References in Sherlock : The Abominable Bride you might've missed.

By Nayanika Dey | 1.1k | 01 Jan 2017

There is a reason Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat are hailed and railed to excess - and it's not just because of their ingenious TV show Sherlock but also because of the subtle hints they manage to encompass in every episode that have fans worldwide scrambling to rack their brains and conjure up plausible theories. Have a look here at the hidden messages in The Abominable Bride before the new season releases in a few days!

1) In the book "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes", Arthur Conan Doyle mentions that the character of Holmes was an unitdy and messy one to the extent that he stored his tobacco in his shoes and “his unread letters on the mantel, impaled with a jackknife.” And voila! Here we have a take in "The Abominable Bride" showing just that!

Moffat and Gatiss do their homework well.

2) Another reference from the same introduction mentioned that he “stored his pipe tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper.” The series converts that to modern day cigarettes, but here it is.

Book reference!

3) You may or may not have noticed this painting hanging on the wall of their room. But did you know it is actually a famous painting named "All is Vanity"? It's an optical illusion drawn by Charles Allan Gilbert in 1892, when he was 18 years old, who then sold it to Life magazine.

Still from the episode.

The painting is actually that of a Victorian lady at her dresser, looking at her reflection, but from a distance it looks like a skull.

The original painting.

5) So Moffat again proves his ingenuity in his genre by placing another reference from the book.The unframed portrait present at the lower-right corner of this still is of slavery abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, as Doyle had written in his story of "The Cardboard Box or The Resident Patient as “Watson’s eyes turned across to the unframed portrait of Henry Ward Beecher which stands upon the top of [his] books…”

6) The song that Emilia Ricoletti and her (ghost) keeps singing is a snatch of the Victorian Ballad called "Maid of the Mills".

7) Now here's a humorous bit. Through out the episode, we see Watson and Sherlock fighting at odd intervals over Watson's usage of the phrase "features of interest" in his books as Sherlock's patent dialogue which Sherlock claims he never uses in real life. But in the original book by Conan Doyle, Holmes does use the phrase several times.

8) Sidney Paget was the original illustrator of the Doyle books (it is said he based Holmes on his brother) and here, set designer Arwel Jones and his team used his illustration as a reference to recreate the exact carriage for filming.

Paget's illustration.

References in Sherlock : The Abominable Bride you might've missed.

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