Gotham: Easter Eggs and DC Comics References in "The Penguin's Umbrella"

Tonight's episode of Gotham was an intense one -- and in no small part because of the presence of Victor Zsasz, a fan-favorite villain created in 1992.

That wasn't the only place we saw some winks and nods to DC history, some subtle (did you catch the "jolly fat man" thing? and others...not so much.

Like -- hey! We finally got Jim Gordon on this show! Same with Montoya and Allen!

So...what else did we spot tonight?

Read on...

Penguin's Umbrella

The title of tonight's episode is multifaceted; first of all, he's come into his own and is no longer carrying anyone's umbrella -- so there's that.

We also get that opening shot of him doing the Penguin walk with the umbrella and everything, having seemingly embraced it and leaning into the mannerisms instead of trying to avoid them.

Judge Bam-bam

I'm not sure what to make of this, but the name on those blank warrants was odd enough that it stuck out.

Perhaps it's a reference to James "Bam-Bam" Bamford, the acclaimed stunt coordinator on Arrow? While he's got no connection to Gotham that I know of, he is well-liked inside of Warner Bros. Television.

Victor Zsasz

We talked about this a little bit earlier. Bottom line: in the comics, he isn't quite so suave; he's just a guy who kills people and marks his flesh with a notch afterwards. And he's killed a LOT of people.

That said, he's a fan-favorite villain and starting him early may age him a bit...but he was never all that much a physical threat and now he has time to rack up all the kills we see on him in the comics.

Jolly Fat Men

"I tire of jolly fat men," Fish Mooney tells Maroni, and then wheels on Penguin, spitting "--and you!"

It's hard not to wonder whether that was an intentional juxtaposition, given what most people think of when you about about The Penguin.

Alfred the Royal Marine

Alfred Pennyworth can apparently whup Crispus Allen, we learned this week, playing into the ongoing series of hints that this version of Alfred is inspired by the bad-ass Royal Marine of Batman: Earth One.

Echoes of the pilot

This episode and the pilot could be tied together into a movie with some clever editing and maybe a touch of new footage added in. There's a lot of callbacks to that first episode. Among them? The sequence where Maroni's men storm in on Nikolai, guns blazing, and just cut down everything in their path. It feels like when Falcone saved Bullock and Gordon in the pilot...and a little bit like a similar scene in the Warren Beatty-directed Dick Tracy movie.

Carbone dies

On Friday, the official Gotham Twitter feed name-dropped the Jeph Loeb-Tim Sale story Batman: The Long Halloween (for obvious reasons). Well, in the sixth issue of that maxi-series, Frankie Carbone was killed.

This week, he died on Gotham at the hands of The Penguin. Not how he died in the comic, but the timing is interesting.

Also: The actor who played Frankie Carbone in Goodfellas recently lodged a lawsuit against The Simpsons for allegedly stealing his likeness for one of their gangsters. Quite a week for Carbone!

More DeVito

It's hard not to notice that Robin Lord Taylor's face after he kills Carbone is eerily similar to the snarl that Danny DeVito affected for much of his time as The Penguin in 1991's Batman Returns.