Forum:Honor Among Thieves - Easter Egg Hunt

Seeing people looking for a list of all the 'Easter eggs' in Honor Among Thieves, I thought I'd have a go at compiling one. Now, I don't like the term 'Easter egg' in this context, as these are neither undocumented or bonus features in a DVD menu, nor ovoid chocolate treats. Rather, as a D&D tale, these are setting details that are practically part-and-parcel of the world. Nevertheless, what from the existing Forgotten Realms is there to find in Honor Among Thieves? Let's go on the hunt!

Not covered are spells (mostly 5e lifts or made-up), things appearing in the novelization but likely cut from the movie, some basic geography that still needs to be correlated with the Monopoly board and maps. By the way, the most obscure, oldest, and least 5e-connected finds most likely came in part from the Forgotten Realms Wiki itself (and I just wish we'd known ahead of time so we could have had the best articles ready for the production team). ~ BadCatMan (talk) 06:41, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Store-bought
These are the really obvious ones, not so much Easter eggs as parts of the story directly served up:
 * Themberchaud: the jumbo egg full of Smarties, impossible to miss
 * Thay, zulkirs, Red Wizards, and Szass Tam: not so much the BBEG as the puppet-master, like he should be.
 * Revel's End, with Voss Anderton, Kriv Norixius, and Jil Torbo of the Absolution Council: reputedly created in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden for the movie. Do these even count as Easter eggs?
 * Critters: aarakocra, displacer beast, black dragon, red dragon, dragonborn, gelatinous cube, intellect devourer, mimic, owlbear (we say snowy owlbear), tiefling
 * Neverwinter, Castle Never, Dagult Neverember: essentials of modern Neverwinter
 * Longsaddle, Mornbryn's Shield, Targos, Triboar: Towns and villages told of in 5e sourcebooks, no surprises here.
 * Harpers, Cult of the Dragon, Emerald Enclave: all named and doing what they do.
 * Dolblunde: Not seen since 3e, but not much of an Easter egg either, as it's nigh-unrecognizable. Given its prominence, I put it here.
 * Sending stones: Most prominently used magic items, as they serve to replace mobile phones and walkie-talkies.
 * Holga's Elk tribe (the Uthgardt one, not the Icewind Dale one)
 * The need to attune to potent magic items.

Just Laying There on the Grass
Those things name-dropped or easily spotted:
 * Bobby, Diana, Eric, Hank, Presto, Sheila: the kids from the Dungeons & Dragons animated series, easy to recognize in the arena battle
 * Elminster Aumar: Named a few times as Simon Aumar's great-great granddaddy. A soft, slightly melted Easter egg here, as El doesn't have quite as many known romances and offspring as fan lore makes out. The representation of El has his customary sigil, staff with orb and feathers, and red robes.
 * Mordenkainen: He of the arcane seal of Mordenkainen. Mentioned a few times, you might've heard it.
 * Harper pin: Edgin wears one with his Harper cloak, and it gets him into Korinn's Keep as one would
 * Places: Evermoors, Kryptgarden Forest, Mount Hotenow, Neverwinter Wood. Edgin also namedrops Baldur's Gate when trying to think of places to look for Forge in the beginning of the movie, while Forge subsequently mentions hosting rich men from Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep.
 * Critters: axe beak, giant clam, giant spider, halfling, hobgoblin, rust monster, tabaxi, yuan-ti abomination
 * During the nighttime scene in which the party speaks with the dead, the opening shot of the moon shows the Tears of Selûne trailing behind it.
 * "Nine Hells!" used as a curse.

Hard-to-Find Finds
For those with elf ears or elf eyes:
 * Thorass and Dethek script on signs and props throughout. Must reads, one day.
 * Critters: beholder, bullywug, gnome
 * Kelemvor's symbol on Simon's deathly token
 * Talos: Priests of Talos were once fought by Xenk.
 * While the island fortress of Korinn's Keep is a new location, the name is likely an allusion to the Korinn Archipelago.
 * Alchemy jug: glimpsed in Korinn's Keep.
 * Bag of holding: carried by Simon throughout, though not obviously used.
 * The Fanged Tome of Lykanthus Szar: Apparently the favourite book of Ven Salafin. Who knew Elk tribe barbarians read books of arcane lore that Khelben Arunsun kept safe in Blackstaff Tower, mentioned only in Blackstaff in 2006?
 * Several shots of the city of Neverwinter show a mist settling on the Neverwinter River, which is lore accurate! The volcanically warmed waters are said to produce mist when mixing with the cool ocean, hence the harbor being known as the Bay of Mists.
 * The climax of the movie takes place during the High Sun Games, and while this could just be a fancy name, it is more likely a solid hint as to the month in which the games take place: Eleasis, aka "Highsun" (the equivalent of August).

Deep in the Crevices
You've really got to search for these:
 * Mordenkainen: Yes, him again! Those are the three circles of his two-bladed sword on the Mordenkainen's arcane seal on the Castle Never vault. What's more, those same three circles appear on the front of the helmet of disjunction—which casts Mordenkainen's disjunction.
 * The spear of Aoth Fezim: Who? The Thayan warmage involved in the War of the Zulkirs during Szass Tam's takeover of Thay in the The Haunted Lands and Brotherhood of the Griffon series of novels by Richard Lee Byers from 2007 to 2013.
 * Trip and Shuffle: Introduced in A Reader's Guide to R. A. Salvatore's the Legend of Drizzt, marked only on maps since then. Only named on the Monopoly board.
 * Driftwood Tavern: From Neverwinter Campaign Setting and Drizzly novels. Only named on the Monopoly board and cast list. I don't even recall this in the movie.
 * The Citadel: Too dark to be sure, but the tower in Thay may be Szass Tam's base of operations.
 * Holga's darksteel greataxe: Made from darksteel and functioning roughly as last detailed in Magic of Faerûn and Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. This was forged by Ghelryn Foehammer of Targos, who appeared in 2e and 5e.
 * Loudwater: The thieves robbed Jolym of Jolym's Barrels & Packing in Loudwater, which was only mentioned in Volo's Guide to the North, 1993.
 * Zulkir Dmitra Flass: a 1300s Red Wizard of Thay, a non-speaking role and named only in the cast list.
 * Din Caldwell, of the Caldwell family of Baldur's Gate, named only in the cast list.
 * Porb Piiradost, of the Piiradost family of Waterdeep (not seen since 2nd edition), named only in the cast list.
 * Lord Nasher Alagondar: That's his giant statue outside the Neverwinter arena.
 * Lord Halueth Never: So possibly that's his giant statue next to Nasher's.
 * The Gray Hands, just mentioned as competing in the Neverwinter arena.
 * A portrait of Volothamp Geddarm in instrument to the heist.

How in the Hells Did You Find This?
The most obscure, the deepest cuts:
 * Pendant of invisibility: Kira's magic item. Most likely a coincidence as it wasn't on the wiki before, but it matches perfectly with a magic item of the same name in the back of Dungeon #112 in 2004.
 * The flashback of Szass Tam's spell and takeover of Thay appears to be a quick fictionalized summation of the events of The Crimson Gold and Unclean as well as the next century of Thayan history and descent into a necromancer's realm. Presumably this is set circa 1375 before Szass's coup and the Thayan civil war in the latter book.
 * Szass Tam's beckoning death spell for creating mass numbers of undead follows exactly the supposedly false story of "the spell of Undeath" that the would-be Harper King Rundorl Moonsklan and duped ally of Szass Tam spread in the early 1200s DR, as detailed in The Code of the Harpers by Ed Greenwood in 1993.
 * Whether or not it can be seen in the final cut of the film, thanks to an old photo from the set of the Triboar playhouse, we know there are images depicting the three boars for which the town was named as well as a shirtless man we assume to be Gwaeron Windstrom (given that god's relevance to the town).
 * Scenes of Lord Halueth Never and the early history of Neverwinter appear on the walls of Forge's office.

Wild Realmslore Theorizing
Insert meme of madman in front of conspiracy board here.
 * In Thay, it's "the eve of the solstice" and a few people are carrying red-and-yellow sun symbols. Amaunator the sun god has the summer solstice as his holy day and a sun holy symbol, particularly this one. While newly revived in 1374 DR and his association with Thay is unknown, it is plausible.
 * Daurgothoth moved into Dolblunde in the, which has the same name as the Szass Tam's spell. Daurgothoth, the Creeping Doom, a dracolich, is also conspicuously absent from Dolblunde, while that necromantic spell for creating undead pours forth from something that looks like it just might be part of a dragon's horn.
 * We don't know officially what type of undead to classify Dralas and the other victims of Tam's beckoning death, however we note that they seem like perhaps a cross between the living Thayan knights and the unliving dread warriors (a favorite and original creation of Tam's).