The Flood were influenced by the assimilating alien species in Christopher Rowley's The Vang; it has also been speculated that the Master Chief's name "John 117" may have been a reference to a character named Jon 6725416 in Rowley's Starhammer, or to the John Spartan character of Demolition Man.
But the juiciest — "remembrance for the deceased" — turned out, it seemed, to be a mistaken interpretation of Bukhori, a reference to a relative named Ochil.
Hearing a reference to an unfamiliar name or a historical event and not being able to look it up (oh, Wikipedia!) is a curse for anybody with even a minimal sense of curiosity.
Ellipses contain a reference to a person's name.
According to documents published by the Guardian and the Washington Post, the N.S.A.'s "minimization procedures" — which are supposed to keep it from spying on Americans — include the note, "A reference to a product by brand name, or manufacturer's name or the use of a name in a descriptive sense, e.g. 'Monroe Doctrine,' is not an identification of a United States person".
It no longer means this it now stands for "Eliminate Stones," which is a reference to a gang by the name of the Familia Stones, originally known as the Puerto Rican Stones.
That restriction inspired the name of Gorki Aguila's punk band, Porno Para Ricardo, a reference to a friend by the same name who would ask people to bring him porn when they traveled out of the country.
The report that an Alcimon of Croton was the first to write animal fables might be a reference to a poet of a similar name.
Another idea is to make a pun or a reference to a character with a similar name from fiction.
He had previously built the Van Corlear apartments — the name a reference to a prominent early Dutch family — but would soon demonstrate a penchant for American Indian and Western associations, constructing two smaller apartment buildings, the Wyoming and the Ontiora, in addition to the Dakota.
In a list of phenomena meant to illustrate how Latin American reality is more fantastic than anything found in fiction, Gabriel García Márquez included in his acceptance speech for the 1982 Nobel Prize a reference to a dictator committing genocide in the name of God.
