References and Easter Eggs

Throughout the series, several **references** or **"Easter Eggs"** about real life or other pieces of media have been made. These are normally indirect or visible throughout the sets.

## Video games

### Azur Lane

**Azur Lane** is a gacha-type mobile game originating from China that is popular in Japan. The game is done with an "anime" (Japanese animation) appearance to its characters with them being based off warships from the Second World War. The game was launched in May 2017 for China, followed by Japan in September 2017, Korea in February 2018, internationally in May 2019, with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan seeing their servers launched in October 2019. The game has an international following in China, Japan and in some Western countries. While the design of the characters normally appealed to a mature audience, the game itself spawned several mangas and animes based around it, as well as fan fiction stories.

#### References or Easter Eggs

* County of Hants and County of Bedford's dynamic is based off Portland and Indianapolis respectively.
* Several images from the game appear as posters at several stations, even long before the idea was thought of.
* Glorious' introduction episode "Glorious Battle" is named after an event in the Azur Lane game.
* During his visit to Japan in 1991, Mathew says this when he sees an anime girl on an advertisement, "What's the next thing they come up with? Warships as humans with skinny, clad clothing?"
* As part of the international launch of Azur Lane, Glorious has the character design of "Glorious" applied to her to help promote the game after another Jubilee and a a certain 1F refused to have an "anime girl" applied to them.

### Grand Theft Auto

**Grand Theft Auto**, commonly called by gamers as **"GTA"**, is an adult-focused, role-playing video game series made by Rockstar Games. The game was made in the late-1990s by a team of British developers for Rockstar North, with the name derived the crime of motor vehicle theft, known in the United States as "grand theft auto". The first game was released in November 1997 and became popular in the 2002 and 2004 with the releases of 'GTA: Vice City' and 'GTA: San Andreas' respectfully. The series was hugely updated to high definition (HD) in 2008 with the release of 'GTA IV' and now has several players since 2013 with the release of 'GTA V', considered the most advanced in the whole series.

#### References and Easter Eggs

* Just after a wagon is taken from the goods siding at Monaton in 1997, Antonio calms that "someone's done a GTA I on us!"
* Antonio would often say he came from "Los Santos" (based off Los Angeles, California).
* Blue Comet tells Casey not to become a member of "The Lost MC", confusing the 2-8-0.
* The car crusher at Nerland Metal Recycling resembles the one seen in GTA III and GTA: Liberty City Stories.
* Blue Comet would always call New York City as "Liberty City" (GTA's Liberty City is based off NYC in real life, with its GTA IV counterpart resembling it closer than its 2001 counterpart GTA III).

### Wargaming

**Wargaming** is a vehicular combat game developer from Belarus based in Cyprus. The first was founded in 1998 by Victor Kislyi with the original intentions for it to be a strategic video game development company. The company made itself internationally famous in August 2010 with the release of its first online title, 'World of Tanks', with this same game being released a year later in North America. This title was followed by two similar games in 2013 and 2015, these being 'World of Warplanes' and 'World of Warships' respectfully. In the gaming community, all three titles are called "WoT" (World of Tanks), "WoWp" (World of Warplanes) and WoWS (World of Warships) and have a major global following with millions of international players.

#### References or Easter Eggs

* Some of HMS Thorndyke's scenes were made with WoWS.
* McConnell's line: "Why would someone make a series of games where the people in the real things never came back? It's just wrong," only to be interrupted by his fireman saying, "I play it, all three of them games. I find it fun playing against everyone across the globe."

## Music

### Country and Western

**Country and Western** are a type of music genre that originates from the United States.

### "Kpop" and "Jpop"

**"Kpop"** and **"Jpop"** are two types of popular music that originates from South Korea and Japan.

### Rock

**Rock**, also known as **Rock n' Roll**, is a type of popular music that originates from the 1950s and 1960s.

### Metal

**Metal/heavy metal** is a type of music genre that spawned from rock music during the late-1960s and early-1970s in the UK and US. The genre in noted for its loud sounds including distorted electrical guitar, semphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals. The term became coined from the signature of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, all three formed in 1968 and noted as the pioneers of metal music.

#### References or Easter Eggs

* During the opening day of the Thorndyke Underground, an instrumental version of Wind Rose's 2019 cover of the Yogscast's original song 'Diggy Diggy Hole' when the first train enters the tunnel. This was chosen because the small nature of the ex-London Underground 1938 stock used resembling "dwarves" and the fact they run underground for most of the time.
* It's common in the 1980s for the engines' sleep interrupted by nearby concerts.
* In 5AT's introduction, the song 'In the Name of God (Deus Vult)' by Powerwolf is heard as she is speeding.

### Nightcore

**Nightcore** is a type of music genre that is when a song has been digitally edited in pitch and speed to sound slightly different. The genre originated in 2001 with its name derived from a Norwegian duo. The name means "We are the *core* of the *night*, so you'll dance all night long." The duo set up a standardised template of the songs being altered in pitch and speed between 25-30%. The genre gained traction in the 2010s when the song 'Rockerfeller Street' by Getter Jaani for Eurovision 2011 was altered, which is the version of the song everyone's familiar with. Since then, several individuals have made nightcore songs and uploaded them for YouTube for people to enjoy. Nightcore is commonly associated anime due to the thumbnails being of either official, fanart, or original artwork featuring anime characters (mostly female).

#### References or Easter Eggs

* A nightcore version of 'Late to the Party' by Emei is briefly heard when Tatiana and Yamahashi were looking for some old coaches to trick Blue Comet into pulling them instead of his usual converted US heavyweights.

## Internet and social media

### Virtual YouTubers

**Virtual YouTubers ("Vtubers")** are streamers (normally female) who use animated avatars to hide their real identity, which most of time these avatars are done in the anime (Japanese animation) style of character design. Vtubers could be independents (known as "indies" in the fandom) or work for an agency such as either hololive or Nijisanji. The first known case of a "Vtuber" appeared in 2010 when visual novel company Nitroplus began uploading videos to its YouTube channel featuring an animated 3D version of its mascot "Super Sonico". In 2016, Kizuna AI debuted and became the first to coin the term "virtual YouTuber" as well as being the first to gain breakout popularity. That same year, COVER Corp and hololive Production were formed. Vtubers shot in popularity internationally due to the lockdown caused by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

#### References or Easter Eggs

* Rushia is a major one, named after a former Vtuber associated with hololive from 2019 until 2022.
* A poster for Kizuna AI appears at Hathtown station.
* Some of the music is inspired by hololive original songs, minus vocals and with the tempo or pitch altered while still trying to sound like the original.
* A milk tanker is seen with the words "Noel Milk" in both English and Japanese. This is a joke based on hololive Vtuber Shirogane Noel's large bust size (resulting in her nickname at school of "running t\*tty cow") and depictions with cow-related features. However, this tank is first seen being shunted hard and then on a flatbed badly damaged (It's unknown if the tanker was returned to service in a new livery or scrapped due to crash damage).

## Anime and Manga

### Kaguya-sama: Love is War

**Kaguya-sama: Love is War** is a romantic comedy manga series written by Aka Akasaka and was first written 2015. The series was a success with an anime adaption and two live action films being made based upon them. The series focuses of Kaguya Shinomiya, the vice-president of the Shuchiin Academy's school council, as she appears to fight for the attention of her love interest Miyuki Shirogane, who serves as the council's president, while added antics by secretary Chika Fujiwara and the treasurer Yu Ishigami. Mix these shenanigans with Kaguya's tsundere/yandere persona, and you have a recipe for what could be chaos or a really funny moment.

#### References or Easter Eggs

* A message under Wilick Bridge at the Wilmont end says "Chika, go did a grave", referring to how Chika Fujiwara's gecki persona lands her into trouble (including being gagged by Yu and Miyuki for spoiling a manga) and how Shane *despises* her.
* A poster for the name can be seen at Wilmont station.
* A figure on Thorndyke platform in the 2010s resembles the protagonist Kaguya Shinomiya.

### Rail Romanesque

**Rail Romanesque** is a slice-of-life anime series based on the game Maitetsu with a railway theme. The series features female characters known as "raillords", human-like control modules" paired with full-size locomotives to assist the human crew in their operation. Each of the raillords' size reflects the size of the actual locomotive while also consuming the same fuel as their locomotive like food. The most known characters in the anime are Ran (D51 840) and Suzushiro (C12 67), themselves steam locomotives of Japanese National Railways (JNR), a D51 class 2-8-2 and C12 class 2-6-2T respectfully.

#### References or Easter Eggs

* An artwork featuring a Rail Romanesque OC based on GWR Hall class No. 4920 'Dumbleton Hall' is featured at Portsmouth station, maybe as a nod to the actual locomotive being exported to Japan in December 2021.
* A poster appears at the railway museum in Japan that Mathew visits in the early-1990s.

### Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara

**Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara**, also known by its English name of **Iroduku: The World in Colours**, is a time-travel, romantic series created P. A. Works that aired in from October to December 2018. The series focuses on Hitomi Tsukishiro, a 17-year-old mage from 2078 that suffers from total colour-blindness which has been sent back to 2018 by her grandmother Kohaku (who was 17 in 2018) to rediscover colours. The show is set around the real life Japanese city of Nagasaki (famous for the atomic bombing by the USAAF in 1945) with the city's landscape making prominence over the series. Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara ran for 13 episodes with no OVAs with the show's English dub being produced in 2021 and released to home media in 2022.

#### References and Easter Eggs

* Berkeley Castle sometimes has days where his vision makes him completely colour-blind. This is most-likely from the shock of when he ran over George Jackson Churchward in late-1933.
* One of the cities Mathew visited in the early-1990s is Nagasaki.
* A poster from around the time Irozuku aired in Japan is seen at Hathtown and Chapton Junction stations in the 2018.
* Mysterious glowing "star sand" can be seen near the wreck of IJN Wendigo.
* Figures that resemble the main characters appear at Shintaro station.