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References in popular culture

• The Yoyodyne company, which first appears in V., is also referenced in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and it is a manufacturer of starship drives in the Star Trek universe. Angel, the spin-off series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, includes a firm named Yoyodyne, although this may be an indirect allusion via the Buckaroo Banzai film. ABC television created a website for a fictional company named PB-Sales, in connection with their TV show Lost; PB-Sales specializes in managing and controlling other corporations, including Yoyodyne and Daystrom Data Concepts (a nod to the Star Trek episode "The Ultimate Computer").^[10] The GNU General Public License uses "Yoyodyne, Inc." as the name of a company in an example of a copyright disclaimer.
• Also, in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Cards", Jake and Nog attempt to bid on a baseball card which is assigned Lot 49
• On his album Fishcoteque, the Jazz Butcher (a.k.a. Pat Fish) named one track "Looking for Lot 49".
• Both Radiohead and Yo La Tengo have included Pynchonian motifs in their works, some of them hinging upon TCL49.^[11] Yo La Tengo named a song "The Crying of Lot G" on their album And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Radiohead also references the novel in the name of their online merchandise shop and mailing list, W.A.S.T.E. (which originally sent out physical mail, making the reference more apt).
• Nicholas Meyer's 1993 novel The Canary Trainer describes a fictional painting by the famous Impressionist Degas, which happens to show Sherlock Holmes playing violin in the Opera Garnier. To explain why this work is not prominently displayed in an art gallery, Meyer adds a tongue-in-cheek footnote, explaining that it was bought by the late "Marquis de Tour et Tassis", then auctioned off by the Marquis's widow. Both the aristocrat's name (a clear variant of "Thurn and Taxis") and the auction are nods to Pynchon.
• The sixth book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events sequence also contains a TCL49 reference. The middle child, Klaus, is reading an auction catalogue and mentions that he has "read up to Lot #49, which is a valuable postage stamp". Later on they attend the auction, but delays force the auctioneer to skip Lot 49.
• In the William Gibson novel Count Zero (1986), the multinational corporation Maas-Neotek is named in honor of Oedipa Maas.^[12]. Its sister corporation, Maas-Biolabs, also features in the novel and first appeared in the short story "New Rose Hotel", which is included in the 1986 collection Burning Chrome.
• In Lawrence Norfolk's novel Lemprière's Dictionary (1991), a mysterious Mr. O'Tristero suddenly appears out of nowhere to tell the protagonist and writer Lemprière that he is his "rival," after which he disappears again.
• In 2003, the peer-to-peer program WASTE briefly appeared, designed by Justin Frankel as a reference to the book's dark postal service W.A.S.T.E. It uses encryption to maintain privacy, while also requiring encryption keys on both sides to get into the network in the first place.
• In Ken Kesey's novel Sailor Song the boat bought by Michael Carmody is originally named Lot 49 and then re-christened Cobra.
• In the 2007 film Cthulhu, one of the pivotal scenes is of an auction of the hero's mother's estate; the auctioneer, a woman, is introduced as "Lauren Passerine", as the hero's lawyer points out that "an auctioneer cries a sale." When the object of the hero's curiosity, his mother's house, comes up for bids it is classified as Lot 49.
• In the 2003 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, several items appeared on the list that made reference to the novel. Teams were asked to build a half-scale replica of the Echo Courts sign, set up a private postal system similar to W.A.S.T.E., and display the Tristero symbol on their bodies at all times, among other things.
• The entire text of the book is the message encoded within the dynamic art installation San Jose Semaphore,^[13] located on the top of the Adobe Systems headquarters building in San Jose, California. The winners of the challenge to decode the message^[14] and the answer^[15] were Bob Mayo and Mark Snesrud of Silicon Valley.
• Yoyodyne is the title of Projekt A-ko's debut album and the song of the same name features a reference to Oedipa Maas.
• "Silent Empire," the opening track on the 1995 album De Profundis (album) by Polish Death metal band Vader obliquely references the Tristero, and includes a liner notes reference describing it as one of the world's oldest secret organizations.
• Secret Public is the name of Buzzcocks official news letter, launched in 1978 to communicate news of the band's activities to fans. The Secret Public logo is a muted post horn. It is the symbol of Tristero. The story of the horn comes from the novel The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.