Pop culture, comics, and other references and Easter eggs are never in short supply on The Flash.
Videos by ComicBook.com
This week, as the fourth season kicked off, there were a lot of things to keep track of, but a few in particular stuck out at us (and, based on our reading of Twitter, to fans as well.
Let’s take a trip down the path of what cool things you might have missed on tonights’ premiere of The Flash…!
Season 1
We won’t go into too much depth here, since we already talked about this at some length elsewhere…
…but yeah, there were a bunch of references and callbacks to the first season of The Flash in tonight’s episode.
Some were obvious and some were subtle. Some, like the return of “run, Barry, run,” were less specific and more general things that reference the earlier episodes. But the end message is, the movie is headed back in the direction of the early days.
Cisco’s slang (part 1)
When Caitlin says that Barry’s cipher is “all Greek to me,” Cisco has an epiphany.
“Great Caesar’s Ghost!” he cries out — a line that, by the way, also wormed its way into tonight’s episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
That line, of course, is famous for frequently being used by Clark Kent’s veteran and long-suffering editor, Perry White.
Cisco’s slang (part 2)
After he manages to crack the algorithm to translate the text in question, rather than “eureka” or something like that, Cisco cries out “excelsior!”
This is not the first time The Flash (or Cisco) has made a Stan Lee reference, but it never gets old.
“Excelsior” is one of Stan’s favorite nonsense words, basically, that he used to punctuate old letter columns and the like and still uses to this day in public appearances and his movie cameos.
Frosty
What is it about having cold powers that just makes you unable to resist the urge to make bad puns?
We saw it with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mister Freeze; we saw it with Captain Cold on The Flash and later Legends of Tomorrow…
…now it’s Caitlin.
“You wouldn’t like me when I’m frosty?” Really?
Well, anyway, that’s two Marvel references in an episode of The Flash, so that’s something.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
In one scene, before Cisco and Caitlin have their breakthrough, the pair are working together to try to figure out if there is any way of helping Barry.
Caitlin has made two basic theories: that he has a kind of aphasia and is using words incorrectly…or that Barry has dementia brought on by spending essentially infinite time inside of the Speed Force.
Cisco, of course, latches onto the first possibility becuase it seems like there is more possibility of a recovery there…and when he begins to try and decode the writing Barry is leaving everywhere, he says something about Barry trying to communicate to the team the secrets of “life, the universe, and everything.”
Caitlin counters with a question about whether Barry is doing everything he is doing just to tell them “42.”
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
Nobody knows the question, and the search for it is the central conflict of the first (of five, or six, or possibly even seven, depending on how you count them) novels in the series.
