9 Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Easter Eggs You Might Have Missed

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episodes 1-2, “Amazing Fantasy” and “The Parker Luck.” Spider-Man catches thieves just like flies, but did you catch these Easter eggs? Marvel Animation’s newest series has swung onto Disney+, introducing an alternate version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which a 15-year-old Peter Parker (voiced by Hudson Thames) is mentored by the not-yet-Green Goblin Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo) instead of Tony Stark when he accepts an internship at Oscorp.

Months after the fateful spider’s bite that grants the teenager great power — the result of an encounter between a symbiotic alien (Kellen Goff) and sorcerer Doctor Strange (Robin Atkin Downes) — the series picks up just before the (altered) events of the 2016 Marvel Studios movie Captain America: Civil War, where Iron Man recruits the rookie superhero during a schism between the Avengers.

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While this isn’t the exact MCU from the movies, there are obvious similarities: Iron Man is active (clad in old school, Steve Ditko-inspired red-and-gold armor), and Avengers Tower looms large in the skyline over Peter’s neighborhood of Queens. Here, we break down a few of the less obvious nods to the wider Spider-Verse in these first two episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Amazing Fantasy

Besides the premiere episode’s title referring to Spider-Man’s first appearance in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15 by co-creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the comic that Peter fell asleep reading is Amazing Adult Fantasy #14: the penultimate issue of Marvel’s anthology series that was retitled Amazing Fantasy for its final issue. (While the book was canceled, its breakout superhero went on to star in his own solo series: The Amazing Spider-Man.)

Civil War

The premiere includes multiple homages to Captain America: Civil War. When Spider-Man (wearing his homemade suit) stops a runaway van from crashing into a bus full of civilians, it’s the same spectacular feat that a bystander captured on video and is later played by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) when he meets Peter Parker (Tom Holland) for the first time in his Queens apartment.

The end of the first episode recreates Peter’s entrance in Civil War, right down to using the song “Left Hand Free” by alt-J. Except this time, the “crazy car” parked out front belongs to billionaire industrialist Norman Osborn — not Tony Stark — who is meeting with Peter’s Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren).

Spider-Suits

In Peter’s notebook containing different Spider-Man mask concepts, the style of drawings resemble two artists in particular: John Romita Sr. — who replaced Ditko as the regular artist on Amazing Spider-Man starting with 1966’s issue #39, the first to unmask the Green Goblin as Norman Osborn — and Mark Bagley, a fellow Amazing artist whose bigger, bug-eyed lenses and more bulbous head defined the Ultimate Spider-Man run of the 2000s.

The comic book-style opening credits sequence — which is set to “Neighbor Like Me” by The Math Club (featuring Relaye and Melo Makes Music), remixing the theme song of the classic 1967 Spider-Man animated series — also features nods to some of Spider-Man’s alternate costumes throughout the years.

The lens-less mask is a look that Spider-Man briefly adopted in 1972’s Amazing Spider-Man #113-116. When he was unmasked by Doctor Octopus during a fight, Spidey was forced to temporarily replace his mask with a cheap costume version without his lenses.

Alternative costumes shown include the stealth suit Spider-Man wore during the “Big Time” storyline (Amazing Spider-Man #648-654) with a big, green chest spider; a nod to Steve Ditko’s more narrow-eyed Spider-Man mask; what appears to be a homage to the Electro-Proof suit, padded and insulated to withstand the electric supervillain; the original Scarlet Spider costume, worn by the clone Ben Reilly, that debuted in the pages of 1994’s Web of Spider-Man #118; and finally, the Prodigy, Hornet, and Dusk identities that Spider-Man briefly adopted during his Norman Osborn-caused Identity Crisis spanning issues of Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, and Spectacular Spider-Man.

Pop Culture References

When Stevie Sherman livestreams a thug’s attack on Spider-Man, the comments aren’t kind to Spidey’s makeshift costume. “Kick his ass, Sea-Bass!,” reads one follower’s reply, a line from the Jim Carrey-Jeff Daniels comedy Dumb and Dumber. Comments checkle05: “u got beat up by a guy wearing hockey pads, lmao,” a likely reference to Batman’s “I’m not wearing hockey pads” response in 2008’s The Dark Knight. The user advertising their channel with “better content” is from user Screwball, a live-streaming “supervillain” and a master of parkour who first appeared in 2008’s Amazing Spider-Man #559.

Peter’s Classmates

RELATED: The Peter Parker Origin Story You Didn’t See in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

After they’re forced to attend the sports-oriented Rockford T. Bales High School instead of the S.T.E.M.-oriented Midtown High School of Science and Technology, Peter and his best friend, Nico Minoru (Grace Song), both crush on the same girl: Pearl Pangan (Cathy Ang), who used to live in Peter’s building and babysit him when he was younger (she’s three years his senior). Her boyfriend is star quarterback and football captain Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd), who becomes Peter’s lab partner.

In the comics, Nico is a member of the Runaways: the children of the Los Angeles-based supervillain group known as the Pride. The daughter of the dark wizard Tina Minoru, Nico uses blood magic and the mystical Staff of One to cast spells. Lonnie’s comic counterpart was a classmate of future Daily Bugle editor Robbie Robertson (rather than Peter’s), who turned to a life of crime as the Harlem-based gangster called “Tombstone” even before he was exposed to a chemical compound that made his skin rock hard as his name.

Pearl also has a superhero counterpart in Marvel’s comics, where she debuted in 2019: Wave, a water-wielding Filipino superhero and a member of the Agents of Atlas alongside the likes of Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel and Cindy Moon/Silk.

The Oscorp Think Tank

Peter’s internship at Oscorp is populated with characters from the Spider-Man mythos and the wider Marvel Universe. His fellow interns include Asha (Erica Luttrell), Amadeus Cho (Aleks Le), and Jeanne Foucault (Anjali Kuanpaneni); their various projects are under the supervision of Oscorp’s Dr. Bentley Wittman (Paul F. Tompkins) and Dr. Carla Connors (Zehra Fazal).

In the comics, the Wakandan Asha attended Wakanda’s School for Alternative Studies and has the power to reflect or absorb light to disappear at will; Jeanne is Finesse, an attendee of Avengers Academy, a polymath able to learn skills, languages, and other abilities at incredible speeds; and Amadeus is a super-genius who used gamma energy to turn himself into the super-strong, Hulk-like hero Brawn.

Dr. Carla Connors is a gender-swapped Dr. Curt Connors, an amputee who becomes the Spider-Man villain the Lizard after studying reptilian molecular biology and using a serum to regenerate his lost arm. And Wittman, primarily an enemy of the Human Torch and the Fantastic Four, is a brilliant inventor who was dubbed the “Wizard” for his scientific feats that seemed to be achieved by magic. As the leader of the Frightful Four, the Wizard uses an arsenal of weapons that includes power gloves and anti-gravity discs.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Movies

When Wittman tells Asha to see “the head of Aerospace Technologies,” this is a reference to 2002’s Spider-Man. In that movie, Quest Aerospace is the big business rival of Norman Osborn’s (Willem Dafoe) Oscorp Industries and competitor for a U.S. military contract.

Just before Spider-Man returns home (and finds the discarded DVD player on a dumpster), he webs up a thief who stole from a pizza restaurant. When he returns the stolen money, a sign displayed prominently in the window reads: “Pizza Time.” It’s a fan-favorite (and often memed) line from 2004’s Spider-Man 2, where Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) delivers pizza (until he’s fired).

Roxxon Oil

Upon learning that Peter accepted an internship at Oscorp to get his hands on cool technology and next-gen robotics, the anti-corporate Nico tells her best friend, “If you take a side gig at Roxxon Oil, I’m staging an intervention.” The Roxxon Corporation is a major player in both the MCU and the Marvel Comics universe, appearing or mentioned in everything from Iron Man to Agent Carter, Daredevil, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Echo; in the comics, the Roxxon Oil Company’s (later Roxxon Energy Corp.) illicit actions have led to the creation of the Iron Man villain Sunturion and the Spider-Man villain Will O’ the Wisp, and the company in recent years has been in the control of the Thor villains Dario Agger, a.k.a. the Minotaur, and the Asgardian Amora the Enchantress.

Crusher Hogan

The opening credits include a glimpse of a disguised Peter Parker’s wrestling match with Joseph “Crusher” Hogan, who debuted in Amazing Fantasy #15 as the wrestler who Peter sees as an opportunity to test his power and earn cash by staying in the ring with Hogan for three minutes. (Issue #2 of Marvel’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man prequel comic book, by writer Christos Cage and artist Eric Gapstur, shows the fight in full, and ends with the web-masked marvel victorious over the former heavyweight champion in a backyard wrestling tournament.) Crusher appears again briefly on the television in episode 2 just after Peter is introduced to Dr. Connors.

The first two episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are now streaming on Disney+, with multiple new episodes dropping weekly on Wednesdays through Feb. 19.