Seven Years Later, The Browncoat Flag Still Flies

There’s no denying that Joss Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV series Firefly and its 2005 feature film “sequel,” Serenity, boast one of the most devoted fanbases around: the Browncoats. It just so happens that there are quite a few Browncoats in media and entertainment, and like any good fans of a cult hit, they find ways to sneak references to Firefly and Serenity into their own creations. There have been several of these references within the past month or so, so I thought it would be fun to round them up.

Dark Reign – The List: The Amazing Spider-Man #1

Peter Parker is congratulated after sending some incriminating video footage to the media, with one person using Serenity‘s catchphrase, “You can’t stop the signal”:

Castle

In the Halloween episode of Nathan Fillion’s light-hearted detective dramedy, Richard Castle (Fillion) dresses up in his old Malcolm Reynolds costume from Firefly. The dialogue is what really makes this in-joke fabulous.

Borderlands

There are several missions in Gearbox’s role-playing shooter centering around a character named “Jaynis Cobb” who has taken control of “Jaynistown” — obviously a reference to the Firefly episode “Jaynestown,” in which crew member Jayne Cobb is the inadvertent Hero of Canton.

Google Wave

There’s not just a reference to Firefly within Google’s new messaging app, Wave — the name itself comes from the method of communication in the ‘Verse. But just to ice the proverbial cake, there are also a couple of error messages that call back to the show and movie: