With so much attention given to the cast, costumes, action and special effects of a superhero blockbuster, movie fans have a hard enough time taking in the movie as a whole. That means it’s almost impossible to catch all of the tiny details, nods to the fans, and comic book easter eggs slipped in by the cast and crew. But not anymore.
Here are Screen Rant’s 10 Amazing Hidden Details in Superhero Movies #2.
Batman V Superman
When Zack Snyder announced that his Superman sequel would pit the Man of Steel against Batman, he did it with a speech pulled right out of Frank Miller’s famous comic, The Dark Knight Returns. The influences run deep, as the first trailers for the Justice League lead-in showed Ben Affleck’s Batman lit up by lightning while firing a grapple gun - perfectly recreating the iconic cover art of the graphic novel.
After planting a nod to his previous comic book movie, 300, in Man of Steel, Zack Snyder went even bigger for the sequel. The sequence involving Superman saving a Russian rocket from an explosive launch shows the numbers 003 on its side - flip them around, and it’s literally the biggest 300 easter egg he could probably fit into the picture.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Audiences never find out exactly how Peter Quill came to pick his own spaceship, but the orange and blue “Milano” is destroyed and completely rebuilt over the course of the movie. In case fans were wondering where the name came from, director James Gunn has confirmed that Quill named his ship after actress Alyssa Milano - Peter’s childhood crush when he was whisked away from Earth in 1988.
It isn’t just 80s icons that get referenced in Marvel’s space team-up, but their Earthbound heroes, too. Even though Iron Man never makes an appearance in the movie, one of his best lines does. When the new Stark Tower is revealed in The Avengers, Tony gives Pepper Potts “12% of the credit.” It doesn’t go over well, and it’s the Guardians of the Galaxy who actually explained why a few years later, claiming that such a small percentage is “barely a concept.”
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
When the villain of the movie goes looking to build a new body out of Vibranium, he finds a massive batch aboard a beached transport ship in Africa, called the Churchill. The name isn’t just a nod to the former British Prime Minister, but to Marvel Comics mythology. In the comics, it was Winston Churchill who first sent the famous explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton to find Vibranium in the first place. Making this one nod to the comics that all but the hardcore are guaranteed to miss.
Ant-Man
After Scott Lang loses his job at Baskin Robbins, he heads home to the apartment he shares with the rest of his (future) gang. The room is shown to be inside The Milgrom Hotel - a name that carries serious weight for comic fans. The building is a clear nod to comic book writer, artist, inker and editor Al Milgrom, who lent his talents to a number of Marvel titles before taking over as publisher, including The West Coast Avengers.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The movie version of Wolverine may be a different one than comic fans are used to, but the crew on the movie are obviously big fans of the comic book Logan - and some of his most iconic stories. When Logan first wakes up in his 1970s apartment, it’s shown that his love for a brown and yellow costume is because those are two of his favorite colors, judging by the interior. Fans can also spot samurai swords and a painting of Mount Fuji - all a nod to his famous Japan Saga storyline.
Deadpool
These days, Kevin Feige is best known as the man in charge at Marvel Studios, but he didn’t start out building the MCU alone: the producer cut his teeth on other comic book adaptations like Daredevil, Blade Trinity, The Punisher, and X-Men. It earned him some fans in the crew of the Deadpool movie, too - the pizza that Wade Wilson eats in one of his first scenes is delivered from Famous Feige’s Pizzeria.
The worlds of Fox’s X-Men and Marvel’s Avengers are completely divided, but that doesn’t stop a guy like Deadpool from referencing his MCU friends. The biggest example is the movie’s final fight, taking place on a massive, dry-docked aircraft carrier. But it’s only in the final shots where audiences can see that it’s actually a heli-carrier, but just different enough from the version used by SHIELD (footage in both Avengers and Age of Ultron) in the Avengers movies.
To confirm that Deadpool’s solo movie would officially be given an R-Rating, the studio came up with an amazing way to make the announcement: arrange an April Fool’s Day PG-13 announcement in an interview with Extra’s Mario Lopez. The host played along, getting killed by the movie’s star. But it wasn’t his only gag. In the actual movie Ryan Reynold’s hero can be seen intently reading from Lopez’s memoir, “Just Between Us.”
Conclusion
Those are just a handful of details that prove the people working behind the scenes are often even bigger fans than the ones watching the finish movies. What are some of your favorite, easy-to-miss easter eggs in superhero movies? Let us know where to find them in the comments, and remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos like this one.
