Stealth Puns in Literature.
- In Accel World, Haruyuki's normal neural linker avatar is a pig. Silver Crow's main power is flight. Therefore, pigs are flying.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Fitting that Amy Lawrence was Tom's love interest directly before Becky Thatcher came. After all, A comes directly before B in the alphabet.
- Shinobu, a major character in Bakemonogatari, has a stealth pun in the kanji for her name. Before the start of the series, her original name is Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade. Early in the series she is given the name Shinobu by another character. The kanji for Shinobu is written as 忍, making her new name still literally heart (心) under blade (刀).
- In the kids' story Bee-Wigged (about a giant bee who passes himself off as a schoolboy thanks to a Paper-Thin Disguise) the main character Jerry Bee is noted to be extremely good at spelling. Which of course makes him a spelling bee.
- Blood Trail, the second book in Tanya Huff's Blood Books series, features Henry and Vicki protecting a family of werewolves living near London (Ontario). Not one character ever mentions Warren Zevon or his song, "Werewolves of London".
- Indeed, the working title of the book was A Canadian Werewolf in London, Ontario.
- There's a curious non-comic example in the title of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael novel The Rose Rent. The literal reading of the title refers to a house owner's odd demand to be paid one white rose per year by the Abbey in lieu of rent. The punning version refers to the scene in which persons unknown attempt to thwart the arrangement by rending the rose bush from which the annual blossom must be harvested.
- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is better known for its hurricanes, but...
- The dangers of the Stealth Pun are featured in one of the stories, while the actual Stealth Pun is subverted through explanation; a story on Tall Tales Night is about to bomb because of a Stealth Pun that went over everyone's head, so the narrator steps in to state the pun that the pun-making Star Wars fan was O.B. Juan's kin, Obie.
- Spider Robinson has what many would regard as an unfortunate tendency to lampshade his Stealth Puns. Witness the Callahan story "Have You Heard The One ...?", about a time-traveling salesman: the female guest character, Josie Bauer, turns out to be a time-traveler as well and mentions at one point that her father has almost finished "the Riverworld ser — " The narrator ends by pointedly explaining that he's not going to explain the translation of her surname. (The Stealth Punchline is, "Have you heard the one about the traveling salesman and Philip Jose Farmer's daughter?")
- One of the characters in Lady Slings the Booze winds up on the receiving end of one: he's introduced to the Native American janitor, busy changing a burned-out bulb, who apparently goes by the name "Many Hands"note . When he figures the pun out, he asks what the guy's name really is.
- In one of the Lady Sally's books, a bearded carpenter is seen variously hobbling down the hall on crutches, riding a bicycle, and bouncing on a pogo sticknote .
- In Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, boko-maru, the only real ritual of the Bokononists, is described as a meeting of souls. It is performed by having the two participants remove their footwear, and then press the soles of their feet together.
- In Robert McCloskey's Centerburg Tales a mysterious stranger puts a record containing an Ear Worm into Uncle Ulysses' jukebox, then leaves after giving Homer and Freddy a warning which amounts to Schmuck Bait.Freddy: That character could make some little squirrel very happy.note
- In the Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) novel Duty Calls, the pilot of Amberley's ship is named Pontius
. Also among the major players in the novel are soldiers from an all-female religious order based in the planet's region of Gavaronne. The fact that they are literally the Nuns of Gavaronne is never explicitly made.- In The Traitor's Hand, there is a brief mention of an animal called the nauga, whose hide is particularly useful for "certain hard-wearing applications." The maker of Naugahyde fabric ran with this, selling Nauga dolls.
- In The Traitor's Hand, there is a brief mention of an animal called the nauga, whose hide
- There's a character in the Codex Alera named Rook. Rook is a watercrafter powerful enough to manage Voluntary Shapeshifting. At one point, she uses this to switch places with a member of the nobility, providing protection for the noble and increased maneuverability for herself. Rook castles.
- In The Day my Bum Went Psycho, it turns out the Kisser is an ass-kisser in more ways then one.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: On page 52 of the first book, there's a picture of a guy with a Hockey Mask and Chainsaw chasing Greg and Rowley with the written sound effect "RRRRRRRRRRRRR!" (with exactly thirteen "R"s).
- Digital Devil Story has a pretty groan-worthy bilingual one. An occult organization in Arkham has a computer server run by an AI named Craft. It's never mentioned in the text, but the computer's manufacturer is almost certainly Hewlett Packard.
- Discworld
- In The Wee Free Men, a talking toad is introduced as a guide for Tiffany Aching. Although it was explained that said toad's yellow colour was caused by his being unwell, nobody ever actually told her to "follow the yellow sick toad". As the author said:Terry Pratchett: I just happened to note a toad had a skin which had had unfortunately gone a bit yellow because it had been ill. Far be it from me to make a pun. You did that.
- Moving Pictures had the same pun made more explicit, where a man in half a lion suit says "I don't know what it's called, but we're doing one about going to see a wizard. Something about following a yellow sick toad."
- Moving Pictures, while like the other early books is set in the "Century of the Fruitbat", has a studio in Holy Wood called Century of the Fruitbat Pictures. You may know that Fruitbats are also known as Flying Foxes.
- Similarly, in Jingo!, when Carrot is investigating an attempted political killing with strong similarities to the Kennedy assassination, he interviews a gnoll. In addition to being an informant, the creature has plants growing on it. That's two possible routes to the phrase "grassy gnoll", but it never happens.
- Conversely, an actual suspect for the assassination-attempt is named Snowy Slopes. Ankh-Morpork has a somewhat colder climate than Dallas...
- Soul Music is full of these.
- The main character is Imp Y Celyn, who explains his name (which is actual Welsh) as imp being a term for new growth at the end of a stalk, and celyn being a member of the holly family. All the same, there are plenty of time people note his name sounds "Elvish." This is made more obvious when he starts going by the name Buddy.
- His band-mate, Lias Bluestone, who changes his name to Cliff. The fact that one of the band's songs is Sto Helit Lace suggests that he's supposed to represent J. P. Richardson Jr. AKA "the Big Bopper". "You won't get very far in the music business with a name like Cliff!"
- The Dean of UU spends several scenes constructing an elaborate coat. Later, Death, knowing that some things have to look right, borrows it before going very quickly to an important place. When he gets there, he kills The Music. None of this is ever spelled out.
- Death riding to the rescue on a motorcycle, which turns ghostly as parts break off... meaning that by the end, he's hitting the highway... on a silver-black phantom bike. (Like a Bat out of Hell...)
- The Dean also spends a lot of time riveting trousers out of denim. The Archchancellor complains, and the Dean replies that soon everyone will be wearing them, and they certainly won't be called Archchancellors.
- One of the bands manages to acquire a leopard, which is a bit hard of hearing.
- The band names are full of these. Consider, for instance, the opposite to "We're certainly Dwarfs".
- In Witches Abroad, there's a couple of puns where the first two witches give an outright pun or Shout-Out but Nanny Ogg delivers the stealth pun.
- The three of them are deliberating on the idea of a transport system built on broomsticks. Their ideas for names are puns on well know real world airlines but Nanny Ogg gets cut off before she says hers. However, note she is looking at Magrat and being rather coquettish. Consider Magrat's role in The Hecate Sisters trio: virgin.
- In a later scene, while stuck in a Wizard of Oz parody, Magrat and Granny have a falling out. As they walk along the obligatory yellow brick road, Magrat says "some people" need a little more heart, Granny Weatherwax says "some people" need a lot more brain, and Nanny Ogg, both literally and figuratively stuck between the two, thinks to herself that she needs a drink – i.e. Dutch Courage. note
- In Pyramids, a voting system involving each elector placing round beads into a jar is described as giving rise to a popular saying about politics. Presumably that it's a load of balls.
- It is echoed by Sybil in Guards Guards: "Lord Vetinari seldom had balls. There was a popular song about it, in fact."
- In Going Postal, Reacher Gilt dresses up as a pirate and has a parrot sitting on his shoulder that continually shouts "twelve and a half percent!" Twelve and a half is 100 divided by 8, or, in other words, one Piece of Eight, which is the traditional coinage that all pirates are after, and "Pieces Of Eight!" was the Catchphrase of Long John Silver's parrot in Treasure Island.
- The Last Hero includes some pages that are excerpts of fictional documents. One of these is a list of "Varieties of the Swamp Dragon". One of the listed varieties is the "Nothingfjord Blue", which is given this description: "Wonderful scales, but a tendency to homesickness." In other words, it's pining for the fjords.
- In Night Watch Discworld, Dr Lawn briefly refers to "the founder of my profession, the philosopher Scepturn." Since this is obviously the Disc version of Hippocrates, the highly cynical Lawn has presumably taken the Sceptic Oath.
- The Guild of Ladies of Negotiable Affection (pre-legalization and renomination) employed Dotsie and Sadie, known as the Agony Aunts since that's what they inflict on badly behaving customers. Now say their names the other way round.
- In British English, an Agony Aunt is an advice columnist.
- If you swap Dotsie and Sadie around and drop the "i.e." you get Sad-Dots or Sadists.
- All through Thief of Time it is emphasized that Susan hates Nougat. The book finishes with her eating a chocolate privately in the closet. The chocolate turned out (to her dismay) to be Nougat. She is then interrupted when Lobsang arrives. They kiss and the book closes with "Even with Nougat, you can have a perfect moment." And before he joined the History Monks, Lobsang was called Newgate Ludd.
- In Unseen Academicals, a girl calls Glenda "the leftover queen", then thinks it might be taken insultingly and explains she meant that Glenda was very good at cooking with leftovers. Why would someone not like to be called the leftover queen? Because in the card game, the leftover queen is the Old Maid.note
- Also Trev Likely is a "likely lad" and a skilled dribbler (he works in the University candle vats before getting involved in the football). And a teddy bear with a third eye sewn on its forehead is described as "more enlightened than the average bear": an obvious gag on Eastern mysticism and Yogi Bear's catchphrase, but a subtler one when you remember a yogi is an Eastern mystic.
- Becomes a plot point in Feet of Clay. Heraldry is explained as consisting mostly of "Crossword clues and plays on words". Most of these are set out on the spot, but there are a few that give a clue to the ongoing plot. These are explained at the end, but an astute reader may be ahead of the investigation.
- In Guards! Guards!, Vimes refers to an unusually weak beverage as "love-in-a-canoe" coffee. The punchline goes unsaid — it's "fucking close to water".
- One from Paul Kidby: his illustration of Leonard of Quirm in Nanny Ogg's Cookbook includes many Leonardo references, including the original sketch of the Mona Ogg. Another picture of the young Gytha, however, shows her lying naked on a divan, which is a reference to a completely different Leonardo.
- Possible one in Sourcery, when Rincewind points to his hat and says "What does this mean to you?" and someone else says "That you can't spell." Not only is the word Wizard misspelled (there are two Z's) on his hat, Rincewind is also an Inept Mage. He... can't spell.
- The protagonist of Small Gods is Brutha, a lowly acolyte who ends up reforming the warlike theocracy of Omnia and becoming its leader after a number of hardships. So he's actually a Christ analogue, but Pratchett somehow waited until Unseen Academicals to use the fairly obvious joke about the Discworld equivalent of "Jesus Christ!" being "Oh, Brutha!"
- The Grim Reaper's main adversaries in the series are the Auditors of Realities. Which means that Pratchett is pitting against each other the two certainties in life: Death and Taxes.
- Besides having Death's powers, another Lamarckian inheritance Susan got was a mark on her face mirroring one given to her father, Mort, when Death hit him. This seems to be a Stealth Pun on the idea of "hitting someone so hard their children will feel it".
- The Mended Drum, Ankh-Morpork's oldest and most famous tavern, is so named because it used to be the Broken Drum, and got renamed after it was burned down. Why it was called the Broken Drum is never explained in the Discworld series. However, Strata, one of Terry's early sci-fi books also features a bar called the Broken Drum, and that one does get explained: "You can't beat it."
- To understand why one of the voodoo gods in Witches Abroad is called "Master Safe Way", you have to know a) that there's a Real Life voodoo loa called Maitre Carrefour (literally Master Crossroads), b) that Safeway is the name of a UK supermarket and c) that Carrefour is also the name of a French supermarket with a few branches in the UK, one of which was near Sir Pterry's house.
- In multiple Discworld books, we find the families Venturi and Selachii, who are mostly noted for hating each other. A venturi is a type of a jet engine, and Selachii is a taxonomic name for an order of sharks. In other words, they are named for the feuding gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, of West Side Story.
- In The Wee Free Men, a talking toad is introduced as a guide for Tiffany Aching. Although it was explained that said toad's yellow colour was caused by his being unwell, nobody ever actually told her to "follow the yellow sick toad". As the author said:
- The punishment in The Divine Comedy for damned flatterers is to be trapped in a ditch filled with fecal matter the ditch is full of shit, just as they are.
- In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel Borrowed Time, Rory has acquired a 51st century camera that speeds up time in a given area. The phrase "time bubble" is repeatedly used to describe this. The main plot involves an extradimensional stock exchange that buys and sells time, and a being who believes that she can manipulate the market by buying more time than her debtors have, as long as she can keep passing the debts on before they're called. Despite this being explicitly compared to both the contemporary financial crisis and 17th century tulipmania, the phrase "time bubble" is not used in this context.
- In the Dragaera books, during the period where Vlad was a gangster, he had two mooks working for him known as Schoen and Sticks. Schoen means stone- thus, they are Sticks and Stones (and will break your bones).
- In The Dresden Files, there's a supporting character named Virginia, who is a werewolf. No one mentions that they are afraid of Virginia Wolf.
- Also in The Dresden Files, Harry is asked to guess the name of the wizard who is the newest member of the Senior Council. His guess is "Klaus the Toymaker." It is implied that Harry is not joking, but he's wrong.
- In Summer Knight, we meet a very small fairy that looks to be nothing more than a spark of light. Her name? Elidee. L. E. D.
- Norse related characters tend to have names that are Kenning, and if you can figure it out tells you exactly who and what they are.
- For instance: MonOc Securities. MonOc is a combination of words for "one" and "eye"; it didn't take the fans long to realize it was led by Odin One-Eye. And one of their employees is Ms. Gard: If you read up on your Norse Mythology, you'll know that Asgard is the home of most of the gods and location of Valhalla. She's a Valkyrie.
- You could also read her name as a slight mispronunciation of "Midgard" (i.e., Earth), which makes sense given that she's often seen acting as an intermediary between her boss and the mortal world (such as Marcone).
- The Archive asks Harry to tell his kitty hello for her. This means that, had she not gone through a third party, she would have said, "Hello Kitty."
- Summer Knight's finale involves a massive battle between the Fae Courts, both of which are seasonally themed. One could say it is very climatic.
- Before making love and having a baby (in the spiritual sense), Lash and Harry play music cooperatively — her providing the technical knowledge telepathically, and him playing the actual guitar. One could say "[they] made sweet music together".
- In Blood Rites, Harry somewhat hypocritically disparages Kinkaid's plan to simply blow up the Black Court nest and declares that he wants a plan that doesn't sound like it came from "the Bolshevik Muppet with all the dynamite." They end up resorting to Kinkaid's plan anyway. No one mentions that said "Bolshevik Muppet" is named Crazy Harry.
- In Dune, the spice, melange, is also called the geriatric spice because it can triple the human lifespan. What does melange mean? A mixture, or a combination...in short, variety is the spice of life.
- Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles:
- The characters constantly have to deal with the wizard Antorell who is a big nuisance. After one encounter, Killer asks what the commotion was, noting "part of it sounded like another donkey." Morwen answers "No, it was a wizard, though in this case it's much the same thing."
- The last book features a character called Daystar. Guess how he relates to the previous main characters.
- The "blinding" of Isaac from The Fault in Our Stars. Unintended, according to John Green.
- In The Girl from the Miracles District, Aleks sends Nikita his friends, a biker gang called the Bears, to protect her, but they end up being more trouble than they are help. In Polish, a "bear favour" is an attempt at help that ends up making the situation worse.
- In Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid:
- The dialogue "Aria with Diverse Variations" (named after a piece by J. S. Bach more commonly known as the Goldberg Variations) mostly concerns the Goldbach Conjecture and variations on it. Near the end of the dialogue, Achilles suddenly offers the Tortoise the gift of a "very gold Asian box." This pun doesn't get to sink in until after the true ending of the dialogue: a fake ending in which a cop arrives and Achilles turns the Tortoise in for the reported theft of a Very Asian Gold Box.
- In another part of GEB, "the art of Zen strings" is described in some detail in a dialog between the Tortoise (who is so called, of course, because he taught us) and Achilles. (There is no such art, of course.) At one point Achilles explains that you use a substance called "ribo" to help manipulate the strings and after you get "some ribo" on them you can "translate" the symbols on the "messenger" into folds on a string. Achilles is actually describing the transcription of DNA into proteins via messenger RNA and "some ribo" is a ribosome.
- In "Sloth Canon," the Sloth remarks that his copy of the "Canon per augmentationem, contrario motu" from the Musical Offering has the letters 'S', 'A', 'T' in front of the three staves. Achilles guesses that they stand for "Soprano", "Alto" and "Tenor", but the Sloth then is about to explain what they really stand for when the Tortoise makes a hasty departure, leaving Achilles stumped.
- The dialogue "Aria with Diverse Variations" (named after a piece by J. S. Bach more commonly known as the Goldberg Variations) mostly concerns the Goldbach Conjecture
- Harry Potter:
- Vernon Dursley works at Grunning Drills — or, in other words, his job is very boring.
- The names of some locations in the magical world are symbolic puns, which are never mentioned or called out by the characters at all. "Diagon Alley" (Diagonally) was said by J. K. Rowling to reference Harry's entrance into the magical/adult world, because it was very unusual, or some such. "Knockturn Alley" (Nocturnally) is a dark and frightening underbelly sort of place.
- There's also Durmstrang, a Spoonerism of the German phrase Sturm [und] Drang (Storm and Stress). Puns honestly seem to actually be a naming convention of the Wizarding world, they come up so much.
- From The Heroes of Olympus series in Mark of Athena, Leo (upon hearing that there is a bounty on their heads) makes a wisecrack about being worth two, or three Franks. Franks. As in, Francs.
- In Honor Harrington, the inner circle of the Renaissance Factor conspiracy contains a few names that might seem familiar to a student of 20th-century cinema, like Hitchcock, Tarantino, Stone and Kubrick. It's a Board of Directors.
- The fourth arc of Humanity Has Declined involves bananas that cause time slips.
- The Hunger Games: Finnick offers Katniss sugar when he flirts with her. "Give me some sugar" is slang for "Let's kiss etc."
- When Katniss requests to kill Snow, the president of District 13 offers to flip her for the privilege. The president's last name? Coin.
- In Death: Nadine Furst. Why is she always first when it comes to being a reporter?
- The cellular phone implant during the Millennium in the Left Behind book Kingdom Come. It gives new meaning to the term "a ringing in your ears."
- Used as a joke in the comic strip Cow And Boy.
- In Sam Gayton's novel Lilliput, there is a swift kept in a cuckoo clock. Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, on which Lilliput is based.
- Midnight's Children: When Ahmed becomes The Alcoholic, Saleem refers to his behavior as "warring with djinns". "Djinn" is a homophone for "gin", the kind of alcohol he would be drinking at that point; and of course, both are found in bottles.
- One example in Mistborn, although it might have been accidental. Mistborn, coinshots and people with hemalurgic steel augmentations tend to use metal objects like small-denomination coins as bullets. The smallest denomination of coin in the mistborn verse is known as a clip (also a term for a self-contained unit of ammunition).
- In the era before the smallest coin was known as a boxing. Nobody called a duel between coinshots a boxing match.
- There's another example which is clearly intentional this time. Aluminum is allomantically inert so wearing aluminum around your head protects you from allomantic abilities that affect emotions.
- The Mysterious Benedict Society:
- The Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened is on Nomansan Island.
- There are two characters that are named Jackson and Jillson that serve as minor antagonists. At one point in the original The Mysterious Benedict Society book, the two of them are in hot pursuit of Kate Wetherall and Constance Contraire, who are struggling to try to join their friends Reynie Muldoon and Sticky Washington, who are confronting the Big Bad, Ledroptha Curtain. After scaling a ladder, Kate drops her bucket, loaded with water, on top of Jackson's head, sending him tumbling backwards down a ladder and knocking over Jillson as well. This is, of course, a reference to the classic nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after."
- The Nature of Predators has the Absolute Xenophobe Krakotl, a highly aggressive race of avians who advocate a Final Solution against humanity, including actively bombing major human cities specifically to inflict mass civilian casualties (the idea being that 'the fewer predators the better,' being ignorant of the human belief in Pay Evil unto Evil). That they are a species of war hawks goes unspoken.
- In "Nightfall (1941)", an advanced society regresses to barbarism once the light from all six of their planet's suns are blocked. In other words, they enter a literal Dark Age.
- In Peter Pan, Captain Hook is said to have crewed with the historical Blackbeard as well as Long John Silver from Treasure Island. Hook is also said to be using an assumed name. The pirate character in Treasure Island who is named after a member of Blackbeard's crew is called Israel Hands. So before the incident with the crocodile, Hook used to be Hands.
- One of the creatures in The Phantom Tollbooth is the Everpresent Wordsnatcher, a bird who comes from a place named Context and likes to take words from other people's mouths and twist them. He comes this close to explaining the pun:"I'm from a land very far away called Context. But it's such a nasty place I try to spend all my time out of it."
- Another example would be a stall in Dictionopolis which sells " fresh-picked if, ands, and buts". Now, what would they owner say if they ran out of stock? "No ifs, ands, or buts!"]
- The book is really entirely made up of these puns.
- Another example would be a stall in Dictionopolis which sells " fresh-picked if, ands, and buts". Now, what would they owner say if they ran out of stock? "No ifs, ands, or buts!"
- Lauren Owen's novel The Quick is a vampire novel that does not advertise itself as such. Once one is aware that it involves vampires and that humans are referred to as "The Quick", it seems quite clear that the "full title" is "The Quick and the (Un)dead" (as well as a potential reference to the phrase from Dracula "The Dead Travel Fast").
- Redwall's seagoing rodent villains are referred to as "corsairs" specifically to avoid an endless string of "pi-rat" puns.
- In The Rock Rats by Ben Bova:Fuchs: So, Mr. Ripley, will your crew be able to assemble the latest additions on schedule?
Mr. Ripley: Believe it or not, they will. - "Search by the Foundation" mentions that students in the Composition and Rhetoric class were required to write their names as initial-of-given-name followed by surname, "except for Olynthus Dam, because the class laughed so when he did it the first time."
- One example in A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Baudelaire children's first guardian after Olaf is called Uncle Monty, And he owns Pythons. You figure it out.
- In Shadow of the Conqueror, Blackheart, the most feared and ruthless pirate captain on Tellos, is the illegitimate child of emperor Dayless, making him a "royal bastard" in several ways.
- In the classic Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", Holmes and Watson find a priceless gem inside a stolen Christmas goose, and figuring out how it got there takes them all over London. Somehow, Conan Doyle managed to resist having Watson complain about a wild goose chase.
- A similar situation occurs in the Dalziel and Pascoe novel A Killing Kindness where the detectives spend most of the novel after a suspect called "Wildgoose" who turns out to be a red herring.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, Varys refers to his spies by the nickname "little birds". While the name was probably chosen to reflect the saying "a little bird told me", no one references that in-universe. In another figure-of-speech based example, the Kettleblack brothers (as in "the pot calling the kettle") are scoundrels who accuse others of crimes of which they themselves are guilty. Also, it's been noted that the Kettleblacks seem to be deliberately flat characters and all around mediocre, down to having near-identical appearances and names. Notably, the initials of every Kettleblack are O.K..
- A Storm of Swords: Jon is an illegitimate member of the Stark family, whose sigil is the direwolf. When Jon goes undercover amongst the wildlings, he is forced to abandon his black cloak and is given a sheepskin cloak as a replacement. So Jon is A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
- In one Star Trek: New Frontier book (all written by Pungeon Master Peter David), a beast is described as cyclopean, with a large horn, wings, and purple fur, hunting crew members for food — a reference to the novelty song "The Purple People Eater". Lampshaded later as one of the stalked crew members says, "It sure looked strange to me."
- Temeraire: The eponymous Temeraire is a dragon who loves to read. An old English synonym for "dragon" is "worm". Temeraire is a literal Bookworm.
- Thursday Next has a ton of these.
- Combined with a Shout-Out in Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians, in which a character named Tia Einzig learns that her uncle Napoleon has escaped to the Isle of Man. Since "Einzig" is German for "solo", this would make him Napoleon Solo, the UNCLE from Man. (For extra Shout-Out points, she learns this from her uncle's friend Colin McDavid; Napoleon's partner, of course, is played by David McCallum.)
- There are several in the Warlock of Gramarye book The Warlock Rock. Amongst others: A group of animate rocking horses moving around a large clock, and talking rocks constantly rolling down hills.
- In War of the Dreaming, there's a brief mention of Parliament as "something owls do when they get together. Boring, but then it's better than what crows do."
- The main character of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is named Elphaba. Now, recall the name of the author of the original Land of Oz novels — L. Frank Baum.
- Piers Anthony does this CONSTANTLY in many of his books, especially in the Xanth books. He notoriously has solicited puns from his fanbase, which are subsequently incorporated into future books. He appends a chapter-long Author's Note to every book, in which he invariably thanks each reader whose pun made it into that novel.
- The Witch of Knightcharm: Sica, a wolf familiar serving an evil witch, gets her name from an ancient type of dagger which was associated with assassins. Of course, Sica also sounds like 'sic,' the word that people say to order a canine to attack someone.
- Young Sherlock Holmes: Duke Balthasar, the Big Bad of Red Leech, is described as being close to seven feet tall, painfully thin, with pale skin and pale blond hair, dressed all in white with a white porcelain mask. In other words, he is 'the Thin White Duke'.
