‘The Flash’: Easter Eggs and Other Things You Might Have Missed In “Mixed Signals”

November 9, 2017, 4:53pm

Barry Allen is officially back in action tonight on The Flash and it’s not just the Scarlet Speedster who is going top speed. The CW show is wasting no time hitting the cultural references with some fun Easter eggs in tonight’s episode.

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Mild spoilers for The Flash the episode ‘Mixed Signals’, below.

The first big cultural Easter egg happens close to the beginning of the episode. Barry comes into the scene dressed in his socks, boxer shorts, and button-down shirt singing Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock N Roll” into a pancake turner. If the scene looks familiar to you it’s because it’s a nod to the 1983 Tom Cruise movie Risky Business. In the movie, Cruise’s wealthy high school student Joel Goodson has a little too much fun when his parents go out of town. On his first night of parentless freedom, he gets a little drunk, cranks up the stereo and dances around in his boxers to “Old Time Rock and Roll.” While Barry isn’t drunk or running amok alone in the apartment, he definitely has the same sense of freedom after having been stuck in the Speed Force.

For as fun as Barry singing and dancing is, though, this isn’t the only Easter egg in tonight’s episode. Read on for more clever pop culture references in ‘Mixed Signals.’

‘Game of Thrones’

Even with Barry’s exuberance at being back home there are things he has missed out on in his absence which is where the second big cultural Easter egg of the night comes in. After making a giant breakfast and apparently taking care of every single chore that he could possibly tackle before Iris wakes up, Barry relaxes on the couch to get caught up on some of his favorite television shows — all six months’ worth, all at once. Cisco made him a special, sped up tape of everything Barry missed while he was gone and it turns out that Barry is a Game of Thrones fan. We briefly see the show’s direwolf logo as well as get to see Barry react to the Jon Snow situation.

“Jon Snow died,” Barry says sadly before a moment later excitedly noting “oh! He’s alive!”

‘Silicon Valley’

The third big pop culture reference in tonight’s episode, however, isn’t quite as obvious as Risky Business and Game of Thrones. After narrowly saving Joe from Ramsey Deacon’s attempt at killing his former business associate, Cisco and Barry discuss how Deacon reminds them of Richard on Silicon Valley, an HBO series that follows a group of young software programmers trying to strike gold in California’s Silicon Valley. Richard, much like Deacon in the episode, is a software designer. Barry feels like the hacker bad guy Team Flash is dealing with reminds him more of another Silicon Valley character, Guilfoyle while Cisco thinks he’s more like the character Erlich.

It’s a subtle reference that many won’t catch unless they also happen to watch Silicon Valley, but if you missed it, don’t worry. Iris quickly puts the boys in their places and gets them back to working trying to figure out if Deacon really is their metahuman villain and, if so, who his next target is.