I hadn’t seen the previews for this episode and was really caught off guard with the easter eggs in here. For those not familiar with the deep lore of TEIS, it was originally published as a web novel (WN) on syosetu. It was later picked up by a publisher which produced the light novel (LN) version. The LN version is considered the primary source and canon for all the adaptations since. After the first LN was published, the author stopped updating the WN and basically considered it more of a rough draft than the actual story.

Why do I bring all this history up? Well, for the first three LNs (up through the John Smith arc), the WN and LN were very, very similar with only minor tweaks to the story/characters. However, when LN4 came out, the story was completely different than what existed in the WN previously. It has been a long time since I read the WN, but the two arcs that followed the John Smith arc in the WN consisted of Cid becoming a prisoner of war in the ongoing Oriana civil war followed by him orchestrating a jailbreak and joining a Goldy/Quinton led band of soldiers to fight in the war. These events never happened in the LN, but Cid referenced them very briefly this episode.

I knew that the staff must have been familiar with the WN based on a couple easter eggs from the first season, but this is an explicit inclusion of WN-only content that I never thought would happen. If you are interested in the WN story, I really recommend at least the prison arc as it was one of my favorites. You can see the novelupdates page here.