Lord Ruthven wrote:
Animal Man #16 by Grant Morrison.
"The Clockwork Crimes of the Time Commander" (October 1989)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who Watches the Watchmen) is written on a toilet cubicle wall in the comic. Also, as seen on the cover (via link above) and throughout the comic itself, the Time Commander has a timepiece which is permanently set at 5 to 12
The quote from Juvenal surfaces several times in Terry Pratchett's
Discworld books, particularly the ones involving Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch Sam Vimes (though Vimes's general distrust of everyone has lead him to wonder who watches the watcher watching the watchmen as well, because that's just another level of someone calling ethical superiority).
There was an episode of
Avatar: The Last Airbender that involved a rebel leader destroying an occupied town in order to destroy the invaders, and seeing the actual residents of the town as an acceptable sacrifice to make in the name of freedom. The heroes arrived too late to stop him, and they showed the damage in strong detail (though, this being a kids' show, it turned out that another one of the heroes that had gotten separated from the pack managed to warn the innocent villagers to flee before it happened). This may have been a
Watchmen reference, given that the creators of that show are pretty steeped in pop culture, or it may have been a coincidence.
In a case of references flowing the other way, I have a strong belief that the look of movie!Veidt was influenced by David Bowie in
The Man Who Fell to Earth:
There are some
vague character similarities as well, but not enough for me to think that Veidt was actually written to homage Newton in the GN. I think the movie was likely shooting for a physical resemblance, though.
