Arrow: Easter Eggs and DC Comics References In "Uprising"

Team Arrow had a meeting with a number of Easter eggs this week.

It's actually been fairly quiet in recent weeks, but this week there were a lot of little things that played through the episode.

So...what did we see? What did we miss? Read on...!

Outsiders

This is a loooooong stretch, but the kind of thing that will come up in the comment thread if I don't point it out; both Green Arrow and Katana have, at various points, been members of The Outsiders.

Which isn't a bad name for people like Tatsu and Maseo, who are off the grid and determinedly so.

We also get a little bit of philosophical discussion around Katana's swordcraft. It's something that we get quite a bit in the comics, given the nature of her character.

Red Streak

"Are you that red streak I've been hearing about?" Asks one of Brick's men. Of course, he isn't -- that would be The Flash, or what they called him before he named himself publicly, anyway.

Arsenal

Lance mocking Arsenal's name -- "what are they, just picking names out of a hat, now?" -- is the kind of thing we've heard before from fans, given that Speedy/Arsenal/Red Arrow/Roy Harper changes names pretty often.

Speaking of which, the idea that Lance knew who Roy was all this time and just withheld it is similar to what many fans assume has long been the case for Batman's relationship with Jim Gordon.

David Maclean

One of the reporters whose work is featured on the front page of the Starling City Sentinel that Felicity brings up about the murder of Merlyn's wife is David Maclean, who died during the Undertaking.

The character in the show was named after a storyboard artist who works on both Arrow and The Flash.

The other reporter whose name is on the front page -- Scott Higgs or Riggs, as far as I can tell -- doesn't appear to be anyone, based on a few brief searches.

"I don't want her to be an angel."

"I doni't want her to be an angel, Ollie. I want her to go back to being my mom," Tommy tells Oliver at the funeral for his mother. That mirrors something Caitlin said recently on The Flash: That she didn't want Ronnie to be a hero, she wanted him to be her husband.

Something else

Like in the opening monologue, where Oliver says the island and his experiences made him "something else," that's what Merlyn said Nanda Parbat was going to make him.

...Well, he was technically right.

The uprising

Taking to the streets, urging the citizenry to be their best selves, isn't an entirely alien idea in these kinds of stories. Often, the idea that superheroes are more important as inspirations than as individual combatants is a major part of their story, thematically.

In particular, this one kind of feels like the third act of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, but maybe that's just me.

Wildcat

This is the first time we actually see Ted in action as Wildcat. It doesn't go well.