‘The Flash’: Easter Eggs and References in “The Death of Vibe”

Tonight on The Flash, we got “The Death of Vibe.”

That might sound ominous, but…well, yeah, it’s ominous. Complete with a creepy slasher-style villain in Cicada.

Along the way, as these shows generally do, we got plenty of winks and nods, not just to other parts of the DC Universe but to the wider culture.

So…check out what we noticed, and let us know in the comments below (or on Twitter @comicbook and @russburlingame) if we missed anything…!

“The Death of Vibe”

With “The Death of Vibe” as your title, you just know that the episode is almost certain not to deliver on that promise.

(Not that, in this case, that’s a bad thing.)

In this case, the death of Vibe refers more to the idea of killing off his secret identity so that he can continue to live without being hunted. There have been numerous variations on this idea in the comics over the years, notably including “The Death of Clark Kent,” in which a supervillain was targeting Clark rather than Superman, and in order to protect his loved ones, Kal-El had to briefly abandon the Clark Kent identity and pretend the reporter was dead.

In execution — the fact that the villain literally blew something up and then believed that he had succeeded in killing the hero — this feels a bit like The Amazing Spider-Man #347, in which Spidey realizes that, stranded on a desert island, he has little hope of defeating Venom in a one-on-one battle and opts to fake his own death so that Venom can be “at peace” and leave him alone.

The Flash Museum

In this episode, we get confirmation that by 2032, the current STAR Labs building is the home of the Flash Museum.

Check out some more details of our first look at the iconic building here.

Floyd Belkin

Floyd Belkin, Cicada’s first victim in XS’s timeline, is a DC hero and how dare The Flash do him like that?

Belkin is the Legion of Super-Heroes member known as Arm-Fall-Off Boy, whose powers are…

…well, it’s right there on the tin, isn’t it?

Created by Gerard Jones and Curt Swan, the character first appeared in 1989 and has the ability to remove his own limbs and then use them as weapons.

Later, he would be reinvented with the name Splitter. Between the two identities, he only had a handful of appearances. He did appear on the Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes animated series.

Herr Wells

Herr Wells, better known as  Harrison Wolfgang Wells, is a resident of Earth-12 and a member of the Council of Wells.

He first appeared in the season four episode “When Harry Met Harry” and later reappeared in “Harry and the Harrisons,” and was part of the mission to decode The Thinker’s true identity.

Herr Wells holds four PhD’s and wrote the book Everything is Meaningless, so Why Did I Buy This Book?.

Sherloque Wells

Sherloque Wells was introduced in this week’s episode, using a fog reminiscent of London’s and a shadowy profile not unlike those you might see on the covers of Sherlock Holmes books.

…And, yes, this does not go entirely uncommented-upon, as Cisco calls him “Holmes” at one point in the episode.

Like other Wellses, he appears to have more going on than you would think, since he comes in with a multiversal reputation as a genius but turns out to be a slacker with a slew of bad debt.

Really makes you wonder how Earth-1’s Wells managed to be, by all appearances, pretty genuine up until the point where he was murdered and replaced by Thawne. Maybe it’s the wife who was the key to him achieving his potential?

Allons-y

At one point, Sherloque Wells says “Allons-y.” While this is actually not an unusual thing for a French person to say, it is almost certainly used in this case as a reference to Doctor Who.

This is far from the first — more like the hundredth — Doctor Who reference to appear on The Flash.

Here’s the rundown from the Doctor Who Fandom Wiki:

Allons-y, according to the Tenth Doctor, was French for “Let’s go”. (TV: Midnight) It was one of the Tenth Doctor’s favourite sayings; he especially wanted to say, “Allons-y, Alonso”, (TV: Army of Ghosts) which he eventually said to Alonso Frame. (TV: Voyage of the Damned) The Twelfth Doctor once claimed that he was able to say it due to his precise control over the TARDIS translation circuits. (COMIC: Four Doctors)

It saved his life on Midnight by proving that the being possessing Sky Silvestry had stolen his words. (TV: Midnight)

The Tenth Doctor yelled the phrase as he, along with twelve other incarnations, combined the power of their TARDISes to use a stasis cube to freeze Gallifrey in a pocket universe. This, combined with the Eleventh Doctor’s “geronimo!”, came to the irritation of the War Doctor. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

STAR Labs Stock Sale?

When Sherloque Wells needs money, they sell off some of STAR Labs’s stock.

This goes largley unremarked-upon, although it seems like a huge move for the show.

The question of how STAR Labs makes any money when it has a skeleton crew who seem to work only to prop up Team Flash has been a running joke among fans, and it now seems likely to go from the realm of internet joke to actual plot development, since other stockholders will likely mean other people wanting to know what is going on with their money.

(Also, how does Sherloque use Earth-1 money on his home world?)

What I Started

Given that his costume and attitude have already got fans comparing Cicada to Star Wars villain Darth Vader, it is kind of funny that the “finish what I started” line he delivers to Joe can be pretty easily compared to the scene above from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

David Hersh

It is not clear whether David Hersh is meant to be anybody in specific. There does not appear to be a corollary character in the DC Comics canon.

That said, there was an episode of The Flash — “Fury Rogue” — that was written by a Jeff Hersh, so maybe it’s a nod to him?

52

It has been a while since we really paid attention to all of the hidden 52s in place on The Flash and Arrow — and frankly it has been a while since they were actually used as Easter eggs.

Recently the News 52 logo showed up on Arrow again, though, and tonight in the pipeline we saw the “52” on the doorway.

This is a set we have seen used before, so it is hardly new, but since the frequency of 52s has decreased quite a bit recently it seemed worth mentioning.

Geography

After Vibe falls through a breach with Cicada and finds himself lost, he calls in to Team Flash for help.

After he says that he is in a forest, Caitlin muses that there are “over 14 million acres of forest in this state alone.”

Given that Central City is a fictional city, it is likely that the geography of a world where Metropolis and Star City exists is slightly different than our own.

Still, it is worth noting that the three states in the United States with more than 14 million acres of forest and less than 15 million are Florida, Tennessee, and Louisiana, according to Statemaster.

Michael Myers

At one point, Cisco refers to the masked, knife-wielding Cicada in the woods as “Michael Myers.”

That seems aptly timed, considering that we are about a week away from Halloween and just days after the release of the latest Halloween movie.