William Gibson, secret weeb? It's more likely than you'd think.
Okay. So. I am posting this very fast with no direct citations or links, but I'd like to excite the, like... two dozen people who like The Bridge trilogy, Gibson's 90s work, the way I do.
So there's an anime that's my main favorite thing ever, Bubblegum Crisis 2032, a direct-to-video 'OVA' that had installments from 1987-1991. It is very rock n' roll cyberpunk, taking more from Blade Runner, Terminator, and Streets of Fire than anything in The Sprawl, it's cyberpunk anime superheroines with power armor versus Cyberdyne Meets Tyrell. Not the point, though.
One: One of the main heroines in the anime is Linna Yamazaki, aerobics instructor, melee specialist, and high-strung yuppie with a horrible romantic life. Perhaps not that similar to Laney Yamazaki of Virtual Light, geeky anthropologist who... had his name retconned to Shinya Yamazaki, with Colin Laney taking his name in Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties? The deuce you say! The name's too specific, too close, and the change suggests some wrote Billy G and he had to cover his tracks.
Two: In All Tomorrow's Parties, the self-destructing Laney, buried in the internet and a tokyo subway cardboard apartment, is woken up by a Gunsmith Cats alarm clock. This is a very weird and specific cut, because it's a manga about bounty hunter girls with guns in Chicago... done by a man named Kenichi Sonoda. Who was one of the main staff on Bubblegum Crisis.
This is such a specific set of potential references I find it unlikely that it's two coincidences at the same time. So I am starting discussion about it.