Like any good movie adapted from a comic book with years of history, Aquaman had a few cool
Easter Eggs put there to reward eagle eyed comics fans.
From fun cameos to some pretty deep cuts that only make sense if you've brushed up on your
comic book history, here are some of the Easter Eggs that you may have missed in Aquaman.
And beware: there be salty sea-spoilers ahead.
It's no secret that tons of movies and TV shows try to make themselves seem more real
by enlisting the help of real-world media personalities to talk about the fictional
events or characters you're watching.
You know the moments - like when Anderson Cooper appeared on CNN to cover the big superhero
throwdown in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
But Aquaman goes in a different direction.
Just as folks in the DCEU read the Daily Planet rather than The New York Times, they also
watch other channels instead of, say, MSNBC.
When the characters in Aquaman flip on the news, the anchors sit behind the desk at GBS,
a fictional network pulled straight from the pages of DC Comics.
Longtime comics readers might know that in 1971's Superman #233, Clark Kent gave TV a
shot, working as a news anchor for WGBS.
Pretty much all of DC Comics' superheroes have their own fictional locales where they
hang their capes, and Aquaman's no different.
The battle for Atlantis' throne is one of the film's central plotlines.
However, while we had no shortage of undersea civilizations to see as the movie progressed,
another scene in the movie seemed to lay the foundation for a different superhero who we
haven't actually met in this version of the DC Extended Universe.
During the one and only credits-scene, we see a clipping from a newspaper asking about
the identity of Aquaman - and the newspaper itself is the Coast City Gazette, presumably
the hometown paper for another important DC superhero, Green Lantern.
Sure, if you saw the Ryan Reynolds-starring Green Lantern movie from 2011, you're probably
already familiar with Coast City… but there's actually a pretty good chance you didn't see
it, since it didn't sell enough tickets to justify a sequel.
"Please don't make the supersuit green.
Or animated."
Since Warner Bros. rebooted DC's cinematic universe after Green Lantern bombed, we've
been introduced to tons of heroes and villains, but except for a small cameo during a flashback
scene in Justice League, Green Lantern is still MIA from this incarnation of DC's movieverse.
Could this small newspaper clipping lay the groundwork for Green Lantern's impending return?
Most DC Comics fans know that Aquaman has a sidekick who usually goes by the name Aqualad.
But even though Aqualad has had comic book and animated adventures of his own in the
Teen Titans and the Team from Young Justice, Aquaman has yet another sidekick who rarely
gets the respect he deserves.
That's right, we're talking about Topo the octopus, an eight-armed sentinel of justice
who Aquaman taught to play several instruments at once.
Mostly so he could play "Happy Birthday" should the need arise.
No, really.
As silly as the Aquaman movie turned out to be, James Wan and the rest of the filmmakers
wisely decided not to go so far as to have Arthur hang out with his octopus pal.
However, Wan has, indeed, confirmed that Topo makes an appearance in the movie anyway.
He's not easy to miss: he's the giant octopus playing the drums during the Ring of Fire
battle scene between Arthur and King Orm.
For a movie set in the DC Comics' multiverse, there weren't a ton of overt nods to comics
themselves… or at least, that's how it might seem.
However, there's a distinct possibility that one of the movie's key locations - the sea
in the center of the Earth - could actually be one of the most obscure Easter Eggs you
could imagine.
In the mid-1970s, DC Comics published a series called Warlord, about an Air Force pilot who
crash lands in a place called Skartaris, a lush jungle land filled with fantastic creatures
and dinosaurs.
And, in the third act of the movie, Aquaman and Mera find themselves in a mysterious land
in the center of the Earth, filled with lush jungle and dinosaurs, where they're reunited
with Atlanna, who's been there by herself for 20 years.
While Skartaris in the comics does, in fact, feature various factions of people, Atlanna
said she was alone the entire time she was there.
That might mean that wherever she'd been might not actually be Skartaris, or simply that
she never managed to encounter any of the land's inhabitants.
Maybe Warner Bros. will announce a Warlord adaptation coming to the big screen any day
now.
But until they do, this Easter Egg might not be as fresh as the others.