‘The Flash’: Easter Eggs and References in “All Doll’d Up”

Tonight’s episode of The Flash may have seen the heroes deal with one if its creepiest villains yet with Rag Doll, but it was also packed with a bunch of clever Easter eggs.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of The Flash, “Rag Doll”, below.

If you could get past the decidedly intense creepiness of Rag Doll, there were plenty of clever Easter eggs packed into tonight’s episode covering everything from comic book canon to Spider-Man to even a little bit of science fiction and science fact. Here’s the breakdown.

Grodans

When trying to bargain with Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) to get some work done around the West house, Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) offers to tell her stories about her father that didn’t make it to the museum — including one involving the Grodans. In comics, the Grodans are Golden Giants, a prehistoric, strongly-built humanoid race who have golden skin and are, well, giants. They first appeared in The Flash #120 from 1961 where they are discovered by Barry and Wally West when an earthquake combined with Barry’s vibration accidentally sent him into the past. It’s worth noting they were later brought to modern day Keystone City by Abra Kadabra during a Rogue attack.

Phil LaMarr

While Rag Doll/Peter Merkel is physically portrayed by the real-life contortionist Troy James, the extra creepy character is voiced by someone very familiar to DC fans: Phil LaMarr. LaMarr, who has provided the voice for numerous characters in both the DC and Marvel animated worlds among other voicework, posted on Twitter tonight that he had an idea of what Rag Doll might sound like — meaning him.

Dale Eaglesham

When Rag Doll kidnaps Barry, he takes him to the roof of the Eaglesham apartment building. That apartment building name is itself an Easter egg referring to Dale Eaglesham, one of the co-creators of the Peter Merkel Jr. version of Rag Doll in comics. Eaglesham created the character, along with Gail Simone, as part of the Villains United miniseries.

Oh, just something Ralph saw in a comic book

With Barry kidnapped, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) out of commission, Sherloque (Tom Cavanagh) having broken the breaching device, and Nora not answering calls, Ralph (Hartley Sawyer) steps up to be the hero. He and Iris head off to save Barry, but instead of driving Ralph wants to try something he saw in the comics: swinging between buildings. That’s right, Ralph went full Spider-Man and while it’s largely coincidence, considering the recent death of Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee, it’s an Easter egg that feels extra fitting.

Robbie, Hal, Colossus, and Data

Cisco figured out tonight that they could repurpose The Thinker’s four satellites from The Enlightenment and, upon successfully converting them to the side of good he named them: Robbie, Hal, Colossus, and Data — and you can bet those are clever references. Hal is a direct reference to the rogue computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey (incidentally, the actor who voiced Hal also passed away recently). Colossus is likely a reference to Colossus: The Forbin Project, a 1970 science fiction thriller film about an advanced defense system that becomes sentient — and takes over the world. Data is a likely reference to the Star Trek: The Next Generation character of the same day and Robbie? That’s a short story by Isaac Asimov about a robot of the same name that centers on the misplaced technophobia about robots — Robbie isn’t evil, the way most robots were portrayed in literature at the time. It’s interesting, though, that Cisco named the satellites after two “bad” computers and two “good” ones.

Did you catch any Easter eggs that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.