Shanghai Knights - Cultural References

Cultural References

There are a lot of references that are hard to miss, such as the fact that the little boy winds up being Charlie Chaplin, the detective is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who goes on to writing the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Roy talks about Zeppelins "taking off" and being a successful invention despite what will happen to the Hindenburg in 1937.

• When Chon Wang is fighting the police in New York City, it is a blatant reference to the Keystone Cops of early silent film.
• In the scene where the thief takes the watch, in the scenery is a building that says "R. Sowerberry, Undertaker." (and Chon Wang is thrown into a coffin next to the building at this point) This is a reference to the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, where the workhouse's undertaker is Mr. Sowerberry. During this scene the first four notes of the theme to The Addams Family (1964) are heard.
• After Lin runs off after finding Wang and Roy during the pillow fight, she is stopped by Jack the Ripper on a bridge, and ends up kicking him over the edge into the river.
• The stunt sequence where Wang fought the foes while holding an open umbrella pays tribute to the well-known Singin' in the Rain scene with Gene Kelly. In the scene, the song "Singin' in the Rain" is heard also.
• The name of the villain, "the finest swordsman in England," seems to be a tribute to Basil Rathbone, who in villain roles often looked to be the better swordsman, holding back artificially to let the hero win as per the script. Also, Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes in a series of movies throughout the late 1930s and 1940s.
• When Chon Wang and Roy are entering the Jubilee party, the string quartet plays an uncredited baroque version of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black" (just before the piece by Boccherini).
• The fight scene with the guards in Rathbone's library and treasure room, where Chon Wang used ancient Chinese vases to distract the guards, pays homage to Chan's previous film, Rush Hour. The same scene also recalls Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; both feature a fight sequence involving a rotating fireplace leading to a secret chamber.
• The climatic scene in the Big Ben clock tower pays homage to the 1978 film The Thirty Nine Steps, which was itself inspired by a scene in the 1943 Will Hay comedy My Learned Friend. The scene where Chon Wang and Roy fall off of the minute hand on Big Ben is a reference to Jackie Chan's earlier film Project A where Jackie Falls off the minute hand of a smaller clock tower, itself a reference to Harold Lloyd's famous clock-tower stunt from the 1923 film Safety Last!
• While sitting by the fireplace in the flat they had illegally entered Roy mentions that he would like, in the future to have grandchildren, calling them Vera, Chuck, and Dave which is in reference to the Beatles song lyrics from "When I'm Sixty-Four".
• When knocking on Conan Doyle's door, the clothes that Roy and Wang are wearing are exactly the same dress that Holmes and Watson wore in Conan Doyle's stories.