016 The Barefoot Boy

The article on the John Greenleaf Whittier poem "The Barefoot Boy" does not yet mention that the poem is referenced by Mr. Burns in an episode of The Simpsons. He says: "I was once a barefoot boy with cheek of tan," quoting the poem. He is speaking at this moment to Snappy the Alligator, held by Mr. Smithers.

015 Assegai

The entry on the Zulu weapon an assegai does not mention that a character is named after this implement in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. 

014 Trophonius

The entry on the chthonic deity Trophonius might mention another literary reference thereto: in Nicholson Baker's 1988 novel, The Mezzanine, the author described the imagined inner workings of an escalator to be "Trophonian."

013 Trapdoor

We all recognize the image: the evil boss/magnate has a trapdoor in front of his desk, through which he can drop employees and labor agitators and anyone else at his diabolical pleasure. Mr. Burns has one, for instance. But where on earth did this come from? Who originated the trope? Perhaps some earlier instance could be found, but he's one I'd put forward as a possible contender: F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished Hollywood novel, The Last Tycoon. Our narrator Cecilia's father (the crude and scheming arriviste, not the brilliant Monroe Stahr who is the tycoon of the book's title) is rumored to have set up such a device. "I've heard a story about a trap door in the floor that would drop unpleasant visitors to an oubliette below but believe it to be an invention," says Cecilia. Probably the trope is older -- showing up in some work of pulp fiction or other. But who knows -- maybe Fitzgerald came up with it. And currently, let it be known, its appearance in Fitzgerald is mentioned neither in the Wikipedia nor the TV Tropes articles on the subject of trapdoors.

012 Prisoner of Chillon

As of December 26, 2018, the page for Byron's poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" does not yet mention the fact that there is an indirect allusion to it in Henry James's Daisy Miller (Miller and our protagonist Winterbourne visit the castle of Chillon in Geneva, and Winterbourne recounts the fate of Bonivard. Further evidence is provided later in the story that he is a Byron fan -- he recites aloud to himself (people are always doing this sort of thing in old novels) several lines from "Manfred" while waiting alone in the Colosseum at night. Perhaps all this is intended as an ironic commentary on the fact that Daisy Miller will be subjected to the same kind of fanatical persecution and ostracism that Byron's prisoner undergoes.)

011 Victor Cherbuliez

As of December 26, 2018, the page for 19th century French novelist Victor Cherbuliez does not yet mention his novel Paule Méré, despite the fact that there is an intriguing allusion to it in Henry James' Daisy Miller, which draws an oblique parallel between the persecution of Cherbuliez's heroine and that of James's.

010 McLean Hospital

It's that famous hospital for wealthy Boston brahmins and literary types who have gone a little haywire in the head ("thoroughbred mental cases," as one of their number, Robert Lowell, once put it). But one of its former patients (fictional, in this case, but no less blue-blooded) who is not yet mentioned on the Wikipedia page (as of December 8, 2018) is Polly Perkins, from the great 1990 Whit Stillman film Metropolitan. Perkins is doubly fictional in this case, as she is made up by one of the characters (no, not made up, a "composite," he insists, "like they do in New York Magazine"), but in any case it is clearly stated that she -- addled debutante that she is -- did time in McLean.