Arrow: Easter Eggs and DC Comics References in "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak"

Tonight was a bit of an Easter egg omelette.

Once in a while, Arrow delivers an episode so loaded with DC Comics mythology, that you assume it has to pay off big down the line, or it will seem like a really weird one in hindsight. This is one of those, with Jack Kirby's Brother Eye debuting...

...which, of course, is likely to raise some questions about the potential connections between Felicity's ex-boyfriend, Queen Consolidated's O.M.A.C. Project, A.R.G.U.S., Checkmate and the Crisis on Infinite Earths tease in the season premiere of The Flash.

More on that later for now...let us know if we missed anything.

Title Drop

Look, the Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak follows a long tradition of DC Comics titles with "The Secret Origin of..." in them.

There was, in fact, a collection of post-Crisis on Infinite Earths-reimagined Justice League origin stories called Secret Origins which saw print as a graphic novel edited by Mark Waid -- and a series of "Secret Files & Origins" one-shots in the late '90s.

More recently, there was a documentary feature titled Secret Origin that detailed the history of DC Comics.

"It replaces your computer"

Ray's watch is apparently so feature-rich that it's going to replace your personal computer, eh? This might be a stretch, but it seems like that's some mighty impressive miniaturization technology, there...!

Brother Eye

Is Brother Eye connected to the O.M.A.C. Project? It seems like a wasted opportunity if it isn't.

In the comics, Brother Eye is a self-aware satellite with connections to various iterations of the Jack Kirby-created character O.M.A.C.

It's also been a major, major villain in the recent past. Brother Eye and the O.M.A.C. Project were major antagonists in stories like Infinite Crisis and The New 52: Futures End.

In the run-up to Infinite Crisis, Blue Beetle Ted Kord -- the character Ray Palmer was intended to be on Arrow this season before rewrites -- died attempting to stop Brother Eye after discovering that Checkmate -- an organization with ties to Amanda Waller and A.R.G.U.S. -- was abusing the satellite.

Starro the Conqueror

Cooper's t-shirt (seen above) features what sure as heck looks like the classic Justice League villain Starro the Conqueror, the villain the JLA battled in their first published adventure.

In fact, if you look at the cover above, you'll notice that it looks like the Starro on his shirt is the same pose and everything. Just without the League.

I wrote it five years ago

"Five Years Later..." is a pretty common theme going on in DC Comics right now, especially as Brother Eye is involved.

In The New 52: Futures End, Brother Eye has already started to take on sentience and be baaaad news five years from now. It appears to be pointing everything toward Convergence.

Myron Forest

Who is Cooper's roommate? Another Jack Kirby creation.

Doctor Myron Forest was a scientist in the early 21st century on a parallel world known as Earth-AD. Forest worked closely with theGlobal Peace Agency and was instrumental in the creation of the world's most advanced artificial intelligence, Brother Eye.

Santa Prisca

Where is Lyla again? Oh, she's in the fictional South American nation where Bane was born in prison.

It was created by legendary Green Lantern/Green Arrow writer Dennis O'Neil in the pages of The Question, and was used repeatedly throughout O'Neil's tenure as Group Editor for the Batman family of books.

It has previously appeared in an episode of the fan-favorite animated series Young Justice and was name-dropped in a number of Batman-related video games, including the Arkham franchise. While a nameless foreign prison figured into Bane's backstory The Dark Knight Rises, it is unclear whether that was intended to actually be Santa Prisca or not.

Lady Death

Yeah, Felicity isn't Neil Gaiman's Death, and doesn't even look particularly like her, but wearing the big honkin' ankh in promotional photos, we've had so many readers point out the similarity this week that we couldn't leave it un-remarked-upon.

Cooper Seldon

It's very, very hard to imagine that the name of Felicity's sketchy ex-boyfriend isn't a reference to Sheldon Cooper, the character who most defines the WBTV-owned The Big Bang Theory on CBS.

Felicity dyes her hair

In the comics, Felicity has dark hair -- and while most people haven't complained about this minor inconsistency because Felicity Smoak isn't all that popular a character and Emily Bett Rickards is great at her job, it comes into play in this episode when we see her with dark hair, and then her mom makes her admit that she dyes it when she says they've got blonde hair in common.

Definitely black.

That's Laurel's answer for Wildcat. Black Canary, of course. Ha.

Possessed

Joan Crawford was actually in two different films, both called Possessed, in 1931 and 1947. It's difficult to be totally sure which one Oliver and Thea may have been sitting down to watch, but our money is on the 1947 version, co-starring Van Helfin, which was about an unstable woman's obsession with her ex-lover.

UPDATE: 

Daniel Levin in the comments said ... (original post)

It was the 1931 version. You could see Clark Gable's name.

UPDATE #2: One we missed!

Batman '89

A great number of fans noted that Oliver tells Thea, "Nice place you got here. Lots of space." That's a line delivered by both Bruce Wayne and The Joker to Vicki Vale, according to our readers, in Batman.