[ADwD spoilers] Shout outs to other works

[Skadhi]

I put down the book and started snickering at "useless as nipples on a breastplate" (paraphrase). Pretty sure that's not a a Martin original. Fuckin' George Clooney.

Holy Clooney, Batman! :)

[ser clever name]

This may be another case where it's more of an inside joke then an homage,but oh well. In "The Discarded Knight" chapter, when Selmy thinks to himself

I have no skill at unraveling such knots

I immediately thought of GRRM's struggles with the Mereenese knot, and how Selmy was announced as POV shorlty after GRRM posted an update saying that he was making progress with the knot due to the addition of a new POV. I figured this was GRRM's way of poking fun at himself a little.

[Maltaran]

This has been mentioned before, but apparently Ser Patrek, the guy with the blue stars as his sigil who Wun Wun uses as his own personal rattle, is a reference to the Dallas Cowboys which Martin was forced to include due to a lost wager (he hates the Cowboys). However he then proceeds to have Patrek killed in a horrific manner, so I think Martin came out the winner in the end. :D

The bet was with Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, and was specifically that the character based on him would be killed. The real Pat is from Montreal aka King's Mountain (more precisely, Royal Mountain, but let's not be too pedantic).

[Nipples]

There's a mention of a serving girl named Maisie in one of Theon's Winterfell chapters (the one where they escape with fake Arya).

[dr reader]

One of Bran's chapters in the cavern contains an allusion to Coleridge's "Kublai Khan." The river in the cave goes "down to a sunless sea."

(In the poem, "Alph the sacred river ran/ through caverns measureless to man/ down to a sunless sea.")

[kedlav]

Dolorous Edd always reminded me of Eeyore, but not quite so awesome (or four-legged), so that balances out! (Seriously, Eeyore's voice from the original Disney cartoons is Edd's voice, in my head.)

I've always had that same voice in my head too, which is funny because I don't usually imagine voices for characters in books. It just fits.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Dolorous Edd always reminded me of Eeyore, but not quite so awesome (or four-legged), so that balances out! (Seriously, Eeyore's voice from the original Disney cartoons is Edd's voice, in my head.)

I hadn't realized it until you posted this, but that is the voice I also hear when reading him. :lol:

I also caught the "fart in their general direction" as a Monty Python reference.

There's a mention of a serving girl named Maisie in one of Theon's Winterfell chapters (the one where they escape with fake Arya).

I giggled at that. It also had to be a recent addition.

[Maltaran]

Dolorous Edd always reminded me of Eeyore, but not quite so awesome (or four-legged), so that balances out! (Seriously, Eeyore's voice from the original Disney cartoons is Edd's voice, in my head.)

I generally had him as Marvin the Paranoid Android from H2G2.

[OwenDarklock]

The Valyrians in general match up with the Melniboneans.

Totally.

[bens]

One of the ironmen has the surname Oakenshield which is a reference to Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit.

House Oakenshield first appeared in AFFC, actually. They rule Oakenshield, one of the Shield Islands of the Mander (attacked by Euron in AFFC).

Interestingly, there is also a castle called Oakenshield along the Wall. (It's one of the two closest to Castle Black.) Jon mentions garrisoning it with wildlings in one his later chapters.

[Ran]

Actually, it's House Hewett of Oakenshield, not House Oakenshield. :)

[strongboar]

Tyrion refers to an incoming storm as a "Bar sinister". This threw me off so I've looked it up and it turns out that Peter Dinklage played a character named Dr. Simon Bar Sinister in a 2007 movie Underdog.

[Unreliable Narrator]

There's also quite a bit of Christian imagery in Cersei's walk of shame, especially in the special attention GRRM pays to each time she falls. I'm not too well educated in Christianity, but I'm fairly certain special attention is paid to Jesus falling a few times on his way to his crucifixion in the Stations of the Cross in the Catholic tradition.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

It (and a few other books I've read recently) use the phrase "Eat or be eaten." I know that it's a common phrase, but I like to think of it as a nod to The Inferior anyway.

[salinea]

"You are my only hope, Lord Snow."

Star Wars reference?

[BoldAsYouPlease]

Brynden Rivers aka Bloodraven seems like a huge epic nod to Michael Moorcock and Elric of Melnibone'

Yes, this - albino sorcerer with a famous sword. I'm not sure what the red splotch on his face is a shout-out to, though - Mikhail Gorbachev, maybe :unsure: .

[Unreliable Narrator]

The Frey pie is likely a reference to the Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus. In it, the hero's daughter is raped and mutilated by the Gothic queen Tamora's two sons, Chiron and Demetrius (all very high quality Goth names, those :P). Anyway, Titus captures both of the sons, kills them, and bakes them up in a pie which he then serves to their mother, Tamora, and reveals all with this charming bit of verse:

Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;

Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,

Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.

Although, to be sure, there's a long literary tradition that predates Shakespeare regarding baking your enemies in pies and serving them to their parents. Still, along with the Birnham Wood reference from Macbeth, I'd stake my money on GRRM taking his cue from Titus.

[Brandon the Epithetless]

I doubt this is a shout out but when I read that Jorah has been tattooed with a demon face on his cheek I thought that now he can be called the demon bear. Which reminded me of the New Mutants/X-Force enemy Demon Bear who haunted the teenage mutant Dani Moonstar.

[hagga on her hill]

- Tyrion's drunk, miserable tour through the Mediterranean (at least before he meets up with Penny) feels like a big shout-out to the travelogue poems Lord Byron wrote when he'd been thrown out of the country. I'd have to reread, but a lot of the romantic ruins seem familiar. Lots of English Romanticism in general, actually-- all the high Gothic stuff with the Northmen in particular. Brandon and Lyanna and Barbrey sound like some permutation of Cathy and Heathcliff. "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell" reminds me of "There has always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm!" Sansa is a governess in a cross between Jane Eyre and Turn of the Screw. Gregorstein is from Mary Shelley, obvs. I am still stunned that Tyrion has yet to utter the line "but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead."

-I don't know if the whole weirwoods/Children setup can be called a shoutout, but it's almost unchanged from a similar situation in GRRM's novella, A Song for Lya

- Also on Bran, the scene where he confronts Bloodraven's dessicated body among the shelves of skulls is right out of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga

- And I completely teared up at Bran's Princess Bride moment:

Bran did not understand, so he asked the Reeds. “Do you like to read books, Bran?” Jojen asked him.

“Some books. I like the fighting stories. My sister Sansa likes the kissing stories, but those are stupid.”

[Go seaward]

When the Shy Maiden is turned around on the Rhoyne and sees the Bridge of Dream again, Haldon says that this turn of events is "inconceivable."

Tyrion refers to an incoming storm as a "Bar sinister"

Probably just referring to the heraldic device (which sometimes has to do with bastards, incidentally).