#ICYMI: 10 of the Best ‘Captain Marvel’ Easter Eggs

Everyone loves a good Easter Egg hunt. While you were swimming among the ’90s references and schmaltzy jokes in Captain Marvel, you may have missed quite a few skillful placements of eggs and homages throughout the movie. This isn’t a review. This isn’t a rumination. All you find here are the eggs you zoomed by during the festivities.

Marvel is getting so much better at their bunny hopping game. Here are several examples.

*WARNING: Spoilers Appear Along this Easter Trail. You’ve Been Warned**

1. Mr. Lee and His ‘Mallrats.’

Let’s just get this out of the way–that cameo was perfect. It wasn’t the best in terms of comedy and hijinks. (We have a list for that mystery.) However, in all the cameos, none has been so appropriate and fitting as this one.

There he is, on the subway, reading a script from Kevin Smith’s movie Mallrats, in which he had a cameo playing himself. Many fans still hearken his famous words, “Trust me. True believer.”

And, as if that wasn’t enough, watch this again and look carefully at Brie Larson’s smirk of both appreciation and adoration. He hadn’t passed on the Excelsior plain yet, and still, that look spoke to us all. Absolutely magical and perfect for “the man.”

2. Starforce

It’s why Zack Snyder was so cherished. It’s why Kevin Feige is the best. Only comic fans can make great comic book movies. Starforce opens up the movie as the elite Kree military team of operatives. The roots are deep in Marvel canon and the movie even got the names, personalities, and classic Kree colors correct.

3. Goose

He is not your average puddy-tat. He is also not named after a bird, but a Wookie. The original cat has a place in canon, but his name was “Chewie.” However, there’s this company that owns Marvel and Star Wars, so with Carol being a pilot and this movie based in the ’90s, “Goose” it is. That said, the cat was awesome and the squid hurling is an accurate portrayal of Flerkenism.  Lovely.

4. The 1990s

Speaking of this beloved decade of Grunge, fanny packs, Doc Marten’s, and the invention of that World Wide Web thing, the movie had some “Marvel”ous references to this bygone decade, starting with the crash site. Y’all just don’t know the magic of this place–before the Internet, streaming and pirating, and even DVDs, was Blockbuster.

Aside from that, there was a phone booth. That’s a thing we had back in the day kids before those mobile phone thingamajigs. There is Carol, talking on a pay phone in front of a Smashing Pumpkins poster. The cars, the VHS tapes, RadioShack, Nintendo Gameboy — what a great decade.

5. Kelly Sue Deconnick

For those who love where the comic was going that led to this cinematic moment, you have Kelly Sue Deconnick to thank for it. She knew everything she was writing was coming to this. So, how is this lovely woman an Easter Egg? Right after the ballyhoo on the subway, Captain Marvel exits the train and walks right by the woman who wrote her being there in the first place. Again, high nerd egg here but for those of us who love her work, this was a Faberge. (Look it up.)

6. Tesseract

Yes, Loki fans. He didn’t have it first. Ever since Red Skull went traipsing through Germany searching for the Space Stone, we have known about the Tesseract. As we know, Howard Stark got it, followed by Loki (thanks, Thanos, for the irony) a few years later. However, somewhere between now and then, we have the Tesseract powering Mar-Vell’s new mechanism like the Flux Capacitor in some ’80s movie. A nice egg.

7. Mar-Vell (Kinda)

The word “marvel” means “to be filled with wonder.” Makes sense, only in 1939, Fawcett Comics took it first. By the time, ‘Captain Marvel’ was a real thing in the ’50s, Stan Lee had this idea–make a signature character who would be the personification of the brand. If only he could get that word as a character, then Fawcett stopped publishing and the copyright lapsed and Ms. Marvel was born. Only Captain Mar-Vell was a dude and his boss was Colonel Yon-Rogg. (Yes, that was Jude Law and Mar-Vell was not the Captain. Yeah, just see the movie.)

8. Talos (the Tamed)?

If you spend any time with Marvel Comics, you know one of the ultimate enemies is the Skrull. These shapeshifting monsters are ruthless but in the movie, the supreme commander of Skrulls is Talos the Untamed. Only the film tames him a little with a great twist no one ever saw coming (and no, not spoiling that one). The pleasant surprise has us rooting for Talos, even if he wasn’t quite what we expected.

9. Nick Fury 007

In Marvel Canon, the beginning of Nick Fury was two distinct things–a notable spy and Caucasian. He made his name and cut his teeth as a spy during World War II. That’s when he was only a sergeant but he still had swag.

And yes, he was white. He remained a 007-type sleuth with salt-and-pepper hair and an eye patch. That is, until 2002 when Marvel went through a rebrand with “The Ultimates.”  Nick Fury was literally made to look like Samuel L. Jackson, so if you think Sam was “born to be Nick Fury.,” he kinda was. And yes, we find out how he lost his eye, but you can get to that later.

10. Project Pegasus

First in Iron Man 2 then in Thor, but eventually we learn how the Stark family gets hooked up with military, defense, and space–a shared facility with NASA and S.H.I.E.L.D. kept secret to study the Tesseract. Rewind a couple of decades, the same building is used to shelter, build, and launch prototype vehicles, as well as classified secrets about certain Kree warriors. It’s the blue circle of life.

There were others in this entertaining, 21st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but those are the eggs  that stood out the most. Comments are open if you want to talk breakfast recipes.