Yesterday my girlfriend, who is a mean Arkham player herself, suggested watching Hitchcock's Rear Window, which I admit I had never seen before. And hallway through the film I noticed that the main character, a press photographer, is called Jefferies and that he kept talking to a guy from his newspaper who was called Doyle. So I guess that's where Doyle Jeffries got his name. I know there are others (Monterey Jack, Joe Diamond and the Wilson Richards gag), but I couldn't find a reference to this one on the boards. What do you think?
Where the names come from...
Confirmed:
Joe Diamond is a manipulation of another detective name (Sam Spade—thanks M.F.)
Wendy Adams is from Wednesday Adams
Wilson Richards is from designers Kevin Wilson and Richard Launius.
Zoey Samaras's character is based off of the art director (I think that's her job), but I can't say if the name is also shared.
Vincent Lee is from horror actors Vincent Price and Chrisopher Lee . Thank you, The Professor .
Obvious:
Monterey Jack is a cheese, obviously.
Amanda "Sharpe." She's a student.
Silas Marsh carries the Marsh bloodline shared by Obed and Barnabas.
William Yorick is a Shakespeare reference. The guy really must like theater to change his last name to "Yorick." Or it could be a coincidence of the facepalm-y comic book sort that none of the in-universe characters notice.
Suspect:
"Skids" O'Toole reminds me of the Family Guy skit, "Sneakers O'Toole," which would surprise me if it's not a reference to something else, but I don't know what.
Hank Samson may be a Venture Bros. reference, which would be killer.
Minh Thi Phan's name is suspiciously Vietnamese looking, but she's apparently Korean. That's fine—not everybody in Korea has to share a Korean ancestry, but it's more believable as a designer mistake than a plausible coincidence. Not to mention, her boss's last name changes halfway through her backstory.
Monterey Jack is a cheese, obviously.
That, and it's also a riff on 'Indiana Jones' - who Monterey is pretty well supposed to be. And your close on Joe Diamond - he has to be based on Sam Spade, Humphry Bogards character in 'The Maltese Falcon', which is an excellent flick you should all watch.
Wasn't Vincent Lee a confirmed combo?
Vincent Price and Chrisopher Lee ~ Horror-themed big screen actors who starred in the movie House of the Long Shadows
Very interesting to read. Thank you all ::smiling::
Very nice input, espcially Tibs. Thank you. But back to my orginal question. Do you think that's where the editor got his name? I consider the combination of the two names rather obvious, given his profession. What do you think?
Carl Sanford comes from the role-playing game, though he was Carl S t anford there.
Charlie Kane = Citizen Kane.
Minh Thi Phan = Minty fun ?
Roland Banks = Well, he's a fed, so I guess he can't be Robin Banks. ;-) Maybe some kind of pun on bank roll, given his Expenses Account special ability.
Jake yet again said:
Carl Sanford comes from the role-playing game, though he was Carl S t anford there.
Which was Sandy Petersen, wasn't he?
Rex Murphy after Murphy's Law based on his curse (i.e. whatever can go wrong will go wrong).
This clears up Monterey Jack's murky past. It also is a cracking read:
www.yog-sothoth.com/content/894-Monterey-Jack-or-How-I-Learned-to-Stop-Worrying-and-Love-Cthulhu
Cheers, Hal
In the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, the character creation example is Harvey Walters.
Monterey Jack is also a common "parody name" for Indiana Jones type characters. IIRC it was the name of the big mouse from Rescue Rangers (who, also IIRC had a whip and a fedora hat like Indy's) and I'm fairly certain I've seen the name in at least one other place, again tacked onto an adventurous treasure-hunter type of the same archetype, damned if I can remember the show/movie/whatever, though.
In any event, I'm left with the distinct impression that FFG is not the first to come up with this name for this type of character. Their use of it may, in addition to being an Indy parody in its own right, also be a nod to one or more of the other Indy parodies that have used it in the past.
Jake yet again said:
Charlie Kane = Citizen Kane.
Directly - the character's full name is Charles Foster Kane.
Dexter Drake derives from Mandrake the Magician.
William Yorick is of course from the character in Hamlet - though in the play, Yorick is a (deceased) jester and it is the gravedigger who exhumes his skull for Hamlet.
Akachi Onyele - "akachi" is an African name meaning "the hand of God".
Madmaestro said:
In the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, the character creation example is Harvey Walters.
Eight of the Sixteen Base characters names' were also taken verbatim from the Original Chaosium version of the game.