[5] In many of the hand-to-hand combat scenes featuring the character, particularly those in Serenity, Glau's own experience in ballet dancing was incorporated into her fight choreography.

[6] During River's early childhood, she grew up alongside her brother, Simon, part of the wealthy Tam family on the "core" planet of Osiris.

[7] While her parents and Simon believed the Academy was a private school meant to nurture the gifts of talented children, it was in fact a cover for a government experiment in creating assassins.

[8] According to Simon, the Alliance attempted to isolate River from her family, though she managed to send a call for help by putting a coded message in a letter to her brother.

In his quest to locate and free River, Simon enlisted the aid of anti-governmental groups, exhausting his personal fortune and sacrificing a promising medical career.

[9] Dr. Karin Beeler of the University of Northern British Columbia compared and contrasted River to Buffy Summers, protagonist of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise (also created by Joss Whedon), in her book Seers, "Witches" and Psychics on Screen: An Analysis of Women Visionary Characters in Recent Television and Film.