Shazam! is a little over a week away from debuting in theaters, and early reviews seem to indicate that it will be a genuine hit for DC Films. While fans already spend their time speculating about which Easter eggs make their way into the film, a slightly more obscure nod might be hiding in plain sight.
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Earlier this month, Reddit user EddyTheMartian pointed out a particular screenshot from the most recent Shazam! trailer, in which the titular hero (played by Zachary Levi) can be seen flexing his newly-superheroic muscles. As their post points out, that flex happens to look a lot like the iconic pose performed by beloved cartoon character Johnny Bravo.
Granted, there’s no telling if fourteen-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel) would canonically even know Johnny Bravo, seeing as the majority of the series aired from 1997 to 2004, before he would have been born. But the nod – intentional or not – is a pretty amusing one, especially since Johnny Bravo technically also exists under the Warner Bros. umbrella.
As early reviews have pointed out, there will be no shortage of amusing tongue-in-cheek references in Shazam!, given the place that it has within the larger DC Extended Universe.
“Our movie takes place very squarely in the DC Universe.” Levi said in an interview last year. “In fact, I would argue that we’re kind of the most self-aware of it because the movies that we all watch — I mean, Aquaman and Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman — they’re all basically documentaries in their world. These things, these are all real events that have happened. Batman and Superman fighting, Superman saving all of Metropolis, whilst simultaneously destroying the entire city — that all really happened.”
“It’s a fun movie,” director David F. Sandberg previously explained. “It sounds like a pure comedy, but it touches on some pretty dark subjects… I like to compare it to 80s movies like Goonies, like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future. Like, it’s a family kind of movie, it’s not dark and grim.”
Upcoming DC films include Shazam! on April 5th, Joker on October 10th, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on February 7, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5, 2020, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.
