There’s a special joy in finding little hidden references and Easter eggs in the movies you watch. Many people comb over each frame and every second of a movie hoping for any new clue to come up in their search. Easter egg hunting is an age-old cinema tradition that’s both entertaining and interesting.
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There were many references to other IPs and cool little details sprinkled throughoutSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but you might not have caught all of them on your first viewing. The best Easter eggs are the ones you can see, but the small details are, sometimes, just as cool.
10Title Card Glitch
Keen-eyed fans might have noticed that with each new iteration in the Spider-Verse universe, the title card of the movies has gotten more and more glitchy, almost as if they’re destabilizing. The first movie had a pretty standard comic-style title card, the dominant colors being red, with a hint of blue at the borders.
Across the Spider-Verse takes it a step further and adds a similar distort effect to the anomalies shown in the movie. The blue color starts to become more prominent, but the primary color is still red. Meanwhile, in the leaked image for the third movie’s title card, we can see that the color scheme changes, with purple becoming the dominant color rather than red, and it gets even more glitchy.
9The Villains In Spider Society
When Miles is introduced to Spider Society, he sees amazing sights and goes through different parts of the world. He also passes by a prison where the Spider Variants keep anomalies, people, or creatures that end up in a different dimension that will be sent back to their original world.
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Among these villains are Moosterio, Spider-Ham’s version of Mysterio, the classic Spider-Man villain Rhino, and a really old Green Goblin from the Atari era, where he was barely recognizable as a green man with a waving hand. It’s cool to see the Spider-Verse pay attention to the less popular Spider-Man comics.
8The Spider-Verse Is Part Of The MCU
After Miles is brought to the HQ of Spider Society, he meets the head of the whole operation, Miguel O’Hara. Also known as Spider-Man 2099, the leader explains to Miles the consequences of opening multiversal portals and why it’s not a good idea.
It’s during this tirade that Miguel also mentions the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home and calls Doctor Strange stupid. This proves that even the characters in their own reality think Doctor Strange was acting a bit out of character. It also proves that the Spider-Verse is a part of the same reality as the MCU.
7Andrew Garfield’s & Toby Maguire’s Spider-Men
When explaining the concept of canon events, Miguel brings up a series of images of different Spider Variants losing their loved ones in the form of Uncle Ben. It’s during this sequence that we get to see both Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield mourning over their dead Uncle.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse utilized a large variety of art styles, even incorporating live action when appropriate. There’s a good chance the third movie will have more live-action elements in it as well, so we might even get a crossover between the many Spider-Man trilogies, similar to what we got in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
6Spider-Animals
Hidden among the multitude of Spider Variants in Spider society, the audience gets an eyeful of many different cool Spider Variant designs. The first Spider-Verse introduced us to Spider-Ham, a web-slinging pig, but now we have even more animals we can adore.
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There’s Spider-Cat, Spider-Horse, and even Spider-Monkey, among others. The coolest and most unexpected one was definitely the Spider-Dinosaur variant that Miles spots during the chase scene.
5The Spider-Man Meme, Again
Getting a boom in 2015, the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme is pretty mainstream nowadays. First, it made an appearance inSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse— laughter was sparse, but it was there for knowing fans. Then, it made an appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home to the cheer of the entire cinema.
In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the meme gets used once more when Miguel orders the Spider Variants to capture Spider-Man. Really? Again? Talk about beating a dead spider-horse. I’ll see myself out.
4More Detail On The Spider That Bit Miles
One of the coolest details in The Spider-Verse is the very clear foreshadowing they did in the first movie. The particle collider explosion has more effects than just bringing in a couple of different Spider Variants. It gave birth to the villain of the second movie and directly kick-started the events of Across the Spider-Verse. A smaller detail that might’ve slipped by relates to the spider that bites Miles.
It’s revealed in the second movie that the radioactive spider was actually not a part of this universe at all. It came from Earth 42, which left that reality without a Spider-Man of its own, a fact that will be relevant in the third movie. In the trailer for Into the Spider-Verse, we see the spider that bit Miles glitch out, as all anomalies should. At the time, nobody thought much of it, but with the power of hindsight, it’s a really cool detail that the directors added.
3Donald Glover As The Prowler
A long-time fan who tried to be a part of a Spider-Man movie many times, even launching a campaign for it, Donald Glover finally got his wish in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. He plays as an alternate, live-action version of Uncle Aaron, who is slated to be sent back to his own reality.
Seeing an actual version of the Prowler’s suit was cool, and seeing a prolific personality like Donald Glover in an animated movie was even cooler. The Spider-Verse has very consistently used a variety of mediums and art styles and blended them together in a way that works (and works well), and it’s incredible to watch it happen.
2Venom’s Convenience Store
Spider-Verse’s main villain, The Spot, realizes he has dimension-hopping powers and goes on something of a field trip, visiting different realities and encountering a variety of worlds, from a Lego version of the Daily Bugle to the convenience store in Tom Hardy’s Venom.
He interacts with the store owner, Mrs. Chen, and then zips back into his body without giving it too much thought. While Venom itself wasn’t a part of the movie, there’s speculation that the infamous symbiote might make an appearance in the next movie.
1Ganke Plays Marvel’s Spider-Man
The coolest thing I saw in the cinema was Ganke Lee, Miles' right-hand man, offhandedly playing a version ofMarvel’s Spider-Man. Is Marvel Studios also a part of the MCU? Do they also make superhero movies in-universe? How does merchandising for real-life heroes work? How much is Miles making off of that game? Well, probably not anything since he isn’t in it; the other Spider-Man of his universe is.
So many questions but so few answers. Perhaps we’ll never know the full extent of the in-universe Marvel’s influence over the events of the world they inhabit. But one thing is for sure; we need to know if Marvel made a Spider-Man movie in the Spider-Man movie.
