There were so many Easter eggs in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that I think I need to just sit down and make a definitive list myself, offline, not for the site, so that I can keep adding to it as I discover more.
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That said, here’s as complete a listing as I can put together, based on my observations and a few fan comments. I KNOW there’s stuff missing from this list, so please feel free to chime in below. At the same time, it’s pretty complete and there are a handful of things that don’t get their own heading, but ARE discussed when related items come up.
So try and read all the way through before you tell me what I’m missing!
BILL FINGER
For the first time ever on the big screen, Bill Finger — the writer who worked with Bob Kane on the original Batman stories and who is responsible for inventing much of what defined Batman as a character — got credit for his contributions to creating the character in this movies.
Finger’s name has been appearing on the credits to Gotham recently, but it’s been reported that in the run-up to this movie, DC and the Kane family found a way to an agreement that would allow Finger to be credited. For years, it was reported that Bob Kane, when alive, had negotiated a contract that only allowed him sole creator credit on the character.
ZORRO
When Bruce Wayne flashes back to his origin, we get a look at Joe Chill killing his parents in a way that’s nearly identical to how it happened in The Dark Knight Returns.
Among other things, we have the way Martha’s pearls get caught on the gun, the way Thomas clutches Bruce’s shirt in his hand, and the fact that they were leaving a Zorro movie.
JIMMY OLSEN
Apparently the CIA plant in the desert, who was posing as Lois Lane’s photographer?
Yeah, that’s the movieverse version of Jimmy Olsen.
That’s an odd creative choice. One has to wonder if maybe Jenny Jurwich really was supposed to be Jenny Olsen at one point, and that left the writers without a clear idea of Olsen’s role in the Snyderverse when they elected not to do it.
In any event, as you’d expect, not everyone is happy with his death.
But at least you can still see him on Supergirl every week!
TALON
When Jimmy is killed, we learn that his CIA callsign was “Talon.”
Of course, in the comics, Jimmy Olsen has nothing to do with Talon, who is the enforcer of Gotham’s Court of Owls and, eventually, an ally to Batman.
SUBTLETLY OR COINCIDENCE?
Alfred talks about the White Portugese as a “phantasm” — the name of the villain in the beloved animated movie Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm — and describes the Kryptonians as “gods hurling lightning bolts,” which some have taken as a nod to Shazam.
Similarly, Jimmy “Talon” Olsen’s CIA partner is designated “Python,” the name of a B-list DC villain. Could they be one and the same? Hard to guess…!
GOTHAM CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT
There were a couple of police officers who, according to credits available online, were named after comic book creators.
Office Mazzuchelli would be named after David Mazzuchelli, artist of Batman: Year One, while Officer Rucka would be Greg Rucka, the longtime Batman writer who recently returned to write Wonder Woman as part of DC Comics’s Rebirth initiative.
Those officers’ call sign? “Delta Charlie 27,” a nod to Detective Comics #27, the first appearance of Batman in 1939. That should also explain “1939 Harbor Way,” the address where they respond to the call that turns out to be Batman beating on human traffickers.
Their car number, 224, might even be a very oblique reference to Watchmen. In Detective Comics #224, Batman and Robin wear “body-reinforcing armor,” perhaps a nod to the armor that he wore in The Dark Knight Returns and so in Batman v Superman.
In Batman #224, the Dark Knight squared off against a villain called Moloch, who shares a name with a villain who appeared in Watchmen.
Speaking of which…!
WATCHMEN, WATCHMEN, EVERYWHERE!
In the football game the Gotham cops are watching in their car, you can see a giant sign of Richard Nixon being held up by the fans. That’s just one of a number of nods to Snyder’s DC Comics adaptation Watchmen that pops up in the movie.
During Batman and Superman’s big fight, you can see “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” — the Latin translation for “Who watches the watchmen?” — spraypainted on one of the walls. Speaking of vandalism, there’s “THE END IS NIGH” on a billboard — the same message carried around by Rorschach on a sign while in his civilian identity.
Then there’s the fact that the President of the United States is played by Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl) and Carla Gugino (Silk Spectre) reprises her Man of Steel role as one of the Kryptonian robots in the scout ship.
Add to that the flashback sequence in which Richard Dean Morgan appears as Thomas Wayne, and that’s a pretty respectable list of potential or actual callbacks to Watchmen.
SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON
All those Watchmen cameos aren’t a surprise when you consider just how many little references there are to the previous work of people who appear in the film.
Much has been made of the fact, for instance, that Thomas and Martha Wayne both appear on The Walking Dead, although Jeffrey Dean Morgan hadn’t yet been cast in the show at the time when he shot his brief role alongisde his soon-to-be costar Lauren Cohan.
There is a blink-and-you-miss-it nod to Snyder’s first comic book adaptation, 300, in the film in the form of the numbers on the side of the Russian rocket Superman saves.
Snyder’s wife and co-executive producer Deborah Snyder makes a brief cameo in the film — physically this time, as a guest at Clark Kent’s funeral, rather than her name being on a boat like in Man of Steel.
Later, when Lex has Lois captive at the top of LexCorp Tower, he quotes lines from Nabokov’s Lolita at her — an interesting choice considering that one of the two major American motion pictures based on the book starred Jeremy Irons (Alfred) as the male lead.
Even Larry Fong, the film’s cinematographer, got in on the fun, as his is one of the names listed on the memorial for those who died during the Kryptonian attack during Man of Steel. And of course, screenwriter Chris Terrio’s name appears on a janitorial truck when KGBeast is kidnapping Lois.
Tim Rigby, a stuntman and driver on 300, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman, was represented as well in that he had a mailbox in Lois and Clark’s building.
NAIROMI
There are a few things here.
First off, Nairomi is in fact a fictional setting in the DC Universe — and while it might not have the long history of Qurac or Bialya, it was referenced in Batman #79 way back in 1953, where the Dark Knight encountered the Shah of Nairomi. In that story, he competed with Batman for the affections of Vicki Vale.
What’s arguably more significant about that scene, and has been largely overlooked, is the way it mirrors one of Superman’s early post-Crisis on Infinite Earths adventures — and one that reverberated through the first five or so years of the post-Crisis era.
In The Adventures of Superman #427, the Man of Steel decided that he didn’t trust the president of the aforementioned Qurac. He flew to the country to interrogate President Marlo about recent attacks in Metropolis.
When he arrives, Superman bursts directly into the presidential palace and pins Marlo to the wall. Soldiers try to stop him, but he melts their weapons with his heat-vision and dismantles a fair amount of their military infrastructure.
The event caused an international incident and got into a lot of questions about whether Superman should have a role in international politics. Superman realized that it wasn’t his place to shape the destiny of humanity and that people had to have free will.
The fact that so many of those high concepts were explored — albeit in a bit of a shallow way, since it only had the runtime of a movie and that wasn’t really the main point — indicates that it’s likely Snyder, Goyer, and Terrio had those stories in mind when crafting the African subplot.
THE JUSTICE LEAGUE
Yes, we get appearances by Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg.
They’re brief, but they’re there. All four of them are people Lex Luthor has apparently been keeping tabs on — but Wonder Woman is much more than a photo on a disc. Rather, she’s apparently been a superhero already, and retired, and is now coming back since the world is getting more and more out of control.
We get a little more from The Flash than the others, as well, but more on that later…!
FIRST APPEARANCES
We already mentioned how the Delta Charlie 27 police callsign was a nod to the first appearance of Batman.
Well, in Wallace Keefe’s apartment, we get a pretty decent look at a reinvention of the cover of Action Comics #1 — the first appearance of Superman — as seen above.
There’s also a nod to the first appearance of Lex Luthor right at the end of the Ultimate Cut. More on that later.
ACE CHEMICAL
Beyond that aforementioned “The End is Night” billboard, in the Gotham City skyline, you can see Ace Chemical, the company where The Joker was born.
The Ace Chemical Processing Plant, which first appeared in the comics in 1951, was where a criminal known as the Red Hood was knocked into a vat of chemicals by a young, inexperienced Batman, turning him into The Joker.
The plant was featured in 1989’s Batman (as Axis Chemicals instead of Ace), and will reportedly be a setting used in Suicide Squad later this year, as well.
This isn’t a new way to create environments in the DC movie universe; Man of Steel saw a number of companies hidden as background Easter eggs, including Wayne Enterprises, LexCorp and Blaze Comics, the publishers of Booster Gold’s print adventures.
KAHINA
In the movie, Kahina is not a super-anything; she’s the African woman who lied to Congress in order to set up the circumstances Lex hoped would lead to Superman’s demise.
However, Kahina is a female DC Comics character and member of The Others, along with Aquaman, The team was tasked with hunting down Black Manta, but failed in that pursuit.
Black Manta eventually reemerged and killed Kahina, though not before she had a prophetic vision of Arthur Curry’s future.
CELEBRITY GUESTS
As you’ve seen in movies like Ghostbusters, we get a lot of celebrity guests commenting on the events of the film.
It’s part of Snyder’s attempts to make the world feel real, and to make the film feel like it’s “what would happen if Superman came to our world.”
Who all is there as themselves?
LA news anchor Kent Shocknek, along with pundits and personalities like Anderson Cooper, Nancy Grace, Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, Charlie Rose, Soledad O’Brien, and more. Jon Stewart was even in the movie, but his scene was cut.
And, yes, it’s worth noting that this is an apparent nod to the “talking heads” that play a major role in crafting the world of The Dark Knight Returns.
EMMET VALE
No relation to Vicki.
That guy who took possession of the Kryptonite from the divers and apparently brought it to Lex? That’s Emmet Vale — the scientist who created Metallo, the Kryptonite-powered Cyborg who has become one of Superman’s most recognizable villains.
No idea whether this means they have plans to use Metallo in the future, although it wouldn’t be surprising to see him in the next solo Superman film, especially since he was strongly rumored in both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman.
KGBEAST
Anatoli Knyazev, the muscle Luthor used to do almost all of his dirty work (played by Captain America: the Winter Soldier baddie Callan Mulvey), is in fact a DC Comics supervillain of some note.
In the comics, he wears a mask and has body parts missing — so it’s possible we could see him return in an altered form following his exit of Batman v Superman by fire.
(That, too, was a nod to The Dark Knight Returns, since the whole “I’ll kill her, believe me!” “I believe you” exchange came from Frank Miller.)
In any event, he’s the KGBeast, a Russian villain known for squaring off against Batman, but who has recently become a foe of Aquaman and The Others.
Knyazev has appeared in episodes of Arrow, where he’s understood to have been instrumental in bringing Oliver Queen into the Russian Bratva.
STEVE TREVOR
That guy in the 1918 photo with Wonder Woman?
That’s Steve Trevor, played by Star Trek star Chris Pine.
He’ll apparently be her love interest in the Wonder Woman movie, but he’s presumably long dead by now, since he’s mortal and all, so it looks like once she gets to the modern day, Wonder Woman is free to either date another Justice Leaguer, or maybe just enjoy indepednence from men…!
GBS
During one of Senator Finch’s press conferences, she’s standing in front of a podium covered in microphones. Many of them have mic flags identifying their news outlets, and while most of them are real-world outlets, one of them is GBS.
That would be, the Metropolis-based 24-hour news network that has, over the years, counted Cat Grant and Clark Kent as employees.
The image above was taken from Superman’s interview with Cat Grant, conducted hours before he rushed off to face Doomsday and battle the monster to the death, in the comics.
IS THAT LUKE FOX?
One of our readers on Facebook (sorry! I can’t find the message!) suggested that the young black fighter Bruce Wayne helps in the fight club when he’s trying to track Knyazev could actually be Luke “Batwing” Fox, who has a background in MMA.
Given that this Batman has already gone through at least one Robin and has a long history prior to this film, it’s not impossible…!
…AND IS THAT VICKY VALE?
A lovely blonde woman named Vicky introduces Lex Luthor at his library benefit, prompting one of our readers to suggest it could be Vicky Vale.
Of course, in the comics she’s generally not blonde at all…but she was in Tim Burton’s Batman.
PROMETHEUS
Not only is Prometheus the name of a DC Comics villain…but the mythological story of Prometheus and the notion of man conquering a god was already invoked by Lex Luthor as an anti-Superman metaphor in Superman Returns.
RALLI’S DINER
Where did Martha Kent work before being abducted by Knyazev and company?
Ralli’s Diner.
That’s likely familiar to you post-Crisis Superman fans like me.
In the story “Metropolis 900 Mi.,” written and drawn by John Byrne in 1987’s Superman #9, Lex meets a waitress named Jenny Hubbard and offers her $1 million to “stay with him” in Metropolis for one month. He then goes back to his car, saying he’ll wait in his car for ten minutes for her to make her decision.
The readers, and Jenny, never find out what her final decision would have been because, after agonizing over the thought, Jenny finds that Lex has left early.
The kicker is when Lex tells his driver, Cynthia, that was the whole point. He only wanted to play a mind game and leave Jenny – and the many others he has played this game with in the past – with torturous, lingering doubt about the choice they might have made.
MERCY GRAVES
In the comic books and Superman animated series, Mercy Graves is Lex’s personal assistant and body guard, where she is portrayed as highly intelligent and experienced in hand-to-hand combat.
Of course, here, she seemingly dies along with dozens of others in the Capitol as a result of a bomb that Lex planted.
…but what if she didn’t? After all, it’s been widely theorized by comics fans that Mercy might be part Amazon.
S.T.A.R. LABS
According to the footage seen in Lex Luthor’s files, it appears as though Silas Stone was working at S.T.A.R. Labs when he used a Mother Box to make his mortally-wounded son into a cyborg to save his life.
More on the Mother Box in a minute…but S.T.A.R. Labs should be recognizable as the home of The Flash on The Flash.
MOTHERBOX
That device used to save Vic Stone’s life?
Pretty clearly a Mother Box.
Mother Boxes are New Gods technology — essentially living computers with a vast access to universal knowledge. And in the recent “New 52” reboot, Cyborg’s origin was retooled to include a Mother Box integrated into his tech, since the Justice League’s origin came during an attack by Darkseid and Apokolips. Traditionally they’ve been smaller, but in the recent reboot they were depicted more like actual boxes, about the size of the xeno-artifact Silas used on his son.
Later, when Lex Luthor is checking out the visual history of the universe or whatever he’s watching in the “Communion” scene, we see Steppenwolf surrounded by three Mother Boxes before Luthor is taken into custody.
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS
When Barry Allen seemingly pops out of space time to deliver a cryptic but urgent message to Batman regarding the fate of the world, that felt eerily like Crisis on Infinite Earths, when Barry — having already chosen to sacrifice his life and running through time and the Speed Force — popped up periodically to try and help his compatriots throughout the story. Batman was the first person he encountered.
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS
Let’s face it: this film is basically two comic book stories, shaken up and thrown together.
The first is Frank Miller’s seminal Batman miniseries, The Dark Knight Returns. Among other things, it involves an aging, semi-retired Batman who comes back with a more brutal approach and squares off against Superman while wearing an armored, Kryptonite-powered batsuit.
The one above is just one of at least a dozen little visual callbacks drawn directly from The Dark Knight Returns. The armor, the Bat-rifle used for grappling, the talking heads on TV throughout the film, the dessicated, nuked Superman restored by the sun and more all came from Miller’s book.
GRAFFITI
Whether it’s “Who watches the Watchmen?,” “The End Is Nigh,” or just anarchy symbols and question marks (referring, perhaps, to some of Batman’s better-known villains), there’s a LOT to unpack in the graffiti at the scene of the big Batman/Superman fight.
There also appear to be little “JO” and “KR” bits around that can be connected to be a Joker reference if you’d like.
THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN
…Here’s the other big story this adapts. The showdown with Doomsday took almost a full day and featured a half-dozen Justice Leaguers before Superman died in the comics, but that was in a much more fully-developed DC Universe than we have here.
SUPERMAN’S FUNERAL
The horse-drawn carriage, the massive crowds watching, and the flag-draped coffin? All of that could be seen in the issue of Superman: The Man of Steel where Superman’s funeral was held, following his epic battle with Doomsday.
(Above, by the way, that image shows Lois and Jimmy mourning alongside most of the Superman creative teams of the day.)
Another visual nod to the comics? On the coffin in the movie, instead of the wood finish and gold “S” shield seen in the comics, it’s a black coffin with a silver “S” shield — a coffin that matches the costume he would wear when he came back from the dead in The Reign of the Supermen.
1938
At one point, Perry White tells Clark Kent that “it’s not 1938 anymore” in response to his optimism and determination that the paper should stand for something.
In the movie, that’s the year the Daily Planet was founded — but in our world, that’s when Superman was created.
Action Comics #1, the issue in which Superman first appears, also gets an on-screen nod, in the form of one of the images on the wall of Wallace Keefe’s anti-Superman shrine. You can see Superman holding a car over his head and smashing it against a rock formation there, just as in Action Comics #1 from 1938.
THE DEAD ROBIN
When we see Robin’s costume in its memorial case, it appears to have been not only bronzed, but spray painted with mockery by The Joker.
Of course, in “A Death In the Family,” The Joker brutally murdered one of Batman’s Robins. In The Dark Knight Returns, which provided the aesthetic inspiration for this movie, that tragedy drove Batman into a long retirement, after which he came out somewhat less stable and significantly more brutal.
“I BELIEVE YOU”
There are a great many references to The Dark Knight Returns in this film, but this one in particular bears repeating.
At one point, a gunman threatens to kill a child if Batman comes any closer. Batman’s response, when the baddie says “believe it?”
“I believe you.” And then he takes him down. Just like he did to Knyazev when he was holding a gun to Martha Kent.
NEW GODS
The Parademons of Apokolips, as well as the Omega symbol used by Darkseid, both appear in Batman’s “Knightmare” sequence of dreams/fantasies/whatever.
They’re to warn Batman, and prepare the audience, that Darkseid is coming as a foe to the Justice League.
It’s also likely that’s who Lex later claims to have been paving the way for by killing Superman, saying “he’s coming, and he’s hungry,” likely in reference to Justice League villain Steppenwolf, and/or his nephew, Darkseid.
One of our readers also tells us that The Joker’s card is taped to one of the guns in the Knightmare sequence.
But that’s not all we get from that sequence…!
INJUSTICE
Injustice: Gods Among Us is the popular video game and then comic book series in which Superman, his will shattered by the death of Lois Lane, goes rogue and forms an army to help him take over Earth.
Obviously there were some pretty clear allusions to such an event taking place in this movie, and since Injustice probably reaches exponentially more people than the average comic, that’s likely no accident.
Which works well for everybody, considering that they just announced Injustice 2 is coming soon.
SHOT FOR SHOT
The Dark Knight Return wasn’t the only comic to get basically shot-for-shot homages in this film (although it was far and away the most common).
Check out this meme for some more examples from Alex Ross’s Superman: Peace on Earth.
NICHOLSON TERMINAL AND DOCK COMPANY
When Batman is chasing down the Kryptonite smugglers on the docks, what’s the name on the side of a building, big as life? “Nicholson Terminal and Dock Company.”
That’s likely a nod to Jack Nicholson, whose turn as The Joker was the first to really embrace the darkness and violence that had been bred into the character from Neal Adams’s 1970s reinvention of the Batman mythology forward.
(And yes, I specifically chose the image where he was on the water.)
WATERFALL
Throughout Batman’s history, many incarnations of the character have entered the Batcave through a waterfall. Sometimes it’s real, sometimes it’s an illusion, sometimes it’s directly into the cave and sometimes it’s a little more complicated.
This time, the “waterfall” was an effect created when Bruce Wayne drove down a ramp across a reservoir on his property. The Batmobile skidded down the wet road and into a long corridor that brought it to the cave.
It — like so much of Bruce Wayne’s personal property in this movie — is a great update of the classics, allowing Snyder to reinvent the wheel without totally abandoning what people expect.
SENATOR PURRINGTON
Senator Purrington is in fact a real U.S. Senator.
No, his name isn’t actually Purrington, but the man who sat next to Holly Hunter’s Senator Finch in the Superman hearings (and presumably got blown up) is U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-MA, a famous Bat-fan.
“We’ve never had Superman as a witness,” Leahy joked with local media. “And we’ve never had quite as much excitement as you’re going to see in this hearing [in the movie].”
Leahy has previously appeared in Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as lending his voice to an episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
MY WORLD
The phrase “my world” is a recurring refrain in the film — always from Superman or those directly around him.
“It did on my world,” he responds to Lois when she tells him that the logo on his chest means something to people.
“She was my world,” Clark says of Lois — both to Batman in the Knightmare sequence, and to Lois herself just before he sacrifices himself to Doomsday. Jonathan Kent also says the same about Martha.
“He’s from another world — my world,” Superman says of Doomsday when Wonder Woman wonders what it is.
“This is my world,” Superman tells Lois before charging into battle against Doomsday. The song in the soundtrack is also titled “This Is My World.”
Funny enough, Batman — terrified of and furious at aliens — never says it.
KANDOR
The Kryptonian Scout Ship identifies General Zod’s home as being Kandor.
In the comics, Kandor is a city on Krypton which was eventually kidnapped by Brainiac, shrunk and hidden away in a “bottle” for observation.
In the comics, both Zod and Jax-Ur, who was refrenced in Man of Steel, lived in Kandor at one point. It was also briefly used (in miniaturized form) as a base of operations for Rip Hunter and Supernova during 52.
TO THE MOUNTAINTOPS
When Clark decides that he needs to rethink his approach to being Superman, he does so…high atop remote, snow-covered mountains.
That’s not an entirely uncommon place for Superman to go and think.
In Superman #59 in the ’90s, that’s where Superman and Lois had a heart to heart about what it meant for their relationship that she and Clark had recently become engaged — and then he’d revealed to her that he was Superman.
THE LANG FARM
Apparently, when Jonathan Kent was young, he saved his farm from a flood, only to inadvertently cause the same thing to happen to the Lang farm down the way.
This reminds me of — but might not be totally identical to — a story Clark told in Superman: The Doomsday Wars. I want to say they even flashed back and showed some of the cows suffering, in the way that Jonathan talks about in the movie.
TONGA TRENCH
The footage of Aquaman in the files from Lexcorp is listed as having been shot at the Tonga Trench.
No real value in terms of the DCU, but it could tell us something about the Aquaman movie.
The Tonga Trench is a real place in the South Pacific, which lines up with the tattoos and some of the mythology that Jason Momoa has talked about playing a role in the film.
6-1982
The Mother Box recovered by S.T.A.R. Labs: Silas Stone refers to it as “USGov Item #6-1982” or something like that.
June 1982 was the first time Cyborg ever had a solo comic with his name on the cover — Tales of the New Teen Titans #1, which detailed his origin.
ANARCHY
There was SO MUCH “anarchy” graffiti it’s really hard not to imagine that Lonnie Machlan had been there.
A longtime villain and sometime antihero in the Batman family of characters, Machlan recently appeared on Arrow.
And, yeah, the Riddler-style question mark everyone spotted in the trailers.
MMMM-TRR-PLSS!
When Doomsday stops his fight with Superman to inspect the Superman statue in Heroes Park, it seemed very reminiscent of the moment in the comics when Doomsday first displayed real intellect — when he spotted a sign for Metropolis and connected it to an earlier TV ad he’d seen of a man shouting threats (it was a wrestling special).
METROPOLIS 8 NEWS
Metropolis 8 News, pictured reporting from outside of the Scout Ship site when Doomsday broke free, isn’t a nod to the comics (that I can remember), but the news show was on site during the events of Man of Steel.
It’s the network where Glen Woodburn got screen time spreading Lois’s secrets after Zod’s ultimatum was delivered.
Slide 46
From The Dark Knight Returns.
In that story, Superman is emaciated and near-skeletal when struck by a nuclear bomb, until he’s rapidly replenished by the sun.
Also worth noting: that sequence has a “mother… mother…” utterance from Superman, which might have served as the inspiration for the much-discussed “Martha” moment.
JENET KLYBURN
No, after all those rumors, Jena Malone was not Barbara Gordon, or Carrie Kelley, or the second gunman on the grassy knoll.
She played the role of Jenet Klyburn, a S.T.A.R. Labs scientist who was advising Lois on matters pertaining to her xenomineral bullets.
While Kylburn first appeared way back in Superman #304, and she did appear on the 1988 Superman cartoons, she’s not a major character by any stretch and didn’t even play a big role in the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths era when Superman was always hanging around S.T.A.R. Labs.
STRYKER’S ISLAND
While here it was just a convenient offshore staging ground for the battle with Doomsday — “it’s uninhabited!” the military exposits — Stryker’s Island is a prison in the DC Universe, named (obviously) for Riker’s island in real life, although its look and feel has always seemed a little more Alcatraz to me.
It’s one of a handful of often-reused superhuman prisons.
ADVENTURES #498
When Superman dies in the film, he falls to the ground with his arms partially out. It’s not quite the Christ pose that you might expect from Snyder, who has always been heavy on his Messianic imagery with Superman.
Rather, it seems to be a nod to The Adventures of Superman #498, which featured a famous image of Superman’s body ostensibly taken by Jimmy Olsen (the actual cover was by Tom Grummett).
In the image, as in the film, his arms are splayed a bit away from his body with one hand closed and one open, and his right leg straight while the left is curled in toward the right one.
The fact that the camera viewed him upside down, not unlike the cover to Adventures #498 did, made the reference feel even more overt.
We also got a few little nods to the Death of Superman story, as Superman gives Lois a final, emotional good-bye and then she cradles his dead body after the battle with Doomsday.
MEMORIAL IN THE STREET
In the comics, there was a plaque built into the street on the place Superman fell defending the city against Doomsday.
In Adventures of Superman #500, the Cyborg Superman destroyed the monument to announce that “he” was back.
FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND
Besides the aforementioned cameo by Deborah Snyder, there were some other familiar faces in Smallville’s funeral for Clark Kent.
It’s not clear whether the two of them know that the other is aware, but the only two Smallville citizens (besides Martha Kent) whom we know are aware that Clark is Superman are Pete Ross and Father Leone, seen talking amongst themselves at the wake.
Father Leone delivers the eulogy, which foreshadows the events of Justice League by saying that the dead shall rise again, from Isaiah 26:19: “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.”
The credits also list Lana, but I didn’t see or at least reconize her.
BELLE REVE
Fans online noticed that Lex Luthor was thrown into Belle Reve at the end of the movie.
Not only is that a prison familiar to fans of the comics — but it’s the one where the Suicide Squad are recruited from in this summer’s movie.
We’ll see if he gets that rumored cameo, though, since obviously the Squad will be operating out of Belle Reve, not Arkham, where Batman promises to send Lex.
PRISON NUMBERS
If an Easter egg exists only in a director’s cut, and not the theatrical cut of a movie, does it still count?
We vote “hell yes,” especially when it’s a pretty cool one.
On Lex Luthor’s prison uniform at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it’s been much-discussed that his prisoner number ends in TK-421, a Star Wars reference to the Stormtrooper who abandoned his post to investigate a noise on the Millenium Falcon in A New Hope.
This is one of those Easter eggs that got spotted right away when Batman v Superman hit theaters, and not really a surprise — but what’s interesting is that there’s a line of dialogue in the just-released Ultimate Cut of the film that references Luthor as having a different prisoner number entirely — and one that has an entirely different Easter egg baked into it.
Just before Batman arrives to hassle Luthor at the end of the movie, a guard rousts the criminal, callinghim prisoner “AC23-1940,” and saying that the warden wants a word with him.
This is, of course, just before the lights go out, the prison staff vanishes, and Batman reveals that he’s going to have Luthor relocated to Arkham Asylum.
Even if you didn’t specifically know the piece of trivia, many comics fans could probably guess what that “new” prisoner number means: Lex Luthor’s first appearance in the comic books took place in Action Comics #23, cover dated April 1940. This, along with a wink-and-a-nod reference to Superman’s first appearance in the form of an image of the Man of Steel lifting a car over his head on the wall of Wallace Keefe’s apartment, means that we were getting some pretty decent Golden Age nods in the course of the movie.
PING. PING. PING.
What if the “dingdingdingdingding” that Lex is doing at the end of the movie isn’t just a “ding-dong, the witch is dead” thing…but an impersonation of a Mother Box, which in the comics make a near-constant “Ping. Ping. Ping.” noise when active?
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Image Courtesy of Warner Bros.
