There was a lot to process in tonight’s episode of Arrow.
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Luckily the villain of the week brought plenty of processing power with him!
Oof, sorry about that. Let’s just get on with the Easter eggs before I embarrass myself any more.
So…what did we see? What did we miss?
Read on, and comment below.
AMERTEK
Amertek Industries is a weapons manufacturer, tech conglomerate and defense contractor arguably best known for their biggest gun, the “Toastmaster” BG-80.
Designed by John Henry Irons, their brutality turned him off of weapons-making and he left Amertek to go into hiding, taking on the name John Henry Irons.
The guns would later make their way into the hands of street gangs in Metropolis and Washington, DC. Seeing his weapons on the streets, coupled with the then-recent death of his idol Superman, led Irons to take on the armored superhero identity of Steel.
Amertek, finding that Irons had resurfaced, tried to kill him to silence his objections to the BG-80 program and even stole the designs for his Steel armor to make similar suits for their footsoldiers.
Amertek’s logo was one of a handful of DC Comics companies that appeared on the first-ever poster for The Flash.
ROY HARPER
Nobody should really need a refresher on this one, but…just in case.
Last season, Roy Harper — who had been the Arrow’s first in-costume sidekick as Arsenal — gave up his freedom to buy Oliver’s when he posed as the Arrow after Oliver was arrested in connection with the murders he’d committed mostly in the first season of the show.
They faked Roy’s death to sneak him out of jail, and sent him off to find a life for himself.
In the comics, before Roy became Arsenal (and, later, Red Arrow), he was actually Speedy, a name given to Thea in the TV show.
CADMUS TECH
Tonight’s episode of Arrow name-dropped another huge DC Universe scientific concern — although here, it’s a tech company, whereas in the comics it’s best known for its genetics work.
Cadmus Tech is a nod to Project Cadmus from the comics, a scientific research center just outside Metropolis best known for its work with genetic engineering and cloning.
It was Cadmus who cloned Guardian and the Newsboy Legion, so that there could be a second life for those characters after their Golden Age incarnations, in the post-Crisis DC Universe. It’s headed up by Paul Westfield and based on the research of Dabney Donovan, neither of whom were particularly good guys.
In the comics, they’re also responsible for the creation of, among others, Dubbilex the DNAlien and the post-Crisis Superboy.
The photo above was taken on the set of The Flash, where they’ve apparently had a “Cadmus Labs” prop the whole time, but it’s never been seen on camera in such a way that it would be recognizable.
PENNYTOWN
Pennytown is a borough of Star City, and home to Damien Darhk and Ruve Adams.
It’s fairly new to both the comics and the TV show; scouring the Arrowverse and DC Wikis, the first references I can find to “Pennytown” are in Green Arrow #42 (August 2015), where it’s described as a neighborhood in Seattle, and “Dark Waters,” the midseason premiere episode of Arrow in which Green Arrow rescues Darhk’s family.
FARADAY CAGE SYSTEM
In the real world, a Faraday Cage is a grounded metal screen surrounding a piece of equipment to exclude electrostatic and electromagnetic influences.
That’s the context in which Felicity was using it.
Of course, because comics, many DC fans probably heard that and thought it was a made up bit of technology named for King Faraday, a super-spy in the DC Universe with ties to the recently-deceased Amanda Waller.
HUB CITY
Hub City is the birthplace and stomping grounds of Vic Sage, The Question.
That’s where Roy has been hanging around since we saw him last? Cool.
Now get The Question on the show.
THE CALCULATOR
A Z-grade villain who actually dressed like a giant calculator for a time, Noah Kuttler was a Batman villain who reinvented himself as a kind of anti-Oracle. If a supervillain needed intel, men, supplies or the like, Kuttler was the one who could get it for them…for a price.
His gimmick originally was that he would record opponents’ combat maneuvers so that he couldn’t be beaten by the same person twice — something that’s been used recently on Supergirl and was essentially the premise for the Grant Morrison villain Prometheus during his run on JLA.
Prometheus, ironically, is the one who killed Roy Harper and got himself killed by Green Arrow for his troubles.
In Identity Crisis, Kuttler was the one who hooked up The Atom’s ex-wife with Captain Boomerang, whom she hired to kill Jack Drake, Robin’s father. He became an arch-nemesis to the wheelchair-using IT goddess from there on out, with Oracle swearing to bring down his operation.
Of course, as many parallels as one can draw between Overwatch and Oracle, we all know that Barbara Gordon’s dad is a nicer guy than Felicity’s…!
