Shout Out / Battlestar Galactica (2003)

• Boomer's mission to destroy the Cylon ship at the end of Season 1 is almost exactly the same as the mission pulled off at the end of Independence Day.
• The term "skinjob" is comes from Blade Runner, which has been openly admitted as an influence. It's also an Actor Allusion, as Edward James Olmos was in Blade Runner. The standard Colonial Sidearm, at least in the first season, is also a replica of Deckard's gun from the same film. This can be seen quite clearly in many scenes and was apparently confirmed in a DVD commentary. Likewise the civilian Stallion pistol is actually COP .357 Derringer, used in the opening scene where a Replicant shoots a Blade Runner.
• From "Colonial Day":
  Laura Roslin: Don't smirk, Zarek. I won't kiss you.
  Tom Zarek: It's a shame. I shaved very close in anticipation of getting smacked by you.
• Cylon Model Number 6 is a shout out to The Prisoner.
• Serenity from Firefly can be seen landing on Caprica in the background of a scene from the Miniseries.
• Naming the deceased Cylon model "Daniel" seems to be a shout out to the Isaac Asimov android R. Daneel Olivaw.
• The way Laura Roslin became president might be a Shout-Out to a scene in Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon: The female Secretary of Education becomes the President of the US after a nuclear attack, and uses the radio to address the few surviving towns in America.
  • Her inauguration on board Colonial One deliberately emulates the inauguration of American president Lyndon Johnson in the wake of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Babylon 5 also used this imagery with the inauguration of President Clarke.
• Cally shooting Boomer in "Resistance" is meant to emulate the murder of JFK's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.
  • Also from "Resistance", Word of God states that the incident on board the Gideon is inspired by the Boston Massacre.
• Tyrol's union speech in "Lay Down Your Burdens" is almost a direct word for word quote of a speech given by Mario Savio during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, California in 1964. The production staff went so far as to obtain permission from Savio's widow to use the quote.
• "The shape of things to come" is from a 1933 novel by H. G. Wells of the same name.
  • "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again" is the first line of the 1953 Disney Peter Pan animated film.
  • How about the Cylon Basestar command systems referencing the MCP from TRON by finishing off their sentences with "End Of Line"?
• Star Trek references:
  • The original Enterprise appears as part of the rag tag fleet in the Miniseries, and in the openings of seasons 1 and 2 due to recycled footage.
  • Also during the Miniseries, Colonial One attempts to rescue "Geminon Liner 1701".
  • The Astral Queen is a shout out to the Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King," which Ron Moore has described as his favorite Original Series episode. The producers later admitted that "Astral Queen" was a terrible name for a prison ship.
  • In "The Ties That Bind," members of the Final Five meet in a weapons locker 1701D.
  • In "Pegasus", Roslin has the Raptors rescue the Caprica Resistance by jumping above Martok Valley. This is very likely a reference to the character General Martok of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• In "Sacrifice" a shadowy silhouetted picture of "alleged Cylon prisoner Sharon Valerii" is seen in the terrorist's Roomfull Of Crazy, possibly a reference to the similar "Photo believed to be Col. W. E. Kurz". A similar Apocalypse Now shout out is the Shore Patrol picking up a drunken Tigh for his assignment (including the "What are the charges?" line).
• In "Litmus" Head-Six delivers an oh-so-menacing yet oh-so-sexy tip of the hat to The Incredible Hulk:

  Head-Six: "Don't make me angry, Gaius... You wouldn't like me when I'm angry..."

• Episode Titles:
  • "Bastille Day" is named after, well, Bastille Day, the holiday commemorating the storming of the infamous prison at the start of The French Revolution.
  • "Valley of Darkness" paraphrases Psalm 23 from The Bible.
    Psalm 23:4: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
  • "Taking a Break From All Your Worries" quotes the theme song to Cheers. The episode's plot originally focused on Joe's Bar, thus explaining its seemingly out of place title.
  • "The Son Also Rises" is a pun on the title of the 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises.
  • "He That Believeth In Me" quotes John 11:25-26, and given the episode's events, is a very appropriate title.
    Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
  • "The Ties That Bind" paraphrases the Protestant hymn "Blessed Be the Tie that Binds" which celebrates the unity that comes from love.
  • "The Road Less Traveled" quotes Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken."
  • "Sometimes a Great Notion" is the title of a novel by Ken Kesey, which itself quotes the blues song "Goodnight, Irene".
    Sometimes I get a great notion
    to jump in the river and drown.
  • "No Exit" takes its title from a 1944 play by Jean-Paul Sartre, which contains the famous quote, "Hell is other people!"
  • "Someone to Watch Over Me" takes its title from a song of the same name by George and Ira Gershwin.
  • "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" quotes The Outermost House by Henry Beston.
    "For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars? pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time."
• There's a few nods to Aliens in Razor - a marine named Hudson, and the Pulse Rifle's distinctive sound can be heard in a couple of firefights.
• The little girl in the pilot, who is abandoned on a non-FTL ship, is more or less a shot-for-shot reference to the infamous "Daisy" presidential campaign commercial.
• The GDI Kodiak can be briefly seen during the series finale, as shown here.
• During the assault on the Cylon Colony in the series finale, one of the Fours inspecting Hera says "I think you overestimate their chances" when Boomer is worried about the colonials succeeding. Grand Moff Tarkin said the exact same thing during the Rebel attack on the Death Star in A New Hope.
• The scene where one Cylon shoots another to protect a fragile Enemy Mine alliance is inspired by Lawrence of Arabia doing the same.
• It's said that the Vic Viper of the Gradius series was loosely based on "a famous scifi ship", with the obvious implication being one of the colonial viper models from Battlestar's original series. Now, it seems the Viper Mk VII series has returned the favor, with a design almost identical to the Vic Viper when seen from the side.
• In Season 3, Cylon prisoners (which includes Laura Roslin and Tom Zarek) are loaded up into trucks and taken away from the city. The Cylons stop the trucks, telling the prisoners they're stopping to allow them to stretch their legs, which then they realize that the Cylons are going to kill them right there. This entire sequence is inspired by The Great Escape, in which several of the escapes are executed by the gestapo in a similar way. The only difference is that for the show, the Resistance showed up to take out the Centurions before they could fire a shot.
• Possibly a coincidence, but the series as a whole bears a remarkable similarity to the classic anime Gall Force, which is also about a crew of humans fighting a desperate running battle against cruel, robotic enemies, at least one character turns out to be a robot sent to spy on them and the story ends with The Reveal that it takes place in the distant past and modern humans are descended from one of the crew and an Artificial Human hybrid created by the enemy.
• In Razor, the First Hybrid is played by Campbell Lane, who voiced the Bentusi in Homeworld, which was basically a BSG game in everything but name. The Bentusi are Unbound, melded to their ships just like the Hybrids.