[63] Something Truss pointed out: Hyuuga and his canonical console-mate, Shigeru Aoba, look unnervingly like the young John Flansburgh and John Linnell from They Might Be Giants, circa about 1988.

[147] NIT - not a real school - is Keiichi and Belldandy's alma mater in Oh My Goddess.

[155] A fairly common practice in Japan, so I'm told, when the wife's family is more socially prominent than the husband's.

[193] Yes, that movie. What can I say? They were a sappy couple.

[348] The third stanza of August Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersleben's 1841 poem Das Lied der Deutschen ("The Song of the Germans"), written as alternate lyrics to Joseph Haydn's 1797 Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser ("God Save Francis the Emperor"). The third verse of Das Lied der Deutschen has been used as the German national anthem's words since 1952. From the poem's adoption in 1922 until then, the first verse was used, and the song was commonly known as Deutschland Über Alles ("Germany Over All"). A rough English translation of the third verse:

Unity and justice and freedom
For the German Fatherland!
For these let us all strive,
Brotherly with heart and hand.
Unity and justice and freedom
Are the pledge of happiness.
Bloom in this fortune's blessing,
Bloom, German Fatherland!
Bloom in this fortune's blessing,
Bloom, German Fatherland!

[392] The triumvirate of HAL 9000 systems at X-COM Halifax are derived from the trio of AIs controlling operations aboard the colony ship Marathon, from the computer game of the same name.

[658] A true story. (Incidentally, I've always been fond of the little quirk that, though the son of an X-Files protagonist and an all-around conspiracy buff, DJ finds the JFK assassination uninteresting.)

[1204] Barney here is the security guard you run into a bunch of times in the original Half-Life.

[1265] Knowing now what a Cherub is, DJ means "vocation" in the religious sense, albeit ironically.

[1325] "Thank you very much, Mr. Croft!"

[1326] "It's nothing." In his position, DJ can't really help but learn a bit of German.

[1403] Amusingly, a technology almost identical to NoteFlash actually exists now - PlayAway - though I've only seen it applied to audiobooks, not music, and they're certainly not cheap, at least not yet.

[1881] Who else? Harland & Wolff built the Titanic, after all.

[2087] Not unlike the one shown on the cover of the 1985 Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms.

[2154] Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin', 1964.

[2313] How's that for a switch?

[3177] The "TV listings" gag later became an occasional feature on the UF discussion board, where Avalon 17 and other listings have popped up whenever we've had enough joke shows to fill 'em up.

[3199] I'm still amused by all the wacky amalgamations in this list, but I think Yellow Submarine No. 6 is the most creative.

[3262] Of all the silly things we did Bonus Theater!! trailers for, Evangelion Flash (later internally retitled Evangelion Victory) remains the one we're most tempted to actually do a one-shot of some day. Not that that necessarily means we will? But we often find that we rather want to.

[3439] Fuyutsuki keeps having to jack up the price because all the overhead on those attack monsters is murder on a criminal mastermind's budgeting.