Firstly is during the attack on Dracula's castle, Alucard uses his wolf form and his sword in a similar manner to the legendary boss Great Wolf Sif. This is a more speculative link and at first I thought it might not be related. However 5 seconds later Sypha uses her ice magic in an interesting way.

So, what was it that convinced me that it was a reference/inspired scene. While the thought of Alucard's Sif impersonation was fresh in my mind, Sypha arranges her ice spikes halo-like around her head, unfortunately I only could be bothered to get a pic with the spikes infront. But her magic almost seems to mimic the magic used in the soul series, that magic being demon's souls' "homing soul arrow", even having a very similar colour. This visual aspect carried on throughout the souls series, and was fresh in my head from the demon's souls remake.

(This isn't the best image to represent my point, however it was the only pic of the spikes I could find, and I wasn't going to comb through the episode)

Tell me what you think