While it is not clear that Jim Henson himself contributed to any of the design meetings, he was invited to a party thrown by Douglas Adams during their work on the game. Henson, a fan of Adams, gifted him with a large plate of smoked salmon as he was leaving the party. Adams was flabbergasted, but Henson would not leave the party until the author “said it”. Adams quickly realized what was up and begrudgingly bid Henson “so long, and thanks for all the fish”.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was likewise cribbed from “Shada”, an uncompleted Doctor Who story. Professor Chronotis was originally from “Shada”, as was the fictional college he works at (St. Cedd’s), his time machine (which closely resembles a TARDIS), and his unnaturally long life. The story itself also derives from his completed Doctor Who story “City of Death.”

Dolled-Up Installment - TV Tropes

When Douglas Adams needed to come up with a storyline for the third book of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, Life, the Universe and Everything, he took an old Doctor Who movie script called “Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen” and rewrote it to be about the Guide characters (with some difficulty; he would later say the problem was finding a Guide character who was interested in saving the universe — he eventually settled on Slarty and Trillian, who essentially become Expies of the Doctor and Sarah Jane).

Dolled-Up Installment - TV Tropes

“Forty-two?” shouts the Doctor, and I smile.

[panem-et-circenses]

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” 

- Douglas Adams