BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / Find the original & post other nods to the canon (merged topic)

**Posted by Sherli Bakerst** June 21, 2012 11:40 pm

Ever wonder where the name Anderson came from? I mean, why that name and not something else? Could it be from a reference in The Five Orange Pips, where Watson is writing in passing about previous cases and mentions "...the facts concerned with the loss of the British bark Sophy Anderson"?

It's a very slight connection. If the name of the ship had been Sally Anderson, then I would be a lot more sure the TV names were a nod to the canon!

**Posted by Sherli Bakerst** June 22, 2012 3:21 am

This isn't exactly a nod to the canon but it's pretty interesting nevertheless:

In Hound, when John is registering at the Cross Keys Inn and sees the receipt for meat, the actual name on the receipt is "Undershaw Meat Supplies." I wouldn't have noticed except I was watching on my computer instead of my TV and could more easily freeze the frame. It's at approximately 17:52 on the DVD. I wouldn't have understood the significance of "Undershaw" if I hadn't been surfing Sherlock websites since discovering the show and learned that it was the name of ACD's home.

**Posted by Sherli Bakerst** June 24, 2012 12:43 am

I read The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet for the first time last night and came across this, which I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet, at least not in this thread, although maybe that's because it's so obvious.

Said by Sherlock Holmes: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

And in Hounds: "Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be true." (Thanks to Ariane DeVere's transcript for this.)

Sheesh, three nods in a row and all from the same episode! Anyone starting to think I really like this one?!?!?

Last edited by Sherli Bakerst (June 24, 2012 12:44 am)

**Posted by JaneCo** June 24, 2012 2:14 pm

Only a tiny contribution here, it has taken me a while to find it,

In "The Valley of Fear"

"The old wheel turns, and the same
spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and
will be again."

Similar to Sherlock's "The wheel turns. Nothing is ever new." In the car on his way to the 'flight of the dead' aircraft.

Also from the same book, (and I remember someone posted something similar from another story) when talking about Moriarty

"dozens of exiguous threads which
lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web
where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking"

**Posted by Eva Blackwell** June 24, 2012 4:01 pm

Sherli Bakerst wrote:
Ever wonder where the name Anderson came from? I mean, why that name and not something else? Could it be from a reference in The Five Orange Pips, where Watson is writing in passing about previous cases and mentions "...the facts concerned with the loss of the British bark Sophy Anderson"?

It's a very slight connection. If the name of the ship had been Sally Anderson, then I would be a lot more sure the TV names were a nod to the canon!

The name Anderson is mentioned in The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter Fixing the Nets:
"Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year ‘66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own."
It's probably just a coincidence, but it is still funny - Anderson? A murderer? LOL

**Posted by Sherli Bakerst** June 24, 2012 4:12 pm

Nice connection, JaneCo. I haven't gotten that far with the canon yet. Also, thanks Eva Blackwell (and welcome)--I didn't remember that!

But I did find another possible reference in Hounds to a story. I just finished reading The Adventure of Silver Blaze, which is also set in Dartmoor. Sherlock has decided to return to London and tells Colonel Ross and Inspector Gregory, "We have had a charming little breath of your beautiful Dartmoor air."

That's like a mirror opposite of what DI GREG Lestrade says: "I’m enjoying this! It’s nice to get London out of your lungs!" (Thanks again to Ariane DeVere for her transcript.)

I wonder if this story was the impetus for naming Lestrade Greg.

Last edited by Sherli Bakerst (June 24, 2012 4:14 pm)

**Posted by veecee** June 24, 2012 5:35 pm

And the twist is that they end up getting something quite nasty in their lungs.

**Posted by Sherli Bakerst** June 24, 2012 11:03 pm

LOL, veecee! I hadn't thought of that.

**Posted by jenosborn** June 25, 2012 12:51 am

I have always enjoyed watching the John and Sherlock giggle fit in the palace in A Scandal in Belgravia. I have been re-reading The Sign of the Four, and came across this passage, a completely different context of course, but still, this could have served as a stage direction:

"Sherlock Holmes and I looked blankly at each other, and then
burst simultaneously into an uncontrollable fit of laughter."

**Posted by Wholocked** July 3, 2012 5:33 am

OMG I just found this - can't believe we haven't picked it up before!

It the second paragraph of The Adventure of the Creeping Man:

It was one Sunday evening early in September of the year 1902 that I received one of Holmes's laconic messages: 'Come at once if convenient - if inconvenient come all the same - S.H."

And of course in A Study in Pink John receives three text messages from Sherlock while he is meeting with Mycroft:
Baker Street. Come at once if convenient. SH
If inconvenient, come anyway. SH
Could be dangerous. SH

Last edited by Wholocked (July 3, 2012 5:36 am)

**Posted by Davina** July 3, 2012 7:03 am

I'm reading 'The Adventure of the Prior School' and I'm thinking...is this where the idea of the children being kidnapped from the boarding school comes from in TRF?

**Posted by Wholocked** July 3, 2012 7:42 am

I don't recall that one - maybe I haven't read it yet. I'm reading Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Illustrated Short Stories and am up to the last few cases. However, this "complete" book doesn't have A Study in Scarlet so I don't know what else is missing!

I have actually encountered a few more of the smaller, more subtle nods as I read through them but I haven't written them down or anything. I'll have to go back and read them again!

**Posted by Sherlock Holmes** July 3, 2012 7:58 am

I've been keeping an extensive document with all the references in (yes I'm that sad). When I've completed the whole canon I will maybe post them all up here. But for now I'll just give you these examples from the Musgrave Ritual, some of Watson's descriptions of Holmes:

• “…one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow lodger to distraction.�
• “cigars in the coal scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece…�
• “…when Holmes was in one of his queer humour he would sit in an arm chair, with his hair trigger and a hundred boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic VR done in bullet pocks.�
• “Our chamber were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics, which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter dish, or in even less desirable places.�

You can see where they've appropriated some of these for the series.

**Posted by Wholocked** July 3, 2012 8:19 am

Ah yes, I recall the second and third one you've posted there.

I just found another almost-verbatim dialogue in The Illustrious Client

Colonel Damery is withholding the identity of Holmes' client, to which Holmes replies:
'I am sorry, ' said Holmes. 'I am accustomed to have mystery at one end of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing. I fear, Sir James, that I must decline to act.

And of course, in A Scandal in Belgravia, when Mycroft and Harry(?) are withholding the identity of his royal client, Sherlock responds with:
Mycroft, I don't do anonymous clients. I'm used to mystery at one end of my cases, both ends is too much work. Good morning

(Which is, of course, followed by the fan-favourite Mycroft-stepping-on-the-sheet moment!)

**Posted by Wholocked** July 3, 2012 9:47 am

Oh and the text Sherlock sends from John's phone at the beginning of Pink is from a canon story too
"If brother has green ladder, arrest brother SH"

Can't remember the story but it's got something to do with accessing a house via a green ladder.

**Posted by The Doctor** July 3, 2012 12:07 pm

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches?

**Posted by kazza474** July 4, 2012 2:56 am

There's no green ladder in the canon.
Ladder in the Copper Beeches but not a green one.

**Posted by Davina** July 4, 2012 5:34 am

The Green Ladder thingy is on The Science of Deduction website as a case to study. Definitely not canon, as Kazza says.

**Posted by Chrissi** July 8, 2012 2:41 pm

In The Valley of Fear they misidentify a corpse with a destroyed face (Mr.Douglas) just like they misidentify a corpse in A Scandal in Belgravia (Irene).

The drug from Hounds of Baskerville is taken from The Adventure of the Devil's Foot.

I've also been wondering about Kitty Riley the journalist.
In The Adventure of the Illustrious Client there's this fierce young women Kitty Winter who want's to destroy Baron Gruner's reputation. Kitty Riley destroys Sherlock's reputation in The Reichenbach Fall.
And in both stories newspapers spread wrong information about Sherlock. In Illustrious Client the public is made to believe that Sherlock's almost dying and in Reichenbach that he is actually dead.

**Posted by Sherlock Holmes** July 8, 2012 3:56 pm

Yeah that sounds about right with the Kitty analogy.