Hi! Yes, you are correct that there are Sherlock Holmes references in DN! :) L is at least partly a Holmes expy, although there are other obvious influences that Ohba never acknowledged as openly. I’d call Cumberlock a Holmes expy too, although his story is an explicit attempt at reimagining the original stories, while L is just an attempt at creating a moderately similar character to operate within a more original framework. Ish. (This has just reminded me of a post I wanted to make.)

That said, the stuff I was referring to was more extensive than what comes from two characters being somewhat distant branches off the same trunk. I am actually a lifelong Sherlock Holmes fan, and somewhat older than most DN bloggers on Tumblr… mentioning that only because “lifelong” means a much longer time in my case than it would for some people). However, I’m not a fan of BBC’s Sherlock at all, partly because I don’t really care for the way it approaches the source material. Personal taste, etc. Not something I usually discuss in depth because a lot of my friends are fans, and so is my 14-year-old niece.

Ordinarily I’d like to give you a well-sourced reply here (one where I list off the aforementioned likely DN references), but I’m sorry, I’m not up to it! :( I have a fever and antibiotics going on tonight and please don’t make me. I’ll write some thoughts on this but I cannot promise that they’ll be cohesive. Furthermore, I’m aware that some of the examples I’m about to give could be used to support conclusions different than the ones I drew, but I don’t think they strongly support those alternate conclusions.

Probable DN references in Sherlock are things I noticed in depth at the time that I watched those episodes, and there were a few too many for it to seem coincidental, but it’s been a few years. The elements I’m thinking of mostly came off as hat-tips and visual references, maybe even jokes, rather than rip-offs (and specifically to the anime rather than the live-action films or the manga — they had a “the showrunners are fans” vibe). Of course, the overwhelmingly most important influence on those episodes is indeed ACD. If you feel up to it, maybe you want to rewatch it yourself with “trying to notice the occasional DN reference or overlapping visual theme” in mind and see if you pick up on anything. I can’t recall which ep it was that really seemed rife with them at the time, and I cannot guarantee that you would come away from such a rewatch convinced. That said —

The other recent adaptations really don’t have anything in them that seems like a tip of the hat to DN. It’s specifically Sherlock, and not Elementary (which I watch pretty faithfully) or the RDJ movies. (No arguments about which is better: my point is that they all use the same source material, but the other two don’t have the potential references in them.) Actually, I know for a fact that the showrunner of Elementary is a DN (fan? reader? viewer?), because he used to be a producer on Medium and co-wrote two episodes that cribbed concepts directly and obviously from DN. One involved a kid who was basically a low-level Kira being directed in his murders by the ghost of a vigilante detective (no notebook); the other involved sunglasses that essentially gave a power similar to the Shinigami Eyes to the title character.

Even in the case of the Sherlock Holmes adaptation run by a guy who has obviously cribbed from DN in the past on another show, in a way that I’d describe more as a rip-off than a tip of the hat, there are fewer possible DN references than I recall noticing in the BBC show’s Moriarty episodes. To me that argues for it, in that it shows that it’s perfectly feasible for someone who is obviously familiar with both ACD and DN to do a modernization of Sherlock Holmes without there being a bunch of conspicuous possible DN nods. Where L and Elementary’s Holmes overlap, it does seem like a  matter of source material and little else. (To be honest, I keep wondering if Elementary ever will reference DN, but I don’t think doing it would suit the tone of the show.)

Rhetorically, why would Moffat and Gatiss and possibly BC and Andrew Scott have put in those nods, if they did? Possibly they wanted to achieve something like DN’s dynamic, which is a little like their Holmes vs Moriarty dynamic; neither is much like most previous well-known Holmes vs Moriarty dynamics, which iirc are usually like the one in the RDJ movies or like the one in Young Sherlock Holmes. (On the other hand, an argument against this is that the dynamic they did achieve is — IMO, if we’re framing it in DN terms — slightly closer to L and B than L and Light.)

If they never spontaneously acknowledge or deny it, and are never approached about it, there’s only conjecture — it’s not the kind of thing that’s worth more than casual speculation. So it’s unlike in-story stuff that you can spec on in a very A+B=C, “this is a clear implication” kind of way. It’s harder to say things like “L’s eye design was inspired by Akira Fudou from Devilman” with certainty if Obata does not confirm/deny it. We know Tim Burton was an influence on Obata’s creature design, so without his statements about Devilman, we could as easily assume that L’s design was inspired by Ichabod Crane in Burton’s version of Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands — and we’d be wrong. I’m not saying this in support of “Dude, the Sherlock creators have totally watched DN,” I’m saying that it’s easy to suspect and really hard to confirm unless they actually say something about it, but it really wouldn’t be that weird given the approximate time the series was in development and DN’s reputation at the time for intense one-on-one suspense. What would be weird is if it were the only influence, or the major influence on the series.

Likewise, I feel like I should pull out HtR13 to talk about the pose… but I’m going to leave it on the shelf tonight because I want to stay in bed. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at the section where the Holmes references are discussed, but the one I recall is something like sugar replacing hard drugs… I think?

Holmes sat with his violin across his knees sometimes, iirc, and then there’s this:

http://hindiakoto.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/its-sherlock-holmes-not-l-lawliet/

http://a-doctor-in-the-house.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/16SHERLOCK-popup.jpg

However, the pose shown there (used for the Nendoroid) is not the one L usually actually sits in; it’s a variation that’s viable for a top-heavy action figure that already falls out of its little chair a lot and doesn’t need to have a center of gravity that pitches it forward any further! Canon L squats on his haunches, perched like a bird, sometimes with a large cushion sort-of supporting his bottom (first hotel room), sometimes not (his spinny chair at HQ). I think you could certainly argue that the more general idea of having him sit weirdly comes from An Obvious Place, but I’m reasonably sure it’s *not* the exact same pose. (Call that level of certainty around 70% — actual percentages, not L percentages. I wouldn’t bet money on myself right now!) If we were going to get really technical I’d also suspect that the act of flouncing into chairs in the specific way shown in that post is not solidly ACD Holmes either. And really really technically, I do kind of wish the person who assembled the post that I reblogged had used a shot from the anime rather than from the live-action films… but only because, if there is indeed an influence, that’s where I suspect it lies.

But anyway, this is all “IIRC, with a fever” — haha! I’m sorry I can’t reference or research this as well as I would like to right now, but that’s kind of why I originally left a brief offhand comment to begin with, and I’ve been at this reply for over an hour. The tl;dr is “yes, L comes with some built-in Holmes references, but that wasn’t all I was talking about. Oh god, please don’t make me list them or do more than perfunctory googling, I’m just not up for it tonight.”

Thanks for the note! :D