Dracula: 10 References And Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

While the time jump between Dracula's second and third episodes may have had some of those people who loved the first part just two days earlier now baying for blood, it was hardly the first time that an adaptation has thrust the Count forward into the present day. One contemporary Dracula in particular proved an obvious influence on Gatiss and Moffat.

Hammer Films's 1970s cult favourite Dracula AD 1972 featured the first clash of the legendary pairing of Christopher Lee's Dracula and Peter Cushing's Van Helsing since the studio's original 1958 Dracula. In it, much as in the Gatiss and Moffat version, Van Helsing defeats Dracula in the nineteenth century, but only until the vampire resurfaces in the present day and must be taken down again by Van Helsing's suspiciously identical descendant.

There is even a female Van Helsing as Cushing's 1970s incarnation has a daughter: Stephanie Beacham's Jessica Van Helsing, whose blood Dracula slowly consumes while she is under his spell, his act of vengeance against the Van Helsing lineage.

The third episode here isn't just similar to Dracula AD 1972 in sharing some overlapping plot points, Gatiss and Moffat also pay direct tribute to the Hammer film.

In the episode we see Dr Zoe Helsing (like her great, great aunt Sister Agatha also played by Dolly Wells, much like Cushing's Lorrimer and Lawrence Van Helsing) in hospital due to malignant cancer. The number on her hospital room? AD72. Just one of the ways that this Dracula acknowledges its debt to Hammer's.