POP culture and Trivia in SPN - Page 3

Spinal Tap: This Is Spinal Tap is a 1984 documentary, directed by Rob Reiner about heavy-metal glam rock band Spinal Tap.

Yoda is a character in the Star Wars universe. Yoda speaks in an unusual manner by placing verbs (and more frequently, auxiliary verbs) after the object and subject. In linguistic typology this is the "Object Subject Verb" format. A typical example of Yoda's speech pattern is from Return of the Jedi: "When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not."

Haley Joel Osment starred in The Sixth Sense, in which he played 9-year old Cole Sear. Cole has psychic abilities; he "sees dead people," and is rather emotionally scarred by this ability.

Arquette plays psychic Allison DuBois in the TV series Medium; Hewitt plays psychic Melinda Gordon in the TV series Ghost Whisperer.

Jack Nicholson played Randle McMurphy in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (based on the novel by Ken Kesey). McMurphy, a serial petty criminal who has been sentenced to a fairly short prison term, decides to have himself declared insane so he'll be transferred to a mental institution, where he expects to serve the rest of his time in (comparative) comfort and luxury. Of course, the institution is a very bad place, and very bad things happen (all completely "natural"), but I don't want to spoil anything. :)

Another reference to The Shining, a film in which Dean's Man Jack (Nicholson) plays a writer driven insane and homicidal by a haunted hotel.

Dean: Looked pretty aggro from where I was standing.

"Aggro" is a common slang term originating in Britain and widely used in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. It can be used to describe aggressive behaviour, or a situation that is a source of irritation to the speaker (e.g. "These roadworks are causing more aggro than they're worth," he muttered.) Dean probably picked up this term from association with tourists while on the road, as the term is not widely used in the States.

Could also possibly be a reference to computer gaming: the term "aggro" is used as a measure of how much hate/aggression a computer-generated foe holds for a player. The more aggro something has for you, the more likely it is to attack you. Whether Dean would be familiar with gaming terms is questionable.

Yet another reference to The Shining. This is possibly Dean's favorite movie. This line refers to a scene in the movie where Jack Nicholson's character, Jack, has been supposedly writing for months. His wife has heard him, day after day, pounding away on his typewriter. Finally, when he is elsewhere, curiosity get the better of her. She walks to the typewriter, and sees the sheet in place. Written on it are endless repetitions of the single sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." She looks through the stack of papers neatly placed to the side with increasing horror; the book Jack was working on consists of only the repetitions and permutations of layout of that same sentence. Over and over, through hundreds of pages.

Most likely a reference to the Mtley Cre album because, well, it's Dean.