Too Obscure For You?

Lyssie’s seemingly innocent comment about the orb room is lifted from the Xbox’s popular first person shooter, Halo. Cortana, the AI hitching a ride in your character, says “That must be the control room. Subtle…” during the snow mission, Assault on the Control Room. She’s a snide one, that Cortana.

Halfway through his speech about the orb of water, Kavian starts spitting out lines from the fantastic Comedy Central cartoon, The Critic. These lines were actually spoken by Jay Sherman’s australian friend, Jeremy, while Jay peddled his screenplay in Hollywood.

Savannah is partly to blame for Kavian’s woes, but his line about burning in Hell comes from another great cartoon cancelled before its time, Family Guy. This is from the episode “Peter Peter Caviar Eater,” available on the DVD I picked up. Perhaps the timing works better when spoken, but I’ve never let that stop me before.

Those of you who watch anime as much as I do may recognize Kavian’s next comment about spreading a reign of terror on the planet. I took it from Excel Saga episode 23, “Legend of the End of the Century Conqueror,” which was a riotous Fist of the North Star parody. I’m not sure if Excel takes that line from somebody else, but given its apparent wackiness I’m willing to bet she came up with it first.

And… surely you don’t need me to identify an Austin Powers reference for you? Just to be clear, it is Dr. Evil’s conversation with Scott that Kavian and Lyssie are having. The custom “Dr. Evil” Kavian sprite in the last panel was ingeniously made by yours truly.