Dear Reader: Some things are original. Other things have been pilfered for your pleasure. Sincerely, Stimply J. Nightingale, Esq.
Rack’s quoting of a Poxforth professor saying “A thesis on the curve became a dog turd on the curb,” attributed by Rack to a Poxforth professor, can be found in the introduction to the 1994 Exact Change edition of Maldoror by the Comte de Lautrémont.
The bear gun is the creation of, and used by permission of, Adam Mills.
Dracula’s testicles belong to Horia Ursu, who provided the idea, for better or worse.
The subterranean compass exists, a creation of the artist Angela DeVesto, and is referred to by permission. DeVesto is also a rat aficionado and was of use with regard to Tee-Tee.
The brief reference to “church tanks” is a nod to artist Kris Kuksi’s church-tank sculptures.
Rack’s feverish description of a funicular is taken from the Wikipedia entry on funiculars.
Quotes in the death piggies scenes are from William Hope Hodgson’s public domain novel The House on the Borderland (1908).
The term “rage and flap, flap and rage” from the Golden Sphere’s hand puppet stint is a joint composition of VanderMeer and the artist Abinada Mesa. The “flap” may have been created by VanderMeer, but the “rage” was concocted by Mesa.
The stilts used by the giant marmots to navigate steep, uneven mountainsides were a gift from the demented mind of Jonathan Wood. Even if they didn’t make the final cut.
The term “Circus Meat,” used by Sprogg at the Alpine Meadows Research Institute, was first brought to the author’s attention by the blonkers artist Jeremy Zerfoss (who also created the illustrations for this volume).
Dr. Lambshead’s mentioned quest for the silver star, otherwise known as edelweiss, is a nod to the comic Asterix in Switzerland. (Which is not, one might add, an accurate representation of Switzerland. Or Gauls.)