Cultural References

The following is a list of cultural references in the Locke & Key series annd media that reference the series.

Volumes

Welcome to Lovecraft

Welcome to Lovecraft #2

• Bode references a variant of Whack-a-Mole called Whack-a-Bode that Tyler used to play with him.

Welcome to Lovecraft #3

• The book Kinsey is reading is The Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan.

Welcome to Lovecraft #4

• The graphic on Bode's t-shirt bears similarity to the Transformers logo.
• The high school where Rendell Locke worked at, and where Tyler and Sam attended, back in San Francisco was called the "William Gaines Academy", named after the co-founder and publisher of Mad Magazine.

Welcome to Lovecraft #5

• Bode compares his talks with the Lady in the Well to having his own E.T..

Welcome to Lovecraft #6

• In Kinsey's room, there is a poster of Bob Marley.
• In Tyler's room, there are posters of the 49ers cheerleaders, and 30 Days of Night.

Head Games

Head Games #1

• Joe Ridgeway references various Shakespearean works, including The Tempest, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and The Riverside.
• Zack is reading "On Evil", by Thomas Aquinas.
• The comic Kinsey is reading is Tank Girl.

Head Games #2

• In Bode's head, Space Invaders can be seen.
• Bode mistakenly pronounces "tsp" as "tissp", the same way Fauna does from "Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty".
• Three of the Tylers attending the funeral portion in Tyler's head reference the Three wise monkeys.

Head Games #3

• The issue's cover art is a homage to Crime SuspenStories #22, published in April/May 1954.

Head Games #4

• Zack and Kinsey reference Doug Henning and Criss Angel's magic.

Head Games #5

• Zack sings "Head Games" by Foreigner.

Head Games #6

• One of the toys in Rufus Whedon's bedroom is the rocket ship from the two The Adventures of Tintin comics: Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon.

Crown of Shadows

Crown of Shadows #1

• Zack is wearing a t-shirt with Inky the ghost from Pac-Man.
• Books seen on the bookshelf in Keyhouse:
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  • An unknown book by Ray Bradbury (Only the first two letters of the title: "MA" are visible).
  • An unknown book by Jack London.
  • Gloriana by Michael Moorcock.
  • Don Quixote (in 2 vols) by Miguel de Cervantes
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  • An unknown book by Oscar Wilde
  • Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  • Ubik by Philip K. Dick
  • At the Mountains of Madness (mistitled in the comic: In the Mountains of Madness) by H. P. Lovecraft
  • Le Petit Prince (aka The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
  • Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
  • Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Crown of Shadows #2

• Jamal References "Life of Samuel Johnson", by James Boswell.
• Scot references James Cameron's Titanic after jumping into the cold water.

Crown of Shadows #3

• Tyler reads Peter Pan to Bode. Incidentally, Bode's shadow resembles Peter Pan.
• When Zack puts on the Crown of Shadows for the first time, he says: "Hello darkness, my old friend." This is a lyric from the 1964 song: "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel.
• When wearing the shadows, Zack briefly becomes Jughead from Archie Comics.

Crown of Shadows #4

• The radio DJ announces that the next song will be by Elvis Costello.

Keys to the Kingdom

Keys to the Kingdom #1

• The art style during the bird segments is a homage to Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.

Keys to the Kingdom #2

• Tyler says that the Fencing Club is "roughly as cool as being in the World of Warcraft club".
• Tyler tells Kinsey if she wants to investigate Erin Voss, she can play Nancy Drew herself.
• Bode is reading "Yukon, Ho!" a Calvin and Hobbes book.
• The McClellan workers talking in the bar talk about Leatherface and Freddy Kreuger.
• In McClellan's waiting room, Bode reads "Wolves in the Walls" to two patients.
• Some of the patients' names on McClellan's directory are celebrities, fictional characters as well as members of the band Rush:
  • "T. Gilliam" refers to Terry Gilliam, film director and member of Monty Pyton.
  • "D. Adams" refers to Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • "T. Hooper" refers to Tobe Hooper, co-creator of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre and TV adaptation of Salem's Lot
  • "G. Lee" refers to Geddy Lee, lead vocalist and bassist of the band Rush.
  • "D. Brown" refers to either Doc Brown from Back to the Future; or possibly Dan Brown, author of the The Da Vinci Code.
  • "K. Smith" refers to Kevin Smith.
  • "G. Ennis" refers to Garth Ennis, Comic writer.
  • "A. Lifeson" refers to Alex Lifeson, Guitarist of the band Rush.
  • "K. Challis" refers to Kay Challis, aka "Crazy Jane" a character from the DC Universe who suffers from multiple personalities.
  • "N. Peart" refers to Neil Peart, Drummer of the band Rush.

Keys to the Kingdom #3

• Zack drinks from a mug with Pac-Man on it.
• Jordan complaining about her professor is a (much more profane) reference to Kitty Pryde's, "Professor Xavier is a jerk" from Uncanny X-Men v1 #168.
• The snake doll nearby Bode is the Sandworm from Tim Burton's Beetlejuice.
• Written on the hollowed out page of the "Keys to the Kingdom" book where Bode finds the Hercules Key, Angel Key, Harlequin Key; the lyrics to the song "The Necromancer" by Rush can be just barley seen.
• Bode compares the effects of the Harlequin Wardrobe to opening the door to the Batcave.

Keys to the Kingdom #4

• The Squadron Strange cover is done in classic Stan Lee style. It also refers to "Two-Fisted Tales".
• The serial number Sam lists to Rufus, 867-5309, is a reference to the song, 867-5309/Jenny, by Tommy Tutone.

Keys to the Kingdom #5

• Brian references Doctor Phil to Tyler.
• At the fencing tournament, Tyler refers to Zack as Zorro.
• Zack calls Tyler "Sherlock Holmes" when talking about his detective skills.

Clockworks

Clockworks #1

• Harm Timmerman's dying words, "Shub-Niggurauth", is a reference to a deity in the Cthulu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.

Clockworks #3

• Mark Cho mentions Naked Gun and O.J. Simpson.
• Charlie's Angels is mentioned.

Clockworks #6

• Mark's note to Ellie has an image of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man on it.
• Among the shadows when Dodge is stripping Erin Voss's memory is a Ninja Turtle.
• Dodge's dying words, "Shub-Niggurauth", once again references the deity from the Cthulu Mythos.

Omega

Omega #1

• The Squadron Strange cover at the end of the issue is in classic war comic style.

Omega #3

• Scot and Jamal re-enact the blood-drop scene from Carrie.
• The Beach Boys song Jordan mentions to Tyler is "Little Deuce Coupe".

Alpha

Alpha #2

• The F-Variant cover by Dave Sim is an homage to Amazing Spiderman #29.

Golden Age

Small World

• The title is based on the 1981 horror novel Small World by Tabitha King, the mother of Joe Hill. Both stories involve a magical dollhouse, and the issue's cover art is an homage to the novel's cover.
• Harland Locke is seen reading The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois when Jean Locke sticks her booger to the wall.
• The Black Widow antagonist is a homage to Richard Matheson's science fiction novel The Shrinking Man, and its 1957 film adaptation The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Open the Moon

• While on the moon, Ian Locke watches through his telescope a group of cowboys, Native Americans, and settlers watching a motion picture projected on the side of a barn. The motion picture they are watching is the famous 1903 silent western film The Great Train Robbery.

...In Pale Battalions Go... #1

• The address on the parcel containing the unwritten Mark Twain book is "Befuddle Hall, 50 McCay's Walk, Slumberling". "Befuddle Hall" is the name of a location and story arc in the Little Nemo comics. "McCay's Walk" is most likely a reference to Winsor McCay, Little Nemo's creator. "Slumberling" could be a reference to Slumberland, the place Nemo goes to in his dreams.

...In Pale Battalions Go... #3

• While exploring Keyhouse, Eric Murnau quotes iconic lines from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• Eric Murnau's vampire shadow closely resembles the vampire from the famous 1922 silent horror movie Nosferatu. At the beginning the shadow even poses itself in resemblance to the famous shadow scene from the movie. Eric Murnau is also most likely named after Fredrick Wilhelm Murnau who was the German director of the film.
• Three of the Teddy Bears in Jean Locke's room are posed in reference to the Three wise monkeys.
• The poem at the end of the issue is When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead by Charles Sorley.

Hell & Gone #1

• Gabriel Rodriguez revealed via Twitter that the scene where Mary Locke escapes the House of Mystery is a reference to the Cover Art of "Sinister House of Secret Love Issue #4" aka "Secrets of Sinister House".

Hell & Gone #2

• Gabriel Rodriguez stated in an interview that he studied the Gustave Doré illustrations of Dante's Inferno and John Milton's Paradise Lost for his depictions of Heaven and Hell.
  • The panel showing Lucifer's fall from Heaven is based on the Doré illustration from the latter epic.
• Ignatz, the main character of the newspaper cartoon Krazy Katz, is seen serving tea while Krazy Kat hides nearby.
• The living tea set that Mary, Lucien and Fiddler's Green drink from resembles Mrs. Potts and Chip from the Walt Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.
• The year that the "Laws and Statues of Hell. Revised Edition" was written in was 1472. 1472 was the same year Dante's "Divine Comedy" (which includes Dante's Inferno) was originally published for the first time.
• In the very back of the Harlequin Wardrobe is a lamp-post surrounded by snow, referencing the lamp-post that marks the entrance to Narnia from the magical wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
  • Fiddler's Green remarking the Wardrobe is much bigger on the inside is an allusion to the famous quote about the TARDIS from the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who.

• Six of the symbols in a page from "Laws and Statues of Hell - Revised Edition 1472", as well as the five on Mary's summoning circle for Etrigan the Demon, are the seven alchemical domain symbols from the Merlin Circle and the Morgana Star from the 2010 Disney live-action remake of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The five symbols in question are Space-Time, Matter, Elements, Motion & Mind.
• Lucifer Morningstar first proposes to Mary a traditional riddle contest to settle the feud over John's soul. This is similar to Bilbo Baggins and Gollum's riddle contest in The Hobbit.
  • Fiddler's Green then says that he knows "an excellent riddle about hidden treasure and an egg". This is one of Bilbo Baggins's riddles: "A box without hinges, key or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid"—the answer is an egg.
• Etrigan's quote, "Past is prologue and prologue is past!", is a reference to the quote from The Tempest.
• On the newspaper webpage that mentions the fate of the Matchstick Key, there's a link to another article with the headline: "OFT-STOLEN VIKING AXE DISAPPEARS" and features the Viking Axe from Joe Hill's comic series: "Basketful of Heads" and its sequel "Refrigerator Full of Heads".

Short stories

Grindhouse

• Upon coming up to the Keyhouse gates; one of the crooks, impressed by the size of Keyhouse, wonders jokingly if "Daddy Warbucks" lives there, a character from Little Orphan Annie.

Netflix series

Episode 2: Trapper/Keeper

• Bode references that only children could enter Narnia as a reason that Nina cannot remember her experiences with the Mirror Key. This is a reference to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a novel by C.S. Lewis.

Episode 3: Head Games

• The video game that's playing on the three big screens in Bode's mind is Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

“

...Kenzie, we came up with this weird mall. We were visually inspired a little by Inception, worlds of thought... I think the uptilt shot in the mall was a direct shout-out to Inception with the upside down escalators.

”

–Carlton Cuse in an interview about the development of Locke & Key.

• Carlton Cuse revealed in an interview that the mall in Kinsey head was inspired by the 2010 movie Inception; saying that the uptilt shot and the upside down escalators were a direct shout-out to the film.
• Kinsey's memories are color coded and arranged on a shelf, similar to the Memory Orbs in Riley Andersen's mind in the 2015 Pixar film: Inside Out. The only difference being Kinsey's memories are cubes while Riley's are orbs.
• When Nina is looking through Rendell's old year book the following quotes that were chosen by each student can be seen:
  • Erin Voss: "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless" - Mother Theresa
  • Rendell Locke: "The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it." - J.M. Barrie
  • Ellie Whedon: "Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead." - Oscar Wilde
  • Jeff Ellis: "Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life a champion." - Muhammed Ali
  • Lucas Caravaggio: "Life is ours. We live it our way." - Metallica
  • Mark Cho: "I find your lack of faith disturbing." - Darth Vader

Episode 12: The Head and the Heart

• The name of the ship in the opening, Codfather, is a reference to Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 mafia film The Godfather.
• When Jackie leaves class as a result of her fading memory, Doug references the notorious quote from the end of the 1995 film The Usual Suspects.

Episode 13: Small World

• Bode is watching the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance episode "Nothing Is Simple Anymore" on his iPad.

Episode 15: Past is Prologue

• The episode's title is a line from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, with which the Keepers of the Keys are associated in the graphic novels. An optimistic interpretation of the line is that past events set the stage for important happenings in the future, while a more cynical interpretation sees it as a warning that one should learn from their mistakes lest history repeats itself.
• The song Eden sings when sitting alone with Kinsey is I Think We're Alone Now by Tiffany.

Episode 16: The Maze

• Duncan and Bode find the Chain Key in a cassette tape from Alice in Chains, an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington.

Episode 17: Best Laid Plans

• The episode's title is a reference to the famous line from the Scottish poem "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns. "The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry" (often misquoted as "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry") . Its meaning is that no matter how carefully you plan something, there is always a chance that something will go wrong with it.

Episode 19: Alpha & Omega

• Scot sarcastically references the 1906 French silent film The Chimney Sweep while Kinsey investigates the chimney.

Episode 22: Wedding Crashers

• When past Duncan hears that Bode is from the future, he asks if "Dylan and Brenda" ever get back together. This is a reference to a couple in the popular 90s' teen drama television series Beverly Hills, 90210.

Episode 23: Five Minutes Past

• The song the Savinis sing, and which later plays during Eden's memorial, is "Hear You Me" by Jimmy Eat World.

Episode 27: Curtain

• In one of Gordie Shaw's memories, there is a poster on a bulletin board that shows that the Matheson Academy Drama Club was putting on a play of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" on October 27, 28, and 29th.
  • On the same bulletin board, there is also an Alice in Wonderland poster.

Episode 28: Farewell

• Tyler compares the style of Keyhouse to Norman Bates, the antagonist of the film Psycho.

References in other works

• The Ghost Key makes a cameo appearance in the "Clive Barker's Hellraiser issue #1" comic that was published by Boom Studios in 2011. In the comic the Ghost Key is in possession of the Cenobite, Pinhead. The dialogue implies that this Ghost Key gives Pinhead special access to "The Bellows", an area of Hell that most Cenobites and dawned souls don't have access to.
• In the video game "Echoes of the Past 2: Castle of Shadows" by Big Fish Games, the Ghost Key appears in a Hidden Object Puzzle.
• In the fantasy novel The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, the Head Key makes a cameo appearance.
• In Joe Hill's short novella Snapshot, The Whispering Iron makes an appearance inside the enchanted camera.
• In the one-shot Christmas special of IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Locke & Key is one of books on the turtles' coffee table.
• In Hill's horror novel "N0S4A2" and its TV series adaptation, Lovecraft, Massachusetts is referenced on the map of the "United Inscapes of America" as a marker in the state of Massachusetts called "Lovecraft Keyhole".

• Gabriel Rodriguez's Cover Art B variant for the seventh and final issue of Joe Hill's "Basketful of Heads" references the Cover Art for Head Games 2.