User:BigGator5/The Venture Bros.

In order to save most, if not all, the cultural refernces and connections to other episodes for each of the Venture Bros episodes, I am starting this subpage. Please add info as you see fit. Do not subtract or alter stuff, without first discussing it in the talk page. Thank you.

Now Museum, Now You Don't

Cultural references

• Jonas Venture Jr. refers to Dr. Venture's suit as "Scooby-Doo purple".
• Dr. Venture mentions the Harlem Globetrotters when Jonas Venture Jr. tells him that everyone their father worked with is at the reception.
• Col. Horace Gentleman claims to have had a threesome with Wally Schirra and Gore Vidal.
• Action Man regales Brock Sampson with tales of Team Venture at its prime, including arching Fidel Castro, being debriefed by John F. Kennedy, watching Frank Sinatra perform at the Sands Hotel, and hanging out with the Mercury Seven.
• Jonas Venture Jr. has a device on display which he claims is the real atomic secret that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg attempted to steal.
• Col. Gentlemen refers to Brainula as "The Great Gazoo," a reference to The Flintstones, and calls Scaramantula Spider-Man.
• Pete White harbors romantic fantasies about the mother from Growing Pains, played by Joanna Kerns.

Connections to other episodes

• The Venture twins found Col. Gentleman apparently dead in "Twenty Years to Midnight".
• In "What Goes Down, Must Come Up", Dr. Entmann tells Brock he was "15 feet tall." The opening sequence shows him in this form.
• Col. Gentleman punches Dr. Venture "for breaking [his] stepdaughter's heart," referring to the events of "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman".
• The Fraternity of Torment was first mentioned in "Fallen Arches" as a rival to the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

The Lepidopterists

Cultural references

• Ventronic is a parody of Voltron, right down to the team members describing the parts of the body they are forming. The music played during the sequence which is repeated several times during the episode is a parody of typical Voltron music.
• Watch and Ward make a number of pop culture references when JJ calls them to clarify his puzzlement over his nemesis.
  • Ward derisively suggests that JJ "click his heels three times" to get in touch with the non-existent "protagonist guild." Doing just that with the ruby slippers is how Dorothy gets home in The Wizard of Oz.
  • Watch suggests sending up the "OSI signal," a reference to the Bat Signal.
  • Watch and Ward exchange words to the effect of Jonas Venture Jr.'s resemblance of an illegitimate G.I. Joe/Rainbow Brite lovechild.
• 21 and 24 discuss swimming in a tunnel in Tomb Raider. Their discomfort is a reference to a swimming section in the original game which frightened players for being dark and confining.
• J.J. mishears a comment by Brock and believes he was talking about the Zapruder film.
• The Doe and Cardholder's dialog and style is highly reminiscent of two detectives in Barton Fink.
• The Monarch repeatedly refers to "impulse power" when giving orders in the command room of his cocoon. This is a common phrase heard on the bridge in the various incarnations of Star Trek.
• When J.J. chastises the Monarch for using the word "retard" as a slanderous term, the Monarch claims that his crude vocabulary is part of his style. He then condemns terms like "meddling kids," as clear homage to Scooby-Doo cartoons.

Connections to other episodes

• The Pirate Captain seems more and more annoyed with his treatment under Jonas Junior's employ. This started to become evident in the previous episode, "Now Museum, Now You Don't".
• #24 tells #1 the tragic death of Speedy (another overenthusiastic henchman)... and how he himself (#24) was run over by Brock Samson's Dodge Charger. These events transpired in "Dia de Los Dangerous!".
• #21 and #24 continue to expound on their own genre awareness, a trend started in "Tears of a Sea Cow".
• Doe and Cardholder mention that the Monarch had killed his last five arches, as shown in "Tears of a Sea Cow".
• The laser on Spider Skull Island being Scaramantula's and the museum being in the island refer to the prior episode, "Now Museum, Now You Don't". Also, Brock refers to the laser as being late '60s though the decade of when the attack on Spider Skull Island occurred was bleeped out in that episode.
• More detail is given on the Guild of Calamitous intent:
  • OSI denies their existence. In the '80s it seems at least some agents didn't believe they existed. This may or may not have changed.
  • The Guild's complex code seems to make villainy more like duels and contests of some kind - and there are strict rules enforcing increased aggression.
  • The Guild's codes and policies seem to act as a way to contain villainous aggression - Brock goes so far to suggest without the codes things would be a lot more dangerous

ORB

Cultural references

• Members of the Victorian-era Guild (apparently a more benevolent Guild, an offshoot of which later became the Guild of Calamitous Intent) include a number of historical figures: Aleister Crowley, Eugen Sandow, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), and Oscar Wilde. Eugen Sandow exclaimed that Nikola Tesla and the Avon Lady were attacking the airship.
  • Similarly, many great minds in history were mentioned as working on the Orb including Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and Galileo.
• Also depicted as a Guild member, alongside the various historical figures, is the fictional Fantômas, a costumed adventurer and apparent ancestor of Phantom Limb.
• The Victorian Guild, consisting as it does of the greatest minds and adventurers of the time, is reminiscent of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Guild-members Samuel Clemens and Oscar Wilde both created characters (Tom Sawyer and Dorian Grey respectively) who appeared in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film.
• Tesla's appearance is likely yet another reference to David Bowie, whose fictional counterpart in the Venture Bros. series is the shape-shifting leader of the current Guild of Calamitous Intent. The real David Bowie played Tesla in the 2006 movie The Prestige.
• Aleister Crowley is briefly referred to as "The Beast," an epithet the real Aleister Crowley used for himself. His costume resembles that of comic book character and sorcerer Felix Faust, complete with half-moon symbol on the circlet holding down his head scarf.
• Colonel Venture identifies the orb as containing "lenses by Newton, and prisms by Galileo." In fact, Newton is known for developing a theory of color based partly on his work with prisms and Galileo for his work with telescopes and microscopes.
• The Frick Collection's building was the inspiration for the fictional Avengers Mansion, which like the Frick covers the entire city block at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 70th Street (but has the address 890 Fifth Avenue, rather than 1 East 70th Street, the address of the Frick).
• One of the clues points the Alchemist to Whistler's painting of Robert de Montesquiou, the model for Dorian Gray.
• White's comment about being afraid of his face melting off when the white box is opened in the Venture Compound alludes to the face-melting of the Nazis who open the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• The menacing behavior of Brock's Charger during the post-credits outro is similar to the car in Christine.
• One of Brock's passwords for his car's computer is "John Bonham rocks."
• An Orb of untold power is a common element in fiction such as the Palantír, the Orb of Aldur, The Dragon Balls, the Sphere, the Loc-Nar, and more. Such an orb played a key role in the plot of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., which is set in the same time period as the flashbacks in this episode, but looks far different.
• Brock Samson is identified as a Minnesota Vikings fan. Early in the episode he is listening to music in his bedroom at the Venture compound with headphones that have a Vikings logo on the side. Colonel Gathers also mentions in an previous season episode that he is from Land o' Lakes region, which is in Northern Minnesota. He also mentions that Brock was born in Omaha, Nebraska, which implies he lived in Minnesota during his youth.
• Hank finds a Slammer Pog and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card belonging to Dean and mistakes them for treasure.
• Billy Quizboy keeps Mason jars of urine in his mobile home, much as Howard Hughes did during his mental decline.

Connections to other episodes

• The heraldic dragon, or wyvern, that decorates the Victorian-era Guild's dirigible is also part of the modern Guild's logo. In the earlier period it is depicted impaled with a sword or dagger, while the current version stands astride the globe, a change that may symbolize the Guild's move toward calamitousness.
• One of the members of the earlier Guild is Fantômas. Aside from being an early 20th century costumed adventurer, he is also claimed to be an ancestor of Phantom Limb, as revealed in the episode "The Invisible Hand of Fate".
• The Guild itself has many characters that bear parallels to the modern day characters:
  • There is a sorcerer/wizard - Aleister Crowley in the past, Doctor Orpheus in the present.
  • There is a witty homosexual - Oscar Wilde in the past, the Alchemist in the present.
  • There is a Venture.
  • The Venture has a bodyguard - Eugen Sandow in the past, Brock Samson in the present.
  • There is a man in a white suit - Mark Twain (referred to as Samuel, Twain's real name) in the past, Pete White in the present.
  • There is a member of Phantom Limb's family.
  • Tesla has a lightning gun and female companion, just like the Monarch. It should be noted that one of Tesla's dreams was to create a lightning gun, though he never succeeded.
• It is revealed that Kano is a mute only by choice, a self-imposed punishment for "depriving the world of a great man."
• Footage from the oft-cited Rusty Venture cartoon is seen. The "animated" characters look different from their "real life" counterparts, particularly Kano. Its lengthy introduction is akin to that of Jonny Quest, and features Rusty riding the pterodactyl he tells Pete, Billy, and Orpheus about in "Escape to the House of Mummies Part II". Also of note is the giant robot being attacked by tanks is a much larger version of the one that killed the boys in the death montage in "Powerless in the Face of Death".
• Brock meets his former commander, Hunter Gathers, now a stripper after his sex-change operation in "Assassinanny 911". He is working at the same bar seen in "Mid-Life Chrysalis".
• The body of Venture family dog, Scamp, is found. Scamp was seen in the pilot, "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay", and in "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!", during a dream-like sequence, during which his death was mentioned.
• The ubiquity of Brisby and Bizzy Bee in the representation of Times Square recalls "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay", which took place in New York City.

The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together (Part I)

Cultural references

• Herr Trigger's appearance and mannerisms are based on those of German actor Klaus Kinski.
• Brock tells Hank to call The Cleaner and tell him they have a Damian Hirst in their motel room, a reference to the artist's work featuring animals divided into clean slices.
• Le Tuer's costume is a parody of the costume used by the Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter.

The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together (Part II)

Cultural references

• Brock mentions Molotov "Catwoman-ing around," a reference to the Batman villain Catwoman.
• The scene in which Sgt. Hatred leads the clones into battle is a homage to the March of the Wooden Soldiers; the music under the scene is the March itself.
• General Treister's heart and eye patch are similar to Marvel Comic characters Iron Man and Nick Fury, respectively.
• The Monarch's Death Panoply resembles the Death Blossom sequence from the movie The Last Starfighter.
• The Cleaner is a reference to mascot Mr. Clean.

Connections to other episodes

• Hank refers to the clone army as his Christmas present. In the episode Viva Los Muertos, the boys accidentally see their own clones and Dr. Venture tells them that the "army" of facsimiles were supposed to be a Christmas present.
• General Treister is most likely the same General Treister referenced in the episode Mid-Life Chrysalis by the man administering Brock's exam who claims to be the General's son.
• When Brock talks into the watch communicators telling the Monarch and the OSI that they will meet at the Venture Compound at dawn, Hank confuses the time of day with the name suggesting that they will finally meet their long lost sister. This is a reference to the episode Love-Bheits in which Hank confuses the statement that Baron Underbheit was going to marry Dean (who he thought was female) at dawn as to mean that they had a long-lost sister named 'Dawn'.