Seeing as how The Final War was the big grand finale, I really had no choice but to make as many callbacks as I possibly could, so let’s get started.

There’s a pretty obvious callback to A Hero’s Past in chapter five when Humphrey talks about Arnold and when he got stuck in the bear trap and Humphrey had to leave him. It also brings Arnold back to the audience’s mind to make sure they still remember him when he eventually returns.

There’s another callback to A Hero’s Past shortly afterward when Humphrey finds Gerald and the bear and jokes about how he and Arnold started something between the two. This is a callback to the prank Humphrey and Arnold pulled on Gerald back in A Hero’s Past.

There’s a direct reference to the real world in chapter six, when Viggo brings up The Art of War, which, if you don’t know, is a real-life book written sometime between 475 and 221 BC by Sun Tzu. It’s a book about military tactics and battle strategy and many of the tactics in its “pages” are commonplace in the military today. And judging from the kind of villain Viggo is, it makes sense that he would’ve read it.

The beginning of chapter seven has another callback to A Hero’s Past when Steven finds the lean-to that Viggo made after his tent was wrecked by the storm. There’s a callback to the first movie right after Humphrey tells Leyla about his life and it’s when he embarrassingly tells her that he has to go to the bathroom. The conversation in the story reads:

“I, uh. I have to go.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because I’m embarrassed.”

“Oh. Are you sure you can’t hold it?”

“No, I can’t.”

This is from the scene in the movie when the camper Kate and Humphrey are hiding in stops at a gas station and he needs to step out to go to the bathroom. In the movie, the dialogue is almost the same, with:

“I have to go.”

“You can’t leave. Can’t you hold it?”

“No, I can’t.”

I’m not sure if I really need to point out the Star Wars reference when Humphrey first sees Viggo at the zoo and tells Joe, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” I guess it’s a bit of a common line, so I figured I’ll clarify that it was an intentional Star Wars reference. Also, I guess I should mention the very obvious reference to COVID, too. Referring to Viggo as the “Mysterious Man” is yet another callback to A Hero’s Past and a subtle way to try and get the readers to start connecting the dots.

During the early part of Humphrey and Joe’s escape, there’s a callback to the second movie when Kate, Humphrey, and the pups come across the same gas station from the first movie. Humphrey asks Kate to bite his paw to wake him up, as if it’s a bad dream, and he says the same thing when he and Joe are escaping the zoo. There’s also a small mention of Gerald when Humphrey tells Joe that he once met a fox when he was a pup.

There’s a very funny coincidence during Humphrey’s fight with Viggo in chapter seven. Humphrey bites Viggo’s leg and pulls him to the ground. Viggo kicks him in the face with his other foot and makes him let go, but Humphrey immediately jumps on Viggo before he can get up. The funny thing is, the exact same thing happens at the end of the Hong Kong fight in Godzilla vs. Kong. Just replace Humphrey with Godzilla and Viggo with Kong. And yet, I wrote this fight months before that movie came out, so I had no way of knowing that that was going to happen in the movie.

I snuck another Star Wars reference in there when Viggo says that Kate and Humphrey’s marriage was “a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one” which is easily recognizable because of the memes of that line.

I put in a small, but pretty fun reference to Guardians of the Galaxy in chapter fourteen when Mick insists on fighting the Protectors, similar to how at the end of the movie, Rocket insists on stealing something if he really wants it. I put in another Marvel reference in chapter sixteen, this time from Age of Ultron, when Viggo quotes Ultron, saying, “I’m glad you asked that because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan.”

I already mentioned in the characters section about how I named Arnold after Arnold Schwarzenegger and right from the start, I knew I had to make him say “I’ll be back” and that moment finally came in the middle of chapter sixteen.

I pointed out in the section about preparing for the final battle the reference to the tall grass in chapter twenty-two. There’s another callback in chapter twenty-two to A Hero’s Past when Viggo walks out of the forest and Humphrey and Arnold repeat their dialogue from the prank they pulled on Gerald. The last callback in chapter twenty-two is when Runt and Princess first see each other again. They have a short bit of dialogue where she says, “how time flies” and Runt replies with, “It always does”, which is a flip from what they said in the second movie, when Runt says, “how time flies” and Princess replies with, “it always does”.

In chapter twenty-nine, I put in another callback to Humphrey’s incident with the moose in the first movie, which he later exaggerates in the fifth movie, saying that he needed therapy afterward. This reference was to add a little fun since he seems to obviously be traumatized by that experience.

The final callback of the story is by far my favorite, in the stories that is. The last little bit of dialogue between Kate and Humphrey is taken directly from the part of the first movie when they first get on the train. Humphrey mentions how they make a good team and jokingly dubs them, “Kate and Humphrey: World Adventurers”. Kate laughs it off, but Humphrey says that he’s serious and kind of jokes that if she sticks with him, they’ll “go places”. That was kind of the beginning of their journey together and not long after that scene, they finally fell in love.

Now fast-forward to the end of The Final War. They’ve lived their lives and are now simply peacefully living out the rest of their days. And as I’m reflecting back on this whole massive story, I realize they did stick together, and they did go places and that they really did make a great team. And after that, it felt like too perfect of a way to end it all for me to not do it.