Quite a few Shout Outs pepper this, the ninth novel of The Dresden Files. With a serial killer stalking practitioners and unrest in the White Court, trouble and pop culture-savvy snarking are sure to ensue:
- The clue that confirms to Harry that the killings are related is a Bible reference.
- In a later moment's Self-Deprecation, Harry snarks that he'll try turning water into wine and walking on water after he finishes his current nigh-impossible tasks.
- He reminds Lara that "pride goeth" in another scene.
- Harry describes the woods around Castle Raith as "Lovely, dark and deep," a clear reference to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," a poem by American poet Robert Frost. He also compares it to Sherwood Forest.
- Priscilla greets Harry with a scowl of Dickensian disapproval.
- After a psychic attack leaves him with a world-class headache, Molly's booted footsteps sound like Godzilla-sized tromping to Harry.
- Elaine uses a spell that causes whirlwinds by twirling something over her head. The Mighty Thor uses the same method, and Jim Butcher has shown himself to be a big Marvel fan.
- Conversing with Lash, Harry reminds himself that every concession to her reasoning brings him closer to signing on with the Legion of Doom.
- Anna's suspicions of the Wardens get Harry making sarcastic Nineteen Eighty-Four cracks.
- The ward on her apartment, in Harry's opinion, is a decent warning system, but no more of a defense than the house of straw from "The Three Little Pigs".
- Later, he considers making a Big Bad Wolf entrance to Anna's apartment, perpetuating the "Three Little Pigs" motif.
- Having just watched Molly react erotically to a dead woman's residual memories, Butters feels a bit "Nabokovian" until Harry confirms she's no longer underage.
- The clothes worn by a captive ghoul in Harry's New Mexico flashback remind him of Lawrence of Arabia.
- Harry recites the opening lines of a classic dirty limerick when Murphy chides him for how he never stops joking.
- A cross-dressing villainous vamp who goes by Priscilla is a clear shout out to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
- Harry calls Mouse "Krypto" at one point.
- Butters has "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Bohemian Polka" playing in his morgue examination room, and Harry recognizes it as a rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody".
- Practicing his guitar, Harry himself plays "Every Breath You Take" and "I Will Survive". Or possibly mangles them, if Mouse's reaction is typical.
- On a related note, Elaine evidently likes Aerosmith, or at least their T-shirts.
- Ramirez feels the same way about The Offspring, while Molly wears a Metallica shirt.
- Murphy and Dresden quote a few lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail at each other early in the book, much to Harry's delight and amusement.
- Elaine does a Humphrey Bogart impression when Harry teases her for not looking "hardboiled" enough.
- Learning that one of the victims wasn't an Ordo member, Harry and Murphy paraphrase lines from Sesame Street:Harry: Some of these things are not like the other things.
Murphy: Some of these things are kind of the same. - "The Black Council had been, if you will pardon the phrasing, a phantom menace."
- Beefy, red-headed Hendricks plays Clifford the Big Red Dog to Murphy's Emily Elizabeth.
- Given Harry's tech-ignorance, him calling Murphy "Mini Mouse" is probably a punning reference to her stature and Mickey Mouse's Distaff Counterpart, not her stature and a computer accessory.
- Thomas, fighting ghouls, tears through them like they're Mooks in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
- Harry describes this as Thomas putting on his Supervamp cape.
- Harry's own power sends super-ghouls flying like extras from The A-Team.
- Harry reflects upon how much fiction Murphy writes in her police reports, and thinks how she should throw in a bit with a dog.
- Opting to wear his duster despite the heat, Harry reasons that failing to do so after he's just been attacked could qualify him for Guinness World Records in stupidity, or possibly the Darwin Awards.
- Harry put a trackable bangle on Mouse's collar for "just such an emergency" as he's faced with, a la Foghorn Leghorn.
- The shockwave from an explosion feels like The Incredible Hulk struck Harry on the chest with a giant pillow.
- If money were words, Mac would make Scrooge look like Monty Hall.
- We also have Harry facing off against Vittorio Malvora, a super fast vampire, specializing in throwing knives.
- Using Little Chicago, Harry can see his own body looming above the table, like Godzilla's hyperthyroid cousin.
- Thomas's boat, the Water Beetle, looks like Quint's boat from Jaws.
- Several snarky references to bowling arise during the duel. Even the vampires laugh at them!
- Harry makes World War II analogies while weighing his priorities about tracking Grey Cloak.
- Seeing Grey Cloak's contact, he muses that the Ringwraith look is pretty common among dark wizards. Ramirez has made the same connection.
- Harry calls the contact "Darth Bathrobe" once they start dissing each other.
- Mouse gives Harry a pleading look when he sees that Toto has a carry-case, and Harry points out that he'd have to hire the Hulk to haul a Mouse-sized pet carrier around.
- Yet another snicker-snack reference, this time to Ramirez's Warden sword in action.
- Butters asks Molly if Harry transforms her into animals, like in The Sword in the Stone.
- Commenting on his past battles with evil forces, Harry admits he's not always sure where everyone around him falls on the Jedi-Sith Index.
- Both Thomas and Harry start reciting "This is bad, this is bad, this is bad" during the battle at the docks, which could be a Shout-Out to Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs.
- In accordance with his facade as a Camp Gay hairdresser, Thomas's apartment is decorated with posters for The Wizard of Oz and The Pirates of Penzance.
- Conversely, the room full of notes, maps and photos looks like it belongs to Rambo's accountant.
- Harry narrates Lara's welcome to the Raith property with a reference to Mary Howitt's poem "The Spider and the Fly".
- Dresden refers to Mouse's method of warning people of danger as a "Lassie act".
- Sneaking onto the Water Beetle, Elaine rattles off a string of Buddy Cop Movie tropes.
- When word that Harry passed for gay to avoid being arrested gets around the precinct, SI's cops start up with the Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, track-lighting and Julie Newmar jokes.
- After Lara reveals that Ramirez is a virgin, Harry calls him Galahad.
- Harry's unexpectedly-effusive welcome to Executive Priority Health catches him so flat-footed, he quips that if the Lollipop Guild is waiting for them inside, he's leaving.
- A hospital security-guard's manner is compared to Patrick Swayze's in Roadhouse 1989: nice, until it's time not to be.
- Harry refers to how Lash has been stoking his subconscious anger as "feeding my inner Hulk".
- Justine tips Harry to the fact she's no longer a basket case by squeezing his hand in the "Shave and a Haircut" sequence.
- Ramirez calls Vitto and Madrigal Beavis and Butt-Head before their duel, but Lara doesn't get the reference. A doubly-funny example for fans of that cartoon, as Vitto is obviously the Butt-Head and Madrigal, the Beavis.
- Harry does, but he would have gone with Hekyll And Jekyll himself. Could be a double Shout-Out, if the spelling is a Jekyll & Hyde reference to White Court vamps' dual nature rather than just a misspelling.
- Mae West is paraphrased again, this time by Elaine.
- The description of a super-ghoul reassembling itself from spilled ichor is an obvious Homage to the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Harry even describes the ichor moving "like liquid mercury", which is what the filmmakers used to shoot the scene in question.
- Meeting with Marcone at the end, Harry tells the gang boss he'll be visited by the Ghosts of Indictment Past, Present and Future.
- At one point, Lasciel helps Harry play extremely well on his guitar, a Shout Out to Robert Johnson (who allegedly got similar help from the Devil to become a great guitar player).
