Call Back / The Order of the Stick

The Order of the Stick, as a Long Runner, has indulged in many, many call backs and Continuity Nods.

• Double one from the prequel book Start of Darkness, when we see Redcloak's family visiting the Monster in the Darkness. Redcloak's youngest nephew has a Julio Scoundrél toy, and the MitD has a plush dragon.
• One of the longest Call Backs in the whole comic: in #25, Elan assumes that since the less armor you wear, the less able enemies are to see you, if you're naked, you must be invisible. Thanks to this, he can first streak through Azure city New Year Party (#302) unseen, without causing a scandal. Later in #665, Roy is resurrected and is completely naked — Elan exclaims, "You're invisible!" Elan calls back to it again in #1190, in which he says that he would have gone ahead with an invisible Haley and V, but it's too cold to be naked.
  Jones: Oh, and Blondie: try to keep your clothes on. Kids play this game.
• Belkar and Miko enter Shojo's throne room via Super Window Jump. 150-odd strips later, Xykon comes in through a different window, and the first one is still boarded up.
• #449 to #277. "Only the honor of a paladin is unbreakable."
• #486 to #39 and #456.
  High Priest: Wait a minute, I had a 22!
• In #535 villains from a filler arc make a cameo.
• In #3, Haley mentions how she dislikes the color of her lime green Boots of Speed. These Boots are also spoken of in #573, feature in a flashback in #608, and in #675, she has them dyed brown.
• #580 has Bozzok, Crystal and Hank consulting a copy of On the Origin of PCs to review Haley quitting the Thieves Guild, with them reacting to Haley's Fanservice hot tub scene.
  Hank: (to Bozzok) Let's see... you threatened to kill her if she left the Guild... she left anyway to become an adventurer... yeah, I think you hit the highlights. Though you did leave out what I consider to be some important context...
  Crystal: Eww! Why would anyone want to watch Starshine take a bath?
  Hank: ...Important sexy context.
• Black dragons seem to have a taste for elf.
• From #683 all the way to #87.
• Also, #685 to #171. In both, Belkar "knows a guy who knows a guy."
• Another extremely long Call Back — from #705 all the way back to #326 with hydra-burgers.
• #714 to #178.
• "Do you need, like, 200-foot-tall flaming letters or something?" Apparently so. Double-example considering what was being used for the fire.
• When Elan meets his father, note the Star Wars references. When Elan calls out the old man, and also here, note the Star Wars parallels.
• From #766 to #90 ("I've got a 4!") and to #130 with the "elveny boots".
• There's one that would be more of a Call-Forward, since it shows up in a prequel book. In this comic, Roy makes a throwaway comment about only getting a C- in his Attacks of Opportunity class. In On the Origin of PCs, that's the class Roy is studying for when his dad shows up to tell him about the Blood Oath against Xykon.
• "Stop oppressing my culture, you enthnocentric bitch!"
  Belkar: Stop suppressing our rupture, you electroresistive niche!
• From #795 to #114.
• The comic tops itself yet again as of #789 to #43, with the return of Zz'dtri.
• "I may be in error, but I believe the appropriate proclamation is, 'Sneak Attack, bitch.'"
• #478 has V teaching Elan to create illusions of celestial creatures. In #805, Elan demonstrates what he's learned with an illusionary celestial tree sloth.
• A shorter one, but in #727, Roy's hunch back in #691 pays off...
• Redcloak's confrontation with Tsukiko in #830 is similar to Xykon's confrontation with Dorukan in Start of Darkness, with a one character exploiting a seemingly powerful one's weaknesses, giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to them, and then killing them ignominiously.
• From #841 all the way back to #12 AND #124 :
  Haley: Do you want to go up a level, or down a level?
  Roy: Don't start with that.
  • The bit gets a lampshade in #1188 when Elan tells Minrah that that particular Who's on First? gag is out of date.
• From #535 to #226 and #229. Apparently the inn's employees and the assassins had a good reason to assume that Roy was the King of Nowhere.
• From #170 to #73. Thor must really like tall tankards of beer.
• Another extremely long one: from #868 (appropriately named "Unleash the Fury") all the way to #140.
• In #890, Roy mentions that he's tried to take careful notice of time passing since his resurrection, no doubt as a result of completely losing track of it in the afterlife.
• From 256 back to 127: "I, like, would never be caught dead in a stars-and-planets wizard robe."
• A pretty dark example in #881: Belkar's pseudo-Rousing Speech to Roy explaining that the Order needs to continue on despite Durkon's vampirization because if they just turn back now, then he would've died for nothing, is very similar to "The Reason You Suck" Speech Xykon gave Redcloak in Start of Darkness where the Evil Sorcerer invoked the Sunk Cost Fallacy in order to keep Redcloak on his side after Redcloak was forced to kill his own brother in Xykon's defense. Ultimately, both Xykon and Belkar are arguing using the same logic - "Keep on or we did this for nothing" - but for completely dissimilar goals.
• Roy's knowledge of architecture and engineering comes in handy again.
  Roy: This pillar doesn't look load-bearing to me.
• From #905:
  Elan: This is just like the cactus fight all over again!
• The title of comic #907, "Always Hiring" is a callback to comic #446, where Xykon says this.
• In comic #637, the IFCC are watching V versus the Black Dragon on a plasma HDTV — specifically, a blood-plasma Hell-Damned Television. In comic #914, the TV gets smashed... and bleeds.
• Tarquin refers to Roy's potential replacement in the Order as Rob Redblade.
• Seems Belkar and Roy share at least one thing in common after all...
• Elan's plan comes to fruition.
• Elan remembers what happened the first time he met Nale.
• Wrecan and Veldrina needing the last Teleport Orb reminds Vaarsuvius and Blackwing of that time they squabbled with a wizard over remaining diamond dust.
  Vaarsuvius: I believe I am experiencing what is commonly referred to as déjà vu.
  Blackwing: Darn, I left my sombrero on the ship.
• "But as a certain half-orc once said, 'Talky man talk too much'"
• Both Thog and Miko tell Roy, mid-fight, to "Stop Talking!"
• In #1080, Elan recalls a previous conversation they had about random encounters, which is pretty impressive given how long ago that was.
• Strip #84, Durkon tells Hilgya how his mother told him what it means to be a dwarf, in a rather tragically humorous way. Strip #1129, we finally get the context. It's a lot more tragic and far less humorous.
• In #1140, Durkon reminds Thor of the time, over a thousand strips previously, when his automated prayer system almost gave Elan a colon tumor — which had already received a Call-Back in strip #40.
  • Also in #1140, we see a sentient soda drink take revenge on a slice of pizza for a murder that was seen all the way back in #301.
• A subtle one, but #444 has Durkon happy that Roy had a "good and worthy" death, just like an honorable dwarf; Haley doesn't feel the same way. A couple hundred strips later, the dwarves cheer Kandro dying an honorable death; Haley doesn't feel the same way.
• Another call back of over 1100 strips: Haley points out in #1187 that Roy never got any sleep because he couldn't trust anyone.
• Roy about to tell Julia that he made his father swear an oath to never see any family members is a several hundred strip callback.
• In Tinkertown in #966, Elan and Belkar discuss random merchants who appear right before the end of a quest to sell basic potions. As the Order prepares to leave the Mechane in #1201, one such merchant pops up.
• In #1225, Lien and O-Chul continued to try to one up each other as they did in #1031.
• In #1228, O-Chul recalls his attempts to destroy the Gate in Azure City, which happened all the way back in #448. Serini then asks if he can vow someone else never used his sword to destroy a Gate; O-Chul can't promise that either.
• "That's His Bad": The strip is a Continuity Cavalcade all its own — Elan states that he has to recall previous events considering it's before the final battle and they don't have much time to reminisce. He recalls the time when he tried to bluff the ogre and Roy told him he hated him, the time where he tried to become a wizard and V yelled at him, and the time where Belkar tried to kill/defeat him for free EXP. He then comments about how the previously mentioned Order members were kind of mean to him, to which Roy and Belkar apologize for how they treated Elan in the past. V notes they had apologized to Elan in the very next strip.
• In #1231, Thor uses the special ringtone he set for Durkon's Commune.
• In #1232, Thor notes Durkon still seems to never have the right spells prepared, such as using up all four Sending spells by accident in #733 and not having Control Winds ready in #837.
• In 1233, Durkon jabs Roy with his tendency to use Talking Is a Free Action, and using Thor's comment to Durkon about how the Order seems to manage impossible tasks:
  Roy: Though in my defense, it's hard to discuss these things with someone who's charging you with an axe.
  Durkon: Aye, aye, if thar's one thing anyone could say aboot Roy Greenhilt, it's tha he's nev'r manag'd ta fight an' talk at tha same time.
  Roy: No, it's not that. It's just—
  Durkon: 'E never, say, deeply interrogat'd a vampire's inner motivations while swordfightin' wit' 'im on tha floor o' tha Godsmoot.
• After Elan gets charmed into running into unknown territory in #1236, Belkar sides with Haley on going after him, citing previous experience.
  Belkar: [...]Last time one of us ran off into a dungeon by themselves, it didn't turn out so hot.
  Durkon: Och, ain't tha true.
• Sunny looks exactly like the beholder from #32. Parody remains protected speech, it seems.
  • As it turns out, Sunny IS the beholder from #32.
• V reveals they have a Scroll of Passwall, but anyone paying attention would have known they had one prepared.
• O-Chul comments "Five stars, would be rescued again", the same joke Belkar makes in #733: "Dark but clean, I'd give this three stars — 'Would be incarcerated again.'"
• In Bite Sized:
  • When Razor swallows Serini whole, Belkar recalls "What is it with you paladin chicks and killing weird old people?!?"
  • When Lien states there are no sharks who have acid or fire, O-Chul recalls at least one that did.
• When using Speak with Dead to get information about Girard's Gate out of the corpse of one of its dead defenders, the imprecise, literal nature of the spell results in the corpse telling them that Girard's Rift is between his butt cheeks. Later, Serini comments that placing the key to conquering her dungeon on the conqueror's butts means that any divination spells are likely to result in confusing answers.
  • And one comic before that, in 1277: ETA, a call way back to the logic of the shell game from 428: It Takes A Thief. Serini is impressed Roy even knows what a shell game is, but it provides the backbone for the final deduction by V.

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