The Duchess was based on Spartans from Halo, actually, but way more over-the-top. I wanted to pick a kind of character that resonates with me personally given what the story is about, so I picked Halo because it's one of those fictional properties I still have a lot of love for (I had a different idea involving a Transformers pastiche and another involving Bionicle pastiches but this was more fleshed out). The bit with the screw was intentional. Basically that was one of the parallels I tried to draw between the Duchess and the Doppler, since the Doppler's whole thing is that he worships her and tries to emulate her. When he finds that screw in his pocket, I wanted that to be one of those throwaway gags that ends up being important. The Doppler ends up mimicking the Duchess unintentionally, but he isn't on the same scale as the Duchess, so instead of his ship's power failing completely, it just breaks a speedometer, although it ends up having pretty big consequences anyway.