So, just for laughs, I've decided to trawl through a recent UF story and pick out the various source material references. I'm not going to do this for everything - I may, in fact, never do it again - but I thought it might be an amusing exercise to try once.

OK, let's see.

Krypton/the El brothers/Kara Zor-El/Alura Zor-El: DC Comics, although not any particular version. There have been many interpretations of Krypton and the most famous Kryptonians in the comics, in movies, and on TV, and UF's doesn't map directly to any given one, though it's closer to the Silver Age comics than, say, the deeply regrettable John Byrne era.

Kei Morgan: Dirty Pair, most specifically the OVAs produced after the original television series (e.g. Conspiracy on Flight 005). The original character has no last name; "Morgan" is the name of one of the dorms at WPI.

Horizon-T dropship: I forget which piece of Robotech the Horizont is from. Super Space Fortress Macross, probably.

SDF-17 Wayward Son: Super Space Fortress Macross, plus the ship's name is a reference to the 1970s prog-rock band Kansas.

The Radiant VII: Corellian-built Galactic Republic courier ship seen (and blown to smithereens) in the first scene of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace).

The Calufrax Purser: The name is a reference to Calufrax, a planet seen in the Key to Time story arc on Doctor Who, but it has no actual relevance to that story; I just wanted a nifty word.

The Royal Salusian Lifesaver's Medal: Though the medal is made up, Salusia and its people are originally from Ninja High School (though my version has diverged so much by this point I might as well have made it up).

Catherine Willows/Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle/Nick Stokes/Greg Sanders/Warrick Brown: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Oddly, the Zeta Cygni Dyson sphere isn't a direct reference to anything, though of course there was a Dyson sphere in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics".

Grissom's work bee: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (and again and again in Star Trek materials thereafter as people kept re-using the model).

The International Police Organization/Experts of Justice: Loosely based on the heroic group by the same name in Giant Robo: The Night the Earth Stood Still.

The City of New Avalon: Named after, but only one way resembling, the capital of the Federated Suns in the old Battletech game setting. (That one way: Both contain a science/technology-oriented university called the New Avalon Institute of Science or NAIS.)

"This is my daughter Kara Zor-El... ": From the recent Supergirl revival in Superman/Batman, written by Jeph Loeb.

Adam Savage: One of the hosts of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters.

Tricorder: Star Trek. The particular version Gryphon's using here is a TR-560, developed for Star Trek: The Next Generation and seen in subsequent shows and movies as well.

Victor Sage (The Question): DC Comics, by way of Charlton Comics. Originally created by Steve Ditko. The UF version also has some elements of the Justice League Unlimited version and can be assumed to be voiced by Jeffrey Combs.

The Earth Alliance: Babylon 5.

The United Federation of Planets: Star Trek.

The Titans: DC Comics, the usual mishmash. Robin, Cyborg, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Raven have their Cartoon Network designs (and presumably voices) with modified histories; Stargirl's a heavily modified take-off on the comics version, as is Batgirl; and Flash is kind of a Teen Titans TV-ified Kid Flash with a little more common sense (and an all-red costume).

General Zod/Ursa/Non: Again, DC Comics, but not any particular versions. In my mind, UF-Zod kind of looks like Lance Henriksen, for whatever reason.

Space Paranoids: One of Flynn's video games in Tron (specifically the one he's playing the first time he appears on screen).

Luornu Durgo: Legion of Super-Heroes, specifically the 1990s version that was usually drawn by one of the Moy brothers.

Gryphon's Hughes X-3 jetpack: The Rocketeer (the movie, not the comics; in the comics there were a lot of coy references to the fact that the X-3 was built by Doc Savage, and although I'm as big a Doc Savage fan as the next pulp enthusiast, I think Howard Hughes works better in that role).

Waid Head Lighthouse: A reference to comic-book writer Mark Waid, who wrote some of my favorite Flash material and Kingdom Come before he was apparently replaced by a pod person around the year 2002.

The Cosmic Lens of the International Police: Derived from the Cosmic Lens of the Galactic Patrol in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen books, of course.

The Z-Mover game console: Oddly enough, a CSI reference. There's an episode of CSI in which the team finds a dead man who turns out to have been a burglar robbing the swanky house in which he's found. He was beaten to death by his partner with a Z-Mover game console they were stealing. Also, pretty obviously an Xbox reference in itself.

The Ares Convention: The Battletech universe's equivalent of the Geneva Convention, setting out the rules of international warfare.

Bruce Banner: The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Comics. Another case of a modified origin, though his is closer to the comics than, say, the Bill Bixby TV show.

Alan Scott: The Golden Age Green Lantern, again from DC Comics.

Juggernaut and Spitfire: Marvel Comics, modified origin for Spitfire, you know the drill.

Kimiyo Hoshi: Dr. Light (the heroic one, not the villain) from DC Comics; probably the Justice League Unlimited version.

Tony Stark: Iron Man, Marvel Comics.

Mary Batson (Mary Marvel)/Bill Batson (Captain Marvel): DC Comics.

Meizuri: Dirty Pair. Headquarters of the Worlds Welfare Work Association are located there.

Diana Prince: Wonder Woman, DC Comics - again, most likely closest to the Justice League Unlimited version.

Var-Ul: An original character, modulo being a Kryptonian cop, of course.

Geoff Depew's Canon: I believe Geoff told me his UF self's weapons are derived from guns found in Hellsing, which I haven't seen. The Canon also bears a family resemblance to the Samaritan from Hellboy, which in UF is made by the same people.

The Daodan: A concept from Oni, a video game made by Bungie, the studio famous for Marathon and Halo.

Puckett's Landing: Named for comic artist Kelley Puckett, not to be confused with ballplayer Kirby Puckett.

M5 Industries/Jamie Hyneman/Kari Byron: all from MythBusters. Trivia: The UF version of Kari is a Bgtzlian, the phase-shifting alien race from Legion of Super-Heroes.

Shan Bastila: Bastila Shan from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, made into a Bajoran from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine because I felt like it.

Kryptonian super-intelligence: Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, they actually had it!

Faora Dar-Val: Has the same first name as a Kryptonian from the comics, but is not the same character.

Sam "Cannonball" Guthrie: Marvel Comics.

Roy "The Human Bomb" Lincoln: DC Comics, by way of Quality Comics

Getter rays: The eponyous power source of the Getter Robo in Change! Getter Robo and its various sequels/do-overs/etc.

Captain Cold/Heat Wave: DC Comics. Actually villains in the comics, members of Flash's Rogues Gallery.

Cortana: The ever-helpful AI from the Halo games.

Perez Island: Named for comics artist George Pérez, of course.

Edison Carter/Theora Carter/live and direct on Network 23: Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future.

"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit": A classic catchphrase of the pulp character The Shadow, the UF version of whom was one of Raven's mentors.

Raven's spell vs. Zod: Based on the power Tenebrous Tentacles in City of Heroes, which in turn owes a stylistic debt to the classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons magic-user spell Evard's Black Tentacles.

Inertia-Vector control system: Macross. The most sophisticated Zentraedi and Meltrandi mecha use it to control their flight.

Pinpoint Barrier: Also from Macross.

Getter Plasma weapons array: A hybrid of Getter-ray technology and the plasma weapons of the Covenant from Halo.

Ragol and associated tech: Phantasy Star Online.

The actual look of the XAF-1 Flying Frame: Based on Pascal Ferry's design for Adam Strange's heavy battlesuit near the end of Adam Strange: Planet Heist.

The Entire State Building: c'mon.

Cyclone transformable motorcycle: Genesis Climber Mospeada, which became the "Invid Invasion/Next Generation" part of Robotech.

Sergeant Russell Schweickart, NAPD: Named after astronaut Russell L. "Rusty" Schweickart.

B.J. Hunnicut: The character who replaced Trapper John as Hawkeye's roommate on M*A*S*H. Played by Mike Farrell.

Skuld Ravenhair: The Norse goddess of the future, one of the three Norns. The UF version is based on the one from Kosuke Fujishima's Ah! My Goddess (or however they're translating that title into English this week).

Yuri Daniels: Dirty Pair. Her last name is, again, the name of a WPI dorm.

Lex Luthor: DC Comics. Our version is sort of a hybrid of the "Earth-3" Luthor from before Crisis on Infinite Earths, who was his world's only superhero, and the teenage pre-villainy version from the old Superboy cartoons.

The Sky Raiders: Villain group from City of Heroes. In UF, they're led by a man named Slade, who is based on the annoyingly recurring villain on the Teen Titans TV show, who is in turn based on a hugely overrated comics villain, Slade "Deathstroke the Terminator" Wilson. Don't say I never used anything I didn't like!

So there you have it, and I'm sure I missed a thing or two. That took me more than an hour, so you can see why I'm not keen to do it for the whole frickin' canon. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/