With ruthless necromancers on the loose in Chicago, Harry needs all the help he can get in this, the seventh novel of The Dresden Files. And when part of that help comes from Butters, a nerdy medical examiner as addicted to pop culture as Harry himself, the Shout Outs are bound to come fast and often.
- Harry cites Genesis on the very first page, feeling a bit like Cain about his brother's sloppiness.
- "Thomas is too pretty to die."
- Of course he is. He's the forgotten Greek God of body cologne.
- Butters asks why Grevane's zombies aren't moaning for braaaaaaaaaaaains, saying they were more like the Terminator.
- Harry scores a double whammy Shout-Out, in which he refers to Cowl and Kumori as trying to reinterpret Fahrenheit 451 from a Ringwraith perspective.
- Not completely original of Harry, as Bob told him about how the White Council burned Kemmler's works with a Fahrenheit 451 reference earlier. And he'd Lampshaded a Tolkien quip to Shiela just a minute before confronting the two necromancers, about having already told them he didn't want to buy a ring.
- Leaving Bock's to confront Cowl and Kumori, Harry muses over whether he's living out High Noon or The Maltese Falcon.
- He asks Cowl if he's a Franz Schubert fanboy, and Cowl dryly replies that he likes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
- Bob claims it's like the circle of life for Harry to have retrieved his skull from the charred ruins of Justin's lab, as Justin took it from the wreckage of Kemmler's.
- Harry calling Bob "His Skull Friday" might also be a Shout-Out, either to Robinson Crusoe or the 1940 Cary Grant film His Girl Friday.
- Butters doesn't have an ax, and would prefer a less Bunyan-esque option for disabling zombies.
- Harry's description of the potential results of the Darkhallow: "One of them gets phenomenal cosmic power, and all the living space he can take."
- Completing it will give them a Valhalla-sized power-boost.
- Butters' imperfect musical performance sounds like the Quasimodo Polka.
- Even a glancing strike from Cowl's magic makes Harry feel like the Jolly Green Giant had slugged him with a beanbag chair.
- He paraphrases Ginsu knife ads and other too-good-to-be-true infomercials while refusing Lasciel's temptations.
- The necromancer whose book everyone is after is Heinrich Kemmler, a reference to the Vampire Counts character from War Hammer Fantasy Battles, Heinrich Kemmler, Lichemaster. Jim Butcher has mentioned that he is a fan of WHFB.
- When asked why he would go to the Nevernever if it's so dangerous, Harry shrugs and replies, "It's a living."
- Shiela's Halloween costume is an I Dream of Jeannie reference. Also Foreshadowing of how she's really Lasciel, who promises to make Harry's every wish come true if he yields to temptation.
- Dead Beat references Alice in Wonderland several times. Morgan's sword even goes snicker-snack.
- In the sequence with Malcolm Dresden, Harry asks him for a Vorpal Sword, but all he's got is a Snickers Snack. Jabberwocky again, and Malcolm even Lampshades it with a "Beware the Jabberwock" quote.
- Bock has an original edition of Through the Looking Glass in his bookstore's secure back room.
- Why Grevane wants to abduct Butters is the $64,000 question.
- When Cowl asks Harry for the book about the Erlking, Harry says that Cowl must be a Schubert fan. Cowl responds with "Goethe, actually." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem called "Der Erlkönig", and Franz Schubert adapted the poem into a song.
- Grevane's attempt to batter through Harry's wards make his apartment shake and its occupants stagger around like it's the Enterprise bridge on Star Trek.
- Butters describes Harry's enhanced healing abilities as "not like mutant X-factor healing". Struggling to make sense of what Harry's told him about magic, he mentions the Force as one possible name for energies not yet understood by science.
- Harry, explaining about monsters, says they make horror-movie creatures look like The Muppets. Ironic, considering Harry would meet monsters that mimic horror-movie creatures in the next novel!
- Apparently Harry reads Dean Koontz, as he owns a copy of Watchers.
- He probably loves The Hobbit more, as he used it as an affinity-item when summoning the Erlking.
- The Alphas' Big Damn Heroes moment is heralded by a Wolfen quip from Harry.
- Who then takes off with them, saying "Quick, to the Woofmobile".
- Butters makes a quip about Liv Tyler.
- Firefly: Also, read the dream sequence where Malcolm Dresden and Harry talk, giving his father Nathan Fillion's voice. Seriously. It's eerie, just how much Dresden Sr.'s method of speech resembles Reynolds'. And they're both people who are trampled upon because they're good souls who do the right thing.
- It being Halloween, Harry makes a Great Pumpkin crack.
- Informed that Mendoza was a smuggler, Butters name-drops Han Solo.
- Harry's explanation of Outsiders makes their Lovecraftian roots obvious.
- Being assigned to try to decode the numbers makes Thomas feel like James Bond.
- Collectively, the necromancers get tagged Sergeant Kemmler's Lonely Hearts Club Band by Harry.
- The Lord of the Rings references abound in this series, but Harry refusing Lasciel's offer of power by quoting Gandalf's refusal of the One Ring stood out as especially awesome.
- To confirm he won't yield for the moment, Lasciel herself quotes "Get thee behind me" as a query.
- Once Butters has overcome his fear, his newfound eagerness to help defeat the necromancers earns a Fight Club quip from Harry.
- "Darth Vader Syndrome" is Harry's term for how satisfying it is to see the villain who's been scaring the pants off you go after another, mutual enemy. This comes up twice: once when Harry calls in the Wardens to go after the necromancers, and again when Luccio drafts Harry, whom many White Council elders fear, to join the Wardens in their war.
- Realizing Mouse must've deliberately dragged Butters to safety, Harry muses that even if pipsqueak Butters had had gamma radiation-induced green skin and purple pants, it couldn't have been the other way around.
- Harry mentally chains and cages Lasciel's shadow, in a scene similar to how John Crichton dealt with Harvey on Farscape.
- When Butters starts concocting terms like "anti-Murphyonic field", even Harry accuses him of watching too many Star Trek reruns.
- Harry acquires some gear from the Field Museum's Buffalo Bill exhibit when he animates Sue the Tyrannosaur.
- Once he's done so, of course it's time for lots and lots of references to the Jurassic Park films.
- And possibly even the promotional slogan for said films, although Bob (being Bob) probably would have said "size does matter" in any case.
- "Thanks for your opinion, Counselor."
- Mouse, a secretly-intelligent supernatural dog with a nicked ear, suffers a minor injury in his first on-page fight with a zombie. Snuff, a secretly-intelligent supernatural dog with one tattered ear, carries old war wounds from a dispute with a zombie. Both dog-vs-zombie scraps happened during the run-up to a dark magic rite on Halloween, in which opposing spell-casters contest over whether it'll run its course or not.
- At the end, Bob surmises that Cowl was atomized by the Darkhallow's backlash, sending the ashes of him and his little dog too showering down over the city.
- Bob's line "Harry! You stole a Warden's cloak?" might be a reference to the old tradition of drunkenly stealing a policeman's hat.
