L.A. After Midnight – The title of this story is a riff on the Judas Priest song “Living After Midnight”.
November 1985 – Assuming that season one of The A-Team begins in 1982 (“Ten years ago . . . “ becoming “In 1972” in subsequent seasons), this date indicates that the story takes place during season four.
Amour à la Première Morsure – Google Translate French for “Love at First Bite”, which is also the name of a 1979 comedy film featuring Count Dracula.
Marilyn Kendall – As far as I can tell, Marilyn is an original name for a character who exists mostly by inference.
“His name is Mark . . . his baby sister, Harmony.” - Mark Kendall is a character from the 1985 vampire comedy Once Bitten, while Harmony Kendall is of course the future Sunnydale High student and vampiric Wolfram & Hart employee. Neither one has any mentioned siblings as far as I can tell, but the shared last name was too good to pass up.
“He came down to L.A. for the weekend . . . After he had been gone a few days, his girlfriend Robin disappeared” – This is the beginning of the plot of Once Bitten, which has taken place just before this story begins. I’ve never actually see the film itself, so please excuse any inaccuracies based on my working off IMDB and Wiki pages.
The Badlands – a fictional Los Angeles neighborhood mentioned in Angel: the Series.
Return of the Snake from the Center of the Earth - The original Snake from the Center of the Earth was mentioned in the third season A-Team episode “The Big Squeeze”. Hannibal, of course, played the snake.
Agent Smith, FBI, and this is Agent Jones – Face and Hannibal are riffing on the Men in Black of UFO lore, and this particular joke is based on the Agents Black and White routine from the 1997 film of that name.
Section X – Shoutout to The X-Files.
Hostile Sub-Terrestrial – A euphemistic term for vampires and other demonic creatures used by the Initiative in season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but based on Face’s memories coined far earlier.
Malkavius – in Vampire: the Masquerade and other products of the World of Darkness, the Malkavians are a clan of vampires known for their mental instability.
Nurse – Hunnicutt – Captain B.J. Hunnicutt’s infant daughter, often mentioned on M*A*S*H, now all grown up, with her own military-medical career.
Doom Club – A nickname for the officer’s mess in Da Nang mentioned in the season two A-Team episode “When You Comin’ Back, Range Rider?”
Enter freely and of your own vill – Another Dracula reference, this time from the original novel by Bram Stoker. Most of the rest of Murdock’s vampirc dialogue is referencing either the novel or the 1931 movie adaption.
a powder-blue cloak, . . . Slicked back hair, a large golden medallion, and a set of fake fangs – Harry Dresden, of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels, wears the exact same cheesy-vampire costume to a vampire-hosted party in Grave Peril.
Bela Lugosi is dead – referring to the song by Bauhaus, referencing the actor famous for playing Dracula in the Universal Monsters film series.
Von, two tasty mortals. Bwa-ha-ha! - the compulsion to count things is an obscure part of traditional vampire lore, most famously used by Sesame Street’s Count von Count, who Murdock is imitating here.
Script for Rock and Roll Vampire – In the fourth season A-Team episode “The Doctor is Out”, Face uses this movie script to hit on a young actress.
a boy about eight years old . . . Charlie – this is a young Charles Gunn, another future Angel: the Series character.
It was . . . Marty? - A reference to Marty McFly, the protagonist of Back to the Future, which also takes place in 1985 California.
It’s green – the drink is absinthe, Face’s line is a running Star Trek joke about Scotty’s drinking habits.
dressed similarly to the Hell’s Angels or the Barbarians – the Barbarians were a biker gang defeated by the A-Team in the season one episode “Black Day at Bad Rock”.
you punch like the frakin’ Slayer – the expletive “Frak” was first used on Battlestar Galactica, while the Slayer is, well, the Slayer.
the team’s antique Thompson – while they usually sport Ruger Mini-14s, Hannibal in particular is occasionally seen with a classic gangster tommy-gun.
the Golden Pagoda, a Chinese restaurant whose owner, Sam – The team’s client in the season two A-Team episode “The Maltese Cow”.
Lawrence Tureaud – this is the birth name of B.A. Baracus’ actor, Mr. T.
Wolfram & Hart – the evil law firm from Angel: the Series.
Brown-haired and pale-skinned, he looked like he might be quite handsome, under all those years of grime – Although never named, this is Angel himself.
“I didn’t say I was your friend” – Angel has a similar conversation with Buffy in the season one Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Welcome to the Hellmouth”.
Luminos – Derived from the “Lumos” charm in the Harry Potter books.
favored of the Countess – The Countess is the main villain in Once Bitten.
mother-in-darkness – this term for a vampire’s sire comes from the Anno Dracula novels by Kim Newman.
passed away in a nursing home – the implication that Hannibal’s mother is much older than him is a nod to the essay The Dynasty of Fu Manchu by Win Scott Eckert, in which he theorizes that Hannibal’s parents are the Lord of Strange Death’s daughter, Fah Io Suee, and his great nemesis, Sir Denis Nayland Smith. This theory does have the advantage of explaining how Hannibal keeps getting away with disguising himself as a Chinese laundryman.
a late-model Gordian – Gordian Knot brand locks are from the graphic novel Watchmen.
a bright yellow Volkswagen – A nod to the Transformer Bumblebee.
seemed to be taking years – A self-deprecating joke alluding to the amount of time it took to finish the last chapter of this story.
get the Chips on us – ChiPs was a TV show featuring members of the California Highway Patrol that ran from 1977 to 1983.
Auhangamea Pitt – The father of Owen Pitt from the Monster Hunter International books by Larry Correia, a Green Beret who served with Special Task Force Unicorn.
Reg Slivko – One of the only members of the Sky Devils to survive the events of the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island.
Kirk Conover . . . no such thing as unicorns – Another Vietnam-era member of Special Task Force Unicorn. STFU, in the Monster Hunter International books, is a top-secret government black-ops unit that both fights and utilizes supernatural creatures, the existence of which is often denied with the phrase “There’s no such thing as unicorns”.
Joe Dawson – A member of the Watchers who features prominently in Highlander: the Series. As usual, I have conflated this organization with BtVS’ Watcher’s Council.
Phencyclidine – Better known as PCP, the Watchers’ favorite cover story for vampire activity.
Dr. Charles Winchester . . . an infamous field hospital – Both Dr. Winchester and the 4077th are from M*A*S*H. Including them on the team’s list of “spooky” acquaintances is my nod to the curious fact that the show lasted longer than the war it depicted.
Cousin Johnny – This would be John Winchester, father of Sam and Dean from Supernatural. I’ve never actually seen the show, but was in the process of checking to see if he’d done any monster hunting in Vietnam (no) when I hit on the connection with Dr. Charles. I’m assuming the latter is a member of the Men of Letters, which I am also rolling into the Watchers.
Doublemeat Palace – A fast food franchise that appears in the sixth season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer also titled “Doublemeat Palace”.
Sunnydale – The Kendall family must live here, since Harmony as mentioned is destined to attend Sunnydale High.
Lobster Bay – the community saved by the A-Team in the second season episode “There’s Always a Catch”.
morbid and creepifying – Borrowed from a remark made by Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the Firefly episode “Safe”.
Egg Shen . . . Chinese black magic – Egg Shen is an eccentric Chinese wizard in the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China.
Murdock the Vampire Slayer . . . a great movie . . . Or maybe a TV show – Murdock’s latest flight of fancy combines Angel’s backstory with BtVS’s format change.