A newspaper bears the
headlines "Kingston Falls 'Riot' Still Unexplained" and "Homewood School
Teacher Reported Missing." Among the items in a junkyard is a sled inscribed
with the word "Rosebud." Kingston Falls is the setting of Explorers director Joe Dante’s film Gremlins, while the
Homewood schoolteacher is Helen Foley from "It’s a Good Life," Dante’s segment
of Twilight Zone: The Movie, based on the episode of the Twilight Zone TV series of the same name, which in turn was based on Jerome Bixby's short story. In Dante's version of "It's a Good Life," Dick Miller appears as Walter Paisley, the character he originated in A Bucket of Blood and reprised in several other films, including Dante's The Howling, which is in the CU via the appearance of a character from Gremlins. Therefore, Dante's version of "It's a Good Life" is the one that is canon for the CU. In Orson Welles’ classic film Citizen Kane, Rosebud was the name on Charles
Foster Kane’s sled as a child. Since Kane’s sled was tossed into an incinerator
at the end of Citizen Kane, Rosebud must be a brand name, and the sled
in the junkyard another of the company’s products.
Is this the movie about the kids who somehow build a space ship and go exploring the universe? Because I don't know how many times they showed this in school, whenever the teachers needed to grade papers.
ReplyDeleteThe original Twilight Zone episode of "It's a Good Life" happened in a devastated America (implicitly a nuclear war), so it could not have happened in the CU. By the way, did you know Morley cigarettes showed up in the famous episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feat?"
This off-topic (I'd post it at the Yahoo groups, but I think I'm the only one who still goes there.) But the 1990s Stanley and His Monster comic miniseries mentions The Shadow and Doc Savage explicitly as real people. You'll have to scroll to the bottom.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/comics/girlgenius/thehb.shtml
Yep, that's the one.
ReplyDeleteGood point about the Twilight Zone episode. I did know about Morleys showing up in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which I find interesting, considering that it aired well before the X-Files really popularized the brand.
I'll add the Stanley and His Monster series.
Well, props like come Morley cigarettes come from companies that rent them out. That's the reason they show up in various shows over the years, they just happen to come from the same place. On the one hand, they are usually aren't intended as a homage or crossover (except for a few incidents after The X-files made the brand popular) so I'm not certain they should count as a crossover. On the other hand, if the nothing in the show conflicts with the CU from being out, why not? Plus, Win included them in Crossovers 1 &2, so it has precedent.
ReplyDeleteThe Heterodyne Boys are the parents of the titular character of the web comic Girl Genius. Though, as the article makes clear they went through a lot of change over the years. Girl Genius, for example, is set in an alternate history Europe ruled by Mad Scientists so it's an AU. Interestingly, enough there is a reference to the Phantom of the Opera once.
Didn't Morley cigarettes show up in an episode of The Walking Dead? If so, since that's obviously incompatible with the CU, will it be listed in the appendices as an AU?
ReplyDeleteYes, Morleys have appeared on The Walking Dead. There are other connections on that series establishing it as an alternate reality to the CU. In one episode, a character's drug stash includes the blue meth from Breaking Bad, which is in through ties to The X-Files. (Vince Gilligan, BB's creator, was a producer and writer on The X-Files.) Yet another episode has a brief appearance by the crate from the Horlicks University expedition to the Antarctic, from "The Crate," a segment of the anthology film Creepshow. The crate can also be seen in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and Horlicks University has been mentioned elsewhere in Stephen King's works.
ReplyDeleteCool, I wasn't aware of those other references. :-)
ReplyDeleteSo would the original Walking Dead comic be an AU, since the tv show is an AU. (Obviously it can't be in the CU.)
ReplyDeleteI imagine so.
ReplyDelete