The Expanse

Season 2

Safe

1. The device that is on the table in the Med Lab (to Naomi's right) is a Millipore water purification system ("MilliQ"), which is often used in Biochemistry labs. The ultrapure water produced is much, much purer than distilled water.
2. The Marines speculated how much money the family of Pvt. Hillman ("Hill") has. The real-life Hillman Family Foundations have been active since the 20th century and their gifts include the Hillman Cancer Center and the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh.
3. Everyone calls Draper "Gunny". Gunnery Sergeant is a Marine rank between Staff and Master Sergeant. Gunnies will command squads or platoons in the field. While the nickname "Gunny" is a sign of respect and affection, lower ranks sort of need permission to use it.
4. In the show we see first hand the race between Earth and Mars to reach Pheobe, and the subsequent destruction of the moon by the Martian Navy. In the books it is only spoken of in retrospect.

Doors & Corners

1. The transport ship, 'Guy Molinari', was named after the Staten Island Ferry that the author, ' Daniel Abraham', used to take to work.
2. The stealth ship had a devastating close range rail gun. Rail guns use powerful electromagnets to accelerate projectiles to very high velocities in fractions of a second. In 2010 the US Navy built a rail gun that fired a 7 pound round at 10 times the speed of sound (7,600 miles per hour). Provided you have a good enough source of electricity, you could launch projectiles at relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light).
3. Apparently FedEx is still in business in the 24th century. As the "Guy Molinari" freighter approaches the spin station, they eject "FedEx" labeled freight containers (containing the volunteer fighters intended to board the spin station) toward the station.

Static

1. Deimos is the smaller "moon" of Mars. It is only about 8 miles in diameter, and less than a millionth of the mass of Earth's moon.
2. The drawing that Cortazar makes on the window resembles the structure of an RNA strand with the base-pairing and various loops and hairpin bends.
3. The scientist with brain damage (and a lack of empathy) who was part of the Eros experiment was compared to a pedophile, and Eros was his pedophilia. The word choice is ironic, since the name of the asteroid (Eros) is the Greek god of sexual love and desire.

Godspeed

1. The temple/starship Nauvoo has a golden, trumpet blowing angel on the front end. This is generally agreed to be the angel Moroni (possibly Nephi) who either wrote the first of the golden plates, wrote the last plate, or guarded the golden plates while they were buried. All of the better Mormon temples have one. The first Moroni temple topper was at Nauvoo, Illinois in the 1840s.

Home

1. This marks the end of the first book of the series.
2. The markings on the wall by the captured scientist appear to be Feynman diagrams. These diagrams are used to describe the behavior of subatomic particles.
3. When UN Secretary General Gillis (Jonathan Whittaker) is about to launch the nuclear missiles at Eros Station he says "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly". This is a quote from the 1977 novel "Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard D. Bach.

Paradigm Shift

1. This episode marks the second actor to appear in The Expanse that was a lead actor on the show Being Human(U.S.) Sam Huntington plays Solomon Epstein in this episode and he played Josh Levison on Being Human. Kristen Hager played Ade in season one of The Expanse and played Nora Sergeant in Being Human.

The Seventh Man

1. The Purple Heart is awarded to US military personnel who are wounded or killed in action, and was first used in the mid-20th century. The Martian award appears identical to the US medal. About half a million medals were made in preparation for the expected casualties from the planned invasion of Japan in World War 2. With the invasion unnecessary, these medals were stored and awarded gradually in post-WWII conflicts. It is possible that the stockpile still existed in the 23rd century, and these old badges were still being issued.
2. Previously it was established that Belters, who lived in microgravity, could not endure Earth's gravity. Gunny is going to Earth where she will encounter gravity that is 2.5 times Mars normal. Imagine a 150 pound person suddenly weighing 375 pounds; that is Gunny's position. However the show has been explicit about the fact that Martian Marines train in 1g environments (Earth-like gravity) precisely to prepare for the contingency of doing operations on Earth.

Pyre

1. One of the workers on Tycho Station gives permission for a ship called 'Jefferson Mays' to dock. Jefferson Mays is the voice actor for the audio books of the Expanse series of books.

The Weeping Somnambulist

1. As the Weeping Somnambulist approaches Ganymede, the star field behind the Jovian moon is accurate - to the moon's right, the belt, sword and shield of Orion; and the star clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades in Taurus, are all clearly visible.
2. The pan of lasagna that Alex hands Amos is actually a real pan made for brownies called the Bakers Edge Brownie Pan and was developed to give every brownie in the pan two edges - for those that love edges on their brownies.
3. The Purple Heart Gunny Bobbie wears is actually a combination of the ribbon portion from the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and Purple Heart pendant.
4. "Somnambulist" means "sleepwalker".
5. "Looking a gift horse in the mouth" means showing undue concern over the quality of a gift. A young horse is a good gift, an old horse is a worthless gift. Often the surest way to check the age of a horse is by looking at the teeth. When a horse gets old its gums shrink, making the teeth look longer. Humans experience the same thing - hence "long in the tooth" means rather old.

Cascade

1. Nico describing to Bobbie how he can tell that she is a Martian by how she walks is very similar to the opening of "Double Star" by Robert A. Heinlein where Lorenzo identifies the spaceman by how he walks.

Here There Be Dragons

1. Mei's backpack has a hologram of two dinosaurs named Misko and Marisko. In The Expanse books, Misko and Marisko are the two main characters in a popular animated show. When Miller and Holden are trying to escape from Eros Station in the first book (Leviathan Wakes), they both reminisce about watching the show as kids.
2. 13m 41s in to episode 11 of season 2 a map of Ganymede station is shown. The map actually is that of Great Britain. That is definitely the outline of Wales on the the left hand side of the screen. Particularly apt given the title of this episode.
3. The Martian destroyer that is shadowing the UNS Arboghast on Venus has a nameplate reading "SHANDIAN" in Roman script. "Shandian" means "lightning" in Chinese. It's hard to be certain, but right after the Roman letters there is a small design that looks like "Shandian" in Chinese characters.
4. The creature-without-a-vac-suit which killed Gunny's team was part of Project Caliban. In Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' a beastial, murderous, half-human monster named Caliban is the treacherous slave of magician Prospero.
5. The scene where Bobbie runs to the United Nations to seek asylum, is said be reminiscent of Juliana's (Alexa Davalos) flight when she fled from Japanese held territory to that of the Greater Nazi Reich in The Man in the High Castle: The Road Less Traveled (2016).

The Monster and the Rocket

1. Cotyar admits to having been military, SIGINT and a forward observer. SIGnal INTelligence is military intelligence work intercepting and analyzing enemy communication. A forward observer is not doing intelligence work; he is directly viewing, from close range, munitions (artillery, bombs, missiles) hitting, or missing, the targets and then telling fire control folks how to adjust their aim.

Caliban's War

1. The Hybrid Monster was performance captured by actor Elias Toufexis who played the character of Kenzo in season 1. The producers and VFX team knew that Toufexis had an extensive background in Performance Capture and asked him to play the Hybrid.
2. In one of the final scenes aboard the UN ship at Venus there is a cameo appearance by Adam Savage (Mythbusters) as a member of the crew.
3. The title of the episode, Caliban's War, is also the title of Book 2 in The Expanse series, of which the latter half of season 2 is based.