Having to protect his long-standing Council enemy from the other Wardens makes Harry unsure if he should be Shouting Out, or just shouting mad. But even if he can't break the frame on Morgan, at least he'll try his darnedest to break his record for pop-culture references in this, the 11th novel of The Dresden Files.
- Contemplating the importance of exonerating Morgan and convicting the real traitor, Harry sums up the sort of irrefutable case he'll need to present to the Council:
- Thomas, according to Harry, has teeth whiter than the Ku Klux Klan and makes the Spartans in that movie look like slackers.
- Harry tells Injun Joe that he wants to die by being "stepped on by an elephant while having sex with identical triplet cheerleaders", which is a reference to The Chronicles of Amber. Corwin also wants to die by being stepped on by an elephant while having sex. note
- The Sight can show you things that the Black-Goat-with-a-Thousand-Young wouldn't dare tell its kids for bedtime stories.
- Cell phones are compared to the Red Shirt extras from Star Trek: The Original Series: soon as any (magical) action kicks off, so do they.
- When Harry is describing his leather duster, he says it's waterproof, bulletproof, and it breathes. He compares it to modern armor technology, quipping "Sufficiently advanced technology, my ass."
- Harry fights back the memory of Shagnasty with the help of Eratosthenes, i.e. by calculating prime numbers.
- Murphy explains that bureaucracy is on Harry's side, although Harry would rather have The A-Team.
- Having Morgan explain how powerful the skinwalker is, Harry's impressed enough to say, "Jinkies."
- In Harry makes an impressively smooth transition from Metal Gear Solid straight into The Pirates of Penzance.Toot's body practically convulsed in excitement. Had a giant yellow exclamation mark appeared above his head, I would not have been surprised. "A Major-General?"I couldn't resist. "Yes, yes," I said solemnly. "A Major-General."
- Given Dresden's ignorance of post-1980s video games, the exclamation mark might be both a cartoon reference from Harry's POV and a Metal Gear reference by Butcher.
- At one point, our put-upon wizard refers to himself as "your friendly neighborhood Harry Dresden".
- Begging Thomas to get Justine to help investigate, Harry insists that he's not asking for her to deactivate the tractor beam, rescue the princess, and escape to the fourth moon of Yavin.
- When the Wardens cut loose against Binder's Grey Men, the flashes of fire-magic make it look like a Star Wars battle scene.
- While Harry's been calling Molly "padawan" for several books now, this is one of the first times she calls him "Obi-Wan".
- Harry tells Georgia to "send up the wolf-signal" when he arrives at her place.
- The Wardens are seen walking in a group like in The Right Stuff in Vince's surveillance photos.
- Tales of skinwalkers are darker than the tales of The Brothers Grimm, the ones that haven't been prettied up by Disney and the like. The actual presence of one nearby, according to Harry, would make the environment feel Tales from the Darkside-creepy to him.
- Morgan, of all people, chews Harry out for acting like a bloody superhero. None specified, but for Morgan even to know there are such things probably rates as Genre Savvy for a workaholic senior wizard.
- A weary Harry mutters, "I have promises to keep", as he presses on with work.
- Zero splits the difference between a Dionysian bacchanal and a Fellini flick.
- Harry tells a rubber-clad Justine she looks like the Michelin Man's wet dream.
- Murphy says she has a better chance of winning a slam-dunk contest with Michael Jordan than of tracking down a confidential foreign bank transaction.
- Smack-talking Madeline, Harry compares her to Jessica Rabbit or the evil princess from Buck Rogers.
- Ancient Mai's temple-dog statues look like something out of a Godzilla movie (King Caesar, we presume).
- Harry claims that if a revolver was good enough for Indiana Jones, it's good enough for him.
- Murphy references him too, when she says real cops leave trick shots to SWAT or Indy.
- Molly paraphrases Gone with the Wind when she returns from sweet-talking Vince. Harry later does the same when he gives some lip to the skinwalker over the phone.
- Luccio quotes Highlander, which surprises Harry because she'd told him she fell asleep at the drive-in.
- Having his head bandaged makes Harry feel like the fife player from Willard's iconic painting, Spirit of '76.
- Murphy, analyzing the opposition, deduces that he or she is not some kind of James Bond supervillain.
- When Vince reveals where Binder is going, Harry asks if he's the Amazing Kreskin.
- Running her hand along the Silver Wraith's fender, Murphy says she's not a material girl, but damn.
- Realizing Mouse was only acting injured, Harry marvels that maybe he should have named the Foo dog Denzel.
- Harry points out that the Fairy Tales of the brothers Grimm nearly always take place in a forest, because forests can be scary places. Aside from the mostly-open oak woods where Robin Hood movies and Shakespeare adaptations are filmed, that is.
- Molly asks permission to come aboard the bridge of the Water Beetle, because it's what they do on Star Trek.
- Harry teaches Molly the basics of piloting the vessel, although he's hardly Horatio Hornblower himself.
- The White Court strike team drops from their helicopter with as much grace and coordination as the Cirque du Soleil.
- "Wile E. Coyote, Suuuuuuper Genius."
- Madeline quotes Hamlet when she's about to kill Harry. Possibly also a Call-Back to when Lord Raith made the same "flights of angels sing you to your rest" reference in Blood Rites when he was about to kill Thomas, (especially since both Raith and Madeline end up being raped to psychic slavery/death by Lara), or maybe it's just a family habit.
- Seeing Harry bandaged up after the battle on the island, Vince asks him if he cursed everyone who desecrated his tomb, or just the English-speaking guys.
- Ebenezar's taste in books ranges from Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein and Tom Clancy on one hand to Julius Caesar, D.H. Lawrence, Stephen Hawking and Friedrich Nietzsche on the other.
- Delivering The Summation at Morgan's trial, Harry quips that he feels just like Hercule Poirot.
- "I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland."
- Peabody's defensive gesture is similar to something Doctor Strange might do.
- Examining his latest collection of battle-scars, Harry quips that he'll look like Herr Harrison von Ford.
- "That's Doctor Smart-ass. I didn't go through 8 years of insult college to be called Mister."
- The whole scene is a (very possibly intentional) reference to Gandalf arriving at the Meduseld in The Lord of the Rings.
- A huge crowd of Woodland Creatures gathers in silence when Harry confronts the island's genius loci, and Harry has to fight down the thought of what it would feel like to be killed by a Zerg Rush of wildlife. Shades of Wyrd Sisters, there...
- The fae spiders Harry encounters in the Nevernever have disturbingly human-like mouths tucked between their venomous fangs. This is something they have in common with the Gray Widowers from The Mist, which have human-like teeth between theirs.
