the Hand of Thrawn duology, unless you're paying attention it's hard to tell what's a Call Back, a Continuity Nod, a Cryptic Background Reference, or a Noodle Incident.
  • Survivor's Quest and Outbound Flight, very different novels set 50 years apart, were written together, so there are calls between them. Survivor's Quest also has at least two Call Backs to the Original Trilogy. "I want to go with you", a young untrained Force-Sensitive who wants to help an older Jedi, and Dean Jinzler, brother of a Jedi, who'd been passing as an ambassador.
    Jinzler: I'm not an ambassador, Guardian. I'm an electronics technician. Like my father before me.
  • Jedi Apprentice has Qui-Gon Jinn commenting to Yoda about not-yet-a-Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi. He tells Yoda that the boy fought ferociously, which isn't a trait he likes to see. Yoda mildly says that this is like a boy he knew long ago. Qui-Gon assumes Yoda means his fallen apprentice Xanatos, but is told "Not speaking of that one. Of you I spoke."
    • Rebel Force, set many years ahead, has Obi-Wan as a Force Appartition describing Luke to Yoda, who says he's reminded of a boy he knew long ago. Obi-Wan immediately assumes he means Anakin and jumps to Luke's defense, saying he's nothing like that, but Yoda tells him he means Obi-Wan.
  • In Labyrinth of Evil, Anakin and Obi-Wan use the Linked List Clue Methodology to try and track down Darth Sidious. Many of the clues pointing toward Sidious were seen back in The Phantom Menace: Nute Gunray's mechno-chair, which provides the first break, is the same one he used on Naboo; Anakin and Obi-Wan find a pilot who delivered Darth Maul's ship to him from its manufacturer; and Sidious apparently uses a U-shaped speeder bike of the same design as Maul's to get around Coruscant quickly.
  • Star Wars: Kenobi:
    • Two to Ben's previous visit to Tatooine during The Phantom Menace: he has a healthy fear of sandstorms, and knows something of the Tusken Raiders after an (offscreen) encounter with them during that film.
    • Most people call Annileen Calwell "Annie." Ben refuses to, both to maintain some distance and because it reminds him uncomfortably of Anakin.
    • Jabba's people are leaning on Orrin for payment because the new Galactic Empire is making business uncertain, so he wants cash on hand.
    • While never directly spelled out in the narrative, it's obvious that the event a few years earlier that spooked the Tusken Raiders and led to a decline in their fortunes, as well as those of Orrin when demand for the Settlers' Call dried up in turn, was Anakin's massacre of the Tusken tribe that killed his mother in Attack of the Clones.
  • Star Wars: Scoundrels:
    • This is the second time Lando agrees to work with Han after a previous falling out leads them to swear never to see each other again (in The Han Solo Trilogy and the comic book Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika). Lando is now willing to admit that the previous incidents may not have been wholly Han's fault, but given how badly Han has misplaced his trust in the past, Lando is leery and demands the blackmail files upfront in lieu of credits if they pull the job off, so that he can leave and not get screwed over again. It doesn't help him all that much. It's up in the air which of the three incidents Han "I'm sure he's forgotten about that" Solo and Lando "You double-crossing no-good swindler" Calrissian are referring to in The Empire Strikes Back.
    • Once again, Han is cornered in a cantina by a bounty hunter looking to capture him for Jabba. This time, the bounty hunter is smart enough to tell him to keep his hands on the table. But this time, Han has Chewbacca with him, so he's able to distract and disarm the man, who gets one shot off. It's only when the bounty hunter draws another blaster that Han shoots him. Eanjer is impressed by this display of quick thinking, and approaches him about The Caper.
  • Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves: Hunter Maas hides his important information, not in the high-tech safe in his room, but in the R3 astromech droid sitting unassumingly in the corner. Leia is one of the first characters to figure it out, and is the one to extract the information, because of her previous experience hiding info in astromechs.
  • The Han Solo Trilogy: The books have references to a lot of earlier details from other Star Wars works, even ones most fans preferred ignored, like Jabba's father being Zorba, who had been put into prison on a planet called "Kyp".
• Stick Dog: The series often likes to remind readers of foods the dogs have eaten before, or of the park, or of Karen's favourite garbage bin.
• Tortall Universe
  • Some of the training practices in Protector of the Small are a direct result of Alanna's tenure as a page and squire in Song of the Lioness. Lord Wyldon's selection as training master was a concession to conservatives who were outraged that Alanna was permitted to retain her shield after being exposed as a woman. Similarly, public exams were instituted for pages so that anyone could see that they were being trained properly and nobody else was being snuck through the system under false pretenses (even though girls were legally permitted to seek knighthood after Alanna, rendering any more Sweet Polly Oliver situations unlikely). Keladry's exam ends up being sabotaged when someone kidnaps her maid, forcing her to miss it in order to rescue her; fortunately she is allowed to take it once the situation is resolved due to the obvious coercion involved.
  • The beings from The Immortals become an established part of life in Tortall after the events of that quartet. This means that dangerous monsters are now roaming the landscape, but also new sentient allies and adversaries in the form of centaurs, basilisks, Stormwings, etcetera. In the Trickster Duet, Aly is gifted the offspring of darkings, who were created in the last Immortals book, to use as spies.
• Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell:
  • The reveal that she was originally a pegasus makes sense, considering many of her more memorable moments have been in flight.
  • Her transformation into a Princess took her to the same hall of mirrors as Twilight it seems.
• In Warrior Cats, in The Last Hope, Firestar points out that he is once again the cat chosen by a prophecy to save his Clan, and quotes the original one.
  Firestar: I guess fire will save the Clans once more.
• Whateley Universe: In The Evil That Men Do, it is said by a math teacher, that:
  Hallowell's Proof. For those of you intending to continue your studies with me in game theory later in your careers here at Whateley, you will want to take note of this particular theorem as it is considered one of the more important statistical bases of Game Theory and Probability Mathematics.”
  Then, in The Last Ride, where James Hallowell makes an appearance, it is said:
  [he] became a mathematics professor at the nascent University of California, Berkeley where he penned Hallowell's Proof, considered one of the founding theorems of Game Theory.
• Done frequently among the numerous narratives in World War Z. A diver who specializes in underwater zombie combat mentions the Chinese sub that was sunk in an earlier story told by a Chinese submariner. Todd Wainio and his squadron come across the church that Sharon the feral child had been trapped in during the Great Panic. Wainio also serves with the girl who sang "Avalon" at the Battle of the Five Colleges. Arthur Sinclair still hopes to arrest Breckinridge Scott. Jurgen Warmbrunn mentions having come across both the psychological evaluation of Stanley MacDonald and the blog of Fernando Oliveira's nurse in his research. Collins mentions MacDonald trying to find his peace among the monasteries in Meteora when discussing war veterans trying to deal with their trauma from the war. It's also strongly hinted that the old man Kondo Tatsumi gets his katana from is the older brother of his master Sensei Ijiro. A photograph of the old man as a young officer shows he had a little brother that would have been about Ijiro's age.

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