Trivia / Learning to Breathe Underwater

• Fandom Nod: Ronaldo calls Jasper a Big Buff Cheeto Puff after running into her in a forest while checking for supernatural beings.
  • In the same vein: when the Gems successfully defeat the first Gem Buster, capture Peridot, and decide to celebrate with a beach party, Amethyst digs an ancient limited-edition lime-flavored corn chip (not explicitly stated to be a Dorito) out from under the couch and eats it. One of SU's older Peridot memes was her hair's resemblance to a Dorito.
  “It’s covered with hair,” Pearl said, weak with horror.
  • Peridot later complains that humans have live births instead of laying eggs, which is "more civilized"; one of the most popular non-canon interpretations of Gem reproduction is "gem egg hell".
  • When Steven checks in with Sadie about Peridot (who at this point is mooching off The Big Donut's wi-fi), Lars comes out of the back with a box labeled 'Looking for a good home' with the implicit intent of sticking Peridot in it, a possible reference to the 'Peridot is a cat' meme.
  • Lapis' evolving relationship with pizza looks like a nod to the Crewniverse' "Lapizza Lazuli" gag pizza box.
• I Knew It!: While most the backstory is entirely made up by the author, the fact that one of Homeworld's leaders is called Blue Diamond, that she was the one who oversaw the colonization of Earth (and later the war effort against the Crystal Gems) and that Lapis served under her proved to be correct when the episode "The Answer" aired.
  • While mostly inaccurate due to author speculation, at least two major aspects of Jasper's backstory turn out to be correct: she WAS sent straight into the battlefield after she came out of her Kindergarten and has major issues because of it, and she WAS told that she was the "ideal" and the standard that other Quartzes would be held to...by Yellow Diamond, who wanted to make sure Jasper performed up to spec in spite of what the Diamonds judged to be her "defects" and also so she didn't become (or want to become) one of Rose's followers.
• What Could Have Been: After the fic was finished, the author made plans to make it into a series. A combination of never getting around to it and Summer of Steven completely jossing everything they set up led to the plans being cancelled.