The Flash: Easter Eggs and DC Comics References In “Fast Lane”

On tonight’s episode of The Flash, fans may have spotted a few Easter eggs — although not nearly as many as we sometimes get.

It’s definitely worth mentioning that The Flash and Wally West came face to face for the first time tonight, although it’s not as though that’s really an Easter egg; Wally being a series regular now, that was bound to happen.

Nevertheless, we’ve put together a little list of some of the more subtle stuff.

So…what did we see? What did we miss?

Read on, and comment below.

COAST CITY PIZZA

During the dinner scene, we see that the West Family is eating food from Coast City Pizza.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this chain — which is likely inspired by the real-life California Pizza Kitchen.

Coast City Pizza previously appeared in “Who Is Harrison Wells?,” a Season One episode of The Flash.

And, of course, Coast City is where Hal Jordan — the Green Lantern — lives in the comic books. It’s frequently referenced on The Flash and Arrow.

OLIVER QUEEN’S MAYORAL CAMPAIGN

In passing, the TV news mentioned Oliver Queen’s mayoral campaign.

As you can see above (in a photo taken when I visited the set of Arrow in October), Stephen Amell’s Green Arrow is protecting the city in his day and night jobs these days, running for elected office as Oliver Queen while crusading the streets as Green Arrow.

TAR PIT

Created by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins, the character was introduced in 2001. A small-time drug trafficker, Monteleone discovered in jail that he could project his astral self out into the world to get in trouble. At one point, his spirit became trapped in an animated vat of tar, leaving Joey to walk the earth with a body made of flaming, molten asphalt while his physical form remained in a coma at Iron Heights Prison. In the comics, he not only runs afoul of The Flash, but also Captain Cold, who is rumored to be appearing in the mid-season finale of The Flash before moving on to DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in 2016.

In the TV series, The CW revealed to us that Tar Pit is a vengeful meta-human with the ability to transform into molten asphalt.  When he crosses paths with The Flash, Tar Pit uses his powers to gain a tactical advantage over the Scarlet Speedster, who finds the ground literally shifting beneath his feet.

DIAMOND DETAILING

That Diamond Detailing sign has a logo that looks quite a bit like one of the logos from Diamond Comics Distributors. A coincidence? Probably…but worth a mention, at least.

NEWS 52

The most common Easter egg in either Arrow or The Flash, we mention that the characters were watching News 52 at one point in the episode mostly because it’s been a while since we distincly remember this one being on The Flash (although with Oliver’s aforementioned mayoral run, the press has ben all over Arrow this year).

BREACH IMPLOSION REACTOR

That reminds me a lot of Skeets.

At the end of 52, Booster Gold — a former football player — threw his robot buddy Skeets into the timestream to stop Mr. Mind, a worm-like villain trapped inside of Skeets’s robot shell. 

The result was closing a dangerous time loop and capturing Mr. Mind before he could become a threat to the multiverse.

It’s probably an incidental/accidental similarity, but given the football-like shape of the breach implosion reactor Barry threw into the breach this week, the final pages of 52 came to mind immediately.