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I have currently watched nine episodes of Durarara!! and I am surprised about how many references there are. Some are quite obvious (they even talk about Accel World or Spice and Wolf sometimes):

Spice and Wolf (Ep1)

Some others not so obvious:

Baccano! (Ep1)

(It's the Baccano-screen.)

I can understand these, as all three are published by Dengeki Bunko, but why are there so many? Also, I don't understand why they included Yozakura Quartet, since it's a manga and no Light Novel?

Yozakura Quartet Manga

looper
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  • It's a supernatural comedy and these popular references are there to help us associate with the "reality" of Durarara's world. It feels like it's the same world as ours, but there are actually mysterious things going on in Ikebukuro. – Hakase May 02 '14 at 15:17
  • A lot of the references are from other products they or related associates have had a hand in. Baccano is an odd example since they were advertising the anime...but at the same time Baccano and Durarara take place in the same world (in later novels, most of the modern Baccano crew head to Ikebekuro and are touring around as a result of a throw away comment at the end of book 1 leading to books 11 and 12), and Nile and Elmer spent the last half of 2001 (following the end of Book 5) there looking for Denkuro (during which Nile fought Shizuo and got his ass kicked) – ZanathKariashi Jun 18 '14 at 06:42
  • Gintama also have many references to various different things. Why? Why not. It makes it funny and interesting. I don't get the point of your question. – 絢瀬絵里 Dec 22 '17 at 09:06

1 Answers1

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ASCII Media Works is the parent company for Durarara's publisher (a brand company of Kadokawa), Dengeki Bunko amongst other things. This is why most of these references to shows are referenced by their light novels instead of manga.

Durarara!! and Baccano! were written by the same person, Ryohgo Narita. The same studio (JC Staff) did the animation.

Suzuhito Yasuda is the illustrator on Ryohgo Narita's Durarara!! light novels and also the author of the Yozakura Quartet manga.

The Durarara!! and Kuroshitsuji manga are published by Square-Enix. JC Staff likes to include these sort of references in thier shows.

кяαzєя
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  • I thought it was Brains Base that did was in charge of animation production for DRRR. – senshin May 02 '14 at 21:34
  • The anime, yes. But JC seem to like inserting cameos an reference to other IP it's animated or their production has right holders have for, whenever it's possible (sometimes based on the source material, sometimes as just an passing reference). – кяαzєя May 02 '14 at 22:18