Arrow: Easter Eggs and DC Comics References in "Legacy"

CAPTAIN PIKE

...Wait. Is that a Star Trek reference? We really can't decide.

Either way, per his nametag, that police captain talking to Thea in the opening scene appears to be "Captain Pike," the captain of the USS Enterprise immediately prior to James T. Kirk.

LONNIE MACHIN

A recurring villain from season four of Arrow, Lonnie Machin (the first baddie Oliver fights in season five) is better known to DC Comics fans as the antihero Anarky.

WILD DOG

Tonight on Arrow, the first new member of Team Arrow version 2.0 was introduced to the audience, in the form of Wild Dog, a hockey mask-wearing, gun-toting vigilante who was inspired by -- and then shot in the kneecap by -- Green Arrow.

The character first appeared in Wild Dog #1 in 1987, making him one of the first new superheroes created following Crisis on Infinite Earths. Created by Road to Perdition writer Max Allan Collins, "his super power is guns."

Star athlete Jack Wheeler went to college on a football scholarship, but had to drop out and become a mechanic after an injury forced him off the team and he couldn't afford tuition. Before working as a mechanic, though, he enlisted for a tour of duty with the U.S. Marines, only to see most of his friends killed by a terrorist bomb. After returning home, he fell in love...but the woman he was in love with was gunned down in a seemingly-random shooting, later revealed to be a hit because her father was a reputed mobster. Wheeler snapped and became Wild Dog -- a vigilante beloved by the public for "cleaning up the streets" but wanted by the police for his brutality.

After his own series failed to make him a star, the character would appear in Action Comics Weekly before fading mostly into obscurity. His most recent appearances on the printed page were in an alternate-reality story in Booster Gold, in which Wild Dog was part of a team of revolutionaries led by Green Arrow and working against Maxwell Lord and his army of OMACs.

"You gotta go to [writers] Geoff [Johns] and Jeff [Katz] for that one," artist Dan Jurgens said when ComicBook.com's Russ Burlingame asked him why Wild Dog had been chosen to team with a group of DC A-listers in Booster Gold #8. "I kind of enjoyed it. Took me back to those Action Weekly days!"

During his Booster Gold run, Wild Dog was depicted as being very conservative, something that seems likely to play a role on Arrow since Oliver Queen is now the liberal mayor of Star City.

A group of men dressed in Wild Dog costumes appear on the cover of Green Arrow #1, out today, although the character does not actually appear in the issue.

"That's not coming right away but it's coming down the pipeline," Green Arrow writer Ben Percy said of Wild Dog. "That first cover is sort of previewing some of the obstacles that lay ahead in the first few Rebirth arcs. I won't say too much except that there was a lot of discussion at the DC offices about how we could channel some of what was going on in the news, particularly what was going on in Oregon at the Malheur Nature Reserve which was taken over by that militia."

UNDERGROUND FIGHT CLUBS

It's interesting that the underground fight club seen in this episode has ties to the Bratva and, by extension, Anatoly Knyazev.

We last saw Anatoly on Arrow when Oliver helped him to escape from Lian Yu. Here, though? He arrives just in time to turn the tables and save Oliver from a Bratva assassin who was about to shoot him in the head.

The funny thing about the fight club is that if you watched Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Knyazev appeared as an agent of Lex Luthor, who (among other things) kidnapped Martha Kent in order to drive the

KONSTANTIN KOVAR

Konstantin Kovar is the father of Leonid Kovar, better known as Red Star.

In the comics, Konstantin originally wasn't a villain, but a relatively benign figure: an archaeologist who unearthed a nasty bit of business that gave his son powers. But Red Star himself, a loyal communist in the Soviet era, was occasionally a problem for the other heroes before he turned his life around.

Eventually, he would become a bad guy in service of the Soviet Union -- something that might make him an interesting figure going forward in case Anatoly Knyazev's comic book destiny of becoming the cybernetically-enhanced "KGBeast" is to become part of Arrow's story.

TOBIAS CHURCH

There's some stuff going on here.

First of all, Church's nickname is apparently Charon, the ferryman of Hades from Greek mythology. There is a Charon in DC Comics, although he shares basically nothing in common with this version. This is something that will be repeated again in the episode: choosing a historical/mythological meaning instead of a contemporary/comics one.

Second: comic book fans will recognize Church as Chad Coleman from The Walking Dead. In addition to playing Tyreese. And just for extra The Walking Dead points, his weapon of choice when he's going after the city council is a baseball bat.

We're assuming its name is Lucille, right?

VIGILANTE

"Mr. Ski Goggles," as Felicity calls him, is actually Vigilante, a DC Comics antihero created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez.

Perez provided the police sketch seen on Felicity's computer screen.

Created during Marv Wolfman's time on the New Teen Titans, Vigilante in the comics is a former New York district attorney who's set on the path of justice after hsi family is killed by the mob. The CW describes him similarly: Chase is "Star City's new district attorney and an ally of Mayor Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), who aims to clean up the streets through the legal system."

Segarra joins Rick Gonzalez, who will play Wild Dog next season. Echo Kellum, who plays Curtis Holt (a formative version of Justice Society member Mister Terrific), has also been upgraded from recurring to series regular.

While in the comics, Vigilante tends to be fairly similar to Wild Dog in his aggressive, brutal approach to fighting crime, he's a more complex and layered character. Chase is only one of the people to use the name Vigilante; he would eventually be consumed with guilt over his own abandonment of the rule of law, and would take his own life. Later, another Vigilante would take his place.

HUB CITY & BLUDHAVEN

According to Detective Malone, before he made his way to Star City, apparently he haunted Hub City -- the home of The Question -- and Bludhaven, the home of Nightwing.

A ROSS PAINTS

Is that a little bit of free advertising for comic book artist and painter Alex Ross on the side of the truck Tobias Church and his goons are driving to their crime spree?

Looks like it is!

MR. BERTINELLI

Whoever the head of the Bertinelli crime family is now that Helena has killed her father, he makes an appearance here -- only to be immediately killed by Tobias Church's men.