Annotations for NBC's Chuck

Chuck vs. the Ex (S2E06)

2009-09-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Guy LaFleur, Jill's boss, shares a name with a former NHL player.

While Chuck and Jill are in the Ferrari on their date, the music cue is evocative of the James Bond theme.

Sarah Walker plays an Australian scientist, Eva Anderson. Yvonne Strahovski is Australian.

Immunizing a room full of people with only two needles is wildly irresponsible.

Chuck Vs. Tom Sawyer (S2E04)

2009-09-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

The title of this episode is a reference to the Rush song "Tom Sawyer" which is crucial to stopping the crisis of the week

Playing a video game to "Tom Sawyer" was first done in Futurama, although the game in question is Space Invaders

Missile Command, is an actual Atari game, but it was only created by Mr. Morimoto in Chuck world

Emmett Milbarge is played by Tony Hale, most recently on Andy Barker, PI

The music playing during the montage is "The Touch" by Stan Bush, first recorded for the 1986 animated movie Transformers: The Movie. In Transformers, the song played twice - first when Optimus Prime returned to Earth to fight the Decepticons and second when Hot Rod wrestled the Matrix away from Galvatron. It was also used in one episode of the animated series, "The Return of Optimus Prime", when Optimus reawakened from his journey into the Matrix. No, I didn't need to look any of that up.

Chuck vs. the Sandworm (S1E06)

2009-07-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

The title is a reference to Chuck and Morgan's costume for the Halloween party - the costume is of the sandworm from the movie Dune, based on the novel series by Frank Herbert.

Morgan's warm-up routine for 'mystery crisper' is similar to Jean-Claude Van Damme's training routine in Bloodsport

The government asset is named Lazslo Mahnovski. He had been put underground to design equipment for various DoD agencies. Lazlo Hollyfeld is the name of the character in Real Genius (the smartest man in America) who lives underground because he did not want to design weapons for the government. Not sure if this is a legitimate reference, but I love Real Genius.

Sarah gives Chuck a picture of her and Chuck dressed up like Princess Leia (in slave girl costume) and Han Solo from Comic-Con. San Diego Comic-Con is held in late July/early August, so it seems unlikely that the two of them were 'dating' during Comic-Con that year.

Chuck vs. the Sizzling Shrimp (S1E5)

2009-05-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day: Chuck and Ellie's mom left them in mid-October. Her identity, and why she left them is still unclear. Mother's Day is normally celebrated in May.

Morgan's choices for a 'cool' last name: Baretta, MacGyver, Headroom, Rambo. Baretta was a television detective on Baretta; MacGyver was the last name of engineer/hero Angus MacGyver on the series MacGyver; Headroom refers to Max Headroom, a computer-generated character on a variety of tv shows; and Rambo refers to Vietnam vet John Rambo, from First Blood.

Chuck vs. the Wookie (S1E4)

2009-05-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

The title refers to the incredibly hairy bad guy. Wookies are a tall arboreal species from the Star Wars universe.

Morgan: "If Chuck is Solo, then [Bryce] Larkin is [Chuck's] Fett." Really, a poor analogy. Boba Fett hunted Han Solo down for a bounty. Bryce Larkin supposedly betrayed Chuck. A better analogy would have been "... Larkin is Lando Calrissian on Cloud City."

The diamond is known as the "Nadan-i-noor" - this may or may not be a reference to the Koh-i-noor diamond, which has an almost identical prophecy around it (that whoever owns it will rule the world).

"Tyrell Corporation: Genetic Engineering" is on the bag Morgan is carrying around - the Tyrell Corporation produced the androids in Blade Runner.

The wookie - Peyman Alahi - has a golden gun, just like Scaramanga (played by Christopher Lee) in The Man with the Golden Gun, a James Bond movie from 1974 (or the book of the same name by Ian Fleming).

Sarah doesn't like olives. Probably not an intentional reference, but in the first episode of How I Met Your Mother, Marshall introduces "The Olive Theory", based on the idea that a compatible couples is one in which one of the two members of the couple likes olives, and the other member of the couple does not.

Sarah's real middle name is "Lisa".

Chuck vs. the Suburbs (S2E13)

2009-05-17T20:38:00.000-07:00

Not a lot in this episode - I'm not sure if that's me, or the writers . . .

Big Mike's user name for the online dating service is Lando Calrissian. Played by Billy Dee Wiliams, Lando was in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Lando, and to a lesser extent Billy Dee Williams, was and always will be the measuring stick for 'cool'.

Chuck vs the Tango (S1E3)

2009-05-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

La Ciudad is Spanish for "The City"

Morgan mistakes a gelding (castrated male horse) with the species Gelfling from A Dark Crystal.

While Morgan is locked in the cage, the music playing in the background is "Marriage of Figaro: Duetto-Sul Aria", the song from Shawshank Redemption that Andy Dufresne plays while in prison.

Season 3?

2009-05-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

It appears that Season 3 is still a possibility. NBC's up-fronts are in two weeks, and we should know by then. If anyone is actually following this blog and hasn't made an effort to save Chuck, please, do so now!

Chuck vs the Helicopter (S1E2)

2009-05-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

This episode was actually pretty light (to my eyes) on geek references, etc.

During the Intersect tests, one of the pieces of intel Chuck reveals is, "Oceanic 815 was shot down by surface to air . . . " This is a reference to Lost. Oceanic 815 was the plane that crashed in the first episode. It was not shot down by a missile, however.

This is the first mission in which Chuck is supposed to wait in the car. It is not the last.

This is the first episode with Gen. Beckman running the NSA side of Operation Chuck. An unnamed NSA director was in the pilot.

The Pilot (S1E1)

2009-04-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Only episode w/o the title "Chuck vs. the ..."

Movie posters in Chuck's room - North by Northwest and TRON. North by Northwest is about a man who is mistaken for a government agent. TRON is about a man sucked into a computer. The two combine to pretty well capture the premise of Chuck

Clearly, the stores on the show are stand-ins for real world stores.
Buy More = Best Buy
Large Mart - Sam's Club or Wal-Mart

Bryce Larkin's escape - parkour-like escape is in the style of the chase at the beginning of Casino Royale

Major John Casey (Adam Baldwin) has genre street cred from Independence Day, Firefly, Superman:Doomsday (as the voice of Superman), Angel, and Serenity.

Zork was one of the first interactive video games. Chuck claimed to have played it with Bryce at Stanford on a TRS-80. Given Chuck's age, and when he was at Stanford, this was clearly an intentional move on his part to play a retro game, rather than an indication of what the state of the art was at the time.

Morgan: "Stop the presses, who is that"
Chuck: "Vicky Vale, Vicky Vale"
Chuck claims the line is from Batman (1989), but it's really from the Prince song "Batdance" that was on the Batman soundtrack.

The NSA Director in this episode is replaced by General Diane Beckman in all future episodes.

And, we're back

2009-04-30T10:11:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long delay. I'm starting at Season 1 and working my way forward now for more annotations.

Spoilers and such

2009-02-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

News from the New York City Comic Con

Chuck vs. the Third Dimension (S2E12)

2009-02-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

This episode of Chuck was the post-Super Bowl episode. The gimmick was, of course, that the episode was all in 3-D, as part of a cross-promotion with Monsters vs Aliens.

When Chuck flashes on the grenade at the Buy-More, it's called an IG-88. IG-88 was one of the six bounty hunters that pursued Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back
Jerome Bettis guest starred as Jimmy. Also known as "The Bus", he was a halfback in the NFL before retiring. His introduction is during the keep-away scene with the grenade, where he clotheslines Morgan.
While everyone is standing in line to see Tyler Martin, Emmett Milbarge, played by Tony Hale, yells out "No touching!" This phrase was commonly used in Arrested Development, where Tony Hale played Buster Bluth.
Dominic Monaghan guest starred as rock star Tyler Martin. He played Charlie Pace on Lost. Charlie was also a rock star.

To Begin

2009-02-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of NBC's Chuck, and I am trying to compile a proper listing of all of the nerdy references from the show. I'm going to try and go back through the first season and a half while also keeping up with the season as it goes along.

Please add comments to help out!