“All cases are connected.” Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is very much a story centered around the notion that we are linked in some form or another. It’s not surprising, then, that the television adaptation of the book series by Douglas Adams is chock-full of easter eggs for fans to discover and connect with other moments and stories by the author.

Many science fiction fans have likely geeked out on The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy at some point in their life, but another one of Douglas Adams’ properties has also come to life on screen. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency aired on BBC America for two critically acclaimed seasons. For those looking to dive in at the cult favorite, which is currently available for streaming on Hulu, what is a “holistic” detective, actually?

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“The term ‘holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things," said Gently’s character in the original 1987 Adams novel. “I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose.”

It’s clear, then, that Gently is indeed a private detective, but “holistic” ones don’t look for clues — they look for the big picture. He’s interested in the universe’s intentions and how it can reveal the answer to the mystery at hand.

Fittingly, there are several little “easter eggs” in the comic science fiction series created and primarily written by Max Landis. The two seasons are inspired by the novel series of the same name by Adams, by the way, and the series is co-produced and distributed by BBC America and Netflix. When we say “easter egg,” we mean a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another medium. The term used in this manner was coined around 1980 by Steve Wright from Atari to describe a hidden message in the video game Adventure, in reference to an Easter egg hunt.

Overall, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a sci-fi mystery with comedic sensibility and chock-full lot of storylines. It mostly dispenses with the book’s plot — which some have proclaimed unfilmable — in favor of an original mystery. Landis’ version also dispenses with all of the book’s characters, except for the titular detective himself. Although BBC America’s Dirk is an entirely new adventure, there are little easter eggs in the show for fans of Douglas’ books.

Let’s take a closer look.

The Number 42

     Via: Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency

The 2016 BBC America adaption included several references to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which enjoyed a 2005 film adaptation starring Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, and Mos Def. First off, let’s look at the number 42 that kept showing up in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, such as on the wall of a death maze encountered by Dirk (played by the sensational Samuel Barnett, who some viewers may remember from Penny Dreadful) and his friend — and also assistant — Todd Brotzman (played by the reliably excellent Elijah Wood, whose persona here partially resembles his role in FX’s Wilfred). There are also said to be 42 members of an organization called Blackwing, whose phone number is 555-424-2424 (lots of 42’s here), as revealed in the ninth episode of season 2. Additionally, one of the main characters, a security guard named Farah, wears a jacket with a 42 patch on the arm.

Why so many instances of this number? For our cult followers out there, 42 in The Hitchhiker’s Guide is said to be “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” In this other story by Adams, a supercomputer named Deep Thought calculates this number after 7.5 million years.

The Sofa

In the first episode of Dirk, our titular hero says that “there was a bit about a sofa," in recapping past events. This is a reference to plot points from the Hitchhiker’s novel Life, the Universe and Everything, whose principal characters travel through space with the help of an anachronistic sofa. Dirk’s mentioning of the sofa is also a reference to the first book in his own series, as there is an incident with a sofa stuck in a wall halfway up the stairs of a character’s flat. Dirk and his colleagues ultimately travel through time with the help of the unassuming piece of furniture.

Thor

As with the Dirk Gently books, Thor is mentioned several times in the TV series. In the pilot, Dirk mentions Thor in the same breath as the sofa (see above), which is surely a reference to the second book in Adams’ series, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, whose story heavily involves the hammer-wielding god from Norse mythology.

Hoopy Frood

In the eighth episode of season 2, Dirk is at one point called “a hoopy frood,” a term used repeatedly in the Hitchhiker’s series — mainly by Ford Prefect, who is played by Def in the 2005 film.

The Rowdy 3

The Dirk TV series features a group of characters called The Rowdy 3, a term that is also spraypainted on the van they use. Funny enough, the “trio” is actually a quartet of psychic vampires that later adds a fifth member. They travel in a beat-up van, wreaking havoc wherever they go, as they quite literally feed off the energy of other people. Many fans think this is a reference to how Adams’ Hitchhiker’s book series played out — it was originally planned to be three published works but turned into five.